his paper, and published it twice a week, in order to meet the growing demand for political intelligence. The _Gazette_ was trammelled for years by the fact that it was semi-official, and the vehicle of public notifications, but when, subsequently, [Footnote: In 1823, an Official Gazette was published by Dr. Fisher, Queen's Printer. Canadian Magazine,' p. 470.] this difficulty no longer existed, the paper, either under his own or his son's management, was independent, and, on the whole, moderate in tone whenever it expressed opinions on leading public questions. Mr. Neilson, from 1818, when he became a member of the Legislature, exercised a marked influence on the political discussions of his time, and any review of his career as journalist and politician would be necessarily a review of the political history of half a century. A constant friend of the French Canadians, a firm defender of British connection, never a violent, uncompromising partisan, but a man of cool judgment, he was generally able to perform good service to his party and country. As a public writer he was concise and argumentative, and influential, through the belief that men had in his sincerity and honesty of purpose. In 1806, there appeared in Quebec a new organ of public opinion, which has continued to the present day to exercise much influence on the politics of Lower Canada. This was the _Canadien_, which was established in the fall of that year, chiefly through the exertions of Pierre Bedard, who was for a long while the leader of the French party in the Legislature, and at the same time chief editor of the new journal, which at once assumed a strong position as the exponent of the principles with which its French Canadian conductors were so long identified. It waged a bitter war against its adversaries, and no doubt had an important share in shaping the opinions and educating the public mind of the majority in the province. If it too frequently appealed to national prejudices, and assumed an uncompromising attitude when counsels of conciliation and moderation would have been wiser, we must make allowance for the hot temper of those times, and the hostile antagonism of races and parties, which the leaders on both sides were too often ready to foment, The editor of the _Canadien_ was also punished by imprisonment for months, and the issue of the paper was stopped for a while on the order of Chief Justice Sewell, in the exciting times of that most arbitrary of military governors, Sir James Craig. The action of the authorities in this matter is now admitted to have been tyrannical and unconstitutional, and it is certainly an illustration of human frailty that this same M. Bedard, who suffered not a little from the injustice of his political enemies, should have shown such weakness--or, shall we say, Christian forbearance--in accepting, not long afterwards, a judgeship from the same Government which he had always so violently opposed, and from which he had suffered so much.