thing to the Church of Scotland. I have put a history of this question into a despatch, which you can lay before both houses. If the Lords reject the bill, upon their heads be the consequences. I will not answer for the government of the province, if the measure should come back. In case there is any blunder made by the lawyers, you must re-enact the bill in England; for here it cannot come again without the most disastrous results."

The session closed on the 10th February 1840, having exhibited for the first time in Canada the working of a government majority on the same principles on which the parliamentary business is conducted in the mother country. He concluded his speech at the close of the session in the following terms:

"On your return to your different districts, I earnestly hope that it will be your endeavour to promote that spirit of harmony and conciliation which has so much distinguished your proceedings here. Let past differences be forgottenlet irritating suspicions be removed. I rejoice to find that already tranquillity and hopeful confidence in the future prevail throughout the province. Let it be your task to cherish and promote these feelings: it will be mine cordially to cooperate with you; and by administering the government in obedience to the commands of the Queen, with justice and impartiality to all, to promote her anxious wish that her Canadian subjects, loyal to their Sovereign, and attached to British institutions, may, through the blessing of Divine Providence, become a happy, an united, and a prosperous people." His private letters expressed the same feelings.

"I have prorogued," he says, " my parliament, and I send you my speech. Never was such unanimity! When the Speaker read it in the Commons, after the prorogation, they gave me three cheers, in which even the ultras united. In fact, as the matter stands now, the province is in a state of peace and harmony which, three months ago, I thought was utterly hopeless. How long it will last is another matter. But if you will settle the union bill as I have sent it home, and the Lords do not reject the clergy reserves bill, I am confident I shall be able to keep the peace, make a strong government, and get on well. It has cost me a great deal of trouble, and I have had to work night and day at it.”—“ The great mistake made here hitherto was, that every governor threw himself into the hands of one party or the other, and became their slave. I have let them know and feel that I will yield to neither of them-that I will take the moderate from both sides; reject the extremes, and govern as I think

right, and not as they fancy. I am satisfied that the mass of the people are sound, moderate in their demands, and attached to British institutions; but they have been oppressed by a miserable little oligarchy on the one hand, and excited by a few factious demagogues on the other. I can make a middle reforming party, I feel sure, which will put down both.

"You can form no idea of the manner in which a colonial parliament transacts its business. I got them into comparative order and decency, by having measures brought forward by the government, and well and steadily worked through. But when they came to their own affairs, and, above all, to the money matters, there was a scene of confusion and riot, of which no one in Britain can have any idea. Every man proposes a vote for his own job; and bills are introduced without notice, and carried through all their stages in a quarter of an hour! One of the greatest advantages of the union will be, that it will be possible to introduce a new system of legislating, and, above all, a restriction upon the initiation of money-votes. Without the last I would not give

farthing for my bill: and the change will be decidedly popular; for the members all complain that, under the present system, they cannot refuse to move a job for any constituent who desires it."

The Governor-General now proceeded to Lower Canada; and following up the principle which had guided him in Upper Canada, he, shortly after his arrival in Montreal, summoned the special council to meet at that city for the settlement of such questions of purely local interest as could not without inconvenience be left for the United Legislature. Writing from Montreal on the 13th March 1840, he thus describes the task then before him:

:

"I have been back three weeks, and have set to work in earnest in this province. It is a bad prospect, however, and presents a lamentable contrast to Upper Canada. There great excitement existed; but at least the people were quarrelling for realities, for political opinions, and with a view to ulterior measures. Here there is no such thing as a political opinion. No man looks to a practical measure of improvement. Talk to any one upon education, or public works, or better laws, let him be English or French, you might as well talk Greek to him. Not a man cares for a single practical measure the only end, one would suppose, of a better form of government. They have only one feeling-a hatred of The French hate the English, and the English hate the French; and every question resolves itself into that and

race.

that alone. There is positively no machinery of government. Everything is to be done by the governor and his secretary. There are no heads of departments at all, or none whom one can depend on, or even get at; for most of them are still at Quebec, and it is difficult to move them up here, because there are no public buildings. The wise system hitherto adopted has been to stick two men into some office whenever a vacancy occurred; one Frenchman and one Britisher! Thus we have joint crown surveyors, joint sheriffs, &c., each opposing the other in everything he attempts. Can you conceive a system better calculated to countenance the distinction of race?"-"The only way, under these circumstances, in which I can hope to do good, is to wait for the union, in order to get a government together; and that I shall do. Meantime, what I am chiefly anxious about now is to get a good division of the province for judicial purposes, which I shall make fit in with the proposed municipal districts. I hope to get an entirely new system of judicature, introducing circuits for the judges, and district courts for minor civil causes. I have already established stipendiary magistrates; and a rural police in this district, commenced by Lord Seaton, I mean to extend generally over the whole province in a few weeks by an ordinance. The hand of the government is utterly unknown and unfelt at present out of Montreal and Quebec, and not the slightest means exist of knowing what is passing in the rural districts. It is with this view that I have proposed, and attach the greatest importance to, the establishment of lieutenants for each municipal district, who shall likewise preside over the council. This is very necessary in Upper Canada, but indispensable here. You will see that I propose to reserve a power in my bill to appoint one or two deputy-governors or lieutenants, with such powers as the governor-general may see fit to delegate. This is essential. The province is 1000 miles long; and without some one at each end on whom we can confide, it will be impossible to manage. Very good men may be got for L.1000 a-year at the outside for what I want."

Among the other measures occupying his attention at this period, and which he proposed to effect by ordinance before the establishment of the new constitution, was the incorporation of the cities of Quebec and Montreal, of which the former corporations had been allowed to expire during the dissensions of 1836,-and the incorporation of the seminary of St Sulpice, in order to provide for the gradual extinction of seigneurial dues in the city and island of Montreal

The session of the special council continued till the end of June.

The following extract from a private letter will show the close attention of the Governor-General to public business during this interval, as well as the nature of the occasional relaxations which he allowed himself:

"June 15, 1840.

"You ask about my health. It is better than it has been for years, which I attribute to the very regular life I lead, and to the absence of House of Commons atmosphere. Then, to be sure, if it were not for the interest I take in my business, and the quantity of it, it would be a dull life enough. Work in my room till three o'clock; a ride with my aide-de-camp till five; work again till dinner; at dinner till nine, and work again till early the next morning. That is my daily routine. My dinners last till ten when I have company, which is about three times a week; except one night in the week, when I receive about 150 people, who dance, sing, amuse themselves, and rather bore me."

To another correspondent he writes:

"I have been very much occupied here making great changes in the laws of the province preparatory to the union, and have had infinite trouble; but I have carried three or four great measures on large and extended principles, which the people here are not quite capable yet of comprehending, but which they will see the benefits of when they are in operation. Nothing but a despotism could have got them through. A House of Assembly, whether single or double, would have spent ten years at them."

Immediately afterwards he left Montreal for Quebec; whence in a few days he sailed for Nova Scotia, the government of which he had received the Queen's commands temporarily to assume, in order to put an end to collisions which had arisen between the executive government and the House of Assembly.

In Nova Scotia, as in Upper Canada, the population had gradually outgrown the monoply of power in the hands of a few large families, which seems to be the almost necessary condition of colonies in their infant state. There, as in Upper Canada, the popular branch of the legislature, chafing against the passive resistance of the executive, had addressed the crown in language which, under a better system, would probably never have been heard. They had asked for the removal of their governor, and had not obscurely hinted at the stoppage of supplies. These were evidently the signs of a coming storm; and the home government, determining at

once to anticipate and arrest it, confided the settlement of the difficulties to the Governor-General, leaving him a full discretion as to the measures to be recommended. He arrived in Halifax on the 9th July; and having been sworn into office, entered immediately on the task committed to him. After an unrestricted communication with the officers of the government on the one hand, and the popular leaders on the other, he was enabled on the 27th July, a fornight only after his arrival, to recommend to Lord John Russell certain changes in the legislative and executive councils of the province, which, having been subsequently carried into effect under the administration of Lord Falkland, entirely reconciled the previous dissensions. Since that time the province of Nova Scotia has been free from internal disturbance; and, however distasteful the changes may have been to particular individuals, they have been undoubtedly satisfactory to the great body of the inhabitants. Thus, by a frank admission of not unreasonable or illegitimate demands, all those heartburnings and dissensions by which other colonies have been distracted, and which no after concessions have been sufficient to allay, were avoided in Nova Scotia.

In order to facilitate the changes suggested by Lord Sydenham to the Colonial office, Sir Colin Campbell, then the governor of Nova Scotia, to whom probably it would have been personally unpleasant to carry them into execution, was removed to the government of Ceylon, and replaced by Lord Falkland in the month of October, 1840, under whose management the affairs of that colony still continue. The following passage of a letter from Lord Sydenham to Lord Falkland, written in the succeeding year, will explain some of the difficulties in colonial administrations with which his experience in Canada had made him acquainted, and the temper in which he was accustomed to meet them :

"Montreal, 12th May, 1841. "I have watched your proceedings with great anxiety, and am most gratified at the result. I think it in the highest degree creditable to your tact and judgment." "I enter completely into the difficulties of which you speak in carrying out improvements, notwithstanding your governmental majority, as they term that sort of thing in France. It is the misfortune of all popular governments in our colonies. The people are made legislators before they have either intelligence or education to know how to set about their work; and, as under such circumstances, selfishness and a preference of their little local jobs, to any views of general advantage must prevail amongst them, the progress of practical improvement cannot