In adverting to the injurious consequences arising from the division of the late Province of Quebec, your Majesty's petitioners cannot omit to notice more particularly the effect that measure has had in preventing the increase of the British population in Lower Canada and the development of its resources. The preponderance of the French population in the Legislature has occasioned obstacles to the settlement of British emigrants that have not been surmounted; so that the vast increase of British population to have been expected from this cause has been, in a general degree, prevented. The injury sustained in this particular may be easily appreciated when it is observed that, since the late American War, upwards of eighty thousand souls (that is, a number equal to one-fourth of the actual French population) have found their way to this Province from Great Britain and Ireland, and of these scarcely one-twentieth part remains within its limits, the rest, with the exception of a small number who have settled in Upper Canada, having been induced by the foreign character of the country in which they had sought an asylum, and the discouragements they experienced, to try their fortunes in the United States. The loss thus sustained is not confined to those who left the country, but comprises their connections and friends who would have followed them. In the same proportion as the increase of British population has been prevented, has the agricultural and commercial prosperity of the country been retarded and obstructed; as it is to the enterprise, intelligence and persevering industry of that population that both agriculture and commerce must be principally indebted for their advancement. On this head it may be fairly advanced that, had not the impolitic division of the late Province of Quebec taken place, and had a fit plan of representation been adopted, the British population would now exceed the French, and the imports and exports of the country be greatly beyond their present amount. 30. THE FOUNDING OF GUELPH, ONTARIO (1827). =Source.=--_The Autobiography of John Galt._ London, 1833. On the 22nd of April, the day previous to the time appointed for laying the foundations of my projected polis, I went to Galt, a town situated on the banks of the Grand River, which my friend, the Honourable William Dixon, in whose township it is situated, named after me long before the Canada Company was imagined; it was arrived at the maturity of having a post office before I heard of its existence. There I met by appointment, at Mr. Dickson's, Dr. Dunlop, who held a roving commission in the Canada Company, and was informed that the requisite woodmen were assembled.