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Nicholas and Amable Daumais, who had aided in the trial and execution of Chartrand, were subsequently hanged for having taken an active part in the second insurrection of 1838. The rebellion of 1837 never reached any large proportions, and very few French Canadians of social or political standing openly participated in the movement. Monseigneur Lartigue, Roman Catholic bishop of Montreal, issued a _mandement_ severely censuring the misguided men who had joined in the rebellious movement and caused so much misery throughout the province. In England, strange to say, there were men found, even in parliament, ready to misrepresent the facts and glory in a rebellion the causes of which they did not understand. The animating motive with these persons was then--and there were similar examples during the American revolution--to assail the government of the day and make political capital against them, but, it must be admitted, in all fairness to the reform ministry of that day and even to preceding cabinets for some years, that the policy of all was to be just and conciliatory in their relations with the provincial agitators, though it is also evident that a more thorough knowledge of political conditions and a more resolute effort to a reach the bottom of grievances might have long before removed causes of irritation and saved the loss of property and life in 1837 and 1838. In the presence of a grave emergency, the British government felt compelled to suspend the constitution of Lower Canada, and send out Lord Durham, a Liberal statesman of great ability, to act as governor-general and high commissioner "for the determining of certain important questions depending in the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada respecting the form and future government of the said provinces" Despite a certain haughtiness of manner which was apt to wound his inferiors and irritate his equals in position, he was possessed of a great fund of accurate political knowledge and a happy faculty of grasping all the essential facts of a difficult situation, and suggesting the best remedy to apply under all the circumstances. He endeavoured, to the utmost of his ability, to redeem the pledge with which he entered on his mission to Canada, in the first instance "to assert the supremacy of her majesty's government," in the next "to vindicate the honour and dignity of the law," and above all "to know nothing of a British, a French, or a Canadian party," but "
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