tion of
such a lever. The opposition can do nothing more at present. June is
rather a leisure month for reading--the hay and wheat harvest will come
on in July, August and September,--during which time agitators can do
but little, and then I suppose will come the session of the Legislature.
I hope to produce a vindication of His Excellency that will do no
discredit to him, and shake, if not confound, his enemies, and exhibit
such a platform of government as will appeal to every candid, common
sense, sound British subject, best adapted to promote the best interests
and greatest happiness of Canada....

To vindicate injured worth, either in high or humble life, has on
different occasions, afforded me peculiar pleasure, and I contemplate,
even as a pleasing task (though painful from the occasion) the purpose
and opportunity of doing so in respect to so noble a subject and so good
a cause as that with which His Excellency is identified. When the
Government once assumes the attitude of strength, many who are now
neutral, or perhaps professedly leaning to the apparently stronger
party, will come over avowedly to the Crown. The timidity of the secret
friends of the government in Lower Canada is an infirmity (I think of a
majority of mankind) which requires as much pity as it deserves censure.
All Greeks are not Spartans. Ten men seem to be made for work, where one
is constituted for war. I have found it so in the hour of peril; when I
have been left almost alone, though I found abundance of helping and
co-operating friends as soon as the tide of victory began to turn in my
favour. I think it will be so with the government in less than twelve
months--at least in Upper Canada. The League organization in Toronto is
the most formidable affair that has ever been formed in western Canada.
I am told that its funds are large also,--several thousand pounds--but I
think its power can be broken.

In a note to Dr. Ryerson from Mr. Higginson, dated 23rd of May, he
said:--You will of course have seen the manifesto just hatched and
brought forth by the League, jesuitically and cleverly enough put we
must admit; it will no doubt be widely circulated, and it is very
desirable that an antidote to the poison should be as extensively
communicated to the people; and who in the province is so capable as
yourself for such a task? If you would take up the arguments
_seriatim_--you could prove their fallacy without much difficulty. The
fabric being