We watch with lively interest the prospect which the completion of our great water communications with the ocean, will open to us; and we fervently hope that the extension of trade thus opened to Her Majesty's North American Provinces will tend to strengthen the union between these Provinces and the Parent State.
We congratulate Your Excellency and Lady Elgin upon the birth of an heir to Your Excellency's house; and we truly sympathise with Her Ladyship upon her present delicate and weak state, and venture to hope that her tour through Upper Canada will have the effect of restoring her to the enjoyment of perfect health.
REPLY.
Gentlemen,—I receive with much satisfaction the assurance of your attachment and devotion to Her Majesty's person and government.
That the diversities of opinion which exist among you, on questions connected with the political condition of the Province, should be attended with much excitement, is greatly to be regretted, and I fully appreciate the motives which induce you at the present time, to call my attention to the fact. I am willing, nevertheless, to believe that however warmly the citizens of Toronto may feel on such subjects, they will be prepared, on all occasions, to demonstrate their high appreciation of the blessings of the British Constitution, by according to the Governor-General that respect and consideration which are no less due to his position than to their own well-tried loyalty and decorum.
It is my firm conviction, moreover, that the inhabitants of Canada, generally, are averse to agitation, and that all communities as well as individuals, who aspire to take a lead in the affairs of the Province, will best fit themselves for that high avocation, by exhibiting habitually in their demeanour, the love of order and of peaceful progress.
I have observed with much anxiety and concern the commercial depression from which the City of Toronto, in common with other important towns in the Province, has of late so seriously suffered. I trust, however, with you, that the crisis is now past, and that the abundant harvest, with which a kind Providence has blessed the country, will ere long restore its commerce to a healthy tone.
The completion of your water communications with the ocean must indeed be watched with a lively interest by all who have at heart the welfare of Canada and the continuance of the connection so happily subsisting between the Province and the Parent State. These great works have undoubtedly been costly, and the occasion of some financial embarrassment while in progress. But I firmly believe that the investment you have made in them has been judicious, and that you have secured thereby for your children, and your children's children, an inheritance that will not fail them so long as the law of nature endures which causes the waters of your vast inland seas to seek an outlet to the ocean.
I am truly obliged to you for the congratulations which you offer me on the birth of my son, and for the kind interest which you express in Lady Elgin's health: I am happy to be able to inform you, that she has already derived much benefit from her sojourn in Upper Canada.
As not a little fictitious history has been woven out of these events, I shall call in evidence here the Globe newspaper of the 11th, the following day, in which I find this editorial paragraph:—