29 t TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [ Vou. TIL. 
In this letter Mr. Coffin expresses his views as to the attitude of the 
Americans in a very pointed and concise manner. 
“The upper classes in the state, the educated and the intelligent, are decidedly 
averse to a collision with England. The lower classes sympathize with the rebels, less 
because they love patriotism than because they envy and hate the British. A war has 
been hitherto averted by the personal influence of a few sensible men.” 
Early in February the Earl of Durham was appointed governor-in- 
chief and “Her Majesty’s High Commissioner for the adjustment of 
certain important affairs affecting the Provinces of Upper and Lower 
Canada.” At the same time an act was passed in the Imperial Parlia- 
ment, suspending the constitution of Lower Canada, and establishing a 
“ Special Council” to take the place of the two Houses of Parliament. 
This council was to be composed of equal numbers of French and 
English. From one of the letters before me, I learn that among the 
appointments made by Sir John Colborne to the Special Council was 
that of Mr. Coffin’s brother Austin, who was “to represent the interests 
and the wishes of the emigrant population of the townships.” 
With what intense eagerness Lord Durham's arrival was awaited 
may be gathered from a letter of Mr. Coffin’s, dated March 30th, 1838: 
“T know not what to think of the new Avatar. When in Quebec I saw a letter from 
the Hon. A. W. Cochrane, now in London. He augurs favourably of Lord tvurham, 
and all the world here seems inclined to chime to the same tune. One thing is certain, 
he is the arbiter of the destinies of the people of these Provinces, and be it for good 
or be it for evil, I tremble to think how momentous a trust has been confided to the 
wisdom or to the caprice of an aristocratic Whig Lord, and a man who will pull down 
the high if he can, and keep down the low if he dares. From the sensation which 
Canadian affairs have created in England, and the ostentatious tuition his Lordship is 
now undergoing at the Colonial Office, (so many hours fer diem the newspapers say) 
and his evident and most laudable desire to establish a noble reputation as pacificator 
of Canada, I fear that he may overdo the thing, that he may come out here with an 
exaggerated and Quixotic idea of the stern justice it is his duty to dispense, and in his 
anxiety to play the part of a Minos, confound the tried British loyalists with the soz- 
disant loyalists of Canadian extraction. 
“There is an Association Canadienne on foot here headed by a few respectabie 
names—by a few of the heads of the old and first Canadian families who with a short- 
sighted anxiety to protract the existence of ‘wotre langue, notre religion, et nos lois,’ 
represent the mass of the French Canadian people—the whole district of Quebec, and 
Three Rivers and a vast majority of the district of Montreal, as perfectly loyal, and 
then ask, Are we to be disfranchised? Are we to be punished for the faults of a few?” 
A letter dated Quebec, June 2nd, makes reference to the outrage per- 
petrated on May 29th in Upper Canada by a band of fifty rebels under 
Bill Johnson, who before daybreak boarded the steamboat Sir Robert 
Peel, while taking in wood at Well’s Island, on the American side of the 
St. Lawrence. Though the weather was cold and stormy, the passengers 
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