400.122 H.L.C. RELIGIOUS ENDOWMENTS IN CANADA. The Clergy Reserve and Rectory Questions. A CHAPTER OF CANADIAN HISTORY. BY SIR FRANCIS HINCKS, K.C.M.G., C.B. LONDON: DALTON & LUCY, 28, COCKSPUR STREET, 400 122 Ÿ RELIGIOUS ENDOWMENTS IN CANADA. It will be the aim of the author to submit to the British public as concisely as possible, a statement of facts in relation to Religious Endowments in Canada, and to the settlement of the Clergy Reserve and Rectory questions by the Canadian Parliament. It is now rather more than a century since Canada, then containing a population of about 65,000 people, professing the Roman Catholic faith, was ceded by France to England. The treaty was dated February 10th, 1763, and a proclamation was issued on 7th October following, announcing that the Governors had been authorized by Letters Patent, to summon and call general assemblies in the same form as in other North American Colonies. No Imperial Legislation took place until 1774, when the Act 14 Geo. III. cap. 83, was passed. For the "perfect security and ease of His Majesty's subjects professing the religion of the Church of Rome," it was provided that the Clergy of the Church of Rome should be entitled to all their accustomed dues and rights with respect to such persons only as professed that religion, and that out of the rest of the said accustomed dues and rights it should be lawful for His Majesty, his heirs and successors, to make such provision, as he or they should from time to time think necessary or expedient, for the encouragement of the Protestant religion, and for the maintenance and support of a Protestant Clergy. It was evidently contemplated by the framers of the Act referred to, that the Protestant Clergy should be supported as the Roman Catholic Clergy are to this day, by tithes and dues exacted from their own flocks, and against which there has been as yet no remonstrance on the part of the Roman Catholics of Lower Canada. By the same Act a Council was constituted, but with powers much less ample, than are now entrusted to the Legislative Councils of Crown Colonies. At that period Upper Canada was a wilderness, but after the close of the American revolutionary war, the adherents of the British Crown began to flock to it encouraged by promises of grants of land to themselves, and their descendants. The new settlers were chiefly Protestants, and when the time arrived for conceding self-government to the colonists, it was deemed expedient by Mr. Pitt to divide the old Province of Quebec into two Provinces, Lower and Upper Canada. Accordingly an Act was passed 31 Geo. III. cap. 31, formerly known as the Constitutional Act. The clauses of this Act relating to the support of religion are those from sec. 35 to 42 inclusive. Sec. 35 was a re-enactment of the provisions of 14 Geo. III. cap. 83, regarding all dues, and rights, and it was long held and probably correctly, that under it tithes might have been levied in Upper Canada. No attempt to do so was ever made, but it was deemed advisable by the Legislature of Upper Canada to pass a declaratory act on the subject in the year 1823. Sec. 36 authorized a reservation of land, equal in value to one-seventh of all land disposed of by grant or sale to settlers, for the maintenance and support of a Protestant Clergy. The other sections authorized the erection and endowment of Rectories, and gave power to the Provincial Legislature about to be created" to vary or repeal" all these provisions. Long before a grievance was felt on religious grounds, there was general dissatisfaction among the colonists, at the obstruction to settlement presented by the reservation. Those at all acquainted with the settlement of a new country, destitute of the means of communication, must be aware of the magnitude of the grievance inflicted by these reserves For a long time there was no authority to sell the Clergy Reserves, and the original idea seems to have been to create a tenantry in each township which was eventually to be constituted a parish. A Clergy Corporation was established with power to grant leases, and for some years this system was followed. How far the leasing system proved successful may be gathered from the evidence given to the Committee of the House of Commons in 1828, by Mr. James Stephen, then legal adviser to the Colonial Office. Mr. Stephen, referring to Lower Canada, states the revenue from Clergy Reserves to be nominally £930 per annum, and the actual |