should entertain any active feeling of attachment to the Crown. For opening new settlements the _habitant_ has many useful qualifications, being usually competent to provide, by his personal skill, all the essentials requisite for his situation, such as house, clothing, and the ordinary farming implements. But having cleared his land, erected a dwelling for himself and a church for the _curé_, he remains stationary, contented with his lot, and living and dying as his ancestors lived and died before him. At the present day, for instance, a traveller may pass through districts where there is an abundance of excellent milk, and be unable to procure either butter or cheese with the sour and black-looking country bread which is served up at his meals; and it is by no means an uncommon circumstance for a _habitant_ to sell his manure to a neighbouring farmer, or throw it into the adjoining river, while every season his crops are deteriorating, in consequence of the degeneracy of the seed and the exhaustion of the soil. By the _habitant_ a small gain, or saving of actual coin, is deemed much more important than a large expenditure of time; and he will not easily be induced to venture on an immediate pecuniary outlay to secure a remote advantage, unless indeed the money is to be devoted to litigation, in which he loves to indulge. There is no class resembling English "country gentlemen" among the Canadians; nor do the doctors, notaries and lawyers, who overabound in the colony, form an efficient substitute for such a class. Needy and discontented, they are more disposed to attempt an improvement in their own condition of political agitation, than to labour for the advancement of their uninstructed neighbours. The only body of men to whom the _habitants_ can look for aid and direction are the parochial clergy, who, in the districts where their authority is unimpaired, act as a vigilant moral police, the efficiency of which is manifested in established habits of sobriety and order. Persons acquainted with the province are well aware that, in the disaffected districts, the influence of the Canadian clergy is much diminished. It appears, then, that the mode of village settlement adopted by the Franco-Canadians is favourable to the establishment of municipal institutions, and that the obstacles to be encountered are the absence of education, popular inexperience, blind repugnance to taxation, and the absence of a wealthy and instructed class, interested in the prosperity of the many, and desirous of engaging gratuitously in the administration of local affairs. 34. THE IRRESPONSIBLE OPPOSITION IN LOWER CANADA (1838). =Source.=--Lord Durham's _Report_. Lucas. Vol II.