As at present informed, however, without going further into these questions, I see enough stated in the Petition upon the table of the House to justify the appointment of a committee of inquiry.

In every country, Sir, the wishes of the greater number of the inhabitants, and of those in possession of the great mass of the property, ought to have great influence in the government; - they ought to possess the power of the government. If this be true generally, the rule ought, a multo fortiori, to be followed in the government of distant colonies, from which the information that is to guide the Government at home is sent by a few, and is never correct or complete. A Government on the spot, though with the means of obtaining correct information, is exposed to the delusions of prejudice for a Government at a distance, the only safe course to pursue is to follow public opinion. In making the practical application of this principle, if I find the Government of any country engaged in squabbles with the great mass of the people, - if I find it engaged in vexatious controversies and ill-timed disputes, — especially if that Government be the Government of a colony, I say, that there is a reasonable presumption against that Government. I do not charge it with injustice, but I charge it with imprudence and indiscretion; and I say that it is unfit to hold the authority entrusted to it. The ten years of squabbles and hostility which have existed in this instance, are a sufficient charge against this Government.

I was surprised to hear the Right Honourable Gentleman put the People and the Government on the same footing in this respect. What is government good for, if not to temper passion with wisdom? The People are said to be deficient in certain qualities, and a Government are said to possess them. If the People are not deficient in them, it is a fallacy to talk of the danger of entrusting them with political power: if they are deficient, where is the common sense of exacting from them that moderation which government is instituted for the very purpose of supplying?

Taking this to be true as a general principle, it cannot be false in its application to the question before the House. As I understand it, the House of Assembly has a right to appropriate the supplies which itself has granted. The House of Commons knows well how to appreciate that right, and should not quarrel with the House of Assembly for indulging in a similar feeling. The Right Honourable Gentleman himself admits the existence of this right. The Governor-General has, however, infringed it, by appropriating a sum of one hundred and forty thousand pounds without the authority of the Assembly. That House does not claim to appropriate the revenue raised under the Act of 1774: they only claim a right to examine the items of the appropriation in order to ascertain if the Government need any fresh supplies. The Petitioners state it as one of their not unimaginary grievances, that they have lost one hundred thousand pounds by the neglect of the Receiver-General. This is not one of those grievances which are said to arise from the Assembly's claim of political rights. Another dispute arises from the Governor-General claiming, in imitation of the power of the King, a right to confirm the Speaker of the House of Assembly. This right, - a very ancient one, and venerable from its antiquity and from being an established fact of an excellent constitution at home, is a most absurd adjunct to a colonial government. But I will not investigate the question, nor enter into any legal argument with regard to it; for no discussion can in any case, as I feel, be put in competition with the feelings of a whole people. It is a fatal error in the rulers of a country to despise the people: its safety, honour, and strength, are best preserved by consulting their wishes and feelings. The Government at Quebec, despising such considerations, has been long engaged in a scuffle with the people, and has thought hard words and hard blows not inconsistent with its dignity.

I observe, Sir, that twenty-one bills were passed by the House of Assembly in 1827,

-most of them reformatory, of which not one was approved of by the Legislative Council. Is the Governor responsible for this? I answer, he is. The Council is nothing else but his tool: it is not, as at present constituted, a fair and just constitutional check between the popular assembly and the Governor. Of the twenty-seven Councillors, seventeen hold places under the Government at pleasure, dividing among themselves yearly fifteen thousand pounds, which is not a small sum in a country in which a thousand a-year is a large income for a country gentleman. I omit the Bishop, who is perhaps rather too much inclined to authority, but is of a pacific character. The minority, worn out in their fruitless resistance, have withdrawn from attendance on the Council. Two of them, being the most considerable land- | holders in the province, were amongst the subscribers to the Petition. I appeal to the House, if the Canadians are not justified in considering the very existence of this Council as a constitutional grievance?

It has been said that there is no aristocracy formed in the province. It is not possible that this part of Mr. Pitt's plan could ever have been carried into execution: an aristocracy the creature of time and opinion

cannot be created. But men of great merit and superior qualifications get an influence over the people; and they form a species of aristocracy, differing, indeed, from one of birth and descent, but supplying the materials out of which a constitutional senate may be constituted. Such an aristocracy there is in Canada; but it is excluded from the Council.

There are then, Sir, two specific classes of grievances complained of by the Lower Canadians: the first is, the continued hostility to all the projected measures of the Assembly by the Governor; the second is, the use he makes of the Council to oppose them. These are the grounds on which inquiry and change are demanded. I, however, do not look upon these circumstances alone as peremptorily requiring a change in the constitution of the province. These are wrongs which the Government might have remedied. It might

have selected a better Council; and it might have sent out instructions to the Governor to consult the feelings of the people. It might have pointed out to him the example of a Government which gave way to the wishes of a people, - of a majority of the people, expressed by a majority of their representatives, on a question, too, of religious liberty*, and instead of weakening themselves, had thereby more firmly seated themselves in the hearts of the people. On reviewing the whole question, the only practical remedy which I see, is to introduce more prudence and discretion into the counsels of the Administration of the Province.

The Right Honourable Gentleman has made allusion to the English settlers in Lower Canada, as if they were oppressed by the natives. But I ask what law has been passed by the Assembly that is unjust to them? Is it as a remedy for this that it is proposed to change the scheme of representation? The English inhabitants of Lower Canada, with some few exceptions, collected in towns as merchants or the agents of merchants, very respectable persons, I have no doubt, amount to about eighty thousand would it not be the height of injustice to give them the same influence which the four hundred thousand Canadians, from their numbers and property, ought to possess? Sir, when I hear of an inquiry on account of measures necessary to protect English settlers, I greatly lament that any such language should have been used. Are we to have an English colony in Canada separated from the rest of the inhabitants,- -a favoured body, with peculiar privileges? Shall they have a sympathy with English sympathies and English interests? And shall we deal out to Canada six hundred years of such miseries as we have to Ireland? Let us not, in God's name, introduce such curses into another region. Let our policy be to give all the King's subjects in Canada equal law and equal justice. I cannot listen to unwise distinctions, generating alarm, and leading to nothing but evil, without adverting to them; and I shall

As to Upper Canada, the statement of the Right Honourable Gentleman appears to be scanty in information: it does not point out, -as is usual in proposing such a Committee, —what is to be the termination of the change proposed. He has thrown out two or three plans; but he has also himself supplied objections to them. The Assembly there appears to be as independent as the one in the Lower Province. I have heard of some of their measures - an Alien bill, a Catholic bill, and a bill for regulating the Press: and these discussions were managed with as much spirit as those of an assembly which I will not say is better, but which has the good fortune to be their superiors. The people have been much disappointed by the immense grants of land which have been reserved for the Church of England,—which faith is not that of the majority of the people. Such endow ments are to be held sacred where they have been long made; but I do not see the propriety of creating them anew, and for a Church, too, to which the majority of the people do not belong. Then, with regard to the regulations which have been made for the new college, I see with astonishment that, in a country where the majority of the people do not belong to the Church of England, the professors are all to subscribe to the Thirty-nine articles: so that, if Dr. Adam Smith were alive, he could not fill the chair of political economy, and Dr. Black would be excluded from that of chemistry. Another thing should be considered: :- a large por

tion of the population consist of American settlers, who can least of all mer bear the intrusion of law into the domains of conscience and religion. It is a bad augury for the welfare of the province, that opinions prevalent at the distance of thousands of miles, are to be the foundations of the college-charter: it is still worse, if they be only the opinions of a faction, that we cannot interfere to correct the injustice.

To the proposed plan for the union of the two provinces there are so many and such powerful objections, that I scarcely think that such a measure can soon be successfully concluded. The Bill proposed in 1822, whereby the bitterness of the Lower Canada Assembly was to be mitigated by an infusion of mildness from the Upper Province, — failing as it did,—has excited general alarm and mistrust among all your colonies. Except that measure, which ought to be looked upon as a warning rather than a precedent, I think the grounds upon which we have now been called upon to interfere the scantiest that ever were exhibited.

I do not know, Sir, what other plans are to be produced, but I think the wisest measure would be to send out a temperate Governor, with instructions to be candid, and to supply him with such a Council as will put an end to the present disputes, and infuse a better spirit into the administration than it has known for the last ten years. I wish, however, to state, that I have not come to a final judgment, but have merely described what the bearing of my mind is on those general maxims of colonial policy, any deviation from which is as inconsistent with national policy as it is with national justice.

MR. SPEAKER,

I think it will be scarcely necessary for any man who addresses the House from that part of it where I generally sit, to disclaim any spirit of party opposition to His Majesty's Ministers during the present session. My own conduct in dealing with the motion which I regret that it is now my painful duty to bring forward, affords, I believe I may say, a pretty fair sample of the principle and feeling which have guided all my friends in the course they have adopted since the very first day of this Session, when I intimated my intention to call public attention to the present subject. For the first two months of the session, I considered myself and my political friends as acting under a sacred and irresistible obligation not to do anything which might appear even to ruffle the surface of that hearty and complete cooperation which experience has proved to have been not more than necessary to the success of that grand healing measure* brought forward by His Majesty's Ministers,

--

that measure which I trust and believe will be found the most beneficent ever adopted by Parliament since the period when the happy settlement of a Parliamentary and constitutional crown on the House of Brunswick, not only preserved the constitution of England, but struck a death-blow against all pretensions to unbounded power and indefeasible title throughout the world. I cannot now throw off the feelings that

actuated me in the course of the contest by means of which this great measure has been effected. I cannot so soon forget that I have fought by the side of the Gentlemen opposite for the attainment of that end. Such are my feelings upon the present occasion, that while I will endeavour to discharge my duty, as I feel no hostility, so I shall assume no appearance of acrimony. At the same time, I trust my conduct will be found to be at an immeasurable distance from that lukewarmness, which, on a question of national honour, and in the cause of the defenceless, I should hold to be aggravated treachery. I am influenced by a solicitude that the councils of England should be and should seem unspotted, not only at home, but in the eye of the people as well as the rulers of Europe, — by a desire for an explanation of measures which have ended in plunging our most ancient ally into the lowest depths of degradation, — by a warm and therefore jealous regard to national honour, which in my judgment consists still more in not doing or abetting, or approaching, or conniving at wrong to others, than in the spirit never tamely to brook wrong done to ourselves.

disabilities.

security; - above all, to convince them that

care is taken of the national honour, the best, and indeed only sufficient guard of that peace and security. I regard such discussions as acts of courtesy due to our fellow-members of the great commonwealth of European states; more particularly now that some of them are bound to us by kindred ties of liberty, and by the possession of institutions similar to our own. Two of our neighbouring states,―one our closest and most congenial ally,-the other, in times less happy, our most illustrious antagonist, but in times to come our most illustrious rival -have adopted our English institutions of limited monarchy and representative assemblies may they consolidate and perpetuate their wise alliance between authority and freedom! The occasional discussions of Foreign Policy in such assemblies will, I believe, in spite of cross accidents and intemperate individuals, prove on the whole, and in the long-run, favourable to good-will and good understanding between nations, by gradually softening prejudices, by leading to public and satisfactory explanations of ambiguous acts, and even by affording a timely vent to jealousies and resentments. They will, I am persuaded, root more deeply that strong and growing passion for peace, which, whatever may be the projects or intrigues of Cabinets, is daily spreading in the hearts of European nations, and which, let me add, is the best legacy bequeathed to us by the fierce wars which have desolated Europe from Copenhagen to Cadiz. They will foster this useful disposition, through the most generous sentiments of human nature, instead of attempting to attain the same end by under-rating the resources or magnifying the difficulties of any single country, at a moment when distress is felt by all attempts more likely to rouse and provoke the just sense of national dignity which belongs to great and gallant nations, than to check their boldness or to damp their spirit.

:

If anything was wanting to strengthen my passion for peace, it would draw new vigour from the dissuasive against war which I heard fall with such weight from the lips

of him*, of whom alone in the two thousand years that have passed since Scipio defeated Hannibal at Zama, it can be said, that in a single battle he overthrew the greatest of commanders. I thought, at the moment, of verses written and sometimes quoted for other purposes, but characteristic of a dissuasive, which derived its weight from so many victories, and of the awful lesson taught by the fate of his mighty antagonist : —

"Si admoveris ora, Cannas et Trebiam ante oculos, Thrasymenaque busta,

Et Pauli stare ingentem miraberis umbram." †

Actuated by a passion for peace, I own that I am as jealous of new guarantees of foreign political arrangements, as I should be resolute in observing the old. I object to them as multiplying the chances of war. And I deprecate virtual, as well as express ones: for such engagements may be as much contracted by acts as by words. To proclaim by our measures, or our language, that the preservation of the integrity of a parti cular state is to be introduced as a principle into the public policy of Europe, is in truth to form a new, and perhaps universal, even if only a virtual, guarantee. I will not affect to conceal that I allude to our peculiarly objectionable guarantee of the Ottoman empire. I cannot see the justice of a

policy, which would doom to perpetual barbarism and barrenness the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean, — the fair and famous lands which wind from the Euxine to the Atlantic. I recoil from thus riveting the Turkish yoke on the neck of the Christian nations of Asia Minor, of Mesopotamia, of Syria, and of Egypt; encouraged as they are on the one hand to hope for deliverance by the example of Greece, and sure that the barbarians will! be provoked, by the same example, to maltreat them with tenfold cruelty. It is in

* Alluding to a passage contained in a specch of the Duke of Wellington on the Catholic Relief Bill.-ED.

+ Pharsalia, lib. vii. - ED. Which formed part of the basis of the arrangements for liberating Greece. - ED.