To the Honorable the Knights, Citizens and Burgesses, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in Parliament Assembled
MAY IT PLEASE YOUR HONORABLE HOUSE —
WE His Majesty's dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of Lower Canada in Provincial Parliament assembled, respectfully and with confidence address Your Honorable House, for the purpose of representing the numerous and ever increasing evils under which the People of this Province are labouring, in consequence of defects in its Laws and Constitution, and of the abusive, partial, unconstitutional and violent manner in which the existing laws have been and continue to be administered.
If any other motive than a sense of justice, were necessary to induce your Honorable House to listen favourably to the complaints of a numerous portion of the subjects of this vast and glorious Empire: this House might insist upon the strong affection with which the People whom it represents have always cherished the tie which unites them to Great Britain, — on the courage with which they have repeatedly defended its interests in time of war, —on their refusal to accede to the appeal made to them by the lat English colonies on this continent, at the period which preceded the independence of the latter, — on the confidence which they have manifested in His Majesty's Government, even under circumstances of the greatest difficulty, and under Provincial administrations which trampled under foot their dearest rights, — and on the liberty with which they have welcomed as brethren, their fellow subjects from the several parts of the United Kingdom and its dependencies. This House might likewise insist, upon it earnest endeavour to facilitate to that class of His Majesty's subjects (as far on it dependended) a participation in the political and natural advantages of the country, and to remove for them the difficulties rising from the vices of the Provincial administration, — on its efforts to advance the general prosperity of the country, by securing the peace and content of all classes of its inhabitant without distinction, on the solid and durable basis of identity of interests, and equal confidence in the protection of the Mother Country, — on its efforts to introduce and firmly establish in this Province the constitutional and parliamentary Law necessary to the operations of the Government thereof, and of all such portions of the public Law of England, as appears to it adapted to promote the welfare and safety of the people, and conformable to their wishes and their wants, — and on the anxiety it has shewn to preserve the strictest possibly analogy between its proceeding and those of Your Honorable House.
But in the full conviction that the consideration thus alluded to will be fully appreciated by Your Honorable House, we shall proceed to detail the facts and principles on which our humble prayer is founded:
At a recent period the great majority of the people of this Province, complained by petitions signed by upwards of 87,188 persons, of serious and numerous abuses which then prevailed;— and their complaints being submitted to the consideration of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, were followed by a Report made to Your Honorable House on the 18th July, 1828, by a Committee of which the present principal Secretary of State for the Colonial Department as well as several others who are now members of His Majesty's Government formed part. That report, the result of extensive research and careful deliberation, contained the following very just conclusions:— 1st, "That the embarrassments and discontents which had long prevailed in the Canadas, had arisen from serious defects in the system of Laws and the constitution established in those Colonies — 2dly, That the said embarrassments and discontents were in a great measure to be attributed to the manner in which the existing system had been administered. — 3dly, That neither the suggestions of Your Honorable House, nor any other improvements in the Laws and Constitutions of the Canadas would be attended with the desired effect, unless an impartial, conciliatory and constitutional system of Government were observed in these loyal and important Colonies."
It is with deep regret that we now state to Your Honorable House that neither its recommendations nor the benevolent intentions since expressed by His Majesty's Executive Government, have been followed by any effective measures of a nature to produce the desired effect;— that the Constitution of this Province, with it s serious defects, has continued to be administered in a manner calculated to multiply the embarrassments and to increase the discontents which have long prevailed; and that the greater part of the abuses which then prevailed still exist without correction or mitigation.
After having carefully reflected on this state of things, this House is convinced that the source of the evil lies in the first of the causes pointed out by Your Honorable House; and is equally convinced that the most serious defect in the Act of the thirty-first year of the reign of George the Third, chapter thirty-one, — the most active cause of abuses of power — of the infraction of the laws — and of the waste of the public revenue and property, is that injudicious enactment, the fatal results of which were foretold at the time, by one of the public men of whom England has most reason to be proud, that, namely, which invests the Crown with the exorbitant power, (incompatible with any Government duly balanced and founded on Law and Justice, and not on force and coercion,) of selecting and composing without any rule or limitation, or any predetermined qualification, an entire branch of the Legislature, supposed from the nature of its attributions to be independent, but inevitably the servile tool of the authority which create, composes, and decomposes it, and can on any day modify it to suit its interests or passions of the moment; and unlimited power from the use of which the abuse of it is inseparable, and which has in fact always been so exercised in this Province as to favor a spirit of monopoly and despotism in the Executive and Judicial Departments, and never in favor of the public interest. — And this House further states, as its intimate conviction, that even if the Colonial Administrations had, by making more judicious selections, succeeded in quieting the alarm, and allaying for a time the profound discontent which have prevailed, that form of Government would not be less essentially vicious which makes the happiness or misery of a Country depend on an Executive over which the people have no influence, and which has no permanent community of interest with them.
The effectual remedy for this evil foreseen by your Honorable House, when one of the Agents of the people of this Province was asked, whether he thought it possible that the Legislative Council could command the confidence and respect of the people and go in harmony with the House of Assembly, unless the principle of Election were introduced into its composition in some manner or another; in answer to which question two means were pointed out by the said Agent, the one being the exertion of the Royal Prerogative in making good selections, by calling to the said Council men who were independent of the Executive, and the other the rendering it elective.
This House believes with the said Agent, that, judging from experience, there would be no security in the first of those means, while the second would be safe for all parties; but with regard to the suggestion of the said Agent, that a class of Electors of a higher qualification should be established, and a qualification in landed property fixed for the persons who might sit in the said Council, this House, has in its humble address to His most Gracious Majesty, dated the 20th of March 1833, declared in what manner that principle could in its opinion be rendered tolerable in Canada, by restraining it within certain bounds which should in no case be passed. Even in defining bounds of this nature and in consenting to require as a condition of eligibility to the Legislative Council, the possession of real property which most wisely and happily has not been made a condition of eligibility to the House of Assembly, this House could only have sough to avoid shocking received opinions in Europe, when custom and the Law have given so many artificial advantages to birth, rank, and fortune, while in America these political privileges and advantages in favor of the possessors of large property, could no long resist the preference given at free elections, to virtue, talent, information, and to honest, contented and devoted men, whom, under the elective system, the people ought always to have the power of consecrating to the service of the Country when they think them fitter for it than richer men, whose fortune does not exclude, but is not always accompanied by the other advantages aforesaid.
We are therefore in no wise disposed to admit the excellence of the present Constitution of Canada, although in a Despatch of which the date is unknown, and which has been only partially communicated to this House during the present Session, His Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonial Department, (this House having no certain knowledge whether the present Colonial Secretary of his predecessor,) unreasonably and most erroneously asserts that the said Constitution has conferred on the two Canadas the Institution of Great Britain; nor do we reject the principle of extending the system of frequent elections much further than it is at the present carried; but we think that this system ought especially to be extended to the Legislative Council, although it may be considered by the Colonial Secretary as incompatible wit the British Government which he calls a Monarchical Government, or too analogous to the Institutions which the several States composing the industrious, moral, and prosperous confederation of the United States have adopted for themselves. We differ in like manner from the said high public functionary when he says, that an examination of the composition of the Legislative Council at the period when it was so justly censured by the Committee of your Honorable House and at the present time, will sufficiently show the spirit in which His Majesty's Government has endeavoured to carry the wishes of Parliament into effect, although we received with gratitude this assurance of the just and benevolent intentions with which, in the performance of their duty, His Majesty's Government has endeavoured to carry those wishes into effect.
Your Honorable House can, doubtless, never deem it right, that under the name of a Legislative Council, an Aristocracy should be imposed on a Country which contains no natural materials for its formation; and will rather as we venture to hope, be of opinion that the Parliament of the United Kingdom is granting to His Majesty's Canadian subjects the power of revising the Constitution under which they hold their dearest rights would adopt a liberal policy, free from all considerations of former interests and of existing prejudices; and that by this measure, equally consistent with the wisest and the most extended views, it would enter into a noble Rivalry with the United States of America, would prevent His Majesty's Canadian subjects, from seeing any thing to envy there; and would preserve a friendly intercourse between Great Britain and this Province, as her Colony, so long as the tie between us shall continue, and as her ally whenever the course of events shall change our relative position. We emit these opinions with the greater confidence, because they are stated to have been emitted among other remarks in the same spirit, by the Right Honourable Edward Geoffrey Stanley now His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Colonial Department, and by several other distinguished public men, some of whom are among the number of His Majesty's present Ministers, and whose words we do but echo, when we assert that the Legislative Council of this Province, has never been any thing but an impotent screen between the Governor and the People, which by enabling the one to maintain a conflict with the other has served to perpetuate a system of discord and contention; and that it has unceasingly acted with avowed hostility to the sentiments of the people as constitutionally expressed by the House of Assembly.
The conduct of the Legislative Council since its presented reform, which was held up as one adapted to unite it more closely with the interests of the Colony in conformity to the wishes of Parliament, shows clearly, that the opinions then entertained on this subject in the United Kingdom, and in this Province, are in no wise rendered less applicable or less correct by the present composition of that body, which, strengthened by a majority inimical to the right of this House and of the people whom it represents, has received new and more powerful means than it before possessed of perpetuating and aggravating the system of abuses of which the people of this Province have, up to this day, ineffectually complained, and which up to this day Parliament and His Majesty's Government in England have in like manner ineffectually sought to correct. It is even since its pretended Reform that the Legislative Council has, in a manner more calculated to alarm the Inhabitants of this Province, and more particularly, and more particularly in its Addresses to His Majesty of the first of April, one thousand eight hundred and thirty three, renewed its pretension of being specially appointed to protect one portion of His Majesty's subjects in this Province, as supposing them to have interests which could not be sufficiently represented in this House, even-eights of the Members of which are by the said Council most erroneously stated to be of French origin and to speak the French language. A pretension of this nature is a violation of the Constitution, and cannot fail to excite and perpetuate among the several classes of the inhabitants of this Province, national distinctions, distrust and animosity, and to give one portion of the people an unjust and factious superiority over the other, with the hope of domination and undue preference. — This attempt of the Legislative Council, as one of its first acts after its pretended reform, to prejudice and irritate His Majesty's Government, against the People of this Province, and against the Representative Branch of its Legislature, has destroyed all the hope which remained among the people and in this House, of seeing the said Council act for the public good, so long as it shall remain constituted as it now is; all are, on the contrary, intimately persuaded, that the extension of the elective principle to the body is the only measure which affords any prospect of equal and sufficient protection in future to all the inhabitants of this Province, without distinction. It is after having well considered the Despatches of His Majesty's Secretary for the Colonial Department, and on the eve of a General Election, that this House now solemnly repeats and renews its prayer, that the Legislature of the United Kingdom will comply with the wished of the people of this Province and of this House, and will deign to provide the only effectual remedy of all evils present and future, either by rendering the Legislative Council elective, in the manner mentioned in the address of this House to His Most Gracious Majesty, of the twentieth of March one thousand eight hundred and thirty-three, or by enabling the people to express still more directly, their opinions as to the measures to be adopted in that behalf, and with regard to such other modifications of the system of Laws and of the Constitution as the wants of the people and the interest of His Majesty's Government may require.
We must express our regret that the accomplishment of the wishes of Parliament, was left to the Principal Agent of His Majesty's Government in this Province, the present Governor in Chief, in whose power it lay, more than in that of any of his predecessors, (by reason of the latitude allowed him, as to the number and choice of the persons whom he might call to the Legislative Council,) to allay, for a time at least, the intestine divisions which ?read? this Colony, and to give to the said Body a character of greater independence and respectability by judicious nominations.
... (More to be transcribed - Scan 14.pdf.)