the
Governor should govern in accordance with advice given by Colonial
Ministers in whom the popular Assembly reposed confidence, and who,
through that Assembly, were in touch with popular opinion; for it was to
the strangulation of popular opinion that Durham attributed all the
disorders and disasters of the past. This recommendation was eventually
adopted, not in the Act subsequently passed, but by instructions to the
Governors concerned; instructions which were first interpreted in the
full liberal spirit by Lord Elgin in 1847. The Maritime Provinces at
various dates and under various Governors received full responsible
government by 1854. Responsible government proved the salvation of
Canada and the Empire, as it would have proved, if given the chance, the
salvation of Ireland and a source of immensely enhanced strength to the
Empire.

The second and less important recommendation, afterwards embodied in the
Act of 1840, was the Union of the two Provinces of Upper and Lower
Canada. Here Lord Durham, misled unhappily by the Irish precedent, fell
into an error. During his visit to Canada he came near to accepting
that higher conception of a Federal Union with local Home Rule for each
Province, outlined by Roebuck and Mackenzie, and eventually consummated
thirty years later. When he came home to London he made a _volte face_,
rejecting the Federal idea and accepting its antitype, that Legislative
and Administrative Union of the two Provinces which had been rejected by
Pitt in 1791. There were, of course, economic arguments for Union apart
from the racial factor; but they do not seem to have been decisive with
Durham. At the last moment he gave way to a dread of predominant French
influence in Lower Canada, similar at bottom to his dread of the
unchecked influence of the British minority. While he feared that the
latter, if let alone, would inaugurate a reign of terror, he added also:
"Never again will the present generation of French-Canadians yield a
loyal submission to a British Government." The argument is inconsistent
with the whole spirit of the Report, which attributes the friction in
both Provinces to bad political institutions. It is probable that Durham
was really more influenced by the quite reasonable recognition that the
French were relatively backward in civilization and ideas. He sought,
therefore, both to disarm them politically and to anglicize them
socially, by amalgamating their political system with t