=Source.=—_Report on the Affairs of British North America._
By Lord Durham. Printed for the House of Commons, 1839.
The lengthened and various discussions which had for some years been
carried on between the contending parties in the Colony, and the
representations which had been circulated at home, had produced in
mine, as in most minds in England, a very erroneous view of the parties
at issue in Lower Canada. The quarrel which I was sent to heal had been
a quarrel between the executive government and the popular branch of
the legislature. The latter body had, apparently, been contending for
popular rights and free government. The executive government had been
defending the prerogative of the Crown and the institutions which, in
accordance with the principles of the British Constitution, had been
established as checks on the unbridled exercise of popular power.... I
expected to find a contest between a government and a people. I found
two nations warring in the bosom of a single state; I found a struggle,
not of principles, but of races; and I perceived that it would be idle
to attempt any amelioration of laws or institutions until we could
first succeed in terminating the deadly animosity that now separates
the inhabitants of Lower Canada into the hostile divisions of French
and English.... To conceive the incompatibility of the two races in
Canada it is not enough that we should picture to ourselves a community
composed of equal proportions of French and English. We must bear in
mind what kind of French and English they are that are brought in
contact, and in what proportions they meet.
The institutions of France during the period of the colonisation of
Canada were, perhaps, more than those of any other nation, calculated
to repress the intelligence and freedom of the great mass of the
people. These institutions followed the Canadian colonist across the
Atlantic. The same central, ill-organised, unimproving, and repressive
despotism extended over him. Not merely was he allowed no voice in the
government of his province or the choice of his rulers, but he was not
even permitted to associate with his neighbours for the regulation of
those municipal affairs which the central authority neglected under
the pretext of managing. He obtained his land on a tenure singularly
calculated to promote his immediate comfort and to check his desire to
better his condition; he was placed at once in a life of constant and
unvarying labour, of great material comfort, and feudal dependence. The
ecclesiastical authority to which he had been accustomed established
its institutions around him, and the priest continued to exercise
over him his ancient influence. No general provision was made for
education; and as its necessity was not appreciated, the colonist made
no attempt to repair the negligence of his government. It need not
surprise us that, under such circumstances, a race of men habituated
to the incessant labour of a rude and unskilled agriculture, and
habitually fond of social enjoyments, congregated together in rural
communities, occupying portions of the wholly unappropriated soil,
sufficient to provide each family with material comforts far beyond
their ancient means, or almost their conceptions; that they made little
advance beyond the first progress in comfort, which the bounty of the
soil absolutely forced upon them; that under the same institutions
they remained the same uninstructed, inactive, unprogressive people.
Along the alluvial banks of the St. Lawrence and its tributaries they
have cleared two or three strips of land, cultivated them in the
worst method of small farming, and established a series of continuous
villages, which give the country of the seignories the appearance of
a never-ending street. Besides the cities which were the seats of
government, no towns were established. The rude manufactures of the
country were, and still are, carried on in the cottage by the family
of the habitant; and an insignificant proportion of the population
derived their subsistence from the scarcely discernible commerce of
the province. The mass of the community exhibited in the New World the
characteristics of the peasantry of Europe. Society was dense; and even
the wants and the poverty which the pressure of population occasions in
the Old World became not to be wholly unknown. They clung to ancient
prejudices, ancient customs, and ancient laws, not from any strong
sense of their beneficial effects, but with the unreasoning tenacity
of an uneducated and unprogressive people. Nor were they wanting
in the virtues of a simple and industrious life, or in those which
common consent attributes to the nation from which they spring. The
temptations which, in other states of society, lead to offences against
property, and the passions which prompt to violence, were little known
amongst them. They are mild and kindly, frugal, industrious, and
honest, very sociable, cheerful, and hospitable, and distinguished
for a courtesy and real politeness, which pervades every class of
society. The conquest has changed them but little. The higher classes
and the inhabitants of the towns have adopted some English customs and
feelings, but the continued negligence of the British Government left
the mass of the people without any of the institutions which would have
elevated them in freedom and civilisation. It has left them without
the education and without the institutions of local self-government
that would have assimilated their character and habits, in the easiest
and best way, to those of the Empire of which they became a part. They
remain an old and stationary society in a new and progressive world....
The common opinion, however, that all classes of the Canadians are
equally ignorant is perfectly erroneous. The piety and benevolence
of the early possessors of the country founded in the seminaries
that exist in different parts of the province institutions of which
the funds and activity have long been directed to the promotion
of education. Seminaries and colleges have been by these bodies
established in the cities and in other central points. The education
given in these establishments greatly resembles the kind given in the
English public schools, though it is rather more varied. It is entirely
in the hands of the Catholic clergy. The number of pupils in these
establishments is estimated altogether at about a thousand, and they
turn out every year, as far as I could ascertain, between two and three
hundred young men thus educated. Almost all of these are members of the
family of some habitant.... Thus the persons of most education in every
village belong to the same families and the same station in life as the
illiterate habitants.... To this singular state of things I attribute
the extraordinary influence of the Canadian demagogues. Over the class
of persons by whom the peasantry are thus led the Government has not
acquired, or ever laboured to acquire, influence; its members have been
thrown into opposition by the system of exclusion long prevalent in
the colony, and it is by their agency that the leaders of the Assembly
have been enabled hitherto to move as one mass, in whatever direction
they thought proper, the simple and ductile population of the country.
The entire neglect of education by the Government has thus more than
any other cause contributed to render the people ungovernable, and to
invest the agitator with the power which he wields against the laws and
the public tranquillity.
Among this people the progress of emigration has of late years
introduced an English population exhibiting the characteristics with
which we are familiar as those of the most enterprising of every
class of our countrymen. The circumstances of the early colonial
administration excluded the native Canadian from power, and vested all
offices of trust and emolument in the hands of strangers of English
origin. The highest posts in the law were confided to the same class of
persons. The functionaries of the civil government, together with the
officers of the army, composed a kind of privileged class, occupying
the first place in the community, and excluding the higher class of
the natives from society, as well as from the government of their own
country. It was not till within a very few years, as was testified by
persons who had seen much of the country, that this society of civil
and military functionaries ceased to exhibit towards the higher order
of Canadians an exclusiveness of demeanour which was more revolting to
a sensitive and polite people than the monopoly of power and profit.
Nor was this national favouritism discontinued until after repeated
complaints and an angry contest, which had excited passions that
concession could not allay. The races had become enemies ere a tardy
justice was extorted; and even then the Government discovered a mode
of distributing its patronage among the Canadians which was quite as
offensive to that people as their previous exclusion:
It was not long after the conquest that another and larger class of
English settlers began to enter the province. English capital was
attracted to Canada by the vast quantity and valuable nature of the
exportable produce of the country and the great facilities for commerce
presented by the natural means of internal intercourse. The ancient
trade of the country was conducted on a much larger and more profitable
scale, and new branches of industry were explored. The active and
regular habits of the English capitalist drove out of all the more
profitable kinds of industry their inert and careless competitors
of the French race; but in respect of the greater part (almost the
whole) of the commerce and manufactures of the country the English
cannot be said to have encroached on the French, for, in fact, they
created employments and profits which had not previously existed....
The English farmer carried with him the experience and habits of the
most improved agriculture in the world. He settled himself in the
townships bordering on the seigniories, and brought a fresh soil and
improved cultivation to compete with the worn-out and slovenly farm of
the habitant. He often took the very farm which the Canadian settler
had abandoned, and by superior management made that a source of profit
which had only impoverished his predecessor. The ascendency which an
unjust favouritism had contributed to give to the English race in
the government and the legal profession, their own superior energy,
skill, and capital secured to them in every branch of industry. They
have developed the resources of the country; they have constructed or
improved its means of communication; they have created its internal
and foreign commerce. The entire wholesale and a large portion of the
retail trade of the province, with the most profitable and flourishing
farms, are now in the hands of this numerical minority of the
population.... The two races thus distinct have been brought into
the same community under circumstances which rendered their contact
inevitably productive of collision. The difference of language from the
first kept them asunder. It is not anywhere a virtue of the English
race to look with complacency on any manners, customs, or laws which
appear strange to them; accustomed to form a high estimate of their own
superiority, they take no pains to conceal from others their contempt
and intolerance of their usages. They found the French Canadians filled
with an equal amount of national pride—a sensitive but inactive pride,
which disposes that people not to resent insult, but rather to keep
aloof from those who would keep them under. The French could not but
feel the superiority of English enterprise; they could not shut their
eyes to their success in every undertaking in which they came into
contact and to the constant superiority which they were acquiring. They
looked upon their rivals with alarm, with jealousy, and finally with
hatred. The English repaid them with a scorn which soon also assumed
the same form of hatred. The French complained of the arrogance and
injustice of the English; the English accused the French of the vices
of a weak and conquered people, and charged them with meanness and
perfidy.