"We His Majesty's dutiful and loyal subjects, inhabitants of the city of Montreal and the neighbouring Parishes, have learnt with extreme regret that your Excellency is unexpectedly about to leave this province. "We hasten, before your Excellency separates yourself from us, to convey to your Excellency the expression of our sorrow for your departure, of our gratitude for the benefits conferred on us, in common with our fellow subjects, by your Excellency's administration, and our ardent wish that your Excellency's absence from this province may be of short duration. "These sentiments are naturally produced in our minds by the recollection of the public and private virtues which have been displayed by your Excellency in your exalted station, and by the advantages we have experienced from your Excellency's wisdom and justice in peace, and your protecting care in war. "In your Excellency's civil administration, we have seen conspicuously evinced an anxious desire to dispense equal justice to His Majesty's subjects, to obliterate unjust and impolitic distinctions between the inhabitants of this province, of different origin, and to unite them as members of one community with the same rights and interests, for the promotion of their common welfare. Influenced by this wise and just policy, your Excellency has been enabled to form a correct estimate of the character and disposition of the population of Canada: and, by reposing in the loyalty and bravery of His Majesty's Canadian subjects that confidence which they fully merited, your Excellency has afforded practical evidence of their devoted attachment to His Majesty's government, and their capacity to yield it effectual support. "While exposed to the pressure of the late unjust and unprovoked war waged by the United States of America against His Majesty, we experienced the security derived from your Excellency's indefatigable exertions for the defence of this Province, and have reason to ascribe its preservation, as well as that of the Upper Province, to the judicious distribution and arrangement of the Public Force made by your Excellency, by which the attempts of the enemy were frustrated, and the honourable character, with the rights and advantages of British subjects has been secured to the Inhabitants of the Canadas.