h; and only two priests, the cures of St
Charles and St Benoit, showed it any encouragement. The actual
rebellion was confined to the county of Two Mountains and the valley of
the Richelieu. The districts of Quebec and Three Rivers were quiet as
the grave--with the exception, perhaps, of an occasional village like
Montmagny, where Etienne P. Tache, afterwards a colleague of Sir John
Macdonald and prime minister of Canada, was the centre of a local
agitation. Yet it is easy to see that the rebellion might have been
much more serious. But for the loyal attitude of the ecclesiastical
authorities, and the efforts of many clear-headed parish priests like
the Abbe Paquin of St Eustache, the revolutionary leaders might have
been able to consummate their plans, and Sir John Colborne, with the
small number of troops at {103} his disposal, might have found it
difficult to keep the flag flying. The rebellion was easily snuffed
out because the majority of the French-Canadian people, in obedience to
the voice of their Church, set their faces against it.

{104}

CHAPTER X

THE LORD HIGH COMMISSIONER

The rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada profoundly affected public
opinion in the mother country. That the first year of the reign of the
young Queen Victoria should have been marred by an armed revolt in an
important British colony shocked the sensibilities of Englishmen and
forced the country and the government to realize that the grievances of
the Canadian Reformers were more serious than they had imagined. It
was clear that the old system of alternating concession and repression
had broken down and that the situation demanded radical action. The
Melbourne government suspended the constitution of Lower Canada for
three years, and appointed the Earl of Durham as Lord High
Commissioner, with very full powers, to go out to Canada to investigate
the grievances and to report on a remedy.

John George Lambton, the first Earl of {105} Durham, was a wealthy and
powerful Whig nobleman, of decided Liberal, if not Radical, leanings.
He had taken no small part in the framing of the Reform Bill of 1832,
and at one time he had been hailed by the English Radicals or Chartists
as their coming leader. It was therefore expected that he would be
decently sympathetic with the Reform movements in the Canadas. At the
same time, Melbourne and his ministers were only too glad to ship him
out of the country. There was no question of hi