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FROM THE COMMENCEMENT TO THE CLOSE OF ITS
EXISTENCE AS A SEPARATE PROVINCE.

BY ROBERT CHRISTIE.

IN SIX VOLUMES.

VOL. VI.

MONTREAL:

RICHARD WORTHINGTON,

PUBLISHER AND BOOKSELLER.

1800.

Entered, according to Act of the Provincial Legislature, in the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-five, "for the protection of copyrights in this province," by RICHD. WORTHINGTON, in the office of the Registrar of the province of Canada.

August, 1865.

Hist-user Hood 8.27-41

43684

INTRODUCTION.

THE papers and correspondence in this volume, relating to the constitution and government of Lower Canada, and other public matters therein, throw upon certain periods of its history much additional light, the more interesting as coming directly from the chief actors themselves in the political drama. A notion has long and very generally prevailed, though without any positive evidence to support it, that the authorities in Lower Canada, particularly during the administration of Sir James Craig, had urgently moved the home government for an alteration in the constitution, and for various innovations upon its civil and religious institutions, but in which of these, or in what particular respects, remained a mystery to the people who were to be affected by the proposed alterations, and without being at all consulted on the subject. Here, however, is a full revelation of the whole scheme.

The correspondence of Mr. Ryland, the object of whose mission to England, in 1810, the reader will find in Sir J. H. Craig's letter to Lord Liverpool, introduced at the end of the publisher's, vol. 5, of "Lower Canada," is by far the most interesting portion of the collection, and will be found to have been conducted by that gentleman with tact and ability, whatever may be thought of the purposes of his mission, which few of the present day, except those of the old school, will undertake to justify, or approve.

As death has removed Mr. Ryland from amongst us, a short memoir of him taken from a Quebec paper, (Mercury, 25th February, 1834,) may not be amiss, that his position and status in the country may be understood. Born and educated in England, the late Honorable Herman Witsius Ryland first entered public life in the year 1781, going out that year to New York as Assistant Deputy Pay Master General, to the King's forces in British North America. Soon after his arrival there he was sent into the enemy's territory, where he remained as Acting Pay Master General to the forces, captured with Lord Cornwallis and General Burgoyne, till the end of the war. On the evacuation of New York by the British forces, he returned with the Commander in Chief, Sir Guy Carleton, to England.

In 1793, the same General officer, then Lord Dorchester, and Governor in Chief of British North America, brought Mr.Ryland out to this country as his confidential Secretary. In this capacity he continued to serve under several successive Governors of Lower Canada, during a period of twenty years, and resigned under the administration of Sir George Prevost. The confidential and important office of Clerk of the Executive Council, which for several years he had held, previous to his resignation of the Secretaryship, he retained until his decease, which took place at his residence at Beauport, near Quebec, on 20th July, 1838. Though a strong party man, Mr. Ryland was a benevolent and kind neighbour, even to those of opposite and hostile politics, and accordingly he was much esteemed in the parish where he resided, by the French Canadian inhabitants, with whom he lived on terms of intimacy and friendship. He had been, in acknowledgment of his services, honored with a seat in the Legislative Council, and moreover was gratified with a pension from the Crown.

As Secretary he had the best possible opportunity of making himself thoroughly acquainted with public affairs, and the principal public men in Lower Canada. The reader will judge of his ability as a diplomat by his correspondence. But Mr. Ryland, it truly must be said, was in his sympathies, and antipathies, prepossessions, and prejudices (for who is free of such ?) an Englishman to the core, and like his friend and chief Sir J. H. Craig but little apt to conciliate or soothe the prejudices of a people foreign in language, religion, laws, usages and customs to those of his own country, to which they were but recently annexed by conquest and treaty. Indeed, generally speaking, it may be said that the prejudices of Englishmen, if not innate, are at least stubborn and characteristic, certainly not of a nature readily to humour or indulge those of their co-subjects of the other race, still less to give way to them. His convictions in politics, however, were conscientious, and his integrity unimpeachable. The darling project of his heart, was to anglify, but by means compulsory and distasteful to them, the French Canadian people, who, having no wish to be anglified by any means, would not be so "by compulsion." As a servant of the Crown he pursued ardently and indeed ultra zealously, what he believed to be, in the phraseology of the times when he first entered upon public life, the interests of his "King and Country." But in justice to his memory it should be also stated that although he considered the people of Lower Canada insufficiently prepared for free institutions, or self-government, yet in the case of Juge Foucher, when the Crown conceded to the Assembly its right of impeachment, he manfully, at the risk of losing his official appointment, denounced in his place in the Legislative Council the crooked policy of the government in withholding from the assembly the despatch conveying the Prince Regent's decision on this head. Mr.

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