population known to the imperial government, and an association that afterwards greatly contributed to save the province during the rebellion--we find the following among other passages to the same effect, upon this subject:-- "For half a century has the population of English and Irish descent in Lower Canada been subjected to the domination of a party whose policy has been to retain the distinguishing attributes of a foreign race, and to crush in others that spirit of enterprise which they are unable or unwilling to emulate. During this period, a population, descended from the same stock with ourselves, have covered a continent with the monuments of their agricultural industry. Upper Canada and the United States bear ample testimony of the flood-tide of prosperity--the result of unrestricted enterprise, and of equitable laws. Lower Canada, where another race predominates, presents a solitary exception to this march of improvement. There, surrounded by forests inviting industry, and offering a rich reward to labour, an illiterate people, opposed to improvements, have compressed their growing numbers almost within the boundaries of their original settlements, and present, in their mode of laws, in their mode of agriculture, and peculiar customs, a not unfaithful picture of France in the seventeenth century. There also may be witnessed the humiliating spectacle of a rural population not unfrequently necessitated to implore eleemosynary relief from the legislature of the country."