they also met? how were they regarded, and were the colonists sympathised with on account of them? They were spoken of and accounted for, by the free-trade leaders, in a spirit similar to the following paragraph—in a spirit of exaggerated detraction, instead of national sympathy and management. And we put it to the candour of the English public, if the succeeding remarks of the _Daily News_ are not a fair sample of the manner in which the party that paper represents are in the habit of speaking of the colonies:— “The argument of the Montreal traders is: ‘The Americans are more prosperous than we. If our territory was incorporated into the Union, we would be as prosperous as the Americans.’ The fallacy of this argument is obvious to dispassionate lookers-on. The superior prosperity of the Americans was as marked when the late Mr Stuart visited Canada and the United States as it is now. It has not originated in the change of British mercantile policy. It has all along been owing to the superior energy and enterprise of the Americans. The Canadians were listless, relying upon protection in the British market; the Americans were active, because they had only their own enterprise to rely upon. The Americans, in the position of the Canadians, are not afraid of free competition. The stronghold of the protectionist party in America is in the sea-board manufacturing states. If the Canadians would be as prosperous as the Americans, they must become as active and enterprising as the Americans. The self-government of the people of the United States promoted the spirit of enterprise; but, for all essential purposes, Canadians now enjoy that spring of energy. Canada annexed to the United States would advance more rapidly than Canada under its former close government and protective system did; but the advance would be the work of, and its profits would be reaped by, the hardy emigrants from the United States. The dreamers who think that their prosperity depends upon their being subject to this or the other government, not upon their own exertions, would be driven to the wall before the new-comers. Their individual plight, be that of the province what it might, would be worse than ever.” Now, that the deductions and statements in this paragraph—if they are intended to apply to the state of Canada before as well as after free trade, and they certainly seem so intended—are as untrue, ungenerous, and unjust, towards the colonists—towards the hardy, persevering, and hard-working people of Great Britain in them—as they are grossly misrepresentative and unfair with respect to the prosperity of the country—we here undertake and pledge ourselves to the reader satisfactorily to prove.