Source.—A Petition from the British Inhabitants of Montreal, December, 1822: printed in the Report on the Canadian Archives for 1897.

It is a consequence of the relative geographical situation of the Provinces, that Upper Canada is entirely dependent on Lower Canada for the means of communicating with the parent state and other countries; it is only through Lower Canada that the Upper Province can receive its supplies or export its surplus commodities.

The port of Quebec is the entrance common to both. This being situated in Lower Canada, the inhabitants of Upper Canada can have neither free ingress into, nor egress from, their country, except in so far as it may be permitted by the Government of Lower Canada. This, your Majesty's petitioners humbly represent, is a cause for the union of the Provinces perpetual in its operation, and which cannot be counteracted without a long series of inconveniences and disasters to both. If, while it may still be done, the population of the two Provinces be not gradually assimilated and identified in their interests by a union, the differences between them from the causes now in operation and the collisions to which they will give rise, must have the effect of rendering the inhabitants of each a separate and distinct people, with the most hostile feelings towards each other, requiring only a fit occasion to urge them into measures of actual violence. In the progress of things towards this conclusion, the inhabitants of Upper Canada would imperceptibly be induced to form connections with their American neighbours, and, being unnaturally disjoined from Lower Canada, would seek to diminish the inconveniences arising by a more intimate intercourse with the adjoining states, leading inevitably to a union with that country. The actual tendency of things to this result, while the Provinces continue under separate Legislatures, it is to be observed, is likely to be much promoted by the artificial means of communication by canals which have been lately formed at immense expense in the state of New York, affording to Upper Canada, if the outlet at the port of Quebec should be rendered inconvenient to her, an easy communication to American seaports; and her disposition to avail herself of this communication will obviously be increased while the Lower Province continues in its character to be French.

Some of the circumstances arising from the division of countries thus united by nature ... have been practically exhibited in the disputes respecting revenue between the two Provinces. Upper Canada relies on the revenue to be derived from import duties for the payment of her civil expenditure. The nature of her local situation precludes her from conveniently or effectually levying these duties within her own limits; it is at the port of Quebec only that she can levy them: but this is in another Province, and, while she has a separate Legislature, beyond the authority of her Government....

In adverting to the injurious consequences arising from the division of the late Province of Quebec, your Majesty's petitioners cannot omit to notice more particularly the effect that measure has had in preventing the increase of the British population in Lower Canada and the development of its resources. The preponderance of the French population in the Legislature has occasioned obstacles to the settlement of British emigrants that have not been surmounted; so that the vast increase of British population to have been expected from this cause has been, in a general degree, prevented. The injury sustained in this particular may be easily appreciated when it is observed that, since the late American War, upwards of eighty thousand souls (that is, a number equal to one-fourth of the actual French population) have found their way to this Province from Great Britain and Ireland, and of these scarcely one-twentieth part remains within its limits, the rest, with the exception of a small number who have settled in Upper Canada, having been induced by the foreign character of the country in which they had sought an asylum, and the discouragements they experienced, to try their fortunes in the United States. The loss thus sustained is not confined to those who left the country, but comprises their connections and friends who would have followed them. In the same proportion as the increase of British population has been prevented, has the agricultural and commercial prosperity of the country been retarded and obstructed; as it is to the enterprise, intelligence and persevering industry of that population that both agriculture and commerce must be principally indebted for their advancement. On this head it may be fairly advanced that, had not the impolitic division of the late Province of Quebec taken place, and had a fit plan of representation been adopted, the British population would now exceed the French, and the imports and exports of the country be greatly beyond their present amount.