38891 EIGHT YEARS IN CANADA; EMBRACING A REVIEW OF THE ADMINISTRATIONS OF LORDS DURHAM AND SYDENHAM, SIR CHAS. BAGOT, AND INCLUDING NUMEROUS INTERESTING LETTERS FROM LORD DURHAM, MR. CHAS. BULLER, AND OTHER John BY MAJOR RICHARDSON, Knight of the Military Order of St. Ferdinand, AUTHOR OF "ECARTE," "WACOUSTA," "THE CANADIAN BROTHERS," &c. &c. &c. DE OMNIBUS REBUS ET QUIBUSDAM ALIIS. MONTREAL, CANADA: PUBLISHED BY H. H. CUNNINGHAM, 50, NOTRE DAME STREET. F 1032 "When we transplant the institutions of England into our Colonies, we ought at least to take care beforehand that the social state of the Colony should possess those peculiar materials on which alone the excellence of those institutions depends in the Mother Country."-Lord Durham's Report, Page 47, [Entered according to Act of the Provincial Legislature, in the year 1847. by MAJOR JOHN RICHARDSON, in the Office of the Registrar of the Province of Canada; and at Stationers' Hall, London.] DONOGHUE AND MANTE, PRINTERS, MONTREAL. INTRODUCTION. This book, as will be seen on reference to a letter from Lord Durham to myself, written after his departure from Canada, and given in the Appendix, was intended to have been inscribed exclusively to his Lordship. Had he still existed, that intention would have been carried out; but as he is no more, and as subsequent events have, in some degree, released me from what, had his Lordship lived, I should have regarded as an obligation, I hesitate not to satisfy my own strong inclination, by coupling with his name that of one, who, alas! is also no more, and whose principles of government, and nobleness of character, have, in the highest degree, claimed the warmest attachment of the Canadian people. It is far purer, moreover, to render the meed of homage to the dead, than to seek by adulation to win the favor of the living; and, therefore, to the memory of LORD DURHAM, the founder of a great system, and to that of LORD METCALFE, the true reader of the application of that system to a colony, do I inscribe this volume. It is far from being an offering adequate to the worth of these celebrated dead, but its pages will at least be found to embrace much that will redeem their memories from whatever aspersions the malevolent may seek to cast upon them. Montreal, March 1st, 1847. J. RICHARDSON. |