The third party, which is the American, is the only one at present inclined to move, and in all probability they will commence as soon as the winter sets in; for however opposed to this shameful violation of the laws of nations the President, officers, and respectable portion of the American Union may be, it is certain that the majority are represented by these marauders, and the removal of our troops would be a signal for immediate aggression.

  The Americans will tell you that the sympathy, as they term it, only exists on the borders of the lakes; that it extends no further, and that they are all opposed to it, etcetera. Such is not the case. The greatest excitement which was shown any where was perhaps at Albany, the capital of the State of New York, on the Hudson river, and two hundred miles at least from the boundary; but not only there, but even on the Mississippi the feeling was the same; in fact, it was the feeling of the majority. In a letter I received the other day from a friend in New York, there is the following remark: —

  “Bill Johnson (the pirate on lake Ontario) held his levées here during the winter. They were thronged with all the best people of the city.”

  Now, the quarter from whence I received this intelligence is to be relied upon; and that it was the case I have no doubt. And why should they feel such interest about a pirate like Bill Johnson? Simply because he had assailed the English. This may appear a trifle; but a straw thrown up shows in what direction the wind blows.

  At present there is no want of troops to defend the Canadas against a foreign attack, and little inclination to rebel in the provinces themselves. That now required is, that the legislature should be improved so as to do justice to all parties, and such an encouragement given to enterprise and industry as to induce a more extended emigration.

  Lord Durham has very correctly observed, that it is not now a conflict of principles between the English and French, but a conflict of the two races. He says: —

  “I expected to find a contest between a government and a people: I found two nations warring in the bosom of a single state: I found a struggle, not of principles, but of races; and I perceived that it would be idle to attempt any amelioration of laws or institutions until we could first succeed in terminating a deadly animosity that now separates the inhabitants of Lower Canada into the hostile divisions of French and English.”

  But why should this conflict between the two races have taken place? Firstly, because the French, by the injudicious generosity of our Government in allowing them to retain their language in public affairs, with all their customs and usages, were allowed to remain a French colony, instead of amalgamating them with the English, as might have been done. Subsequently, because the interests of the English colonists have been sacrificed to the French, who, nevertheless, became disaffected, and would have thrown off the English dominion. Lord Durham very correctly adds: —

  “Such is the lamentable and hazardous state of things produced by the conflict of races which has so long divided the province of Lower Canada, and which has assumed the formidable and irreconcilable character which I have depicted. In describing the nature of this conflict, I have specified the causes in which it originated; and though I have mentioned the conduct and constitution of the colonial government, as modifying the character of the struggle, I have not attributed to political causes a state of things which would, I believe, tinder any political institutions have resulted from the very composition of society. A jealousy between two races, so long habituated to regard each other with hereditary enmity, and so differing in habits, in language, and in laws, would have been inevitable under any form of government. That liberal institutions and prudent policy might have changed the character of the struggle, I have no doubt; but they could not have prevented it; they could only have softened its character, and brought it more speedily to a more decisive and peaceful conclusion. Unhappily, however, the system of government pursued in Lower Canada has been based on the policy of perpetuating that very separation of the races, and encouraging these very notions of conflicting nationalities which it ought to have been the first and chief care of Government to check and extinguish. From the period of the conquest to the present time, the conduct has aggravated the evil, and the origin of the present extreme disorder may be found in the institutions by which the character of the colony was determined.”

  We have, therefore, to legislate between the two parties, and let us, previous to entering upon the question, examine into their respective merits. On the one hand we have a French population who, after having received every favour which could be granted with a due regard to freedom, have insisted upon, and have obtained much more, and who in return for all the kindness heaped upon them, excited by envy and jealousy of an energy and enterprise of which they were incapable, have risen in rebellion, with the hopes of making themselves an independent nation.

  On the other hand we have a generous, high-spirited race of our own blood, and migrating from our own soil, who having been unfairly treated, and having just grounds of complaint against the mother-country, have nevertheless forgotten their own wrongs, and, to a mail, flown to arms, willing to shed their blood in defence of the mother-country.

  Add to this, we have the French inhabiting a comparatively sterile country, without activity or enterprise; the English, in a country fertile to excess, possessing most of the capital, and the only portion of the colonists to whom we can safely confide the defence of that which I trust I have proved to the reader to be the most important outpost in the English dominions. Bearing all this in mind, and also remembering that if the emigration to Upper Canada again revive, that this latter population will in a few years be an immense majority, and will ultimately wholly swallow up all the former, we may now proceed to consider what should be the policy of the mother-country.

  Note 1. It was not long after the conquest, that another and larger class of English settlers began to enter the province. English capital was attracted to Canada by the vast quantity and valuable nature of the exportable produce of the country, and the great facilities for commerce, presented by the natural means of internal intercourse. The ancient trade of the country was conducted on a much larger and more profitable scale; and new branches of industry were explored. The active and regular habits of the English capitalist drove out of all the more profitable kinds of industry their inert and careless competitors of the French race; but in respect of the greater part (almost the whole) of the commerce and manufactures of the country, the English cannot be said to have encroached on the French; for, in fact, they created employments and profits which had not previously existed. A few of the ancient race smarted under the loss occasioned by the success of English competition; but all felt yet more acutely the gradual increase of a class of strangers in whose hands the wealth of the country appeared to centre, and whose expenditure and influence eclipsed those of the class which had previously occupied the first position in the country. Nor was the intrusion of the English limited to commercial enterprises. By degrees, large portions of land were occupied by them; nor did they confine themselves to the unsettled and distant country of the townships. The wealthy capitalist invested his money in the purchase of seignorial properties; and it is estimated, that at the present moment full half of the more valuable seignories are actually owned by English proprietors. The seignorial tenure is one so little adapted to our notions of proprietary rights, that the new seigneur, without any consciousness or intention to injustice, in many instances exercised his rights in a manner which would appear perfectly fair in this country, but which the Canadian settler reasonably regarded as oppressive. The English purchaser found an equally unexpected and just cause of complaint in that uncertainty of the laws, which rendered his possession of property precarious, and in those incidents of the tenure which rendered its alienation or improvement difficult. But an irritation, greater than that occasioned by the transfer of the large properties, was caused by the competition of the English with the French farmer. The English farmer carried with him the experience and habits of the most improved agriculture in the world. He settled himself in the townships bordering on the seignories, and brought a fresh soil and improved cultivation to compete with the worn-out and slovenly farm of the habitant. He often took the very farm which the Canadian settler had abandoned, and, by superior management, made that a source of profit which had only impoverished his predecessor. The ascendancy which an unjust favouritism had contributed to give to the English race in the government and the legal profession, their own superior energy, skill and capital secured to them in every branch of industry. They have developed the resources of the country; they have constructed or improved its means of communication; they have created its internal and foreign commerce. The entire wholesale, and a large portion of the retail trade of the province, with the most profitable and flourishing farms, are now in the hands of this numerical minority of the population.

  Note 2. “Nor does there appear to be the slightest chance of putting an end to this animosity during the present generation. Passions inflamed during so long a period, cannot speedily be calmed. The state of education which I have previously described as placing the peasantry entirely at the mercy of agitators, the total absence of any class of persons, or any organisation of authority that could counteract this mischievous influence, and the serious decline in the district of Montreal of the influence of the clergy, concur in rendering it absolutely impossible for the Government to produce any better state of feeling among the French population. It is even impossible to impress on a people so circumstanced the salutary dread of the power of Great Britain, which the presence of a large military force in the province might be expected to produce. I have been informed, by witnesses so numerous and trustworthy that I cannot doubt the correctness of their statements, that the peasantry were generally ignorant of the large amount of force which was sent into their country last year. The newspapers that circulate among them had informed them that Great Britain had no troops to send out; that in order to produce an impression on the minds of the country-people, the same regiments were marched backwards and forwards in different directions, and represented as additional arrivals from home. This explanation was promulgated among the people by the agitators of each village; and I have no doubt that the mass of the inhabitants really believed that the government was endeavouring to impose on them by this species of fraud. It is a population with whom authority has no means of contact or explanation. It is difficult even to ascertain what amount of influence the ancient leaders of the French party continue to possess. (The name of M. Papineau is still cherished by the people; and the idea is current that, at the appointed time, he will return, at the head of an immense army, and re-establish “La Nation Canadienne.”) But there is great reason to doubt whether his name be not used as a mere watchword; whether the people are not in fact running entirely counter to his councils and policy; and whether they are not really under the guidance of separate petty agitators, who have no plan but that of a senseless and reckless determination to show in every way their hostility to the British Government and English race. Their ultimate designs and hopes are equally unintelligible. Some vague expectation of absolute independence still seems to delude them. The national vanity, which is a remarkable ingredient in their character, induces many to flatter themselves with the idea of a Canadian Republic; the sounder information of others has led them to perceive that a separation from Great Britain must be followed by a junction with the great confederation on their southern frontier. But they seem apparently reckless of the consequences, provided they can wreak their vengeance on the English. There is no people against which early associations and every conceivable difference of manners and opinions have implanted in the Canadian mind a more ancient and rooted national antipathy than that which they feel against the people of the United States. Their more discerning leaders feel that their chances of preserving their nationality would be greatly diminished by an incorporation with the United States; and recent symptoms of Anti-Catholic feeling in New England, well known to the Canadian population, have generated a very general belief that their religion, which even they do not accuse the British party of assailing, would find little favour or respect from their neighbours. Yet none even of these considerations weigh against their present all-absorbing hatred of the English; and I am persuaded that they would purchase vengeance and a momentary triumph by the aid of any enemies, or submission to any yoke. This provisional but complete cessation of their ancient antipathy to the Americans, is now admitted even by those who most strongly denied it during the last spring, and who then asserted that an American war would as completely unite the whole population against the common enemy, as it did in 1813. My subsequent experience leaves no doubt in my mind that the views which were contained in my despatch on the 9th of August are perfectly correct; and that an invading American army might rely on the co-operation of almost the entire French population of Lower Canada.”

  Note 3. Colonel Prince is the gentleman who took with his own hands General Sutherland and his aide-de-camp, and who ordered the Yankee pirates to be shot. Mr Hume has thought proper to make a motion in the House of Commons, reprobating this act as one of murder. I believe there is little difference whether a man breaks into your house, and steals your money; or burns your house, and robs you of your cattle and other property. One is as much a case of burglary as the other. In the first instance you are justified in taking the robber’s life, and why not in the second? Those people who attacked the inhabitants of a country with whom they were in profound peace, were disowned by their own government, consequently they were outlaws and pirates, and it is a pity that Sutherland and every other prisoner taken had not been immediately shot. Mr Hume may flare up in the House of Commons, but I should like to know what Mr Hume’s opinion would be if he was the party who had all his property stolen and his house burnt over his head, in the depth of a Canadian winter. I suspect he would say a very different say, as he has no small respect for the meum; indeed, I should be sorry to be the party to be sentenced by Mr Hume, if I had stolen a few ducks out of the honourable gentleman’s duck decoys near Yarmouth.

  Chapter Five.

  The Canadas, continued.

  In the last chapter I pointed out that in our future legislation for these provinces, we had to decide between the English and French inhabitants; up to the present the French have been in power, and have been invariably favoured by the Government, much to the injury of the English population. Before I offer any opinion on this question, let us inquire what has been the conduct of the French in their exercise of their rights as a Legislative Assembly, and what security they offer us, to incline us again to put confidence in them. In examining into this question, I prefer, as a basis, the Report of Lord Durham, made to the English Parliament. His lordship, adverting to the state of hostility between the representative and executive powers in our colonies, prefaces with a remark relative to our own country, which I think late events do not fully bear out; he says: —

  “However partial the monarch might be to particular ministers, or however he might have personally committed himself to their policy, he has been invariably constrained to abandon both, as soon as the opinion of the people has been irrevocably pronounced against them, through the medium of the House of Commons.”

  This he repeats in an after part of the Report: —

  “When a ministry ceases to command a majority in Parliament on great questions of policy, its doom is immediately sealed; and it would appear to us as strange to attempt, for any time, to carry on a Government by means of ministers perpetually in a minority, as it would be to pass laws with a majority of votes against them.”

  If such be an essential part of our constitution, as his lordship asserts, surely we have suffered an inroad into it lately.

  That the system of Colonial Government is defective, I grant, but it is not so much from the check which the Legislative Council puts upon the Representative Assembly, as from the secrecy of the acts and decisions of that council. This, indeed, his lordship admits in some cases, and I think that I can fully establish that, without this salutary check, the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada would have soon voted themselves Free and Independent States. Lord Durham observes: —