The Sun.
London, England, 1837-09-27 00:00:00

THE CANAD A.S,

Quebec papers have been received to the 27th of Au-
gust. They contain a copy of the address of the House
of Assembly, and the answer of his Excellency Lord Gos-
ford. The address was presented to his Lordship on the
26th ult., to which an answer was returned immediately,
and on the same day he issued a proclamation proroguing
the Legislature until the sth of October. We subjoin the
address, as well as the speech of the Governor
To his Excellency the Right Hon. Archibald Earl of
Gosford, Baron Worlingham of Beccles, in tbs county
of Kent, Captain-General, and Governor-in-Chief in
and over the provinces of Lower Canada and Upper
Canada, Vice-Admiral of the same, and one of her
Majesty's Privy Council, &c.
" May it please your Excellency—
" We, her Majesty's faithful and loyal subjects, the Com-
mons of Lower Canada, in provincial parliament assembled,
humbly thank your Excellency for your speech from the
throne at the opening of the present session. We assure
your Excellency that at whatever season we may be called
upon to perform the duties delegated to us by the people
of this province, we shall ever regard as nothing the per-
sonal inconvenience to which we may be subjected ; more
especially when we may be called upon to deliberate on
the great interests of the country under circumstances as
zrave and critical as the present, when your Excellency
has to communicate to us the proceedings which have
taken place in the Imperial Parliament since we were last,
called together, and the resolutions which have been
adopted therein with regard to the affairs of this province.
‘• We ask permission humbly to represent to your Excel-
lency, that the course which this House has deemed it ex-
pedient to adopt during the last four years, with regard to
the existing financial difficulties, has been founded on the
best recognised principles of the Constitution, and adopted
with the view of obtaining the removal of numerous abuses

and grievances against which this House and the people
whom it represents have long remonstrated in vain, and the
greater portion of which have been recognised as existing,
and have been the subjects of promises and declarations
which had raised a hope that they would be speedily re-
dressed. It was, therefore, with deep regret, and at the
same tima with surprise, that we heard your Excellency
announce to us that her Majesty's Ministers, before adopt-
ing any measures for the removal of the numerous abuses

afr,resiiid, had resolved to propose to the House of Com-
mons that a vote of credit should be passed for the advance,
by way of loan, from British funds, of the sum required for
the payment of the arrears due to the public officers, with

the view that this sum should be hereafter drawn from the
provincial chest, by virtue of an Act of the Imperial Par-
liament, if this House'should not, by granting the requisite
supplies, obviate the necessity of any further action on the
part of the Imperial Parliament.'
" We should have believed, that under a Government
which, like that of the mother country, founds its fairest
claim to the consideration of other nations oil its respect for
the natural and political rightt of the subject, would have
felt that before proceeding to meet by measures of so ex-
treme a nature. and so destructive of the Constitutional
rights of a whole people, the refusal of this House to pro-
vide for the expencea of the Civil Government of the Pro-
vince, it would be right to remove the main causes of this
refusal, founded as it was on the existence of open and ac-
knowledged abuses and grievances. We should think we
were deceiving your Excellency and the Imperial Govern-
ment if we did not firmly and frankly declare, that what-
ever be our anxiety to forward the woi kof conciliation, we
regard these measures as an attack upon the property of the
people and upon the most sacred rights of the House, and
as tending greatly to affect the security of her Majesty's
loyal subjects in this province, and their confidence in her
Government, and therefore as constituting a serious obsta-
cle to the arrangement of the existing difficulties, and es
tending to weaken the ties which bind this colony to the
mother country.
" \Vc ask leave further to represent to your Excellency,
that when this House, during the last Session cf the pro
ir.cial Parliament, came to the determination to suspend its
de'iberations, it was influenced chiefly by the conviction,
grounded on the result of the preceding Session, that it
could not with advantage to the country enter into the la-
bours and incur the expenses of a regular session in con-
junction with the present legislative council, whose anterior
proceedings breathed nothing but factious opposition to the
wishes, wants, and interests of the people. The two
Houscs of the Imperial Parliament, by declaring (as
your Excellency tells us they did) that it is expedient
to adopt measures for securing . to that branch of the

„ .
legisl.iture a greater degree of Rubric confidence,' have

come forward to corroborate the opinion which the House
held and still holds with regard to the legislative council.
And we cannot refrain from here expressing our asto-
nishment that this significant and solemn declaration
that one of the branches of the Legislation appointed
by the Crown is not so constituted as to enjoy the con-
fidence of the public, should be communicated to us at
the same time with an imperative demand for supplies,
and while her Majesty's Government has done nothing
! towards secure to that branch a higher degree of public
confidence. The supplies are, as we humbly con-
ceive, granted by • the Commons solely in consideration of
their entire confidence in the Government ; and this confi-
dence cannot exist while the Government leaves untouched
a legislative body which it openly acknowledges not to pos-
sess the confidence of the public. But the astonishment
produced by such a declaration, accompanied by such a de-
mand, must be succeeded by a more painful feeling, when
we are told that our rejection of this demand will be fol-
lowed by the taking of the provincial moneys under the au-
thority of an Act of the Imperial Parliament. The people
of this province would thus be punished by the violation of
the most important of their rights for the fault of the exe-
cutive authorities, local or imperial, in abandoning the spi-
rit of the constitutional Act by declining so to constitute
the Legislative Council as to secure public confidence in
it, and by persisting in maintaining the present vicious com-
position of that body, notwithstanding the complaints of
this House and the people it represents, reiterated during
many years.

"Conduct like this, on the part of the imperial autho-
rities, would destroy in us for ever all confidence, and all
assurance in our present state of political existence, if
we were not sustained by the hope that the two Houses
of the Imperial Parliament, and her Majesty's Go-
vernment have been induced to adopt it by a forced
interpretation of the terms in which this House, dur-
ing the last Session, declared its determination to sus-
pend its deliberations. if this interpretation has not
been seized with avidity, and for the purpose of using
it as a pretext for coercive measures towards the colony ;
if a more precise and clear declaration of the mean-
ing of this Ilause can yet induce the Imperial authorities
to prevent the effects of their misunderstanding, we de-
clare that we have always held, and that we still hold, that
the only means of insuring to the country, in a permanent
and satisfactory manner, the advantages of a representative
Government, would be to apply the elective principle to
the Legislative Council, and that we cannot, therefore, re-
commend the adoption of any other means. But if, in
despite of the unhappy experience of half a century, and
above all, of the vain attempt recently made to reform that
body, in pursuance of the solemn recommendations of the
Canada Committee of 1828, her Majesty's Government
still retains the hope of being able so to re-model it as to
enable it to answer the purposes of its institution, and to
secure public confidence in it, it is for her Majesty's Go-
vernment to hasten to have recourse to this measure, and
to put it to the proof. It will then remain for this House
to consider whether the reform thus effected is such as to
lead to the hope of a system of legislation useful and
honourable to the country, which is the sole object this
House has sought to attain, in demanding the application
of the elective principle to the Legislative Council of this
province.

" We now proceed to represent to your Excellency that
the declaration made by the two Houses of the Imperial
Parliament on the subject of the Legislative Council of
this province, is calculated to revive the hope that that
branch of the Legislature will, at a period perhaps not far
distant, but which is left indeterminate, be so composed as
to lead the country to hope that for a time at least a re-
gular and beneficial system of legislation may exist ; but as
this declaration neither changes nor weakens the reasons
which at the last session induced this House to suspend its
deliberations, we find ourselves under the painful necessity
' of adhering to the determination we then came to, of sus-
pending our deliberations until the consummation of the
reforms—and that of the Legislative Council above all
—announced by, and in the name of, the Imperial Au-
thorities, which, by reviving confidence, and restoring
harmony in the Legislature, will give hope of the speedy
disappearance of the numerous subjects of complaint
enumerated in the several Resolutions, and Ad-
dresses of this House in former Sessions. We there-
fore assure your Excellency that the work of Reform._
°ice thus begun on the part of the Government—
this Ifausc will be ready to receive, consiLr, and if pos-
sible to agree to, the several proposals which her Majesty's
Government may have to make to it for the final arrange-
ment of the financial and other difficulties which have so
long existed in this province ; and also to recommence the
regular course of its deliberations, which have only been
interrupted in consequence of the conviction which the
House then fa.!:t, and still feels, that no other result could
now attend them than that of burdening the people with
considerable expense, without any of the great advantages
which they have a right to expect from a Session of the
Legislature.

‘-; We ask leave yet further to represent to your Excel-
lency, that although we do not make particular mention of
the Executive Council, because we consider the reform of
that body as intimately connected with that of the Legis-
!dtive Council, we do not consider this reform as less essen-
,ial to the good government of the province, or less adapted