, circulated throughout the Province,
addressed to the Provincial and Imperial Parliaments, and take up the
whole question--decidedly, fully, and warmly. We must be up and doing
while it is called to-day. It is the right time. There is a new and Whig
Parliament in England, and I am sure our own House of Assembly dare not
deny the petitions of the people on this subject.

Nature of the Struggle for Religious Equality.

During this and many succeeding years the chief efforts of Dr. Ryerson
and those who acted with him were directed, as intimated before, against
the efforts put forth to establish a "dominant church" in Upper Canada.
A brief _resume_ of the question will put the reader in possession of
the facts of the case:--

The late Bishop Strachan, in his speech delivered in the Legislative
Council, March 6th, 1828, devoted several pages of that speech (as
printed) to prove that "the Church of England is by law the Established
Church of this Province." This statement in some form he put forth in
every discussion on the subject.

The grounds upon which this claim was founded were also fully stated by
Rev. Wm Betteridge, B.D. (of Woodstock), who was sent to England to
represent the claims of the Church of England in this controversy. These
claims he put forward in his "Brief History of the Church in Upper
Canada," published in England in 1838. He rests those claims upon what
he considers to have been the intention of the Imperial Parliament in
passing the Clergy Reserve sections of the Act (31 Geo III., c. 31) in
1791, and also on the "King's Instructions" to the Lieutenant-Governor
of Upper Canada in 1818. He further contended that the "Extinction of
the Tithes Act," passed by the Upper Canada Legislature in 1823,
inferentially recognized the dominancy of the Church of England in
Canada as a Church of the Empire. Beyond this alleged inferential right
to be an Established Church in Upper Canada, none in reality existed. It
was, therefore, to prevent this inference,--which was insisted upon as
perfectly clear and irresistible,--from receiving Imperial or Provincial
recognition as an admitted or legal fact, that the persistent efforts of
Dr. Ryerson and others were unceasingly directed during all of those
years.

Few in the present day can realize the magnitude of the task thus
undertaken. Nor do we sufficiently estimate the significance of the
issues involved in that contest--a contest waged for the recognition of