Between the extremes, however, there existed a group of moderate politicians, represented, in the Upper Province by Baldwin, in the Lower by La Fontaine, and among British statesmen apparently by both Sydenham and Elgin. Especially among its Canadian members, this group felt keenly the desirability of supporting religion, as it struggled through the difficulties inevitably connected with early colonial life. But neither Baldwin, who was a devoted Anglican, nor La Fontaine, a faithful son of his Church, showed any tinge of Strachan's bitterness as they considered the question; and nothing impressed Canadian opinion more than did La Fontaine's speech, in a later phase of the Clergy Reserve troubles, when he solemnly renounced on behalf of his coreligionists any chance of stealing an advantage while the Protestants {53} were quarrelling, and when he stated his opinion that the endowment belonged to the Protestant clergy, and should be shared equally among them. It was this school of thought---to anticipate events by a year or two--which received the sanction of Sydenham's statesmanship, and that energetic mind never accomplished anything more notable than when, in the face of a strong secularizing feeling, to the justification for which he was in no way blind, he repelled the party of monopoly, and yet retained the endowment for the Protestant churches of Canada. "The Clergy Reserves," he wrote in a private letter, "have been, and are, the great overwhelming grievance--the root of all the troubles of the province, the cause of the Rebellion--the never-failing watchword at the hustings--the perpetual source of discord, strife, and hatred. Not a man of any party but has told me that the greatest boon which could be conferred on the country would be that they should be swept into the Atlantic, and that nobody should get them. My Bill[54] has gone through the Assembly by a considerable majority, thirty to twenty, and I feel confident that I can get it through the {54} Council without the change of a word. If it is really carried, it is the greatest work that ever has been done in this country, and will be of more solid advantage to it than all the loans and all the troops you can make or send. It is worth ten unions, and was ten times more difficult."[55] It is a melancholy comment on the ecclesiastical interpretation of religion that, ten years later, when the firmly expressed desires of all moderate men had given the Bishop of Toronto a good excuse for acquiescence in Sydenham's _status quo_, that pugnacious ecclesiastic still fought to save as much of the monopoly as could be secured.[56]