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/67

 give an opportunity of making known the sentiments of the people of these Provinces, on this subject.

Sincerely attached to the form of Government under which we have the happiness to live, we consider the postponement of that measure, and the opportunity afforded to the people of these Provinces of manifesting their sentiments on a subject of such great importance, as a fresh proof of your Majesty's paternal solicitude for the welfare of all your subjects, and of the justice of the British Government, on which the inhabitants of this Province have learned to rely with the firmest confidence, and with feelings of the most lively gratitude; and with a view of fulfilling a sacred duty towards your Majesty, the Assembly of this Province take respectful leave to lay at the foot of your Majesty's throne, the expression of their feelings on this important matter.

The Assembly participated in the surprise and grief experienced by a very large majority of your Majesty's subjects in this Province, on learning that your Majesty's Ministers had proposed those alterations in the Act which has established our Constitution, and especially the Union of the Legislatures of Upper and Lower Canada.

The Assembly are fully assured that the Constitution conferred on this Province by the said statute, and the separation of this Province from Upper Canada, were, on the part of the Imperial Parliament, an act of justice, as well as of beneficence, towards the inhabitants of both Provinces, by giving to both the means of maintaining entire the rights and privileges which were guaranteed and secured to them by the faith of Government.

The passing of the said Act hath been one of the most effectual methods of making known to the inhabitants of this Province the justice and magnanimity of the British character, and hath for ever secured to your Majesty's Government the inviolable confidence, affection, and fidelity, of all classes of your Majesty's subjects in this colony.

The said Act, modelled on the Constitution of the Mother Country by some of the greatest and wisest statesmen establishes