Lord Elgin | Page 8

of bankruptcy before the
union; in fact the former had actually a considerable surplus when its
old constitution was revoked on the outbreak of the rebellion. It was,
consequently, with some reason, considered an act of injustice to make
the people of French Canada pay the debts of a province whose revenue
had not for years met its liabilities. Then, to add to these decided
grievances, there was a proscription of the French language, which was
naturally resented as a flagrant insult to the race which first settled the
valley of the St. Lawrence, and as the first blow levelled against the
special institutions so dear to French Canadians and guaranteed by the
Treaty of Paris and the Quebec Act. Mr. LaFontaine, whose name will
frequently occur in the following chapters of this book, declared, when
he presented himself at the first election under the Union Act, that "it
was an act of injustice and despotism"; but, as we shall soon see, he
became a prime minister under the very act he first condemned. Like
the majority of his compatriots, he eventually found in its provisions
protection for the rights of the people, and became perfectly satisfied
with a system of government which enabled them to obtain their proper
position in the public councils and restore their language to its
legitimate place in the legislature.
But without the complete grant of responsible government it would
never have been possible to give to French Canadians their legitimate
influence in the administration and legislation of the country, or to
reconcile the differences which had grown up between the two
nationalities before the union and seemed likely to be perpetuated by
the conditions of the Union Act just stated. Lord Durham touched the
weakest spot in the old constitutional system of the Canadian provinces
when he said that it was not "possible to secure harmony in any other

way than by administering the government on those principles which
have been found perfectly efficacious in Great Britain." He would not
"impair a single prerogative of the crown"; on the contrary he believed
"that the interests of the people of these provinces require the
protection of prerogatives which have not hitherto been exercised." But
he recognized the fact as a constitutional statesman that "the crown
must, on the other hand, submit to the necessary consequences of
representative institutions; and if it has to carry on the government in
unison with a representative body, it must consent to carry it on by
means of those in whom that representative body has confidence." He
found it impossible "to understand how any English statesman could
have ever imagined that representative and irresponsible government
could be successfully combined." To suppose that such a system would
work well there "implied a belief that French Canadians have enjoyed
representative institutions for half a century without acquiring any of
the characteristics of a free people; that Englishmen renounce every
political opinion and feeling when they enter a colony, or that the spirit
of Anglo-Saxon freedom is utterly changed and weakened among those
who are transplanted across the Atlantic."
No one who studies carefully the history of responsible government
from the appearance of Lord Durham's report and Lord John Russell's
despatches of 1839 until the coming of Lord Elgin to Canada in 1847,
can fail to see that there was always a doubt in the minds of the
imperial authorities--a doubt more than once actually expressed in the
instructions to the governors--whether it was possible to work the new
system on the basis of a governor directly responsible to the parent
state and at the same time acting under the advice of ministers directly
responsible to the colonial parliament. Lord John Russell had been
compelled to recognize the fact that it was not possible to govern
Canada by the old methods of administration--that it was necessary to
adopt a new colonial policy which would give a larger measure of
political freedom to the people and ensure greater harmony between the
executive government and the popular assemblies. Mr. Poulett
Thomson, afterwards Lord Sydenham, was appointed governor-general
with the definite objects of completing the union of the Canadas and
inaugurating a more liberal system of colonial administration. As he
informed the legislature of Upper Canada immediately after his arrival,

in his anxiety to obtain its consent to the union, he had received "Her
Majesty's commands to administer the government of these provinces
in accordance with the well understood wishes and interests of the
people." When the legislature of the united provinces met for the first
time, he communicated two despatches in which the colonial secretary
stated emphatically that, "Her Majesty had no desire to maintain any
system or policy among her North American subjects which opinion
condemns," and that there was "no surer way of gaining the