The Sun.
London, England, 1837-12-30 00:00:00

SPORTING INTELLIGENCE.

HUNTING APPOINTMENT&
Her Majesty's Stag Hounds will meet on Monday at Stoke Com-
mon ; Wednesday, at Salt Hill ; Friday, at Littleton-11.
The Duke of Beaufort's Hounds on Monday at Sister Court;
Wednesday, at the Black Horse, Tittip's Inn ; Friday, at Gate
Common ; Saturday, on the Lawn—half-past 10.
The Marquis of Hastings' Hcunds on Monday at Cavendish
Bridge ; Wednesday, at Clifton Village ; Saturday, at Marley Toll
Bar—half-past 10:.

Mr. llorlock's Hounds on Monday at Mock Wood ; Wednesday,
at Lucknam ; Saturday, at Derry Hill—half-paA 10.
Mr. A. Smith's Hounds on Monday at Crawlboy's Farm ; Thurs-
day, at Wilster Wood-11.
Alr. Farquharson's Hounds on Monday at Ashley Wood ; Tues-
day, at Dunclyffe.
Mr. Bulteel's Hounds on Tuesday at Goodamoor—half-past 10.,
The Cadbury Harriers on Monday at the Wheat Sheaf ; Satur-
day, at Ansford Park.
Earl Fitzwilliam's Hounds on Monday at Elton New Close ;
Wednesday, at Stanwick Pasture; Thursday, at Walcot Park-10.

In condeinning the present attempt of the French Ca-
nadians, and the object which they have in view, we by no
means wish to be considered as admiring the course which
has hitherto been pursued towards Canada. In fact, those
who are best acquainted with Canadian affairs will most
readily adm;t that many political blunders, have from first
to last been committed, both by the Government and Le-
gislature of this country, in Canadian matters. But if the
Government of this country has not always been guided by
absolute wisdom, what the agitators in Lower Canada
now demand would, if conceded, be ruinous to both
the upper and lower provinces. In the Chronicle of
this day appears " A Memorial of the British Ameri-
can, West Indian, and General Shipping Association
of the City of Glasgow," addressed to Lord Gleneig,
in which they state, " that they are engaged to a
considerable extent, and many of them have em-
barked
capital to a large amount, in the trade be-
tween this country and Canada, and are consequently
deeply interested in the welfare and prosperity of
that colony." They declare " that the Executive
Government in Lower Canada seems either inade-
quate or unwilling to exercise its power in a judi-
cious, firm and efficient manner, and the disaffected party
appear determined to leave no means untried for subverting
everything constitutional and British in that province." If
the country were polled we suspect the general opinion
would be that the Government has been rather too indul-
gent than too harsh in, the steps it has pursued with regard
to the agitators in Lower Canada. But however that may
be, there seems much good sense in the two concluding pa-
ragraphs of the memorial :
" Your memorialists are firmly persuaded that the principal
cause of disunion which exists in the lower province, and to
which in great part the present alarming state of affairs is to
be attributed, arises from the existence of a municipal system
vicious in principle and injurious in operation, whereby the
inhabitants of that province are subjected to a code of laws
administered in the French language, and governed by rules
not recognised by the English Courts—a code which affords
no security either to person or property, and which, so long as
it is permitted to exist, must ever oppose an insuperable bar-
rier to that harmony between the two great classes of the
community which is the surest guarantee of national prosperity.
" Your memorialists would, therefore, respectfully, but
earnestly submit this most important subject to the considera-
tion of your Lordship ; and while they pray that you would
be pleased to call the attention of her Majesty's Govern-
ment to the urgent necessity of immediate, vigorous, and
effective measures for quelling the rebellious and mischievous
spirit which has been manifested, and restoring tranquillity
and security to the colony, they would humbly beg to offer
it as their decided opinion, confirmed by the experience of
well-informed persons, that the root of the evil cannot be
wholly extirpated until the inhabitants of Lower Canada are
put on the same footing in regard to the administration of laws
with those of the Upper Province."
However, the first consideration is to restore tranquillity
to the Colony. When order has been restored it will then
be necessary to guard against a recurrence of the evil by
the adoption of a system better calculated than the present
to promote the welfare of the two Provinces. The people
of this country must he secured against the possibility of
again incurring the expense of putting down revolt, and this
security can only be obtained by going to the root of the
evil. We must always protest against the attempt to
confound the revolt of the French Canadians with the re-
volt of the old colonies, now the United States. The
people of the United States took arms in defence of their
dearest rights. They resisted the attempt of the King
and Parliament of Great Britain to tax them without their
consent. The Canadians have not been so taxed. The
House of Assembly of Lower Canada has done what Dr.
Franklin, the great apostle of American liberty, conceived
no sane body of men could do—refused to appropriate the
supplies for several years, and left till the public functiona-
ries in a state of destitution. When the case was put to
Dr. Franklin whether an Assembly having,the power might
not refuse the necessary supplies to support its own Go-
vernment, he unhesitatingly answered that " an Assembly
that would refuse them must want common sense, which
cannot be supposed." Bat M. Papineau and his par-
tisans hold common sense in very different regard from
that in which it was held by the great American
sage and patriot. A very sensible pamphlet on the
Canadian differences, under the title of " A few Words
on the subject of Canada, by a Barrister," was pub-
lished by Messrs. Longman, last summer; at a time
when the pressure of domestic matters prevented our be-
stowing that attention to it which it in many respects de-
serves. The writer examines the claims set up in behalf
of the French Canadians by Mr. Roebuck, their ablest
advocate in this country, and shows that some of the de-
mands cannot be granted " while Great Britain affects to
hold, with regard to Canada, the relation of a superior
and protecting State," while :others would bring ruin on all
British settlers in tho two provinces, would lead to all
manner of injustice, and would be most detrimental to the
best interests even of those, for the sake of whom the de-
mands are made. For those who wish to see in a short
compass a clear statement of the subjects of controversy
between the French and British, and between the House
of Assembly and the British Government, we would re-
commend a perusal of the pamphlet in question. One of the
demands of the House of Assembly is the repeal of the Ca-
nada Tenures Act. It is a great pity that the British Go-
vernment did not long ago sweep away the whole of the
feudal tenures of Canada, which are in their operation be-
yond measure mischievous. The great complaint of the
French, before the Revolution, was the oppressiveness of
the feudal tenures ; the great complaint of the poor de-
luded Canadians is, that the feudal tenures were interfered
with by the British Parliament ! The effect of the tenures
in impeding the improvement of a country may be inferred
from an answer given by Mr. M'Gillivray to the Commit-
tees before whom he was examined in 1828 :—" I attri-
bute the superior eligibility of land in Upper Canada over
land in Lower Canada, to the difference of those Institu-
tions under which it is held in the two places ; and in cor-
roboration of which, I would add, that where there is not
much difference of climate, where the land is merely di-
vided by an imaginary line, separating the province of
Lower Canada from the States of New York and Vermont,
the land in the townships on the Canadian side of the
line is in many places scarcely saleable at Is. an acre, and
on the other side of the line it is sold at 10s., Ns.,
and lse Unfortunately for the poor French Canadians,
the men who now abuse their confidence are the very men
who are most interested in the continuance of these abo-
minations. The Barrister admits at once " that the enact-
ing of this statute (the Tenure Act) is an interference
with the labours of the provincial legislature. But the
introduction of a new system of tenures was of national
importance, and during all the years in which the colony
had possessed a legislature no single attempt of the sort
had been made." And why ? " Circumstances force the
mind to one conclusion, and allow it no choice of adopting
any other. The gentlemen of Lower Canada, the lords
of the soil, the feudal seigneurs of the country, derived
at once an income and a porver from the French tenures
of land of which they must have been deprived by the
change ;" and the poor vassals are the dupes of interested
seigneurs and procureurs. It has often been remarked
that till the British Parliament, after the Rebellion of 1745,
, put an end to heritable jurisdictions, ward holdings, and
r sonic of the other more grievous evils of the feudal sys-
tem, which interposed a power between the Government
and the body of the people, that country made no progress in
improvement ; and that thenceforward the improvement was
miraculous. The great complaint we have to make
against the Government is, that it did not go far enough in
removing the obstructions to improvement. As to the
demand that the grants of land should be set aside, and in
particular that the Canada Land Company's Act should
be repealed, that demand is at variance with every prin-
ciple of justice. The King could have granted alone, ac-
cording to the admitted rules of constitutional law, the
charter to the Land Company, of which the House of
Assembly complain. The title cannot be worse because, to
avoid all question, the Company chose to have the au-
thority of a statute of the Imperial Parliament, de-
claring it to be incorporated, and allowing it to purchase
lands. The great end and object of the French Canadian
agitators, as we have before observed, is to drive the Bri-
tish from the lower province, to force the inhabitants of
the upper province to throw themselves into the arms of
the United States, from the obstructions to their commu-
nication with Europe through the natural channel of the
St. Lawrence, and all this in order that a set of interested
monopolists may perpetuate their ascendancy over the mi-
serable French peasants now subject to them. Had Jo-
nathan been the master, he would have done for them and
their monopolies long ago. Too much regard has hitherto
been paid to these petty provincial oppressors.—Morning
Chronicle.

Although there are few statesmen who will now-a-days
deny that the essence of all sound policy is justice, we
hardly find any that, in the exercise of power, are capable
of concessions to popular importunity from a disinterested
sense of right. It is equally true that concessions wrung
from repugnant power by threats of popular violence
are never received with gratitude by those who obtain
them, and never cause any lasting dereliction of the

turbulence by which they are extorted. Yet that sub-
mission through weakness, which produces no peace,
should be so frequent, while the tribute to justice,
which would naturally beget both respect and satisfaction
in those who were gainers by it, should be so rare, is a
humiliating circumstance for the readers of history and
the speculators on civil government. Ireland is an in-
stance of the bad results of concessions granted from
vicious, or rather from despicable, motives—through the
whole series of relaxations in our state policy against
Roman Catholics, tardily, reluctantly, and therefore thank-
lessly and ineffectually, surrendered to menaces of-phy-
sical force. Everything given up by England to the pe-
remptory demands of the Irish gentry in 1782, and to the
seditious clamours of the Papists afterwards, had been with-
held until the Minister who executed each succeeding con-
cession apologized for it to his friends by the assurance
that he could resist no longer. The consequence was, and
has been to this hour, that each step gained through vio-
lence became a footing whereon to plant the machinery of
further violence, whereby fresh encroachments might be
made securely and infallibly upon a power which showed
that it had no principle of action but stubbornness when
strong, and flight when feeble. This subject is recurred
to for the sake of diverting the minds of public men from
the question by which they have hitherto been almost ex-
clusively engrossed—viz., are we able to refuse this or that
boon to this or that portion of the people ? and of directing
them to another and far more elevated inquiry—via.,
what solid advantage not hitherto enjoyed by them can
we justly bestow upon any portion of the people ? Had
the Irish penal laws been abolished, and the priesthood
provided for, at the period of the Union, when Mr. Pitt
proposed it, or immediately on the peace of 1815, when
the British Government was all powerful to raise up
or to put down, it is morally impossible that any demagogue
or democrat spirit should afterwards have been ingrafted
on Irish Popery, or that such men as Mr. Daniel O'Con-
nell should have extracted a livelihood from unlawful and
treasonable callings. But if the refusal of justice, through
a consciousness of strength, be a criminal proceeding in
any State, a surrender to violence, whether armed or un-
armed, is an error not less deplorable or fatal, because it at
once recognizes within the monarchy a power above, be-
yond, and more irresistible than that of the monarchy itself.
Rebellious meetings and rebellious language ought no more
to be capitulated with than regimented rebels in the open
field attacking the Queen's troops with rifles. Had Papi-
neau, the practised speaker of sedition, been fined and im-
prisoned three or four years, or even six months, ago—
Papineau, the rebel and traitor, need not now have been
proclaimed in the Gazette, and 1,0001. promised by her Ma-
jesty's Government for his capture. But the man was pam-
pered in his insolence. He was encouraged and seduced by
the deceitful no less than profligate blandishments, flatteries,
and slavish servilities of the Gosford mission, and all but
bribed into the declaration of a civil war against Great
Britain. We have said in a former article that the prin-
cipal demands made upon Great Britain by this Papineau
and his auxiliaries would, if yielded, have been equivalent
to a complete overthrow of the British dominion, as that
of the parent state over her dependent colony. One item
in those demands was, that the Legislative Council, or
Upper Chamber of the Canadian Parliament, should, like
that assembly of which Papineau was chosen Speaker (and
of which he has, in fact, been dictator), be elected by the
suffrage—nearly universal—of the same constituency.
Another modest and becoming demand was, that the Le-
gislative Assembly, alias M. Papineau, should have the
nomination of the Governor's Cabinet Ministers ! And the
refusal of this was one of the main grievances adduced by
our political tinker, Mr. Joseph Hume, to illustrate
his classic phrase of the " baleful domination of the
mother country." Now, we do not appeal to block-
heads like this Hume, but we do appeal willingly
to the rest of the British nation, whether, if the Upper
Chamber were to be elected by the same rabble consti-
tuency as the Lower, and if a Papineau faction were to have
the power of naming Privy Councillors to the Governor of
the province, who would make a merit of not obeying the
orders issued from the Queen's Government in Downing-
street—whether in either of such cases, much more in both,
Canada would not, in truth and reality, be a republic—ab-
solutely independent of the British Crown ? and whether,
therefore, the acquiescence of the Queen's Ministers in
such demands would not be a total sacrifice of the pro-
vince, and, pro tanto, a dismemberment of the British em-
pire ? The war, therefore, into which the Papineau fac-
tion have run headlong is an iniquitous and depraved ag-
gression upon the sovereign rights of this country, acknow-
ledged by the whole eililized world ; and the legitimate,
and we trust the certain, termination of such war will be,
as it ought to be, followed, if not by " indemnity for the
past," at all events by " security for the future."—Tinres.
As in the moral and social, so in the political world,
there is hardly any circumstance so wholly unfortunate as
not to be also the medium or the instrument of some good.
If it gives no other advantage, it is at least a lesson—if it
do not point out the way to the obtainment of a benefit, it
shows how sonie other calamity should be guarded against
and evaded. With respect to the news from Canada,
which is indeed lamentable—for of all horrors what can be
so dreadful as civil war ?—yet the intelligence of these
events, and the notice taken of them in this country, may
be, and probably will be, in some points, of use to the
community. But for what has occurred at a distance, and
the fierce joy of approbation with which some Radicals
have, dwelt upon it in the House of Commons, many of
the public would not have believed the extent of hostility
to the British Monarchy by which certain violent politicians
are actuated. Until it became evident by the speeches of
the friends of the American malcontents is the House of
Commons, the public generally would not have deemed it
possible that men in the position of Members of that
House would venture to express something even stronger
than common sympathy with those who were notoriously in
arms against the British Crown, to which they owe al-
legiance. We have been so much accustomed in Great
Britain to free, and even fierce disputation, upon political
questions, without any idea that either wavered in the
essential principles of loyalty, that no danger has been
dreamed of beyond vihat might be involved in the ascen-
dancy of this party or of that. But those who are not wil-
fully blind must now see that there is a greater danger—
that the passion for organic change has votaries in this
country ready to applaud the very utmost length to which
revolution can be carried', and, therefore, very likely to
practise what they applaud, if an opportunity were to offer.
This being evident, it becomes equally so that good sub-
jects who feel allegiance to be a principle which they are
bound both to support and to enforce, it necessary, as well as
prudent men who desire to live in peace, and to enjoy their
property in security, should look about them, and do their
utmost, to inflict " a heavy blow and a great discourage-
ment" upon the spirit of the movement, and upon the men
who, either through carelessness, through cupidity, or
through essential disloyalty, give their aid to the promotion
of that spirit. But, in addition to the warning against the
possible extent of the extravagance of radicalism at home
to be derived from a consideration of the way in which
the intelligence of Canadian treason has been received,
there is another, and a very important lesson to be
gathered concerning the conduct of the present Go-
vernment. No doubt the general impression of the
incompetency of the present Ministers for the discharge of
'their high duties was very strong in England before the
receipt of the news from Canada. The result of the ge-
neral election in August showed that even then, and in
spite of every circumstance likely to set asleep the vigi-
lance of the people, and thus to operate favourably for the
Administration, the electors of England did not place confi-
dence in the Government. But it required the news from
Canada, and the consideration of the remissness of the Go-
verument both before and since the knowledge of actual
rebellion in that province, to satisfy, and most impressively,
to convince the people of England that there is no real
safety for the Crown or the country under the management
of the present Ministers. There is not, perhaps, in the
whole history of British Government, any instance of such
trifling, such timidity, and such moral powerlessness, as that
afforded by the present advisers of the Crown with respect
to the affairs of Canada. News arrives that one of the
principal colonial provinces of Great Britain is in open re-
volt ; the public naturally expect that Government on its own
responsibility, or with the consent of Parliament, im-
mediately deal with this rebellion so as to succour British
subjects abroad and to satisfy those at home. But what
do they hear? Why, simply this—that Ministers hope
that nothing very serious will arise out of Canadian rebel-
lion, but do not wish to speak confidently ; and that this
being the time for Christmas holidays, Parliament will
adjourn for four weeks, retrenching two weeks from the
intended recreation, in consideration that Canada is in
open rebellion. This is literally the history of Ministerial
conduct upon this occasion, and we appeal to the common
sense of the nation whether anything more feeble or
more ridiculous upon such an occassion could have hap-
pened, or could have been imagined. There has not been
the slightest hint that Government would do any thing of
itself, and the Parliament has separated for four weeks.
The rebellion in Canada is left to adjust itself. We think
this stroke of policy will be sufficient to convince many,
Who before only suspected the present Ministers of being