§ The Order of the Day for resuming the adjourned debate on the Canada Government Bill having been read,
§ Sir W. Molesworthsaid, although he felt it his duty to vote against the further progress of the Bill then under the consideration of the House, because it would suspend the constitution of a free people, yet he offered no objection to what he understood was the most important feature of the Ministerial measure, namely, that there shall be sent to Canada a person in whom confidence could be placed; whose duty it would be to administer the affairs of the province, and to reduce the people to contented allegiance. It was both a dangerous and a delicate thing to express a decided opinion as to the fitness of any individual for so difficult a task as that of Governor of this insurgent province. He did not, however, hesitate to state his humble, though decided, approbation of the choice of her Majesty's Ministers. If there were a nobleman in this country for energy, decision of character, manly and liberal sentiments, better fitted than another for so arduous a task, that nobleman was the Earl of Durham. Reluctant as he was to pin his faith on any individual, still he felt confident that Lord Durham, if left to the unfettered exercise of his judgment, would accomplish the object of his mission. Understanding, as he did, that the purposes for which Lord Durham was deputed to Canada were to restore peace and tranquillity, to recal the revolted subjects of the empire to their allegiance, to enforce in every quarter the majesty of the laws, to sustain the honour and dignity of this country—best sustained by acts of grace and mercy; and, lastly, to devise along with the delegates of the people what form of free constitution would be best suited to the province, and in what respect the existing institutions of the country ought to be changed—these undoubtedly were most onerous duties, requiring for their performance the soundest judgment and discretion, and every requisite power should in justice be given to the Governor who took upon himself so weighty a responsibility. At the same time, for the exercise of his delegated authority, the Governor should be most 359 strictly responsible. He alone should be made answerable for every act done or omitted; all responsibility should be concentrated upon his single head; and the noble Lord should be made to feel that, though he alone would merit all the praise of success, he must equally bear all the odium, blame, and deep discredit of failure. If successful, he would render the most valuable and enduring services to his country, and acquire the greatest political renown; but failure would make the state of affairs in Lower Canada still more complicated, and still more disastrous, and failure would be accompanied by the utter destruction of the political character of the nobleman from whom so much was expected, and to whom so much was intrusted. Every requisite power should, therefore, be granted to him, but he should also be made strictly responsible, and, above all things, unfettered by any specific instructions from the Colonial office; for every impartial person, after a careful perusal of the despatches which had been laid upon the table of the House, must be convinced of the ignorance and incapacity of that office. The necessity of sending Lord Durham on so extraordinary a mission, proved of itself that the head of the Colonial Office had been, and was unable to carry on the administration of the affairs of Canada in the ordinary manner—that he had permitted events to occur which rendered it imperative to place in other hands an extraordinary control over the province. Her Majesty's Ministers had selected the person whom they deemed fittest for the office of Governor-general; it would, therefore, be most absurd to shackle him in any way by the orders of persons who were virtually acknowledged to be less capable than himself. In proportion as Lord Durham was independent of the control of the Colonial Office, or even of her Majesty's Government, in exactly the same ratio would the probability of a successful termination of these affairs increase. This country, in its conduct towards Canada, ought to acknowledge that there were long-standing grievances which should be redressed; that its rulers had been to blame for having so long neglected those wrongs; that it was most sincerely anxious to make every reparation", in its power for the negligence of the authorities; and that in earnest of its sincerity it had taken the administration of the affairs of the province out of the hands of the ordinary authorities, and intrusted Lord Durham with plenary power to accomplish its 360 benevolent intentions. The first act of the noble Lord should be one of grace and mercy, an oblivion of all past political offences, a pardon to all political offenders—a general amnesty. He (Sir W. Moles-worth) hailed with joy, the mention made by the noble Lord, the Member for Stroud, of an amnesty. He could not but observe that the only person who objected to that wise and humane—the only person who thirsted after slaughter and called aloud for blood was the representative of all the learning and the small modicum of Christian charity to be found in the University of Oxford, The only means by which the revolted subjects of her Majesty could be reduced to a state of contented allegiance, were by a redress of the grievances of which the House of Assembly had so long, so justly, and so consistently complained, and such an alteration in the constitution of the province as would prevent the recurrence of similar abuses. The noble Lord, the Member for Stroud (Lord J. Russell) the other night arraigned the conduct of the House of Assembly. Last night that body was most ably defended by their agent, his friend, Mr. Roebuck. He contended that, in the disputes between the colony and the mother country, not the House of Assembly but the Colonial Ministers of the Crown were the persons to blame. He had heard both sides, the arraigner and the arraigned, the accuser and the defender, and it was for the House, as a tribunal, to decide who was in the wrong. That a once most loyal colony should have suddenly burst forth into rebellion, was a matter for grave and serious inquiry, as it proved that blame attached somewhere, and the people of England had a right to know who had been chiefly culpable, and who ought to be held up to public indignation. The noble Lord, the Member for South Lancashire, said, that he would not inquire into past events, or as to who were the originators of the present disasters. That was judicious policy on the noble Lord's part. He was wise, for the sake of his party, to evade the question. From a careful and anxious perusal of all the documents, from a strict examination of the Parliamentary folios in which that evidence was contained, he had come to the conclusion, that the Tories had been, to a great extent, the cause of the present disasters; that it was their mischievous policy, continued through a long series of years, which first generated, then aggravated, the grievances of the 361 Canadians;, and produced those feelings of discontent and distrust which rendered conciliation nearly impracticable, and led ultimately to revolt. The right hon. Baronet (Sir R. Peel) had assumed, as an all but acknowledged fact, that the Colonial Government of the Tories was nearly perfect, and that a return of his party to power would be the greatest benefit to the colonies. He admired the dexterity with which that right hon. Baronet made these assumptions, to which some of his (Sir W. Molesworth's) hon. Friends, he was surprised to find, lent the weight of their authority, by greatly magnifying the liberality of the intentions of Sir George Murray and Lord Aberdeen. As far as Sir George Murray was concerned, he was inclined to suspect that those liberal sentiments were only written with the view of being laid upon the table of the House, and printed, as, with ample opportunity, they never gave birth to any liberal actions, and he was induced to believe, that on the much wished for, by hon. Gentlemen opposite, advent of their party to power, the colonial policy of the empire would not be in any way improved—not to say it would be deteriorated. A more loyal people did not exist, nor one more firmly attached to the dominion of this empire, than the inhabitants of the province of Canada. For a long time they did not even sufficiently prize the benefit of free institutions. They looked with indifference upon the possession of electoral rights, and of a representative Assembly. Their boast was, that under the sceptre of England, they enjoyed, without trouble, all the advantages of the government of the United Stales. They were soon aroused from their political apathy by acts of Tory misrule, and taught to value privileges which they had previously but little cherished. This change of feeling took place under the government of Sir James Craig, about the year 1807, when Lord Castlereagh was Secretary of State for the Colonies. Sir James Craig acted in the most violent manner towards the people of the province, addressed the House of Assembly in the most disrespectful terms, rejected their proposal to defray the civil expenses of the province, twice dissolved the House of Assembly in one year, and, in order to influence the elections, caused the press of a Liberal paper to be seized, and three of the leading Members of the former Assembly to be thrown into gaol on charges of sedition, which were never attempted to be sustained. This insane 362 conduct of the Tory Governor destroyed the influence both of the Administration and of all persons connected with it. Since that period the Government has never been able again to command a majority in the House of Assembly. These events were soon followed by the American war, during the continuance of which the inhabitants of Lower Canada lavished their blood and their treasure in defence of the province, and showed a zeal and a courage in the cause of this country which has been but ill requited. From the conclusion of the war in 1814, down to 1818, little occurred worthy of notice. The dissensions occasioned by Sir James Craig's misgovernment were then renewed, and an attempt was made to impeach some of the Judges for the advice given to the Governor. In the latter year the House of Assembly obtained permission to defray the civil expenditure of the province. In the subsequent year, the disputes about the Supply Bill commenced. When in 1810 the House of Assembly first offered to defray the civil expenditure, that expenditure did not exceed 40,000l. per annum; in 1817, it had reached 60,000l.; and in 1819, the Assembly was called upon for an additional 16,000l. The House of Assembly became alarmed; they found that in proportion as the custom revenues of the province had increased, the civil expenditure likewise increased. The House of Assembly in consequence narrowly scrutinised the expenditure, struck off several useless expenses, and passed a Supply Bill by items, which was rejected by the Legislative Council. With this act of the Legislative Council commenced the financial disputes of the province, which are still undetermined. From the year 1820, to the year 1828, was the disastrous and disgraceful government of Lord Dalhousie; during seven years of that period, Lord Bathurst was the Colonial Secretary. Mr. Huskisson was Colonial Secretary only for a very short time. During that period it might be seen what in reality was the conduct of a Tory Government in the colonies when not under the immediate influence of the force of public opinion; and what acts of injustice they could then perpetrate. In 1822 a Bill was suddenly introduced for the purpose of uniting the two provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, without any information whatever being given to the people of the two provinces. This act of gross injustice was fortunately delayed by the efforts of the hon. Member for Kilkenny, (Mr. 363 Hume) and Sir James Mackintosh, until information of the intentions of the Government was conveyed to the provinces. Public meetings were then held for the first time in every part of Lower Canada, and the strongest indignation and opposition to the measure was ex pressed by the inhabitants of both provinces, more especially by those of Lower Canada, and, in consequence of the universal feeling on this subject, the Bill was never again introduced. In the same year the Canada Trade Act was passed, which rendered permanent certain temporary taxes, which had been granted by the House of Assembly, in order to defray the expenses of the American war. This was most unconstitutional, and in direct violation of the Act of 1791. The same Act, and the Canada Tenures Act of 1825, interfered with the whole tenure of private property in the province, and altered to a great extent the law of real property. At the close of 1823, the Receiver General failed for 96,000l. of the public money—about a year and a half of the civil expenditure of the province. "It appears," says the Committee of 1828, "that no acquittal could be traced from the Treasury of a later date than the year 1814. It appears likewise that the fact of the Receiver General's insolvency was known to the Governor a considerable time before he was suspended, and the Governor even lent him 20,000l. out of the army chest." Such was the manner in which hon. Gentlemen opposite administered the pecuniary affairs of the province. No securities had been taken in the province for the Receiver General. About the same time two sheriffs failed, in whose hands were the monies of the poor suitors. One failed for 37,000l., and another for a less sum; it appeared, likewise, no securities had been taken for them. During the whole period, from 1820 to 1828, only two Supply Bills were parsed by the Legislative Council on account of the disputes between the House of Assembly and the Colonial Office, with regard to the civil list, and with regard to the claim of the House of Assembly to appropriate the revenues raised under an Act of 1774. The Legislative Council proved themselves, by their conduct with regard to the Supply Bills, to be (to use the words applied to them by the hon. Member for North Lancashire) the mere tools of the local Government. At one time, at the wish of one Government, they accepted the same description of Supply Bill which they rejected at another time at the bidding of 364 the Colonial Office. But the Government, undoubtedly with the sanction of the Colonial Office, did not hesitate to seize, without authority, the monies in the public chest. The Committee of 1828 says, "that the local Government has thought it necessary, through a long series of years, to have recourse to a measure (which nothing but the most extreme necessity could justify), of annually appropriating by its own authority large sums of the money of the province, amounting to no less than 140,000l. without the consent of the representatives of the people under whose control the appropriation of these sums is placed by the Constitution. Your Committee cannot but express their deep regret that such a state of things should have been allowed to exist for so many years in a British colony without any communication or reference having been made to Parliament on the subject." The Committee likewise state other grave allegations against the administration of Lord Dalhousie: of the dismissal of many militia officers for the constitutional exercise of their rights; of the sudden and extensive remodelling of the Commission of the Peace, to serve political purposes; of a vexatious system of prosecutions for libel at the instance of the Attorney General, and of the harsh and unconstitutional spirit in which these prosecutions have been conducted. Such, according to a Committee of the House of Commons, appointed on the motion of Mr. Huskisson, was the mode in which the Tories governed the country for no less a period than eight years. The petition complaining of these grievances, signed by no less than 87,000 persons was presented to the House of Commons. In consequence of the report of that Committee, Lord Dalhousie was recalled from Canada, and his illegal, almost iniquitous conduct was recompensed by a high military command in India In the same year Sir G. Murray came into power and wrote that despatch which his (Sir W. Molesworth's) hon. Friends had so praised for liberality of sentiment, without taking the trouble of examining whether it gave birth to any liberal acts. He did nothing. Few colonial ministers were ever placed in a more favourable position; he might have rendered the greatest service to his country, and averted the difficulties under which this country was now labouring with regard to Canada, In short, he might have merited all the praise bestowed upon him. The House of Assembly had expressed 365 almost extravagant admiration of the report of the Committee of 1828—all that was then required was to follow out the intentions of the Committee, by passing an Act of the Imperial Parliament to relieve the Lords of the Treasury from the duty of appropriating the revenues raised under the Act of 1774, no one could doubt that all those unhappy dissensions about a permanent civil list, and about the independence of the Judges, would then have been easily settled. 1828, 1829, 1830 passed away—nothing was done by Sir George Murray. The excuse was, the debates in Parliament on the Catholic Emancipation, the death of the king, and other events prevented him from introducing the measures required. These excuses, if well founded, were the best practical illustration of the difficulty, if not impossibility, of governing, with anything like the semblance of justice, a colony removed three thousand miles from the seat of government. But the excuse was an absurd one; for hon. Gentlemen were aware how easily Colonial Bills were hurried through that House, and the Act required would have consisted only of a few lines and a single clause. Indeed, a similar Act was passed in 1831, during the disputes on the Reform Bill. To the non-passing in time of the Act in question he attributed the present disasters; and for those disasters he contended, therefore, that Sir G. Murray and his friends opposite were in a great degree responsible. The House of Assembly on the one hand, the Colonial Office on the other, maintained each its right to control the revenues raised under the Act of 1774. Supply Bills were passed by the House of Assembly, in which the claims of the Assembly were indirectly maintained. They were protested against, but accepted by Sir James Kempt, who acted, he acknowledged, in the most liberal and conciliatory manner, though it appeared from the dispatches of Sir G. Murray that his conduct hardly met with the approbation of the Colonial-office. The hon. Baronet, the Member for Devonport, said that all the financial claims of the House of Assembly had been granted. So they were. That proved they were just claims. But when was justice done? The claims were made in 1794; portion of them were conceded in 1831, and the rest in 1836; forty-two years' delay of justice! If, however, tardy justice had been done in 1828, that would hare sufficed; but 366 nothing was done. In consequence of the delay to which he had referred angry disputes continued, producing great" and unnecessary irritation. The expectations of the people of the province had been greatly excited by the report of the Committee of 1828. Those expectations were disappointed. Deep-seated distrust had succeeded to confidence, and when Lord Grey's administration came into power they had to contend with the evil effects of more than twenty years of Tory misgovernment and tyranny. Their task was a most difficult one, and he would not even take it upon himself to assert that, with the then state of feeling of the inhabitants of Lower Canada, it would have been possible finally to settle the existing difficulties, without pursuing a course of policy which none but men of superior and energetic minds would have dared to attempt, and which, perhaps, at first would have found but few supporters. With the removal of Sir G. Murray from the Colonial-office, the reign of Tory policy in that department of the State did not, however, terminate, and he had no doubt that hon. Gentlemen opposite would gladly acknowledge that Lord Ripon (who then became Colonial Secretary) belonged to their party. Lord Aylmer was made governor of Lower Canada about the same time. Lord Ripon, by the act of the 1st and 2nd of William 4th, surrendered at last to the House of Assembly the revenues raised under the act of 1774. He, however, most unfortunately, determined to retain the casual and territorial revenues, which had hitherto been placed at the disposal of the colonial legislature for general purposes. He retained them, it must be observed, in order to support the Established Church of England. A most unfounded charge had been brought against the House of Assembly with regard to these revenues, namely, that they laid claim to the appropriation of sums of money to which they had no right whatsoever. This charge was refuted last night by Mr. Roebuck by means of quotations from the messages of Lord Dorchester, in 1794, and of Sir James Kempt, in 1828, both of which documents proved that those revenues were generally placed at the disposal of the colonial legislature—indeed in 1799 the House of Assembly made a permanent grant of 5,555l. lls. 1d. in return for those revenues. The hon. Baronet, the Member for Devonport, denied that the message of Lord Dorchester did place those funds at 367 the disposal of the colony. He (Sir W. Molesworth) contended it did; that the claim of Lord Ripon to apply them to the support of the Church of England was a most unjustifiable one. He would, in proof of this position, refer to the evidence of Lord Aylmer, who, in a dispatch dated January 26, 1832, told Lord Ripon with regard to these revenues:—"Here, then, the Crown and the House of Assembly are still at issue; and I cannot conceal from your Lordship my apprehensions that the latter will never be induced to forego its pretensions, which certainly derive considerable weight from the circumstance of these revenues having hitherto been placed at the disposal of the colonial legislature, for general purposes." Lord Ripon thought proper, however, to divert these revenues from the purposes to which they had heretofore been applied, in order to give 3,000l. a-year to the Bishop of Quebec, and to maintain the Established Church of England, to which communion about one-fifth of the Protestants, that is, about one-twenty-fifth of the whole population belonged. After this act, hon. Gentlemen opposite could not for one moment hesitate to acknowledge that Lord Ripon was truly their own colonial secretary. In consequence of the disputes about the casual and territorial revenues, the House of Assembly refused to grant a permanent civil list. In consequence of the conduct of the House of Assembly, the noble Lord, the Member for North Lancashire, brought an accusation against the House of Assembly of a breach of faith. He first made that, charge in 1834, he had repeated it almost every year, when he was obliged by Mr. Roebuck to acknowledge that it was utterly unfounded: but so valid was the authority supposed to be upon which that charge rested, being no less than that of a person who had once been colonial secretary, that it obtained the widest circulation, was generally credited; and he found from the newspapers that it was repeated a short time ago by the Fidus Achates of the noble Lord opposite in a speech at Carlisle, wherein he proved to demonstration that he had always been a Tory, and the same charge was repeated in the leading article of the Morning Chronicle of to-day. Great was the guilt of him who had made unfounded assertions, and the noble Lord had much to answer for in that respect. He would not enter into an examination of the documents, in order to disprove the accusation against the House of Assembly 368 —the documents were to be found in the evidence laid before the Committee of 1834. The charge was, that the House of Assembly had promised to grant a permanent civil list on the passing of the 1st and 2nd William 4th. Now he would merely observe that in a dispatch dated the 15th of March, 1831, Lord Aylmer informed Lord Ripon that the House of Assembly would not grant a permanent civil list unless the casual and territorial revenues were surrendered. This dispatch was acknowledged by Lord Ripon on the 15th of May, 1831, and it was not till September of the same year that the 1st and 2nd of William 4th was passed; consequently, Lord Ripon was well aware four months at least before this act was passed, that the House of Assembly would not assent to his proposal of a permanent civil list. Connected with these disputes about the territorial revenue and the permanent civil list, was the question of the independence of the judges. The noble Lord, the Member for Stroud, whilst arraigning the other night the conduct of the House of Assembly, complained of their refusing to grant permanent salaries to the judges. It would hardly be believed, after all that had been said on this subject, that the House of Assembly did pass an act granting the permanent salaries required; that the act was thankfully accepted by Lord Aylmer; and that Lord Aylmer most earnestly requested Lord Ripon to accept it; and if Lord Ripon had accepted it, the disputes would have terminated, but Lord Ripon refused the bill for some inconceivable reason. He would produce the proof of these assertions. Lord Aylmer, in his address of the 5th of December, 1831, called the attention of the House of Assembly chiefly to the independence of the judges. He says, in conclusion, after referring to other subjects, "But he is most anxious to see the question of the independence of the judges, and of permanent provision for their salaries, retired allowances, and incidental expenses, finally disposed of by a distinct and substantive enactment, before bringing the other, and comparatively less important, measure, specifically under their consideration." The House would find in the evidence of the Committee of 1834 the Bill passed by the House of Assembly, in compliance with the request of Lord Aylmer. An objection had been urged against that Bill, that the amount of the salary of the judges was not stated, and that they were to be voted annually; but 369 the words of the Bill were—"that from and after the passing of this Act, the salaries which are now annually allowed and paid to the said judges shall be secured to them in a fixed and permanent manner;" and Lord Aylmer fully explained the reason for not mentioning the amount of the judges' salaries in the Bill. He tells Lord Ripon, in a dispatch dated the 36th of January, 1832—"I think it necessary to mention to your Lordship, that in framing my message to the House of Assembly upon the independence of the judges, I conceived it unnecessary to make any specific statement regarding their salaries and retired allowances, for it was well understood beforehand that the Assembly was fully prepared to continue the salaries of the judges upon their present footing, and to make a liberal provision for their retired allowances. The event has justified this expectation." This Bill received the unanimous assent of the Legislative Council, and the following were the terms in which Lord Aylmer spoke of this measure in his address to the House of Assembly and the Legislative Council:—"Amongst the many important measures adopted this session, all of which are more or less calculated to promote the interests of the province, I have (he said) great satisfaction in noticing the Bill for establishing the independence of the judges. I think it necessary, at the same time, to inform you that, although the principle of this Bill coincides altogether with the views of his Majesty's Government, it contains one or two provisions which impose upon me the necessity of reserving it for the signification of his Majesty's pleasure. The passing of the Bill for securing the independence of the judges, may be considered as the first practical effect of the dispatch of Viscount Goderich of the 7th of July." Such were the terms in which Lord Aylmer spoke of this Bill to the House of Assembly; at the same time he wrote to Lord Ripon, entreating him to agree to the measure. He says, in his dispatch of the 26th of January, 1832:—"I take leave, with the utmost submission, to recommend it to the favourable consideration of his Majesty. Once rejected, it is highly probable that no other from the House of Assembly at a future period can be expected upon more favourable terms, or even upon terms equally favourable." Such was the language of Lord Aylmer to Lord Ripon; nevertheless, Lord Ripon rejected the Bill. 370 Who was to blame? The Colonial Minister. There were no other events of any note which occurred during the remainder of Lord Ripon's Colonial Administration, except that in 1832, on account of the Supply Bill being reserved for the consideration of the home authorities, Lord Aylmer thought proper to take, without sufficient authority, a certain portion of the public monies. For this act, however, it must, in justice to Lord Ripon, be stated that Lord Aylmer was severely censured. In the year 1833, Lord Ripon was succeeded by another noble Lord, whom he doubted not the Tories would most readily claim as their own, and be willing to bear the responsibility of his acts. That noble Lord, in his previous office, had not won the affections of the Irish people, nor, on account of his Colonial Administration, did the inhabitants of Lower Canada bear towards him kindlier feelings. In consequence of the conduct of the Legislative Council in rejecting the Supply Bill passed by the Assembly, the House of Assembly became convinced of the impossibility of carrying on the Government in harmony with the other branch of the Legislature. They sent an humble address to his Majesty, praying him to sanction a general assembly of the people, for the purpose of determining what alteration should be made in the constitution of the province. The reply of the noble Lord, in a dispatch which was laid before the House of Assembly, was in a tone better fitted for the angry disputes and contentions of this House than for the reply of a Colonial Minister to the provincial Parliament. And the noble Lord offended the House of Assembly by saying, that, "on the mode proposed, his Majesty is willing to put no harsher construction than that of extreme inconsiderateness; to the object sought to be obtained his Majesty can never be advised to consent, as deeming it inconsistent with the very existence of monarchical institutions." This language to the House of Assembly was extremely inconsiderate, if not deserving of a harsher appellation; the House of Assembly were justly indignant, and in their famous ninety-two resolutions of the succeeding year they denounced the noble Lord in set terms. They said "That it is with astonishment and grief that they have seen in the extract from the dispatches of the Colonial Secretary, communicated to this House by the Governor-in-chief during the present Session, that one at least of the Members of his Majesty's 371 Government in England entertains towards them feelings of prejudice and animosity, and inclines to favour plans of oppression and revenge ill adapted to change a system of abuses, the continuance of which would altogether discourage the people, extinguish in them the legitimate hope of happiness, which, as British subjects, they entertained." The noble Lord opposite was succeeded by the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose only official act was to take 31,000l. out of the army chest, to defray the salaries of the unpaid officials of the province. Mr. Roebuck stated, on what authority he knew not, or how trustworthy, probably it was upon the word of the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself, that a dispatch was written which would have settled all the difficulties in Lower Canada, but, unfortunately, the very day it was to have been sent off the Melbourne Administration were dismissed, and no one knew what became of the dispatch. The right hon. Gentleman was succeeded by Lord Aberdeen, who, likewise, according to some, wrote a most admirable dispatch, which likewise produced no effect. Up to this period the Tories, and the Tories alone, with the exception of Mr. Spring Rice, were responsible for the Colonial Government, and as he thought he had shown, there was no reason whatsoever to suppose that their conduct would be one iota better than that of the Whigs; they, in reality, had been the cause of those angry emotions and bitter feelings which had led to the present disasters. Since that period—since the beginning of 1834—her Majesty's present Ministers were alone responsible for colonial mis-government. They sent out commissioners to Lower Canada. The first object of the Commissioners was to deceive—they concealed their instructions, and pretended that they were unfettered upon every subject. Now, the popular party had come to the conclusion that no arrangement would be satisfactory without a complete change in the constitution of the Legislative Council. The House of Assembly had expressed that opinion in their resolutions, and the Colonial-office had been repeatedly warned that, without agreeing to such a change, any attempt to settle the disputes would be useless; but in the instructions to the Commissioners the question of an elective council was a forbidden one. This fact the Commissioners carefully concealed, and endeavoured, by holding out false hopes, to obtain the supplies. 372 The following was the account of this, which must at least be termed an extraordinary proceeding, given by Sir George Gipps:—
Had we, on our first arrival," he said, "declared that the question of an Elective Council was absolutely a forbidden one, we should have failed, in limine, with one party, for we have now the best reason for knowing that there would, in such case, have been no session of the Assembly. Had we, on the other hand, spoken of our instructions as more favourable to the democratic party than they were represented in the Governor's opening speech, we should not only have sinned against truth, but have driven, perhaps, the English party to violence. I do not think we were ever at liberty to publish our instructions in extenso; but, had we even done so, no good effect would, in my opinion, have been produced by it. The course which we pursued was so far successful that there was every reasonable prospect, up to the 9th of last month, that the arrears of the last three years, and the supplies of the current year, would have been granted. We have the most complete assurances that on the 7th of last month such a determination was provisionally adopted at a private meeting of the persons of most influence in the Assembly, the question being then to come on in the House on the 11th.Unfortunately, however, for this scheme, Sir F. Head, the governor of the upper province, published extracts from his instructions, which were of a similar description to those of Lord Gosford. From those extracts the House of Assembly found they had been deceived, and, justly indignant, they set aside the question of paying the arrears, and voted a Supply Bill only for six months, which was rejected by the Legislative Council. With the exception of the resolutions of last year, and which were the proximate cause of rebellion, he did not know any other charge which could justly be brought against her Majesty's Ministers, besides that of having placed Lord Glenelg at the head of the Colonial Department. Every person reading the dispatches laid upon the table of the House, or perusing the brilliant and sarcastic examination of those documents made in another assembly, must acknowledge that the noble Lord, though by no means the least competent of her Majesty's Ministers, was wholly incompetent for his high and responsible situation. Such was the brief outline of the history of the Tory misgovernment of Lower Canada, and of the financial disputes which agitated that province. The persons to be blamed, and the most criminal (for he did not arraign 373 the miserable tools in the province, but called the chiefs to account), were the Tory Secretaries of State for the Colonies—Lord Castlereagh, Lord Bathurst, Sir George Murray, Lord Ripon, and Lord Stanley. There were other grievances of the Canadians caused by these hon. Gentlemen, which required to be mentioned, and could be proved by the report of the Commissioners, whose observations applied chiefly to the conduct of the three last-mentioned Secretaries—Sir George Murray, Lord Ripon, and Lord Stanley. The greatest grievance next to the financial ones, and the most frequent topic of complaint, was the constitution of the Legislative Council. That body had been framed on the notion that it should represent in Canada the House of Lords of this country; but, instead of being an independent assembly, sometimes siding with the popular party against the encroachments of official authority, at other times uniting with the Government against the too rapid extension of popular principles, it sacrificed its independence by leaguing itself entirely with the Government; it became the mere tool of the Government, to use the words of the noble Lord, the Member for North Lancashire. The conduct of the Colonial Government was equally impolitic. Instead of perceiving and acknowledging the importance of the House of Assembly as representatives of the people, it relied exclusively for support upon the Legislative Council. The Commissioners, in their general report, stated, "Instead of the Government shaping its policy so as to gain the confidence of the House of Assembly it adopted the unfortunate course of resting for support exclusively on the Legislative Council." Thence arose feelings of jealousy and animosity between the two assemblies, and frequent and well-founded complaints of the constitution of the Legislative Council were made by the House of Assembly. In 1828, the Canada Committee recommended "that a more independent character should be given to the Executive and Legislative Councils; that the majority of their members should not consist of persons holding offices at pleasure of the Crown; and that any other measures that may tend to connect more intimately this branch of the constitution with the interest of the colonies would be attended with the greatest advantage." As long as the Tories remained in the Government offices, up to the middle of the year 1834, what had been their conduct? The evidence of 374 the Commissioners, which applied almost entirely to the conduct of Sir George Murray, Lord Ripon, and Lord Stanley, was very valuable upon this subject, and he would not refrain from referring to some of the extracts which were made by Mr. Roebuck. They ascribed the fact of no formal demand for an Elective Council having been made before 1833, simply to the expectation entertained by the popular party, that, in consequence of the recommendations of the Committee of 1828, very essential alterations in the composition of the colonies were on the point of being effected. An alteration was indeed effected in 1832. The judges ceased to take part in its proceedings, and thirteen new members unconnected with the Government were added in the course of the year; but that these new nominations were unsatisfactory to the Assembly, and that the disappointment they felt at the alterations of the Council was the cause of their fresh proceedings against it, might be inferred from the fact that in the next Session of the Legislature was voted the first Address, in which a demand for an Elective Council was put forth. The Commissioners state that the popular party expected that the Legislative Council would be made to harmonize to a great extent with the House of Assembly. With regard to the appointments just mentioned they say—"We may, we think, venture to say, that whilst they satisfied the terms of the recommendation made by the Committee of 1828, as far as the matter of pecuniary independence of the Crown was concerned, they scarcely produced an alteration in the political character of the body to which the new Members were aggregated." The following was the delicate manner in which the Commissioners spoke of the feelings and conduct of the Legislative Council:In the course of these protracted disputes, too, it has happened that the Assembly, composed almost exclusively of French Canadians, have constantly figured as the asserters of popular rights, and as the advocates of liberal institutions, whilst the Councils in which the English interest prevails have, on the other hand, been made to appear as the supporters of arbitrary power, and of antiquated political doctrines; and to this alone we are persuaded the fact is to be attributed that the majority of settlers from the United States have hitherto rather sided with the French than the English party. The Representatives of Stanstead or Misissquoi have not been sent to Parliament to defend the feudal system, to protect the 375 French language, or to oppose a system of registration. They have been sent to lend their aid to the asserters of popular rights, and to oppose a Government by which, in their opinion, settlers from the United States have been neglected or regarded with disfavour. Even during our residence in the province we have seen the Council continue to act in the same spirit, and discard what we believe would have proved a most salutary measure, in a manner which can hardly be taken otherwise than to indicate at least a coolness towards the establishment of customs calculated to exercise the judgment and promote the general improvement of the people. We allude to a Bill for enabling parishes and townships to elect local officers, and assess themselves for local purposes, which measure, though not absolutely rejected, was suffered to fail in a way that showed no friendliness to the principle.And the following was the still more delicate manner in which the Commissioners of the Government replied to the question, whether the Government—that is to say, whether Sir George Murray, Lord Stanley, or Lord Ripon—had performed their duty of following the recommendations of the Committee of 1828.If these recommendations are satisfied by the appointment of a large number of new Councillors, none of them dependent on the Government for their income, but all living by their own means, and possessing property engaged in pursuits connected with the general interests of the country, we have to report that the advice of the Committee has been followed. But if, on the other hand, their words be taken to mean that a change ought to have been made in the political character of the body, we can only repeat what we observed in paragraph four of our preceding report on the Council itself—that there does not appear to have been an alteration effected in that respect.He thought, after this expression of the opinion of the Commissioners, no one could doubt that such alterations had not been made in the constitution of the Legislative Council as ought to have been made. He would not enter into any very minute detail of the evil effects of the Legislative Council—he would not enumerate the number of important subjects upon which it had resisted the House of Assembly, and upon which it had been reluctantly obliged to give way. They were stated in the fourth report of the Commissioners. He would, however, mention a few of them. The Legislative Council resisted the right of the Assembly to accuse and. bring to trial 376 public officers. The Legislative Council refused to permit the House of Assembly to appoint an agent in England—a matter which the House of Assembly considered of the utmost importance, on account of the frequent unjustifiable, and, sometimes, most unexpected, attempts of the Colonial-office to interfere with the internal concerns of the provinces—as, for instance, in the case of the attempted union of the two provinces in 1822; of the Canada Trade Act of the same year, by which, as he had already observed, the House of Commons most unconstitutionally, and contrary to the Declaratory Act of 1778, rendered permanent certain temporary taxes imposed by the Legislature of Lower Canada for the purpose of assisting Great Britain in defending the province during the last American war; of the Canadian Tenures Act in 1825, by which the whole civil law of England, with all its incidents, was at once introduced into the province. The Agent's Bill had been regularly passed by the House of Assembly every, or nearly every, year for the last thirty years, and as regularly rejected by the Legislative Council, though the Committee of 1828 strongly recommended, that permission should be granted to the House of Assembly to appoint an agent. The Legislative Council likewise long resisted the right of the House of Assembly to control their own contingent expenses. The Legislative Council long opposed the demand of the Assembly for the surrender of the proceeds of the Jesuits' estates; and for the withdrawal of the judges from political affairs, from their seats in the Legislative and Executive Council—indeed they had opposed every measure which would tend to make the judges independent, and liable to impeachment for misconduct. Instead of the judges holding their offices, as in this country, during good behaviour, they held their appointments during the will of the Crown; and this fact, coupled with the fact that, on account of the expiration of the jury laws, which the Legislative Council refused to renew, the sheriffs, who were mere tools of the Government, could, by selecting the district out of which the jury were to be chosen, pack the jury, had destroyed the confidence of the people in the due administration of justice. Moreover, judges sat upon the bench who were totally unfit for the office. For instance, Mr. Spring Rice, while Secretary of State for the Colonies, acknowledged Mr. Gale was an improper person to 377 be a judge; yet Mr. Gale still remained in that high and responsible situation. Mr. Thompson likewise (who was proved to have been drunk on the bench, and an habitual drunkard), nevertheless continued to be judge. To return, however, to the conduct of the Legislative Council, they rejected, in 1826, the School Bill, by which not less than 40,000 children were suddenly deprived of the means of education. "They proved (to use the words of the Commissioners) at least a coldness towards the establishment of customs calculated to exercise the judgment, and promote the general improvement, of the people," by their conduct towards the Parish and Townships Officers Bill. The evil which they did in rejecting this Bill might be understood from the following; extract from the evidence of Mr. Neilson, given before the Canada Committee of 1828.In Canada (he said) we have been plagued with an old French system of government; that is to say, a Government in which the people have no concern whatever. Everything must proceed from the city of Quebec and the city of Montreal, and persons must come to the city of Quebec and the city of Montreal to do everything, instead of being able to do for themselves in their own localities. In the United States they have the English system, by which every locality has certain powers of regulating its own concerns, by which means they regulate them cheaper and much better; whereas, with us a man must make a journey to Quebec, he must go to a great expense, he must bow to this man and to that man, and rap at this door and rap at that door, and spend days and weeks to effect a little improvement in a road, or something of that kind of common convenience to a district, whereas all that is done in the United States, without going out of his own small district.The object of this Parish and Township Officers Bill was to remedy this great evil, and consequently it was rejected by the Legislative Council, the determined hostility of which to the wishes of the Representatives of the people was sufficiently proved by the facts which he had narrated. To these facts he might add a number of others—to these facts, however, he appealed when he affirmed that the Legislative Council, up to the latest moment, had been a real grievance to the Canadians; and the Canadians were justified in asserting either that there had been the most culpable negligence on the part of the Colonial Secretaries in not improving the constitution of that body, or that its constitution was so radically bad that it ought to be abolished 378 or rendered elective. He would wish to show by the Report of the Commissioners, that the demand of the House of Assembly for an Elective Council was not so extravagant as some hon. Gentlemen seemed to think. The Commissioners said, "We will even say, that, under more favourable circumstances, at an earlier time, or had less animosity been excited, we can conceive that good might have resulted from the principle of election." The chief objection of the Commissioners to an Elective Council seemed to have been, that they feared that the other party, the anti-popular party, would have broken out into insurrection. The Commissioners said in the same Report, "The concession of an Elective Council in the present excited state of public opinion would afford a triumph to one portion of the people, which, we say, would be fraught with danger." It had been argued by some persons, that the contest between the Legislative Council and the House of Assembly was not a contest between a small party and the representatives of the people, but between those who were, and would be, the defenders, and between those who were, and would be still more, the oppressors of the English race. He acknowledged, that it was in accordance with the generous and noble feelings of a free people to be most anxious, and to take care that wrong should be done to no one connected with them by blood; and he, for one, should be ready, when it was proved that there was a risk of injury to the just rights of his fellow countrymen in Canada, to support any measure duly calculated to protect their interests, and advance their well-being, and so, he was convinced, would every Member in that House. At the same time, however, especial care should be taken lest under the influence of their national feelings, lest moved by affections towards those connected with them, they should be induced to sanction the wicked desires, and gratify the odious passions of cunning and unscrupulous men, whose only object was power and whose purposes were more hateful even than those of the Orange faction. Such, however, would be the disastrous effect of being guided in their conduct towards Canada by persons who asserted, that the House of Assembly did not represent the wishes of the Canadians both of French and English origin. A few simple facts which he would now state from the Report of the Commissioners, with regard to the representation, would prove the con- 379 trary. For some time previous to the year 1829 just complaints were made, that the townships were not represented, and that the whole system of representation was very unequal. When the Constitutional Act of 1791 was passed, the then Governor, Sir Alured Clark, was intrusted with the power of dividing the province into electoral districts. He took as the sole basis of his calculations the numerical amount of the population, and divided into counties as much land as contained a certain number of inhabitants; consequently, at that time a small district on the (comparatively speaking) thickly-peopled banks of the St. Lawrence was found to suffice, whilst in more distant parts vast territories were comprehended in one county. After a certain interval the representation, by the progress of emigration and the increase of population, became very unequal; persons of the British race, settled in the remoter counties, were hardly represented at all in the House of Assembly, whilst the French population contained in the seigneuries of the small counties on the banks of St. Lawrence had an undue preponderance in the popular branch of the Legislature. Complaints were justly made by the townships; Bills were brought in and passed by the House of Assembly, but were rejected as unsatisfactory by the Legislative Council. Such was the origin of the complaint, that the British, or more properly speaking, the township, population were unrepresented. He would here observe, that for ordinary purposes the township population may be considered as of the British or Anglo-Saxon race—that is to say, either composed of emigrants from this country or of American settlers, who cannot be distinguished from one another, and who would unite together entirely, if the supposed (though highly improbable) contest of races were to take place. The seigneurial population was almost entirely French. Now the complaint of the townships of the undue preponderance of the seigneuries in the House of Assembly was no longer well-founded. In the year 1829 a Bill was passed by the House of Assembly for amending the representation in proportion to the population; this Bill, however, was greatly altered in the Legislative Council, and the alterations were such that, according to all expectations, said the Commissioners, would have caused the Bill to be lost in the House of Assembly. "The general effect," said the Commissioners "of the alteration made by 380 the Council is, as far as we can judge of it, to give six representatives to those counties in which a township (that is to say British) population prevails more than they would have had under the Bill as it left the Assembly, and five less to those which are inhabited by French Canadians." And in another portion of their Report the Commissioners stated, that, according to the census of 1831, "in the counties composed exclusively of seigneurial population, or containing a majority of that description of inhabitants, the proportion of people to each representative was, in the former 6,201; and, in the latter, 6,883; and that in counties containing a majority of population settled in townships, or composed exclusively of such inhabitants, the proportion of people to each representative was 3,394 and 3,543. Thus the inhabitants of counties in which the townships predominated, had nearly twice as many representatives in proportion to their numbers as the inhabitants of counties entirely seigneurial." By the Amendments of the Legislative Council, then, the British population had twice as many representatives in proportion to their number as the French population. The Bill thus amended was adopted by the House of Assembly without opposition. After these facts he could hardly conceive how any impartial man could deny, that the British portion of the community had their fair share of the representation of the province. It was true, that some of the persons who called themselves the English party seemed not satisfied, and made the following moderate proposal to the Commissioners, that there should be one representative to every 2,600 British, and one to every 24,000 French; that is, that the British should have ten times as many representatives, in proportion to their numbers as the French. This was not a bad sample of the moderate views of the so-called English party. The Commissioners very fairly observed, with regard to this proposal, that "they are forced to come to the conclusion that it is one which they cannot recommend." It being evident that the House of Assembly fairly represented both races, what had been the conduct of the British Representatives? Did it bear out the position, that the views of the British population were opposed to those of the French? Ottawa, Missisquoi, Shefford, Stanstead, Sherbroke, Drummond, and Megantie, were inhabited almost entirely by persons of British origin, these 381 counties, containing a population of 41,000 in 1831, returned twelve representatives, one-half of whom, representing a population of 23,000 were invariably to be found on the popular side; many persons of British origin were returned by French constituencies, but according to the Commissioners more than one-half of the representatives of British origin in the House of Assembly were in the constant habit of voting with the popular party; and they had stated, likewise, in their General Report, that "the majority of settlers from the United States sided with the French rather than the English party," and Sir George Gipps allowed, that "so long as the contest can be made to appear as one not of nationality but of political principle, the Americans, and a portion even of the British will be on the democratic side." These facts proved, that, up to the present moment, there was no real contest of races in the province of Lower Canada. In that province there was indeed a so-called English party, whose only characteristic similarity to the majority of their fellow-countrymen consisted in the fact of their speaking the English tongue. They were a small faction, whose object was power; who, for that purpose, appealed to disgraceful national antipathies, and dared to make the extravagant demands to which he had referred, and claimed as their right a tenfold share in the representation of the province—an odious and monopolising clique, the source of all evil, the origin of all the disputes which had so long agitated that unfortunate country. The organs of the Tory party had most correctly proved the similarity between this so-called English party in Lower Canada and the Orange faction in Ireland. Every odious sentiment, and every hateful principle—every mischievous prejudice which was characteristic of the one belonged likewise to the other faction. He trusted the people of this empire would show as little sympathy for the one as it ought to feel for the other. But if, on the grounds of being dissimilar in race, and of speaking a different language, they were to accord dominion to this party in Canada, then tenfold was the claim of the analogous party in Ireland to supremacy over a people whose native language was far more dissimilar to our tongue, and who sprung from a stock far less akin to ours than that of the French. He felt ashamed and humiliated that in this, the nineteenth 382 century, he should have to combat and denounce antipathies arising out of the difference of race. Every effort had been made to excite such antipathies. To one attempt of this description he would wish most particularly to allude. The Canadians had been represented as a bigoted and ignorant people, stupidly and slavishly attached to ancient and barbarous feudal customs and privileges. Such was the language of the noble Lord, the Member for Stroud, when, quoting Montesquieu, he said, "he who pays cens is a serf—he who does not is free." Such had been the language of hon. Gentlemen, because the Canadians preferred the seigneurial tenure to that which had been attempted to be introduced by an Act of the Imperial Legislature. Now, he contended that they were justified in their preference of the seigneurial tenure, and, for the purpose of proving that they were in the right, he would appeal again to the reports of the Canada Commissioners. The Commissioners state, that the feudal tenure, as it was first introduced into Canada, appeared to them to have been, in some particulars, well adapted to the settlement of a new country; and, comparing the incidents of the two tenures, namely, of the feudal tenure and of that in free and common soccage, they said, "the modes of conveyance under the French customs are simple, expeditious, and cheap," and "the French rules of descent are much preferred to the law of primogeniture by the people of all origins on this continent;" and they recommended the application of the French modes of conveyance and descent instead of the tenure in free and common soccage. Undoubtedly there were inconveniences attached to the feudal tenure—the heavy fines on the transfer of property, and the other obstacles to its free transmission, arising out of the feudal tenure, had an injurious tendency. But those evil effects were begining to be generally acknowledged. "And," say the Commissioners, "in the views now expressed by the leading Canadians of French origin there is no desire whatever to perpetuate the onerous parts of the tenure, and the people have been moved in some cases to represent the inconvenience." The patriotic meeting in the county of Vaudreuil demanded a relief from feudal burthens, and the Commissioners stated likewise "that a Committee of Assembly in 1834, in a report which they made, exhibited a feeling very favourable to the 383 extinction on reasonable terms of the burthens of the seigneurial tenure." The French Canadians, therefore, were not blindly and foolishly attached to the mischievous effects of the feudal tenure, but they did object to the conduct of this country in attempting to interfere with a matter which ought to be one of internal arrangement, and they objected for this reason to some Acts of the Imperial Parliament—for instance to two clauses of the Canada Trade Act (3rd George 4th., cap. 110, sec. 31 and 32), and to the Canada Tenures Act (6th George 4th, cap. 59). Now, with regard to the two laws which he had just mentioned, the Commissioners stated that complaints had been made on the following grounds:—First, "That the subject of tenures is one of internal arrangement, in which the Imperial Parliament ought not to interfere, and on which it could not possess sufficient knowledge to legislate without falling into error." With regard to this complaint the Commissioners said, "We think there is reason for it, and that the interference of the Imperial Parliament in matters of this nature ought, if possible, to be avoided. As an example of the inconvenience which it is liable to create, we may state that, most probably from an insufficiency of local knowledge it has been found lawful to commute, for the unconceded parts only of seigneuries, in two cases out of three that have occurred under the Tenures Act." The second objection was, "That the Act of 1825, in a part of it, purporting to be declaratory, established a law different from what had prevailed in practice, and unsettled various rights of property." The Commissioners say, "The second objection was also in their opinion, well founded." "We conceive that the unqualified introduction of the English law of real property was at any rate not suited to the circumstances or to the wishes of any class of the people." The third objection was, that the Act of 1825 was far too favourable to the seigneur, whilst it did very little for the censitaire, that is to say, that it was very advantageous to the great landlord, but not to the small tenant; this objection likewise, said the Commissioners, "is, we think, founded in fact." Thus, he considered that he had shown, from the report of the Commissioners, that the people of the province had had good reason to complain of the Tenures Act. He would observe that the Government was to blame for the small 384 number of voluntary commutations of tenures between seigneurs and censitaires. The censitaire was only entitled to demand a commutation of tenure when the seigneur had previously commuted with the Crown. Now, the Committee of 1828 recommended that the seigneurial rights of the Crown should be given up, and the droits de quint—which is a fine on the transfer of seigneurial property—should be remitted, in order to facilitate voluntary commutation between seigneurs and censitaires, under the Act of 1825. This recommendation of the Committee of 1828 had not been attended to by the Colonial Office, and for this inattention the Colonial Office was justly deserving of blame; for, said the Commissioners—"If the impediment which is presented by the droit de quint were thus surmounted, nothing would be more easy than the arrangement of voluntary agreements between seigneurs and censitaires for the discharge of lands from the dues and services of their actual tenure," and for these reasons they recommended that the droit de quint should be given up. In short the Commissioners fully and completely showed the validity of the complaints of the House of Assembly with regard to the Tenures Act; and, in the conclusion of their report, they stated—"We have no hesitation in saying that, in our opinion, the Tenures Act of 1825, and the clauses in the Trade Act of 1822 which relate to tenures, should be repealed." Thus he had assigned his reasons for deciding that not the House of Assembly, but the Colonial Secretaries, most especially the three—Sir George Murray, Lord Ripon, and Lord Stanley—were to blame. He had enumerated a series of grievous wrongs inflicted on the Canadian people by the tools of the Colonial Office, and for which the Ministers who had presided over that department of the State ought to be held strictly responsible. But it should be remarked that of all the high functionaries the Colonial Secretary was the one least exposed to effective responsibility, because the people of a mother country are necessarily uninterested and unacquainted with the affairs of their remote dependencies. Therefore it was only on extraordinary occasions that the public attention could be directed from matters of nearer interest to colonial concerns: it was rarely that the Colonial Office could be made to feel the weight of public opinion, and to fear censure and 385 exposure. Where, however, responsibility was wanting, the experience of all ages had proved, that abuses would exist, and continue to exist, unredressed, until at last they reached that amount which induced them no longer to trust to prayer and humble petition, but raise the cry of war, and have recourse to arms. Such had been the case of Canada. In that province for the has thirty years acknowledged abuses had existed; acknowledged by Committees, and by Members of every party in the House of Commons. Great changes had taken place in the Government of this country, yet no changes had taken place in the administration of colonial affairs. The same odious system of colonial misgovernment which was pursued by the Tories had been acted upon by the Whigs. The causes for the continuance of the same colonial system under Ministers of the most adverse principles were easily to be explained. The Colonial Secretary seldom remained long enough in his office to become acquainted with the concerns of the numerous colonies which he governed. In the last ten years there had been no less than eight different Colonial Secretaries. They had seldom, therefore, the time, and still more seldom the inclination, to make themselves acquainted with the complicated details of their office; their ignorance rendered them mere tools in the hands of the permanent Under-Secretaries and other clerks. It was in the dark recesses of the Colonial Office—in those dens of peculation and plunder—it was there that the real and irresponsible rulers of the millions of inhabitants of our colonies were to be found. Men utterly unknown to fame, but for whom, he trusted, some time or other, a day of reckoning would come, when they would be dragged before the public, and punished for their evil deeds. These were the men who, shielded by irresponsibility, and hidden from the public gaze, continued the same system of misgovernment under every party which alternately presided over the destinies of the empire. By that in is government they drove the colonies to desperation—they connived at every description of abuse, because they profited by abuse—they defended every species of corruption, because they gained by corruption. These men he now denounced as the originators and perpetrators of those grievances in Canada, the evil effects of which this country had already begun to experience. He trusted the experience 386 thus gained would convince the people of the necessity of a sweeping reform in the Colonial Office. There remained for him one other Canadian grievance to mention—the great—the master grievance of all; for this grievance not only was the Colonial Office responsible, but the whole of her Majesty's Ministers, and even unfortunately, the Imperial Legislature of this country; that grievance consisted in the resolutions passed last Session by Parliament. Those resolutions virtually destroyed the Constitution of Lower Canada—it was the grossest absurdity to call together last autumn the House of Assembly, for the purpose of informing them that the Imperial Legislature had deprived them of their most valuable rights, and he contended that the conduct of the House of Assembly was on that occasion most praiseworthy, and consistent with the spirit and determination which they had always evinced. It was fortunate that her Majesty's Ministers could find one individual fit to be sent to Canada who took no share in those wicked resolutions; for if Lord Durham had either assented to, or approved of, or in any way directly or indirectly participated in the conduct of the Government on that occasion, not the slightest confidence, not the smallest reliance, could be placed in him, and his mission to Canada would, without doubt, be a complete, a miserable, and a disgraceful failure. These fatal resolutions were the proximate cause of the present revolt, and though he must deeply lament that blood had been shed, still if the insurrection should, by sending Lord Durham to Canada, tend to bring the unhappy affairs of that province to a satisfactory settlement, he for one should not consider that on the whole there was much reason for deep sorrow, and regret on account of late events. With regard to the issue of the struggle which was now taking place in our North American colonies he had already expressed what were his hopes, his fears, and his wishes. For so doing he had been held up to public indignation, and received unmeasured abuse. But whether he was denounced as traitor or rebel in the courteous, though somewhat wearisome, tones of the noble Lord, the Member for South Lancashire, or in the more energetic vituperations of interested orators, was a matter to him of titter indifference. Not one expression which he used, not one opinion which he uttered, not one word which escaped from 387 his lips with regard to this question did he in any way regret or retract; and if he did not at the present moment reiterate those sentiments it was partly out of respect for the feelings of that Assembly, partly because he could not find terms strong enough to embody his sentiments, and partly because he wished no longer to trespass upon their patience.
§ Mr. W. S. O'Briensaid, that although he was quite aware it would not be in his power to engage for any length the attention of the House, still he was extremely anxious to state shortly the grounds upon which it was his intention to support the Bill now under the consideration of the House. During the last Session of Parliament, when the resolutions relating to Canada were brought forward by the noble Lord, the Member for Stroud, he had felt it to be his duty to vote with the minority who had opposed those resolutions—a proof that he did not participate in the views and feelings of the noble Lord upon that or on the present occasion. He had done so, because he believed and anticipated that those resolutions would, when known in the colony, throw into rebellion and revolt the people whose peaceable demeanour had frequently been the subject of compliment and respect. And after looking at the events which had since occurred, he had never ceased to rejoice at the part he had on that occasion taken, because, humble as his single vote was, if it had been in the majority with the noble Lord, he should have felt himself to be a participator in the responsibility for the awful consequences which had ensued. In coming to a decision upon the present question he had kept in view but a simple guide, and that was, to return to that course of policy which would be likely to prevent the shedding of blood, to restore tranquillity, and to give to the people of Canada in a very short time the full enjoyment of their rights, and he could not conceive any project more likely to effect this object than that which had been proposed by the noble Lord at the head of the Home Department. The constitution of 1791 was already virtually suspended; the House of Assembly had itself abrogated its functions, and it therefore could not be expected that of its own will it would soon meet for the purpose of resuming those functions to the benefit and advantage of the Canadian people. And then came the question whether there should be martial law, an attempt to establish a civil government, or au union with 388 such associations as the Doric Club. It seemed to him that the much safer course would be, to intrust, as proposed, the government of that colony to the hands of an able statesman, and in the character of the Earl of Durham he found an ample guarantee that as soon as order was established in the province, the constitutional rights of free men would not be trampled upon, but that a new constitution would be framed (he trusted more successfully than formerly), and that the liberties of the people would be entirely respected. On these grounds, he should support the Dill before the House, and he could not but hope that hon. Members would look to it, as he should, in a manner that would indicate to the Colonial office, and to the colonies themselves the spirit in which hereafter the British Parliament would legislate in their respect, and he had no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that it would give a character to their future proceedings, that past differences should be consigned to entire oblivion; for God knew there had been sufficient faults on each side to teach both mutual forbearance. He admitted, that the persons or the parties who first shed blood in civil strife rendered themselves amenable to the condemnation of mankind, but there were cases in which resistance by an oppressed people was justifiable, but then that oppression must be intolerable, and all hope of otherwise removing it lost. Now, he did not admit that such were the characteristics of the resistance in Canada—on the contrary, he believed that if the Canadians had abstained from revolt and had contented themselves with constitutional resistance, they would have ultimately succeeded in their just demands, and would have excited that sympathy which by their recent conduct they had forfeited. But while he condemned the colonists thus much, he did not participate in the spirit in which the noble Lord, the Member for Stroud, had arraigned the House of Assembly: on the contrary, so far as he could trace, he thought many of their claims had been conceived in a wise spirit, and were asked in a manner deserving the approbation of the House. He would take the liberty to recapitulate the different points for which the House of Assembly had successfully struggled, and which were based in reason and justice. He found, first, the demand for a control over all their own revenues, and after a long struggle between the House of Assembly 389 and the Colonial-office on that subject, it ended by the expressed conviction of this House that the Colonial-office was in the wrong. Then came the demand for the independence of the judges, and the responsibility to the Assembly of the public officers of the colony. The principles of those measures had been admitted, but never carried into effect by the colonial authorities at home, though this demand, as well as that relating to the clergy reserves, was conceded to be just in principle. He was one of those who thought that this country had done wisely in adhering to the arrangement with the Land Company, to which the Crown stood pledged, but was it proper or right for the country to alienate a million acres of land in Canada, without first consulting the Colonial Legislature? Certainly not, and therefore the House of Assembly had a right to demand (though this country ought not to concede) the abolition of the charter to that company: with respect to the responsibility of the Legislative Council to the House of Assembly, the resolution of last year stated, that the fullest confidence ought to exist between those two bodies, and he took it for granted, if such confidence did exist, the House of Assembly would be satisfied. Now nothing could be more anomalous than the form of Executive Council fixed upon by the Commissioners; he denied the existence of any analogy between that body and the Privy Council here. The present Executive Council were neither responsible to the Legislature there, nor to the Government at home. He, therefore, maintained that the House of Assembly had been justified in its demand, and this brought him to the last point, namely—whether or not the Legislative Council ought to be elective; on this head, he thought the House of Assembly altogether wrong. But if there existed any confidence between the two bodies, as stated by Mr. Roebuck in his speech at the bar last night, the House of Assembly would have never raised the speculative theoretical question as to whether the council ought to be nominated by the Crown or elected by the people. All the Assembly desired was good government. It was, however, impossible, from the constitution of the council, that such confidence could exist. That council had been founded on the supposition that it would be analogous to the House of Lords, but no analogy existed—the Legislative Council had no title to the respect and vener- 390 ation of the colonists; neither was it composed of men of great rank, talent, wealth, or character; on the contrary, many of them were totally dependent upon the Government, others were of broken-down fortunes, ruined men, public defaulters; such was the body to whom was committed the Government of a great empire with a great income. It appeared that in the year 1828, out of the twenty-three members of the Legislative Council, twelve held office under the Government, there being a positive majority of official men in that branch of the Legislature. But look to the constitution of that body in another point of view. The majority of the Canadian people were in religion Roman Catholics, and yet in the Legislative Council, out of the twenty-three members sixteen Mere Protestants and only seven Roman Catholics, and again fifteen were natives of the United Kingdom and eight only were natives of the provinces. Since that period, when the number became reduced to nine, there were eight Protestants and only one Roman Catholic in the Legislative Council. Was it then to be wondered at that under such circumstances a body so constituted could not give satisfaction? That body had thrown out all good bills, and the people of Canada had entirely given up all hopes of good legislation. What could be more natural than that the Canadians should look to neighbouring countries, and when they saw that it worked well in the United States they thought it ought to work well with them, and therefore it was, that they had asked for an elective Legislative Council. The address of the Assembly making this demand had been carried by a majority of 55, only seven members of that Assembly denying that a change to that effect would be of advantage. And then the Colonial-office at home stepped forward and said, "We will give effect to the opinions of those seven." It had been said, that if the other course had been taken, the result would have been the surrender of the province to the majority—namely, the French party. That such language should have been used by the ultra-Tories did not surprise him; but he owned he was astonished to hear that argument adopted by those who had resisted the doctrine in the discussions upon the Irish Corporation Bill. That the noble Lord who had told the Protestants of Ireland that they were a miserable monopolising minority should apply this doctrine to Canada, and tell the Canadians. 391 "We will legislate in your case for the benefit of the minority of the people, and we distrust nine-tenths of our fellow-citizens on the other side of the water," he owned did astonish him. If the majority was not safely to be trusted in one Assembly, they were not to be trusted in the other. But when the resolutions of last session went out, the utmost indignation was created, public meetings were held, and certainly strong language was made use of at those meetings. But did not the noble Lord remember the strong language used at Birmingham in the year 1831, and that it was then thought expedient to tell the people of Birmingham that those who set at nought that language spoke but as the "whisper of a faction?" He contended that the Government at home ought to pay attention to the expressions of sentiment by their fellow citizens whether in Canada or at Birmingham. There had again been great want of policy in taking away the commissions of the peace and in the militia from those individuals in Canada who had attended such meetings. There had been a still greater want of policy in the prosecution of the hot-headed young man who tore down the proclamation of advice of Lord Gosford. The grand jury of Montreal ignored the bill of indictment, and then an ex officio prosecution was directed; this extremity of the law in such a case became the subject matter of scoffing and derision, because it was directed to so trumpery a case. What followed everybody knew and deplored. The people and the ignorant peasantry rose, but it did not appear that any of the prominent leaders of the House of Assembly had instigated the people to commit themselves by hostilities. He had taken this short review that he might not be supposed to participate by supporting this Bill in the views of the noble Lord who had condemned the House of Assembly when they deserved admiration. He was of opinion that both parties had been sufficiently in the wrong, and that, therefore, a general amnesty ought at once to be proclaimed. But let us turn from the past, and direct our views to the future. If our statesmen instead of casting aspersions on the Canadians which they did not deserve, would throw out some ideas as to the best kind of constitution that could be established in Canada with advantage to themselves and to the mother country, they would have an object before them worthy of consideration. He could 392 not agree with the suggestion thrown out by the hon. Member for Bridport, that England ought to dissociate herself from her colonies. If colonies were well governed, there was no surer basis on which to rest national power and national prosperity. He could not conceive a more noble source of pride to the inhabitants of this country than that she should be the parent of mighty nations, and transplant the nurslings of the British oak to the remotest regions of the earth. He denied that it could in any case be the interest of either country to be dissociated. He was for allowing the colonies self-government in connexion with the mother country. He wished, therefore, that the state-men of this country would consider what was the best arrangement for carrying this principle into effect. Matters should be so contrived as to give satisfaction to the people of Canada. If they demanded an elective Legislative Council, give it them; if they asked for a responsible Executive, let them have it. He felt long speeches were very bad things, but he felt strongly on this question as an Irishman, in consequence of the similarity of circumstances that existed in the two countries. He rejoiced at the triumph of the Queen's troops, because we could now do with a good grace what we might have been obliged to do from fear.
Mr. W. Williamsregretted that he felt himself called upon to oppose that Bill, but he did so upon the ground that it contained an enactment which he thought would tend to aggravate the already existing feeling of discontent amongst the people of Canada. He considered that the resolution to take the public money of the province, contrary to the express will of the House of Assembly, was a great violation of the rights of the colonists, but he considered the Act suspending the constitution a still greater violation of their rights. He would beg the House to bear in mind the statement made by Lord North in 1775, when he brought his celebrated motion before the House. He then stated, that disaffection only existed in one of the thirteen provinces. But what was the result? No sooner was the intelligence received in America than the whole of the colonies there broke out into open rebellion, and in a very short time after, the battle of Lexington was fought. He, moreover, had heard no real reason to justify the suspension of the Constitution. His opinion of such a proceeding was, that it would tend to pro- 393 duce so strong a feeling, so deep a sense of the insult, that the people as a body would become disaffected to the mother country. The only reasons which he had heard used were, that there were certain local Acts which would expire in the course of this year, and only affecting a particular district in the country; and that it was requisite that the Legislature should be summoned each year. These reasons did not appear to him to have any weight, for all objection might be obviated by deferring unto the last possible moment the proceedings contemplated by the Bill. It was also very important to consider the statement in the speech of the President, and the evident preparations for war which it recommended. He would, however, confess that he could not see that statement, and regard the present situation of Canada without apprehension. In the event of a war, if the United States were to obtain possession of Canada how would it be possible for this country to retain its other colonies in that part of the world—Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the islands in the Gulph of St, Lawrence? If the noble Lord (Lord Durham) went out as a pacificator, but carrying with him the suspension of the Constitution, all his efforts would be worse than useless. But he would like to know what loss this country would have sustained if it had granted an elective Legislative Council twenty years ago? Thinking, therefore, that this Bill would exasperate the feelings of the Canadians, he could not help both expressing his regret, and condemning the course which the Government was pursuing; but he was still glad that in the Ministerial plan twenty persons were to be elected as a council from the inhabitants of both provinces.
§ Mr. E. L. Bulwerthanked the Government as an Englishman (feeling, as he did, a warm desire for the honour and the power of England paramount to all party considerations) for their determination to uphold the integrity of the empire, and the maintenance of the laws. He thanked them scarcely less, as a friend to a liberal and popular policy, for their declared resolution to redress the grievances of Canada, and to restore to her, as speedily as possible, the blessings of a free constitution. The Government had been assailed by a variety of arguments, as singular and incongruous as any that the invention of an opposition ever conceived. The hon. Member for Droitwich, who spoke with 394 much ability last night, wound up his peroration by declaring, that for the Canadian insurrection, the loss of property, the effusion of blood, the Government were deeply responsible; and as far as he could gather from the hon. Member's speech, the main argument on which he rested so grave a charge, and on which he expatiated for a quarter of an hour, was in the hesitation of the Government about the bishopric of Quebec, and the inadequate salary of that unfortunate prelate. Then the noble Lord, the Member for South Lancashire, who, not more from his station than from his acquirements and the dignified tone of moderation he ever assumed, was always so welcome an ornament to their debates, after first blaming the measures of Lord Gosford, most curiously complained that Lord Gosford was removed, and here he fell upon a very original argument. The most proper man, said he, for coercion was the roan who had tried conciliation in vain—in oilier words, the best person to carry out one line of policy was the man who was most pledged to another. This might be very philosophical, but it was against the universal practice of parties. If it was true in one case, it was true in another. If he who had tried concession was best for resistance, he who had tried resistance was the best for concession; and yet so little did the right hon. Gentleman, the Member for Tamworth, act up to this policy of sagacious tergiversation, that, after he had exhausted all the arts of resistance to the Reform Bill, he refused, when the Duke of Wellington meditated to supersede Lord Grey's Government, to have recourse to that concession for which his previous resistance had, according to the noble Lord's theory, so eminently qualified him. The speech of the learned gentleman they had heard at the bar had been characterised as effective and unanswerable. The learned gentleman, no doubt, made the most of his case; but he must say, that, considering the flourish of trumpets with which he was announced—considering the solemn menaces of proving high crimes and misdemeanours against the Government—considering the length and elaborate bitterness of his oration, he must say, that he never knew a speech of so formidable an exordium arrive at more feeble and impotent conclusions. He passed over the learned Gentleman's long historical recapitulation, which had no more to do with the Bill before the House than a history of the Deluge would hare to do 395 with a Bill to guard against the overflow of the River St. Lawrence. The main object of the learned Gentleman was, to show that there still existed grievances among the Canadians. Unquestionably there did, and that House would now be examining these grievances if the party the learned Gentleman defended had not converted a petition into a declaration of war. The learned Gentleman next wished to prove, because we acknowledged the grievances, and especially the expediency of reforming the Legislative Council, that we, therefore, justified the stubborn resistance of the lower House of Assembly, and almost also justified the revolt. It was exactly the reverse. When we allowed the grievance, when we declared we would redress it, when the leader of that House, on the 14th of June last, had declared his willingness to listen to authorised proposals of compromise, we took away all excuse for the Lower Assembly, and all palliation for a gratuitous revolt. They were told that this Bill, this suspension of the constitution, was nothing but punishment and coercion. But, taking the Bill in connexion with the speeches that explained it, he must say, that he saw in the whole measure the mildest and most generous policy ever pursued by a Government towards disaffection, or by a conqueror towards defeated opponents. In the first place, there was a general amnesty to all offenders; in the second place, there was not only a promise but a provision for a free and reformed constitution; and as a pledge of the hearty sincerity and good faith of the Government, the measures of reform, the policy that was to put down discontent, were intrusted—to whom? To a military chief?—to a lover of arbitrary power? No; to a man whose whole life had been devoted to the enforcement of principles the most popular, and whose name was identified, not with coercion to the popular will, but with concession to popular grievances. In the principles of that noble Lord, the Government had given to this country and to Canada an earnest of intentions the most generous; and in the peculiar talents of that noble Lord, his long civil and legislative experience, his singleness of purpose, his enlarged, vigorous, and commanding intellect, they had afforded every reasonable hope that those intentions would be carried triumphantly into effect. He (Mr. Bulwer) could not but admire the sacrifice of self which had induced the noble Lord to ac- 396 cept this office. It was a sacrifice, this honourable exile!—it was a sacrifice to a man in the high station of that noble Lord; nor could he be actuated by any ambition than that of serving his country wherever that country most needed; not a dictator and a despot, but a reformer, a pacificator, and a framer of wise laws and enlightened institutions. But the constitution was suspended! And who were they who complained of this suspension? Why, the very men who had told them for years that the constitution could not work—that the constitution was the worst grievance of the Canadians—that it was powerless for good, and only a legitimate obstacle to the popular demands—the very men who called upon them not to suspend but to overthrow that constitution. For the Legislative Council which they asked the House to sweep away, was precisely as integral and fundamental a part of the constitution as the Lower Assembly, whose functions it was proposed to suspend. But the constitution was virtually suspended when for neatly four years the Lower Assembly itself stopped all supplies to the most urgent wants which any community redeemed from barbarism could require. They stopped the payment of a police and of judges, or, in other words, the expenses necessary for the maintenance of order and the dispensation of justice. It was virtually suspended when the Lower Assembly demanded as the price of allegiance to the mother country a new constitution altogether. It was suspended when it was found that all the wheels of legislation were locked, and that the Lower Assembly and the Legislative Council, would not, or could not, act together. It was annihilated—a dead letter—a caput mortuum, the moment that a civil war commenced. The constitution was now suspended. But for what purpose? Why, in order to reform it. Who by the Bill were to be the advisers and coadjutors of Lord Durham? Foreigners—natives of the mother country—men anxious only for her supremacy and selfish interests? No! Canadians themselves, the majority of them delegates of the people—authorised and responsible organs of their complaints and desires. Why, this Committee proposed by his noble Friend was exactly the course, not that a colony, but a free republic, would adopt, if it seriously designed an entire reform of its constitution. This Bill might fail—the mother country might be deceived; but if so it 397 would be by the liberality, the confidence, and not by the severity and distrust of the parent state. It was for the Canadians to decide whether it should stand forth to posterity as an example of the wisdom of a lenient and generous colonial policy, or whether it should be by that failure an encouragement to the sterner measures which he believed every other country in Europe would have adopted to a disaffected province and a defeated enemy. He thanked the Government for this Bill. He went farther: he thanked them also for their whole conduct to Canada since the passing of the resolutions last Session. He thanked them for not having sent out troops as the accompaniment of those resolutions. The right hon. Baronet blamed them the other night for not having done so. Against the opinion of the right hon. Baronet he called into court the opinion of the noble Duke, the leader of his party in the other House. [No, no!] What! was the noble Duke no longer the head of the party? Yes, the noble Duke had acquitted the Government on this head, and who in that House was the solitary accuser of the supineness and negligence of the Government? None of the right hon. Baronet's own party. No: a noble and learned Lord, who, after coquetting with all parties, seemed to have thrown—[The Speaker: Order!] He would not press that point further. Yes, he would repeat, that he was glad that troops were not sent out. It was something to have robbed revolt of all justification. Had you sent out troops as the heralds and carriers of your resolutions—had you by that parade of power, justly irritated the pride of men to whom you have communicated the jealous English spirit of liberty and honour—you would not now find the patrons of Mr. Papineau confined in this country to a council of six—you would have procured for them the popular sympathy of England; and, for his own part, instead of being the supporter of the Government, he should now have been their opponent. He did not blame the Government for their not guarding against a violence which they had no right to anticipate, and which premature anticipation would have justified. The result had proved the wisdom as well as generosity of their policy. The forces had been sufficient for the safety of the colony. He equally commended the Government, now that the violence had broken out, for their vigorous exertions entirely to suppress and 398 to guard against its recurrence. He should not enter into the premature and inexhaustible field of speculation which was opened to them as to the future constitution of Canada. In that constitution, whatever it might be, he for one should hope that if the English, or rather the commercial, interests were to be more banished from the Legislative Council, they would by a better distribution of the suffrage obtain a fair share of influence in the representative assembly. If this were done—if, whenever at some distant period they should have to listen to any demands for a separation, they might feel sure that French and English were united in one common interest, then, he confessed, he should not object, if by the popular principles of that constitution they educated the Canadas to that safe and gradual independence which should be the last and crowning been that a colony should receive from a parent state. But look to the views, the intelligence of the party deluded by Mr. Papineau. Fortunately the merchants of England, whom the hon. Member for London represented, knew that that party had professed the most benighted hostility to all the principles of commerce itself. But did the hon. Member for Westminster in his harangues at the Crown and Anchor—did he tell his admiring audience what it was that the Papineau party were most wedded and attached to? Not to the great and wise institutions of this day, but to the worn-out and obsolete customs and feudalisms of four centuries ago. And the hon. Member for Bridport, and those who were called philosophical Radicals, and would wisely proportion the extent of popular suffrage, to the amount of popular education, were they not aware that till within the last seventy years printing presses were forbidden at Canada; that at this day the vast majority of the electoral population could neither read nor write, and that it often happened that a foreman of a jury could not give in the verdict from the inability to read it. Was this a colony fit for independence? Why, if it were a republic to-morrow, it would be a monster in legislation—half jacobinism, half feudalism. The noble Lord, the Member for South Lancashire, had said something relative to Whigs and Radicals which induced him to make one remark. He wished the House and the country to observe that it was the same small and isolated knot of Gentlemen, who, on the first day of this session declared so much contempt of the 399 Reform Bill, and so much hostility to the Government, who now differed also from the whole people of England in their sympathy for a guilty and absurd revolt. Whether those Gentlemen called them -selves Radicals or not, the great body of Liberal politicians neither agreed with them in their policy for Canada nor their principles for England. In the one, whether Radicals or Tories, the vast majority of thinking men were equally zealous for the honour of England—equally concerned in her struggles—equally proud in her glory, or sorry for her reverses. In the other, the Liberals of that House and country were resolved, it was true, to maintain and enforce their sentiments, whether differing from the opposition or the government; but they were resolved to do so without ingratitude for past popular concessions—without a bigotted rancour for honest differences of opinion; and they and the people of these realms cordially rejoiced that that House supported her Majesty and her Ministers in this attempt to save Canada from the hell of her own factions, and to save the commencement of this reign from the contempt of Europe, and the melancholy retrospect of posterity.
§ Mr. Grotesaid, that he scarcely expected in a speech on the subject of a Bill for making a temporary provision for the Government of Lower Canada, to have heard a general and an unmeasured denunciation dealt out by the hon. Member for Lincoln against what he had been pleased to call a small body of Radicals. He could not help thinking, that the occasion taken for making that denunciation was as unseasonable as the tone of it was, in his opinion, undeserved, and improperly harsh and severe; and he also thought, that when the hon. Gentleman condescended to ridicule his hon. Friend, the Member for Bridport, for doing what he must have known his hon. Friend had never done in his life—that was, to call himself a philosophical Radical; the hon. Gentleman might have recollected that the words "philosophical Radical" which he had applied to his hon. Friend, were at least as respectable as the terms "literary Whig," which might be applied to other Gentlemen in this House. He would now pass to the subject immediately before the House, and he was very sorry indeed that he could not concur in those unmeasured expressions of gratitude in which the hon. Member for Lincoln had indulged towards 400 her Majesty's Government; neither could he concur with him in thanking them on account of the proposed treatment of the colony of Lower Canada, nor on account of their having sent out troops to that colony, nor on account of the Bill which he now held in his hand. There was, indeed, one point on which he could express his satisfuction, and that was, on the choice of Lord Durham as being the Governor now going out to Canada; and he could also express his satisfaction at the announcement made of their intention to exercise clemency to those who had been engaged in the late revolt. With respect to those two points, he perfectly concurred with her Majesty's Government, and perfectly approved of their conduct. But it seemed to him, that when he had stated that, he had stated all the good that they at present proposed to do; because he could not consider, that the Bill before the House was, in the slightest degree, calculated either to harmonise with, or assist the effect of, the really good proceeding of sending out Lord Durham. The allegation upon which the preamble of this Bill was founded—and most certainly when they looked at the enactments of the Bill, the allegation ought to be well and sufficiently made out—that allegation was, that the House of Assembly could not be assembled without serious detriment to the interests of the province. He must say, that that allegation however emphatically asserted and laid down, had never been, to his satisfaction, made out. He did not see what harm the House of Assembly could do if allowed to meet. He thought there was every sort of chance that it might exhibit a much more harmonious and tractable spirit than ever existed before. Give him leave to ask the noble Lord how it was, that, when he sent out to the colony the announcement of the choice which he had made of gentlemen to fill the offices of Legislative Councillors, he had contrived, either by accident or design, that the news of the appointment should not reach the colony before the meeting of the House of Assembly, on the 8th of December. Had they given that body a fair trial? Did they know what its sentiments would have been when the appointments were declared? He had most carefully read the address which had then been agreed to by a majority of that House when it met, and also the amended address, which received the sanction of a large majority of that Assembly, and he 401 found in each most remarkable internal evidence of a desire that such appointments should be made to the Legislative Council as would have permitted the Assembly to go on at least for a time in harmony with the Legislative Council; and he thought, that Ministers should have given a fair trial to the working of the Council with the new additions. If the experiment had failed, neither this country nor the colony would have been worse off; and if it had succeeded, Parliament would have been relieved from a serious difficulty, and from the necessity of imposing upon the colony a Bill which would not fail to produce a reluctant and irritated state of feeling throughout the province. He could see no necessity, when the Government and the Parliament had recommended that amendments in some parts of the Canadian constitution should be carried into effect, why the existing constitution should be suspended. He thought that hon. Gentlemen who advocated this course of proceeding, had not paid any attention to what took place in the United States, where conventions for the purpose of amending the constitution were of frequent occurrence, and where, because amendments were to be made, there was no interval without any constitution, but where the old constitution was allowed to go on till it was replaced by the amended one; and he could not, for the life of him, understand because the Government supported amendment, why, therefore, it was necessary for the people of the colony to pass through a year of purgation before they entered into the happiness of their improved constitution. He would say, improve the constitution by all means, but keep all the powers of the old constitution and the rights of the people alive till the new system be introduced. But. by far the most important view in which this subject could present itself to the consideration of the Parliament was, would it did or embarrass the proceedings of Lord Durham? Hon. Gentlemen who had spoken on this subject, seemed to imagine that it would lighten the difficulties of their present situation; but he must confess, that he entertained an entirely different opinion; for he conceived, that it would add materially to the trouble of mastering the difficulties, and they were very considerable, which the noble Lord (the Earl of Durham) would be called upon to surmount; and his opinion was founded on a deep consideration of the 402 source of those difficulties, the discontent and mistrust which existed in Canada—discontent at the past, and mistrust as to the future. And was it possible to conceive, that the present Bill would not be received as an aggravation of that discontent and that mistrust? Let the House well consider that many moderate persons, who had disapproved of the first proceedings of the local legislature, disapproved still more of the resolutions of the noble Lord, and had since taken part with the opponents of Government in that colony; and ought they not to take warning from what had passed, and to take care that still further coercions did not alienate more of the moderate party? For if they disapproved so much of the noble Lord's resolutions, what would they think of the present Bill, which broke down the constitution in all its parts, and which struck dumb the whole province, by depriving it of the only legitimate source of making known its grievances? Would not discontent be thus aggravated; and when Lord Durham arrived at the colony, could they suppose that with all his talents and with all his character he would be received with satisfaction and content by the people of Canada? The success of Lord Durham's mission would mainly depend upon the opinion which the people would entertain of the intentions and the spirit in which he went out. Now, there were only two sources on which the people could found their belief and their inference; one was the Bill which he then held in his hand, and the other was the speech of the noble Lord, the Member for Stroud, on the first night of the debate, when he introduced the address to the Crown, and both the one and the other were calculated to lead to the belief and the inference that Lord Durham would go out animated by a spirit of rigour and coercion, and with little intention of administering that redress of grievances which was essential to the success of his mission. Hon. Gentlemen who supported this Bill seemed to rely on the benefits to be derived from a disconnected convention which Lord Durham was to call together. But what did the Bill declare?—why, "that in the present state of the province of Lower Canada the House of Assembly of the said province could not be called together," and it then forbids the assembly to meet, and if they could not be called together when they were designated the House of Assembly, how were the parties 403 similarly chosen to meet when they possessed merely the altered character of a convention of delegates? Because the present state of the province was such that the representatives of the people could not meet without danger to discuss the condition of the province they were not allowed to assemble, and this reason, if of any value, would apply equally to the convention of delegates; and if it did not apply, the Assembly would not really be a convention representing the people. If they meant to succeed they must endeavour to meet the wishes of the Canadians; they might indeed calculate upon keeping down insurrection by a large military force, they might calculate on having under their thumb several of the popular leaders, who might fear the exercise of the law; they might calculate on subduing for a time the opposition of the press, but he would ask hon. Members if they could conceive a state in which the minds of the people would be more alive, and in which more discussion would arise than when active measures were announced, on the authority of the Government, for making important amendments in the constitution of the country. He had before expressed an opinion, which was not very favourably received in that House, but which he nevertheless sincerely entertained, that a separation between the colony and the mother country was the most desirable thing which could happen, both for the mother country and the colony. This was his opinion, however much it might differ from the sentiments of the House; and with a view to separation, he thought that nothing was so likely to lead to a separation as this Bill, which he viewed with great pain and regret, because he was anxious to keep alive the best feelings between the colony and the mother country; and when the hon. Member for Lincoln said that he anticipated a junction with America, he must say that he entertained a different opinion; but still he thought that nothing was more likely than the passing of measures of severity, which would lead to an alienation of the feelings of the Canadians, and than a forced connection with this country, to bring about a connexion between the United States and Canada. It must be observed also, that there was already the commencement of a feeling of sympathy, or an implied sympathy between the people of the United States and the Canadas; and they should bear in mind, that when the proposed re- 404 medial measures should have passed, the colonial convention actuated by a colonial and American feeling, they would be submitted for approval to that House, which was impressed with other and English sentiments, and in which there existed a strong fear lest, if they implanted the tree of liberty on the American shore, the westerly winds might by accident waft across the ocean some chance seeds which might flourish in this country. Such were the feelings and the fears which actuated hon. Gentlemen in this country, and the contiguity of the Canadas to the borders of the United States naturally led the people to participate more or less in American feeling and in American desires. And when the hon. Member for Lincoln talked of the conciliation which he had observed in the speech of the noble Lord, the Member for Stroud, he must confess that he did not recollect any such proposition; but he did recollect that the then hon. Member for Bath proposed a conciliation, which was distinctly rejected by the noble Lord, who declared that he would not concede a Legislative Council, neither would he consent to abolish, nor would he agree to its re-composition, with the view of rendering it more consonant with the feelings of the majority of the people. And if the noble Lord would not concede this little measure, how could it be supposed that he entertained opinions favourable to a still larger? And he was led to despair at, not to say distrust, the success of Lord Durham's mission when he knew the feelings entertained by the Legislative Council, from among whose Members, not with standing his necessarily personal ignorance of their merits, he would be obliged to select persons, who were to aid him in the improvements of the constitution. If Lord Durham were not allowed to sanction the appointment of an elective Legislative Council, he feared that Lord Durham would not be allowed to produce harmony of feeling and action between the Legislative Council and the Legislative Assembly; and if he were to produce harmony between them, he feared that the alteration proposed would be by eventually abrogating the representation of the people, and that it would be, not by bringing the Legislative Council into harmony with the Legislative Assembly, but the Assembly into harmony with the Council, by giving only the shadow of a Legislative Assembly, without its vitality or its substance; and at any rate he feared that his Lordship would not 405 effect the purpose of his mission if he were surrounded by the Legislative Council, or were under the manacles and the shackles of the Colonial office here. For these reasons his views were not so sanguine as those of some hon. Members who had previously addressed the House as to his Lordship's success, or as it would have been if Lord Durham had been applied to to frame a constitution after his own inclination. He feared, from the tone of the speeches of many Members of the House, and from the endeavours which had been made to inculpate the Legislative Assembly and to prove that they had forfeited all right to the exercise of their functions, that the sentiments of that House were not such as to lead to contentment and satisfaction in the minds of the people of Canada. If they would have colonial possessions such as Canada, they had this difficult problem to solve, they had to maintain the supremacy of this country, and at the same time to give satisfaction to the Canadian people; and unless they could solve this difficulty, unless they could provide for both these things, it was idle to talk of the benefit of the colony, for if they would misgovern it, it would be necessarily costly and burdensome, and its retention would be an absolute loss without any gain. It was usual to make severe remarks on the speeches of what was called the Radical party in that House, and to speak contemptuously of the smallness of their numbers, but he was rather surprised that if the Radical party were really so small and contemptible, that hon. Members should find so much in their speeches worthy of comment; but he must say of the speeches which had been delivered in that House, and which would alienate the feelings of the colonists, it was not the speeches of those who spoke for, but of those who spoke against them which were more likely to produce such a result. He could not conceive anything more likely to provoke hostility of feeling than the references which had been made during that debate, and than the idea of dealing with the Canadian people as a nation of serfs; and he would appeal to the House whether such allusions would not with more probability create a feeling of hostility to the English interests, than would what had been called the violent and inflammable speeches of the Radical Members. He hoped that hon. Gentlemen would lay well the difficulties of the case to their hearts, for he must express his conviction that the 406 difficulties of the case would be much aggravated and embittered by that Bill. He had abstained from voting against the first reading of the Bill, after hearing the determination of the Government to send out the Earl of Durham; and he did not like to vote against it until he had seen its provisions, hoping to find in it some admixture of mildness and conciliation to weigh against the rigour, but in this hope he had been disappointed; he could see nothing in the measure but rigour and coercion; and feeling as the free citizen of a free country he repudiated it, and he feared that it would spoil the effect of Lord Durham's mission, and would dissipate the hopes which were entertained of its success.
§ Sir E. B. Sugdenhad listened with much attention to the grounds upon which the arguments against the measure were founded, and more particularly to the arguments urged by Mr. Roebuck at their bar, because that gentleman was considered to speak the sentiments of the House of Assembly, and was, moreover, supposed to be better informed on the subject than any other Gentleman likely to address the House. He could sincerely say, that he thus listened with a view to information, and not at all for the purpose of finding topics for cavil. It occasioned him, then, great surprise to find that in the speech made at the bar many of the most material features of the case were kept out of view—a circumstance which he must suppose to arise from the fact that Mr. Roebuck either regarded those topics as of no importance, or that he considered those which were the most material as so exceedingly important that he felt himself incapable of entering into that part of the subject. In any observations which he should have then to make, he begged at the outset to declare that he desired to abstain from a single word calculated to give pain to the French Canadians; he should rest no argument that he intended to submit to the House upon any such ground as the origin of any portion of the colonists, for he most strongly felt that no such ground should enter into the discussion, and for this, amongst other reasons, that he remembered it was for a particular purpose, that the two colonies were kept distinct. Whatever distinctions arose from origin, or from measures of legislation, or from any other cause, he wished to consider French Canadians precisely in the same light as British Canadians, and in every respect as 407 entitled to claim equal protection. He thought, also, that the French Canadians were entitled to the entire enjoyment of their civil institutions grounded upon their feudal tenures. They naturally desired a continuance of their ancient institutions, and it was no reproach to them that the people of England should consider such continuance a disadvantage rather than a benefit. The prevalence of such an opinion in this country formed no bar to the right which the Canadians most unquestionably had to the full enjoyment of their old tenures. The fault which appeared to him to have been committed in relation to Canada was the imperfect nature of the attempt made to engraft the free institutions of this country upon the feudalisms of that colony. In introducing the constitution of 1791 there could not have been found a class out of which to form an hereditary Legislature. It must be remembered that Mr. Burke had looked forward to the formation of an hereditary branch of the Legislature there; and yet now, in 1838, not one hereditary legislator was to be found; no one thought of any thing of the sort. For this and for a variety of other reasons, he was of opinion, politically speaking, the constitution was not wisely imagined, and that it had failed. As matters at present stood, it only remained for Parliament to leave the tenures as they stood, and to engraft upon them the best system that they could. The scheme of Mr. Fox would most certainly not answer at the present day, his plan having been for an elective council; but what said the French Canadians upon that point? They objected to have their Legislative councillors elected for life, but on the contrary demanded that a certain number should go out annually, and regular elections take place to fill up the vacancies fixing the electoral qualification at 10l. an amount which appeared to find favour in other places as well as here. It was proposed also, that 200l. should be the qualification for the elected, though at the same time it was thought by the colonists that, considering the general practice of America, the latter qualification was unnecessary. He need no further touch upon topics of this class, the main consideration for Parliament was this—had the House of Assembly placed themselves in such a position as that a measure like the present became necessary? He was far from saying that revolt in the abstract could make it requisite. If there 408 were nothing but revolt, he should at once say, strengthen the hands of the Legislative Council and House of Assembly; but it appeared to him, that the revolt had grown out of and been occasioned by the act of the House of Assembly. Now, he should proceed to show, that in 1791 there had been an attempt made to imitate the constitution of this country, and what at present arose out of this was, that the House of Assembly demanded to have a Legislative Council elected by themselves, and they insisted further upon all their original rights, and upon being placed in the same situation as the mother country. They desired a breach in their own charter—they desired to have an elective council and what did they intend to do with that when obtained? Why, the Executive Council and governor would thenceforward be under the control of the local Legislature. They desired a power of impeaching the governor, and removing the ministers of the executive. Now that demand was perfectly absurd, and the Canadians should recollect, although it was our bounden duty to cherish connexion and treat them with all the kindness which a parent state should evince, towards her colonies, the Canadians should recollect that the British Crown was the superior; that we had by conquest, by treaty, and by possession, the right, which no doubt should ever be exercised for their benefit, of Sovereign dominion over the colony. They desired an elective council in order that they might have the power of impeaching the Governor before that body; they also desired a power of impeaching the judges—a very proper thing in itself no doubt—but how was it to be carried into effect? They said, first give us an elective council and we shall have the power of carrying the Governor before it by way of impeachment, and also of carrying the judges before that elective council, by way of impeachment, and we shall be satisfied. He declared, after the best consideration he could give to this question, when they talked of the independence of the judges, he admitted they would make the judges free from the control of the Crown, but they would make the judges deeply responsible to the Canadians and place them under the control of the popular branch of the Constitution. The judges should be as free from the shackles of the people as from the power of the Crown. No one could ever be a judge to hold fairly the scales of justice and administer fear- 409 lessly what he believed to be the law between the Crown and the people, unless he was as independent of the one as of the other. He maintained, therefore, when the Canadians desired that the judges should be free from the power of the Crown, but under their own control and dominion, they were not sensible of the first principles of justice, and totally unaware of the great perils they would draw upon themselves if their wishes in this respect should be complied with. The Canadians had a practical proof of this before them, for the moment the revolt broke out they disclaimed all the authority of the courts of justice, and erected what they called family tribunals, to which people were desired to resort under severe penalties in order to arrange and settle their disputes. Either there must be the greatest grievances connected with the administration, amounting to a positive failure of justice in the colony, which grievances should at once be sifted, probed to the bottom, and remedied, or the people of Canada were insensible to the great benefits of their judicial institutions resting on a solid foundation. It was impossible, therefore, that the demands of the Canadians, as regarded an elective council, an executive council, and judicial officers, under the control of the House of Assembly, could for a moment co-exist with the dominion of this country or with the happiness, the peace, prosperity, and comfort of the Canadians themselves. Let it not be said they were the best judges of what would be to their own benefit. He denied that men in a state of excitement, like the Canadians at present, could be considered as the best judges of what would be for their own permanent advantage; and third persons, who knew the facts, with kind feelings towards the colonists, were much better able to point out benefits which they themselves would be willing to accept at a later period, although they might repel them at the moment when first suggested to their minds. But, passing from the demands of the Canadians in that respect as utterly inadmissible, he would only observe on that part of the case in which the House of Assembly demanded that their Executive Council, Cabinet, or Privy Council, should be under the control of the Legislative Assembly, in imitation, as they said, of the control which this country exercised over her Majesty's Ministers, it was founded in a total mistake. There was no law in this country which made Minis- 410 ters responsible to that House in this sense. If they misconducted themselves to the amount of great crimes and misdemeanours, they might, no doubt, be impeached; that, however, arose not from any positive law on the subject, but from the force of public opinion as represented in that House. And when they sought by some law to render the Executive Council amenable to the House of Assembly, so as to make the former removable at once, if the latter did not approve of them, he for one would say it would be absolutely impossible for government to go on for a single week under such a system. Another most important question related to the purse. That point required the greatest consideration; they should be quite sure they were right upon that subject. Because, granting the Canadians a free constitution, a House of Assembly representing the people, if they withheld from them the dominion of the purse unjustly, it would amount undoubtedly to a great grievance, and he should not be surprised if an outbreak were the consequence. The House was of course aware that a great part of the revenues of the province had always been under the dominion of the Legislative Assembly. There was never any question as to the local revenue; the only question was as to the duties of 1774, and the casual and territorial revenues. The House of Assembly, as he read the evidence given before the Select Committee of 1834, did not rest their case, as Mr. Roebuck had done, on Lord Dorchester's message, nor did they put it as the hon. Baronet, the Member for Leeds, had to-night, on Lord Aylmer's dispatch; they demanded the control over the revenues of the province as a matter of constitutional right. Lord Aylmer's dispatch did not touch the point. As regarded the casual and territorial revenues, he defied any one to raise a question, unless it arose upon the message of Lord Dorchester; for when the French Crown ceded all its rights to the Crown of England, the right of the lands, the casual and territorial revenues vested in the Crown, precisely as the landed property, in this country called her Majesty's Woods and Forests, were vested in the Crown. It was asked if they insisted on it as private property of the Crown? No, they said no such thing; it was not sought to put a shilling of it into the privy purse; it was to be dedicated to the purposes of the colony; but the right of the Crown was indubitable. It belonged as much to the 411 Crown as any property any private gentleman possessed belonged to him, with the difference of course which existed, and must always be recognised, between private and Crown property. Acquired by conquest and treaty, it now belonged to the Crown. Every one of the acts of Parliament recognised it as such; the act of 1774 contained an express provision that nothing in it should at all be deemed to affect in any manner the landed property belonging to the Crown; in like manner the act of 1791, so far from treating these revenues as under the power of the Assembly, contained an express prohibition against the Assembly dealing with these funds without being first mentioned in an address sent over to this country, laid on the table of both Houses of Parliament, and if either House addressed the Crown praying that such a bill might not pass, the power of the Crown to give an assent to that bill was taken away. There never was a clearer case; in all dealings with the colonies the property was treated as vested in the Crown. Did Lord Dorchester's message, then, take it away? That message, he confessed, was somewhat ambiguous; he was satisfied upon it himself, but he should like to have it a little more explained. First of all, it was to be observed, that there had been no claim upon that message for a very long series of years. In 1834 the claim was put on constitutional right, not on any message. Then nothing had ever been done to divest the Crown of that property. Considering, therefore, that there had been during that period no renunciation of the right on the part of the Crown, and no vesting it in the colony, he did not see any sufficient ground in the message for vesting it in the colony. What was done in 1774? When this country acquired Canada, we found duties imposed on all wines imported into Lower Canada, and all dry goods exported and imported. Imposed by whom?—by the simple will and power of the French King. When we came to regulate Canada, those duties were repealed, and by an act, not of the King but of the Imperial Legislature, new duties were imposed—not to be put into the coffers of the British treasury or privy purse, but to be specially dedicated to the expenses of the judicial establishment, and the civil government of the province. In 1831 Lord Ripon's act placed the disposition of these funds in the legislature of Lower Canada. He must say, with every disposition to act fairly towards the 412 Canadians, but with a determination to place every thing on its right footing, he thought there was no ground for charging them with any direct breach of good faith in reference to that act. He did not think they had entered into any direct undertaking that on condition of the surrender of the revenues, they would grant a permanent civil list, although a promise, an engagement, to that effect had undoubtedly been held out by those supposed to represent the opinions of that people; but the control was granted on the notion and belief that they would do so; and the noble Lord who brought in the bill then stated, that if the Lower Canadians should not grant a civil list, the revenues would remain as they were before, under the control of the Crown. A very important question for the consideration of the House arose upon that act. Before the bill of 1831 those funds did not belong to the Crown, although they were receivable by the Crown without any right of intervention on the part of the Assembly of Lower Canada, and they were dedicated by the imperial act of 1774 to paying the judicial establishment and civil government of the province. The question then assumed this shape—he had heard it stated that the act of 1831 repealed that of 1774. It did no such thing; but, reciting the act of 1774, which vested the duties in the Crown, subject to their disposition for the judicial establishment and civil government of the province, it said it was desirable to make further provision, and then it was enacted that those sums should be within the disposition of his Majesty, with the advice of the Colonial Legislature. The funds fairly and fully being submitted to the control of the House of Assembly in case they provided a permanent civil list, if, after due time had elapsed, the Colonial Legislature did not avail itself of that offer, the question was, whether in default of any other arrangement the funds were not still applicable to the maintenance of the judicial establishment and civil government of the province. He should feel no difficulty in repealing the act of 1831, with this proviso, that if the Colonial Legislature should at any time provide for the civil government and judicial establishment, then, during the continuance of that provision not only the duties of 1774, but the casual and territorial revenues, should be under the disposition of the Colonial Legislature; he would give them the power, if they chose to avail themselves of 413 the full disposition of these revenues. It was most important in discussing this question that they should consider whether there was any well-founded complaint on the part of the House of Assembly as to that part of the case in which it was complained that they had not made a permanent allowance by way of providing for the judicial and civil establishments. They desired in words that they should have all the benefit the mother country possessed in point of representation and power over the purse. Now, if they would be content with the power which that House had—if they would take the House of Commons for a pattern, they would at once provide for their civil and judicial establishments This country did nothing so absurd as to leave its civil and judicial officers who fairly performed their duties without salaries. If honour had nothing to do with the question—if it were a mere question of self-preservation, no people of common sense would leave their judicial establishments exposed to all the influency of poverty. The first thing a free people thought of was not simply to place their judicial officers on a footing of perfect freedom, but with character and station to afford them the means of keeping up external appearance suitable to their dignity in communicating with the great body of the people. He looked upon this question as one of the most vital importance. Having heard Mr. Roebuck at the bar, it was their duty to show the House of Assembly that they had been compelled to refuse their claims upon no slight or unimportant grounds. He was glad that the debate had been an adjourned one in order that Members might have the opportunity of fairly and fully stating their opinions upon it. It would be a disgrace to them if they allowed a bill of such a nature as this to pass as a matter of course, and that because a revolt had broken out in Canada they must take away the free constitution of the people in that province. But he supported this bill because he believed that a suspension of that constitution for a time was the only mode of saving to them the free constitution which he wished them to enjoy. He for one was prepared to give as free a constitution to the people of Canada as they were capable of enjoying. With respect to the Tenures Act, there could be no doubt it was an unwise act, made without a sufficient knowledge of the subject, and which never ought to have been made at all. It was a subject for local legislation. 414 He should be perfectly ready to repeal it, simply reserving to all parties the rights they had acquired under it: thus they would show the Canadians that where there were grievances they were determined to remedy them. Although he would not say they should force on the Canadians a mode of tenure they did not desire, still if the Assembly insisted that the Crown had no right to grant land in free and common soccage, they were wholly wrong, for the Crown had always reserved explicitly the right to make such grants. In the act of 1774, and in that of 1791, there was an express enactment that all lands theretofore granted and thenceforward to be granted by the Crown in fee and common soccage should be supported and upheld. From first to last this country, dealing with the Canadians and granting them a representative constitution, had taken care to reserve that right to the Crown. Upon the whole circumstances of the case his reluctant opinion was, that the House of Assembly having refused the supplies after obtaining the act of 1831 had done it factiously—he did not use the word offensively—they had done so with an indirect purpose, not for the redress of any wrong, but for the assertion of a right which did not belong to them, and which, if conceded, would destroy the connexion between this country and the Canadas. In this country the stopping of the supplies was the exception, and not the rule. The Canadas, on the contrary, had made it the rule, and not the exception. And it was upon that ground that he justified the vote which he was about to give in support of the present measure. At the same time, he would not conceal from the House that there were many parts of it which he disapproved of entirely, and which, in the Committee, he should use his utmost endeavours to amend. Nor must he, in supporting this Bill, be considered as approving of the conduct adopted by her Majesty's Ministers towards Canada since the passing of the resolutions of last Session. In his opinion that conduct was open to great and just blame; but he refrained from saying a word on that subject at present, further than to protest against being supposed to approve of their conduct because he gave his support to the present measure. The hon. and learned Gentleman then sat down amid general cheering.
§ Mr. Labouchereassured the House, that he did not rise at that late period of the evening to prolong the discussion on this measure; but as he had taken part in 415 every discussion which had occurred upon the affairs of Canada since he had had the honour of enjoying a seat in that House, he was unwilling to give a silent vote when a measure of such vital importance to its future condition was proposed to the consideration of Parliament. He had listened with the greatest delight and satisfaction to the excellent speech which had been delivered by the hon. and learned Gentleman who had just sat down—a speech, of which he must say, that, so far as it related to the legal tenures of Canada, it was worthy of the high professional character which the right hon. and learned Gentleman had acquired for himself, but which was entitled to lasting praise on the still higher ground of having stated the opinion of a British senator in that free, liberal, and conciliatory language, which represented the feelings of the great majority of the Members of that House, although they might differ on some minor points arising out of the subject itself. He thought that nothing could be more unjust than the imputation which had been thrown upon the House by the hon. Member for the City of London, when he said, that, in the observations which had fallen from hon. Members on both sides of the House, language had been used most harsh and unwarrantable towards the Canadians, who had been spoken of as if they were serfs and inferiors, whom we were not bound to consider with the same regard in our legislation as we would consider other subjects of the British empire. He was sure, that if any expression which could bear such a construction, had fallen in the course of debate from any hon. Member, it would have sounded harsh and grating upon his ear; but, having listened with the utmost attention to every word that had been uttered in this debate, he must say, that nothing had given him greater satisfaction than the tone in which every hon. Member, without exception, who had yet addressed the House, had expressed himself with regard to the rights to which the colonists of this great empire were entitled. He believed, that when this debate went forth, as it would do to the colonies, the tone of it would produce as beneficial an effect among them as any legislative measure which the House could enact on their behalf. He had said, that he had listened with the greatest delight and satisfaction to the speech of the right hon. and learned Gentleman. There were many of his observations in which he cor- 416 dially concurred; but there were also some of them from which be was compelled to withhold his concurrence. But as it was not the business of the House to discuss at present the possible changes in the constitution of Canada which might be suggested at a future period, and as those changes, when they were suggested, must undergo full discussion in both Houses of Parliament, he would reserve what he had to say upon them for the proper period of their discussion, and would refrain from entering upon them at present. He had seen no reason to alter the opinions which he had formerly expressed when this subject was under their consideration. He was sure now, as he had ever been, that any constitution fitted for the Canadas, must be founded on the broadest principles of liberty. For his own part, he would not assent to any measure which would permanently deprive the Canadians of a constitution founded on those principles of liberty, although he felt himself compelled, by the necessity of the case to suspend the constitution which they enjoyed at present. The hon. Member for the City of London had said, "Why not summon the House of Assembly again, and allow the constitution of Canada to remain in full operation?" That "why" he would meet with a distinct "wherefore." The proposition was impracticable, for there was a wide distinction between leaving the constitution of Lower Canada in full operation under the present House of Assembly, and suspending it for a time, until that Assembly was better regulated. To suppose that the calling that House of Assembly together, flagrante bello, could be productive of any beneficial result was a notion which, though it might enter the head of the hon. Member for the City of London, could scarcely be entertained for a moment by any practical man, who looked calmly and deliberately at the working of human affairs. It had been urged, as an objection to this measure, that the Earl of Durham was going to Canada with the powers of a dictator, to frame for it a new constitution. He asserted that this was not the fact, on the contrary, it appeared to him that the most valuable part of this measure was that part of it which went to give the colony the guarantee, not only of her Majesty's Ministers, but also of that House; that it was their intention permanently to revert to that system of constitutional government, which was the only one that was practicable and feasible for so great 417 and important a community. He begged to state distinctly, that, though no one could attach more importance than he did to the continuance of the connexion between the Canadas and this country, though he thought it would be a positive loss of strength and reputation to us to have that connexion dissevered, though he was determined as far as in him lay to maintain the integrity of the British empire in all its parts, though he thought it was the duty of the country to assert its supremacy over all its colonial dependencies, yet if it could be proved to him that we could not maintain them as colonies of freemen, he would rather give them up at once and for ever, than incur the danger, the folly, and the disgrace of endeavouring to govern a large portion of the British Empire on such unworthy principles. He looked forward, however, to the future administration of the Canadas with some anxiety, but without any feeling of despondency. His humble advice to the Government during all these unfortunate differences had been invariably this—to persevere to the utmost in a mild and conciliatory course, and to despise the taunts of those who were for ever calling for what they considered vigorous strokes of authority. So far was the course of events from proving that he was wrong in giving that opinion, that it had absolutely confirmed him in the propriety and policy of it. The country was now reaping the reward of that conciliatory conduct. He had always thought that if that line of conduct were perseveringly pursued, and if the unreasonableness of the leaders of the House of Assembly should, notwithstanding, break at last into open rupture, Parliament would have in the first place the support of its own consciousness that it had done all it could to avert the crisis, and in the next place the sympathies and verdict of the civilized world in its favour, which in the present enlightened state of public opinion was no mean support to any Government. Much had been said fast night by the hon. and learned Gentleman who appeared at the bar respecting the United. States, and the effect which this contest with Canada must of necessity produce there. As one who valued extremely the importance of our continuing on good terms with that great and flourishing republic, he had observed the manifestation of public feeling on this subject there with great satisfaction. It was natural that the late events should have 418 produced some excitement in the United States; but as far as he could judge of the state of public opinion there, from the statements of the public press and from the declarations of their public men, the opinion of the United States was, that Great Britain had acted a fair, an honourable, and a just part, in her present contest with the Canadas; and he believed that there was not a single American who would not feel it to be a most foul libel on the immortal achievers of their independence, their Washingtons and their Franklins, to have them compared with the leaders of the present Canadian revolt. To what did he attribute this state of public opinion in the United States? To this—that ever since the year 1828, all the administrations which had succeeded each other in this country had been anxious to do justice to the Canadas. He did not mean to say, that all they had done had been right; no—all of them had made some mistakes; it was only natural that at the distance they were from the scene on which their measures were to be tried they would make some mistakes; but no one who was desirous of getting at the truth, and who had attentively watched the course taken by the different Administrations to whom the affairs of Great Britain had been intrusted since 1828, could deny that they had one and all wished to do justice to the Canadas. This was the feeling, the general feeling, of the Canadians themselves. In former limes he had himself been well acquainted with the opinions entertained by their leading politicians. He had been acquainted, well acquainted, with those gentlemen who came from Canada in 1828, to represent to the Colonial Department the grievances under which they then considered themselves to labour. He had never seen men who took a more honourable and justifiable pride than they did in the country which had given them birth, or who had a warmer or better founded attachment to free institutions, or who would more strenuously resist anything which they considered an infringement on that free constitution to which they were by birth entitled. And he had, therefore, great pleasure in informing the House, that two out of three of them, and he believed all the three, had taken a decidedly active part in supporting the just claims of England against the arrogant pretensions of the House of Assembly. He felt deeply indebted to the House for the patient attention with which 419 it had listened to his observations; it was not his intention to trespass much longer on its indulgence, but he could not help addressing these few words to it on a measure so deeply affecting a colony with which he had been so intimately connected. Whilst he stated that he entirely concurred in the propriety of the course taken by her Majesty's Government to suppress the revolt which had unfortunately taken place in the Canadas, he could not help adding, that when he heard Mr. Roebuck representing to the House last night at the bar that this was the case of a colony goaled into revolt by the measures of the mother country, it was an attempt to mislead the House and the country, which could not fail to excite the disgust of all who knew any thing of the real circumstances of the case. They had all either heard or read of the speeches made, and the resolutions passed, by the House of Assembly—they had all heard or read of the speeches made and the resolutions passed at the different district meetings of Lower Canada—they knew that there had been drillings of troops, acquisitions of arms, meetings by night, processions by day, and all the preparations for war in time of profound peace. Of all these things Mr. Roebuck said not a single word—he passed them over in silence as prudent as it was complete, and yet no Government, worthy of the name of Government, could hesitate for a moment about putting such things down, when once they were brought under its notice and attention. The hon. Member concluded by expressing his gratitude once more to the House for its attention, on which nothing but a sense of duty would have induced him to trespass so long.
§ Mr. Gladstonethought it nothing more than a debt of justice to the hon. Member for the City of London to acknowledge the candour and fairness with which the hon. Member had stated both now and formerly the strong opinions which he entertained on this question, and the consistency with which he had urged them both in good and in ill fortune. When a month ago the intelligence received from Canada was, so far as regarded the success of the British arms, of an equivocal character, the hon. Member calmly and deliberately avowed it to be his opinion that we ought to resort to a separation from Canada as the best mode of putting an end to the differences between us; and now, when the news was of a very different 420 character, and when it fully established the triumph of the British arms, the hon. Member in the same calm and deliberate tone, and without indulging in any asperity or violence of language, came frankly forward to maintain the same opinion. How well did the consistency of his speech on the former, with his speech on the present occasion, contrast with the wonderful difference observable in the speeches made then and now by the hon. Member for Leeds, the hon. Member for Cornwall, the hon. Member for Kilkeny, and the hon. Member for West-minister What was the burden of the song of their hon. Members before the recess? We heard of nothing from them but the certainty of British defeat, and the confiscation of British property—we heard of nothing but instructions how the insurgents were to fire to inflict.-the greatest loss upon the British troops—we heard of nothing but the curses and the execrations which would be the doom of the British Government if they dared to maintain in cither of the Canadas the supremacy of British authority. Where were all those boasts and assertions now? Vanished into thin air, not on account of their injustice and falsehood, but on account of the different aspect which the intelligence contained in the newspapers of the day gave to the revolt in that colony. Those hon. Members talked of the vacillation of her Majesty's Government. They to talk of vaceillation! They to accuse her Majesty's Government of vacillation! Before they used that word again, let them, for their own sakes, look at home. They proposed one day the separation of the Canadas from the mother-country, and the next, when intelligence arrived from the colony proving that there was no desire for such a separation entertained there, they were struck suddenly dumb, and no such proposition issued from their lips. If this were consistency, he should like to know what constituted inconsistency. If this were not vacillation, he should like to know of what tortuosities of language and of conduct it was com-posed. He should not know how to account for these discrepancies between the professions of one day and the professions of the next, if he did not recollect, that they proceeded from that new school of morals which taught that success was the only criterion of merit. There was only one point raised by the hon. 421 Member for Leeds in his speech of that evening respecting the grievances alleged to have been sustained by the inhabitants of Canada which had not yet been raised in the debate. That point admitted, as he conceived, of a very plain and easy reply; and with the permission of the House he would then proceed to afford it. The hon. Member for Leeds had said, that the judges in Canada were not independent—that the House of Assembly, seeing the impropriety of leaving the judges in a dependent situation, had passed a Bill to render them independent—and that that Bill, on being referred to the authorities in England for approval, had been rejected by the Secretary of State for the Colonial Department. Those hon. Members who advocated the cause of the House of Assembly were never tired of declaiming against the ignorance which, according to them, their opponents displayed of all Canadian affairs. They must really conceive the ignorance of their opponents to be as gross as they represented it to be, or they would never dare to employ arguments, he would not say so inaccurate, but so totally unfounded. What were the facts? It was undoubtedly true, that the House of Assembly had passed a Bill providing nominally for the independence of the judges. But what was the other provision contained in that Bill? It established a court of impeachment for all public officers, with which he imagined that the independence of the judges had no natural connexion whatsoever. Moreover it asserted the claim of the House of Assembly to dispose as it pleased of the hereditary and territorial revenues of the Crown, to which the House of Assembly had no legal claim at all. Thirdly, it made no provision for the permanent payment of the salaries of the judges, although it nominally asserted their independence; so that, if from mistaken policy it had been assented to, we should have had the judges made independent of the Crown, whilst their salaries were to be voted as before year after year by the House of Assembly. Whilst he was listening last night to the speech made at the bar by Mr. Roebuck, on behalf of the House of Assembly, he certainly did expect, from its commencement, that Mr. Roebuck was about to advance much higher claims than those on which he afterwards rested. But when be compared the lameness of his perora- 422 tion with the magniloquence of his proemium, he could not refrain from asking, with the Latin poet,
Quid dignum tanto tulit hic promissor hiatu?He threatened to indict her Majesty's Government of sundry high crimes and misdemeanours, and yet the only parties on whom he pressed with any degree of severity were his own peculiar Friends and supporters. "Here," said he, "am I standing alone against hundreds of Members." Alone! Had the hon. and learned Gentleman then forgotten the Friends and allies whom he had in the hon. Member fur Leeds, in the hon. Member for Bridport, in the hon. Member for Westminster, in the hon. Member for Cornwall, and, to complete the climax, in the hon. Member for Kilkenny, who was in himself a host, as he took care to speak on this question every night, and who only last night had made a speech upon it for the mere purpose of telling the House that he had nothing at all to say about it? What, he would ask, was the nature even of the hon. and learned Gentleman's own argument on this question? It was twofold. He argued first, that the House of Assembly had an absolute claim to the disposal of all the hereditary and territorial revenues of the Crown; and next, that as the Legislative Council was either incompetent or unwilling to administer the affairs of the colony, the House of Assembly was entitled to demand an organic change in the constitution of that Council. Now, after what had been so well urged last night by his hon. Friend, the Under Secretary for the Colonies, and again tonight by another hon. Friend of his, in explanation of the real nature of Lord Dorchester's messages to the House of Assembly, he would not enter into that discussion further than to say, that even the passage which the hon. and learned gentleman had himself read did not bear out the construction, or rather the assumption, which he had put upon it, and that the hon. and learned gentleman must have calculated largely on the inattention and carelessness of the House when he read the passage and said that it did. That message merely adverted to the application of the revenues of the Crown to the purposes of the colony—it merely stated, that the manner in which they were appropriated to those purposes should be laid before the House of Assembly, but it 423 did not contain a single word about the unconditional surrender of them to that body. The history of our country would not have justified such an absolute surrender of them to the people, and was it likely, he would ask, that the Governor would, of his own accord have placed the Commons of a new and recently conquered colony on a better footing with regard to the Crown than that possessed by the Commons of the United Kingdom? If the Governor had placed them in that situation, was it likely that different Houses of Assembly would have allowed subsequent Governors for so many years to act as if no such surrender of revenue had been ever made to them? He would next look to the conduct of the Legislative Council. Mr. Roebuck had mentioned two cases in which Bills passed by the House of Assembly had been rejected by the Legislative Council on account of their alleged incompetency to conduct the affairs of that colony. Here he would remind the House that the Legislative Council was placed in the exact situation in which Mr. Roebuck had complained that the House of Assembly would have been placed, had the House of Commons not consented to hear him at the bar. It was hard that its chance of defence should be left to those who were all but its uninformed and uninstructed advocates; but it was fortunate enough, that even upon the showing of Mr. Roebuck himself it was impossible to make out a case against the Legislative Council. The first Bill to which Mr. Roebuck alluded was a Bill to amend the law affecting mortgages. It was true, that the Legislative Council had thrown out a Bill which was framed for the purpose of introducing into the colony the lex stelionati. Now, that law presupposed secrecy in the imposition of mortgages, and the object of the Legislative Council was to have a system of open registration. It therefore declined, and, as he thought wisely, to pass a Bill which, though an amendment on a vicious system, was still a part of it, and which must be got rid of entirely before a better system could be introduced. The second case was that of a Bill called, he believed, the Parish Officers' Bill, enabling the inhabitants of the various townships and parishes to elect local officers from their own body. What were the proceedings of the Canadian Legislature in reference to that measure? A 424 Bill, enabling the inhabitants of these townships to elect local officers, passed the Legislative Council, was sent down to the Assembly, and was sent back in an amended shape to the Legislative Council, who rejected it. But what were the provisions of the Bill? He thought the House would be surprised to hear, that the Bill sent back to the Council contained a provision, which, in fact, went to establish a system of election for justices of the peace. By the second clause it was proposed to be enacted, that it should be lawful for the freeholders present at every such meeting, by a majority of votes to choose by ballot, or otherwise, one person to be clerk to the township or parish, and also to recommend one or more persons, being resident freeholders, to be justices of the peace in the said township or parish. Undoubtedly this provision would not at once take out of the hands of the Crown the prerogative of appointing justices of the peace; but surely if such a system had been established, the practice would, in process of time, have become exactly equivalent. Such a system would have been attended with all the evils of a popular election of magistrates, and he put it to the House whether the Legislative Council were not perfectly justified in throwing out a Bill containing a provision so obnoxious. Other grievances had been stated as affecting the Canadians, but with regard to those already mentioned, it was pretty clear that they formed no ground which should deter the House from pursuing the course they were now called upon to adopt. The bankruptcy of the judges was alleged to be a serious grievance, but though he had made many inquiries, he had not been able to learn that such a case as that of the bankruptcy of a judge had ever occurred. Undoubtedly there had been recent cases of judges being embarrassed in circumstances, and deeply in debt, but, he asked, was not that the natural result of the course which the Assembly themselves had taken? It was quite impossible that anything else should take place when the Assembly had for a series of years withheld the hard-earned payment of their laborious services. Then, again, the bankruptcy of the Receiver-General was said to be a grievance, and he was ready to admit, that if the province were likely to suffer injury from such a state of that officer's affairs, the bankruptcy would amount to a grievance, 425 and the colonists would have a fair claim to be indemnified. But what were the facts of this case? The Receiver-General was a defaulter to the extent of 96,000l, but his estate had been made over to the treasury of the province, and a sum of 150,000l. had been at one time offered for it. If, in the present condition of the country, the estate were not disposable, if a purchaser could not be found when the proceedings of the Assembly had disturbed the public peace, and ruined for a time the public commerce, surely that circumstance could not be made the foundation of a charge against the British Government. It was said, again, that the resolutions passed by that House in the course of last Session were grievances. Undoubtedly, if there were many substantial grievances oppressing the Canadians before, if these resolutions were considered as affecting a provincial Legislature which was in itself unimpeachable in its conduct, they were really grievances; but if the provincial Assembly were in the wrong before, these resolutions could not possibly put them in the right. With respect to the charges against the Legislative Council, they had never been substantiated, nor was there any plausible ground for them. The Council had not been called upon by the people to pass any particular act, and had refused; but all its acts had been backed by the Government at home, and approved by that House. The accusations against the Council, therefore, must fall to the ground, and no part of its proceedings afforded any reason for fundamentally changing its constitution. Some hon. Members had contended, that because the Legislative Councils existing in several of the New England States while attached to the dominion of this country were elective, the same form of constitution could be safely and advantageously introduced into Canada. It appeared to him that the cases were by no means parallel. At the time when those councils existed, no example had ever been set of severing the bonds of connexion with the mother country; the principle of subjection to Government was much stronger than at present; there was no powerful neighbouring state of whose revolt the American colonies had the example before them, and with whom they might unite themselves; there were no elements of hostility between two great classes of the population, which rendered it difficult for them to secure 426 internal harmony, and conduct their Government on principles of beneficent justice to all. These were differences of great moment,—differences which totally destroyed the apparent similarity of the cases. He would even go the length of asserting, that it was probably owing to the want of Legislative Councils in some of these states, or to the form of their constitution in others, that there was no rallying point for those disposed to maintain British connexion; and that the colonists, in consequence, came precipitately to the resolution of declaring their independence, and abandoning that connexion. These circumstances afforded an ample justification for originally establishing a Legislative Council in Canada, and because none of its acts, since its establishment, constituted any substantial grievance, there were ample reasons for continuing it. One other statement which assumed even the form of a grievance of the Canadians had been made in the course of that evening, and that regarded the present state of the jury law in Lower Canada. It was said that the jury law, which was intended to secure the freedom and increase the privileges of the people, had become the instrument of their oppression. What were the real facts that concerned this matter? In the first place, with respect to the actual state of the jury law, the House might judge which party was the most oppressed by it from a dispatch of Lord Gosford, dated 5th October, in which he stated that the grand jury, in defiance of the strongest evidence, had ignored bills of indictment preferred against several persons in the county of Two Mountains, for a conspiracy to drive out of it two inhabitants who held opposite political opinions, and that the Attorney-General in consequence had been obliged to file ex-officio informations against them. In a passage of a dispatch from the noble Lord, dated 12th of October, were found the following words:—Judging from recent events, in the little probability, even if evidence of sufficient weight could be procured to arraign the offenders, of a jury taken from the district of Montreal finding bills and convicting on them.He found the magistrates of Montreal making a similar statement at a meeting held by them:—That it is the opinion of this meeting, that 427 turbulent and disaffected persons, inciting the peasantry to rebellion, would not be declared guilty by any jury called in the ordinary course of law.Such was the slate of that law which was declared to be an instrument of despotism in the hands of Government. A bill, introducing several alterations in the law, passed the House of Assembly, and was amended by the Legislative Council; but, on being sent back to the House of Assembly, it rejected the measure without even demanding a conference; and with that House rested the responsibility of that step. He had now gone through all the allegations of grievances put forward by those who appeared as the advocates of the insurgent colonists, and he thought he had sufficiently shown the hollowness of their pretences. But it was said, and the statement, though it could not be interpreted into a practical grievance, was calculated to create an impression favourable to the justice of the rebel cause, that the United States were prosperous and flourishing as an independent community, while the energies of Canada were crippled, her commerce fettered, the developement of her resources retarded by her connexion with Britain. They were told of the rapid progress of the American colonies of Britain when emancipated from her sway, as compared with the slow rate of their advances before. He, indeed, believed that there was no more remarkable example in history of speedy advancement in all that constituted the greatness of a nation than was furnished by the career of the American colonies of Great Britain, now forming the United States, during the past century. As one remarkable instance of their prosperity he might mention that the duties collected at Philadelphia advanced in fifty years from 25,000l. to 500,000l. But the foundations of the power and grandeur to which these colonies have obtained were laid by the fostering care of Great Britain during the term of its dominion, and it was under the protection of this country that their infant resources were allowed to expand. The benefits which they received from the rule of the parent state were thus described by Mr. Burke in his celebrated speech on American taxation:—Their monopolist happened to be one of the richest men in the world. By his immense capital, primarily employed not for their benefit but his own, they were enabled to proceed 428 with their fisheries, their agriculture, their ship-building, and their trade, too, within the limits, in such a manner as got far the start of the slow languid operations of unassisted nature. This capital was a hot bed to them. Nothing in the history of mankind is like their progress. For my part, I never cast an eye on their flourishing commerce and their cultivated and commodious life, but they seem to me rather ancient nations grown to perfection through a long series of fortunate events and a train of successful industry, accumulating wealth in many centuries, than the colonies of yesterday; than a set of miserable out-casts a few years ago, not so much sent as thrown out, on the bleak and barren shore of a desolate wilderness, 3,000 miles from all civilized intercourse.Surely it stood to reason, proceeded the hon. Member, that in the infancy of a country it was far better that it should be connected with an old nation, where capital existed in abundance, where the habits of men had been matured by the influence of long-established civilization, and the resources of social life had been fully called into action, than that it should be left to itself to struggle unaided with the difficulties inseparable from an early stage of society. Such had been the case of Canada, and what was the real rate of her progress which had been represented as so slow. If compared with the United States, its advance in prosperity was found to be even more rapid. In 1775 the population of Canada was but 60,000. It now amounted to 600,000, having been multiplied tenfold since that year. At the commencement of the American war, the population of the United States was 2,500,000, and now amounted to 15,000,000, having increased six-fold. How did these facts agree with the statements of the advocates of the insurgents, who attempted to persuade the world that Canada had made no progress and had derived no benefits from its connexion with this country. Did hon. Gentlemen recollect the progress which New South Wales had made, notwithstanding the peculiar disadvantages under which it laboured? Against these facts it was impossible to contend, and he was justified in dismissing at once the supposition that the progress of Canada had been retarded by its subjection to Britain. If, therefore, it were true, as he believed it was, that the grievances alleged by the Canadians as an excuse for rebellion could not be substantiated, and if there were any defects in the internal constitution of 429 Canada, or any hardships in the working of the administration, they were manifestly such as the provincial assembly itself ought to remove. Certainly there was nothing in the statements of Mr. Roebuck and his friends which ought to deter the House from taking measures to restore tranquillity and re-establish the authority of her Majesty's Government in the province. He would say one word as to past times. Some gentlemen had attempted to cast discredit on all administrations for their Canadian policy, excepting those of the last few years. He himself was not personally connected with any of those administrations whose policy had been thus condemned, but he could not refrain from expressing his conviction that great injustice was done to them. Canada was originally a French colony, its inhabitants being destitute of rights or privileges, subject to the will of an absolute monarch, in whose government there was no vestige of the principle of representation. It must be remembered that acts, which would appear to verge on injustice and oppression when subjects in the enjoyment of ample freedom and privileges were concerned, assumed an altered character when considered in connexion with the condition of a colony unaccustomed to any government but that of a despotic master. But he would refer to an authority which he believed would not be questioned for a description of the benefits which the Canadians had derived from subjection to British sway. He would take the liberty of quoting a remarkable passage, for which he was indebted to so ordinary a source as the daily prints, from a speech made by M. Papineau himself in 1820, and he presumed that the testimony of that individual would be admitted to be of considerable importance, when it was recollected that the years which had passed since 1820 were marked by an uninterrupted series of concessions to the Canadians, and that there was not even a pretence for alleging the origin of any grievance subsequent to that time. Speaking of George 3rd. M. Papineau said—Each year of his long reign has been marked by new favours bestowed upon the country. Compare our present happy situation with that of our fathers on the eve of the day when George 3rd became their legitimate monarch. Under the French Government (internally and externally arbitrary and oppressive) the interests of this country had 430 been more frequently neglected and mal-administered than those of any other part of its dependencies. (George 3rd succeeded Louis XV.) From that day the reign of the law succeeded to that of violence; from that day the treasures, the navy, and the armies of Great Britain are mustered to afford us an invincible protection against external danger: from that day the better part of her laws became ours, while our religion, property, and the laws by which they are governed remain unaltered; soon after are granted us the privileges of its free constitution—an infallible pledge when acted upon of our national prosperity. Now, religious toleration, trial by jury—that wisest of safeguards ever devised for the protection of innocence,—security against arbitrary imprisonment by the privileges attached to the writ of habeas corpus—legal and equal security afforded to all in their persons, honour, and property,—the right to obey no other laws but those of our own making and choice, expressed through our representatives—all these advantages have become our birthright, and shall, I hope, be the last inheritance of our posterity. To secure them let us only act as British subjects and freemen.Was this testimony, he asked, of no importance? He would not scruple to appeal to facts for a confirmation of it, if it had proceeded from the governor of Canada, of the Secretary of State for the colonies, but, coming from him who had been the leading agitator of Lower Canada—coining from him who was now the leading rebel and fugitive of Lower Canada—was it not most useful and important? He trusted, then, that he had disposed of the argument derived by the supporters of rebellion from the analogy of the revolt of the United' States. There was, indeed, just such a resemblance between the two cases as was sufficient to deceive and delude a careless or unreflecting mind; The case of the United States was as different from that of Canada as any case could well be from another. The grievances of the American colonists, especially that of taxation, were not redressed, while of the Canadian grievances there was none which Parliament had not removed, or which it had not declared its anxiety to remove. The Americans were willing to make greater sacrifices to preserve a connexion with this country than we had ever called on the Canadians to make. We had negociated with the Canadians to induce them to grant a civil list for seven years, while it would astonish the House to hear that Dr. Franklin had proposed to grant one for a century. The concilia- 431 tory overtures of the British Government were rejected with insolent contempt by the leaders of the rebellion in Canada, while the Americans, for no less than sixteen months after the war broke out, continued ardently desirous to preserve their connexion with Britain; and when at last the declaration of independence was put forth, several of the most eminent men in the country were averse to it, and expressed their regret that feelings of irritation should have carried their compatriots so far. It was somewhat singular that one of the grievances of the Americans was stated by themselves to be the conduct of Great Britain towards Canada—not her oppression of the Canadians but her excessive liberality, or as they considered it, partiality towards the Canadians. In the first petition of the American Congress in 1774, a remarkable document, worthy the attention of the House, the grievances of the colonists were staled to be the appointment of the judges and councillors during pleasure, the harassing restrictions imposed on commerce, the exorbitant duties levied arbitrarily under the stamp act, which was declared to be only an initiative measure, the stoppage of agents' salaries, the abolition of trial by jury in many cases through the extension of the jurisdiction of the admiralty courts, and lastly, the act for extending the limits of Quebec, abolishing the English and restoring the French law, whereby great numbers of British freemen were subjected to the latter; and establishing an absolute government, and the Roman Catholic religion throughout those vast regions that border on the westerly and northerly boundaries of the free Protestant English settlements. Was it not most unfair to cite the alleged analogy of America, when one of the reasons urged by the Americans for revolting was the liberality shown by this country towards her Canadian subjects? Strange as it might appear, the authority of Dr. Franklin was in our favour on this occasion to the extent of justifying the appropriation by the Imperial Parliament of the revenues of a colony to the purposes of its government. In his examination before the Committee of 1776, an event memorable in the history of his country as having led to the repeal of the stamp act by the Rockingham Administration, he was asked what he would do in case a colonial Assembly should refuse the sup- 432 plies. He answered, that—"They could not suppose such a case as that the Assembly would not raise the necessary supplies to support its own government. An Assembly that would refuse it must want common sense, which cannot be supposed. If an Assembly could possibly be so absurd as to refuse raising the supplies requisite for the maintenance of government among them, they could not long remain in such a situation; the disorder and confusion occasioned by it must soon bring them to reason." He was then asked, if it should not, ought not the right to be in Great Britain of applying a remedy. His answer was, a right to be used only in such a case I should have no objection to, supposing it to be used merely for the good of the people of the colony. Dr. Franklin, not having the advantage of the superior enlightenment of the nineteenth century, could not anticipate that a provincial assembly would commit a gross act of injustice, and then urge its right to do so as a pretext for rebellion. His authority, so far from being adverse to us on this occasion, was strongly in favour of the course pursued by the British Government. Did there remain, then, in sober reason, anything deserving to be called a grievance in Canada? If there were, he would proceed immediately to redress it. He cared not whether rebellion was rearing its head in triumph, instead of sinking into extinction—whether the British arms were covered with that dishonour which some hon. Members had patriotically wished might befal them, instead of carrying defeat into the ranks of rebellion, that ought to work no change in the wish to conciliate hostile feelings, and heal the wounds of civil discord. He disclaimed altogether the political morality of the hon. Member for Kilkenny, who had disavowed his friend Mr. Mackenzie, because he had been unsuccessful. [Mr. Hume, No, no!] He would appeal to the whole tenour of the hon. Member's recorded speech, whether the purport of his argument was not to show that rebellion was justifiable, when it was successful. But he looked forward to a very different and more cheerful prospect; in the great hand of God it was that they stood, nor did he fear for the ultimate triumph of justice, nor yet did he fear that he should see the clay, when, as Mr. Roebuck had yesterday expressed himself, the last British vessel 433 should leave the shores of Lower Canada amidst the curses of her inhabitants. He did not know what might be the anticipation of hon. Gentlemen opposite with respect to the issue of the present contest with Canada, but he must say, the learned gentleman, at least, seemed to have forgotten, that in the space of a few years after the separation of the American colonies from the dominion of Great Britain, our commerce with America was flourishing more than at any former period. Hon. Gentlemen on that side of the House were called upon, he thought, to give their aid in providing for the exigency of the period, and he would beg the attention of the House while he offered a few remarks in explanation of the two causes which, in his opinion, called for and justified the proposed suspension of the constitution of Lower Canada. One was, that the supplies had been suspended; the other, that revolt had occurred. Under the circumstances of the case, he thought it incumbent upon Parliament to adopt some vigorous measures, and for as short time as possible to suspend the constitution; but, standing there as a Member of the Commons' House of Parliament, and remembering, as he did, that England had ever been accustomed to extend as far as possible to all countries the privileges and benefits of free and equitable constitutions, he felt that he must not omit to say a few words as to what were the causes which had, by an unfortunate concurrence of circumstances led to the present disastrous results. This was a subject he would gladly have left untouched, but he should have felt dishonoured were he not to enter fairly and manfully into the discussion of it; and he must say, that he did hope to show that none of the late disastrous events would, in all probability, have occurred; there would have been no stoppage of the supplies, and no outbreak of rebellion, and no need for the measures now adopting by the noble Lord and hon. Gentlemen opposite, if the advice which had been tendered on the subject some time ago, that the Act of 1831 should be repealed, had been acted on. That advice had been rejected, but he would repeat, that if it had been taken, it was his conviction that the machine of Government would not have been stopped by the suspension of the supplies. From the papers which he held in his hand, it appeared that, with ordinary discretion, this 434 result would not have been occasioned; the spilling of blood would have been spared, and the peace of the country remained undisturbed. With reference to the conduct of Lord Gosford, he was aware that the noble Lord's position was one of much difficulty, and, on the ground of mere error of judgment, he could not venture to pass any strictures on the noble Lord; but he complained, that while Lord Gosford spoke of the state of the country, and hinted at certain measures rendered necessary by the existing state of things, he did not give them the data on which his judgment was formed, and especially he did not mention what was the opinion of Sir John Colborne: his despatches were deficient, too, in other particulars. But, besides this, he found also in Lord Gosford's despatches the most extraordinarily contradictory statements. On the 2nd of September, 1837, the noble Lord wrote, "I do not conceive there is any ground for alarm." And in the very next sentence he stated, "I am disposed to think that you may be under the necessity of suspending the constitution." Now, how these two sentences could be written in close connexion with one another by any man in his senses was more than he could comprehend. How the noble Lord came to fall into such an error of judgment as was here displayed was quite inconceivable. In the next letter Lord Gosford spoke of the Ultras of both sides struggling for ascendancy; but he must say, there was much more reason, he thought, to apply that epithet to the man who could so far overstep the bounds of ordinary judgment as to say, in one breath, that there was no cause for alarm, and in the next that it might be necessary to suspend the constitution. He defied any man to reconcile two such statements. But, small as was the information as to the state of the country conveyed in these two despatches of the noble Lord, did the mist clear away as time advanced? Oh, no! On the 12th of October, 1837, nearly three weeks after the date of the former letter, Lord Gosford stated, that he had declined the proposal of 300 inhabitants of Quebec, who had tendered their services to her Majesty, requesting in consequence of the state of the province, to be allowed to enroll themselves as a volunteer corps; and so Lord Glenelg stated, in one of his dispatches, that he had, at one time entertained thoughts of sending 435 over two regiments of the line, in addition to the troops already in Canada; but, on further deliberation, he had resolved otherwise, because he was apprehensive that their appearance would be regarded in the light of a demonstration on the part of Government against the people. But was it possible for any thing to be more a demonstration than the famous resolutions?—not, it was true, a demonstration by a military force; but could it be denied, that they constituted an important demonstration? Though those resolutions had not the effect of an exertion of power or of military authority, yet they were strictly analogous to demonstrations of this nature, and, therefore, nothing could be more irrational than for Lord Glenelg to send out a despatch talking this way against demonstrations. In his opinion, it was not only the part of common sense, but of common humanity, to take sufficient and satisfactory measures to show those who might choose to revolt, that revolt was hopeless. Again, at page 65 of the Parliamentary papers relating to Canada, Lord Gosford, after referring to the difficulty of arriving at certain information of the state of the country, and to various reports which were then current, goes on to say, "I do not myself credit these reports, nor yet apprehend any serious disturbance;" yet, on the very same page, on the same day (the 12th of October)—nay, even in the very next sentence, he writes, "It is proper that I should represent to you the inadequacy of the powers at the disposal of the local government for meeting the difficulties that surround it." There was a proof, and he thought a melancholy proof enough, that the executive in Lower Canada had not discharged its high and important functions in such a manner as to merit the approbation of that House. But there was something in the despatch of the 6th of November, 1837, which be thought would appear still more remarkable. It was there stated, for the first time, that "large bodies of the seditious are openly drilled in military tactics every Sunday in and near the city of Montreal." But Lord Gosford had been apprised long before that time, by Sir John Colborne, of several acts of various parties, which plainly denoted the spirit which was abroad; and Colonel Eden's correspondence also clearly established facts which demonstrated that the conduct of the parties mentioned had taken the character of revolt. And here 436 he must express his astonishment that nothing had been heard of this correspondence at the Colonial Office. It was said, the letters could not be found. He must say, words could not express his surprise, that while Lord Gosford was writing in this contradictory style, no attempt whatever appeared to have been made by the Colonial Secretary to obtain from this and other sources (as, for instance, from Sir John Colborne, who must have had many opportunities of becoming acquainted with the real state of things) some certain information as to what were the dispositions of the people. That Sir John Colborne had the means of information, and that he had made Lord Gosford acquainted with his views, might be seen from his letter to Lord Gosford of October 6, 1837, where Sir John observed, "The game which M. Papineau is playing cannot be mistaken; and we must be prepared to expect, that if 400 or 500 persons are allowed to parade the streets of Montreal at night, singing revolutionary songs, the excited parties will come in collision." Now, of such a warning as this ought no notice to have been taken? Were there no precautionary measures which could be adopted? If he was told, that the forces in the country were insufficient to prevent tumult and overawe the people, then let those persons who urged this, explain to him how it was, that, at that very same moment, Lord Gosford chose to refuse the offer of their services which had been made by the volunteers. With respect to the question on which so much had been said of sending out more troops to Canada, without pretending to any knowledge as to the military considerations belonging to the subject, he begged to state, that his impression was, that all the troops were not employed which were in the province, and though the use of a military force could not have prevented the stoppage of the supplies or the passing of the resolutions of the House of Assembly, yet still there were certain intermediate and preliminary steps previous to these grand measures of the malcontent party, such as the drillings every Sunday, which he did think might have been beneficially put down by the interference of an armed force. It was worthy of remark that these meetings and drillings had gone on for some time before Government had been informed of their existence, in reference to which Lord Gosford said, Nov. 6, 1837—" My two last dispatches will 437 have given you some idea of the political state of the province; since those communications were written, the plans and designs of the seditious have become much more apparent; and I regret to say, that their efforts and activity are producing results, to arrest which requires the adoption of much more vigorous and decisive measures than it is within the power of the Executive Government to put in force: large bodies of them are openly drilled in military tactics every Sunday, in and near the city of Montreal." Now, the expression "every Sunday" showed that he had known this for some time. It was true this might be considered an inference which rested on very slight grounds? but if he were obliged to draw his conclusions from vague terms, it was because that kind of information was all the Government was pleased to afford. But he contended from the use of this term "every Sunday," that the first information of these practices which had been sent home was not at their commencement, but after they had been so fully established as to be regularly observed every Sunday. But even then the noble Lord did not state, that measures had been taken to prevent and put down these seditious meetings, which he had permitted to reach such a height, and indeed so small was the countenance and support lent by the noble Lord's Government to the loyal and well-disposed inhabitants, that numbers of persons were compelled in self-defence to put their names to petitions, the objects of which they from their souls abhorred; yet the noble Lord had permitted all this without one effort to stay the progress of disaffection and discontent. And hence arose a question of great importance, and which it would be necessary for the vindication of Government that they should be able to dispose of fully and satisfactorily—namely, that whether 20,000 men, or any other number, were necessary to keep in check the Canadians, Government had never made trial as regarded measures of prevention of the force which they had on foot in the province. At any rate we might be quite certain that the troops in the province were amply sufficient to put down the drilling. This Lord Gosford must have known, and he ought to have taken measures accordingly, especially as he himself declared that these drillings pointed to nothing but open revolt. Lord 438 Gosford might also, with the forces he had at his command, have put a stop to the violence which was exercised towards the peaceful inhabitants; yet instead of doing any of these things, he had let things take their course, and never informed the Government at home leading them to think that nothing at all was amiss, until at last he was obliged to write word that the drillings took place every Sunday. He believed that he was justified in saying that the Government had made itself responsible for the acts of Lord Gosford. He was supported in this belief by finding Lord Glenelg making use of very strong terms of approbation in reference to Lord Gosford's conduct. On the 27th of November, 1837, Lord Glenelg expressed his gratitude, and that of the Ministry, his colleagues, to the noble Earl for "the good faith, the moral courage, and the perseverance with which under the most discouraging circumstances, he had still endeavoured to carry out the liberal policy" of the Ministry. But the noble Secretary had thought fit to accept the resignation of Lord Gosford on the most curious grounds—namely, that the proper course of policy would be more conveniently followed out by a person less implicated than Lord Gosford in the events of the last few years; but surely if this reason were good far the resignation of Lord Gosford, it would apply with still more force to the resignation of Lord Glenelg himself. Still Lord Glenelg stated that Lord Gosford "had acted throughout with the utmost temper, discretion, and good faith." This was Lord Glenelg's attestation in favour of the noble Earl, and the same attestation had been repeated by the organs of Government both in that and the other House. On the whole, the papers he had before him seemed to show that it would have been easy to put a stop to the beginnings of that which subsequent eruptions rendered it much more difficult to smother; that much violence might have been spared; that effusion of blood might have been spared; and that House might have been spared the painful task of delivering the people of Canada into the hands of arbitrary Government. He had thus stated his sentiments, and however, feebly, he had stated his sentiments fairly and fully on this great and important question, and having done this he should be anxious to hear the opinions of more experienced 439 Members on the question, and leave what he had said in the hands of the House. With respect to the Bill before the House, he would say that there was no question but that in some shape or other they must have a Bill to suspend the constitution of Lower Canada, because in effect that constitution was suspended already, and was stated to be so, as appeared from a dispatch of the noble Earl by the insurgents themselves, and indeed it was the expression of the noble Lord opposite, who had stated that the Constitution was already suspended. But the Bill appeared to him to have much more in it that was objectionable as regarded the rights of the people; and he could not help thinking that there was no necessity that Parliament should divest itself of its authority in order to confer on an individual arbitrary power; he did not think it fitting to confer such power on any individual whatever as would enable him to forejudge all questions almost which could arise in the colony before they could be decided in this country, and he must confess his surprise to find that the hon. Gentlemen who usually promoted Radical principles had received the announcement of this appointment with so very much satisfaction. It would be in the recollection of the House, too, how strongly those hon. Gentlemen had been opposed to the Irish Coercion Bill, as it was termed, and how strenuously that measure had been denounced and deprecated; yet now, when a bill of much greater extent was proposed, there were scarcely ten men, and those Mr. Roebuck had disavowed, who were found to oppose it; in short, there never was a more happily-timed appointment than that of Lord Durham; like the twin stars, forthwith on his appearance—Concidunt venti, fugiuntque nubes.He had heard that great advance had been made in the science of government in the course of the 19th century, but he had witnessed no proof of this improvement which had filled him with so much astonishment. It appeared, however, that there was not any objection on the opposite side to arbitrary power, and that bill conferred more arbitrary power than he believed had ever been before conferred on an individual, and which he thought was calculated to throw the Canadians into a state similar to that of this country under Edward 3rd. There seemed no 440 objection to arbitrary power, but only to the manner in which it was exercised, and to the person in whom it was vested. These remarks he had offered without having referred in the least to the details of the Bill, and only in the endeavour to take a general view of the case, and he had spoken at greater length than he had a right to speak in that House; but he thought it necessary to explain his sentiments with respect to the case of Canada, and to explain that he admitted the painful obligation they were placed under of suspending, for a time, the constitution of that country. But he did think that some share of the blame (he did not attempt to state the amount of it), but he did say, that some part of the blame of the present unfortunate situation of affairs rested on those who administered the Government of this country, and glad should he be, if it turned out that the inefficient and reprehensible acts of various administrators of colonial affairs had not been among the most efficient causes in which originated the painful necessity of suspending the constitution.
§ The Chancellor of the Exchequerfelt it impossible to complain of any part of the argument of the hon. Member who had just sat down, without bearing testimony, at the same time, to the ability which was displayed in other parts of that speech; but he must also take leave to say, that while a speech might be able, at the same time it might deal unfairly with the question under discussion; it appeared to him that the tendency of the speech of the hon. Gentleman, and of the speeches of other hon. Gentlemen opposite was to induce hon. Gentlemen from that (the Ministerial) side of the House to pass over to the relief of that small minority to which the hon. Gentleman had adverted. The hon. Gentleman had, under a false and mistaken view of consistency, called upon Gentlemen on the Ministerial side of the House to cooperate with him, because they had taken a particular line during the progress of the Coercion Bill for Ireland, in order, that by the league, the hon. Gentleman might increase the numbers of his minority. He did not say it was the intention, but it certainly was the tendency of the hon. Gentleman's speech to produce such a result. He would take the next portion of the speech, that which contained charges against her Majesty's Government. He would say that there was no portion of her Majesty's Go- 441 vernment, no individual Member of it who was disposed to shrink from an entire and full responsibility for every act done by Lord Gosford, and for every measure to which he had had recourse. They were ready to stand by the approval which they had expressed of Lord Gosford's administration, and undoubtedly no individual could feel greater or higher pleasure in according praise to Lord Gosford than he who had then the honour to address them, and who had been long closely united with the noble Lord by ties of intimacy and of friendship. He would ask the House whether the hon. Gentleman opposite had dealt fairly with the correspondence of Lord Gosford? The hon. Gentleman had asked what could be so contradictory and inconsistent as the statements made by Lord Gosford in one and the same despatch? Lord Gosford, says the hon. Gentleman in one part of bis dispatch, admits that he does not conceive there is any ground for alarm, and yet, in the next sentence contradicts himself by saying he thought Government might be under the necessity of suspending the constitution. Those statements did not appear to him to involve any inconsistency. Lord Gosford in one part admitted that there was no immediate cause of alarm, and in the other suggested a possible future result. If the hon. Gentleman had attended with the same pleasure and instruction which he had to the speech made by the right hon. and learned Gentleman on his right, he would find this distinction recognized. Lord Gosford had said that he apprehended no immediate danger from physical force—no outbreak requiring military interposition. It was perfectly consistent with that to say, that there might still be a necessity to have recourse to a new system of law. Suppose that no outbreak had taken place at all, that there had been no insurrection, but that from year to year the House of Assembly had steadily refused to aid the Government of the country in the administration of affairs, would the hon. Gentleman say that the necessity of an alteration in the constitution as contemplated by Lord Gosford would not arise? It should be recollected, that it was not simply a stopping of the supplies which had taken place. It should be recollected that all the ordinary functions of civil Government in the province were about to be suspended; that the Canadians had already proceeded to the election of justices of the peace of" their own, had empowered civil and military officers of their own 442 appointment to act, and had done these things in defiance of the constituted authorities. He would ask the hon. Gentleman whether, if such a state of things were permitted to continue, it would not be necessary to have recourse to the supreme power of the state. If that distinction was recognised, the House would easily see the perfect consistency of denying that there was any danger from physical force, and at the same time expressing an apprehension that the necessity for a certain contingency may arise. He rejoiced that the charge made against Lord Gosford, and against the Government which confided in him, was not that they had precipitated matters into a state of disorganisation and confusion, but that they had acted with forbearance and caution, that they had exhausted patience itself, and had waited till the last moment when forbearance was justifiable, and that it was not until the nature of the case was such as to warrant the necessity of the step, that her Majesty's Government had recommended measures of severity and of repression. The hon. Gentleman said, that if Government had followed the advice given them last year, the insurrection would have been spared. Did the hon. Gentleman sincerely entertain that opinion? He ought not to doubt the hon. Gentleman's sincerity. But did he seriously think, upon reflection, that he could sustain that opinion? Did the hon. Gentleman think that by such means, Canada would have been preserved in tranquillity and the present crisis avoided? The hon. Gentleman said, the resolutions were insulting to the Canadians, but would not the repeal of the Act of 1831 have an equal insult? The argument was, that they should have repealed the Act in the last Session, but if that had been done and—if the repeal had caused a rebellion—how would the responsibility of Ministers have been lessened? The hon. Gentleman had been kind enough to say, that he did not believe Government was deficient in precautionary measures and in providing a sufficient military force in Canada. They thanked him for the generous concession he had made, but, fortunately for them, through the higher authority of a political opponent, his concession was of lesser importance. A generous admission to the same effect had been made by an authority, than which there was no higher in this land—he might say, in the civilised world, and the Duke of Wellington had stated, that no imputation rested upon the Government for any 443 want of military precaution in Canada. The hon. Gentleman might have spared the insinuation at the end of his speech, and the argument which accompanied it. Sir J. Colborne and the military authorities in Canada had made no complaint of want of support, but on the contrary, they had acknowledged that the Government was ready to anticipate all their demands. When the Duke of Wellington at home, and Sir John Colborne in the province, had brought no such charge against them, they were willing to submit to the taunts of the hon. Gentleman. But even if these high military authorities had not been with them—had the Government introduced a great military force into Canada not to repress disturbance, but for political purposes, and that resistance had ensued, then, indeed, they might have felt a deep responsibility, and might well have been all reproached by the hon. Gentleman opposite. That hon. Gentleman had referred to the despatch of Sir John Colborne, dated the 6th of October, as one giving Government a warning to adopt precautionary measures. There was one part of the despatch of Sir John Colborne, to which, however, the hon. Gentleman had not thought proper to refer. He alluded to that passage in which it was said that the great mass of the Canadian people could not be excited or induced to take an active part with the persons who were sounding the alarm. When such a statement, and such an expression of opinion came to them from the highest military authority in the province, they saw nothing to induce them to send, and would not have been justified in sending out a large military force. Undoubtedly it would be unnecessary for him to dilate on the general merits of the question then before the consideration of the House. For with very few exceptions, the absolute and unavoidable necessity of the measure had been admitted by both sides of the House. As to the leading principle of the Bill, namely, the suspension of the constitution of the year 1791, there had been no great difference of opinion expressed in that House. It would ill become him at that hour of the night, to occupy their attention for any great length of time. He would, however, for a few moments, take the liberty of setting them right as to a portion of the argument relied on by the learned gentleman who had appeared at the bar to oppose the Bill. He did not care so much about it, because the matter related to himself personally, as be- 444 cause he wished to give the House an opportunity of judging for themselves, by one illustration, of the accuracy of the statements which had been made at the bar, and of the confidence they deserved. The learned Gentleman at the bar had stated, in referring to the period when he (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) was Secretary of State, that he had practised a deception on the Canadian deputies which led to the subsequent refusal of supplies by the House of Assembly. He had upon a former occasion, discussed this point face to face with Mr. Roebuck, and he was not, therefore, disposed now to discuss it with any acrimony whatever; but still he thought it right to state to the House what were the real facts of the case. He had accepted office in the month of April, 1834.. At that time the Committee relating to Canada was sitting. Two of the deputies from the Canadian Assembly, Mr. Viger and Mr. Morin, were in this country attending to the progress of the bill for the suspension of Lord Ripon's Act. On accepting the seals of office, he became a member of the Committee, and he inquired before he received the deputies whether it was the wish of the Committee that he should receive them. Many members of the Committee expressed their desire that he might receive these Canadian deputies. He received them, then, with perfect confidence and the utmost fairness, as well as the gentlemen who accompanied them, and this he did without having a single individual on his part present. He then stated his unwillingness to carry Lord Stanley's Bill without having acquired that full knowledge of the affairs of the colony which he hoped he might hereafter possess, and which the occupation of office for the short time he held it, could not give him. He said he wished to have the means of judging justly and fairly before he acted; and he then asked them if the Assembly, in order to afford full time for deliberation, would pass a Supply Bill? He was told upon that occasion by them, that there could be no doubt but that a Supply Bill would be passed. He stated distinctly, that the course pursued by Lord Dalhousie was one that he did not approve of, and one that he did not mean to follow. He had held a confidential communication with those gentlemen, and yet the confidential communication was made public in the newspapers in America; and this, too, was done in contradiction to the declarations that had been 445 made to him. They founded this breach of a solemn engagement upon a statement made in the newspapers. It was stated, too, that he had promised distinctly that no money should be paid out of the funds placed at the command of the mother country. This was stated, though the contrary was to be found in a despatch addressed by himself to Lord Aylmer, and directed by him to be laid before the House of Assembly. Would it be credited by any two Members, individuals in that House, that he could have violated an engagement made with two members of the House of Assembly, and had afterwards directed the proofs of the supposed violation of that engagement to be laid on the table of the House of Assembly, of which M. Morin and Viger were leading members. He had but one word more to add upon this subject. They had heard from Mr. Roebuck a charge against the mother country founded upon a review of the whole of its relations with Canada from the conquest up to the present time. He thought that the hon. Gentleman who had last spoken had given high authority upon this subject. He thought the conclusion drawn from the evidence of Dr. Franklin was important thereon; and what was still of greater value, that authority would be felt to be important beyond the Atlantic. Still he had another witness to produce—a witness too of some importance. He did not compare his witness to Dr. Franklin, although there was some analogy between them. He had a witness to produce who so late as the year 1834, had no hesitation in stating, that "the most anxious and earnest anxiety existed in the home Government, to carry into effect the suggestions of the Committee of 1828," and that, "the endeavours of the Government to that end had been unremittingly guided in all cases by the interests of the colony." He could not express in a more decided manner, his approval of the conduct of the Government from 1828 to 1834 than in such a sentence as that. Members of Parliament must not be surprised that he should be desirous to claim his witness upon the present occasion, neither need they be surprised that this witness had not been quoted by the learned gentleman at the bar. Mr. Roebuck was himself that witness. Mr. Roebuck had been a Member of the Committee of 1834, he was a party to that report in which it was so generously admitted, and so liberally declared that there had 446 existed an earnest and anxious desire on the part of the home Government to carry into effect its intentions for the advantage and interest of the colony. He thanked the House for the attention with which he had been listened to. He first wished to vindicate Lord Gosford, and also to vindicate the Government; and he wished also to call the attention of the House to the conduct of the hon. Gentleman at the bar, and to cite that learned Gentleman's authority against his own arguments.
§ Sir R. Peelsaid, he gave, on a former night, his cordial and unhesitating support to the Address brought in by the Government, pledging the House to the support of her Majesty, in her attempt (he hoped a successful one) to put an end to the revolt in the colony of Canada. He was now called upon by her Majesty's Government to take into consideration a measure of totally a different nature—a measure for the suspension of the constitution and privileges of the people of an important province. It was his intention also, after mature reflection, but yet with great reluctance, to give his support to the proposition then under the consideration of the House. He gave his support to that proposition, because he found no safe alternative to which he could resort. If he had any doubt of the justifiableness of the proceeding—if he saw any other practicable mode of arranging the differences which had unhappily arisen between this country and her colonies—he should be induced to withhold his assent from the present Bill. But he considered that it was justified, in point of equity, by the conduct of the House of Assembly of Lower Canada, and he saw in point of prudence no other course, which, under the circumstances, could be pursued. He should deeply regret if their justification before the House and the world rested on a minute inquiry into the acts and proceedings of the Canadian House of Assembly. It rested on the simple, plain, and intelligible ground on which he had given his support to the resolutions of last year. Five years had now elapsed since the popular Assembly of Lower Canada had wholly refused to make any provision for the carrying on of the civil government of the colony. Five years had now elapsed since the judges, the civil officers and public functionaries had been left without that provision, for the affording of which the faith and honour of the Government 447 was pledged. What course, then, was to be pursued? It was impossible to leave the public servants of the state, the judges of the land, and the other civil officers of the colony, without those salaries and provisions, the payment of which was required, not for English purposes, but for the due administration of the colony itself, upon which its success and prosperity depended. It was impossible that they could be left destitute for an indefinite period of time. Were the people of this country to undertake the charge of their support? Or upon whom was it to be thrown? The duty could only rest upon those who were interested in the performance of the local administrative functions. If the stopping of the supplies had been a fair and ordinary exercise of a legitimate and undoubted power, and was intended only to assert a principle, instead of being attended with such mischievous and fatal results, he would not, on that ground, support a Bill for the annihilation of the constitution. The express ground, however, upon which they put it was this—"We will not pay the public officers. We will suspend the machinery of government unless you consent to bear the charge of your civil administration, and to make fundamental changes in the constitution." It appeared to him (Sir Robert Peel) to be an unjust and unfair condition to attach to the payment of the public functionaries. To refuse to bear the expense of its own administration unless the mother country would consent to make fundamental changes in the constitution, was a condition which would seem to justify the mother country as the supreme arbiter of such rights and demands, to resort to violent measures for their repression. That is the simple intelligible ground on which to justify our interference. In point of public policy, was there any other course? The law recognized the Assembly and its powers; but a revolt had taken place. He did not think that a revolt justified a suspension of the constitution; that was not the necessary punishment of a revolt. We should have recourse to the execution of the laws, the employment of a military force, the apprehension and trial of the persons guilty of the revolt, and their punishment if convicted. These were the legitimate steps to be taken for the punishment of a revolt; the suspension of a constitution was not the necessary legal punishment. But if the revolt had been 448 aggravated by the Assembly—if it had grown out of the Assembly—that might create a necessity for suspending the constitution. There was only one of four courses to be pursued—there could be no other. They might call together the Colonial Assembly, and ask the counsel of that body. Would any one advise that? In the present state of public feeling in the colony, would any one advise that the present Assembly should be called together, considering that a number of the Members of the Assembly were implicated in the affair (he did not say whether they were guilty or not); in these circumstances, would any one advise that the present Assembly should be called? Would they, having called that Assembly, bona fide abide by its recommendation? Would they merely call it for the purpose of offering an impediment to public affairs and then dismiss it with contumely. Would they, then, and that was the next course, advise a dissolution of the Assembly in the present state of the colony? He thought no prudent man could advise such a course. Would they, then, advise the course of leaving the present Assembly in the possession of all its powers—of all the authority which it possesses, but suspend its functions, and not call it together, taking away by law the power that renders it necessary to be called together once a year? In such a case it would be necessary to obtain a power to carry on the local affairs of the colony, and also to give a power to the Executive Government to control the disposal of the public money, which would otherwise have to be voted by the House of Assembly. Now, it appeared to him that this was the most objectionable course that the House could pursue. It would be the greatest insult that could be cast upon the representative principle. It would be in effect to leave the Assembly emasculated—possessing the mere shadow of its representative authority whilst they annihilated its representative functions, and gave to a public officer the power to put his hand into the public purse, and to direct the expenditure of the public money. On consideration of these different courses which it would be competent to pursue, he had come to a conclusion adverse to the adoption of any of them. It appeared to him that, great as is the difficulty that might arise from the proceedings they were about to pursue, yet, upon the whole, considering the pre- 449 sent state of public feeling in Canada—considering the present agitated state of the public mind in that province—considering the disposition which had been manifested on the part of the Assembly, that it was not prepared to co-operate with the Parliament of England in carrying on the local government of the colony, unless upon conditions to which the Parliament declared it could not submit, he had reluctantly come to the conclusion that there was no other course which they could safely pursue, unless suspending the constitution of Lower Canada for a limited time, and making a temporary provision for such period for carrying on the Government of that country. On this ground he gave his consent to the main and principal object of the Bill, namely, the suspension of the constitution for a limited period, and the devolution of sufficient powers to the governor appointed by the Crown for the purpose of carrying on the affairs of Lower Canada. He omitted altogether from his consideration the person appointed by the Crown. He treated any one appointed by the Crown with that respect which he was bound to yield to the choice of the Crown, and with that respect which was due to the situation which the individual held. He would not allow any other than great public considerations to influence his opinion. He would withhold no power from the individual so appointed on account of any difference of political opinion; but whilst he was prepared to concede all just and necessary power, he would never consent to confer one iota of power beyond what appeared to be required by the nature and the exigency of the case. It would not become them in the discussion of these important concerns, to be led away by any consideration of the personal character of any individual, from the calm and deliberate view of the case, or to allow any such consideration to reconcile them to the extension of powers the most important that ever were confided by Parliament. Such considerations would ill befit the grave nature of such an occasion. In a matter of great emergency, personal character and the liberal opinions of a chief governor sunk into insignificance, compared to the great constitutional question at issue. Whatever powers were necessary for the effectual execution of the Bill, he willingly conceded to the governor whom the Crown appointed to 450 execute its functions. He would enable Lord Durham, by the advice of certain councillors, to make such orders as were necessary for the local government of the country; but then he would not consent that Lord Durham should, with the advice of councillors so appointed by him, have any powers beyond what the temporary exigency of the case required. To that part of the Bill which gave any such powers he should offer his most decided opposition. He objected to the giving any such powers to Lord Durham on the ground that it was an unnecessary and gratuitous violation of the constitution. If they asked him to violate a constitutional principle, and showed him a great necessity for it, then he might consent to it; for he had a safeguard in the necessity that it could not be drawn into a precedent; but where, under the pretence of mitigating the severity of the Act, they either in the preamble or the provisions proposed other regulations which no necessity called for, and which touched upon constitutional principles, for which there was not a necessity, and which were therefore unjustifiable, then he for one was determined to expose the fallacy on which they rested their aggressions, and to lay bare the delusion on which the argument was grounded, and he was resolved to show that what they called a liberal measure, was, in reality, despotic and unconstitutional. He claimed from the House of Commons, he claimed from men of all parties who adhered to constitutional principles, support in opposing this portion of the Bill, as not being justified by any paramount necessity, or by the exigency of the case. He should propose to omit from this Bill that part of it which might be called a recognition by that House that a certain Assembly to be called by Lord Durham should have a representative character and capacity. He hoped that Members would not allow themselves to be led away by plausible and specious arguments, grounded on a false assumption that he was endeavouring to render more despotic the powers given to Lord Durham. He hoped they would not he deluded by assertions of this nature until they had ascertained the intrinsic weight that belonged to them. Here was a Bill suspending the constitution in Lower Canada. It annihilated the House of Assembly in that province, which represented the feelings of the people. Should 451 he then call, indirectly as it was done in the preamble of this Bill, any Assembly summoned by the governor—of an Assembly representing the interests and opinions of her Majesty's subjects? Were hon. Gentlemen thus to give, by their enactment, representatives to Canada? While they suspended the constitution were they to have persons, so collected, assume the character of representatives of the interests and opinions of her Majesty's subjects? After suspending the Assembly, and also after suspending every part of the Act, which gave a constituency to that Assembly, were they to delegate to the governor of the province the return of Members to that Assembly? Were they to do this after they had suspended every constitutional right? Did they mean that the governor should call any such Assembly which they could be disposed to acknowledge as representatives? Were they, the representatives of the people of England, to acknowledge any such Assembly, disconnected as it must be from the people representing the interests and feelings of any class of her Majesty's subjects? Oh! if the King of the Low Countries had done this—if he had declared that he felt it necessary to abolish representation in Belgium; that he meant to suspend the representative system there for two years; that all parts of it were in revolt; that in Belgium the constitution should be suspended; and then said that, in the exercise of his prerogative, he was determined upon carving Belgium into certain divisions, so that he must be sure of having those who were distinguished for their fidelity to him; and having established tranquillity, that he would call certain persons to advise him as to the interests of Belgium and Holland, and that they must be regarded in the nature of representatives for Belgium! If the King of the Netherlands had done this their indignation would have overflowed. But what should we think of that hypocrite who, whilst he took away the representatives which the country already possessed, pretended that he would find better ones in their stead. But if all this was true as respected Lower Canada, what should be said of Upper Canada? Had the inhabitants of the upper province done anything to entitle them to be deprived of their constitutional rights? was there anything in Upper Canada which rendered 452 the existence of a Legislative Assembly dangerous; Upper Canada of whose loyalty Sir Francis Head was so assured, that he ventured upon that, as he thought rash experiment, of removing every soldier from within its limits? That experiment had succeeded, however, and the upper province of Canada had, indeed, proved itself to be loyal and faithful in its allegiance to its Sovereign. And was it to be said that a mere exercise of the prerogative of the Crown was to suspend the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada? He entreated the House of Commons not to allow its estimation of the high character of the noble Lord to whom these high matters were to be intrusted to reconcile it to an unconstitutional principle. which, applied to the province of Upper Canada, was as indefensible as anything ever propounded by any despot in Europe. Last year he had been called upon to agree to certain resolutions proposed by the noble Lord opposite in reference to the Canadas, and had agreed to them. The last of those resolutions was as follows:—"That great inconvenience has been sustained by his Majesty's subjects inhabiting the provinces of Lower Canada and Upper Canada from the want of some adequate means for regulating and adjusting questions respecting the trade and commerce of the said provinces, and divers other questions wherein the said provinces have a common interest; and it is expedient, that the legislature of the said provinces respectively be authorised to make provision for the just regulation and adjustment of such their common interests." At the instigation of the Ministers he had voted that resolution, declaring that the persons best calculated to discuss not only the local interests of the respective provinces, but their mutual relations, were their own legislative assemblies; and if he stood alone he would never recognise any act giving the Crown a prerogative to suspend the constitutional rights and functions of the Canadians. He objected to it as a most dangerous precedent thus to call upon Parliament to recognise such a prerogative, not by any direct enactments, but by a mere allusion in a preamble, and thus creating a confusion of prerogative and parliamentary enactments to which no limits could be with precision set. What necessity, also, was there for it on the present occasion? If the Government of her Majesty required new and extraor- 453 dinary powers, let them be asked from Parliament, and if necessary they would be granted; if, on the other hand, the prerogative of the Crown was already sufficient for what they proposed to do, let them at once advise the Crown to exercise that prerogative in such a manner as the case required. But in the existence of any doubt upon this point, let them not by any tortuous implication in the preamble to a Bill seek to obtain a Parliamentary sanction for their proceedings. Let them consider to what such a course would lead. The existence of a prerogative in the Crown, for the exercise of which the Ministers of the Crown were responsible was assumed. Let her Majesty's Ministers take upon themselves the responsibility of exercising it, and advise the Crown accordingly. Let them do this if they pleased; but he for one, in the absence of all information on the point, and with the doubts upon his mind which he really entertained upon the subject, would not consent to be dragged into a participation in that responsibility which properly belonged only to the Ministers of the Crown. He was prepared to have his motives misconstrued even upon this head. He knew it would probably be said of him that he wanted to prevent the Canadians from obtaining the advantages of a free constitution. He wanted no such thing. He believed that the subject was one which required mature consideration; but he did not believe that it would be possible to govern the Canadian provinces successfully, either with regard to their own interests or those of the mother country, or to the permanent connexion between the two, without the establishment of a free constitution. Then, again, there was another point in this Bill to which he must give his most decided opposition, namely, the power proposed to be vested in the Crown to repeal the Act by advice of the Privy Council. Of all the events which had taken place within his memory, embracing as it did a period of history in which constitutional principles had been more discussed than in any other of similar duration, he never recollected a proposition more unconstitutional and unjustifiable than this. If her Majesty's Ministers called upon him to-day to pass this Bill into a law, he would never recognise a power in the Crown to repeal that enactment. If a constitutional principle of such magnitude and importance were to be 454 admitted, that an act passed by Parliament could be repealed at pleasure by the Crown, there was no knowing to what it might lead hereafter. Besides, the very clumsy manner in which the whole Bill was drawn up, but remarkably so in this clause, showed that the framers of the measure themselves did not very thoroughly understand to what extent they wished the principle to be carried. The marginal abstract professed to give this power to her Majesty in council, "when Parliament was not sitting," but the enacting part of the text omitted this restriction, and gave her Majesty the absolute power to repeal the act at all times, and under all circumstances. For his own part, however, he cared not for the distinction as to whether Parliament were sitting or not, he would never allow the Crown a power to suspend, not merely a few matters of detail in an Act of Parliament, but absolutely and entirely to annihilate that very enactment which had been passed by the three estates of the Legislature. No: if Parliament were to be called upon to pass this act, suspending the constitutional rights of the provinces of Canada, at least let it also have the graceful task of restoring those high privileges when the happy occasion for so doing presented itself. Let it not be said that those privileges were forfeited by law and restored by prerogative. To have that said would be an advance in unconstitutional principles the contemplation of which should make the House pause before they gave their sanction to the first step which might lead to it. There was another point also to which he could not but allude. It was proposed to be enacted that when the Governor-general had called together the council which was to assist him in passing the measures which might be necessary for the adjustment of the affairs of the two provinces, no one in that council but himself, who had just arrived from England should be allowed the privilege of proposing any such measures for adoption. Now he could not see upon what pretence such a restriction upon the powers of the councillors should be passed. The council was to have the power of making laws, but no one but the Governor-general was to propose any. No one could open his lips with the suggestion of any, for if he did so the measure he suggested would become invalid, if passed. The only man, in short, who was to propose anything on 455 the subject upon which they had all met to deliberate, was the very one amongst them who having but just landed from England, might be supposed to be least informed of any on the practical details of these great interests. Now, it appeared to him that if the governor-general had been invested with the power to elect this council and to dismiss it at pleasure, there could be no possible necessity for tying up the hands of the councillors in the way proposed. He would not enter further into these details at present. He had thought it right to give this full notice to the House of the amendments which he intended to propose in this measure, in order respectfully to beg hon. Members not to pledge their opinions in favour of these propositions, merely upon the consideration of the feelings of confidence and respect which they might entertain for the noble Lord into whose hands these high and peculiar powers were to be reposed. This bill was limited in its application for two years, and he should readily assent to any suggestion which might be adopted for giving the Canadians a restoration of their constitutional rights. All that he objected to was, that the Crown should have the power of suspending absolutely and without limitation the provisions of the most soleman and important act passed in his time. Sir, (continued the right hon. Baronet), in the course of the debate express reference has been made to me by the hon. Member for Lincoln (Mr. Bulwer) in reference to that part of the subject which has occupied a portion of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer. And I must say, that, giving that right hon. Gentleman credit for the acuteness and ability which he is known to possess, and being perfectly satisfied that he introduced to the notice of the House every paper which could support his case, and being aware that he filled the office of Secretary of the Colonies, and must be well versed in its affairs—if the statement which he made be intended as a defence of the Government against the charge preferred by my hon. Friend the Member for Newark it was a lamentable failure. The right hon. Gentleman says, "we have at least this satisfaction, that the charge preferred against us is not that of precipitation and harshness, of tyranny and severity—the whole charge against us is, that we have pushed to excess the principles of lenity 456 and conciliation." Sir, the hon. Gentleman is not at liberty to prefer an indictment against himself. The charge is not that he and his colleages have pushed the principles of lenity and conciliation to excess, but it is this—that they have spoiled their conciliation and neutralized their vigour by the nature of their proceedings. It is, that they have never been either consistently conciliatory, or consistently vigorous. The right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Lincoln seemed to imply that on the military part of the question, the Government received a complete acquittal from my noble Friend the Duke of Wellington. "Here," says the right hon. Gentleman, "is the highest military authority in this country, and he has pronounced that we are completely justified in all our proceedings respecting the augmentation of the military force in Canada." Why, Sir, I think my right hon. Friend is mistaken as to the testimony of the Duke of Wellington. My noble Friend, I believe, did state that the Government had ample force in Canada for the purpose of suppressing any revolt; but I am much mistaken if my noble Friend did not state this charge, which he preferred against the Government, namely, that when you had given directions to the governor of the Canadas to withdraw troops from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the navigation being there open, you did not take care to send other troops thither; and, Sir, after the high and merited compliment which the right hon. Gentleman has paid to my noble Friend, if that was the charge which he preferred against the Government that the navigation being open, although there was a sufficient number of troops in Canada, yet still you compelled the withdrawal of forces from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, which you might, and ought to have supplied by fresh augmentations, let me tell you that the high military authority which you have cited, so far from being liable to be pleaded as a vindication of your conduct, constitutes a strong accusation against it. But as has been just said in the very able speech of the hon. Member for Newark, this is not a military question. This is a case of which every civilian is competent to judge, namely, whether or no after the resolutions of last year and the state of the public mind in Canada, every rational man must not have believed that on the arrival 457 of these resolutions, public excitement must have been aggravated, and that it was a time to take the additional precaution to send such a force as must, beyond doubt, suppress revolt? This, then, I want to know, whether you did send such a force to Canada as might intimidate the disaffected, calm the apprehensions of the timid, encourage the loyal, and prevent that outbreak of popular violence and that unfortunate shedding of blood which has unhappily occurred? Why, Sir, when we see Lord Gosford and Sir James Kempt bestow praises which I echo on these poor Canadian people—when we see them dwell on their honesty, simplicity, and industry—on their contentment with British rule, and their attachment to British connexion—and when we read that of this same people, there were (necessarily, I believe) killed 200, and 300 wounded in one village (that is 500 in the whole killed and wounded; for one gentleman stated that he counted 157 dead bodies, and that there were 300 wounded, besides several others dead), then I have a right to ask, might any precaution be taken which could have prevented such a lamentable loss of life? I rejoice, as every well affected subject must, at the triumph of the law and the success of the Queen's troops; but I have no such feeling with regard to that victory as if it had been achieved in a righteous cause over the open enemies of the country. When such a slaughter is found necessary or justifiable, the occasion which gave rise to a conflict leading to such calamitous consequences is deeply to be lamented; and if by a timely supply of troops, you might have averted that melancholy necessity, then, I maintain, there were rational grounds for believing that the necessity might occur, in consequence of the activity and delusion practised by the leaders of the Canadian people, and that it was the duty of the Government to overlook the miserable (comparatively speaking) consideration of the inconvenience of a military demonstration, and by a timely display of force to prevent the desertion of the well-affected and encourage the fearful—it was, I say, your duty to manifest such a determination to support the authority of the British Crown, and to maintain the British connection, as to deter designing men from practising on the simplicity of a loyal and well-conducted people. So far from exposing 458 yourself to the unjust reflection of having acted in a severe and tyrannical manner, you would have secured and deserved the compliment of having made a merciful demonstration of vigour. Why, if on looking to the papers before the House we see what my hon. Friend, the Member for Newark, pointed out in a dispatch that there were two sentences conflicting in opinion, in one of which it was stated that there was no danger of commotion, and in the other, that the suspension of the constitution might be necessary, and that this discrepancy was met by the right hon. Gentleman's argument that the statements were consistent and distinct, inasmuch as there might be a suspension of the constitution and no apprehension of commotion, what will the right hon. Gentleman say if I be more successful than my hon. Friend, and find two contradictory opinions in one sentence which I shall read? Here it is: "As I stated in my former letters, I do not expect any serious commotion; at the same time, when I see so many clever unprincipled engines in action, yielding implicit obedience to the mandates of such a man as Mr. Papineau, it is impossible to set limits to the extent of mischief they construct.' Thus it is stated that the noble Lord (Gosford) saw no reason to apprehend the suspension of the constitution, or any chance of any commotion, and yet he adds that it is "impossible to set limits to the extent of the mischief they may construct." It appears to me that there were special and peculiar reasons connected with that province which made the event which has taken place not at all improbable, and called for an energetic course of proceeding in preventing it. What says Lord Gosford? "The jealousy that exists between the two origins is also a powerful instrument in the hands of a convention, or central committee, as before alluded to, and corresponding, as no doubt they do, with various parts of the province. The two extremes are doing incalculable mischief, and must disgust every friend to liberal measures." This being the impression of Lord Gosford, why was not an attempt made to send such a military force as would have prevented the necessity of making blood the boundary line which was to divide the inhabitants of French and English origin. But what has been the consequence? You have been obliged to call out volun- 459 teers. Was there ever an instance in which it was so essential that the enforcement of the civil authority should be intrusted to the military force, and in which the Government should have abstained, until the last moment and when it became absolutely indispensable, from relying on the suppression of this revolt by the aid of one party so inflamed as it was against the other? The right hon. Baronet went on to state that they had sent out last year resolutions which it was evident would aggravate the excitement in a ten-fold degree. Therefore he said, with respect to a military force, they had neutralised their vigour by the proceedings which they took to sustain it; and he must also say, that their conciliation lost much of its grace by the tardiness and delay with which it was displayed. Now, to give a proof under that head. They invited the House to be parties to certain resolutions, ten in number, the most important of which was the eighth; but they did not accompany this demonstration of vigour without some compensation in the shape of promises. The House was invited to accede to two resolutions, one of which stated, that it was inexpedient to make the Legislative Council elective, but that it was advisable that measures should be adopted for securing to that blanch of the legislature a greater degree of confidence; and the other resolution stated, that while it was extremely desirable to improve the composition of the Executive Council it would be unwise to submit it to the responsibility demanded by the House of Assembly. Now, would it not have been advisable when they communicated to the House of Assembly the measures of violence that they should also have communicated to the House of Assembly the perfection of those measures of grace with which they were to be accompanied? If they were not ready with those measures for the improvement of the Council why not suspend the meeting of the House of Assembly until they were ready? Why leave it to the Governor, after he had apprised the House of Assembly that the House of Commons had determined to take their money—why leave it to the Governor to snake the unsatisfactory communication, that he was sorry to say that he had nothing positive to communicate about the improvement of the Legislative or the Executive Council, but that measures of 460 improvement were under consideration? Would it not have been rational to have postponed making this communication until the Governor could lay before the House of Assembly the series of measures of improvement which he had to propose? It would have shown them that the House of Commons, when they consented to measures of necessary violence, was not so irritated as to refuse at the same time measures of redress. When Ministers communicated their intention to take the money, they should have also taken into consideration the improvement of the Executive Council, and they should have made known the names of the men whom they meant to propose. Could they state any valid excuse for not having done so? He had looked through the despatches of Lord Glenelg on this subject, and he found them the worthy echoes of those of Lord Gosford. He found in the series of despatches many declarations, that there was now no time for vacillation, that they must now be vigorous, that there must be no further delay; there were endless demonstrations of this sort, but the only real demonstration of promptitude and vigour was, the acceptance of the resignation of the Governor. Talking of resignations, was it true that Sir F. Head had been recalled? Canada was conspicuous for the recal of its Governors. Sir J. Col-borne had been recalled from Upper Canada, Sir F. Head had been recalled from Upper Canada, Colonel Arthur who had been recalled from Van Diemen's Land was to proceed to Canada, and Lord Gosford had been recalled from Lower Canada. It had been said, and certainly with truth, that one of the greatest evils in the administration of the affairs of the colony consisted in the succession of its Governors, for the moment they were becoming acquainted with the local interests of the colony they were removed. If this was an objection at all, it applied with quadruple force in the case of our North American provinces. With respect to the Executive and Legislative Councils, they had sent out three Commissioners to Canada to make inquiry. They had made their report with reference to the Executive Council, and they stated the principles upon which various improvements might be made in the Council. This was in 1836, and on the 14th of July, 1837, Lord Glenelg stated, that no delay should occur in acting on the Report, and that 461 he had no serious doubts respecting the wisdom of the suggestions of the Commissioners. If there was no doubt, why not call upon the House of Commons to pledge itself to the improvements last year? Eighteen months had now elapsed since the subject had been brought under consideration, although in July, 1837, Lord Glenelg had no doubt respecting the wisdom of the suggestions contained in the Report. And what was the cause assigned? It was the difficulty of getting men to fill the office. For eighteen months there was no doubt about the propriety of the thing, the whole doubt and difficulty was in getting the men. Lord Glenelg, however, said, that it was impossible to acquiesce in any further delay, and what did he do? To prevent mistakes he sent out to the Commissioners an extract from their own Report. He sent out to Lord Gosford, who was one of the Commissioners, an extract from his own Report, he told him to act upon the principles therein contained, to seize the first nine men he should meet, and to swear them in as councillors. It seemed to him, that if they wanted to afford a plausible justification for disaffection, the course pursued respecting these councils was well calculated to afford it to men who were not looking for real grievances, but for plausible grounds to make out a case of oppression. Eighteen months they had been in possession of the principle—there was no doubt entertained of the wisdom of the suggestions in the Report—they asked the House to concur in measures of severity; but when measures of improvement were mentioned, the answer was, that they intended to propose them, but they were not yet ready. There was repeated mention in the course of the despatches of Lord Glenelg of the great importance of some definitive measures; but this was another instance in which conciliatory measures had been spoiled and prejudiced by delay. He therefore thought, that this established his charge that the Government had not acted with lenity and forbearance; but that, in point of fact, a demonstration of timely vigour would have been true lenity and forbearance. He did not complain of the concessions that had been made. He believed, that they afforded an ample proof that in the course they had adopted they had met the justice of the case. He believed, that the feeling of the United States, of Europe, and of 462 the world, was, that they had done justice. He believed, that the general impression was, as was said by an hon. Gentleman, that in no other country in Europe, whether free or despotic, had greater moderation or forbearance been shown than by Great Britain during the continuance of this contest. But this forbearance was neutralised, as far as the conduct of the Government could neutralise it, by neglect, delay, and by the want of vigour and precaution; and he must say, that he did think, looking at the papers before the House, that for this outbreak in Canada, and for the state of mind in Canada which had led to this outbreak, for the false reliance that had been placed upon the support from this country, he did think that her Majesty's Government were morally and deeply responsible.
§ Lord John Russellsaid, that with respect to the real subject of debate, namely, whether the principle of this Bill should be affirmed by the House or not, so much had already been said on all sides of the House, and with such very great ability, and they had placed the subject in such various lights, that it made it unnecessary for him to enter much, if at all, into the discussion. But in the course of the debate, there had been mixed up so many other topics with reference to what on a former occasion he had said in the House, and so much censure had been passed on the conduct of the Government, that he felt that he could not allow the debate to close without some reference to these topics. And, first, with respect to the measure before the House. He would ask, had those most opposed to it suggested any rational plan as an alternative? Admitting, for the sake of argument, that the Legislative Council had been wholly in fault, and that the House of Assembly was wholly blameless, yet they had by general confession a House of Assembly and a Legislative Council so constituted that the result was the stoppage of all legislation, the entire refusal of the supplies necessary to carry on the Government, and the total absence of those laws which were necessary to the well-being of the community. In this state of things, an hon. Gentleman had made a proposition which seemed to him nothing more than this, namely, that the House of Assembly should be brought together again. There was, however, one part of the plan to which all parties were 463 willing to consent, namely, that Lord Durham should proceed to Canada. But did they suppose that Lord Durham would proceed to Canada without any power whatever, but as a mere spectator of the battles between the two adverse assemblies, and to declare the utter hopelessness of bringing them to a conclusion? Whatever charge of want of reform or of conciliation might now be made against Government, such a course as that referred to would show a weakness and a want of conciliation which would indeed deserve censure. A right hon. Gentleman opposite, in going into the amendments he proposed to make in Committee, had stated some strong objections to parts of the Bill, and he (Lord John Russell) must say, that in stating these objections the right hon. Gentleman (Sir R. Peel) had dealt in greater exaggeration than he had ever heard the right hon. Gentleman indulge in before. The right hon. Gentleman stated, that Government was acting on delusive grounds—on a pretence of liberality—and putting certain provisions into the Bill which did not properly belong to it. In his opinion the grounds of the Bill were perfectly natural and simple. Nothing could be more natural than this—to say that for a long time dissensions had prevailed in Canada—that they found it impossible to bring matters to an amicable termination—that the malcontents had at last proceeded to revolt, and that the revolt should be first suppressed, and that then they should proceed to adopt measures for the production of a better state of things. In order to do this latter, they intended to call in the aid and advice of persons resident in, and perfectly well acquainted with the wants and feelings of the province, and to learn from them what measures they thought likely to restore tranquillity. Was this false pretence?—were these delusive grounds? He owned that it seemed to him that hon. Gentlemen wished to fasten on the Bill a character not belonging to it, in order to furnish themselves with some feasible grounds for opposition to it. He had seen that evening symptoms of a sort of coquetry which was not now exhibited for the first time on the part of a right hon. Gentleman opposite. He had been passing very marked compliments on the speech of the hon. Member for London. The argument of that hon. Member was:—"If you are able to convene this meeting of the provincial representatives, why not convene the Assembly?" 464 The hon. Gentleman seemed to consider it an argument of great force, but he could not see in it any force whatever. Suppose that peace was restored—suppose they convened the Assembly—they would only bring together a body which, in its present state of irritation, would say, "Give us an Elective Council, or we will not vote the supplies;" while the Legislative Council would declare that if they were made elective the constitution would be destroyed. Thus, then, there would soon be an end of the meetings of the Assembly. But if they collected a body consisting not only of persons selected from those two bodies, of persons representing the feelings of Lower Canada, but also some who would represent the feeling of the upper province, together with some Members of the Legislative Council, then they would have some chance of seeing the matters in dispute satisfactorily arranged. There was another matter which the right hon. Gentleman had not taken notice of, but which he had slated expressly. He had stated, that this Committee which was to be assembled was not to have any legislative power. He stated that he considered it absolutely necessary that the supreme legislative control should rest with Parliament, where the constitution had placed it. There was thus a total difference between the body which the Government would have power to assemble and one which met for the purpose of legislation. The right hon. Gentleman, in spite of his (Lord John Russell's) statement to this effect, had spoken to-night as if the governor and the Committee intended to octroyer a constitution. [Sir R. Peel: "No, no!"] The right hon. Gentleman had certainly used the word. [Sir R. Peel: "No, no!"] With respect to the preamble of the Bill the right hon. Gentleman had used this argument, that if they intended to arrange the matter by the use of the prerogative of the Crown, they need not provide for it in the preamble of the Bill. Truly, it seemed to him desirable that if that could be done they should be provided by the Bill with power for the purpose. It seemed to him right that when extreme measures of this kind were to be adopted, they should be formally placed before Parliament, and that no part of it should be concealed, lest afterwards Parliament should disapprove of it. After all the right hon. Gentleman had said against the nature of the preamble, it did not seem that he now intended an altera- 465 tion similar to that which had been at first supposed. He had thought, from what the right hon. Gentleman had stated, and from his proposal to leave out the preamble, that he went so far as to say that they ought not to frame the constitution of Canada on the principle of a free constitution. But now he disavowed that intention, and would merely alter some words in no very intelligible manner. They never had said that Canada should be governed otherwise than by a free constitution; and he said that it was expedient to make provision for the temporary government of Canada, in order afterwards to make provision for governing it on principles conducive to the maintenance of the rights and liberties of the province, but the right hon. Gentleman would strike out the words to that effect in the preamble. The great matter for Parliament to consider was the necessity of the case. If the necessity did not exist, the Bill would not have been demanded; but, when they did demand such despotic authority, he (Lord John Russell) thought it necessary that Parliament should know that they only sought a temporary power, and that the paramount wish of Government was to have a free constitution established in Canada. The right hon. Gentleman had gone on to find fault with a provision of the Bill giving a power to the Queen in council to suspend its operation for a time, and contended that they wished to suspend the constitution of Upper Canada. Why, the Bill contemplated no interference with the constitution of Upper Canada; with respect to the ordinary working of that constitution it would not be interfered with in the least, Neither did they propose that the Assembly should be deprived of any of the privileges it enjoyed; on the contrary, they proposed that as the people of Upper Canada had long complained, and justly complained, of the manner in which their trade was interfered with, and their navigation impeded, by the regulation of the lower province, they proposed that ten persons should be selected from the upper province to form part of the committee; and to provide for the remedy of these grievances. With respect to the other ground of objection to the power proposed to be given to the Queen in Council he saw no reason, although this was a very great power, that it should not be given when necessary; but when the right hon. Gentleman brought forward his amendments it would then be competent for him 466 to answer them. The right hon. Gentleman had gone on to censure the conduct of Government. With respect to his first complaint, that of the want of sufficient force, he (Lord J. Russell) did say, that, notwithstanding what had been said by the hon. Member for Newark, the right hon. Gentleman was not successful in quoting the Duke of Wellington on that head. As the noble Duke's authority had been appealed to, he would not dispute it. The noble Duke was probably right in saying that there had not been sufficient troops in Nova Scotia, but that was totally different from the charge made by the right hon. Gentleman. His charge was, that Government had not sufficient troops in Canada to prevent insurrection—not enough to "encourage the loyal, and to overawe disaffection." His answer to that was, that sufficient troops were there for any legal purpose required. With respect to Nova Scotia, although, for many reasons, it might have been necessary to have had more troops there; still could any one say, that the presence of more troops there would have prevented revolt in Lower Canada? They had the Duke of Wellington's authority for this—an authority which would be more looked to than any in that House. It was not the first time when party topics ran high—when the election batteries were mounted—when it suited a party purpose to quote the Duke, that all of a sudden a plain declaration from himself completely discountenanced all their assertions. The right hon. Gentleman had made another charge. He said that not only had Government displayed a want of vigour in not having a sufficient number of troops in Canada, but they had not adopted conciliatory measures at a proper season. With respect to that subject, he must say that, although it was not very difficult for hon. Gentlemen reading the despatches to find fault with them, yet he thought they formed a full and complete defence for Lord Glenelg, for Lord Gosford, and for the Government. There was an inherent difficulty in this case, which rendered it impossible to give sufficient instructions, or for Lord Gosford himself to take such measures as would have led to a satisfactory result. What was the object of Lord Gosford's mission? It was to endeavour, by remedying all real grievances, and by a kind treatment of those who preferred them, to give satisfaction to the Canadians; but while he was endeavouring to do this 467 there was a party in the House of Assembly, headed by its Speaker, which was determined to thwart all his efforts, to misrepresent them, and to take every means to throw difficulties in the way of Government, and thus to procure a separation from the mother country. Now, while this was attempted, it was always a matter of necessity to consider whether subjects of complaint were real grievances, or whether they were submitted with the knowledge that they would not be assented to, in order to fill up the catalogue of complaints, and create an anti-British feeling in the colony. He did think that this inherent difficulty made it quite impossible for Lord Gosford to take those measures which under other circumstances might be possible. But he had done this—he had convinced all intelligent and dispassionate men that it was the determination of Government to act fairly by the province, and that it was no wish of theirs, for any sinister end, to take away any privilege it ought to possess. Fully to establish that such was the object of Government was ample compensation for the want of what the right hon. Baronet called rigorous measures. A noble Lord, sitting opposite, had thought proper to criticise the despatches of Lords Glenelg and Gosford. With respect to those despatches they related to matters of great importance but were often, from necessity, written in such haste as to render careful composition impossible. The noble Lord had also talked of what he was pleased to call the sickly sentimentality of some of those despatches. He remembered an address of that noble Lord's to the electors of North Lancashire, which was very sentimental, and at the same time exceedingly obscure. A friend of his, to whom he mentioned its obscurity, told him that he could explain the matter at once—that it was merely a translation from the German. If they were to criticise so minutely public documents, the noble Lord was as liable as others to have his compositions censured for the sickly sentimentality he complained of. He could not conclude what he had to say without adverting to some observations of the hon. Member for London. That hon. Member had complained of the Government measure—he talked of the harm it would do. If he did any harm it would be less by the fair expression of his opinions, than by the distorted manner in which they were represented. That hon. Member had said, that he (Lord J. Russell) 468 had refused to reform the legislative council; what was the fact? When Mr. Roebuck had proposed a plan of his own for that purpose, he said that, although he thought it would be rash to adopt that plan, yet that if the Assembly would propose a rational plan the Government would not stand in the way of its adoption; yet still the learned gentleman represented him as an enemy to Reform, and on that he framed his speech. As a proof of this he would mention the hon. Member's quoting his praise of Montesquieu, but he had not used it by way of casting any slur on the Canadians, but to show how anxious England had been to frame laws agreeable to the people. He said, that she had even recognised for them the absurd feudal laws, although these were so odious to the people of this country that in the reign of Charles 2nd a great triumph was considered to have been achieved by their abolition, and although they were conscious that British settlers would be likely to come under their operations. Was there anything in this calculated to irritate or offend? Now with regard to the whole of this subject and the instructions which had been given to Lord Durham, he would take the liberty of saying a few words. There was a time when England was comparatively confined to the bounds of her own dominions—when she had no need to think of anything beyond her own laws, her own usages, her own religion, and when it was desirable that all should be peculiarly English. There was another period when, by the force of her arms and the extent of her conquests, she kept possession of a great part of the world against all invaders and enemies. Both these periods had passed. It was not now the policy of this country, with its great and extended dominion, to enforce English laws and English customs throughout them all. Nor did they pretend—and God forbid they should pretend—to keep those possessions in subjection by the mere force of arms? There was then a third system, which it seemed more wise, more just, and more politic to pursue. Having acquired large possessions by various wars and by the efforts of powerful men from Cromwell to Marlborough, and from Marlborough to Wellington, it was desirable carefully to consider the peculiar usages, the peculiar wants, the religious habits, and the peculiar aptitudes of the people over whom they ruled, so as to take such measures as would be best calculated to conciliate their 469 good opinion. When revolutions were to be quelled, let the necessary measures for quelling them be adopted—but when a permanent Government was to be established, let everything be done to ascertain the just expectations and wishes of the people, and let not this country, for paltry objects of its own, impose upon them institutions which might prove unpalatable or intolerant. This was the aim which he had in view with respect to Canada, and to all the other North American provinces. They were not to be governed in the same manner as islands in the Mediterranean or our dominions in the east; but by making such temporary changes and ameliorations as from time to time the circumstances might call for—such changes as might suit the habits of the persons to be governed, and at the same time that they did honour to the mother country prove advantageous to the colonies, so that the name of the mother country might not suffer, nor the empire be diminished. This was the end to which he looked in sending out the instructions by Lord Durham, and those were the objects which he wished that noble Lord to have in view before he transmitted his plan to this country. If there were any person who could devise a better mode of proceeding, let it be proposed; but the plan which Ministers presented appeared to him to be the best mode of attaining this most desirable result. He would conclude by stating, that his great and paramount desire was to avoid maintaining the dominion of this country over the provinces in any other way than that which would prove permanently advantageous and happy to the latter, at the same time that it proved honourable to both.
§ The House divided on the Motion for going into Committee:—Ayes 262; Noes 16: Majority 246.
| List of the AYES. | |
| Acland, T. D. | Barnard, E. G. |
| A'Court, Captain | Harrington, Viscount |
| Adam, Sir C. | Belfast, Earl of |
| Aglionby, H. A. | Bentinck, Lord G. |
| Alford, Viscount | Berkeley, hon. H. |
| Alsager, Captain | Bernal, R. |
| Alston, R. | Bewes, T. |
| Anson, hon. Colonel | Blair, J. |
| Ashley, Viscount | Blake, W. J. |
| Attwood, W. | Bolling, W. |
| Bagge, W. | Borthwick, P. |
| Bagot, hon. W. | Bowes, J. |
| Baillie, Colonel | Bradshaw, J. |
| Baker, E. | Bramston, T. W. |
| Broadly, H. | Fitzalan, Lord |
| Broadwood, H. | Fitzroy, Lord C. |
| Brodie, W. B. | Fleetwood, P. H. |
| Brownrigg, S. | Flemming, J. |
| Bruges, W. H. | Forbes, W. |
| Buller, C. | Fort, J. |
| Buller, E. | Fremantle, Sir T. |
| Bulwer, E. L. | French, F. |
| Burdett, Sir F. | Freshfield, J. W. |
| Burr, H. | Gibson, J. |
| Busfield, W. | Gladstone, W. E. |
| Byng, G. | Goddard, A. |
| Byng, rt. hon. G. S. | Gordon, R. |
| Campbell, Sir J. | Goring, H. D. |
| Canning rt. hn. Sir S. | Granby, Marquess of |
| Castlereagh, Viscount | Grattan, J. |
| Cavendish, Hon. C. | Greene, T. |
| Cavendish, hn. G. H. | Grey, Sir G. |
| Cayley, E. S. | Grimston, Viscount |
| Chalmers, P. | Grimston, hon. E. H. |
| Childers, J. W. | Guest, J. J. |
| Chisholm, A. W. | Halford, H. |
| Chute, W. L. W. | Hallyburton, Lord |
| Clay, W. | Handley, H. |
| Clayton, Sir W. R. | Hardinge, rt. hn. Sir H. |
| Colquhoun, Sir J. | Harland, W. C. |
| Coote, Sir C. A. | Hastie, A. |
| Copeland, Alderman | Hawes, B. |
| Corry, hon. H. | Hawkes, T. |
| Courtenay, P. | Hawkins, J. H. |
| Cowper, hon. W. F. | Hay, Sir A. L. |
| Craig, W. G. | Hayter, W. G. |
| Crawford, W. | Herbert, hon. S. |
| Dalmeny, Lord | Hobhouse, rt. hn. Sir J. |
| Dalrymple, Sir A. | Hobhouse, T. B. |
| Damer, hon. D. | Hodges, T. L. |
| Darby, G. | Hodgson, R. |
| Dashwood, G. H. | Hogg, J. W. |
| Denison, W. J. | Hollond, R. |
| De Horsey, S. H. | Holmes, W. |
| Divett, E. | Hope, G. W. |
| Dottin, A. R. | Horsman, E. |
| Douglas, Sir C. E. | Hotham, Lord |
| Dowdeswell, W. | Howard, F. J. |
| Duckworth, S. | Howard, P. H. |
| Dugdale, W. S. | Howick, Viscount |
| Duke, Sir J. | Humphery, J. |
| Duncan, Viscount | Hurst, R. H. |
| Dundas, F. | Hutton, R. |
| Dundas, J. W. D. | Ingham, R. |
| Easthope, J. | Inglis, Sir R. H. |
| Eaton, R. J. | Irving, J. |
| Egerton, Lord F. | James, W. |
| Eliot, Lord | James, Sir W. C. |
| Elliot, hon. J. E. | Jones, W. |
| Ellice, A. | Kemble, H. |
| Ellice, rt. hon. E. | Kinnaird, hon. A. F. |
| Ellice, E. | Knight, H. G. |
| Ellis, J. | Labouchere, rt. hn. H. |
| Erle, W. | Lambton, H. |
| Estcourt, T. | Langdale, hon. C. |
| Etwall, R. | Lascelles, hon. W. S. |
| Evans, Colonel | Law, hn. C. E. |
| Evans, W. | Lefevre, C. S. |
| Farnham, E. B. | Lennox, Lord G. |
| Ferguson, Sir R. A. | Lennox, Lord A. |
| Finch, F. | Loch, J. |
| Lockhart, A. M. | Shirley, E. J. |
| Logan, H. | Slaney, R. A. |
| Lushington, C. | Smith, J. A. |
| Lygon, hon. General | Smith, hon. R. |
| Lynch, A. H. | Somerville, Sir W. M. |
| Mackenzie, T. | Spencer, hon. F. |
| Mackenzie, W. F. | Standish, C. |
| Maclean, D. | Stanley, W. O. |
| Macleod, R. | Stuart, R. |
| Mahon, Viscount | Stuart, H. |
| Marshall, W. | Stuart, Lord J. |
| Martin, J. | Stuart, V. |
| Marton, G. | Strangways, hon. J. |
| Melgund, Viscount | Strutt, E. |
| Mildmay, P. St. J. | Style, Sir C. |
| Milnes, R. M. | Sugden, rt. hon. Sir E. |
| Morpeth, Viscount | Surrey, Earl of |
| Muskett, G. A. | Talfourd, Sergeant |
| O'Brien, W. S. | Thomson, rt. hn. C. P. |
| O'Ferrall, R. M. | Thornley, T. |
| Paget, Lord A. | Tracy, H. H. |
| Paget, F. | Trench, Sir F. |
| Pakington, J. S. | Trevor, hon. G. R. |
| Palmerston, Viscount | Troubridge, Sir E. T. |
| Parker, J. | Tufnell, H. |
| Parker, T. A. W. | Turner, E. |
| Parrott, J. | Verney, Sir H. |
| Peel, right hon. Sir R. | Villiers, Viscount |
| Pemberton, T. | Vivian, J. H. |
| Perceval, hon. G. J. | Vivian, right hon. Sir R. H. |
| Philpotts, J. | |
| Pinney, W. | Walker, R. |
| Ponsonby, hon. J. | Wall, C. B. |
| Poulter, J. S. | Ward, H. G. |
| Protheroe, E. | Westenra, hon H. R. |
| Pryme, G. | Westenra, hon. J. C. |
| Redington, T. N. | Wilbraham, G. |
| Reid, Sir J. R. | Wilmot, Sir J. E. |
| Rice, E. R. | Wilshere, W. |
| Rice, right hon. T. S. | Winnington, T. E. |
| Rich, H. | Winnington, H. J. |
| Richards, R. | Wodehouse, E. |
| Rolfe, Sir R. M. | Wood, C. |
| Rose, rt. hon. Sir G. | Wood, T. |
| Round, C. G. | Worsley, Lord |
| Rushbrooke, Colonel | Wynn, rt. hon. C. W. |
| Rushout, G. | Wyse, T. |
| Russell, Lord John | Young, G. F. |
| Salwey, Colonel | Young, J. |
| Scarlett, hon. R. | TELLERS. |
| Seymour, Lord | Smith, R. V. |
| Sheppard, T. | Stanley, E. J. |
| List of the NOES. | |
| Baines, E. | Molesworth, Sir W. |
| Brotherton, J. | Turner, W. |
| Callaghan, D. | Vigors, N. A. |
| Currie, R. | Wakley, T. |
| Gillon, W. D. | Warburton, H. |
| Harvey, D. W. | Williams, W. |
| Hindley, C. | |
| Jervis, S. | TELLERS. |
| Leader, J. T. | Hume, J. |
| Lister, E. C. | Grote, G. |
§ Lord John Russellmoved that the 472 Committee on the Bill take preced nee of all other business on Thursday.
§ Mr. Wakley, having a motion on the paper for that day for a Select Committee to inquire into the constitution of a society in Glasgow, under the title of the "Association of Operative Cotton Spinners of Glasgow and its neighbourhood," could not agree to the motion of the noble Lord unless he had a pledge that the men lately sentenced to transportation should not be sent out of the country before that motion came on.
§ Lord John Russellwould not give a pledge, but he did not think it possible that these men could leave the country before the expiration of a week.
§ Mr. Wakley, not getting a pledge, would divide the House on the Motion of the noble Lord.
§ The House divided on Lord John Russell's motion:—Ayes 101; Noes 6: Majority 95.
| List of the AYES. | |
| Acland, T. D. | Goring, H. D. |
| Adam, Sir C. | Grey, Sir G. |
| Aglionby, H. A. | Grimston, Viscount |
| Alsager, Captain | Grimston, hon. E. H. |
| Ashley, Lord | Harvey, D. W. |
| Baines, E. | Hawes, B. |
| Barrington, Visct. | Hobhouse, rt. hon. Sir J. |
| Bewes, T. | |
| Borthwick, P. | Hobhouse, T. B. |
| Bradshaw, J. | Hodges, T. L. |
| Broadwood, H. | Hodgson, R. |
| Brodie, W. B. | Hollond, R. |
| Brotherton, J. | Howard, P. H. |
| Bruges, W. H. L. | Howick, Viscount |
| Buller, C. | Hurst, R. H. |
| Busfield, W. | Hutton, R. |
| Campbell, Sir J. | Inglis, Sir R. H. |
| Cavendish, Hon. C. | James, W. |
| Chalmers, P. | Kinnaird, hon. A. F. |
| Clayton, Sir W. R. | Langdale, hon. C. |
| Craig, W. G. | Lefevre, C. S. |
| Darby, G. | Lennox, Lord G. |
| De Horsey, S. H. | Lister, E. C. |
| Douglas, Sir C. E. | Lockhart, A. M. |
| Dowdeswell, W. | Logan, H. |
| Duke, Sir J. | Lushington, C. |
| Dundas, F. | Mackenzie, T. |
| Ellis, J. | Macleod, R. |
| Erle, W. | Martin, J. |
| Estcourt, T. | Milnes, R. M. |
| Farnham, E. B. | Morpeth, Viscount |
| Finch, F. | Muskett, G. A. |
| Fleetwood, P. H. | O'Ferrall, R. M. |
| Forbes, W. | Pakington, J. S. |
| Gibson, J. | Palmerston, Viscount |
| Gillon, W. D. | Parker, J. |
| Goddard, A. | Parrott, J. |
| Gordon, R. | Philpotts, J. |
| Pinney, W. | Strutt, E. |
| Pryme, G. | Thomson, rt. hn. C. P. |
| Redington, T. N. | Thornley, T. |
| Rice, right hon. T. S. | Tracy, H. H. |
| Richards, Richard | Turner, E. |
| Rolfe, Sir R. M. | Turner, W. |
| Rose, right hon. Sir G. | Wilbraham, G. |
| Round, C. G. | Winnington, T. E. |
| Rushbrooke, Colonel | Winnington, H. J. |
| Russell, Lord J. | Wood, T. |
| Salwey, Colonel | Wynn, rt. hon. C. W. |
| Scarlett, hon. R. | |
| Smith, R. V. | TELLERS. |
| Somervile, Sir W. M. | Labouchere, H. |
| Stanley, E. J. | Steuart, R. |
| List of the NOES. | |
| Grote, G. | Williams, W. |
| Hindley, C. | |
| Hume, J. | TELLERS. |
| Vigors, N. A. | Wakley, T. |
| Warburton, H. | Leader, J. T. |