out going so far as to accuse the Assembly of a deliberate design
to check the settlement and improvement of Lower Canada, it cannot be
denied that they looked with considerable jealousy and dislike on the
increase and prosperity of what they regarded as a foreign and hostile
race; they looked on the province as the patrimony of their own race;
they viewed it not as a country to be settled, but as one already
settled; and instead of legislating in the American spirit, and first
providing for the future population of the province, their primary care
was, in the spirit of legislation which prevails in the old world, to
guard the interests and feelings of the present race of inhabitants, to
whom they considered the newcomers as subordinate; they refused to
increase the burthens of the country by imposing taxes to meet the
expenditure required for improvement, and they also refused to direct to
that object any of the funds previously devoted to other purposes. The
improvement of the harbour of Montreal was suspended, from a political
antipathy to a leading English merchant who had been the most active of
the commissioners, and by whom it had been conducted with the most
admirable success. It is but just to say, that some of the works which
the Assembly authorised and encouraged, were undertaken on a scale of
due moderation, and satisfactorily perfected and brought into operation.
Others, especially the great communications which I have mentioned
above, the Assembly showed a great reluctance to promote or even to
permit. It is true that there was considerable foundation for their
objections to the plan on which the Legislature of Upper Canada had
commenced some of these works, and to the mode in which it had carried
them on; but the English complained that, instead of profiting by the
experience which they might have derived from this source, the Assembly
seemed only to make its objections a pretext for doing nothing. The
applications for banks, railroads, and canals were laid on one side
until some general measures could be adopted with regard to such
undertakings; but the general measures thus promised were never passed,
and the particular enterprises in question were prevented. The adoption
of a registry was refused, on the alleged ground of its inconsistency
with the French institutions of the province, and no measure to attain
this desirable end in a less obnoxious mode, was prepared by the leaders
of the Assembly.