The ministers of several other denominations accompanied the first influx of emigration into Upper Canada, (1783-1790,) and have shared the hardships, privations, and sufferings incident to missionaries in a new country. And it is through their unwearied labours, that the mass of the population have been mainly supplied with religious instruction. They, therefore, do not stand in the relation, of Dissenters from either the Church of England or of Scotland, but are the ministers of distinct and independent Churches, who had numerous congregations in various parts of the Province, before the ministerial labours of any ecclesiastical establishment were, to any considerable extent, known or felt.
_Jan. 20th, 1831._--As an evidence that the views put forth by Dr. Ryerson, in the _Guardian_, against an established Church in Upper Canada, were acceptable outside of his own denomination, I give the following letter, addressed to him at this date from Perth, by the Rev. Wm. Bell, Presbyterian:
Though differing from you in many particulars, yet in some we agree. Your endeavours to advance the cause of civil and religious liberty have generally met my approbation. Some of your writings that I have seen discover both good sense and Christian feeling. The liberality, too, you have discovered, both in regard to myself and in regard of my brethren, has not escaped my observation. Be not discouraged by the malice of the enemies of religion. Your _Guardian_ I have seldom seen, but from this time I intend to take it regularly. Consider me one of your "constant readers." The matters in which we differ are nothing in comparison of those in which we agree.
_Feb. 9th._--Some members of the Church of England in the Province evinced a good deal of hostility to the Methodists of this period, chiefly from the fact that they had been connected with the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States, and that the Canada Conference had formed one of the Annual Conferences of that Church, presided over by an American Bishop. As an evidence of this hostility, Dr. Ryerson stated in the _Guardian_ of this date, that Donald Bethune, Esq., and others, of Kingston, had petitioned the House of Assembly:--