But these are small matters, wholly unworthy of the
attention of the Smiths, and Annands, and Palmers, who have come
forward to forbid the banns of British-American Union. Mr. Speaker,
before I draw to a close the little remainder of what I have to say--
and I am sorry to have detained the House so long--
I beg to offer a few observations _apropos_ of my own position as
an English-speaking member for Lower Canada. I venture, in the first
place, to observe that there seems to be a good deal of exaggeration on
the subject of race, occasionally introduced, both on the one side and
the other, in this section of the country. I congratulate my honorable
friend, the Attorney-General for this section, on his freedom from such
prejudices in general, though I still think in matters of patronage and
the like he always looks first to his own compatriots for which neither
do I blame him. But this theory of race is sometimes carried to an
anti-christian and unphilosophical excess. Whose words are these--'God
hath made of one blood all nations that dwell on the face of the
earth'? Is not that the true theory of race? For my part, I am not
afraid of the French Canadian majority in the future local government
doing injustice, except accidentally; not because I am of the same
religion as themselves; for origin and language are barriers stronger
to divide men in this world than is religion to unite them.
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