The Sun.
London, England, 1838-11-22 00:00:00

specimen of presumption and incapacity was making the
whole British population f both Canadas join with the
French Canadians in denouncing the principle of distant
colonial government, and the very officials talk familiarly of
a separation, was it nothing to show to Canada that there
was one British statesman who could understand her
Wants and feel for her grievn.nces—that from any councils
in the mother country in which he had influence she might
expect justice—and that the man, on whose constancy and
magnanimity so much depended, was not throwing up his
mission from personal disgust, but returning to England
because the manceuvres or his enemies had changed the
place where he could servo them from Quebec to the
House of Lords.

" Viewed in this light, it seems to us that the proclama-
tion, with all in it that has been inveighed against—the un-
grudging aeknowledgrnew of past misgovernment and pre-
sent abuses—the disclosure of his generous schemes for the
improvement of the laws and administration, and for confer-
ring On an united people,' not a restricted, but a more ex-
tensive enjoyment of fro notl responsible government'—so
far from needing an apoiogy, points out Lord Durham, be-
yond almost anything else which he has done, as the fit
leader for the great Reform party of the empire. The pro-
clamation was the necessary complement and winding up of
his short administration—tii:t explanation which was due to
the people of Canada for the past, And the best legacy which
he could leave to them for the future. So far from being
inflammatory, it was, in all probability, the only kind of ad-
dress to the people which, in the then state of men's minds,
could have had any healing effect,
" As we have said nil along, the main end of his admi-
nistration was the reconciliation of the two parties, by ex-
hibiting to both, embodi,d in a series of measures, a policy
which, by satisfying the just claims of both, should convince
them that there was no necessity for their being enemies—
that both might hope fer justice under a Government
knowing no distinction between them. If thiss the one
thing needful, was now debarred him by the mother coun-
try, was it not the next best thing, since he could not leave
healing measures, to leave heeling principles behind him ?
Next to doing the noble things spoken of in the proclama-
tion, to point them out as fit to be done was the thing most
calculated—was the one thing calculated—to.restore har-
mony in the colony. If the policy there chanted but is
that on which alene a reconciliation of parties and races
can be founded, then, since he could not give them the
hope of such a policy ; in giving them the idea of it, ae a
possible thing, as the thing, which they should strive for,
instead of separation, or the mere predominance of their own
side ; and which, as for as his inflnence reaches, he will yet
help them to obtain.

" These considerations are still further strengthened if
we reflect in what position the disallowance of the ordi-
nance found Lord Durham with respect to the French
Canadians. He had es yet done nothing to redress what
they deemed their grlevanees. His plans for their benefit,
like all his other plans of general improvement, were yet
unfinished ; and they were a people too little accustomed
to good treatment from their rulers to give their confidence
until earned by actual ly,nefits. Lord Durham had done
enough to convince the more intelligent and experienced
people of the United St ~tes—not enough to convince the
French Canadians. 01 tit~ amnesty, qualified by the ordi-
nance, they knPw, ilZtt at first what to think ; but when
they learnt from the dispatch laid before Parliament
that Sir John Colborne and the heads of what is
called the British party' had approved of it, from that
moment (we know the fat_A,t) the French, though previously
undecided, deemed it their part to disapprove of it.
This was mere prejudice in them ; if Lord Durham
could carry the British party with him in clemency
to the French, the greater was the credit due to him ;
and having to give an account of his measure in a quarter
where lenity was more likely to be imputed to it than se-
verity, he naturally availed himself of the fact that it had
obtained the acquiescence of those whose error was not
likely to be on the lenient side. But when we consider
how the French Canadians have seen Governor after Go-
vernor become the tool of the officials, and how seldom the
two parties have concurred in approving of the same mea-
sures, we cannot woraer that a Governor who had done
but one great act, and that act in concert, as it now ap-
peared, with the dominant faction, should not yet have
made much progress in attaGhing the other party to his
Government.

" If, then, Lord Durham had left matters in this state ;
if he had departed leaving no explanation to the Cana-
dians of his principles and of his ulterior purposes,
he would have gone away without doing a single act,
which could prove to the French population that there
existed a British Statesman willing to redress their griev-
ances, and without giving a single lesson to the English
party of what was due to the French. We maintain that
surrounded as he was at the last by the English inhabitants
—leaving the country amidst the mingled sound of their
plaudits and their lamentations, while the bulk of the
French Canadians kept sullenly aloof—he had, from all
these causes, an appearance of being the man of a party,
of giving his countenance to the exclusive principles of a
class, which appearance he was bound to throw off—from
which it would have been criminal in him not to have taken
the most direct means of fr. eing himself. And we foretel
that his having done so will yet be found to be the greatest
thing yet done to facilitate the settlement of Canada on a
basis just, and, therefore, capable of being permanent.
The whole English populaton are now committed, as far as
the strongest public demonstrations can commit them, to
the policy of a man wh ) has told them unambiguously and
minutely, and in a manner admitting of no misunderstand-
ing, that his plans involve full justice to the French Cana-
dians. They have invested with their confidence, they have
acknowledged as their virtual representative, the man who
is identified with the principle of the conciliation instead
of coercion, of equal justice to all instead of the predomi-
nance of the few over the many. The English population
has stood up openly as a distinct body from the jobbing offi-
cial clique which has hitherto assumed to be its representa-
tive ; and it may be hoped that the settlement-of Canada,
which they will now exert themselves for, will be conceived
under the inspiration of Lord Durham rather than that of
the late Legislative Council."
This is very ingenious, no doubt ; but we are much mis-
taken if Lord Durham do not by this time wish that he had
not put his enemies in the House of Lords so fully in pos-
session of his case as he has done in that proclamation.
From the moment of its appearance the Tories had their
cue ; they made in the Times a dead set at his
Lordship, and he had so ingeniously contrived mat-
ters as to divide the Liberals at the very mo-
ment be was making it a matter of life or death
with the Tories to crush him if they possibly could.
But on this subject we will say no more for the present.
As to the effect to be produced on the French Canadians
by the proclamation, the writer loses sight of the important
fact, that what he deems improvements are precisely what
will draw down on him the hostility of the French Cana-
dians. All that Lord Durham proposes runs counter, as
we have said, to their most cherished illusions. When
reason is against a man, as old Hobbs said, he will only be
the more against reason. We have played too long in Ca-
nada at the game of cutting blocks with razors. The
French Canadians must be made good British subjects in
spite of themselves.—Morning Chronicle.
The intelligence brought by the Garrick, from New
York, is not in itself of the most satisfactory or tranquil-
lizing nature, and somehow or other it appears to us, from
certain correspondence, purporting to be " private," and
from certain remarks thrust into the Ministerial News-
papers, that, as Brother Jonathan would say, it " com-
ports" with the views of the Whig Ministers rather to
make the most of the Cmadian troubles now existing, and
thus to back up the deiolating prospects described by Lord
Durham as likely to follow from his resignation, than to
disparage or undervalue either. Let any discerning per-
son look through the columns of the Treasury Journals,
morning and evening, for the last ten days, and then say
whether or not there is a palpable wish to increase whatever
uneasiness may prevail with regard to the actual state of
Canada. The writers for Downing-street are more con-
cerned "than surprised." We comprehend the meaning of
all this system of manceuvre, for which two motives may
be assigned-Ist, an anxiety, quite in character for the
Whigs, to prepare the public mind for such a surrender of
the rights of England in the settlement of the " boundary
question" as would revolt the pride and honour of every
man in the community, unless it were made under circum-
, stancess pressing enough, and desperate enough, to furnish
some sort of apology for concessions otherwise too humi-
liating and disgraceful to be borne. It would in that case
be the obvious interest of Ministers to exaggerate and mul-
tiply to the utmost the dangers wherewith we are sur-
rounded, both from an insurrection of rebel Frenchmen,
and from an auxiliary invasion of lawless United States-
men, that when a treaty for territorial cession, however dis-
advantageous or discreditable, came to be laid before the
country, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs might be able
to apostrophise Parliament a ith a—" See how we were
pushed and harassed on all sides ; how could I do
more ?" It is indeed believed] in well-informed circles that
a shifty patchwork d, scrif,tior; of bargain has been made, or
a proposal tendered and acquiesced in, to the effect that a
portion of the territory of New Brunswick—that which is
acknowledged and recognized by the Americans themselves
to be British soil, shdl be transferred to the state of Maine,
as the price of our future freedom from molestation on the
subject of that which is, but which never ought to have
been, " disputed," and which, according to the equitable
Great Britain as rightfully as Lancashire or
Yorkshire. interpretation of the spirit of the treaty signed in 1783,
belongs t o
We are not less unwilling to inflict a wrong
upon the United States, or
to withhold the redress of a
real injury from our lar.l we should be to tolerate
one at their hands. Bat 11,1,-: Instance of the boundary,
it is our conscientious persuasion, that the spirit and meaning
of the treaty of iudependence in 1783 left England fairly en-