I warned the noble lord against endangering the establishments of the country, by giving anything like an authority to a popular assembly to withhold the funds necessary for carrying on the civil government; for nothing is more needful to a country than to uphold the civil power, and the independence—as well pecuniary as political—of the judges of the land. And let noble lords learn, from the events in Canada, and other dominions in North America, what it is to hold forth what are called "popular rights," but which are not popular rights either here or elsewhere; and what occasion is thereby given to the perpetuation of a system of agitation which ends in insurrection and rebellion, and the coming to blows with her majesty's troops.
January 18,1838.
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Importance of reducing the Canadian Rebels.
I confess, my lords, that I have a feeling for the honour of my country, and I cannot but believe that if, by any misfortune, we should fail in restoring peace in Lower Canada, at an early period of time, we shall receive a blow, with respect to our military character, to our reputation, and to our honour, of which it will require years to enable us to remove the effects.
January 18,1838.
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An Elective Legislative Council in Canada deprecated.
My lords, there is one topic which has been adverted to by the noble and learned lord (Lord Brougham), upon which I think it necessary to say a word, although it is not alluded to in the address, and will more properly form a subject of the discussion on the bill which is to be brought in upon some future day—and that is the establishment in Lower Canada of an elective legislative council. The noble and learned lord, with all his knowledge of Lower Canada, has not, in my opinion, sufficiently adverted to the fact of the difference of the two races of inhabitants in that country. My lords, it may be easy to talk, here, of establishing an elective council, but if the noble and learned lord will look into the discussions which have taken place upon that subject, and to the opinions that have been delivered upon it by the different parties, in that colony, he will find that British inhabitants are to the full as much opposed to that arrangement as the French are in favour of it, he will find that in point of fact, they would be in a state of insurrection against that arrangement, in the same degree as the French are now supposed to be in a state of insurrection in favour of an elective legislative council. I will likewise beg the noble and learned lord, and I would entreat the noble viscount opposite, and every member of her majesty's government, to attend to this fact, that an elective legislative council is not the constitution of the British monarchy; that a legislative council appointed by the monarch is the constitution of this country; that this was so stated in the discussions upon the bill passed in the year 1791, by all the great authorities who discussed that measure, amongst others by Mr. Fox himself. That gentleman said, "that a legislative council, appointed by the monarch, is an essential part of the British constitution."
January 18, 1838.