and that no more coadjutors should
be allowed. But the Bishop was not the only clergyman of the Church of
Rome in the province, and the See of Rome has its instruments in every
ecclesiastical grade. The priests, as a body were very much annoyed at
the Union Bill. They did not fail to declaim against it. Nor were they
to be blamed. The French Canadians were indeed, to a man, opposed to
the union. The English population were, of course, in favor of the
scheme. Horrified at popery, an Englishman honestly believed that
popery had no rights in a country possessed by a protestant king. It
could be tolerated but not legally maintained. Of course when the King
became Bishop of the Church in Canada, the Pope was virtually deposed,
and the deposition of the Pope in England is indeed the most essential
difference between the Church of England and the Church of Rome. The
people of Montreal were most actively in favor of Mr. Ryland's
admirable scheme of religious conversion. Of 80,000 people who had come
into the province since the American war scarcely a twentieth part had
remained within the limits of the province, the rest having been
induced by the foreign character of the country in which they had
sought an asylum, and the discouragements they experienced, to try
their fortune in the United States. The division of the Province of
Quebec, into Upper and Lower Canada, had been impolitic. Had a fit plan
of representation been adopted the British population would have now
exceeded the French, and the imports and exports of the country have
been greatly beyond their present amount.[34] It is not a little
extraordinary to find that the English speaking inhabitants of the
province complained of the unreasonable extent of political rights
which had been conceded to Lower Canada. Mr. Neilson was not of these
complainants. Mr. James Stuart was. The Canadians had deserted Mr.
Stuart and he now deserted them. Mr. Neilson had not been yet deserted
by those whom he had served, and he had not therefore cause for
desertion. Messrs. Neilson and Papineau went home in charge of
petitions against the contemplated union of the provinces, while Mr.
Stuart went to London with the petition of the unionists in his pocket.
The mob was merely prejudiced. There was no politics in the heads of
the ordinary people, whether of French or English extraction. But the
English hated the French, and the French disliked the English, because
neither understood the ot