[BouriNor] ECONOMIC CONDITIONS OF THE PROVINCES 43 
of Canada, was the Reverend Mr. Bethune, chaplain of a loyalist regi- 
ment, who came to the country in 1782. By 1837 the Presbyterians of 
all shades of church government were numerous in the provinces. The 
Reverend Mr. Cleveland was the first clergyman of St. Mathew’s—a 
Congregational church erected soon after St. Paul’s and afterwards pur- 
chased by the Church of Scotland. Presbyterianism received its first 
impulse by the arrival of Dr. McGregor and Dr. McCulloch in 1786 and 
1803. The Reverend Mr. McDowell was the first Presbyterian to visit 
the loyalist settlements about the beginning of the nineteenth century. 
The Baptists were most successful in Nova Scotia where a secession from 
old St. Paul’s brought to it some of the ablest men in the country. The 
Methodists had steadily gained strength from the commencement of the 
century. The founder of the sect in the Maritime Provinces was the 
Reverend William Black, and the first regular preacher in Upper Canada 
the Reverend William Losee, a loyalist, who held services among 
the loyalists of the St. Lawrence settlements. Before his time the first 
preachers in Upper Canada were officers or soldiers of the army, some 
of whom settled in the country and continued to show the same religious 
zeal. By 1837, the Methodists were said to be the most numerous de- 
nomination in the western province. The Reverend Dr. Ryerson, after- 
wards prominent in education, was the most prominent man among 
them. 
Popular education, now one of the most creditable features of the 
social condition of Canada generally, was at the lowest possible ebb. 
In 1837 there were in all the private and public schools of the provinces 
only one-fifteenth of the total population, In Lower Canada, not one- 
tenth could write, or one fifth read. In 1829 the legislative council— 
with reason according to Lord Durham—rejected an appropriation bili 
for schools om the ground that the members of the assembly actually 
filled up school-houses with teachers who could not even write their 
names and were otherwise disqualified—a shameful piece of political 
jobbery. In fact the government itself diverted the funds derived from 
the Jesuits Estates, and primarily intended for education, to a sort of 
secret service fund. The children of the habitant repeated the cate- 
chism by rote, and yet could not read as a rule. In Upper Canada 
things were no better. The tavern too often preceded the school-house 
in the province. School masters were “ ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-paid or 
not paid at all;” and added Mrs. Jameson, “ always either Scotch or 
Americans, and totally unfit for the office they had undertaken.” Dr. 
Thomas Rolph tells us that as late as 1833 Americans or other anti- 
British adventurers carried on the greater proportion of the schools, 
