them independent of voluntary
contributions from the people, I would studiously avoid that policy,
and leave truth unfettered and unimpeded to make her own conquests....
The professions of law and physic are well represented in this
Assembly, and bear ample testimony to the generosity of the people
towards them. Will good, pious and evangelical ministers of our holy
religion be likely to {52} fare worse than the physicians of the body,
or the agents for our temporal affairs? Let gospel ministers, as the
Scriptures say, live by the gospel, and the apostolic maxim that the
workman is worthy of his hire implies the performance of duty rewarded
temporarily by those who impose it. There is no fear that the
profession will become extinct for want of professors."[53]

Between the extremes, however, there existed a group of moderate
politicians, represented, in the Upper Province by Baldwin, in the
Lower by La Fontaine, and among British statesmen apparently by both
Sydenham and Elgin. Especially among its Canadian members, this group
felt keenly the desirability of supporting religion, as it struggled
through the difficulties inevitably connected with early colonial life.
But neither Baldwin, who was a devoted Anglican, nor La Fontaine, a
faithful son of his Church, showed any tinge of Strachan's bitterness
as they considered the question; and nothing impressed Canadian opinion
more than did La Fontaine's speech, in a later phase of the Clergy
Reserve troubles, when he solemnly renounced on behalf of his
coreligionists any chance of stealing an advantage while the
Protestants {53} were quarrelling, and when he stated his opinion that
the endowment belonged to the Protestant clergy, and should be shared
equally among them. It was this school of thought---to anticipate
events by a year or two--which received the sanction of Sydenham's
statesmanship, and that energetic mind never accomplished anything more
notable than when, in the face of a strong secularizing feeling, to the
justification for which he was in no way blind, he repelled the party
of monopoly, and yet retained the endowment for the Protestant churches
of Canada. "The Clergy Reserves," he wrote in a private letter, "have
been, and are, the great overwhelming grievance--the root of all the
troubles of the province, the cause of the Rebellion--the never-failing
watchword at the hustings--the perpetual source of discord, strife, and
hatred. Not a man of any part