chief, executed the instructions of concession and conciliation, which had been imparted to him, to their full extent, is equally well-known. Indeed he pushed his courtesy to the utmost bound, and still held out the olive branch, when the enemies of the constitution and of British connection were sharpening their swords in the hope of overthrowing the government, and of severing that tie by which the province has been raised to its rank in the British colonial possessions; whilst the religion, the institutions, language, and laws of the inhabitants have been preserved inviolate. At length the undisguised language of the declaration, at the meeting of the six counties, held at St. Charles on the 23rd of October 1837, too plainly proved that the endeavor at governing Lower Canada under the existing constitution was a hopeless task; and Lord Gosford then apprised her Majesty's ministers of his thorough conviction of the necessity of changing the conciliatory policy which had been hitherto pursued for measures of a sterner character; and, at the same time, he declared his inability to conduct the government under the instructions by which he had to that time been guided, adding that if he stood in the way, from his adherence to those instructions, of the full execution of the measures which had obviously become necessary, he was willing to resign the trust that had been confided to him, and begged to be relieved from his charge. Her Majesty's ministers, whilst they fully concurred in all that his lordship had done in the government of this colony, and expressed their approbation of the manner in which his important duties had been discharged, consented to his lordship's return to Britain, and sent instructions to his Excellency Lieutenant-General Sir John Colborne to assume the reins of government upon his lordship's departure. This transfer of authority took place. Whatever errors Lord Gosford may have committed during the short but eventful period of his administration, no man can question his motives; we believe that none will be found so rancorous in their censure of his conduct as to question the purity of his intentions or the benevolence of his views. But having been instructed to endeavor to form a government by uniting the most moderate of the two political parties, his lordship pursued this object with an earnestness that caused him to lend too ready an ear to the representations of designing men, who affected to secede from the majority of the Assembly, only to forward their views of personal advancement; and, unhappily, these were too successful in palming their pseudo-loyalty upon the noble lord, and producing a far more favorable impression than their previous conduct, considered along with their after professions, ought to have obtained for them. That Lord Gosford did not succeed in administering the government of Lower Canada, and calming the dissensions by which it was torn, cannot be imputed to his memory as a disgrace, his predecessors for years had not been more fortu

nate, and if open rebellion, pretended to have been provoked by the necessary interference of the Imperial Parliament in the concerns of the colony, broke out under the conciliatory policy enjoined by his instructions, it is fully obvious that such an outbreak would not have been averted had coercion been resorted to at an earlier period. An appeal to force might have produced for the insurgents a strong sympathy among the people of the United Kingdom and even in the Imperial Parliament, under the idea that they had been driven to desperation by arbitrary and oppressive conduct pursued towards them; whereas they stood prominent as reckless and ungrateful rebels, who refused concessions which had been thankfully received by every other province in British America, and had been seduced by their own vanity, and the vaunts of their unprincipled chiefs, to wage an unprovoked war against the mother country, without even the most distant prospect of success to cloak the crime of treason in the mantle of revolution.

He married 20th July, 1805, Mary only daughter of Robert Sparrow, Esquire, of Worlingham Hall, Suffolk. She was lineally descended from Thomas Sparrowe of Somersam, living A.D. 1419, and by her had issue one son (present peer) and four daughters. The Earl of Gosford died in England on the 29th March 1849.

LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR GEORGE GIPPS.

Ir being our province to give the particulars of the lives of all those celebrated men who have in any way been connected with Canada, we place next on the list the above distinguished civil and military officer who, as will appear, bore a very important part in the affairs of this country, at a time when we were really in an alarming predicament.

We will not enter into the details concerning the early portion of his distinguished career; but will content ourselves with giving the simple facts and adding the various and important civil employments in which he was engaged previous to and at his death. Together they extend over a period of thirty-eight years, and are such as to entitle him to an honorable rank among the best servants of his country.

Sir George was born about the year 1791. His father was the Rev. George Gipps, rector of Ringwould in the county of Kent. His commissions in the honorable corps to which he had the honor

to belong, are dated respectively, second lieutenant, 11th January, 1809; first lieutenant, 21st December 1809; second captain, 30th September, 1814; first captain, 8th April, 1826; brevet-major, 10th January, 1837; regimental lieutenant-colonel 23rd October, 1841.

In 1811 he was ordered to join the army in the Peninsula, and was present at the successful siege of Badajos, in March and April, 1812. Whilst leading one of the columns of assault on Fort Picurina, he was wounded in the left arm; and for his gallant conduct on the occasion he was specially mentioned in the Duke of Wellington's public despatches. In 1813 and 1814 he was with Sir John Murray's army in Catalonia, and took part in the affair of the pass of Biar, the battle of Castella, the capture of Fort Balaquer, (for which service he was again honorably mentioned in the despatches of Sir J. Murray) in the siege of Terragonna, and blockade of Barcelona. From November, 1814, to July, 1817, he served with the Duke of Wellington's army in the Netherlands and France; but he was not present at the battle of Waterloo, having been detached some time previously for the purpose of putting the fortress of Ostend into a state of defence. Subsequently to the withdrawal of the army of occupation from the French territory, Sir George was permitted to remain some time out of active service, and availed himself of this opportunity to visit Germany, Italy, Egypt, Syria, Turkey and Greece. After further military duty at Chatham, he proceeded in October, 1824, to the West Indies, and at the expiration of that service he visited Mexico, and returned to England in December, 1829. The able representations which he made during this period on the subject of the emancipation of the slaves in those particular colonies, with which he was immediately acquainted, so strongly impressed the ministry of the day with his capacity for civil business, that after his return, whilst in command of the Royal Engineers at Sheerness, he was nominated on two successive government commissions, the one in Ireland and the other in England, on the subject of the proposed boundaries for constituencies, under the parliamentary reform and municipal corporations acts respectively.

In 1834 he was appointed private secretary to the Earl of Auckland, then first lord of the Admiralty; and in the subsequent year proceeded with the newly appointed governor-general of British North America, the Earl of Gosford, and the Right Honorable Sir Charles E. Grey, to Canada, as a commissioner "for the investigation of grievances affecting her Majesty's subjects in that colony," which had been raised by Messrs. Papineau, Mackenzie & Co. But these men failing in their endeavors to obtain redress for their alleged "grievances," excited and fomented a portion of the people to rebellion. Sir George, on this occasion, received the honor of knighthood. As to the success of the mission, e are all aware how unfortunate it was in its results; but this was ot the fault of

those that composed it. The blame lay at the door of another party, higher in office, and over whom they had no control or authority, and but for whom all would have gone on well; and the people of Canada would not have to blush for the part a portion of their countrymen played in 1837. Sir George returned home, after a brief excursion into the United States, in April, 1837; and in the course of the same year, received the appointment to a more arduous undertaking, the government-in-chief of the Australian colonies, and sailed for Sydney in the following October.

The anxieties of this high office, exercised under every succession of administrations, during a period of nine years, laid the foundation of that disease, which at the early age of fifty-six, deprived the country of the further services of a most able, talented and energetic officer. He died on the 28th February, 1847, of a complaint of the heart, within a few weeks after his return to England. His wife, whom he married in 1830, was a daughter of the late Major-General Ramsay, of the Royal Artillery, who with one son, their only child, are still living.

RIGHT HON. SIR CHAS. E. GREY, G.C.H.

THIS learned and distinguished gentleman, who came to Canada in 1835, as one of the "Three Gs," as they were called, but in other words, the royal commissioners, appointed for the adjustment of the affairs of this province, and which was composed of Gosford, Gipps, and Grey; is the son of Ralph William Grey, Esq., of Buckworth, Northumberland, (descended from the Greys of Horton-castle) by the daugter of Charles Brandling, Esq., of Gosforth House, Northumberland; born, 1785; married, 1821; second daughter of Sir Samuel Clarke Jervoise, Bart., (she died 1850); educated at University college, Oxford, where he graduated B.A., 1806; obtained a fellowship at Oriel, and thence graduated M.A, 1810; author of the prize essay of 1808, on the "Hereditary Rank" was called to the bar, at Lincoln's-Inn, 1811; appointed a bankruptcy commissioner in 1817; a judge of the Supreme Court at Madras, in 1820 (on which occasion he was knighted); chief-justice of the Supreme Court at Bengal, in 1825, and commissioner for the affairs of Lower Canada, in 1835. On his return from this country he received the Hanoverian order; was governor of Barbadoes, St. Vincent, Tobago, Trinidad, St.

Lucia, &c., from February, 1841, to September, 1846, when he was appointed governor of Jamaica, (salary £6,000). In 1837 was an unsuccessful candidate at the Tynemouth election; but, on petition, succeeded in obtaining his seat, which he held till 1841.

CHIEF-JUSTICE SIR J. STUART, BART., LL. D.

PERHAPS there never existed a public man in Canada who possessed higher attainments and more gifted endowments of mind, or a more varied and extensive range of legal and other knowledge, than the eminent individual whose name heads this notice. No one, perhaps, ever exercised such power and influence in political circles, or controlled the destinies of the country with a more jealous eye and in a more guarded manner.

Sir James Stuart was the third son of the celebrated divine, Dr. John Stuart, then a clergyman of the Church of England at Fort Hunter, and afterwards rector of Kingston, a notice of whom we have given. Sir James was born at Fort Hunter, on the Mohawk river, in the state of New York, on the 2nd of March, 1780. After passing two years at school, in Schenectady, he went to the college at Windsor, in Nova Scotia, then the only Protestant collegiate institution in British North America. Having completed the ordinary course of study in that college, at the unusually early age of fourteen, he became, in 1794, a student-at-law with Mr. Reid, when prothonotary of the court of King's Bench at Montreal, with whom he remained four years. In 1798, he entered the office of the late Jonathan Sewell, then attorney-general, and afterwards chief-justice of Lower Canada. With this gentleman he completed his studies, and was called to the bar on the 28th of March, 1801. Before being called, however, he received from Sir Robert Shore Milnes, lieutenant-governor of Lower Canada, the appointment of assistant-secretary, which he retained for several years, practising at the same time his profession at Quebec.

In 1805, at the early age of twenty-five, he was appointed solicitor-general for Lower Canada, and removed to Montreal, which was the usual station of the incumbent of that office.

At the general election, in 1808, he was returned to represent the county of Montreal, and also the county of Buckingham, and declared his option to sit for Montreal. In 1809, in consequence of some difference with the executive, he was removed from the