tisfaction among the former, from the fact that Lord Elgin's
government appeared to favour the latter party. This circumstance
renewed the desire for annexation, and a petition containing twelve
hundred signatures of persons of respectability, o British birth or
lineage, was got up for presentation to the queen. This petition would
have been far more numerously signed, but for the impression that it
could not be received, being unconstitutional. At the close of the
year the division of parties, especially "Annexationists" and
"Anti-annexationists," ran high, and a new element of discord was
introduced by the projected removal of the seat of government from
Montreal to Toronto or Kingston. This subject was discussed with heated
temper, even by those who were for separating the Canadas altogether
from the mother country, and who might be supposed without interest in
the question.

At home a certain party in the commons and the country favoured
the views of those who would separate the colony from the crown. The
speeches of these gentlemen encouraged dissatisfaction in Canada, and
contributed largely to the elements of disturbance there. The Irish
Roman Catholic members of parliament, and the newspaper organs of that
party, were singularly inconsistent; they argued for the separation of
the colony, yet they denounced the disloyalty of the party in Canada
which promoted it, because that party was chiefly formed of Protestants,
and were adverse to the French and Catholic sections of the colonists.
The influence of the Irish newspaper articles, and of the speeches of
those who partook of the opinions, expressed by them, were mischievous
in Canada, where even' expression of opinion pronounced at home was
watched and reproduced. Some of the disloyal papers in Ireland, while
abusing the Canadian Protestants with bitterness, expressed their
hope that they would settle the dispute by an appeal to arms, forcibly
severing the colony from the sceptre of Victoria. These treasonable
wishes were published with impunity. The year 1849 closed sadly
in Canada: blood had been shed, incendiarism had been perpetrated,
disloyalty had spread; and the main causes of this state of things were
the infatuation of the colonists in favour of commercial protection,
and the inability of the governor-general of the Canadas, and of the
ministry at home, to descry the policy which was most calculated to
serve the interests of the mother country and the co