made any excuse for introducing it, even
independently of the part taken by you formerly with reference to
the case of my friend Mr. Bidwell, and which alone would give you a
just claim to address me. I can never feel any suggestion, no
matter from what quarter, having his good for its object, to be an
intrusion on me, and be assured that nothing could have afforded me
greater pleasure than to have had it in my power to have advised
his appointment to the Bench. Nor have I ever ceased to do all that
I could with propriety to get him to put himself in the position
which might lead to such a result. You are aware of the steps I
took in 1843 to have his pledge to Sir Francis Head cancelled. I
sent you, I think, the correspondence respecting it. (See page
308.) On that being done, I wrote him a letter of which I preserved
a copy, from which I send you one. By this you will see how
earnestly I pressed him to return then. Had he come in, as I
suggested, it was my intention to have offered him the Crown
business on whichever of the Circuits he might have chosen. I have
subsequently, as often as I felt I dared to do so, urged his
return. But it has been felt impossible, until he had placed
himself in the position of a practitioner, as formerly, at our own,
and not at a foreign, Bar, to advise his appointment to the Bench
of the Province. For myself, although friendship might have led me
to have overlooked, or overstepped, this difficulty, my judgment,
when appealed to, forced me to admit, with my colleagues, that the
objection was insuperable.

I am not acquainted with the income he realizes from his profession
in New York, but I doubt not it is much beyond what could be
obtained in Toronto. Still, if he really does wish to return to
Canada, the time is most propitious as far as professional
prospects are concerned. Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Blake, and Mr. Esten
being taken from the Bar leaves a space to be filled that, I should
say, offers the best possible opening.

Had Mr. Bidwell been in his proper professional position here when
the Government was called upon to appoint to the places now filled,
or on the eve of being filled, by those gentlemen, there is not one
of those high judicial positions to which it would not have been at
once a pride and a pleas