When the Assembly's report made its appearance, early in 1827, Captain Matthews was fully exonerated, so far as that body was concerned, from everything savouring of disloyalty. "The circumstances of the transaction"--thus ran the report--"as they are related without the contradiction of a single witness, irresistibly bespeak the absence of that disloyalty with which it has been basely attempted to sully the character of a most honourable man." The report moreover read a sharp lesson to the promoters of the accusation against him. It declared that "If every effervescence of feeling upon every jovial or innocent occasion is, in these Provinces, to be magnified into crime by the testimony of secret informers--if there can longer exist a political inquisition which shall scan the motives of every faithful servant of the public--if the authorities in Canada shall humble the independence of the Legislature by scandalizing its members and causing them to be ordered to Quebec, and thence to England, to sustain a fate which, under such corroboration as Lord Dalhousie received, might cover them with ignominy, or bring them, however innocent, to the block--or if the members of our community shall be awed into political subserviency by fear of oppression, or lured by the corrupt hope of participating guilty favours, then, indeed, will the prospect before us four, and this fine Province become a distant appendage of a mighty empire, ruled by a few aspiring men with the scourge of power."[89] The Committee professed their inability to learn by whom the pernicious representations had been made to the newspapers, or to the authorities in Canada, or from what source Lord Dalhousie had obtained his "corroboration." They expressed their conviction that there was no ground for the charge preferred against Captain Matthews, the malignity and falsity of which they believed to have derived their origin and support from political hostility towards him.