of Upper Canada, its possession of immense tracts--some of them, the
Huron Block, for instance, locked up for years--was for a time a great
public grievance.

But all these land questions sank into utter insignificance compared
with the dispute which arose out of the thirty-sixth clause of the
Constitutional Act of 1791, which provided that there should be
reserved for the maintenance and support of a "Protestant clergy," in
the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, "a quantity of land equal in
value to a seventh part of grants that had been made in the past, or
might be made in the future." Subsequent clauses of the same act made
provision for the erection and endowment of one or more rectories in
every township or parish, "according to the establishment of the
Church of England," and at the same time gave power to the legislature
of the two provinces "to vary or repeal" these enactments of the law
with the important reservation that all bills of such a character
could not receive the royal assent until thirty days after they had
been laid before both Houses of the imperial parliament. Whenever it
was practicable, the lands were reserved under the act among those
already granted to settlers with the intention of creating parishes as
soon as possible in every settled township throughout the province.
However, it was not always possible to carry out this plan, in
consequence of whole townships having been granted _en bloc_ to the
Loyalists in certain districts, especially in those of the Bay of
Quinté, Kingston and Niagara, and it was therefore necessary to carry
out the intention of the law in adjoining townships where no lands of
any extent had been granted to settlers.

The Church of England, at a very early period, claimed, as the only
"Protestant clergy" recognized by English law, the exclusive use of