utional government as the moderator between parties, the
representative of interests which are common to all the inhabitants of
the country, as distinct from those which divide them into parties,
was ever so fully and so frankly recognised. Now, I do not believe
that I could have achieved this if I had had blood upon my hands. I
might have been quite as popular, perhaps more so; for there are many,
especially in Lower Canada, who would gladly have seen the severities
of the law practised upon those from whom they believe that they have
often suffered much, unjustly. But my business is to humanize--not to
harden. At that task I must labour, through obloquy and
misrepresentation if needs be. At the same time I admit that I must,
not for the miserable purpose of self-glorification, but with a view
to the maintenance and establishment of my moral influence, recover
the prestige of personal courage of which some here sought to deprive
me. Before I have travelled unattended through the towns and villages
of Upper Canada, and met 'the bhoys' as they are called, in all of
them on their own ground, I think I shall have effected this object,
in so far as the province is concerned. To right myself in England
will be more difficult; but doubtless, if I live, the opportunity of
so doing, even there, will sooner or later present itself. Hitherto
any impertinences which have reached me from the other side have been
anonymous.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Afterthoughts.]

I believe that the sentiments expressed in the newspaper extract of
which you acknowledge the receipt in your last, with respect to the
merits of the policy of forbearance adopted by me at the great crisis,
are beginning to obtain very generally among the few who trace results
to their causes. But none can know what that crisis was, and what that
decision cost. At the time I took it, I stood literally _alone_.
I alienated from me the adherents of the Government, who felt, or
imagined (having been generally, in times past, on the anti-Government
side), that if the tables had been turned--if _they_ and not
_their adversaries_ had been resisting the law of the land, and
threatening the life of the Queen's representative--a very different
course of repressive policy would have been adopted. At the same time
I ga