But you may observe in reply to this, 'You cannot get the security which Michigan and Maine enjoy for nothing; you must purchase it by the surrender of your custom houses and public lands, the proceeds of which will be diverted from their present uses and applied to others, at the discretion of a body in which you will have comparatively little to say.' The argument is a powerful one, so long as England consents to bear the cost of the defence of the Colony, but its force is much lessened when the inhabitants are told that they must look to their own safety, because the mother-country can no longer afford to take care of them. On the other hand very weighty reasons may be adduced in favour of the policy of requiring the province to bear some portion at least of the charge of its own protection. The adoption of free-trade, although its advocates must believe that it tends to make the Colonies in point of fact less chargeable than heretofore, will doubtless render the English people more than ever jealous of expenditure incurred on their behalf. I am, moreover, of opinion, that the system of relieving the colonists altogether from the duty of self-defence is attended with injurious effects upon themselves. It checks the growth of national and manly morals. Men seldom think anything worth preserving for which they are never asked to make a sacrifice. My view, therefore, would be that it is desirable that a movement in the direction which you Lave indicated should take place, but that it ought to be made with much caution. The present is not a favourable moment for experiments. British statesmen, even Secretaries of State, have got into the habit lately of talking of the maintenance of the connection between Great Britain and Canada with so much indifference, that a change of system in respect of military defence incautiously carried out, might be presumed by many to argue, on the part of the mother-country, a disposition to prepare the way for separation. Add to this, that you effected, only a few years ago, a union between the Upper and Lower Provinces by arbitrary means, and for objects the avowal of which has profoundly irritated the French population; that still more recently you have deprived Canada of her principal advantages in the British markets; that France and Ireland are in flames, and that nearly half of the population of this Colony are French, nearly half of the remainder Irish. That Canada felt no need of bulwarks except against England's foes was a point on which he constantly insisted. On one occasion he wrote:-- Only one absurdity can be greater, pardon me for saying so, than the absurdity of supposing that the British Parliament will pay £200,000 for Canadian fortifications; it is the absurdity of supposing that Canadians will pay it themselves.