the
efforts of the British to assimilate or dominate them. When Poulett
Thomson landed, on October 19th, 1839, at Quebec, he was brought at
once face to face with the relation between French nationalism and the
constitutional resettlement of Canada.

Durham had had no doubt about the true solution. It was to confer free
institutions on the colony, and to trust to the natural energy and
increase of the Anglo-Saxon element to swamp French _nationalite_. "I
have little doubt," he said, "that the French, when once placed, by the
legitimate course of events and the working of natural causes, in a
minority, would abandon their vain hopes of nationality."[8] It was in
this spirit that his successor endeavoured to govern the French section
in Canada. Being both rationalist and utilitarian, like others of his
school he minimized the strength of an irrational fact like racial
pride, and, almost from the first he discounted the force of French
opposition, while he let it, consciously or unconsciously, influence
his behaviour towards his French subjects. "If it were possible," he
wrote in November, 1839, "the best thing for Lower Canada would be a
despotism for ten years {81} more; for, in truth, the people are not
yet fit for the higher class of self-government, scarcely indeed, at
present, for any description of it."[9] A few months later, his
language had become even stronger:--"I have been back three weeks, and
have set to work in earnest in this province. It is a bad prospect,
however, and presents a lamentable contrast to Upper Canada. There
great excitement existed; the people were quarrelling for realities,
for political opinions and with a view to ulterior measures. Here
there is no such thing as a political opinion. No man looks to a
practical measure of improvement. Talk to any one upon education, or
public works, or better laws, let him be English or French, you might
as well talk Greek to him. Not a man cares for a single practical
measure--the only end, one would suppose, of a better form of
government. They have only one feeling--a hatred of race."[10]

But at the outset his task was simple. His powers in Lower Canada, as
he confessed on his first arrival, were of an extraordinary nature; and
indeed it lay with him, and his Special Council, to settle the fate of
the province. Pushing on {82} from Quebec to Montreal, he lost no time
in calling a meeting of the Special Council, whose members, eighteen