For many parliaments previous to the rebellion in Lower Canada, the majority in favour of the French was on an average equal to four-fifths of each house. And, instead of this majority being diminished by the agency of immigration, or by reason of the detachment of almost every Englishman and American in the province from their cause--who at first sided with them for the purpose of procuring the redress of all real abuses, most, if not all, of which, arose from the nature of their own institutions,--it continued to increase, until at last every county in the province which had a preponderance of French influence, sent a member to parliament to carry on a kind of civil war with the government. Men of the first talents in the country, who had freely spent the best of their lives and their efforts in its service, when they were compelled to leave this faction, or take leave of their loyalty to the crown, found that the breadth of their own intellects was all they were ever able to detach from its ranks. Every concession the imperial government could make, every effort to conciliate them, was met only by fresh demands--demands conceived in a spirit of hostility, and wilfully and knowingly of such a character as could not be conceded. Yet their majorities continued, and even increased, in parliament. In 1832, they carried their measures of hostility to the British, and even the Irish population so far, as to refuse to employ them for any purposes whatever, and, in some cases, those employed were dismissed. It is matter of Lower Canadian history, that one of their greatest grievances was, that they had not the control of the appointments of judges and other public officers, and the apportioning of their salaries; yet it is well known--it was publicly avowed by them in Parliament--that their object was, to starve out the British government, by starving out its officers. Still the French leaders who mooted these measures gained in popularity, and the English members for French counties continued to lessen. British manufactures were solemnly denounced in their parliament, and the use of them declared a disgrace to every Frenchman; and a tax, which they intended as a prohibition, was attempted to be placed upon British emigrants: yet withal, Mr Papineau, the great French leader, rose the higher, and his party grew the stronger. The more, in short, the French leaders could embarrass the government, and the more they could throw obstacles in the way of the improvements incident to the activity and enterprise of the English race, the more they rose in the estimation of the French constituencies. They claimed, in truth, for these very acts, their confidence, and they received what they claimed to the fullest extent. In a well-written, and, considering all the circumstances, a temperate address of the Constitutional Association of Montreal in 1832--an association got up with the view of making the situation of the British