The Express.
London, England, 1853-03-19 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY, MARCH 19.

Tin debate last night on the Canada Clergy Re-
serves Bill is not much calculated to raise the Govern-
ment in the estimation of the country. In the days
when the Church of England in Canada had everything
its own way, certain lauds in that colony were
sold and the proceeds were invested, tor the
benefit of present and future clergymen of the
Churches of England and Scotland. Cinder one Act
of Parliament referring to inch arrangements, it was
enacted that if in any year the defined arrange-
ment of Canada Land Sales did not produce
9,2801. a year for the two favoured Churches in
that Colony the deficiency should be made up
out of the Consolidated Fund : or in other
words, out of the pockets of the taxpayers in
England. When we got a Ministry, like the pre-
sent, sufficiently liberal to take in hand the
grievances of our North American Colonies, with a
view to their settlement on a broad and liberal basis,
the bill was drawn which has been of late before the
House of Commons. The third clause of that bill
ran thus :

So much of the said act of the third sad fourth years of
her blejesty, chapter 78, as charges the Consolidated Fund
of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
with, or authorises any payment thercout of. the semi
needed to supply such deficiency as in the said act men-
tioned shall from and after the pawing of this act be re-
pealed.

On Monday night, however, Lord lons RUSSELL
came down to the House and proposed to withdraw
this third clause. Much surprise was very
naturally excited by such a step on the part
of the Leader of the House of Commons.
.

Mioisterialists asked what it meant—Derbyites in-
quired whether the chance could be worked to damage
the government—and neutrals saw suddenly one of
those mysterious whispering and explanatory side-
talks which often accompany a ministerial scrape. The
Ministers had put a bill on the table of the House,
and had earned it through a second reading,
before they found out that foolish friends or
crafty foes had put them iuto a position from which
it was their interest to slip as soon as pos-
sible. The Bill had been drawn to carry the whole
question broadly, through the English Legislature.
Canada had asked justice and an English Ministry
was content, nay, ready, to grant It. The whole
question of the lands in dispute was to be very pro-
perly handed over to the Canadian Parliament, to be
finally settled as that body may hereafter think best.
Suddenly, however, it was found that the third clause
of the Bill—very properly inserted to carry out
these wise views—would interfere with certain clerical
interests in this country. England had been long
ago induced—to speak iu plain English—to endorse
a clerical acceptance for some nine thousand a-year
for ever—becoming liable for the whole of that
amount should any future interference with the land
sales prevent Canada from meeting the said clerical
engagements made in times when Canada had
little voice in such bargains. The passing
of the Bill now before the House of Commons will
very properly hand over to the Canadian Parliament
not a portion but the entire management of
the Reserved Lands. The probabilities are, that
those lands will be applied to educational and such
other purposes as the needs of the country may
seem ,most to require. In fact they are likely to
be secularised. In that use the upshot, in all
probability, will be the fixing of the English
people with the payment of about 9,2801. a year, for
the support of Clergymen of the English and
Scottish Churches in North America. Some politi-
cians do not hesitate to state their belief that
this sacrifice of the third clause of the bill
is an offering at the shrine of the Bench
Of Ilishoes ; others strive to get the Cabinet
out of their fix by declaring such a clause to be
unnecessary, and putting the blame of its insertion
on the shoulders of ministerial subordinates. Cer-
tain it is however that such a clause was in, and ought
to be retained in, the bill, or to be replaced by some
equally sufficient arrangement for securing this
country hereafter from the cost of finding spiritual
pastors for a colony who are to have given them the
whole property and control of their own church lands.
All Lord JOHN RUSSELL could last night say
afforded bat poor comfort,but, practically, the question
seems to resolve itself into this : Shall we do an
act of justice to Canada at a possible risk to our-
selves of having to pay 9,0001. a-year ? The
answer to this question is much simplified
when we recollect that Canada had nothing what-
ever to do with fixing any such possible liability
upon ns. The English Parliament alone gave the
guarantee now hanging so painfully over our shoal-
ders—aad gave it clearly as an offering to the Eng-
lish and Scottish Churches. The Canadians did not
make the bargain we are now likely to suffer from,
and therefore, as a matter of justice and policy, we
caa scarcely plead our own past follies as reason
enough for any present or future injustice to our
Canadian brethren. We may, however, and ought,
to protest most loudly against anything like • per-
manent charge on English tax-payers for Canadian
clergymen. If Canada wants her pulpits filled, she may
very fairly be asked to pay their occupants. Doubtless
the clerical bodies charged with the patronage of
this 9,0001. a year will say we cannot remove any
such incubus. They will affirm our arrangements to
be, like the laws of the Medea and Persians, un-
changeable; but selfish pleas never deceive very long,
and this one will be viewed in its right light, and
be, some day, dealt with accordingly. State endow-
ments are distasteful enough when they have
antiquity to quote in their favour, and when their
recipients are men of our own country—living and
working zealously amongst us. But to think that
any State endowment founded on a temporary Mi-
nisterial expediency, unsanctioned by any clearly ex-
pressed will of the nation, and payable for the bene-
fit of a distant people fully able to cater
for their own spiritual wants—to think, we
say, that any such new State endowment
could become permanently irksome, is to ignore the
whole growth of modern intelligence amongst us and
to disbelieve the power of justice to secure right. A
Ministry of Coalition seems necessarily a Ministry of
Compromise, and that spirit seems to have
reached the settlement of the Canada Clergy Reserve
question. But since this Cabinet of Lord ABERDEEN
is the only one that has had honesty enough and
courage enough to offer our Canadian colonies the
management of their own waste church lands, it
would be merely play ing the game of the Detbyites
to stop the measure, because we are already liable. to
n charge of a few thousands a year. It was doubt-
less a feeling of this sort that secured Lord JOIIN
ItussELL his majority of 6s last night. Let us give
Canada her own, and then go to work to see that she
pays for her own spiritual teaching.