"Your petitioners, consisting of the United Empire Loyalists and their children, took refuge in this Province after the American Revolution, under the impression that they possessed the same constitution as that of the Mother Country, which includes a decent provision for the administration of the Word and Sacraments according to the forms of the Church of England."
The prayer of the petition was—
That the proceeds of the clergy reserve lands be applied to the maintenance of such clergy, and of a bishop to superintend the same, so that the ministrations of our Holy Religion may be afforded without charge[106] to the inhabitants of every township in the Province.
Dr. Ryerson, having with difficulty procured a copy of this petition, pointed out in the Guardian of July 3rd, 1839: 1st. Its historical misstatements, and denounced the selfish and exclusive character of its demands. He showed in effect that the Province was settled in 1783, whereas the constitutional Act (which was invoked as though it had existed long before that date), was not passed until 1791—eight years after "the United Empire Loyalists and their children took refuge in Upper Canada." 2nd. That for forty years and more, nine-tenths of the United Empire Loyalists and their descendants, with all their "impressions," might have perished in heathen ignorance had not some other than the Episcopal clergy cared for their spiritual interests; and that after these forty years of slumbering and neglect, and after the incorporation of the great body of the old Loyalists and their descendants into other churches, the Episcopal clergy came in, and now seek, on the strength of these apocryphal "impressions" (which never could have existed), to claim one-seventh of the lands of the Province as their heritage.[107] In proof of these facts Dr. Ryerson referred to the testimony of fifty-two witnesses, given before a select Committee of the House of Assembly in 1828, and published in full at that time.
I have purposely abstained from making any special reference to discussions in the clergy reserve question with which Dr. Ryerson had no connection. An important one, however, took place between Hon. Wm. Morris and Archdeacon Strachan in 1838-39, chiefly in regard to the claims of the Church of Scotland. Mr. Morris, however, did good service in the general discussion.
In November, 1838, Dr. Ryerson received a letter from Thomas Farmer, Esq., of London, England, in regard to the Centenary Celebration, to which he replied as follows:—
Our prospects as a country are rather gloomy. We have lately had the excitement and loss produced by Lord Durham's departure, and the second rebellion in Lower Canada, followed in a few days by a brigand invasion of this province to distract and destroy us. You refer to a Centenary Offering. I cannot say what we shall be able to do. We have not the slightest provision yet for the education of preacher's children; nor a contingent fund to aid poor circuits, or to relieve the distressed preachers' families; and an unpaid for Book Room, and not an entirely paid for Academy;—all of which subjects have engaged our most anxious consideration;—but in the present entirely unsettled state of our public affairs, we scarcely know what to do in respect to the future. We cannot, therefore, as yet fix upon the objects of our Centenary Offering.
The Methodist Centenary Year occurred in 1839. The Conference set apart the 25th October for its celebration,
By holding religious "services in all of our chapels and congregations, for the purpose of calling to mind the great things which the Lord has done for us as a people; of solemnly recognizing our obligations and responsibilities to our Heavenly Father; and of imploring, on behalf of ourselves and the whole Wesleyan Methodist family throughout the world, a continuance and increase of religious happiness, unity and prosperity."