Whatever may be the danger of the precedent, and whatever may be its effects upon other colonies, or upon England herself, it seems clear that a large expenditure of blood and money, to suppress this movement in the Canadas, is neither desirable, nor, in the present temper of the British public, might it be possible. And this movement never could be physically or forcibly put down, without a large expenditure of both these. The men who have deliberately entered into it are not such as could be easily driven out of the land, or frightened out of their convictions in it. They would fight for their opinions, and, considering all things—loyalists disgusted, and Frenchmen in power—they are dangerously numerous. This brings us, then, to consider what is being done in a conciliatory point of view, by the free-trade party in England—who are answerable for the difficulty—to take the wind out of this “annexation movement’s” sails. This is, according to Lord John Russell’s speech—at the dinner given some months since, for the purpose, it would seem, of discussing colonial subjects—to give them more liberty. Heaven help us! If Lord John Russell saw, as we have seen, liberty recently running clean mad in these colonies; if he saw responsible government playing its “fantastic tricks before high heaven,” with England’s “dignified neutrality” looking on, he would hardly be disposed to give them any more rope. But what is the character of the liberty and privileges they ask? and, being asked, he would give them? The last small instalment they require is, to elect their legislative council; and, thinking that the phantom of Great Britain’s power, called “dignified neutrality,” may be had at a cheaper rate at home, they propose to elect that also—feeling, too, not without justice, that they might thereby _neutralise_ the loss to the colonies of some four thousand pounds annually. But suppose England should waive the privilege of sending out a phantom, and the legislative lords would have, like David Crocket, to go about the country electioneering with a pocket full of _quids_, pray what, after all this, would be left in the colonies to recognise England by? An Englishman coming to them, like the man in the farce who had been asleep for a century, would find it rather difficult to recognise his relations. But, seriously, what is all this but annexation? And is this the only way the great authors of the colonial difficulties have of keeping the colonies British?—of making them a home for men who seek and who claim to live under the institutions of Britain? Better—infinitely better—would it be to tell men straightforwardly, and at once, that they must feel the iron enter their souls of seeing the flag of their forefathers hauled down on the American continent for ever, than compel them to endure its being thus slowly and gradually disgraced out of it. And this would and must be the inevitable result of Lord John Russell’s giving the colonies more rope.