lared, while avowing such distrust, that no officer of the Crown was
to be elected into the House. The English in general and their own
seigneurs were entirely proscribed. Except in the boroughs or cities
these classes had no chance of election. A paper called the _Canadien_,
had been published, and industriously circulated in the country, for
three or four years, to degrade and vilify the officers of government,
under the title of _gens en place_; and to bring the government itself
into contempt, by alluding to the Governor as a _ministere_, open to
their animadversions. Nothing calculated to mislead the people had been
omitted in this vile print. The various circumstances that brought
about the abdication of James the Second, had been pointed out, with
allusions, as applicable to the government here. "_La nation
Canadienne_," was their constant theme. Religious prejudices, jealousy,
and extreme ignorance, forbade the expectation of any improvement in
the Assembly. Questions before the Houses were always viewed as
affecting or otherwise some temporal right of their clergy, or having
some remote tendency to promote the establishment of the Protestant
interest. How the Act for the establishment of Public Schools had
passed had always been matter of surprise to him. There was much
jealousy at the progress of the Eastern Townships, which were settled
by American loyalists. The country was beginning to look up to the
members of the Assembly as the governors of the country. Formerly the
cry was--"_La Chambre_ to the devil!" He thought that the only remedy
for the state of things which he had described was to deprive the
province of its constitution, as the provincialists termed their
charter. The people were unfitted for liberty. And here are the
Governor's reasons for saying that a people were incapable of free
institutions. "That spirit of independence, that total insubordination
among them, that freedom of conversation, by which they communicate
their ideas of government, as they imbibe them from their leaders, all
which have increased wonderfully within these five or six years, owe
their origin entirely to the House of Assembly and to the intrigues
incident to elections. They were never thought of before." One really
wonders that even a general officer could have ventured upon sending to
England such trash, a country which had produced a Charles Fox, who
took at the passing of the Separation Act so opposite a view of human