in the disposal which it makes of the revenues of the lands in
question. Now the rights of the people of Canada on this subject were
explicitly stated by the late Sir George Murray in 1828, by the Earl of
Ripon in 1832, by His late Most Gracious Majesty in a message to the
Legislature of Upper Canada in 1833, and by Lord Glenelg in 1835 and
1836. I give a summary of the whole in the words of Lord Glenelg, in a
despatch to the Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, dated December 5,
1835, in reply to an attempt on the part of the latter to induce
Imperial legislation on the subject. Lord Glenelg says, in behalf of the
Imperial Government, that:--

Parliamentary legislation on any subject of exclusively internal
concern, in a British colony possessing a representative assembly,
is as a general rule unconstitutional. It is a right of which the
exercise is reserved for extreme cases, in which necessity at once
creates and justifies the exception.

After showing that no necessity existed for setting aside the
constitutional rights of the Canadian people, Lord Glenelg expresses
himself in the following language of enlightened political philosophy:--

It is not difficult to perceive the reasons which induced
Parliament, in 1791, to connect with a reservation of land for
ecclesiastical purposes, the special delegation to the Council and
Assembly of the right to vary that provision by any Bill which,
being reserved for the signification of His Majesty's pleasure,
should be communicated to both Houses of Parliament for six weeks
before that decision was pronounced. Remembering, it should seem,
how fertile a source of controversy ecclesiastical endowments had
supplied throughout a large part of the Christian world, and how
impossible it was to foretell with precision what might be the
prevailing opinions and feelings of the Canadians on this subject
at a future period, Parliament at once secured the means of making
a systematic provision for a Protestant clergy, and took full
precaution against the eventual inaptitude of that system to the
more advanced stages of a society then in its infant state, and of
which no human foresight could divine the more mature and settled
judgment.

In the controversy, therefore, respecting ecclesiastical
endowments, which at present divides the Canadian Legislature, I
find