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

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

That there are thousands of individuals in the border
States enrolled, and ready on the slightest encouragement
to advance into Canada, is, we believe, quite certain ; but
we must again repeat, it by no means follows that any of
the men so enrolled will ever cross the lines. The most
reckless of the desperadoes who are ready to join the
French, will wait to see whether they can matte any stand
against the armed force ; for they will not be so foolhardy
as to advance on the mere chance of the insurrection at-
taining consistency in some quarter or other. If, then, the
dispositions of the Government, aided by the British popu-
lation, be so judicious that the French arc not suffered so
to strengthen themselves on any point as to afford some-
thing like a reasonable prospect to the bands in the
United States that they would meet with co-operation
in Canada, the insurrection will be crushed in the
bud. We are inclined to think that, notwithstand-
ing all the plans and preparations, there really will be
no insurrection. If, however, the armed force in the
province were not so great as it is, the chances cer-
tainly are that the French would make the attempt now.
They are aware that if they do not achieve their indepen-
dence and separate nationality now they must renounce the
hope for ever. They know that having openly avowed that
under the forms of representative Government they were
aiming at independence, the British Government must of
necessity either at once abandon the province or take im-
mediate steps for making the colony thoroughly British.
In an article in the forthcoming number of the London and
Westminster Review, which we have received, and in which
we recognise a writer deservedly held in high esteem,
the conduct of Lord Durham and his opponents is
discussed at considerable length. The reviewer has,
however, in our opinion, been much more successful
in justifying the steps taken by Lord Durham on
arriving in Canada, than sagacious in the views which
he takes of the Canadian question. We agree with
him that the measures of Lord Durham, which were on
the point of completion when his career was cut short,
were of first-rate importance ; but allowing that " though
the leaders of parties have generally unworthy objects in
view, their followers, as it has often been said, have always
honest ones," the followers may be very prejudiced as well
as very honest, and " the large and solid schemes of colo-
nization and internal improvement " entertained by Lord
Durham, struck such a blow at one of the prejudices most
fondly cherished by the French Canadians, that they
ought to be considered as a separate nation, entitled to
maintain their " institutions, their laws, and their lan-
guage," in their province, that they could never have been
made palateable to them. The views of the French
and English colonists were so opposed to each other,
that it is impossible to adopt any course acceptable
to both. It was exceedingly proper in Lord Durham to
act towards all parties in a spirit of conciliation and
forbearance ; but we hold it to be one of the wildest delu-
sions ever entertained to suppose that Lord Durham, or
any other individual, could have obtained the support of
the French Canadians one moment after his plans of re-
form became known. Lord Durham is a man of too de-
cided a character to suppose, like Lord Gosford, that his
mission was to say fine things merely to the two parties ;
and as his measures, we really believe, were substantive,
the very first could have no other effect than to array
against him the " nation Canadienne." The writer alludes
to some of the means by which he supposes Lord Durham
might have gained over the French Canadians :
" Passing now from what is known of Lord Durham's
projects to what is only believed, to the scheme, so
far as yet matured, which he is understood to have
bad in view for the future constitution of the colony ; this,
too, so far as anything is known of it, is constructed
upon the same great principle of impartial justice ;
the removal of all real evils ; the satisfaction of the
just demands of either side. The French sought
to be freed from the incubus of a Legislative Council, a
second chamber, representing neither the English nor the
French population, neither the colony nor the mother coun-
try, but possessing a veto on every proposal emanating from
either, and which it actually exercised against measures
equally desired by both. From this grievance it is under-
stood that Lord Durham was prepared to relieve them.*
The English complained that the French of Lower Canada,
by their majority in the House of Assembly, possessed a.
veto on all measures which concerned the five colonies col-
lectively ; that the navigation of the St. Lawrence, the
roads and canals, the post-office and custom regulations, of
all British America, were under the control of a portion of
the people of one colony, who had no goodwill, it was af-
firmed, either to commerce or colonization, and who, aim-
ing at a separate nationality, were rather hostile than
friendly to the improvement of the purely British provinces.
Lord -Durham's plan took such affairs entirely out of their
cognizance, and placed them and all matters of common
concernment under a federal body, to be chosen by all
the provinces, and subject in the same manner, with the
local legislatures, to the veto of the mother country.
This project, the principle of which so exactly met the
difficulties of the case, that every one who has sincerely
applied his mind to an amicable adjustment has hit upon
it—that for a moment it united the suffrages of Mr. Roe-
buck and of Lord John Russell—had the further advan-
tage that it was the only legitimate means of destroying
the so-much-talked-of-nationality of the French Cana-
dians. It would compel them to consider themselves, not
as a separate family, but an integral portion of a larger
body ; it would merge their nationality of race in a na-
tionality of country ; instead of French Canadians it would
make them British Americans ; and this without bringing
into their house and home, into their social and domestic
relations, the customs of another people (which, whether
practised on all of them or on a part, would be one of the
last excesses of despotism), or establishing, as hitherto,
over not only their necks but those of the English popu-
lation, a petty oligarchy of the latter.

• • • • • • • • •
" On the very day preceding that which brought the
news of his retirement, the chief newspaper organ, at once
of the Ministry and of the English Canadian party, ful-
minated an anathema against his plan of a federal Legis-
lature ; and it is some consolation for the abrupt close of
his government when we see that, however wisely his plans
might have been formed, he would not have been suffered
to carry them."
With all due submission to the writer in the London and
Westminster Review, Lis federal plan is liable to the objec-
tion of being impracticable. His statement of the objects
of concernment common to the different colonies is
founded on defective information. Two only of the co-
lonies, Upper and Lower Canada, are so connected
together by the St. Lawrence that they can be said
to have objects of common concernment of such mo-
ment as he describes ; and it would be impossible, as we
have already stated, in the present state of the colonies,
and for a long time to come, to unite all the colonies by
any other bond than the common connection with the
parent State. But we never supposed that Lord
Durham himself ever seriously countenanced any such
plan of federation ; and we are sure, at all events, that
the moment he fairly applied his mind to it he would see
the objections to which it was open. It was the business
of Lord Durham to listen to.all manner of projects ; and
we need hardly observe many a great man receives credit
with projectors for favouring their nostrums merely because
they do not at once reject them. The apology for Lord
Durham's proclamation is ingenious, and as it is proper
that all parties should be heard, and we have already ex-
pressed our own sentiments distinctly on the subject, we
shall allow the London and Westminster Reviewer to de-
fend the proclamation :
" We wonder that those who are in so much haste to call
the proclamation inflammatory, do not ask themselves what
there was for it to inflame ? Whether all upon whom the
topics introduced into it could have any inflammatory effect
were not already roused to such a pitch of indignation that
the calm though feeling manner in which their senti-
ments were responded to by the Governor-General was
more calculated to temper than to add fuel to the
fire ? It can hardly be supposed that those who
hanged Lords Brougham and Melbourne in effigy, and
who voted the addresses and passed the resolutions of
which such multitudes have reached us, waited to form
their opinion on tae affront to Lord Durham until he told
them that it was one. His address was no appeal' to
them ; their sentence was already pronounced. The whole
scope and object of the proclamation has been carelessly
misapprehended. It was not a complaint : there was no
more complaint in it than was unavoidable. Its purpose,
its declared purpose, was to explain the reasons of his re-
tirement. All the addresses, all the resolutions, were soli-
citations to him to retain the government. The proclama-
tion was his answer.
" If the only use of making this explanation had been to
gratify personal feelings, by guarding his motives from mis-
construction, then, as the
re would have been no public good
r o
to be attained, private sentiments, however creditable,
might have found a more appropriateasa
ex
private channels. But it was not mere matter
through
of u g
indi-
vidual feeling that it was important for him to retain the
confidence of all among the Canadian people who had be-
stowed it upon him. Thongh
b nn longer their Governor, his
connection with them was not to cease ; upon him it was to
devolve to watch over their interests in England
he was the
only man in the kingdom of first rate politicalinfluence, the
only man ever thought of as a Minister, or as a party
who did not at that moment stand convicted, in the minds,
of those whom he was addressing, of the grossest ignorance
of all the circumstances of the colony, and the most pre-
sumptuous incapacity in legislating for it. When this last
• It has been recently asserted that this part of Lord Dur-
ham's plan has been given up. we should most deeply la
went such an abandonment, and are convinced that it could
only have been thought of, if at all, as a concession to sonic
imaginary necessity. But the statement does not rest upon
authority which entitles it to any credence.