The Sun.
London, England, 1853-02-16 00:00:00

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only a portion of them. Among that portion there had
arisen an agitation against the reserves, principally in
Upper Canada ; for, so far as the Lower Province wag
concerned, the agitation was not known till the end of
1849. But were their lordships prepared to accept the
fact of agitation as a reason for passing a measure !
Canada was not the only country where agitation pre-
vailed. They had only to look across the Channel to
Ireland, and there they would see agitation, not of the
mildest form nor the least threatening, 'nor the least
powerful. (Hear, hear.) He hoped the Government
were prepared to support the Irish church, and, if so,
they would certainly add to their own embarassments in-
-1 defence of that church by giving such an open en-
couragement to the agitation against the church in
Canada. Oh, but it was said that the reserves were
public property. He knew not if their lordships were
prepared to sanction this principle, but, if they were,
they would be doing what no House of Lords, since the
Heptarchy had ever dreamt of doing, or dared to do.
He warned them also that they would be setting a pre-
cedent which would justify, not merely the spoliation of
the church in Canada and in the United Kingdom, but
the estates of many of their lordships, It was within
his own knowledge that in the case of one of the greatest
and best landowners in this country, who held a large
portion of his property by grant from the Crown, the
land having once belonged to the church, some of his
tenants were in the habit of saying to each other—" This•
land is ours ; it is public property, and we have as good
right to it as he has." He was not saying whether this
was a sound argument or not, but the persons who used
it would, he was sure, be delighted at the precedent
which would be set by the proposed bill on the Canada
reserves. (Hear, hear.) The first paper for which lie
proposed to move was the Government Gazette of Canada
of the Bth of May, 1849, or any other document in the
Colonial-office, containing a copy of an address to the
Governor- General of British North America from the
Romish prelates and clergy of Quebec in the year 1849,
and of the answer of his Excellency to that address.
He asked for that doctunent, because he was assured
that it contained an answer of the Governor-General to
an address from the Romish prelates and clergy of
Quebec : that the first signature to that address was
"Joseph, Archbishop of Quebec," a see which the Pope
had no right to create, any more than he had a right to
create sees in the mother country, and that the answer
to the address had been directed to "his Grace the
Archbishop, his Lordship the Bishop, and the other
Members of the Catholic Clergy of Quebec." If he were
rightly informed upon this branch of the subject, it
would appear that the Governor-General had by that
act recognized and sanctioned titles which in the eye of
the law had no existence whatever. The second return
for which he moved was a list of the bills passed by
the Canadian Parliament, whether reserved or not,
in the year 1849, and a statement whether and which of
the same were disallowed by her Majesty. He believed
that this return would show that in May, 1849, an act
was passed in the Canadian Legislature to incorporate
the Roman Catholic archbishops and bishops in each
diocese in Canada. That act could not take effect un-
less the Home Government gave their assent to it within
two years from the time of its passing the Canadian
Parliament, and he was desirous to know whether it had
been allowed to lapse, or whether it had ever been sanc-
tioned by the Government of this country ? Their lord-
ships would observe, that the interval between the pass-
ing of the act in Canada and the time when, in order to
take effect, it must be sanctioned by the Home Parlia-
ment, embraced the period when the famous epistle was
written by the noble lord the Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs, which shook this country to its inmost
parts, and was made the ground of the strongest expres-
sions of animadversion against the Pope. At that pe-
riod, and when that act of the Pope, so familiar in the
recoPection of us all, was being declared by him to be
unprecedented, a bill was actually before the noble lord
from Canada, the object of which was to incorporate an
Archbishop of Quebec. He (the Bishop of Exeter) con-
tended that this was a matter with which it was not
competent for the Colonial Legislature to deal, that it
was an imperial question involving the highest and most
sacred part of our constitutional law, and that it was
one upon which the Imperial Parliament alone should
decide. The Legislature of Canada bad shown its re-
gard to religion already by completely secularising a
college, whic had been founded and 'endowed for the-
purpose of the church in that country, and he did trust
that the Church would'not be left to the tender mercies
of such a Legislature. Another act had passed that
Legislature, the 11th and 12th of Victoria, chap. 143,
the object of which was to incorporate a religious order
of persons in Canada, who were bound by their oaths to
do any service which was required by the Pope. That
measure actually had received the sanction of her Ma-
jesty's Government at the very time when there was
such an outcry against the Pope in this cdtintry. (Hear,
hear.) There was only one other document for which
he should at present move, ' and that was a copy of
any official letter from the Lord Bishop of Quebec to
his Grace the Duke of Newcastle, one of her Majes-
ty's Principal Secretaries of State, on the matter
of clergy reserves, in Canada. That latter had been
hastily written ; but it was perhaps, the more
satisfactory on that account, as containing the
deep and earnest impressions of the writer. His
right rev. friend had kindly favoured him with a sight of
the draught of that letter, and he perceived that he de-
clared that no measure could have sacrilege more plainly
stamped upon it than one which provided for the abso-
lute confiscation to godless uses of property solemnly
dedicated to God, in order to satisfy the claims of the
American loyalists. He asked their lordships, were
they prepared to sanction that sacrilege ? There had
been times when the House of Lords would have spurned
the very notion, and he begged to remind the Govern-
ment that the act would be in direct contravention of
the coronation oath. He knew statesmen did not like
a reference to that oath. It permitted a great deal ;
but one thing it did say—that the Protestant church
should be upheld and preserved in England and Scot-
land, and all the dominions belonging thereto. He con-
tended that it had been properly construed that that
oath bound the Sovereign to the utmost of her power to
pYeserve the Protestant church and the Protestant re-
ligion in this country and all its dependencies. But,
independently of this, there was another reason why the
proposition of the Government should not be sanctioned.
The whole amount of the provision from the clergy re-
serves was about 20,0001 a year in the umer province;
and there was a restriction that not more than 1001. a
year should be allowed to any one clergyman. If there
were at present but 200 clergymen receiving 1001. a
year each in that country to support the true church, he
asked their lordships were they prepared to sanction the
disturbance of that property in the face of an enor-
mously wealthy church ! The estates of St. Sulpice
alone, in Montreal, were estimated at 60,0001. per
annum ; and lie might safely say that it was the richest
spiritual corporation in the world. He would be no
party to a breach of the treaty which bound us to hold
inviolate the property of the Roman Catholic church ;
but it must be remembered that that provision was the
very reason which had induced George 111. and his
Ministers to recommend the measure of 1791 to Parlia-
ment, and which had led to its being triumphantly
carried by the Legislature of that day. The right rev.
prelate concluded by moving for the production of the
papers.

The Duke of NEWCASTLE said, that as it would
probably at no distant period be his duty officially to oc-
cupy their lordships at some length on this subject, he
would not now take up much of their time in discussing
the various points introduced by the right rev. prelate.
He did not, of course, complain of the right rev. prelate.s
having brought forward the subject on the present occa-
sion, but he thought the house would concur with him in
the opinion that the course so adopted by the right rev.
prelate was not altogether contenient, seeing that, on
the one hand, there was no measure before their lord-
ships on this subject, and that, on the other hand, a
member- of the Government was, he believed, at that
very moment stating to the other house of Legislature the
details of a bill by which the Government proposed to
settle the question, which bill, he anticipated, would, in
due season, come before their lordships for regular dis-
cussion. (Hear, hear.) That measure, indeed, the right
rev. prelate, though evidently unacquainted with its
provisions, had thought proper to stigmatize as one of
confiscation, as designed to pervert the clergy reserves
in Canada from their legitimate purpose ; but their
lordships would find, when
,the bill came before them,
that the right rev. prelate's apprehensions on this head
were without foundation. The right rev. prelate com-
plained that the measure had not been introduced first
in their lordships' house. In the first place, pre-
cedent had established that such bills should originate
in the other house ; in the second place, the state of
their lordships' benches then—as usual at this early,
period of the session—showed the inexpediency of intro-
ducing a measure of so much importance there under
such circumstances ; and, thirdly, the very character of
the bill itself rendered it desirable that it should come
before their lordships, and especially before the right
rev. bench, in a condition as maturely discussed as
might be elsewhere deemed fit. Any one would imagine
from the right rev. prelate's speech that this was quite
a new subject, on which the opinion of the colonists re-
mained to be ascertained, whereas it was a. question on
which the wishes and feelings of the colony had been
tested over and over again, which had been in agitation
for the last 30 years, and which had been the subject of
repeated despatches from the colonial ministers of this
country, all of whom, with one single exception, of
most recent date, had declared the principle that this
was a matter for the consideration of the colonial, and
not of the Imperial Legislature. With regard to the
clergy of Canada, it could not be said with accuracy
that they were taken by surprise in the Government
bill at that moment being proposed elsewhere, for
Archdeacon Bethune, who was now in this country,
had published a, pamphlet on the subject, in which
he declared his expectation that legislation would
take place, and in the very sense now contem-
plated by her Majesty's ministers. As little could
be said that the colonists were taken by surprise
in the matter, for he held in his hand a Canadian
newspaper of recent date, a most respectable and
well-conducted journal, and one, he might add, of strong
Conservative opinions, which, adverting to the measure
anticipated from her Majesty's Government, spoke of it,
not by any means as a bill of confiscation, but as a
course of legislation to be encouraged and supported in
the most emphatic manner, as confirming the principle
of the indefensible right of the Canadian Legislature to
legislate on this matter, peculiarly its own affair, for
itself—a principle in which her Majesty's Government
fully concurred. The suggestion of the right rev, pre-
late that danger was to be apprehended to the Church
in Canada, because, as he stated, some individual mem-
ber of, the Government there had expressed strong opi-
nions en the subject, WM of no Ayail, since, whateyer