d by Sir James Craig; and
an apology even can be made for the crooked policy of those voluntary
advisers who had hedged him in. Great Britain was at war with France.
The name of a Frenchman was unmusical in the ears of any Englishman of
that period, and it sounded harshly in the ears of the British soldier.
It was France that had prostituted liberty to lust. It was France that
had dragged public opinion to the scaffold and the guillotine. It was
France that held the axe uplifted over all that was good and holy. It
was France that was making all Europe a charnel-house. It was General
Buonaparte of France, who only sought to subdue England, the more
easily to conquer the world. Many an English hearth had cursed his
name. Many a widow had he made desolate, and many an orphan fatherless.
The "conquered subjects" of King George spoke and thought in French.
They held French traditions in veneration. There could only be a
jealousy, a hatred, a contempt entertained of everything seeming to be
French, in the heart of an Englishman. And these sentiments were
doubtless reciprocated. But, still the French of Canada, were only,
now, French by extraction. They had long lost that love of the land of
their origin, which belongs to nativity. Few men in the province had
been born in France. Few Canadians knew anything about the new regime,
or took any interest in the "_Code Napoleon_." And few even cherished
flattering recollections of Bourbon rule. The Canadians wanted English
liberty, not French republicanism. The Canadians wanted to have for
themselves so much liberty as a Scotchman might enjoy at John O'Groats,
or an Englishman obtain at Land's-End. And for so desiring liberty they
were misrepresented, because of English colonial prejudices, and
because of official dislikes and selfishness. When the first
Attorney-General of Canada, Mr. Mazzeres, afterwards Cursitor Baron of
the Exchequer, in England, of whom Mr. Ryland was but a pious follower,
proposed to convert the Canadians to Anglicism in religion, in manners,
and in law, assuredly little opposition could have been made to the
scheme. Then, the pursuance of Cardinal Richelieu's policy would, in
after ages, have exemplified that the pen had been mightier than the
sword. Then the whole population of the province could have been housed
in one of the larger cities of the present time. But when the province
had increased in numbers to 300,000, partially schooled in English
legislatio