country on
the face of the globe. It was situated near a country ready to receive,
with open arms, into a participation of her democratic privileges,
every person belonging to Great Britain. It was material that a colony,
capable of freedom, and capable of a great increase of people, should
have nothing to look to among their neighbours to excite their envy.
Canada should be preserved to Great Britain by the choice of her
inhabitants, and there was nothing else to look to. The Legislative
Councils ought to be totally free, and repeatedly chosen, in a manner
as much independent of the Governor as the nature of a colony would
admit. He was perfectly desirous of establishing a permanent provision
for the clergy, but could not think of making for them a provision so
considerable as was unknown in any country of Europe, where the species
of religion to be provided for prevailed.

It is impossible to do other than admire the farsightedness of that
great statesman, Charles Fox, with his blue coat and yellow waistcoat,
in this manly, sensible, and telling address. Time has nearly brought
round the state of things that he desired to see, and if disembodied
spirits can take an interest in things earthly, it will be no small
addition to his present state of bliss to discover almost the
realization of suggestions made sixty years ago, before the Browns of
this period were conceived, and while the Rolphs were puling infants.

Mr. Chancellor Pitt did not join issue with Mr. Fox, but did not
consider it expedient to flash legislative freedom upon a people. He
thought that if the Assembly were not rightly consolidated by the Bill,
little harm was done, because there was nothing to hinder the
Parliament of Great Britain from correcting any point which might
hereafter appear to want correction. He did not like the elective
principle of democratic governments, and with respect to the land
appropriated to the clergy, like every thing else provided by the bill,
it was subject to revision. Where land had been given in commutation of
tithes, the proportion of one seventh had grown into an established
custom. The Bill was re-committed. Next day the clauses of the Bill
being put, paragraph by paragraph, Mr. Burke eloquently defended its
provisions, ridiculed the "Rights of Man," and almost extinguished the
light of the new lantern, which exhibited in the academies of Paris and
the club-rooms of London, the constitutions of America and France