approach of civil war, and sensible, possibly, of the privileges they enjoyed, attached themselves openly to the Government. Nor were the British supporters of the Constitution inactive. Loyal meetings of an imposing character took place at Quebec and Montreal, at which resolutions were passed avowing devoted attachment to the Crown, and a determination to support the Constitution at all hazards.

In the midst of this excitement died William IV., the amiable citizen King of England; and, after the lapse of a century and a quarter, a female sovereign again sat on the British throne. But the accession of Victoria I. awoke no feelings of gallantry or forbearance in the bosoms of the Papineau faction, and they plotted against her crown as earnestly as they had done against that of her predecessor. More violent language than ever was uttered at public meetings, and in various parts of the district of Montreal, the focus of sedition, magistrates were compelled to resign their commissions, and the laws otherwise violated with impunity. In consequence of these proceedings Papineau and several other militia officers were dismissed.

The Home Government, very unwilling at the commencement of a new reign to adopt coercive measures, instructed Lord Gosford to convoke the Legislature once more, and give it an opportunity to rescind its resolves, and pursue a wiser and more constitutional course. On the 18th of August it accordingly assembled for the last time at Quebec, many members of the Assembly, pursuant to a determination, recently agreed upon, to discountenance the use of British manufactures, appearing in homespun clothing. The Governor's speech was most conciliatory in its tone, but the Assembly doggedly persisting in its determination to vote no supply bill, nor transact any other business till their demands were complied with, the Legislature was prorogued by proclamation on the 26th.

These occurrences increased the prevailing excitement. Military associations were organised by the Patriots, as the disaffected thought proper to term themselves, and the determination to establish a "North-West Republic of Lower Canada" openly avowed. Under existing circumstances legal prosecutions would be of no avail. The bench, the bar, the people, were alike tainted with the spirit of hostility to Great Britain, and no jury would dare, if they even desired it, to convict a political criminal. The military power alone could effectually grapple with the existing order of things. But positive rebellion only would excuse its intervention. That had not as yet raised its head, so matters in the meantime were permitted to take their course.

The project of a republic at length effectually aroused the French. Roman Catholic clergy to a sense of their true position, and they now vigorously applied themselves to check the progress of the storm, which they had so long quietly allowed to gather strength, or covertly fomented. Bishop Lartigue addressed a circular letter to his clergy, directing them to oppose the revolutionary spirit, and to inculcate obedience to the laws of their country. At the same time he painted in forcible language the horrors and misery of civil war. In the excitement of the moment his address had little apparent effect: still, from the hour of its publication, a moral influence was steadily at work at the altars and confessionals of the many churches of the province, which gradually, but surely, effected a powerful reaction. Papineau was soon made to feel that the "Church" exercised a mastery over the unlettered habitants which he had not yet attained to.

CHAPTER XX.

CAUSES LEADING TO THE LOWER CANADIAN REBELLION.

NEVENTFUL indeed must the pages of that history be, which

UNEY

conveys no profound lesson of instruction to the politician, the philanthropist, or the philosopher. Brief as the existence of Canada has been, her annals are pregnant with import, and their careful and philosophical analysis eminently necessary to wise legislation. By accurately tracing effect to cause, and by a disposition on our part to profit by past experience, much ill-digested and unwise legislation may be avoided.

The history of Canada solves, in a great measure, if not altogether, two important problems in political economy. On one hand, it tends to establish the fact that the colonial policy of England is revolutionary in its effects, and founds communities on a basis which invariably leads to political independence of the parent state; on the other, it proves that the natural temperament of a French community is not favourable to the sober and rational exercise of constitutional liberty.

1. Generations ago the sages of England discovered that the unity of the empire could only be preserved, and its power consolidated, by fusing the Legislatures of the three kingdoms into one. The Act of Union effected this object with regard to Scotland, the rebellion of "98" accomplished the same purpose in Ireland. From 1798 the British Parliament has assumed an imperial aspect, and steadily pursued its mission of a united metropolitan power. While the astute O'Connell desired a national existence for Ireland, he saw clearly that his project was utterly hopeless so long as his country continued to send members to a British Legislature. Hence, he agitated the "Repeal of the Union" as the first grand step towards Irish nationality; but, opposed alike by Whig, and Tory, and Conservative, he sank to rest with his fathers, leaving his purpose unaccomplished, and every prospect of its attainment blotted out for

ever by the political insanity of Smith O'Brien and John Mitchell, the latter the pseudo-advocate of liberty in Ireland, the apologist for slavery in the United States.

When the eloquence of Grattan was transplanted from the College Green of Dublin to the Westminister of London-from an Irish to a British Parliament, there were over a million of persons in Ireland who could scarcely speak a word of English. Numbers beside, while they spoke a little English, could only think in Irish, and all regarded the Anglo-Saxons as a race of odious foreigners, who neither understood the language, nor appreciated the religion of the Celt.

Here, then, was a clear and tangible basis for an Irish nationality; and O'Connell long struggled to preserve it as a distinct social element. But the imperial policy triumphed. The English language broke roughly and continually over that of the Celt, invaded the bogs of Connaught, and the rude cabins of Connemara, pervaded the bench, the bar, the national schoolroom, and effectually performed its mission of breaking down the "wall of partition" between the two races. A few generations more, and the tongue in which Carolan sang, Curran apostrophised, and the learned "Four Masters" indited their Annals, will have passed into oblivion, to be only acquired by the studious.

It must create a feeling of surprise in the mind of the philosophical inquirer, that the policy of a united power, so successful in fusing the Celtic elements of Ireland and Scotland into the great Anglo-Saxon family, was not followed out in the colonial system of Great Britain. Had an imperial representation been interwoven in the constitutions of the American colonies, they would still, in all probability, have remained an integral portion of the British Empire. The indignant feelings consequent on the secondary positions their legislatures. occupied, could not have been excited; and, secure in every privilege of the citizen of the parent state, their inhabitants would never have felt themselves oppressed by colonial inferiority, and the circumstance of their being no longer entitled to the rights of British freemen when they ceased to inhabit immediate British soil.

Had the principles of an imperial federal union been established from the first, as the prominent characteristic of the colonial policy. of Great Britain, her power would be alike splendid and enduring, instead of being broken into several fragments, in some cases held together by the most slender ties. But, unfortunately for the unity of the race, a narrow commercial prejudice influenced the colonial legislation of the mother-country, meanly looking to mercantile

monopoly and present profit, rather than to the future founding of what must be almost a universal empire.

The American revolution produced no change in the fundamental principles of British colonial policy. The surrender of the right of internal taxation by the Imperial Parliament was merely an abstract measure, and involved only a slight modification of the general system. The erroneous position was assumed by British statesmen that taxation without representation was the chief cause of American independence, and that by relinquishing such a right, no event of the kind could ever happen again. The result has proved how fallacious was the supposition. It never occurred to British legislators of the last century that their whole colonial system was utterly at fault, and required to be entirely remodelled, in order to secure a lasting union with the vigorous young nations Anglo-Saxon immigration was planting amid the gentle tides of the Pacific, along the pleasant valley of the St Lawrence, and in the gorgeous regions towards the rising sun. The political events in all the principal British dependencies for the last fifty years present unmistakable evidence how imperfect is our colonial system, and how slightly has it been modified for the better by the lapse of time. Seventy-two years ago it led to the independence of the United States, and in our own day it has all but severed the Cape of Good Hope, Canada, and Australia from British dominion. To all intents and purposes, these provinces are now practically as independent of the mothercountry, as the American Union. Every British colony, as it arrives at a certain position of population and wealth, must occupy the same position. This result is the necessity of a system, which, while it concedes the principle of local colonial legislation, would check the full development of constitutional liberty, (which the very concession itself involves,) and arrogates to itself an imperial dictation. Hence, so long as this system prevails, Great Britain must be content to see her colonies become practically independent, one by one, as they arrive at an age to take care of themselves; whereas, a more enlightened course would have enabled her to found an empire, such as the world has never seen. It would seem that the time for establishing such an empire has gone by, and that the union of opinion and natural affection is the only one which now can subsist between Great Britain and her principal colonies.

2. While a correct knowledge of this subject is necessary to the student of Canadian history to enable him to understand a great many points which otherwise might appear enigmatical, it must not be forgotten, that the future colonial policy of Great Britain can