1 DECEMBER 1849, Page 1

The Canadian Annexationists seem to have attained a tempo- rary

failure in Montreal. They have held rather a numerous meeting ; but the grandees, whether of the English Liberal party or of the French blood, kept away. On the other hand, the British American League at Toronto has taken up a very distinct course, which does not involve annexation, but is likely enough to meet with response in other colonies, as it certainly will in London. The resolutions passed by the League, indeed, com- prise arguments which will not be so generally recognized ; but they are retrospective—the demands are prospective. The League calls for an elective Legislative Council, independence of the Mother-country in the administration of purely Colonial af- fairs, and union of all the Provinces. With a stronger tinge of antagonistic bitterness against the Metropolitan Government, the resolutions are not far from accordance with Mr. Adderley's reso- lutions of last July, recommending the "municipal system" for Australia. The election of the Legislative Council is a matter of detail which would be disposed of by any real improvement on the present plan, on all hands admitted to be bad.

The West Indies enjoy a degree of lull in their chronic disaf- fection. The most hopeful item of news is the arrival of Mr. Stanley, Lord Stanley's son, on a tour of inquiry through the principal West Indian Colonies,—as other independent Members of Parliament have been making less distant tours in Ireland, to study the politics on the spot. Young Members cannot be" more laudably engaged ; and Mr. Stanley may hereafter employ his travelled experience usefully in the Senate. Even a father may not refuse to be the pupil of a son, when that son earns the right to teach, and by his teaching carries on the good fame of his line.

California continues to send news of gold and trouble. The

bare gold, without the circumstances that make it valuable, is poor comfort or support in the desert. There, it is but wealth in posse, with much to be done before it can be made wealth,---lehour to be collected, products to be accumulated that may be exchanged for it, long journies to go and costly. California, however, is settling into something like order, by the gradual accretion of numbers interested in the support of authority. It has found useful commercial helpers in the Chinese, who come there to supply social wants, of cookery and the like ; so that the golden land has brought about the union of America and China direct.

From South Africa we learn that the contest between the Cape colonists and their Governor went on. The Governor had gone as far as he could without breaking the law, and there the honest veteran took a firm stand. What are we to think of a course of administration which would lead on the colonists, through a series of perfectly just demands, to one in a natural order of sequence but perfectly illegal? The colonists kept up their " pledge " of non-supply during the stay of the convict ship Neptune, under the operation of which the Governor and the Naval Commander were baking their own bread at home.