cessarily be the creature of a Minister, you go farther, and throw under this absolute power a country never considered as Canada, and peopled by British subjects alone; for you extend the Government to the Mississippi on the West, to the Ohio on the South, to Hudson’s Bay on the North, and on the East, to God knows where; for no mortal can tell from the Bill where the Eastern boundaries are, so exceedingly indefinite and unintelligible is the Bill. I should be glad to know for what purpose the Colony is thus amazingly extended.

In the next place, Sir, the internal arrangement of the Colony consists in leaving the inhabitants the civil law of France. You take away the trial by Jury, in civil matters, and you' cut off the habeas corpus from them. Thus, in giving a Government to the Canadians, you deprive many British born subjects, residing in countries where they never dreamed of such innovations, of the dearest birth-rights of Britains. And as by this Act all commissions to the legal Magistrates are revoked, I suppose the Province is to change her present excellent Chief Justice for a new one to be appointed. It is for these reasons, Sir, and for others, which I am clear will suggest themselves to all the members of the House, that I shall give my hearty negative to the Bill.

Lord North. The honorable gentleman has put a string of questions to me, which I am m no way able, nor, if I were, should I look upon myself bound to answer. I know not who drew the Bill up. I know not whether it was this great Lawyer, or that noble Lord. All I know about the matter is, that it is a Bill from the other House offered to us for consideration, and on which the House is at liberty to form that opinion best suited to its wisdom and judgment. I know further, that very great and uncommon pains have been taken to form a Bill least liable to inconvenience or objection from any quarter. The honorable gentleman has often pressed the King's servants on this subject, and now owns that the affairs of that country call loudly for regulation and redress; yet the very first attempt that is made to put them on a proper footing, he at once condemns in the gross, and is willing to continue the evils he complains of, rather than attempt their correction in the first instance. For my part, all circumstances considered, I think the Bill is the best that can at present be devised; other gentlemen, may think otherwise; but at all events it seems to me proper that it should be permitted to go to a Committee; and if it shall then appear to be the sense of the House, that the Bill should pass in its present form, that it should receive amendments, or that particular clauses should be struck out, and others substituted in their stead; or, in fine, that it should be totally rejected; in any or either of these events, I shall be perfectly satisfied.

I wish to give the right honorable member all the satisfaction in my power upon this measure. Respecting the Government given to the Province, the right honorable gentleman objects, I suppose, to an Assembly not being appointed. The reason why a Council alone, appointed by the Governor, was preferred, was the small number of English settlers who must choose that Assembly, in order for their acts to govern and bind all the French and Roman Catholic subjects. This, Sir, was thought to be very unequal, and even cruel, to have an Assembly, chosen by so small a body, govern so large a one; and if the business is considered maturely, it will, I believe, be found the most conducive to the happiness of the People. Next, Sir, as to the extent given to this Colony; it takes in no countries regularly planted by British settlers, but merely distant military posts, at present without any Government but that of the respective commanding officers. Now, the question here is merely this, will you annex them under the present Government? Will you leave them without any Government? Or will you form separate Governments and Colonies of them?

It was thought by the Lords, that the plan in which there were the fewest inconveniences, was to throw the scattered posts to the Government of Quebec. As to the civil law of France being left to the Canadians, it was thought more humane to them than to change it for a new law, of which they must be entirely ignorant, as the trial by Jury, in criminal matters is given them. The present officers in the Province were not meant to be changed, most certainly.

Mr. Dunning. I cannot omit this opportunity of giving my hearty protest against a Bill, which, in my conscience, I think destructive of every principle of freedom, and abounding with mischief of a most serious tendency. Sir, I shall beg leave to follow the noble Lord in the reply he has given to the honorable member who stated his objections to the Bill; a reply which by no means answers those objections; on the contrary, they appear to me to remain in full force. And in endeavouring to do this, I shall divide what I have to observe into two considerations: first, the consequences which will attend this Bill if it passes, in case Canada should ever be restored to France, an idea which by no means hurts me; for if it should pass, I must own I would as soon see the one Sovereign reigning there as the other; I mean, it will be of little consequence to the People, and they will be as free in one case as in the other. My second consideration will be, if the Province should remain to England.

Consider what it was for which you engaged in the last war, encroachments of the French upon our Colonies; they passed down their rivers, they seized upon large tracts, and built forts about this very country to the southward of Canada, claiming it as a part of Canada. You repelled force by force; they offered to you to withdraw from the South of the Ohio, and retire to the North, making that river the boundary of the two Colonies. No, you replied; the river of St. Lawrence is the boundary of Canada; we will admit of no other; the tracts which you claim are parts of our Colonies of Virginia, Pennsylvania, &c, and we cannot grant away the certain and undoubted rights of our subjects in such a manner. This refusal brought on the war; and in case a future war should happen, in which your arms do not succeed in the manner they did in the last war, you may then find yourself treating upon the re-cession of Canada to France; will not the French demand the cession of Canada as you limit it by Act of Parliament? Will they not say, you have, by a solemn act of your whole Legislature, proved to all the world, that in the dispute of limits at the opening of the war we were right, and you wrong; you have chalked out the very limits to it, which we insisted on; and you have confirmed them by an act of Parliament; how therefore can you, with any propriety, talk of restoring any thing less than what we always claimed as Canada, and what you have since solemnly adjudged to be Canada? And this, I think, in a negotiation, may be attended with most serious consequences.

Next Sir, supposing you preserve the possession of it, let us consider the consequences that flow from this Act; you throw at once the whole People of that Colony into an arbitrary power, for such is that of your Governor, as it has been well stated; and you not only do this to the Canadian subjects, but, by giving to the new Province this monstrous southern extent, you run it down upon the back of the planted part of many of our Colonies, and take away, by one stroke, the charter properties confirmed by net of Parliament of those Colonies, you violently seize their rights, and the People who pass the mountains to settle on the eastern side of them, will immediately find, that by going to live in what they ever esteemed their direct property, they find themselves gone from the freedom of the British constitution, and meet with all the power of despotism. This is not only a cruel, violent, and odious measure, but it tears up justice, and all its principles, by the root. To think that the inhabitants of those countries, settling in them under the protection of this free Government, and assured by law and Parliament that they settle under the liberty of their old charter constitutions, finding themselves, by crossing an imaginary line, deprived of the dearest rights and privileges of English subjects, is a most tyrannical and inhuman conduct. It is sporting with property in a manner that cannot be defended, and for attaining no end whatever that deserves attention.

But there are much greater and more solid objections to the present Bill, than can possibly arise from the limits within which it is intended to operate. I am well warranted in affirming, and do without reserve affirm, that it is a Bill the most pernicious in its frame, and destructive of the principles of the constitution in its tendency, that was ever introduced into this House. What does it do? It appoints a Legislative Council, under the absolute controul