CHAPTER III.

CANADA AND LORD DURHAM.

THE first disturbance to the quiet and good promise of the new reign came from Canada. The Parliament which we have described met for the first time on November 20th, 1837, and was to have been adjourned to February 1st, 1838; but the news which began to arrive from Canada was so alarming, that the ministry were compelled to change their purpose and fix the reassembling of the Houses for January 16th. The disturbances in Canada had already broken out into open rebellion.

The condition of Canada was very peculiar. Lower or Eastern Canada was inhabited for the most part by men of French descent, who still kept up in the midst of an active and moving civilization most of the principles and usages which belonged to France before the Revolution. Even to this day, after all the changes, political and social, that have taken place, the traveller from Europe sees in many of the towns of Lower Canada an old-fashioned France, such as he had known otherwise only in books that tell of France before '89. Nor is this only in small sequestered towns and villages which the impulses of modern ways have yet failed to reach. In busy and trading Montreal, with its residents made up of Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Americans, as well as the men of French descent, the visitor is more immediately conscious of the presence of what may be called an old-fashioned Cathol

icism than he is in Paris, or even indeed in Rome. In Quebec, a city which for picturesqueness and beauty of situation is not equalled by Edinburgh or Florence, the curious interest of the place is further increased, the novelty of the sensations it produces in the visitor is made more piquant, by the evidences he meets with everywhere, through its quaint and steepy streets and under its antiquated archways, of the existence of a society which has hardly in France survived the Great Revolution. At the opening of Queen Victoria's reign, the undiluted character of this French mediævalism was, of course, much more remarkable. It would doubtless have exhibited itself quietly enough if it were absolutely undiluted. Lower Canada would have dozed away in its sleepy picturesqueness, held fast to its ancient ways, and allowed a bustling, giddy world, all alive with commerce and ambition, and desire for novelty and the terribly disturbing thing which unresting people called progress, to rush on its wild path unheeded. But its neighbors and its newer citizens were not disposed to allow Lower Canada thus to rot itself in ease on the decaying wharves of the St. Lawrence and the St. Charles. In the large towns there were active traders from England and other countries, who were by no means content to put up with Old-World ways, and to let the magnificent resources of the place run to waste. Upper Canada, on the other hand, was all new as to its population, and was full of the modern desire for commercial activity. Upper Canada was peopled almost exclusively by inhabitants from Great Britain. Scotch settlers, with all the energy and push of their country; men from the northern province of Ireland, who might be described as virtually Scotch also, came there. The emigrant from the south of Ireland went to the United States because he found there a country more or less hostile to England,

and because there the Catholic Church was understood to be flourishing. The Ulsterman went to Canada as the Scotchman did, because he saw the flag of England flying, and the principle of religious establishment which he admired at home still recognized. It is almost needless to say that Englishmen in great numbers were settled there, whose chief desire was to make the colony as far as possible a copy of the institutions of England. When Canada was ceded to England by France, as a consequence of the victories of Wolfe, the population was nearly all in the lower province, and therefore was nearly all of French origin. Since the cession the growth of the population of the other province had been surprisingly rapid, and had been almost exclusively the growth, as we have seen, of immigration from Great Britain, one or two of the colonizing states of the European continent, and the American Republic itself.

It is easy to see on the very face of things some of the difficulties which must arise in the development of such a system. The French of Lower Canada would regard with almost morbid jealousy any legislation which appeared likely to interfere with their ancient ways and to give any advantage or favor to the populations of British descent. The latter would see injustice or feebleness in every measure which did not assist them in developing their more energetic ideas. The home Government, in such a condition of things, often has especial trouble with those whom we may call its own people. Their very loyalty to the institutions of the Old Country impels them to be unreasonable and exacting. It is not easy to make them understand why they should not be at the least encouraged, if not indeed actually enabled, to carry boldly out the Anglicizing policy which they clearly see is to be for the good of the colony in the end. The Government has all the difficulty that the mother of a house

hold has when, with the best intentions and the most conscientious resolve to act impartially, she is called upon to manage her own children and the children of her husband's former marriage. Every word she says, every resolve she is induced to acknowledge, is liable to be regarded with jealousy and dissatisfaction on the one side as well as on the other. "You are doing everything to favor your own children," the one set cry out. ought to do something more for your own children," is the equally querulous remonstrance of the other..

"You

It would have been difficult, therefore, for the home Government, however wise and far-seeing their policy, to make the wheels of any system run smoothly at once in such a colony as Canada. But their policy certainly does not seem to have been either wise or far-seeing. The plan of government adopted looks as if it were especially devised to bring out into sharp relief all the antagonisms that were natural to the existing state of things. By an Act called the Constitution of 1791, Canada was divided into two provinces, the Upper and the Lower. Each province had a separate system of government-consisting of a governor; an executive council appointed by the Crown, and supposed in some way to resemble the Privy Council of this country; a legislative council, the members of which were appointed by the Crown for life; and a representative assembly, the members of which were elected for four years. At the same time the clergy reserves were established by Parliament. One-seventh of the waste lands of the colony was set aside for the maintenance of the Protestant clergy-a fruitful source of disturbance and ill-feeling.

When the two provinces were divided in 1791, the intention was that they should remain distinct in fact as well as in name. It was hoped that Lower Canada would remain altogether French, and that Upper Canada would be exclu

sively English. Then it was thought that they might be governed on their separate systems as securely and with as little trouble as we now govern the Mauritius on one system and Malta on another.

Those who formed such an idea do not seem to have taken any counsel with geography. The one fact, that Upper Canada can hardly be said to have any means of communication with Europe and the whole Eastern world except through Lower Canada, or else through the United States, ought to have settled the question at once. It was in Lower Canada that the greatest difficulties arose. A constant antagonism grew up between the majority of the legislative council, who were nominees of the Crown, and the majority of the representative assembly, who were elected by the population of the province. The home Government encouraged, and indeed kept up, that most odious and dangerous of all instruments for the supposed management of a colony-a "British party" devoted to the so-called interests of the mother country and obedient to the word of command from their masters and patrons at home. The majority in the legisla tive council constantly thwarted the resolutions of the vast majority of the popular assembly. Disputes arose as to the voting of supplies. The Government retained in their service officials whom the representative assembly had condemned, and insisted on the right to pay them their salaries out of certain funds of the colony. The representative assembly took to stopping the supplies, and the Government claimed the right to counteract this measure by appropriating to the purpose such public moneys as happened to be within their reach at the time. The colony -for indeed on these subjects the population of Lower Canada, right or wrong, was so near to being of one mind that we may take the declarations of public meetings as representing the colony-demanded that the legislative