faction, may yet perhaps, if properly improved, furnish the best
remaining security against annexation to the States.

I could not with these views afford to lose the opportunity of
promoting this object, which was presented by a spontaneous movement
of the people, headed by the priesthood--the most powerful influence
in Lower Canada.

The official correspondence which has passed on this subject I hope to
send by the next mail, and I need not trouble you with the detail of
proceedings on my own part, which, though small in themselves, were
not without their effect. Suffice it to say, that Papineau has retired
to solitude and reflection at his seignory, 'La Petite Nation'--and
that the pastoral letter, of which I enclose a copy, has been read
_au prône_ in every Roman Catholic church in the diocese. To
those who know what have been the real sentiments of the French
population towards England for some years past, the tone of this
document, its undisguised preference for peaceful over quarrelsome
courses, the desire which it manifests to place the representative of
British rule forward as the patron of a work dear to French-Canadian
hearts, speaks volumes.

With the same object of conciliating the French portion of the community,
he lost no opportunity of manifesting the personal interest which he felt
in their institutions. The following letter, written in August 1848, to
his mother at Paris, describes a visit to one of these institutions, the
college of St. Hyacinthe, the chief French college of Montreal:--

[Sidenote: A French college.]