The clergy reserves were for many years a fruitful source of discontent and agitation in Canada. They had their origin in a provision of the Constitutional Act of 1791, that there should be reserved for the maintenance and support of a "Protestant clergy" in Upper and Lower Canada "a quantity of land equal in value to a seventh part of grants that had been made in the past or might be made in the future." It was provided also that rectories might be erected and endowed according to the establishment of the Church of England. The legislatures were to be allowed to vary or repeal these enactments, but such legislation was not to receive the royal assent before it had been laid before both Houses of the imperial parliament. Did the words "Protestant clergy" apply to any other body than the Church of England? A vast amount of legal learning was expended on this question; but there can be little doubt that the intention to establish and endow the Church of England was thoroughly in accord with the ideas of colonial government prevailing from the conquest to the end of the eighteenth century. In the instructions to Murray and other early governors there are constant injunctions for the support of a Protestant clergy and Protestant schools, "to the end that the Church of England may be established both in principles and practice."[3] Governor Simcoe, we are told, attached much importance to "every establishment of Church and State that upholds a distinction of ranks and lessens the undue weight of the democratic influence." "The episcopal system was interwoven and connected with the monarchical foundations of our government."[4] In pursuance of this idea, which was also that of the ruling class in Canada, the country was to be made as much unlike the United States as possible by the intrenchment of class and ecclesiastical privileges, and this was the policy pursued up to the time that responsible government was obtained. Those outside the dominant caste, in religion as in politics, were branded as rebels, annexationists, Yankees, republicans. And as this dominant caste, until the arrival of Lord Elgin, had the ear of the authorities at home, it is altogether likely that the Act of 1791 was framed in accordance with their views. The law was unjust, improvident, and altogether unsuited to the circumstances of the colony. Lord Durham estimated that the members and adherents of the Church of England, allowing its largest claim, were not more than one-third, probably not more than one-fourth, of the population of Upper Canada. Methodists, Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics, each claimed a larger membership. He declared that the sanction given to the exclusive claims of the Church of England by Sir John Colborne's establishment of fifty-seven rectories, was, in the opinion of many persons, the chief pre-disposing cause of the rebellion, and it was an abiding and unabated cause of discontent.[5]