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/70

 same;" a Constitution endeared to us by many warmly-cherished considerations; that Statute was given and received as the declaration of British liberty, made to British-born subjects, having, by birth, an indefeasible right to such liberty; that Statute is the mode and the form prescribed by the parental solicitude of his late gracious Majesty, and his Parliament, by which we are to use this liberty in which we are born, a mode and a form guaranteed by the solemn enactment of a British Parliament, and which will not, we trust, be taken from us without our consent.

Secondly, Because it was given as the well-earned reward of fidelity to brave and devoted subjects and soldiers, who sacrificed their property, and shed their blood in defence of their King and Country.

Thirdly, Because many of us, not originally born subjects, in confidence of protection to our persons and property under British institutions, have not only made permanent settlement in this Province, under this Constitution, but have actually fought and bled in its defence successfully, and with credit, universally acknowledged by His Majesty's generals and officers having the conduct of the late war in this Province.

We, therefore, gravely, respectfully, and earnestly remonstrate to your Honourable House, against all innovations in this our Constitution, without our consent, expressed by legislative act of the Province, passed in due Session by the King, the Council, and the Assembly thereof; and

First, Because this is the only legal course to effect any change in the Act, except in as far as the said Act, in express terms, reserves to His Majesty, his Heirs, and Successors, and the Parliament of Great Britain, certain power of future legislation on particular matters in the said Act also expressed.

Secondly, Because that Statute, the pledge of security to Canadian right and liberties, the very branch which identifies us with our parent stock, is about to be torn from us against our will, and substituted by a hasty, ill-digested project, subversive of all that is valuable in that Statute, a catastrophe that we,