cies, a new and more active spirit began to shew itself in Canadian politics. Among those who emigrated to Canada were many men of excellent education, of great energy, of considerable means, and of practical knowledge of the world. These men who had but little sympathy with that FrancoCanadian nationality, which in the lower province it had been the policy of the constitutional act and the pride of the people to maintain, and who brought with them no innate respect for the existing authorities of the upper province, naturally looked to acquire in their new country at least an equal, if not a superior standing to that which they had left. But they soon found that while in Lower Canada their professional prospects were injured, and their commercial speculations circumscribed by French laws and regulations, in Upper Canada they had little chance, without local connection, of obtaining either employment or influence. Against such a state of things they naturally protested, and the agitation produced by their existence at once broke up the calm which had before prevailed. In Lower Canada the French Canadians took fright at the increase of power which the British minority derived from the numbers and energy of the new comers. In Upper Canada the old settlers foresaw in them the most formidable competitors for that station and influence which hitherto had been restricted to themselves. Thus was created in both provinces an active opposition to the government; with this difference, that while in Lower Canada, the new comers being of the same origin as the office-holders, the opposition consisted of the original inhabitants, in Upper Canada it was composed principally of the new settlers.

The spirit of opposition once aroused, it was not difficult to find opportunities for its exercise. The assemblies were suddenly awakened to a sense of their powers and importance, and the change was assisted by the demand which the mother country, in the embarrassments consequent on the war, now made for the first time, that they should defray from local revenues such of their expenses as she had hitherto paid from the imperial treasury. Discussions arose as to the manner in which the supplies thus called for should be voted, and as to the constitutional right of the Crown to certain revenues independently of the local legislature. The discussions.spread to other subjects; and the representative branch soon found itself in either province at issue with the executive.

It would have been natural to expect that in colonies, the constitution of which was modelled on that of Great Britain, the executive government, on finding itself opposed by the popular body, would have adopted some course analogous to

that by which, in the mother country, the harmony between the crown and the House of Commons is maintained. But unfortunately the principle, that the executive government should be in harmony with the representative body, which in the mother country is a truism, had not only never been recognised in Canada, but when put forward had been resisted, and denounced as democratic, revolutionary, and almost treasonable. The arguments fairly arising from the distinction between the supreme power of the imperial parliament and the subordinate functions of the colonial legislature had been, pushed far beyond their legitimate limits, until the co-operation of the latter with the local executive seemed to be considered a matter almost of indifference, or at any rate not of sufficient importance to be obtained by a sacrifice of predetermined measures or executive patronage. To this result the claims which had grown up on the part of the public servants, and the influence which they had naturally acquired over successive governors, no doubt contributed in a considerable degree. The tenure of office had been originally, as in Britain, during pleasure; and it must be assumed that in the first instance the government selected only such individuals as possessed the good-will and confidence of the great mass of the inhabitants, and were fitted to represent their interests. But as the members returned to the first assemblies were either little fitted or little disposed for official life, and as it was evidently very convenient for the government to be able to hold out to its servants the prospect of some permanency in their appointments, the tenure during pleasure was gradually converted in practice into a tenure during good behaviour, and the officers acquired a quasi-prescriptive right to be protected against loss of place or emolument, so long as neither their capacity nor their conduct could be impugned.

But the adoption of this policy had involved another departure from British practice. As soon as it was determined that the executive government need not be in unison with, or depend upon the support of, the House of Assembly, it had followed that the government should withdraw its officers from that house, or at all events should divest such as might have seats in it of all pretension to speak or vote as the organs of its views. To have done otherwise-to have allowed them to speak and vote as members of the government, yet to have seen them continually defeated, and to have made no change -would have been too anomalous and humiliating, and could only have increased the violence of the opposition. Thus while the Canadian constitution, unprotected by those safe

guards against popular pressure which result from the wealth the education, and the connections of the members of our representative body, was also deprived of that self-adjusting principle, without which our House of Commons, notwithstanding its natural and adventitious restraints, would become the instrument of revolution, the great principle that the battle of the crown should be fought in the representative body was entirely thrown aside, and the government was left without the means of defence or explanation in that body where its defence was all-important.

At its first adoption this system had seemed to answer the end of protecting the executive from popular pressure; and so long as the distrust of the assembly was exhibited only in motions of inquiry, demands for papers, or violent declamations and resolutions, the isolation of the crown rendered such proceedings utterly ineffective. But when distrust ripened into hostility, and the assembly, chafing at the contemptuous neglect of the government in carrying out its own policy without regard to their opinions or votes, proceeded from words to deeds, and began to pass measures to weaken the prerogative, and to strengthen their own hands, it became evident that collision between the executive and the people must, if allowed to continue, break up the foundations of the constitution. To avoid this, the government adopted as its last resource, the fatal policy of employing the legislative council as a breakwater between it and the people. The leaders of the assemblies having adopted ultra-popular doctrines, men were selected for the legislative council who were known as their most uncompromising opponents. Collision between the houses once established, the usual consequences followed. Both parties became heated in the contest, and the leaders of the popular body, freed from the usual responsibilities of party men-secure against being called upon in power to redeem the pledges made in opposition-proceeded to the most extreme lengths. Measures were passed, with the full knowledge that they must be thrown out by the council, and bills were sent up at such a period, and in such a form, as to insure their rejection, for the express purpose of casting odium on that body. At last, irritated by their utter impotence against the passive resistance of the government, and rendered desperate by being placed under a sentence of perpetual exclusion from power, the popular leaders were ready to resort to almost any means to remove the proscription under which they apparently lay. Thus was the majority pushed on, first in the Lower Province in 1833, and afterwards in Upper Canada, in 1836, to the extreme measure of stopping the supplies; and thus was

gradually produced in the public mind that exasperation which induced them to demand a change in their constitution as the only means of deliverance from their difficulties.

The nature of the change sought by the two provinces respectively, sufficiently illustrates the difference between the constitutional knowledge of each. While the Lower Canadians, drawing their knowledge of representative institutions only from the neighbouring states, demanded an elective legislative council; the Upper Canadians, better instructed by their British experience, asked that the executive council should be made responsible to the assemby. Both demands were resisted. In the case of Lower Canada, the refusal was solemnly sanctioned by a resolution of the House of Commons in the month of March, 1837. In Upper Canada, it acquired a momentary support by the defeat, at the election of 1836, of several of the popular leaders.

These checks did not discourage the opposition; on the contrary, they rather tended to stimulate their exertions, and to embitter their language. The proceedings of the British parliament in respect to Lower Canada, were attributed to ignorance of the real state of the case,-to misrepresentations on the part of the British and official party, and to anti-Gallic prejudices; while in Upper Canada, the result of the election was, as usual in such cases, and with about the usual proportion of truth, ascribed to corrupt interference on the part of the government

Still nobody imagined that in either province any party would be so mad or so wicked as to resort to open rebellion, much less that the colonists would array themselves in the field against the British troops. Nor indeed can it be believed that the leaders of the French Canadians contemplated such a result. They had for many years been in the habit of opposing the government, and of inveighing against what they termed its tyrannical and unconstitutional proceedings. By this course, and by a dogged refusal of all compromise, they had gradually obtained from successive governments, almost every demand which they had advanced. They were but little acquainted with British politics, and were unaware of the slight interest which at that time colonial questions excited in the British senate; and they had accordingly mistaken the forbearance and conciliation of the home government for timidity, and the party attacks of the daily press for the expression of national opinion. The first check administered to them was in the resolutions of 1837; and, taught by the experience of the past, they expected, by violent declamations and threatened resistance, to procure the

reversal of those resolutions, or at least to prevent their being carried farther. And as the occasion was more urgent, so were the declamations more violent than at any other period; while the temper of the body from whom jurymen must have been taken, secured the speakers against all fear of legal consequences. During the whole summer of 1837, seditious and treasonable sentiments were propagated through the land; and it is not surprising that, under such circumstances, the people should have become excited; that understanding in their literal sense the sentiments they heard-relying with primitive and invincible confidence on their leaders and still more ignorant than they of the madness of the attempt—they should have been ready to carry into practice the armed resistance to the government, which was so loudly and constantly menaced. The train was thus prepared, and an accident set fire to it. Warrants having been issued in November, 1837, for the arrest of certain parties charged with seditious practices, two of them were rescued from a party of volunteer cavalry, by a body of armed peasants. The French population of a large portion of the Montreal district immediately rose en masse, and the rebellion was begun.

But the rebellion at once tore away the flimsy covering by which the objects of the French party had hitherto been veiled, and drew a line of demarcation between them and their opponents, as distinct as it was universal. Their could no longer be a doubt as to the object of the contest; and accordingly, with very few exceptions, the British, of all shades of politics, were found ranged on the one side, the French, with equally few exceptions, on the other. The result was not for a moment doubtful. With the single exception of Saint Denis, where the elements rather than the insurgents checked the English forces, no resistance of the slightest importance was offered to them. The handful of troops then in Lower Canada, marched almost without opposition, through the whole of the insurgent districts, leaving the principal towns to be protected by the volunteers. The insurrection. not only never succeeded, but never for a moment had a chance of success. It is but justice to the French Canadians to record that, notwithstanding the existing anarchy, and the exasperation to which they had been inflamed by their leaders, scarcely an act of wanton cruelty was perpetrated, nor did they attempt to make the public disturbances a means of private revenge. Atrocious as were the murders of the unfortunate Weir, of Walker, and of Chartrand, these were the acts only of individuals; and there were circumstances in each case to take them out of the category of those outrages which