I
express our belief that the Methodist Church, in its doctrines,
ministry, and institutions, furnishes as formidable a barrier
against the irreligion and infidelity of the times as any other
section of Protestantism. Nor is it possible for
us--notwithstanding our unfeigned respect for His Excellency--to
feel ourselves under any obligations to tender our support to
another section of the Protestant Church, whose clergy, in this
Province, collectively, officially, and individually (with solitary
exceptions), have resisted the attainment of every civil and
religious privilege we now enjoy--have twice impeached our
character and principles before the Imperial Government--who deny
the legitimacy of our ministry, who, in their doctrines respecting
Church polity, and several points of faith, do not represent the
doctrines of the Church of England, or of the established clergy in
England as a body, but that section only of the established clergy
that have associated with all arbitrary measures of government
against various classes of Protestant non-conformists which have
darkened the page of British history, and also the dark ages,
notions of rites and ceremonies, and the conductor of whose
official organ in this Province has recently represented the
Methodist ministry as the guilty cause of those divine
chastisements under the influence of which our land droops and
mourns. I am sure my brethren, as well as myself, freely forgive
the great wrongs thus perpetrated against us; but we feel ourselves
equally bound in duty to ourselves, to our country, and to our
common Christianity, to employ all lawful means to prevent such
exclusive, repulsive, and proscriptive sentiments from acquiring
anything more than equal protection in the Province.

I might appeal to circumstances within His Excellency's knowledge,
to show that from 1836 to the close of the last session of our
Provincial Parliament, I have spared no pains--without the remotest
view to personal or even Methodistic advantage--to second, to the
utmost of my humble ability, any plan to which the Province might,
under all circumstances, be induced to concur, in order to settle
the protracted controversy on the clergy reserve question; and that
it has not been, until I have had indubitable proofs that