LIBRARY 
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 3>97
 
 LORD DURHAM'S REPORT 
 
 ON THE AFFAIRS OF 
 
 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA 
 
 EDITED 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR C. P. LUCAS, K.C.B., K.C.M.G. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 VOLUME I: INTRODUCTION 
 
 OXFORD 
 
 AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 
 1912
 
 HENRY FROWDE, M.A. 
 
 PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 
 
 LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW VORK 
 
 TORONTO AND MELBOURNE
 
 PEEFACE 
 
 THE Sketch of Lord Durham's Mission by 
 Charles Buller is published as far as I am aware 
 for the first time by the kind permission of 
 Mr. A. G. Doughty, C.M.G., Dominion Archivist 
 at Ottawa, to whom it was given by the present 
 Earl of Durham. 
 
 My thanks are due to him ; and among many 
 friends in England and Canada who have given me 
 help, I must specially mention Professor Egerton, 
 and Mr. A. B. Keith of the Colonial Office, author 
 of Responsible Government in the Dominions. I 
 have also to thank Mr. Henry Lambert, C.B., of 
 the Colonial Office, Mr. C. Atchley, C.M.G., I.S.O., 
 Librarian of the Colonial Office, and Mr. H. P. 
 Biggar, of the Dominion Archives Department. 
 
 Any views expressed in the Introduction or the 
 Notes are my own alone. 
 
 C. P. LUCAS. 
 
 March 1912
 
 ERRATUM 
 
 P. 97, 1. 12. for 1838 read 1837
 
 CONTENTS OF VOLUME I 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LORD DURHAM ....... 1 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THE ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA ... 10 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE POLITICAL DIFFI- 
 CULTIES IN THE CANADAS .... 24 
 
 i 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 LORD DURHAM'S COMMISSION AND INSTRUCTIONS . 106 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE REPORT : ITS SCOPE, CHARACTER, AND SUBSTANCE 
 
 The Scope of the Report . . . . .114 
 The Character of the Report . . . .116 
 The Substance of the Report . . . .123 
 Reunion of the two Canadas .... 124 
 Responsible Government . . . . .137 
 
 Public Lands .152 
 
 Emigration ... 188 
 
 Means of Communication ... .198 
 
 Municipalities and Local Government . . .210
 
 vi CONTENTS 
 
 THE REPORT: ITS SCOPE, CHARACTER, AND SUBSTANCE 
 
 (Continued) 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Administration of Justice 223 
 
 Education 232 
 
 General Union of British North America . . 247 
 References to the United States .... 257 
 Colonial Office and Colonial Administration . .266 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 RETROSPECT, FORECAST, AND SEQUEL .... 276 
 
 CHAPTER VH 
 THE REPORT AND THE EMPIRE 303 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 LORD DURHAM'S REPORT AS BEARING ON THE QUESTION 
 
 OP HOME RULE FOR IRELAND . . . .318 
 
 INDEX . 325
 
 CHAPTER I 
 LORD DURHAM 
 
 JOHN GEORGE LAMBTON, first Earl of Durham, 
 was born in 1792. He died in 1840 at the age of 48. 
 He was bom a year after an Act had been passed 
 by the Imperial Parliament dividing the Province 
 of Quebec, as it then was, into the two provinces of 
 Upper and Lower Canada, and granting to either 
 province representative institutions without respon- 
 sible government. In the year in which he died 
 another Imperial Act was passed, in consequence 
 of his own recommendations, reuniting the two 
 provinces with a view to granting to the single 
 colony wider powers of self-government. 
 
 He was the son-in-law of Lord Grey, the Prime 
 Minister who carried the great Reform Bill. He 
 was the father-in-law of Lord Elgin, who, as 
 Governor-General of Canada, made responsible 
 government in that colony a reality. He was 
 the grandfather of the Secretary of State for the 
 Colonies, who gave responsible government to the 
 Transvaal and the Orange River Colony. His life 
 was comparatively short : he never held high 
 administrative office in England : he was a colonial 
 governor for only five months : and he gave to the 
 world a state paper on colonial matters which will 
 live to all time. 
 
 He was educated at Eton, and, after two years 
 in the Army, he was in 1813 elected to the House 
 
 1352-1 B
 
 2 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 of Commons on the Whig or Liberal side as member 
 for the county of Durham. In 1828 he was made 
 a peer. In 1830 he was included in Lord Grey's 
 Cabinet, being given the sinecure office of Lord 
 Privy Seal, and he was a prominent member of the 
 Committee of Ministers who framed the Reform 
 Bill. In 1833 he left the Government and was 
 made an Earl. For about two years, from 1835-7, 
 he was Ambassador to Russia. In January 1838 
 he accepted the appointment of Governor-General 
 of the British North American provinces. He left 
 England on the 24th of April 1838 ; he reached 
 Quebec on the 27th of May. On the 29th of May 
 he landed and was sworn into office. He left again 
 for England on the 1st of November following. 
 On the 30th of November he landed at Plymouth. 
 His Report is dated the 31st of January 1839 ; 
 and on the 28th of July 1840 he died. 
 
 Lord Durham was an aristocrat in temper and 
 habits, lordly and imperious, fond of pomp and 
 circumstance. He was a pronounced Radical in 
 his political creed. But he was poles asunder from 
 the Radicals of the Manchester School, and was 
 more allied to such men as Sir William Molesworth 
 than to Richard Cobden. He seems to have been a 
 man of high character, transparent honesty, great 
 courage and promptness, and of outspoken con- 
 victions, but masterful and arrogant, with a self-will 
 intensified by want of health, and by having come 
 into his kingdom in early boyhood. He was a good 
 man to serve, but a difficult man for a colleague, 
 a man impatient of contradiction and restraint, one 
 who made enemies and risked losing friends.
 
 CHAP, i LORD DURHAM 3 
 
 His life has been fully told in Mr. Stuart Reid's 
 two interesting volumes, and no reference will now 
 be made to any of its incidents in or out of Canada. 
 Nor will words be wasted upon the much-debated 
 question whether or not he wrote the Report which 
 bears his signature. No one would suppose that 
 he drafted every line of the document himself. On 
 the other hand, to maintain that Lord Durham, of 
 all men in the world, allowed somebody else to 
 dictate what he was to recommend is ridiculous. 
 When dispatches or state papers are published 
 bearing the signature of one minister or another, 
 it is not to be supposed that they have in all cases 
 been written, word by word, from beginning to 
 end, by the man who signs them. Yet every such 
 document is presumed to embody his instructions, 
 to have been under his eye, and corrected by his 
 hand, and, bearing his signature, is credited to 
 him for good or ill. Whether Lord Durham's own 
 pen actually wrote much or little of the Report, 
 in form and substance it is his and his alone, able 
 as were the members of his staff. 
 
 For he seems to have had the high quality of 
 choosing competent advisers and assistants, and 
 the courage or indiscretion of selecting them with- 
 out regard to public opinion. The principal mem- 
 ber of his staff was Charles Buller, pupil and friend 
 of Carlyle, and satirist of the Colonial Office, who 
 was widely credited with being the real author of 
 the Report, and whose brilliant promise was cut 
 short by early death in 1848. Next in importance 
 was Gibbon Wakefield, whose personal antecedents 
 gave occasion for cavilling at his being attached to 
 
 B 2
 
 4 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 Lord Durham's Mission, but whose living and 
 stimulating interest in colonial questions was 
 beyond dispute. Durham's private secretary was 
 Edward Ellice the younger, son of ' Bear ' Ellice, 
 who had been the whip in Lord Grey's Ministry, 
 and to whose merits in the capacity of a Canadian 
 seignior the Report pays the graceful and kindly 
 tribute of an old friend. 
 
 The Report was published before all the supple- 
 mentary reports which form its appendices had 
 been received. A list of these appendices is given 
 in vol. iii, and the following documents have been 
 reprinted in the hope that they will be of use and 
 interest to students of colonial, more especially of 
 Canadian history. From Appendix A, papers 1, 2, 
 5, 6, and 9, being Mr. Hanson's Report on the 
 excessive appropriation of public land under the 
 name of Clergy Reserves ; a special report by 
 Charles Buller on militia claims to grants of land ; 
 a letter from Mr. William Young on the State of 
 Nova Scotia; a letter from the Roman Catholic 
 Bishop Macdonell ; and an address from the Con- 
 stitutional Association of Montreal. From Appen- 
 dix B, Charles Buller's Report on Public Lands 
 and Emigration with the Royal Commission under 
 which Lord Durham appointed him to make the 
 Report, but without the Minutes of Evidence. 
 Appendix C, including the Reports of the Com- 
 missioners of Inquiry into the Municipal Institu- 
 tions of Lower Canada, but excluding both the 
 Appendix to those reports and also the Report from 
 the Anglican Bishop of Montreal on the state of the 
 Church within his diocese. From Appendix D, the
 
 CHAP, i LORD DURHAM 5 
 
 Report of the Commissioner of Inquiry into the 
 state of Education in Lower Canada, without the 
 Returns, and an extract from the Report on the 
 Jesuits' Estates. It has also been thought well to 
 reprint three dispatches, dated 20th January 1838, 
 3rd April 1838, and 21st April 1838, which embody 
 Lord Glenelg's instructions to Lord Durham ; Lord 
 Durham's dispatch of 9th August 1838, in which he 
 foreshadowed the terms of his Report ; Lord John 
 Russell's dispatch of 14th October 1839 on the sub- 
 ject of Responsible Government ; and lastly, to add 
 Charles Buller's sketch of Lord Durham's Mission. 
 The Report, clear and powerful, speaks for itself, 
 but some notes have been appended to it, and in 
 this Introduction it is proposed to try to answer 
 the following questions. (1) What were the con- 
 ditions prevailing in the United Kingdom and in 
 the British Empire generally at the time of Lord 
 Durham's Mission ? (2) What was the position in 
 the two Caiiadas at the time, and what circum- 
 stances had led up to it ? (3) What were the terms 
 of Lord Durham's Commission, and what were his 
 instructions ? (4) What was in summary the scope, 
 the character, and the substance of his Report ? 
 
 (5) How far, according to the lights of the present 
 day, did he read the past correctly ? How far 
 did he correctly forecast the future in Canada, 
 and how far were his recommendations adopted ? 
 
 (6) How far are the principles laid down in his 
 report of universal application ? 
 
 Before, however, dealing with these specific 
 questions it is necessary to say a word of general 
 caution. The popular view of Lord Durham and
 
 6 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 his mission is that an abnormal crisis having 
 arisen in a British colony, or a group of British 
 colonies, which crisis was due in the main to 
 ignorance and want of intelligence on the part of the 
 rulers both in the colony and at home, the hour 
 came and the man who discovered once for all the 
 true principles of colonial administration. This 
 view needs to be corrected. The crisis in Canada 
 was only in part abnormal, though it had attained 
 to undue proportions. Discontent is the common 
 accompaniment of growth. Given a young man 
 or a young community, with increasingly large 
 capacities, and full of life and vigour, then desire 
 for greater freedom and a wider field of vitality, 
 and restlessness until the desire has been satisfied, 
 is healthy, natural, and in no sense abnormal. 
 Given again a community, in which to the desire 
 for a greater measure of self-government is super- 
 added the further element of friction caused by 
 rival races, in different stages of development, 
 living side by side in the same country, and it is 
 obvious that the restlessness will be intensified. 
 The conditions in the Canadas which Lord Durham 
 set out to remedy were, therefore, not altogether 
 abnormal. They were to some extent the necessary 
 outcome of the time and place. 
 
 Nor did Lord Durham achieve some wholly new 
 and wonderful discovery when he recommended 
 the reunion of the two provinces, and the grant of 
 self-government to Canada. The reunion of the 
 Canadas had been talked of almost from the date 
 when they were divided from each other ; while 
 as far back as 1822 a reunion bill had, on the
 
 CHAP, i LORD DURHAM 7 
 
 instance of Ellice the elder, been introduced into 
 the House of Commons by the Tory Government of 
 the day, and, but for the opposition of a handful 
 of Radical members led by Sir James Mackintosh, 
 might have been passed into law. Self-government 
 for the colonies again, in one form or another, was 
 not first conceived by Lord Durham. His merit 
 consisted in the fact that, though he had not been 
 born and bred in the colonies, probably because he 
 had not been born and bred in the colonies, but 
 had been a leader of the Reform movement in 
 England, he advocated self-government for the 
 colonies in the form in which it existed in the 
 United Kingdom. It consisted in the force and 
 clearness with which he pointed out existing evils, 
 and the remedies which must be applied ; the 
 statesmanship with which, not content with 
 generalities, he prescribed definite and immediate 
 action ; and the courage and insight, amounting to 
 genius, with which he gave to the world the doc- 
 trine of responsible government, not as a prelude 
 to the creation of separate peoples, but as the 
 cornerstone upon which a single and undivided 
 British Empire should be reared to abiding strength. 
 One other comment is necessary. Lord Durham 
 was only five months in North America, and of 
 that time only eleven days were spent in Upper 
 Canada, 1 the whole of the rest of the time being 
 
 1 The Report of the Select Committee of the House of Assembly of 
 Upper Canada, made in April 1839, which severely criticized Lord 
 Durham and his Report, stated that ' His lordship's personal observa- 
 tion was confined to his passing up the River St. Lawrence, and crossing 
 Lake Ontario, in a steamboat occupied exclusively by his family and 
 suite, a four days' sojourn at the Falls of Niagara, and a twenty-four
 
 8 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 devoted to the Lower Province. Moreover, during 
 these five months, he had not only to attend to all 
 the everyday business of administration, but to 
 deal with the most pressing and vitally important 
 questions, carrying on his own shoulders at a time 
 of crisis the whole load of responsibility. He was 
 not, like other commissioners, sent to make an 
 inquiry, while all the ordinary machinery of 
 government was steadily working from day to day 
 irrespective of the commissioner and without dis- 
 turbing the course of the inquiry. Nor was lie 
 sent out with command of railways, telegraphs, 
 and all the swift and sure means of communication 
 which science has since perfected or devised. The 
 field of his inquiry was very wide, the population 
 was very scattered, the problems were as varied 
 as they were numerous, means of communication 
 were most inadequate. That such results should 
 have been achieved in so short a time, when that 
 short time had been overfilled with harassing ques- 
 tions of administration, is evidence to monumental 
 industry and striking ability on the part of Lord 
 Durham and his assistants. But, at the same time, 
 it is clear that, under these conditions, it was 
 humanly impossible for the Report to have em- 
 bodied the fullest first-hand knowledge on every 
 point of detail, or to have been written with all 
 the judgement and reflection which a longer 
 residence in North America might have brought. 
 Possibly in the latter case the view of the forest 
 
 hours' visit to the Lieutenant-Governor at Toronto' (Parliamentary 
 Paper, No. 289, June 1839, Copies or Extracts of Correspondence 
 relative to the Affairs of Canada, p. 22).
 
 CHAP, i LORD DURHAM 9 
 
 might have been obscured by the trees, and the 
 picture of the whole might have been no more 
 accurate and less vivid than that which is presented 
 in the Report ; but, none the less, on the one hand 
 it is only fair to Lord Durham to bear in mind the 
 disadvantages under which the Report was written, 
 and on the other it would be wrong to ignore the 
 very strong exception taken to the statements and 
 inferences which it contained, in and on behalf of 
 Upper Canada.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THE ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA 
 
 QUEEN VICTORIA came to the throne on the 
 20th of June 1837. Lord Durham, therefore, 
 started on his mission towards the end of the first 
 year of her reign. It is noteworthy how the 
 beginning of the great Queen's reign coincided with 
 various measures or movements which tended to 
 recast and regenerate the British Empire. In 
 1833, Sir James Stephen, then legal adviser and 
 three years later permanent head of the Colonial 
 Office, between a Saturday morning and the middle 
 of the day on the following Monday, drafted the 
 Imperial Act for the Abolition of Slavery. Passed 
 into law in that year, it provided that, from the 
 1st of August 1834, slavery should be abolished 
 throughout the British dominions ; but the emanci- 
 pated negroes were to continue to labour under 
 a system of apprenticeship until the 1st of August 
 1838 in the case of non-praedial apprentices, and 
 the 1st of August 1840 in the case of praedial 
 apprentices, the term of apprenticeship being in 
 some cases shortened by local legislation. The 
 last remnants of legalized slavery were therefore 
 being blotted out in the British Empire when the 
 young girl of eighteen became Queen ; and when 
 sixty-three years later she died in fullness of age 
 and of honour, she was mourned in the lands which
 
 CHAP. IT ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA . 11 
 
 slavery had once blighted, as the giver of freedom 
 to the negro race. Great as an act of humanity 
 and justice to a class of British subjects, the 
 Emancipation Act is also interesting to students 
 of colonial history as an instance of the mother 
 country enforcing its will on colonies, some of 
 which had from the earliest times enjoyed no small 
 measure of self-government. An island like Bar- 
 bados was never a Crown Colony in the ordinary 
 sense. It had from the first been to a large extent 
 a self-governing community, though the self- 
 government was limited to the white oligarchy ; 
 and to this day it retains its elected Assembly 
 and the power of the purse. Thus we have the 
 noteworthy coincidence of the birth of responsible 
 government in British North America with the 
 most pronounced enforcement of the will of the 
 mother country in the British West Indies, though 
 the latter had enjoyed representative institutions 
 in times when Canada, so far as it was colonized, 
 was under a French despotism, with no semblance 
 even of municipal liberties, while what was after- 
 wards Upper Canada was in the main a wilderness. 
 Somewhat later in time than the anti-slavery 
 movement, but roughly coincident with the acces- 
 sion of Queen Victoria, was another fruitful philan- 
 thropic effort, which resulted in the gradual 
 abolition of the system of transportation. Arch- 
 bishop Whately and others had been active in 
 pointing out the evils and abuses to which this 
 system gave rise, and in 1837 a select committee 
 was appointed by the House of Commons ' to 
 inquire into the system of transportation, its
 
 12 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 efficacy as a punishment, its influence on the 
 moral state of Society in the penal colonies, and 
 how far it is susceptible of improvement '. It was 
 a strong committee. Sir William Molesworth was 
 the Chairman, and among the members were 
 Charles Buller, Sir George Grey, Lord Howick, 
 afterwards Lord Grey, Lord John Russell, and 
 Sir Robert Peel. The report was made in August 
 1838 : it condemned the existing system : and the 
 first of its recommendations was ' that transporta- 
 tion to New South Wales, and to the settled 
 districts of Van Diemen's Land, should be dis- 
 continued as soon as practicable '. In 1840 
 transportation to New South Wales was suspended. 
 This was the beginning of the end of a system 
 which died hard, for some convicts were sent to 
 Western Australia up to 1867, Western Australia 
 being, it should be noted, the only colony in 
 Australia which at that date had not received 
 responsible government. The system died hard, 
 for it was not, like slavery, evil in its essence ; it 
 was evil only in the conditions under which it was 
 enforced or which gathered round it. 
 
 The Act of Parliament which abolished slavery 
 throughout the British dominions affected mainly 
 the colonies of Great Britain in the western 
 hemisphere, the West Indies, which were her 
 oldest colonies, and which were in fact, as they 
 had been in name, plantations. The anti-trans- 
 portation movement principally affected the British 
 colonies in the south, the youngest colonies of 
 Great Britain, those in Australia which had been 
 originally founded as penal settlements. Slavery
 
 CHAP. IT ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA 13 
 
 was abolished by the will of the mother country 
 imposed upon the slave-owning colonies ; trans- 
 portation was eventually abolished in obedience to 
 the will of the colonies imposed upon the mother 
 country. In the West Indies, where slavery 
 prevailed, and where in past times the white 
 oligarchies were in great measure self-governing 
 communities, there is now but the remanet of 
 representative institutions. The area where the 
 transportation system was most fully applied is, 
 at the present day, the scene of colonial self- 
 government in its fullest expression. 
 
 The Cape, on the way between East and West, 
 on the way between North and South, was touched 
 alike by the abolition of slavery and by the move- 
 ment against transportation. One of the dramatic 
 incidents in the later stages of the anti-transporta- 
 tion campaign, and one of the most emphatic 
 pronouncements of colonial rights in advance of 
 colonial self-government, was the refusal of the 
 Cape colonists, in September 1849, to allow the 
 Neptune to land her freight of ticket-of -leave men 
 in Simons Bay. Earlier in the history of the Cape, 
 the inadequacy of the compensation paid to the 
 slave-owners had embittered colonial feeling against 
 the British Government ; there followed the 
 reversal of Sir Benjamin D'Urban's policy by 
 Lord Glenelg ; and when Queen Victoria came to 
 the throne, the Great Boer trek was taking place, 
 which coloured the whole subsequent history of 
 South Africa. 
 
 Returning to Australasia, the colony of South 
 Australia dates from 1836, the year before the
 
 14 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 Queen's accession. The date usually given to the 
 founding of Melbourne is 1837. In 1837 the New 
 Zealand Association was formed. In 1838-9 it 
 was followed by the New Zealand Land Company. 
 In 1839 this company forced the hands of the 
 Government by sending out the ship Tory to New 
 Zealand, with Gibbon Wakefield's brother on 
 board, and the forerunners of a larger band of 
 settlers ; and early in 1840 New Zealand became 
 formally and finally a British possession. The 
 settlement of South Australia, and the acquisition 
 of New Zealand, were the outcome of the coloniza- 
 tion movement with which Gibbon Wakefield's 
 name is for ever associated, and the chairman of 
 the New Zealand Company was Lord Durham. 
 This movement was at its flood-tide when Queen 
 Victoria came to the throne. 
 
 But while thinkers and statesmen and philan- 
 thropists were at work, more potent in their effects 
 upon the world at large, and upon the British 
 Empire in particular, were the inventions and 
 discoveries of men of science. When Queen 
 Victoria began her reign, the forces of steam were 
 in their cradle, and the forces of electricity were 
 being brought to birth. The first railway upon 
 which the locomotive was used, the line from 
 Stockton to Darlington, was opened in 1825, the 
 line from Manchester to Liverpool in 1830. In his 
 Report (ii. 212-13), Lord Durham wrote, ' there 
 is but one railroad in all British America, and 
 that, running between the St. Lawrence and Lake 
 Champlain, is only fifteen miles long.' That line 
 was the only railroad in the British Empire outside
 
 CHAP, ii ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA 15 
 
 the United Kingdom at the date of the Queen's 
 accession. In his Essay on the Government of 
 Dependencies, which was published in 1841, Sir 
 George Cornewall-Lewis speaks of the possibility 
 of countervailing the difficulties in administration 
 due to distance by ' the goodness of the roads 
 and bridges, and an advanced state of the art of 
 navigation, affording the means of rapid locomotion 
 both by land and sea V but he makes no specific 
 reference in this passage to railways, steamers, or 
 telegraphs ; and in one note only in his book does 
 he refer in unfamiliar terms to ' the invention of 
 steam railways ', as about to reduce ' to sober 
 truth ' the passage in which the poet Claudian 
 depicted the unity and the facility of intercourse 
 which peace and good roads had given to the 
 Roman Empire. 2 Almost the greatest merit of Lord 
 Durham's Report is the writer's obvious apprecia- 
 tion of what the future, aided by science, might have 
 in store for British North America ; and had Lord 
 Durham lived to see the 8th of November 1885, 
 when railway connexion was completed from 
 Montreal to Vancouver, he would have been 
 hardly older then than one of the chief pioneers of 
 the Canadian Pacific Railway, the present High 
 Commissioner for Canada, is now. 
 
 ' The success of the great experiment of steam 
 navigation across the Atlantic,' says Lord Durham 
 in his Report (ii. 316-17), ' opens a prospect of 
 a speedy communication with Europe, which will 
 materially affect the future state of all these 
 provinces.' On the wall at the entrance to the 
 
 1 p. 178 (1891 ed.). ' PP- 128-9 note.
 
 lf> BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 Parliamentary Library at Ottawa there is an in- 
 scription ' in honour of the men by whose enterprise, 
 courage, and skill, the Royal William, the first 
 vessel to cross the Atlantic by steam power, was 
 wholly constructed in Canada and navigated to 
 England in 1833 '. This ship was built at Quebec 
 under the cliffs of Cape Diamond, and launched in 
 April 1831. On the 18th of August 1833 she started 
 from Pictou in Nova Scotia and steamed across 
 the Atlantic, reaching Gravesend on the 12th of 
 September, twenty-five days after leaving Pictou. 1 
 Regular steam communication, however, between 
 England and America did not begin till 1838, the 
 year in which Lord Durham went to Canada. 
 The Peninsular Company, formed in 1837, received 
 its charter as the Peninsular and Oriental Company 
 in 1840 ; and on the 4th of July 1840 the Britannia, 
 a steamer belonging to a citizen of Halifax in Nova 
 Scotia, of the name of Cunard, started from Liver- 
 pool for Halifax and Boston, being the first regular 
 steamer of the great Cunard line. 
 
 In 1837, Cooke and Wheatstone took out a patent 
 for an electric telegraph, and in 1840 Wheatstone 
 is said to have drawn plans for a submarine tele- 
 graph from Dover to Calais ; but it was not until 
 1858 that a submarine cable was laid between the 
 United Kingdom and America, and the connexion 
 was not finally and successfully made until 1866. 
 It may be summed up that when Queen Victoria's 
 reign began, and when Lord Durham went out to 
 
 1 The brass tablet was erected in 1894, and a full account of the Royal 
 WiUiam is given in the Report of the Secretary of State of Canada for 
 1894, published in 1895.
 
 CHAP, ii ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA 17 
 
 Canada, science was about to recast the meaning 
 of space and time ; but it was as yet the dawn 
 only, and not the full brightness of day. 
 
 Lord Melbourne, who succeeded Lord Grey as 
 the leader or nominal leader of the Whig party, 
 was Queen Victoria's first Prime Minister, and it 
 was during his tenure of office that Lord Durham's 
 mission took place. The battle of Waterloo had 
 ended an age of war. Before 1815< for England 
 and for the world generally, war had for a long 
 series of years been the rule and peace the excep- 
 tion. The people had grown up not merely familiar 
 with the conditions of life in time of war, but so 
 accustomed to war that peace must have seemed 
 a novelty. It had been a fight for national exis- 
 tence. England, though spared the horror of war 
 on her own shores, had paid a heavy price for 
 victory, but she had survived and she had won. 
 When peace came again, the English, by a perfectly 
 wholesome instinct, still kept in power the men 
 who had led them in war times and with whom 
 the Duke of Wellington was associated, and they 
 kept out of power the Whigs who had been or 
 seemed to have been the less patriotic of the two 
 parties. This went on until peace had become the 
 rule and not the exception, and until, if ever there 
 was going to be a transfer of power from one party 
 to another, it was absolutely inevitable that it 
 should take place. Then in 1830 the Whigs, who 
 had especially espoused or professed to espouse 
 the cause of Parliamentary Reform, came into 
 power, and with a short break held office for rather 
 more than ten years. 
 
 1352-1 C
 
 18 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 They passed the great Reform Act of 1832, the 
 Acts for the abolition of slavery, for the reform of 
 the Poor Law, for the reform of municipal corpora- 
 tions, and other valuable legislation. It stands to 
 their lasting credit that they thoroughly repaired 
 the parliamentary machinery of England, gave 
 some measure of representation to the great cities, 
 and made the House of Commons an exponent of 
 popular wishes and popular movements to an 
 extent which had never been the case before. It 
 stands to their credit, too, that, having improved 
 the machinery, they used it for a short time in an 
 undeniably beneficial manner. On the other hand, 
 their enthusiasm for democratic measures, and the 
 enthusiasm of the people for them, cooled some- 
 what rapidly ; and at the beginning of Queen 
 Victoria's reign the Whig ministers were not much 
 more than caretakers, the leaders of the Ins as 
 opposed to the Outs, not entrusted with any great 
 mission or standing for any great principle. 
 
 The reasons for this result are not far to seek. 
 The inevitable outcome of passing the Reform Act 
 and having a reformed Parliament was disunion, 
 more or less pronounced, more or less rapid, both in 
 the Government and in the country. The door had 
 been unlocked, obstructions had been removed, 
 people were moving on, and they moved at different 
 rates of speed and in different directions. The 
 individual ministers, or some of them, may well 
 have become tired and half-hearted, and there was 
 probably, as is always the case, a large section of 
 the public disappointed because extension of the 
 franchise did not at once bring the millennium.
 
 CHAP, n ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA 19 
 
 Moreover there was, after all, no great gulf fixed 
 between the Whigs and the Tories. On the one 
 hand the Whig Government was not wholly com- 
 posed of traditional Whigs, and on the other the 
 Tories, whom they succeeded, had had a strong 
 leaven of Liberalism among them. Melbourne had 
 served under Canning and the Duke of Wellington. 
 Stanley, nominally a Whig, had served under 
 Canning. Palmerston, Goderich, Lord Glenelg, 
 among others, had been in the so-called Tory ranks. 
 In those ranks, Canning had been the very anti- 
 podes of a benighted Tory; Huskisson had gone 
 further than any responsible minister in the direc- 
 tion of Free Trade ; while, even when the Duke of 
 Wellington, the very embodiment of Toryism, was 
 Prime Minister, the Test and Corporation Acts had, 
 on Lord John Russell's initiative, been repealed, and 
 Catholic emancipation had been carried. Canning 
 and Huskisson were dead, but Peel survived ; and 
 Peel, the country knew well, was no more of 
 a reactionary than Melbourne and his friends. 
 Thus at the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign 
 there was a somewhat colourless Government in 
 power, representing a spent force, no better and 
 110 worse than an ordinary party Government in 
 ordinary times of peace. War as a normal con- 
 dition of English life had passed more or less into 
 oblivion, and there were a large number of move- 
 ments at work, political, social, and industrial, and 
 a considerable number of individual men, like 
 Lord Durham himself, not hide-bound by party 
 ties, but independent of and prepared, if their 
 principles called for such a course, to be antagonistic 
 
 02
 
 20 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA FNTKOD. 
 
 to the Government. In 1838 the Anti-Corn Law 
 Association was formed, which developed in the 
 following year into the Anti-Corn Law League. 
 Free Trade had not been a plank in the Whig 
 platform, and there was no love lost between 
 the official Whigs and Richard Cobden. 1838-9 
 was the date of the Chartist movement, and those 
 who sympathized with he Chartists made small 
 account of the Whigs as represented by Lord Mel- 
 bourne's Government. 
 
 In that Government, when Lord Durham went 
 out to Canada, the Colonial Secretary was Charles 
 Grant, Lord Glenelg. Sir Henry Taylor, who 
 served under him at the Colonial Office, wrote of 
 him as ' high-minded, accomplished, and occasion- 
 ally eloquent, but habitually and incurably sluggish 
 and somnolent ; . . . amiable and excellent as he 
 was, a more incompetent man could not have been 
 found to fill an office requiring activity and a ready 
 judgement.' l A much more favourable estimate 
 of him was given by Taylor's friend and colleague, 
 Sir James Stephen, who, during Lord Glenelg's 
 tenure of office was promoted to be permanent 
 Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. When 
 Lord Glenelg resigned, Stephen wrote : 
 
 ' Lord Glenelg's resignation is, as you may well 
 suppose, a sad subject with me. He is the tenth 
 Secretary of State under whom I have served, 
 and from the most certain knowledge, I can 
 declare that of the whole of that long list he is the 
 most laborious, the most conscientious, and the 
 most enlightened minister of the public. . . . His 
 
 1 Autobiography of Sir Henry Taylor 1885, vol. i, pp. 147-8.
 
 CHAP, ii ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA 21 
 
 real and only unfitness for public life arises from 
 the strange incompatibility of his temper and 
 principles with the tempers and with the rules of 
 action to which we erect shrines in Downing Street.' l 
 
 There can be no doubt that Lord Glenelg was 
 a man of very high principles. He was actuated 
 by the purest motives of justice and philanthropy, 
 when he ordered withdrawal from the native 
 territory which Sir Benjamin D' Urban had annexed 
 to the Cape Colony ; but the result of his action in 
 that case was most disastrous, and in general by 
 common consent he was a weak and incompetent 
 Secretary of State for the Colonies. In 1838 Sir 
 William Molesworth moved a vote of censure on 
 him in the House of Commons, charging him by 
 implication with want of diligence, forethought, 
 judgement, activity and firmness, and early in the 
 following year he was made to resign. 
 
 Stephen, who described himself in the letter 
 quoted above as Lord Glenelg' s ' intimate personal 
 friend ', and who, as permanent Under-Secretary 
 of State, was his principal adviser at the Colonial 
 Office, was anything but a weak man. He was 
 strong enough to be exposed to attacks from which 
 permanent officials are usually exempt, and he was 
 supposed to be the embodiment of all the vices 
 of the Colonial Office when Charles Buller de- 
 nounced it and talked about ' Mr. Mother Country '. 
 
 ' I am scarcely twenty-four hours off Sir William 
 Molesworth's impeachment,' Stephen wrote in 
 1838, ' in which I hear from Charles Buller, a great 
 friend of Sir William's, that I am to have a con- 
 
 1 The First Sir James Stephen, pp. 56-7, Letter of February 12, 1839.
 
 22 BRITISH NORTH 'AMERICA INTROTX 
 
 spicuous share. I am, it seems, at your service, 
 a rapacious, grasping, ambitious Tory. On two 
 unequal crutches propped he came, Glenelg's on 
 this, on that Sir G. Grey's name ; and it appears 
 that by the aid of these crutches I have hobbled 
 into a dominion wider than ever Nero possessed, 
 which I exercise like another Domitian.' ] 
 
 If some took Stephen to be a rapacious Tory, the 
 eccentric Governor of Upper Canada, Sir Francis 
 Bond Head, abused him as a rank republican. 
 From his predominance at the Colonial Office ho 
 was christened Mr. Over-Secretary Stephen, and he 
 seems to have been regarded by men of the school 
 of Molesworth and Buller as the type of a rigid 
 and unsympathetic official. He had been brought 
 up in the evangelical atmosphere of the Clapham 
 sect, and with their virtues and their philanthropy 
 may well have inherited also some narrowness, but 
 his private letters show no want of kindly feeling 
 or of human sympathy. 
 
 ' It fell to his lot,' wrote his son, Sir FitzJames 
 Stephen in 1860, ' to assist in two of the most 
 remarkable transactions even of this century. 
 The first was the abolition of slavery, the second 
 was the establishment of responsible government 
 in Canada. . . . The principles which he always 
 advocated ultimately obtained complete recogni- 
 tion, but he was constantly obliged to take part 
 in measures which he regretted, and of which he 
 disapproved.' 2 
 
 It must be remembered that, when the United 
 States were severed from the British Empire, little 
 
 1 The, Fir.it Sir Jam?s Stephen, p. 53. Sir G. Grey was then the 
 Parliamentary Under- Secretary at the Colonial Office, nnd represented 
 it in the House of Commons. - pp. 51-2.
 
 CHAP, ii ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA 23 
 
 trace of colonial self-government was left within 
 the Empire except in the West Indian Legislatures. 
 The tendency of the time was, as in the case of the 
 abolition of slavery, to override these Legislatures, 
 not to extend their powers ; and in 1839, the very 
 year in which Lord Durham's Report appeared, 
 Lord Melbourne's Government brought in a Bill for 
 temporarily suspending the constitution of Jamaica, 
 which led to the resignation of the Ministry. Out- 
 side the West Indies, Canada had been given repre- 
 sentative institutions by the Act of 1791, but the 
 Colonial Office had necessarily none of the experi- 
 ence of dealings with self-governing communities 
 which it has at the present day. It may be summed 
 up therefore that, when Lord Durham went out to 
 Canada, the Colonial Office with which he had to 
 deal was in the main what would now be called 
 a Crown Colony Office, presided over by an excep- 
 tionally weak Secretary of State and an exception- 
 ally strong permanent Under-Secretary. Such 
 conditions would give a notable opportunity for 
 reflections and comments on bureaucracy; and 
 inasmuch as the evils of bureaucracy were a 
 favourite theme with Charles Buller, perhaps his 
 hand may specially be traced in the very able 
 passages of the Report (ii. 101-6) which refer to 
 this subject, and one of the side notes to which is 
 ' Evils of committing details of government to 
 Colonial Department '.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE POLITICAL 
 DIFFICULTIES IN THE CANADAS 
 
 IN 1837, the year of the Queen's Accession and 
 the year before Lord Durham went to Canada, 
 the discontent and unrest which had long prevailed 
 alike in Lower and in Upper Canada, culminated 
 in open rebellion in either province. In order to 
 make clear how the trouble arose, it is necessary 
 to give an outline of the previous condition of the 
 two provinces. 
 
 Between French and English colonization in 
 North America, and between French and English 
 colonists, there was a great gulf fixed. Race, 
 religion, language, customs, prejudices divided 
 them, but the division did not end here. French 
 colonization was born of the State, it was reared 
 by the State, it was controlled by the State. Its 
 essence was feudalism, imported from the old world 
 to the new, which was not, however, as in the old 
 world, a growth but the creation of the Crown. 
 In New France the authority of the Crown and 
 of the Church was absolute. ' The institutions of 
 France,' wrote Lord Durham (ii. 27-8), ' during the 
 period of the colonization of Canada, were, perhaps, 
 more than those of any other European nation, 
 calculated to repress the intelligence and freedom 
 of the great mass of the people. These institutions
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 25 
 
 followed the Canadian colonist across the Atlantic. 
 The same central, ill-organized, unimproving and 
 repressive despotism extended over him. Not 
 merely was he allowed no voice in the government 
 of his province, or the choice of his rulers, but he 
 was not even permitted to associate with his 
 neighbours for the regulation of those municipal 
 affairs, which the central authority neglected under 
 the pretext of managing.' Lord Durham regarded 
 the political and social system of Canada under 
 French rule from an English point of view, and he 
 emphasized that view as an advanced Liberal. 
 It is true that there was no liberty, as Englishmen 
 understood it, in New France, no vestige of popular 
 representation in political or even in municipal 
 matters ; but the system was not without its 
 merits. It was not ill organized. In its inception 
 it was well and skilfully organized. The object 
 was to reproduce in the new home the conditions 
 which the colonists had known in the old, to create 
 a New France in America. New France was 
 created, and it would be difficult to find a parallel 
 in history for a handiwork so artificial, which was 
 at the same time so strong and lasting. Two 
 features in French Canada call for special notice. 
 The first is that it tended to be a land of extremes, 
 or at any rate a land of strong contrasts. Within 
 the settled area life was lived rigidly according to 
 rule, on fixed lines in fixed places. Outside the 
 settled area French quickness of mind and body 
 found unlimited scope : the voyageurs and the 
 coureurs de bois went far and wide and knew no 
 law. The second characteristic to be noticed is
 
 20 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 that Canada in old days was better framed for war 
 than for peace. It had a natural stronghold in 
 Quebec, to which there is no parallel in North 
 America ; it had a race of men in the coureurs de 
 bois specially adapted for border forays ; while the 
 system, at once feudal and centralized, under which 
 the ordinary community lived, was a most effective 
 organization for war purposes. The English in 
 America were many, the French were one ; and, 
 as the days of New France were more often days 
 of war than days of peace, Canada reaped the 
 benefit of unquestioned authority, unquestioning 
 obedience, and a whole population trained for 
 service to the King. 
 
 Canadian colonization was the product of the 
 State, and the State was the Crown. The British 
 colonies, which were the neighbours and rivals of 
 Canada, were largely the product of antagonism 
 to the State. The typical New Englanders were 
 men or the descendants of men who had gone out 
 to America to live their lives as they wished, and 
 not as the King or the Home Government wished. 
 They were cradled in freedom, political and 
 religious, and self-government in one form or 
 another was of the essence of their being. They 
 did perforce a good deal of warring, in a spasmodic 
 and slipshod fashion, but their real business was 
 to grow and multiply, to settle in their own way 
 and on their own lines. There were backwoodsmen 
 and hunters among them, but there were no such 
 extremes in the English colonies as were to be 
 found in Canada. There were no habitants or 
 seigniories on the one hand, and on the other no
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 27 
 
 ' definite class of Indianized Europeans like the 
 coureurs de bois. The English colonists were all 
 citizens, more often than not grudging and selfish 
 citizens, but in all cases keenly conscious of their 
 rights if not of their responsibilities. 
 
 The conquest of Canada and the Peace of Paris 
 made the French Canadians, who had in the past 
 been most loyal subjects of the French King, sub- 
 jects of the British King, and fellow subjects with 
 these wholly dissimilar British colonists, who had 
 no instinct or tradition of heart-whole obedience, 
 and a few of whom, bad specimens of their kind, 
 found their way into Canada. A most difficult 
 position was created for the British Government. 
 That Government wished to treat the new subjects, 
 the French Canadians, with the fullest considera- 
 tion, to respect their religion and their customs. 
 At the same time the British ministers wished to 
 extend to the French Canadians within reason 
 British laws and institutions, because those laws 
 and institutions embodied, so it was assumed, 
 better conditions of life than the Canadians had 
 hitherto known, and because it was desired to con- 
 vert the Canadians gradually into British citizens. 
 Further it was desired, as far as possible, while con- 
 ciliating the French Canadians, not to run counter 
 to the wishes and prejudices of the neighbouring 
 British colonies, and also as far as possible to meet 
 the wishes of the very small but very noisy British 
 minority in Canada, and to make Canada an 
 attractive field for British settlement. The result 
 was, and could only be, a measure or measures of 
 compromise.
 
 28 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 Canada, as a British possession, began with 
 military rule, and it throve under military rule. 
 The Canadians had been accustomed to it or to 
 something very like it. They had been trained on 
 military lines. Their loyalty and obedience had 
 been to persons, to the King, to the priest, to the 
 seignior, not to a State. They had obeyed rules 
 and customs made from above, not laws made by 
 themselves. They had been brought up under 
 authority and had inherited discipline. Military 
 men, therefore, who had known discipline them- 
 selves, and who were by reason of their calling 
 essentially the King's men, who, moreover, had in 
 fighting learnt to appreciate the bravery and the 
 stubbornness of the French Canadians, sympa- 
 thized with them more and understood them better 
 than did civilians, and far better than well-meaning 
 ministers at a distance or the ill-disposed British 
 minority on the spot. 
 
 When civil government was established by the 
 Royal Proclamation of 1763, soldier governors 
 were continued. James Murray, the first Governor, 
 and his successor Carleton, were in full sympathy 
 with the Canadians, and Carleton urged the 
 importance of interfering as little as possible with 
 Canadian laws and customs, and of employing the 
 Canadian seigniors in the King's service, thereby 
 giving them the personal link which they had 
 known under the old regime. The absence of some 
 such recognition left the Canadian noblesse half- 
 hearted in their new allegiance. The introduction 
 of English laws and of English legal procedure 
 led to confusion and to general uneasiness. The
 
 CHAP, m POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 29 
 
 habitants found the bonds of discipline relaxed, 
 and began to unlearn obedience. The British 
 minority clamoured for a General Assembly, on the 
 model of the Assemblies of the adjoining provinces, 
 the grant of which had been foreshadowed by the 
 Proclamation of 1763, and they made the igno- 
 rant French peasantry familiar with the claptrap 
 phrases of colonial democracy. Under these con- 
 ditions, after the most anxious inquiry and guided 
 to a great extent by Carleton's advice, the Home 
 Government passed the Quebec Act of 1774. 
 
 The Quebec Act gave great offence to the old 
 colonies, already on the eve of revolt, mainly 
 because it included within the Province of Quebec 
 the western lands which those colonies looked upon 
 as their own sphere of future settlement and 
 colonization ; nor did it satisfy the British minority, 
 inasmuch as it made no provision for an elected 
 Assembly. By the Canadians, on the other hand, 
 it was regarded at the time with great satisfaction, 
 for it safeguarded their religion and gave them 
 their old laws in civil matters. The Act created 
 a Legislative Council, but not on an elective basis ; 
 and it withheld from the Council powers of taxa- 
 tion except in the form of purely local rates. 
 Another Imperial Act was passed at the same 
 time, the Quebec Revenue Act, which repealed 
 various taxes levied under the French Government, 
 and imposed instead certain duties on spirits and 
 molasses as well as certain licences, the proceeds of 
 which were applied to meeting the expenses of the 
 civil government and of the administration of 
 j ustice.
 
 30 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 The passing of the Quebec Act was followed 
 almost immediately by the War of American 
 Independence. In this war the Canadians as a 
 whole were neutral ; they were a lately-conquered 
 people, they had no great reason to love their con- 
 querors, and they were invited and urged to rise 
 for freedom and for imaginary privileges which 
 they did not understand. On the other hand, they 
 had liked their soldier governors ; they, or some of 
 them, had recognized the fair and kindly dealing 
 embodied in the Quebec Act ; if they had no great 
 love for the English from over the seas, they had 
 less love for the English in their immediate neigh- 
 bourhood ; and the sentiment for a King had not 
 wholly died out. The better classes tended to take 
 the King's side. Of the peasantry not a few joined 
 the Americans ; but the large majority waited on 
 events. 
 
 The outcome of the war was that Quebec was 
 well defended and well kept ; that Canada re- 
 mained a province of the British Empire with far 
 greater relative importance attached to it than 
 when it had been overshadowed by the adjacent 
 colonies, now no longer British possessions ; and 
 that the Loyalist immigration from the United 
 States led to the creation of two new British pro- 
 vinces in North America, New Brunswick, which 
 was the mainland of Nova Scotia, and Upper 
 Canada, which was the hinterland of Quebec. The 
 Loyalists brought with them intense animosity to 
 the newly-formed Republic of the United States, 
 intense loyalty to the British Crown, but none the 
 less the traditions and the instincts of colonial
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 31 
 
 self-government. Their coming into the old 
 Province of Quebec produced a new set of con- 
 ditions. The British population of Canada was 
 now no longer an insignificant minority, but a 
 strong and substantial number of tried and 
 approved citizens, whose political training had 
 been wholly different from that of the French 
 Canadians. They were mainly settled in a part of 
 the province which the French had not colonized ; 
 and this fact made it possible, if it was thought 
 desirable, to divide the province, and give to 
 either half a separate legislature and administra- 
 tion. This course was taken, again after the most 
 careful attention to all the facts and features of 
 the case ; and, by the Imperial Act of 1791, the 
 Province of Quebec was divided into the two 
 provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, either pro- 
 vince being given a constitution consisting of 
 a nominated Legislative Council and an elected 
 Assembly, but neither province being given full 
 control either of their revenues or of their executive 
 officers. By thus dividing the old Province of 
 Quebec it was hoped that friction would be avoided, 
 and that French Canada, being side by side with 
 a British province, and enjoying the same institu- 
 tions, would gradually become assimilated to it 
 without jealousy or ill-will. William Pitt's words, 
 when introducing the bill into the House of 
 Commons, were as follows : ' This division, it was 
 hoped, would put an end to the competition 
 between the old French inhabitants and the new 
 settlers from Britain, or British colonies, which 
 had occasioned the disputes and uncertainty
 
 32 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 respecting law, and other disputes of less im- 
 portance, by which the province had been so long 
 distracted.' x 
 
 At almost any time in Canadian history between 
 1783 and 1867, when British North America was 
 federated into a dominion, the arguments for 
 having one Canada or two Canadas (exclusive of 
 the Maritime Provinces) left little to choose 
 between them. There were obvious advantages 
 and obvious disadvantages in either alternative. 
 The division into two provinces led to the following 
 among other difficulties. As is pointed out in 
 Lord Durham's Report, it tended to widen the gulf 
 between French and English by marking out one 
 part of Canada for the French and the other for 
 the English. At the same time it did not effect 
 the object which the framers of the 1791 Act 
 contemplated, of preventing conflict between the 
 two races by giving them separate spheres of 
 influence ; for in the French province there came 
 into being an English district, the townships as 
 opposed to the seigniories, the settlers in which, for 
 many years, were not represented in the Quebec 
 Legislature and keenly resented French domination. 
 
 The division of the provinces again necessarily 
 involved divided executive authority in an area 
 over which it was clearly desirable that there 
 should be one supreme head. Nominally there was 
 a Governor-General of the two Canadas, and the 
 Governor of Upper Canada only bore the title of 
 Lieutenant-Governor : but for all practical pur- 
 
 1 Parliamentary Rajistir 1791, vol. xxviii, p. 514, Debate of ilaivh 1 
 1791.
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 33 
 
 poses the Governor- General soon became Governor 
 of Lower Canada only, and the substitution of two 
 Governors for one militated against uniformity of 
 policy and tended to weaken the executive power 
 in the face of growing democracy. Once more, 
 the division of the two provinces, as the dividing 
 line was drawn, created a purely inland colony, 
 whose outlet to the sea was either through the 
 sister colony or through a foreign country. The 
 result of this was to make Upper Canada, as far 
 as customs duties were concerned, dependent upon 
 Lower Canada, and thereby to create a perpetual 
 dispute between the two provinces. The Imperial 
 Canada Trade Act of 1822 was an attempt to 
 remove this cause of friction. 
 v It may be summed up that from 1791 onward 
 until Lord Durham's time there were, exclusive 
 of what are now the Maritime Provinces of the 
 Dominion, two Canadas, one mainly French, the 
 other mainly English, each province enjoying 
 representative institutions without responsible 
 government, and the Legislatures consisting in 
 either case of a nominated Legislative Council and 
 an elected Assembly. There were thus obvious and 
 abundant opportunities for friction ; between the 
 Governors, as occurred at the outset between Lord 
 Dorchester and Simcoe ; between the provinces, 
 for the reason already given ; between the races 
 and religions, wherever French and English were 
 brought into close contact ; between the two 
 houses of the Legislature a species of political fric- 
 tion which is common everywhere ; between the 
 executive power on the one hand as represented 
 
 1352-1 D
 
 34 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA TNTROD. 
 
 by the Crown and the officers of the Crown, 
 especially the Governor, and on the other the 
 Legislature, or rather the elected branch of the 
 Legislature, the main ground of dispute being 
 control of the public purse. On the whole it may 
 fairly be said that the history of Canada from 1791 
 to the time of Lord Durham's mission is, with the 
 exception of one interlude, the war of 1812, a 
 record of friction of this last-named kind, coloured 
 by race feeling and by the special conditions of 
 the respective provinces. 
 
 When the two Canadas received representative 
 institutions, the French Canadians were thereby 
 given a machinery which was familiar to English- 
 men, but which had never previously been handled 
 by Frenchmen in America. The French population 
 consisted of an intensely conservative gentry and 
 a wholly uneducated peasantry, both dominated 
 by a Church, the essence of which was absolutism. 
 As far as the French Canadians had any guidance 
 in handling their new tools, it came from the 
 British minority in Quebec and Montreal ; but not 
 many years passed before the French began to 
 better their instruction. With the early years 
 of the nineteenth century Nationalist views gained 
 ground, a French Canadian press came into 
 existence, and, while French and English more or 
 less combined against an administration which 
 was out of touch with the people, and various 
 officers of which, sent out from home, were 
 notoriously unfit for their posts, the line of race 
 cleavage became more and more distinct, and the 
 struggle for popular control of the finances was
 
 CHAP, ni POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 35 
 
 embittered by being fought with French acuteness 
 and French impatience of compromise. Mean- 
 while Upper Canada, though as a whole intensely 
 loyal to the British Crown, was leavened to 
 some extent by American immigration. 
 
 It has been stated that, during the earlier years 
 of British rule in Canada, military men proved 
 themselves to be sympathetic Governors of the 
 French Canadians. As time went on, and the 
 Canadians grew towards political manhood, the 
 soldier, unless he was an exceptional man, was 
 less likely than had previously been the case to 
 be in harmony with conditions which were becom- 
 ing increasingly democratic. In 1807, after a long 
 interregnum, Sir James Craig came out as Governor- 
 General, a soldier of tried worth, but with a soldier's 
 views of discipline, which were not softened by ill 
 health. He came into collision with the elected 
 chamber of the Legislature in Lower Canada, had 
 resort to repeated dissolutions, and put down with 
 a high hand the Nationalist paper Le Canadien, 
 which persistently vilified the Government. In 
 a long dispatch to the Secretary of State, written 
 in May 1810, in which he reviewed existing con- 
 ditions in Lower Canada, Craig represented French 
 and English in the province as bitterly opposed to 
 each other. * The line of distinction between us,' 
 he wrote, 'is completely drawn; friendship, cor- 
 diality are not to be found, even common inter- 
 course scarcely exists.' But, though the sentiment 
 of French Canadian nationality was gathering 
 force year by year, the struggle at this time was 
 not so much a race conflict as a squabble between 
 
 D 2
 
 36 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 the Executive and the Legislature, one of the 
 Governor's leading opponents, whom he relieved 
 of the office of Solicitor-General, being James 
 Stuart, who was the son of a United Empire 
 Loyalist, and who in after years was appointed 
 by Lord Durham to be Chief Justice of Canada. 
 It was during the governorship of Sir James Craig, 
 in the year 1810, that the Quebec House of Assem- 
 bly, in view of the prosperity of the province, 
 offered to take upon themselves for the time being 
 the whole charge of the civil administration. This 
 offer, which came to nothing at the time, was much 
 quoted at a later date. It meant that the elected 
 representatives realized that power is in the hands 
 of those who pay, and that so long as the Imperial 
 Government, either by direct subsidies, or from 
 territorial revenues, or from taxes levied under 
 permanent Acts, paid a large proportion of the 
 cost of the civil government of Canada, so long 
 would the power be in the hands of the Governor 
 and his officers as being the servants of the Imperial 
 Government, and not in the hands of the Assembly 
 which represented the people of Canada. Sir James 
 Craig left Canada in 1811. His successor, Sir 
 George Prevost, was a man of very different stamp. 
 Prevost set himself to conciliate the French 
 Canadians, and in that respect did good service 
 to the Empire during the war of 1812, though in 
 the actual operations of the war he did not dis- 
 tinguish himself. Quebec was little troubled by 
 the war, and the Assembly which sat there con- 
 tinued to a large extent its vendetta against the 
 existing system, impeaching the Chief Justice of
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 37 
 
 Lower Canada on the ridiculous charge of having 
 conspired against the civil liberties of the people. 
 The war, however, had beyond question a whole- 
 some effect in softening, under the influence of 
 common danger, the jealousies and the animosities 
 of race. French and English stood shoulder to 
 shoulder to repel invasion, and some sense of unity 
 came into Canada, effective at the time in reducing 
 friction, salutary in after years as a memory of 
 common patriotism. The brunt of the war fell 
 upon Upper Canada, with the result that in this 
 province, for the time being, all constitutional 
 wrangles were swallowed up in a fight for national 
 existence, and that the loyalty of the Loyalists to 
 the British connexion was intensified. It may be 
 said in brief that the war of 1812 did not affect 
 the continuity of history in the Lower Province, 
 whereas in the Upper Province it made a complete 
 break and supplied a new starting-point. 
 
 The war ended, and the old difficulties revived. 
 In Lower Canada the judges were still harried by 
 the Legislature. In Upper Canada the loyalty of 
 those who had fought and suffered was tried by 
 delays in settling arrears of pay and in giving 
 grants of land, while the development of the 
 province was retarded by restrictions on American 
 immigration, which at the time were neither 
 unreasonable nor unnecessary, as well as by the 
 amount of land which was locked up in Crown and 
 Clergy reserves. In 1816 Sir John Sherbrooke was 
 
 C?t/ 
 
 appointed Governor-in-Chief of the two Canadas, 
 and once more proved that a good soldier may 
 be also a tactful and diplomatic administrator.
 
 38 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 Unfortunately his term of office was shortened by 
 ill health, and only lasted for two years. Handling 
 the political situation in Lower Canada with much 
 skill, Sherbrooke brought to an end the quarrel 
 with the judges. He detached support from 
 Stuart, still a pronounced opponent of the Govern- 
 ment, with the result that the latter for the time 
 being retired into private life, and he worked in 
 harmony with the Speaker of the Assembly, the 
 future leader of rebellion in Lower Canada Louis 
 Papineau. He then took stock of the finances of 
 the provinces, which during the war had fallen 
 into some confusion, and he warned the Secretary 
 of State of the fact, which previously does not 
 appear to have been fully appreciated at the 
 Colonial Office, that the civil administration could 
 not be carried on independently of the votes of the 
 elected Assembly. It was on this point that the 
 whole future conflict turned. Had the revenues 
 which were at the disposal of the Crown been 
 sufficient to meet the cost of the administration, 
 the opposition of the Assembly to the Government 
 would have had little practical effect, and there 
 would have been no adequate lever for the grant of 
 responsible government ; but, inasmuch as those 
 revenues did not cover the annual charges of govern- 
 ment, and the taxpayers of the United Kingdom 
 could not be asked to make good the deficit, the 
 executive power in Canada was so far at the mercy 
 of the elected Assembly. 
 
 The result of Sherbrooke's correspondence on 
 this subject with Lord Bathurst, the Secretary of 
 State, was that in the session of 1818 the Governor-
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 39 
 
 General laid the estimates of the year before the 
 Assembly, showing clearly what was the total 
 estimated expenditure, what proportion of the 
 total was covered by revenue at the disposal of the 
 Crown, and how much the Legislature was asked to 
 provide. He reminded the Assembly of the offer 
 made by the elected representatives in 1810 to 
 take upon themselves the whole cost of the civil 
 administration, and after considerable debate the 
 Assembly voted the sum whereby the total expendi- 
 ture of the year exceeded the revenue at the 
 disposal of the Crown. 
 
 This result was largely due to personal respect 
 for Sherbrooke, and the Assembly was not minded 
 to make permanent provision for the expenses of 
 the civil administration in the form of a Civil List, 
 as the Home Government desired. Sherbrooke's 
 successor, the Duke of Richmond, had therefore, 
 in the following year, to face the same difficulty, 
 and to face it without Sherbrooke's tact and 
 influence. The estimates which he laid before the 
 Assembly unfortunately showed a large increase 
 on the expenditure side, and the Assembly took 
 upon themselves to recast the budget, scrutinizing 
 all the separate items, including the charges against 
 the Crown revenues, and reducing or omitting 
 salaries at will. In their reckless procedure they 
 arrogated to themselves control of the finances to 
 an extent which would not be paralleled at the 
 present day either in the British House of Commons 
 or in any colonial Parliament. The Bill which they 
 sent up to the Legislative Council was promptly 
 and rightly thrown out by that body, and a crisis
 
 40 JW1TISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 then began which years afterwards ended in armed 
 rebellion, in the suspension of the constitution in 
 Lower Canada, and in Lord Durham's mission. 
 
 The revenues at the disposal of the Crown in 
 Lower Canada were twofold. There were in the 
 first place certain rents and dues which had been 
 paid to the French King and which had passed to 
 his successor in title. They were known as the 
 casual and territorial revenues of the Crown. 
 * They are enjoyed by the Crown,' Lord Aylmer 
 informed the Assembly in 1831, 'by virtue of the 
 Royal Prerogative, and are neither more nor less 
 than the proceeds of landed property, which legally 
 and constitutionally belongs to the Sovereign on 
 the throne.' * In the second place, there were the 
 proceeds of certain taxes imposed by law, mainly 
 the customs and licence duties received under the 
 Imperial Quebec Revenue Act of 1774. These 
 latter receipts, more especially, the Quebec Assem- 
 bly designed to secure under their own control ; 
 on the other hand they were the quid pro quo, by 
 which the Imperial Government might hope to 
 effect its object of obtaining a more or less perma- 
 nent Civil List. 
 
 In asking for a Civil List for the life of the King, 
 the Imperial Government were only proposing that 
 the practice which prevailed at the time in England 
 should be followed in Canada. Prior to the 
 accession of King William the Fourth, the term 
 Civil List purported to mean the provision made 
 out of the hereditary revenues of the Crown, 
 
 1 Canada Crown Revenues : Return to an Address of the House of 
 Commons, July 1831, p. 3.
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 41 
 
 supplemented by the proceeds of certain taxes, 
 which were placed at the disposal of the reigning 
 sovereign to cover the ordinary civil expenses of 
 the State (other than debt charges), including the 
 expenses of the Court and the Royal Household. 
 The recalcitrant Assembly in Lower Canada con- 
 tended that the conditions of the province differed 
 from those of England and would not allow of 
 more than annual votes : they also contended 
 that the Civil List as proposed for Canada was 
 more extensive than the Civil List of the United 
 Kingdom. Their contentions were ill founded : 
 they were the contentions of a body of men who 
 were mainly French in race and in cast of mind ; 
 and who, being French, and having tasted the 
 beginnings of political freedom, were intolerant of 
 compromise. They wanted not merely the powers 
 which the British House of Commons enjoyed, but 
 more also. Oh the other hand, Lord Bathurst 
 was insistent that the Assembly should have no 
 authority to dispose of public money without the 
 concurrence of the Upper Chamber, the Legislative^ 
 Council, thereby restricting the powers of the 
 Assembly as compared with those of the House of 
 Commons. There was thus a great gulf fixed 
 between the democrats and demagogues of Lower 
 Canada on the one hand, and the conservative 
 Imperial Government on the other, but there w r as 
 still, at any rate, the semblance of loyalty to the 
 Crown ; for, when King George the Third died, 
 Louis Papineau took occasion to deliver an 
 eloquent eulogy on the blessings which Canada 
 owed to British rule.
 
 42 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 The Duke of Richmond was a Tory of the old 
 school. He formulated for the confidential con- 
 sideration of the Secretary of State proposals which 
 were probably illegal, and were certainly imprac- 
 ticable, whereby sufficient revenue should be 
 secured to the Crown to make the Government of 
 Lower Canada independent of the Legislature. 
 His death under tragic circumstances, after he had 
 only held office for one year, prevented any consti- 
 tutional experiments such as he suggested from 
 being tried. An able and high-minded Governor 
 succeeded him, the Earl of Dalhousie. He took up 
 his duties in June 1820, and did not finally leave 
 Canada until September 1828. During the term 
 of his government the quarrel between the Execu- 
 tive and the Legislature became more and more 
 embittered, and tended more and more to follow 
 the lines of race. Unreasoning and unreasonable, 
 the French Canadian majority in the Quebec House 
 of Assembly stand condemned by their persistent 
 hostility to a ruler so courteous and so public- 
 spirited as was Lord Dalhousie. It must be borne 
 in mind that the democratic movement in Canada 
 was coincident with and parallel to the democratic 
 movement in the United Kingdom. England \\ as 
 gradually moving towards the great Reform Bill, 
 while Papiiieau and his colleagues were refusing 
 supplies and making speeches in Canada ; but 
 there was no slow broadening out in French 
 Canada ; and there was greater haste and bitter- 
 ness in fighting for the fullness of liberty, in that the 
 existing instalment of freedom had not been earned 
 by long years of training and of steady growth.
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 43 
 
 Lord Dalhousie's instructions were to aim at 
 securing ' the permanent assignment of a fixed 
 annual revenue to meet the charge of such a Civil 
 List as the Province requires for its proper adminis- 
 tration '- 1 This was precisely what the Quebec 
 Assembly was determined not to concede. In 
 their crusade against the Government the legis- 
 lators of Lower Canada had been able to point to 
 sinecures, to abuses in salaries and pensions, which 
 they contended should be abolished, before the 
 people were asked to make good an expenditure 
 which included such items. The abuses existed 
 and were notorious, but they were not peculiar 
 to Canada : they were rife in England also ; and 
 such Governors as Sherbrooke and Dalhousie 
 objected to them as much as did Papineau and his 
 friends. Their existence, however, gave material 
 for agitation to the popular party, and so did the 
 defalcation of the Receiver-General of Canada, an 
 Imperial officer, which came to light in 1823. 
 When Dalhousie first met the Legislature in 
 December 1820, he set out clearly the average 
 and recurrent cost of the civil administration of 
 Lower Canada, and invited the Assembly to make 
 permanent and adequate provision for it. The 
 Assembly refused to give more than a vote for one 
 year, and in doing so they introduced new items 
 of expenditure and assumed control of the Crown 
 revenues. Their Bill went up to the Legislative 
 Council, who threw it out and coupled the rejection 
 with strongly worded resolutions, the result of the 
 quarrel between the two Houses being that the 
 
 1 Dispatch of Lord Bathurst, September 11, 1820.
 
 44 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 Governor was left without any legal authority to 
 meet the expenditure of the year. In December 
 1821 the Legislature met again, and it was made 
 clearer than before that the Assembly were only 
 asked to make permanent provision for permanent 
 expenditure, casual contingencies being left to be 
 covered by annual votes. This time the direct 
 issue was raised by a motion in the House that 
 permanent provision should be made for the 
 support of the civil administration of the province 
 during the life of the King. The motion was lost 
 by a majority of six to one ; the Assembly then 
 embodied their grievances and views in an address 
 to the King, refused to vote the necessary supplies 
 for the coming year, and refused also or threatened 
 to refuse to renew certain expiring Revenue Acts, 
 so as entirely to cripple the Executive for want of 
 funds. 
 
 At the same time, and by the same action, they 
 were crippling Upper Canada, which was entitled 
 to a share of the customs duties under the Acts in 
 question ; and already the Upper Province, unable 
 to obtain a satisfactory adjustment of its financial 
 relations with Lower Canada, had asked for the 
 intervention of the Imperial Government. The 
 result was that in June 1822 the Under-Secretary f or 
 the Colonies, Wilmot, afterwards Wilmot Horton, 
 introduced a Bill into the House of Commons, 
 ' to make more effectual provision for the govern- 
 ment of the Provinces of Lower and Upper Canada, 
 and to regulate the trade thereof.' The Bill pro- 
 vided for reunion of the provinces ; it was strongly 
 supported on the Liberal side of the House by
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 45 
 
 ' Bear ' Ellice, with whom it had in fact originated ; 
 but it was opposed by Mackintosh and some other 
 Radical members, not so much on its merits as on 
 the ground that the peoples and legislatures of the 
 two provinces had not been given an opportunity 
 of expressing their views. In consequence of this 
 opposition, as the session was drawing to a close, the 
 Government contented themselves with legislating 
 on the subject of the financial relations between 
 the two provinces, leaving the wider question of 
 reunion to stand over for another session. Thus 
 the Canada Trade Act was passed on the 5th of 
 August 1822, and by its terms the Quebec Legis- 
 lature was restricted from varying the customs 
 duties levied at the ports of Lower Canada to the 
 detriment of the Upper Province. Under existing 
 conditions the Act was both necessary and salutary, 
 but it was avowedly only an instalment, and the 
 matter as a whole was badly handled. The British 
 Government made the mistake so common in the 
 colonial history of Great Britain, of putting their 
 hand to the plough and looking back. They went 
 forward, and stopped half-way. They proposed 
 a large constitutional change, and, having given 
 their scheme to the public, they did not carry the 
 change through. At the same time they went far 
 enough to override by Imperial legislation the 
 representative Assembly of Lower Canada and to 
 restrain their taxing powers. In short, there was 
 interference from home with a colonial legislature, 
 enough to irritate, but not enough to cure more 
 than a part of the evil which it was sought to 
 remedy. In speaking on the Reunion Bill Ellice
 
 46 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 warned the House of Commons that ' the only 
 consequence of delay would be the excitement of 
 feelings of animosity between the English and 
 French inhabitants in the meantime, and that the 
 House ultimately would find it absolutely necessary 
 to pass the Bill V and years afterwards Lord 
 Durham wrote in his Report (ii. 47) : 
 
 ' It is said that the appeals to the national pride 
 and animosities of the French became more direct 
 and general on the occasion of the abortive attempt 
 to reunite Upper and Lower Canada in 1822, which 
 the leaders of the Assembly viewed or represented 
 as a blow aimed at the institutions of their province. 
 The anger of the English was excited by the 
 denunciations of themselves which, subsequently 
 to this period, they were in the habit of hearing.' 
 
 It had been intended by the Home Government 
 to take up again the Reunion Bill, as soon as the 
 people of Canada had had time to express their 
 views upon it ; but the reception of the Bill in the 
 two provinces was on the whole so unfavourable 
 that no more was heard of it in the House of 
 Commons. In Upper Canada opinion was divided, 
 but such leading men as Dr. Strachan and Beverley 
 Robinson were opposed to it. In Lower Canada 
 the French Canadians were heart-whole in their 
 opposition. They regarded the Bill, or professed 
 to regard it, as an attempt to * anglify ' to 
 denationalize French Canada. The English in the 
 province were divided ; only in the Eastern Town- 
 ships, unrepresented in the Quebec Legislature 
 and chafing against French indifference to their 
 
 1 Hansard for 1822, vol. vii, p. 1709
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 47 
 
 interests, was there strong and solid backing of 
 the Bill. The opponents of the measure at Montreal 
 and Quebec sent Papineau and John Neilson, the 
 latter being a Scotchman and a journalist, as their 
 spokesmen to England : while Stuart, no longer in 
 line with the French, took the lead of the party 
 who favoured reunion. 
 
 Papineau' s absence, and appreciation of the fact 
 that the Canada Trade Act had been passed and 
 that a Reunion Bill was pending, made the Quebec 
 Legislature, which met again in January 1823, more 
 amenable than before. The estimates, as presented 
 to the Assembly, were divided into two schedules, 
 one of which contained the general or permanent 
 establishments, the cost of which was covered by 
 the Crown revenues ; the other contained what 
 were termed local establishments, for which the 
 Assembly was asked to provide. The necessary 
 supplies were voted, other useful work was done, 
 and Lord Dalhousie closed the session with compli- 
 ments and thanks. 
 
 Soon after its close the announcement was made 
 that the Imperial Government would not proceed 
 with the Reunion Bill. Papineau came back to 
 Quebec and to the Legislature ; and, when the 
 Assembly met again towards the end of November 
 1823, for the last session of an expiring Parliament, 
 the irreconcilables had it their own way. Papineau 
 distinguished himself by personalities against the 
 Governor ; and when the estimates were brought 
 in, arranged in two schedules as before, he and his 
 followers assumed control of the whole finances 
 and of all the establishments, and reduced the
 
 48 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA TXTROD. 
 
 salaries, including the Governor's, by 25 per cent. 
 The Bill which embodied these proceedings was at 
 once thrown out by the Legislative Council. In 
 this session, which lasted till the 9th of March 
 1824, the majority of the Quebec Legislature found 
 occasion to flout the wishes and injure the interests 
 of the people of Upper Canada, as well as to cripple 
 the administration and check the progress of their 
 own province ; and when Lord Dalhousie closed 
 the session, he pointed out the grave mischief 
 which had resulted from the unwarranted and 
 unconstitutional claim of the one branch of the 
 Legislature ' to appropriate the whole revenue of 
 the province according to its pleasure ', and the 
 withholding of supplies in order to enforce the 
 claim. ' This subject,' he continued, ' has occupied 
 every session from the first to the last, and is now 
 transmitted to those which shall follow. It has 
 caused incalculable mischief to the province ; and 
 now leaves it to struggle under difficulties, while 
 every inhabitant of it must see that the encouraging 
 aid of the Legislature is alone wanting to arouse 
 powerful exertions and draw forth those resources 
 which, without that aid, must, in a great measure, 
 be dormant and useless within its reach.' 
 
 On the 6th of June, 1824, Lord Dalhousie sailed 
 for England on leave of absence, and the Lieutenant- 
 Go vernor, Sir Francis Burton, took over the 
 administration. Burton's case was one of those 
 which had given the Quebec Assembly substantial 
 ground for complaint. His commission as Lieu- 
 tenant-Go vernor was dated November 1808, but 
 he did not go out to Canada till 1822, after his
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 49 
 
 absence had called forth remonstrances from the 
 Legislature. Notwithstanding, he seems to have 
 attained considerable popularity among the French 
 Canadians, possibly because the opponents of the 
 Government hoped thereby to emphasize their 
 antipathy to Lord Dalhousie. A general election 
 was held in July and August ; and in the following 
 January the new Legislature met, Papineau being 
 again chosen as Speaker, and an opportunity being 
 found by the Government in the course of the 
 session to secure their former opponent, James 
 Stuart, for the post of Attorney- General. The 
 Lieutenant-Governor brought in the estimates in 
 a different form from that which had been adopted 
 by Lord Dalhousie. He abandoned the two 
 schedules, and with them the distinction which 
 had been drawn between the charges against per- 
 manent funds and those for which local votes were 
 required. The estimates which he presented 
 treated the whole expenditure as one, and he asked 
 the Assembly to vote a sum sufficient to cover the 
 excess of the total expenditure over the revenue 
 provided by law. The Assembly went through the 
 whole estimates, including the permanent establish- 
 ments, and, after making large reductions, voted 
 the sum which they considered to be adequate for 
 one year. They had now, so they thought and 
 hoped, made good their claim to control the 
 disposal of all revenues, permanent as well as 
 temporary, and to give supply only from year to 
 year. So they held, and Lord Bathurst interpreted 
 what had taken place in much the same sense, 
 for, in a dispatch dated the 4th of June 1825, he 
 
 1352-1 E
 
 50 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 severely censured Sir Francis Burton. Burton, it 
 afterwards appeared, had acted with imperfect 
 knowledge of previous instructions, and was 
 consequently exculpated. The instructions to 
 the Governor-General, said Lord Bathurst, in the 
 dispatch referred to, had imposed upon him 
 
 ' the necessity of refusing all arrangements that 
 went in any degree to compromise the integrity of 
 the revenue known by the name of the permanent 
 revenue ; and it appears to me, on a careful 
 examination of the measures which have been 
 adopted, that they are at variance with those 
 specified and positive instructions. The Executive 
 Government had sent in an estimate in which 110 
 distinction was made between the expenditure 
 chargeable upon the permanent revenue of the 
 Crown and that which remained to be provided for 
 out of the revenues raised under colonial Acts. In 
 other words, had the whole revenue been raised 
 under colonial Acts, there would have been no 
 difference in the manner of sending in the estimates. 
 . . . Instead of the King's permanent revenue 
 having certain fixed charges placed upon it, of 
 which the Assembly were made cognisant, the 
 revenue was pledged together with the colonial 
 revenue, as the ways and means of providing for 
 the expenses of the year. . . . The consequence of 
 this arrangement is, that the permanent revenue 
 will not be applied for the payment of such expenses 
 as His Majesty may deem fit, but on the contrary, 
 for the payment of whatever expenses the colonial 
 Legislature may think necessary.' x 
 
 This misunderstanding about the estimates made 
 Lord Dalhousie's position more difficult than ever. 
 
 1 This dispatch will be found printed at pp. 93-4 of vol. iii of Christie's 
 History of Lower Canada.
 
 CHAP, m POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 51 
 
 He returned from England in September 1825 : 
 the Legislature met again in January 1826, and 
 in February he laid before them the estimates, 
 divided into two parts, as they had been before 
 Sir Francis Burton tried his hand at compromise. 
 The Secretary of State's criticism of Burton was 
 communicated to the Assembly later in the session, 
 but the only result, as far as the Assembly were 
 concerned, was an Appropriation Bill in the same 
 form as that to which Lord Bathurst had taken 
 exception, and a claim, formulated at once in 
 Resolutions of the House and in an Address to the 
 King, ' that to the Legislature alone appertains 
 the right of distributing all monies levied in the 
 colonies.' Lord Dalhousie, on the other hand, in 
 proroguing the Legislature, intimated very cour- 
 teously that he must continue to adopt the form 
 of estimates ' showing to you one branch of the 
 revenue for your information, and the other branch 
 for your appropriation '.* 
 
 In the next session, however, which opened in 
 January 1827, Lord Dalhousie did make a change 
 in the form in which he presented the estimates 
 to the Assembly, for he laid before them an estimate 
 of that portion only of the year's expenditure which 
 would not be a charge against permanent revenues, 
 thus removing the latter from the purview of the 
 elected representatives. The latter retorted by 
 practically refusing supply, and they added to the 
 difficulties of the Government by refusing to renew 
 the militia laws, and thereby recalling into existence 
 two old ordinances on the subject, which the 
 
 1 Christie, vol. iii, pp. 106-7. 
 E 2
 
 52 BRITISH NORTH" AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 Governor-General found himself bound to enforce, 
 and in enforcing which he encountered disloyalty 
 and intrigue. 
 
 In July 1827 he dissolved the Parliament : 
 a general election left matters much as they were : 
 the new Legislature met in November : Papineau 
 was again chosen as Speaker : in view of his 
 virulent opposition to the Government and personal 
 insults to the head of the Government, Lord Dal- 
 housie refused to confirm the choice : and, as the 
 majority of the Assembly upheld their champion, 
 the Legislature was prorogued before any business 
 had been transacted. Petitions and counter -peti- 
 tions were now drawn up, and delegates were sent 
 to England in the Spring of 1828. Shortly after 
 their departure, Lord Dalhousie learnt that he had 
 been appointed to be commander-in-chief of the 
 forces in India, and in September 1828 he finally 
 left Canada, having, in an impossible position and 
 amid every form of malignant misrepresentation, 
 held the reins of government with dignity, impar- 
 tiality, and a single eye to the welfare of the 
 Canadian people. 
 
 In England there had been changes. In April 
 1827 Lord Liverpool resigned, and Lord Bathurst 
 left the Colonial Office, having presided over it for 
 a longer time than any Secretary of State before or 
 since. For three and a half months in Canning's 
 administration Lord Goderich was Colonial Secre- 
 tary. In July 1827 he wrote a dispatch offering 
 to hand over the revenues of the Crown to the 
 Assembly in exchange for a Civil List of 36,000 per 
 annum, but, as the Assembly never met for business,
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 53 
 
 the dispatch could not be communicated to them, 
 and if it had been laid before the House, the offer 
 would have been at once refused. Huskisson suc- 
 ceeded Goderich, again only for a few months 
 from the middle of August 1827 till the end of May 
 1828, and, while he was Secretary of State, he 
 moved in the House of Commons, on the 2nd of 
 May 1828, that a select committee should be 
 appointed to inquire into the state of the Civil 
 Government of Canada, as established by the 
 Act of 1791. 
 
 When the Duke of Richmond came out to govern 
 Canada in 1818, his son-in-law, Sir Peregrine Mait- 
 land, came with him to take up the appointment 
 of Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada. Mait- 
 land had served with much distinction in the 
 Peninsula, and had commanded the First Brigade 
 of Guards at Waterloo. In later years he was 
 Governor of the Cape. He took up his appoint- 
 ment in Upper Canada in the midst of an agitation 
 against the Government, which had been excited 
 by Robert Gourlay, a well-meaning but crack- 
 brained Scotchman, who attributed the stagnation 
 of the province to the obstructive character of the 
 Government, and who was taken too seriously- 
 being tried and imprisoned by a course of proce- 
 dure which was harsh and impolitic as well as of 
 doubtful legality. In March 1822 Sir John Sher- 
 brooke, now living in retirement, who had been 
 consulted by Lord Bathurst as to the advisability 
 of reuniting the two provinces, wrote that ' I could 
 not avoid remarking when I was in Upper Canada, 
 that in many instances a stronger bias prevailed in
 
 54 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 favour of the American than of the British form 
 of government.' l Already, before Maitland's arrival, 
 there had been in Upper Canada friction between 
 the two Houses, and a protest had been made 
 by the elected Assembly against the Executive 
 Council being composed of men who were members 
 of the Upper House. Maitland introduced into 
 the Upper Province a similar classification of the 
 finances to that which was made in Lower Canada, 
 marking off the King's revenues from those which 
 depended on the votes of the Assembly, and he 
 took his advisers from a circle of able and patriotic 
 though not democratic men, such as Beverley 
 Robinson and Dr. Strachan, who were subse- 
 quently grouped under the name of the ' Family 
 Compact '. Thus there grew up year by year 
 antagonism between a more or less despotic 
 Government, and the general community, the most 
 loyal part of which, the United Empire Loyalists, 
 had yet brought into their new homes the tradi- 
 tions of self-government, while the least loyal were 
 leavened by American Republicanism. It is true 
 that the feeling was not all dangerous, and the 
 administration was not all reactionary. A law 
 passed in 1820 for ' increasing the representation 
 of the Commons of this province in the House 
 of Assembly' was a wise and liberal measure of 
 electoral reform, and the resentment of the people 
 of Upper Canada against the French Canadian 
 majority in the Quebec Assembly for crippling 
 their customs revenue, which led to an appeal to 
 the Imperial Government and to the passing of 
 
 See Canadian Constitutional Development (Egerton and Grant), p. 125.
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 55 
 
 the Canada Trade Act, diluted to some extent 
 their discontent with their own administration. 
 Yet it was under Maitland's regime that the men 
 came to the front who were afterwards prominent 
 in constitutional agitation or in open rebellion, 
 among others Marshall Spring Bidwell, son of an 
 American immigrant, Barnabas Bidwell, who was 
 elected to the Assembly in 1825, and subsequently 
 became Speaker, Dr. Rolph, and William Lyon 
 Mackenzie, the last of whom started in 1824 an 
 anti-Government paper, the Colonial Advocate, and 
 in after years played much the same part in Upper 
 Canada that Papineau played in the Lower 
 Province. In 1828 Sir Peregrine Maitland was 
 succeeded as Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada 
 by Sir John Colborne, another veteran soldier of 
 the Napoleonic wars, who had commanded the 
 far-famed 52nd regiment at Waterloo. 
 
 The Select Committee of the House of Commons 
 which, at Huskisson's instance, had been appointed 
 to inquire into the state of the Civil Government 
 of Canada, reported in July 1828. By this time 
 Huskisson had left the Duke of Wellington's 
 administration, and his place as Secretary of State 
 for War and the Colonies had been taken by Sir 
 George Murray. The report, though a short one, 
 covered much ground, and was not wanting in 
 sympathy with the complaints which had come 
 from Canada. On the vital question in Lower 
 Canada, the control of the public revenues, its 
 terms were as follows : 
 
 ' Although, from the opinion given by the 
 Law Officers of the Crown, your Committee must
 
 56 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 conclude that the legal right of appropriating the 
 revenues arising from the Act of 1774 is vested in 
 the Crown, they are prepared to say that the real 
 interests of the provinces would be best promoted 
 by placing the receipt and expenditure of the 
 whole public revenue under the superintendence 
 and control of the House of Assembly.' 
 
 The Committee advised that the Governor, the 
 members of the Executive Council, and the judges 
 should be rendered 
 
 ' independent of the annual votes of the House of 
 Assembly for their respective salaries . . . and if 
 the officers above enumerated are placed on the 
 footing recommended, they are of the opinion 
 that all the revenues of the province (except the 
 territorial and hereditary revenues) should be 
 placed under the control and direction of the 
 Legislative Assembly.' 
 
 It was suggested that in both the Canadas 
 a more independent character should be given to 
 the Upper Houses, the Legislative Councils, and 
 4 that the majority of their members should not 
 consist of persons holding offices at the pleasure of 
 the Crown', but the Committee were not prepared 
 under existing circumstances to recommend the 
 union of the two provinces. Various other subjects, 
 including land tenure in Lower Canada, the dis- 
 posal of the estates which had belonged to the 
 Jesuits, and the Clergy reserves in Upper Canada, 
 were dealt with in the report, and a kind of post- 
 script advised ' strict and instant inquiry ' into 
 the allegations which had been made against Lord 
 Dalhousie's administration, and which had been 
 brought up at a late stage of the proceedings.
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 57 
 
 The Committee had only sat for between two and 
 three months, and their work had been hurried. 
 Their reference to the charges against Lord Dal- 
 housie was unfair to the latter in creating a pre- 
 sumption that the charges were true, and the 
 recommendations made in the report were, in the 
 main, too general to give much guidance towards 
 a detailed and practical solution of the difficulties. 
 Meanwhile Sir James Kempt, reputed to have been 
 a personal friend of Huskisson's, had succeeded 
 Lord Dalhousie, but as Administrator only, not 
 as Governor-General. He was another veteran 
 soldier, had been Quartermaster-General of the 
 Forces in Canada when Sir James Craig was 
 Governor, and had followed Lord Dalhousie as 
 Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia. As Adminis- 
 trator of Canada, he did little more than mark 
 time for two years, when in October 1830 he was 
 succeeded by Lord Aylmer. Kempt's opening 
 speech to the Legislature had been prescribed for 
 him by Sir George Murray, who also addressed to 
 him a dispatch for communication to the Legis- 
 lature dealing with some of the matters which had 
 come under the purview of the Select Committee. 
 The Secretary of State laid down that, while the 
 Imperial Statutes on the subject continued in 
 existence, the revenues raised under their pro- 
 visions could not be handed over to the control 
 of the Provincial Legislature, but that after the 
 salaries of the Governor and of the judges had been 
 met from this source, the balance of the funds 
 would not be appropriated until the Assembly had 
 had an opportunity of advising as to the best
 
 58 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 method in which it could be applied to the public 
 service. The dispatch went on to say that a scheme 
 was in contemplation * for the permanent settle- 
 ment of the financial concerns of Lower Canada '. 
 This scheme was embodied in a Bill introduced 
 into the House of Commons in 1829 by Sir George 
 Murray, but not passed into law, whereby it was 
 intended to hand over to the Canadian Assemblies 
 the proceeds arising from the Imperial Act of 1774 
 in return for a Civil List. Murray's dispatch pro- 
 duced no effect, and the Quebec Assembly still 
 arrogated control of the whole public revenues. 
 The session of 1828-9 in Lower Canada, however, 
 resulted in one important new electoral law, where- 
 by the Eastern Townships were given eight repre- 
 sentatives in the Assembly ; and in 1830 another 
 grievance of the Townships was temporarily reme- 
 died by the establishment in these districts of 
 Land Registry Offices. 
 
 Lord Aylmer, a soldier like his predecessors in 
 the Government of Canada, held office, for a few 
 months as Administrator and subsequently as 
 Governor-General, from October 1830 to August 
 1835. Meanwhile the Reform Ministry came into 
 power in England, and Lord Goderich, afterwards 
 Earl of Ripon, went to the Colonial Office. Both 
 Secretary of State and Governor-General were bent 
 on a policy of conciliation, and by the Secretary 
 of State's instructions Lord Aylmer, in February 
 1831, offered to the Assembly to hand over to 
 their control all the Crown revenues, other than the 
 casual and territorial revenues, in return for a Civil 
 List for the life of the King. The amount to be
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 59 
 
 handed over was estimated at 38,000 per annum, 
 the casual and territorial revenues at over 7,000 
 per annum, and the cost of the Civil List at 19,500, 
 which included the salaries of the Governor, the 
 Civil Secretary, the judges, and the law officers. 
 The offer fared no better than previous offers of 
 the kind ; the Assembly persisted in their opposi- 
 tion and in their claims ; they refused to grant 
 a Civil List, and embodied a statement of their 
 grievances in a petition to the King. The Home 
 Government meanwhile continued its efforts at 
 conciliation. A dispatch, written in February 1831, 
 while Lord Aylmer was sounding the Assembly, 
 intimated that in the event of permanent provision 
 being made for the payment of the judicial salaries, 
 the judges should in future hold office during good 
 behaviour and not at the Royal pleasure, thereby 
 securing their independence both of the Royal 
 authority and of the control of the popular branch 
 of the Legislature. The dispatch at the same time 
 laid down that no judge would in future be nomi- 
 nated as a member either of the Executive or of 
 the Legislative Council, with the single exception 
 of the Chief Justice of Quebec, who would remain 
 a member of the Legislative Council of the Lower 
 Province, in order to advise on permanent legisla- 
 tion, while at the same time abstaining from party 
 politics. In a later dispatch, dated the 7th of July, 
 Lord Goderich answered in detail the complaints 
 which had been embodied in the petition to the 
 King, and gave every indication of meeting to the 
 utmost within reason the wishes of the Assembly. 
 Yet another dispatch, written in November of the
 
 60 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 same year, dealt with the disposal of Crown lands, 
 and laid down that for free grants open sale in 
 the public market ought to be substituted. Nor 
 did the Imperial Government content itself with 
 friendly dispatches from the Secretary of State and 
 instructions to the Governor to move along the 
 path of constitutional reform. Before the session 
 of 1831 ended in England, a law was passed in 
 September whereby the revenues which the Crown 
 had controlled under the Quebec Revenue Act of 
 1774 were handed over unconditionally to the 
 Legislatures of the two Canadian Provinces. These 
 were revenues which had hitherto been offered in 
 return for a Civil List, and they were now ceded 
 in the hope that the Legislatures would repay con- 
 fidence with confidence, and having freely received 
 would freely give. In the case of Upper Canada 
 the confidence was not misplaced, for the Legis- 
 lature voted a Civil List, but the Quebec Assembly 
 took what was given and made no return. The 
 act was a grave mistake. It deprived the Imperial 
 Government of a lever, which had hitherto been 
 in its hands, for bringing the French Canadian 
 Assembly at Quebec into line with the House of 
 Commons in England, and it left hardly any funds 
 in Canada at the absolute disposal of the Crown 
 other than the casual and territorial revenues. 
 The Duke of Wellington protested against the Bill 
 in the House of Lords, but the protest was unheeded, 
 and, armed with greater powers, the Quebec 
 Assembly became more unmanageable than ever. 
 
 The Secretary of State invited from that Assem- 
 bly, in return for the concessions which had been
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 61 
 
 made, a law securing the independence of the 
 judges and providing permanently for their salaries, 
 and also a small Civil List to cover the salaries of 
 the Governor and four of the principal officers. 
 In the session of the Quebec Legislature of 1831-2 
 a Bill was passed nominally securing the inde- 
 pendence of the judges, but leaving their salaries 
 dependent upon annual votes and claiming the right 
 of the Assembly to control the casual and territorial 
 revenues ; while a Civil List amounting only to 
 5,900 was rejected. The Imperial Government 
 disallowed the Judicial Bill, and intimated that 110 
 further application would be made to the Assembly 
 for a Civil List, but that the Civil List charges 
 (other than the salaries of the judges) would be 
 met from the funds which still remained at the 
 disposal of the Crown. Meanwhile an election riot 
 at Montreal in 1832, which resulted in two or three 
 deaths from the firing of the soldiers, embittered 
 political feeling ; the dismissal from office of the 
 able Attorney-General Stuart, who had been 
 specially obnoxious to and virulently assailed by 
 the Assembly, gave to that body an added sense 
 of power and increased their aggressiveness ; the 
 incorporation of the British American Land Com- 
 pany, which was formed to develop the lands in 
 the Eastern Townships, and which came into 
 existence about the year 1833, was resented by the 
 French Canadians as an attempt to anglicize the 
 province ; and year by year added to the intensity 
 of race feeling and to the impossibility of com- 
 promise 011 constitutional lines. 
 
 Early in 1833 Lord Goderich was succeeded as
 
 62 BRITISH NORTH AMKRLCA INTKOD. 
 
 Secretary of State for the Colonies by Mr. Stanley, 
 afterwards Earl of Derby. In June 1834 Stanley 
 was succeeded by Spring Rice. During Sir Robert 
 Peel's short administration in 1834-5 Lord Aber- 
 deen was Secretary of State, and when Lord 
 Melbourne returned to power in 1835, Lord Glenelg 
 went to the Colonial Office. The contumacy of the 
 Quebec Assembly culminated in February 1834 
 in a kind of Petition of Rights embodied in ninety- 
 two resolutions, which, among other points, de- 
 manded an elective Legislative Council, held up 
 the United States as a model for Canada, and 
 called for the impeachment of the Governor- 
 General. In the House of Commons the French 
 Canadians had now found a spokesman violent 
 enough for their purpose in John Arthur Roebuck, 
 member for Bath, who in April 1834 moved for 
 the appointment of a Committee ' to inquire into 
 the means of remedying the evils which exist 
 in the form of government now existing in Upper 
 and Lower Canada '. Stanley met his attack by 
 moving for a Select Committee to inquire into and 
 report how far the recommendations of the Com- 
 mittee of 1828 had been carried out, and to inquire 
 into the other grievances set forward by the 
 Assembly of Lower Canada, the scope of the 
 Committee being confined to the Lower Province. 
 This Committee, which included all the members 
 of the earlier 1828 Committee who still had seats 
 in the House of Commons, reported at the beginning 
 of July, but its report was confined to a few lines 
 stating that the Home Government had shown the 
 greatest anxiety to carry out the recommendations
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 63 
 
 made by the Committee of 1828, that the efforts 
 had been in part successful, but in part had failed 
 owing to the differences between the two Houses 
 of the Legislature, and between the Assembly 
 and the Imperial Government, and that the com- 
 mittee thought it unadvisable to express any 
 opinion on the points at issue, or to lay the evidence 
 which they had taken before the House, being 
 persuaded ' that the practical measures for the 
 future administration of Lower Canada may best 
 be left to the mature consideration of the Govern- 
 ment responsible for their adoption and execution '. 
 This report left matters where they were : possibly 
 the members of the Committee were unwilling to 
 exhibit divergent views, or they were minded to 
 keep the House of Commons outside the contro- 
 versy between the Imperial Government and the 
 Quebec Assembly. 
 
 In Lower Canada matters went from bad to 
 worse. A new general election, held in the autumn 
 of 1834, resulted in further strengthening Papi- 
 neau's following, and the British element in Lower 
 Canada, now thoroughly alarmed, formed consti- 
 tutional associations at Quebec and Montreal. The 
 withholding of supplies had meant withholding 
 of the salaries of the public officials, and to relieve 
 the position, the Secretary of State, Spring Rice, 
 authorized in September 1834 an advance of 
 31,000 from the military chest. This action of the 
 Home Government was made a fresh grievance 
 on the part of the French Canadian majority, when 
 the new Parliament met in 1835, for they regarded 
 it, to quote their own words, as 'destroying the
 
 64 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 wholesome and constitutional influence which the 
 people ought to have through their representatives 
 over every branch of the Executive Government '. 
 The Legislature met on the 21st of February 1835, 
 and was prorogued on the 18th of March, as the 
 Assembly declined to transact any further business. 
 In April, Lord Aylmer published a dispatch from 
 Lord Aberdeen in which it was stated that the Govern- 
 ment Sir Robert Peel's Ministry had decided to 
 send out a Royal Commissioner to Lower Canada. 
 It had been at first intended to send Manners 
 Sutton, Viscount Canterbury, who had been Speaker 
 of the House of Commons, and when he declined, 
 the second Lord Amherst was offered and accepted 
 the appointment ; but the change of Ministry, which 
 took place before he could leave England, resulted 
 in different arrangements for the mission and 
 a different personnel. It is not quite clear what 
 were contemplated by Sir Robert Peel and Lord 
 Aberdeen to have been the relations between Lord 
 Amherst, had he gone out, and Lord Aylmer ; but 
 apparently Lord Amherst was, like Lord Durham 
 at a later date, designated both as High Com- 
 missioner for the special purpose of investigating 
 the grievances of which the Quebec Assembly had 
 so abundantly complained, and also as Governor, 
 so that Lord Aylmer would have been superseded 
 for the time being, but not necessarily recalled. 
 When Lord Melbourne returned to office and Lord 
 Glenelg became Colonial Secretary, Lord Aylmer 
 was told, though in flattering terms, that his ad- 
 ministration must be considered to be terminated, 
 and it was decided to send out three Royal Com-
 
 CHAP. ITT POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 65 
 
 missioners, the Chairman of the Commission being 
 also appointed Governor-in-Chief of the two 
 Canadas and of the other British North American 
 provinces, with the exception of Newfoundland. 
 The man selected for the post was an Irish peer, 
 the Earl of Gosford, who was the first civilian 
 Governor of Canada since it became a British 
 possession, and his colleagues as Commissioners 
 were Sir George Gipps, afterwards Governor of 
 New South Wales, and Sir Charles Grey, a retired 
 Indian judge. Gipps was an exponent of Whig 
 views, as they were then understood. Grey was 
 an exponent of Tory principles, and as such was 
 credited with being a nominee of King William 
 the Fourth. The Secretary to the Commission was 
 T. F. Elliot, a member of the Colonial Office, after- 
 wards Assistant Under-Secretary of State for the 
 Colonies. The Commissioners reached Quebec 
 on the 23rd of August 1835, and on the 17th of 
 September Lord Aylmer left for England, regarded 
 by the British population of Canada as sacrificed 
 to the clamour of a disloyal majority. 
 
 What were in rough outline the main demands 
 of the majority at this date, and what was the 
 tenor of Lord Glenelg's instructions to the Com- 
 missioners ? The Quebec Assembly had many 
 grievances real or alleged, but the points on which 
 they specially laid stress were the following. In 
 the first place, they demanded unconditional con- 
 trol of all the public revenues of every kind. In 
 the second place, they demanded an elective Legis- 
 lative Council. In the third place, they attacked 
 the composition of the Executive Council. In the 
 
 1352-1 F
 
 <;; BRITISH NORTH AMERICA IXTROTX 
 
 fourth place, they complained of the way in which 
 the patronage of the Crown had been exercised 
 in the matter of appointments. Fifthly, they de- 
 manded the repeal of the Imperial statutes dealing 
 with the tenure of land in Lower Canada ; and 
 sixthly, in connexion with the disposal of waste 
 lands, they demanded that the charter given to 
 the British American Land Company should be 
 cancelled. They had not hitherto in so many words 
 demanded that the Executive Council should be 
 responsible to the Legislature, but the essence of 
 their demands was to obtain full control of all the 
 Executive offices by securing entire command of all 
 the means of paying them ; and their hostility to 
 the British American Land Company was dictated 
 not only by seeing in it an agency for increasing 
 the proportion of the British population of the 
 province, but also by appreciating that the pay- 
 ments made by the Company to the Crown added 
 to the revenues which were withheld from the 
 elected Assembly. 
 
 Lord Glenelg's instructions were embodied in 
 terms indicating the utmost desire of the Home 
 Government to meet, as far as possible, the wishes 
 of the Assembly ; but he laid down, as necessary 
 preliminaries to handing over all the remaining 
 Crown revenues to popular control, that provision 
 should be made for securing the independence of 
 the judges, that an adequate Civil List should be 
 granted, that the management of the waste lands 
 of the province, as opposed to the receipts from 
 those lands, should remain with the Crown, and 
 that existing pensions of retired public officers
 
 CHAP, m POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 67 
 
 should be continued. He authorized inquiry into 
 the constitution of the Legislative Council, but 
 pointed out, without in so many words vetoing 
 the proposal, that the introduction of the elective 
 principle in connexion with that Council would be 
 a constitutional change of the gravest and most 
 vital kind. He instructed the Commissioners to 
 consider any amendment which would increase the 
 efficiency of the Executive Council ; to investigate 
 the tenures of land in the province, including the 
 seigniorial rights claimed by the Sulpicians in and 
 around Montreal ; and to advise whether or not 
 any further charters should be granted by the 
 Crown, such as had been given to the British 
 American Land Company. He also directed atten- 
 tion to the state of education in Lower Canada, 
 and to the possibility of so adjusting the financial 
 relations between the two Canadian provinces as 
 to admit of the repeal of the Canada Trade Act. 
 
 Cotemporaneously with the instructions to the 
 Commissioners, Lord Glenelg addressed a dispatch 
 to Lord Gosford, not as Chief Commissioner but as 
 Governor, in which he dealt with such complaints 
 of the Assembly as needed no investigation, but 
 could be dealt with at once by the executive 
 authority of the Governor. Prominent among 
 these was the alleged abuse of patronage, as to 
 which the Secretary of State reiterated and 
 enlarged previous instructions. It is worth while 
 to quote Lord Glenelg's own words on this subject, 
 as the allegation that French Canadians had been 
 unduly excluded ' not only from the larger number, 
 but from all the more lucrative and honourable of
 
 68 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROP. 
 
 the public employments in their native country ', 
 was, if true, the moat reasonable and substantial of 
 the grievances. Adopting ' in their fullest extent ' 
 instructions, which he said had been given by Lord 
 Goderich, to exercise ' the utmost impartiality in 
 the distribution of public offices in Lower Canada, 
 without reference to national or political distinc- 
 tions, or to any consideration, except that of 
 superior capacity and fitness for the trust ', Lord 
 Glenelg went on, somewhat inconsistently, to 
 suggest that modified preference might be given 
 to French Canadians. 
 
 ' Your Lordship will remember that between 
 persons of equal or not very dissimilar pretensions, 
 it may be fit that the choice should be made in 
 such a manner as in some degree to satisfy the 
 claims which the French inhabitants may reasonably 
 urge to be placed in the enjoyment of an equal 
 share of the Royal favour. There are occasions 
 also on which the increased satisfaction of the 
 public at large with an appointment, might amply 
 atone for some inferiority in the qualifications of 
 the persons selected.' 1 
 
 He then laid down that the patronage of the 
 Governor in making appointments should be sub- 
 ject to the approval of the Secretary of State, and 
 that the general rule should be, as it had been, 
 to appoint residents in Lower Canada. In other 
 points of detail, which need not be specified, Lord 
 Glenelg enjoined on the outgoing Governor con- 
 sonance with the wishes of the Assembly. Assuredly, 
 never was the Home Government more anxious to 
 work in harmony with public feeling in a colony 
 
 1 See House of Commons Paper, No. 113, March 1836, pp. 47-8.
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 09 
 
 than was the British Government in its relations 
 to Lower Canada in the year 1835. 
 
 Lord Gosford called the Quebec Legislature 
 together on the 27th of October 1835. In his 
 opening speech he gave, as desired by Lord Glenelg, 
 the substance of his own instructions and of those 
 to the Royal Commissioners ; and intimating that 
 one object of the coming inquiry was to hand over, 
 on such conditions as should be carefully matured, 
 the whole of the revenues of Lower Canada to the 
 control of the elected representatives, he invited 
 the Assembly to make good the arrears of salary 
 due to the public officers and to continue to provide 
 for their pay while the inquiry was taking its course. 
 The Session dragged on until, in February 1836, 
 the Assembly learnt from a letter written to 
 Papineau, Speaker of the Assembly of the Lower 
 Province, by Marshall Bidwell, Speaker of the 
 Assembly of Upper Canada, that Sir Francis Bond 
 Head, the new Lieutenant-Governor of Upper 
 Canada, had communicated to the Legislature of 
 that Province verbatim extracts of the Instruc- 
 tions to the Commissioners. These were alleged 
 to be at variance with the substance of the instruc- 
 tions as contained in Lord Gosford' s opening 
 speech, and, following Papineau' s lead, the Assem- 
 bly voted supplies for six months only and drew 
 up a fresh address of grievances to the King. The 
 Supply Bill was thrown out by the Legislative 
 Council as not being in accordance with what the 
 Government had requested, and for a fourth year 
 in succession Lower Canada was left without legal 
 supplies to carry on the public service. The
 
 70 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 Legislature was prorogued on the 21st of March 
 1836. 
 
 Before the prorogation took place, Papineau had 
 written to Bidwell a violent letter, attacking the 
 Home Government, and inviting the co-operation 
 of the Assembly of Upper Canada in the struggle 
 in which Lower Canada was engaged. Meanwhile 
 Lord Gosford and the other two Commissioners 
 continued an inquiry which was already doomed 
 to failure. They were not at one, and their reports 
 were accompanied by qualifying minutes and 
 counter minutes by Sir Charles Grey and Sir George 
 Gipps. The first report, dated the 30th of January 
 1836, dealt with the proposed Civil List and the 
 conditions upon which the Crown revenues should 
 be ceded to the Assembly, the recommendations 
 being made on the assumption that they would 
 not be carried into effect until the Legislature had 
 made good the outstanding arrears of salary to 
 the public servants. A second report, dated the 
 12th of March, dealt with the position which had 
 arisen owing to the Assembly having shelved the 
 question of these arrears until their demands 
 should have been complied with, and noted that 
 those demands now included making the Executive 
 Council responsible to the Legislature. The Com- 
 missioners came to the conclusion that, under the 
 circumstances, the best course to adopt was to 
 repeal the Imperial Act of 1831 by which the taxes 
 levied under the Quebec Revenue Act of 1774 had 
 been handed over to the Provincial Legislature. 
 A third report at the beginning of May dealt with 
 reform of the Executive Council, again negativing
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 71 
 
 the responsibility of that Council to the Legisla- 
 ture. A fourth report in June contradicted state- 
 ments made with regard to the Commission by 
 Mr. Roebuck in a pamphlet distributed to mem- 
 bers of the House of Commons. A fifth report in 
 October dealt with the seigniorial rights of the 
 Seminary of St. Sulpice at Montreal ; and a 
 sixth report in November, a general report, dealt 
 with the Legislative Council, tenures of land, and 
 other matters indicated in the instructions. Sir 
 Charles Grey left for England shortly afterwards, 
 Sir George Gipps and Mr. Elliot followed in the 
 spring of 1837, and Lord Gosford was left to face 
 alone what had long been an impossible position. 
 
 The Commissioners, in recommending the repeal 
 of the Act of 1831, and the resumption by the 
 Imperial Government of control of the revenues 
 which had been handed over to the Assembly, had 
 not taken sufficient account of the effect which 
 such a strong measure might have produced on 
 public opinion in the other British North American 
 provinces. There was discontent in Upper Canada 
 and New Brunswick, and there was danger lest 
 they should make common cause with Lower 
 Canada. This danger was present to Lord Glenelg 
 and his colleagues. Accordingly they rejected the 
 proposal, and in a dispatch of the 7th of June, 
 which answered the last Address from the Quebec 
 Assembly to the King, Lord Glenelg directed 
 Lord Gosford to lay the whole of the Instructions 
 to the Commissioners before the Assembly, in order 
 to clear away the misapprehension which was 
 supposed to have arisen, arid again to invite pay-
 
 72 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 inent of the arrears of salaries and provision of 
 adequate supplies. Lord Gosford did as he was 
 instructed. He summoned the Legislature on the 
 22nd of September 1836, laid before them copies 
 of the Instructions, and communicated Lord 
 Glenelg's dispatch as an answer to the address 
 from the Assembly to the King. The only result 
 was that the Assembly still refused to comply with 
 the Secretary of State's wishes, still persisted in 
 their demands, especially in that for an elected 
 Legislative Council, that they referred to existing 
 conditions as a ' system of metropolitan ascendancy 
 and colonial degradation', and that the Legisla- 
 ture was prorogued on the 4th of October without 
 having transacted any business or passed any laws. 
 It was now time for the Imperial Parliament 
 to interfere, and the ministry was encouraged 
 in taking action by the fact that public feeling in 
 Upper Canada and in New Brunswick had under- 
 gone a change, which seemed to indicate that 
 the attitude of the Assembly at Quebec would no 
 longer find much support in those provinces. The 
 Session opened in England on the 31st of January 
 1837 ; the King's Speech directed the special 
 attention of Parliament to the state of affairs in 
 Lower Canada ; the Reports of the Commissioners 
 were laid before both Houses ; and on the 6th of 
 March Lord John Russell moved ten Resolutions 
 in the House of Commons. The Resolutions pro- 
 vided for making good the outstanding arrears of 
 pay, by empowering the Governor-General to apply 
 to that purpose the revenues in the hands of the 
 Receiver-General of the province ; they negatived
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 73 
 
 the demand for an elective Legislative Council, 
 for the introduction of the principle of responsi- 
 bility to the Legislature into the Executive Council, 
 and for the cancellation of the charter of the 
 British American Land Company ; they promised 
 repeal of the tenures Acts, as soon as a law adequate 
 for the purpose should have been passed by the 
 provincial Legislature ; they proposed to hand 
 over to the Legislature the net proceeds of the 
 remaining Crown revenues, as soon as a Civil 
 List should have been voted covering the judicial 
 expenditure and the salaries of the principal civil 
 officers ; and they authorized the Legislatures of 
 the two Canadian provinces to make provision 
 for adjusting the trade disputes between the two 
 provinces. The Resolutions did not pass without 
 debate. In addition to Roebuck, various members, 
 such as Hume, O'Connell, and Sir William Moles- 
 worth, keenly opposed the Government ; while in 
 Canada, so cool and experienced a judge of local con- 
 ditions as Sir John Colborne, who was at the time 
 at Quebec in command of the troops, wrote of the 
 eighth Resolution, whereby provincial funds were 
 to be appropriated to the payment of arrears : ' The 
 eighth resolution, of seizing money which does not 
 belong to us, must produce further coercion on 
 the part of Ministers.' x By the middle of May, 
 however, all the Resolutions had been carried 
 through both Houses of Parliament, and steps were 
 taken to bring in a Bill to give to them the force 
 of law. 
 
 On the 22nd of May Lord Glenelg wrote to Lord 
 
 1 Letter dated Quebec, June 5, 1837 (Life of Lord Seaton, 1903, p. 277).
 
 74 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 Gosford, directing him to call the Legislature to- 
 gether again, and once more to invite the Assembly 
 to make good the arrears and to vote supplies, 
 so as to render it unnecessary to have recourse 
 to the powers which the Imperial Parliament was 
 about to embody in the form of a law. 
 
 Shortly afterwards the King died, and, unwilling 
 that the reign of Queen Victoria should open with 
 a measure of coercion, the Government, at the 
 beginning of July, obtained a vote of credit to meet 
 the immediate requirements of the administration 
 in Lower Canada and remitted legislation to a new 
 Parliament. When Lord John Russell's Resolu- 
 tions became known in Lower Canada, they caused 
 much excitement : indignation meetings were held 
 by the partisans of the Assembly, Dr. Wolfred 
 Nelson, who lived on the Richelieu river, taking 
 a prominent part in the agitation, and Papineau 
 being extolled as the Canadian counterpart of 
 O'Connell. Lord Gosford, in accordance with his 
 instructions, called together the Quebec Legislature 
 on the 18th of August, but the Assembly replied 
 to his opening speech by a protest against the 
 Royal Commissioners and the Home Government, 
 and by demanding that the Resolutions passed -by 
 the two Houses of Parliament should be rescinded. 
 The Governor, therefore, on the 26th of August, 
 prorogued the Legislature, and with the proroga- 
 tion, as events proved, came the end of the 
 Constitution which had been framed for Lower 
 Canada under the Act of 1791. 
 
 It is now time to give an outline of what had 
 been taking place in the other provinces of British
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 75 
 
 North America. Sir John Colborne became Lieu- 
 tenant-Governor of Upper Canada in November 
 1828. The Report of the Select Committee of the 
 House of Commons upon the Civil Government of 
 Canada, which had been made in the previous 
 July, together with the evidence which had been 
 taken by the Committee, pointed to the conclusion 
 that the two main grievances in this province 
 were the want of independence in the Legislative 
 Council, which was little more than a mouthpiece 
 of the Government, or rather of the dominant 
 bureaucracy, and the favoured position given to 
 the Church of England, especially in the matter 
 of the Clergy Reserves. Colborne was a man of 
 kindly sympathies and no narrow views. He was 
 keenly interested in education, and was the founder 
 of the Upper Canada College. But he was sur- 
 rounded by the men who formed the so-called 
 ' Family Compact ', and whose influence, used 
 against the more democratic section of the com- 
 munity, was strong because it was largely the 
 outcome of real ability and high character. Shortly 
 before his arrival a general election had taken place, 
 and the newly-elected Assembly contained a pro- 
 gressive majority. Marshall Bidwell was the 
 Speaker, William Lyon Mackenzie was one of the 
 members, and in the course of the year 1829 Robert 
 Baldwin was elected to fill a seat which had been 
 vacated by the appointment of the Attorney- 
 General, Beverley Robinson, to be Chief Justice of 
 Upper Canada, Robinson's successor, as Attorney- 
 General, Boulton by name, was a man of far 
 inferior type ; domineering and aggressive, he
 
 70 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTHOD. 
 
 provoked, instead of conciliating, opposition to the 
 Government. The death of King George IV, in 
 June 1830, necessitated a new election, and this 
 time the partisans of the Government secured 
 a substantial majority in the Assembly. The 
 Imperial Act of 1831, which handed over to the 
 Legislature the proceeds of the taxes levied under 
 the Quebec Revenue Act of 1774, was met by the 
 grant of a Civil List to the amount of 6,500 per 
 annum, and thus one great element of friction with 
 the Imperial Government was eliminated. But 
 the Government party in the Assembly had a most 
 unwise leader in Boulton, and on the other side 
 Mackenzie made himself impossible. The violence 
 with which the latter in speech and writing 
 attacked his political opponents was met by pro- 
 ceedings which were equally indefensible. He was 
 repeatedly expelled from the Assembly, and re- 
 peatedly re-elected. He carried his grievances to 
 England and found a champion in Joseph Hume, 
 while the obvious unfairness and unwisdom of the 
 treatment to which he had been subjected led 
 to his chief opponent, Boulton, being dismissed 
 from the appointment of Attorney-General by the 
 Secretary of State. 
 
 In 1834 the town of York was incorporated as 
 the city of Toronto, and Mackenzie became the 
 first mayor. Towards the end of the year there 
 was a general election for the provincial Parlia- 
 ment, and the Reform party once more gained 
 the upper hand in the Assembly. Mackenzie had 
 somewhat lost in popular estimation by publishing 
 a letter from Joseph Hume, in which the latter had
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 77 
 
 expressed himself to the effect that a crisis was 
 coming in Canada ' which will terminate in inde- 
 pendence and freedom from the baneful domination 
 of the mother country ', and he gravitated away 
 from the more moderate reformers and towards 
 making common cause with Papineau in the Lower 
 Province. Still he was the mouthpiece of the 
 Reform party in the new Parliament of Upper 
 Canada, and it was upon his motion that a select 
 committee on grievances was appointed, of which 
 he was chairman, and ' by which ', to quote Lord 
 Glenelg's words, ' a report was made impugning 
 the administration of affairs in every department 
 of the public service, and calling for remedial 
 measures of such magnitude and variety as appa- 
 rently to embrace every conceivable topic of com- 
 plaint.' x This Report, made in April 1835, and 
 widely distributed in England, specified the almost 
 unlimited patronage of the Crown and the abuse 
 of that patronage as the chief sources of colonial 
 discontent, and it demanded responsible govern- 
 ment and an elected Legislative- Council. Lord 
 Glenelg dealt with it at length in December 1835 
 in his instructions to Colborne's successor, Sir 
 Francis Bond Head ; and in the dispatch which 
 embodied these instructions, he enclosed extracts 
 from his previous instructions to Lord Gosford and 
 his colleagues, the publication of which by Sir 
 Francis Head caused, as already told, a ferment 
 in the Quebec Assembly. 
 
 When the grievances report was made public, 
 
 1 See Lord Glenelg's Instructions to Sir F. Bond Head, December 5, 
 1835, House of Commons Paper, No. 113, March 1836, p. 55.
 
 78 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 Colborne had been for more than six years Lieu- 
 tenant-Governor of Upper Canada. To the Whig 
 Government in England, anxious to conciliate 
 public feeling in the Canadas, it seemed advisable 
 to make a change, and Colborne himself realized 
 that he was out of harmony with his employers. 
 While Lord Glenelg wrote to recall him, he in turn 
 wrote resigning his appointment, and in the middle 
 of winter, on the 23rd of January 1836, a week after 
 the Parliamentary Session in Upper Canada had 
 been opened, his successor, Sir Francis Bond Head, 
 arrived at Toronto, no intimation of his coming 
 having been received in Upper Canada until he had 
 already reached New York. Head was sworn in 
 on the 25th of January, and on the following day 
 Colborne left for Montreal on his way to England. 
 He stayed at Montreal till the middle of May, then 
 went to New York to embark for home, and while at 
 New York was offered by Lord Glenelg the appoint- 
 ment of Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in both 
 Canadas. He accepted it and went back to Montreal. 
 One of Colborne's last acts, as Lieutenant- 
 Governor of Upper Canada, was to call into opera- 
 tion the sections of the Constitutional Act of 1791, 
 which authorized the Governor or Lieutenant- 
 Governor in either of the Canadas, with the advice 
 of the Executive Council, to constitute and endow 
 Church of England rectories. He signed docu- 
 ments which endowed with lands forty-four rec- 
 tories, and in doing so he stirred up the dangerous 
 Clergy Reserves question, aroused the wrath of the 
 Scotch Church, the Wesleyans, and others, and 
 was accused of hurriedly perpetrating a job for
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 79 
 
 the Church of England before he was superseded, 
 though, as a matter of fact, he was only taking the 
 last step in carrying out views which had been 
 expressed by Lord Goderich when Secretary of 
 State in 1832. He gave offence, too, in Lower 
 Canada by a reference to the dissensions in that 
 province which he made when opening the Parlia- 
 mentary Session at Toronto on the 14th of January 
 1836, just before Head's arrival. It seemed, there- 
 fore, as though an estimable but somewhat re- 
 actionary Governor was being replaced by a man of 
 broader outlook and more enlightened views. The 
 sequel was to prove that the new-comer was 
 dangerous and flighty in the extreme, and that 
 when a crisis came Colborne was the man to meet it. 
 Sir Francis Bond Head had been a soldier, a 
 traveller, a writer, and a Poor Law Commissioner, 
 before he was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of 
 Upper Canada, but he had had no previous ex- 
 perience of colonial administration. His two years' 
 career as Lieutenant-Governor was that of a self- 
 willed though well-meaning eccentric, not amenable 
 either to an Assembly or to a Secretary of State. 
 He began by publishing his instructions in extenso, 
 instead of communicating their substance to the 
 House of Assembly. In order to bring new blood 
 into the Executive Council, he induced Robert 
 Baldwin and Rolph, leaders of Reform, to take 
 seats upon it, together with the Receiver-General 
 of the province ; but Baldwin's views of what an 
 Executive Councillor should be did not square 
 with those of the Lieutenant-Governor, who had no 
 intention of giving to the Council any real power
 
 80 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA TNTROD. 
 
 or responsibility, and the result was that in three 
 weeks' time the whole Council resigned. Head 
 then procured a new Council, came into collision 
 with the Assembly, dissolved the Legislature, and, 
 managing to present the issue to the people as 
 being in effect whether or not Upper Canada should 
 remain a loyal province of the British Crown, he 
 secured at the general election of June 1836 an 
 overwhelming majority of supporters in the New 
 Assembly. Bidwell, Mackenzie, Lount, among 
 others, lost their seats, and, resenting the Govern- 
 ment influence which had been used against them, 
 the more violent members of the Reform party 
 turned their minds towards revolution. The new 
 Parliament met in November 1836, and sat till 
 the following March, passing among many other 
 measures a much criticized law that the Legislature 
 should not be dissolved upon the sovereign's death, 
 which was, in other words, an Act for prolonging 
 its own existence. It met again in June 1837 for 
 a short and special session, to deal with a financial 
 crisis caused by commercial depression in the 
 United States ; and the next session, the last which 
 Sir Francis Head opened, began at the end of 
 December 1837, after the close of the abortive 
 rising in Upper Canada, and lasted till the 6th of 
 March 1838. In 1836 Head had dismissed from 
 office a district judge of the name of Ridout, on 
 the alleged ground that he had been an opponent 
 and critic of the Government. In the following 
 year he passed over Bidwell for a judgeship in the 
 Court of Queen's Bench. Lord Glenelg, on learning 
 Ridout's side of the case, directed that he should
 
 CHAT, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 81 
 
 be reinstated ; and he also gave instructions that 
 Bid well should be offered the next vacant judge- 
 ship. Head point blank refused either to reinstate 
 Ridout or to offer a judgeship to Bidwell, and 
 in September 1837 tendered his own resignation. 
 Lord Glenelg accepted the resignation in a dispatch 
 written towards the end of November and received 
 in January 1838, Mackenzie's rising having taken 
 place in the meantime ; on the 23rd of March the 
 new Lieutenant-Governor, Sir George Arthur, 
 arrived at Toronto ; and Head returned to England 
 to continue unavailing protests against men and 
 events, obstinate and wrongheaded, but none the 
 less the spokesman in exaggerated fashion of the 
 sentiments held by the Conservative section of 
 the community of Upper Canada. 
 
 The causes which produced friction and led to 
 constitutional changes in Lower and Upper Canada, 
 were at work also in the Maritime Provinces. Nova 
 Scotia was the first of the present Canadian pro- 
 vinces to be given representative institutions, for its 
 House of Assembly dates from 1758, and in later 
 days perhaps the most cogent of all the Canadian 
 advocates of responsible government was the Nova 
 Scotian, Joseph Howe, who first entered the House 
 of Assembly in that Province in 1836. Both in 
 Nova Scotia and in New Brunswick, which, as the 
 result of Loyalist immigration from the United 
 States, had been created a separate province in 1784, 
 the same persons constituted both the Executive 
 Council and the Upper House of the Legislature, 
 viz. the Legislative Council. At the end of 1830, 
 Lord Goderich, then Secretary of State for the 
 
 1352-1 O
 
 82 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTKUD. 
 
 Colonies, who was dealing with the Report on the 
 Government of Canada made by the House of 
 Commons Committee of 1828, wrote to the Lieu- 
 tenant-Governors of Nova Scotia and New Bruns- 
 wick, suggesting the desirability of giving a more 
 independent character to the Councils by intro- 
 ducing a larger number of unofficial members and 
 excluding the puisne judges ; and in May 1832 he 
 wrote to Sir Archibald Campbell, Lieutenant- 
 Governor of New Brunswick, proposing that the 
 Executive and Legislative Councils should no 
 longer consist of the same members ; that the 
 Executive Council should be small in number, 
 * including one or two influential members of each 
 branch of the Legislature ; ' * that the number of 
 the Legislative Council should be increased, and 
 that its members should cease to be necessarily 
 members of the Executive or Privy Council. 
 
 Sir Archibald Campbell agreed that ' the incon- 
 sistency of the same members forming the Privy 
 and Legislative Councils as a body, is an anomaly 
 that never ought to have existed, and the sooner 
 that it is abolished the better '. Accordingly, by 
 Royal Commission to the Governor-General dated 
 the 20th of November 1832, New Brunswick was 
 endowed with two distinct and separate Councils, 
 one Executive and one Legislative. Between three 
 and four years later, in 1836, two delegates from 
 the New Brunswick House of Assembly came to 
 London to support an Address to the King from 
 that body, one of them being the reform leader, 
 
 1 See the House of Commons Paper, Nova Scotia, &c., No. 579, 
 August, 1839, pp. 49-50.
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 83 
 
 Lemuel Wilmot. New Brunswick asked for no 
 more than Lord Glenelg had already embodied in 
 his instructions to Lord Gosford and Sir Francis 
 Head ; there was no demand for an Executive 
 Council responsible to the people, nor for an elected 
 Legislative Council, though improvements were 
 suggested in the composition of either Council. 
 The control of all the Crown revenues in return 
 for a Civil List, and different management of the 
 Crown lands, were asked for and readily conceded ; 
 the terms of a Civil List Bill to be passed by the 
 provincial Legislature were amicably settled ; and 
 the delegates went back, gratefully acknowledging 
 the liberal and enlightened policy of the Imperial 
 Government and the personal attention which Lord 
 Glenelg had given to their representations. There 
 was a slight hitch later on, because the new policy 
 was distasteful to Sir Archibald Campbell, and 
 either on principle or through misunderstanding 
 he resigned in 1837, instead of passing the Civil 
 List Bill ; but his successor, Sir John Harvey, as 
 tactful a Governor as he had shown himself to be 
 a good fighter in the war of 1812, speedily carried 
 into effect the reforms which had been contem- 
 plated, and paved the way for responsible govern- 
 ment, which came into being about ten years later. 
 Nova Scotia was more conservative than New 
 Brunswick. It was closely in touch with England, 
 the port of Halifax being open all the year round ; 
 and soldiers and sailors, active or retired, formed 
 a strong element in the community. Accordingly, 
 while in New Brunswick the Executive was, in 1832, 
 separated from the Legislative Council, the two 
 
 G 2
 
 84 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD, 
 
 continued in Nova Scotia to be identical down to 
 the year 1837. In that year the Assembly for- 
 warded an Address to the King, claiming control 
 of the casual and territorial revenues, and asking 
 His Majesty 'to grant us an elective Legislative 
 Council ; or to separate the Executive from the 
 Legislative Council, providing for a just repre- 
 sentation of all the great interests of the province 
 in both ; and by the introduction into the former 
 of some members of the popular branch, and 
 otherwise securing responsibility to the Commons, 
 confer upon the people of this province what they 
 value above all other possessions, the blessings of the 
 British Constitution \ l Lord Glenelg made similar 
 concessions in the case of the constitution of Nova 
 Scotia, as had been made in regard to the other 
 North American provinces, but it is noteworthy 
 that he expressed great doubt as to the advisability 
 of separating the Executive from the Legislative 
 Council. ' The separation of this body into two 
 distinct chambers,' he wrote in April 1837, * the one 
 Legislative and the other Executive, is an experi- 
 ment which was first tried in the Canadas by the 
 Act of 1791, and repeated in New Brunswick in the 
 year 1832. So far as I have been able to judge, the 
 result of this innovation has not been such as to 
 exclude very serious doubts respecting its real 
 usefulness.' 2 In reference to the suggestion that 
 the Executive officers should be under popular 
 control, he wrote that ' Her Majesty's Govern- 
 
 1 House of Commons Paper, as above, p. 17. 
 
 8 Ibid., pp. 11, 12. The third quotation, from a dispatch of July G> 
 1837, is not included in the extracts given in this Blue Book.
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 85 
 
 ment must oppose a respectful but, at the same 
 time, a firm declaration that it is inconsistent with 
 a due advertence to the essential distinctions 
 between a metropolitan and a colonial Government, 
 and is therefore inadmissible.' 
 
 The separation of the Executive from the Legis- 
 lative Council was formally completed by means of 
 the Commission which appointed Lord Durham to 
 be Governor of Nova Scotia, and which was dated 
 the 6th of February 1838 ; and in his Report Lord 
 Durham described the political condition of Nova 
 Scotia as one in which, though there were various 
 questions at issue, there was no strong antagonism 
 between the Government and the people. Nova 
 Scotia had, as a rule, been fortunate in her Lieu- 
 tenant-Governors. More than one had, like Lord 
 Dalhousie, gone on to be Governor-General of 
 Canada. Sir Peregrine Maitland, who had been 
 transferred from Upper Canada to Nova Scotia in 
 1828, had been mainly an absentee; but his suc- 
 cessor in 1834, Sir Colin Campbell, a soldier of high 
 repute, at the time when Lord Durham wrote, com- 
 manded public confidence and esteem, though a little 
 later he was found too conservative for Joseph 
 Howe and the partisans of responsible government. 
 
 In March 1834 the House of Assembly of Prince 
 Edward Island asked that that colony might be 
 placed upon an equal footing with the sister 
 province of New Brunswick, by being given a Legis- 
 lative Council distinct from the Executive Council, 
 but the request was refused by the Secretary of 
 State, Spring Rice. In May 1837 Lord Glenelg 
 invited Sir Charles Fitzroy, who was then going
 
 86 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA TNTROD. 
 
 out to Prince Edward Island as Lieutenant- 
 Governor, to look into the composition of the 
 Legislative Council ; and in March 1838 Fitzroy 
 enclosed an Address from the House of Assembly, 
 again asking that the Executive and Legislative 
 Councils might be separated from each other, in 
 accordance with the change which had taken place 
 in Nova Scotia. Fitzroy supported the proposal 
 and suggested an Executive Council of nine mem- 
 bers, three of whom should be selected from the 
 House of Assembly. Lord Glenelg then sanctioned 
 the separation of the Councils. In Prince Edward 
 Island, however, as will be gathered from Lord 
 Durham's Report, the chief causes of complaint 
 were connected more with the land than with the 
 constitution, for in this island the evils arising 
 
 !ut of absentee ownership were most acutely felt. 
 The conditions of Newfoundland had always 
 been wholly dissimilar to those of the mainland 
 provinces of British North America, and its story 
 had run in a different channel, but in Newfound- 
 land, too, constitutional difficulties had arisen, and 
 accordingly it was included within the scope of 
 Lord Durham's Commission. By the year 1832 
 the system had broken down, ' the fundamental 
 principle of which was to prevent the Colonization 
 of the island, and to render this kingdom the 
 domicile of all persons engaged in the Newfound- 
 land fisheries V and in that year the island was 
 given a representative Assembly, created not by 
 Act of Parliament but by the King's Commission 
 
 1 Lord Goderich to Governor Sir T. Cochrane, July 27, 1832 (House 
 of Commons Paper, as above, p. 82).
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 87 
 
 to the Governor and by the Royal Instructions. 
 There was also a Council which was in effect, though 
 not in name, at once a Legislative Council and an 
 Executive Council. Foreseeing the likelihood of 
 friction between the Council and the Assembly, 
 Lord Goderich, the Secretary of State who called 
 the constitution into existence, suggested that an 
 arrangement might be made and embodied in 
 a local Act, ' which should consolidate the Council 
 and the Assembly into a single House, in which the 
 representatives of the people would be met by the 
 official servants of the Crown.' * The proposal met 
 with general disapprobation in the colony, and was 
 not carried into effect ; and almost immediately 
 the two houses came to loggerheads, the Council 
 being the aggressor by throwing out a revenue Bill. 
 This was in the first session of the new Legislature in 
 the spring of 1833, and matters were not improved 
 when later in the same year Boulton, who had 
 proved so cantankerous as Attorney-General of 
 Upper Canada, was consoled for losing that 
 appointment by being made Chief Justice of New- 
 foundland. In that capacity he presided over the 
 Council and arrogated to himself the title of 
 Speaker, until his pretensions and those which he 
 made on behalf of the Council were, in October 
 1834, somewhat summarily disallowed by Spring 
 Rice, then Secretary of State. The disputes 
 between the two Houses went on. In 1837 an 
 Appropriation Bill was thrown out by the Council, 
 whose action was in February 1838 disapproved 
 by Lord Glenelg. Religious animosity had been 
 
 1 House of Commons Paper, as above, p. 85.
 
 88 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 added to the political squabble, the Irish Roman 
 Catholics being specially bitter against Boulton, 
 who was relieved of his office in 1838. Matters 
 came to such a pass that, under an Imperial act 
 of 1842, the existing Legislature was ended, and 
 replaced by a single chamber, as had been suggested 
 by Lord Goderich. Another Imperial act of 1847 
 restored the old constitution ; and, finally, in 1855 
 responsible government came into being. 
 
 It has been seen that the Quebec Legislature 
 was prorogued by Lord Gosford on the 26th of 
 August 1837. The news of the death of King 
 William IV and of the accession of Queen Victoria 
 had reached Canada at the end of July, but had 
 not affected the political situation or softened 
 party feeling. Montreal was Papineau's birthplace 
 and home, and he was one of the parliamentary 
 representatives of the city. Accordingly, both in 
 1837 and later, in 1838, disloyalty was more 
 aggressive and more pronounced in the district of 
 Montreal than lower down the river. In the town 
 itself there was a strong element of loyal citizens, 
 but on the other side of the St. Lawrence, in the 
 counties along the line of the Richelieu river, the 
 proximity of the American frontier gave encourage- 
 ment to disaffection ; and behind the island of 
 Montreal, in the county of the Two Mountains on 
 the north bank of the Ottawa river, sedition and 
 lawlessness were rife. 
 
 The rising, such as it was, was mainly a French 
 Canadian movement, though it was a nondescript 
 kind of disturbance. The Roman Catholic Church, 
 with rare exceptions, exercised its authority on
 
 CHAP, m POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 80 
 
 the side of law and order, and there were many 
 French Canadian loyalists, magistrates, and others; 
 while on the other hand, among the leaders of the 
 so-called 'Patriots', British names were as promi- 
 nent as French. There were the brothers Nelson, 
 for instance, and Thomas Storrow Brown, and no 
 paper attacked the Government with greater 
 violence than the English Vindicator, edited at 
 Montreal by Dr. O'Callaghan. But, naturally, the 
 followers of Papineau were in the main French 
 Canadians, whereas the overwhelming majority of 
 the British, including the Irish, population were 
 staunch and determined for the Government. 
 The would-be rebellion had no chance. The towns 
 were on the whole not revolutionary, and the 
 seditious districts had neighbours to hold them in 
 check. The Glengarry Highlanders, in Upper 
 Canada, but on the border line of the two provinces, 
 Roman Catholics of traditional and long-tried 
 loyalty, publicly announced their intention to 
 uphold the Government, and the English-speaking 
 Eastern Townships were strongly opposed to 
 Papineau and his friends. Most of all, though the 
 Governor-in-Chief Lord Gosf ord was, it would seem, 
 reputed to be somewhat weak and temporizing, the 
 man in whose hands was the ultimate issue, the com- 
 mander of the troops, was pre-eminently cool and 
 strong. Sir John Colborne left nothing to chance, 
 he prepared for the crisis and practically forestalled 
 it. In the latter part of July he went up from 
 Quebec to Sorel at the mouth of the Richelieu 
 river, to be near the probable scene of disturbance ; 
 and on the 9th of November, after a riot had taken
 
 00 BRITISH NORTH AMRRTCA INTROD. 
 
 place in Montreal, he moved into that city. Tn 
 July, at Lord Gosford's instance, a regiment was 
 brought up from Halifax to Quebec ; and at the 
 end of October, with the cordial consent of Sir 
 Francis Bond Head, the 24th regiment was brought 
 down from Toronto to Montreal, where it arrived 
 on the 13th of November. When the trouble 
 came, the military forces, regulars supplemented 
 by volunteers, were mainly concentrated at 
 Montreal ; but preparations had also been made 
 at Quebec, and towards the end of the year more 
 regiments came in overland from Nova Scotia 
 and New Brunswick, recalling the winter marches 
 of the war of 1812. 
 
 For the winter, when the navigation of the 
 St. Lawrence was closed, was the dangerous time, 
 and as the winter drew on, matters came to some- 
 thing like a climax. Dr. Wolfred Nelson was, as 
 not a few men have been, in public a violent 
 politician, in private a kindly humane man. Ten 
 years previously, at a general election, he had 
 opposed and defeated James Stuart, then Attorney- 
 General, for the borough of Sorel or William 
 Henry, his brother Robert Nelson being at the 
 same election returned as Papineau's colleague for 
 one of the wards of Montreal. He lived and prac- 
 tised his profession at St. Denis on the Richelieu 
 river, and on the 23rd of October 1837 he presided 
 at a public meeting at St. Charles near to his 
 home, on which occasion Papineau was present, 
 a cap of liberty was hoisted, and the representatives 
 of the six confederated counties, as they styled 
 themselves, being the counties bordering on the
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 91 
 
 Richelieu, passed a series of lengthy resolutions, 
 the most practical of which was an invitation to 
 the soldiers to desert their colours and emigrate 
 to the United States. One of the resolutions 
 expressed approval of the political organization in 
 Montreal entitled the ' Fils de Liberte ', of whom 
 Christie contemptuously remarks that they were 
 'chiefly idle boys, stripling Attornies, and mer- 
 chants' clerks V On the 6th of November the Sons 
 of Liberty, led by Storrow Brown, who was reputed 
 to have been of American birth and who was at 
 the time a dealer in hardware at Montreal, came 
 into collision with the members of a loyalist 
 association, known as the Doric club. In the end 
 the Sons of Liberty fared badly, the office of the 
 Vindicator was gutted and sacked, the Riot Act 
 was read, and troops patrolled the streets. After 
 this outbreak Colborne took up his quarters at 
 Montreal. By this time a kind of reign of terror 
 had come into being in the district of Montreal 
 outside the city itself, and especially in the counties 
 on the southern side of the St. Lawrence. Magis- 
 trates were intimidated and called upon to 
 resign, and the lives and property of the loyalists 
 were no longer safe. In consequence, on the 16th 
 of November, warrants were issued for the arrest 
 of the leaders of sedition, including Papineau him- 
 self, who, however, fled fom Montreal and joined 
 Dr. Wolfred Nelson at St. Denis. A small party 
 of soldiers was, on the evening of the 16th, sent to 
 St. John's on the Richelieu, to arrest two French 
 Canadians named Demaray and Davignon. The 
 
 1 Christie, vol. iv, p. 395.
 
 92 BRITISH NORf H AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 arrest was effected, but as the prisoners were being 
 taken to Montreal, their guard was fired upon, 
 and they were rescued. Colborne immediately 
 sent more troops into the district. One body, 
 under Colonel Wetherall, went straight across the 
 river to the fort at Chambly ; a second body, under 
 Colonel Gore, was taken down the St. Lawrence, 
 and landed at Sorel at the mouth of the Richelieu. 
 Gore was to march up the Richelieu, and Wetherall 
 down it, so as to disperse armed insurgents who 
 were understood to have gathered at St. Denis 
 under Dr. Wolfred Nelson and at St. Charles under 
 Storrow Brown, St. Denis being about eighteen 
 miles up the Richelieu from Sorel, and St. Charles 
 six or seven miles further up the river. Gore started 
 from Sorel with some 250 men on the night of 
 the 22nd of November, and marching all night 
 through sleet and rain did not reach St. Denis till 
 nearly 10 o'clock on the following morning. Here 
 he found Dr. Nelson and his followers prepared 
 for defence, having converted a large stone house 
 into a fort. He attacked with his tired troops, but 
 was not strong enough to carry the position ; and 
 after some hours' fighting he was obliged to retreat, 
 with the loss of six men killed and ten wounded 
 and of the one field piece which he had taken 
 with him. He did not reach Sorel again till the 
 afternoon of the 24th. Wetherall, with a rather 
 larger force than Gore's, left Chambly at precisely 
 the same time to march on St. Charles and eventu- 
 ally join Gore. In the same bad weather he 
 marched through the night of the 22nd and the 
 forenoon of the 23rd, and eventually, being brought
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 93 
 
 to a stand by a broken bridge some few miles 
 short of St. Charles, he encamped for the night, 
 rested his troops, received reinforcements on the 
 following day, the 24th, and did not move until 
 the 25th. Some entrenchments had been thrown 
 up at St. Charles, and they were defended by 
 a considerable number of insurgents, of whom 
 Storrow Brown had taken command. Wetherall 
 summoned the people to disperse, and when they 
 resisted he carried the position, after about an 
 hour's fighting, not without loss, and effectually 
 broke up all resistance, returning to Montreal 
 on the 29th of November. This was practically 
 the end of the rising in the Richelieu counties, 
 although towards the end of the first week of 
 December there was a brush near the American 
 frontier, in which loyalist volunteers intercepted 
 and dispersed a band of rebels who had taken 
 refuge in and crossed over from Vermont. At the 
 beginning of December Gore was sent again to 
 Sorel and up the river to St. Denis and St. Charles. 
 He met with no resistance, he recovered his 
 wounded and his gun, and his troops burnt some 
 houses at St. Denis. Dr. Wolfred Nelson had at once 
 shown more courage and been more unfortunate 
 than his fellows. When he heard of Wetherall's 
 success at St. Charles, he attempted to escape across 
 the frontier into the United States; but after 
 much suffering from cold and privation in the 
 woodlands of the loyalist Eastern Townships, he 
 was taken prisoner on the 12th of December and 
 sent in to Montreal, his kindly care of the wounded 
 being remembered in his own misfortunes. A
 
 94 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA IKTROD. 
 
 reward had been offered for his capture, and a still 
 larger reward was offered for the capture of 
 Papineau, but the latter made good his escape. 
 He left Dr. Nelson's house at St. Denis on the 
 morning of the day when Gore attacked it, and 
 with O'Callaghan found his way to the United 
 States, leaving to after years a controversy as to 
 the motives for his flight at the moment of danger. 
 Storrow Brown also reached American soil, and 
 he, too, was criticized, though apparently without 
 good reason, for not having been on the spot at 
 St. Charles when the actual fighting took place. 
 
 After an interval of years insurgents became 
 good citizens again, and memories were softened, 
 but there were two bad murders in this rising in 
 the Richelieu district which could not be smoothed 
 over or forgotten. A young officer, Lieutenant 
 Weir, trying to catch up Gore's column between 
 Sorel and St. Denis on the night of the 22nd of 
 November, took a wrong road, reached St. Denis 
 in advance of Gore's troops, and fell into the insur- 
 gents' hands. When Gore attacked, Weir was placed 
 bound in a wagon to be taken to St. Charles : 
 he jumped out of the wagon, and was there 
 and then shot and stabbed to death by those 
 who were in charge. His body, badly mangled, 
 was subsequently found in the Richelieu river, 
 and was buried at Montreal on the 8th of December. 
 In 1839, a man of the name of Jalbert, who had 
 been in principal charge of the wagon, was tried 
 for the murder, but the jury disagreed and he 
 went unpunished. Even more cold-blooded was 
 the murder of a stone-mason Chartrand, a French
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 95 
 
 Canadian of St. John's, who had enrolled himself 
 as a loyalist volunteer. Coming home from a 
 place five or six miles off on the afternoon of the 
 28th of November, he was intercepted by a party 
 of ruffians, some of them with loaded guns. He 
 was subjected to a mock trial, condemned as a spy, 
 tied to a tree, and shot. Four men were tried for 
 his murder in 1838, but were acquitted by a jury of 
 their countrymen in face of the strongest evidence 
 of their guilt. Two of them, however, one a ring- 
 leader, were inculpated in the second rising in the 
 autumn of 1838, were tried by court martial and 
 hung early in 1839. 
 
 Gore's repulse at St. Denis acted as a stimulus 
 to armed disloyalty, and the disloyal county of 
 the Two Mountains, to the north-west of Montreal, 
 gave some trouble. The centre of the disturbance 
 was the village of St. Eustache, and the leaders 
 were a Swiss adventurer of the name of Girod, and 
 a French Canadian, like Wolfred Nelson, a brave 
 but headstrong doctor, of the name of Chenier. 
 Like Nelson at St. Denis, Chenier at St. Eustache 
 turned a building into a fort. This was a 
 convent, of which he took forcible possession 
 on the 1st of December. Sir John Colborne 
 waited for nearly a fortnight until he was fully 
 prepared to settle the matter, and then marched 
 out of Montreal on the 13th of December with 
 2,000 men. On the 14th the troops took possession 
 of St. Eustache, where Chenier and it is said 
 about 250 others held church, convent, and other 
 buildings, and fought with spirit. Chenier was 
 killed, much of the village was burnt, and a con-
 
 96 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTEOD. 
 
 siderable number of French Canadians were killed 
 or taken prisoners. Girod had taken flight early 
 in the proceedings, but a few days later, being 
 hard pressed, shot himself. The troops went on 
 to St. Benoit, another little centre of disaffection, 
 fomented by one of the very few French Canadian 
 priests who actively opposed the government. 
 Here there was no resistance, but notwithstanding 
 there was burning of houses ; a third village was 
 also visited, and on the 16th the troops returned 
 to Montreal. 
 
 This was the end of the rising in Lower Canada. 
 The contemporary insurrection in Upper Canada 
 was even more fatuous and abortive. The danger 
 in this province arose from two causes. One was 
 purely temporary, and has already been mentioned, 
 the fact that, when Sir John Colborne asked if 
 any troops could be spared, Sir Francis Bond 
 Head somewhat theatrically denuded Toronto of 
 all the regulars, being well inclined, it would seem, 
 to show to the world the loyalty of the citizens 
 of Upper Canada, his own confidence in them and 
 their confidence in him. The second source of 
 danger was the ease with which raids could be 
 organized from the American shores of the Niagara 
 and Detroit rivers. For the rest, the community 
 of Upper Canada was in the main thoroughly 
 loyal, and race feeling did not complicate the 
 situation. What Papineau was to Lower Canada 
 Mackenzie was to the Upper Province, but with far 
 more courage, even less discretion, and certainly 
 less widespread influence. In both provinces 
 the medical profession seems to have produced
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 97 
 
 leaders among the Patriots or Rebels, which- 
 ever name may be thought more appropriate. As 
 against Wolfred Nelson and Chenier in Lower 
 Canada, Drs. Rolph, Buncombe, and Morrison 
 were prominent in Upper Canada. Among the 
 reformers, Baldwin had no part or lot in the 
 rising, nor had Bidwell, though the latter did 
 not escape suspicion, which induced him, wrought 
 upon, it was said, unfairly by Sir Francis Head, 
 to exile himself for the rest of his life in the United 
 States. 
 
 During the summer of 1838 Mackenzie had been 
 agitating through the province. The extreme men 
 showed a disposition to come into line with 
 Papineau in Lower Canada, but there was little 
 talk of resort to force, and only gradually, in the 
 country districts, some kind of secret preparation 
 was made for taking up arms. Eventually the 
 plan was evolved of capturing Toronto and the 
 Government, the night of the 7th of December 
 being fixed for the attempt. It was long before 
 Sir Francis Head would admit the possibility of 
 any danger or take any steps towards meeting it, 
 although a good soldier, Colonel Fitzgibbon, whose 
 name had been a household word in the war of 
 1812, was urgent ih his warnings. At length, at 
 the beginning of December, it was determined to 
 arrest Mackenzie and to call out some of the militia, 
 with the result that the conspirators hastened 
 their movements, and resolved to make their 
 attempt on Toronto on the night of the 4th. But 
 when plans are changed in conspiracies, differences 
 of opinion arise, there is uncertainty and confusion, 
 
 1352-1 H
 
 98 BRITISH NORTtf AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 warning is given to the other side, and the scheme 
 miscarries. The rebels picketed Toronto on the 
 night of the 4th of December, but made no attack. 
 A loyalist, Colonel Moodie, was intercepted and 
 shot; an insurgent leader, Anderson, was shot; 
 citizens were stopped and arrested by the rebels, 
 but one or two broke through, and the alarm was 
 most effectually given in the town. On the next 
 morning, the 5th, after a reconnaissance, Fitzgibbon, 
 with sound military instinct, wished at once to 
 attack the insurgents in their position, but Head 
 refused his consent and sent Baldwin and Rolph 
 to parley with them, in happy ignorance that 
 Rolph was in their inmost secrets. The conference 
 came to nothing, and when night fell, Lount and 
 Mackenzie led their misguided followers towards the 
 city. They came across a small picket of twenty- 
 seven men whom Fitzgibbon had sent out. The 
 picket fired and then ran away, and so did the 700 
 insurgents. Militia and volunteers were now fast 
 coming into Toronto, and by the following night, 
 the night of the 6th, the Government had some 
 1,200 fighting men at its back. On the 7th, Fitz- 
 gibbon and Colonel MacNab attacked, and within 
 half an hour the rebels were dispersed and the rising 
 was at an end. MacNab and a force of 500 men 
 went on into the London district, where Dr. 
 Duncombe, of American birth, had been organizing 
 rebellion, but it had all melted away, and Duncombe 
 had fled to the United States. Mackenzie, too, 
 made his way across the frontier, and so did Rolph. 
 Among other prominent rebels, one, Van Egmont 
 by name, who was reputed to have served under
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 99 
 
 Napoleon, died in prison ; two, Lount and 
 Matthews, were hanged. 
 
 In the United States Mackenzie tried to organize 
 invasion of Canada, and frontier raids followed. 
 Just above the Falls of Niagara, a small island 
 in Canadian waters, Navy Island, was, at his 
 instigation, occupied by a band of filibusters from 
 Buffalo, who held it for a month from the middle 
 of December 1837 to the middle of January 1838. 
 A small Buffalo steamer, the Caroline, had been 
 chartered to carry warlike stores and supplies to 
 the island, and on the night of the 29th of December 
 a party of Canadians rowed across the river to 
 the American shore, cut out and burnt the vessel, 
 and killed one man on the wharf. This incident 
 caused strong resentment in the United States, 
 although, from the Canadian point of view, it was 
 no more than a justifiable reprisal, inasmuch as 
 American soil had been openly made a basis for 
 attack upon a friendly nation, and the raiders were 
 almost entirely American citizens. Eventually, 
 between three and four years later, Daniel Webster 
 obtained from Sir Robert Peel a friendly explana- 
 tion and what was held to be an adequate apology. 
 The raid, or attempted raid, on the Niagara 
 frontier was supplemented by similar attempts 
 in the neighbourhood of Detroit in January and 
 February 1838, in the course of which an Irish 
 American adventurer of the name of Theller was 
 taken prisoner. He was said to have been a doctor, 
 like various other men who were prominent in 
 these Canadian disturbances, and he obtained 
 some notoriety by making a bold escape from 
 
 H 2
 
 100 BRITISH NORTrf AMERICA TNTROD. 
 
 his prison in the citadel of Quebec in October 
 1838. 
 
 Martial law was proclaimed in the district of 
 Montreal on the 5th of December 1837, and the dis- 
 trict remained under martial law until the following 
 27th of April, when, just a month before Lord 
 Durham's arrival, Colborne, as acting Governor- 
 General, dispensed with it in accordance with 
 wishes expressed from home. 
 
 In September 1837 Lord Gosford had placed 
 himself in the hands of the Home Government, 
 intimating that personally he would be glad to 
 resign, though he was ready to continue in office, 
 if the ministers so desired. He had been pledged 
 to a policy of conciliation, and it was rapidly 
 becoming evident that other measures would be 
 necessary, which might better be entrusted to 
 other hands. On the 27th of November Lord 
 Glenelg wrote to accept his resignation, and he 
 wrote also to Sir John Colborne intimating that 
 the administration of the government would 
 devolve upon him. Lord Gosford's departure 
 from Canada was delayed by an injury which he 
 received from a fall, but he finally left Quebec on 
 the 27th of February 1838, and on the same day 
 Colborne assumed the government. In the latter 
 part of March, as already told, Sir Francis Head 
 was replaced in Upper Canada by Sir George 
 Arthur, who had previously been Lieutenant- 
 Go vernor of Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania. 
 
 The first Parliament of Queen Victoria met in 
 November 1837. Just before the adjournment 
 for the Christmas holidays news reached England of
 
 CHAP, m POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 101 
 
 the outbreak in Canada. ' The adjournment before 
 the Christmas recess,' says the Annual Register for 
 1838, 1 ' took place almost contemporaneously with 
 the arrival of the intelligence of the Canadian revolt, 
 though not before some younger members of the 
 Radical section had found an opportunity of ex- 
 pressing their exuberant joy at the fact and their 
 confident predictions of its inevitable consequences.' 
 This statement may have been somewhat of an 
 exaggeration, but some of the utterances were 
 deplorable. One of the most violent speeches was 
 made by Sir William Molesworth, who was not 
 alone in hoping that Canada would pass from under 
 the British dominion. That ' that dominion should 
 now be brought to a conclusion I for one most 
 sincerely desire '. This was on the 22nd of 
 December 1837, but Molesworth's normal view 
 was a saner one, for on the following 6th of March, 
 in attacking Lord Glenelg's administration of the 
 colonies, while he still expressed a hope that 
 the people of Lower Canada would become inde- 
 pendent, if their constitution was not restored to 
 them, he stated that he yielded to no member in 
 the House of Commons ' in a desire to preserve 
 and extend the colonial empire of England'. 
 
 The House met again on the 16th of January 
 1838, and Lord John Russell immediately intro- 
 duced into the House of Commons a Bill which, 
 after being much amended and recast, became law 
 on the 10th of February, entitled ' An Act to make 
 temporary provision for the government of Lower 
 Canada'. 2 It suspended the constitution of 1791 
 
 1 p. 2. 2 1 Vic. c. ix.
 
 102 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 in Lower Canada from the date when the Act should 
 be proclaimed in the province until the 1st of 
 November 1840; and it empowered the Crown to 
 constitute a special Council, by authorizing the 
 Governor to appoint councillors in accordance 
 with instructions. The operation of the laws to 
 be passed by the Council was limited to the 1st of 
 November 1842, ' unless continued by competent 
 authority', and the Council was precluded from 
 passing any legislation which should impose new 
 taxes or involve constitutional changes. All laws 
 were to be proposed to the Council by the Governor, 
 and the presence of five councillors at least was 
 required for the passing of a law. When explain- 
 ing the proposals of the Government, Lord John 
 Russell intimated that the extensive powers 
 conferred by the Act would be entrusted to Lord 
 Durham. Lord Durham himself in the House of 
 Lords gave expression to the reluctance with which 
 he undertook the charge. As a matter of fact he 
 had been invited by Lord Melbourne in the previous 
 July to take the governor-generalship of Canada, 
 but had declined. He was again approached after 
 the news of the rebellion had been received, and it 
 was only on the day before Parliament met in 
 January 1838 that he finally consented to go out. 
 
 The new Act practically created a dictatorship, 
 and was, therefore, strongly opposed by the 
 Radicals in its passage through Parliament. It 
 would have been even more hotly opposed but 
 that Durham was conspicuous for his Radical 
 sympathies. Roebuck, not then in Parliament, 
 was heard against the Bill at the bar of either
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 103 
 
 House. In the House of Lords Brougham was 
 specially bitter against the Government and its 
 policy. But the policy prevailed. The Act was 
 sent out to Canada with instructions to Colborne 
 to call together a special Council in order to deal 
 with immediate requirements, but to make it 
 clear that Lord Durham on arrival would con- 
 stitute his own Council. Colborne acted accord- 
 ingly and nominated a Council consisting of 21 
 members, 11 of whom were French Canadians. 
 The Council met on the 18th of April and was 
 prorogued on the 5th of May. Lord Durham 
 arrived at the end of May, and on the 28th of June 
 nominated his own special Council consisting of 
 five members only, unconnected with political life 
 in Canada. 
 
 Was there any real justification for the armed 
 rising in the two Canadian provinces ? The answer 
 must be that there was not. There was ground 
 for discontent, the discontent of communities 
 growing and conscious of growth, and desirous 
 with reason of more extended control of their 
 own destinies, the discontent in Lower Canada of 
 a French race largely officered by Englishmen, the 
 discontent in Upper Canada of a democratic party 
 stonewalled by official Conservatism. But the 
 popular demands were, for the time and place, 
 excessive and unreasonable, the grievances were 
 clothed in exaggerated language, and the weakness 
 and speedy collapse of the outbreak in either 
 province testified to the absence of deep-seated and 
 widespread resentment against grinding tyranny. 
 It may be said that the rebellion was the product
 
 104 BRITISH NORTH- AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 of three causes, first the war of American Inde- 
 pendence, secondly, unwise speeches in England, 
 thirdly, real, though not overwhelming grievances. 
 The war of American Independence and its out- 
 come coloured the whole of the subsequent colonial 
 history of England ; especially it affected the 
 history of the British provinces which bordered 
 on the United States. The popular view of the 
 war, adopted and embellished by the Whigs, was 
 that it was a signal and crowning illustration for 
 all time of the triumph of liberty over oppression : 
 and the terms used of it implied that the English 
 had been guilty of the wildest excesses of tyranny. 
 This led to similar exaggeration, whenever in after 
 years there was friction between a colony and the 
 motherland ; and in the case of Canada speeches 
 made by men like Roebuck or Hume, who were 
 either paid advocates of the colonies or so con- 
 stituted as to be incapable of imagining that the 
 Home Government for the time being could be 
 right, or speeches again made from the Irish point 
 of view by O'Connell, contributed to a distorted 
 vision of the actual facts. Lower Canada had 
 not even the cause of complaint which the thirteen 
 colonies had been able to put forward, that new 
 taxes were being imposed from without upon the 
 provincials by the Government at home. As far 
 as the finances were concerned, it was a question 
 not of taxation but of appropriation. In the words 
 of the Annual Register for 1838, 1 ' Throughout 
 the unfortunate differences which we are about 
 to notice, no question ever existed with respect to 
 
 1 p. 4.
 
 CHAP, in POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES 105 
 
 the imposition of duties or the levying of money. 
 The claims of either party were limited to the 
 right of appropriating what must, at all events, 
 be collected and what, if not disposed of j must 
 accumulate from year to year in the public chest.' 
 In refusing a Civil List, in return for the control 
 of their finances, the democratic party in Canada 
 were refusing what it would have been right and 
 reasonable to grant, and the attacks made upon 
 successive Governors-General were unworthy and 
 contemptible. None the less, there were wrongs 
 to be righted and causes of friction to be removed : 
 the time had come in all the provinces of British 
 North America to recognize that the peoples were 
 now not children but adults, and the man had 
 come, in Lord Durham, to show the better way.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 LORD DURHAM'S COMMISSION AND 
 INSTRUCTIONS 
 
 WHEN Lord Durham's Report was laid before 
 Parliament in 1839, it was prefaced by the Commis- 
 sion which is now reprinted, and which had already 
 been given separately to Parliament on the 9th of 
 July 1838. It was a Royal Commission under the 
 Great Seal, appointing him to be ' High Commis- 
 sioner and Governor-General of all Her Majesty's 
 provinces on the continent of North America, and 
 of the islands of Prince Edward and Newfound- 
 land'. The Commission recites that he had 
 already received five several Commissions appoint- 
 ing him to be Governor-in-Chief of the four 
 provinces of Lower Canada, Upper Canada, Nova 
 Scotia, and New Brunswick, and of Prince Edward 
 Island. Similar powers had been given to his 
 predecessors ; but, as appears from Lord Glenelg's 
 letter to Lord Durham of the 3rd of April 1838; 
 only three Commissions had previously been issued 
 for the five colonies, instead of one for each. The 
 Commission then goes on to appoint him ' to be 
 our High Commissioner for the adjustment of 
 certain important questions depending in the said 
 provinces of Lower and Upper Canada, respecting 
 the form and future Government of the said 
 provinces ', and to authorize him as High Com-
 
 CHAP, iv LORD DURHAM'S COMMISSION 107 
 
 missioner ' to enquire into and as far as may 
 be possible to adjust all questions depending in 
 the said provinces of Lower and Upper Canada, 
 or either of them, respecting the form and ad- 
 ministration of the Civil Government thereof 
 respectively '. Then, ' with a view to the adjust- 
 ment of such questions,' the Commission appoints 
 him to be Governor-General of all the British 
 North American provinces and islands, including 
 Newfoundland, but the commission of the exist- 
 ing Governor of Newfoundland is specially safe- 
 guarded. 
 
 Finally the Commission empowers him to hold 
 the offices of ' High Commissioner and Governor- 
 General of our said provinces on the continent of 
 North America, and of the said islands of Prince 
 Edward and Newfoundland'. 
 
 This document gave Lord Durham a threefold 
 authority. In the first place he was, like his 
 predecessors, Governor-in-Chief of Lower Canada, 
 Upper Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, 
 and Prince Edward Island. His legal powers 
 were those of Governor-in-Chief. He was not, 
 nor had his predecessors been, Governor-in-Chief 
 of Newfoundland, for in Newfoundland there was 
 a Governor and not merely a Lieutenant-Governor. 
 In the second place he was High Commissioner to 
 do special work in two of the provinces. In the 
 third place he was Governor-General of all the 
 provinces and islands, including Newfoundland. 
 The appointment of Governor-in-Chief applied to 
 each province or island separately, excluding 
 Newfoundland. The appointment of Governor-
 
 108 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 General applied to them all collectively, includ- 
 ing Newfoundland ; but it is not quite easy to 
 appreciate why the appointment of Governor- 
 General of all the provinces and islands collectively 
 was conferred upon him ' with a view to the 
 adjustment' of the special questions in Lower and 
 Upper Canada, in connexion with which he had 
 been appointed High Commissioner ; nor is it 
 clear why he is styled High Commissioner as well 
 as Governor-General of all the provinces and 
 islands. 1 The meaning of the document can be 
 interpreted from the first two paragraphs of Lord 
 Durham's Report. It was, that certain grave 
 troubles had come into existence in two Cana- 
 dian provinces which required a very special 
 man, clothed with very special authority, to deal 
 with them : that the conditions in other parts of 
 British North America were not dissimilar: that 
 the chosen man should, therefore, in addition to 
 possessing the ordinary powers of government 
 which previous Governors-in-Chief had enjoyed, 
 be given a High Commissionership intended pri- 
 marily to apply to Lower and Upper Canada and 
 only to special purposes in those two provinces, 
 but to apply also, if required, in combination with 
 a general authority as Governor-General, to the 
 whole of British North America, even including 
 Newfoundland. In short, the difficulties which 
 had arisen in Lower and Upper Canada differed 
 
 1 In the Commission to Charles Buller empowering him to inquire 
 into public lands (see voL iii, Appendix B), Lord Durham appears as 
 Governor-General only, not as High Commissioner, and Newfoundland 
 is wrongly given a Lieutenant-Governor instead of a Governor.
 
 CHAP, iv LORD DURHAM'S COMMISSION 109 
 
 rather in degree than in kind from those which 
 had occurred or might occur elsewhere in British 
 North America, and therefore all the provinces 
 and islands were, so to speak, grouped under Lord 
 Durham's authority as Governor-General, and to 
 all he might, if necessary, appty whatever powers 
 appertained to him as High Commissioner. Thus, 
 in the first of the three letters or dispatches in 
 which Lord Glenelg conveyed to him the instruc- 
 tions of the Government, the letter of the 20th 
 of January, it is stated : ' Neither ... is it the 
 intention of Her Majesty's Government to exclude 
 other subjects from your consideration, or to 
 restrict you from entertaining other proposals, 
 whether affecting the two Canadas only or all the 
 British North American provinces, which you may 
 be induced to think conducive to the permanent 
 establishment of an improved system of Govern- 
 ment in Her Majesty's North American possessions. 
 Your Commission will be co-extensive with the 
 whole of these possessions ' ; and in the letter of the 
 21st of April reference is made to the powers which 
 were vested in him ' for the purpose of a general 
 superintendence over all British North America '. 
 
 The formal Royal Instructions, which accom- 
 panied Lord Durham's five Commissions as Gover- 
 nor-in-chief, were much the same as had been 
 given to his predecessors. In the case of Lower 
 and Upper Canada, the old Instructions which 
 had been handed on from Lord Dalhousie's time 
 were continued, with the proviso that they should 
 apply ' so far only as the same are not obsolete or 
 have not been superseded by any such statute as
 
 110 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA TNTROD. 
 
 aforesaid or as the same may not be found to bo 
 inapplicable to the present state of affairs in our 
 said province ' ; and in the case of Lower Canada, 
 a separate Instruction was added as to constituting 
 the special Council authorized by the newly passed 
 Act ' to make temporary provision for the Govern- 
 ment of Lower Canada '. Over and above these 
 formal Instructions, Lord Glenelg conveyed to him 
 the views of the Melbourne Ministry in the three 
 letters of the 20th of January, 3rd of April, and 
 21st of April 1838, which are reprinted in vol. in, 
 and of which a few words must be said. 
 
 It will be remembered that Parliament met 
 on the 16th of January 1838. The Instructions 
 contained in the letter of the 20th of January 
 were therefore given almost immediately after 
 Lord John Russell had introduced the Bill for sus- 
 pending the constitution of Lower Canada, which 
 eventually, on the 10th of February, became the Act 
 ' to make temporary provision for the Government 
 of Lower Canada ', and they followed close upon 
 Lord Durham's acceptance of the charge which 
 had been offered to him. The Government were 
 anxious to lose no time in embodying their policy 
 in the form of Instructions, but the letter of the 
 20th of January was absurdly premature, seeing 
 that the law with which the Instructions were 
 coupled had yet to be passed. It will be seen 
 that in this letter Lord Glenelg authorized Lord 
 Durham somewhat elaborately, though leaving 
 him a discretion in the matter, to call together 
 an advisory committee of the two Canadas with an 
 elective element in it, for the purpose of consulting
 
 CHAP, iv LORD DURHAM'S COMMISSION 111 
 
 the members on some or all of the outstanding 
 questions, especially those which were common 
 to the two provinces. A reference to this proposed 
 committee had been embodied in the preamble 
 to the Bill which was then before the House of 
 Commons. The first draft of the Bill recited that, 
 whereas under existing circumstances the House 
 of Assembly in Lower Canada could not be called 
 together without detriment to the public interests, 
 
 ' and whereas it is nevertheless expedient that the 
 said Province should be permanently governed on 
 constitutional principles adapted to promote the 
 interests of all classes of Her Majesty's subjects in 
 the said Province : And whereas, in order to the 
 preparation of such measures as it may be desir- 
 able to propose to Parliament for improving the 
 constitution of the provinces of Lower Canada 
 and Upper Canada, or either of them, and for 
 regulating divers questions in which the said pro- 
 vinces are jointly interested, Her Majesty hath been 
 pleased to authorize the Governor-General of Her 
 Majesty's provinces in North America to summon 
 a meeting, to be holden within the said provinces 
 of Lower Canada and Upper Canada, consisting of 
 the said Governor-General and of certain persons 
 to be by Her Majesty or on Her Majesty's behalf 
 for that purpose appointed, and also consisting of 
 certain other persons representing the interests 
 and opinions of Her Majesty's subjects inhabiting 
 the said provinces, and whereas it is in the mean- 
 time necessary that temporary provision should be 
 made for the Government of the said province of 
 Lower Canada, Be it therefore enacted . . . ' 
 
 The fact was that the Whig Ministry, being 
 driven to a measure of coercion, tried to sweeten
 
 112 BRITISH NORfET AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 it, and to conciliate their Radical following, by 
 introducing into the preamble of the Bill and into 
 the Instructions to their Commissioner evidence 
 of the Liberal and Constitutional principles on 
 which they prided themselves. But they had to 
 reckon with Sir Robert Peel, who would have 
 none of this preamble, and pointed out with 
 irresistible force that it was an attempt, by a 
 side wind in the form of a preamble to an Act, to 
 make Parliament responsible for the acts and 
 the policy of the Executive Government. On the 
 same grounds he refused to give any Parliamentary 
 recognition to Lord Glenelg's Instructions to Lord 
 Durham, 1 and he pointed out the palpable absurdity 
 of giving instructions in January to a man who 
 would not arrive in Canada till the end of May. 
 The end of it was that, being given a lead from his 
 own side, by ' Bear ' Ellice and Charles Buller, Lord 
 John Russell struck the preamble out of the Bill, 
 and no more was heard of the elaborate instructions 
 for calling together an advisory committee. 
 
 Lord Glenelg's letter of the 20th of January 1838 
 is a wordy document with high phrases and fine 
 sentiments, evidently designed for the shop- window; 
 but it will be noted that the letter refers specially 
 to the complaint made against the Quebec Assem- 
 bly that it was animated by an 'anti-commercial 
 spirit of legislation ', and that prominence is given 
 to the relations between the two Canadian pro- 
 
 1 An extract from Lord Glenelg's letter of instructions to Lord 
 Durham of January 20, 1838, was laid before Parliament on January 23, 
 1838. The whole letter, together with the letters of April 3 and April 21 , 
 was included in the Parliamentary Paper of February 11, 1839.
 
 CHAP, iv LORD DURHAM'S COMMISSION 113 
 
 vinces and the difficulties which had arisen in this 
 connexion. Some kind of federal legislature is 
 suggested which should supplement, but not take 
 the place of, the separate legislatures of Lower 
 and Upper Canada. The letter also adverts to the 
 constitution of the Legislative Council hi Lower 
 Canada, and to the resolution of the House of 
 Commons that the Council should be given a more 
 popular character without being made elective. 
 
 The letter of the 3rd of April deals with Lord 
 Durham's Commissions and with his relations, 
 under their terms and under the Royal Instructions, 
 to the Lieutenant-Governors. It may be inferred 
 from it that Lord Durham was not expected to 
 visit Newfoundland, as no reference is made to 
 the possibility of his doing so. 
 
 The letter of the 21st of April is by way of 
 completing a series of Instructions. It is again a 
 wordy document with a number of copybook plati- 
 tudes. It refers more especially to relations with 
 the United States, and to the desire of the Whig 
 Government that gentle treatment should, in other 
 than exceptional cases, be meted out to those in 
 Canada who were inculpated in the late rising. 
 With this end in view, Lord Durham is given an 
 unrestricted power of pardon. The letter concludes 
 with an assurance of the full confidence of Her 
 Majesty's Government and ' of their utmost support 
 and assistance '. 
 
 On the whole, it would be somewhat difficult to 
 find a more futile set of Instructions to a strong 
 man setting out on a difficult mission, but they 
 had the merit of leaving him a wide discretion. 
 
 1352-1
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE REPORT 
 ITS SCOPE, CHARACTER, AND SUBSTANCE 
 
 THE SCOPE OF THE REPORT 
 
 LORD DURHAM having been appointed Governor- 
 General of all the British North American Colonies, 
 including Newfoundland, the nominal scope of his 
 Report was the whole of British North America ; 
 and, in so far as the Report laid down general 
 principles, or foreshadowed a union of all the 
 provinces, it did to a greater or less extent include 
 them all. But the primary object of his mission 
 was to adjust outstanding and pressing questions 
 in Lower and Upper Canada, ' respecting the form 
 and future Government ' of those two provinces ; 
 and it has been seen that, as a matter of fact, his 
 stay in British North America hardly exceeded 
 five months, all of which time he spent in Lower 
 Canada with the exception of eleven days which he 
 gave to the Upper Province. Nova Scotia, New 
 Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfound- 
 land, he never visited at all. He interviewed 
 delegates from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and 
 Prince Edward Island ; and the Crown Lands 
 Inquiry, which was entrusted to Charles Buller, 
 included these three colonies as well as the two 
 Canadas ; but, except in connexion with Crown
 
 CHAP, v THE SCOPE OF THE REPORT 115 
 
 lands, only three pages of the Report in its original 
 Blue Book form are devoted to ' the Eastern 
 provinces and Newfoundland ' ; and, while the 
 Commission which empowered Buller to inquire 
 into Crown lands included Newfoundland, the 
 actual inquiry and Buller's Report left out that 
 island altogether. It was in fact a farce, as events 
 turned out, to have brought Newfoundland at all 
 into the Commission and into the Report, for Lord 
 Durham says plainly (ii. 202): 'With respect to 
 the colony of Newfoundland, I have been able 
 to obtain no information whatever, except from 
 sources open to the public at large '. The scope of 
 the Report may then be fairly summed up by 
 saying that it deals in detail with Lower and 
 Upper Canada, and that it contains information, 
 deductions and suggestions which were applicable 
 in the first place to the Maritime Provinces of 
 North America, and in the second place to other 
 parts of the world, including Newfoundland, which 
 had been colonized by British citizens more 
 applicable indeed to some other provinces of the 
 Empire than to Newfoundland, for the conditions 
 of Newfoundland were sui generis and wholly 
 different from those of an ordinary British colony. 
 The Report is, in short, mainly a special report 
 upon the two Canadas, but partly also a general 
 essay upon the best method of adjusting the 
 relations between Great Britain and British 
 colonies which are not merely dependencies, 
 including a model scheme of colonization by means 
 of the proper application of the public lands of 
 the colonies. 
 
 i 2
 
 116 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 THE CHARACTER OF THE REPORT 
 
 Turning to the character of the Report, critics 
 wishing to find fault might lay stress upon one or 
 two instances of direct misstatement, and more 
 numerous instances of obvious exaggeration; but 
 the Report must fairly be considered as a whole, 
 and its two main features, apart from the substance 
 of the recommendations which it contains, are in 
 the first place its plain speaking, and in the 
 second place its breadth of view. The first of 
 these two characteristics may be illustrated by 
 reference to the marginal notes, which form 
 a running analysis, unusual in a Blue Book, and 
 suitable rather to a history or a general essay than 
 to the report of a special commission. Here are 
 three notes which follow one another on ii. 59, 60 : 
 4 The Canadians would revenge themselves on the 
 English by any aid ' ; ' The English population 
 will never tolerate the French pretensions to 
 nationality ' ; ' They complain of being the sport 
 of parties at home.' And here are three more on 
 ii. 292-4 : ' Hopeless inferiority of the French- 
 Canadian race ; ' ' Economical obstacle to perpetua- 
 tion of their nationality ; ' * The French nation- 
 ality is destitute of invigorating qualities.' Notes 
 of this kind, and such strong language as will be 
 found in the body of the Report, would never see 
 the light in the report of a Royal Commission at 
 the present day, though possibly some approach 
 to it might now and again be found in separate 
 dispatches. It is interesting to speculate how far 
 this plain speaking was the outcome of the man,
 
 CHAP.V THE CHARACTER OF THE REPORT 117 
 
 and how far of the time a time before summaries 
 of speeches and reports were telegraphed to the 
 ends of the earth. Lord Durham was not accus- 
 tomed to mince his words, nor did he greatly 
 regard the feelings of others. His right-hand man, 
 Charles Buller, had a trenchant pen, and both men 
 were at once indifferent to political niceties, and 
 minded to read their countrymen at home a lesson 
 for all time on the subject of colonial administration. 
 Hence the Report is full blooded, and, while nothing 
 is set down in malice, nothing is extenuated. The 
 writer is determined to paint a graphic picture of 
 the truth, as it appeared to his eyes, and he has 
 beyond question succeeded in his effort. But if 
 Lord Durham and Buller had lived in our own day, 
 it cannot be doubted that the Report would not 
 have been so outspoken. Violent party speeches 
 are as common as ever, but in the matter of reports, 
 especially with regard to the dominions beyond the 
 seas, the men of the present time weigh their words 
 more carefully than was the case seventy years 
 ago. It is well that it should be so. We could 
 wish that our Parliamentary Papers were marked 
 by the vigour, the clearness, the eloquence, the 
 honesty which, over and above its supreme ability, 
 are conspicuous in Lord Durham's Report, but 
 we could and would dispense with criticisms and 
 terms of expression which may be valuable for 
 confidential purposes, but in public documents are 
 calculated to give abiding offence to classes or to 
 communities. 
 
 And Lord Durham's Report, great and remedial 
 as it was, by form as well as by substance gave
 
 118 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 grave offence in both Canadas. As late as the 
 3rd of February, 1910, Sir Wilfrid Laurier referred 
 to it in the Canadian House of Commons in the 
 following terms. 
 
 ' It is a singular fact that the report of Lord 
 Durham was received by the French Canadians 
 of that day with pained surprise. The reason is 
 known to those who have studied the history of 
 that period. Friend of liberty as he was, broad 
 as he was in his conceptions, f ar-visioned as events 
 show him to have been, Lord Durham himself 
 did not appreciate the effect of liberal institutions. 
 Coming to Canada at a time when the very atmo- 
 sphere was reeking with rebellion, he formed a 
 hasty judgement upon the French population of 
 that day, which he expressed in hasty and some- 
 what haughty language. He thought they could 
 not be reconciled to British rule, and stated in his 
 report that the conditions should be such in 
 Canada that the two provinces should be united, 
 so that French Canada should be ruled by the 
 stern and relentless hand of an English-speaking 
 majority. It is not to be wondered at that when 
 the report was made known in Canada, it not 
 only caused, as I have said, pained surprise, but 
 produced a feeling of injustice and wrong.' 1 
 
 Equal irritation was aroused in Upper Canada 
 by the publication of the report, as will be seen by 
 the Report of the Select Committee of the House 
 of Assembly of the Upper Province, which was 
 forwarded by Sir George Arthur to England in 
 May 1839. Here is one passage referring to Lord 
 Durham's comments on the methods of expenditure 
 on public works in the province. 
 
 1 Quoted from the Canadian Hansard.
 
 CHAP, v THE CHARACTER OF THE REPORT 119 
 
 ' There is something so offensive and unbecoming 
 in these passages of the report, as to induce the 
 committee, from that and other internal evidence, 
 to believe that that portion of it which relates to 
 Upper Canada was not written by and never 
 received the careful revision of his Lordship.' l 
 
 The House of Assembly and its committee no 
 doubt represented mainly those whom Lord 
 Durham considered to be the Tories of Upper 
 Canada, and the passage in his Report which they 
 so bitterly resented hardly called for so much 
 resentment. Still the Report might have achieved 
 its purpose without giving such dire offence. Its 
 great breadth of view might have been more 
 appreciated at the time, if the comments had been 
 somewhat more carefully worded and a little less 
 unc ompr omising. 
 
 This breadth of view might be illustrated by 
 quotations on almost every point and on almost 
 every page, but it will be enough to take one 
 point only and to note the strong and healthy 
 Imperialism, the confidence in the English race, 
 the love of and pride in the British Empire, which 
 is really the keynote of the Report, and which was 
 wholly alien to the ordinary Whig doctrines and 
 modes of thought at the time when Lord Durham 
 went to Canada. He was an Imperialist in the 
 best sense. He believed in Libertas, but he believed 
 also in Imperium. He was not afraid of force, if 
 used for what he conceived to be a good purpose. 
 He was not inclined to make concessions, merely 
 
 1 Parliamentary Paper containing copies or extracts of correspondence 
 relating to the affairs of Canada, No. 289, June, 1839, p. 27.
 
 120 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 because the majority asked for them, but only, if 
 they were sound in principle and likely to conduce 
 to future greatness. He did not consider that 
 undoing, or at the most giving new machinery, 
 was the one and only thing needful. The bent of 
 his mind was constructive, and he would not be 
 content without creating something greater than 
 before. He was not inclined to let the colonies go 
 hang. He believed in their potential value to 
 England, and in a future for England and for them 
 of strength and partnership. England was to give 
 them freedom and security, but she was to have 
 something in return. ' The country which has 
 founded and maintained these Colonies at a vast 
 expense of blood and treasure, may justly expect 
 its compensation in turning their unappropriated 
 resources to the account of its own redundant 
 population ; they are the rightful patrimony of 
 the English people, the ample appanage which 
 God and Nature have set aside in the New World 
 for those whose lot has assigned them but in- 
 sufficient portions in the Old ' (ii. 13). The 
 marginal note to this fine passage is ' Advantages 
 derivable by the Mother country from these 
 Colonies ' ; and even the inaccuracy which may be 
 noted in it, that of treating French Canada as 
 though it had been an original colony of Great- 
 Britain, bears witness to the same breadth of 
 conception, which refused to look upon the 
 province of Quebec merely as a conquered depen- 
 dency, the home of an alien race, and persisted in 
 regarding it as an integral part of the British 
 Empire. Similarly Lord Durham's scheme for
 
 CHAP, v THE CHARACTER OF THE REPORT 121 
 
 the disposal of the public lands in the British 
 North American provinces was ' intended to 
 promote the common advantage of the Colonies, 
 and of the Mother country ' (ii. 327) ; and in the 
 same spirit Charles Buller, in his Report on Public 
 Lands, laid stress on the fact that the subject was 
 one of Imperial concern. ' Higher interests than 
 those of the Colonies, the interests of the Empire 
 of which they form a part, demand that Parliament 
 should establish at once, and permanently, a well 
 considered and uniform system. The waste lands 
 of the Colonies are the property, not merely of 
 the Colony, but of the Empire, and ought to be 
 administered for Imperial, not merely for Colonial, 
 purposes ' (Appendix B, iii. 37). 
 
 This British patriotism and Imperial outlook, 
 the seeking for what is or may become great and 
 broad, and strong, runs through the whole report. 
 The French Canadians should be merged in an 
 English nationality because they would thereby 
 become an integral part of a greater community, 
 and have a goodlier heritage. ' It is to elevate 
 them from that inferiority that I desire to give 
 to the Canadians our English character' (ii. 292). 
 The legislative union of all the British North 
 American provinces, if it could be accomplished, 
 ' would form a great and powerful people, pos- 
 sessing the means of securing good and respon- 
 sible Government for itself, and which, under 
 the protection of the British Empire, might in 
 some measure counterbalance the preponderant 
 and increasing influence of the United States on 
 the American continent ' (ii. -309). Responsible
 
 122 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 government should be given not only as a means 
 to popular contentment, but also as making for 
 strength, whereas ' there is every reason to believe 
 that a professedly irresponsible Government would 
 be the weakest that could be devised ' (ii. 298). 
 One reason given for the union of the two Canadas 
 is that ' the full establishment of responsible 
 Government can only be permanently secured by 
 \/ giving these Colonies an increased" importance in 
 the politics of the Empire-!__(ii. 304) ; and this 
 permanence of self-government in a strong com- 
 munity is held to be necessary ' for the well- 
 being of the Colonies, and the security of the 
 Mother country ' (ii. 285). Any danger to the 
 Imperial connexion from making the colonies 
 greater and stronger is scouted. ' I am, in truth, 
 so far from believing that the increased power and 
 weight that would be given to these Colonies by 
 Union would endanger their connexion with the 
 Empire, that I look to it as the only means of 
 fostering such a national feeling throughout them 
 as would effectually counterbalance whatever 
 tendencies may now exist towards separation ' 
 (ii. 310). By enlarging the colonial unit, by 
 widening the area and adding to the population, 
 by endowing with responsibility, greater men would 
 be produced, new and wider interests would be 
 created ; and the danger of Absorption into the 
 United States would be met ' by raising up for 
 the North American colonist some nationality of 
 his own, by elevating these small and unimportant 
 communities into a society having some objects of 
 a national importance ' (ii. 311). The spirit which
 
 CHAP, v- THE CHARACTER OF THE REPORT 123 
 
 inspires the Report is indicated by the concluding 
 words, in which Lord Durham records his ' earnest 
 desire to perpetuate and strengthen the connexion 1 
 between this Empire and the~ North American ' 
 colonies, which would then form one of the brightest 
 ornaments in your Majesty's Imperial Crown '. 
 
 In the debates in the House of Lords on the 
 Reunion Bill, in the summer of 1840, Lord Melbourne 
 took exception to the terms of the Report. ' There 
 were unquestionably many things in that report 
 which he did not praise, and which he did not 
 think were prudent matters to be brought forward, 
 and which he thought it would have been wiser 
 to have omitted.' J This was when the committee 
 stage was reached on the 7th of July. A week 
 earlier, in the debate on the second reading, 
 Brougham had declared himself in favour of giving 
 up the North American colonies, and so had Lord 
 Ashburton. Lord Durham was too outspoken for 
 the Whig Prime Minister : he was a better and 
 broader Englishman than Brougham. 
 
 THE SUBSTANCE OF THE REPORT 
 In dealing, as briefly as the subject permits, 
 with the substance of Lord Durham's Report, it 
 is proposed to notice in the first place the two, \ 
 main recommendations which it contains, viz. "y 
 
 ' *\ 
 
 the reunion of the two Canadas, and the grant 
 of responsible government : then to take the 
 recommendations made under the following heads : 
 public lands, emigration, improvement of means 
 of communication, municipalities, administration 
 
 1 Hansard, 1840, vol. Iv, p. 515.
 
 124 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 of justice, and education ; and finally to consider 
 the passages of the report which refer to a future 
 general union of British North America, those in 
 which reference is made to the United States, 
 and those which embody Lord Durham's views on 
 the Colonial Office, and on colonial administration 
 generally. 
 
 REUNION OF THE TWO CANADAS 
 Why did Lord Durham recommend that the 
 two Canadas should be reunited, and what form of 
 reunion did he recommend ? He recommended that 
 the two provinces should be reunited, first and 
 foremost, because under existing conditions he 
 considered reunion to be a necessary preliminary 
 to the grant of responsible government ; secondly, 
 because he considered that reunion would result 
 in a greater and a stronger whole, with more 
 possibilities for the future, and that the interests 
 of the inhabitants of both provinces, especially 
 of the French Canadians, demanded reunion. 
 The form of reunion which he recommended was 
 
 , and not political union 
 
 only but a complete^ amalgamation of peoples, 
 races, languages, and laws. He recommended, as 
 far as it was humanly possible, absolute unity, 
 easier to depict on paper than to carry out into 
 fact. 
 
 It has been noted that the Report is not only a 
 special report upon the best means of solving the 
 difficulties which had actually arisen in the two 
 Canadas, but also in part an essay upon colonial 
 administration in general, upon the advantages to
 
 CHAP, v REUNION OF THE TWO CANADAS 125 
 
 be derived from giving responsible government to 
 British colonies, which are not merely foreign 
 dependencies. In itself the principle of responsible 
 government was of wide application. Wherever 
 the majority of the population consisted of British 
 citizens, or of Europeans who had been trained in 
 British citizenship, and had enjoyed some measure of 
 British institutions, there it was, in Lord Durham's 
 view, prima facie, good, sound, and desirable 
 that self-government within certain denned limits 
 should be established. But though the principle 
 was so far of general application, the application 
 was necessarily subject to conditions of time and 
 place ; and Lord Durham was sent out primarily 
 to deal with a particular time and a particular 
 place. The particular time was the close of armed 
 rebellion, and the particular place, or one of the two 
 particular places, was a province which adjoined 
 the American Republic, but in which the large 
 majority of the inhabitants were of French 
 descent. Thus Lord Durham set before himself, 
 in regard to Canada, something like the problem 
 which Aristotle propounded for solution in the 
 Politics. He set himself to consider in the first 
 place, what is the best constitution; and in the 
 second place, what is the best constitution, given 
 a particular set of conditions. He answered the 
 second problem not so much by departing from 
 his model constitution, as by proposing to alter 
 the conditions so as to enable the model con- 
 stitution to be brought into being. On the grant 
 of self-government he had clearly made his mind 
 up before he went out to Canada. After arrival
 
 126 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 in Canada, when brought face to face with existing 
 facts, he did not modify his theory to suit the 
 facts, but he set himself to modify the conditions 
 in order to make the theory practicable. 1 
 
 Thus, in regard to Lower and Upper Canada, the 
 two main recommendations of the Report are 
 inseparably connected together. He recommended 
 that the two Canadas should be reunited, and that 
 to the single province thus formed responsible 
 government should be given. He commented 
 most strongly upon the bad effects produced by 
 the want of responsible government in Lower 
 Canada, but he did not recommend that under 
 existing conditions, Lower Canada, as it stood, 
 should be endowed with responsible government. 
 He became convinced, when on the spot, that the 
 root cause of the evils in French Canada was not 
 to be found in the constitution, though the defects 
 of the constitution had aggravated the evils. He 
 traced the mischief ultimately to race antipathy 
 <and race conflict ; and, therefore, he considered 
 it to be a necessary preliminary to the jjrant of 
 responsible government to French -Cana4a_tliat 
 / in the legislature, to which the new and wider 
 powers should be given, a.British majority should 
 be assured. ' The fatal feud of origin, which is the 
 cause of the most extensive mischief, would be 
 aggravated at the present moment by any change 
 which should give the majority more power than 
 
 1 From the Life of Sir John Beverley Robinson, pp. 243-4, it \\ould 
 seem that Lord Durham was opposed to the Union of the two Canadas 
 during his whole stay in Canada. He tells us himself in the Report 
 (ii. 304) that on his first arrival in Canada he was inclined to a general 
 federation of the provinces of British North America.
 
 CHAP, v REUNION OF THE TWO CANADAS 127 
 
 they have hitherto possessed. A plan by which 
 it is proposed to ensure the tranquil government 
 of Lower Canada, must include in itself the means 
 of putting an end to the agitation of national 
 disputes in the legislature, by settling, at once and 
 for ever, the national character of the province. 
 I entertain no doubts as to the national character 
 which must be given to Lower Canada ; it must be 
 that of the British Empire ' (ii. 288). 
 
 The first part of the Report, which deals with 
 Lower Canada, begins with Lord Durham's 
 statement that he himself, and most men in 
 England, had wholly misapprehended ' the parties 
 at issue in Lower Canada ' ; that he had been sent 
 out to heal a quarrel between the Executive and 
 the popular branch of the Legislature, and found 
 a deeper seated cause of strife. ' I expected,' he 
 writes in of ten- quo ted terms, ' to find a contest 
 between a government and a people : I found 
 two nations warring, in the bosom of a single 
 state : I found a struggle, not of principles, but of 
 races ' (ii. 16). Lord Durham probably somewhat 
 exaggerated the strength of the race antipathy, 
 but that it existed was undeniable, and it is some- 
 what difficult to understand why there should have 
 been any misconception on the point. The contro- 
 versies in Lower Canada for thirty years past had 
 borne the impress of antagonism between the 
 French and British races, growing in intensity as 
 the years went on. As far back as 1810 Sir James 
 Craig had borne the strongest witness to the strength 
 of the race feeling in the province, and this feeling 
 had been constantly in evidence ever since.
 
 128 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 Papineau had denounced the abortive Reunion 
 Bill of 1822 as an attempt to Anglify French 
 Canada, and the records of subsequent committees 
 and commissions abundantly testified to the 
 division of races in Lower Canada. It was well 
 known that the Seigniories were French Lower 
 Canada, and the Townships, English Lower 
 Canada ; that the Legislative Council represented 
 the British community, and the Assembly more 
 especially the French ; while the last enclosure 
 in Appendix A to the Report is ' An Address from 
 the Constitutional Association of Montreal to the 
 inhabitants of British America ', denouncing in 
 the strongest terms the evil influence of French 
 domination in Lower Canada, and calling for union 
 of the provinces in order to secure a British 
 majority. This address is dated January 1836, 
 and was, therefore, issued more than two years 
 before Lord Durham went to Canada. How 
 then, it may be asked, can there have been any 
 doubt whatever that the troubles! in Lower Canada 
 were mainly due to race ? 
 
 The explanation seems to be in the first place 
 that, as has been pointed out, individual men of 
 British birth, such as the brothers Nelson, were 
 prominent among the popular party to the end, 
 and took a leading part in the rising in Lower 
 Canada. Their prominence and leadership tended 
 to obscure to onlookers the line of race. In the 
 second place, that Lord Durham, broad-minded as 
 he was, had been a strong party man ; that, 
 before he went out to Canada and faced the facts, 
 he had formed an a priori view of the situation,
 
 CHAP, v REUNION OF THE TWO CANADAS 129 
 
 based on his party creed; that, as one of the 
 authors of the great Reform Bill, he had, while 
 in England, an intense belief in the efficacy of 
 constitutional reform, and had not contemplated 
 the possibility of conditions for which it would 
 not be an adequate remedy. Such would no doubt 
 have been the view of the Whig Government, and 
 of the friends and advisers with whom he would 
 have taken counsel. But he was man enough, 
 after he reached Canada, to recognize that con- 
 stitutional reform alone would not meet the case 
 of the Lower Province, that the evil was more 
 deeply seated and required a more drastic remedy. 
 ' At the root of the disorders of Lower Canada,' 
 he writes in the Report, ' lies the conflict of the two 
 races, which compose its population ; until this 
 is settled, no good government is practicable ' 
 (ii. 72) ; and again, ' Though I have mentioned the 
 conduct and constitution of the Colonial govern- 
 ment as modifying the character of the struggle, 
 I have not attributed to political causes a state 
 of things which would, I believe, under any 
 political institutions, have resulted from the very 
 composition of society ' (ii. 63). 
 
 How far Lord Durham formed a correct estimate 
 of the French Canadian problem will be discussed 
 later. At present we are simply concerned with 
 the substance of his Report. He recommended in 
 the plainest and most uncompromising terms the 
 gradual extinction of the French Canadian nation- 
 ality, the Ajjglifying ofLower^Caiiada. ' I repeat 
 that the alteration oTthe character of the province 
 ought to be immediately entered on, and firmly, 
 
 1352-1
 
 no BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 though cautiously, followed up ; that in any plan 
 which may be adopted for the future management 
 of Lower Canada, the first object ought to be that 
 of making it an English province ; and that, with 
 this end in view, the ascendancy should never 
 again be placed in any hands but those of an 
 English population ' (ii. 295, 296). This was the 
 recommendation of the most advanced Liberal 
 among the leading English politicians of the day, 
 the man who was most heartwhole in the cause of 
 democracy. At first sight it seems curiously at 
 variance with Liberalism, especially as Liberalism 
 has been interpreted in later days. But Lord 
 Durham, as has been seen, had a strong Imperial 
 strain in his character ; and moreover, had he been 
 challenged as sinning against Liberal principles, 
 his Report contained ample materials for reply. 
 For he had contended earlier in the Report with 
 great force that the English minority in Lower 
 Canada represented progress and reform, while 
 the French majority stood for unenlightened Con- 
 servatism. He was fully determined to entrust 
 the internal fortunes of Canada to the will of the 
 majority of the population, and his thesis was 
 that there was one way, and one only, to carry out 
 this great Liberal measure with safety and with 
 the prospect of permanence, and that was to ensure 
 that the majority should be a British majority. 
 He wanted to give, and he determined to give, 
 responsible government. Willing the end, he also 
 willed the means. ' It is only by the same means, 
 by a popular government, in which an English 
 majority shall permanently predominate, that
 
 CHAP, v REUNION OF THE TWO CANADAS 131 
 
 Lower Canada, if a remedy for its disorders be not 
 too long delayed, can be tranquilly ruled. On these 
 grounds, I believe that no permanent or efficient 
 remedy can be devised for the disorders of Lower 
 Canada, except a fusion of the government in that of 
 one or more of the surrounding provinces ' (ii. 303). 
 Further, we have seen that it was not only as a 
 necessary preliminary to the grant of responsible 
 government that he recommended the union of the 
 two provinces. He recommended it also on its 
 merits, in order to make a greater and a worthier 
 whole. ' The permanent interests of the French 
 Canadians, like the permanent interests of the old 
 French Colony of Louisiana, would be promoted by 
 merging the more conservative race in the popula- 
 tion which had the keeping of the future, instead 
 of gratifying ' some idle and narrow notion of 
 a petty and visionary nationality ' (ii. 265) ; Upper 
 Canada would gain by being given access to the 
 sea ; and the citizens of both provinces would gain 
 by co-operation for common purposes, by calling 
 into existence new and common interests, * by 
 raising up for the North American colonist some 
 nationality of his own ' (ii. 311). To achieve such 
 a great end Lord Durham was not afraid to recom- 
 mend drastic measures. It may well be that Buller 
 had a large share in forming his views, and in 
 enunciating them in such clear and forcible terms ; 
 and Buller, it will be borne in mind, was a pupil 
 of Carlyle. There is a strong savour of Carlyle in 
 the attitude which the Report adopts towards the 
 French Canadian nationality. There is no Whig- 
 gism whatever in it, no trace of laissez-faire. 
 
 K 2
 
 132 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA FNTROD. 
 
 Lord Durham was a democrat after the type of 
 Cromwell, and few state documents ever embodied 
 so strong a policy as is contained in his Report. 
 
 He had originally contemplated federation only, 
 not union ; and federation of all the provinces, not 
 of the two Canadas merely. He came to the ultimate 
 conclusion that union was preferable to federation, 
 for the reason already given, that thereby the 
 French Canadians would no longer retain their 
 individuality and their isolation, and would be 
 merged in an English nationality. He would have 
 preferred that the union should from the first 
 include all British North America, but, under the 
 conditions of the moment, he thought, it better 
 V to Confine it to the two Caiiadas^wlucl^herrujaited 
 i^would be the nucleus for further union. He was 
 combining what he considered to be ideally best 
 with what the time and the place demanded, but 
 never losing sight_of_the conception of a single 
 self-governing British. North- America. The union 
 of the two Canadas, it must be repeated, was 
 to be no half union, no 'mere amalgamation of 
 the Houses of Assembly of the two Provinces ' 
 (ii. 323), such as had been attempted in 1822, and 
 was subsequently carried out ; much less was it to 
 be merely some shadowy 'joint legislative authority, 
 which should preside over all questions of common 
 interest to the two provinces, and which might be 
 appealed to in extraordinary cases to arbitrate 
 between contending parties in either ', such as 
 Lord Glenelg had tentatively suggested in his 
 instructions. 1 All was to be one ; the separate 
 
 1 Dispatch of January 20, 1838.
 
 CHAP, v REUNION OF THE TWO CANADAS 133 
 
 laws and institutions, the separate language, 
 everything, except the religion, which marked the 
 French Canadian nationality, and which led Papi- 
 neau and his followers to dream and talk of 
 a Canadian nation, was to be gradually but com- 
 pletely submerged. 
 
 He laid great stress upon the evils produced by 
 difference of language. ' The difference of language 
 from the first kept them [the two races] asunder ' 
 (ii. 38). ' The difference of language produces mis- 
 conceptions yet more fatal even than those which 
 it occasions with respect to opinions ; it aggravates 
 the national animosities, by representing all the 
 events of the day in utterly different lights ' (ii. 40). 
 Similar views had been held years before by Lord 
 Dalhousie, who wrote that the use of two languages 
 nourished prejudice and separation of feelings 
 between the two classes of people. Lord Durham 
 would not have summarily proscribed the French 
 language in Lower Canada, but it was an integral 
 part of his policy steadily to substitute EngHsK 
 for French, until all the inhabitants of the province 
 should be English speaking and English reading 
 citizens of the Empire. * A considerable time must, 
 of course, elapse before the change of a language 
 can spread over a whole people ; and justice and 
 policy alike require that, while the people continue 
 to use the French language, their government 
 should take no such means to force the English 
 language upon them as would, in fact, deprive the 
 great mass of the community of the protection of 
 the laws. But I repeat that the alteration of the 
 character of the province ought to be immediately
 
 134 BRITISH NORTtf AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 entered on and firmly, though cautiously, followed 
 up ' (ii. 296). ' Until Canada is nationalized and 
 Anglified,' wrote the Commissioner of Enquiry into 
 the State of Education in Lower Canada, ' it is 
 idle for England to be devising schemes for her 
 improvement ' (Appendix D, iii. 273). Obviously 
 the substitution of the English language for the 
 French was absolutely essential, if Lord Durham's 
 policy was to be carried out. 
 
 In discussing the disadvantages arising to a 
 Dependency from its dependence on the Dominant 
 Country, Cornewall Lewis, in the Government of 
 Dependencies, 1 comments upon the inexpediency 
 of attempting to make a sudden change in the 
 language of the dependent people, and quotes 
 the case of the attempt made by Joseph II to 
 impose the German language on Hungary. He 
 also notes ' that the use of a common language is 
 consistent with the existence of the strongest 
 antipathies between different communities '. But 
 Lord Durham did not advocate a sudden change ; 
 on the contrary, in the passage which has been just 
 quoted, he expressly laid down that the process 
 must be gradual, and he advocated change of 
 language in order to raise a particular dependency 
 from the status of dependence to that of self- 
 government. This question of difference of lan- 
 guage has through the years complicated the task 
 of England in working out her Imperial system, 
 but probably most thinking men would agree that, 
 while community of language would be best if 
 it were practicable, at any given time or place, 
 
 1 1891 ed., chap, ix, pp. 267-9, and note N.
 
 CHAP, v REUNION OF THE TWO CANADAS 135 
 
 whether in Canada or in South Africa, the only 
 policy which is practically possible, and which is 
 consistent with British traditions and instincts, is 
 to let the different languages run their course side 
 by side. 1 
 
 1 See on this question of language Lord Cromer's Ancient and Modern 
 Imperialism (1910) ; he refers to the question in South Africa en p. 103 ; 
 his essay, however, deals not with the self-governing dominions of 
 Great Britain but with her dependencies ; and with special reference 
 to the coloured races, he gives his view (p. 107) that ' language is not, 
 and never can be, as in the case of ancient Rome, an important factor 
 in the execution of a policy of fusion. Indeed, in some ways, it rather 
 tends to disruption, inasmuch as it furnishes the subject races with 
 a very powerful arm against their alien rulers '. 
 
 On the other hand, Lord Morley in an address to the English Associa- 
 tion on January 27. 1911, spoke of the spread of the English language 
 in India as a ' unifying agent ' : 
 
 ' I called English the most widespread of living tongues. Surely not 
 the least stupendous fact in our British annals is the conquest of a 
 boundless area of the habitable globe by our English language. There 
 is no parallel. You have been told here, I see, that Arabic is or has 
 been our rival. This is a proposition that needs far deeper limitations 
 and qualifications than I can either set forth or examine. Arabic 
 scholars assure me that though Arabic in Islamic lands for some three 
 or four centuries became the medium for an active propagation of ideas, 
 and though by the Koran it retains its hold in its own area, and keeps 
 in its literary as distinct from its spoken form the stamp of thirteen 
 centuries ago, yet there is no real analogy or comparison with the 
 diffusion of English. Latin is a better analogy. Latin was universally 
 spoken pretty early in Gaul, Britain, Spain, and somewhat later in the 
 provinces on the Danube. In the East it spread more slowly, but by 
 the Antonines and onwards the spread of Latin was pretty complete, 
 even in Africa. Greek was common throughout the empire as the lan- 
 guage of commerce in the fourth century. St. Augustine tells us that 
 pains were taken that the Imperial state should impose not only its 
 political yoke but its own'tongue upon the conquered peoples, per pacem 
 societatis. This is what, among other things, is slowly coming to pass 
 in India. Though to-day only a handful, a million or so, of the popula- 
 tion use our language, yet English must inevitably spread from being 
 an official tongue to be a general unifying agent. An Englishman who 
 adds to the glory of our language and letters will deserve Caesar's grard 
 compliment to Cicero, declaring it a better claim to a laurel crown to
 
 136 BRITISH NORTH* AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 South Africa is the latest case in which this 
 particular question has given trouble, and in 
 reference to this and other points, it is interesting 
 to read Lord Durham's Report in the light of what 
 has taken place in South Africa. His views no 
 doubt would have been modified, and might have 
 been entirely reversed, in the light of later experi- 
 ence, and no two sets of conditions in history are 
 wholly alike. It would not have been possible to 
 rearrange South Africa so as to secure a British 
 majority over the Dutch ; and the native problem 
 and many others differentiate the case of South 
 Africa from that of Canada. Still it should be noted 
 that, while Lord Durham's Report was after the 
 South African war freely used to support the case 
 of giving responsible government to the conquered 
 territories in South Africa, the all-important fact 
 was rather left out of sight that this advanced 
 democrat, this father of the system of colonial 
 self-government, in dealing with a province in 
 which there had been only a contemptible rising 
 and not a life and death struggle, in which the 
 non-British majority had lived and thrived not 
 under republican institutions but under British 
 rule, laid down as a sine qua non for giving 
 responsible government that a British majority 
 should be permanently assured. 
 
 have advanced the boundaries of Roman genius than the boundaries of 
 Roman rule. Whether Julius was sincere or insincere, it is a noble 
 truth for us as well as for old Rome.'' Lord Morley's Address to the 
 English Association ', Times, Jan. 28, 1911.
 
 CHAP, v RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 137 
 
 RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 
 
 To the two Canadas, made into one ; to all the 
 other British North American provinces, as they 
 stood, and when in years' to come they should be 
 united to the already united Canadian province, 
 Lord Durham recommended that responsible 
 government should be given. What did he mean 
 by responsible government ? What objections 
 were raised to it by British statesmen at the time ? 
 and what limits or conditions did Lord Durham 
 assign to it ? 
 
 On the 14th of May 1829 Mr. Stanley (afterwards 
 Earl of Derby) presented to the House of Commons 
 a petition which had been agreed to at a meeting 
 held at Yorktown (Toronto), and signed by 2,110 
 inhabitants of Upper Canada. According to 
 Stanley's speech in presenting the petition, it 
 asked, among other points, for ' a local responsible 
 ministry '. This is commonly held to be the first 
 mention of the term responsible government, which 
 subsequently became so familiar. In itself it is 
 a somewhat vague phrase, and in some passages of 
 his Report Lord Durham uses general terms in 
 referring to it. Thus he says that the grant of 
 responsible government would be ' a change which 
 would amount simply to this, that the Crown would 
 henceforth consult the wishes of the people in the 
 choice of its servants ' (ii. 285) ; but in other 
 passages he makes it perfectly clear that he con- 
 sidered the essence of responsible government to 
 be that the executive officers should be subordinate 
 to the Legislature. ' The wisdom of adopting the
 
 138 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 true principle of representative government, and 
 facilitating the management of public__affairs, by 
 entrusting it to the persons^wfto]Have^he confidence 
 of the representative body, has never been recog- 
 nized in the government of the North American 
 colonies. All the officers of government were inde- 
 pendent of the Assembly T "(ii. 77). By responsible 
 government^ then, he meantpand all in England 
 and Canada who used the phrase and discussed it 
 meant, constitutional government in the accepted 
 English sense, as constitutional government had 
 been known and practised in England for genera- 
 tions. He meant a political system in which the 
 Executive is directly *nd \mme>.(\\a.tf>]y responsible 
 
 to the Legislature, in which the ministers are 
 members of the Legislature, chosen from the party 
 which includes the majority of the elected repre- 
 sjentatives of the people. He meant a British 
 system, and therefore he would entrust its working 
 only to a British majority. 
 
 The Act of 1791 had given to either of the two 
 Canadas representative institutions without respon- 
 sible government. It had embodied, to use Lord 
 Durham's somewhat exaggerated words, ' the com- 
 bining of apparently popular institutions with an 
 utter absence of all efficient control of the people 
 over their rulers ' (ii. 74). To Lord Durham, as 
 a student of English history, as an heir of English 
 traditions, as a foremost fighter in the democratic 
 ranks, as England understood democracy, repre- 
 sentative institutions without responsible govern- 
 ment were a monstrosity, a contradiction in terms. 
 4 It is difficult to understand how any English
 
 CHAP, v RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 139 
 
 statesmen could have imagined that representative 
 and irresponsible government could be successfully 
 combined ' (ii. 79). ' From the commencement^ 
 therefore, to the end of the disputes which mark 
 the whole Parliamentary history of Lower Canada, 
 I look on the conduct of the Assembly as a constant 
 warfare with the Executive, for the purpose of; 
 obtaining the powers inherent in a representative 
 body by the very nature of representative govern- 
 ment ' (ii. 83, 84). 
 
 Now it will be noted that in his Report Lord 
 Durham continually contrasts the condition of the 
 two Canadas with that of the United States, and 
 attributes the greater prosperity, which was in 
 evidence in the United States, in part to the fact 
 that the citizens of the American republic lived 
 ' under a perfectly free and eminently responsible 
 government' (ii. 261). x Moreover, in one passage he 
 lays down that ' this entire separation of the legis- 
 lative and executive powers of a state is the natural 
 error of Governments desirous of being free from 
 the check of representative institutions ' (ii. 79). 
 He never seems to have realized, or at any rate he 
 ignores, the vital difference between the British 
 and the American constitutions, that in the former 
 the Executive is, to use Professor Dicey 's terms, 2 
 
 1 On the other hand, Lord Durham says (ii. 331), ' The warmest 
 admirers, and the strongest opponents of republican institutions, admit 
 or assert that the amazing prosperity of the United States is less owing 
 to their form of government, than to the unlimited supply of fertile land.' 
 
 2 The Law of the Constitution, sixth ed., 1902, Appendix, note 3, 
 on the ' Distinction between a parliamentary executive and a non- 
 parliamentary executive '. Professor Dicey points out (p. 432) that 
 ' the strong point of a non-parliamentary executive is its comparative 
 independence ' On this subject see Mr. Bryce's American Common-
 
 140 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 parliamentary, and in the latter non-parliamentary, 
 that the American constitution is an instance of the 
 successful combination of representative and (in 
 the English sense) irresponsible government ; while 
 his statement, that the separation of the legislative 
 and executive powers of a state is an error due to 
 the desire to be free from the check of representa- 
 tive institutions, is amazing in face of the fact 
 that this separation had been originally recom- 
 mended by political thinkers, and carried into 
 effect in America and in France, as a supposed 
 security against arbitrary government, as an indis- 
 pensable guarantee of a free constitution. 1 
 
 In the United States the people elect the Presi- 
 dent ; but, during the President's term of office, 
 the executive officers whom he appoints, though 
 they belong to the party to which he belongs, and 
 therefore are so far in harmony with the wishes of 
 the majority of the electors, are, like the President 
 himself, not members either of the Senate or of 
 
 wealth. He writes : ' There exists between England and the United 
 States a difference which is full of interest. In England the legislative 
 branch has become supreme, and it is considered by Englishmen a merit 
 in their system that the practical executive of the country is directly 
 responsible to the House of Commons. In the United States, however, 
 not only in the national government, but in every one of the states, the 
 exact opposite theory is proceeded upon that the executive should 
 be wholly independent of the legislative branch' (1888 ed., vol. i, 
 pp. 385-6). 
 
 1 See on this point Cornewall Lewis's Government of Dependencies, 
 Preliminary Inquiry, 1891 ed., p. 41, &c. Locke, Montesquieu, Paley, 
 &c., supported this theory of the separation of the legislative and 
 executive powers, and Cornewall Lewis says that it ' became in the last 
 (the eighteenth) century a sort of political axiom which every one 
 supposed himself to understand, and which no one thought of ques- 
 tioning '.
 
 CHAP, v RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 141 
 
 the House of Representatives, but are wholly 
 independent of and in no sense responsible directly 
 or indirectly to the Legislature. Thus Lord 
 Durham, on the one hand, insisted upon the 
 vital necessity of responsible government as 
 Englishmen understood it, and, on the other, held 
 up as a model a country in which the system of 
 responsible government in the English sense did 
 not and does not exist. He would no doubt have 
 contended, if challenged on the point, that the 
 two cases of Great Britain and the United States 
 were and are entirely differentiated by the existence 
 of the Crown in the one case and of the elected 
 President in the other, 1 and it is very noteworthy 
 what importance this advanced Liberal attached 
 to 'the stable authority of an hereditary monarchy' 
 (ii. 263) ; but it is a weakness in the Report that, 
 with its constant references to the United States, 
 it does not seem to appreciate that the political 
 system existing in the country, which bordered on 
 Canada and which had been colonized from Great 
 Britain, was not an accurate illustration of his theory 
 of responsible government as embodying the one 
 vital principle of a Parliamentary Executive. Why 
 did the author of the Report not appreciate the 
 difference between the two cases ? Because he 
 
 1 This is clearly pointed out by Merivale in the Appendix, written 
 in 1861, to No. XXII of his Lectures on Colonisation and the Colonies. 
 Speaking of the American system of a non-parliamentary executive, 
 he says, ' Not to speak of other objections to this system, it is clearly 
 incompatible with colonial institutions under a Governor appointed by 
 the Crown. His ministers would be ministers of the Crown, and 
 antagonistic, or so considered, to the community and legislature. It 
 might work if governors were elected by the people, as is the American 
 President ' (p. 650).
 
 142 BRITISH XOHTII AMERICA IN TROD. 
 
 was intensely British, because he could not con- 
 ceive of liberties for white men in lands under 
 the British Crown without British Parliamentary 
 government. The citizens were to be made 
 British, if not -British already ; their institutions 
 were to be those, and those only, which he had 
 known in Great Britain and helped so largely to 
 develop. 1 
 
 As he understood responsible government- 
 government with a Parliamentary Executive so 
 other English statesmen of the time understood it. 
 What were the objections which they took to it ? 
 The objections all resolved themselves into the one 
 main contention that men cannot serve two masters. 
 How, it was argued, is it possible to hWe divided 
 responsibility ? If the Executive is responsible to 
 the Colonial Legislature, it cannot be responsible to 
 the Imperial Parliament ; wRereas4t ^was assumed 
 
 that, if a colony was to remain part of the British 
 Empire, its administration must be responsible to 
 the Imperial advisers of the Crown and to the 
 Imperial Parliament. Thus Lord Glenelg con- 
 tended, in his Instructions to Sir Francis Bond 
 
 1 Lord Durham's son-in-law, Lord Elgin, thoroughly understood the 
 difference between the British and American systems. Writing to 
 Lord Grey from Canada on November 1, 1850, he says : ' The faithful 
 carrying out of the principles of constitutional government is a departure 
 from the American model, not an approximation to it. ... The fact is 
 that the American system is our old colonial system with, in certain 
 cases, the principle of popular election substituted for that of nomina- 
 tion by the Crown. Mr. Fillmore stands to his Congress very much in 
 the same relation in which I stood to my Assembly in Jamaica. There 
 is the same absence of effective responsibility in the conduct of legisla- 
 tion, the same want of concurrent action between the parts of the 
 political machine '. Canadian Constitutional Development (Egerton and 
 Grant), p. 327.
 
 CHAP, v RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 143 
 
 Head, dated the 5th of December 1835, 1 that 
 the existing system in Upper Canada, if properly 
 worked, was already responsible government, only 
 the responsibility lay to the Home authorities. 
 
 ' Experience would seem to prove that the 
 administration of public affairs in Canada is by 
 no means exempt from the control of a practical 
 responsibility. To His Majesty and to Parliament 
 the Governor of Upper Canada is at all times most 
 fully responsible for his official acts. . . This 
 responsibility to His Majesty and to Parliament is 
 second to none which can be imposed on a public 
 man, and it is one which it is in the power of the 
 House of Assembly at any time, by address or 
 petition, to bring into active operation.' 
 
 It has been seen that in March 1837 the House 
 of Commons passed a series of resolutions, one of 
 which was in the following terms : ' That while it 
 is expedient to improve the composition of the 
 Executive Council in Lower Canada, it is unad- 
 visable to subject it to the responsibility demanded 
 by the House of Assembly of that province.' 
 Speaking in support of this resolution, Lord John 
 Russell said that the Assembly demanded that 
 ' the executive council should be a responsible 
 council similar to the cabinet in this country ', and 
 his comment was : 
 
 ' I hold this proposition to be entirely incom- 
 patible with the relations between the mother 
 country and the Colony. . . . That part of the 
 constitution which requires that the ministers of 
 the Crown shall be responsible to Parliament and 
 
 1 See House of Commons Paper, No. 113, March 2, 1836, p. 64.
 
 144 BRITISH NORTlT AMERICA IN TROD. 
 
 shall be removable if they do not obtain the confi- 
 dence of Parliament, is a condition which exists in 
 an Imperial legislature and in an Imperial legis- 
 lature only. It is a condition which cannot be 
 carried into effect in a colony it is a condition 
 which can only exist in one place, namely the seat 
 of the Empire.' 
 
 He used similar terms in the debates of the 
 following January, when the constitution of Lower 
 Canada was being suspended and Lord Durham 
 was being sent out ; and, after Lord Durham's 
 Report had been received, laid before Parliament, 
 and fully considered, he reiterated the same views 
 to the new Governor-General of Canada, Poulett 
 Thomson, in his dispatch of the 14th of October 
 1839, which will be found in the Appendix. It will 
 be seen on reference to that dispatch that Lord 
 John Russell apparently did not appreciate the full 
 force and intent of Lord Durham's recommenda- 
 tions. He gives an unqualified negative to the 
 grant of responsible government, treating the 
 question as decided by the resolutions against it 
 which had been passed in Parliament ; but he adds 
 that ' while I thus see insuperable objections to the 
 adoption of the principle, as it has been stated, 
 I see little or none to the practical views of colonial 
 government recommended by Lord Durham, as 
 I understand them '. The demand had been for 
 a Parliamentary Executive on the model of the 
 British constitution, for the conversion of the 
 Executive Council into a Cabinet. To this Lord 
 John Russell answers. The prerogative of the 
 Crown in England is never exercised without
 
 CHAP, v RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 145 
 
 advice. The Governor is the representative of the 
 Crown and receives his orders from the Crown. 
 
 ' Can the Colonial Council be the advisers of the 
 Crown of England ? Evidently not, for the Crown 
 has other advisers, for the same functions, and with 
 superior authority. It may happen, therefore, that 
 the Governor receives at one and the same time 
 instructions from the Queen, and advice from his 
 Executive Council, totally at variance with each 
 other. If he is to obey his instructions from 
 England, the parallel of constitutional responsi- 
 bility entirely fails ; if, on the other hand, he 
 is to follow the advice of his council, he is no 
 longer a subordinate officer, but an independent 
 sovereign.' 
 
 Lord John Russell then goes on to point out that 
 the force of these objections had been felt in regard 
 to questions of other than internal concern, draw- 
 ing the distinction which had been drawn in Lord 
 Durham's report and to which further reference 
 will be made ; but he maintains that, even in regard 
 to the purely domestic matters of a colony, the 
 principle of responsible government is inadmissible. 
 He held, and others held with him, that a colony 
 must either be a dependency or an independent 
 state. Cornewall Lewis, writing in 1841, took the 
 same view. 
 
 ' If the government of the dominant country 
 substantially govern the dependency, the repre- 
 sentative body cannot substantially govern it ; and 
 conversely, if the dependency be substantially 
 governed by the representative body, it cannot be 
 substantially governed by the Government of the 
 dominant country. A self-governing dependency 
 
 1352'J L
 
 146 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 (supposing the dependency not to be virtually 
 independent) is a contradiction in terms.' ] 
 
 Many years later, in 1870, we find similar views 
 still put forward by a Colonial Governor of great 
 ability and long experience. Sir Philip Wodehouse, 
 Governor of the Cape Colony, contending against 
 the proposal to give responsible government to 
 that colony, and opposing it largely on the ground 
 of the existence of the native population, wrote : 
 
 ' I have never regarded responsible government 
 as applied to a colony, more properly speaking 
 a dependency, as anything less than an absolute 
 contradiction in terms. How can a ministry, 
 responsible to its own constituencies, render 
 obedience to the permanent power ? The issue 
 between them may be shirked or postponed, but 
 it must come. Responsible government I have 
 always held to be applicable only to communities 
 fast advancing to fitness for absolute independence, 
 and I think that the course of events in British 
 North America, Australia, New Zealand, and 
 Jamaica has, in different forms, gone very far to 
 establish that view.' 2 
 
 Occasion will be taken later to note how far these 
 objections were valid, and what light subsequent 
 history has thrown upon them/ The contention in 
 Lord Durham's Report was that a clear line could 
 be drawn between matters of Imperial and matters 
 of purely colonial concern, and that in regard to 
 the second class of questions, those of purely 
 colonial concern, the colony should no longer be 
 
 1 Government of Dependencies, 1891 cd., chap, x, p. 289. 
 1 Correspondence relating to the Affairs of the Cape of Cood Hope, 
 C. 459, 1871, p. 15.
 
 CHAP, v RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 147 
 
 a dependency ; that on the contrary, it should be 
 given through national institutions the sense of 
 national existence ; and that, in reference to these 
 internal matters, the Governor, as the representa- 
 tive of the Crown, should act on the advice of 
 a colonial cabinet, not on the advice given to the 
 Crown by ministers in England. He states his 
 case so clearly that it is difficult to understand how 
 Lord John Russell could have felt any doubt about 
 his meaning, except for the fact that the Report, 
 in order to emphasize the opinions of the writer, 
 is apt to exaggerate the contention of those who 
 held the contrary view. Thus, in the following 
 passage, Lord Durham represents those who were 
 opposed to responsible government as maintaining 
 that 'the administration of a colony should be 
 carried on by persons nominated without any 
 reference to the wishes of its people ', a statement 
 which is not only too wide but directly contrary to 
 the tenor of Lord Glenelg's dispatches. 
 
 Otherwise the passage sums up precisely the 
 meaning and intent of responsible government : 
 
 ' I know that it has been urged, that the prin- 
 ciples which are productive of harmony and good 
 government in the mother country, are by no 
 means applicable to a colonial dependency. It is 
 said that it is necessary that the administration of 
 a colony should be carried on by persons nominated 
 without any reference to the wishes of its people ; 
 that they have to carry into effect the policy, not 
 of that people, but of the authorities at home ; 
 and that a colony which should name all its own 
 administrative functionaries would, in fact, cease 
 to be dependent. I admit that the system which 
 
 L2
 
 148 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 I propose would, in fact, place the internal govern- 
 ment of the colony in the hands of the colonists 
 themselves ; and that we should thus leave to them 
 the execution of the laws, of which we have long 
 entrusted the making solely to them ' (ii. 280-1). 
 
 Thus, within certain limits or under certain 
 restrictions, Lord Durham recommended that, 
 given a majority of British citizens, Canada or any 
 British colony under similar conditions to those of 
 Canada, should be self-governing as England is 
 self-governing, that is to say, that within those 
 limits it should be subject to the Crown only, 
 advised by the colonial ministers, who should be 
 members of and responsible to the Colonial Legis- 
 lature. What were these limits and restrictions ? 
 In the last pages of the Report Lord Durham 
 sums up his recommendations, and we have an 
 outline of the constitution which he proposed for 
 Canada. The two provinces were to be reunited 
 under one Legislature, and reconstituted as one 
 province ; the Bill to be introduced into the 
 Imperial Parliament for reuniting the two provinces 
 was to provide for the voluntary admission of the 
 other North American provinces into the Union at 
 a later date ; a Parliamentary Commission was to 
 be appointed to mark out electoral divisions and 
 give representation as nearly as possible in pro- 
 portion to population ; the two provinces in this, 
 as in other matters, were to be dealt with as one, 
 and any plan for giving an equal number of 
 representatives to Lower and to Upper Canada 
 was to be discarded ; the same Parliamentary 
 Commission was to form a plan for constituting
 
 CHAP, v RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 149 
 
 elective local bodies subordinate to the General 
 Legislature, and the plan was to be embodied in 
 an Imperial Act, so as to prevent the General 
 Legislature from encroaching on the local bodies ; 
 ' a general Executive on an improved principle ' 
 was to be established, and with this recommenda- 
 tion is coupled a recommendation that a Supreme 
 Court of Appeal should be established for all the 
 British North American Colonies ; this General 
 Executive was to be such that ' the responsibility 
 to the United legislature of all officers of the 
 Government, except the Governor and his Secre- 
 tary, should be secured by every means known 
 to the British Constitution ' ; the constitution of 
 the Legislative Council was to be revised by the 
 Imperial Parliament, so as to enable it ' to act as 
 an useful check on the popular branch of the 
 legislature', without a repetition of the collisions 
 between the two Houses which had occurred in 
 past years ; the entire administration of thgjpublic 
 lands was to be left to the Imperial Government ; 
 all the other revenues of the Crown were to be 
 given over to the Legislature in return for an 
 adequate Civil List ; the judges were to be placed 
 in the same position, as regards tenure and salary, 
 as in England ; no money votes were to be pro- 
 posed except with the consent of the Crown, i.e. 
 by the responsible ministers. In a previous passage 
 Lord Durham had specified that the .only matters 
 in which the mother country need retain control 
 over the colony were, ' the constitution of the form 
 of government, the regulation of foreign relations 
 and of trade with the mother country, the other
 
 150 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 British colonies, and foreign jiations^-aniL the dis- 
 posal of the public lands- ^ii. 282). 
 
 The above being an outline of Lord Durham's 
 proposals, the answer to the question, What limits 
 or restrictions did he contemplate in respect to the 
 grant of responsible government? is, first, that 
 he drew a line between matters of imperial and 
 matters of purely colonial concern ; and secondly, 
 that in what he considered to be the purely colonial 
 sphere, he made certain recommendations which 
 would have the effect of restricting the powers of 
 
 the elected branch of the Legislature. Under the 
 
 
 
 first head he reserved to the control of the Imperial 
 Government the constitution of the colony, its 
 foreign relations, the whole of its external trade, 
 and the whole of its public lands. It will be noted 
 that he does not mention the control of the armed 
 forces on land or sea. Presumably he would have 
 included this most important matter under the 
 head of foreign relations ; but how far he would 
 have left the militia laws, and the control of the 
 militia in normal times, to the discretion of 
 the Colonial Legislature, does not appear. By 
 reserving to the Imperial Government the manage- 
 . ment of the public lands, he reserved control of no 
 small proportion of the colonial revenues; and, 
 turning to the second head, it will be noted that he 
 insisted, as a matter of course, on also reserving a 
 Civil List, and on securing in permanence the sala- 
 ries of the judges. These reservations were directly 
 contrary to the claims which had been so persis- 
 tently advanced by the Assembly of Lower Canada. 
 It is true that Lord Durham coupled them with
 
 CHAP, v RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 151 
 
 the grant of responsible government, but the 
 French-Canadian leaders had contended that, on 
 its merits, a permanent Civil List was not suited 
 to the circumstances of the Province of Quebec. 
 In this respect, and in others, notably in the 
 recommendation that money votes should only be 
 initiated upon the authority of the Crown, we trace 
 the intensely British cast of Lord Durham's mind. 
 The new system in Canada was to be the British 
 system ; responsible government was to be given 
 in internal matters, because England had respon- 
 sible government ; but all the British checks were 
 to be applied. On the subject of the Legislative 
 Council the Report is disappointing, and gives no 
 guidance. Lord Durham tells us what the Council 
 should not be ; he condemns its existing com- 
 position, he dismisses the possibility of recon- 
 stituting it upon the lines of the House of Lords, 
 and thereby departs from his British model, but 
 he gives no hint as to how it should be recast, and 
 contents himself with insisting that it should be 
 an effective check upon the popular Legislature, 
 again looking to the British system, and again 
 controverting, to some extent at any rate, the 
 French-Canadian views. Lastly, writing, we may 
 assume, with the Municipal Corporations Act, 
 which the Whig Government had carried in 1835, 
 fresh in his mind, 1 Lord Durham lays the greatest 
 stress upon the establishment of a good system of 
 
 1 ' In 1835 the Municipal Corporations Act restored to the inhabitants 
 of towns those rights of self-government, of which they had been 
 deprived since the fourteenth century ' (Green's Short History of the 
 English People, Epilogue).
 
 I.-.L' BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 municipal institutions, as a check upon the General 
 Legislature. The local bodies in Canada were to be 
 subordinate to the General Legislature, but they 
 were to take something from it, notably the oppor- 
 tunities which dabbling in purely local matters 
 gave for jobbery and corruption. As colonial 
 liberties were to be safeguarded against interfer- 
 ence from home by the grant of responsible govern- 
 ment, so local liberties were to be safeguarded 
 by Imperial Statute and by the prerogative of 
 the Crown against interference on the part of the 
 Central Legislature. ' A general legislature, which 
 manages the private business of every parish, in 
 addition to the common business of the country, 
 wields a power which no single body, however 
 popular in its constitution, ought to have ; a 
 power which must be destructive of any con- 
 stitutional balance ' (ii. 287). 1 
 
 PUBLIC LANDS 
 
 Lord Durham's Report abounds in references to 
 questions connected with lands and land tenure 
 in British North America, seigniories, townships, 
 clergy reserves, and the like ; and twenty-one 
 continuous pages of the Report in the original Blue 
 Book form, out of one hundred and nineteen, are 
 devoted to the Disposal of Public Lands and 
 Emigration. The best known of the Appendices 
 
 1 On this subject, the value of municipal institutions as a corrective 
 of the Central Legislature, see Merivale's Lectures on Colonisation and 
 Colonies, Appendix of 1861, pp. 651-4. He points out how the colonial 
 legislatures in Australia would not adopt the policy of creating local 
 bodies ' partly because its adoption would have diminished the excessive 
 power of the central legislature '. See also below, pp. 217-9.
 
 CHAP, v PUBLIC LANDS 153 
 
 is Charles Buller's Report upon the same question, 
 which Buller tells us in his account of Lord Dur- 
 ham's mission was, as a matter of fact, really due 
 to Gibbon Wakefield. Buller also supplied a short 
 special Report upon militia claims to grants of 
 land ; his assistant, Mr. Hanson, made a special 
 Report on the excessive appropriation of public 
 lands under the name of clergy reserves ; and 
 among the Appendices which have not been re- 
 printed are a long Report on the Jesuits' estates, 
 made by Mr. Dunkin, secretary to the Commission 
 of Enquiry into the State of Education in Lower 
 Canada, another Report by Buller on the Com- 
 mutation of the Sulpician feudal tenures, more 
 especially in the island of Montreal, and a Report 
 by Turton on the establishment of a Registry of 
 Real Property in Lower Canada. 
 
 Corresponding to the space allotted to the 
 consideration of land questions is the strength of 
 the terms in which Lord Durham emphasizes the 
 importance of the subject of public lands. ' The 
 disposal of public lands in a new country has more 
 influence on the prosperity of the people than any 
 other branch of government ' (ii. 242). ' In the 
 North American colonies of England, as in the 
 United States, the function of authority most full 
 of good or evil consequences has been the disposal 
 of public land ' (ii. 206). Such a scheme as Buller 
 outlined, and he adopted, for the disposal of public 
 lands, was, in his opinion, If more calculated tharl 
 any other reform whatever to attach the people\ 
 of British North America to Your Majesty's throne,] 
 and to cement and perpetuate an intimate con-
 
 154 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 nexion between the colonies and the mother 
 country ' (ii. 207-8). ' The warmest admirers, and 
 the strongest opponents of republican institutions, 
 admit or assert that the amazing prosperity of the 
 United States is less owing to their form of govern- 
 ment, than to the unlimited supply of fertile land, 
 which maintains succeeding generations in an un- 
 diminishing affluence of fertile soil ' (ii. 331). 
 
 Two points should be noted at the outset. The 
 JirsJ} is that the part of the Report which deals 
 with the disposal of public lands is the one part 
 which includes in fact, and not merely in name, the 
 whole of British North America, with the excep- 
 tion of Newfoundland.^ Thejsecond point is that, 
 when dealing with public lands and emigration, 
 Lord Durham has in view the interests of the 
 mother country as immediately and directly as 
 those of the colonies. 1 At the beginning of the 
 Report he speaks of the lands and resources of 
 British North America as ' the rightful patrimony 
 of the English people, the ample appanage which 
 God and nature have set aside in the New World 
 for those whose lot has assigned them but in- 
 sufficient portions in the Old ' (ii. 13). At the end 
 of the Report he sums up, ' I see no reason, there- 
 fore, for doubting that, by good government, and 
 the adoption of a sound system of colonization, 
 the British possessions in North America may thus 
 be made the means of conferring on the suffering 
 classes of the mother country many of the bless- 
 ings which have hitherto been supposed to be 
 peculiar to the social state of the New World ' 
 (ii. 331-2). Lord Durham had a scheme for, or
 
 CHAP, v PUBLIC LANDS 155 
 
 a vision of, the true management of colonies, and 
 their full and free development, but always in con- 
 nexion with and in relation to the mother country. 
 His scheme included on the one side constitutional 
 reform, with subsidiary reforms appended. The 
 basis of this was responsible government, and in 
 proposing responsible government he was concerned 
 to consider how much he could give to the colonies, 
 so as to make the colonial legislatures national 
 legislatures. The other side of the scheme looked 
 rather towards the mother country, and in regard 
 to the disposal of public lands he was concerned 
 to hold for the mother country what he considered 
 that the mother country had won. His concep- 
 tion was broad and generous. He looked out upon 
 the Empire as a whole, and did not forget the 
 interdependence of the interests of the different 
 parts. He was imperially minded, whether he con- 
 sidered the colonies or whether he considered the 
 mother country ; and to his mind public lands and 
 emigration formed a necessary complement to con- 
 stitutional reform. In the matter of responsible 
 government primarily he gave to the colonies, in 
 the matter of public lands primarily he kept for 
 the mother country. 
 
 It will be remembered that in emphasizing the 
 importance of the subject of public lands, in deal- 
 ing with it as a matter of prime interest to the 
 mother country, and in the method of disposal of 
 the lands which he put forward, he was the mouth- 
 piece of Gibbon Wakefield's views. Wakefield had 
 been with him in Canada, and the Report was 
 written and published just at the time when the
 
 15B BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 principles which Wakefield had laid down in regard 
 to public lands and colonization found most general 
 acceptance. In 1834 the South Australian Act 
 had been passed, and at the end of 1836 that 
 colony was founded, intended to be a model 
 colony, planted upon the lines of the Wakefield 
 system. In August of that same year, 1836, the 
 Select Committee of the House of Commons upon 
 the disposal of public lands in the British colonies 
 issued their Report, embodying Wakefield's views ; 
 and although Canada, as Lord Durham reminds 
 us, was not directly within the purview of that 
 committee, there are abundant references in the 
 evidence given by Wakefield himself, as well as by 
 other witnesses, to the dealings with land in the 
 British North American colonies. Both before he 
 went to Canada and after his return, Lord Durham 
 was in close touch with Wakefield in the schemes 
 for the colonization of New Zealand. In short, 
 he and Charles Buller alike were in this matter 
 Wakefield's disciples ; Wakefield must be credited 
 with the special Report on the subject which bears 
 Charles Buller's signature; and whoever actually 
 wrote the part of the main Report which relates to 
 public lands and emigration, no one doubts that 
 the inspiration came from Gibbon Wakefield. 
 * The essence of the Wakefield system was, that 
 all the public lands of a colony should be sold at 
 a uniform substantial fixed price, and that the 
 proceeds of the sales should be mainly devoted to 
 sending out emigrants who, from the high price 
 of the land, would not be able to become land- 
 holders in the first instance, but would supply the
 
 CHAP, v PUBLIC LANDS 157 
 
 labour necessary for the development of the new 
 country, while relieving the competition in the 
 labour market at home. The system will be found 
 fully discussed in Meriyalels lectures on coloniza- 
 tion and colonies, 1 and reference should be made 
 to a speech made by Sir William Molesworth on 
 the subject in the House of Commons on the 27th 
 of June 1839, a few months after the publication 
 of Lord Durham's and Buller's Reports. 2 Moles- 
 worth spoke in support of resolutions embodying 
 Waken" eld's principles. The resolutions set forth 
 the advantages to the United Kingdom -to be 
 derived from ' the occupation and cultivation of 
 waste lands in the British colonies by means of 
 emigration '. They laid down that ' the pros- 
 perity of colonies, and the progress of colonization, 
 mainly depend upon the manner in which a right 
 of private property in the waste lands of the colony 
 may be acquired ', and that the most effectual 
 method of disposing of the waste lands was ' the 
 plan of sale at a fixed uniform and sufficient price, 
 for ready money, without any condition or restric- 
 tion, and the employment of the whole or a large 
 fixed proportion of the purchase money ' in pro- 
 viding passages for emigrants. They further laid 
 down that ' it is essential that the permanence of 
 the system shall be secured by the legislature, 
 and that its administration should be entrusted 
 to a distinct subordinate branch of the Colonial 
 
 1 Among later accounts see chap, i in Book III of Professor Egerton's 
 Xhort History of British Colonial Policy. 
 
 See the Selected Speeches of Sir William Molesworth, edited by 
 Professor Egerton. 1903. Speech on the Wakcfield system of disposing 
 of the colonial lands.
 
 158 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 department, authorized to sell Colonial lands in 
 this country ', and to raise loans for emigration 
 on the security of the land sales. Finally they cited 
 the success which had attended the application of 
 the system in the case of South Australia. Moles- 
 worth, in his speech, credited Wakefield with first 
 enunciating in 1829 the principles set out in the 
 resolutions, and developing them in 1833. He 
 said that they had been partially adopted by the 
 Colonial Office in 1832, and had been embodied in 
 the South Australian Act ; that in 1836 they were 
 recognized by Lord Glenelg in a circular addressed 
 to the West Indian colonies ; that in the same year 
 they were approved by the committee of the House 
 of Commons, to which reference has already been 
 made ; and that they had been confirmed by the 
 transportation committee which reported in 1838. 
 ' They form,' he continued, ' no inconsiderable 
 and by no means the least valuable portion of 
 Lord Durham's report on Canada. My honourable 
 friend the member for Liskeard (Charles Buller) 
 has adopted them in his able report on the waste 
 lands of the North American colonies. And lastly, 
 within a few weeks, a company with a capital of 
 250,000, has been established on these very prin- 
 ciples, to colonize New Zealand.' 
 
 Nowhere in the world, perhaps, have lands 
 and land tenure figured so largely in political 
 liistory as in British North America. A library 
 of books might be written upon British North 
 American land questions without exhausting the 
 subject, and probably without elucidating the 
 most confusing questions which present them-
 
 CHAP, v PUBLIC LANDS 159 
 
 selves to any one who studies the Blue Books 
 and Reports. 
 
 There was in the first place the question of the 
 dual system of land tenure in Lower Canada, 
 the French and the English, the feudal tenure and 
 that of free and common soccage. The com- 
 petition and conflict between the two tenures had 
 gone on ever since the date of the Royal Pro- 
 clamation of 1763, long before the Constitution 
 Act of 1791 had divided the Province of Quebec 
 into the two Canadas ; and in course of time, after 
 the passing of that Act, its result had been to 
 create in Lower Canada an English district, as 
 opposed to the French regions of the seigniories. 
 The seigniories lay along the St. Lawrence. ' Along 
 the alluvial banks of the St. Lawrence and its 
 tributaries, they [the French Canadians] have 
 cleared two or three strips of land, cultivated them 
 in the worst method of small farming, and estab- 
 lished a series of continuous villages, which give 
 the country of the seigniories the appearance of a 
 never-ending street ' (ii. 28-9). The townships lay 
 away from the St. Lawrence on the borders of the 
 United States. They formed the English part of 
 Lower Canada. Thus the Assistant Commissioners 
 of Municipal Enquiry reported that ' The bulk of 
 the population of the townships is composed of old 
 American loyalists and more recent settlers from 
 the United States ; the remainder are emigrants 
 from Britain ' (Appendix C, iii. 142) ; and earlier, in 
 1823, a petition from the townships to the House 
 of Commons recited that * The townships, or English 
 Lower Canada, are peopled wholly by inhabitants of
 
 160 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 British birth and descent, and American loyalists, 
 amounting at present to about 40,000 souls, who 
 have no other language than that of their British 
 ancestors, who inhabit lands granted under the 
 British tenure of free and common soccage, who 
 have a Protestant clergy V Not the least interest- 
 ing feature in the townships was the fact that they 
 originated, as Buller and Lord Durham point out, 
 in the practice of * Leaders and Associates ', 
 whereby the land regulations were evaded and 
 the lands which were granted by the Crown 
 became accumulated in very few hands. The 
 following is the evidence given on the subject 
 before Buller's Commission by John Davidson, one 
 of the Commissioners of Crown Lands in Lower 
 Canada. 
 
 ' After the passing of the Constitutional Act of 
 1791, lands were granted by patent to leaders of 
 Townships and their associates. Under this system 
 1,200 acres were granted to the leader, and 1,200 
 acres to each of his associates, it being quite 
 notorious that in many cases the whole, and in 
 none less than 1,000 acres, were immediately re- 
 conveyed by each associate to the leader. . . . The 
 whole was a plan devised for the purpose of elud- 
 ing the instructions from the Home Government, 
 under which no person could obtain a grant of 
 more than 1,200 acres.' 
 
 Thus the land in the eastern townships was 
 taken up, largely by Americans, on British tenure, 
 and thus a distinctively English district grew up 
 in the land of the French Canadians. But the 
 
 1 Appendix to the Report of the Parliamentary Committee of 1828 
 on the Civil Government of Canada, p. 323.
 
 CHAP, v PUBLIC LANDS Wl 
 
 English, with their predilection for the free and 
 common soccage tenure, were not to be found only 
 in the townships. They invaded also the seig- 
 niories. ' The wealthy capitalist, 5 Lord Durham 
 tells us, ' invested his money in the purchase of 
 seigniorial properties, and it is estimated that at 
 the present moment full half of the more valuable 
 seigniories are actually owned by English pro- 
 prietors ' (ii. 36). One of them was ' Bear ' Ellice, 
 who became owner of the seigniory of Beauharnois, 
 and it was at his instance that provisions were 
 embodied in the Canada Trade Act of 1822 to 
 facilitate the conversion of French into English 
 land tenure. This was followed by the Canada 
 Tenures Act of 1825, which was avowedly intended 
 gradually to extinguish the French system. These 
 enactments met with much hostility from the 
 Nationalist party in the Quebec Assembly, who 
 considered them to be part of a policy designed to 
 denationalize French Canada, and contended that 
 the effect of the Tenures Act was to convert the 
 seignior into an English landlord, and to deprive 
 the censitaire or habitant of the rights which he 
 enjoyed under the old feudal tenure. 
 
 Again and again the French Canadian party 
 renewed their protests, and in 1836 they went so 
 far as actually to pass a Bill, which the Legislative 
 Council rejected, repealing the two Imperial Acts, 
 so far as they provided for commutation of French 
 into English tenure. It seems strange that Lord 
 Durham made no specific recommendations on the 
 main subject in his Report ; but Buller tells us 
 that it had been fully intended to deal with the 
 
 1352-1 M
 
 102 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 question ; the extinction of the feudal tenures was 
 a necessary part of the scheme for converting 
 Lower Canada into a British province; and in 
 reference to the Sulpician seigniory in the island of 
 Montreal, Buller speaks of * the pernicious influ- 
 ence of these feudal tenures, which in all parts of 
 the province retard the extension of its commerce 
 and the development of its natural resources ', 
 just as Lord Durham himself writes of ' ancient 
 and barbarous laws ' (ii. 265). The attitude which 
 was taken up on the subject by the Imperial 
 Government, and definitely stated in Lord Glenelg's 
 Instructions to Lord Gosford in July, 1835, 1 was 
 that the matter must eventually be settled by or 
 at the instance of the local Legislature, and by the 
 local Legislature of United Canada the question 
 was finally determined, when, in the year 1854, 
 they passed the Act ' for the abolition of feudal 
 rights and duties in Lower Canada '. 
 
 The troubles arising out of conflicting systems 
 of land tenure, one French and the other English, 
 were confined to Lower Canada. The difficulties 
 which were created by the system of clergy re- 
 serves were common to both the provinces, but 
 were especially prominent in Upper Canada, where 
 Lord Durham considered the clergy reserves to be 
 ' the most mischievous practical cause of dissen- 
 sion ' (ii. 179). 
 
 These reserves had been called into being by 
 the Constitutional Act of 1791, certain sections of 
 which provided that there should be a permanent 
 
 1 Copy of Instructions given to the Earl of Gosford, &c. } House of 
 Commons, Paper, No. 113, March, 1836, p. 10.
 
 CHAP, v PUBLIC LANDS 163 
 
 appropriation of public lands in the two provinces 
 for the endowment of a Protestant clergy. As 
 regards the future it was enacted that, whenever 
 grants of Crown land were made, an amount of 
 land was to be reserved for the purpose of such 
 endowment, as nearly equal in value as could be 
 estimated to one-seventh of the lands which were 
 granted for other purposes. The Act went on to 
 authorize the creation of parsonages or rectories 
 in each parish according to the establishment of 
 the Church of England, and there ensued an inter- 
 minable controversy, more especially in the Pro- 
 testant province of Upper Canada, as to whether 
 the scope of the Act was confined to the Church 
 of England or included also other Protestant 
 denominations. Apart from this fruitful element 
 of dissension, the provisions in question operated 
 as a bar to what would now be called closer settle- 
 ment, for, whenever Crown land was alienated, 
 a certain amount was locked up in clergy reserves, 
 which remained undeveloped for want of the 
 capital necessary to develop them. To meet this 
 evil an Imperial Act was passed in 1827, 1 permit- 
 ting the Government to sell a certain proportion 
 of the reserves, the proceeds to be applied to the 
 improvement of the unsold reserves or to the 
 purposes for which the reserves were originally 
 made. The action of Sir John Colborne in estab- 
 lishing a large number of Church of England 
 rectories, to which Lord Durham refers (ii. 175), 
 greatly increased the opposition to the system, 
 although, as has been already pointed out, 
 
 1 7 & 8 Geo. IV. c. 62. 
 M 2
 
 164 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD 
 
 Colborne acted in accordance with the Secretary 
 of State's views in 1832, and the course which he 
 adopted was upheld in the courts of law. The 
 system, in short, had given rise to abuses, as is 
 shown in Mr. Hanson's Report on the excessive 
 amount of land which had been appropriated for 
 the purposes in question; it had caused much 
 practical inconvenience ; and it had proved to be 
 out of place and out of time, for in Lower Canada 
 the overwhelming number of the inhabitants were 
 Roman Catholics, with a fully developed and time- 
 honoured church organization, while Upper Canada 
 was a new and sparsely settled country, in which 
 the great majority of the colonists, though they 
 were Protestants, were not members of the Church 
 of England. 
 
 ' The apparent right which time and custom 
 give to the maintenance of an ancient and re- 
 spected institution cannot exist in a recently 
 settled country, in which everything is new ; and 
 the establishment of a dominant church there is 
 a creation of exclusive privileges in favour of one 
 out of many religious denominations, and that 
 composing a small minority, at the expense not 
 merely of the majority, but of many as large 
 minorities ' (ii. 178). 
 
 The prominence which the question of the clergy 
 reserves attained in the politics of Upper Canada 
 may be in part attributed to the strong character 
 of Strachan,^ the leader (though a Scotchman) of 
 the Church of England party in the province, and 
 a foremost figure in the ' Family Compact '. 
 Shortly after Lord Durham left Canada, Strachan
 
 CHAP, v PUBLIC LANDS 165 
 
 was, towards the end of 1839, created the first 
 Church of England Bishop of Toronto, and as he 
 played a great part in the secular as well as in 
 the Church politics of the time, so the system, of 
 which he was the champion, became, apart from its 
 merits or demerits, one of the burning questions 
 in the political life of Upper Canada. Lord Dur- 
 ham was more specific in his recommendation on 
 this subject than he was in regard to the seigniorial 
 system. 
 
 ' It is most important that this question should 
 be settled, and so settled as to give satisfaction to 
 the majority of the people of the two Canadas, 
 whom it equally concerns. And I know of no 
 mode of doing this but by repealing all provisions 
 in Imperial Acts that relate to the application of 
 the Clergy Reserves, and the funds arising from 
 them, leaving the disposal of the funds to the local 
 legislature, and acquiescing in whatever decision 
 it may adopt ' (ii. 179). 
 
 As will be told later, this recommendation was 
 eventually carried out, and in 1854 the Canadian 
 Parliament passed an Act by which the clergy 
 reserves were finally secularized. 
 
 It has been noticed that among the Appendices 
 to Lord Durham's Report are Reports upon the 
 Jesuits' estates, and upon the desired commutation 
 of the feudal tenures enjoyed by the Seminary of 
 St. Sulpice. At the time of the cession of Canada 
 to Great Britain, the Jesuits owned various seig- 
 niories and other valuable landed property in 
 Lower Canada. After the passing of the Quebec 
 Act in 1774, the new Royal Instructions. given to
 
 166 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 Governor Carleton on the 3rd of January, 1775, 
 expressly ordered * that the Society of Jesuits be 
 suppressed and dissolved, and no longer continued 
 as a body corporate and politic, and all their rights 
 and possessions and property shall be vested in 
 Us for such purposes as we may hereafter think 
 lit to direct and appoint '. It was not, however, 
 until 1800 that the Crown took full possession of 
 the estates. In the meantime, in or about 1770, 
 King George III had given some promise of 
 these estates to Lord Amherst as a reward for 
 his services in Canada, and the claim of the 
 Amherst family was not finally extinguished until 
 1803. In Canada it had always been contended 
 that the proceeds of the Jesuits' estates ought to 
 be devoted to education, and eventually, in 1831, 
 Lord Goderich handed over the revenues from 
 this source to the Quebec Legislature for educa- 
 tional purposes. In the following year that Legis- 
 lature passed an Act applying the funds in ques- 
 tion to education, and by a later Canadian Act of 
 1856 the Jesuits' estates were appropriated to form 
 ' The Lower Canada Education Investment Fund '. 
 Many years afterwards, subsequent to the Con- 
 federation Act, the provincial Legislature of Quebec 
 passed in 1888 the Jesuits' Estates Act, under 
 which a sum of $400,000 was paid in compensa- 
 tion for the property which the Jesuits had once 
 owned. 1 
 
 It will be observed that Lord Durham criticizes 
 the British Government on the ground that ' it 
 has applied the Jesuits' estates, part of the pro- 
 
 1 Sec The Seigniorial System in Canada, Muuro, p. 250, note 4.
 
 CHAP, v PUBLIC LANDS 167 
 
 perty destined for purposes of education, to supply 
 a species of fund for secret service ; and for a 
 number of years it has maintained an obstinate 
 struggle with the Assembly in order to continue 
 this misappropriation ' (ii. 136). From the Report 
 of the Commissioner of Inquiry into the State of 
 Education in Lower Canada (vol. iii, App. D), and 
 from Mr. Dunkin's special Report upon the Jesuits' 
 estates, it is clear that this criticism applies wholly 
 or mainly to the years between 1800 and 1831, 
 Mr. Dunkin's account being that ' the revenues of 
 the estates during the interval between this period 
 (1800) and the year 1831, when they were sur- 
 rendered by the Provincial Parliament for the 
 support of education, were appropriated by the 
 local executive as a part of the property of the 
 Crown, and no report as to the mode of their 
 application was made public '. 
 
 The Seminary of St. Sulpice had never, like the 
 Jesuits, fallen under the ban of the British Govern- 
 ment. On the contrary, the Sulpicians had been 
 allowed to retain undisturbed possession of their 
 estates, and in consequence it was held by the law 
 officers of the Crown in England, who were con- 
 sulted in the matter during Sir James Craig's 
 Government, by Lord Goderich in 1831, and by 
 Lord Gosford and his fellow commissioners, who 
 made a special Report upon the question in October 
 1836, that the Crown could not without great 
 hardship disregard their proprietary rights. The 
 Sulpicians owned three seigniories in the district 
 of Montreal, one of which included nearly the 
 whole island of Montreal, and the object of Lord
 
 168 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 Gosford and his colleagues, as well as of Charles 
 Buller's later recommendations, was 
 
 which were 
 
 felt to be a growing encumbrance in proportion 
 to the growth of the city of Montreal. No time 
 was lost in dealing with the matter after Buller 
 had reported. In April 1839jbhe Special Council 
 of Lower Canada passed an ordinance incorporat- 
 ing the seminary, confirming~Fts title o~its seig- 
 niories, and providing for the commutation of the 
 seigniorial rights^ thereby ^to ^ate^EE^rords in 
 which the objects of^tEef ordinance were described 
 ' relieving a wealthy and enterprising com- 
 munity from the encumbrances and drawbacks 
 of a feudal tenure '. The ordinance contained 
 a clause providing that it should not take effect, 
 until confirmed by an Imperial Act, or other legis- 
 lative authority competent which the Special 
 Council was not to give it perpetuity. Sir John 
 Colborne from Canada, and Lord Durham in Eng- 
 land, earnestly pressed that the matter should be 
 settled without delay ; and in the following year, 
 1840, by duly authorized local legislation this long 
 outstanding question was set to rest. 1 
 
 1 What happened was rather complicated. The Special Council for 
 Lower Canada was created by the Imperial ' Constitutional Act Suspen 
 sion Act, 1838.' That Act provided that any laws passed by the Council 
 should expire on November ], 1842, ' unless continued by competent 
 authority.' Therefore the Council could not in any case apart from 
 the reservation clause in the ordinance referred to in the text legislate 
 in perpetuity for the Seminary of St. Sulpice. But in August 1839 the 
 Imperial Parliament passed the Suspension Act Amendment Act, 1839, 
 which repealed the provision making laws passed by the Special Council 
 expire on November 1, 1842, and the same Act, while prohibiting the 
 Special Council from legislating on the temporal or spiritual rights of
 
 CHAP, v PUBLIC LANDS 169 
 
 In all new countries, as a general rule, land 
 companies play a prominent part, and Canada was 
 110 exception to the rule. Two companies deserve 
 special mention, one of which went to work in 
 Upper Canada, the other in the eastern townships 
 of the Lower Province. The former, the Canada 
 Company, was the elder of the two, and was given 
 legal recognition by an Act of the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment, passed in June 1825, 1 which was followed by 
 a Royal Charter incorporating the company and 
 bearing the date of the 19th of August 1826. The 
 preamble of the Act shows clearly that the object 
 which the Government had in view in passing it, 
 was the settlement and cultivation of the Crown 
 and clergy reserves in Upper Canada by sale 
 within limits to a chartered company ; and Buller, 
 in his Report on Public Lands, wrote that ' The 
 sale to the Canada Company, though in form an 
 exceptional method of disposing of public lands, 
 was in effect, and was intended to be, a delegation 
 of the powers of Government in this important 
 
 ecclesiastics, or the law of tenure, made a special exception in favour of 
 legislation for commuting the seigniorial rights of the Seminary of St. 
 Sulpice. When the Act had been passed, Lord John Russell, who was 
 then Secretary of State for the Colonies, returned the ordinance to be 
 revised and re-enacted. Meanwhile there had been considerable opposi- 
 tion to it in Canada on the ground that it was too favourable to the 
 Seminary. Poulett Thomson therefore passed a new ordinance through 
 the Council in 1840, following more closely the lines laid down by Buller, 
 and less favourable to the ecclesiastics. There was still some opposition 
 both in Canada and in England, but the ordinance was allowed to 
 stand. When the Canadian Act ' for the abolition of feudal rights and 
 duties in Lower Canada ' was passed in 1854, the settlement which had 
 been made was safeguarded, but further provisions with regard to the 
 Seminary and its tenures were included in the Seigniorial Amendment 
 Act of 1859. l An amending Act was passed in 1828.
 
 170 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 particular to a private company ' (Appendix B, 
 iii. 55). 
 
 The quantity of land sold to the company, and 
 the terms on which it was sold, are given as follows 
 in the evidence of John Radenhurst, chief clerk of 
 the Surveyor-General's office in Upper Canada, 
 who appeared before Buller's Commission. 
 
 ' The company at first contracted for the pur- 
 chase of 1,384,413 acres of Crown Reserves and 
 829,430 of Clergy Reserves at 3s. 6d. per acre. The 
 Government were, however, unable to perform 
 their contract, so far as related to the Clergy 
 Reserves, and, as a substitute, the company were 
 aUowed to select 1,100,000 acres in a block on the 
 shores of Lake Huron, at the same price for the 
 whole as was to have been paid for 800,000 acres 
 of Clergy Reserves, making the whole of their pur- 
 chase 2,484,413 acres ; the purchase money was 
 to be paid in the following annual instalments, viz. 
 In the year ending July 1827, 20,000; 1828, 
 15,000; 1829, 15,000; 1830, 15,000; 1831, 
 16,000; 1832, 17,000; 1833, 18,000; 1834, 
 19,000 ; 1835, 20,000 ; and 20,000 a year for 
 the next seven years. The company was to be at 
 liberty to expend one third part of the purchase 
 money of the block of 1,100,000 acres in public 
 works and improvements within such block of 
 land, such as canals, bridges, roads, churches, 
 wharfs, and school houses, &c.' 
 
 John Gait, the Scotch novelist, had much to do 
 with the inception and the early work of the Canada 
 Company. He was the founder of Guelph, and the 
 town of Gait bears his name. The main sphere of 
 the company's operations was the Huron district, 
 due west of Toronto, between Lakes Huron and
 
 CHAP. V 
 
 PUBLIC LANDS 
 
 171 
 
 Ontario ; and undoubtedly much was done to 
 develop and settle this part of Upper Canada. 
 In 1856 an Imperial Act was passed giving facilities 
 for winding up the company ; but when the Colonial 
 Land and Emigration Commissioners issued their 
 last colonization circular in 1877, they reported 
 that the company had still 400,000 acres to sell or 
 lease. A further Imperial Act was passed in 1881, 
 and the Company is still in active operation. 
 
 The British American Land Company made an 
 agreement with Stanley, afterwards Lord Derby, 
 then Secretary of State for the Colonies, on the 
 3rd of December 1833. Under this agreement the 
 Government sold to the company 847,661 acres in 
 the eastern townships for 120,000, payment being 
 at the rate of 3s. Qd. an acre for Crown reserves 
 and surveyed land, and 3s. for unsurveyed land. 
 The company was incorporated by Royal Charter 
 on the 20th of March 1834, and the charter was 
 confirmed by Act of Parliament dated the 22nd of 
 May 1834. /The charter extended to the whole of 
 British North America, including Newfoundland, 
 and the company was empowered to hold lands 
 purchased from the Crown or from private persons 
 up to three millions of acres at any one time in the 
 British North American provinces. One section 
 of the Act authorized the commutation of any 
 feudal rights on lands acquired under , seigniorial 
 tenure into free and common soccage./ The com- 
 pany's operations were, as a matter of fact, confined 
 to the eastern townships, where the actual amount 
 of land acquired from the Crown seems not to have 
 been quite as large as was specified in the first
 
 172 BRITISH NORTH* AMERICA INTEOD. 
 
 contract with the Government. The colonization 
 circular of 1877, to which reference has been made 
 above, states that the company purchased from 
 the Crown in the eastern townships, where its 
 head-quarters were at Sherbrooke, about 767,000 
 acres, and that the directors were then offering for 
 sale nearly 500,000 acres. The company met with 
 bitter opposition from the French Canadian maj ority 
 in the Quebec Legislature, and repeated demands 
 were made that the charter should be cancelled 
 and the Act repealed. The introduction of British 
 immigrants, which was welcome in Upper Canada, 
 was resented by the French of Lower Canada as 
 part of a policy designed to denationalize the 
 province. It was contended that the Executive 
 Government had no right to dispose of the waste 
 lands of the province without the authority of the 
 Legislature ; and that, in the sale to the company 
 of so large a tract of land, the rights of the Canadian 
 people had been disregarded in favour of mono- 
 polists in the United Kingdom, and the rights of 
 cultivators in favour of landlords. There were two 
 Acts of Parliament which were constant sources of 
 complaint against the Imperial Government by the 
 Quebec Legislature, both connected with land- 
 one was the Tenures Act, the other was the Act 
 which confirmed the charter of the British American 
 Land Company. The Imperial Government, how- 
 ever, refused to entertain any proposals which 
 involved repudiating their contract, and the com- 
 pany is still in existence, working under the pro- 
 visions of successive Imperial Acts, the latest of 
 which was passed in 1894.
 
 CHAP, v PUBLIC LANDS 173 
 
 A troublesome and long-standing question con- 
 nected with land in Canada was that of claims to 
 land by those who had served in the militia in the 
 war of 1812. So far as Lower Canada was con- 
 cerned, this question formed the subject of a 
 special Report by Charles Buller, which is given in 
 App. A (vol. iii) ; and Lord Durham embodied in his 
 own main Report (ii. 225-30) the instructions which 
 he gave to the commissioners whom he appointed 
 to settle the claims, after receiving Buller's recom- 
 mendations. Some time after the war of 1812, 
 free grants of land in the Lower Province were 
 promised by Royal Instructions to militiamen who 
 had served in the war, the boon being intended for 
 the six battalions of embodied militia, as opposed 
 to what was known as the sedentary militia, 
 though some of the latter also preferred claims. 
 The grants were to range from 100 acres to the 
 privates to 1,200 to the commanding officers. 
 They were to be made on condition of settlement ; 
 but sufficient facilities for settlement were not 
 given, and the land claims were in large measure 
 disposed of by the militiamen to land speculators. 
 There resulted, in Buller's words, 'the maximum 
 of injury to the province with the minimum of 
 benefit to the militiamen ' ; and, on his recom- 
 mendation, Lord Durham appointed a board of 
 commissioners to investigate the claims, and to pay 
 off those claimants who had made good their title 
 by orders representing the money value of the 
 land to which they were entitled, at the average 
 selling price of Crown lands during the last ten 
 years. There had been similar trouble in Upper
 
 174 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 Canada in the years after the war ; and John 
 Richards, who had been specially deputed by the 
 Imperial Government in 1830 to visit the British 
 North American provinces and make a Report in 
 connexion with Waste Lands and Emigration, 1 
 wrote : 
 
 ' The Province of Upper Canada appears to have 
 been considered by Government as a land fund, 
 to reward meritorious servants. Lots are given to 
 reduced officers ; say, 1,200 acres to a Colonel, 
 1,000 to a major, 800 to a captain, 500 to a lieu- 
 tenant, 200 to a serjeant, and 100 to a disbanded 
 soldier, and to the United Empire Loyalists, their 
 sons and daughters, 200 acres each.' 
 
 The interest of the matter lies in noting not 
 merely or mainly the abuses which arose from 
 making free grants of land to disbanded soldiers, 
 but rather the great part which the practice played 
 in the history of Canada. Thus in the days of 
 Louis XIV, when Colbert and Talon were busy 
 colonizing Canada, discharged soldiers of the 
 famous Carignan Salieres regiment were planted 
 out on the land under feudal tenure. After the 
 cession of Canada to Great Britain, by the Royal 
 Proclamation of 1763, grants of land were offered 
 to soldiers and sailors who had served in America 
 in the previous war on conditions of settlement ; 
 similar grants were offered after the war of American 
 Independence. It was in principle a good and 
 sound method of rewarding those who had fought 
 for their country, and attaching to the soil colonists 
 
 1 The report was made in January 1831, and laid before the House 
 of Commons in March 1832, No. 334. See p. 4.
 
 CHAP, v PUBLIC LANDS 175 
 
 who had shown that they could defend it. But 
 in the case in point, the militiamen had already 
 their homes in the land, and there was no question 
 of attracting them to remain in it as settlers. 
 Moreover, as Buller pointed out, in Lower Canada 
 ' the majority of the militia were French Canadians, 
 who have not hitherto been, and are not now, an 
 emigrating people ' ; the result, therefore, of giving 
 them grants of land would at best only have trans- 
 ferred them reluctantly from one district of the 
 province to another, while the actual outcome was 
 to make the land claims the subject of traffic and 
 speculation. 
 
 Various other questions connected with lands in 
 the two Canadas might be noted. There was 
 a difficulty caused by squatters who had settled 
 on the waste lands of the Crown without any legal 
 title. Their case is referred to in Buller's Report, 
 and Lord Durham met or proposed to meet it by 
 naming a date, and giving to all bona fide settlers, 
 who had established themselves on Crown lands 
 without title before that time, a right of pre- 
 emption at the price which had been fixed for 
 Crown lands in their neighbourhood. He wrote 
 a separate dispatch on this matter, and it formed 
 the subject of later correspondence between Lord 
 John Russell and Poulett Thomson. There was 
 again the subject of the lands assigned to the Six 
 Nation Indians in Upper Canada ; but, without 
 further reference to these specific questions, it is 
 time to comment upon the general subject of Crown 
 lands in Canada, and upon Buller's scheme, which 
 was Wakefield's scheme, and which Lord Durham
 
 176 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 adopted for dealing with the lands in the public 
 interest. 
 
 Buller's, or rather Wakefield's, scheme was 
 designed partly to remedy the evils which had 
 resulted from the profusion of land grants in the 
 past ; partly to provide a sound working system 
 for disposing of public lands in the future. In the 
 past the Government had parted with a vast 
 amount of land to private owners, with the result 
 that much was locked up and uncultivated. In 
 order to bring these lands into cultivation, Buller 
 proposed that a tax at the rate of 2d. an acre 
 should be levied upon all wild lands, and that the 
 proceeds of the tax should be applied, either 
 directly or by being made part security for a 
 development loan, to making roads, improving 
 communications, and facilitating the settlement 
 of the country. Proprietors were to be allowed to 
 pay the tax in land, such land * to be taken by the 
 Government at the rate of 4s. per acre, in lots of 
 not less than 100 acres ' ( App. B, iii. 88). Thus the 
 Government would recover some of the land which 
 had been alienated in the past, and the proprietors 
 who paid the tax would be recouped for losing 
 some of their land, by the increased value which 
 would accrue from the proceeds of the tax to the 
 lands which they still retained in their own hands. 
 The tax was to be imposed and its continuance 
 guaranteed by a central authority, the Imperial 
 Parliament. As regards the future, BuUer recom- 
 mended that all public lands should be sold not by 
 auction, but at a fixed price ; that this fixed price 
 should be uniform, one and the same in all parts
 
 CHAP, v PUBLIC LANDS 177 
 
 of British North America, and that the money 
 should be paid at the time of sale. The price, he 
 suggested, might be 10<s. an acre, though he doubted 
 whether it was not too low. ' Even at that price, 
 there is great reason to fear that labouring emi- 
 grants may be induced to become purchasers before 
 they have either the requisite capital or knowledge 
 to qualify them for the position they will thus 
 assume. The produce of the fund, also, will be 
 scarcely adequate to the objects to which it ought 
 to be applied, the construction of public works 
 and the promotion of emigration' (iii. 113). He 
 named the sum in question as a compromise, noting 
 that the neighbourhood of the United States 
 must be an element in determining the price, and 
 that the question therefore was perhaps one to be 
 left to and settled by the authority to which the 
 administration of the public lands would be con- 
 tided. He recommended that no limit should be 
 placed to the amount of land which any one man 
 might buy ; that all reserves of every kind, in- 
 cluding the clergy reserves, should be thrown open 
 to purchase and settlement ; and that ' public 
 land in all the North American colonies should 
 be open to purchase by all persons to whatever 
 country they may belong, requiring, if necessary, 
 that the subject of a foreign power should at the 
 time of purchase take the oath of allegiance ' 
 (iii. 108). This provision he considered to be 
 especially desirable, in order to encourage settlers 
 from the United States ; and both he and Lord 
 Durham criticized, with some inaccuracy, 1 the 
 
 1 See note 1 to ii. 172. 
 
 1352-1 N
 
 178 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA LNTROD. 
 
 measures which had been taken in Upper Canada 
 after the war of 1812, to prevent land being held 
 by American citizens, for Buller laid great stress 
 on the value to Canada of American settlers 
 * none form such efficient pioneers of civilization.' 
 The funds derived from land sales, and from 
 licences for cutting timber, in addition to the pro- 
 ceeds from the tax on wild lands belonging to 
 private proprietors, were to be applied to making 
 roads, railways, and canals, and to introducing 
 emigrants, who were rather to work for wages on 
 first arrival than to take up land for themselves ; 
 and at the outset loans were to be raised upon the 
 security of the funds, partly for public works and 
 partly for emigration. The whole scheme was to 
 be embodied in an. Act of Parliament ; and when 
 the principles had been laid down and ratified by 
 law, the practical working was to be entrusted to 
 a central commission in the United Kingdom, with 
 subordinate commissioners in the North American 
 colonies, all acting under the supreme control of 
 the Secretary of State for the Colonies. 
 
 Similarly, guided by Wakefield, as Lord Durham 
 and Buller were guided, the Select Committee of 
 1836 had recommended, with regard to the Aus- 
 tralian and West Indian colonies and the Cape, 
 ' that the whole of the arrangements connected 
 with the sale of land, including both the price 
 and the precise mode of sale, should be placed 
 under the charge of a Central Land Board, resi- 
 dent in London, and made responsible either to 
 some existing department in the Government, 
 or to Parliament directly, as may be deemed
 
 CHAP, v PUBLIC LANDS 179 
 
 
 
 expedient '. The outcome was the appointment 
 in 1840 of the Board of Land and Emigration 
 Commissioners, who worked in subordination to 
 the Secretary of State for the Colonies and the 
 Lords of the Treasury. 
 
 Thus the public lands in British North America 
 were to be administered upon a definite system, 
 for the benefit alike of the colonies and of the 
 mother country ; but the authority, under which the 
 system was to come into being, was the Imperial 
 Parliament and not the Colonial Legislatures ; and, 
 though .Reports of the proceedings of the com- 
 missioners were to be laid before the Colonial Legis- 
 latures as well as before the Imperial Parliament, the 
 Executive was to be directly responsible not to any 
 colonial authority but to the Secretary of State. 
 
 Further and separate reference will be made 
 below to emigration and improvement of means of 
 communication, to which the funds derived from 
 public lands were to be applied ; but it will be 
 borne in mind that these two subjects were from 
 Lord Durham's and Buller's point of view insepar- 
 ably connected with the disposal of public lands, 
 and were an integral part of a great scheme of 
 colonization. Towards the end of his Report 
 (ii. 327-31) Lord Durham summarizes the whole. 
 On the ' management of public lands ' he writes, 
 ' The plan, which I have framed for the manage- 
 ment of the public lands, being intended to pro- 
 mote the common advantage of the colonies and 
 of the mother country, I therefore propose that 
 the entire administration of it should be confided 
 to an Imperial authority.' Then, passing on to 
 
 N 2
 
 180 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 the ' measures to promote emigration ', he says, 
 'In conjunction with the measures suggested for 
 disposing of public lands, and remedying the evils 
 occasioned by past mismanagement in that depart- 
 ment, they form a plan of colonization to which 
 I attach the highest importance. The objects, at 
 least, with which the plan has been formed, are 
 to provide large funds for emigration, and for 
 creating and improving means of communication 
 throughout the provinces. . . .' Then, reviewing 
 the prospective ' benefits of a judicious system of 
 colonization ', he lays down that * it is by a sound 
 system of colonization that we can render these 
 extensive regions available for the benefit of the 
 British people. . . . The experiment of keeping 
 colonies and governing them well, ought at least 
 to have a trial, ere we abandon for ever the vast 
 dominion which might supply the wants of our 
 surplus population, and raise up millions of fresh 
 consumers of our manufactures, and producers of 
 a supply for our wants.' 
 
 It has been noted that Lord Durham ANUS 
 a strong and convinced Imperialist, and that, in 
 the matter of public lands, he kept his eyes fixed 
 on the mother country at least as much as on the 
 colony. This point of view was characteristic of 
 the group of public men to which he and Buller 
 and Gibbon Wakefield belonged. They were, in 
 modern phraseology, Radicals, but the reverse of 
 Little Englanders ; and their attitude will be better 
 appreciated, if it is contrasted with the views on 
 public lands in the colonies which are contained 
 in Cornewall Lewis's Government of Dependencies,
 
 CHAP, v PUBLIC LANDS 181 
 
 published in 1841, two years after Lord Durham's 
 Report was given to the press and to Parliament. 
 In the chapter on * The advantages derived by 
 the dominant country from its supremacy over 
 a dependency ', Lewis l discusses the advantage 
 accruing to the people of a dominant country 
 from the possession of a dependency, ' in the 
 facilities for emigration and for the acquisition 
 and cultivation of land which it may afford to 
 them ' ; and he argues that ' the system of defray- 
 ing the expenses of emigrants from the proceeds 
 of the sale of public lands in the colony does not 
 necessarily suppose that the new settlement is a 
 dependency of the country which sends out the 
 emigrants ', that ' there is nothing in the colonial 
 relation which implies that the colony must be 
 a dependency of the mother country, nor generally 
 is it expedient that such a relation should exist, 
 even in the case of a newly founded settlement.' 
 Lord Durham had no sympathy with this point of 
 view. He wished to give responsible government 
 to Canada, and so far to remove it from the 
 category of dependencies ; but at the same time 
 he would have emphatically rejected the reasoning 
 which treated the political connexion between 
 Great Britain and Canada, in the matter of public 
 lands and emigration, as of no real advantage to 
 either party. 
 
 Sir William Molesworth spoke in high praise of 
 the passages in Lord Durham's Report which refer 
 to public lands, and of Buller's special Report on 
 the subject. It is true that no part of the whole 
 
 1 1891 ed., pp. 225-9.
 
 182 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 inquiry was more detailed, more elaborated, or 
 more complete, but, in the light of subsequent 
 experience, it must be added that no part was so 
 academic or so divorced from living realities. On 
 paper the principles which Wakefield laid down 
 were sound and broadly based ; his reasoning was 
 logical and conclusive ; and indirectly his doc- 
 trines produced no little practical good. But new 
 countries and the English race do not lend them- 
 selves to cut-and-dried systems. English emigrants 
 go out to live as they think best, and not as they 
 are ordered, and colonization and uniformity have 
 little in common. The success which Lord Durham 
 credited to the Wakefield system was nowhere 
 attained ; indeed the system was never fuUy and 
 consistently tried ; and whatever scope there may 
 have been for its application in Australia, in 
 British North America the field was already too 
 much occupied, the conditions which past history 
 had evolved were too various, to make a uniform 
 system for all the British North American pro- 
 vinces even a remote possibility. Uniformity was 
 impossible ; and even more impossible, in the light 
 of the political controversies which had taken 
 place, more especially in Lower Canada, was the 
 proposed combination with the grant of respon- 
 sible government of Imperial control over the 
 public lands. 
 
 It will be remembered that when, in 1831, the pro- 
 ceeds of the taxes which were raised under the Quebec 
 Revenue Act were handed over to the Legislatures 
 of the two Canadian provinces, the casual and 
 territorial revenues of the Crown were still reserved ;
 
 CHAP, v FUJ3L1C LANDS 183 
 
 that the control of these revenues formed one of 
 the main issues between the Imperial Government 
 and the Legislature of Lower Canada; and that 
 the position taken up by the Imperial Government 
 was, roughly, that these funds would be handed 
 over to the local Legislature when certain con- 
 ditions had been complied with, principal among 
 which was the provision of a Civil List. In February 
 1831 Lord Aylmer, then Governor-General, in 
 a message to the Quebec House of Assembly, 
 classified the casual and territorial revenues of the 
 Crown under the following heads * : 
 
 (1) Rents, Jesuits' estates. 
 
 (2) Rent of the King's Posts. 
 
 1 See the House of Commons Paper of July 15, 1831, Canada Crown 
 Revenues. These funds were enumerated by Mr. John Davidson, 
 Commissioner of Crown Lands in Lower Canada, in his evidence before 
 Buller's Commission, as follows : 
 
 Of what does the landed property of the Crown in this Province 
 consist ? 
 
 All the estates which were held by the King of France at the time of 
 the conquest, which may be arranged as follows : 
 
 1st. Certain fiefs in the city of Quebec and town of Three Rivers, 
 whereof the censitaires held immediately under the Crown. 
 
 2nd. The forges of St. Maurice, which were established by the old 
 French Government and have been let for different terms to private 
 persons. 
 
 3rd. The King's trading posts, which signifies that portion of the Pro- 
 vince of Lower Canada between the settled lands on the north bank of 
 the St. Lawrence and the land held under the Charter of the Hudson's 
 Bay Company, and which tract is held by that Company under a lease 
 that secures to them the sole right of hunting, fishing, and trading on 
 that territory. The lease expires in 1842. 
 
 4th. The King's Wharves in Quebec, which were originally formed by 
 the old French Government, and have been improved by the British 
 Government, and are now let upon lease to individuals. 
 
 5th. The estates held at the time of the conquest by the late order of 
 Jesuits, which upon the extinction of that order in the Province were 
 reserved by the Crown, and which consist of extensive seigniories and
 
 184 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA TNTROD. 
 
 (3) Forges of St. Maurice. 
 
 (4) Rent of King's Wharf. 
 
 (5) Droit de Quint. 1 
 
 (6) Lods et Ventes. 1 
 
 (7) Land fund. 
 
 (8) Timber fund. 
 
 The average receipts from these sources in Lower 
 Canada amounted at this date to no more than 
 upwards of 7,000 per annum, whereas the revenues 
 which were raised under the Quebec Revenue Act, 
 and which in this year, 1831, were handed over to 
 the Quebec Legislature, were estimated, on an aver- 
 age, at 38,000 per annum. In other words, the 
 public lands in Lower Canada, even after 1830, 
 only formed one item, or, including timber, two 
 items in a list of Crown receipts the sum total of 
 which was not more than about one-fifth of the sum 
 which had been derived from taxes levied under 
 Imperial Acts, and which the Imperial Govern- 
 ment had controlled prior to 1831. In specifying 
 the items of the casual and territorial revenues, 
 Lord Aylmer, as already stated, insisted that these 
 
 of other property, including buildings in the city of Quebec and town 
 of Three Rivers. 
 
 6th. All the beaches and water lots upon all navigable rivers. 
 
 The beaches consist of the land on botli sides of the rivers between 
 the highest and lowest water -mark, and the water lots extend from the 
 lowest water -mark into deep water. 
 
 7th. The whole of the waste and unappropriated land within tlio 
 Province. 
 
 In addition to this the Crown is entitled to a mutation fine upon the 
 sale of seigniories, varying from the maille d'or, which is a nominal 
 acknowledgement, to one-fifth part of the purchase, which is the more 
 common fine, and payable in either case before the seignior is admitted 
 to perform fealty and homage. 
 
 1 Tiie ' Quint ' and the ' Lods et Ventes ' were mutation fines, the 
 former paid by the seignior, the latter by the censitaire. See Munro's 
 Seigniorial System, in Canaia.
 
 CHAP, v PUBLIC LANDS 185 
 
 revenues were the property of the Crown. ' They 
 stand upon a perfectly different ground from taxes, 
 properly so called. They are enjoyed by the Crown, 
 by virtue of the Royal Prerogative, and are neither 
 more nor less than the proceeds of landed property, 
 which legally and constitutionally belongs to the 
 Sovereign on the throne.' This account of the 
 funds would have been strictly accurate, if it had 
 been given before William IV came to the throne ; 
 but it was overlooked at the time when Lord 
 Aylmer addressed the Quebec Legislature, and 
 apparently it was more or less overlooked for many 
 years afterwards, 1 that by the Civil List Act which 
 was passed when King William IV became king, 
 and again by the Civil List Act of Queen Victoria, 
 all the casual revenues of the Crown, whether 
 within or without the United Kingdom, were made 
 part of the Consolidated Fund. Thus in 1831, and 
 afterwards, the casual and territorial revenues of 
 the Crown in British North America, including the 
 waste lands, were not the property of the Crown, 
 but the property of the Imperial Government. The 
 confusion on the subject was finally cleared up 
 in the year 1852, when the Imperial Parliament 
 passed ' An Act to remove doubts as to the lands 
 and casual revenues of the Crown in the colonies 
 and foreign possessions of Her Majesty.' 
 
 Buller, in his Report (iii. 37), spoke of the waste 
 lands as ' in name the property of the Crown ' ; 
 and Lord Durham wrote (ii. 209) that ' the whole 
 
 1 The point, however, was appreciated by Lord Gosford and his 
 fellow commissioners, and noticed in the first of their reports, which 
 dealt with the Crown revenues in Lower Canada. See the House of 
 Commons Paper of February 20, 1837, No. 50, p. 12.
 
 186 BRITISH NORTH AMERTCA INTROD. 
 
 of the public lands have been deemed the property 
 of the Crown ' ; but there is little or no indication 
 in Buller's Report or in Lord Durham's that these 
 waste lands, to which they attached such great 
 importance, and from which under proper manage- 
 ment they, hoped so much, had been included and 
 more or less hidden away in the list of casual 
 and territorial revenues of the Crown : and Lord 
 Durham makes no specific mention of public lands 
 when, in referring to the sources of public revenue 
 in Lower Canada, he writes : ' With the exception 
 of the small amount now derived from the casual 
 and territorial funds, the public revenue of Lower 
 Canada is derived from duties imposed partly by 
 Imperial and partly by provincial statutes ' (ii. 141). 
 Lord Glenelg, on the contrary, had fully appre- 
 ciated the position, when in his instructions to 
 Lord Gosford and his colleagues in July 1835, he 
 indicated that while he was prepared to hand over 
 to the Quebec Legislature the casual and terri- 
 torial revenues in return for an adequate Civil List, 
 the concession would include the right of appro- 
 priating the revenues arising from Crown lands, 
 but would not include the management of those 
 lands which would be retained in the hands of 
 the Executive Government. On this basis Lord 
 Gosford and his fellow commissioners made their 
 recommendations; but Lord Durham and Buller 
 practically ignored what had gone before, and dis- 
 cussed the question of the disposal of public lands 
 very much as though the time-honoured dispute 
 as to the control of the territorial revenues of the 
 Crown had never existed. The result was that
 
 CHAP, v PUBLIC LANDS 187 
 
 whereas in Lower Canada these revenues were to 
 have been handed over to the local Legislature in I 
 return for the grant of a Civil List, Lord Durham 
 proposed to withhold from the United Legislature 
 of the two Canadas both the management of public 
 lands and the funds accruing from land sales and 
 land taxes, and further to insist ' on the conces- 
 sion of an adequate Civil List' (ii. 327) as the 
 price of giving up to the Legislature the remaining 
 revenues of the Crown. The recommendation was 
 a curious pendant to the grant of responsible 
 government. While anxious to give free institu- 
 tions, to create a national spirit and a national j 
 pride, while pleading the cause of self-government 
 with rare eloquence and cogent reasoning, Lordx 
 Durham, at the same time and in the same scheme, 
 withheld from the proposed national Legislature 
 more than the Imperial Government for years had 
 contemplated withholding. 
 
 It was in no narrow or timid spirit that he put 
 forward his scheme. He was broad-minded in 
 withholding as in granting ; he withheld, because 
 in the matter of public lands he conceived that 
 Imperial interests were at stake ; but his recom- 
 mendation was impossible in view of what had 
 gone before in Canada, and more impossible when 
 coupled, as it was, with the grant of responsible 
 government. To ignore in this matter previous 
 political controversies and previous conditional 
 promises was only to invite a recrudescence of 
 bitterness against the Imperial Government and 
 the mother country. To give free institutions, but 
 at the same time to withhold the control of the
 
 188 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 soil and the revenues arising from it, was little 
 better than a contradiction in terms. 
 
 Hence it must be summed up that, however 
 broad was Lord Durham's conception of the right- 
 ful disposal of public lands, however suggestive 
 was the form in which his views were embodied, 
 under the actual conditions of place and time, 
 and under the political conditions which he pro- 
 posed to create, his scheme was wholly imprac- 
 ticable. 
 
 EMIGRATION. 
 
 In an interesting and often quoted Parliamen- 
 tary Paper, to which Lord Durham refers (ii. 115), 
 and which was laid before the House of Commons 
 in March 1832, entitled ' Copy of the Report of 
 Mr. Richards to the Colonial Secretary respecting 
 the Waste Lands in the Canadas and Emigration ', 
 the author of the report writes that ' much was 
 said to me in the colonies upon the two questions 
 of spontaneous and regulated emigration ; and the 
 great evil of which they complain was the entire 
 absence of wholesome regulation. I feel, therefore, 
 fully convinced, whatever course may be ultimately 
 adopted, even if the present loose mode is to go 
 on, that the necessity of reducing it to a system 
 will be forced upon us V In the interval between 
 Mr. Richards' visit to British North America and 
 Lord Durham's mission, something had been done 
 by the Government in the direction of safeguard- 
 ing emigrants, including the passing in 1835 of an 
 amended Passengers' Act ; but, according to 
 
 1 No. 334. Canada, Waste Lands, p. 23. See above, p. 174.
 
 CHAP, v EMIGRATION 189 
 
 Durham and Buller, who as disciples of Wakefield 
 were entirely in favour of ' systematic emigra- 
 tion ', very much more remained to be done, and 
 the parts of their reports which deal specially with 
 emigration are mainly devoted to pointing out 
 existing evils, and emphasizing the need of further 
 regulation by Government. Lord Durham con- 
 cludes his comments on the subject with the 
 remark, ' All the gentlemen, whose evidence I have 
 last quoted, are warm advocates of systematic 
 emigration. I object, along with them, only to 
 such emigration as now takes place without fore- 
 thought, preparation, method, or system of any 
 kind ' (ii. 259). In this, as in other respects, Durham 
 had 110 sympathy with the coming Manchester 
 school. He believed in Government intervention, 
 and, as will be further noted, both he and Buller 
 criticized the view which the Government Com- 
 mission 011 Emigration in 1831 had upheld, that 
 the direct interference of the State was not required 
 in connexion with emigration to British North 
 America. 1 
 
 The close of the Napoleonic wars was the 
 beginning of the modern history of emigration 
 from the British Isles. The Report of May 1838, 
 to which Durham and Buller refer, and which was 
 written by Mr., afterwards Sir T. F. Elliot, in his 
 capacity of Agent-General for Emigration from 
 the United Kingdom, states that for the first ten 
 years after the Peace the average annual number 
 of emigrants to Canada was about 9,000, that for 
 
 1 Sec ii. 253-j of Lord Durham's Report and note, and Buller's 
 Report, Appendix B, iii. 119.
 
 190 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 the five years ending with 1831 the average was 
 20,000, and that in the year 1831 over 50,000 
 passed through the port of Quebec. Between 1816 
 and 1834 the emigration from the United Kingdom 
 to British North America was as a rule much 
 larger than to the United States, but with the 
 year 1835 the tide turned and ran strongly in 
 favour of the United States, where the Irish now 
 went by preference, having previously emigrated 
 or been assisted to emigrate largely to British 
 North America. 1 The first Imperial grants in aid 
 of emigration seem to have been made in the years 
 1821, 1823, and 1825, to assist emigrants from the 
 South of Ireland to Canada and the Cape, and the 
 first vote for an emigration establishment was in 
 1834, when a small sum was provided to cover the 
 pay of emigration agents at Liverpool, Bristol, 
 Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Limerick, and Greenock. 
 In 1826 and 1827 committees of the House of 
 Commons considered emigration at very great 
 length ; and the committee of 1827, among other 
 recommendations, advised that a Board of Emigra- 
 tion should be constituted ' under the direct con- 
 trol of an executive department of the State '. In 
 131 Lord Goderich appointed the Government 
 
 1 But even in the year 1837, if the figures given in an Appendix to 
 Elliot's report are correct, out of 29,884 emigrants who left the United 
 Kingdom for British North America, the emigrants from Irish ports 
 numbered 22,463, against 7,421 from Great Britain, while out of 36,770 
 who left for the United States, they numbered only 3,871, against 
 32,899 from Great Britain. Elliot's Report was printed for the House 
 of Commons on May 14, 1838, No. 388, ' Copy of a report to the 
 Secretary of State for the Colonies from the Agent-General for Emigra- 
 tion from the United Kingdom.' Reference is made to it on pp. 248 and 
 253-4 (voL ii) of Lord Durham's Report, and on p. 119 (voL iii) of 
 Buller's report.
 
 CHAP, v EMIGRATION 191 
 
 Commission 011 Emigration, to which reference has 
 been made, and which consisted of five members, 
 including the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of 
 the Colonial Office, Lord Howick (afterwards Lord 
 Grey), and the Permanent Under-Secretary, Mr. 
 Hay, while the secretary of the commission was 
 Elliot, also a member of the Colonial Office. This 
 commission was dissolved in 1832, and the Colonial 
 Office was left to carry out its recommendations, 
 until in 1837 Elliot was appointed Agent-General 
 for Emigration ; and finally in 1840, after Dur- 
 ham's and Buller's Reports had been published, 
 the Board of Colonial Land and Emigration Com- 
 missioners was established, Elliot being one of the 
 three commissioners. This Board was not wholly 
 abolished until the year 1878. 1 
 
 Such legal provision as had been made in past 
 times for the protection of emigrants on the out- 
 ward voyages, was largely embodied in clauses of 
 the Customs Acts. The first Act, which was 
 definitely known as the Passengers' Act, was 
 passed in 1825, though an Act of the kind had been 
 passed as early as 1803. The Act of 1825 was 
 repealed in 1827 upon the recommendation of the 
 House of Commons Committee on Emigration, 
 apparently because the Committee considered that 
 it involved unnecessary interference with oversea 
 transit. It was, however, re-enacted, as far as 
 concerned British North America, in 1828 ; and in 
 
 1 See the Paper on Emigration and the Land and Emigration Board, 
 which forms Appendix XVII to the Report of the Departmental Com- 
 mittee on Agricultural Settlements in British Colonies, vol. ii, Minutes 
 of Evidence, &c., Cd. 2979, 1906, p. 327.
 
 192 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 1835 an amended Passengers' Act was passed. 
 Tliis was the Act which was in force when Durham 
 and Buller reported. Several later Acts were 
 passed, notably in 1842, 1849, and 1855, and now 
 the provisions of the Passengers' Acts are included 
 in the Merchant Shipping Acts, the principal of 
 which is the Act of 1894. 
 
 Various strains of emigrants contributed to the 
 peopling of Canada in the earlier years of the 
 nineteenth century, as they contribute to it now. 
 The House of Commons Committees of 1826 and 
 1827, the later of which called Malthus as a witness, 
 and largely relied on his evidence, invited special 
 attention to the condition of the Irish labouring 
 classes, and to the terrible distress which had been 
 caused among the weavers in Lancashire and other 
 parts of the North of England, as well as in the 
 South of Scotland, by the substitution of machinery 
 for handlooms. It was held that emigration from 
 Ireland to the king's dominions beyond the seas 
 ought to be encouraged and assisted, in order to 
 prevent the emigration which was already taking 
 place from Ireland to England and Scotland, 
 thereby lowering the already too low wages of the 
 English and Scotch labourers ; and there had 
 been an object-lesson in emigration from Ireland 
 in 1823 and 1825, when Peter Robinson, with the 
 help of Government funds, took out emigrants from 
 County Cork and successfully planted them in 
 Upper Canada. On the first occasion he had some 
 difficulty in inducing between 500 and 600 to 
 emigrate ; on the second, according to his own 
 evidence before the 1827 Committee, he selected
 
 CHAP, v EMIGRATION 193 
 
 2,000 out of 50,000 who were ready to emigrate. 
 The starving haiidloom weavers supplied a large 
 number of emigrants, many of whom were Scotch- 
 men from Lanarkshire and Renfrew. Numbers of 
 emigration societies came into existence from 1820 
 onwards ; and private individuals, landlords, and 
 others, gave money to promote emigration, among 
 them being Lord Egremont, who, in 1832, started 
 an emigration scheme at Petworth in Sussex, and 
 the excellence of whose arrangements for the care 
 of the emigrants on the ships which he sent out 
 is extolled in the evidence appended to Buller's 
 Report. 
 
 The emigration from the United Kingdom to 
 British North America, during the twenty years 
 prior to Lord Durham's mission, was pre-eminently 
 the outcome of bitter poverty and distress. The 
 poor in their misery were anxious to emigrate, 
 their better circumstanced fellow countrymen were 
 anxious to help them, emigration was generally 
 recognized as the true remedy for a great and 
 pressing evil, and British North America, though 
 far away in the absence of steam, was near as com- 
 pared with Australia. Given the most destitute 
 of emigrants, given the desire to put no restric- 
 tion on their emigration, given a British territory 
 not as distant as some other parts of the British 
 dominions, where there was unbounded room for 
 British immigrants, and where State policy made 
 British immigration especially desirable ; given 
 again a time when modern appliances were un- 
 known, and views of life were less enlightened than 
 our own ; there is then no room for wonder that the 
 
 1352-1 O
 
 I'.M BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTKOM. 
 
 emigrants took with them on the middle passage, 
 as Lord Durham termed it l (ii. 253), and to the 
 other side, hardship and suffering which reached 
 its climax when the emigrant ships brought cholera 
 from England in 1832. As far back as 1819 a 
 Quebec Emigrants' Society had been formed for 
 the relief of emigrants on arrival ; from time to 
 time the Quebec Legislature voted money for the 
 same purpose ; and in 1832, more especially, two 
 important Acts were passed. One was a Quaran- 
 tine Act, being 'An Act to establish Boards of 
 Health within this province and to enforce an 
 effectual system of quarantine '. It was an Act 
 consisting of forty sections, but, in accordance 
 with a most mischievous practice of passing tem- 
 porary laws which the Assembly of Lower Canada 
 had adopted in its crusade against the Govern- 
 ment, it was only passed in the first instance for 
 one year, becoming law on the 25th of February 
 
 1832, and remaining in force till the 1st of February 
 
 1833. It was passed in consequence of a warning 
 from the Imperial Government that cholera had 
 reached England, and would probably pass on to 
 Canada; and under its provisions a quarantine 
 station was established at Grosse Isle, rather more 
 than thirty miles below the port of Quebec. It 
 was passed none too soon. In June an emigrant 
 ship brought the cholera, which caused terrible 
 mortality, 2 and supplied a fresh and not wholly 
 
 1 The actual words are, ' the yet unhealthy mid-passage.' 
 
 ' On June 8 it declared itself in Quebec, and the following day at 
 Montreal. An almost decimation of the inhabitants of both cities took 
 place before it ceased its ravages.' From ' Remarks on the Quarantine 
 Station, Grosse Isle, from its establishment in 1832, by Sir John Doralt,
 
 CHAP, v EMIGRATION 195 
 
 unreasoning grievance against England among the 
 French Canadians, in that emigration from England 
 had brought death to Canada. 
 
 The second Act was ' An Act to create a fund 
 for defraying the expense of providing medical 
 assistance for sick emigrants and of enabling 
 indigent persons of that description to proceed to 
 the place of their destination '. This Act again was 
 a temporary Act, expiring on the 1st of May 1834, 1 
 and, like the Quarantine Act, had been suggested 
 by the Imperial Government. It levied a tax on 
 immigrants of 5s. a head, and the proceeds of the 
 tax were divided into fourths, between the Quebec 
 Emigrant Hospital, the Montreal General Hospital, 
 the Emigrant Society at Quebec, and the Emigrant 
 Society at Montreal, the main object being to for- 
 ward destitute emigrants on arrival to their 
 destination. It was a tax which Buller criticized 
 on the score of equity. ' To tax the whole body of 
 emigrants for the purpose of providing a remedy 
 
 M.D.', included in Appendix A to Lord Durham's Report. This has 
 not been reprinted. 
 
 1 The inconvenience caused by this temporary legislation is shown 
 by the following extract from Buller's Report (iii. 121) : ' In the year 
 1837, when from the prevalence of the cholera the necessities of the 
 emigrants were greatest, the societies in question had absolutely no 
 public money at their disposal, on account of the expiration of the 
 Provincial Act under which the fund had, till then, been raised.' An 
 Act was passed in March 1834, prolonging the operation of the 1832 Act 
 until May 1, 1836, but the prolonging Act was reserved for the King's 
 pleasure, and did not receive the Royal assent till August, 1834, and 
 the royal assent was not notified by proclamation of the Governor- 
 General till January 1835, when the Act came into force. There were 
 subsequent Acts which prolonged the original Act till 1839. As to Acts 
 for the relief of emigrants in Lower Canada, see the General Report of the 
 Assistant Commissioners of Municipal Enquiry, Appendix C, iii. 169, 170. 
 
 O 2
 
 196 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA TNTROD. 
 
 for evils which no adequate means have been 
 adopted to prevent, and thus to compel the most 
 prudent of that class to bear the burden of impru- 
 dence or negligence in others, is surely a measure 
 of very doubtful justice ' (Appendix B, iii. 122). 
 
 That Durham and Buller did good service in 
 calling attention to existing abuses in connexion 
 with emigration from the United Kingdom to 
 British North America, and in demanding more 
 effective control by the Government, cannot foe 
 doubted ; nor is there any doubt that their repre- 
 sentations bore fruit, when in the following year 
 the Board of Colonial Land and Emigration Com- 
 missioners was created, and Lord John Russell 
 formulated their instructions. But the main interest 
 of the subject lies in comparing the views which are 
 propounded in their reports with those which are 
 set out in Elliot's Report of 1838. According to 
 Elliot's Report, a strong distinction had been drawn 
 by the Commission of 1831 between emigration to 
 Australia and emigration to British North America, 
 emigration to Australia requiring direct State aid, 
 which was held not to be required in the case of 
 emigration to British North America; and Elliot 
 summed up the Government emigration policy, in 
 regard to British North America, in the words 
 ' that although no direct aid is given to the resort 
 of people to North America, every effort is made 
 for the ease and safety of their transit, so that 
 while the emigration to that quarter is left to flow 
 from natural springs, no pains are spared to keep 
 the channels free through which it takes its course V 
 
 1 p. 10.
 
 CHAP, v EMIGRATION 197 
 
 The official view, in short, was that emigration 
 to British North America need not be subsidized 
 or stimulated, though the emigrants must be 
 and actually were safeguarded. Durham, on the 
 other hand, strongly contended that sufficient 
 safeguards were not applied, and that the existing 
 amount of Government control was not adequate. 
 But, with Buller, he went further; he disputed 
 the whole thesis that while the Wakefield system 
 was applicable to Australia, it was not applicable 
 to British North America, and that in the case 
 of British North America Government interference 
 should be strictly limited. To Durham and 
 Buller emigration was only one part of a great 
 scheme for colonizing the Empire ; and though 
 they appreciated the difference between the 
 conditions of the Australian colonies and those 
 of British North America, yet the scheme which 
 they contemplated was to be as far as possible 
 uniform for the whole Empire, and in carrying it 
 out the agency of the Imperial Government was 
 to be omnipotent and omnipresent. ' There is not 
 indeed any obvious reason why the Government 
 should take less effectual measures to regulate 
 emigration to the American than to the Australian 
 colonies,' writes Buller (iii. 120), ' there may be a 
 difference in the character and circumstances of 
 emigration to the two regions, but none so great 
 as to free the former from all interference, while 
 the latter is in several cases to a great extent, and 
 in one entirely, regulated by Government.' It will 
 be borne in mind that the time was one when 
 a strong body of public opinion was being formed
 
 108 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD.* 
 
 antagonistic to State interference, and about to 
 result in Free Trade ; that the great Poor Law 
 Amendment Act of 1834 had been a practical pro- 
 nouncement in favour of self-help and of restrict- 
 ing aid from public funds ; that Durham, as the 
 apostle of self-government for the colonies, seemed 
 to be in harmony with the trend of opinion which 
 made for laissez-faire in the case alike of individuals 
 and of peoples. Yet it was at this time, and by 
 this man, that the strongest possible pronounce- 
 ment was made, in connexion with public lands in 
 the colonies and emigration to 'the colonies, in 
 favour of interference by the Government with the 
 individual, and by the Imperial Government with 
 the colonial community. The explanation is that 
 Durham, when he recognized what he considered 
 to be abuses, was not tied by a priori doctrines, 
 and that he had above all a great and overpower- 
 ing sense of the unity of the Empire. 
 
 MEANS OF COMMUNICATION 
 
 It has been seen that the funds derived from 
 the tax upon wild lands, from the sale of lands, 
 and from timber licences, were, according to 
 Buller's scheme, to be applied partly to assisting 
 and safeguarding emigration, and partly ' to such 
 works as would improve the value of land and 
 facilitate the progress of settlement. Of such 
 works ', writes Buller, ' I may mention the con- 
 struction of leading lines of road, the removal of 
 obstructions in the navigation of rivers, and the 
 formation of railroads and canals. In some of
 
 CHAP, v MEANS OF COMMUNICATION 199 
 
 these works, the whole of the cost will be defrayed 
 out of these funds ; in others, it will only be 
 necessary to afford a limited amount of assistance 
 in aid of works in which private capital may be 
 invested, though not to a sufficient amount to 
 complete the undertaking. Of the class in which 
 only a partial assistance would be required are 
 the railroads and canals, which have been pro- 
 jected to connect the different colonies with each 
 other ; or to improve existing or create new means 
 of transport for passengers and merchandise to the 
 Western States of the Union ; and to which the 
 resources of the colonies are as yet unequal. Of 
 these, I may mention the projected canal between 
 the Bay of Fundy and the Baie Verte, referred to 
 in the evidence of Mr. Mackay ; the canal con- 
 necting the River Ottawa and Lake Huron by 
 means of Lake Nipissing and French River, re- 
 ferred to in the evidence of Mr. Shirreff ; a pro- 
 jected railroad connecting Lake Ontario with Lake 
 Huron ; and the railroad from Halifax to Quebec ' 
 (iii. 116). It will be noted that Buller suggests that 
 railroads and canals should be constructed, not so 
 much directly by the State, as by supplementing 
 and subsidizing private enterprise from Govern- 
 ment funds. Such a course had been adopted in 
 regard to the Welland Canal; and the Canadian 
 Pacific Railway may be taken as one of the most 
 striking of many instances in which private citizens 
 have carried out great public enterprises in Canada 
 with the aid of State subsidies. In this respect 
 Canada differs from the self-governing dominions 
 in Australasia, where the means of communication
 
 200 BRTTTSH NORTH AMERICA INTROP. 
 
 have been supplied almost entirely by the State. 
 In Canada, for instance, the great railway systems 
 of the Canadian Pacific, the Grand Trunk, and 
 the Canadian Northern are all owned by private 
 companies, though they have been largely aided 
 and strongly backed by the Government. Of the 
 four public works to which Buller referred as in 
 contemplation, the two last have been carried out. 
 Various railways connect Lake Ontario with Lake 
 Huron, and the Intercolonial Railway links Halifax 
 to Quebec. But the Baie Verte Canal has never 
 been made, and the great, much-considered scheme 
 of the Georgian Bay Canal is still for the future. 
 Buller wrote of improving or creating means of 
 transport for passengers and merchandise to the 
 Western States of the Union, but he made no 
 mention of the great North-West of Canada. Nor 
 is there any mention of it in Lord Durham's report, 
 for far-seeing as Lord Durham was, and great as 
 was his confidence in the resources of the coming 
 time, the future grain lands of the prairies were 
 hidden from his eyes. 
 
 For any empire, for any great territory within 
 or without an empire, means of communication 
 are all important ; but perhaps throughout the 
 whole world, no land tells so well as Canada to 
 what extent the life of a country and of its people 
 is a question of communication. Nowhere have 
 communications been more essential to national 
 existence than in Canada ; nowhere has nature 
 offered greater facilities for communication; no- 
 where has man supplemented nature in this respect 
 with more conspicuous courage and enterprise.
 
 CHAP, v MEANS OF COMMUNICATION 201 
 
 Early in his Report Lord Durham, in a splendid 
 passage, bears witness to Canada as he saw it, 
 recounting that ' trade with other continents is 
 favoured by the possession of a large number of safe 
 and spacious harbours ; long, deep, and numerous 
 rivers, and vast inland seas, supply the means 
 of easy intercourse ; and the structure of the 
 country generally affords the utmost facility for 
 every species of communication by land ' (ii. 12, 13). 
 Towards the end of his Report he lays down, as 
 beyond dispute, that ' the great discoveries of 
 modem art, which have throughout the world, 
 and nowhere more than in America, entirely 
 altered the character and the channels of com- 
 munication between distant countries, will bring 
 all the North American colonies into constant and 
 speedy intercourse with each other. The success 
 of the great experiment of steam navigation across 
 the Atlantic opens a prospect of a speedy com- 
 munication with Europe, which will materially 
 affect the future state of all these provinces ' ; 
 and he prophesies that with the construction of 
 a railway from Halifax to Quebec, and with 
 steamers running across the Atlantic, ' the passage 
 from Ireland to Quebec would be a matter of ten 
 or twelve days, and Halifax would be the great 
 port by which a large portion of the trade, and all 
 the conveyance of passengers to the whole of 
 British North America, would be carried on ' 
 (ii. 316-19). 
 
 The line of length in Canada, like the line of 
 life, has been from east to west. ' The great 
 natural channel of the St. Lawrence,' to use Lord
 
 202 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA TNTROD. 
 
 Durham's words, runs south-west and north-east. 
 While Canada belonged to France, the story of 
 Canada, excluding Acadia and Hudson's Bay, was 
 the story of the St. Lawrence, the story of a water- 
 way, and that waterway ran in the main east and 
 west. In later times expansion was still mainly 
 east and west, still from one meridian of longitude 
 to another, not from one parallel of latitude to 
 another, although the fur traders roamed north 
 and south as well. It was otherwise in the case of 
 the United States. There the earlier settlement 
 was for the most part north and south along the 
 Atlantic seaboard ; and, when in the course of 
 years settlement expanded inland to the west, the 
 great river which was secured for the American 
 Republic, the Mississippi, was a river which ran 
 north and south, not east and west. 
 
 By the severance of the United States from the 
 British Empire, Canada gained a future as a 
 nation ; but its national existence and its national 
 growth became almost entirely a matter of longi- 
 tudinal expansion, for the treaty of 1783 gave to 
 the British provinces, which now form the Dominion 
 of Canada, a southern boundary, which hemmed 
 them in, and in a sense prolonged their line by 
 making the length of habitable land before the 
 North- West was opened up and known out of 
 proportion to the breadth. The line was threatened 
 at this point and at that, notably on the Maine 
 boundary, by the unnatural results of the treaty 
 of 1783, and communication became beyond all 
 things vital to the existence of Canada. 
 
 Further, the coming into being of the American
 
 CHAP, v MEANS OF COMMUNICATION 203 
 
 boundary, with a not too friendly people on the 
 other side, gave prominence to military considera- 
 tions in the matter of Canadian lines of communica- 
 tion. Military men desired to impede rather than 
 to promote communications between Canada and 
 the United States, and within Canada they desired 
 to construct communications as far removed as 
 possible from the frontier. It was for military, 
 not, as Lord Durham read the history, 1 for political 
 reasons, that it was attempted, after the war of 
 1812, to prohibit settlement and keep a belt of 
 bush between Canada and the United States on 
 the south side of the St. Lawrence ; and the con- 
 struction of the Rideau Canal was entirely due to 
 the soldiers' wish to have water communication, 
 for military purposes, between Montreal and 
 Lake Ontario, beyond striking distance from the 
 American frontier. In the first of these two cases, 
 after the government reversed its policy, we find 
 a military man expressing regret that the bush was 
 allowed to be cut down in these frontier districts 
 and settlement to be promoted ; while correspon- 
 dence which has been published on the subject of 
 the beginnings of the Rideau Canal, 2 shows that 
 that work was so entirely the outcome of military 
 considerations, that Colonel By 3 the skilful 
 engineer who carried out the undertaking, 
 himself a soldier, with difficulty induced the 
 Government to consent to making the canal 
 and its locks large enough for commercial as well 
 as for military purposes. A prize essay on the 
 
 1 See the Report, ii. 65, and note, and below, p. 278. 
 
 5 See the Report on the Canadian Archives for 1890, Appendix P.
 
 204 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 canals of Canada, by Mr. Keefer, published in 
 1850, comments severely upon the military canals 
 in Canada, and speaks of * those unfortunate 
 military considerations which have ever been a 
 bar to our advancement ' ; 1 but it was under a 
 soldier governor, and in time of war, that the 
 canals of Canada began; and Canada has owed 
 not a little to the military instinct which has 
 sought for lines of communication remote from 
 the international boundary. 
 
 Coming down to later times, the confederation 
 of Canada was more than anything else a ques- 
 tion of communication. The 145th section of the 
 British North America Act provided that, 'Inas- 
 much as the provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, 
 and New Brunswick have joined in a declaration 
 that the construction of the Intercolonial Railway 
 is essential to the consolidation of the union of 
 British North America, and to the assent thereto 
 of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick,' a railway 
 connecting the river St. Lawrence with the city of 
 Halifax should be begun within six months of the 
 date of union ; and as this Intercolonial Railway, 
 the railway which Lord Durham foreshadowed, 
 was an essential condition to the union of the 
 maritime provinces with Canada, so the con- 
 sideration for which in 1871 British Columbia 
 joined the Dominion, was that a railway linking 
 that province with Eastern Canada should be 
 begun within two years, and completed within 
 ten years from the date when the province entered 
 
 1 Prize Essay : The Canals of Canada, by Thos. C. Keefer, Civil 
 Engineer, Toronto, 1850.
 
 CHAP, v MEANS OF COMMUNICATION 205 
 
 the Union. In 1885, a little later than the pro- 
 mised time, the Canadian Pacific Railway spanned 
 the continent, and to a greater extent than any 
 other single work of man in any part of the world 
 contributed to the making of a nation. 
 
 Although airships have been invented, com- 
 munication has so far been carried on either by 
 water or by land. Nature gives communication 
 by water, though there are usually flaws in the 
 connexion which need to be remedied by the handi- 
 work of man. By land, at best, she does not pro- 
 hibit it. Lord Durham, in the passage which has 
 been quoted above, notes that in Canada ' the 
 structure of the country generally affords the 
 utmost facility for every species of communica- 
 tion by land ' ; and his statement holds true, 
 although, when he made it, he had in view at most 
 but half the continent. Stupendous as was the 
 work of carrying the first railway through such 
 a desert as lies on the north shore of Lake Supe- 
 rior, the prairies beyond are formed for roads 
 and railways, and the Rocky Mountains and the 
 Selkirks were traversed without burrowing under- 
 ground as in the Alps. From Montreal to Van- 
 couver the Canadian Pacific Railway runs for 
 2,900 miles; along its whole course there is still 
 no St. Gothard or Simplon tunnel, and but few 
 tunnels, as at Field, of appreciable length. 
 
 In the matter of waterways Nature has been 
 wonderfully bountiful to Canada. It would be 
 difficult to find a parallel in other parts of the 
 world, if account is taken both of inland waters 
 and of outlet to the sea. This is perhaps the
 
 206 I'.RITLSH NO^TH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 greatest advantage that Canada possesses, as com- 
 pared with the other self-governing dominions of 
 the King. There is continuous water communica- 
 tion for 2,200 miles from the Straits of Belle Isle 
 to Port Arthur at the western end of Lake Superior. 
 The difference in level between the sea and Lake 
 Superior is about 600 feet. Along this great water- 
 way there are some 73 miles of canal ; and between 
 Montreal at the head of ocean navigation, 986 
 miles from the Straits of Belle Isle, and Lake 
 Superior, there are 48 locks. The beginning of 
 Canadian canals was in the years 1779-83, years 
 of the War of American Independence, when 
 General Haldimand governed Canada. They were 
 constructed for military purposes, and consisted of 
 short cuts with locks on the St. Lawrence above 
 Montreal, between Lakes St. Louis and St. Francis, 
 at the Cascades, the Cedars, and Coteau du Lac, 
 which were subsequently merged in the Beau- 
 harnois Canal. In 1797-8 some kind of canal 
 appears to have been made by the North- West 
 Company on the Canadian side of the Sault St. 
 Marie. The Lachine Canal, which, with a length 
 of 8J miles and five locks, carries vessels past the 
 Lachine rapids and across the southern part of the 
 Island of Montreal, was early projected ; and after 
 the second American war, in 1815, the Quebec 
 Legislature, on the suggestion of the Governor, 
 Sir George Prevost, passed an Act appropriating 
 a sum of money to its construction. The canal, 
 however, was not completed till 1824, at a cost of 
 over 107,000, and the first ships went through it 
 in 1825. Of the other canals which were in exis-
 
 CIIAI-. v MEANS OF COMMUNICATION 207 
 
 tence in Lord Durham's time, the Rideau Canal 
 from Ottawa to Kingston,- 126 miles in length, 
 a military w rk constructed entirely at the expense 
 of the Imperial Government, was begun in 1826 
 and opened in 1832 ; while the Welland Canal, 
 27 miles long, correcting the break in navigation 
 caused by the Falls of Niagara, and therefore of 
 the utmost importance to Canadian waterborne 
 trade, Chough begun before the Rideau Canal, was 
 not available for traffic till 1833. In 1834 the Corn- 
 wall Canal, to which Lord Durham refers, and 
 which rectifies the navigation of the St. Lawrence 
 past the Long Sault Rapids, was begun, but it 
 was not opened for traffic till 1843. One of the 
 early projects in connexion with inland navigation 
 in Canada was the improvement of the waterway 
 of the Richelieu River, connecting the St. Lawrence 
 with Lake Champlain. In 1818 an Act was passed 
 in Lower Canada, empowering a company to con- 
 struct the Chambly Canal on the line of this river ; 
 but it was not until 1843 that, after various vicissi- 
 tudes, the canal was opened, having a length of 
 12 miles with 9 locks. 1 Meanwhile, the Richelieu 
 River had been connected with the St. Lawrence 
 over against Montreal by a little railway of 15 miles 
 in length, running from La Prairie to St. John's 
 on the Richelieu, above the Chambly Rapids. 
 This was the line to which Lord Durham refers in 
 his Report (ii. 212-13) as the 'one railroad in all 
 
 1 One of the best accounts of the Canadian canals up to the date of 
 the report is the Historical Sketch of the Canals of Canada, given in 
 the report of the Canal Commission of 1871, Canadian Sessional Papers, 
 1871, No. 54.
 
 208 BRITISH NOR^H AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 British America ', and it had only been opened for 
 locomotive traction in 1837. 
 
 As compared with the great canals and railways 
 which throughout Canada, as Canada was in Lord 
 Durham's time, make the transit of men and 
 merchandise sure and speedy, and which beyond 
 the limits of his horizon are making a new world 
 in the West and North- West, carrying communica- 
 tions to the northern as well as to the western seas, 
 the public works of Canada in Lord Durham's day 
 appear puny and insignificant. But not a little 
 had been done, and out of all comparison with the 
 accomplished facts was the recognition of what 
 was coming in the future. On the 13th of July, 
 1826, Colonel By, when contending for larger 
 dimensions in the scheme of the Rideau Canal, 
 wrote : * The number of the steamboats now build- 
 ing on the banks of the St. Lawrence is one of the 
 great proofs of the increasing trade and prosperity 
 of this country.' * Lord Durham notes how the 
 province of Upper Canada had become involved in 
 financial difficulties through entering on a bold 
 policy of public works, and it has been seen that 
 the first vessel to cross the Atlantic by the help of 
 steam alone had been built in and started from 
 Canada. In spite of political troubles and antago- 
 nisms, possibly to some extent because of them, 
 Canada was instinct with the sense of possibilities, 
 and Lord Durham shared it to the full. It is the 
 common failing of political thinkers and writers 
 to devote their whole attention to laws and con- 
 stitutions, and what is called political science, and 
 
 1 Report on Canadian Archives for 1890, Appendix D.
 
 CHAP, v MEANS OF COMMUNICATION 209 
 
 to overlook the tremendous effect which science in 
 the stricter sense, invention, and engineering, has 
 had and will have in an increasing degree upon 
 politics and history. It was one of Lord Durham's 
 supreme merits that, politician as he was, and 
 devoted to constitutional reform, he appreciated 
 public works present or future at their full value, 
 and appreciated them not merely for their direct 
 material results, but also, and in a greater degree, 
 because of their bearing on politics. They appealed 
 to his constructive mind as being communications, 
 as making divided parts into one, as making small 
 things into great, as linking one home to another, 
 one little town to another little town, one pro- 
 vince to another, one united group of provinces 
 to the mother country. He notes as one among 
 various objections to the system of clergy reserves, 
 that they were an obstacle to communication and 
 to continuity of settlement (ii. 220-2). Here are 
 words in which he condemns the policy of the 
 Legislature of Lower Canada (ii. 99-100) : ' While 
 the Assembly was wasting the surplus revenues of 
 the Province in jobs for the increase of patronage, 
 and in petty peddling in parochial business, it left 
 untouched those vast and easy means of com- 
 munication which deserved, and would have repaid, 
 the application of the provincial revenues. The 
 state of New York made its own St. Lawrence 
 from Lake Erie to the Hudson, while the Govern- 
 ment of Canada could not achieve, or even attempt, 
 the few miles of canal and dredging, which would 
 have rendered its mighty rivers navigable almost 
 to their sources.' And here are words which show 
 
 1352-1 P
 
 210 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 how well he understood the bearing of public 
 works on politics, and how he looked to roads 
 and railways to help on confederation : ' The 
 completion of any satisfactory communication 
 between Halifax and Quebec would, in fact, pro- 
 duce relations between these Provinces that would 
 render a general union absolutely necessary ' 
 (ii. 318). 
 
 It has been noted that Lord Durham's horizon 
 did not include the North- West and beyond, but 
 assuredly if ever a man deserved to see what our 
 eyes have seen in Canada, a dominion from sea to 
 sea as the direct result of railways, it was the man 
 who could feel as he felt, and write as he wrote, 
 with regard to the importance of means of com- 
 munication. 
 
 MUNICIPALITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 How close was the connexion in Lord Durham's 
 mind between means of communication and local 
 government may be seen from the Commission 
 which he issued to Buller, authorizing an inquiry 
 into the municipal institutions of Lower Canada. 
 The Commission recites, ' Whereas it is highly 
 expedient and desirable that the counties, cities, 
 towns, parishes, and townships in our province of 
 Lower Canada should respectively enjoy as ex- 
 tensive a control as may be consistent with their 
 own improvement, and with the general welfare 
 of our said province, over all matters and things 
 of a local nature, to the end that intercourse may 
 be facilitated, industry promoted, crime repressed, 
 education appreciated, and true liberty under-
 
 CHAP, v LOCAL GOVERNMENT 211 
 
 stood and advanced.' The first place among the 
 objects for which local self-government should be 
 given is assigned to facilitating intercourse ; and 
 similarly Charles Buller, in his letter of instruc- 
 tions to the Assistant Commissioners of Municipal 
 Inquiry, places in the forefront ' increased facilities 
 of internal communication '. ' You will inquire 
 and report about the provision which has been 
 made for the formation and maintenance of those 
 internal communications, which, as they concern 
 only local divisions, can never be the objects of 
 interest to a central government. The system by 
 which the roads and bridges of the province have 
 been managed will be one of the first and most 
 important subjects of investigation.' 
 
 The General Report of the Assistant Commis- 
 sioners of Municipal Inquiry is of great value for 
 students of Canadian history, embracing as it 
 does a large variety of subjects, and illustrating, 
 for instance, such anomalies as had been caused 
 by the mischievous practice of temporary legisla- 
 tion, which the Quebec Assembly had reduced to 
 a fine art. The Report, however, deals with Lower 
 Canada only, and in their Preliminary Report the 
 Commissioners state that they had been compelled 
 to modify their plan of investigation, and curtail 
 their labours, by ' events untoward for the settle- 
 ment of these colonies ' (Appendix C, iii. 138), in 
 other words, by Lord Durham's resignation. The 
 Commission authorizing the inquiry is dated the 
 23rd of August 1838, the General Report is dated 
 the 14th of November 1838, and from what Lord 
 Durham says (ii. 113), it is clear that he had not 
 
 P2
 
 212 BRITISH NORTfr AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 received the Assistant Commissioners' Report, when 
 lie wrote his own. 
 
 In their Preliminary Report the Assistant Com- 
 missioners record that ' there is no such thing 
 as systematized local self-government in Lower 
 Canada' (Appendix C, iii. 139) ; and the paragraph 
 in their General Report, headed ' Existing Means 
 for Local Self-Go vernment in Lower Canada', be- 
 gins with the statement that ' The only machinery 
 for the working of a plan of municipal government 
 in the province is to be found under the operation 
 of the road law and collateral enactments ' (Appen- 
 dix C, iii. 227). In reference to the same province, 
 Lord Durham writes of ' the utter want of muni- 
 cipal institutions giving the people any control 
 over their local affairs ' (ii. 113). Municipal corpora- 
 tions had come into existence in Quebec and 
 Montreal in 1832, in pursuance of Acts passed in 
 the previous year, but they went out of existence 
 again in 1836, in consequence of the temporary 
 Acts under which they had been created not 
 being renewed by the cross-grained Assembly of 
 Lower Canada; and Lord Durham tells us, that 
 he found it necessary to organize police forces for 
 the two cities (ii. 132). Throughout the country, 
 under the old French regime, the militia had been, 
 in Lord Durham's words, ' so constituted and used, 
 as partially to supply the want of better civil 
 institutions ' (ii. 98), but the force was now prac- 
 tically annihilated. In short, in Lower Canada, in 
 both town and country, there was administrative 
 chaos. 
 
 On the subject of local government in Upper
 
 CHAP, v LOCAL GOVERNMENT 213 
 
 Canada Lord Durham has little to say ; though, in 
 the part of his Report which refers to that province, 
 he notes that ' there is no adequate system of local 
 assessment to improve the means of communica- 
 tion ' (ii. 184) ; and on the other hand, that ' the 
 Province has already been fortunately obliged to 
 throw the whole support of the few and imperfect 
 local works, which are carried on in different parts 
 of the Province, on local assessments ' (ii. 190). 
 Buller, in his instructions to the Assistant Com- 
 missioners, gives Upper Canada as an instance of 
 a country in which ' a very perfect municipal 
 machinery exists without being rendered avail- 
 able for the most important municipal purposes ' 
 (Appendix C, iii. 136) ; and from a Report which 
 was supplied to Poulett Thomson in January 
 1840, and forwarded by him to Lord John Russell, 1 
 it appears that, while the country townships of 
 Upper Canada had their local machinery and 
 elected their officers, they had no power of raising 
 money for local improvements. On the other 
 hand, the same Report states that ' Nearly all 
 the towns in Upper Canada have obtained corpo- 
 rate powers, namely Toronto, Kingston, Hamilton, 
 Cobourg, Niagara, Prescott, Cornwall, and London'. 
 Toronto had been incorporated in 1834, and with 
 its incorporation regained its original name, and 
 discarded the name of York which it had borne 
 since 1793. The first Mayor of Toronto, elected 
 
 1 Report by Captain Pringle on Land Tax, Roads, and Municipal 
 Institutions, dated Toronto, January 20, 1840: House of Commons 
 Paper, 147, March 23, 1840. Copies or Extracts of Correspondence 
 relative to the Re-union of the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, 
 p. 41.
 
 214 BRITISH NORTft AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 by his fellow citizens, was William Lyon Mac- 
 kenzie. 
 
 Bearing in mind that what is stated in Lord 
 Durham's Report and its Appendixes on the sub- 
 ject of municipalities and local administration has 
 special reference to Lower Canada, Lord Durham's 
 views on the subject will be best appreciated, by 
 giving what are more or less obvious answers to 
 the question, Why did he set so much store by 
 municipal institutions and local self-government ? 
 The first and most obvious answer is, that the want 
 of such institutions was so painfully apparent ; 
 but it is unnecessary to labour this point, or to 
 multiply quotations showing how great and press- 
 ing was the actual need for adequate municipal 
 and local administration in Lower Canada; and 
 Lord Durham, while he lost no time in providing 
 for security of life and property at Quebec and 
 Montreal, had views beyond merely meeting the 
 wants of the moment. 
 
 He was a strong Liberal, he was a strong Im- 
 perialist, and he had an eminently constructive 
 mind. From all these points of view he was 
 concerned to endow Canada especially French 
 Canada with a proper system of municipal and 
 local institutions. It has been already noted that 
 municipal reform was one of the planks in the 
 Whig programme, and in 1835 Lord Melbourne's 
 Government had carried the celebrated Municipal 
 Corporations Act. Lord Durham was not a 
 member of the Government at the time, but he 
 was a leading member of the party ; and it may 
 well be believed that he was in full sympathy with
 
 CHAP, v LOCAL GOVERNMENT 215 
 
 the movement for giving self-government to the 
 great cities of England, and wished to create 
 similar institutions in Canada. But even more as 
 an Imperialist than as a Liberal, he was anxious 
 to further the policy of local self-government in 
 Lower Canada, for he wished to anglicize Lower 
 Canada, and he regarded local and municipal 
 institutions as peculiarly Anglo-Saxon. ' Lower 
 Canada remains without municipal institutions of 
 local self-government, which are the foundations of 
 Anglo-Saxon freedom and civilization ' (ii. 98-9) ; 
 and again, referring to the United States, ' In the 
 greater part of the States to which I refer, the 
 want of means at the disposal of the central 
 executive is amply supplied by the efficiency of 
 the municipal institutions ; and even where these 
 are wanting, or imperfect, the energy and self- 
 governing habits of an Anglo-Saxon population 
 enable it to combine whenever a necessity arises. 
 But the French population of Lower Canada 
 possesses neither such institutions, nor such a 
 character. Accustomed to rely entirely on the 
 government, it has no power of doing anything 
 for itself, much less of aiding the central authority ' 
 (ii. 112-13). Lord Durham's contention was in 
 effect, that under the old French regime local 
 liberties and responsibilities had been unknown ; 
 that, when Great Britain took over French Canada, 
 French centralization and despotism had been 
 abolished without substituting for it Anglo-Saxon 
 municipal and local institutions; and that French 
 Canada could only be made British by being given 
 these liberties, while conversely the liberties could
 
 216 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 only be appreciated and put to proper use, if 
 French Canada were anglicized. A similar train 
 of reasoning will be found in the Report of the 
 Assistant Commissioners. ' The simple question at 
 issue is, whether the province shall remain French, 
 or stand still until pushed forward by the aggres- 
 sive movements of the United States, or become 
 English in the progressive and prosperous action, 
 as well as in the outward and visible character of 
 its institutions ' (iii. 230). 
 
 Apart from his desire to convert Lower Canada 
 into a British province, Lord Durham, as a con- 
 structive statesman, as a man who wished to 
 create and to build up, attached the greatest 
 importance to municipal institutions. He regarded, 
 and rightly regarded, municipal and parish work 
 as a training ground for higher politics, and he 
 criticized the action of the British Government in 
 giving to the people of Lower Canada representa- 
 tive government without at the same time giving 
 them municipal institutions. ' If the wise example 
 of those countries in which a free representative 
 government has alone worked well, had been in all 
 respects followed in Lower Canada, care would 
 have been taken that, at the same time that 
 a Parliamentary system, based on a very extended 
 suffrage, was introduced into the country, the 
 people should have been entrusted with a com- 
 plete control over their own local affairs, and been 
 trained for taking their part in the concerns of 
 the Province, by their experience in the manage- 
 ment of that local business which was most in- 
 teresting and most easily intelligible to them. But
 
 CHAP, v LOCAL GOVERNMENT 217 
 
 the inhabitants of Lower Canada were unhappily 
 initiated into self-government at exactly the wrong 
 end, and those who were not entrusted with the 
 management of a parish, were enabled, by their 
 votes, to influence the destinies of a State ' (ii. 113). 
 Holding municipal institutions to be an integral 
 part of the structure of a well-organized com- 
 munity, he embodied in his own scheme for the 
 union of the two Canadas ' a plan of local govern- 
 ment by elective bodies subordinate to the General 
 Legislature ' (ii. 324) ; and, in discussing the possi- 
 bility of a union of the whole of the British North 
 American provinces,he expressed his opinion that the 
 formation of municipal bodies would be 'an essential 
 part of any durable and complete Union ' (ii. 322). 
 But again, it was not only as a Liberal Imperia- 
 list, intent on building up a community, that Lord 
 Durham expressed this opinion and advocated so 
 strongly municipal institutions. He advocated 
 them also as what might be styled a Conservative 
 reformer ; for, as has been pointed out already > 
 he regarded the creation of municipal and local 
 institutions as a necessary check upon the general 
 legislature which he proposed to call into being, 
 and to which he intended to entrust the powers" of 
 responsible government ; and he took this view 
 very especially because, having under his eyes the 
 abuses of which the Quebec Assembly had been 
 guilty, he wished to remove from the General 
 Legislature of the future the opportunities for local 
 jobbery. It was with the same object that he laid 
 down that money votes should be initiated only 
 by the ministers of the Crown. How right he was
 
 218 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 in this view, and how essential it was to create 
 municipal machinery for the purpose, is shown 
 by the dispatch in which, at the end of 1839, 
 his successor, Poulett Thomson, afterwards Lord 
 Sydenham, made his recommendations to Lord 
 John Russell on the subject of the coming Union 
 Bill. He wrote that : 
 
 ' One of the most important provisions in the 
 plan proposed last session, one on which the Earl 
 of Durham has justly laid the greatest stress, and 
 of which I find the strongest approbation expressed 
 in the Canadas, is that which restricts the initiative 
 of money votes in the House of Assembly to the 
 Government, and which is calculated to put an end 
 to the disgraceful system of local jobbing for Parlia- 
 mentary grants, which has prevailed in both pro- 
 vinces. But if this provision be adhered to 
 and without it I should think the Bill of little 
 comparative value it is absolutely necessary to 
 provide machinery by which local taxation can 
 be raised for local purposes. Thus the establish- 
 ment of municipal institutions becomes a necessary 
 part of the Union Bill.' 1 
 
 A man who was, as Lord Durham was, a heart- 
 whole believer in responsible government, but who 
 was, as Lord Durham was not, purely a political 
 theorist, might well have argued, Give the people 
 the right to govern themselves, and they will at 
 once see the necessity of having local institutions, 
 and forthwith call them into existence. Lord 
 Durham thought otherwise, for his political doc- 
 trines were leavened with common sense. It was 
 
 1 House of Commons Paper, 147, March 23, 1840. Copies or Extracts 
 of Correspondence relative to the Re-union of the Provinces of t'pjx-r 
 and Lower Canada, p. 31.
 
 CHAP, v LOCAL GOVERNMENT 219 
 
 not that he doubted whether the popular Legis- 
 latures, if left to themselves, would do the right 
 thing in the matter of local institutions ; he was 
 quite certain that at the outset they would not, 
 for he recognized the limitations and shortcomings 
 of democracy, in small, untrained communities. 
 And being thus persuaded in his own mind, he 
 would have none of the ordinary Whig platitudes 
 as to trusting the people, but held it to be incum- 
 bent upon the Imperial Government to withhold 
 from the Colonial Legislatures the power of mischief. 
 
 4 The establishment of a good system of muni- 
 cipal institutions throughout these provinces is 
 a matter of vital importance. A general legis- 
 lature, which manages the private business of 
 every parish, in addition to the common business 
 of the country, wields a power which no single 
 body, however popular in its constitution, ought to 
 have. ... It is in vain to expect that this sacrifice 
 of power will be voluntarily made by any repre- 
 sentative body. The establishment of municipal 
 institutions for the whole country should be made 
 a part of every colonial constitution ; and the 
 prerogative of the Crown should be constantly 
 interposed to check any encroachment on the 
 functions of the local bodies, until the people 
 should become alive, as most assuredly they 
 almost immediately would be, to the necessity of 
 protecting their local privileges ' (ii. 287). 
 
 That his views on this point were accurate and 
 true has been shown by subsequent colonial his- 
 tory, 1 as it had already in effect been proved by 
 
 1 Reference should be made to the second edition of Merivale's 
 Lectures on Colonization and Colonies, Appendix to Lecture XXII, 
 pp. 651-4. See above, pp. 151-2 and note, and below, pp. 297-8.
 
 220 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 the history of Lower Canada ; for it was due to the 
 representative Legislature of Quebec, not to any 
 want of goodwill on the part of the Imperial 
 Government, that municipal institutions were not 
 existing and flourishing in Lower Canada. Lord 
 Durham blamed the Home Government for not 
 having insisted on such institutions, for not having 
 brought them into being at the time when repre- 
 sentative government was given to the province 
 in 1791, and it is a little difficult to decide how 
 far this criticism was well founded. He does not 
 notice that the Quebec Act of 1774, which gave 
 to the province of Quebec, as it then was, a nomi- 
 nated Legislative Council, while withholding from 
 it the power of taxation, gave it explicitly full 
 powers to authorize towns and districts to levy 
 local rates ' for the purpose of making roads, 
 erecting and repairing public buildings, or for any 
 other purpose respecting the local convenience and 
 economy of such town or district V In 1786 the 
 magistrates of Cataraqui, afterwards Kingston, in 
 what was a few years later the province of Upper 
 Canada, represented that ' the election or appoint- 
 ment of proper officers in the several townships to 
 see that the necessary roads be opened and kept 
 in proper repair, we conceive, would be of great 
 utility, by facilitating the communication with all 
 parts of the settlement ' ; 2 and though the con- 
 stitutional Act of 1791 was silent on the subject of 
 
 1 Section XIII. 
 
 1 See Shortt and Doughty, Documents relating to the Constitutional 
 History of Canada, p. 643. The note at the bottom of the page is, ' This 
 is the beginning of the agitation in the western settlements for the 
 introduction of municipal government.'
 
 OHAP. v LOCAL GOVERNMENT 221 
 
 municipal institutions, as the Union Act of 1840, 
 save in the matter of authorizing the constitution 
 of townships, 1 was silent also, there was nothing 
 to forbid the Legislatures of the two provinces 
 from inaugurating municipal institutions, and as 
 a matter of fact, in Upper Canada, the machinery 
 of local administration was actually brought into 
 existence. 
 
 But Lord Durham, it must be repeated, was not 
 satisfied with permissive legislation. Municipal in- 
 stitutions were with him a vital necessity. It was 
 his creed that a community should be given self- 
 government in balanced proportions ; that as 
 the Act of 1791 erred in granting representative 
 institutions without responsible government, so it 
 erred in granting those institutions to the whole 
 province, without at the same time granting them 
 within defined limits to the towns and districts of 
 the province. For the absence of local liberties, 
 which meant local responsibilities, he blamed, 
 rightly or wrongly, the Imperial Government. 
 Possibly he overlooked the fact that the legis- 
 lators of 1791 had not at their command the 
 valuable experience in colonial matters which since 
 that date had been painfully accumulated; and 
 possibly too he did not sufficiently bear in mind 
 the difficulty of passing a Bill, overloaded with 
 detail, through the House of Commons. 
 
 But it should be noted that his view, that the 
 Home Government had been remiss in not estab- 
 lishing municipal institutions in the British North 
 American provinces, was shared by the Assistant 
 
 1 Section LVIII.
 
 222 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 Commissioners of Municipal Inquiry, and also by 
 Charles Buller. The former wrote of Lower Canada 
 ' that although long under the rule of England, 
 the province has participated far too sparingly 
 in the benefits of sound British institutions ' 
 (Appendix C, iii. 139) ; while Nova Scotia, that 
 most British province, is described by Buller as a 
 country from whose institutions ' every vestige 
 of the municipal system of the old colonies was 
 jealously excluded ' (Appendix B, iii. 76). 
 
 In the administration of their Empire, it was the 
 policy of the Romans to respect municipal liberties, 
 and encourage municipal life. They did so, it 
 would seem, partly because the towns were con- 
 venient units of administration, and partly in 
 order to provide their subjects with a substitute 
 for political freedom and national life. At their 
 best and their best was very good the Romans 
 were despots ; they always had in mind the maxim 
 Divide et Impera ; they did not regard municipali- 
 ties either as a training ground for higher freedom, 
 or as an integral part of an edifice of constitutional 
 government ; least of all did they contemplate in 
 them a necessary check upon the central authority. 
 If what Lord Durham wrote in his Report upon 
 the subject of local self-government is contrasted 
 with what the historians tell us in this regard 
 of Roman provincial administration, and if it is 
 borne in mind that in the matter of the municipia 
 the Romans came nearest to encouraging freedom, 
 we can form some fair estimate of the extent to 
 which British Imperialism is broader than the 
 Imperialism of Rome.
 
 CHAP, v ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE 223 
 
 The General Report of the Assistant Commis- 
 sioners of Municipal Inquiry contains a good deal 
 of matter relating to the administration of justice 
 in Lower Canada. To this subject Lord Durham 
 devoted several pages of his Report, commenting 
 severely upon/ ' the mischievous results prominently 
 exhibited in the provision which the Government 
 of Lower Canada makes for the first want of 
 a people, the efficient administration of justice ' 
 (ii. 116). His criticisms are almost entirely con- 
 fined to the case of Lower Canada, where difference 
 of race, law, and custom had led to complica- 
 tion and confusion ; and only one paragraph, on 
 pp. 182-3, refers to administration of justice in 
 the Upper Province. 
 
 The British Government had begun by intro- 
 ducing, or trying to introduce, into the Province of 
 Quebec the law of England, both in criminal and 
 in civil matters. By the terms of the Royal Pro- 
 clamation of 1763, the Governor in Council was 
 empowered to constitute Courts of Justice, ' for 
 hearing and determining all causes, as well criminal 
 as civil, according to law and equity, and as near as 
 may be agreeable to the laws of England.' On this 
 basis, in September 1764, Governor Murray passed 
 an ordinance establishing a superior Court of Judi- 
 cature or Court of King's Bench, and an inferior 
 Court of Judicature, or Court of Common Pleas, 
 and introducing trial by jury, Justices of the Peace, 
 and Quarter Sessions. The Quebec Act of 1774, 
 while continuing the law of England in criminal
 
 224 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 matters, restored as a whole 1 French law and 
 custom in civil matters, thereby abolishing in 
 civil cases trial by jury; and this compromise 
 in the main prevailed down to the date at which 
 Lord Durham wrote. It is obvious that under the 
 circumstances some confusion was inevitable, and 
 that technical difficulties must have arisen in the 
 endeavour to deal fairly by two races with separate 
 customs and traditions in one province ; but the 
 interesting point to note is how in the matter of 
 administration of justice, as in regard to other 
 subjects dealt with in his report, Lord Durham 
 held the Imperial Government responsible. The 
 Imperial Government, and the Governors who were 
 sent to Canada, had no other object or desire in 
 connexion with the administration of justice than 
 to give to the province of Lower Canada the laws 
 and procedure which the time and place seemed to 
 demand. They were not the obstacle to adequate 
 and efficient administration of justice ; the blame 
 rested with the Quebec Legislature ; but Lord 
 Durham censured the Home Government at once 
 for not giving larger powers to the Legislature, and 
 for not insisting upon that Legislature doing its 
 duty. Presumably he would have contended that, 
 had responsible government been in existence, 
 little or no blame would have attached to the 
 authorities in England for shortcomings in adminis- 
 tration of justice, or in any other matter ; but that, 
 inasmuch as under the constitution of 1791 the 
 ultimate responsibility still remained with the 
 
 1 Section IX excepted lands granted or to be granted in free and 
 common soccage. See what Lord Durham says on pp. 69 and 116 
 (vol. ii) of the Report.
 
 CHAP, v ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE 225 
 
 Imperial Government, that Government was to 
 blame in giving so much latitude to the representa- 
 tive assembly in the province, and not at the same 
 time ensuring that the French Canadian legislators 
 passed the measures which were obviously re- 
 quired for the good of the community. From the 
 time of Sir James Craig the Quebec Legislature 
 had instituted a regular crusade against the 
 judges. Jonathan Sewell, who was appointed 
 Chief Justice of Lower Canada in 1808, and who 
 only retired at the time of Lord Durham's Mission, 
 had been the object of special hostility, but other 
 judges also had been arraigned one after another 
 in spiteful and vindictive fashion. One reason 
 probably was that the judges were mainly British, 
 and in earlier days, at any rate, imported from 
 outside, not always with much regard to suit- 
 ability for their work. Another reason was that 
 they stood rather especially for independence of 
 the votes of the popular assembly ; while a third 
 and potent reason was that they were not held 
 aloof from politics. In the early stages of a colony, 
 a man who has been selected to hold the post of 
 Chief Justice, may well, by his training and stand- 
 ing, be a valuable public asset to the Government 
 and to the community, apart from his judicial 
 functions ; and a good case may be made for not ex- 
 cluding him from the advisory council or the Legis- 
 lature, provided that he is not subject to popular 
 election. Even'at the present day, in some Crown 
 Colonies, the Chief Justice is a member of the 
 Executive Council, or of the Legislative Council, or 
 of both. Sewell was Speaker of the Legislative 
 
 1352-1 O
 
 226 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA IXTROB. 
 
 Council in Lower Canada, as Beverley Robinson 
 was of the Council in the Upper Province, and the 
 stronger and more efficient the particular judge 
 was, the more he tended to attract the opposition 
 of the popular party. In 1831 Lord Goderich, as 
 Secretary of State, instructed the Governor ' to com- 
 municate to the Legislative Council and Assembly 
 His Majesty's settled purpose to nominate on no 
 future occasion a judge either as a member of the 
 Executive or Legislative Council of the Province ', 
 with one exception, that exception being the Chief 
 Justice of Lower Canada, whose presence in the 
 Legislative Council was thought advisable in con- 
 nexion with legislation, but who was to be in- 
 structed to hold aloof from all party proceedings. 1 
 Lord Goderich, at the same time and in the same 
 dispatch, proposed that, as in England so in Lower 
 Canada, the judges should be given by Act of the 
 Legislature permanent salaries and complete inde- 
 pendence pending good behaviour both of the 
 Royal pleasure and of the popular assembly. But 
 independence of the judges was abominable to the 
 Quebec Assembly, 2 and the question was still out- 
 standing at the time of Lord Durham's Mission, 
 with the result that one of his recommendations 
 was (ii. 327) that ' the independence of the Judges 
 should be secured, by giving them the same 
 tenure of office and security of income as exist 
 in England '. 
 
 ' See Christie, vol. iii, p. 366, and see above, p. 59. 
 
 2 See ii. 88 of the Report, in which Lord Durham gives an instance of 
 the Quebec Legislature having resort to 'tacking', in order to defeat 
 legislation for securing the independence of the judges.
 
 CHAP, v ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE 227 
 
 It is very noteworthy in the history of Canada, 
 how anxious the Imperial Government and the 
 Colonial Ministers were to reproduce in Canada 
 the conditions which prevailed in England, in the 
 honest belief that what suited England must suit 
 Canada ; whereas it was inevitable that much that 
 was suitable and congenial to an old and purely 
 British country was not adapted to a new land in 
 which a large proportion of the inhabitants were 
 not British. Thus provision was made in the Con- 
 stitutional Act of 1791 for enabling the Crown to 
 connect hereditary titles of honour with member- 
 ship of the Legislative Council, and the correspon- 
 dence which preceded the passing of the Act showed 
 that the Government would have desired to go 
 farther in the direction of giving distinction to 
 members of the Upper Chamber, and introducing 
 the hereditary principle ; but the man on the spot, 
 the experienced Governor, Lord Dorchester, dis- 
 couraged the attempt to reproduce in one form or 
 another a House of Lords. ' Many advantages,' 
 he wrote, ' might result from an hereditary Legis- 
 lative Council, distinguished by some mark of 
 honour, did the condition of the country concur 
 in supporting this dignity ; but the fluctuating 
 state of property in these provinces would expose 
 all hereditary honours to fall into disregard ; for 
 the present therefore it would seem more advisable 
 to appoint the members during life, good behaviour, 
 and residence in the province.' l His advice was 
 
 1 Shortt and Doughty, p. 675. Similarly in the summary of recom- 
 mendations at the end of his Report, speaking of the Legislative 
 Councils, Lord Durham says, ' The analogy which some persons have 
 
 Q2
 
 228 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 not followed so far as to omit from the Act all 
 mention of the subject, but it was followed in that 
 the sections which referred to it remained a dead 
 letter. 
 
 The same Act contained the sections which con- 
 stituted the clergy reserves and endowed the Church 
 of England, and on this subject Lord Durham took 
 up his parable in words which have been already 
 quoted, pointing out that ' the apparent right 
 which time and custom give to the maintenance 
 of an ancient and respected institution cannot 
 exist in a recently settled country, in which every- 
 thing is new' (ii. 178). But apparently one of the 
 most unfortunate attempts to reproduce English 
 institutions in Lower Canada was the introduction 
 of the system of unpaid Justices of the Peace. 
 ' The system of unpaid magistracy, as incidental 
 to the criminal law of England, was naturally 
 introduced into the province with that law ; and 
 the utter unfitness of the people for such an 
 institution is a striking instance of the imprudence 
 of unadvisedly engrafting the code of one country 
 on that of another ' (Appendix C, iii. 160). This was 
 the verdict of the Assistant Commissioners of 
 Municipal Inquiry, who further pointed out that 
 the Provincial Legislature, by enacting that every 
 
 attempted to draw between the House of Lords and the Legislative 
 Councils seems to me erroneous. The constitution of the House of 
 Lords is consonant with the frame of English society ; and as the crea- 
 tion of a precisely similar body in such a state of society as that of 
 these colonies is impossible, it has always appeared to me most unwise 
 to attempt to supply its place by one which has no point of resem- 
 blance to it, except that of being a non-elective check on the elective 
 branch of the Legislature ' (ii. 325).
 
 CHAP, v ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE 229 
 
 Justice of the Peace must possess a certain amount 
 of landed property, in accordance with the pre- 
 cedent set in the English counties, practically 
 excluded from the Commission of the Peace British 
 merchants who lived in the towns and did not own 
 land. Lord Durham was equally emphatic as to 
 the uns'uitability of an unpaid magistracy to the 
 case of Lower Canada. ' When we transplant the 
 institutions of England into our colonies,' he wrote, 
 ' we ought at least to take care beforehand that 
 the social state of the. Colony should possess those 
 peculiar materials on which alone the excellence 
 of those institutions depends in the mother coun- 
 try ' (ii. 131), and he suggested that under existing 
 conditions, a small stipendiary magistracy would 
 be preferable not only in Lower Canada but in 
 Upper Canada also. 
 
 Bad, however, as had been the result of intro- 
 ducing the system of unpaid Justices of the Peace 
 into Lower Canada, Lord Durham laid down 
 (ii. 126) that ' the most serious mischief in the 
 administration of criminal justice arises from the 
 entire perversion of the institution of juries, by 
 the political and national prejudices of the people '. 
 Early in the Report, when illustrating the intense 
 animosities of race in Lower Canada, he shows 
 how the jury system had been used to obstruct 
 justice, a conspicuous instance being the acquittal 
 of the murderers of Chartrand l (ii. 52-4) ; and 
 he returns to the point, when he deals especially 
 with the subject of administration of justice in 
 Lower Canada. In the paragraph, which has for 
 
 1 See above, p. 95, and see note (2) to voL ii, p. 54.
 
 230 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 its side-note ' perversion of juries ' (ii. 126), he 
 points out how the practical effect of following 
 English practice in the selection of juries had 
 been to give the French an entire preponderance, 
 to produce miscarriage of justice, and to destroy 
 public confidence in the administration of the 
 criminal law. His summary is (ii. 130) that ' The 
 trial by jury is, therefore, at the present moment, 
 not only productive in Lower Canada of no con- 
 fidence in the honest administration of the laws, 
 but also provides impunity for every political 
 offence ' ; and it seems strange that he did not 
 make any definite recommendation that the system 
 should for the time be suspended. But though 
 trial by jury, which the English had brought into 
 Lower Canada, proved under conditions of ex- 
 treme race bitterness to be a temporary failure, 
 it was not, in criminal matters at any rate, like 
 various other English institutions, permanently 
 out of place in the province. It failed utterly for 
 the time being, as it has failed at times of political 
 excitement in various other countries, notably 
 Ireland ; but it must not be classed with the mis- 
 fits with which the English, in good intention, 
 have from time to time endowed one or another 
 province of the Empire. 
 
 On the subject of Appeal Courts, reference 
 should be made to a note which has been appended 
 to the passages in the Report which deal with this 
 subject (ii. 121). From the dispatches which were 
 laid before Parliament in 1839, it would seem that 
 Durham, while in Canada, was credited or dis- 
 credited in England with having created a new
 
 CHAP, v ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE 231 
 
 Court of Appeal for Lower Canada ; whereas he 
 left the Executive Council, as he found it, the 
 Court of Appeal for the province, but made it 
 more effective for the purpose by swearing in an 
 additional number of judges as Executive Coun- 
 cillors, and by not summoning to the Council, when 
 it sat as a Court of Appeal only, those Executive 
 Councillors who had no legal training. 1 
 
 At the same time, in the dispatch which he wrote 
 on the subject from Canada to Lord Glenelg, he 
 said plainly : ' Had I possessed the means and 
 the power, I should have been glad to have given 
 the province a completely competent and per- 
 manent Court of Appeals, consisting entirely of 
 lawyers, for it is much wanted and called for, and 
 forms one feature of the plan which I had in view 
 for the future government of the provinces.' The 
 summary of his recommendations at the end of 
 the Report does not include a new Court of Appeal 
 for Lower Canada or for the two Canadas only, 
 but it includes, as has been already noticed, ' a 
 supreme Court of Appeal for all the North American 
 colonies ' (ii. 325). The 101st section of the British 
 North America Act of 1 867 empowered the Dominion 
 Parliament to provide such a general Court of 
 Appeal for Canada, and in 1875 that Court came 
 into existence under the name of the Supreme 
 Court of Canada. 
 
 1 See the Report, ii. 123, and see Lord Durham's dispatch to Lord 
 Glenelg of September 29, 1838. House of Commons Paper, British 
 North America, February 11, 1839, p. 194. See also Buller's Sketch of 
 Lord Durham's Mission, iii. 351, 352.
 
 232 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 EDUCATION 
 
 In the matter of education in Lower Canada, 
 Lord Durham criticizes the Government very 
 severely. He tells us early in his Report (ii. 27-34) 
 that under the French regime no general provision 
 was made for education, and goes on to speak 
 of the entire neglect of education by the British 
 government. Later on (ii. 136) he writes : ' I am 
 grieved to be obliged to remark, that the British 
 government has, since its possession of this Pro- 
 vince, done, or even attempted, nothing for the 
 promotion of general education.' Similarly Arthur 
 Buller, the commissioner whom he appointed to 
 inquire into the state of education in Lower 
 Canada, and whose Report forms Appendix D, 
 writes (iii. 246) : ' Up to this moment the only acts 
 of the British government, in respect of Canadian 
 instruction, have been the wholesale seizure and 
 the partial restoration of the Jesuits' estates.' 
 How far were these criticisms well founded ? 
 
 The education Report gives instances of educa- 
 tion Acts being passed by the local Legislature, 
 sent home for the Royal Assent, and never being 
 heard of again. Both Arthur Buller and Lord 
 Durham censure with evident reason the deal- 
 ings of the Home Government in connexion with 
 the Jesuits' estates. On the other hand, instances 
 might be quoted to show that neither Governors 
 nor Secretaries of State were unmindful of the 
 importance of education; and Lord Glenelg, when 
 inviting ' the most serious attention ' of Lord 
 Gosford and his colleagues to the state of educa-
 
 CHAP, v EDUCATION 233 
 
 tion in Lower Canada, speaks of ' the earnest 
 endeavours of my predecessors on .this subject', 
 which had been repeatedly frustrated; although, at 
 the same time, he seems to admit that the Imperial 
 Government might not have been sufficiently 
 prompt in devising a well-considered system of 
 education 1 for the province. 
 
 The education Report, as a whole, seems to show 
 that the Quebec Assembly was mainly responsible 
 for the want of a good educational system in Lower 
 Canada, and that, if the Imperial Government 
 was to blame, its fault consisted in not having 
 made the local Legislature do its duty. Arthur 
 Buller advocated, as strongly as Lord Durham 
 himself, the Anglifying of Lower Canada ; and this 
 process was to be carried out by a system of 
 common schools, instead of letting French and 
 English children learn their lessons and play their 
 games apart. ' Until Canada is nationalized and 
 Aiiglified, it is idle for England to be devising 
 schemes for her improvement. In this great work 
 of nationalization, education is at once the most 
 convenient and powerful instrument ' (iii. 273). 
 Similarly, before the Constitutional Act of 1791 
 was passed, in October 1784, Hugh Finlay, the 
 Postmaster-General of the Province of Quebec, 
 wrote : ' Before we think of a House of Assembly 
 for this country, let us lay a foundation for useful 
 knowledge to fit the people to judge of their situa- 
 tion, and deliberate for the future wellbeing of the 
 Province. The first step towards this desirable 
 
 1 See House of Commons Paper, No. 113, March, 1836, Copy of the 
 Instructions given to the Earl of Gosford, &c., p. 15.
 
 234 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 end is to have a free school in every parish. Let 
 the schoolmasters be English, if we would make 
 Englishmen of the Canadians.' l If then the British 
 Government was to be blamed for the want of 
 a sound system of education among the peasantry 
 of Lower Canada, and if the essence of a sound 
 system of education was the establishment of 
 common schools, in which the children were to be 
 brought up to be British and not French, then it 
 must be summed up that the fault of the Imperial 
 Government consisted in not over-riding popular 
 wishes, traditions, and prejudices, in not forcing 
 a French people and a Roman Catholic Church 
 the latter distinguished, as Arthur Buller is careful 
 to tell us, by ' the most undeviating allegiance 
 to the British Crown ' (iii. 241), to extinguish 
 their nationality and give up the principle of 
 separate schools. 
 
 Lord Durham, as well as Arthur Buller, saw the 
 difficulty of the position and the obstacles which 
 the clergy, not of the Roman Catholic Church 
 alone, would place in the way of non-sectarian 
 education. He expresses his confidence, notwith- 
 standing, ' that the establishment of a strong 
 popular government in this province would very 
 soon lead to the introduction of a liberal and 
 general system of public education' (ii. 136); and 
 then, in the words which have been quoted, he 
 goes on to blame the British Government for having 
 done nothing in the matter. 
 
 The Report of the Commissioner of Inquiry 
 
 1 Finlay to Nepean, Quebec, October 22, 1784 (Shortt and Doughty, 
 p. 500); but Finlay would have allowed the masters to be Roman 
 Catholics.
 
 CHAP, v EDUCATION 235 
 
 into the state of Education in Lower Canada is 
 dated Quebec, 15th November 1838; but, from the 
 wording of the Report, it is clear that it was not 
 written, at any rate in part, until a later date ; 
 and it was not laid before Parliament until June 
 1839, whereas Lord Durham's own Report was pre- 
 sented in the previous February. Lord Durham, 
 therefore, speaks of the results of the Education 
 Inquiry as not complete (ii. 134), and his own com- 
 ments are mainly confined to emphasizing the very 
 defective state of elementary education in Lower 
 Canada, and in one passage (ii. 94) enlarging upon 
 the extent to which political jobbery had entered 
 into educational grants. It may be noted that 
 Lord Gosford and his fellow commissioners also 
 dealt very briefly with this thorny subject in their 
 General Report on Lower Canada in November 
 1836, and in regard to religious instruction, con- 
 fined themselves to generalities and to a pious 
 hope ' that a system of education founded on the 
 truly Christian principle of toleration and general 
 charity would not be unattainable '. 1 
 
 Lord Durham's Commissioner of Inquiry, Arthur 
 Buller, was the younger brother of Charles Buller, 
 and, like the latter, had been a pupil of Carlyle. The 
 family ability is evident in his Report, and though 
 his work was cut short by Lord Durham's resigna- 
 tion, he collected and embodied in the Report a 
 great amount of valuable information, which was 
 supplemented by a very exhaustive Report on the 
 
 1 Reports of Commissioners on Grievances complained of in Lower 
 Canada. House of Commons Paper, No. 50, February 20, 1837, General 
 Report, p. 50.
 
 236 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 Jesuits' estates, compiled by Mr. Dunkin, the 
 Secretary to the Education Commission. Buller 
 comments on the dealings or misdealings of the 
 British Government with the Jesuits' estates, 
 which were in 1831 handed over to the Colonial 
 Legislature for the purposes of education. He gives 
 some account of the education Acts which were 
 passed by that Legislature, and of the education 
 Bills which did not become law ; and he sums up 
 (iii. 265) that education in Lower Canada ' lan- 
 guished under systems where the masters were 
 illiterate and needy ; the supervision careless and 
 dishonest ; the school-houses unfit for occupation, 
 and ill supplied with fuel ; the children unpro- 
 vided with books ; and parents utterly indifferent 
 to an institution of which they could not appreciate 
 the importance, and the trouble and cost of which, 
 at all events, they deemed the province of the 
 legislature '. This deplorable result he attributed 
 mainly to the fact that education had been made 
 by the House of Assembly subservient to politics. 
 ' The moment they found that their educational 
 provisions could be turned to political account, 
 from that moment those provisions were framed 
 with a view to promote party rather than educa- 
 tion ' (iii. 266). The utter breakdown of all previous 
 education schemes, however, had in his eyes the 
 merit that it left the field clear for a wholly new 
 system, which he proceeded to recommend, the 
 basis of his proposals, as has already been stated, 
 being that ' the principle of Anglification is to be 
 unequivocally recognized, and inflexibly carried 
 out ' (iii. 288).
 
 CHAP, v EDUCATION 237 
 
 He tells us that, in making his proposals, he took 
 for his models the educational systems in force in 
 Prussia and the United States ; and it may be 
 noted that the Gosford Commission mentions 'that 
 the Report of M. Cousin on the state of education 
 in Prussia, as well as several works on the subject 
 of education in the United States, are beginning 
 to attract notice in the Province V The chief 
 features of the proposals were, that there should 
 be common elementary schools for the children 
 of all denominations, in which undenominational 
 Christianity should be taught from an approved 
 book of Bible extracts, denominational teaching 
 being allowed out of school hours. The elementary 
 schools were to be supplemented by a certain 
 number of model schools, giving a rather higher 
 education, and offering scholarships to the best 
 boys from the elementary schools. These model 
 schools were to supply pupils to three normal 
 schools, in which the future schoolmasters were to 
 be trained ; and to the normal schools, and if 
 possible to the model schools also, farms were to 
 be attached, in which the pupils should learn the 
 most approved methods of agriculture. 
 
 The elementary and model schools were to be 
 supported on the principle which had been adopted 
 in the United States, viz. by requiring ' each 
 school district to furnish, by assessment, among 
 
 1 House of Commons Paper, February 20, 1837, General Report, p. 49. 
 The Cousin referred to was Victor Cousin. He was in 1831 commis- 
 sioned by the Government of Louis -Philippe to go to Germany to 
 examine the state of education there, and in 1832 he published his 
 ' Rapport sur 1'etat de I'instruction publique dans quelques pays de 
 1'Allemagne, et particulierement en Prusse ',
 
 i:Js BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 its inhabitants, an amount at least equivalent to 
 the sum apportioned to it from the public funds ' 
 (iii. 279). The sum to be granted from public 
 funds, which was to include the whole cost of the 
 normal schools, and also a grant for the encourage- 
 ment of superior educational institutions, was to 
 be charged upon a permanent education fund, 
 which fund was to be supplied from the proceeds 
 of the Jesuits' estates and the clergy reserves, 
 supplemented by direct grants from the provincial 
 treasury. Popular or local control over the schools 
 was to be secured in the following manner (iii. 285). 
 Lower Canada was to be divided into munici- 
 palities, and the municipalities into districts. 
 Three school commissioners were to be elected 
 for each municipality, and three trustees for 
 each district. The commissioners were to have 
 vested in them all the legal estate of the elemen- 
 tary schools in their respective municipalities, 
 to receive the money allotted by the Govern- 
 ment for education, and to distribute it to the 
 trustees in the districts. The trustees were ' to 
 manage the daily concerns ' of the schools, to 
 receive the Government grants, to collect the 
 money raised by local assessment, to pay the 
 masters, and in conjunction with the ministers of 
 religion to appoint the masters. In each munici- 
 pality there was to be a board of school visitors, 
 consisting of * the resident ministers of religion, 
 two residents appointed by the Inspector, and two 
 annually by the municipality '. There were to be 
 slightly different arrangements for the three large 
 towns. There were to be three inspectors for the
 
 CHAP, v EDUCATION 239 
 
 whole province, and over all, at the seat of govern- 
 ment, a superintendent or chief officer of instruc- 
 tion, who, as well as the three inspectors, was to be 
 kept completely aloof from politics. 
 
 Finally, the proposed system, if and when 
 adopted and embodied in law, was to be ' gradu- 
 ally put in force by a board of Commissioners some- 
 what similarly constituted to that of the Board of 
 Poor Law Commissioners in this country ' (iii. 293). 
 
 Bearing in mind that the root principle of the 
 scheme was to make Lower Canada English, that 
 the Roman Catholic Church was whole-hearted in 
 opposition to it, and had petitioned Lord Durham 
 for separate Roman Catholic schools (iii. 277), that 
 the Church of England clergy were almost unani- 
 mously hostile, and the Presbyterians divided 
 (iii. 277, 278), that the Canadian peasantry were 
 indifferent to education, and strongly objected to 
 being taxed to pay for it, it is difficult to regard 
 Buller's proposals as in any sense practicable, or 
 to look upon his Report as other than an interest- 
 ing essay on what might have been ideally the best 
 scheme of education for Lower Canada, if the actual 
 conditions had not presented insuperable diffi- 
 culties to its adoption. It is true that not many 
 years had passed since Catholic emancipation had 
 been carried in England, that in Canada and else- 
 where under Protestant rule the Roman Catholics 
 did not hold so assured a position as they do at 
 the present day, and that by common consent 
 tolerance and forbearance between the rival de- 
 nominations was conspicuous in Lower Canada. 
 ' It is indeed an admirable feature of Canadian
 
 240 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 society,' Lord Durham writes (ii. 39), * that it is 
 entirely devoid of any religious dissensions. Sec- 
 tarian intolerance is not merely not avowed, but it 
 hardly seems to influence men's feelings.' It might 
 therefore not be safe to estimate the strength of 
 the opposition to Buller's recommendations by the 
 feeling which was aroused in later years, when the 
 Manitoba schools question was faced by Sir Wilfrid 
 Laurier. But, just as Canada had been divided 
 into two provinces in 1791, largely in the hope of 
 preventing friction between the two rival races, so 
 it is probable that the kindly feeling between the 
 different denominations was in great measure due 
 to their holding apart from each other in educa- 
 tional matters ; and it is impossible to doubt that 
 any British Government, which had resolved to 
 carry out what Buller proposed, would have been 
 practically committed to replacing tolerance with 
 religious bitterness, to alienating a loyal church, 
 and to coercing the whole French Canadian people. 
 Lord Durham, it has been seen, had not Buller's 
 full Report before him when he wrote his own, and 
 contented himself with contemplating that the 
 laity would be too strong for the clergy, and that 
 the grant of a popular Government would bring in 
 its train a liberal system of public education. He 
 cannot therefore be held responsible for Buller's 
 views; and yet it can hardly be doubted that those 
 views largely reflected his own, especially as the 
 Anglifying of French Canada was one of the main 
 themes of his Report. We come back then once 
 more to the point of view that Lord Durham was 
 prepared to take a high hand in carrying through
 
 CHAP, v EDUCATION 241 
 
 the reforms that he deemed to be necessary, to 
 the conclusion that possibly he did not always 
 sufficiently count the cost, and that, had he been 
 placed in the position not to recommend merely 
 but to carry out his recommendations with a free 
 hand, it is possible that French Canada might not 
 have been redeemed by responsible government, but 
 by the measures which were to be co-temporaneous 
 with responsible government, might have been con- 
 verted into the Poland of the British Empire. 
 
 It is interesting to note how Buller contrasts 
 the character of the two sexes among the French 
 Canadians, as the result of the better education 
 which the girls received. ' The difference in the 
 character of the two sexes is remarkable. The 
 women are really the men of Lower Canada. They 
 are the active, bustling, business portion of the 
 habitants, and this results from the much better 
 education which they get, gratuitously, or at 
 a very cheap rate, at the nunneries which are 
 dispersed over the province ' (iii. 267, 268). Very 
 noteworthy too are his comments on ' the too 
 great abundance of means of superior education 
 enjoyed by the French Canadians' (iii. 270), as 
 compared with the almost total want of facilities 
 for higher education in the case of the British 
 population in Lower Canada. Lord Durham also 
 refers to this point. ' I know of no people among 
 whom a larger provision exists for the higher kinds 
 of elementary education, or among whom such 
 education is really extended to a larger propor- 
 tion of the population ' (ii. 32) ; and again (ii. 134), 
 ' I have described the singular abundance of a 
 
 1352-1 B
 
 242 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 somewhat defective education which exists for the 
 higher classes, and which is solely in the hands of 
 the Catholic priesthood.' On the other hand, 
 ' There exists at present no means of college educa- 
 tion for Protestants in the province ; and the 
 desire of obtaining general, and still more, pro- 
 fessional instruction, yearly draws a great many 
 young men into the United States.' Buller gives 
 a list of the institutions for higher education which 
 had been established by and under the control of 
 the Roman Catholic Church, including ' the two 
 large seminaries of Quebec and Montreal ', founded 
 in the seventeenth century, the former by the great 
 Bishop Laval, the latter by the Sulpiciaris ; l and 
 he explains the use of the words ' too great abun- 
 dance of means of superior education', by pointing 
 out, as Lord Durham also points out, that the 
 children educated at these colleges and seminaries, 
 many or most of them children of habitants, were 
 too numerous for them all to reap the advantages 
 of their education in after life. The priesthood 
 was open to them, but the military and naval 
 professions were closed. They overstocked the 
 professions of advocate, notary, and surgeon. 
 Sprung from the ranks of the people, they led the 
 people. ' To this singular state of things,' writes 
 Lord Durham, ' I attribute the extraordinary in- 
 fluence of the Canadian demagogues ' (ii. 33). As 
 far back as 1768, Carleton had impressed upon the 
 
 1 The letters patent of the French Crown, which authorized the 
 seminary of Quebec, were dated April, 1663 ; this seminary was the 
 parent of Laval University, created in 1852. The letters patent of the 
 French Crown, which authorized the Sulpician seminary at Montreal, 
 were dated May 1677.
 
 CHAP, v EDUCATION 243 
 
 British Government in the strongest terms the 
 impolicy of excluding Canadians, more especially 
 the Canadian gentry, from employment under 
 Government ; Lord Durham notes the kindred but 
 somewhat different evil, of peasant children being 
 educated for higher work than that of a peasant, 
 and finding in after life that they had been taught 
 and trained in vain. 
 
 Meanwhile, for the Protestant children of Lower 
 Canada, two grammar schools were in the year 1826 
 established at Quebec and Montreal respectively, 
 to which the Government, under the authority of 
 the Secretary of State, with no great tact or con- 
 sideration for Roman Catholic feelings, gave small 
 annual grants from the proceeds of the Jesuits' 
 estates. There was also one Protestant endowment 
 at Montreal, of which the world was to hear in the 
 days to come. In 1801 a provincial Act was passed 
 ' for the establishment of Free schools and the 
 advancement of Learning in the province '. Under 
 this Act a corporation, entitled 'The Royal In- 
 stitution for the advancement of Learning ', was 
 constituted for the management of the schools. 
 This corporation was in fact, or was regarded by the 
 Roman Catholics and French Canadians as being, 
 exclusively British and Protestant ; and in con- 
 sequence the system was a failure. When Buller 
 wrote his Report, he stated that 'The corpora- 
 tion has now no other function than the trustee- 
 ship of McGiU's college' (iii. 249). This college, 
 he tells us, was not yet open, the building was not 
 yet erected, and the endowment was not sufficient 
 to raise the college to the rank of a university. 
 
 R2
 
 244 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 The will of the founder, a Scotchman, James McGill, 
 had been made in 1811, nearly three years before his 
 death. A Royal Charter had been granted to the 
 college in 1821 ; but it was not until an amended 
 charter had been obtained in 1852, that the 
 college began to develop into the great McGill 
 University, which is now one of the Universities 
 of the world. In the meantime, Buller suggested 
 that if the British North American provinces should 
 be united, a university jointly endowed by them 
 might be established at Quebec. 
 
 B tiller's Education Report referred to Lower 
 Canada only, and Lord Durham has little to say 
 on the subject of education in Upper Canada. He 
 comments on the paucity of schools in the pro- 
 vince, and notes that of the lands which had been 
 originally appropriated for the support of schools 
 throughout the country, the most valuable part 
 had been diverted to the endowment of a univer- 
 sity at Toronto (ii. 184). But there had been no 
 indifference to the cause of education in Upper 
 Canada. Private effort had been abundant, and 
 the Government and Legislature had at least 
 attempted to do their duty. The Lieutenant- 
 Governors, from Simcoe onwards, had for the most 
 part taken a warm personal interest in education, 
 especially in higher education. Sir Peregrine Mait- 
 land was Lieutenant-Govemor, when a Board of 
 Education was established ; and Sir John Colborne, 
 who while Lieutenant-Governor of Guernsey had 
 regenerated Elizabeth College in that island, con- 
 ferred a similar boon upon Upper Canada, by re- 
 placing the Home district school of Toronto with
 
 CHAP, v EDUCATIOX 245 
 
 Upper Canada College, which was opened in 1830. 
 The religious forbearance, which was so much in 
 evidence in Lower Canada, did not exist to the 
 same degree in the Upper province. Lord Durham 
 (ii. 179-82) criticizes strongly the spirit of Orange in- 
 tolerance towards the Roman Catholics, who formed 
 one-fifth of the population of Upper Canada. It 
 was the more marked, inasmuch as Upper Canada 
 was the home of the Roman Catholic Glengarry 
 Highlanders, and of Bishop McDonell, conspicuous 
 in loyalty to the British Government. The feeling 
 between Protestants and Roman Catholics on the 
 one hand, and 011 the other between the Church of 
 England and the non-Episcopalian Protestant 
 bodies which centred round the question of the 
 clergy reserves, was reflected in the denominational 
 colleges which were established for higher educa- 
 tion. Elementary education was dealt with by 
 a provincial Act of 1816, which provided annual 
 grants for the establishment of common schools 
 throughout the province. The Act was to be in 
 force for four years : it was renewed with modi- 
 fications in 1820, and in 1824 it was made per- 
 manent. The Act of 1824 mentioned for the first 
 time a General Board and district boards of 
 education, and also extended the provisions of 
 the Education Acts to schools for Indian children. 
 Provision for higher education had been made at 
 an earlier date. In 1797, when Peter Russell was 
 administering the government, the Legislature of 
 Upper Canada petitioned the Crown to appropriate 
 a certain amount of Crown lands, for the establish- 
 ment and support of grammar schools in the
 
 24fi BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 different districts, and of a college or university. 
 The result was that some 550,000 acres were 
 allotted for the purpose. In 1807 an Act was 
 passed to establish public schools in the districts 
 of the province, 800 being provided to pay 100 
 per annum to the master of each school in eight 
 districts. These public schools were the district 
 grammar schools of the province. Simcoe had 
 contemplated a university for Upper Canada con- 
 nected with the Church of England ; the petition 
 of the Legislature to the King in 1797 had asked 
 for lands to endow a college or university as well 
 as grammar schools, and the strong feeling in the 
 province in favour of a university was shown by 
 the fact that a provincial Act of 1820, for increas- 
 ing the number of members of the House of 
 Assembly, provided for future university represen- 
 tation. Eventually, in 1827, King's College at 
 Toronto obtained a Royal charter, and was en- 
 dowed with some 225,000 acres of the Crown land 
 which had been appropriated for the purposes of 
 higher education. Dr. Strachan, who had himself 
 been a schoolmaster, the strong and able leader of 
 the Church of England in Upper Canada, had much 
 to do with obtaining the charter; and, although 
 no religious tests were imposed upon the students, 
 the college was placed entirely under the control 
 of the Church of England, the president being the 
 Archdeacon of Toronto, who at the time was 
 Dr. Strachan himself. This exclusive control 
 gave rise to complaints from the other Protestant 
 bodies, and the House of Commons Committee of 
 1828 upon the Civil Government of Canada recom-
 
 CHAP, v EDUCATION 247 
 
 mended that the Constitution should be widened. 
 This was effected by a provincial Act of 1837, and 
 eventually in 1843 the college, no longer a purely 
 Anglican institution, began its work. In 1849 
 it was made entirely secular, and its name was 
 changed to that of the University of Toronto. Its 
 place as a Church of England college was taken 
 by Trinity College at Toronto, which was estab- 
 lished in 1852, and received a Royal charter in 
 1853; and meanwhile other denominations had 
 also formed colleges of their own, the Wesleyans 
 at Coburg, the Presbyterians at Kingston, and the 
 Roman Catholics also at Kingston, the colleges 
 being known as Victoria College, Queen's College, 
 and Regiopolis respectively. 
 
 Lord Durham was not specially concerned with 
 education, and he was specially concerned with 
 the political condition of Upper Canada and its 
 constitutional disorders. But, had he given closer 
 attention to the province and spent a longer time 
 in it, he might have found space in his Report to 
 note the efforts which citizens and rulers alike 
 had made in the cause of education, and might 
 have placed on record that no little credit in this 
 connexion was due to Tory Lieutenant-Governors 
 who had old-fashioned views as to Church and 
 State, and to the members of the Family Compact. 
 
 GENERAL UNION OF BRITISH NORTH AMERICA 
 Reference has already been made to Lord Dur- 
 ham's views as to a future general union of the 
 British North American provinces. c On my first 
 arrival in Canada,' he writes (ii. 304), ' I was
 
 248 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 strongly inclined to the project of & federal union, 
 and it was with such a plan in view, that I dis- 
 cussed a general measure for the government of 
 the Colonies, with the deputations from the Lower 
 Provinces, and with various leading individuals and 
 public bodies in both the Canadas.' Buller tells 
 us, in his sketch of the Mission, that Lord Durham 
 had prepared the outline of such a scheme before 
 he left England, that Roebuck had suggested it in 
 the House of Commons, and that it had been well 
 received. He tells us too that Durham had con- 
 templated forming three provinces out of the two 
 Canadas, constituting a new province out of the 
 district of Montreal, the adjacent part of Upper 
 Canada, and the eastern townships. Recognizing 
 the objections to any plan of federal government, 
 Durham had none the less contemplated that a 
 federation formed under a monarchial government 
 would gradually grow into a complete legislative 
 union. But, on further consideration, and with 
 longer experience of the conditions of British North 
 America, he came to a different conclusion. He 
 reasoned that the time was past for gradual 
 measures in the case of Lower Canada; that the 
 co-operation which would alone make a federal 
 constitution practicable, would be wanting in the 
 case of the French Canadians, if they were left, as 
 they would be under a federal system, in a majority 
 in their provincial Legislature; 'that tranquillity 
 can only be restored by subjecting the province to 
 the vigorous rule of an English majority ; and that 
 the only efficacious government would be that 
 formed by a legislative union ' (ii. 307).
 
 CHAP, v GENERAL UNIOX 249 
 
 On the other hand, while complete and im- 
 mediate fusion of the two Canadas under one 
 Legislature was, in his opinion, a vital necessity, 
 and while therefore a federal system, at any rate as 
 between the two Canadas, was rendered impossible, 
 he did not consider that the conditions of the 
 Maritime Provinces were such as to make it either 
 just or expedient to force upon these latter pro- 
 vinces legislative union, until their Legislatures and 
 peoples had been given ample time for deliberation 
 and consent (ii. 322-3). This train of reasoning 
 led him to recommend immediate legislation by the 
 Imperial Parliament, 'restoring the union of the 
 Canadas under one legislature, and reconstitut- 
 ing them as one province' (ii. 323-5); but 'the 
 Bill ', he continued, ' should contain provisions by 
 which any or all of the North American colonies 
 may, on the application of the Legislature, be, with 
 the consent of the two Canadas, or their united 
 Legislature, admitted into the union on such 
 terms as may be agreed on between them ' ; and 
 he goes on to recommend in terms which are 
 not quite clear, that ' a general executive on an 
 improved principle should be established, together 
 with a Supreme Court of Appeal, for all the North 
 American colonies ', as though the executive and 
 the judicial powers respectively were to be united 
 in advance of legislative union. Possibly, by a 
 general executive prior to legislative union, he 
 intended no more than that a governor-in-chief or 
 governor-general should be appointed, who should 
 be in fact and not merely, as had been the case, 
 in name, Governor of the whole of British North
 
 260 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 America, having one or more secretaries who 
 would correspond with all the provinces. 
 
 The conclusion of the whole matter then was 
 that the condition of French Canada at the time 
 determined Lord Durham's views with regard to 
 British North America generally. But for the 
 critical state of Lower Canada, he would have 
 recommended a federation of the British North 
 American provinces. He would have recommended 
 it, however, not as a final and permanent solu- 
 tion, but as a preliminary to complete union. As 
 things were, he concluded that the two Canadas 
 must at once be fused, not federated ; and thus, 
 having begun with union, he proposed that the 
 union should gradually be extended, without the 
 preliminary stage of federation. But, though he 
 thus advocated union and not federation, he must 
 be regarded as having in the essence foreshadowed 
 the future dominion. The soundness of his reason- 
 ing that the Maritime Provinces should not be 
 hurried into combination with the Canadas, was 
 illustrated by the difficulty which was experienced 
 in carrying confederation in those provinces ; and 
 his proposal to include Newfoundland in the 
 political system of British North America was 
 revived, when the makers of confederation were 
 drafting their first schemes. No part of his Report 
 is more vivid or more cogent than the passages in 
 which he sets out the gains which would accrue 
 to British North America from being made one, 
 his words speak for themselves, they would be 
 spoiled by paraphrase, and one or two points only 
 seem to call for comment and elucidation.
 
 CHAP, v GENERAL UNION 251 
 
 He starts by distinguishing between the two 
 kinds of union which had been proposed, and which 
 he terms federal and legislative (ii. 302-8) ; he 
 defines federal union as a system under which ' the 
 separate legislature of each province would be pre- 
 served in its present form, and retain almost all 
 its present attributes of internal legislation ; the 
 federal legislature exercising no power, save in 
 those matters of general concern, which may have 
 been expressly ceded to it by the constituent 
 Provinces ' ; and a few lines lower down he mentions 
 as an objection which might be urged against a 
 federal system, 'that a colonial federation must 
 have, in fact, little legitimate authority or busi- 
 ness, the greater part of the ordinary functions of 
 a federation falling within the scope of the Imperial 
 legislature and executive '. Similarly, Lord Glenelg, 
 when, as has already been noticed, 1 he suggested 
 to Lord Durham, in January 1838, that some kind 
 of federal legislative body might be established 
 for the two Canadian provinces, spoke of it merely 
 as ' some joint legislative authority, which should 
 preside over all questions of common interest to 
 the two provinces, and which might be appealed 
 to in extraordinary cases to arbitrate between 
 contending parties in either ; preserving, however, 
 to each province its distinct legislature, with 
 authority in all matters of exclusively domestic 
 concern '. Lord Durham then clearly contem- 
 plated that a Federal Legislature in British North 
 America would have little or no real power, 
 inasmuch as British North America would not be 
 
 1 Dispatch of January 20, 1838. See above, pp. 113, 132.
 
 2*2 BRITISH NOR^H AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 an independent State or nation. The real power 
 would rest, partly with the Provincial Legislatures, 
 and partly with the Imperial Government. Though 
 it is the barest justice to his memory to regard him 
 as the prophet of the coming Dominion, he did not 
 contemplate what actually came to pass under the 
 British North America Act, viz. that a Federal 
 Legislature could and would be constituted of such 
 a kind that, while its powers were necessarily only 
 those which had been * expressly ceded to it by 
 the constituent provinces ', yet the constituent 
 provinces would cede to it all the powers which 
 were not expressly reserved to themselves. Unlike 
 the constitution of the United States, and unlike 
 the constitution of the Commonwealth of Aus- 
 tralia, the constitution of the Dominion of Canada 
 makes the Federal Government and not the provin- 
 cial governments the residuary legatee of political 
 power in Canada. Neither in its relation to the 
 constituent provinces, nor in its relation to the Im- 
 perial Legislature and Executive, is the Dominion 
 Legislature a shadow without the substance : on 
 the contrary it is in this Federal Legislature that 
 the real power over Canada resides. To appreciate 
 Lord Durham's point of view, it is necessary, on 
 the one hand to bear in mind that what he had to 
 guide him in forming his opinions on the subject 
 of federation was the one great existing example 
 of federation in the United States, and on the 
 other hand to remember the lines which he laid 
 down for responsible government. In the case of 
 the United States he saw how strong had been 
 and still was the basis of State rights, and to his
 
 CHAP, v GENERAL UNION 253 
 
 mind a Federal Legislature with substantial power 
 had only been rendered possible, because there was 
 no further sovereign power outside and beyond. 
 On the other hand, he had drawn a distinct line 
 beyond which responsible government should not 
 be extended, the line being between what he held 
 to be matters of domestic and what he considered 
 matters of imperial concern. The matters of 
 domestic concern were matters for the domestic 
 Legislature, and that meant, as long as the pro- 
 vinces were not made one, the Legislature of each 
 single province. The matters of imperial concern 
 were to be regulated outside Canada altogether, 
 by the Imperial Legislature and Executive. Where, 
 he argued, was there a place for an intermediate 
 Legislature, except as a transitory form preliminary 
 to substantial union. But what actually happened 
 was the creation of a Legislature which took over 
 a large proportion of the matters of domestic con- 
 cern, and which either from the first possessed, or, 
 as years went on, gradually gathered, many or 
 most of the powers which Lord Durham conceived 
 to be outside the sphere of purely Canadian politics. 
 He was wrong and yet he was right : he was right 
 and yet he was wrong. He wanted to create 
 a nation, and that was achieved by the British 
 North America Act. The Act really brought union 
 into existence under the guise of federation. But 
 when a nation was made, it was not possible to 
 set bounds to national aspirations, or to uphold 
 the limits within which he proposed to grant 
 responsible government. 
 
 There is one aspect of a Federal Legislature, not
 
 254 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 of great importance now, but important enough 
 in earlier days, which he rather left out of sight. 
 In discussing the future union of British North 
 America, he quotes a letter which Chief Justice 
 Sewell had received from the father of Queen 
 Victoria, the Duke of Kent, on proposals for a 
 union of the British North American provinces, 
 which Sewell had submitted to the Duke. When 
 the Bill, which eventually became the Constitu- 
 tional Act of 1791, was under consideration, a pre- 
 decessor of Sewell, Chief Justice Smith, wrote to 
 Lord Dorchester a memorable letter in which he 
 commented on the absence in that Bill of any pro- 
 vision for a General Legislature for all the British 
 North American provinces. To the want of such 
 a Legislature the writer attributed in large measure 
 the loss of the old American colonies. It was in 
 his view hopeless to have expected ' wisdom and 
 moderation from near a score of " petty Parlia- 
 ments ", with which Great Britain had had to deal.' 
 'All America was thus, at the very outset of the 
 Plantations, abandoned to Democracy. And it 
 belonged to the Administrations of the days of our 
 fathers to have found the cure, in the erection of 
 a Power upon the Continent itself, to control all its 
 own little Republics, and create a Partner in the 
 Legislation of the Empire, capable of consulting 
 their own safety and the common welfare '- 1 
 Chief Justice Smith confined himself to the sub- 
 ject of legislation, and apparently did not contem- 
 plate responsible government ; and Lord Durham, 
 
 1 Chief Justice Smith to Lord Dorchester, February 5, 1790. Sec 
 Canadian Constitutional Development, Egerton and Grant, pp. 104-6.
 
 CHAP, v GENERAL UNION 255 
 
 while going beyond him in the matter of granting 
 responsible government, equally with him saw 
 the advantage of creating a united Legislature, 
 which would give a wider field for political am- 
 bitions than the ' petty parliaments ' afforded, and 
 create more equality and more sense of partner- 
 ship with the Parliament of the United Kingdom. 
 But Durham did not appreciate, as Chief Justice 
 Smith did, or at any rate he did not enlarge 
 upon the advantage, under the existing conditions 
 of the British Empire, of a Federal Legislature, 
 as contrasted with a Legislature which absorbed, 
 instead of retaining in some sort, the Provincial 
 Legislatures, in that it would have been ' a power 
 upon the continent itself ' controlling all its own 
 little republics. In other words, he does not seem 
 to have appreciated the advantage of a buffer 
 between the little republics and the Imperial 
 authority, against which, in lieu of the Imperial 
 authority, the petty irritation of the provincial 
 communities, the inevitable friction between the 
 lower and the higher, would mainly have been 
 directed. 
 
 In the earlier stages of the Empire, when dis- 
 tance was all powerful and knowledge and wisdom 
 lingered, a Central Legislature on the spot, con- 
 trolling but not wholly absorbing, and therefore 
 not inheriting but restraining the small causes of 
 bitterness in subordinate Legislatures, would have 
 been, as in later times it has proved to be, a won- 
 derful improvement in the machinery of a world- 
 wide system. 
 
 There is one thing wanting in Lord Durham's
 
 256 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA IXTKOU. 
 
 forecast of a united Dominion. It has been referred 
 to already more than once. He foreshadows a 
 Dominion, but it is not a Dominion from sea to sea. 
 If he had not seen so far and so wide, there would 
 be no room for wondering that he did not see still 
 further and wider. But he had so much states- 
 manlike imagination, that it is matter for surprise 
 that Upper Canada always bounded his western 
 view. The territories of the Hudson Bay Company, 
 the North West, the Pacific Coast were not within 
 the scope of his mission, but yet they need not 
 have lain beyond his horizon. The international 
 line had long been drawn, though with outstanding 
 points of dispute, as far as the Rocky Mountains ; 
 and the boundary from thence to the Pacific had 
 been matter of negotiation. Possibly the diffi- 
 culties with the United States, including the Maine 
 Boundary question, to which he refers, and which 
 at the beginning of 1839 reached its most acute 
 and dangerous stage, made him hesitate to look 
 too far afield, into what might be held to be 
 debatable territory ; but the result is to leave his 
 picture of the future British North America fore- 
 shortened and incomplete. Yet it is a splendid 
 picture, a great conception embodied in noble 
 words. Once more stress may well be laid upon 
 the writer's creativeness, his imperialism which 
 held that England should make what was small 
 and petty into what was worthy and great, his 
 unerring perception that there was one way and 
 one way only to prevent British North America 
 from being permanently overshadowed, and ulti- 
 mately absorbed, by the United States, and that
 
 CHAP, v GENERAL UNION 257 
 
 was by making it one and raising it to be a nation. 
 Such a community, strong and self-governing, he 
 held, and rightly held, would be less likely than 
 the ' petty republics ' to sever the connexion with 
 Great Britain. 
 
 REFERENCES TO THE UNITED STATES 
 As the whole course of Canadian history has 
 been dominated by the proximity of the United 
 States to Canada, so Lord Durham's Report 
 abounds in references to the United States and 
 its citizens, made for purposes of illustration, con- 
 trast, example, and warning. In 1837 Martin Van 
 Buren succeeded General Jackson as President, 
 and inherited a legacy of unrest. The year 1837 
 was in the United States a year of financial crisis 
 and of bank failures. The anti-slavery movement 
 was rapidly gathering strength. Texas, settled 
 largely by American citizens, had in 1836 declared 
 its independence of Mexico, and in 1837 applied 
 for admission into the Union ; thenceforward the 
 Texas annexation question troubled and divided 
 American statesmen and politicians until 1845, 
 when Texas became a State of the Union, and war 
 with Mexico followed as a necessary consequence. 
 Relations between Great Britain and the United 
 States were very strained. The Maine Boundary 
 question was outstanding, accentuated since the 
 admission of the State of Maine to the Union in 
 1820. The Fisheries Convention of 1818 between 
 Great Britain and the United States had given 
 rise to disputes ; and, writing to Lord Durham in 
 September 1838 on the state of Nova Scotia, 
 
 1352-1 S
 
 258 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA TXTROD. 
 
 Mr. William Young referred to * the oppressive and 
 systematic encroachments of the Americans upon 
 our fisheries '.* Along the international frontier 
 further west than the Maritime Provinces, the 
 rebellions in Lower and Upper Canada had led to 
 breaches of the peace and violations of territory. 
 Reference has been made to the case of the Caro- 
 line and the bitterness which it caused in the 
 United States, while a few hours after Lord 
 Durham's landing at Quebec, the Sir Robert Peel, 
 a Canadian steamboat on the Upper St. Lawrence, 
 putting into the American shore, was taken, looted, 
 and burnt by a band of American pirates, to use 
 Lord Durham's words. Writing to Lord Glenelg 
 a few days afterwards, he reported that the popula- 
 tion on the frontier of the State of New York was 
 ' of the worst class and description squatters, 
 refugees, and smugglers, and that the executive 
 power of the United States Government is a perfect 
 nullity '. 2 He had thus given him, immediately 
 after arrival in Canada, a practical illustration 
 of the * necessary weakness of a merely Federal 
 Government ' (ii. 270). One of his first acts, in 
 consequence of the Sir Robert Peel incident, was to 
 send his brother-in-law, Colonel Grey, to Wash- 
 ington, to carry remonstrances, coupled with assur- 
 ances of friendship and co-operation, to President 
 Van Buren, with the result that the President, 
 honestly anxious to keep the peace, took steps to 
 prevent as far as possible a recurrence of similar 
 
 1 See Appendix A, iii. 14. 
 
 * House of Commons Paper, February 11, 1839. British North 
 America, p. 114.
 
 CHAP, v REFERENCES TO UNITED STATES 259 
 
 outrages, though the later recrudescence of Canadian 
 rebellion led to further fillibustering on the fron- 
 tier. Lord Durham fully realized how little was 
 wanting to bring on war between England and the 
 United States, and to what extent the condition 
 of the two Canadas made for war between the two 
 countries. In his dispatch of the 9th of August 
 1838, which was marked secret at the time, but 
 was subsequently published, almost in extenso, in 
 the Blue Book of the llth of February 1839, he 
 summed up the causes which were exciting American 
 animosity against Great Britain. He noted how, 
 among the ill-informed in the United States, the 
 French Canadians appeared to be struggling for 
 the same rights which the Americans had secured 
 by the War of Independence ; how the bitterness 
 of the British party in Canada against the United 
 States, reflected in the colonial newspapers, had 
 caused corresponding irritation; and how the 
 American mind was becoming familiarized to the 
 prospect of war. He commented upon the prac- 
 tical inconvenience and expense caused, alike to 
 the States on the frontier and to the Federal 
 Government, by the disturbances in Canada and 
 the weakness of British administration ; upon the 
 added political difficulty of the boundary ques- 
 tion; and lastly upon the restless, enterprising, 
 lawless character of the frontier population, whb 
 had a precedent for successful invasion and seizure 
 in the events which had taken place in Texas. 
 These considerations are set out again at length in 
 his Report, and he traces with clearness and in- 
 sight how among the British loyalists in Lower 
 
 82
 
 260 BRITISH NORTtf AMERICA TVTROD. 
 
 Canada, exasperation against American sympathy 
 with the French Canadians was combined with an 
 undercurrent of feeling that incorporation with the 
 United States would once for all swamp the French 
 majority, and further the material interests of the 
 English-speaking population; and how in the Upper 
 Province traditional loyalty to the British Govern- 
 ment, if not supported by stable administration 
 and constitutional reform, might be undermined 
 by race sympathy, facility of intercourse, and the 
 object lesson of abounding prosperity which dis- 
 contented eyes in Canada beheld across the 
 frontier. 1 
 
 It was not the least of Lord Durham's services 
 to his country that, when he reviewed the state of 
 Canada, took action on the spot, and made recom- 
 mendations for the future, he had always in mind 
 British and Canadian relations with the great 
 republic that lined the southern frontier of Canada ; 
 and Buller, in his account of the Mission, empha- 
 sizes the change of feeling between England and 
 the United States, which was the result of Lord 
 Durham's prompt measures, and his dignified 
 courtesy to American citizens, producing alike 
 greater friendliness to the country which he 
 represented, and marked personal respect for 
 himself. 
 
 Comment has been made already upon the out- 
 spokenness of Lord Durham's Report. He writes 
 plainly and fearlessly on the situation from an 
 international point of view. The side-note to one 
 of his paragraphs is ' Importance of preserving 
 
 1 See ii. 59-64 and 261-3.
 
 CHAP, v REFERENCES TO UNITED STATES 261 
 
 the sympathy of the United States ', and it 
 runs : 
 
 ' The maintenance of an absolute form of govern- 
 ment on any part of the North American Continent 
 can never continue for any long time, without 
 exciting a general feeling in the United States 
 against a power of which the existence is secured 
 by means so odious to the people ; and as I rate 
 the preservation of the present general sympathy 
 of the United States with the policy of our Govern- 
 ment in Lower Canada as a matter of the greatest 
 importance, I should be sorry that the feeling 
 should be changed for one which, if prevalent 
 among that people, must extend over the sur- 
 rounding provinces ' (ii. 297). 
 
 He argued in effect, that one reason for giving 
 responsible government to the Canadas was that 
 it would be congenial to the United States a very 
 good reason, but not one which at a time of crisis 
 was likely to be attractive to loyalists in Canada. 
 Again he writes (ii. 311-12) in the plainest words of 
 the ever present, ever increasing, all surrounding 
 influence of the United States in relation to Canada 
 and the Canadians, and uses it as a powerful argu- 
 ment for the union of British North America, 
 reasoning that ' If we wish to prevent the exten- 
 sion of this influence, it can only be done by 
 raising up for the North American colonist some 
 nationality of his own; by elevating these small 
 and unimportant communities into a society hav- 
 ing some objects of a national importance ; and 
 by thus giving their inhabitants a country which 
 they will be unwilling to see absorbed even into 
 one more powerful '.
 
 262 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 Throughout his Report he draws a contrast 
 between the American and Canadian sides of the 
 frontier, in the matter of material development and 
 prosperity, attributing the backwardness on the 
 Canadian side mainly to the want of free institu- 
 tions and firm and wise administration. ' It is not 
 politic to waste and cramp their resources, and 
 to allow the backwardness of the British provinces 
 everywhere to present a melancholy contrast to 
 the progress and prosperity of the United States ' 
 (ii. 262). In an earlier passage (ii. 212-13), with 
 special reference to the disposal of public lands, he 
 elaborates the contrast in forcible and picturesque 
 language. ' On the American side all is activity 
 and bustle. . . . On the British side of the line, with 
 the exception of a few favoured spots, where some 
 approach to American prosperity is apparent, all 
 seems waste and desolate. . . . There, on the side 
 of both the Canadas, and also of New Brunswick 
 and Nova Scotia, a widely scattered population, 
 poor, and apparently unenterprising, though hardy 
 and industrious, separated from each other by 
 tracts of intervening forest, without towns and 
 markets, almost without roads, living in mean 
 houses, drawing little more than a rude subsist- 
 ence from ill-cultivated land, and seemingly in- 
 capable of improving their condition, present the 
 most instructive contrast to their enterprising and 
 thriving neighbours on the American side.' This 
 last passage elicited an angry protest from the 
 Select Committee of the House of Assembly in 
 Upper Canada, who quoted it in their Report, and 
 called on the Canadian farmers living by the
 
 CHAP, v REFERENCES TO UNITED STATES 263 
 
 St. Lawrence and on the Niagara frontier to ' read 
 this degrading account of them, and ask themselves 
 whether they would feel perfectly safe in submit- 
 ting their future political fate, and that of their 
 children, to the dogmas of a man who has so grossly 
 misstated their character and condition '.* 
 
 Lord Durham may have used exaggerated terms, 
 but for many years after his time the contrast 
 between the Canadian and American sides of the 
 frontier was a favourite theme, and it has been 
 reserved to the twentieth century to exhibit 
 Canada perhaps rather the North- West than the 
 Canada of Lord Durham's vision as more than 
 rivalling the United States in attractiveness for 
 settlers. Moreover, in view of the emphasis which 
 Lord Durham laid upon misgovernment in Canada, 
 it is interesting to note that no little element in 
 this attractiveness has been the better administra- 
 tion of law in the Canadian Dominion than in the 
 United States. On the other hand, it is a question 
 whether Lord Durham did not overestimate the 
 effect of defective institutions and inadequate 
 administration, as accounting for the comparative 
 backwardness of Canada. He did not take into 
 account the fact that British settlement in Canada 
 was in its infancy, whereas the vast development 
 which he noted in the United States was the out- 
 come of forces which generations had helped to bring 
 to maturity. Unless gold or diamonds are brought 
 to light, British colonization is wont to be a slow 
 growth, but there comes a time, which has already 
 
 1 See Parliamentary Paper, No. 289, June, 1839. Copies or Extracts 
 of Correspondence Relative to the Affairs of Canada, p. 30.
 
 264 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 come in Canada, and which seems to be nearly due 
 in Australia, when harvest succeeds to seed time, 
 when the young country comes of age, and when 
 men enter in not by tens but by thousands, to 
 open the lands and build up a nation. 
 
 In points of detail Lord Durham holds up the 
 United States as a model to Canada. In the 
 matter of public lands, for instance, he contrasts 
 the efficiency of the system in the United States 
 with the absence of any system in the British 
 North American colonies (ii. 211). The words have 
 already been quoted, in which he refers to the Erie 
 Canal, and points out that ' the state of New York 
 made its own St. Lawrence from Lake Erie to the 
 Hudson, while the Government of Lower Canada 
 could not achieve, or even attempt, the few miles of 
 canal and dredging, which would have rendered its 
 mighty rivers navigable almost to their sources' 
 (ii. 99-100). He notes the ' noble provision ' made 
 by the northern States of the Union for education, 
 as against the absence of any general system of in- 
 struction in Lower Canada (ii. 133); he speaks of the 
 efficiency of the municipal institutions in these same 
 northern States, whereas such institutions were 
 wholly wanting in French Canada (ii. 91-92 and 
 112) ; and in a very interesting passage he writes at 
 some length on Louisiana, giving that State as an 
 instance, which he considered might well be copied 
 in the case of Lower Canada, of a French popula- 
 tion being successfully absorbed in a wider nation- 
 ality (ii. 299-302) ; in the same connexion he refers 
 to the fusion of the Dutch element in the State 
 of New York.
 
 CHAP, v REFERENCES TO UNITED STATES 265 
 
 He emphasized the bright side of American in- 
 stitutions and American initiative, and rather left 
 in the background the counterbalancing defects. 
 Even in the matter of public works, Canada had 
 not all to learn from the United States. A note 
 to the Report of the Assistant Commissioners of 
 Municipal Inquiry runs, ' Persons who are dis- 
 posed to regard the local administration of the 
 United States as a model for other countries, will 
 probably be unwilling to believe that in the State 
 of New York, whose prosperity has been immensely 
 increased by its canal and railroad communications, 
 the management of the roads is extremely defec- 
 tive, although there is a large population, possess- 
 ing abundant resources.' J Mr. Young, of Nova 
 Scotia, saw nothing to gain from American citizen- 
 ship : ' I know not of a single individual of 
 influence or talent, who would not regard a sever- 
 ance of our connection with the mother country, 
 and our incorporation, which would soon follow, 
 into the American Union, with its outrages oil 
 property and real freedom, its growing democratic 
 spirit and executive weakness, as the greatest 
 misfortune that could befall us.' 2 To Lord Dur- 
 ham the United States were a bright illustration 
 of the blessings which flow from responsible govern- 
 ment, coupled with wise treatment of public lands. 
 It is true that, as has been pointed out already, he 
 did not look closely into the American constitution 
 or examine how far the Americans enjoyed what he 
 meant by responsible government. It was enough 
 for him that they had free institutions, and from 
 
 1 Appendix C, iii. 194 note. 2 Appendix A, iii. 13.
 
 266 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 these institutions, in his view, flowed material 
 blessings. He over-rated the shortcomings of men 
 and things in Canada, he drew too rosy a picture 
 of men and things in the United States, but his 
 conclusion was sound and true. If British North 
 America was to be kept for Great Britain, instead 
 of succumbing to the powerful attraction of the 
 great and growing republic which was and is 
 its everyday neighbour, then the British North 
 American provinces must be given self-government, 
 and be raised by union from the level of separate 
 petty communities to the higher plane of a single 
 nation. 
 
 COLONIAL OFFICE AND COLONIAL 
 ADMINISTRATION 
 
 In connexion with, but over and above, the 
 main subject of responsible government, Lord 
 Durham's views on the Colonial Office and colonial 
 administration are worthy of note. It has been 
 seen that, at the time when he wrote, the Colonial 
 Office was, from the nature of the case, mainly 
 a Crown Colony Office ; that the head of the per- 
 manent staff in the office was an unusually strong 
 official, serving a Secretary of State who, from the 
 public point of view, was exceptionally inadequate ; 
 and that Charles Buller, the sworn foe of the 
 Colonial Office, was Lord Durham's right hand 
 man. Further, whereas, in the Liverpool adminis- 
 tration, Lord Bathurst had been Secretary of State 
 for the Colonies for fifteen years, from 1812 to 
 1827, holding the office for a longer period con- 
 tinuously than any Secretary of State for the
 
 CHAP, v COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 267 
 
 Colonies before or since, in the next ten years the 
 appointment had changed hands no fewer than 
 eight times. These frequent changes were, in the 
 Report of a Select Committee of the House of 
 Assembly of Upper Canada, which Lord Durham 
 quotes and endorses (ii. 104), alleged to be ' one of 
 the chief causes of dissatisfaction with the adminis- 
 tration of Colonial affairs '. 
 
 How strongly the Colonial Office was criticized 
 and condemned by men of the Buller school, can 
 best be judged by reading the speeches of his 
 friend Sir William Molesworth, who eventually 
 became for a few months before his death Secretary 
 of State for the Colonies. Molesworth's criticisms 
 of the office were not confined to the regime of 
 Lord Glenelg, whose colonial administration he 
 attacked in the House of Commons in 1838, but 
 continued pretty well to the end of his own life in 
 the fifties. His theme was mainly the maladminis- 
 tration of the present self-governing dominions, 
 but he also held that the Crown Colonies were mis- 
 governed ; and, when in 1849 he moved for a 
 Royal Commission to inquire into the administra- 
 tion of the colonies, while laying down that ' the 
 Commission should draw a broad distinction be- 
 tween those colonies which have or ought to have 
 representative institutions, and those of the Crown 
 Colonies which are unfit for free institutions ', he 
 expressed the view that ' In both cases the more 
 the government is local, the better I believe it 
 will be. It will, therefore, be an important subject 
 for inquiry by the Commission, what is the best 
 form of local government for those Crown Colonies
 
 268 BRITISH NORTti AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 which are unfit for free institutions V In an earlier 
 speech he contrasted the Government of India, 
 still under the East India Company, most favour- 
 ably with Colonial Office mismanagement -of the 
 Crown Colonies. On another occasion he asserted 
 that * the tendency of every Executive, and especi- 
 ally of a Colonial Office Executive, is towards exces- 
 sive expenditure, and therefore towards excessive 
 taxation ' ; * and from first to last he argued, and 
 so did Buller, that the Colonial Office system, as 
 it existed in his time, was not merely faulty but 
 absolutely impossible, for it consisted in arbitrary 
 power exercised by ignorant and irresponsible men 
 at a distance. The Secretaries of State were con- 
 stantly changing, and could therefore have no real 
 grip of colonial administration : they were nomi- 
 nally responsible to Parliament, but practically 
 irresponsible, for Parliament neither knew nor 
 cared about colonial matters : the real power was 
 in the hands of under secretaries and clerks, and 
 the result of the whole was ignorance, negligence, 
 and vacillation as ' three inseparable accidents of 
 our system of colonial government ', and a Colonial 
 Office characterized by ' rashness, ignorance, in- 
 discretion, incapacity V 
 
 As against this wholesale condemnation, it is 
 interesting to note the passages in the Government 
 of Dependencies, in which Cornewall Lewis, a con- 
 temporary of Molesworth and Buller, refers to the 
 advantage of having a Colonial Office. He points 
 out that the States of ancient times had no public 
 
 1 Selected Speeches of Sir William Mdesworth, edited by Professor 
 Egerton, pp. 13-14, 232, 239-40, 325, 353.
 
 CHAP, v COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 269 
 
 office, and no public officer, specially charged to 
 superintend and control the governments of their 
 dependencies, and the conduct of the governors; 
 and considers that such an office or such an officer 
 would have made for amelioration of the govern- 
 ment of the dependent communities, and there- 
 fore for consolidation of the Empire to which they 
 belonged. ' The industry and ability of Cicero 
 would have been employed far more advantage- 
 ously to the provincials, if he had filled an office 
 of this sort, than they were in his prosecution of 
 Verres.' x It is a commonplace of Roman history 
 that the provinces fared better under the Empire 
 than under the Republic, and under the Emperor 
 than under the Senate, partly because there were 
 not such frequent changes of governors, but mainly 
 because there was a stronger and more sympathetic 
 control over them at head-quarters. Lewis goes 
 on to mention the Spanish Council of the Indies 
 as the first Colonial Office, ' the first example of 
 a separate public department in a dominant 
 country for the management of dependencies,' 
 and credits it with at any rate some measure of 
 efficiency and regard for the native races. He then 
 sums up the value of a Colonial Office in the follow- 
 ing passage : 
 
 ' If it be assumed that colonial and other depen- 
 dencies are to remain in a state of dependence, it 
 cannot be doubted that they, on the whole, derive 
 advantage from the existence of a public depart- 
 ment in the dominant country, specially charged 
 
 1 Government of Dependencies (1891 ed.), pp. 162-4; see also 
 pp. 119 note and 149.
 
 270 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 with the superintendence of their political con- 
 cerns. The existence of such a department tends 
 to dimmish the main obstacles to the good govern- 
 ment of a dependency, viz. the ignorance and the 
 indifference of the dominant country respecting 
 its affairs ; and to supply the qualities requisite 
 for its good government, viz. knowledge of its 
 affairs and care for them. If the existence of such 
 a department tends to involve the affairs of the 
 dependency in the party contests of the dominant 
 country, it is to be remembered that this very evil 
 has its good side ; inasmuch as the public atten- 
 tion is thereby attracted to the dependency, and 
 the interest of some portion of the dominant people 
 is awakened to the promotion of its welfare.' 
 
 Lewis wrote of a Colonial Office in the abstract, 
 while Molesworth castigated the actual Colonial 
 Office of the day. Moreover, Lewis was consider- 
 ing only the case of dependencies which are to 
 remain dependencies, in other words, Crown Colo- 
 nies, whereas Molesworth dealt mainly, though not 
 exclusively, with the case of what are now the 
 self-governing dominions. Still the difference in 
 the two men's views is striking and instructive. 
 To Molesworth, control from Downing Street was 
 an abomination, to Lewis it was, at any rate in 
 capable hands, a beneficial safeguard. It need 
 not be said that Lord Durham, prompted no 
 doubt by Buller, approached more nearly to 
 Molesworth's point of view than to that of Corne- 
 wall Lewis, but on the one hand Durham was not 
 concerned in any way with Crown Colonies, and 
 on the other his condemnation of the Colonial 
 Office is not so wholesale nor so bitter as that of 
 Molesworth. He deals with the subject more
 
 CHAP, v COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 271 
 
 especially in relation to Lower Canada (ii. 101-10), 
 and characteristically attacks the existing system 
 on account of the weakness which resulted from 
 it. The side-note to the beginning of the passage 
 is ' Want of vigorous administration of Royal Pre- 
 rogative ', and the argument runs : The Governor 
 of the colony is supposed to represent the Sove- 
 reign, but he is in fact a mere subordinate of the 
 Secretary of State, receiving instructions not only 
 as to the general line of policy to be pursued, but 
 also as to details. Being the tool of the Home 
 Government, he is the centre of attacks from the 
 popular party in the Colony, and naturally throws 
 the responsibility as far as possible upon the Home 
 Government, and does little or nothing without 
 referring home for instructions. Thus the Exe- 
 cutive on the spot loses all vigour and initiative, 
 action is enfeebled by distance and delay, ' and 
 the colony has, in every crisis of danger, and 
 almost every detail of local management, felt 
 the mischief of having its Executive authority 
 exercised on the other side of the Atlantic.' 
 On the other side of the Atlantic again, the 
 British public are wholly ignorant of colonial 
 conditions, so are the large majority of members 
 of Parliament ; and, except on the occasion of 
 some great colonial crisis, ' responsibility to Parlia- 
 ment, or to the public opinion of Great Britain, 
 would be positively mischievous, if it were not 
 impossible.' The Secretaries of State are being 
 constantly changed on party grounds, which have 
 nothing whatever to do with the colonies : they 
 therefore have no time to learn their business, and
 
 272 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA TNTROD. 
 
 consequently the management of the colonies rest s 
 with 'the permanent but utterly irresponsible 
 members of the office '. Thus, in the first place, 
 there is no responsibility anywhere for colonial 
 administration under the existing system ; in the 
 second place, the business of the Colonial Office is 
 so multifarious that, in his short tenure of office, 
 the Secretary of State cannot master it himself ; 
 in the third place, his advisers have no first-hand 
 local knowledge ; and in the fourth place, the con- 
 stant changes of Secretaries of State mean constant 
 change of policy, so that to ignorance is added 
 vacillation as an accompaniment of colonial ad- 
 ministration ; finally, there is superadded a general 
 secrecy as to the motives and purposes of the 
 rulers, resulting (to quote the side-note to the 
 passage) in ' ignorance of the people as to the 
 proceedings of their government '. 
 
 In a later passage (ii. 192) referring more especi- 
 ally to Upper Canada, Lord Durham reverts to 
 the injury done to a colony by allowing the policy 
 of its administration to depend upon political 
 changes at home. The general feeling in the pro- 
 vince was, he tells us, that 'they ask for greater 
 firmness of purpose in their rulers, and a more 
 defined and consistent policy on the part of the 
 government ; something, in short, that will make 
 all parties feel that an order of things has been 
 established to which it is necessary that they 
 should conform themselves, and which is not to 
 be subject to any unlocked for and sudden in- 
 terruption consequent upon some unforeseen move 
 in the game of politics in England '.
 
 CHAP, v COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 273 
 
 Many years have now passed since all parties 
 and all schools of thought in this country recog- 
 nized, that in the case of the white communities 
 in the British Empire, responsibility for good or 
 bad government must be vested in the people on 
 the spot; but, though Lord Durham treated of 
 the Colonial Office only in reference to these com- 
 munities, it is impossible to estimate how far the 
 Colonial Office deserved the blame which men like 
 Molesworth attached to it, without taking into 
 consideration the Crown Colonies also. In the 
 first place, it is difficult to suppose that this office, 
 under the guidance of Sir James Stephen, and 
 with men like Sir Henry Taylor and Sir T. F. 
 Elliot, either in it or connected with it, was 
 abnormally bad, worse than other public offices 
 in England at the time. The age was ripe for a 
 change of system as regards Canada and Australia, 
 and the change was carried out ; but it does not 
 follow either that responsible government could 
 usefully have been granted at a much earlier date, 
 or that the Colonial Office in particular was to 
 blame for withholding it till Lord Durham's time. 
 In the second place, the grounds on which Moles- 
 worth condemned the Colonial Office as absolutely 
 hopeless and impossible have, as regards the Crown 
 Colonies, continued to exist in a greater or less 
 degree down to the present day, and, notwith- 
 standing, England, and the Empire, and the Colonial 
 Office, and the world generally have gone on very 
 comfortably all the same. There are still the ob- 
 vious disadvantages arising from constant changes 
 of Secretaries of State : the duties thrown on each 
 
 1352-1 T
 
 L>74 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTKOD. 
 
 Secretary of State in turn are infinitely more multi- 
 farious than whose which Molesworth declared 
 that no one man could adequately discharge : as 
 a necessary consequence, much responsibility still 
 devolves, and must always devolve, upon the per- 
 manent advisers of the Secretary of State ; and 
 in their case want of first-hand personal know- 
 ledge of local conditions is still though not to 
 so great an extent as before almost inevitable 
 as regards some outlying parts of the Empire. 
 It is true that steam and electricity are mini- 
 mizing distance so far as it is a factor in mis- 
 government ; but the same forces have infinitely 
 multiplied the facilities for constant interference 
 from home, whether by the Colonial Office or by 
 the House of Commons. Molesworth, in his hatred 
 of an irresponsible bureaucracy at a distance, 
 advocated, even in the cases of Crown Colonies, 
 establishing responsibility in the colony rather 
 than at home ; but he admitted that such colonies 
 were not suitable for representative institutions, 
 and therefore, on his own showing, the power, if 
 removed from the Home Government, must have 
 been vested either in a despotic governor, or in 
 a governor advised by a white oligarchy, with the 
 prospect of reproducing the evils of Roman pro- 
 vincial administration under the republican regime. 
 It is too often left out of sight that government 
 from a distance is not all evil, especially where 
 coloured men are concerned. It means, or ought 
 to mean, government of coloured races without 
 being influenced by colour prejudices ; and if it is 
 coupled, as it is in the case of the British Crown
 
 CHAP, v COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 275 
 
 Colonies, with the grant of wide discretion to the 
 governors and officers on the spot, a form of govern- 
 ment results which, tried by the test of the greatest 
 happiness of the greatest number, will bear com- 
 parison with any political system in the history of 
 the world. 
 
 The British Empire contains probably a greater 
 number of diverse elements than any association 
 of peoples and races has ever contained, and the 
 essence of the Home Government is the party 
 system. The interests of the whole require, on 
 the one hand, that full play for the diverse elements 
 should be combined with some general rules, some 
 approach to uniformity in the main lines of public 
 administration ; and on the other, that the constant 
 changes at head-quarters, which the party system 
 involves, should be counterbalanced by one or more 
 institution^ which make for tradition and con- 
 tinuity. Under the Crown, which is the one great 
 bond of the Empire, an office like the Colonial 
 Office, putting its value at the lowest, and omitting 
 all its work of direct administration, discharges an 
 absolutely necessary function in supplying some 
 measure of uniformity and of continuity. The 
 Colonial Office has always been and always will be 
 easy to attack, but to those who stop to think it is 
 110 less easy to defend. 
 
 T2
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 RETROSPECT, FORECAST, AND SEQUEL 
 
 THE questions, how far Lord Durham read the 
 past correctly, how far he formed a correct fore- 
 cast of the future, and how far his recommenda- 
 tions were adopted, have to a large extent been 
 answered already. 
 
 Omitting points of detail, and instances of 
 exaggerated language, and noting once more that 
 the accuracy of Lord Durham's account of parties 
 and conditions in Upper Canada was most strongly 
 and categorically challenged by both Houses of 
 the provincial Legislature at the time, 1 it seems 
 fair to say that the main fault in his retrospect 
 was the amount of blame which he attached to the 
 British Government, especially in regard to Lower 
 Canada, although he speaks of ' the uniform good 
 intentions which the Imperial Government has 
 clearly evinced towards every class and every race 
 in the colony ' (ii. 100). It cannot be too often 
 repeated that he had in him something of a 
 Strafford or a Cromwell : he understood despotism 
 and he understood self-government, but he had 
 no patience with half-way compromise ; and from 
 
 1 The Report of the Select Committee of the House of Assembly is 
 given in the Parliamentary Paper No. 289, June 1839, ' Copies or Extracts 
 of Correspondence relative to the Affairs of Canada,' and the Report of 
 the Select Committee of the Legislative Council will be found at pp. 173- 
 88 of Canadian Constitutional Development (Egerton and Grant).
 
 CHAP, vi RETROSPECT, FORECAST, SEQUEL 277 
 
 this point of view he reviewed and censured back 
 history, judging the men of 1791 or earlier in the 
 light of 1838. ' It is difficult to conceive,' he writes 
 (ii. 76), ' what could have been their theory of 
 government, who imagined that in any colony 
 of England a body invested with the name and 
 character of a representative Assembly, could be 
 deprived of any of those powers, which, in the 
 opinion of Englishmen, are inherent in a popular 
 legislature.' In this passage he talks of the 
 Assembly being deprived of powers which it had 
 never possessed. There is no hint or suggestion 
 that the constitution of 1791 was a distinct step 
 forward ; that representative institutions without 
 responsible government were not unknown else- 
 where in the British Empire, as for instance in the 
 West Indies ; that the constitution of 1791 may 
 have been, and probably was, a wise preparatory 
 stage, especially in view of the fact that French 
 Canadians had never in the whole course of their 
 history known any kind of political representa- 
 tion. It was enough for him that the system was 
 faulty, as tried by the standard of his own day, 
 and, this being the case, he took up the position 
 that the people of Canada had been deprived of 
 rights which all men ought to enjoy. 
 
 Still more open to criticism is the interesting 
 passage (ii. 62-71) in which he condemns the 
 division of Canada into two provinces, and the 
 policy pursued towards French Canada, as a policy 
 which was mistaken in the first place, and in the 
 second place not consistently followed up. 
 
 He lays down that, after the United States
 
 278 BRITISH NORTH AMERJr A INTKOI. 
 
 had become independent, the British Government 
 adopted towards their remaining possessions in 
 North America a policy of Divide et Impera : that 
 their object was ' to isolate the inhabitants of the 
 British from those of the revolted colonies ' : to 
 govern the colonies which still belonged to Great 
 Britain ' by means of division, and to break them 
 down as much as possible into petty isolated com- 
 munities, incapable of combination, and possessing 
 no sufficient strength for individual resistance to 
 the Empire '. As an illustration of the intent to 
 isolate Canada from the United States, he quotes 
 instructions which were given by the Government 
 to prohibit settlement and maintain a belt of 
 woodland on the American frontier south of the 
 St. Lawrence, whereas these instructions were 
 given on military advice, and for purely military 
 reasons, in the light of the war of 1812. l To the 
 same imaginary intention of keeping up division 
 and preventing consolidation, he attributes the 
 division of the Province of Quebec by the Act of 
 1791, and then he proceeds to attack the Govern- 
 ment for not having fully carried out the policy 
 of separation which was embodied in the Act. 
 His argument is, either French Canada might 
 have been left entirely to the French, or it might 
 have been gradually but surely denationalized and 
 incorporated in British colonization. The latter 
 was the course which he maintained should have 
 been adopted ; but, the other alternative having 
 been chosen, the policy of French Canada for the 
 French Canadians should have been rigidly adhered 
 
 1 See above, p. 203, and note 2 to vol. ii, p. 65.
 
 CHAP, vi RETROSPECT, FORECAST, SEQUEL 279 
 
 to. ' The province should have been set apart to 
 be wholly French, if it was not to be rendered com- 
 pletely English.' The Home Government, however, 
 while trying to preserve the French character of 
 the Lower Province, encouraged British immigra- 
 tion into it ; there was a mixture of French and 
 British laws and land tenures and religions and so 
 forth ; with the result that the province became 
 neither one thing nor the other, and was the scene 
 of discord of races. 
 
 It was hardly true to facts, or fair to the Govern- 
 ment of Great Britain, to represent it as inspired 
 by the principle of Divide et Impera in its dealings 
 with the British North American provinces ; nor 
 was this policy in the minds of those who framed 
 and carried the Act of 1791. It is true that that 
 Act divided Canada into two provinces, one mainly 
 French, the other British ; but the object which 
 was aimed at was, not so much isolation of the 
 French Canadians, as gradual assimilation of the 
 two races to each other, by letting them grow up 
 side by side, without overlapping too much, until 
 they knew each other better. Again, it was not 
 true to facts, though it was convenient as a genera- 
 lization for a treatise, to lay down that there are 
 only two methods of dealing with a conquered 
 territory either the whole of this or the whole 
 of that. Practical statesmen find it necessary to 
 compromise ; a thorough policy is not often desir- 
 able, and, when a House of Commons has to 
 be consulted, almost impossible. Lord Durham, 
 beyond question, put his finger upon the weak spot 
 in British colonial policy, when he emphasized the
 
 280 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA TXTROD. 
 
 evils which arise from not following out one course 
 consistently, but this weakness had not been 
 exceptionally conspicuous in the case of British 
 North America. There had been, no doubt, change 
 and vacillation, as for instance in regard to the 
 abortive Bill of 1822 for re-uniting the two Canadas ; 
 but there had been no violent reversals of policy, 
 such as have marked the history of South Africa. 
 On the whole, one Secretary of State after another, 
 on either side of the House, had striven to con- 
 ciliate the French Canadians, while not conceding 
 their full demands. They had compromised, they 
 had tried to hold the balance even between the 
 contending parties and races, they had not pro- 
 nounced for one or for the other. Lord Durham 
 blamed them for not having steadily and with 
 a whole heart taken the British side, and sub- 
 ordinated the French ; but such a policy could 
 have succeeded only on two hypotheses, first, that 
 the Home Government had determined to run 
 counter to the British instinct of fair play and 
 generosity to the conquered, which after all is 
 nearly the most valuable asset that a ruling race 
 can possess ; and secondly, that party govern- 
 ment in England would have permitted the con- 
 tinuance for at least a generation of a policy of 
 coercion in Canada. Neither hypothesis would 
 ever have come to pass, and the practical impossi- 
 bility of what Lord Durham would have advised 
 invalidates his criticism of what actually was done. 
 The Home Government showed little strength 
 and little foresight in dealing with Canada, but 
 they were consistent in letting natural forces have
 
 CHAP, vi RETROSPECT, FORECAST, SEQUEL 281 
 
 their play, and in giving as much rope as possible 
 to the French Canadians short of self-government. 
 Lord Durham saw when the time had come for 
 self-government ; and he saw what might have been 
 an ideal solution, if England had not been England, 
 and the French Canadians had not had a natural 
 desire to remain French Canadians ; but, if the 
 actual conditions of the case are taken into con- 
 sideration, his retrospect of the past is not good 
 history. 
 
 If Lord Durham were now alive, he would 
 probably maintain that, so far as he failed to fore- 
 cast the future of Canada correctly, it was because 
 his recommendations were not fully carried out ; 
 but in any case it must be admitted that he wholly 
 underrated the strength and the tenacity of the 
 French Canadian race. He looked upon absorp- 
 tion into Anglo-Saxon surroundings as the inevit- 
 able fate of the French Canadians. He writes of 
 * the vain endeavour to preserve a French Canadian 
 nationality in the midst of Anglo-American colonies 
 and states ' (ii. 70) ; and again, ' It is but a ques- 
 tion of time and mode ; it is but to determine 
 whether the small number of French who now 
 inhabit Lower Canada shall be made English, under 
 a Government which can protect them, or whether 
 the process shall be delayed until a much larger 
 number shall have to undergo, at the rude hands 
 of its uncontrolled rivals, the extinction of a nation- 
 ality strengthened and embittered by continu- 
 ance' (ii. 292). It is interesting to contrast this 
 view with the forecast made by Governor Carleton 
 in the year 1767. There were then but few English
 
 282 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA TNTROD. 
 
 in French Canada, for Canada had only lately been 
 transferred to British keeping, yet Carleton con- 
 templated that the superiority of the French to 
 the English in numbers would not decrease but 
 increase. ' Barring a catastrophe shocking to 
 think of,' he wrote to Lord Shelburne, * this 
 country must, to the end of time, be peopled by 
 the Canadian race, who already have taken such 
 firm root, and got to so great a height, that any 
 new stock transplanted will be totally hid, and 
 imperceptible amongst them, except in the Towns 
 of Quebec and Montreal.' 1 Lord Durham notes 
 the fecundity of the French Canadians, but notes 
 it only as leading to further subdivision of estates 
 and deterioration of the people, and he speaks 
 of the race as destitute of invigorating qualities. 
 His British predilections, his imperialism, and his 
 political views, all, it would seem, coloured his 
 vision in regard to the French Canadians. He 
 stated in so many words that their race was in a 
 condition of hopeless inferiority to the English : he 
 desired to submerge it, for constructive reasons,' 
 in order to produce one great uniform British 
 nationality : and, as a Radical, he had no hope of 
 any good thing coming out of the intense con- 
 servatism and feudal institutions of French Canada. 
 Possibly he might have modified his views, 
 had he stayed longer in Canada and studied the 
 French Canadians in normal times. He came and 
 went at a time when race animosity was unduly 
 accentuated; and probably on the one hand he 
 exaggerated the intensity of the feeling, while on 
 
 1 Shortt and Doughty, p. 198. See note 1, vol. ii, p. 70.
 
 CHAP, vi RETROSPECT, FORECAST, SEQUEL 283 
 
 the other he erred in thinking that it could be 
 extinguished by a policy which aimed at eradicating 
 the nationality. The analogies, which he quotes, 
 seem to show that he did not sufficiently estimate 
 how much the preservation or the extinction of 
 nationality is a question of degree. He takes the 
 case of Louisiana, but the French in the province 
 of Quebec held it by far greater numbers and by 
 far longer tenure than they held Louisiana ; while 
 the Dutch in New York, to whom Lord Durham 
 also refers, had only a fifty years' tenure of Man- 
 hattan Island and the Hudson valley before they 
 were brought under British rule. He might have 
 noted that the Dutch in South Africa absorbed 
 the handful of Huguenots who settled among them, 
 but this illustration also would not have been in 
 point. From the dawn of colonization in North 
 America the valley of the St. Lawrence had been 
 the home of the French, and the history of Canada 
 had testified abundantly to their stubbornness 
 and their strength. In the year 1838 or 1839 it 
 was too late to talk of denationalizing a people 
 who had made the land their own ; and it was 
 hopeless to think that efforts to do so would 
 extinguish the bitterness of race feeling. It was 
 left to Lord Elgin, while carrying out in full Lord 
 Durham's views of responsible government, and 
 sharing Lord Durham's confidence that respon- 
 sible government would make for loyalty and not 
 for separation, to repudiate at the same time his 
 father-in-law's doctrine that the French should be 
 denationalized, and to advocate free play for their 
 language and their usages. Later history has
 
 284 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 proved how far from the fact was Lord Durham's 
 estimate that the French Canadian nationality 
 must necessarily be absorbed ; for, having been 
 left to its destiny under a system of popular 
 government, it has more than held its own within 
 and even beyond the province of Quebec. 
 
 How far race antagonism in Canada has been 
 diminished since Lord Durham's time, and to what 
 degree French and English have come closer to 
 each other, it would be difficult to estimate with 
 any approach to accuracy. French are French, 
 and British are British, and will remain so till 
 the end. On the other hand, modern life makes 
 for greater courtesy and forbearance as between 
 peoples and races. French and English have 
 lived side by side for seventy more years since 
 Lord Durham wrote, and have acquired habits and 
 traditions of co-operation ; and most important 
 point of all the confederation of Canada by the 
 British North America Act of 1867 has completely 
 altered the position, for, to quote once more the 
 words of Chief Justice Smith's wise letter of 1790, 
 that Act has erected ' a Power upon the Continent 
 itself, to control all its own little Republics V and 
 race difficulties are not increased by appeal to, 
 and resentment against, a Legislature on the other 
 side of the Atlantic. 
 
 A second point in regard to which, if Lord 
 Durham were, so to speak, to be pinned down to 
 the wording of his Report, he did not form a correct 
 forecast, of the future, is the extent to which he 
 held that colonial self-government can be limited, 
 
 1 Canadian Constitutional Development (Egerton and Grant), p. 105.
 
 CHAP, vi RETROSPECT, FORECAST, SEQUEL 285 
 
 and a line be drawn between matters of imperial 
 concern. It may well be answered that it is not 
 fair to criticize his words in this respect, as being 
 intended to hold true for all time ; that he took 
 conditions as they were ; and under those con- 
 ditions laid down limits to the freedom of the 
 colony on the one hand, and the interference of 
 the mother country on the other ; but that it 
 does not follow that, under the altered conditions 
 of later times, he would have upheld those limits 
 as unalterable. It has been seen that he enu- 
 merates (ii. 282) ' the constitution of the form of 
 government the regulation of foreign relations, 
 and of trade with the mother country, the other 
 British Colonies, and foreign nations and the dis- 
 posal of the public lands' as 'the only points on 
 which the mother country requires a control ' ; and 
 he notes that ' a perfect subordination, on the part 
 of the colony, on these points, is secured by the 
 advantages which it finds in the continuance of 
 its connexion with the Empire '. He wrote in the 
 light of his own day, when colonies were not 
 dominions, when the small had not become great, 
 and could not stand alone. It would be pettifogging 
 to tie his memory to the exact words. But it is 
 a fair criticism to say that, while he laid stress 
 on self-government as creating a national exis- 
 tence, he did not seem fully to recognize that when 
 once an oversea community has been endowed 
 with national institutions, it is difficult, if not 
 impossible, to set a limit to its growth as a nation, 
 or permanently to withhold any subject as out- 
 side its scope. Free Trade had not come in
 
 286 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 England when he wrote ; he does not refer to it, 
 but it was well on the way ; and, when it came, 
 it profoundly modified the colonial problem ; but, 
 apart from a particular national movement, the 
 effects of which he might or might not have fore- 
 seen, there is no indication that he at all foresaw 
 to what responsible government was going to lead, 
 and to what it inevitably must lead. Cornewall 
 Lewis's reasoning, in the passage which has already 
 been quoted, is unanswerable. * If the govern- 
 ment of the dominant country substantially govern 
 the dependency, the representative body cannot 
 substantially govern it ; and, conversely, if the 
 dependency be substantially governed by the 
 representative body, it cannot be substantially 
 governed by the government of the dominant 
 country. A self-governing dependency (supposing 
 the dependency not to be virtually independent) 
 is a contradiction in terms.' J After responsible 
 government had been given to Canada, it was 
 substantially governed by the representative body 
 of Canada, and ceased to be substantially governed 
 by England. Lord Durham, to judge from his 
 words, seemed to think that the substantial govern- 
 ment could be divided, and that Canada, while 
 becoming a nation, could remain a subordinate 
 nation ; but history has abundantly shown that, 
 starting from the grant of self-government, there 
 can be but one line of movement, from subordina- 
 tion to complete equality. It is true taking his 
 reservations that the Constitution of Canada 
 still depends upon Imperial legislation; that the 
 
 1 Government of Dependencies, p. '289.
 
 CHAP, vi RETROSPECT, FORECAST, SEQUEL 287 
 
 external relations of Canada in political matters 
 are still under Imperial control; that, while the 
 self-governing dominions have for half a century 
 and more been left to settle their own tariffs, it has 
 never been admitted in principle that they can 
 differentiate at will; that control of the Public 
 Lands in Canada was not reserved to the Imperial 
 government because that government was in effect 
 already pledged to concede it. But the broad fact 
 remains that the Canadian self-government of to- 
 day is not what Lord Durham recommended, and 
 the Canada of to-day is more nearly an allied 
 than a subordinate nation. 
 
 A third point on which Lord Durham failed to 
 forecast the future has been sufficiently laboured 
 already. It relates to the actual extent of the 
 Canadian Dominion. He contemplated a dominion, 
 but consisting only of the present eastern pro- 
 vinces. He did not look from sea to sea, a vision 
 to which even a lesser prophet than himself might 
 have been moved. But without further criticizing 
 his outlook, it is time to note how far his recom- 
 mendations were adopted. 
 
 The recommendation that the two Canadian 
 provinces should be reunited was carried out, but 
 not as he had intended. He had expressed him- 
 self (ii. 323, 324) as entirely opposed to ' the mere 
 amalgamation of the Houses of Assembly of the 
 two Provinces', and also 'to every plan that has 
 been proposed for giving an equal number of 
 members to the two Provinces '. He had con- 
 templated complete fusion of the two provinces, 
 and new electoral divisions formed by a Parlia-
 
 _>vx BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTK..D. 
 
 nientary Commission, with a view to ' giving 
 representation, as near as may be, in proportion 
 to population '. He had, no doubt, in his mind 
 the Union Bill of 1822, which had proposed to 
 re-unite the two provinces on the basis of at first 
 simply joining together the existing members of the 
 two Legislative Councils and of the two Assem- 
 blies, with a provision for the future that the 
 elected representatives for each province should 
 not exceed sixty. To this method of reunion, 
 which would continue to treat Canada as two 
 provinces and not as one, Lord Durham was 
 entirely opposed ; and when the Melbourne Ministry 
 first handled his Report and first drafted a Reunion 
 Bill, they were inclined to share his views. On 
 the 3rd of June 1839, Lord John Russell stated 
 in the House of Commons that ' It is our opinion 
 generally, that you ought not to lay down any 
 precise number of representatives for Lower Canada 
 and for Upper Canada V but, after going through 
 various drafts, and being recast in Canada, the 
 Union Bill, as it became law in 1840, provided in 
 its 12th section that in the Legislative Assembly of 
 the new province of Canada, Lower Canada and 
 Upper Canada should have an equal number of 
 representatives, and the effect of the subsequent 
 sections of the Act was to give forty-two members 
 to either of the two late provinces. The Act 
 empowered the new Legislature to alter the system 
 of representation by a two-thirds majority in 
 both houses, but the net result was to federate 
 Lower and Upper Canada rather than to fuse 
 
 1 Hansard's Parliamentary Debated, vol. xlvii, pp. 12U4-G.
 
 CHAP, vi RETROSPECT, FORECAST, SEQUEL 289 
 
 them ; the line of least resistance was followed, 
 and the complete union which Lord Durham had 
 desired was not carried out. 
 
 The only provision in the Act which at all 
 reflected Lord Durham's attitude towards the 
 French Canadian nationality, was the 41st section, 
 which enacted that English alone should be the 
 language of the legislative records, and this section 
 was repealed by a Provincial Act of 1848, passed 
 in Lord Elgin's time. From the outset both French 
 and English were used in the debates, and the first 
 Speaker of the Assembly, after the union had come 
 into existence, was a French Canadian. Nor did 
 the Act contain any provision such as Lord Dur- 
 ham had recommended, and such as was subse- 
 quently included in the Confederation Act of 1867, 
 to enable other British North American provinces 
 to enter the union. In short, the Act of 1840 
 was a compromise Act, falling far short of the 
 root and branch policy which Lord Durham had 
 sketched out. 
 
 It has been seen that his policy prescribed that 
 the union of the two provinces should be accom- 
 panied by the grant of responsible government, 
 limited by various restrictions, and that Lord John 
 Russell and his colleagues were not prepared to 
 accept in full either the principle or the practice of 
 responsible government. Nor was Poulett Thom- 
 son, afterwards Lord Sydenham, whom the Whigs 
 selected to be Governor-General and to carry 
 through the union. But they were all moving in 
 Lord Durham's direction : all were agreed to try 
 and maintain harmony between the executive and 
 
 1352-1 U
 
 290 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 the legislative authorities, by employing in the 
 service of the Government men who had the con- 
 fidence of the people. Lord John Russell went far 
 towards responsible government when, in a dis- 
 patch of the 16th of October 1839, he laid down 
 that the high executive officers, such as the Colonial 
 Secretary and the Treasurer, must not in future 
 be considered to hold their posts by a permanent 
 tenure, but should be liable to be changed with 
 the change of Governor, or to * be called upon to 
 retire from the public service, as often as any 
 sufficient motives of public policy may suggest the 
 expediency of that measure V In September 1841 
 the Assembly of United Canada passed resolutions, 
 said to have been drafted by Lord Sydenham him- 
 self, the first of which laid down 'that the most 
 important, as well as the most undoubted, of the 
 political rights of the people of this Province is 
 that of having a Provincial Parliament for the pro- 
 tection of their liberties, for the exercise of a con- 
 stitutional influence over the Executive departments 
 of their government, and for, legislation upon all 
 matters of internal government ' ; while a subse- 
 quent resolution declared that, in order to preserve 
 harmony, ' the chief advisers of the representative 
 of the Sovereign, constituting a Provincial adminis- 
 tration under him, ought to be men possessed of 
 the confidence of the Representatives of the people '. 2 
 No legislation was needed in order to take the 
 
 1 See Canadian Constitutional Development (Egerton and Grant), 
 pp. 270-2. 
 
 1 See Houston's Documents illustrative of the Canadian Constitution, 
 pp. 303-4.
 
 CHAP, vi RETROSPECT, FORECAST, SEQUEL 291 
 
 further step, to make the executive a purely 
 parliamentary executive, to give full scope to 
 party government, and in purely Canadian matters 
 to constitute the advisers of the Governor, as 
 representing the majority of the people, the real 
 rulers of Canada. This step was taken by Lord 
 Elgin in or about the year 1848. The same date 
 may be given to the completion of responsible 
 government in the Maritime Provinces, 1 and it 
 followed very shortly afterwards in Newfoundland, 
 Australia, and New Zealand. 
 
 Among the restrictions on responsible govern- 
 ment, Lord Durham designed reform of the Legis- 
 lative Council, which should then ' act as an useful 
 check on the popular branch of the Legislature ' 
 (ii. 326-7) ; but, as has been noted, he left to others 
 to decide on what lines the Council should be 
 revised. The result was that no change was made, 
 and that the Union Act left the constitution of the 
 Second Chamber as it had been framed in the Act 
 of 1791, the members of the Council being nomi- 
 nated for life. The section of the 1791 Act, how- 
 ever, which gave power to the Crown to attach to 
 hereditary titles of honour a right to be summoned 
 to the Legislative Council, found no place in the 
 Act of 1840. This latter Act was amended in 1854 
 by another Imperial Act, which empowered the 
 Canadian Legislature to alter the constitution of 
 the Legislative Council; and under the authority 
 thus given a provincial law was passed in 1856, 
 
 1 1848 in the case of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick ; 1851 in that 
 of Prince Edward Island ; 1855 in that of Newfoundland. See Keith, 
 Responsible Oovernment in the Dominions, pp. 8-9. 
 
 U2
 
 292 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 making the Legislative Council an elective body. 
 But under the British North America Act of 1867 
 the elective principle was discarded, for the mem- 
 bers of the senate are, as were the legislative 
 councillors under the Acts of 1791 and 1840, 
 nominated to hold their places for life. 
 
 The 57th section of the Union Act embodied 
 Lord Durham's recommendation that ' no money 
 votes should be allowed to originate without the 
 previous consent of the Crown ' (ii. 328), and 
 a similar provision was included in the British 
 North America Act of 1867. The Union Act also 
 followed his Report in charging against the con- 
 solidated revenue fund of the united provinces an 
 ample Civil List. This list was divided into two 
 schedules. The first schedule provided 45,000 in 
 permanence to cover the salaries of Governor and 
 Lieutenant-Governor, the salaries and pensions of 
 the judges, and the general cost of administration 
 of justice. The second schedule provided 30,000 
 during the life of the Queen and for five years after- 
 wards, to cover the cost of the salaries and pensions 
 of the principal executive officers. 
 
 In the year 1846 the Canadian Legislature 
 passed an Act for granting a Civil List to Her 
 Majesty, the provisions of which were in lieu of 
 the Civil List sections and schedules of the Union 
 Act ; and in the following year, 1847, an Imperial 
 statute 1 gave validity to this provincial Act, and 
 thereby superseded, so far as the Civil List was 
 concerned, the terms of the Union Act. On this 
 footing the Civil List continued in existence until 
 1 10 & 11 Viet. c. 71.
 
 CHAP, vi RETROSPECT, FORECAST, SEQUEL 293 
 
 the passing of the British North America Act of 
 1867, when it finally disappeared; 1 but the salaries 
 and pensions of the judges, as well as the salaries 
 of the ministers, are still guaranteed by permanent 
 Acts of the Dominion Parliament, and the 99th 
 section of the British North America Act provides 
 that the judges of the superior courts shall hold 
 office during good behaviour, removable only by 
 the Governor-General on address of the Senate and 
 the House of Commons. The judges therefore are 
 given the independent position and the security 
 of tenure upon which Lord Durham insisted. 
 
 In return for an adequate Civil List, Lord 
 Durham proposed to hand over to the control of 
 the Legislature all the Crown revenues except those 
 derived from public lands ; but in accordance with 
 what had been a long standing offer of the Home 
 Government, the 54th section of the Union Act 
 surrendered in return for the Civil List the terri- 
 torial and other revenues of the Crown, which 
 included the public lands, and the same provision 
 was included in the provincial Civil List Act of 
 1846, validated by the Imperial Act of 1847, to 
 which reference has been made above. Finally, 
 the complete control of the Canadian Government 
 over the public lands of the province was assured 
 by the Imperial Act of 1852, which cleared up 
 a question of legal ownership, as has already been 
 explained. 2 Thus the whole of Lord Durham's 
 elaborate scheme for keeping the public lands of 
 Canada under the authority of the Imperial 
 
 1 Under sections 102 and 126 of the British North America Act. 
 1 See above, p. 185.
 
 294 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 Government, and disposing of them on the lines 
 laid down by Gibbon Wakefield, was stillborn. 1 
 
 Under the head of public lands should be noted 
 the action which was taken with regard to the 
 clergy reserves. Lord Durham, in discussing the 
 subject (ii. 173-9), contented himself with the 
 recommendation that all provisions in Imperial 
 Acts relating to the application of the clergy 
 reserves and the funds arising from them should 
 be repealed, and that the disposal of the funds 
 should be left to the local Legislature ; and in the 
 summary of his recommendations at the end of 
 his Report, he suggested (ii. 326-9) that the same 
 Imperial Act which carried out the union of the 
 provinces and the accompanying changes, should 
 repeal the existing provisions relating to the clergy 
 reserves. Before, however, the Union Act was 
 passed, Poulett Thomson had already moved in the 
 matter. Shortly after his arrival in Canada, he 
 
 1 The case was summed up as follows in Lord John Russell's instruc- 
 tions to the Land and Emigration Commissioners of January 14, 1840. 
 ' With regard to British North America, the case stands as follows. 
 In Upper Canada and in New Brunswick, the sale and management of 
 waste lands is vested by local enactments in certain local authorities, 
 with whom the Crown has no right of interference. In Nova Scotia 
 and in Newfoundland, there is every reason to anticipate that similar 
 laws will be shortly passed in pursuance of offers made by the Crown 
 to assent to them. In the present state of affairs in Lower Canada, 
 this, in common with many other questions, must be regarded as in 
 abeyance. In general, therefore, it may be stated that you will have 
 no power to contract for the sale of lands situate in British North 
 America, or in any of the adjacent islands ' (House of Commons Paper* 
 Colonial Land Board, February 4, 1840, p. 5). 
 
 The Canadian Legislature in their first session after the Union, 
 1841, passed ' An Act for disposal of Public .Lands ', 4 & 5 Viet. c. 100, 
 which, among other provisions, absolutely prohibited free grants of 
 land.
 
 CHAP, vi RETROSPECT, FORECAST, SEQUEL 295 
 
 induced the Upper Canada Legislature, in the session 
 of 1839-40, to pass a Bill which devoted the revenues 
 derivable from the sale of clergy reserve lands ex- 
 clusively to religious purposes, and secured to the 
 churches of England and Scotland one-half of the 
 future proceeds, leaving the remainder to be dis- 
 tributed for the support of religious instruction 
 among the different Christian denominations in 
 the province, in proportion to the numbers of their 
 respective adherents. This Bill, when sent home, 
 was disallowed as being ultra vires; and in the 
 session of 1840 the Imperial Parliament, in addition 
 to passing the Union Act, the 42nd section of 
 which dealt with ecclesiastical and Crown rights, 
 passed also a special Act to provide for the sale 
 of the clergy reserves in Canada, and for the dis- 
 tribution of the proceeds. 1 Under the provisions 
 of this Act, two -thirds of the proceeds of the lands 
 sold prior to the passing of the Act were assigned 
 to the Church of England and one-third to the 
 Church of Scotland ; while of the annual proceeds 
 of future sales, one-third was appropriated to the 
 Church of England, one-sixth to the Church of Scot- 
 land, and one-half was to be applied for purposes of 
 public worship and religious instruction in Canada. 
 Poulett Thomson, in sending home his own Act, had 
 intimated that public opinion in Upper Canada 
 considered it to be too favourable to the Church 
 of England, and that the majority of the people 
 were in favour of applying the proceeds of the 
 reserves to education or to general State purposes ; 
 and when he received the Imperial Act of 1840, 
 
 1 3 & 4 Viet. c. 78.
 
 296 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 which was still more favourable to the Church of 
 England, he expressed a strong opinion as to the 
 injustice of the settlement. The sections of the 
 Constitutional Act of 1791, which originally created 
 the clergy reserves, gave power to the local Legis- 
 latures, under certain restrictions, to vary or repeal 
 the provisions respecting the reserves ; and, 
 though this power was taken away by the Act of 
 1840, Lord Durham's view that the question was 
 one to be settled in Canada was widely shared in 
 England. Accordingly, in 1853, the Imperial 
 Parliament passed a further Act l empowering the 
 Canadian Legislature to deal with the matter ; and 
 in the following year, 1854, a Canadian law finally 
 set to rest this long standing grievance and con- 
 troversy, by secularizing the reserves and the 
 moneys accruing from them. This law was entitled 
 ' An Act to make better provision for the appro- 
 priation of moneys arising from the lands hereto- 
 fore known as the Clergy Reserves by rendering 
 them available for municipal purposes '. It was 
 an uncompromising Act, for it recited that ' it is 
 desirable to remove all semblance of connexion 
 between Church and State ', and it did not even 
 provide that the moneys in question should be 
 applied to education, but handed them over for 
 municipal purposes. Still treating Canada as a 
 federation of two provinces rather than as a single 
 province, it provided that the revenues of the clergy 
 reserves should be paid over to an Upper Canada 
 and a Lower Canada municipalities fund, and 
 should be divided among the municipalities in 
 
 1 16 Viet. c. 21.
 
 CHAP, vi RETROSPECT, FORECAST, SEQUEL 297 
 
 proportion to population. On the day that this 
 measure became law, the assent of the Crown was 
 also given to another far-reaching Act passed by 
 the Canadian Legislature, 'for the abolition of 
 feudal rights and duties in Lower Canada ', which 
 put an end to the seigniorial system. 
 
 Lord Durham proposed (ii. 323-6) that the Parlia- 
 mentary Commission, which should be appointed 
 to form the future electoral districts in United 
 Canada, and to determine the number and allot- 
 ment of members, should also form a plan of 'local 
 government by elective bodies subordinate to the 
 General Legislature.' It has been seen that he 
 attached paramount importance to the introduc- 
 tion of a sound system of municipal and loca*. 
 institutions into Canada, and Poulett Thomson 
 was, if possible, even more emphatic on the sub- 
 ject. In a passage which has already been quoted, 1 
 the latter wrote to Lord John Russell urging that 
 the provision of machinery by which local taxation 
 could be raised for local purposes was a necessary 
 complement of the reform by which the initiative 
 of money votes in the House of Assembly would 
 be confined to the Government ; and that the 
 establishment of municipal institutions therefore 
 became a necessary part of the Union Bill. Clauses 
 creating district councils were accordingly embodied 
 in the Bill; but, before it left the House of Commons, 
 they were omitted, largely on the suggestion of 
 ' Bear ' Ellice ; and the Bill, as it became law, con- 
 tained one section only the 58th which referred 
 to the constitution of townships. The omission of 
 
 1 See above, p. 218.
 
 298 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 the municipal clauses was bitterly resented by 
 Poulett Thomson, who wrote in September 1840, 1 
 condemning in the strongest possible terms the 
 abandonment of what he considered to be a most 
 vital part of the Union Bill ; but, before the Act 
 was brought into operation, he passed a Local 
 Government ordinance in the Special Council of 
 Lower Canada, and followed it up, after the Union 
 had been proclaimed, by carrying a similar Bill for 
 Upper Canada through the Canadian Legislature. 
 A few years later the elective element was intro- 
 duced more largely into the municipal system which 
 he had created in the two provinces. 2 Writing in 
 1861, Merivale referred to Upper Canada as the 
 only British colony within his knowledge that had 
 then an adequate municipal system. ' The same 
 organization,' he added, ' is spreading in Lower 
 Canada, but has far greater difficulties to contend 
 with. Elsewhere, in British North America, muni- 
 cipal organization seems to remain in a most 
 imperfect state ; and instead of local rates, public 
 works and improvements are effected by grants 
 from the central legislature ; a system leading 
 both to improvidence and to corruption.' ; Under 
 the British North America Act of 1867, by the 92nd 
 section, ' municipal institutions in the province ' 
 
 1 See his dispatch to the Secretary of State, September 16, 1840 
 (Egerton and Grant, pp. 280-7). 
 
 1 See note to Egerton and Grant, p. 288, which states that the 
 elective system for municipal officers was introduced for Lower Canada 
 in 1845, and for Upper Canada in 1849, and that ' these Acts are still 
 the foundation of the municipal systems of the Provinces of Quebec 
 and Ontario '. 
 
 1 Lectures on Colonization and Colonies, 1861 ed., Appendix to 
 Lecture XXII, p. 653.
 
 CHAP, vi RETROSPECT, FORECAST, SEQUEL 299 
 
 are included among the exclusive powers of the 
 Provincial Legislatures. 
 
 Lord Durham's comments and recommendations 
 on the subject of emigration bore no fruit, so far 
 as emigration was coupled with the disposal of 
 public lands as a factor in a great scheme of 
 imperial colonization. 
 
 In his instructions to Poulett Thomson, issued 
 in September 1839, Lord John Russell referred to 
 Lord Durham's Report, as only placing in a clearer 
 light the difficulties which existed in the case of 
 Canada in the way of raising an emigration fund 
 from the sale of Crown lands. 1 But immigration 
 into Canada apart from the subject of public 
 lands formed the subject of much correspon- 
 dence between the Governor- General and the 
 Home Government; and in the speech with which 
 he opened the Canadian Legislature in the summer 
 of 1841, Poulett Thomson announced that the 
 Imperial Government was prepared to assist in 
 facilitating the passages of immigrants from the 
 port of landing in Canada to the places where their- 
 labour would be made available. 2 By this time the 
 Board of Colonial Land and Emigration Com- 
 missioners, established in January 1840, had been 
 in operation for more than a year ; and in Lord 
 John Russell's initial instructions to them 3 may 
 be traced the effects of Lord Durham's powerful 
 criticism of the want of adequate safeguards for 
 
 1 See Parliamentary Paper, 1840. Correspondence relative to the 
 Affairs of Canada, Part I, p. 9. 
 * See Egerton and Grant, p. 291. 
 3 House of Commons Paper, February 4, 1840, Colonial Land Board.
 
 300 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 emigrants embarking from the ports of the United 
 Kingdom. From this date onwards, the provisions 
 of Passenger Acts and Merchant Shipping Acts, 
 administered first by the Land and Emigration 
 Commissioners, and subsequently by the Board of 
 Trade, protected British emigrants when crossing 
 the seas ; and ' the collection and diffusion of 
 accurate statistical knowledge ' for the benefit of 
 Intending Emigrants, which Lord John Russell 
 included in the list of duties of the newly-formed 
 Board, is now provided, not only by the repre- 
 sentatives in this country of the dominions beyond 
 the seas, but also by the Emigrants' Information 
 Office, established in 1886 by the Imperial Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 The first session of the United Legislature of 
 Canada, at the close of which, in September 1841, 
 Poulett Thomson, then Lord Sydenham, died, was 
 rich in measures dealing with subjects which had 
 found a place in Lord Durham's Report. In 
 addition to the District Councils Act for Upper 
 Canada already mentioned, an Act was passed to 
 improve the administration of justice in minor 
 civil cases in Lower Canada ; and a Common 
 Schools Act was also passed, Poulett Thomson 
 having, in his opening speech to the Legislature, 
 reminded its members that ' a due provision for the 
 education of the people is one of the first duties 
 of the State, and in this province, especially, the 
 want of it is grievously felt V Under the provi- 
 sions of this Act, the newly-created district coun- 
 cils of the province were constituted ' Boards of 
 
 1 Egerton and Grant, p. 292.
 
 CHAP, vi RETROSPECT, FORECAST, SEQUEL 301 
 
 Education, but separate schools for the different 
 denominations were included under the heading of 
 common schools. Various other Education Acts 
 followed in later years, and at the present day, 
 by the 93rd section of the British North America 
 Act of 1867, education under certain restrictions 
 is assigned to the Provincial Legislatures, the 
 rights of denominational schools in the provinces 
 of Ontario and Quebec being adequately safe- 
 guarded. Public works received at the outset of 
 the Union as much attention as even Lord Durham 
 could have desired. In this same first session, the 
 Legislature passed an Act creating a Board of 
 Works for the whole province ; and an Imperial 
 Act of 1842 guaranteed the interest on a loan of 
 1^ million sterling to be raised by the Canadian 
 Government, for relieving the pressure of immediate 
 financial difficulties, and carrying out the works 
 which were so sorely needed for the development 
 of Canada. 
 
 Lord Durham died in England in 1840. Lord 
 Sydenham died in Canada in 1841. In either case, 
 humanly speaking, the career was foreshortened, 
 yet in a sense in either case the career was com- 
 plete. Lord Durham preached his gospel and died ; 
 Lord Sydenham, before he too died, set the political 
 machine running in the right direction. Then the 
 machine went on, the way widened, the views 
 widened, men grew up to contemplate a nation, 
 and after contemplating to create it. Lord Dur- 
 ham's Report gave the inspiration. Sydenham, 
 with his combination of strong popular sympathies 
 and great business capacity, showed how to begin
 
 302 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 putting principles into practice. The history of 
 Canada has been on the whole a history of singular 
 good fortune ; and not the least part of this goo'd 
 fortune has been, that Lord Durham should have 
 been forthcoming at the particular time when he 
 went to Canada, and that Lord Sydenham should 
 have been available as his successor. It would be 
 difficult to find in the chronicles of any country 
 two men who, within little more than three years 
 in all, did so much to help the coming time.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 THE REPORT AND THE EMPIRE 
 
 How far, it is proposed to ask in conclusion, 
 are the doctrines or principles embodied in Lord 
 Durham's Report of universal application ? The 
 answer consists in summarizing in a very few 
 words, and to some extent repeating, what has 
 gone before. 
 
 Though Lord Durham laid down in his Report 
 far-reaching principles of colonial administration, 
 it must always be borne in mind that he was 
 primarily concerned with the objects of a special 
 mission. He was not thinking of the whole world. 
 He was not even thinking of the whole British 
 Empire. He had his eyes fixed upon the British 
 provinces in North America, to which he had been 
 sent ; and, when he raised his eyes, his gaze fell 
 upon the adjoining part of North America which 
 had once belonged to Great Britain, and the pros- 
 perity of which conveyed to his mind a contrast 
 and a moral. Having this horizon, he propounded 
 and set himself to answer the following question. 
 Given a people living at a distance from the 
 central authority, who are either of British race, 
 or at any rate of European origin, bred up under 
 British rule, and in some familiarity with British 
 privileges and institutions, what under such cir- 
 cumstances is the best political constitution, de-
 
 304 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA TNTROD. 
 
 signed at once with a view to giving contentment 
 to the distant community, and with a view to 
 maintaining and strengthening its connexion with 
 the central authority ? His answer was that, 
 with certain very important and carefully defined 
 reservations, the distant community should be left 
 to govern itself on the lines on which representative 
 and responsible government is understood and 
 carried on in the United Kingdom. 
 
 It will be noted (1) that he prescribed for distant 
 communities ; (2) that he prescribed for commu- 
 nities which were either British, or Anglicized, or 
 ex hypothesi to be Anglicized, and which already 
 enjoyed representative institutions ; (3) that his 
 prescription was responsible government most care- 
 fully restricted. Each of these points require a few 
 words of comment. 
 
 It has been pointed out that one of the most 
 admirable features of the Report is the stress which 
 is laid upon the importance of means of communica- 
 tion, and the almost prophetic insight which the 
 writer possessed of the extent to which the forces 
 of science might mould the future. If the question 
 which has just been stated were propounded at 
 the present day, the answer would be that in all 
 probability, before many years have passed, there 
 will be no distant communities. If we are to 
 reason from the past to the future, the day will 
 come, and may come in no very long time, when 
 distance will cease to exist to any appreciable 
 extent. The world moves so constantly and so fast 
 that statesmen, and writers, and thinkers, never 
 seem sufficiently to take stock of the advance
 
 CHAP, vn THE REPORT AND THE EMPIRE 305 
 
 which has been made, or to appreciate that what 
 science has done in the past it will probably do in 
 the future, only at a perpetually accelerated pace. 
 It is a little under a century and a half since, in 
 his Observations on a late state of the Nation, Edmund 
 Burke elaborately ridiculed the proposal that the 
 American colonies should be represented in the 
 British Parliament, working out the time that 
 would be necessary in order to traverse the dis- 
 tance. His weeks have now become days or even 
 less ; if he were writing at the present time, he 
 would have to recast his arguments ; and if the 
 next century and a half proves to be as fruitful in 
 scientific discovery and invention as the interval 
 since he wrote has been, distance at the end of 
 that period will have vanished altogether. 1 
 
 It does not follow that elimination of distance 
 will necessarily produce unity within the Empire : 
 there are instances to the contrary, which go to 
 
 1 With reference to the great merit of Lord Durham's Report in 
 appreciating what scientific invention would do for the Empire, there 
 is an interesting passage in the Annual Register for 1838, written in 
 reference to his Report, which shows similar confidence in the future of 
 communications. ' The only conceivable course for bringing our colonial 
 dependencies within the legitimate action of the constitution would be 
 to summon them to send members to the Imperial parliament. This 
 is a remedy which to some may seem worse than the evils which demand 
 its application. Nor can it be dissembled that it would open the door to 
 a multitude of ills, the nature of many of which may be perceived by 
 the inconvenience which is produced by the presence of some of the 
 Irish members in Parliament. . . . One considerable obstacle, at least, 
 to the success of such a plan as we have been noticing, has to a great 
 extent been removed by the speed and certainty of communication 
 attained by steam navigation, so that it is probable that no great 
 inconvenience to any party would now ensue from the delay and 
 difficulties of the transit between Great 'Britain and her Atlantic 
 colonies ' (pp. 337-8). 
 
 1332-1 X
 
 306 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 prove that distance may in some cases lend en- 
 chantment ; and, while the distant provinces of the 
 Empire are year by year being brought into closer 
 touch with each other, they are at the same time 
 and by the same means being brought into closer 
 touch with foreign nations ; but the fact remains 
 that the difficulty which faced Lord Durham, how 
 to hold together communities at a distance from 
 each other, is gradually becoming obsolete; and 
 this particular problem is being superseded by 
 new problems and new difficulties which did not 
 exist in his time, or of which, in his Mission and 
 in his Report, he was not called upon to take 
 cognizance. 
 
 In the second place, he was only concerned with 
 British communities, or, on his own showing, with 
 communities which were to be completely angli- 
 cized, and which already had some measure of 
 British institutions. Thus, one half of the British 
 Empire lay entirely outside his ken. Now let us 
 ask, what is the main difference between the British 
 Empire and ah 1 other empires that the world has 
 as yet known ? The term ' Empire ' 1 is used, in 
 
 1 Sir G. Cornewall Lewis in The Government of Dependencies (1891 ed.), 
 pp. 73-4, defined ' Empire ' as follows : ' The entire territory subject to 
 a supreme government possessing several dependencies (that is to say, 
 a territory formed of a dominant country together with its dependencies) 
 is sometimes styled an Empire, as when we speak of the British Empire. 
 Agreeably with this acceptation of the word Empire, the supreme 
 government of a nation, considered with reference to its dependencies, 
 is called the Imperial government, and the English parliament is called 
 the Imperial Parliament, as distinguished from the provincial parlia- 
 ment of a dependency.' The Roman word Imperium had no special 
 military signification. It was, as Mommsen points out, the right to 
 command the citizens in all matters within a given area (see Mommsen's 
 History of Rome, Book II, chap, iii, vol. i, p. 297 note).
 
 CHAP, vn THE REPORT AND THE EMPIRE 307 
 
 default of a better term, as simply equivalent to 
 a people or collection of peoples owing allegiance 
 to some one common head or central authority. 
 Some prejudice, modern and ill-founded, has arisen 
 against the use of this word, as implying despotism 
 and military rule. It seems to be forgotten that, 
 in the days of King Henry VIII, 'Empire' and 
 ' Imperial Crown ' connoted the Sovereign inde- 
 pendence of England, not the rule of England 
 beyond the seas. 1 
 
 When ancient and modern political systems are 
 compared, we are told that the main differences 
 between them are, that in the ancient world nothing 
 was known of representation in politics, and that 
 slavery was an integral factor in every com- 
 munity. There is the further and most vital 
 difference that the ancients had no knowledge 
 of steam and electricity. Notwithstanding these 
 differences, the Roman Empire, which by common 
 consent was by far the greatest political creation 
 of the Old World, is usually and rightly taken as 
 the standard with which to compare the British 
 Empire. So far as the world's history has gone, 
 the Romans and the British have been the most 
 successful empire builders ; the two peoples have 
 had to a large extent the same qualities, one of 
 the notable features of the Romans being that, 
 though dwelling in Southern Europe, they had 
 rather the characteristics of a northern race. Like 
 the Romans, the British have not been ' cursed 
 with the passion for uniformity ' ; 2 and Romans 
 
 1 See the Oxford English Dictionary s.v. ' This Realm of England 
 is an Empire,' 24 Hen. VIII, cap. 12. 
 
 2 Arnold's Roman Provincial Administration, 2nd ed., 1906, p. 22. 
 
 X2
 
 308 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA TNTROD. 
 
 and British alike realized to the full how essential 
 to making and keeping an empire are adequate 
 means of communication. Allowing then for the 
 differences above mentioned as being the result of 
 different stages of civilization, what is the main 
 distinction to be drawn between this Roman 
 Empire, which of all empires was most akin to our 
 own, and the British Empire of the present day ? 
 
 The Roman Empire seems to have resembled 
 the Empire of Spain in America, in so far as it 
 was created by conquest and held by despotism, 
 while including in the conquered provinces a large 
 amount of colonization from the motherland, 
 which made the dominant feature of the pro- 
 vinces in one case Roman x and in the other 
 Spanish. Neither in the Roman nor in the Spanish 
 American Empire was there any distinction be- 
 tween the areas which were ruled and the areas 
 which were settled. In the earlier system there 
 were Roman colonies, and more or less self-govern- 
 ing municipia, scattered through a subject world. 
 In the later system there was no part of Spanish 
 America which, as a province of the Spanish 
 Empire, differed widely in kind from the other 
 parts. Herein is the great distinction between 
 the British Empire and the Roman Empire, and 
 between the British Empire and all other em- 
 pires. In the British Empire, broadly speaking, 
 the sphere of settlement is distinct from the sphere 
 of rule. The British Empire includes in wholly 
 
 1 This statement does not overlook the great part which Greek 
 language and civilization played to the Roman Empire, but what was 
 dominant am opposed to subordinate in that Empire was Roman.
 
 CHAP, vii THE REPORT AND THE EMPIRE 309 
 
 different areas colonies which are not really depen- 
 dencies, and dependencies which are not really 
 colonies. Nor, as regards the first of these two 
 categories, has any European people, ancient or 
 modern, on anything like the same scale, made 
 other parts of the world the permanent home of the 
 colonizing race, without intermixture of coloured 
 races, the closest parallels being the case of the 
 French in Canada, and in a lesser degree, of the 
 Dutch in South Africa, both of whom are now 
 within the circle of the British Empire. 
 
 The great cardinal feature of the British Empire 
 then is that it consists of two wholly different 
 spheres, the sphere of rule and the sphere of settle- 
 ment, and to the sphere of settlement alone Lord 
 Durham's Report applies. He does not give us 
 any guidance as to the great problem how to hold 
 together as parts of one political system peoples 
 and provinces, at present at a distance from each 
 other, when the provinces show the utmost differ- 
 ences in climate, when the peoples differ in race, 
 in colour, and in stages of development, when some 
 provinces are and must be, self-governing, while 
 others are despotically governed. 
 
 This problem lies outside the scope of the present 
 Introduction ; but, with reference to the state- 
 ment made above that elimination of distance 
 need not necessarily make for greater unity, it may 
 be noted in passing, that better communication 
 has already tended to accentuate what is perhaps 
 the greatest present-day difficulty of the British 
 Empire a difficulty which does not appear to have 
 existed in the Roman Empire the colour question.
 
 310 BRITISH NORTft AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 Lord Durham's outlook having been confined 
 to what has been called the sphere of settlement, 
 we next ask how far in that sphere were the 
 principles which he laid down, and the reasoning 
 which he employed, of general application. He 
 prescribed, in the first place, for provinces which 
 already had been given representative institutions. 
 He says (ii. 278), ' We are not now to consider the 
 policy of establishing representative government 
 in the North American colonies. That has been 
 irrevocably done ; and the experiment of depriving 
 the people of their present constitutional power 
 is not to be thought of.' In the second place, he 
 prescribed more especially for communities which 
 bordered on a self-governing nation of British origin, 
 though the government of that country was not 
 the particular form of self-government which he 
 advocated for Canada. In the third place, as has 
 been abundantly pointed out, he postulated as a 
 necessary preliminary to self-government, that the 
 community, so far as it was not British, should 
 be made British, that every foreign element in 
 it should be submerged. Suppose that Canada, 
 instead of adjoining the United States, had 
 been, like Australia, far removed from American 
 influence and example, the necessity for self- 
 government might not have seemed so urgent. 
 Suppose, again, that the Act of 1791 had not 
 been passed, and that Canada, when Lord Durham 
 visited it, had been a pure Crown Colony without 
 any vestige of a representative institution ; it does 
 not follow that Lord Durham would at once 
 have prescribed responsible government. Suppose,
 
 CHAP, vn THE REPORT AND THE EMPIRE 311 
 
 once more, that he had been deprived of his hypo- 
 thesis that the French Canadian nationality must 
 be obliterated, or that he had been sent to South 
 Africa, as South Africa was after the late war, 
 with the understanding that nothing was to be 
 done to undermine the Dutch nationality, then, to 
 judge from his Report, he would not have recom- 
 mended responsible government. 
 
 It is of course a vain thing to ask what a man 
 would have said or done many years after his death, 
 in altered conditions and with fuller knowledge. 
 A broad-minded man moves with the times, and 
 Lord Durham would never have stood still ; but 
 notwithstanding, in trying to answer the question 
 how far the principles laid down in his Report 
 were or are applicable to the whole sphere of 
 settlement in the British Empire, it is right and 
 useful to point out that his recommendations were 
 primarily directed to the case of a particular group 
 of provinces in a certain stage of development, 
 and with special surroundings, and that beyond 
 all question, he looked upon responsible govern- 
 ment as a British prescription for a British com- 
 munity, and not as a recipe for non-British 
 communities. 
 
 The third point is, that this colonial self-govern- 
 ment which he expounded and prescribed, was, 
 as has been already emphasized, of the most re- 
 stricted chaxacter, falling very far short of colonial 
 self-government as it exists at the present day. 
 It must be repeated that Lord Durham, while 
 making the reservations which 'he made, as being 
 wise and reasonable in the first stages of self-
 
 312 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 government, would, in the light of later know- 
 ledge, probably have been the last man to insist 
 that these limits were unalterable landmarks, to 
 be upheld throughout the centuries. His Report 
 breathes the sane and human spirit of growth and 
 development ; and, were he living now, he would 
 doubtless rejoice in the ever broadening freedom 
 and responsibility which has been obtained by the 
 younger peoples of the Empire in their adult man- 
 hood. If we do not make this assumption, it is 
 clear that his principles, coupled with his reserva- 
 tions, have proved to be inadequate, even for the 
 cases to which they were intended to be applied. 
 On the other hand, however, if we do make it, we 
 must recognize that colonial self-government, as he 
 prescribed it, was merely a stage in a process, the 
 end of which is not yet in sight, and the outcome 
 of which may or may not be one form or another 
 of imperial unity. In other words, if we give 
 Lord Durham credit for marking out very clearly 
 and definitely the direction, with full intent that 
 the road should, as it went on, perpetually broaden 
 out, we must at the same time recognize that he 
 had at best not found a solution, but only a way 
 which might eventually lead to a solution. 
 
 As far as his Report shows, he intended to create 
 a nation, but a nation which should be subordi- 
 nate ; whereas the result of his Report a result 
 which, whatever he may have intended, was abso- 
 lutely inevitable was to begin creating nations 
 which should not be subordinate. It was an 
 inevitable result, because it has always been true 
 of British colonists as of Greek, that, so far as
 
 CHAP, vn THE REPORT AND THE EMPIRE 313 
 
 they were in either case free men, they went out 
 on the principle of being equal instead of subordi- 
 nate to the citizens who were left behind. The 
 problem, as he left it, was the connexion between 
 two self-governing communities, one superior, 
 and the other subordinate. The problem, as 
 we have it, is the connexion between one older 
 and several younger self-governing communities, 
 which are on or are approaching the position of 
 political equality. Judging from his Report, he 
 seems to have contemplated that a nation could 
 be created, endowed with national institutions, 
 and inspired with national patriotism, but that 
 bounds could be placed to its nationhood. Time 
 has proved that this was a fallacy ; that it was 
 not possible in the case of overseas dominions, 
 while the element of distance survived, and while 
 the communities in question were growing out of 
 infancy to the adult stage, to give self-government 
 but assign limits to the self-government. The 
 only limits are those which the self-governing 
 nation may itself assign, by handing over some 
 of its powers to a federation. Thus the critics 
 of responsible government, as Lord Durham pro- 
 pounded it, had much to say for themselves. 
 They contended that there could not be dual 
 control ; he contended that there could, that 
 a division of authority was possible. It was not 
 possible in the long run. The grant of responsible 
 government was the beginning of the end of sub- 
 ordination, in the sense of the mother country 
 eventually retaining any substantial power over 
 the self-governing communities beyond the seas.
 
 314 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROD. 
 
 So far as such power has been retained since the 
 time when responsible government was granted, 
 the retention has been due not to any definite 
 division of authority, such as Lord Durham con- 
 templated, but to the recognition by the self- 
 governing communities of the benefit derived 
 from the conditions which imply control. Security 
 against foreign invasion has been provided by the 
 British fleet, enabling the younger peoples to grow 
 into nations, undisturbed from the outside. The 
 home people of the Empire has in the main paid 
 the foreign bill of the overseas peoples, and further 
 has largely supplied the capital required for the 
 peaceful development of the overseas peoples. 
 The analogy of the family holds for peoples as 
 for individuals. The younger the children are, the 
 more they require to be fostered and protected, and 
 the more they are controlled. When they have been 
 started in the world, the need for fostering and 
 protection grows less and less, and the control 
 diminishes pari passu. Lord Durham may have 
 had this future in his mind, but it is not fore- 
 shadowed in his Report. In that Report he limited 
 his outlook to the creation of subordinate peoples, 
 whereas the result of his recommendation has been 
 that equal nations have been or are being evolved. 
 Lord Durham's view of what has been called 
 above the sphere of settlement in the British 
 Empire would apparently have corresponded very 
 nearly with the view put forward by Burke in his 
 speech on American taxation. ' The Parliament 
 of Great Britain sits at the head of her extensive 
 Empire in two capacities, one as the local legis-
 
 CHAP, vii THE REPORT AND THE EMPIRE 315 
 
 lature of this island. . . . The other and, I think, 
 her nobler capacity is what I call her Imperial 
 character, in which, as from the throne of Heaven, 
 she superintends all the several inferior legislatures, 
 and guides and controls them all, without annihilat- 
 ing any. As all these provincial legislatures are 
 only co-ordinate to each other, they ought all to 
 be subordinate to her.' Lord Durham might prob- 
 ably have gone further than Burke in the measure 
 of emancipation from the control of the Imperial 
 Parliament, which he would have given to the 
 colonies, but still they were in the end to be sub- 
 ordinate members of the Empire, not equal part- 
 ners. It is since this time, but dating from this 
 time, that the relation of partnership has little by 
 little supplanted that of supremacy and subordina- 
 tion, leaving, and in the process strengthening, 
 the link of common allegiance to the Crown. 
 
 It may be summed up then that a close analysis 
 of Lord Durham's Report leads to the conclusion 
 that, while it is to some extent a general treatise 
 on colonial administration, the principles embodied 
 in it are by no means of universal application ; 
 that the great Liberal, who wrote or dictated 
 the Report, was not a preacher of self-govern- 
 ment for the whole world, or for the whole 
 British Empire, or for coloured races, or for non- 
 British white races, or even for British peoples 
 whatever may be their stage of development. Nor 
 was he by any means a preacher of unlimited 
 self-government. And yet it is impossible to 
 study the Report without feeling that such a state- 
 ment of its limitations does it less than justice.
 
 316 BRITISH NORTH AMERICA INTROTX 
 
 It has been attempted in the foregoing pages to 
 lay stress upon what has been termed Lord Dur- 
 ham's constructiveness. To all times and to all 
 sorts and conditions of men he has preached the 
 doctrine, that for peoples, as for individuals, the 
 one thing worth living for is to make, not to 
 destroy ; to build up, not to pull down ; to unite 
 small disjointed elements into a single whole ; 
 to reject absolutely and always the doctrine of 
 Divide, et Impera, because it is a sign of weakness, 
 not of strength ; to be strong and fear not ; to speak 
 unto the peoples of the earth that they go for- 
 ward. In this constructiveness, which is embodied 
 in all parts of the Report, he has beyond any other 
 man illustrated in writing the genius of the English 
 race, the element which in the British Empire is 
 common alike to the sphere of settlement and to 
 the sphere of rule. It is as a race of makers that 
 the English will live to all time, and it is as a pro- 
 phet of a race of makers that Lord Durham lives. 
 Of Canada he wrote (ii. 310) : 
 
 ' If in the hidden decrees of that wisdom by 
 which this world is ruled, it is written that these 
 countries are not for ever to remain portions of 
 the Empire, we owe it to our honour to take good 
 care that, when they separate from us, they should 
 not be the only countries on the American con- 
 tinent in which the Anglo-Saxon race shall be 
 found unfit to govern itself.' 
 
 These words apply beyond Canada and beyond 
 America. The spirit of them transcends the sphere 
 of settlement, it is the living force of the whole 
 British Empire. The words are the message of a
 
 CHAP, vn THE REPORT AND THE EMPIRE 317 
 
 great Englishman to his fellow countrymen, that 
 the one thing needful is to leave behind a legacy 
 of what is permanently sound and great. If 
 England continues to be inspired by what Lord 
 Durham taught so well, then as Great Britain has 
 grown into Greater Britain, so Greater Britain will 
 grow into Greatest Britain, to the glory of God 
 the Creator, and to the well-being of mankind.
 
 LORD DURHAM'S REPORT AS BEARING 
 
 ON THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 
 
 FOR IRELAND 
 
 THERE is no great profit in speculating as to 
 what view a man long dead would have taken 
 of a political question of the present day. But 
 colonial self-government dates from Lord Dur- 
 ham's Report, and reference has been and may 
 again be made to the Report in connexion with 
 proposals for Home Rule in Ireland. It may 
 therefore be of use, without in any way discussing 
 the merits either of Lord Durham's views or of 
 Home Rule, to note very briefly how far there 
 is any analogy between the case of Canada in 
 Lord Durham's time, and that of Ireland to-day, 
 and w r hat bearing the doctrines embodied in the 
 Report seem to have upon the Home Rule question. 
 
 It will be remembered that Lord Durham was 
 one of the leaders, if not the leader, of the Radical 
 wing of the Liberal party of his day, and also that 
 he was a cotemporary of O'Connell, though he died 
 before the great agitation for the Repeal of the 
 Union. Further, the fact that in the previous 
 twenty years there had been a large Irish im- 
 migration into Canada, and that in the recent 
 disturbances in Canada the Irish had in the main 
 ranged themselves with the other British loyalists 
 on the side of the Government, in spite of aggres-
 
 APPEND. HOME RULE FOR IRELAND 319 
 
 sive Orangeism in Upper Canada, may well have 
 kept Ireland and the Irish prominently in his 
 mind. But notwithstanding, he does not seem to 
 quote Ireland for the purpose of comparison or 
 contrast with Canada, except in the passage with 
 the marginal note, ' The French, when in a legiti- 
 mate minority, would abandon vain hopes of 
 nationality,' in which passage he says, ' The 
 experience of the two Unions in the British Isles 
 may teach us how effectually the strong arm of 
 a popular legislature would compel the obedience 
 of the refractory population ' (vol. ii, p. 308). We 
 may therefore take it that Lord Durham himself 
 did not find much analogy between Canada, as 
 it was in his day, and Ireland. 
 
 If we are to find any analogy, it must obviously 
 be found in Lower Canada the French Province, 
 not in Upper Canada, the more or less homo- 
 geneous British Province. Lower Canada con- 
 tained an overwhelming majority of Roman 
 Catholic French Canadians, and a British Protes- 
 tant minority, of strong and enterprising character, 
 considerable in the commercial centres of Quebec 
 and Montreal, and wholly predominant in one 
 corner of the Province, the Eastern Townships. 
 To this extent it rather closely resembled Ireland. 
 The French Canadians had been led by Papineau, 
 who was considered the O'Connell of Canada : the 
 extremists among them talked of La Nation 
 Canadienne, a Canadian Republic and so forth 
 (ii. 58, &c.) ; in short, the feeling, exasperated by 
 the recent rising, was roughly parallel to Irish feel- 
 ing after one or other of the periodical disturbances
 
 320 LORD DURHAM'S REPORT AND APPEND. 
 
 in Ireland, and may be said to have combined 
 some active and pronounced, with much more 
 passive, disloyalty. 
 
 So far there is some similarity between the case 
 of Lower Canada in Lord Durham's time, and 
 Ireland both then and now. On the other hand, 
 the points of difference are many among them 
 the following : (i) The time when Lord Durham 
 went out and reported was an abnormal time, 
 a time of crisis. There had been an armed rising, 
 trivial, it is true, but still an open insurrection, 
 not in Lower Canada only, but in Upper Canada 
 also ; and there had been general political discon- 
 tent from want of self-government in all the 
 British North American provinces. In Lower 
 Canada the constitution had in consequence been 
 entirely suspended, (ii) The scene of his mission, 
 and the object of his recommendations, was a 
 group of communities, not close to but distant from 
 England, (iii) This group of communities bordered 
 on a great self-governing community of British 
 speech and descent the United States, (iv) The 
 communities in question had not at the time, 
 and never had enjoyed so far in their history, full 
 Parliamentary liberties, in the sense in which such 
 liberties are understood in the United Kingdom. 
 (v) The trouble in Lower Canada was, at any rate 
 in Lord Durham's opinion, a trouble of animosity 
 between a British and a non-British race, aggra- 
 vated, but not caused primarily, by defects in the 
 constitution, and not aggravated by difference of 
 religion, religious toleration being conspicuous in 
 Lower Canada.
 
 APPEND. HOME RULE FOR IRELAND 321 
 
 So much for the parallel between Lower Canada 
 and Ireland. Now let us take the views embodied 
 in the Report. In the Introduction to which this 
 note is appended, it has been attempted to correct 
 the common view of the Report, which eulogizes 
 it quite rightly for recommending responsible 
 government, but does not stop to consider the 
 limits which Lord Durham set to responsible 
 government, and the conditions under which 
 alone he was prepared to concede it. Much might 
 be said as bearing on the Irish question of the 
 limits which he placed to self-government ; but it 
 will be enough to note the conditions under which, 
 and only under which, he was prepared to grant 
 it. It may be added that the Report is entirely 
 misinterpreted by those who fail or refuse to see 
 that Lord Durham was quite ready to apply 
 what would now be called Coercion, in order to 
 secure what he considered to be the greatest happi- 
 ness of the greatest number ; and that he had no 
 intention of giving to people something that in 
 his opinion would not be for their permanent good, 
 simply because they asked for it. 
 
 Lord Durham, as an advanced Liberal, went 
 out to Canada, holding that the panacea for all 
 the evils in British North America was constitu- 
 tional reform, in other words self-government. 
 He reasoned, with irresistible force, that there 
 was a common source of discontent in these 
 communities, in that being composed of British 
 citizens, or rather white British subjects, who were 
 already accustomed to some form of representative 
 institutions, they were not entrusted with the 
 
 1352-1 Y
 
 322 LORD DURHAM'S REPORT AND APPEND. 
 
 full management of their own local affairs, but were 
 kept under a distant and therefore, in his opinion, 
 a misgoverning authority ; that it was specially 
 dangerous not to give them self-government, 
 because the self-governing United States was 
 immediately under their eyes, and exercising a 
 powerful attraction ; and moreover, that American 
 public opinion would be conciliated by the grant 
 of self-government to Canada, just as American 
 sympathy with Home Rule for Ireland is taken 
 into account nowadays. 
 
 But when he reached Canada, and found that 
 the evil in the Province of Quebec was more than 
 a constitutional question, and that its root was 
 in race, not only did he not prescribe self-govern- 
 ment for Lower Canada as it then stood, but 
 (i) he blamed the Imperial Government for ever 
 having given any semblance of separate treatment 
 to the French Canadians. ' Unhappily, the sys- 
 tem of government pursued in Lower Canada has 
 been based on the policy of perpetuating that very 
 separation of the races, and encouraging these 
 very notions of conflicting nationalities, which it 
 ought to have been the first and chief care of 
 Government to check and extinguish ' (ii. 63) ; 
 and (ii) he laid down that ' the fatal feud of origin, 
 which is the cause of the most extensive mischief, 
 would be aggravated at the present moment by 
 any change, which should give the majority more 
 power than they have hitherto possessed ' (ii. 288). 
 
 What then was his prescription for Lower 
 Canada ? Not that it should be debarred from 
 self-government, nor that the French majority
 
 APPEND. HOME RULE FOR IRELAND 323 
 
 should be placed under the loyal English minority 
 in the Province ' I certainly should not like to 
 subject the French Canadians to the rule of the 
 identical English minority with which they have 
 so long been contending ' (ii. 308) but that it 
 should be an absolutely necessary preliminary to 
 giving self-government to the Province of Quebec, 
 that that province should be fused not federated 
 with the neighbouring province, in order that 
 the disloyal French Canadians might be out- 
 voted and swamped by and wholly merged in a 
 loyal British majority, in order that the national 
 character to be given to French Canada should 
 be ' that of the British Empire, that of the majority 
 of the population of British America ' (ii. 288). 
 He did not look to self-government by itself to 
 cure disloyalty in Lower Canada. On the con- 
 trary, he made it a sine qua non of giving self- 
 government to the French Canadians that the 
 majority should be British, which, in spite of the 
 rising in Upper Canada, was tantamount to being 
 loyal. Nor did he regard it as a negation of self- 
 government that the French Canadians should 
 always be outvoted. Further, he viewed the total 
 incorporation of a small community in a bigger one 
 as a gain to the small community, and where there 
 was a doubt as to the advisability of granting self- 
 government under existing conditions, he recom- 
 mended absorption in a larger body. Thus he 
 writes of Newfoundland, ' If it be true that there 
 exists in this island a state of society, which renders 
 it unadvisable that the whole of the local govern- 
 ment should be entirely left to the inhabitants, 
 
 Y2
 
 324 LORD DURHAM'S REPORT APPEND. 
 
 I believe that it would be much better to incor- 
 porate this colony with a larger community, than to 
 attempt to continue the present experiment of 
 governing it by a constant collision of constitu- 
 tional powers ' (ii. 202). 
 
 Lord Durham, then, recommended self-govern- 
 ment for Lower Canada, but not Home Rule ; and, 
 if any inference can be drawn from his Report 
 with regard to Ireland, it would seem that he not 
 only would not have recommended Home Rule 
 for Ireland, but would have contended that it 
 has self-government already, and that it was 
 a mistake ever to have given it any shred of 
 separate treatment, such as a fixed number 
 of members in the Parliament of the United 
 Kingdom.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Aberdeen, Lord, 62, 64. 
 Abolition of Slavery, see Slavery. 
 Abolition of Transportation, see 
 
 Transportation. 
 Acts, Principal, referred to : 
 (1) Imperial 
 
 (a) Relating to Canada : 
 Quebec Act of 1774, 29, 56, 
 
 58, 165, 220 and note 1, 
 
 223-4, 224 note. 
 Quebec Revenue Act of 1774, 
 
 29, 40, 60, 70, 76. 
 Constitutional Act of 1791, 
 
 31, 53, 78, 84, 101-2, 138, 
 
 159, 160, 162-3, 220, 221, 
 
 227-8, 233, 254, 278, 279, 
 
 291, 292, 296, 310. 
 Canada Trade Act of 1822, 33, 
 
 45, 47, 55, 67, 161. 
 Tenures Act of 1825, 161, 172. 
 Revenue Control Act of 1831, 
 
 60, 70, 71, 76. 
 Constitutional Act Suspension 
 
 Act of 1838 (Government 
 
 of Lower Canada), 101-3, 
 
 110, 111, 112, 168 note. 
 Union Act of 1840, 221 and 
 
 note, 288-9, 291, 292, 293, 
 
 294, 295, 296. 
 Civil List Act of 1847, 292 and 
 
 note, 293. 
 Crown Revenues Act of 1852, 
 
 185, 293. 
 British North America Act of 
 
 1867, 166, 204, 231, 252, 
 
 253, 284, 289, 292, 293 and 
 
 note 1, 298, 301. 
 Clergy Reserves Acts, 163 and 
 
 note, 294, 295 and note, 
 
 296 and note. 
 Passengers and Merchant 
 
 Shipping Acts, 188, 191, 
 
 192, 300. 
 
 (b) General : 
 
 Reform Act of 1832, 18. 
 
 Poor Law Amendment Act of 
 
 1834, 18, 198. 
 South Australian Act of 1834, 
 
 156, 158. 
 
 Municipal Corporations Act of 
 1835, 18, 151 and note, 214. 
 Civil List Acts, 185. 
 Test and Corporation Acts 
 Repeal, 19. 
 
 (2) Canadian 
 Medical Relief of Emigrants 
 
 Act of 1832, 195. 
 Quarantine Act of 1832, 194. 
 Sulpician Seminary Act of 
 
 1839, 168. 
 Public Lands Act of 1841, 
 
 294 note. 
 Civil List Act of 1846, 292, 
 
 293. 
 
 Abolition of Feudal Rights in 
 Lower Canada, Act of 1854, 
 168 note, 297. 
 Seigniorial Amendment Act 
 
 of 1859, 168 note. 
 Clergy Reserves Acts, 165, 
 
 295, 296. 
 
 Jesuits' Estates Acts, 166. 
 Municipal Corporations Acts, 
 
 212, 298 and note, 300. 
 Advisory Committee, proposed by 
 
 LordGlenelg, 110-12. 
 America and Americans, see United 
 
 States. 
 
 Amherst, Lord, 64, 166. 
 Anti-Corn Law Association, 20. 
 Anti-Corn Law League, 20. 
 Appeals, Judicial, see Law and 
 
 Justice. 
 
 Arnold, Roman Provincial Ad- 
 ministration quoted, 307. 
 Arthur, Sir George, 81, 100, 118. 
 Ashburton, Lord, 123. 
 Assembly, Houses of, 29, 31, 33, 
 
 34, 132, 277, 287, &c. 
 Lower Canada, 35, 36, 38-52,
 
 326 
 
 INDEX 
 
 54, 56-72, 74, 77, 111, 112, 
 128, 139, 143, 150, 161, 183, 
 211, 212, 217, 233, 236. 
 Upper Canada, 7 and note, 54, 
 69, 70, 77, 79, 80, 118, 119, 
 143, 262, 267. 
 United Canada, 288-90. 
 New Brunswick, 82. 
 Newfoundland, 86-8. 
 Nova Scotia, 81. 
 Prince Edward Island, 85, 86. 
 Australia, 12-14, 146, 152 note, 
 178, 182, 193, 196, 197, 252, 
 264, 273, 291, 310. 
 Australia, South, see South Aus- 
 tralia. 
 Australia, Western, see Western 
 
 Australia. 
 
 Aylmer, Lord, 57, 58, 59, 64, 65, 
 183-5. 
 
 Baie Verte, see Canals. 
 Baldwin, Robert, 75, 79, 97, 98. 
 Barbados, 11. 
 Bathurst, Lord, 38, 41, 43 note, 
 
 49-52, 266. 
 
 Beauharnois Canal, see Canals. 
 Beauharnois Seigniory, 161. 
 Bidwell, Barnabas, 55. 
 Bidwell, Marshall Spring, 55, 69, 
 
 70, 75, 80, 81, 97. 
 Board of Trade, see Trade. 
 Boulton, 75, 76, 87, 88. 
 Britannia, the, 16. 
 British American Land Company, 
 
 61, 66, 67, 73, 171-2. 
 British Columbia, 204. 
 British in Canada, 24, 26, 27, 29, 
 31, 34, 63, 65, 66, 89, 126, 128, 
 129, 130, 136, 138, 148, 172, 227, 
 241, 248, 259, 260, 282, 284, 310, 
 316, et passim. 
 
 British North America, 11, 65, 71, 
 
 75, 84, 86, 105, 106, 107, 108, 
 
 109, 114, 115, 121, 122, 123, 
 
 128, 131, 137, 138, 146, 153, 
 
 154, 182, 185, 188, 201, 221, 
 
 244, 256, 266, 277, 279, 280, 
 
 289, 298, 303, 310, et passim. 
 
 Union of, 32, 121, 126, 132, 148- 
 
 9, 217, 247-57, 261, 266, 289. 
 
 Brougham, Lord, 103, 123. 
 
 Brown, Thomas Storrow, 89, 91, 
 
 92, 93, 94. 
 
 Bryce, Mr., quoted, 139-40 note. 
 Buller, Arthur, his Report on 
 
 Education in Lower Canada, 
 
 232, 233, 234-44, 247. 
 Buller, Charles, 3-5, 12, 21-3, 112, 
 
 117, 131, 160, 161, 175, 178, 
 179, 180, 189, 195, 197, 200, 
 210-11, 213, 222, 231 note, 
 235, 248, 261, 266, 267, 268, 
 270. 
 
 his Public Lands Inquiry and 
 Report, 108 note, 114, 115, 
 121, 153, 156, 157, 168 and 
 note, 169-70, 173, 175-82, 
 185-6, 189 note, 190 note, 
 191, 193, 195 note. 
 
 Bureaucracy, 23, 75. 
 
 Burke, Edmund, 305, 314-16. 
 
 Burton, Sir Francis, 48, 50. 
 
 By, Colonel, 203, 208. 
 
 Campbell, Sir Archibald, 82, 83. 
 
 Campbell, Sir Colin, 85. 
 
 Canada, 6, 26-30, 42, 104, 109, 
 
 118, 125, 148, 151, 156, 174, 
 181, 192, 199-206, 208, 227, 
 257, 273, 278, 287-8, 291, 
 296-7, 302, 310, 316, et 
 
 Canadas, Reunion of, 44-7, 124- 
 
 36, 148, 247-50, 287-9. 
 Canada, Lower, History of, 31- 
 
 53, 55-75, 88-96, 100-3. 
 Canada, Upper, History of, 
 
 31-5, 37, 44, 53-5, 75-81, 
 
 96-9. 
 
 See also under other heads. 
 Canada Company, 169-71. 
 Canadian Pacific Railway, see 
 
 Railways. 
 Canadien, Le, 35. 
 Canals, 178, 198, 199, 203-9, 264, 
 
 265. 
 Bay of Fundy and Baie Verte, 
 
 199-200. 
 
 Beauharnois, 206. 
 Chambly, 207. 
 Cornwall, 207. 
 Erie, 209, 264. 
 Georgian Bay, 199-200. 
 Lachine, 206. 
 Military, 203-4, 206. 
 Rideau, 203, 207-8. 
 Welland, 199, 207.
 
 INDEX 
 
 327 
 
 Canning, 19, 52. 
 
 Canterbury, Viscount, 64. 
 
 Cape Colony, 13, 21, 146, 178, 
 
 190. 
 
 Carignan-Salieres Regiment, 174. 
 Carleton, 28, 33, 165-6, 227, 242-3, 
 
 254 and note, 281-2. 
 Carlyle, 3, 131, 235. 
 Caroline, the, 99, 258. 
 Cascades, The, 206. 
 Casual and Territorial Revenues, 
 
 see Crown Revenues. 
 Catholic emancipation, 19, 239. 
 Cedars, The, 206. 
 Chambly, 92. 
 
 Chambly Canal, see Canals. 
 Champlain, Lake, 14-15, 207. 
 Chartrand, 94-5, 229 and note. 
 Chenier, 95, 97. 
 
 Chief Justice, see Law and Justice. 
 Cholera, 194 and note 2. 
 Church of England, 4, 75, 78-9, 
 
 163, 164, 228, 245, 246-7, and 
 
 see Clergy. 
 Church of Scotland, see Clergy, 
 
 Presbyterian. 
 
 Civil List, 39, 40, 41, 43, 52, 58 - 
 61, 66, 70, 73, 76, 83, 105, 
 149, 150, 151, 183, 186, 187, 
 292-3. 
 Clergy : 
 
 (i) Anglican, 165, 239, 246. 
 
 (ii) Presbyterian, 78, 239, 247, 
 295. 
 
 (iii) Roman Catholic, 28, 34, 
 88-9, 96, 234, 239, 240, 
 242. 
 
 Clergy Reserves, see Lands. 
 Cobden, Richard, 2, 20. 
 Coburg, 213, 247. 
 Colbert, 174. 
 Colborne, Sir John, 55, 73, 75, 77- 
 
 9, 89, 91, 92, 95, 96, 100, 103, 
 
 163-4, 168, 244. 
 
 Colonial Administration, see Colo- 
 nial Office. 
 
 Colonial Advocate, the, 55. 
 Colonial Office, 3, 20-3, 52, 62, 
 124, 157, 178, 179, 188, 191, 
 243, 266-75. 
 
 advantages of, 268-70, 275. 
 
 criticisms of, 21, 266-8, 270-3. 
 
 position of Secretary of State. 
 271-4. 
 
 Colonies, relations with mother 
 
 country, 115, 120, 143, 149-50, 
 
 155, 285, 312-15. 
 Colonization Schemes, 14, 115, 
 
 155-7, 158, 179, 180, 181-2, 
 
 197, 299. 
 
 Coloured races, see Native Ques- 
 tions. 
 Commission, Parliamentary, on 
 
 Electoral Divisions, 148-9. 
 Communications, 8, 14-15, 123, 
 
 179, 180, 198-210, 211, 304-5, 
 
 305 note, 308-9. 
 Confederated Counties, 90-1. 
 Constitution, British, 139, 142 
 
 note, 144. 
 Cornwall, 213. 
 Cornwall Canal, see Canals. 
 Coteau du Lac, 206. 
 Councils : 
 
 (i) Special Council of Lower 
 Canada, 102-3, 110, 168 
 and note, 298. 
 
 (ii) Executive, 56, 225. 
 
 (a) Lower Canada, 65, 66, 67, 
 
 70, 71, 73, 143, 144-5, 226, 
 231. 
 
 (&) Upper Canada, 54, 79-80. 
 
 (c) New Brunswick, 81, 82, 
 83. 
 
 (d) Newfoundland, 87-8. 
 
 (e) Nova Scotia, 81, 82, 84. 
 (/) Prince Edward Island, 85, 
 
 86. 
 (iii) Legislative, 29, 31, 33, 56, 
 
 151, 225, 227 and note, 
 (a) Lower Canada, 39, 41, 43, 
 48, 59, 62, 65, 66, 67, 69, 
 
 71, 72, 73, 128, 161, 226, 
 227. 
 
 (6) Upper Canada, 54, 77, 
 226. 
 
 (c) United Canada, 288, 291-2. 
 
 (d) New Brunswick, 81, 82, 
 83. 
 
 (e) Newfoundland, 87-8. 
 (/) Nova Scotia, 81, 82, 84. 
 (g) Prince Edward Island, 
 
 85-6. 
 
 Courts, see Law and Justice. 
 Cousin, Victor, 237. 
 Craig, Sir James, 35-6, 57, 127, 
 
 167, 225. 
 Cromer, Lord, quoted, 135 note.
 
 328 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Crown, the, 66, 143, 144, 145, 147, 
 148, 149, 151, 152, 166, 219, 227, 
 234, 245, 246, 275, 291, 292, 294 
 note. 
 
 Crown Colonies, 11, 23, 225, 266, 
 267, 268, 270, 273, 274, 310. 
 
 Crown Patronage, 66, 67-8, 77. 
 
 Crown Reserves, see Lands. 
 
 Crown Revenues, 40, 47, 52, 54, 
 56, 58-61, 66, 70, 73, 149, 182-8, 
 293. 
 
 Cunard, 16. 
 
 Dalhousie, Earl of, 42, 43, 47, 48, 
 49, 50, 51, 52, 56, 57, 85, 109, 
 133. 
 
 Davidson, John, 160, 183 note. 
 Davignon, 91. 
 Demaray, 91. 
 Derby, Earl of, see Stanley, 
 
 Lord. 
 
 Detroit, 96, 99. 
 Dicey, Professor, quoted, 139 and 
 
 note 2. 
 
 Doratt, Sir John, 194 note 2. 
 Dorchester, see Carleton. 
 Doric Club, 91. 
 
 Droit de Quint, 183 note, 184. 
 Duncombe, Dr., 97, 98. 
 Dunkin, 153, 167, 236. 
 D'Urban, Sir Benjamin, 13, 21. 
 DURHAM, LORD : 
 his life, 1-2. 
 
 his character and ability, 2, 6-8, 
 119-20, 131-2, 214, 256, 276, 
 316, etc. 
 as a Liberal, 2, 128-30, 138, 
 
 141,214,215,282, 315. 
 as an Imperialist, 2, 119-23, 
 130, 141, 149-50, 151, 155, 
 180, 198, 214, 215, 217, 256, 
 282, 285. 
 as a constructive statesman, 
 
 121-3, 216-17, 316. 
 his views before his mission, 
 
 128-9. 
 his views on : 
 
 French Colonization, 24, 25. 
 Nationality, 116, 129-34, 
 
 281-4, 289, 311. 
 Public Lands, 153-5, 165-8, 
 
 176-80, 186-8. 
 
 Emigration, 189 and note, 
 196-8, 299. 
 
 Education, 232, 234, 235, 
 240-3. 
 
 Union of two Canadas, 124, 
 129-33, 148, 247-50, 287-8. 
 
 Union of British North 
 America, 132, 148-9, 210, 
 247-57, 261, 266, 289. 
 
 Administration of Justice, 
 223-5, 229-31. 
 
 Means of Communication, 
 15-16, 201, 204-5, 208-10, 
 304. 
 
 Colonial Office Administra- 
 tion, 266,267, 270-3,279-80. 
 
 Representative Institutions 
 and Responsible Govern- 
 ment, 125, 130, 136-42, 
 146-52, 252-3, 283-7, 289, 
 291,303-4,311-15. 
 
 Municipal Government, 210- 
 22. 
 
 United States, 258-66. 
 his Commission and Instruc- 
 tions, 106-10, 112, 113. 
 
 Resignation, 211, 235. 
 
 Death, 301. 
 value of his work, 301-2, 315- 
 
 17. 
 
 Dutch in New York, 264, 283. 
 Dutch in South Africa, 136, 283, 
 309, 311. 
 
 Education : 
 
 (i) In Lower Canada, 67, 166-7, 
 232-44, 264, 300-1, and see 
 Buller, Arthur, 
 (ii) In Upper Canada, 75, 244-7, 
 
 295, 301. 
 
 Egremont, Lord, 193. 
 Elgin, eighth Earl of, 1, 142 note, 
 
 283, 289, 291. 
 Elgin, ninth Earl of, 1. 
 Elizabeth College, 244. 
 Ellice, 'Bear,' 4, 7, 45, 46, 112, 
 
 161, 297. 
 
 Ellice, the Younger, 4. 
 Elliot, Sir T. F., 65, 71, 189-90, 
 
 190 note, 191, 196, 273. 
 Emigrants' Information Office, 
 
 300. 
 Emigration : 
 
 from United Kingdom to 
 Canada, 156-8, 172, 174, 177- 
 82, 188-98, 279, 299-300.
 
 INDEX 
 
 329 
 
 from United Kingdom to United 
 States, 190. 
 
 abuses of, 189, 193-6. 
 
 Committees and Commission on, 
 190-1. 
 
 control of, 178-9, 188-92, 196-8. 
 
 See also Lands, Quarantine, 
 
 Colonization Schemes, &o. 
 Empire, British, 5, 7, 10, 30, 120, 
 
 121, 123, 202, 222, 254, 255, 273, 
 
 275, 277, 285, 303, 305-9, 305 
 
 note, 306 note, 311, 312, 314, 
 
 315, &c. 
 
 Erie Canal, see Canals. 
 Executive, Parliamentary, Prin- 
 ciple of, 139 note 2, 141, 142, 
 
 291. 
 Executives : 
 
 Lower Canada, 42, 44, 56, 139. ! 
 
 Upper Canada, 143. 
 
 United Canada, 149, 249. 
 
 Relations with Legislatures, 
 33-4, 36, 137, 139, 142-5, 
 148, 290-1, and see Councils. 
 Executive Council, see Councils. 
 
 Family Compact, 54, 75, 164, 247. 
 
 Federal Legislature, see Legisla- 
 ture. 
 
 Federation, 132-3,248-55,287,313. \ 
 
 Feudal Tenures, see Lands and 
 Seigniories. 
 
 Filmore, President, 142 note. 
 
 Fils de Liberte, 91. 
 
 Finances, control of, 149, 293, &c. 
 
 in Lower Canada, 38-44, 47, 48, 
 
 49, 51, 55-61, 65-6, 71, 73, 
 
 104-5, 182-3, 184. 
 
 in Upper Canada, 54, 60, 76, 182. 
 
 Financial relations between Upper 
 and Lower Canada, 44, 45, 54, 67. 
 See also Civil List, Money Votes, 
 &c. 
 
 Finlay, Hugh, 233, 234 note. 
 
 Fisheries Disputes, 257, 258. 
 
 Fitzgibbon, Colonel, 97, 98. 
 
 Fitzroy, Sir Charles, 85-6. 
 
 Foreign Relations, 149-50, 285. 
 
 Forges of St. Maurice, see St. i 
 Maurice. 
 
 Free Trade, 19, 20, 198, 286. 
 
 French Canadians, 24, 25, 27, 28, 
 31, 32, 34, 42, 46, 54, 61, 62, 
 63, 64, 67-8, 88, 89, 91, 95, 96, j 
 
 103, 116, 118, 121, 124, 125, 128, 
 129, 130, 131, 151, 159, 161, 172, 
 175, 195, 214, 215, 225, 239, 240, 
 241, 243, 248, 250, 259, 260, 265, 
 277, 279, 280, 281-4, 309, etc. 
 
 Gait, John, 170. 
 George III, 41, 166. 
 George IV, 76. 
 
 Georgian Bay Canal, see Canals. 
 Gipps, Sir George, 65, 70, 71. 
 Girod, 95-6. 
 
 Glenelg, Lord, 13, 19, 20-2, 62, 64, 
 67, 68, 69, 73, 77, 78, 80, 83, 
 84, 85-6, 87, 100, 101, 158, 
 162 and note, 186, 231 and 
 note, 232-3, 251 and note, 
 258. 
 
 his Instructions to Lord Dur- 
 ham, 5, 106, 109, 112, 113, 
 132 and note, 147. 
 his Instructions to Royal Com- 
 missioners, 65-7, 69, 71, 72. 
 his Instructions to Sir F. Bond 
 
 Head, 142-3. 
 
 Glengarry Highlanders, 89, 245. 
 Goderich, Lord, 19, 52, 53, 58, 59, 
 61, 68, 79, 81, 86 note, 87, 88, 
 164, 166, 167, 190, 226. 
 Gore, Colonel, 92-5. 
 Gosford, Earl of, 65, 67, 69, 70, 71, 
 72, 74, 77, 83, 88, 89, 90, 100, 
 162 and note, 167, 168, 185 
 note, 186, 232, 233 note, 235, 
 237. 
 
 Gourlay, Robert, 53. 
 Government, Imperial, see Im- 
 perial Government. 
 Greek Colonists, 312-13. 
 Grey, Colonel, 258. 
 Grey, first Earl, 1, 2, 17, 142 note. 
 Grey, second Earl, 191. 
 Grey, Sir Charles, 65, 70, 71. 
 Grey, Sir George, 12, 22 and 
 
 note 1. 
 Grosse Isle, 194 and note 2. 
 
 Haldimand, General, 206. 
 Halifax, 16, 83, 90, 201, 204, 
 
 210. 
 
 Hamilton, 213. 
 Hanson, 4, 153, 164. 
 Harvey, Sir John, 83. 
 Head, Sir Francis Bond, 22, 69,
 
 330 
 
 INDEX 
 
 77-81, 83, 90, 96, 97, 98, 100, 
 142-3. 
 
 Hereditary Legislators, 227-8. 
 House of Commons, 7, 18, 39, 41, 
 
 60, 137, 139 note 2, 157, 158, 
 
 159, 174 note, 221, 248, 267, 
 
 274, 279, 288, 297, &c. 
 Committees on Emigration, 190. 
 Resolutions of March 1837, 72-3, 
 
 143, 144. 
 Select Committee of Inquiry 
 
 into Civil Government of 
 
 Canada in 1828, 53, 55, 56, 
 
 57, 62, 63, 75, 82, 160 note, 
 
 246. 
 Select Committee of Inquiry 
 
 into Civil Government of 
 
 Lower Canada in 1834, 62-3. 
 House of Commons Papers, 117. 
 July 1831, No. 102. Canada 
 
 Crown Revenues, 40 note, 183 
 
 note. 
 March 1832, No. 334. Canada 
 
 Waste Lands, 174 and note, 
 
 188 and note. 
 March 1836, No. 113. Copy 
 
 of the Instructions given to 
 
 the Earl of Gosford, etc., 68 
 
 note, 143 note, 162 note, 233 
 
 note. 
 February 1837, No. 50. Lower 
 
 Canada, 185 note, 235 note, 
 
 237 note. 
 
 May 1838, No. 388. Emigra- 
 tion, 190 note, 191 note, 
 
 192. 
 February 1839, No. 2. British 
 
 North America, 231, 258 note, 
 
 259. 
 June 1839, No. 117. Canadian 
 
 Affairs, 119 note, 263 note, 
 
 276 note. 
 August 1839, No. 579. Nova 
 
 Scotia, &c., 82 note, 84 note, 
 
 86 note, 87 note. 
 1840. Affairs of Canada, Part I, 
 
 299 note 1. 
 February 1840, No. 35. Colonial 
 
 Lands Board, 294 note, 299 
 
 note. 
 March 1840, No. 147. Copies of 
 
 Extracts of Correspondence 
 
 relative to the Reunion of 
 
 the Provinces of Lower and 
 
 Upper Canada, 213 note, 218 
 note. 
 
 August 1871, C. 459. Cape of 
 
 Good Hope, 146 note 2. 
 House of Lords, 102, 123, 151, 
 
 227 and note. 
 Howe, Joseph, 81, 85. 
 Ho wick, Lord, see Grey, second 
 
 Earl. 
 Hudson Bay Company, 183 note, 
 
 256. 
 
 Hume, Joseph, 73, 76, 104. 
 Hungary, Language Question in, 
 
 134. 
 Huskisson, 19, 53, 55, 57. 
 
 Imperial Advisers, 142-5, 147. 
 
 Imperial Government, 27, 41, 44, 
 46, 47, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 68, 
 104, 142, 143, 144, 148, 149, 
 162, 166, 174, 178, 179, 184, 185, 
 187, 195, 207, 219, 220, 221. 
 223-5, 232, 233, 234, 236, 240, 
 243, 245, 249, 251, 252, 253, 255, 
 260, 271, 274, 275, 276, 278, 279, 
 280, 293, 295, 299, 300, 306 note, 
 etc. 
 
 Indians, 245. 
 Six Nations, 175. 
 
 Inventions, Scientific, 14-17, 201, 
 204-5, 208, 210, 304-5 and note. 
 
 Ireland and Irish, 88, 104, 190 
 and note, 192, 201, 230, 305 
 note. 
 
 Irish in Canada, 89, 245. 
 
 Jalbert, 94. 
 
 Jamaica, 23, 142 note, 140. 
 Jesuit Estates, see Lands. 
 Joseph II, 134. 
 
 Keefer, T. C., 204 and note. 
 Kempt, Sir James, 57. 
 Kent, Duke of, 254. 
 King's College, Toronto, 246-7. 
 King's Posts, 183 and note. 
 King's Wharves, 183 note, 184. 
 Kingston, 207, 213, 220, 247. 
 
 Lachine Canal, see Canals. 
 
 Lambton, see Durham. 
 
 Land and Emigration Commis- 
 sioners, 171, 179, 191, 196, 294 
 note, 299, 300.
 
 INDEX 
 
 331 
 
 Land Registry Office, 58. 
 Lands : 
 
 Clergy Reserves, 4, 37, 56, 75, 
 
 78, 152, 153, 162-5, 163 note, 
 
 169, 170, 177, 209, 228, 238, 
 
 245, 294-6. 
 Companies, 61, 66, 67, 73, 169- 
 
 72. 
 Crown Lands, 37, 40 note, 60, 
 
 83,114,115,160,163,169-73, 
 
 175, 182-4, 293, 299. 
 in British North America, 152, 
 
 156, 158, 171, 174 and note, 
 
 177-9, 264. 
 in United States, 264. 
 Jesuit Estates, 5, 56, 153, 165-7, 
 
 183 and note, 232, 236, 238, 
 
 243 
 
 Militia Claims, 4, 153, 173-5. 
 Public, 4, 108 note, 115, 120- 
 
 1, 123, 149, 150, 152-88, 
 
 262, 264, 285, 293-4, 294 
 note. 
 
 Tax, 176, 178, 187. 
 
 Tenure, 56, 66, 67, 71, 152, 153, 
 159-62, 168 and note, 171, 
 174, 279 ; see also Seigniories. 
 
 See also Buller, Charles. 
 Language, 133-6, 289, 308 note. 
 Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, 118, 240. 
 Laval, Bishop, 242. 
 Laval University, 242 note. 
 Law and Justice, 123-4, 223-31, 
 
 263, 292. 
 
 Appeals, Judicial, 230-1, 249. 
 Chief Justices, 36, 59, 225, 226. 
 Civil Law, 28-9, 223-4. 
 Courts of Law, 223. 
 Criminal Law, 223. 
 Judges, 37, 38, 56, 57, 59, 61, 
 
 66, 82, 149, 150, 225-6, 231, 
 
 292, 293. 
 
 Juries, 223, 224, 229-30. 
 Magistrates, 223, 228-9. 
 ' Leaders and Associates,' 160. 
 Legislative Council, see Councils. 
 Legislatures, 33-4, 179, 219. 
 Federal, 113, 251-5. 
 Lower Canada, 32, 47, 51, 52, 
 
 57, 60, 64, 69, 72-4, 88, 113, 
 
 166, 172, 183, 185-7, 194, 206, 
 
 209, 224, 228, 248. 
 Newfoundland, 88. 
 United, 148-50, 152 and note, 
 
 187, 217, 249, 288, 291-3, 
 294 note, 296, 299-301. 
 Upper Canada, 54, 60, 80, 113, 
 
 245, 246, 276, 295. 
 Relations with Executives, see 
 
 Executives. 
 
 And see Assembly and Councils. 
 Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, 
 15, 134, 140 note, 145, 180- 
 1, 181 note, 268-70, 286, 306 
 note. 
 
 Liverpool, Lord, 52, 266. 
 Local Government, 4, 123, 149, 
 152 and note, 159, 195 note, 
 210-22, 264, 296-9. 
 in United States, 264-5. 
 Lods et Ventes, 184. 
 London (Canada), 213. 
 Louisiana, 131, 264, 283. 
 Lount, 80, 98, 99. 
 Loyalists, 89, 90, 91, 93, 95, 98, 
 
 159, 245, 259-61. 
 
 Loyalists, United Empire, 37, 54, 
 159, 174. 
 
 Macdonell, Bishop, 4, 245. 
 
 McGill, James, 244. 
 
 McGill University, 243-4. 
 
 Mackenzie, William Lyon, 55, 75, 
 76, 80, 81, 96-9, 214. 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, 7, 45. 
 
 MacNab, Colonel, 98. 
 
 Maine, 202, 256, 257. 
 
 Maitland, Sir Peregrine, 53-5, 85, 
 244. 
 
 Malthus, 192. 
 
 Maritime Provinces, 81, 115, 204, 
 249, 250, 258, 291, and see 
 separately New Brunswick, &c. 
 
 Matthews, 99. 
 
 Melbourne, Lord, 14, 17, 19, 20, 
 62, 64, 102, 110, 123, 214, 288. 
 
 Merivale, Lectures on Coloniza- 
 tion, 152 note, 157, 219 note, 
 298 and note 3. 
 
 Militia and Militia Laws, 51-2, 
 150, 212. 
 
 Militia Land Claims, see Land. 
 
 Ministers of Crown, see Imperial 
 Advisers. 
 
 Molesworth, Sir William, 2, 12, 21, 
 22, 73, 101, 157 note 2, 157-8, 
 181, 267-8, 268 note 2, 270, 
 273, 274.
 
 332 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Monarchy, hereditary, 141. 
 
 Money Votes, initiation of, 149, 
 292, 297. 
 
 Montreal, 15, 34, 61, 63, 67, 71, 
 78, 88-96, 153, 162, 167, 168, 
 194 note 2, 195, 203, 205, 206, 
 207, 212, 242 and note, 243, 
 282. 
 
 Montreal district, 100, 248. 
 
 Montreal, Constitutional Associa- 
 tion of, 4, 63, 128. 
 
 Morley, Lord, quoted, 135-6 note. 
 
 Morrison, Dr., 97. 
 
 Municipalities, see Local Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Murray, General James, 28, 223. 
 
 Murray, Sir George, 55, 57, 58. 
 
 Nationality, Canada a Nation, 
 
 Anglifying of Lower Canada, 
 
 &c., 27, 35, 46, 61, 116, 121, 122, 
 
 125-33, 161-2, 202, 215-16, 
 
 233-4, 236, 253, 261, 266, 281-4, 
 
 286-7, 310-13. 
 Native Questions, 136, 146, 274-5, 
 
 309. 
 
 Navy Island, 99. 
 Neilson, John, 47. 
 Nelson, Dr. Wolfred, 74, 89, 90-4, 
 
 95, 97, 128. 
 
 Nelson, Robert, 89, 90, 128. 
 Neptune, the, 13. 
 
 New Brunswick, 30, 71, 72, 81-5, 
 90, 106, 107, 114, 204, 262, 
 291 note, 294 note. 
 
 Civil List, 83. 
 
 Crown Revenues, control of, 83. 
 
 Deputation to England, 82-3. 
 
 Responsible Government, 83. 
 New France, 24-6. 
 New South Wales, 12, 65. 
 New York, 78, 209, 258, 264, 265, 
 
 283. 
 
 New Zealand, 14, 146, 156, 291. 
 New Zealand Association, 14. 
 New Zealand Land Company, 14, 
 
 148. 
 
 Newfoundland, 65, 86-8, 106, 107, 
 108 and note, 113, 114, 115, 
 154, 171, 250, 291 and note, 
 294 note. 
 
 Fisheries, 86. 
 
 Religious troubles, 87-8. 
 Niagara, 96, 99, 207, 213, 263. 
 
 North- West, 200, 202, 208, 210, 
 
 256, 263. 
 Nova Scotia, 4, 16, 57, 81, 83-6, 
 
 90, 106, 107, 114, 204, 222, 
 257, 262, 265, 291 note, 294 
 note. 
 
 Constitution, 84. 
 Representative Institutions, 81. 
 Revenue Control, 84. 
 
 O'Callaghan, Dr., 89, 94. 
 O'Connell, 73, 74, 104. 
 Ottawa, 16, 207. 
 
 Palmerston, Lord, 19. 
 Papineau, Louis, 38, 42, 43, 47, 
 49, 52, 54, 69, 70, 74, 77, 88- 
 
 91, 94, 96-7, 128, 133. 
 Eulogy of British rule, 41. 
 
 Parliament, Canadian, 118, 231, 
 
 290, 293. 
 Parliament, Imperial, see Imperial 
 
 Government. 
 Parliamentary Executive, see 
 
 Executive. 
 
 Parliamentary Reform, 17. 
 Parsonages, 163. 
 ' Patriots,' 89, 97. 
 Patronage, Crown, see Crown 
 
 Patronage. 
 Peace of Paris, 27. 
 Peel, Sir Robert, 12, 19, 62, 65, 
 
 99, 112. 
 
 Peninsular and Oriental Com- 
 pany, 16. 
 
 Petition of Rights, 62. 
 Pitt, William, 31. 
 Police Forces, 212. 
 Poor Law Reform, 18. 
 Presbyterians, see Clergy. 
 Prevost, Sir George, 36, 206. 
 Prince Edward Island, 85-6, 106, 
 107, 114. 
 
 lands, 86. 
 Proclamation of 1763, 28, 29, 159, 
 
 174 223 
 Protestants, 160, 163, 164, 239, 
 
 242-3, 245-6, andsee Cler<ry a>! 
 
 Church of England, &c. 
 Public Lands, see Lands. 
 Public Works, 118, 178, 208, 209, 
 
 220,264,265,298,301. 
 
 Quarantine, 194, 195.
 
 INDEX 
 
 333 
 
 Quarter Sessions, 223. 
 
 Quebec, 16, 30, 34, 36, 63, 65, 89, 
 90, 100, 183 note, 190, 194 and 
 note 2, 195, 201, 210, 212, 214, 
 242 and note, 243, 282. 
 
 Quebec Act, see under Acts. 
 
 Quebec, Province, 26, 29, 31, 120, 
 151, 159, 220, 278, 283, 284. 298 
 note 2, 301. 
 
 Quebec Assembly, see Assembly, 
 Lower Canada. 
 
 Quebec Emigrants' Society, 194. 
 
 Queen's College, 247. 
 
 Race animosity, &c., 33-7, 46, 
 
 126-31, 229, 240, 279-84. 
 Radenhurst, John, 170. 
 Railways, 8, 14-15, 178, 198-201, 
 210. 
 
 Canadian Northern, 200. 
 
 Canadian Pacific, 15, 199, 200, 
 205. 
 
 Grand Trunk, 200. 
 
 in United States, 265. 
 
 Intercolonial, 200, 201, 204. 
 
 La Prairie to St. John's, 14-15, 
 207-8. 
 
 Stockton to Darlington, 14. 
 Rebellion, 24, 40, 80, 88-99, 101, 
 259. 
 
 in Lower Canada, 38, 40, 88-96, 
 128, 258. 
 
 in Upper Canada, 80, 96-9, 258. 
 
 reasons for, 103-5. 
 Receiver-General of Canada, de- 
 falcations of, 43. 
 Rectories, 78, 163, 164. 
 Reform in England, 17-18, 42, 58, 
 
 76, 129. 
 
 Regiopolis, 247. 
 Reid, Stuart, 3. 
 Religion, 33, 87-8, 133, 239-40, 
 
 245, 279, &c. See also Clergy, 
 
 &c. 
 
 Rents and Dues, 40, 183-4. 
 Representative Institutions, 1 1 , 
 
 23, 34, 81, 138, 216, 217, 277, 
 
 304, 310. 
 
 Republics and Republican Institu- 
 tions, 139 and note, 154, 254. 
 Reserves, Clergy, see Lands. 
 Reserves, Crown, see Lands. 
 Responsible Government, 5, 7, 11, 
 22, 77, 81, 83, 88, 123-6, 
 
 130-1, 137-52, 155, 181, 182, 
 187, 198, 218, 254-5, 261, 
 265-6, 273, 277, 289-91, 304, 
 310-15, &c. 
 
 arguments for, 121-2, 137-8, &c. 
 
 definition of, 137-8, 147-8. 
 
 Durham's recommendations, 
 147-52. 
 
 objections to, 142-6, 313. 
 Revenues, see Finances. 
 Revenues, Crown, see Crown 
 
 Revenues. 
 
 Richards, John, 174, 188. 
 Richelieu, River, 74, 88, 89, 90, 91, 
 
 92, 93, 94, 207. 
 
 Richmond, Duke of, 39, 42, 53. 
 Ripon, Earl of, see Goderich. 
 Rideau Canal, see Canals. 
 Ridout, 80, 81. 
 Roads, 178, 198, 210, 211, 220. 
 
 in United States, 265. 
 Robinson, Peter, 192. 
 Robinson, Sir John Beverley, 46, 
 
 54, 75. 
 
 Life of, 126 note, 226. 
 Roebuck, John Arthur, 62, 71, 73, 
 
 102-3, 104, 248. 
 Rolph, Dr., 55, 79, 97, 98. 
 Roman Catholics, 88, 164, 239, 
 
 243, 245, 247, &e., and see 
 
 Clergy. 
 Romans, 135-6 note, 222, 269, 
 
 274, 307-9. 
 Royal Commission (Lord Gos- 
 
 ford's) to Lower Canada, 64- 
 
 72, 74, 167-8, 185 note, 232-3, 
 
 235, 237. 
 
 Royal William, the, 16 and note. 
 Russell, Peter, 245, 246. 
 Russell, Lord John, 5, 12, 19, 72- 
 
 4, 101, 102, 110, 112, 143-5, 147, 
 
 168 note, 175, 196, 213, 218, 288, 
 
 289, 290, 294 note, 297, 299. 
 
 St. Benoit, 96. 
 
 St. Charles, 90, 92, 94. 
 
 St. Denis, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95. 
 
 St. Eustache, 95. 
 
 St. John's, 91, 95, 207. 
 
 St. Lawrence, 14-15, 88, 90, 91, 
 92, 159, 183 note, 201, 202-4, 
 206-9, 258, 263, 278, 283. 
 
 St. Maurice Forges, 183 note, 184. 
 
 St. Sulpice, see Sulpicians.
 
 334 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Scotch Church, see Clergy, Pres- 
 byterian. 
 Secretary of State for the Colonies, 
 
 see Colonial Office. 
 Seigniories, 28, 67, 71, 128, 152, 
 
 159, 161, 165, 167-8, 183 note, 
 
 297. 
 
 Sewell, Jonathan, 225, 254. 
 Sherbrooke, Sir John, 37-9, 43, 53, 
 
 172. 
 
 Simcoe, 33, 244, 246. 
 /Sft'r Robert Peel, the, 258. 
 Slavery, abolition of, 10-11, 12, 
 
 - 13, 18, 22. 
 
 in United States, 257. 
 Smith, Chief Justice, 254 and note, 
 
 255, 284. 
 
 Sorel, 89, 90, 92, 93, 94. 
 ' Sons of Liberty,' see Fils de 
 
 Liberte\ 
 South Africa, 13, 135 and note, 
 
 136, 280, 283, 309, 311. 
 South Australia, 13, 14, 156, 158. 
 Stanley, Lord, 19, 62, 137, 171. 
 Steamships, 15-16, 201, 208, 305 
 
 note. 
 
 Spring Rice, 62, 63, 85, 87. 
 Stephen, Sir James, 10, 20-2, 
 
 273. 
 
 Strachan, Dr., 46, 54, 164-5, 246. 
 Stuart, James, 36, 38, 47, 49, 61, 
 
 90. 
 
 Submarine cables, 16. 
 Sulpicians, 67, 71, 153, 162, 165, 
 
 167-8, 242 and note. 
 Sydenham, Lord, see Thomson, 
 
 Poulett. 
 
 Talon, 174. 
 
 Tasmania, 12, 100. 
 
 Taylor, Sir Henry, 20 and note, 
 
 273. 
 
 Telegraphs, 8, 15, 16. 
 Texas, 257, 259. 
 Theller, 99-100. 
 Thomson, Poulett, 144, 168 note, 
 
 175, 213, 218, 289-90, 294, 295- 
 
 302. 
 Three Rivers Town Fiefs, 183 
 
 note. 
 
 Timber licences, 178, 184. 
 Titles of Honour, 227, 291. 
 Tories, 7, 14, 19, 42, 65, 247. 
 Toronto, 76, 78, 79, 81, 90, 96-8, 
 
 137, 165, 170, 171, 213 and 
 
 note, 244. 
 Toronto University, see King's 
 
 College, Toronto. 
 Townships, 128, 152, 160, 221, 
 
 297. 
 Townships, Eastern, 46, 58, 61, 
 
 89, 93, 159-60, 169, 171, 172, 
 
 248. 
 
 Trade, Board of, 300. 
 Transportation, 11-13, 158. 
 Trinity College, Toronto, 247. 
 Turton, 153. 
 Two Mountains County, 88, 95. 
 
 United Empire Loyalists, ate 
 
 Loyalists. 
 United States : 
 (i) References to, 22, 80, 91, U3, 
 
 94, 97, 98, 99, 104, 113, 121, 
 
 122, 124, 125, 153, 154, 177, 
 
 178, 216, 252, 257-66, 278, 
 
 303, 310. 
 (ii) Institutions, 54, 62, 140-1, 
 
 142 note, 215, 265. 
 (iii) Causes of Prosperity, 139, 
 
 154, 265. 
 (iv) Comparison with Canada, 
 
 139, 201-2, 262-6. 
 (v) Frontier of, 88, 93, 96, 99, 
 
 159, 203, 256-9, 278. 
 Upper Canada College, 75, 245. 
 
 Van Buren, President, 257, 258. 
 Van Diemen's Land, see Tasmania. 
 Van Egmont, 98-9. 
 Vancouver, 16, 205. 
 Victoria, Queen, 10-19, 74, 88, 
 
 100, 185, 254, 292. 
 Victoria College, 247. 
 Vindicator, the, 89, 91. 
 
 Wakefield, Gibbon, 3-4, 14, 153, 
 
 155-8, 175, 178, 180, 181-2, 189, 
 
 197, 294. 
 War of American Independence, 
 
 30, 104, 174, 206, 259. 
 War of 1812, 34, 36, 37, 90, 97, 
 
 173, 174, 178, 203, 206, 278. 
 Waterways, Canadian, 205-8. 
 Weavers, distress among, 192-3. 
 Webster, Daniel, 99. 
 Weir, Lieutenant, 94.
 
 INDEX 
 
 335 
 
 Welland Canal, see Canals. 
 Wellington, Duke of, 17, 19, 55, 
 
 61. 
 
 Wesleyans, 78, 247. 
 Western Australia, 12. 
 West Indies, 11-13, 158, 178, 
 
 277. 
 
 Wetherall, Colonel, 92, 93. 
 Whateley, Archbishop, 11. 
 
 123, 129, 131, 151, 214, 219, 
 
 289. 
 
 William Henry, see Sorel. 
 William IV, 40, 65, 74, 88, 185. 
 Wilmot, Lemuel, 83. 
 Wilmot, or Wilmot Horton, 44. 
 Wodehouse, Sir Philip, 146. 
 
 York, see Toronto. 
 
 Whigs, 17-20, 65, 78, 104, 111-13, Young, William, 4, 258, 265.
 
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