Three schools of opinion formed themselves in {50} the intervening years. First and foremost came the establishment men, mainly Anglican, but with a certain Presbyterian following, who claimed to monopolize the benefits, such as they were, of the Clergy Reserve funds. Canada as a British colony was bound to support the one or two state churches of the mother country; religious inequality was to flourish there as at home; dissent was to receive the same stigma and disqualification, and the dominant church or churches were to live, not by the efforts of their members, but at the expense of all citizens of the state, whether Anglican, Presbyterian, or Methodist. This phase of opinion received its most offensive expression from leaders like the Bishop of Toronto. To these monopolists, any modification of the Anglican settlement seemed a "tyrannical and unjust measure," and they adopted an ecclesiastical arrogance towards their fellow-Christians, which did much to alienate popular sympathies throughout the province. At the other extreme was a solid mass of public sentiment which had little interest in the ecclesiastical theories of the Bishop of Toronto, and which resented alike attempts to convert the provincial university into an Anglican college, and the cumbrous and unjust form of church establishment, {51} the most obvious evidence of which lay in the undeveloped patches of Clergy Reserve land scattered everywhere throughout the settlements. It was the undoubted desire of a majority in 1840 that the Clergy Reserve system should be ended, the former reserves sold, and the proceeds applied to educational and general purposes; a desire which had been registered in the House of Assembly on fourteen different occasions since 1826.[52] The case for the voluntary principle in Canada had many exponents, but these words of Dr. John Rolph in 1836 express the spirit of the movement in both its strength and its weakness: "Instead of making a State provision for any one or more churches; instead of apportioning the Clergy Reserves among them with a view to promoting Christianity; instead of giving pensions and salaries to ministers to make them independent of voluntary contributions from the people, I would studiously avoid that policy, and leave truth unfettered and unimpeded to make her own conquests.... The professions of law and physic are well represented in this Assembly, and bear ample testimony to the generosity of the people towards them. Will good, pious and evangelical ministers of our holy religion be likely to {52} fare worse than the physicians of the body, or the agents for our temporal affairs? Let gospel ministers, as the Scriptures say, live by the gospel, and the apostolic maxim that the workman is worthy of his hire implies the performance of duty rewarded temporarily by those who impose it. There is no fear that the profession will become extinct for want of professors."[53]