During 1846 the relations between England and her Colonies were, save in one instance, undisturbed, though in Canada some traces of the bitter feeling engendered by the rebellion were still discernible. The Governor, Lord Metcalfe, had incurred considerable unpopularity, because he had not consulted the Ministry as to filling certain offices, which he maintained were Crown appointments. The old disputes, too, which arose out of attempts to charge compensation to rebels on the fund set aside for compensating loyalists for losses suffered during the rebellion, had left rankling memories behind them. Lord Metcalfe, on his death, was succeeded by Lord Cathcart, who opened the Second Session of the Second Canadian Parliament on the 20th of March. His Excellency’s speech hardly pleased his audience. He referred, naturally, with great good feeling, to the death of his predecessor, Lord Metcalfe. But this only incited the minority to bring forward an amendment, which, while expressing regret at Lord Metcalfe’s death, omitted all reference whatever to the manner in which he had discharged his duties. Though the Colony had no reason, said the representatives of this party, to love military governors, yet they had no objection to congratulate Lord Cathcart on his own appointment. Objectionable, however, as _his_ military education might be to them, it could not, they declared, render him as objectionable as Lord Metcalfe, whose political training and experience were purely Oriental. The one topic of high Imperial importance dealt with by Lord Cathcart was his reference to the adoption of Free Trade by the mother country. The Canadians, it may be said, viewed the new commercial policy of Sir Robert Peel with the utmost alarm. The doctrine of buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest had no charms for them, for they were afraid that if the duties were taken off which gave colonial a preference over foreign grain, Canada would be ruined by American competition. On the 12th of May the Canadian Legislative Assembly accordingly adopted an Address, which gave forcible expression to the dismal prediction that Free Trade with England must impoverish Canada, and thus depress one of the best markets then open to English commerce. Mutterings of secession even ran through the Address: it warned the Crown that, when the Canadians found they could not successfully compete with the United States in the only market open to them, they would naturally begin to doubt whether it was “a paramount advantage” to remain subjects of the British Empire. Undoubtedly the Free Trade policy of Peel, whatever good it may have done, had one baneful effect. It alienated the Canadian Colonists from the mother country.