rendering the
connection with England odious and short-lived. Being one of those
sent for by the Governor-General (Mr. Poulett Thompson) on the
clergy reserve question, I told His Excellency plainly that
although my countrymen, the Scotch, did not hesitate to dissent, as
a matter of conscience, they would not be loyal to a government
that made them dissenters by Act of Parliament.

Five years previous to this, or in 1835, I had, as an extra of the
_Albion_ newspaper, published by Mr. Cull, about the time York
became Toronto, proposed a plan of settlement for the clergy
reserves, fitted to solve the difficulties connected with them,
whether Industrial, Educational, or Political. My proposal was that
an educational tax should be levied, the payments by each church or
sect being shewn in separate columns, and each sect receiving from
the clergy reserve fund, in the proportion of its payments for
education.

This first attempt of mine to get an endowment for education
failed, as there was then no system of Responsible Government. But
five years afterwards (in 1840) when my election for Toronto had
decided the question of Responsible Government, and before the
first Parliament met, I spoke to Lord Sydenham, the
Governor-General, on the subject. He felt under considerable
obligation to me for standing in the breach when Hon. Robert
Baldwin found he could not succeed in carrying Toronto. I told him
that I felt sure that if we were allowed to throw the accounts of
the Province into regular books, we would show a surplus over
expenditure. His Excellency agreed to my proposal, and I stipulated
that, if we showed a surplus, half would be given as an endowment
for an educational system. Happily we found that Upper Canada had a
surplus revenue of about $100,000 a year--half of which the
Parliament of 1841 set aside for education as agreed--the law
stipulating that every District Council getting a share of it would
locally tax for as much more, and this constituted the financial
basis of our educational system. Thus I have given you a glimpse of
the time when Dr. Ryerson and I were active cooeperators.

Dr. Ryerson has left no farther record of his two years' ministry in
Newgate (Adelaide) Street circuit, Toronto, than that recorded on page
282. Some incidents of