felt
a stain upon its honour like a wound. The disallowance of his
ordinance by the home authorities was a blow fair in the face. It put
an end to his career in Canada, by undermining his authority. In those
days of slow communication the news of the disallowance reached him
tardily. By a side wind, from an American newspaper, he first learned
the fact on the twenty-fifth of September. He at once sent in his
resignation, told the {18} people of Canada the reason why in a
proclamation, and as soon as possible left the country for ever.
Brougham was burned in effigy at Quebec. The lucky eight, already in
Bermuda, were speedily released. Never did leaders of an unsuccessful
rebellion suffer less for their indiscretion. From Bermuda they
proceeded to New York to renew their agitation. On the first of
November Durham left Quebec, as he had entered that city, with all the
pomp of military pageantry and in a universal display of public
interest. He came in a crisis; he left amid a crisis. He had spent
five months in office, almost the exact term for which the Romans chose
their chief magistrate in a national emergency and named him dictator.

In the eyes of Durham's enemies his ordinance of banishment was a
ukase; and, at first blush, it looks like an unwarrantable stretching
of his powers. But Durham was on the ground and must necessarily have
known the conditions prevailing much better than his critics three
thousand miles away. Desperate diseases need desperate remedies. The
presumption is always that the man on the ground will be right; and
posterity has {19} passed a final judgment of approval on Durham's bold
slashing of the Gordian knot. New facts have set the whole matter in a
new light. A paper of Buller's,[2] hitherto unpublished, shows that
the ordinance was promulgated _only after consultation with the
prisoners_. 'The prisoners who expected the government to avail itself
of its power of packing a jury were very ready to petition to be
disposed of without trial, and as I had in the meantime ascertained
that the proposed mode of dealing with them would not be condemned by
the leading men of the British party, Lord Durham adopted the plan
proposed.' They regarded banishment as an unexpected mercy, as well
they might. The only alternative was the dock, the condemned cell, and
the gallows.

On the thirtieth of November Durham landed at Plymouth, and by the
middle of the following January he had