ot know how much
they have done and suffered for their Sovereign and their country.

You inhabit here a goodly land. A land full of promise, where your
children have room enough to increase and to multiply, and to become,
with God's blessing, greater and more prosperous than yourselves. But
I am confident that no spell less potent than the gentle and benignant
control of those liberal institutions which it is Britain's pride and
privilege to bestow on her children, will insure the peaceful
development of its unrivalled resources, or knit together into one
happy and united family the various races of which this community is
composed.

On this conviction I have acted, in labouring to secure for you,
during the whole course of my administration the full benefit of
constitutional government. It is truly gratifying to me to learn that
you appreciate my exertions. Depend upon it, they will not be relaxed.
I claim to have something of your own spirit: devotion to a cause
which I believe to be a just one--courage to confront, if need be,
danger and even obloquy in its pursuit--and an undying faith that God
protects the right.

[Sidenote: Debates in the British Parliament.]

In the meantime the unhappy Bill, which had caused such an explosion in the
colony, was running the gantlet of the British Parliament. On June 14 it
was vehemently attacked in the House of Commons by Mr. Gladstone, as being
a measure for the rewarding of Rebels.[9] He, indeed, contented himself
with 'calling the attention of the House to certain parts' of the Bill in
question; but Mr. Herries, following out the same views to their legitimate
conclusion, moved an Address to Her Majesty to disallow the Act of the
Colonial Legislature. The debate was sustained with great Vigour for two
nights; in the course of which the Act was defended not only by Lord John
Russell as leader of the Government, but also, with even more force, by his
great opponent Sir Robert Peel. Speaking with all the weight of an
impartial observer, he showed that it was not the intention of the measure,
and would not be its effect, to give compensation to anyone who could be
proved to have been a rebel; that it was only an inevitable sequel to other
measures which had been passed without opposition; and, further, that its
rejection at this stage would be resisted by all parties in the colony
alike, as an arbitrary int