And That There May Be No Doubt About Our Position In Regard To That Document, We Say, Question It You May, Reject It You May, Or Accept It You May, But Alter It You May Not. It Is Beyond Your Power, Or Our Power, To Alter It.

There is not a sentence - not even a word - you can alter without desiring to throw out the document.

Alter it, and we know at once what you mean - you thereby declare yourselves against the only possible union. On this point, I repeat, after all my hon. friends who have already spoken, for one party to alter a treaty, is, of course, to destroy it. Let us be frank with each other; you do not like our work, nor do you like us who stand by it, clause by clause, line by line, and letter by letter. Well, we believe we have here given to our countrymen of all the Provinces the possible best - that we have given them an approximation to the right - their representatives and ours have laboured at it, letter and spirit, form and substance, until they found this basis of agreement, which we are all confident will not now, nor for many a day to come, be easily swept away. And first, I will make a remark to some of the French Canadian gentlemen who are said to be opposed to our project, on French Canadian grounds only. I will remind them, I hope not improperly, that every one of the Colonies we now propose to re-unite under one rule - in which they shall have a potential voice - were once before united as New France.

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