proposition, that men who aspire to exercise a directing and controlling influence in any pursuit or business, should be distinguished by a knowledge of principles and general laws. But it is in the acquisition of this knowledge, and more especially in its application to the occurrences of daily life, that the chief necessity arises for the exercise of those high moral qualities, with the importance of which I have endeavoured, in these brief remarks, to impress you. [1] _Our Colonies_: an Address delivered to the members of the Mechanics' Institute, Chester, Nov. 12, 1855, by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P. [2] See the _Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell's Administration_, by Earl Grey: a work in which the records of a most important period of colonial history are traced with equal ability and authority. [3] MacMullen's _History of Canada_, p. 497. [4] Lord Grey's _Colonial Policy_, &c., i. 207. [5] MacMullen's _History of Canada_. [6] A pamphlet was published by a member of the Legislative Council, denouncing this and similar instances of 'horrible and heartless conduct' on the part of landed proprietors and their 'mercenary agents;' but it was proved by satisfactory evidence that his main statements were not founded in fact. [7] Lord Grey's _Colonial policy_. [8] See Papers presented to Parliament, May, 1848; or Lord Grey's _Colonial Policy_, i. 216. [9] _I.e._ Member of the Provincial Parliament. [10] Lord Grey's _Colonial Policy,_ i. 220. Lord Grey was one of the few statesmen who were blameless in the matter, for he voted against the Act of 1843, in opposition to his party. [11] The personal annoyance which he felt on this occasion was only a phase of the indignation which was often roused in him, by seeing the interests and feelings of the colony made the sport of party-speakers and party-writers at home; and important transactions in the province distorted and misrepresented, so as to afford ground for an attack, in the British Parliament, on an obnoxious Minister.--_Vide Infra_, p. 113. [12] 'A knowledge' wrote Sir F. Bruce, 'of what he was, and of the results he in consequence achieved, would be an admirable text on which to engraft ideas of permanent value on this most important question;' as helping to show 'that to reduce education to stuffing the mind with facts is to dwarf the intelligence, and to reverse the natural process of the growth of man's mind; that the knowledge of principles, as the means of discrimination, and the criterion of those individual appreciations which are fallaciously called facts, ought to be the end of high education.' CHAPTER IV. CANADA.