After nearly forty years of continuous agitation, during which the province of Upper Canada had been convulsed from the Ottawa to Lake Huron, and political parties had been seriously embarrassed, the question was at last removed from the sphere of party and religious controversy. The very politicians who had contended for the rights of the Anglican clergy were now forced by public opinion and their political interests to take the final steps for its settlement. Bishop Strachan's fight during the best years of his life had ended in thorough discomfiture. As the historian recalls the story of that fight, he cannot fail to come to the conclusion that the settlement of 1854 relieved the Anglican Church itself of a controversy which, as long as it existed, created a feeling of deep hostility that seriously affected its usefulness and progress. Even Lord Elgin was compelled to write in 1851 "that the tone adopted by the Church of England here has almost always had the effect of driving from her even those who would be most disposed to co-operate with her if she would allow them." At last freed from the political and the religious bitterness which was so long evoked by the absence of a conciliatory policy on the part of her leaders, this great church is able peacefully to teach the noble lessons of her faith and win that respect among all classes which was not possible under the conditions that brought her into direct conflict with the great mass of the Canadian people. CHAPTER VIII SEIGNIORIAL TENURE