Page:Letter from L. J. Papineau and J. Neilson, Esqs., Addressed to His Majesty's Under Secretary of State on the Subject of the Proposed Union of the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada.djvu/63

 founded on sufficient information, and injurious to the rights, interests, and feelings, and circumstances of those for whom they might be made.

That the geographical situation and difference of climate and the extent of the two Provinces, some of the settled parts of which are 1500 miles apart, as well as the difficulties of the communications in new countries, form insuperable obstacles to the proposed Legislative Union, and would, by the sacrifices required of the members for the purpose of attending in their places, and of their constituents to communicate on their local wants with the seat of the Legislature, effectually deprive a very great portion of your Majesty's subjects, in both Provinces, of their just rights, and their due share in the Legislation.

That your Petitioners, with the most unfeigned grief, have been unable to disguise from themselves the general tendency of the said Bill to affect injuriously the dearest interests of one description of your Majesty's subjects, forming nine-tenths of the whole population of this Province; and your Petitioners particularly lament that clauses should have been introduced therein, relating to the language and religious establishments of so great a proportion of the inhabitants of this par of your Majesty's dominions, which have a direct tendency to create jealousies and prejudices equally fatal to the happiness and quiet of the subject, and adverse to the dignity, wisdom, and justice, of your Majesty's Government.

That the clause of the said Bill which prohibits, in the proceedings and debates of the proposed Assembly, the use of the French language, the only one spoken and understood by a great majority of the inhabitants of this Province, would indirectly disqualify them from being elected to that Assembly, and would amount, in some degree, to a positive deprivation, in respect to them, of that distinguished advantage of your Majesty's subjects; would embarrass and confine the elective franchise, by diminishing the number of persons fitted to represent the people, and would form, of the qualified persons, a privileged class in a British Colony.