Address of the Constitutional Association of the City of Montreal to the Inhabitants of the Sister Colonies

Address of the Constitutional Association of the City of Montreal to the Inhabitants of the Sister Colonies

Anonymous

December 13, 1837

When sedition and rebellion have boldly proclaimed themselves, in the most populous and prosperous portions of this once contented and apparently loyal Province, and when anarchy and confusion have set the laws at defiance, and outraged the harmony an quiet of social life, the question naturally arises, to what circumstances of oppression, or to what unredressed grievances such a calamitous state of things is to be ascribed.

The Constitutional Association of this city has undertaken the important duty of answering the enquiry, and of explaining to the inhabitants of our Sister Colonies, as succinctly as the nature of the subject will admit, the real cause of the discontent which has called into being the active disturbances at present, most unhappily, and at the same time most unjustifiably, existing in Lower Canada.

At the conquest of the Province of Quebec by the British arms, the greater proportion of its inhabitants chose to remain in the Province, trusting to the generosity of their conquerors, rather than to return to the country of their ancestors; they became British subjects by the mere fact of their provincial residence, and subsequent civil and political benefactions conferred upon them, demonstrated their well-placed trust in the generosity of the British Government.

The full exercise of their religious worship, the complete enjoyment of their ancient civil laws, and the undisturbed use of their native language, were among the number of civil and social privileges, guaranteed to them; and political privileges, of equal extent to those enjoyed by the British provincial inhabitants, were, in addition, subsequently bestowed upon them.

The uncongeniality of the French laws as a system of provincial civil jurisprudence, with the spirit and feelings of British settlers, and their expressed desire for a change from the petty tyranny of a Governor and Council to the freedom of a Representative Provincial Government - procured still greater advantage for the French Canadians. In the year 1791, the division of the Province of Quebec into the two separate Provinces of Lower Canada and Upper Canada, was carried into effect, and a Constitution, essentially similar to that of the Parent State, was conferred upon each, whilst, at the same time, universal suffrage, was, in effect, granted to their inhabitants.

It was conceived that this measure, by which one division should consist, as much as possible, of those who were well inclined to the English laws, and the other, of those who were attached to the French laws, was best adapted to put an end to all disputes of a legal sort - to reconcile the jarring interests and opposite views of the provincial inhabitants - to prevent a great degree of animosity and confusion, from their rotted opposition of interests and to obviate dissatisfaction from a great ascendancy of one party over another in a united Legislature.

Two objections to the measure were, however, neglected by the Minister of the day, that it fostered a population of foreigners in a British colony, and that it contained no provision, whereby the inhabitants of the British Islands should be totally excluded from settling themselves in Lower Canada.

The experience of fifty years of separation between the Provinces, and the present insurrectionary and seditious spirit exhibited in Lower Canada, plainly show how far the advantageous results anticipated from that impolitic and undesired measure have been realized.

The possession of the right of almost universal suffrage, and of a numerical popular majority of the provincial constit

...

Montreal, Dec. 13, 1837.

PETER McGILL, Chairman,
WM. BADGLEY, Secretary.

Notes

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