vide the Societies. By
Dr. Ryerson's mission to England this evil was averted by a union in
1833, which proved to be but a hollow truce, as the events of 1840
demonstrated.

That the evil genius of Rev. Robert Alder exercised a baneful influence
upon both Conferences, is abundantly evident from his own subsequent
conduct and other events. And that this was the case is more clearly
manifest from the fact that when he ceased to exert any influence in the
Connexion, and when Dr. Ryerson and the Canadian Representatives were
able to lay the whole case before the British Conference in 1847, that
body, led by Dr. Bunting himself, entirely endorsed the consistent
action of the Canada Conference in all of this painful and protracted
business. He said: "The Canadian brethren are right, and we are wrong."
(See a subsequent Chapter on the subject.)

Looking at the facts of the case in the light of to-day, can any one
wonder at the pertinacity and zeal with which Dr. Ryerson resisted the
unnatural and unwise system of foreign dictation sought to be imposed
upon the Canadian Connexion. This he did at a great sacrifice of
personal feeling, and of personal friendship, as well as of personal
comfort and popularity. He maintained, as he had stipulated in the
articles of Union, that "the rights and privileges of the Canadian
preachers and Societies should be preserved inviolate." He knew that a
Church in a free country like Canada, characterized as it was by
Methodistic zeal and vigour, and yet tempered by the moderation of
Canadian institutions and manners, possessed within itself a spirit of
independence and of growth and progress which would never brook the
official control of a Committee thousands of miles away. To be subject
to even the generous control of such a Committee, possessed of no
practical experience in Canadian matters, would, he knew, doom the
Church to a dwarfed, and unnatural, and a miserable existence. Events
had already proved to Dr. Ryerson (while the Union during 1839-1840 was
in a moribund state) that the Church, controlled by a dominant section
of the British Conference, would be a prey to internal feuds and
jealousies. In the conflicts that would then ensue spiritual life would
die out, missionary zeal would be fitful in its efforts, and every
Church interest would partake largely of a sectional and partizan
character, destructive alike to the symmetry, growth and harmony of
development of a living Church, end