Your kind present of the newspapers, &c., will be very acceptable, and yet, perhaps you are hardly aware of the extent of either our political or literary information. We have two monthly magazines published in York, and three or four newspapers, and from New York we have two weekly newspapers, designed expressly for English readers—the _Albion_ and the _Emigrant_, full of English news and English literature; so that in a month or six weeks, we have all the cream of the London and country news, as well as the best of the lighter articles from the British periodicals. The _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly Reviews_ are reprinted at two-thirds of the English price; also the _Christian Observer_, and other standard and monthly and quarterly works. Messrs. Harper, also, in New York, reprint the best of the English works in the _Family Library_, at three and sixpence each, executed like Murray’s, and their series amounts already to fifty-three volumes. Another series is furnished by Lee and Carey, at Philadelphia, and a third of a religious sort at Boston; so that in a few months, when I can spare a few pounds, I hope to be able to furnish my family with an extent of literature far beyond my capabilities in England. Among my own congregation we have also a book society, well supported and well supplied; we are, therefore, not a little chagrined when your boasting Englishers think of us as in a semi-barbaric land of literary destitution: for we not only feel ourselves a part of the great nation, but regard ourselves on nearly an equal footing as to the comforts and luxuries, while in many respects we feel that we have the most decided advantage, so we warn you not to treat us either politically or personally with scorn.
On the day I left York, government despatches had just arrived, which announced the dismissal of our two Crown Officers, the Attorney and Solicitor General, owing, it is supposed, to too great freedom in debate in our House of Assembly—the ferment it excited was almost ludicrous—“_delenda est Carthago_” was emphatically pronounced. The Whig Ministry must be annihilated. The province, though hardly prepared for such a measure, must at once be severed—such despotism could not be endured. I acted, as I generally do on such occasions, as pacificator, and smilingly quoted the well known lines of old Dr. Byron, in the conclusion of his _Bedlamite_—