, as they alleged,
necessary to impose duties to the amount of fifty thousand pounds a
year. At first, the very ignorant[13] country people, not knowing that
which was going on, became alarmed at the startling information
conveyed to them by the majority. They expressed their fears that their
friends were betraying them. They were soon pacified. Their members
informed them, or they were informed by the _Canadien_, that when the
House of Assembly had the entire management of the civil list, they
would not fail to reduce the sum necessary to keep up the hospitality
of Government House, and only, _consequently_, consideration for the
Governor-in-Chief; nor would they fail to retrench the several
pensions, reduce the heavier salaries of the employees, cut off the
sinecurists, and, in a variety of ways, lessen the public burthens. The
habitants were no longer alarmed at the additional taxation of L50,000
a year, with which they were threatened. A series of resolutions passed
the Assembly, intimating that the province was able to supply funds for
the payment of the civil list. The province was able to pay all the
civil expenses of its government. The House of Assembly ought "this
session" to vote the sums necessary for defraying the expenses of the
civil list. The House _will_ vote such necessary sums. And the King,
Lords, and Commons of England, were to be informed that the Commons of
Canada had taken upon itself the payment of the government of the
province and that they were exceedingly grateful to England for the
assistance hitherto afforded, and for the happy constitution, which had
raised the province to a pitch of prosperity so high that it was now
able and willing to support itself. Ten gentlemen of British extraction
voted against these resolutions and only one Canadian. The address to
the King, pursuant to the resolutions, was carried by a vote of
thirteen to three. Many members appear to have been afraid of
themselves or rather of the consequences to be apprehended from the
offence which the adoption of such resolutions was calculated to give
the Imperial advisers of the representative of the King in a colony.
Nay, the Governor-in-Chief did not much relish the resolutions. He
turned them over in his mind, again and again. There was something more
than appeared upon the surface. He disrelished the idea of getting his
meat poisoned by its passage through Canadian fingers. He was sure the
King, his master, would pay hi