Based on his University of Calgary thesis, James Forbes states his case for a religious origin for Canadian political liberalism. While others argue that Lockean liberalism is based on religious neutrality in religion, Forbes demonstrates that Locke's aversion to the political dangers of Catholicism was compounded by the Protestant Dissenters’ aversion to state-established Anglicanism. This produced religiously motivated liberalism or “Protestant liberty” in Upper Canada in the nineteenth century.

Forbes begins with Upper Canada in 1828 when William Lyon Mackenzie led a Reform victory, supported by Protestant Dissenters. He ends with 1878 when the last prominent Protestant Dissident, Liberal leader Alexander Mackenzie, lost to the prime representative of “neutral liberty,” Edward Blake.

Forbes combines narrative analysis of influential Liberal politicians, clergy, and laity with a review of Upper Canadian newspapers. His interactions with other Canadian and British historians, especially of the twenty-first century, is impressive. These other historians mostly minimize religious motivations or categorize these, particularly anti-Catholicism, as bigotry. Forbes instead finds a long line of theorists in Britain and in Canada who saw liberty as a consequence of Protestant doctrine and experience of resisting religious tyranny. Not all Protestants agreed, since Anglicans had established status in Britain and in Canada. Only Protestant Dissenters or nonconformists advanced this position. However, in Upper Canada, Dissenters constituted a growing majority in the nineteenth century, so the position was politically crucial.

Surprisingly, Forbes finds that Protestant liberty strongly motivated both the 1837 Rebellion and the 1867 Canadian Confederation. William Lyon Mackenzie, the leading rebel, and Methodist minister Egerton Ryerson often used religious rhetoric to critique the Anglican establishment. Mackenzie hoped to lead a revolution to “establish free institutions founded on God's law” (53). Although Mackenzie's rebellion failed, resulting in his exile to the United States, his ideas and language continued. Initially Dissenters argued to cut off Tory government funding for Anglican property (Clergy Reserves). They promoted liberty, voluntarism (church financing by their members alone), and the common good. By 1838, Protestant Dissenters were firmly linked to the Reform-Liberal party.

With the Union of the Canadas in 1841, Protestant reformers resented being joined with Catholic Lower Canada and became progressively more frustrated. New immigrants and Reform leaders Peter Brown and his son George took up the Protestant liberty banner in protesting the Catholic clergy's power to sway votes and uphold Catholic privileges. Anglican Reform leader Robert Baldwin differed, but his moderation and cooperation with Catholics failed to advance Protestant liberty. The Dissenters began to resist Catholic power more than Anglicanism after the end of Clergy Reserves. In both cases they saw true liberty as impossible if the government favored one church. The Disruption of the Church of Scotland, the Tractarians, and Chartism in Britain strengthened the views of Dissenters.

Baldwin was removed as leader in 1851 after other Reformers rejected his compromises with Catholic Lower Canada and establishment ideas, but the new leader, Francis Hincks, followed the same moderate policies. Forbes explores the polarizing Gavazzi riots, similar to many riots around Charles Chiniquy; these pitted freedom of speech (Protestant liberty) against freedom to not be offended (Catholics and neutral liberty), at times justifying violence. Similar debates about tolerance occur today. The Dissenters concluded “that true freedom was only possible in a Protestant society governed by Protestant principles” (100).

Reform-Liberals were constantly frustrated by internal battles and lack of progress in the Union of the Canadas. The Dissenters under George Brown felt imprisoned by the block voting of Lower Canada and Catholics in Upper Canada. This setup managed to impose government-funded Catholic separate schools in Upper Canada, despite lacking majority support in Upper Canada. Hence the Dissenters became the first to promote a Confederation project to break Quebec's power over Ontario by adding other English provinces. Local religious and cultural differences (for example, education) could be preserved, allowing Quebec to remain Catholic but Ontario to remain Protestant. The federal government would then look after neutral economic elements. Forbes argues that Dissenters aimed not to promote a neutral liberty but to preserve Protestant liberty. However, after Confederation, political alliances demonstrated the necessity to please Quebec voters in order to maintain power. The political hopes of the Protestant Dissidents of Ontario dwindled although their beliefs endured. Liberal pragmatists and neutral liberty prevailed.

This book is eminently readable and very well documented. Surprisingly, it lacks a bibliography and contains a far-too-brief index. The choice of end notes is also frustrating for those who often consult sources.

A parallel can be drawn to the experience of French Protestants in Quebec. Quebec actually reinforces the points of Forbes. Anglicans, who constituted the majority of Protestants in Quebec, opposed disestablishment of their rights or those of Catholics; that would threaten social stability. They viewed as religious bigotry any critique of Catholicism, such as Dissenter Robert Sellar's book and Charles Chiniquy's controversial statements. Thus the Montreal Gazette and other promoters of neutral liberty marginalized French Protestants who had left Catholicism and wanted a Protestant liberty. These latter never achieved public schools in their language. Several were elected as Liberals, but they had to minimize their religion to get elected, unlike Catholic candidates. Rather, Liberals like Wilfrid Laurier had to find ways to protect the Catholic establishment. French Protestants were far ahead of their time in promoting public schools, public libraries, and full separation of church and state but lacked political weight. True neutral liberty was absent in Quebec before 1960.

In summary, Forbes enriches the historical discourse, with his radically different approach to Ontario history and the history of liberty in Canada. A neutral liberty has many advantages for social peace, but, in its promotion of material prosperity as ultimate for unity, it minimizes cultural and religious distinctives.