the
_Colonial Gazette_, whose words reached Canada {78} almost on the day
when the new governor arrived, warned Canadians of the imbecility of
character which the world attributed to him. "While therefore," the
article continues, "we repeat our full conviction that Mr. Thomson is
gone to Canada with the opinions and objects which we have here
enumerated, let it be distinctly understood that we have little hope of
seeing them realised, except through the united and steadfast
determination of the Colonists to make use of him as an instrument for
accomplishing their own ends."[7] With such an introduction one of the
most strongly marked personalities ever concerned with government in
Canada entered on his work.

Strange as it may seem in face of these disparaging comments, the new
governor-general had already determined to make the assertion of his
authority the fundamental thing in his policy, although with him
authority always wore the velvet glove over the iron hand. In Lower
Canada the suspension of the constitution had already placed
dictatorial powers in his hand; but, even in the Upper Province, he
seemed to have expected that diplomacy would have to be supported by
authority to compel it to come into {79} the Union; and he had no
intention of leaving the supremacy over all British North America,
which had been conferred on him by his title, to lie unused. The two
strenuous years in which he remade Canada fall into natural
divisions--the brief episode in Lower Canada of the first month after
his arrival; his negotiations with Upper Canada, from November, 1839,
to February, 1840; the interregnum of 1840 which preceded the actual
proclamation of Union, during which he returned to Montreal, visited
the Maritime Provinces, and toured through the Upper Province; and the
decisive months, from February till September 19th, 1841, from which in
some sort modern Canada took its beginnings.

The first month of his governorship, in which he settled the fate of
French Canada, is of greater importance than appears on the surface.
The problem of governing Canada was difficult, not simply because
Britons in Canada demanded self-government, but because self-government
must be shared with French-Canadians. That section of the community,
distinct as it was in traditions and political methods, might bring
ruin on the Colony either by asserting a supremacy odious to the
Anglo-Saxon elements of the population, or by {80} resenting