Could I venture to enter the lists against so tremendous a rhetorical athlete as Professor Goldwin Smith, I should say, that his idea of abolishing party government to secure purity of election is an utter fallacy; I should say that the great factor of corruption in Canada has been the adoption of the principle of coalitions. I told a prominent Conservative leader in 1853, that I looked upon coalitions as essentially immoral, and that the duty of either political party was to remain contentedly "Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition," and to support frankly all good measures emanating from the party in office, until the voice of the country, fairly expressed, should call the Opposition to assume the reins of power legitimately. I told the late Hon. Mr. Spence, when he joined the coalition ministry of 1854, that we (of the _Colonist_) looked upon that combination as an organized attempt to govern the country through its vices; and that nothing but the violence of the _Globe_ party could induce us to support any coalition whatsoever. And I think still that I was right, and that the Minister who buys politicians to desert their principles, resembles nothing so much as the lawyer who gains a verdict in favour of his client by bribing the jury. The union of Upper and Lower Canada is chargeable, no doubt, with a large share of the evils that have crept into our constitutional system. The French Canadian _habitans_, at the time of the Union, were true scions of the old peasantry of Normandy and Brittany, with which their songs identify them so strikingly. All their ideas of government were ultra-monarchical; their allegiance to the old French Kings had been transferred to the Romish hierarchy and clergy, who, it must be said, looked after their flocks with undying zeal and beneficent care. But this formed an ill preparation for representative institutions. The _Rouge_ party, at first limited to lawyers and notaries chiefly, had taken up the principles of the first French revolution, and for some years made but little progress; in time, however, they learnt the necessity of cultivating the assistance, or at least the neutrality of the clergy, and in this they were aided by ties of relationship. As in Ireland, where almost every poor family emaciates itself to provide for the education of one of its sons as a "counsellor" or a priest, so in Lower Canada, most families contain within themselves both priest and lawyer. Thus it came to pass, that in the Lower Province, a large proportion of the people lived in the hope that they might sooner or later share in "government pap," and looked upon any means to that end as unquestionably lawful. It is not difficult to perceive how much and how readily this idea would communicate itself to their Upper Canadian allies after the Union; that it did so, is matter of history.