14 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



tion. In ail the cities and towns the police arrangements were notoriouslj^ 

 defective. Immigration was rapidly falling off owing principally to the 

 distracted state of the country, but also to the mode of transportation. 

 Those were days when the vessels that made voyages to Canada were 

 literally laden with disease and misery. In the over-crowded, ill- venti- 

 lated, and ill-equipped vessels that annually sailed up the St. Lawrence 

 death was ever stalking among the half-starved, unhappy people who had 

 left their wretched homes in the Old World to incur the horrors of the 

 holds of the pest-ship, from which for many years had been ascending to 

 heaven the cries of the martyred emigrant. 



No feature of the aspect of things in Canada gave greater reason for 

 anxiety than the attitude of the French and English peoples towards 

 each other. The very children in the streets were formed into French 

 and English parties. As in the courts of law and in the legislature, so it 

 was in social and every -day life — the French Canadian in direct antagonism 

 to the English Canadian. Many persons among the official and govern- 

 ing class, composed almost exclusively of English, were still too ready to 

 consider French Canadians as inferior beings, and not entitled to the same 

 rights and privileges in the government of the country. It was a time of 

 passion and declamation, when men of fervent eloquence, like Papineau, 

 could have aroused the French like one man, if they had had a little more 

 patience and judgment and had not been ultimately thwarted, mainly by 

 the efforts of the priests who, in all national crises, have intervened on 

 the side of reason and moderation, and in the interests of British connec- 

 tion, which they have always felt has been favourable to the continuance 

 and security of their religious institutions. Lord Durham, in his mem- 

 orable report on the condition of Canada, has summed up very exj)ress- 

 iveh' the nature of the conflict in the French province. '• I expected," 

 he said, "to find a contest between a government and a people ; I found 

 " two nations warring in the bosom of a single state ; I found a struggle, 

 " not of principles, but of races." 



Amid the gloom that overhung Canada in those times there was one 

 gleam of sunshine for England. Although discontent and dissatisfaction 

 generally prevailed among the people on account of the manner in which 

 the government was administered and of the attempts of the minority to 

 engross all power and influence, yet there was still a sentiment in favour 

 of British connection, and the annexationists were relativelj- few in 

 number. Even Sir Francis Bond Head — in no respect a man of sagacity 

 — understood this well when he depended on the militia to crush the 

 outbreak in the upper province, and Joseph Howe, the eminent leader of 

 the popular party, uniformly asserted that the people of Nova Scotia 

 were determined to preserve the integrity of the Empire at all hazards. 

 As a matter of fact, the majority of the leading men, outside of the 

 minority led by Papineau, Nelson and Mackenzie, had a conviction that 



