e Church of Scotland to parliamentary recognition, had
given Canada the beginnings of an Anglican Church establishment; and
that the Anglicans in Canada, and more especially those led by Dr. John
Strachan, had more than fulfilled the sectarian and monopolist
intentions of the legislators.

Three schools of opinion formed themselves in {50} the intervening
years. First and foremost came the establishment men, mainly Anglican,
but with a certain Presbyterian following, who claimed to monopolize
the benefits, such as they were, of the Clergy Reserve funds. Canada
as a British colony was bound to support the one or two state churches
of the mother country; religious inequality was to flourish there as at
home; dissent was to receive the same stigma and disqualification, and
the dominant church or churches were to live, not by the efforts of
their members, but at the expense of all citizens of the state, whether
Anglican, Presbyterian, or Methodist. This phase of opinion received
its most offensive expression from leaders like the Bishop of Toronto.
To these monopolists, any modification of the Anglican settlement
seemed a "tyrannical and unjust measure," and they adopted an
ecclesiastical arrogance towards their fellow-Christians, which did
much to alienate popular sympathies throughout the province.

At the other extreme was a solid mass of public sentiment which had
little interest in the ecclesiastical theories of the Bishop of
Toronto, and which resented alike attempts to convert the provincial
university into an Anglican college, and the cumbrous and unjust form
of church establishment, {51} the most obvious evidence of which lay in
the undeveloped patches of Clergy Reserve land scattered everywhere
throughout the settlements. It was the undoubted desire of a majority
in 1840 that the Clergy Reserve system should be ended, the former
reserves sold, and the proceeds applied to educational and general
purposes; a desire which had been registered in the House of Assembly
on fourteen different occasions since 1826.[52] The case for the
voluntary principle in Canada had many exponents, but these words of
Dr. John Rolph in 1836 express the spirit of the movement in both its
strength and its weakness: "Instead of making a State provision for any
one or more churches; instead of apportioning the Clergy Reserves among
them with a view to promoting Christianity; instead of giving pensions
and salaries to ministers to make