SIR

61. ...Although I hold that so long as the colonies have no roice in the impérial councils they are entitled to look to the impérial aathorities for protection against hostilities which they have no share in provoking, and that it is therefore fitting that impérial garrisons should be maintained at certain important military stations, such as Québec,

(1) Accounts and Papers, 1854-5, Vol. XXXVI, pages 19-43.

as a pledge that this protection, whcn the contingency occurs, will not be invoked in vain, I am confident that nothing will more effectually tend to the security of the empire, or to the establishment of a high standard of national and manly moral s among the colonists, than the assumption by themselves of some portion of the responaibility in respect of self-defence and the préservation of internai tranquillity, which has heretofore been cast upon the mother-country.

62. The parliament of Canada has just glven proof of interest in the strugglc in which the empire is involved, and in the alliance now happily subsisting between the nations whose descendants form one people in this province, by unanimously voting the sum of £20,000 for the relief of the widows and orphans of the soldiers and sailors belonging to either of the allied forces, who may fall in the service of their country during the présent war. Is it too much to expect that, if at some future day, when the material strength of thèse flourishing provinces shall hâve been more fully developed. Her Majesty should chance to be engaged in a contest which carries with it, as the présent contest does, the sympathies of ail lier people, the samc spirit which prompts to this libéral contribution in the cause of charity, may lead Canadians to désire to share with their brethren of the mother-country the glories and the sacrifices of honourablr warfare ?

(Signed) ELGIN and KINCARDINE.

Loi de la Milice, 1855 0)

(Extraits)

An Act to regulate the Militia of this Province, and to repeal the Acts now in force for

that purpose.

fAssented to 19th May, 1855.]

III. — The Provincial Militia shall be divided into two classes, Sedentary and Active.

IV. — The Sedentary Militia shall consist of ail the Maie inhabitants of the Province of the âge of eighteen years or upwards and under sixty, not exempted or disqualifier! by law.

V. — The Sedentary Militiamen shall be divided into two classes, to be called respectively Service men and Reserve men; the Service men shall be those of eighteen years of âge and upwards, but under forty years, and the Reserve mon shall be those of forty years of age and upwards, but under sixty years.