we should more endanger the Church of England in Canada than by any other step.

Mr. Liddell believed that the ultimate object of this measure was confiscation. It authorised a Legislature, whose religious bias was well known, to " vary, repeat, or alienate" this property. The Church of England should, therefore, regard it with distrust; especially when one of its supporters admitted that it might shake confidence in religious endowments which rested on the same foundations as all other property.

Mr. Adderly would certainly support the second reading of the Bill. In the first place, on the ground of the impossibility of the policy of its opponents; in the second place, on the ground of distinct faith, honour, and consistency of principle on the part of the Imperial Parliament; thirdly, from the utter futility of the arguments used against the measure; and, lastly, upon the ground of a Churchman, that the interest of the Church of England, and the retention of Canada as a British colony, was vitally involved in the passing of the measure as rapidly as possible.

Mr. A. Mills concurred that selfgovernment was the great principle of our colonial policy. The question, however, was, whether this was a local affair, and he contended that it was not one of those matters

with which the Canadian Parliament had a right to meddle. These reserves had been set apart for religious purposes, and there was strong reason for believing that in dealing with them the religious principle would not be respected by the Canadian Legislature, Lord Elgin's Government being pledged to secularise them.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer said the facts of the case were these: An address from the Assembly of Canada, and another from the Legislative Council, prayed Parliament to repeal the Act of 1840, which restrained the Canadian Legislature in the disposal of the clergy reserves. Το that prayer Her Majesty's Government urged the House to accede, and Sir J. Pakington desired them to reject it. The objections to the Bill turned upon an apprehension that the power it gave would be, as was thought, misused; but the answer was, that the House had no right to legislate upon such an opinion. The question was, not as to the use to be made of the power, but in whose hands it should be placed. Was this a local matter or not? If it belonged to the category of Imperial interests, this Bill should be rejected; but there was not a shadow of evidence to take it out of the class of local questions. In 1791 Mr. Pitt left it to the colony, and the people of Canada believed it to be a local question. These reserved lands were located in Canada; the capital of Canada had given them their value; the Bill, therefore, satisfied the principle of self-government. Mr. Gladstone showed that the present law could not be maintained on the ground that the question had been finally disposed of, or on that of public faith. deprecated a conflict with Canada, unless our arguments could bear the brunt of controversy, when mingled with other and serious questions. If the House, he said, was determined to maintain the existing appropriation of these reserves, Canada would ask for the title-deeds of this appropriation, and we must then admit that in

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1840 we altered the appropriation of 1791, and that we now denied to the Canadian Legislature, in respect to their own affairs, a power we had exercised on our own behalf. His earnest hope was that these endowments might be maintained, and he knew that there were opinions in Canada entitled to the greatest weight which believed that they would be. He might be wrong; but it was his sincere conviction that our concession to Canada in this vital matter, accompanied by a respectful expression of British feeling for the maintenance of those endowments, if it did not restrain their alienation, would afford the best chance of securing them.

Mr. Napier characterised the measure as one of spoliation. He described the Act of 1840, which encroached on the rights of the Church, as a final compromise, consented to for the sake of peace. He was ready to be bound by the Act of 1791, and he argued from its provisions that the Imperial control over those lands was expressly reserved, and, in respect to ecclesiastical and Crown rights, was retained in 1840. All this control was surrendered by the present Bill, which was not merely prospective, but retrospective. No principle of religious equality was involved in this question; these reserves were a gift of the Crown to the Protestant clergy for the support of the Protestant religion.

After some remarks from Sir Robert Inglis, the House divided, and the second reading was carried by 275 against 192.

On the 11th of April, the subject was again debated at consider able length upon the order of the day for the third reading of the

Bill, when Mr. Walpole, in moving to defer the third reading for six months, stated the reasons which induced him to take this course, namely, the strange admissions which had been made during the discussions in Committee, and the answer given that evening by Lord J. Russell. At the second

reading of the Bill, the House was told that the great object of the measure was to give the Canadian Legislature the fullest power over all matters of purely local concern; but when the Bill was examined in Committee, it appeared not to be confined to those matters; it extended to investments made in this country, and enabled the Canadian Legislature to deal with those investments, though they affected no local interests; and, further, that endowments to Roman Catholics could not be touched without the authority of the Imperial Parliament, while endowments to Protestants in Canada could be dealt with and destroyed by a majority of the Canadian Legislature alone. The principles and considerations alleged by the Government for the introduction of this Bill might be reduced to two points-first, that it was our duty to give to the Canadian Legislature the largest powers with reference to matters of purely local self-government; and, secondly, if those powers were abridged, there was danger of discontent in Canada, and of a collision between the colonial Legislature and the Imperial Parliament. With respect to the first point, though he was favourable to colonial self-government, there were previous obligations upon the Imperial Parliament, which, in this matter, had a trust imposed upon it, and this Bill would dispose of the reserves,

contrary to the terms of that trust. The title to them had never been disputed; a solemn guarantee had been given, which could not be departed from without a violation of faith, and Lord J. Russell had just declared that if this Bill passed, and these reserves should be secularised, the guarantee of this country was

gone. With

regard to the second point, the evil consequences likely to ensue if the Bill did not pass, he believed that worse consequences would result from the adoption of the Bill; and unless the House were prepared to adopt the voluntary principle, unless they desired to sow the seeds of religious strife in the colony, to shake the confidence of other churches in endowments, and to set race against race, he entreated them, upon every principle of policy and expediency, as well as of honour and justice, to pause before they gave their assent to this Bill.

Mr. Hume contended that Mr. Walpole's own arguments ought to have disposed him to support the Bill, which was a wise measure, and would appease religious differences, and diffuse content over the colony. He agreed that the effect of the Bill would be to establish the voluntary principle, but that he thought one of its recommendations.

Mr. Henry Drummond began by calling the measure neither more nor less than a Bill for Church plunder; and he was loath to leave it without a parting bendiction. Lord Aberdeen had said the Government would be conducted on principles of "Conservative progress; but he had stuck to his substantive and had forgotten his adjective. So far as he understood the principle announced by

the Premier, from the way the Aberdeenshire phrase had been translated into pure Cornish, "Conservative progress meant "consistent Radicalism." "I find that when a bishop thinks it right and fair to stand up for the property of an absent brother, Her Majesty's Ministers forthwith denounce him as a pest to his diocese.' Now, that the right hon. Baronet should abuse a prelate who cannot answer him, may be consistent Radicalism, but is not consistent with Conservative progress. But there is another extraordinary matter which I wish to refer to. There was another bishop who justified the plunder of his brother in Canada. I have no doubt you remember, Sir, the anecdote which connects the name of James the First with Dr. Andrewes and Dr. Neale, the Bishops of Winchester and Durham. The monarch asked their opinion whether he might not tax his subjects without going through the formality of asking the consent of Parliament; and Bishop Neale replied,

Your Majesty is the light of our eyes and the breath of our nostrils; you may do what you please.' And what do you say, my Lord?' said James, turning to Bishop Andrewes. Sir,' said he, I think your Majesty may lawfully take my brother Neale's money, for he says you may.' That, I think, will go some way towards showing the Chancellor of the Exchequer that we have a right to take the temporalities of the See of Oxford. (Laughter.) Now, Sir, I do not much like doing things by halves. Since her Majesty's Ministers are going to act the part of Filch in Canada, and the part of Sixteenstring Jack in Ireland, why not put a bold face upon the matter,

and play Captain Macheath in England, beginning with the See of Oxford? If ever I wished to rob or plunder, I should prefer a rich booty; the morality is the same, and the profit much greater. (Laughter.) I admit there is great difficulty between interfering in the internal government of Canada, and letting them manage for themBut you know very little of what is involved in free trade if you think it is confined to cotton and corn." He predicted separation from all these colonies as a necessary consequence of the

measure.

Mr. K. Seymer, as a Conservative, supported the Bill, believing that it would tend to preserve the union between Canada and the mother country.

Mr. Liddell maintained that the English Parliament, in 1791 and 1840, had guaranteed these reserves, and that to set aside that step, out of deference to the feeling of the majority in the colony, would be a virtual surrender of the Imperial authority. The principle would be subversive of the right of property everywhere.

Sir E. Dering observed that he had arrived at the conclusion that the enactments of 1791 and 1840 were not permanent or irrevocable, and that this was a question the solution of which ought to be left to the Canadian Legislature. At the same time he believed there was no intention on the part of that Legislature to secularise the funds.

Mr. Child said that if the arguments by which this Bill was supported applied to Canada, they must have a wider application, and would strike at the root of all property. He could not vote for a measure which would set aside

an Imperial Act, and sanction confiscation.

Mr. F. Peel replied to Mr. Walpole, who, he said, had endeavoured to fasten upon this Bill the stigma of a breach of trust; whereas, if there was one accusation from which it was more free than another it was this. All the obligations of public faith were scrupulously fulfilled by the Bill, which protected existing incumbents, and was conceived in the spirit of the constitutional Act of 1791. It was founded upon the principle of strict impartiality and equality of dealing towards all religious denominations in the colony, and of leaving to its Legislature the management of its own local affairs. Was not this a question that should be entrusted to the colonial Legislature? These lands, it is said, were the property of England: but we had surrendered to the Canadian Parliament all the waste lands of the Crown; and what distinction was there between institutions in Canada for the administration of justice and those for the inculcation of divine truth? Mr. Walpole had argued that the settlement of 1840 was final; but it was final only in the sense that the Canadian people were expected to acquiesce in an arrangement of a question which had been an element of strife and dissension. Not believing that the passing of this Bill would cloud the prospects of the Church of England in Canada, and knowing that it would tend to cement the ties which bound the colony with the mother country, he hoped the House would adopt it.

Mr. Napier denied that the Bill placed the Church of England and the Roman Catholics in Canada upon the same footing; the Pro

testant reserves would be put upon a lower level, and the Church of Rome would be favoured. He insisted that the guarantee on the Consolidated Fund, by the Act of 1840, was not temporary, but for all time, and that the faith of Parliament was pledged to the contract in perpetuity. Was it to be understood that, whenever a territory was conquered by the Crown, and land was reserved to a church there, as soon as a representative Government grew up in that territory, the land so reserved was to be surrendered? This Bill was not doing what was done by the Act of 1791; it interfered with vested rights and acquired interests. This was not a question of endowments or of establishments, but of spoliation and of property. The faith of the Crown, he maintained, was pledged to the entire grant, and it could not delegate to a colony the execution of the contract, which was not limited to the amount paid in 1840, but included one-third of the lands afterwards sold, and this contract must be fulfilled in its entirety.

The Solicitor-General replied, and insisted that Parliamentary faith and private rights were both preserved by the Bill. By the Act of 1840, certain stipends were to be paid to certain incumbents during their life or incumbency, and a certain portion of the remaining fund was to be appropriated for the benefit of the people of Canada Could it, then, be said that Parliament violated a compact, by placing at the control of the people of Canada such Acts entered into for their sake and for their sake alone?

Sir J. Pakington pointed out what he considered to be inconsistencies in the course pursued by

the different members of the Government with reference to this Bill, and contended that, in 1840, it had been distinctly declared by Lord J. Russell that the guarantee against a deficiency of the Canada clergy reserves was to be in perpe. tuity. The language of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the second reading of the Bill, implied that without the third clause there would be a breach of faith; yet that clause was omitted, and he was at a loss to understand how that right hon. gentleman could be a party to the passing of the Bill without any guarantee. Either the honour of the country was pledged in the matter, or not; he believed it was, and if Parliament could not maintain its pledge, and was so feeble or so timid that it could not fulfil its obligations, we could no longer retain Canada with honour to this country. He denounced this Bill as a breach of the faith of the Crown, as a compromise of the honour of Parliament, and as inconsistent with the welfare of the empire.

Lord J. Russell justified the course he had pursued with regard to this question, admitting that in 1840, with reference to the guarantee, he had said that he hoped the arrangement would not be disturbed, though events might render it impossible to maintain the guarantee. But, in preparing this Bill, he did not think it right to oppose the Act of 1840 to a matter of domestic concern, and the question before the House could be determined on no other ground than that this was a subject upon which the people of Canada and their representatives must decide. did not shrink from the consequence that, if the people of Canada thought that church establish

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