When these reinforcements reach you, they will, I trust, enable you successfully to resist the internal, as well as external, enemies opposed to you, and materially aid the able measures you have adopted for the defence of Upper Canada. With regard to the queries you have submitted to me on the subject of martial law, I have to observe, that it has not fallen within my experience to see martial law proclaimed, except in those places where it has been declared under the authority of a provincial legislature, which of course regulated the mode in which it was to be executed. As the martial law which you purpose declaring is founded on the king's commission, and upon the extreme case of invasion alluded to in it, I am inclined to think that whatever power is necessary for carrying the measure into effect, must have been intended to be given you by the commission, and consequently, that the power of assembling courts martial and of carrying their sentence into execution, is included in the authority for declaring martial law. The officers of militia becoming themselves subject to martial law when it is declared, I conceive they may sit upon courts martial with officers of his majesty's regular forces; but upon both these points I desire not to be understood as speaking decisively--extreme cases must be met by measures which, on ordinary occasions, would not perhaps be justified. Your situation is such as to warrant your resorting to any step which, in your judgment, the public safety may require. I should therefore think, that after taking the best opinions you can obtain from the first law characters you have about you respecting the doubts you entertain on this subject, you need not hesitate to determine upon that line of conduct which you shall think will best promote the good of the service, trusting, if you do err, to the absolute necessity of the measures you may adopt, as your justification for them to his majesty's government.