tical details, we could exhibit a picture from Parliamentary and authentic documents of progressive ruin in those noble establishments, which would amply bear out, and even exceed this statement.
She next, practically speaking, shortened by two years the period of negro apprenticeship, and thereby completely disorganized all the plans which the planters had laid, for enabling them to wind up their affairs during the period of apprenticeship. And when it became manifest that the negroes would not work, and that a fresh supply of labourers became indispensable to maintain industry in the West India Islands, we passed Acts of Parliament prohibiting the introduction of free Asiatic labourers, and promulgated regulations in the island, which, by giving the planters no security in the retention of the labour of free European workmen, have in effect cut off all means of supplying the place of the indolent negroes in the cultivation of the land.
What have we done during the same period in Canada? It would appear from our conduct to that noble colony, that we were desirous of disgusting it so completely with the rule of the mother country, as to throw it headlong into the arms of the United States. We first winked at and promoted republicanism and sedition to such a degree, as to fan them into actual rebellion; and, though aware for years that an insurrection was rapidly approaching, we left the colonies with only 3500 British soldiers to protect them from destruction. When the first revolt was put down by this gallant handful of men, and the strenuous support of the loyal North American British population, we carried the system of conciliation, concession, and dallying with treason to such a length, as to cause the rebellion to break out a second time under circumstances of still greater horror, and when it required to be extinguished in oceans of blood. While the wintry heavens were illuminated by the light of burning villages, and the wintry forests were strewed with the carcasses of slaughtered peasants, we submitted quietly to the insulting inroads of hundreds of buccaneers and pirates from the American territory, in a way that never yet was done by the government of any independent state. When the royal banner of the loyal inhabitants in Upper Canada had surmounted these various evils, and a second time restored peace to a distracted land, the sympathy of our rulers with their old allies—the republican party in America—was so strong, that they have never proposed a vote of thanks in either House of Parliament or from the Crown, to the brave soldiers and patriots who saved the empire from dismemberment! Lastly, to show our sympathy with the anti-national party in our transatlantic possessions, in our total disregard to their vital interests, we placed at the head of the colonial department Lord Normanby, whose policy in Ireland was graced by the wholesale liberation of felons and anti-national convicts, and placed at the head of the Government in Quebec, Poulett Thomson, the President of the Board of Trade, who is chiefly known by his long established connexion with the Baltic timber trade, and his often avowed predilection for an equalisation of e duties on Baltic and Canadian timber.
Serious as these evils are, we much fear that greater and more heavy blows at our colonial interests are yet in the contemplation of our infatuated Government. Acting on the dictation of the urban constituencies, whose great object is to buy cheap, and still clinging to the blind system of foreign propitiation, there is little room for doubting that they will ere long, perhaps in the next Session of Parliament, bring forward ministerial plans for equalizing the duties on Baltic and Canadian timber, and Foreign and British sugar. Strong indications of these intentions have already appeared in the speeches of many of the supporters of Government, and the appointment of Mr Poulett Thomson to the viceroyalty of Canada may be considered as the official promulgation of their intention. Let no one imagine that these propositions are so obviously destructive in their effects, and bear so obviously the tendency to dismember the empire, that therefore they will not be attempted by a Ministry whose only principle seems to be to prolong their official existence, without any regard to the jeopardy which the means of accomplishing that object may place the existence or independence of the country. It is never to be
