I hope we shall act a wise part; take warning by our follies since we have become sensible of them, and resolve to talk and act foolishly no more.  It is, indeed, high time to give over such preposterous language and proceedings.  This war of conquest, a war for the acquisition of territory and subjects, is to be a new commentary on the doctrine that republicans are destitute of ambition; that they are addicted to peace, wedded to the happiness and safety of the great body of their people.  But it seems this is to be a holiday campaign; there is to be no expense of blood, or of treasure on our part; Canada is to conquer herself; she is to be subdued by the principles of fraternity!  The people of that country are first to be seduced from their allegiance and converted into traitors, as preparatory to making them good citizens!  Although I must acknowledge that some of our flaming patriots were thus manufactured, I do not think the process would hold good with a whole community.  It is a dangerous experiment.  We are to succeed in the French mode, by the system of fraternization—­all is French.  But how dreadfully it might be retorted on the southern and western slave-holding States.  I detest this subornation of treason.  No; if we must have them, let them fall by the valor of our arms; by fair, legitimate conquest; not become the victims of treacherous seduction.

I am not surprised at the war spirit which is manifesting itself in gentlemen from the South.  In the year 1805-6, in a struggle for the carrying trade of belligerent colonial produce, this country was most unwisely brought into collision with the great powers of Europe.  By a series of most impolitic and ruinous measures, utterly incomprehensible to every rational, sober-minded man, the Southern planters, by their own votes, have succeeded in knocking down the price of cotton to seven cents, and of tobacco (a few choice crops excepted) to nothing; and in raising the price of blankets (of which a few would not be amiss in a Canadian campaign), coarse woollens, and every article of first necessity, three or four hundred per centum.  And now, that by our own acts, we have brought ourselves into this unprecedented condition, we must get out of it in any way, but by an acknowledgment of our own want of wisdom and forecast.  But is war the true remedy?  Who will profit by it?  Speculators; a few lucky merchants, who draw prizes in the lottery; commissaries and contractors.  Who must suffer by it?  The people.  It is their blood, their taxes that must flow to support it.

I am gratified to find gentlemen acknowledging the demoralizing and destructive consequences of the non-importation law; confessing the truth of all that its opponents foretold, when it was enacted.  And will you plunge yourselves in war, because you have passed a foolish and ruinous law, and are ashamed to repeal it?  But our good friend, the French emperor, stands in the way of its repeal, and we cannot go too far in