Excerpt from John Bull and His Calves: Address to a Mother, on the Death of a Young Child, and Reflections on Passing Events

Had the been of an English constitution been accompanied with the reasonable condition, that all discussions respecting the privileges it conferred were to be conducted in English, no measure would have been more effectual in accelerating the introduction of English feelings among the Canadians. A knowledge of our language would have led to an acquaintance with our literature and laws among the upper classes, from which the happiest results would have followed. At pre sent the inhabitants of British and French extractions are as much estranged from each other as they were at the period of the conquest. The French majority in the House of Assembly new claim as a right what was improvidently granted them as an indulgence. A large por tion of them understand French only, and the few English who can find their way into that Body are reduced to the humiliating necessity of abandoning their mother tongue, in order to make themselves under stood by their auditors. The privilege of using one language or the other at the will of the speaker is an utter absurdity. The devisers of such a scheme would, we may suppose, have recommended the builders of Babel to have persisted in their audacious attempt, after the confa sion of tongues had been inflicted upon them. One language or the other must Of necessity be exclusively used, and as the French party are so completely lords of the ascendant in the Canadian House of Assembly, Englishmen are compelled to forego the use of their own, in their fruit less attempts to stem the torrent of revolution, into which these ingrates are endeavouring to force the country.

Little could the gallant Wolfe have supposed that the fruits of that conquest, which he purchased with his life, were to be enjoyed by the conquered, instead of the conquerors, - that the noble Province which his valour wrested from our ancient enemy, and added to the British dominions, was quietly to be surrendered to the vanquished French. For is it not a surrender of it to them, when, while they adhere most pertinaciously to their old prejudices, and continue to cherish French in preference to British feelings, they are told by the King's representa tive, That in every country, to be acceptable to the great body of the people, is one of the most essential elements of fitness for public station.

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