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usually mark the conduct of insurgents, and leave a stain on the character of a people.

In Upper Canada, the most violent of those who had been defeated at the elections of 1836 had retained a rankling hatred of the government, and a determination at all hazards to regain their power. These men imagined that the outbreak in the sister province, and the consequent withdrawal of troops from Upper Canada, afforded a favourable chance for the overthrow of their own government. They accordingly raised the standard of revolt, and under the leadership of Mackenzie, marched to the neighbourhood of Toronto. But it was immediately evident that they had miscalculated the feeling of the great mass of the population; that in construing occasional and partial discontent into disaffection, they had interpreted others feelings by their own, and that the province was at heart thoroughly British and loyal. Without the aid of a single soldier, the militia and volunteers, who crowded on the first alarm to the capital, drove Mackenzie and his followers from the province, so that in the course of six days from the first rising, there was not within the continent of Upper Canada a single insurgent in arms. The only remnant

of the insurrection was to be found at Navy Island, where Mackenzie, with a body of the loose population, who are always hanging about the frontier of the United States, set up his camp, and established what he called a provisional government.

The rebellions, however, in the two provinces, though equally brought to the same conclusion, presented very different considerations, and required very different treatment. The effect in Lower Canada had been to bring out the disaffection of the great mass of the people, and to show that their obedience to the existing constitution could for the present be secured only by coercive measures. In Upper Canada, the result had been exactly the reverse: it had shown that in that province the people were almost universally attached to the mother country, and might well be trusted with the protection of their own rights. While, therefore, it was clear that a temporary suspension of the representative legislature, and an entire change of system, had become inevitable in Lower Canada, it was equally evident that no such necessity existed in the Upper Province. All that was there required, was such a change in the mode of administration as should bring the practice of the government into unison with its prototype in the mother country, and thus remove the feeling of discontent which Mackenzie and his party had exaggerated into disaffection. Accordingly the Act 2 & 3

Victoria, c. 9, by which the constitutional act of 1791 was repealed, as far as Lower Canada was concerned, and a more despotic form of government substituted, was strictly confined in its operation to that province.

This measure, however, being of a temporary nature, it was necessary to couple with it such further arrangements as might enable the government, as soon as the momentary emergency had ceased, to propose to parliament some permanent measure for the future government of Canada. With this view the Earl of Durham was appointed Governor-General, and High Commissioner, to carry out the act, and at the same time to inquire into, and report upon, the causes of the insurrection, and the remedial measures which it might be advisable to adopt. The result of his mission was the presentation of the report, which every one, whatever his politics, must allow to be one of the most remarkable state papers of the present age. His administration of the government of Canada, which appeared likely to have been successful, was suddenly brought to a close in October 1838, through a misunderstanding between himself and the imperial government, having lasted only five months.

In the winter which followed Lord Durham's return, a second insurrection, more hopeless than the first, broke out in the Montreal district, but was quelled almost immediately by the troops, of whom there was now a large force in the province. In Upper Canada the only interruption to the general peace arose from the hostile incursions of the selfstyled, "sympathisers" and "liberators" of the neighbouring states. The political excitement, however, continued unabated, and the separation between the official and reform party had been increased rather than diminished by late events.

These feelings were stimulated by the publication of Lord Durham's report, which, while it excited comparatively little interest in Lower Canada, immediately engrossed the whole public attention in the Upper Province. Its two principal recommendations were, the union, and the establishment of a modified system of responsibility on the part of the official body, according to the practice of the mother country. The countenance which Lord Durham gave by the latter recommendation to the demands of the reformers, the cry with which he furnished them in the words "Responsible Government," and the censure which he cast on the conduct of the "Family Compact," by which name the body of office holders

*Said to have been drawn up by his secretary, Mr Charles Butler, a rising statesman, who died much regretted in 1848. Lord Durham died soon after his return from Canada.

had been long known, at once invigorated their hopes, and inspired their efforts. After a long period of discouragement and discountenance, they, for the first time, found the justice of their complaints recognised by the highest authority; their demands enforced in powerful language and convincing arguments; and the changes, for demanding which they had been denounced as seditious, recommended by the representative of the crown as the necessary conditions of the constitution. That they exaggerated the concessions which the report contemplated there can be no doubt; but the mere admission that the executive ought, as a general rule, to be kept in harmony with the representative body, was of itself an immense advance towards their principles. The opposite party, who feared that in the fulfilment of Lord Durham's recommendations would be involved their loss of power, naturally attacked the report as vehemently as it was embraced by the reformers; and it thus became the Shibboleth by which, during the year 1839, the reality of men's political creeds was tested.

SECT. VIII.-MR POULETT THOMSON'S MEASURES OF GOVERNMENT IN CANADA.

The imperial government adopted to a great extent the recommendations of Lord Durham's report; and in the session of 1839 a bill for the reunion of Upper and Lower Canada was introduced into parliament. But when that bill was before the House of Commons, it was found that so much information in regard to details was still wanting which could be procured only on the spot, and by a person accustomed to the preparation of political measures, that it became necessary to lay it aside for the session. It was to obtain this local information, and to furnish these details, as well as to carry out the great objects of Lord Durham's mission, which had remained unaccomplished, that Mr Poulett Thomson was selected to proceed to the province, invested with the same

The use of this party term has been complained of, and its appropriateness denied more than once; and, indeed, it was one of the points on which the Committee of the Assembly of Upper Canada, appointed in the spring of 1839 to answer Lord Durham's Report as regarded that province, thought it worth while to bestow particular attention. Without vouching for its universal truth, it has at least enough verisimilitude to justify its use; and it has been so extensively adopted, that it would be impossible to describe the political state of Upper Canada without it. Those who are acquainted either personally or otherwise with that colony, will at once understand the party to whom it refers; those who are not, will, it is hoped, be able sufficiently to gather from these pages the origin and meaning of the term.

general powers and authority as had been conferred on his predecessor.

There was another subject also which required immediate attention, and for the settlement of which Mr Poulett Thomson's experience as a man of business, and his acquaintance with matters of trade, pointed him out as the most appropriate selection-viz. the financial state of Upper Canada. In that province the people had for several years been exerting themselves to take advantage of the unrivalled water communications offered by the chain of great lakes and the Saint Lawrence. With an enterprise worthy of an older country, but without sufficient experience or means, they had undertaken the construction of canals, to avoid the falls of Niagara, and to overcome the rapids which interrupt the navigation of the Saint Lawrence between Kingston and Montreal. The first of these great undertakings had been effected by the Welland canal; the works of which had, however, been completed in an insufficient and expensive manner, and were constantly in need of repair. The second had been commenced in the Cornwall canal; a work on a magnificent, perhaps an extravagant scale, which had been arrested in mid course by the failure of funds. These, and other works for opening internal communications and making roads, had necessarily caused a very large expenditure, for which, as yet, but little or no return had been obtained. The consequence was, that, in the summer of 1839 Upper Canada was on the eve of bankruptcy; that, with an annual revenue of not more than L.78,000, the charge for the interest of its debt was L.65,000, and the permanent expenses of its government L.55,000 more, leaving an annual deficiency of L.42,000; while the want of a sea-port deprived it of the power of increasing its revenue in the usual and least onerous way, by the imposition of duties. To resort to direct taxation, in a country so extensive and thinly inhabited, was plainly impossible; and the ruinous expedient which had been adopted of late years, of paying the interest of the debt out of fresh loans, could no longer be repeated. Yet, to allow matters to continue in their actual state was equally impossible; and the only question, therefore, was, in what manner the imperial government might most effectually, and at the same time most safely, assist the province, so as to enable it to take advantage of its natural resources, which, if properly developed, would suffice to pay its debt ten times over. For the solution of this question, it was indispensable that her Majesty's government should obtain the opinion of an officer who, to every means of local information, should unite an intimate acquaintance with

financial subjects, and in whose discretion they had an entire confidence.

It has been already stated that Mr Poulett Thomson left Quebec for Montreal on the 22d of October 1839. Immediately on his arrival in the latter town he called together the special council, which had been appointed by his predecessor, and to which he abstained from adding a single member; because, as he observed in addressing the secretary of state:

"It appeared to me that to secure due weight in the mother country to the judgment of a body so constituted, it was indispensable to avoid even the possibility of an imputation that I had selected for its members those only whose opinions coincided with my own.

"I had moreover every reason to believe, from the motives which guided my predecessor in his choice, that the council contains a very fair representation of the state of feeling in the different districts of the province.

"For these reasons I determined on making no alteration whatever."

To this body he submitted certain resolutions on the subject of the union, to the effect that it should be established at the earliest possible moment-that a civil list should be granted to the crown-that the debt of Upper Canada should be borne by the united province-and that the details of the re-union measure should be settled by the imperial legislature. After several days' discussion these resolutions were carried by a majority of twelve to three. In communicating this result to Lord John Russell, then secretary of state for the colonies, Mr Poulett Thomson thus described the feeling which appeared to him to prevail on the subject in Lower Canada:"It is," he observes, "my decided conviction, grounded upon such other opportunities as I have enjoyed since my arrival in this country of ascertaining the state of public feeling, that the speedy adoption of that measure (the union) by parliament is indispensable to the future peace and prosperity of this province.

"All parties look with extreme dissatisfaction at the present state of government. Those of British origin, attached by feeling and education to a constitutional form of government, although they acquiesced for a time in the establishment of arbitrary power as a refuge from a yet worse despotism, submit with impatience to its continuance, and regret the loss, through no fault of their own, of what they consider as their birthright. Those of the French Canadians who remained. loyal to their sovereign and true to British connection, share the same feelings. Whilst among those who are less well

VOL. II

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