How do you feel after your brush with Sir Francis? You need not feel very downcast, having attained so triumphant a victory. I doubt not but Sir Francis would willingly pay double the amount claimed by us, if he could have prevented the result which has happened. It is too late, however, to recall it now. I hope he will learn wisdom from the past, and not be so self-willed and headstrong in future. No one seems pleased with him but those whose praise is a reproach.
Rev. W. H. Harvard, in a letter from Kingston, said:—
I am truly pained at the conduct of the Lieutenant-Governor, and sympathize with you in thus being brought into such an unavoidable collision with him. I am more than grieved that he should use us so ungenerously.
I am glad that you are the warrior, for you will combine caution and courage, and will come off more than conqueror. You are at present the centre of our solicitude. I pray that your heart may be comforted and controlled from above. We are the Lord's covenanted, consecrated servants. In His work we are employed. By His Holy Spirit may we ever be actuated and aided!
FOOTNOTES:
[55] At the Conference of this year resolutions of thanks were passed to Mr. Draper, and were sent to him by Dr. Ryerson, the Secretary. Mr. Draper's reply was as follows:—
I feel deeply indebted to the Conference of the Wesleyan Methodist Church for the honour conferred upon me in deeming my humble exertions in the cause of Christian education worthy of their approbation, and I trust I shall never forget their good opinion. I cannot, at the same time, pass by the opportunity of thanking you for the terms in which you have communicated that resolution to me, and of expressing my satisfaction that I have in any degree contributed to the success of your unwearied exertions in behalf of the Upper Canada Academy in England. I sincerely rejoice that you were enabled to obtain that aid for its completion, which was so necessary and so well deserved.
[56] In a letter to Dr. Ryerson, his brother William thus accounts for the failure to get the grant: To the miserable Missionary grant of £900 to the English Conference we are chiefly indebted for the loss of the Bill for the relief of the Upper Canada Academy, as we are positively informed by our best friends in the House of Assembly. It has also been the means of depriving many of the preachers of a considerable part of their small salary, and in one or two instances, of the whole of it. It has, and still does more to weaken our hands, and to embarrass our labours, and also to strengthen the hands and to increase the number of our enemies, than almost any or all other causes put together.