[7] Writing a reminiscence of Montreal from 1818 to 1868. Mr. Thomas Storrow Brown has the following allusion to 1837-8: “Mixing much with these French Canadians, I became interested in the cause. I thought the stipulation of the capitulation had not been fulfilled to a ceded people and when grown to manhood a sense of justice, that generous inheritance from a British ancestry, urged me to a knight errancy in their battle that terminated in the overthrow of my own fortunes and that after years of hard struggle to regain a lost position, all for no thanks or even recognition of service.”
CHAPTER XVIII
PROCLAMATION OF THE UNION
1841
HOME RULE FOR THE COLONY
THE DURHAM REPORT—THE RESOLUTIONS AT THE CHATEAU DE RAMEZAY—LORD SYDENHAM—THE PROCLAMATION OF UNION AT MONTREAL—RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT AT LAST.
Durham was wisely lenient with the political prisoners waiting for trial at Montreal, but his injudicious step in securing confessions, through an intermediary, from Doctor Nelson and his companions—by inducing them to place themselves at his discretion, and then his condemnation of them without trial to be transported to Bermuda, forbidding them to return under pain of high treason, and his extraordinary ordinance declaring that Papineau and the fifteen others who had escaped and had neither confessed nor been found guilty should suffer death if they returned to Lower Canada—was held in the English parliament, on the initiative of his enemy, Lord Brougham, to be utterly subversive of the principles of English colonial law. Accordingly his ordinance was disallowed; hence his resignation and return to England. He died about eighteen months later, a broken man. But he did much for Canada and his famous report stands out a masterpiece of statesmanship. It is to the credit of Adam Thom, of Montreal, to have been associated in its compilation as Durham’s secretary for the purpose.
This report of Durham has had far reaching effect. It was based on a study of the situation. He found an acute political association as follows: