The colony, on the passing of the church act, was an open field. The first clerical candidate, because he was such, engrossed a large proportion of the available signatures. The people, generally anxious for some form of worship, both as a moral agency and from its tendency to raise the respectability of a township, gave their names freely as _bona fide_ members of either protestant church. The inevitable result was, an eager competition by the more zealous members of the rival communions. The meaning of _bona fide_ membership of this or that church, was brought into considerable debate. The Anglican clergy insisted on the census; the Scotch on the right of every man to make himself a member for the purposes of the act, whatever his hereditary or mental creed. These different views led to serious discord: the analysis of names appended to various applications imputed all the errors, informalities, and even corruption supposed to attach to popular elections. Those who had never thought much on religion, gave with facility and then retracted their adhesion: they virtually changed not only their minister but their creed. The opposite parties represented each other in terms full of reproach and bitterness; imputations of sectarianism, intrusion, kidnapping, were the common forms of recrimination. It would be useless to relate examples now before the writer, in colours painted by the passions of the conflict. It is the nature of religious controversy to throw on the surface all the malignant feelings that cloud the reputation of gentler spirits, in whom the real virtues of a communion dwell; but the lesson is worth remembrance--that of all forms of clerical institution, none realise less the idea of loving-kindness than that based on universal suffrage. The social effects of this competition were lamentable: neighbours were divided, who had often worshipped at the same altar; religious emulation sprung up in every locality: an attempt to possess the ground, led to the marching and counter-marching of hostile forces. The advent of an eminent clergyman on a township was reported to the head-quarters of his antagonists. In one place the moderator had appeared, in another the archdeacon: it was thus the more zealous partisans of either exasperated their antipathies. Again, the church act did not tie the laity to either their ministers or their creeds: thus a dissatisfied people might easily raise the preliminaries for a second or a third clergyman, and leave their late pastors to their salaries and their solitude.