e, greater and more diversified than
the old, the problem once more recurred, this time in Canada. It is
not the purpose of this book to discuss the earlier stages of the
Canadian struggle. The rebellions under Mackenzie in the West and
Papineau in the East were abnormal and pathological episodes, in
considering which the attention is easily diverted from the essential
questions to exciting side issues and personal facts. In any case,
that chapter in Canadian history has received adequate attention.[3]
But after Colborne's firmness had repressed the {6} armed risings, and
Durham's imperious dictatorship had introduced some kind of order,
there followed in Canada a period of high constitutional importance, in
which the old issue was frankly faced, both in England and in Canada,
almost in the very terms that Burke had used. It is not too much to
say that the fifteen years of Canadian history which begin with the
publication, in 1839, of _Durham's Report_, are the most important in
the history of the modern British empire; and that in them was made the
experiment on the success of which depended the future of that empire.

These years are the more instructive, because in them there are few
distracting events drawing the attention from the main constitutional
question. There were minor points--whether voluntaryism, or the
principle of church establishment, was best for Canada; what place
within the empire might safely be conceded to French-Canadian
nationalism; how Canadian commerce was to relate itself to that of
Britain and of the United States. All of these, however, were included
in, or dominated by, the essential difficulty of combining, in one
empire, Canadian self-government and British supremacy.

{7}

The phrase, responsible government, appears everywhere in the writings
and speeches of those days with a wearisome iteration. Yet the
discussion which hinged on that phrase was of primary importance. The
British government must either discover the kind of self-government
required in the greater dependencies, the _modus vivendi_ to be
established between the local and the central governments, and the seat
of actual responsibility, or cease to be imperial. Under four
governors-general[4] the argument proceeded, and it was not until 1854
that Elgin, in his departure from Canada, was able to assure the
British government that the question had been for the time settled.

The essay which follows will describe t