passed several
resolves expressive of their astonishment. The Council humbly
considered His Excellency's acquiescence with the wishes of the
Assembly to be an unequivocal abandonment of the "Rights" of the
Legislative Council, and a fatal dereliction of the first principles of
the constitution. And with regard to the income tax, proposed by the
Assembly, Mr. Ryland states that the whole saving that would have been
effected by it, would only have been L2,500 a year, and that the
officers of the government who had the utmost difficulty in subsisting
on their salaries, would have been, by such a measure, reduced to
extreme distress! Now, it is a noticeable fact, in connection with this
matter, that the Provincial Secretary, at the period alluded to, was an
official in the Colonial Office, and had never seen Canada, although he
afterwards received from the province a pension of L400 a year, in
consideration of his long and valuable services; and it is in a high
degree amusing to find Mr. Ryland informing this functionary
"decidedly" and "frankly", that he had acted wisely in not asking for
an increase of salary, although it was a different thing to solicit
additional assistance in an office where the public business was
constantly increasing! Mr. Ryland and a few other such cormorants could
not tolerate the impertinent interference of the House of Assembly with
their means of subsistence. Nay, it will even appear that Mr. Ryland
took it upon himself to privately lecture Sir George Prevost's
successor upon the impropriety of following a certain course of action,
and that he actually succeeded in dissuading the Governor from his
original purpose.

The Assembly, thwarted as it had been by the Council, still pursued its
reformatory course. Much time, indeed, did not elapse until Mr. Stuart
again brought forward his motion to take into consideration the power
and authority exercised by the Provincial Courts of Justice, under the
denomination of Rules of Practice. His motion was almost unanimously
carried. And who this Mr. Stuart was, Mr. Ryland tells. About 1813,
says the Clerk of the Executive Council, "Mr. Bedard, the judge, came
to Quebec, for the purpose of advising the measures to be pursued, but
not having a seat in the Assembly, the principal management was left to
an Anglo-American Barrister, named Stuart, who had been a pupil of the
present Chief Justice, (Sewell) when he held the situation of
Attorney-General. This ge