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/81

 Lower Canada have been principally instrumented in called the attention of His Majesty's Government to the proposed Union of the Provinces as a measure calculated to overcome these difficulties; but your Petitioners are far from entertaining the smallest expectation that it would have any so desirable effect. Indeed they cannot but seriously apprehend that, should it take place, it may prove the means of embroiling both Provinces, and create a ferment which cannot fall to be prejudicial to their interests, and which it may be difficult to control.

That should your Honourable House deem these reasons insufficient to prevent the passing of the Bill to unite the Provinces, your Petitioners humbly and earnestly beg leave to protest against certain parts of the Bill introduced and published during the last Session of Parliament for effecting that object. They deem it their imperative duty to object to the clause establishing the qualification necessary to be possessed by persons to be become eligible as Members of the House of Assembly at five hundred pounds sterling, in lands clear of debts and incumbrances, inasmuch as a qualification for that purpose has already been established by a provincial statute suited to the circumstances of the Province, and the proposed change must, particularly in the present depressed state of the value of real property, tend injuriously to abridge the choice of the people of persons whom they may consider otherwise well qualified to represent them in the House of Assembly.

Your Petitioners cannot forbear most strenuously to object to the clause in the said Bill authorizing the persons at the head of the Executive Government to appoint two of his Council to sit in the House of Assembly, with all the rights and privileges of Members, voting excepted; because, it is a measure, as they believe, unprecedented in British Legislation, an innovation in their Constitution as established by the Act of 31 Geo. III, and not called for by any political necessity of which they are aware. And because it gives to persons who act under no responsibility to the People, and over whom the House of Assembly cannot, it is presumed, exercise the same control as over its own Members,