sgar.
Governor General of Canada 1868-1872.]

As for the grievances he came to remedy, Lord Durham dwells upon the
circumstances which practically excluded French Canadians from
political power, leaving all positions of trust and profit in the
hands of the English minority; for although they numbered only one in
four of the inhabitants, this privileged class claimed both political
and social supremacy as though by inherent right. Owing no
responsibility whatever to the legislature, they could afford to smile
at the protestations of that superfluous body, and pursue their own
wilful course.

Coming to practical counsel, the High Commissioner pointed out that
there was no need for any change in the principles of government, or
for any new constitutional theory to remedy the disordered state. The
remedy already lay in the British constitution, whose principles, if
consistently followed, would give a sound and efficient system of
representative government. His first suggestion was the frank
concession of a responsible executive. All the officers of state, with
the single exception of the Governor and his secretary, should be made
directly answerable to the representatives of the people; these
officers, moreover, should be such as the people approved, and should
therefore be appointed by the Assembly. He further advised that the
Governor should be forbidden to employ the resources of the British
Constitution in any quarrel between himself and the Legislature,
resorting to imperial intervention only when imperial interests were
at stake.

His second recommendation was to bring the Upper and Lower Provinces
together by a legislative union. He met the threatened danger of a
disaffected people endowed with political power by an appeal to
arithmetic: "If the population of Upper Canada is rightly estimated at
400,000, the English inhabitants of Lower Canada at 150,000, and the
French at 450,000, the union of the two provinces would not only give
a clear English majority, but one which would be increased every year
by the influence of English emigration....I certainly shall not like,"
he continues, "to subject the French Canadians to the rule of the
identical English minority with which they have so long been
contending; but from a majority emanating from so much more extended a
source, I do not think that they would have any oppression or
injustice to fear."

This plea for unity among all the elements of political life in
C