ordinary and unconstitutional means failed in accom plishing, the Orange shillalahs supplied."

Immediately after the termination of the elections, the people, honorably represented by the "Reform Association of Toronto," which included in its acting Executive, the elite of Canadian ability, honor, wealth, and energy, deputed the Hon. Dr. Charles Duncombe, of Burford, to proceed forthwith to England-as is satisfactorily shown by extracts published in the newspapers of the day from minutes of their proceedings.

Agreeable to this commission, the Doctor hastened to London, and lost no time in applying at the Colonial office for an interview; but, although accompanied by Mr. Hume, and others of England's liberals, he found, to his mortification and chagrin, the doors closed, and himself preceded by a confidential delegate from Head, bearing the following private letter:

"TORONTO, July 16, 1836.

"The republican minority of course feel their cause is desperate: and as a last dying struggle, they have, as I understand, been assembling at Toronto, night after night, for the purpose of appealing for assistance to his Majesty's government! Their convocations are so secret that it is impossible for me to know what passes there: but I have been informed they have actually despatched Dr. Duncombe, an American, and rank republican, with complaints of some sort respecting the elections.

"I feel that your Lordship will discountenance this dark, unconstitutional practice of despatching agents from this Province to his Majesty's government, to make secret complaints against the Lieut. Governor, which, of course, is impossible for me to repel."

Upon this despatch being disclosed to the public, Dr. Rolph subsequently "remarked in his place in the Assembly," that,

"If it is a dark and unconstitutional practice to send agents to his Majesty's government to complain of such official conduct as preceded and attended the late elections-if such conduct is to be approved by the very government from which the people ought to expect and to receive protection-if this co-operation of the Colonial minister is to perpetuate a system abhorrent to every well regulated mind-repugnant to the constitution-subversive of liberty, and based in immorality-the future civil and religious rights of the country are doomed to extinction. Salvation can, in such case, only be expected from the subversion of such a system from its foundation. Unless the evil is now effectually corrected, it will equally infect the future, as it has the past elections. The country must, therefore, remember that this execrable policy is not to be viewed in a speculative, but in a practical point of view. Shall we ever again have a free election? This fearful inquiry must be met by another. Will this execrable policy ever again be put in operation? I answer-it will! The same government, under the same system, will not hesitate to resort to the same means to gain the same ends. They will not blush to call these means "energy," "moral courage," and "foresight:" "gervices" worthy of "high and honorable testimony!" By these virtues we are hereafter to be governed! Canada must now make her choice between the manful redress of her grievances, or a lasting submission. It is the preservation or extinction of liberty. Repetition will be held corroboration, and renewed success will harden the workers of iniquity. It is a solemn, but unavoidable alternative. If you recognise these as virtues, and desire their transmission to your posterity, you have nothing to do; you have only to suffer. But if your nobler feelings rise in arms against such virtues, and the dire inheritance they will yield to your children and your children's children—if you value that purity of civil government which is Heaven's second best gift to man-if this rude blow has not severed your bonds of sympathy from your institutions, civil and religious, and all that endears a people to their country-if liberty shall not, by this deadly outrage, become extinct, but rather rise from the panic, with renewed energy, and a more hallowed zeal-Canadians must nerve themselves with a

fervent patriotic, and a christian spirit, to devise, by all constitutional means, redress for the past, and salvation for the future."

The intrepid Doctor, after finding himself thus thwarted in the object of his mission, boldly appealed to the English public, through the medium of a leading journal. He gave a fair detail of Canadian grievances, and made a full expose of the unjust, unhallowed, and unconstitutional practices of the despotic "Head," in his attempt to pervert the sacred rights of the constitution; and the determination of the Colonial office to palliate his conduct.

This fearless, undaunted movement, brought Glcnelg to his senses; and he finally consented to receive the petitions, and the Doctor's evidence in writing, but positively refused an interview. Mr. Duncombe, therefore, hastily drew up, and imbodied in a letter, the principal facts he had come to represent. Which evidences, although properly substantiated, did not produce the reprimand or recall of Sir Francis, or instructions for a new election, which every true and liberal man really anticipated, but every movement, by the author of the "bubbles of Brunen," in bringing about the utter ruin of his government, was approved, and even applauded, in a despatch from Glenelg, as follows:

"The King is pleased to acknowledge, with marked approbation, the foresight, energy, and moral courage by which your conduct on this occasion has been distinguished. It is particularly gratifying to me to be the channel of conveying to you this high and honorable testimony of his Majesty's favorable acceptance of your services."

The Doctor having been thus unceremoniously treated, in his mission to London, returned to Canada;

and as a forlorn hope in his struggle for liberty, made out a charge of treason against the Governor, for his unconstitutional interference in the people's franchise. This charge was attested by a long list of irrefragible evidences, and carried into the "partizan house," with a determination to try him, even before his own creatures, though the reformers anticipated no benefit; for it was, (as the ingenious General McLeod observes,) done "with a full knowledge that it was like bringing a thief to trial before a gang of thieves."

It required no stretch of discernment to predict what the fate of this appeal would be. The affair was submitted to a "select committee," most of the members of which were, more or less, interested in the acquittal of Sir Francis, who was their acknowledged head. Their report, as a matter of course, without calling any witnesses, declared "the charge frivolous and vexatious." Thus defeating, in an unparallelled, arbitrary manner, the "last expiring struggle" for reform the last constitutional effort to impede the torrent of despotism and regal encroachment.

From this failure, and the ashes of their lost hopes, sprung the daring plans of forcing the desired redress; when, those early staunch champions of the sacred rights of freedom, united unanimously in the preparations for the anticipated contest. Who can wonder that such was the effect of Head's vicious, coercive and corrupt policy. And who can be amazed, to find that it had prepared every honest and independent mind for a violent disrupture from the power that sought so strenuously to entail upon ourselves and

posterity, unmitigated wretchedness and slavery. It will scarcely be expected that I was an uninterested spectator of these degrading events, for I was one of Canada's sons, born, bred, and rocked in the cradle of liberal principles. She was my own, my native land, and my feelings suffered for every wrong she endured; every continued indignity was a new dagger struck to my own heart. I saw the struggle approaching, and actively engaged, both privately and publicly, in preparations to meet it; and made up my mind to see the cause succeed, or become a willing sacrifice on the shrine of patriotism.

Perhaps my resentment might have been influenced more or less, by a keen sense of my own personal wrongs, which, indeed, were not few nor slight; and still augmented by the unjust persecutions of a government faction, that unrelentingly pursued to ruin my wife's family, for no other crime than having nobly befriended, in a case of urgent necessity, that generous martyr in the cause of truth and justice, the late Major Robert Randall, to whom they afforded an asylum and a hazardous protection from the fangs of an arbitrary compact, until he could be elected by the people to a seat in their Legislature, where he served them faithfully and staunchly for fourteen years of severe toil and arduous labor-where his conduct justly entitled him to the position of "the father of reform;" and the uncompromising friend of pure principles, democratic rights and responsible government. To his patriotic exertions in proceeding to England and representing them there, the Canadians owe their eman