be chargeable with having neglected
to give you due warning. You have a great opportunity before you--
obtain reciprocity for us, and I venture to predict that you will be
able shortly to point to this hitherto turbulent colony with
satisfaction, in illustration of the tendency of self-government and
freedom of trade, to beget contentment and material progress. Canada
will remain attached to England, though tied to her neither by the
golden links of protection, nor by the meshes of old-fashioned
colonial office jobbing and chicane. But if you allow the Americans to
withhold the boon which you have the means of extorting if you will, I
much fear that the closing period of the connection between Great
Britain and Canada will be marked by incidents which will damp the
ardour of those who desire to promote human happiness by striking
shackles either off commerce or off men.

Even when tendering to the Premier, Lord John Russell, his formal thanks on
being raised to the British peerage--an honour which, coming at that
moment, he prized most highly as a proof to the world that the Queen's
Government approved his policy--he could not forego the opportunity of
insisting on a topic which seemed to him so momentous.

It is (he writes) of such vital importance that your Lordship should
rightly apprehend the nature of these difficulties, and the state of
public opinion in Canada at this conjuncture, that I venture, at the
hazard of committing an indiscretion, to add a single observation on
this head. Let me then assure your Lordship, and I speak advisedly in
offering this assurance, that the disaffection now existing in Canada,
whatever be the forms with which it may clothe itself, is due mainly
to commercial causes. I do not say that there is no discontent on
political grounds. Powerful individuals and even classes of men are, I
am well aware, dissatisfied with the conduct of affairs. But I make
bold to affirm that so general is the belief that, under the present
circumstances of our commercial condition, the colonists pay a heavy
pecuniary fine for their fidelity to Great Britain, that nothing but
the existence to an unwonted degree of political contentment among the
masses has prevented the cry for annexation from spreading, like
wildfire, through the Province. This, as your Lordship will perceive,
is a new fe