Now, all these suppositions may, I believe, be safely averred to correspond to the realities of our case. With reference, in particular, to the encouraging grounds which exist for protecting and cherishing the Church in the diocese, and the call which is presented in the insufficiency of its own resources, I would beg here to state some few details.

Statistics of the diocese.-We have a population of perhaps twenty-five thousand Church-people, of whom between four and five thousand are in Quebec. We have forty clergymen, of whom twenty-three are missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. We have sixty-one churches (including the chapels of the city). The number of clergy has been increased, since my own accession to the episcopate in 1836, from seventeen to forty; that of churches from twenty-one to sixty-one; and within the same period, we have gained the object of passing a Church Temporalities Act; formed our Church Society, and obtained for it the privilege of incorporation; established our college under a provincial charter, and procured for it a royal charter for conferring degrees; sent out from this college about thirty candidates for Orders, now labouring chiefly in this or the adjoining diocese of Montreal. About two thousand persons are confirmed in each of the triennial visitations, every church in the diocese being visited for the purpose. The proportion of communicants in our congregations is much larger than that which subsists in the mothercountry. If we are enabled to keep our ground, we shall, by the blessing of God, lay a foundation in the country, firm and deep, upon which others, to enter hereafter upon our labours, may prosperously build up and enlarge the Church. We are now at a turning-point in our history, for the introduction of railroads, and the development of mineral and other resources not yet made available, cannot fail to give an impulse to the country; and 'its institutions and religious predilections, in connexion with the advances of the Anglo-Saxon race, will be moulded by the influences which can maintain the ascendant in supplying, intellectually and spiritually, the popular want. If we are in any measure ready to meet this demand, our pure apostolic Church and scriptural faith will establish their proper hold upon the people. If we are found in a paralyzed condition,-if it is seen that we have been compelled to leave the interests of religion to languish, and are exposed to the mortification-it is already most keenly felt-of rendering discouraging answers, and dealing out explanations and excuses to those who address their appeal to us,—we shall sink in their eyes to a character of inefficiency, and some of them will fall away to careless irreligion, some will follow the teaching of unsound and fanatical sects,many will be absorbed into the rich and powerful communion of Rome,and others still, not drawn away in any of these directions, will at least be lost forever to ourselves. Alas! in different places which we could not

supply, we have lost, and are now losing, some who would else have owned the bosom of their mother in the Church.

Measures for reducing the charge upon the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and mutual understanding acted upon in all new arrangements for the missions.—V. I have been endeavouring, for a long time, to lessen the charge upon the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, wherever it was possible; and have brought down, in several instances, the missionary allowance to a lower mark, by exacting the difference from the people. I have also been compelled, in carrying out what I knew the society had a right to expect, to leave here and there in the hands of one man a sadly unwieldy charge, and to forbear from attempting to subdivide great tracts of country into two or more missions, as was urgently required. One whole mission (Lower Inverness, with parts adjacent) I have struck off, and reannexed to the charge of a clergyman twenty miles away, who is loaded with other work, because the poor people could not, in the experiment, fulfil the part which was thrown upon themselves towards the support of a resident pastor.

My poor diocese-what is to become of the flocks? My poor clergywhat are they to do? Here, under all the difficulties which I have described, they must, for the simple exercise of their vocation, each keep his horse, each must provide saddle, bridle, a winter vehicle, harness, cariole-robes (or buffalo-skins for the sleigh), and winter equipments for his own person. With all the rigid self-denial which they can and do practice, they incur debt, which drags as a weight upon their minds. Their spirits are discouraged in the midst of a severity of labour which requires their unbroken energy of soul. I do not see, from any prospect now before me, or any calculations or auguries which I can now frame, how the missions of Ireland, Frampton, and Stoneham, and other such missions, are to be carried on at all if the allowance from home is to be cut down to £60 a year, and to undergo, at the end of three years, a farther reduction. The missions within themselves cannot make up the difference; Quebec alone cannot do for all. The parish of Quebec will, in a few short years at farthest-and it might happen tomorrow-have to provide for the payment of clergymen and some other objects within its own limits, for which the present rector, (holding other appointments also, and being obliged, for reasons known to you, to retain the rectory), is disbursing, in six separate payments, £670 currency a year. The whole annual income (apart from the special fund for widows and orphans of the clergy) of our Church society, raised not without much effort, is £850, of which, £500 is contributed in Quebec. It may be understood, therefore, that the approaching call for Church expenditure upon the spot is something which will be more or less sensibly felt,

and will, so far, increase the difficulty of contributing to the support of the

missions.

Commending all these observations to the favourable notice and candid consideration of the society,

I remain, Dear Sir,

Very faithfully yours,

G. J. QUEBEC.

He concluded a letter of about the same date as follows: "I part with the subject, expressing on the one hand my deep and unalterable sense (to which I have again and again in all fervent sincerity given utterance) of the debt of gratitude due from the North American Church to the society, and the praise due to God above for the blessings which it has long and widely dispensed among us; and recording, on the other, my solemn conviction that these measures of retrenchment, to the extent to which they are carried by the society, and so far as they are not the dictate of imperious and unavoidable necessity, are unseasonable and premature; and that the actual and prospective state of settlements in this and certain other parts of the North American provinces constitutes a direct and legitimate claim upon the fostering help of that great and noble institution. If it be true that, in the language of Lord Bacon, it is the sinfullest thing in the world to forsake or destitute a plantation once in forwardness, for, besides the dishonor, it is the guiltiness of blood of many commiserable persons,' it is a great responsibility which lies upon the Church in England, if she would take her scattered children to record that she is pure from the blood of all men, to follow up to its needful mark the work which has been begun and thus far proceeded with in the spiritual plantation formed within these colonies."

CHAPTER XXIV.

Proceedings within the diocese for initiating synodical action-Difficulties encountered.

THE clergy who met at the visitation in 1857 passed a resolution to choose certain of their own body, and to request the Bishop to name an equal number of laymen, to act together, with the Bishop at their head, in preparing the draft of a constitution to be submitted to the first formal meeting of the diocesan synod. The Bishop, accordingly, appointed six gentlemen, representing the different opinions held on the subject, and after several meetings of the committee had been held, a draft was agreed upon. Early, however, in the following year, it became known that an unexpected interpretation was put, by some parties, upon the act of the provincial legislature for the removal of the doubts which had existed as to the power of the Bishop, clergy, and laity, to meet in synod. It was held that, as no distinct provision had been made for the representation of the laity, no diocesan synod could meet without first going through the form of summoning the whole of the laity to a preliminary meeting at which the principle of representation might be adopted. The Bishop of Huron had acted upon this view in organizing his new diocese, and it was represented to the Bishop of Quebec that it would be safer for him to follow this example, than to leave any room for doubts which might afterwards be found to affect the validity of the proceedings of the synod. It seemed so perfectly plain that neither the

framers of the act nor the legislature which passed it could have intended such an impossibility as that of summoning to one place the whole laity of a diocese, and it was so well known that the act had been made as short and free from details as possible, being in fact only permissive and enabling, and not affecting to confer any new powers, or to prescribe any action whatever to the Church, that the Bishop of Quebec was disposed to adhere to the course which he had adopted of calling a synod to consider the proposed constitution on the 9th June, 1858. He yielded, however, to the views of others, and revoked the summons, calling instead, a meeting of the clergy and laity, to be held at Quebec on the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. I forbear from attempting to describe what took place on that day, but let it suffice, in the words of a circular shortly afterwards addressed by the Bishop to the clergy, to say that it became "apparent that great confusion and multiplied mischiefs must ensue from the act as interpreted to require a meeting of the Church, otherwise than by representation, as well as that extraordinary prejudice must be done to the rights of the diocese at large." The Bishop was so wholly unprepared for any opposition, or for obstacles in the way of farther proceedings, that it was impossible, at the moment, and under the circumstances, to decide on any ulterior step, and the meeting was simply adjourned to the 1st September. He had caused resolutions to be prepared, similar to those adopted in the diocese of Huron, affirming the principles of representation and of voting by Orders, "pending the adoption of a constitution by the synod," thus much appearing to be necessary in order to put the machine in motion at all; but an amendment was moved for the appointment of a committee, to report to another meeting similarly constituted, and when it was to be put to the meeting the question at once arose whether the clergy were to vote separately, or to be out-voted by those who claimed to represent the voice of the laity.