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/74

 have originated in misrepresentations of the grossest nature, in utter ignorance of the localities of the country, and of the wants, circumstances, and feelings of the people.

Petitioners beg leave also to state, that it was thought proper, in the present Constitution, to leave the quantum of property possessed by Representatives, to be fixed by the Provincial Legislature, which has been so done as to secure the respectability of the Assembly, without circumscribing too far the choice of the Electors; but raison the qualification of members to 500l. sterling, agreeable to the Bill before your Honourable House, at its last Session, would have the effect of disfranchising the Electors altogether, as some counties would not be able to select qualified persons out of their whole population; and landed property being made answerable for demands against the owners in case where chattels only would be liable in England, by consolidating real estate, tend greatly to increase the evil. Petitioners, therefore, would rather resign the representative right altogether, than have the House of Assembly established on such principles, and be told of every Act which we could not accord, that it was their own, through our Representatives, when they might, and frequently would be, under the necessity of choosing persons no other way qualified but that of holding large tracts of wild land, which is itself one of the greatest nuisances in the Province. That the lengthening the duration of Parliament to Five years is particularly objectionable, as extending too far the period before which Representatives could again meet their constituents, and the vesting of the Executive Government of each Province, with power to introduce two members into the Assembly without the exercise of the elective franchise is, in Petitioners' opinion, without precedent, and would give an undue influence to an Executive, already possessing enough for all the purposes of salutary Government: for in this country, officers under the Government, are no excluded from the Legislature (as in England,) by whom every wish of the Government many be made known, and ably supported, as has invariably been the ease.