when it has penetrated, it will not
predominate. It is but a question of time and mode; it is but to
determine whether the small number of French who now inhabit Lower
Canada shall be made English, under a government which can protect them,
or whether the process shall be delayed until a much larger number shall
have to undergo, at the rude hands of its uncontrolled rivals, the
extinction of a nationality strengthened and embittered by continuance.

"And is this French Canadian nationality one which, for the good merely
of that people, we ought to strive to perpetuate, even if it were
possible? I know of no national distinctions marking and continuing a
more hopeless inferiority. The language, the laws, the character of the
North American Continent are English; and every race but the English (I
apply this to all who speak the English language) appears there in a
condition of inferiority. It is to elevate them from that inferiority
that I desire to give to the Canadians our English character. I desire
it for the sake of the educated classes, whom the distinction of
language and manners keeps apart from the great empire to which they
belong. At the best, the fate of the educated and aspiring colonist is,
at present, one of little hope, and little activity; but the French
Canadian is cast still further into the shade, by a language and habits
foreign to those of the Imperial Government. A spirit of exclusion has
closed the higher professions on the educated classes of the French
Canadians, more, perhaps, than was absolutely necessary; but it is
impossible for the utmost liberality on the part of the British
Government to give an equal position in the general competition of its
vast population to those who speak a foreign language. I desire the
amalgamation still more for the sake of the humbler classes. Their
present state of rude and equal plenty is fast deteriorating under the
pressure of population in the narrow limits to which they are confined.
If they attempt to better their condition, by extending themselves over
the neighbouring country, they will necessarily get more and more
mingled with an English population; if they prefer remaining stationary,
the greater part of them must be labourers in the employ of English
capitalists. In either case it would appear, that the great mass of the
French Canadians are doomed, in some measure, to occupy an inferior
position, and to be dependent on the English for emplo