with all the dignity of manhood, and introduced into a system which, despite the combativeness of certain ardent spirits from the South, every American believes and maintains to be immortal.  But how does the case stand with us?  No matter how great the advance of a British colony in wealth and civilisation; no matter how absolute the powers of self-government conceded to it, it is still taught to believe that it is in a condition of pupilage from which it must pass before it can attain maturity.  For one I have never been able to comprehend why, elastic as our constitutional system is, we should not be able, now more especially when we have ceased to control the trade of our colonies, to render the links which bind them to the British Crown at least as lasting as those which unite the component parts of the Union....  One thing is, however, indispensable to the success of this or any other system of Colonial Government.  You must renounce the habit of telling the Colonies that the Colonial is a provisional existence.  You must allow them to believe that, without severing the bonds which unite them to Great Britain, they may attain the degree of perfection, and of social and political development, to which organised communities of free men have a right to aspire.

Since I began this letter I have, I regret to say, confirmatory evidence of the justice of the anticipations I had formed of the probable effect of Lord John’s declaration.  I enclose extracts from two newspapers, an annexationist, the Herald of Montreal, and a quasi annexationist, the Mirror of Toronto.  You will note the use they make of it.  I was more annoyed however, I confess, by what occurred yesterday in council.  We had to determine whether or not to dismiss from his offices a gentleman who is both M.P.P., Q.C., and J.P., and who has issued a flaming manifesto in favour, not of annexation, but of an immediate declaration of independence as a step to it.  I will not say anything of my own opinion on the case, but it was generally contended by the members of the Board, that it would be impossible to maintain that persons who had declared their intention to throw off their allegiance to the Queen, with a view to annexation, were unfit to retain offices granted during pleasure, if persons who made a similar declaration with a view to independence were to be differently dealt with.  Baldwin had Lord John’s speech in his hand.  He is a man of singularly placid demeanour, but he has been seriously ill, so possibly his nerves are shaken—­at any rate I never saw him so much moved.  ’Have you read the latter part of Lord J. Russell’s speech?’ he said to me.  I nodded assent.  ‘For myself,’ he added, ’if the anticipations therein expressed prove to be well founded, my interest in public affairs is gone for ever.  But is it not hard upon us while we are labouring, through good and evil report, to thwart the designs of those who would dismember the Empire, that our adversaries