Note 3 — LETTER XXXIV.

Thus, in a recent debate on the treatment of Canada,3 Sir C. Adderley deprecates the continuance of a debate on a question “purely sentimental.” I doubt if Sir C. Adderley knew in the least what was meant by a sentimental question. It is a purely “sentimental question,” for instance, whether Sir C. Adderley shall, or shall not, eat his mother, instead of burying her. Similarly, it is a purely sentimental question, whether, in the siege of Samaria, the mother who boiled her son and ate him, or the mother who hid her son, was best fulfilling her duty to society. Similarly, the relations of a colony to its mother-country, in their truth and depth, are founded on purely parental and filial instincts, which may be either sentimental or bestial, but must be one or the other. Sir Charles probably did not know that the discussion of every such question must therefore be either sentimental or bestial.