Extract from a letter written at Montreal just before the
departure of the last mail.
" You will be sorry to learn that annexation is openly talked of by many, whose lips the word would have burnt a few years back, nay three months ago. The public mind is altogether in a bad state. There is a recklessness in the language and proceedings of the British, which shows their minds to be dis- ordered,—unhinged is perhaps the better word. You would not know the coun- try. Many of the soberest and most prudent are as wild as M'Nab and his immediate followers. It is useless to reason with them, so entirely are they under the influence of passion. The rage of the British (I mean all who are not French or in the French interest) has been caused by the insult, as they call it, of being made to give compensation to rebels. They would have borne this frbm a Ministry of their own party, and would have consoled themselves by abusing that Ministry for weakness, truckling, treachery, and so forth ; but from them it would have been borne. Coming from a French Ministry, it is intolerable. It is called rebels paying themselves out of our pockets.' The feeling of indignation is, I believe, general ; and though, as you know, I have often disregarded the noise of super-loyal indignation, I believe the feeling to be most formidable this time. Lord Elgin has done well till this business came on, and meant well throughout; but he has been wanting in policy. He has neglected the' Oats,' not even paying them the civilities which the 'Outs' require still more than the 'Ins.' Without being so, he has appeared to be a partisan of the party in power; and nothing that he can do now will restore him the good-will of the great Anti- French party. The ferment in the French party is also great; and the hostility between the two is now as deep and bitter as it was in 1837, with this important new fact—that Upper Canada, which took no part in our troubles of 1837 and '38, is now as Anti-French as ever the British of Lower Canada were. What Lord Elgin will do, Fate only knows. If he assent to the bill, it is threatened that meetings shall be held in Montreal and Quebec, and throughout English Canada, to petition the Queen for leave to negotiate with the United States for annexation: and I believe that the threat will be carried into execution. Meanwhile, Jonathan is wide awake. The present state of the Slavery question in the Union disposes the Northern States to long for the annexation of Canada as a makeweight against new Slave States in the direction of Mexico. The newspapers of these Northern States, therefore, record with complacency every symptom of Anglo-Saxon disaffection in Canada. That word Anglo-Saxon ' should make Lafontaine and his people tremble at what they are doing: for in the new struggle between French and English, which cannot, I think, now be stopped, the English are sure to prevail sooner or later. Wo betide the French, if the Anglo-Saxons on our border should come to the aid of their own race in Canada! This the English well know; and this is why (such is now their pas- sionate hatred of the French) they are looking to and openly talking about an- nexation. I am sure they never will submit to what they call ' French domina- tion.' All the power of England would not suffice to make them. The prospect altogether is most gloomy, and the present very uncomfortable for quiet people like me.
" I wish you to understand that the question now is completely one of races;
and that the war of races can only be put an end to, as it was before, by the triumph of that race which a natural energy and the vicinity of Anglo-Saxon America render in fact the more powerful of the two. Mark my words for this. I wish it were otherwise, but am confident in the opinion. It is the opinion of everybody here who thinks, not excepting poor Jean Baptiste himself, who is get- ting frightened, but cannot recede."
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