il which their enactment would have
occasioned, convinces me that the colony has reason to congratulate
itself on the existence of an institution which possessed and used the
power of stopping a course of legislation that, if successful, would
have _sacrificed every British interest_, and _overthrown every
guarantee of order and national liberty_."

Again:--

"One glaring attempt which was made directly and openly to _subvert the
constitution of the country, was_, by passing a bill for the formal
repeal of those parts of the 31 Geo. 3, c. 31, commonly called the
Constitutional Act, by which the constitution and powers of the
Legislative Council were established. It can hardly be supposed that
the framers of this bill were unaware, or hoped to make any concealment
of the obvious illegality of a measure, which, commencing as all
Canadian Acts do, by a recital of the 31 Geo. 3, as the foundation of
the legislative authority of the Assembly, proceeded immediately to
infringe some of the most important provisions of that very statute; nor
can it be supposed that the Assembly hoped really to carry into effect,
this extraordinary assumption of power, inasmuch as the bill could
derive no legal effect from passing the Lower House, unless it should
subsequently receive the assent of the very body which it purported to
annihilate."

Take again the following observations of his lordship:--

"But the evils resulting from such open attempts to dispense with the
constitution were small, in comparison with the disturbance of the
regular course of legislation by systematic abuse of constitutional
forms, for the purpose of depriving the other branches of the
legislature of all real legislative authority.

"It remained, however, for the Assembly of Lower Canada to reduce the
practice to a regular system, in order that it might have the most
important institutions of the province periodically at its mercy, and
use the necessities of the government and the community for the purpose
of extorting the concession of whatever demands it might choose to make.
Objectionable in itself, on account of the uncertainty and continual
changes which it tended to introduce into legislation, this system of
temporary laws derived its worst character from the facilities which it
afforded to the practice of `tacking' together various legislative
measures.

"A singular instance of this occurred in 1836, with respect to the
renewal of the jury law, to w