ON THE CLERGY RESERVES OF MARCH 5, 1853. [The following speech was delivered on the second reading of the Bill, the object of which is fully set out by Sir W. Molesworth. The Secretary for the Colonies, the Duke of Newcastle, was in the House of Lords, so the chief burden of the Ministerial defence fell on Molesworth, who was First Commissioner of Works. An amendment by Sir John Pakington that the Bill be read that day six months was defeated by a majority of 83 275 supporting the second reading and 192 against. In the House of Lords the second reading was passed nem. con. and the struggle took place in committee over an amendment by Lord Derby, in effect preserving the rights of the Churches of England and of Scotland. This was defeated by a majority of 39: content 78, not content 117.] SIR,-The right hon. baronet1 who has just addressed the House, commenced his speech by deprecating the treating this Bill as a party measure. I cordially concur with the right hon. baronet in that deprecation, because this Bill raises two questions of the utmost importance, which ought not to be decided under the influence of party spirit. The first of these questions is the great and fundamental one of the colonial polity of the British Empire-namely, whether it ought to be a rule of our colonial government that all questions which affect exclusively the local interests of a 1 Sir John Pakington. colony possessing representative institutions should be dealt with by the local legislature. If this rule be assumed to be a sound one, then the next question. is, whether it should now be applied to the greatest of England's colonial dependencies, with a population of nearly 2,000,000 of inhabitants-whether it ought now to be applied to Canada with reference to the question of the clergy reserves? The object of this Bill is to apply this rule to Canada. The right hon. baronet seemed to have some difficulty in understanding the intentions of the framers of this Bill. Their intentions are to transfer to the Legislature of Canada the power of dealing with the clergy reserves, irrespective altogether of the mode or manner in which that Legislature may think proper to deal with those reserves. In my opinion the questions, whether the Legislature of Canada ought or ought not to maintain the present application of the proceeds of the clergy reserves-whether it ought or ought not to secularise those reserves, are questions for the Canadian and not for the Imperial Parliament to debate. I shall, therefore, not follow the example of the right hon. baronet, the greater portion of whose speech was not addressed to the real question at issue, whether we should transfer to the colonial Legislature the power of dealing with the clergy reserves, but merely expressed his opinions as to the manner in which the Canadian Legislature would exercise such a power. Sir, the right hon. baronet has admitted over and over again to-night that the rule of colonial polity which I have just mentioned is a sound general rule; and the right hon. baronet cannot deny that the question, how the proceeds of that portion of the lands of Canada which are called the "Clergy Reserves," should be disposed of, is one which affects exclusively the people of Canada. But the right hon. baronet has asserted that the question of the clergy reserves should be treated as an exception to the general rule that local questions should be dealt with by the local parliament of a colony. The reasons which have been assigned by the right hon. baronet for making this exception may, I think, be reduced to two chief ones. First, that the question of the clergy reserves is essentially an Upper Canadian and Protestant question; secondly, that the Act of 1840 was intended to be a final settlement of this question. With the permission of the House, I will consider each of these arguments separately. First, the right hon. baronet has repeatedly affirmed that the question of the clergy reserves is essentially an Upper Canada question; that the representatives of Upper Canada were as nearly as possible equally divided upon it; and that the majority, which carried the resolutions which the House of Assembly passed last September in favour of a Bill similar to that now before the House, had consisted in a large proportion of Roman Catholic members of the lower province, whose religion had been amply and munificently endowed. Thence the right hon. baronet inferred that the Roman Catholic members of Canada ought not to have power to legislate on questions affecting the endowments of Protestants, and that such questions should be dealt with in accordance with the wishes of the Protestants of Canada alone. Sir, it is by no means correct, on the part of the right hon. baronet, to say that the Roman Catholic religion is munificently endowed in Canada. The landed endowments referred to by the right hon. baronet are not, strictly speaking, the property of the Roman Catholic clergy, nor are they applicable in any considerable degree to the support of religious worship in Canada, but they are chiefly applicable to educational and charitable uses, or to the conversion of the Indian tribes. They belong to corporations which existed before the conquest of Canada. They were mostly obtained by gift, bequest, or purchase. A small portion only was granted by the French Crown. By the capitulation of Montreal in 1760 it was stipulated that this property should be preserved to its possessors; but this stipulation was not confirmed by the Treaty of 1763, nor by any Act of Parliament, and it was expressly set aside by the Act of 1774. Therefore, there is at present no statutory provision which would prevent the Canadian Legislature from dealing with this property in any way it might think proper. In Lower Canada the Roman Catholic clergy are now supported, as they were supported before the conquest, by tithes and other dues, which have much more of the character of voluntary contributions than of legal dues. For no person in Canada can now be required to pay tithes unless he voluntarily professes the Roman Catholic religion; and if a man in Lower Canada ceases to be a Roman Catholic, or sells his lands to a Protestant, the priest loses his tithes; because tithes were not secured to the Roman Catholic clergy by the capitulation of Montreal, but their payment was made to depend upon the will and pleasure of the British Crown. That pleasure was signified in 1774, in the first Act for the government of Canada. That Act evidently proceeded on the principle of religious equality between Christian sects, for it provided that the Roman Catholic clergy might receive tithes only from Roman Catholics, and that Protestants should pay tithes for the support of a Protestant clergy. In Lower Canada tithes have been regularly paid by Roman Catholics; they are moderate in amount, having been reduced from one-tenth to one-thirteenth, and finally to one twenty-sixth part of the cereal crops. In Upper Canada, on the contrary, tithes have never been paid, though as legally due as in the lower province, and the Roman Catholics, who have become a numerous body-nearly as numerous as the members of the Church of England, and thrice as numerous as the members of the Church of Scotland,have neither tithes nor landed endowments, as in the lower province, nor any statutory provision for the support of their clergy. I must also call the attention of the House to the fact that the Legislatures of the Canadas had power under the Constitution Act of 1791, and the united Legislature has power under the Constitution Act of 1840, to abolish the payment of tithes; and that power was exercised with reference to Protestant tithes by the Legislature of Upper Canada in an Act which received the Royal Assent in 1823. These facts prove that the right hon. baronet was inaccurate when he said that the Roman Catholic religion is munificently endowed in Canada; and they also prove that the Legislature of Canada has the same |