whom accompanied the new Governor-General to Canada,
and who are generally believed to have inspired, if they did not
actually write, the greater part of the celebrated Report which became
the Magna Charta of the self-governing Colonies of the Empire.

A word about the events which ended in the publication of this Report.
Durham reached Canada at the end of May, 1838, and in November was
recalled in disgrace for exceeding--strange as it seems!--the almost
absolute powers temporarily entrusted to him. He was an extraordinary
mixture of a despot and a democrat, an extreme Radical in politics, an
autocrat in manners, as vain and tactless as he was generous and
sincere, making bitter enemies and warm friends in turn. He began by
winning and ended by estranging almost every class in both Provinces of
Canada, and returned to England to all appearances a spent and
extinguished meteor. There is some truth, perhaps, in Greville's
observation that, had he been "plain John Lambton," he would never have
been chosen for Canada. It is certain that those who sent him there
little dreamed of the consequences of their action. Lord Melbourne, the
Prime Minister, in a letter to the Queen, charged him with magnifying
the Canadian troubles "in order to give greater _eclat_ to his own
departure."[28] Still, he did his work of investigation faithfully, and
formed his conclusions sanely, and there were plain men of greater
ability at his elbow in the persons of Wakefield and Buller, by whose
advice he was wise enough to be guided. All opinion was against him when
news came of his recall, and even Roebuck was denouncing him in the
_Spectator_ for his autocratic excesses; but a brilliant article by John
Stuart Mill in the _Westminster Review_, pleading for time and
confidence, arrested the tide of obloquy.

Durham's long Report, and the events which followed it, ought to be
studied carefully by every voter, however lowly, who has a voice in
deciding the fate of Irish Home Rule. After an exhaustive discussion of
the causes of disorder in Canada, Durham made two recommendations, the
first of incalculable importance, and proved by subsequent experience to
be right; the second of minor consequence, and proved by subsequent
experience to be wrong.

The first was that responsible government should be inaugurated both in
Canada and in the Maritime Provinces of North America, whose
constitutional troubles Durham also discussed. His proposal was that