The main points of the letter were as follows:—
1. For thirty years (up to 1820) nothing was heard of an ecclesiastical establishment in the Province: all classes felt themselves equally free, and were, therefore, equally contented and happy.
2. From the first open and unequivocal pretensions to a state establishment being made, the inhabitants of Upper Canada, in every constitutional way, have resisted and remonstrated against it.
3. Every appropriation and grant to the Episcopal clergy out of the lands and funds of the Province has been made in the very teeth of the country's remonstrance.
4. The utter powerlessness of the representative branch of the Legislature has rendered the officers and dependents and partizans of the Executive more and more despotic, overbearing, and reckless of the feelings of the country.
5 This most blighting of all partizanship has been carried into every department of the Executive Government—the magistracy, militia, and even into the administration of justice. Its poison is working throughout the whole body politic; it destroys the peace of the country; rouses neighbour against neighbour; weakens the best social affections of the human heart, and awakens its worst passions; and converts a healthy and fertile province into a pandemonium of strife, discontent, and civil commotion.
6. While upwards of $220,000 (besides lands) have been given to the Episcopal clergy since 1827, the grants made by the Imperial Parliament to the clergy of Upper Canada amount to over $400,000, being over $620,000 in all.
7. A very large sum has been expended in the erection of Upper Canada College, on the grounds of King's College, and with an endowment of $8,000 or $10,000 a year. This institution is wholly under the management of Episcopal clergymen, while the Upper Canada Academy, which has been built at Cobourg by the Methodists at a cost of about $40,000, could not without a severe struggle get even the $16,000 which were directed to be paid over to it by Lord Glenelg. The matter had to be contested with Sir F. B. Head on the floor of the House of Assembly before he could be induced to obey the Royal instructions. (Page 179.)
8. In the recent legislation on the clergy reserve question, the high church party resisted every measure by which the Methodist Church might obtain a farthing's aid to the Upper Canada Academy. And, to add insult to injury, the high church people denounce Methodists as republicans, rebels, traitors, and use every possible epithet and insinuation of contumely because they complain, reason, and remonstrate against such barefaced oppression and injustice—notwithstanding that not a single member of that church has been convicted of complicity with the late unhappy troubles in the Province.
9. A perpetuation of the past and present obnoxious and withering system, will not only continue to drive thousands of industrious farmers and tradesmen from the country, but will prompt thousands more, before they will sacrifice their property and expatriate themselves, to advocate constitutionally, openly, and decidedly, the erection of an "independent kingdom," as has been suggested by the Attorney-General, as best both for this province and Great Britain.