ENGLISH CATHEDRAL
The proclamation published immediately on Lord Durham's arrival in Canada gave promise of fair dealing to all parties. "I invite from you," he assures them, "the most free, unreserved communications. I beg you to consider me as a friend and arbitrator, ready at all times to listen to your wishes, complaints, and grievances. If you, on your side, will abjure all party and sectarian animosities, and unite with me in the blessed work of peace and harmony, I feel assured that I can lay the foundations of such a system of government as will protect the rights and interests of all classes....
"In one province the most deplorable events have rendered the suspension of its representative constitution, unhappily, a matter of necessity; and the supreme power has devolved upon me. The great responsibility which is thereby imposed on me, and the arduous nature of the functions which I have to discharge, naturally make me most anxious to hasten the arrival of that period when the executive power shall again be surrounded by all the constitutional checks of free, liberal, and British institutions." [47]
The problem to be solved is stated and partly solved in the famous report on the affairs of Canada subsequently published by the High Commissioner—perhaps the most remarkable document in British colonial history. It showed the keenest insight into knotted complications, and at the same time it made practical and far-seeing suggestions, which reduced the problem to its simplest terms, and prepared the way for a legislative union upon a sovereign scale, and with a provincial autonomy having the happiest results.
"I expected," he declared, "to find a contest between a government and a people; I found two nations warring in the bosom of a single state."
Nor could any lasting reform be accomplished unless the hostile divisions of Lower Canada were first reconciled. As far as the French population were concerned, he found an explanation of their antagonism, not so much in their unjust exclusion from political power, as in the grudging and churlish patronage with which privileges were one by one conceded; while, on the other hand, the Loyalists were intolerant to a degree, regarding every favour shown to their rivals as a slight put upon themselves, and professing principles which were thus summed up by one of their leaders: "Lower Canada must be English at the expense, if necessary, of not being British." Elsewhere Lord Durham confesses the overbearing character of Anglo-Saxon manners, especially offensive to a proud and sensitive people, who showed their resentment, not by active reprisal, but by a strange and silent reserve. The same confession might still be made concerning a section of English-speaking Canadians, who seem to consider it a personal grievance that French Canadians should speak the French language. Lord Durham would probably have reminded them that conquest does not mean that birthright, language, and custom, spirit and racial pride, are spoils and confiscations of the conqueror.
