I certainly regret that this agitation should have been stirred, and that any portion of the funds of the province should be diverted now from much more useful purposes to make good losses sustained by individuals in the rebellion.  But I have no doubt whatsoever that a great deal of property was wantonly and cruelly destroyed at that time in Lower Canada.  Nor do I think that this Government, after what their predecessors had done, and with Papineau in the rear, could have helped taking up this question.  Neither do I think that their measure would have been less objectionable, but very much the reverse, if, after the lapse of eleven years, and the proclamation of a general amnesty, it had been so framed as to attach the stigma of Rebellion to others than those regularly convicted before the Courts.  Any kind of extra-judicial inquisition conducted at this time of day by Commissioners appointed by the Government, with the view of ascertaining what part this or that claimant for indemnity may have taken in 1837 and 1838, would have been attended by consequences much to be regretted, and have opened the door to an infinite amount of jobbing, false swearing, and detraction.

[Sidenote:  Petitions against it.] [Sidenote:  Neutrality of the Governor.]

Petitions against the measure were got up by the Tories in all parts of the province; but these, instead of being sent to the Assembly, or to the Legislative Council, or to the Home Government, were almost all addressed to Lord Elgin personally; obviously with the design of producing a collision between him and his Parliament.  They generally prayed either that Parliament might be dissolved, or that the Bill, if it passed, might be reserved for the royal sanction.  All such addresses, and the remonstrances brought to him by deputations of malcontents, he received with civility, promising to bestow on them his best consideration, but studiously avoiding the expression of any opinion on the points in controversy.  By thus maintaining a strictly constitutional position, he foiled that section of the agitators who calculated on his being frightened or made angry, while he left a door open for any who might have candour enough to admit that after all he was only carrying out fairly the principle of responsible government.

In pursuance of this policy he put off to the latest moment any decision as to the course which he should take with respect to the Bill when it came up to him for his sanction.  As regards a dissolution, indeed, he felt from the beginning that it would be sheer folly, attended by no small risk.  Was he to have recourse to this ultima ratio, merely because a parliament elected a year before, under the auspices of the party now in opposition, had passed, by a majority of nearly two to one, a measure introduced by the present Government, in pursuance of the acts of a former one?