an extreme spirit of partisanship has had the effect of evoking much
prejudice and ill-feeling, not calculated to develop the higher
attributes of our nature. But whatever may have been the injurious
effects of extreme partisanship, the people as a rule have found in the
discussion of public matters an excitement which has prevented them from
falling into that mental torpor so likely to arise amid the isolation
and rude conditions of early times. If the New England States have
always been foremost in intellectual movement, it may be attributed in a
great measure to the fact that from the first days of their settlement
they thought and acted for themselves in all matters of local interest.
It was only late in the day when Canadians had an opportunity given them
of stimulating their mental faculties by public discussion, but when
they were enabled to act for themselves they rapidly improved in mental
strength. It is very interesting to Canadians of the present generation
to go back to those years when the first Legislatures were opened in the
old Bishop's Palace, on the heights of Quebec, and in the more humble
structure on the banks of the Niagara River, and study the record of
their initiation into parliamentary procedure. It is a noteworthy fact
that the French Canadian Legislatures showed from the first an earnest
desire to follow, as closely as their circumstances would permit, those
admirable rules and principles of procedure which the experience of
centuries in England has shown to be necessary to the preservation of
decorum, to freedom of speech, and to the protection of the minority.
The speeches of the leading men in the two Houses were characterized by
evidences of large constitutional knowledge, remarkable for men who had
no practical training in parliamentary life. Of course there were in
these small Assemblies many men rough in speech and manner, with hardly
any education whatever but the writers who refer to them in no very
complimentary terms [Footnote: For instance, Talbot, I, chap. 23. He
acknowledges, at the same time, the great ability of the leading men,