FATHER OF ANGLICANISM IN UPPER CANADA.

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Among the UE. Loyalists was a man of Irish blood, the Rev. John Stuart, who escaped, in 1781, to Canada, where he was destined to win the title of the Father of the Church of England in Upper Canada. He was born in 1740. Though his family were Presbyterians, his predilections led him to the Church of England. He became a missionary in the Mohawk Valley, and translated the New Testament into the language of the Mohawks. In Canada he proved himself a zealous missionary, and was indefatigable in laying the foundation of the Church among the Indians and the whites. In 1785 he took up his permanent abode at Cataraqui, where he resided until his death, which took place in 1811.

Though not unmindful of success he was a true missionary. "I shall not regret," he wrote in 1783, " the disappointment and chagrin I have hitherto met with, if it pleases God to make me the instrument of spreading the knowledge of His Gospel among the heathen.” In 1784 he visited the new settlements on the St. Lawrence, the Bay of Quinté, and the Niagara Falls. In a church which stood ninety miles from the Falls, and which was the first church built in Upper Canada, the Mohawks received him with enthusiasm, and crowded the windows to catch a glimpse of their old pastor. In 1785 he wrote: "I have two hundred acres within half a mile of the garrison-a beautiful situation. The town increases fast; there are already about fifty houses built in it, and some of them very elegant. It is now the port of transport from Canada to Niagara. We have now, just at the door, a ship, a scow, and a sloop, besides a number of small craft, and if the communication lately discovered from this place by water to Lake Huron and Michilmachinac proves as safe and short as we are made to believe, this will soon be a place of considerable trade." The way he mingled the pioneer settler with the pioneer divine is shown in the following sentences :- I have been fortunate in my locations of land, having 1,400 acres at different places in good situations, and of an excellent quality, three farms of which I am improving, and have sowed this fall with thirty bushels in them. We are a poor, happy people, industrious beyond example. Our gracious King gives us land gratis, and furnishes provisions, clothing, and farming utensils until next Sep

tember, after which the generality of the people will be able to live without his bounty." In May, 1786, he opened an academy. In 1788, he went round his parish, which was two hundred miles long. With six Indians, commanded by Captain Brant, he coasted along the north shore of Lake Ontario; went twenty-five miles by land to New Oswego, a Mohawk village just established on the Grand River, and beautifully situated. It contained seven hundred souls. In the midst of a number of fine houses stood a handsome church, with a bell swinging in its steeple, the first bell which made the air vibrate in Upper Canada. Brant had collected money when in England, and had expended it to advantage. Stuart returned by Niagara, and visited that settlement. Here he found no clergyman. The population had greatly increased, and he was so pleased with the people and country, that he was tempted to remove his family thither. "You may imagine," he writes, "it cost me a struggle to refuse the unanimous and pressing invitation of a large settlement, with the additional argument of a subscription, and other emoluments, amounting to nearly £300 York currency per annum more than I have here. But, on mature reflection, I have determined to remain here." He explains to his correspondent that he is not rich, as he might be inferred to be, when he refuses such an offer. He adds: "I do not intend to die rich. I had a commission sent me as first judge of the Court of Common Pleas. But for reasons which will readily occur to you, I returned it to Lord Dorchester, who left this place a few days ago."

In 1789 he was appointed Bishop's Commissioner for the settlements from Point au Baudette to the western limits of the Province. In 1792 he became chaplain to the Upper House of Assembly. In 1799, his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, conferred on him the degree of D.D. At the same time he became chaplain to the Kingston garrison. He was in the seventy-first year of his age, when called away. He was six feet four inches high, and was hence humorously known as "the little gentleman." His sermons were vigorous and persuasive. He seems to have been a handsome man. His character was a lofty one. We need not be surprised, therefore, when we are assured that he was held in the highest esteem by his fellow-citi

IRISH SETTLEMENT IN NEWFOUNDLAND.

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zens. An agreeable clergyman has seldom to complain of neglect. Mr. Stuart was a good deal more than a merely agreeable clergyman. He had five sons and three daughters borne to him by Jane O'Kiell. His sons all occupied prominent positions. It is, as the reader has seen, hard for me to treat Newfoundland as not within the scope of this book. In 1784, the Rev. Dr. O'Donnell, a native of Tipperary, availing himself of the toleration of the Roman Catholic Religion, as set forth in the Royal Proclamation relating to Newfoundland, led an Irish settlement thither. In 1796 he was appointed bishop of the island, and he received for some years, until his death, an annuity of £50 for his services in suppressing a mutiny among the troops. From Dr. O'Donnell's time, the Catholic bishops have played an important part in the island, not only as prelates-as witness the careers of Bishops Lambert, Scallan, Fleming, and Mullock-but as elements of government and material progress.

The Irish priest followed his people wherever they went, and had, sometimes, preceded them into the wilderness as missionaries to the Indians, as was the case with the Rev. Edmund Burke, the Bishop of Halifax.

At Quebec, in 1804, the English Cathedral was built by Mr. Cannon, an Irish Catholic. Prior to this, a mass was said specially for the Irish Catholics; and at Montreal the Bonsecours and the Recollet Church were placed at their disposal.

Haldimand was recalled, and Henry Hamilton sent out as governor in his stead. Hamilton called the Legislative Council together, and having got them to introduce Habeas Corpus into the statute law of the Province, was succeeded by Colonel Hope, who, after a few months, made room for General Carleton, now Lord Dorchester, who, in addition to the governor-generalship of Canada, was nominated commander-in-chief of all His Majesty's forces in the colony, For some years loud complaints of misgovernment had been sent across the Atlantic, and in 1787 Lord Dorchester instituted an inquiry which brought to light a state of things worse than any one had imagined. The administration of justice was tainted; Judges refused to hear evidence. Letters from persons interested in suits were allowed the weight of testimony, without being sifted by cross-examination. It was shown that Governor

Haldimand had made the judges instruments of political oppression. Not only so. The English judges looked to English precedents; the French judges administered civil law; and the judges who knew as little of English common law as of the French civil law, did what was right in their own eyes. Education was in a deplorable state. The English-speaking inhabitants had increased, and were increasing. This deepened the note and increased the volume of the demand for a Legislative Assembly.

In 1787 the Legislative Council amended and made perpetual the militia ordinance of ten years before. A French historian, Bibaud, says the only way to account for this conduct is by supposing that Lord Dorchester and a majority of his Council were persuaded that a rigorous military despotism was the form of government which best suited Canada. The measure, from whose provisions were exempted councillors, judges, public officers, seigneurs, clergy, nobles, professional men, and all specially excluded by order of the commander-in-chief, and which ordained that captains and other officers of militia, in the country districts, should be justices of the peace, was a despotic one, and not defensible on the ground of the dangers to which the country was exposed. Yet, owing to Lord Dorchester's capacity, and charm of manner, discontent diminished, and, if we judge by the eulogies on the Governor in the addresses presented to Prince William Henry, we shall conclude that everything was held to be satisfactory. In 1788, the Council turned its artillery against unlicensed practitioners of medicine. In 1789, provision was made for the more effectual administration of justice. A committee of the executive council appointed to inquire into the best means of advancing elementary and the higher education, communicated with the Bishop of Quebec, M. Jean François Hubert, and his coadjutor, M. François Bailly. The responses of the two bishops were in singular discord. M. Hubert thought the country too little advanced, too thinly populated, and too poor, for the foundation of a university in Quebec, while M. Bailly said it was high time a university was established in Canada. Neither prelate pointed out a solution of the difficulty. The letter of the Bishop of Quebec is valuable, however, as showing the condition of education. Excepting the Quebec seminary, there was not a school

STATE OF EDUCATION. CONSTITUTIONAL ACT.

103 in the province where more was done than teach reading, and writing, and arithmetic. The committee reported in favour of establishing free schools throughout the province, a free school for higher branches in the principal town of each district, and a university. The scheme, which was a secular one, was regarded with hostility by the clergy, and it was found impossible to put it into execution.

The governor also nominated a committee to report on the advantages and disadvantages of the feudal tenure, and of free and common socage. The committee reported against the feudal system, and the report was followed by the draft of a bill or ordinance which greatly alarmed the seigneurs and those having like interests. One seigneur, however, Charles de Lanaudière, had already, in 1788, addressed the governor, and shown that it was the interest of the seigneurs that a change of tenure should take place, for without emigrants their lands were valueless, and it was folly to expect emigrants to. settle under a system of laws they abhorred. The census showed the population of the province at this time to have been 150,000, and M. de Lanaudière's land could accommodate them all.

Difficulties now began to arise out of the differences in tradition and character between the old and the new settlers; and the Home Government prepared a bill which was sent out to Lord Dorchester, to specify any changes his more intimate knowledge of the country and the people might suggest. The Constitutional Act of 1791 divided the Province of Quebec into two provinces, to be known as Upper Canada and Lower Canada, each of which should have an elective legislative assembly and a legislative council, and governor appointed by the Crown; the seignorial tenure and French law, in civil cases, to be retained in Lower Canada; British law, civil as well as criminal, to be established in Upper Canada. Provision was made for the maintenance of the Protestant clergy, one-seventh of the land being reserved for this purpose, and one-seventh for the crown. Those members of the legislative council who should have titles were to have an hereditary right to sit in the upper chamber. The Act was thought by some too aristocratic, by others the reverse. Its popular elements were to prove delusive, and the provisions for the clergy