e right
of taxation, had been used for the coercion of the American Colonies,
and that exactly the same arguments, founded on the same inversion of
cause and effect, were used to defend the coercion of Canada. There,
also, the Fitzgibbonist doctrine of revenge and oppression by a majority
vested with power was freely used, even by Lord John Russell, in his
speech of March 6, 1837, and of December 22 in the same year, when he
spoke of the "deadly animosity" of the French and "of the wickedness of
abandoning the British to proscription, loss of property, and probably
of lives." He ignored the fact that the same state of anarchy had been
reached in uni-racial Upper Canada as in bi-racial Canada, and that the
"loyalists" in both cases were not only in the same state of unreasoning
alarm for their vested rights, but, in the spirit of the Ulstermen of
that day and ever since, were threatening to "cut the painter," and
declare for annexation to the United States if their ascendancy were not
sustained by the Home Government. Then, as to-day, the ascendant
minority were supported in their threats by a section of British
politicians. Lord Stanley's speech of March 8, 1837, where he boasted
that the "loyal minority of wealth, education, and enterprise" would
protect themselves, and, if necessary, call in the United States, is
being matched in speeches of to-day. In all the debates of the period it
is interesting to see the ignorance which prevailed about the troubles
in Upper Canada. The racial question in Lower Canada, owing to the
analogy with Ireland, was seized on to the exclusion of the underlying
and far more important political question in both Provinces.

Against the policy of the two great political parties in England the
little group of Radicals struggled manfully, and in the long run not in
vain, although for years they had to submit to insult and contumely in
their patriotic efforts to expose the vices of the colonial
administration and to avert the rebellion they foresaw in the Canadas.
What they feared, with only too good cause, was that the American and
Irish precedents would be followed, and war made for the coercion of the
Canadas, to be followed, if successful, by a still more despotic form of
government, which would in its turn provoke a new revolt. Rather than
that such a catastrophe should take place, they went, rightly, to the
extreme point of saying that an "amicable separation" should be
arranged, maintaini