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/83

 for the purpose of uniting the Legislature of the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, are impelled (from assertion which has been so unwarrantably hazarded by a Member of Your Honourable House, viz., that such a Union would meet with the decided approbation of His Majesty's subjects in these Provinces) to express their objections to the said Bill.

That your Petitioners deem it unnecessary to detail to Your Honourable House the evil tendency in their opinions likely to result from many of the clauses of the Bill, and which they are aware will be fully and ably demonstrated by others of their fellow subjects, in these Provinces; but they cannot refrain from expressing their unqualified disapprobation of those clauses by which the qualification of Members of the House of Assembly is increased to 500l. clear of debt and incumbrances, as it greatly and injuriously abridges the choice of the people, in electing proper persons to represent them in the House of Assembly, and by which power is given to the person at the head of the Executive Government to appoint two of his Council from each Province to sit in the House of Assembly, which they consider as an innovation in their Constitution as established by 31 Geo. III., and a gross infringement of their privileges as British subjects.

That your Petitioners, in common with their fellow subjects in this Province, had, for several years past, just cause of complaint against the sister Province of Lower Canada, for unjustly detaining from Upper Canada her share of the revenue arising from imports at the Port of Quebec: but by the parental mediation of the Imperial Parliament in passing the late Act devising proper means for ascertaining the proportion of revenue due to us, and to which we shall in future be entitled, as well as for regulating our trade, your Petitioners consider their grievances as fully redressed; and are not therefore desirous of a change which in their opinions could no wise prove beneficial to the interests of both Provinces.

Therefore your Petitioners most earnestly hope that the said