10. It rests with Her Majesty's Government to decide whether or not the inhabitants shall be treated as strangers and helots; whether the blighted hopes of this province shall wither and die, or revive, and bloom, and flourish; whether Her Majesty's Canadian subjects shall be allowed the legitimate constitutional control of their own earnings, or whether the property sufficient to pay off the large provincial debt shall be wrested from them; whether honour, loyalty, free and responsible government are to be established in this province, or whether our resources are to be absorbed in support of pretensions which have proved the bane of religion in the country; have fomented discord; emboldened, if not prompted, rebellion; turned the tide of capital and emigration to other shores; impaired public credit; arrested trade and commerce, and caused Upper Canada to stand "like a girdled tree," its drooping branches mournfully betraying that its natural nourishment has been deliberately cut off.
In a third and concluding letter to Lord Normanby, Dr. Ryerson uses this language:—
The great body of the inhabitants of this province will not likely again petition on the question of the clergy reserves and a church establishment in this province. They will express their sentiments at the hustings with a vengeance, to the confusion of the men who have deceived, and misrepresented, and wronged them; ... A petition would acknowledge the right of the Imperial Parliament to interfere—which ought not to be admitted. If past expressions of public sentiment will not satisfy Her Majesty's Government, none other can do it; and more efficient means (such as the coming elections), must and ought to be adopted, instead of the fruitless method of asking by petition for what has been guaranteed to the constituencies of the country as a right.
The validity of the recent Act of the Legislature, revesting the reserves in the Crown, never will be acknowledged, or recognized by the electors of this province. Any Ministers of the Crown in England would more than lose their places, who should press through the House of Commons, on the last night of the session, in a thin house, a great public measure which had not only been repealed by four successive parliaments, but had been negatived from six to twelve times during the same session of the existing parliament. Nor would the British nation ever submit to any public measure (much less to loss of the control of one-seventh of their lands, and the infliction upon them of an uncongenial ecclesiastical system) which had been forced upon them.
The declarations of the Representative of Royalty have heretofore been regarded in this province as sacred and inviolable; but the reliance of the Canadian electors upon those declarations from the lips of Sir Francis Head has cost them bloodshed, bankruptcy, and misery.... The electors will employ the elective franchise to redress their accumulated wrongs to the last farthing.
It is, of course, my good or bad fortune to be assailed from week to week, whether I write or not.... I am no theorist. I advocate no change in the Constitution of the Province. I have never written a paragraph the principles of which could not be carried out in accordance with the letter and spirit of the established Constitution. I desire nothing more than the free and impartial administration of that Constitution for the benefit of all classes of Her Majesty's subjects. I only oppose or support men, or measures, for the attainment of that object.
Entertaining such strong feelings in regard to the personal conduct of Sir George Arthur in respect to the passage of the clergy reserve bill, Dr. Ryerson felt that he could not accept any social courtesy at his hands. In reply, therefore, to an invitation from Sir George, for Her Majesty's birthday, he felt constrained to decline it. In his letter to the A.D.C., he said:—
After the most mature deliberation up to the last moment in which it is proper to reply, I feel it my duty respectfully to decline the honour of His Excellency's invitation. I most firmly believe that the office of impartial sovereignty has been employed by His Excellency for partial purposes; that an undue and an unconstitutional exercise of the office of royalty has been employed by His Excellency to influence the public mind, and the decisions of our constitutional tribunals on pending and debatable questions between equally loyal and deserving classes of Her Majesty's subjects in this Province; that His Excellency has also employed the influence of the high office of the Queen's representative to procure and afterwards express his cordial satisfaction at the passing of a Bill, in a thin House, on the very last night of the session, the provisions of which had been repeatedly negatived by a considerable majority of the people's representatives, and which deprive the faithful but embarrassed inhabitants of this Province of the control of a revenue and lands sufficient in value to pay off the whole public debt—a proceeding at complete variance with the fair and constitutional administration of a free monarchical government, and the imperial usages since the accession of the present Royal Family to the throne of Great Britain; and, finally, that His Excellency has employed the influence of his high office to the disparagement of the large section of the religious community whose views, rights, and interests, I have been elected to my present offices to advocate and promote.
I beg that my declining the honour proposed by His Excellency may not be construed into any disrespect to His Excellency personally, or to the high office His Excellency holds—for the inviolableness and dignity of which I feel the jealous veneration of a loyal subject—but I beg that it may be attributed solely to a fixed determination not to do anything that may in the slightest degree tend to weaken, but on the contrary, to use every lawful means, on all occasions, to advance those civil and religious interests which I am most fully convinced are essential to the happy preservation of a prosperous British Government in this country, and to the happiness and welfare of the great body of Her Majesty's Canadian subjects.
In order to insure the assent of Her Majesty to the Bill which had been sent to the Colonial Secretary by Sir George Arthur, the authorities of the Church of England in the Province circulated a petition for presentation to the Queen and the British Parliament[105] containing the following statement and request:—