Tone, Emmett, and Smith O'Brien, who pressed their efforts to the point
of violence. Mackenzie and Papineau, who took to arms, succeeded in
their aim.

The crisis in Lower Canada was precipitated, and, indeed, provoked, by a
challenge thrown out in March, 1837, from the British House of Commons,
where, at Lord John Russell's instance, the Ten Resolutions were agreed
to, which amounted in effect to a denial of all the colonial claims and
a declaration of war upon those who made them. Papineau had to eat his
words or make them good, and he chose the latter course. His
insurrection was arranged in concert with that of the Upper Province,
broke out simultaneously in the winter of 1837, and was extinguished
with little difficulty. The men who made it suffered. Canada and the
Empire profited. Both Papineau and Mackenzie, following the precedent of
Wolfe Tone with France, endeavoured with little success to engage
American sympathy and the aid of her army, though Canada had as little
desire for American rule as Ireland had for French rule.

Let us remark, as an interesting fact for those who imagine that
Irishmen are always instinctively on the side of turbulence and
disorder, that the Irish immigrants who poured into Canada at the
average annual rate of 20,000 in the years--terrible years in
Ireland--preceding the rebellions,[23] acted much as we might expect. In
the Lower Province, following the lead of the French Catholic hierarchy,
they declared in November, 1837, against Papineau's party, and thus
strengthened the hands of the Government when the crisis approached.[24]
In the Upper Province Catholics were strongly on the side of reform, but
took no part in the rebellion. Orangemen in both Provinces, as we might
guess, sided as strongly with the ascendancy parties, but colonial air
seems to have taken some of the theological venom out of Orangeism. If
Charles Buller is to be trusted, some Catholics joined the societies in
Upper Canada, which were more Tory than religious, and the healths of
William of Orange and the Catholic Bishop Macdonnell were drunk in
impartial amity.[25]

In the meantime, three of the four outlying Provinces of North
America--Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island--where the
same form of Constitution prevailed as in Upper and Lower Canada, had
been passing through a similar phase of misgovernment and agitation
during the previous thirty years. Each suffered under a little
monopolist a