[34] To-day an agitation has begun for a repeal of the present Act of Union.
A message was sent to the Assembly, officially informing the House of the arrival of Lieutenant-Governor Sir Francis Burton. The message contained another bit of information to the effect that it was necessary that a residence should be provided for His Excellency. It stated still further that a furnished House had been taken for His Excellency, at a yearly rent of £500, for which it was desirable that the Assembly should provide. And the message concluded by recommending the addition of £1,000 a year to the salary of His Excellency, which was then only £1,500, so that with £2,500 a year, and house rent free, he might live in becoming style. The Assembly cheerfully voted these extra allowances to the Lieutenant-Governor. A bill was this session passed, erecting, for judicial purposes, the Eastern Townships into the Inferior District of St. Francis. There was to be a provincial court in the district, and a resident judge, who was to have jurisdiction in personal actions of £20 sterling. A Court of Quarter Sessions in the district was also established. The bill was introduced into the Assembly, and passed, to increase the representation, by giving the Eastern Townships a representation precisely as recommended in the contemplated Act of Union; but the Assembly, to counterbalance the effect which might result from the introduction of six new members into the Assembly, also created an overbalancing number of new French constituencies. The Council consequently rejected the representation bill. Then the estimates of supply were submitted by message. They had been classed into two schedules. One comprehending the Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, certain officers attached to the Governor-in-Chief, including the provincial agent in London, the Surveyor General and contingencies of his department; the judges and officers of the Courts; the Executive Councillors (£100 a year each); the Clerk of the Council, and the contingencies of his office and of the committee of audit; the Inspector General of Accounts; the Receiver General's department; and the Clerk of the Terrars, the whole sum to be supplied being £32,083 11s. 3d. sterling. The second schedule included the local establishments--the legislature and its officers; the cost of printing the laws; the salaries to public schoolmasters; the pension list; rents and repairs of public buildings, and the salaries and disbursements in connection with such buildings; the expense of collecting the revenues: the expenses of the Trinity House; the militia staff and contingencies; the expenses for criminals and houses of correction; and miscellaneous expenses, such as the salaries of the Grand Voyer and others, the grants to residents on Anticosti, for the assistance of shipwrecked seamen; and the assessments on public buildings, in all amounting to £30,225 sterling. The Assembly voted the local schedule but not the other. Indeed they protested against being required to do so in the particular manner required. The Assembly next passed bills to reimburse and indemnify His Majesty for monies expended without the sanction of the legislature. The Council did not think it decorous to speak of "indemnifying" the King and rejected the bills. There was yet another money bill to pass the Council. A bill to defray the expenses of the local establishments, in which the different items of expenditure were specified, was sent up for concurrence and was only not rejected on account of the distress to individuals which its rejection would have caused. The Assembly had appropriated monies for the payment of the local establishments, which was to be taken from the general funds of the province. The Council passed the bill under protest because by the term "general," appropriated as well as unappropriated monies might be indicated as under the control of the Assembly. An attempt was made to induce the Council to agree to the nomination of Mr. Marryatt as agent for the province, but the Council refused, and the Assembly allowed the matter to drop. To render the proceedings of the Assembly still more attractive, a breach of privilege case occurred again this session. The _Montreal Times_, a stiffishly unionist paper, had dealt harshly both with the Assembly and Council, in speaking of these two august bodies, as anti-British. The Council was quite indifferent to the imputation, but the Assembly pronounced the assertion of the _Times_ to be a false and scandalous libel upon the House, and a breach of its privileges. In accordance with this judgment, Mr. Speaker was instructed to issue warrants for the arrests of the editor and publishers of the _Times_. One offender, Mr. Ariel Bowman, was taken into custody, but Mr.