opportunity is therefore most favourable for the adoption of such measures as may tend to consolidate our strength, and increase our resources, so as to enable ourselves to meet any efforts that the most favourable event of the present troubles can ever enable her to make’. The letter was written after the taking of the Bastille and the outbreak of the French Revolution, when Lafayette was in demand at home and not likely to make further excursions into American politics; but the words implied that France was still in the eyes of British statesmen the main source of danger to Great Britain, especially in connexion with Canada, and that the grant of representative institutions to British and French colonists in Canada was likely to strengthen the hands of Great Britain as against her most formidable rival. [Sidenote: Policy of the British Government determined by the results of the War of American Independence.] [Sidenote: Proposed safeguards to the grant of popular institutions.] [Sidenote: Suggestion to give titles to members of the Upper Chamber.] [Sidenote: Lord Dorchester opposed to the suggestion.] The correspondence shows clearly that the outcome of the War of American Independence had inclined the British Government to give popular representation to the remaining British possessions in North America. On the other hand there are passages in it which should be noted, indicating that ministers were anxious at the same time to introduce certain safeguards against democracy, which had been wanting in the old North American colonies. Grenville’s dispatch stated that it was intended to appoint the members of the Upper Chamber, the Legislative Council, for life and during good behaviour, provided that they resided in the province. It also stated that it was the King’s intention to confer upon those whom he nominated to the Council ‘some mark of honour, such as a Provincial Baronetage, either personal to themselves or descendible to their eldest sons in lineal succession’, adding that, if there was in after years a great growth of wealth in Canada, it might be possible at some future date to ‘raise the most considerable of these persons to a higher degree of honour’. The object of these regulations, he wrote, ‘is both to give to the Upper Branch of the Legislature a greater degree of weight and consequence than was possessed by the Councils in the old colonial governments, and to establish in the provinces a body of men having that motive of attachment to the existing form of government which arises from the possession of personal or hereditary distinction.’ In writing as above, Grenville did not state in so many words that the Government contemplated making appointment to the Legislative council hereditary in certain cases, but merely that it was proposed to give some title to certain members of the Council, which title might be made hereditary; nor was any clause dealing with the