DIVISION IN CANADA.

Marlborough Press, Volume I, Issue 9, 2 March 1860, Page 4

DIVISION IN CANADA.

There are two nations in Canada ; not only an upper and a lower province, but an upper and lower people —the one essentially French and the other essentially English. The French in Lower Canada and the English in Upper Canada have held together for nearly twenty years in a legislative capacity, and have been subjected to the same government and laws. But they have not done so amicably, and the recent news we have been publishing shows that the people of Upper Canada want to be divorced from their Lower Canadian neighbours, and would be very glad to have the chance of setting up a Government and Legislature of their own. It seems that in the present Parliament of Canada, the representatives of the lower province have become the dominant power, and do not hesitate to make use of the revenues and appliances of the colony for their own ends, and even go so far as to force upon the Upper Canadians laws and regulations which are not palatable to a people who are protestant in their faith, progressive in their politics, and selfgoverning in their administration. Upper Canada is not only the most English, but the most wealthy, the most influential, and the most numerously peopled of the two communities.

This state of things has now come to a head. A convention was called by the Parliamentary Opposition, who issued circulars, inviting delegates from every township in Canada West to meet and consider the present critical position of affairs. The meeting consisted of between 500 and 600 delegates, who went to Toronto to represent the mind of the people in their various localities; and after being in council for three days, they expressed their opinion in a series of resolutions, the import and

bearing of which cannot be misapprehended. These resolutions contain two grave points. The first is a declaration that the legislative union of the two provinces is a failure; and in the second place we are informed that the union must no longer exist in the present shape, but be. .entirely federal in its character : that is to say, be a union which gives to each province the regulation of its own internal affairs, and which only exists for purposes that are common to the whole colony. The special accusations brought against the parliament of the two Canadas is, that it has encouraged the growth of a great public debt; for while in 1854 it had risen to nearly thirty million dollars, in 1853 it was double that sum. Nothing had occurred to demand an excessive expenditure, but there had been great political abuses, and a profligate administration, and a burdensome and retrograde system of taxes —so much so, that universal dissatisfaction exists throughout the whole of Upper Canada. So says the Toronto Convention ; and being of that opinion, it seems pretty obvious that the breaking up of the union altogether may be the object at which the Upper Canadians will ultimately aim. In the meanwhile they have wisely determined that “ a practical remedy may be found in the formation of two or more local governments, to which shall be committed the control of all matters of a local or sectional character, and that there shall be some joint authority charged with such matters as are necessarily common to both sections of the colony.” This is cleariy a compromise, and such a compromise as may probably be deemed advisable to grant, considering the extreme length to which public feeling runs in the two provinces.