About the same time, Messrs. Henry and William Rowsell, well-known booksellers, undertook the printing of the _Church_ newspaper, which was transferred from Cobourg to Toronto, under the editorship of Mr. John Kent,--a giant in his way--and subsequently of the Rev. A. N. Bethune, since, and until lately, Bishop of Toronto.
Being intimate friends of my own, they offered me the charge of their printing office, with the position of a partner, which I accepted; and made over my interest in the _Herald_ to Mr. Barber.
[Footnote 14: Easter salutation of the Primitive Church.]
I have lately astonished some of my friends with the information, that William Lyon Mackenzie was originally an advocate of the Clergy Reserves--that is, of state endowment for religious purposes--a fact which makes his fatal plunge into treason the more to be regretted by all who coincide with him on the religious question.
In Lindsey's "Memoirs" we read (vol. 1, p. 46):
"A Calvinist in religion, proclaiming his belief in the Westminster Confession of Faith, and a Liberal in politics, yet was Mr. Mackenzie, at that time, no advocate of the voluntary principle. On the contrary, he lauded the British Government for making a landed endowment for the Protestant clergy in the Provinces, and was shocked at the report that, in 1812, voluntaryism had robbed three millions of people of all means of religious ordinances. 'In no part of the constitution of the Canadas,' he said, 'is the wisdom of the British Legislature more apparent than in its setting apart a portion of the country, while yet it remained a wilderness, for the support of religion.'
. . . "Mr. Mackenzie compared the setting apart of one-seventh of the public lands for religious purposes to a like dedication in the time of the [early] Christians. But he objected that the revenues were monopolized by one church, to which only a fraction of the population belonged. The envy of the non-recipient denominations made the favoured Church of England unpopular.
. . . "Where the majority of the present generation of Canadians will differ from him, is that on the Clergy Reserves question, he did not hold the voluntary view. At that time, he would have denounced secularization as a monstrous piece of sacrilege."[15]