o my personal views and wishes. The
constitutional rights of legislation in Great Britain may not have
always been exercised most judiciously, but who would adduce that as an
argument for the annihilation of those rights, or against the existence
of constitutional freedom in England? Is Canada to be made an exception
to this rule?

3. I remark, thirdly, that neither is this a question which affects the
vested rights of any parties except those of the people of Canada
generally. When one-seventh of the wild lands of Canada was reserved for
the support of a Protestant clergy, by the Act of 1791, 31st George
III., chap. 31, the Canadian Legislature, created by the same Act, was
invested with authority, under certain forms, to "vary or repeal" the
several clauses relating to that clergy land reservation. That vested
right the people of Upper Canada possessed from 1791 to 1840. All other
vested rights are subordinate to those of a whole people, and are not to
be exalted above them. The Canadian Legislative Assembly has proposed to
secure all parties who have acquired rights or interests in the revenue
arising from the sales of the clergy reserve lands during the lives of
the incumbents or recipients; but, beyond that guarantee, it claims the
right of "varying or repealing," as it shall judge expedient, the landed
reservation in question, and the application of the revenues arising
from it.

4. The real question for consideration in England being thus separated
from other questions with which it has sometimes been erroneously and
injuriously confounded, I proceed to remark that the Imperial Act 3 and
4 Vic., chap. 78, is at variance with what the Imperial Governments
without exception and without reservation, for twenty-five years, have
admitted and avowed to be the constitutional rights of the people of
Canada. It has at all times been admitted in the first place, that the
Act 31st Geo. III., ch. 31, which created a legislature in Canada, and
authorized the clergy land reservation, invested the Canadian
Legislature with authority to legislate as to its disposal, and the
application of revenues arising from it; and secondly, that whatever
legislation might take place on the subject should be in harmony with
the wishes of the Canadian people. The Imperial Act 3 and 4 Vic., ch.
78, deprives the Canadian people of that right of legislation which they
had possessed for forty years, and does violence to their wishes and
opinions