would be necessarily a review of the political history of half a
century. A constant friend of the French Canadians, a firm defender of
British connection, never a violent, uncompromising partisan, but a man
of cool judgment, he was generally able to perform good service to his
party and country. As a public writer he was concise and argumentative,
and influential, through the belief that men had in his sincerity and
honesty of purpose.

In 1806, there appeared in Quebec a new organ of public opinion, which
has continued to the present day to exercise much influence on the
politics of Lower Canada. This was the _Canadien_, which was established
in the fall of that year, chiefly through the exertions of Pierre
Bedard, who was for a long while the leader of the French party in the
Legislature, and at the same time chief editor of the new journal, which
at once assumed a strong position as the exponent of the principles with
which its French Canadian conductors were so long identified. It waged a
bitter war against its adversaries, and no doubt had an important share
in shaping the opinions and educating the public mind of the majority in
the province. If it too frequently appealed to national prejudices, and
assumed an uncompromising attitude when counsels of conciliation and
moderation would have been wiser, we must make allowance for the hot
temper of those times, and the hostile antagonism of races and parties,
which the leaders on both sides were too often ready to foment, The
editor of the _Canadien_ was also punished by imprisonment for months,
and the issue of the paper was stopped for a while on the order of Chief
Justice Sewell, in the exciting times of that most arbitrary of military
governors, Sir James Craig. The action of the authorities in this matter
is now admitted to have been tyrannical and unconstitutional, and it is
certainly an illustration of human frailty that this same M. Bedard, who
suffered not a little from the injustice of his political enemies,