Now, gentlemen, what is the inference that I would draw from all this?  What is the moral I would endeavour to impress upon you?  It is this:  That it is your interest and your duty to avail yourselves to the utmost of all these unparalleled advantages; to bring to bear upon this soil, so richly endowed by nature, all the appliances of modern art; to refuse, if I may so express myself, to convert your one talent into two, if, by a more skilful application of the true principles of husbandry, or by greater economy of management, you can convert it into ten.  And it is because I believe that societies like these, when well directed, are calculated to aid you in your endeavours to effect these important objects, that I am disposed to give them all the protection and countenance, which it is in my power to afford.  They have certainly been very useful in other countries, and I cannot see why they should be less serviceable in Canada.  The Highland Society of Scotland was the first instituted, and the proud position which Scotland enjoys as an agricultural country speaks volumes of the services rendered by that society.  The Royal Agricultural Society of England and the Royal Agricultural Society of Ireland followed in its wake, and with similarly beneficial results.  I myself was instrumental in establishing an agricultural society in the West Indies, which has already done much to revive the spirits of the planters; and I shall be very much disappointed, indeed, if that society does not prove the means, before many years are past, of establishing the truth so important to humanity, that, even in tropical countries, free labour properly applied under a good system of husbandry is more economical than the labour of slaves.

[Sidenote:  Change of Ministry.]

At the close of 1847 the Canadian Parliament was dissolved.  When the new Parliament met early in 1848, the Ministry—­Lord Metcalfe’s Ministry—­ found itself in a decided minority.  A new one was accordingly formed from the ranks of the opposition, ’the members of both parties concurring in expressing their sense of the perfect fairness and impartiality with which Lord Elgin had conducted himself throughout the transactions’ which led to this result.[7]

[Sidenote:  French habitans.]

The French Canadians, who formed the chief element in the new government, were even at this time a peculiar people.  Planted in the days of the old French monarchy, and cut off by conquest from the parent state long before the Revolution of 1789, their little community remained for many years like a fragment or boulder of a distinct formation—­an island enshrining the picturesque institutions of the ancien regime, in the midst of an ever-encroaching sea of British nineteenth-century enterprise.  The English, it has been truly said, emigrate, but do not colonise.