You inhabit here a goodly land.  A land full of promise, where your children have room enough to increase and to multiply, and to become, with God’s blessing, greater and more prosperous than yourselves.  But I am confident that no spell less potent than the gentle and benignant control of those liberal institutions which it is Britain’s pride and privilege to bestow on her children, will insure the peaceful development of its unrivalled resources, or knit together into one happy and united family the various races of which this community is composed.

On this conviction I have acted, in labouring to secure for you, during the whole course of my administration the full benefit of constitutional government.  It is truly gratifying to me to learn that you appreciate my exertions.  Depend upon it, they will not be relaxed.  I claim to have something of your own spirit:  devotion to a cause which I believe to be a just one—­courage to confront, if need be, danger and even obloquy in its pursuit—­and an undying faith that God protects the right.

[Sidenote:  Debates in the British Parliament.]

In the meantime the unhappy Bill, which had caused such an explosion in the colony, was running the gantlet of the British Parliament.  On June 14 it was vehemently attacked in the House of Commons by Mr. Gladstone, as being a measure for the rewarding of Rebels.[9] He, indeed, contented himself with ‘calling the attention of the House to certain parts’ of the Bill in question; but Mr. Herries, following out the same views to their legitimate conclusion, moved an Address to Her Majesty to disallow the Act of the Colonial Legislature.  The debate was sustained with great Vigour for two nights; in the course of which the Act was defended not only by Lord John Russell as leader of the Government, but also, with even more force, by his great opponent Sir Robert Peel.  Speaking with all the weight of an impartial observer, he showed that it was not the intention of the measure, and would not be its effect, to give compensation to anyone who could be proved to have been a rebel; that it was only an inevitable sequel to other measures which had been passed without opposition; and, further, that its rejection at this stage would be resisted by all parties in the colony alike, as an arbitrary interference with their right of self-government.  On a division the amendment of Mr. Herries was thrown out by a majority of 141.  And though, a few nights later, a resolution somewhat in the same sense, moved by Lord Brougham in the Upper House, was only negatived, with the aid of proxies, by three votes, the large majority in the House of Commons, and the firm attitude of the Government on the subject, did much to quiet the excitement in the colony.