“I have to warn you not to judge of a government by the meanest of its servants, nor let the upstart insolence of a body so contemptible alienate your affections from your Queen and country; the people of England are both liberal and just, and were your case fairly represented to them there is not the slightest doubt immediate steps would be taken to redress your grievances. The Queen, like other people, has dirty work to do, and must have dirty fellows do it. The royal chimney-sweepers who exercise their professional functions in Buckingham Palace and St. James’s may be very pleasant fellows in their way, but I doubt much if they are the kind of people that either you or I would borrow money to drink with, as Shakespeare’s fat Knight says. “Some little excuse must be had for the poor fellows after all. That the Commissariat are ‘saucy dogs’ we all must allow, have felt it; but that they are not too saucy to eat dirty puddings we know, for cursed dirty puddings they are obliged to bolt, without even daring to make a wry face at them. Witness the correspondence which the House of Assembly last winter elicited between the arrogant, insolent, empty-headed coxcomb at the head of that department and the Commissaries at Toronto and Penetanguishene. To this the poor devils are obliged to submit for their piece of silver or morsel of bread. It is natural, therefore, that the people who have studied so long in the school of arrogant ill-breeding should be anxious to exhibit the proficiency they have attained when their turn comes; and it is possible they may suppose that a Canadian yeoman, who is afraid of losing all that has been taken from him by offending their High Mightinesses, may for a time submit to it. “A broken head or two might remove this delusion and convince them that _a man is still a man_ though clad in a homespun coat, and that to get rid of their redundant bile safely they must make it go as hereditary property does by law, downwards, and alight on the heads of clerks and issuers, who, living in the hope of one day having it in their power to abuse their inferiors, will probably submit with more equanimity. “In applying to the British Parliament for redress, I give you warning that the Commissariat is the most powerful body you can well attack. The Duke of Wellington and Lord Grey, Lord Brougham and Lord Lyndhurst, Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Daniel O’Connell may talk, and all, when in their turn of power, have provided for the sons of faithful butlers and respectable valets in the Commissariat--a department particularly favourable for the offspring of the lower orders (the pay being good and the work little or nothing), the attainments necessary for its duties being easily acquired in any parish school, they being comprised in writing a legible hand and a tolerable acquaintance with the first four rules of arithmetic. The experiment, however, is well worth trying, and I trust will be successful.