ment of the West Indies; and nothing at all with that of the East. We know, what is of more consequence still, that the Church of Christ never was meant, by its founder, to be connected with government.

As to establishing hereditary nobility in Canada, it is a thousand pities, that Mr. Pitt's notion had not been carried into effect. Nothing could have so well exposed the absurdity, as actual trial and consequent ridicule. By this day we should have witnessed many a pleasant farce. We should have seen, perhaps, the Duke of Ontario leading in a cart of hay, my Lord Erie pitching, and Sir Peter Superior making the rick; or perhaps his Grace might now have been figuring as a pettyfogging lawyer, his Lordship as a pedlar, and, Sir Knight, as a poor parson, starving on 5,000 acres of clergy reserves.

As it is, the Legislative Council of Upper Canada must soon come into contempt. It can never rise above the value of a bundle of well tried sycophancy and passive obedience. The characters of the Governor's elect are perfectly known before their appointment for life; and, I doubt, if a single instance has yet occurred, where any one councillor has ever, in a manly manner, opposed the dictum of his Excellency. But Upper Canada has not suffered so much from its legislative councillors as from its assembly men. The councillors have generally been better educated than the representatives of the people, and have had greater regard to outward appearances. The Honourable

William Dickson, for instance, being bred a storekeeper, could write a good hand and keep accounts, with which accomplishments, and some practice as a clerk to a district judge, he was made lawyer by act of parliament, and then dubbed with the honour which he now bears. He is of course so far superior to Isaac Swayze, Member of Assembly, who can scarcely write his own name, and for whom no employment was too mean, even that of collecting fowls for the Lieutenant-Governor's table, who had no blush for palpable malice and perjury, and who was notorious for the commission of most shocking crimes, in capacity of spy and horse provider to his Majesty, during the revolutionary war of America.

But this superiority of the Councillor does not go beyond external acts, and, so far as morality is concerned, every suspicion must sink him below the Assembly-man. The act of the one manifests brutal ignorance, that of the other results from cunning. Dickson's superiority over Swayze, in point of education, his profession of lawyer, and the very feeling which his nominal honour should have bestowed, all militate against him, and point at the willing abettor of perjury. The law, even though applicable to me, did not require that a direct assertion should be made that I was seditious. oath as to the belief of this would have done equally well, as appears more particularly from inspection of the original Sedition Act; and which kind of swearing was in constant practice in Canada, for the arrest of debtors suspected of intention to leave

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the province.

The man who could sufficiently

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read and write, the lawyer, and the legislative councillor, could not be ignorant of this. could not be ignorant that Swayze subjected himself to a prosecution for perjury; but he felt himself secure from danger, and therefore winked at the iniquity. In cunning he was superior to his cat's-paw. The Councillor and Assembly-man, in these their acts, do but too exactly exemplify proceedings in their respective Houses, which may byand-bye appear. The House of Assembly has always been made the prominent instrument of gross performances in the political drama of Upper Canada. The Legislative Council has assisted only behind the scenes, or come forward after the way was smoothed by the pioneers.

This question will naturally arise, how could such a man as Isaac Swayze be elected, and repeatedly elected, by the people as a representative in Parliament? and, to be sure, the people must bear reproach. I shall say the best I can for them: simplicity abounds in Canada. Swayze could cover all the stains upon his character, before my time, with hypocrisy. I once heard him tell, at the table of a Legislative Councillor, by what means he gained favour with his constituents. "When electioneering," said he, "I pray with the Methodists;" and were it not wandering from my present subject, I could satisfy the reader how it came about that jesting with religion and honesty could be endured in such a situation. The fact is, that till I resided in Upper Canada I did not believe

that there were, on earth, men so thoroughly destitute of shame as I found among the higher ranks, Legislative Councillors, and Assembly-men, of that province. Swayze is now put out of the Assembly; but I am sorry to say, that, from another quarter, men have been returned to it, even of a more dangerous stamp to decency and the hope of good. The first session of a new Parliament has passed over without the grand essential of inquiry being carried. The Commons have voted down the Sedition Act, but the Legislative Council has put a veto on its repeal.

The Legislative Council of Upper Canada has considerably declined, in point of respectability, since its first institution. Originally, there were some gentlemen nominated, who had no previous trial and training in mean and dirty things; and who justly bore a high character. Now, and as necessity increases for making the Governor's arbitrary will secure,-for strengthening his influence, I do not say the crown influence, for the influence of a provincial governor goes quite beyond that, we may well imagine what it will come to. In short, the existence of the British constitution in Canada, was, from the beginning, a mere delusion, and experience has given proof of its being a

* This intelligence I have just now (25th June, 1821) received by a private letter from abroad; and when I heard, last September, that seven lawyers had gained favour with the simple Canadians, I guessed too truly how it would be; but improvement must have time.

mischievous one. Mr. Pitt, holding the King's message in his hand, says, "the HABEAS CORPUS ACT was already law, by an ordinance of the province, and this invaluable right was to be continued as a fundamental principle of the constitution." Mr. Fox observes, that the ordinance of the province might expire before the constituting act was in force; but this did not invalidate the declaration of his Majesty's prime minister: or, if it did, the adoption of the whole law of England, saving a few specified exceptions, by the first act of the Canadian parliament, backed with Simcoe's declaration, that the province was blessed, not with a mutilated constitution; but with a constitution, the "very image and transcript of that of Great Britain," completely settled the point. Yes, most assuredly, the habeas corpus act was as good to a British subject in Canada as it is at home; but what are laws without morals? What are they in the face of arbitrary power over which there is no controul? Reasoning, perhaps, could have given me ultimate triumph over my enemies in Canada, but what chance had I from reasoning after my powers of reasoning were gone, and when I had not strength of mind even to protest against oppression? In short, what avails the British constitution, even at home, where juries can be packed; or, when hundreds of people can be trodden under foot by a military corps; when the most shocking murders may be committed at the nod of magistracy, and parliamentary inquiry be refused? The most important and consolatory