Remarks on the proceedings as to Canada

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An Address presented by the House of Assembly of Lower ciZltothe Governor-in-Chief, on the 'Srd of October,

To his Excellency the Rigl^t Honourable Archibald Earl of Gosford Baron Worlingham of Beccles, in the County of Suftolk, Captain Genera7and Lvernor-in-Chief in and over the Provinces of lx>wer Canada and Upper Canada, Vice-Admiral of the same, and one of His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, &c. &c. &c.

Mav it please vour Excellency, . , ,-, „f

We, &is Majesty's faithful and loyal subjects the Comrnons of Lower Canada, in Provincial Parliament assembled, respectfully approach your Excellency for the purpose of further reply^nyio certain ^arts of the speech which it pleased your Excellency to ^^1 ^er at tV,e opening of the present session ; also to a despatch from His ^aje ys Lncfpal Secretary of State for the Colonies dated t^owrnng-t^ee^ 7th June, 1836, which, with various documents, you were pleased to cause to be laid, according to promise, before us.

Referring to our Address to His Majesty on the state of the prov^nce dated 2f^th Fetruary, 1836, we assure your Exc^^^^ncy as we^ already done on a recent occasion, that it contamed the faithful expiession of the views, opinions, and wants of this House, as wel as of he people whom it represents. We have not as yet been able to dz cover any misconceptions or any misunderstanding on our parted a mature to change the fiews which we then entertained on the divers subjeas treated therein, or suggest other means for their accomplishment. We MHeve it to be our duty, as well as for the advantage of the people, to persist in the same demands, in the same declarations, and partly cularly in the demand of an Elective Legislative Council Our opinion on the position of the country at the F^se^^^ ^P^f/l' ^^ ^^^- Xssed in our answer to your Excellency , dated the 24th of this month, Avill show how ill justified we should have been in departing therefrom. We trust that His Majesty's Government will not, after mature dehberation, entertain any doubt as to the correctness of our statements and assertions, particularly of the necessity of changing, conformably to the prayers of Ihis House and of the people, a branch of the legislature which has, with narrow and self-interested views, and moved by party spirit, interposed itself, of late more than ever, between the country and metropolitan state, and destroyed all our attempts to aid in the reparation of abuses, and by causing the result of our labours to reach the foot of the throne, to enable His Majesty's Government to contirm us in the belief of the sincerity of its intentions and promises. We respectfully submit, that although the evils and grievances which oppress the country have not been caused by us, we have spared no pains to terminate the same : those efforts have all failed in that branch, and we are firmly convinced that all measures of a just and liberal nature will hereafter constantly fail therein. The remedy is within the reach of His Majesty's Government. We shall see it applied with the most lively satisfaction ; and however sincere may be His Majesty's desire to witness the entire removal of the grievances of the country, we can furnish in proof of a desire equally sincere on our part, the manner in which we promised, in our Address above mentioned^ to welcome the reforms which we still expect, and the spirit of liberality and concession which accompanied that expression of our hopes.

There is, in the more recent dispositions of the Government in reference to the full and unrestrained exercise of the rights of this Legislature, a point which bears essentially on the character of the present Legislative Council, which we pray His Majesty not to lose sight of; that is, that although in principle His Majesty's intention of leaving to the Provincial Legislature the repeal of certain injurious laws, and the adoption of new provisions favourable to the institutions and to the liberties of this province, in whatever concerns its particular interests, be constitutional in its nature, and a wise acknowledgment even of the principle of our position, the effect thereof has been and will be practically impossible in consequence of the anomaly which the existence of the said Legislative Council has created in the Legislature of this province. And we express our constant and unalterable conviction, guided by the principles of the constitution itself and a long and sorrowful experience, that this state of violent opposition cannot be changed imtil the principle of popular election shall be introduced into the constitution of the said Council^ so as to have a second distinct branch, agreeably to what the existing state of society and the deliberate voice of public opinion require, and which shall enjoy at once a due share of public confidence and a full exercise of an enlightened and independent judgment ; a result so much to be desired, that, in the said despatch, the Ministers of the Crown have found therein one of the essential principles of the Act of 1791. We therefore dare to flatter ourselves that the pretensions and errors of the past will be forgotten, and that this great question will be considered in its full extent, in its connexion as well with the principles as with the practice of the constitution, and not as regards peculiar reluctances or preconceived opinions, respecting which it has pleased His Majesty, in the said despatch, to remove our fears concerning the future.

What we have stated above relative to the operation in the province itself of a Legislature free to watch over its interests, induces us to hope that until there be an essential change in the Legislative Council, His Majesty, whilst desirous of adhering to his benevolent inclination of abstaining from every act which could be represented as an unnecessary intervention in the internal affairs of the province, and thereby even oppose himself to every legislative act on the part of the metropolitan state tending to destroy that large basis, would be pleased to take into his consideration the pure and simple repeal by the Parliament of the United Kingdom of the Act commonly called the Tenures' Act, and of that passed in favour of the Land Company, as not being opposed thereto, inasmuch as the Canadian Legislature never par'icipated in the passing of these two Acts, against which this House and the people have, from the commencement, universally protested, and as their opposition to the rights, laius, and institutions of this province, is now scarcely a subject of controversy . We therefore persist in praying that until the Bill passed on several occasions by this House for the abrogation of the said Tenures' Act be favourably received in a Legislative Council disposed to give effect to the Royal intentions, His Majesty's Government would be pleased to assist in otherwise accomplishing the repeal demanded, which would enable us to re-establish order in the important question of lands and of proprietary law, and to accomplish, for the advantage and happiness of the inhabitants of the country, and of the other of His Majesty's subjects, the views expressed in our said Address.

It is for the same reasons that we persist in demanding likewise the repeal of the Act passed in favour of the Land Company, and of the privileges which that Act pretended to confirm. The considerations of public and private law which cause us to take a view of this subject different from that taken by His Majesty's Ministers in the said despatch, are too numerous and too palpable to be detailed at this moment. We shall pass over, also, in silence, the rights peculiar to the people of this province, and the circumstances, painful to us, under which that Act was passed and those privileges granted ; and we shall abstain from pointing out the means at the disposal of the Government to settle this question with justice to all parties. We shall merely add, that every day convinces us the more that the principal tendency of that Company is to maintain that division of people against people, amongst the different classes of His Majesty's subjects, which has, in common with all the evils resulting therefrom, been fostered in times past, with too much success, by corrupt administrations.

Neither can we forbear from here pointing out what we conceive to be, independent of its constant connexion with the system of metropolitan ascendancy and colonial degradation, a grand error in the disposal of the public domain of this province. That is, that in granting the lands nominally under the tenure of free and common soccage, which, based upon views of free and prosperous colonization, and with a due respect for the laws of the country, would, in fact, be a desirable tenure, the advantages thereof have, in reality, only been accorded to the original grantees, rendered absolute masters of immense extent of land, without any reserve having been made for the future rights and interests of the mass of actual settlers who would improve the soil, who, although His Majesty's free-born subjects, find themselves fettered in the extent of all those great concessions, by onerous and even servile tenures. It is, nevertheless, after this system has been tardily repudiated, that nearly a million of acres of the lands of the country have been improvidently, and without any greater control, granted to the said Cora-

c pany, with the further privilege of augmenting that quantity by unh'mited acquisitions dangerous to the liberties of the people. Independent of this anomaly, and numerous other vices with which the said grant is tainted, the King's Ministers cannot be so unacquainted with the subject as to consider it a question merely of private law, or to believe that in any new country the disposal and settlement of an immense extent of the public lands can be withdrawn from the control of the Legislature, and abandoned to the unrestrained direction of individuals.

The presence in the province of certain pretended authorities, whose powers and attributes are not to be found either in the constitution or in any law, has so often been alleged by your Excellency and by the executive authorities in the metropolitan state as being of a nature to retard till a future period the restoration of order and the introduction of those improvements demanded by the people, that we cannot refrain from here making a few general observations which must have attracted the attention of every public man. We believe that this House is the legitimate and authorized organ of all classes of inhabitants in the country, and that its representations are the constitutional expressions of their wishes and of their wants. We believe that the impartial use we have made of the powers vested in us, for the protection and the happiness of all our fellow-subjects, ought to have secured to us due confidence, when we solemnly exercised those high privileges. It must, however, have been the result of an unjust distrust of this House and the people of this province, that His Majesty's Government has rejected our prayers to defer to the opinions of a few individuals, strangers to the country, the fate of which was thereby committed to men whose vague and subordinate mission could not be acknowledged by any independent authority recognised by the constitution, the spirit of which His Majesty is particularly desirous to maintain. Thus it is that a power acting without law and against law, could not form any other connexion but with those who entertained the same erroneous views, and who, long since the avowed enemies of this House and of the people, profit by the system of dishonest policy which has been, up to this moment, the bane of the country, and which has, nevertheless, been maintained by many acts and declarations of the Crown and of Parliament. We believe, therefore, that the restoration of order and of the mutual respect which those whose duty it is to maintain it owe to each other, is one of the measures the most conducive to promote the establishment of a government as responsible and as popular as that which His Majesty, in enumerating in the saiJ despatch his dispositions on several important points, declares he is entirely disposed to admit. We must equally declare that any departure from those intentions, based upon inquiries emanating from a vitiated source, could not be sanctioned by any portion of the people sufficiently strong to lend its aid to a good government.

We shall pass over in silence the judicial independence and the establishment in the province of a high tribunal of public impeachments. It is too evident that the sole obstacle which now exists depends upon the solution of the question which we look upon as of the utmost importance.

Neither shall we discuss the demand made by this House of the free exercise of its parliamentary and constitutional authority over the settlement and management of the lands of the province, and its control over all the branches of the Executive Government ; we shall also omit whatever appertains to the settlement of the financial question, whereby the executive authority would no longer impede the rightful control of this House over the public revenue. Our views and offers on these two subjects have, without doubt, been considered liberal by His Majesty's Government ; we are at least inclined so to believe, in consequence of the opinion expressed in the said despatch on this part of our Address ; moreover, if we understand, in its true meaning, that part of the said despatch which approves of our opinions on divers other points, without discussing any of them in particular, we should be induced to believe that His Majesty's Government, convinced of the justice of our demands on these points, and of their accordance with the goorl government of the country, has now acceded thereto without requiring any farther useless delay, and without further investigation of rights and principles so clear and so essential.

If our hope of happy days for our country do not lead us to interpret too liberally general expressions, and if that hope be founded on something more than generous inferences, we cannot sufficiently express to your Excellency how much we rejoice at having, by our perseverance, contributed to the substitution of an unjust and partial system, by an order of things conformable to the rights and demands of the people. Nevertheless, we cannot but feel deep regret and profound grief, when we consider that these declarations, as well as those which preceded them on several occasions, have as yet availed nothing; that the vices of our political institutions remain unaltered ; that the Provincial Legislature continues to be paralyzed in its functions, by the support given to the Legislative Council ; that no essential reform has been introduced as yet into the Administration, or for the removal of abuses ; that the executive and judicial authorities have preserved and manifested the same character of a faction combined against the liberties of the country, and its public property ; when we perceive that prejudicial inquiries in opposition to the above-mentioned declaration have not as yet been abandoned; when, in fine, the Executive Government of the province, doubtless in obedience to the special order of the authority which appointed it, has had recourse, since the last session, to the practice of disposing of the public treasure of the province, without the consent of this House. Thus the state of the country having therefore remained the same, we believe it to be our imperative duty to adhere unalterably to the contents of our said Address of the 26th February last, as well as to our previous declarations ; and to them do we adhere.

In reference now to the demand which your Excellency has renewed under existing circumstances for a supply, relying on the salutary maxim, that the correction of abuses and the redress of grievances ought to precede the grant thereof, we have been of opinion that there is nothing to authorize us to alter our resolution of the last session,

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Your Excellency "will bear in mind that our determination to obtain justice by means warranted by the best approved precedents, and by the spirit of the constitution itself, was taken at a more distant epoch, and that, as a mark of our confidence in you, we temporarily departed from that determination by voting a supply for six months. We assure your Excellency, as well as His Majesty's Government, that in that Act, which we look upon as a mark of our liberality, we were prompted by no minor consideration, nor by any unjust or incorrect interpretation of the intentions of His Majesty's Ministers. The conclusion of our said Address contains an explanation of our motives, and of the difficulties which it was not in our power to ward off; the same circumstances, as well as the previous consideration of the salutary principle above referred to, render it incumbent on us, in the present conjuncture, to adjourn our deliberations until His Majesty's Government shall by its acts, especially by rendering the second branch of the Legislature conformable to the wishes and wants of the people^ have commenced the great work of justice and reform, and created a confidence which alone can crown it with success.

Amidst the closing events of the last session, there is one circumstance in particular which we respectfully believe has not been sufficiently noticed by His Majesty's Government. That is : it was not this House, but the Legislative Council which deprived the Provincial Administration of the resources which would have been at its disposal, and which placing itself between the Crown and the people in a matter specially appertaining to the representatives of the latter, has prevented the free gift of the Commons to reach the Throne.

In concluding this Address, we shall again express our belief in your Excellency's sincerity and intentions, and we flatter ourselves that under different circumstances and with more direct powers, your Excellency would have sooner helped to obtain the change which we await. If such a change bad taken place, the good understanding which has hitherto existed between this House and your Excellency, notwithstanding the difficulties of our respective positions, would lead us to expect the most happy results from your Excellency's desire to advance the prosperity of the country.

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Address to His Majesty, voted by the House of Assembly of Lower Canada, 2Qth February, 1836.

To the King's Most Excellent Majesty.

May it please Your Majesty,

We, your Majesty's faithful and loyal subjects, the Commons of

Lower Canada in Provincial Parliament assembled, humbly approach

Your Majesty's throne for the purpose of expressing once more, in the

name of the people we represent, our firm though respectjul opinion of the necessity of the reforms we have so often prayed for in the constitution of this Province, and of the redress of the grievances and abuses which have prevailed therein. We seize the same occasion to make known our sentiments with regard to a portion of the recent views and determinations of Your Majesty's Government, in so far as it has been possible for us to become acquainted with them. fVe pray Your Majesty to believe in our sincerity. We desire, as the representatives of a people, who have even in times of difficulty shown a strong attachment to the empire over which Your Majesty presides, not to forget the sentim.ents of respect we owe to Your Majesty's sacred person, and which Your Royal attributes require ; but at the same time it would be culpable in us to sanction by our silence any misconception with regard to the nature of the improvement and reforms required, or to the constitutional and practical system of government which we desire to see established in this province, and which we believe to be equally in accordance with the true principles of the constitution, the incontestible rights of the inhabitants of this Province, and their natural and social position, and with their wishes, interests and necessities.

When we solemnly repeat, that the principal object of the political reforms, which this House and the people of this province have for a great number of years used every effort to obtain, and which have frequently been detailed to Your Majesty, is to extend the elective principle to the Legislative Council, a branch of the Provincial Legislature which, by its opposition to the people, and by reason of its imperfect and vicious constitution, has proved insufficient to perform the functions for which it was originally created; to render the Executive Council directly responsible to the representatives of the people, conformably to the principles and practice of the British cosistitution as established in the United Kingdom ; — to place under the wholesome and constitutional control of this House the whole public revenue raised in this Province, from whatever source derived ; — to obtain the repeal of certain Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, in which the people of this Province are not represented, with regard to the internal affairs of this Province, making its territory and best resources the subject of unfair speculation and monopoly, and which we hold to be a violation of the rights of the Legislature and of the people of this Province ; to ensure equal rights and impartial justice to all classes of the inhabitants of this Province; — to abolish sinecures and the accumulation of incompatible offices; — to redress the numerous abuses which prevail in the various departments of the public service ; — to obtain for the Provincial Legislature, with regard to the internal affairs of the Province, and more especially over the management and settlement of the waste lands thereof, for the benefit of all classes of Your Majesty's subjects without distinction, that essential control which would be the direct consequence of the principles of the constitution. When we say we respectfully repeat to Your Majesty these our demands, and declare our firm intention to persevere in asking them, as being alone calculated to ensure the liberty, peace and welfare of this Province, and the confidence of the people in the Government, and to cement their political union with the United Empire, we can scarcely fear that we should not he Mwders^oocf% Your Majesty. We shall, however, add to our humble declarations some new facts which must tend yet more to convince Your Majesty of the justice of what we ask, and of the correctness of the view we take of the common interest of the mother country and of this colony.

We are bound, in the first place, to thank Your Majesty for having recalled the head of the Executive Government, and for having appointed as his successor a distinguished personage, who, independently of his qualifications as an individual, of which we have no motive for doubting, was, from his previous habits and position, more likely to comprehend our wishes and our wants. At the opening of the present session of the Provincial Parhament we had to applaud the principles of order and justice enounced in the speech delivered from the throne by his Excellency the Governor-in-chief of this Province, on divers matters connected with the administration of the government, and which might become the subject of our deliberations. In our firm hope that the eflTorts of Your Majesty's Government to do full justice to the people of this country would be continued without relaxation, in a spirit of enlightened liberality, we have by our answer shown that confidence could still exist on our part and that of the people in Your Majesty's Government. We believed so much the more firmly, that the declaration of which we have just spoken, and the extraordinary attributions and circumstances which accompanied the usual powers of Your Majesty's representative, were our guarantees that the essential and vital subjects which were only s])oken of to us as matters for the future deliberation and decision of Your Majesty and Your Parliament, would be looked at in the same comprehensive spirit, and with the same views, and above all, that the researches and determination adapted to throw light on the solution of these weighty questions would not be restrained by any formal refusal of the demands which were to form the matter of investigation, nor by any final determination to maintain at all events the pretensions raised from time to time on divers subjects of colonial policy by Your Majesty's responsible Ministers, and which called forth the remonstrances of this House and the people ; matters which, as Your Majesty was pleased to assure us, were to be equally the subject of research and deliberation.

We thought, that without bringing forward unjust and inapplicable theories of metropolitan domination and colonial abasement, without recurring to a system proved false by memorable examples, regard would be had exclusively to the principles of the constitution, the mutual interests of all parties, and the peace, welfare, rights, wishes and wmts of these important portions of the British dominions. It could, therefore, only be with lively anxiety that we were brought to suppose, from the knowledge which reached us, at first indirectly, and afterwards by the oflScial channel, of certain extracts from a Despatch, dated the 27th of July, 1835, addressed by Your Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies, to certain persons in Lower Canada, (unacquainted as we moreover are with the tenor of the other parts of the same document, and with any subsequent instructions,) that in point of fact the researches authorized by Your Majesty, for the purpose of ascertaining the means of doing justice to Your

Canadian subjects, were, on several of the most essential points, limited by preconceived opinions and anticipated decisions in the manner hereinbefore set forth. We are bound on this head to declare, that in the face of obstacles like these, if Yoiir Majesty's Government should persist in maintaining them, and without Your Royal assent to the essential reforms we expect, no measure of minor importance can have the effect desired; that the delay occasioned by the investigations announced, will serve only to embolden the enemies of the people of this Province andof Your Majesty's Government in their hopes of dissension and violence, and that the best intentions or even acts on the part of the head of the Provincial Executive, even in conjunction with the efforts of this House and of the people, might be wrecked in contending against the deep rooted system of vice and abuse which has robbed Your Majesty's Government in this Province of all efficiency and respect, and has endangered the liberties and safety of the inhabitants of Canada.

At the head of the reforms which we persist in considering as essential, is the introduction of the principle of popular election into the constitution of the Legislative Council. The people of the country without distinction regard this body, as at present constituted, as factiously opposed to its institutions, its state of society, its feelings, and its wants, and as having been and as being necessarily the strong hold of oppression aud abuses. They continue in like manner to believe that any partial reform luhich shall stop short of the introduction of the elective principle, will be altogether insufficient, and will, as leaving the inherent vice untouched, bring back the same evils and the same collisions. We think, that with regard to the constantly baneful action of the Legislative Council, we have amply explained ourselves to Vour Majesty, and that no other proof than the past and the present acts of that body is needed to remove all doubt as to the nature and spirit of the improvements to be introduced into it. We look, in this respect, upon the Act of 1791, giving Legislators for life to the Canadian Provinces, at the mere pleasure of the executive authority, as an unfortunate experiment, followed by most unhappy consequences. We also look upon this experiment as entirely foreign to the British Constitution. We regret that in the extracts from the despatches we have mentioned, an attempt is made, by begging tbe question, to infer an analogy which does not exist, for the purpose of aggravating certain specious objections against an Elective Council. We would respectfully pray Your Majesty to remark, that the influence which prevailed in the Councils of the Empire, at the period when the Act of 1791 was passed, was calculated to give an undue preponderance to the aristocratic principle, while, in America, the independent state and the progress of society repelled any doctrine of this nature, and demanded the extension of the contrary principle. We must also express our regret, that while Your Majesty's representative in this Province has solicited the co-operation of the two Houses of the Provincial Legislature to labour at the reform of abuses, aud while this House is fully disposed to grant that co-operation, the constant opposition of the Legislative Council is of a nature to prevent so important an appeal from being followed by any result. For ourselves we are conscious that we have ever been, and are still

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guided in our labours by our conviction of what was for the greatest advantage of the people, and best adapted to cause Your Majesty's Government in this Province to be respected, cherished and strengthened ; and^rm in our determination to pursue the same course, we pray Your Majesty to believe that we shall not depart from it.

We are not ignorant that some individuals interested in the maintenance of bad government, and accustomed to a system of ascendancy and domination, pretend that harmony might be established between the constituted authorities in the Province, by introducing in its territorial limits, or in the representation of the people, violent changes, of which the sole end would be to deprive a numerous portion of Your Majesty's subjects of a due participation in the advantages of the constitution, and to establish invidious political preferences, as a prelude to the subversion of the institutions of the Province, at the very time when Your Majesty's Government is proclaiming principles of equal justice to all, and acknowledges the excellence of our institutions. We rely too much on the honour of the Government to believe in the possibility of attempts which would destroy all the ties that bind the peopie to Great Britain, and would force them to regret their allegiance. We cannot, however, but express our regret that in the extracts already mentioned, as well as in several other instances, it has appeared as if the same importance was attached to the calumnious representations of a small number of individuals, supporting the abuses of past administrations, as to the solemn deliberations and unvarying opinions of the representatives of the people, who form a branch of the Legislature which no prejudice against their origin can succeed in causing to be regarded as less essential than the other and co-ordinate branch. In this systematic practice of assimilating a recognized authority, acting in a constitutional capacity, to the disorderly passions which seek to overthrow it, the people of this country might in the end see a desire to misunderstand the essence and unity of the popular principle acting in the Government, while the aristocratic principle is upheld by attaching it to the Legislative Council, as if it were part of the essence of the constitution itself. We have at least the satisfaction of seeing that the great body of the inhabitants of this Province, of every creed and of every origin, are satisfied with the share they have in the Provincial representation, and that our fellow-subjects of the less numerous origin in particular, acknowledge the spirit of justice and brotherly love with which we have endeavoured to ensure to all the inhabitants of the country, a participation in its political and natural advantages. We perceive in this happy union another guarantee of good government, and an antidote against the tortuous policy which it is sought to support by unjust distinctions.