ty. Nor have the
English inhabitants forgotten in their triumph, the terror with which
they suddenly saw themselves surrounded by an insurgent majority, and
the incidents which alone appeared to save them from the unchecked
domination of their antagonists. They find themselves still a minority
in the midst of a hostile and organised people; apprehensions of secret
conspiracies and sanguinary designs haunt them unceasingly, and their
only hope of safety is supposed to rest on systematically terrifying and
disabling the French, and in preventing a majority of that race from
ever and again being predominant in any portion of the legislature of
the province. I describe in strong terms the feelings which appear to
me to animate each portion of the population; and the picture which I
draw represents a state of things so little familiar to the personal
experience of the people of this country, that many will probably regard
it as the work of mere imagination; but I feel confident that the
accuracy and moderation of my description will be acknowledged by all
who have seen the state of society in Lower Canada during the last year.
Nor do I exaggerate the inevitable constancy, any more than the
intensity of this animosity. Never again will the present generation of
French Canadians yield a loyal submission to a British Government; never
again will the English population tolerate the authority of a House of
Assembly in which the French shall possess or even approximate to a
majority."

Although M. Papineau and his party were very willing to fraternise with
the discontented party in Upper Canada, and to call forth the sympathy
and the assistance of the Americans, their real intentions and wishes
were to have made the Canadas an independent French province, in strict
alliance with France. [See Note 2.] The assistance of the Upper Canada
party would have been accepted until they were no longer required, and
then there would have been an attempt, and very probably a successful
one, to drive away by every means in their power the English settlers in
Upper Canada to the United States. The Americans, on the other hand,
cared nothing about the French or English grievances; their sympathy
arose from nothing less than a wish to add the Canadas to their already
vast territories, and to drive the English from their last possessions
in America; but they also knew how to wear the cloak as well as M.
Papineau, and had the insurrection bee