GREAT BRITAIN'S BREAD UPON THE WATERS 



219 



dwell upon this and trace out the reason 

 for it. 



It is possible for us, who are not in- 

 volved in this war and who occupy a 

 neutral position, to do justice to the note- 

 worthy exhibition of admirable qualities 

 in all the belligerents without exposing 

 ourselves to the charge of partisanship or 

 prejudiced sympathy ; and it is with that 

 attitude and from that standpoint that I 

 invite your attention to the consideration 

 of the vindication of England's policy in 

 the autonomous governments under her, 

 which constitute a part of her so-called 

 empire. 



Through the blindness of George III, 

 and against the judgment of the more 

 liberal statesmen of his reign, the Ameri- 

 can colonies were lost to England. That 

 they had originally, all of them, a warm 

 affection for the mother country and a 

 pride in their relations to her is clear ; 

 that the course which George III and his 

 ministers took in dealing with them was 

 ill-advised and unjust and altogether lack- 

 ing in prudence and tact, the modern 

 English historians are now the first to 

 admit : that the grievances of which the 

 colonies complained were perhaps not as 

 acute and oppressive as we have been 

 taught in our school histories to believe 

 may be true. 



It suffices to say that, however weighty 

 or otherwise those grievances were, they 

 were at least enough to instil in the minds 

 of a people who had enjoyed practice in 

 self-government, through neglect of the 

 mother country for ioo years, a vision of 

 independence and a desire for it that, once 

 developed, precluded the possibility of a 

 resumption of British control. The les- 

 son which the war of the American Revo- 

 lution taught to Great Britain has been 

 worth all it cost her. 



OLD GRIEVANCES ARE NOT FORGOTTEN 



The spirit of revenge in which we dealt 

 with the Tories who were loyal to Eng- 

 land in our struggle, and the confiscation 

 and the suffering to which we subjected 

 them, drove a body of people into Nova 

 Scotia and into Upper Canada numbering 

 40,000. England sought by the appro- 

 priation of 3,000,000 pounds to salve the 

 wounds of these United Empire loyalists. 



Their feeling of enmitytoward the United 

 States, handed down by tradition, has had 

 a real effect to prevent the union of Can- 

 ada with this country. Their attitude was 

 confirmed in the War of 1812. 



Under the Constitution of 1791, which 

 divided Canada into two provinces, Upper 

 and Lower, each had a legislature with a 

 council which the legislature did not con- 

 trol, under a British governor. This 

 system lasted for 50 years, but it proved 

 unsatisfactory. A "family compact" of 

 ultra Tories in the council ruled Upper 

 Canada and defied and bullied the legis- 

 lature. 



In Lower Canada, where the French 

 lived, England had, by the Quebec Act of 

 1774, satisfied their race and religious 

 sentiment by assuring to them a continu- 

 ance of their civil law and customs and 

 the maintenance of the quasi-political 

 status of their church. This prevented the 

 French from joining the American Revo- 

 lution and retained Canada for England. 



A BRILLIANT STATESMAN 



The promise has been faithfully kept. 

 Still the constitutional act did not work 

 well with the French any more than with 

 the English. So it was that in 1837 the 

 Frenchman Papineau in Lower Canada 

 and the Scotchman MacKenzie in Upper 

 Canada sought to overthrow their re- 

 spective governments by force. These 

 rebellions were easily overcome, but there 

 remained for the home government the 

 burdensome task of solving what seemed 

 an insoluble problem of restoring peace 

 and order among a dissatisfied people, 

 half English and half French. 



Lord Melbourne and his associates pre- 

 vailed on the Earl of Durham to under- 

 take the task. The selection was fortu- 

 nate for Canada and fortunate for Great 

 Britain, although the immediate result of 

 his short incumbency was apparently a 

 humiliating failure. Lord Durham was 

 one of the great statesmen and the great 

 radical reformer of his day. 



He entered Parliament at 21, and long 

 before they really became the burning 

 issues he was advocating Catholic eman- 

 cipation, a reform of representation in 

 Parliament, extension of the franchise, 

 and a repeal of the corn tax. 



