n, the exercise of despotism was only as impolitic as it was
obviously unjust. It was feared by the officers of the civil government
of Canada, when this despotism was practised, that the legislature
might have the power, which has since been conceded, of dispensing with
the services of merely imperial officers, and of filling, with natives
to the manor born, every office of profit or emolument in the province.
It was feared if the exclusive power were granted to the Colonial
Legislature of appropriating all the sums necessary for the civil
expenditure of the province, that it would give the Legislature
absolute control over the officers of the empire and of the colony, and
annihilate, if not actually, potentially, the _imperium_ of Great
Britain over her colony. A distinction was drawn between the privileges
of a colonist and of the resident of the United Kingdom. While every
municipality in the latter was permitted to pay and control its own
officers, the voice of a colonist was to be unheard in the councils of
the nation to which he was attached, and he was to have no control over
the actions of those who were to make or administer the laws, under
which he lived. He was patiently to submit to the overbearing
assumptions of some plebeian Viceroy, accidentally raised to a
quasi-level with the great potentates of the earth, and inclined to
ride with his temporary and borrowed power, after that great
impersonage of evil, which, it is alleged, the beggar always attempts
to overtake when, having thrown off his rags and poverty, he has been
mounted on horseback. It is admitted that at this time the province was
controlled by a few rapacious, overbearing, and irresponsible
officials, without stake or other connection with the country, than
their offices,[14] having no sympathy with the mass of the inhabitants.
It is admitted that these officials lorded it over the people, upon
whose substance they existed, and that they were not confided in, but
hated. It is admitted that their influence with the English inhabitants
arose from the command of the treasury. And it is admitted that, though
only the servants of the government, they acted as if they had been
princes among the natives and inhabitants of the province, upon whom
they affected to look down, estranging them from all direct
intercourse, or intimacy, with the Governor, whose confidence, no less
than the control of the treasury, it was their policy to monopolise. To
the c