med at securing political power for their own race, while
in Upper Canada there was no race problem, and the great struggle was
for independence of official control and in all essential matters for
government by the people. It may be doubted whether at this time it
would have been safe to give these small communities complete
self-government. But this a clamorous radical element demanded
insistently, and the issue was the chief one in Canada for half a
century.

But before this issue matured war broke out between Great Britain and
the United States in 1812 from causes due chiefly to Napoleon's
continental policy. The war seemed to furnish a renewed opportunity to
annex Canada to the American Union, and Canada became the chief theatre
of conflict. The struggle was most vigorous on the Niagara frontier. But
in the end the American invasion failed and the treaty made at Ghent in
1814 left the previous status unaltered.

Lord Durham.

In 1837 a few French Canadians in Lower Canada, led by Louis Joseph
Papineau (q.v.), took up arms with the wild idea of establishing a
French republic on the St Lawrence. In the same year William Lyon
Mackenzie (q.v.) led a similar armed revolt in Upper Canada against the
domination of the ruling officialdom called, with little reason, the
"Family Compact." Happening, as these revolts did, just at the time of
Queen Victoria's accession, they attracted wide attention, and in 1838
the earl of Durham (q.v.) was sent to govern Canada and report on the
affairs of British North America. Clothed as he was with large powers,
he undertook in the interests of leniency and reconciliation to banish,
without trial, some leaders of the rebellion in Lower Canada. For this
reason he was censured at home and he promptly resigned, after spending
only five months in the country. But his _Report_, published in the
following year, is a masterly survey of the situation and included
recommendations that profoundly influenced the later history of Canada.
He recommended the union of the two Canadian provinces at once, the
ultimate union of all British North America and the granting to this
large state of full self-government. The French element he thought a
menace to Canada's future, and partly for this reason he desired all the
provinces to unite so that the British element should be dominant.

To carry out Lord Durham's policy the British government passed in 1840
an Act of Union joining Upper and Lower Cana