at any protracted
contumacy would be dangerous, and would deprive them for the future of
all title to even the modified protection which on this occasion had
saved them.

In the discussion of these transactions, Peel, as we have seen, had
alluded to the affairs of Canada, which had been of a still more serious
complexion; since there the discontent of the colonists in the Lower
Province had developed into armed insurrection. We have seen that, from
the first moment after the country had passed into our possession, there
had been almost constant dissensions between the old French colonists
and the English immigrants who crossed over both from England and from
the colonies on the southern side of the St. Lawrence in the early part
of the reign of George III. The desire of terminating these divisions,
which had their root in a difference of religion as well as of race, the
French settlers being Roman Catholics, had been one of the chief motives
which had led Pitt in 1791 to divide the country into two
provinces.[253] And for many years the scheme was fairly successful;
but, toward the end of the reign of George IV., the political excitement
caused by the agitation in England of the question of Catholic
Emancipation, and subsequently of Reform, spread across the Atlantic to
the Canadas; and the French portion of the colonists, who almost
monopolized the representation in Lower Canada, began to urge the
adoption of changes utterly inconsistent with the existing constitution
of the colony. In the hope of compelling the compliance of the home
government with their demands, in 1832 and the following years they
refused to vote the necessary supplies; and, gaining courage, as it
were, from the contemplation of their own violence, and under the
guidance of a leader of French extraction, a M. Papineau, who scarcely
concealed his hope of effecting the complete severance of the Lower
Province from the British dominion, they proceeded to put forth farther
demands, which they regarded as plausible from the apparent resemblance
of the changes which they required to the system of the English
constitution, but which, to use the words in which Sir Robert Peel
described them, would have established "a French republic." The most
important of them were that the Upper or Legislative Council should,
like the Assembly, be rendered elective, instead of, as had hitherto
been the case, being nominated by the crown. And another asked that the
Execu