116 LEAVES THEY HAVE TOUCHED. 



assure you I shall have pleasure in doing so ; but I lament there 

 shoiild be occasion to undertake, in the midst of commotions from 

 without and troubles from within, measures which should have been 

 adjusted in the day of tranquillity and of peace. . I have the honour 

 to be, &c., Geo. Arthur." A preceding paragraph possesses more 

 interest. "I have caused," Sir George says, "the whole subject [of 

 the Upper Canadian Indians] to be fully gone into by the Provincial 

 Secretary, and Mr. Tucker is a gentleman who will feel it to be a 

 conscientious duty to befriend the Indians, and to exert himself to 

 bring their case forward, so as to remedy the past, as far as it admits 

 of remedy, and to provide for the future." 



Lord Sydenham carried the reunion of the Provinces of Upper 

 and Lower Canada by judicious pressure brought to bear on the 

 Special Council of the latter and the House of Assembly of the 

 former. I have several autographs of Lord Sydenham's. Here is 

 one signed while yet a Commoner — -addressed to a Canadian member 

 of Parliament : " 10th December, 1839. My dear Sir : I hear 

 that you made a most admirable speech this morning, which I cannot 

 refrain from thanking you for. I only regret that I had not the 

 pleasure of hearing it. Yery truly yours, C. Poulett Thomson." 

 Here is another written after his elevation to the Peerage. He 

 refers in it to a Periodical about to be brought out at Toronto, having 

 a political object : also to certain land-grants in Garafi-axa,, a town- 

 ship on the Grand River. It is dated from Government House? 

 Montreal, 28th November, 1841. "My dear Sir: I have yours of 

 the 24th this morning. As. the case now stands, the course you pro- 

 pose to adopt in regard to the ' Monthly' is the best, to take an 

 opportunity in the publication of the first number to explain that 

 ' my sanction and patronage' mean the support which I am glad to 

 give to any literary work undertaken upon good principles, — and not 

 a control or responsibility on the part of the Government. After 

 all, the paragraph does not seem to have attracted much criticism, 

 and may not injure the Journal, which was what I feared, or commit 

 the Government. They ai-e a funny people there. They make a 

 great piece of work about the supposed interference of the Govern- 

 ment with elections, about which we should care nothing in England, 

 and do not mind an avowal that a Journal is under the sanction and 

 prompting of the Executive. I have a complaint from home about 

 our giving as much as 50-acre allotments in the Garafraxa concern, 



