ce. At the same session of Parliament in 1831, the Marriage Bill,
which had been before the House each year for six successive years, was
finally passed. This Bill gave to the Methodists and to other
non-Episcopal ministers the right for the first time to solemnize
matrimony in Upper Canada.

_Feb. 19th._--Sir John Colborne, the Lieutenant-Governor, having
nominated an Episcopal chaplain to the House of Assembly, the question,
"Is the Church of England an established church in Upper Canada?" was
again debated in the House of Assembly and discussed in the newspapers.
With a view to a calm, dispassionate, and historical refutation of the
claims set up by the Episcopal Church on the subject, Dr. Ryerson
reprinted in the _Guardian_ of this day, the sixth of a series of
letters which he had addressed from Cobourg to Archdeacon Strachan, in
May and June, 1828. It covered the whole ground in dispute.[32]

_Nov. 6th, 1832._--Archdeacon Strachan, in his sermon, preached at the
visitation of the Bishop of Quebec at York, on the 5th of September,
speaking of the Methodists, said that he would--

Speak of them with praise, notwithstanding their departure from the
Apostolic ordinance, and the hostility long manifested against us
by some of their leading members.

In reply to this statement, Dr. Ryerson wrote from St. Catharines to the
Editor of the _Guardian_. He pointed out that:--

It was not until after Archdeacon Strachan's sermon on the death of the
former Bishop of Quebec was published, in 1826, that a single word was
written, and then to refute his slanders. In that sermon, when
accounting for the few who attend the Church of England, the Archdeacon
said that their attendance discouraged the minister, and that--

His influence is frequently broken or injured by numbers of
uneducated, itinerant preachers, who, leaving their steady
employment, betake themselves to preaching the Gospel from
idleness, or a zeal without knowledge ... and to teach what they do
not know, and which from their pride they disdain to learn.[33]

Again, in May, 1827, Archdeacon Strachan sent an "Ecclesiastical Chart"
to the Colonial Office, and in the letter accompanying it stated that:--

The Methodist teachers are subject to the orders of the United
States of America, and it is manifest that the Colonial Government
neither has, nor can have any other control over them, or prevent
them