the subject. His Lordship said, indeed, that the
Bill was not what he wished, nor could he say it was just; but he had
clearly ascertained that a more liberal one could not be got through the
House of Lords, and he thought that that Bill was better than none.

The Hon. Isaac Buchanan, in a letter to the Editor, dated April
1882,--speaking of these times and events--said:--

I was one of Dr. Ryerson's oldest friends and cooeperators that have
survived him. I was first in Toronto (then York) in 1830. Although
not then 20 years of age, I came out to Montreal as a partner in a
mercantile firm; and in the fall of 1831 I came up to York to
establish a branch House. From that time I have known Dr. Ryerson,
and then formed that high opinion of both his abilities and his
character which went on increasing more and more; so that for the
last forty years of his life I have regarded him as Canada's
greatest son. Of late years I seldom met him, but when I did, it
was an inexpressible pleasure to me, as an interchange of the most
unbounded mutual confidences took place between us in our views and
objects. He knew my view of religion,--that as with Spiritual
Religion (which is nothing to the mind unless it is everything), so
with the Religion of Humanity (my name for the removal of all
impediments out of the way of the employment, and of the enjoyment
of living of our own people)--it will not take a second place, but
must be the first question in the politics of every
country--otherwise its Government is a mere political machine. He
knew my belief that the Church Question being in the way of this
people's question, it took the first place among the causes of all
the industrial evils in England and Ireland. With me, therefore, it
was a _sine qua non_ to get quit of our dominant Church nuisance in
Canada, viewing it as a thing in the way of the prosperity of the
people, and therefore as a thing insidiously undermining their
loyalty. I am sure that his views were not far removed from mine in
this matter, and yet not a particle of enmity to the Church ever
affected me, and, I believe, the same thing was true of Dr.
Ryerson. But I felt the insufferable evil of the position it had in
this country, not only as usurping the first place in politics,
which the Labour Question should occupy, but as