To the Honorable the Knights, Citizens and Burgesses, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in Parliament Assembled

To the Honorable the Knights, Citizens and Burgesses, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in Parliament Assembled

Louis-Joseph Papineau

1st March, 1834

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 depended) 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 Honorable 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 rend this Colony, and to give to the said Body a character of greater independence and respectability by judicious nominations. The selections which have been made have destroyed this hope and have confirmed His Majesty's subjects in their opinion as to the principle upon which that body is constituted. — although sixteen persons have been called to the Council in two years, (a number greater than that afforded by any period of ten years under any other Administration,) and not withstanding the instructions which the Governor in Chief may have received from His Majesty's Government, the same malign influence which has been extended to perpetuate in the Country a system of absolute irresponsibility, had prevailed to such an extent as to render the majority of the Legislative Council more inimical to the Country and less connected with its interest, than at any former period. So that its present composition, instead of being calculated to bring about that co-operation between the two branches of the Provincial Legislature, which is so necessary to the welfare of the Country, is such as to destroy all hope that the said Council will adopt the opinions and the sentiments of the people of this Province and of this House, with regard to inalienable right of the latter to the full and entire control of the whole Revenue raised in the Province; with regard to the necessity under which this House has found itself (for the purpose of effecting the reformation of existing abuses which it has so long ineffectually demanded) to provide for the expenses of the Civil Government by annual appropriations only; as well as with regard to a variety of other questions of public interest, concerning which the Executive Government and the Legislative Council which it has created, differ diametrically from the people of the Province and from this House. This fact confirms the justice of the censure passed by the Committee of your Honorable House on the Constitution of the Legislative Council as it had theretofore existed, and the correctness of the opinion of those Members of the said Committee who wished to introduce the principle of election into the said body.

The vicious system which has been so carefully maintained, is as contrary to the wishes of Parliament, as that would have been, which in order to ??? the wishes of your Honorable House and of the people of England for Parliamentary Reform, should have called into the House of Lords a number of men notorious for their factious opposition to that great measure. In fact, the majority of the said Council is composed of men who have irretrievably lost the confidence of the Country, by encouraging the acts of violence committed under the Administration of Lord Dalhousie; — by having on all occasions outraged the people and their Representatives; — of men who may be said to have been unknown in the Country and within the last few years, without landed property, or having very little; most of them have never been returned to the Assembly, and some of them having been re??ed by the people; — of men moreover who have never given any proofs of their fitness for performing the functions of Legislators, and who were only appointed by reason of their community of sentiments with the Provincial Administration, to a station in which they have the power of exerting for life, and influence over the Legislation and over the fate of the Province, the Laws and Institutions of which have ever been the objects of their dislike. The recently appointed Councillors, who were taken from the majority of the Assembly, and had entertained the hope that a sufficient number of independent men, holding opinions in unison with those of the majority of the people, and of their Representatives, would be associated with them, have thus been overwhelmed by a majority hostile to the Country.

The result has been so much the more fatal, because the people naturally looked upon the Legislative Council, recomposed by the present Governor in Chief, as embodying the sentiments of the Colonial Executive; and the two authorities seem to have leagued themselves together for the purpose of proclaiming principles subversive of all harmony in the Province, and of governing and domineering in a spirit of blind and invidious national antipathy. This House, has nevertheless, the satisfaction of seeing that the great majority of that class of the Majesty's subjects in this Province who are of British origin, (whether their number be that mentioned in the said Address of the Legislative Council, or, as the truth is, amounts to about half that number,) are every day becoming more and more convinced, that their interests and wants are identical with those of their fellow subjects who are of French origin and speak the French language; the one class love the Country of their birth, the other that of their adoption; the greater portion of the latter have acknowledged the generally beneficial tendency of the Laws and Institutions of the Country, and have laboured in concert with the former, to introduce into them gradually, and by the authority of the Provincial Parliament, the improvements of which they have from time to time appeared susceptible, and have resisted the endeavour which has been made to introduce confusion into them in favor of schemes of monopoly and abuse, and wish for an impartial and protecting Government for all without distinction.

Among the Councillors appointed under the present Provincial administration, there are in manifest violation of the Constitution many persons who were born in the United States, or are natives of other foreign Countries, and who at the time of their appointment had not been naturalized by Acts of the British Parliament; The residence of one of these persons (Horatio Gates) in this Country during the last War with the United States was only tolerated; he refused at that time to take the oath of allegiance and to take up arms for the defence of the Country, in which he remained merely for the sake of lucre; and after these previous facts, took seat in the Legislative Council on the 16th of March, 1833, and fifteen days afterwards, to wit, on the 1st of April, voted for the Address before mentioned, censuring those who during the last War were under arms on the frontiers, to repulse the attacks of the American Armies and on the fellow citizens of the said Horatio Gates. Another, (James Baxter,) was resident during the said late War, within the United States, and was bound by Laws of the country of his birth, under certain circumstances, forcibly to invade this Province, to pursue, destroy and capture if possible His Majesty's Armies, and such of His Canadian Subjects as were arms on the frontier to repulse the attack of the American Armies, and of the fellow citizens of the said James Baxter, who, (being at the same time but slightly qualified as far as property is concerned) became by the nomination of the Governor in Chief, a Legislator for life in Lower Canada, on the 22d of March, 1833, and eight days afterwards, on the first of April aforesaid, voted that very Address which contained the calumnious and insulting accusation which called for the expression of His Majesty's just regret "that any word had been introduced which should have the appearance of ascribing to a class of His Subjects of one origin, views at variance with the allegiance which they owe to His Majesty."

The said Address voted unanimously on the first of April, one thousand eight hundred and thirty three aforesaid, by the Legislative Council after its pretended reform, was so voted by seven Councillors under the influence of the present Executive, and by five others appointed by it, one only of those who voted it (the Honorable George Moffatt,) having been appointed under the preceding administration. The twelve who concurred in it are, (besides the said Honorable George Moffatt,) the Honorable Jonathan Sewell, Chief Justice of the Province, to whom the Right Honorable Lord Viscount Goderich, in a Despatch from the Colonial Department, recommended "a cautious abstinence from all proceedings by which he might be involved in any contention of a party nature;" — John Hale, the present Receiver-General, who in violation of the Laws and of the trust reposed on him, and upon illegal warrants, issued by the Governor, has paid away large sums of the public money; Sir John Caldwell, Baronet, the late Receiver General, a Peculator, condemned to pay nearly one hundred thousand pounds, to reimburse a like sum, levied upon the people of this Province, and granted by law to His Majesty, His Heirs and Successors for the public uses of the Province, and for the support of His Majesty's Government therein, and who has diverted the greater part of the said sum from the purpose for which it was destined, and appropriated it to his private use; Herman Wiltzius Ryland, Clerk of the Executive Government, and a Pensioner upon the Civil Establishment of this Province; Matthew Bell, a grantee of the Crown, who has been unduly and illegally favoured by the Executive, in the lease of the forges of St. Maurice, in the grant of large tracts of waste lands, and in the lease of large tracts of land formerly belonging to the order of Jesuits; John Stewart, an Executive Councillor, commissioner of the Jesuits' estates, and the incumbent of other lucrative offices: all of whom are by their pecuniary and personal interests placed under the influence of the Executive; the Honorable, Peter McGill, John Molson, Horatio Gates, Robert Jones, and James Baxter, all of whom, as well as those before mentioned were, with two exceptions, born out of the country; and all of whom, except one, who for a number of years was a member of the Assembly and has extensive landed property, are but slightly qualified in that respect, and had not been sufficiently engaged in public life to afford a presumption that they were fit to perform the functions of Legislators for life; — and by the Honorable Antoine Gaspard Couillard, the only native of the country of French origin who stooped to concur in the address, and who also, while he is but very moderately qualified with respect to real property, had member been engaged in public life, and who after his appointment to the Council, and before the said first of April, rendered himself dependent upon the Executive by soliciting a paltry and subordinate place of profit. The people of this country have thus every reason to look upon the said address as the work of the present administration of the Province, the expression of its sentiments, the key to its acts, and the proclamation of the iniquitous and arbitrary principles and maxims which are to form its rule of conduct for the future.

The Legislative Council in its said address, charges this House with having calumniously accused the King's Representative of partiality and injustice in the exercise of the powers of his office, and with deliberately calumniating His Majesty's Officers both Civil and Military, ans a faction induced by interest alone to contend for the support of a corrupt Government, inimical to the rights, and opposed to the wishes of the People: — with reference to which the House declares that the accusations preferred by it, have never been calumnious, but are true and well founded, and that a faithful picture of the Executive Government of this Province in all its parts, is drawn by the Legislative Council in this passage of its Address. The said address of the Council would be criminal and seditious if its very nature did not render it harmless, since it goes to assert, that if the Parliament of the United Kingdom should grant the earnest prayer of this House — the result of this act of Justice and benevolence would be to inundate the country with blood. The said address is not less injurious to the small number of independent members of the Legislative Council, — to those who have been Members of the Assembly, and have seconded its efforts to obtain for it the entire control of the whole Provincial Revenue, — who approved the wholesome and constitutional (and not, as styled by the Legislative Council the daring) measure of praying to His Majesty by address, that the Legislative Council might be rendered elective, — who condemned the scheme for the creation of an extensive monopoly of lands in favor of speculators residing out of the country, — who believe that the wishes and interests of the people are faithfully represented by the majority of its representatives, and that the connection between this Colony and the Parent State will be durable in proportion to the greater or less influence of the people in the passing of the Laws which are to govern them, — who are of opinion that His Majesty's subjects recently settled in this Country, will share in all the advantages of the free institutions, and of the improvement which would be rapidly developed, if by means of the extension of the elective principle, the Administration were prevented from creating a monopoly of power and profit in favor of the minority who are of one origin, and to the prejudice of the majority who are of another, and from giving to all public discussions an alarming character of strife and national antipathy. The said independent Members, convinced of the tendency of the said body and undeceived as to the motives which led to their appointment as Members of it, now for the most part refrain from attending the sittings of the said Council, where they would find themselves opposed by a majority inimical to their principles and to their Country.

If, as we are fond of believing, His Majesty's Government in England and does not wish systemically to nourish civil discord in this Colony, the Contradictory allegations thus made by the two Houses, make it imperative on it to become better acquainted with the state of the Province than it now appears to be, if we judge from its long tolerance of the abuses which its agents commit with impunity. It ought not to trust to the self praise of those who have the management of the affairs of a Colony passing, according them, into a state of anarchy; but if its protection of public functionaries accused by a competent authority, (that is to say, by this House in the name of the people) could for a time by force and intimidation aggravate, in favor of those functionaries and against the rights and interests of the people, the system of insult and oppression which they impatiently bear, the result must be to weaken their confidence in, and their attachment to His Majesty's Government, and to give deep root to the discontent and insurmountable disgust which have been excited by Administrations deplorably vicious, and which are now excited by the majority of the public functionaries of the Colony, combined as a faction, and induced by interest alone to contend for the support of a corrupt Government, inimical to the right and opposed to the wishes of the People.

In addition to its wicked and calumnious address, the Legislative Council, after its pretended reform, has proved how little community of interest it has with the Colony, by the fact, that nearly one half of the bills which have been sent up to it, have been rejected, or amended in a manner contrary to their spirit and essence; and the same unanimity which attended the passing of the greater part of the said Bills in the Assembly accompanied their rejection by the Legislative Council. An opposition so violent shows clearly that the Provincial Executive and the Council of its choice, do not, or will not, consider the Representative Body as the faithful interpreter and equitable judge of the wants and wishes of the people, nor as fit to propose Laws conformable to the public will. Under such circumstances it became the duty of the head of the Executive to appeal to the people by dissolving the Parliament, had there been any analogy between the institutions of Great Britain and those of this Province.

His Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonial Department acknowledges in his Despatches, that it has frequently been admitted that the people of Canada ought to see nothing in the Institutions of the neighbouring States which they could regard with envy, and that he has yet to learn that any such feeling now exists among His Majesty's subjects in Canada; with regard to which we beg leave to represent to your Honorable House, that the neighbouring States have a form of Government very fit to prevent abuses of power, and very effective in repressing them; that the reverse of this order of thins has always prevailed in Canada under the present form of Government; that there exists in the neighbouring States a stronger and more general attachment to the national institutions than in any other country; and that there exists also in those States a guarantee for the continual advance of their political institutions towards perfection, in the revision of the same at short and determinate intervals by conventions of the people, in order that they may without any shock or violence be adapted to the actual state of things. It was in consequence of a correct idea of the state of the Country and of society in general in America, that the Committee of your Honorable House asked John Neilson, Esquire, the agent of the people beforementioned, whether there was not in the Canadas a growing inclination to see the institutions become more and more popular, and whether he did not think it would be wise, that the object of every change made to the institutions of the Province, should be to comply more and more with the wishes of the people, and to render the said institutions extremely popular: And this House for and in the name of the people whom it represents, answered solemnly and deliberately, — "Yes, it would be wise — it would be excellent."

We humbly believe, may it please your Honorable House, that the Constitution and the form of Government which would best suit this Colony, are not to be sough for solely in the analogies offered by the institutions of Great Britain, where the state of society is altogether different from our own: and that it would be wiser to profit by the information to be gained by observing the effects of the very various Constitutions which the Kings and Parliament of England have granted to the several Plantations and Colonies in America, and the way in which virtuous and enlightened men have modified them with the assent of the parties interested. The unanimous consent with which all the American States have adopted and extended the elective system, shows that it is adapted to the wishes, manners and social state of this continent. This system prevails equally among those of Spanish origin, although during the continuance of their Colonial State they were subjected to the yoke of ignorance and absolutism.

We do not hesitate to ask from a Prince of the House of Brunswick and a Reformed Parliament, all the freedom and political powers which the Princes of the House of Stuart and their Parliaments granted to the most favored of the Plantations, formed at a period when such grants must have been less favorably regarded than they would now be. We do this with so much the more confidence, because it was not the best and most free system of Colonial Government which hastened the independence of the Colonies; since the Province of New York in which the institutions were most monarchical, in the sense which that word appears to bear in the Despatch before mentioned, was the first to refuse obedience to an act of Parliament, and the Colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island, which though closely and affectionately connected with the Mother Country for a long course of years, enjoyed Constitutions purely democratic, were the last to enter into a confederation rendered necessary by the conduct of bad Servants of the Crown, who called in the supreme authority of the Parliament and of the Constitution to govern arbitrarily, and who listened rather to the Governors and their advisers, than to the People and their Representatives, and shielded with their protection these who consumed the taxes rather than those who paid them. This House then, entertains no fear of being taxed with disloyalty for having endeavored to introduce into the Institution of this Country, whatever those of the neighbouring States offered that was good and applicable, nor more especially, for having during many years passed a Bill (which has at last become at Law,) found on the principle of proportioning arithmetically the number of Representatives to the Population of the places represented; and if by unhappy circumstances it has been compelled to assent to amendments which violate that principle, this is an act of injustice for which our duty obliges us to seek a remedy.

In thus praying that the principle of election may be applied to the Legislative Council, and for the general extension of that principle, we are bound to protest against any alteration in the Constitutional Act of the 31st year of the Reign of George the Third, chapter 31, founded on the false representations of the Legislative Council, and of the interested tools of the Colonial Administration, to the prejudice of the rights, liberties and welfare of the People of this Province. We believe that the Legislative Council, a body which has so long been strongly accused by the People of this Province, and justly censured by the Committee of the Honorable the House of Commons, and which represents merely the opinions of a few individuals, is not an authority competent to demand such alterations; that the said Act cannot be and ought not to be altered except at such time and in such manner as may be wished by the People of this Province, whose sentiments this House alone is competent to represent; and that no interference on the part of the British Legislative with the Laws and Constitution of this Province, which should not be founded on the wishes of the People freely expressed either through this House or in any other Constitutional manner, could in any wise tend to settle any of the difficulties which exist in the Province, but, on the contrary, would only aggravate them and prolong their continuance.

In the midst of the disorders and sufferings which the Country has so long endured, this House and the People had cherished the hope and professed their faith that Your Majesty's Government in England did not knowingly participate in the political immorality of its Colonial Agents and Officers. It is with astonishment and grief that they have seen in Extracts from Despatches from the Colonial Department communicated to his House by the Governor in Chief, during the present Session, that one at least of the Members of Your Majesty's Government entertains towards them feelings of prejudice and animosity, and inclines to favor plans of oppression and revenge, ill adapted to change a system of abuses, the continuance of which would altogether discourage the People, extinguish in them the legitimate hope of happiness, which, as British Subjects, they entertained, and would leave them only the hard alternative of submitting to an ignominious bondage, or of seeing those ties endangered which unite them to the Mother Country.

The approbation expressed by the Colonial Department of the present composition of the Legislative Council, whose acts since its pretended reform have been marked by party spirit and by invidious national distinctions and references, is a subject of just alarm to Your Majesty's Canadian Subjects in general, and more particularly to that great majority of them who have not yet yielded at any time to any other class of Inhabitants of this Province in attachment to Your Majesty's Government, in their love of peace and order, in their respect for the laws, and in their wish to effect that union among the whole People which is so much to be desired, to the end that all may enjoy freely and equally the rights and advantages of British Subjects and of the Institutions which have been guaranteed to and are dear to the Country. The distinctions and preferences aforesaid, have almost constantly been used and taken advantage of by the Colonial Administration of this Province, and the majority of the Legislative Councillors, Executive Councillors, Judges, and other functionaries dependent upon them, to serve to their own ends; and nothing but the spirit of union among the several classes of the People, and their conviction that their interests are the same, could have prevented collisions incompatible with the prosperity and safety of the Province.

Your Majesty cannot fail to observe that the political world in Europe is at this moment agitated by two great parties, who in different Countries appear under the several names of Serviles, Royalists, Tories and Conservatives on the one side, and of Liberals, Constitutionalists, Republicans, Whigs, Reformers, Radicals, and similar appellations, on the other; that the former party is, on the American Continent, with any weight or influence except what it derives from its European supporters, and from a trifling number of persons who become their dependents for the sake of personal gain, and of others who from age or habit cling to opinions which are not partaken by any numerous class; while the second party overspreads all America. We are, then, certain that we shall not be misunderstood wit regard to the independence which it is our wish to see given to the Legislative Council, when we say that Your Majesty's Secretary of State is mistaken if he believes that the exclusion of a few salaried Officers would suffice to make that body harmonize with the wants, wishes and opinions of the People, as long as the Colonial Governors retain the power of preserving in it a majority of Members rendered service by their antipathy to every liberal idea.

This House and the People whom it represents do not wish or intend to convey any threat; but relying as they do on the principles of Law and Justice, they are and ought to be politically strong enough not to be exposed to receive insult from any man whomsoever, or bound to suffer it in silence. This House, then, cannot refrain from stating, that the style of the Despatches from the Colonial Secretary, as communicated to the House during the present Session, is insulting and inconsiderate to such a degree, that no legally constituted Body, although its functions were infinitely subordinate to those of legislation, could or ought to tolerate them; — that the tenor of the said Despatches is incompatible wit the rights and privileges of this House, which ought not to be called in question or defined by any Functionary however exalted, but which ought, as occasion may required, to be successively promulgated and enforced by this House. We therefore most respectfully state to Your Majesty our regret that Your Majesty should have been, as appears by one of the said Despatches, advised to interfere in a case of this nature. In the instance here referred to, we exercised a privilege which we believe d and still humbly believe to belong to us. The principle which we have asserted in our Resolutions of the 15th of February, 1831, is necessary to the independence of this House, and to the freedom of its votes and proceedings. We believe the said Resolutions to be constitutional and well founded, and supported by the example of the Honorable the House of Commons. We have repeatedly passed Bills for giving effect to the said principle, but they have failed to become Law, at first from the obstacles opposed to them in another Branch of the Provincial Legislature, and subsequently by reason of the reservation of the last of these Bills for the signification of Your Majesty's pleasure in England, when it has not been sent back. We think that the refusal of ...

Your Honorable House will doubtless do His Majesty's faithful subjects sufficient justice not to construe into a threat this prediction founded on the past, of a fact which from its nature cannot be prevented. We are on the contrary convinced, that the just appreciation of this fact by Your Honorable House will prevent those misfortunes which none could deplore more deeply than we should do, and which would be equally fatal to His Majesty's Government, and to the People of this Province; — and it is perhaps here that we ought to represent with the same respect, but at the same time with the same frankness, that the fidelity of the People and the protection of the Government are correlative obligations, of which the one cannot long subsist without the other; and that nevertheless by reason of the defects which exist in the Laws and Constitution of this Province, and of the manner in which those Laws and the Constitution have been administered, His Majesty's faithful Canadian subjects are not sufficiently protected in their lives, their property, and their honor.

Among the subjects connected with the defectiveness of the Laws and Constitution of this Province, there is none to which we cannot too earnestly solicit the attention of your Honorable House, — the acts of internal Legislation for this Province passed from time to tome in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and with regard to which the people of this Country have never been consulted. We may, among others, point out the Act of the 6th year of the Reign of George the Fourth, chapter 59, commonly called the "Tenures Act." We believe that it was only by deceiving the justice of Parliament and by abusing its benevolent intentions, that it could have been induced to pass this Act. All classes of the people without distinction have, through their Representatives, demanded its repeal, a very short time after the number of the latter was increased in this Province. Yet this House has never been able to obtain from His Majesty's Representative or from any other source, any information as to the views of His Majesty's Government in England with regard to the repeal of the said Act. Its object was, according to the benevolent intentions of Parliament, and as the title of the Act sets forth, the extinction of the feudal and seigniorial rights and dues on lands held en fief and à cens in this Province, with the intention of favoring the great body of the inhabitants of the Country, and protecting them against the said dues which were regarded as burdensome: but the provisions of the said Act, far from having the effect aforesaid, afford facilities to Seigniors, to become, in opposition to the interests of their censitaires, the absolute proprietors of extensive tracks of unconceded lands, which by the Law of the Country, they held only for the benefit of the inhabitants thereof, to whom they were bound to concede them in consideration of certain limited dues; — so that the said act if generally acted upon, would shut out the mass of the permanent inhabitants of the country from the vacant lands in the seigniories, while at the same they have been constantly prevented from settling on the waste lands of the Crown, on easy and liberal terms and under a tenure adapted to the Laws of the country, by the partial, secret and vicious manner in which the Crown Land Department has been managed and by the provisions of the Act aforesaid, with regard to the Laws applicable to the lands in question; and the applications made by certain Seigniors for a change of tenure, under the authority of the said Act, appear to prove the correctness of the view which this House has taken of its practical effect.

It could only have been in consequence of an erroneous supposition that feudal charges were inherent in the Laws of this Country, as far as the possession and transmission of real property and the tenures recognized by the Law were concerned, that it was enacted in the said Act, that lands with regard to which a change of tenure should be effected, should thereafter be held under the tenure of free and common soccage. The seigniorial charges have been found burdensome in certain cases, chiefly by reason of want of adequate means of obtaining the interference of the Colonial Government and the Courts of Law, to enforce the ancient Law of the Country on that behalf. The Provincial Legislature was, moreover, fully competent to pass Laws providing for the redemption of the said charges in a manner which should be in accordance with the interest of all parties, and for the .... of the .. tenures recognized by our laws. (Scan 23.pdf)

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We therefore humbly pray that your Honorable House, will be pleased to take our present humble address into its favorable consideration, and, jointly with the other branches of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, to use its efforts that the defects which exist in the Laws and Constitution of this Province may be remedied in a manner conformable to the wishes, the interests and rights of the people of this Province and of this House; to see that the abuses and grievances which have prevailed, and which still prevail in this Province, are fully and entirely redressed, — and to punish the authors and perpetrators of them in a manner consonant with the justice and honor of the people of England and with the dignity of the Crown, — and to exert the wholesome influence possessed by Your Honorable, for the purpose of preventing the recurrence of the same grievances and abuses in future, and to the end that the Laws and Constitution of the Province may be constitutionally, equitably, and impartially administered.

And as by inclination and by duty we are led and bound to do, We shall for ever pray, etc. etc. etc.

(Signed)

L. J. PAPINEAU, Speaker of the House of Assembly.

HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY, Quebec, Saturday, 1st March, 1834

Notes

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