insurrection by supplies of stores from this city. These were conveyed
to Navy Island by the steamer _Caroline_, which was subsequently seized,
and sent over the Falls of Niagara by the British troops, a number of
the crew being cruelly massacred.

From inquiries made of parties well informed on the subject, both in
Canada and the United States, I am convinced that the public act of Sir
John Colborne, before quitting the governorship of the province, in
1835, viz., the allotment or appropriation of 346,252 acres of the soil,
as a clergy reserve, and the institution of the fifty-seven rectories,
was the chief predisposing cause of the insurrection. By this Act a
certain portion of land in every township was set apart for the
maintenance of "a Protestant clergy," under which ambiguous term, the
clergy of the Church of England have always claimed the sole enjoyment
of the funds arising from the sale of such portions of land. This is
looked upon by dissenters of all denominations as a direct infringement
of the original intention of the Act, which they maintain was for the
purpose of aiding the Protestant cause at large against the innovations
of the Roman Catholic Church. Much ill-will and sectarian prejudice are
the natural consequence; in fact, the Act is a perfect apple of discord
throughout the Canadas, and has engendered more animosity and resentment
than any one legislative act, sanctioned by the Home Government, since
the acquisition (if so it can he called) of the country. It is an
indelible disgrace to England, that such a manifestly bigoted and
narrow-minded policy should have been allowed to continue so long; and I
am fully persuaded that this enactment, which, there is little doubt,
originated in sectarianism, perpetuates a degree of rancorous feeling in
the minds of people there, that is sufficient to account for the
disaffection and tendency to rebellion that ever and anon displays
itself; and that to remove this blister, and allow the application of