Notwithstanding that the government of the United States has thought it incumbent upon itself to remonstrate against our taking possession of this island, and thus to dispute every inch of ground respecting the right to which there could be the smallest doubt, yet the generality of the people of the States affect to talk of every such step as idle and unnecessary, inasmuch as they are fully persuaded, in their own minds, that all the British dominions in North America must, sooner or later, become a part of their empire. Thus Mr. Imlay, in his account of the north-western territory: “It is certain, that as the country has been more opened in America, and thereby the rays of the sun have acted more powerfully upon the earth, these benefits have tended greatly to soften the winter season; so that peopling Canada, for which we are much obliged to you, is a double advantage to us. First, it is settling and populating a country that must, sooner or later, from the natural order of things, become a part of our empire; and secondly, it is immediately meliorating the climate of the northern states,” &c. The greatest empires that have ever appeared on the face of the globe have dissolved in the course of time, and no one acquainted with history will, I take it for granted, presume to say that the extended empire of Britain, all powerful as it is at present, is so much more closely knit together than any other empire ever was before it, that it can never fall asunder; Canada, I therefore suppose, may, with revolving years, be disjointed from the mother country, as well as her other colonies; but whenever that period shall arrive, which I trust is far distant, I am humbly of opinion that it will not form an additional knot in that extensive union of states which at present subsist on the continent of North America; indeed, were the British dominions in North America to be dissevered from the other members of the empire the ensuing year, I am still tempted to imagine that they would not become linked with the present federal American states, and for the following reasons: First, because the constitution of the federal states, which is the bond that holds them together, is not calculated for such a large territory as that which the present states, together with such an addition, would constitute.