, been alleged that the people of Canada have
acquiesced in the provisions of the Imperial Act, and are satisfied with
it. At the time of passing the Imperial Act, in 1840, and down to within
the last two years, the discussion of questions relating to the
organization and system of government itself occupied the attention of
the public mind in Canada; but no sooner was the public mind set at rest
on those paramount and fundamental questions, than the Canadian people
demanded the restoration of their rights on the question of the clergy
reserves. What they have felt for two years, and often and strongly
spoken, through the local press and at the hustings, they now speak in
the ears of the Sovereign of the Imperial Parliament. That there must be
deep and general dissatisfaction in Canada on this subject, will appear
from the following circumstances: (1) The Imperial Act infringes the
rights, and contravenes the wishes of the Canadian people; (2) It
inflicts an injustice and wrong upon the great majority of the religious
persuasions in that country, where the "convictions of nine-tenths" or
rather ninety-nine one-hundredths, of the inhabitants are in favour of
"equal rights upon equal conditions," among all classes and persuasions;
(3) The Legislative Assembly, by a majority of 51 to 20, declare that
the Imperial Act, "so far from settling this long agitated question, has
left it to be the subject of renewed and increased public discontent;"
(4) The comparative silence of the Wesleyan body--the oldest, the most
numerous, and the most unjustly treated, of all the excluded
denominations--is expressive and ominous. Its representatives, having
proceeded to England in 1840, remonstrated against this Bill, then
before Parliament; they sought the assent of Her Majesty's Secretary of
State for the Colonies to be heard at the Bar of the House of Commons
against it, and having been refused, they presented to him, July 27th,
1840, a most earnest remonstrance against the Bill. On the Bill becoming
law, they silently submitted, and on grounds which were explained, a few
months since, by the official organ of the Wesleyan Methodist Church in
Canada, in the following words:--

On Lord John Russell's Bill becoming a law, the question was
changed from a denominational to a Provincial one--from an
ecclesiastical to a constitutional one. It was no longer a question
between one denomination and another, but a question betwe