ada, against the traditional dominance of the priesthood. Although LaFontaine had no sympathy whatever with violent measures, he distinguished himself during the constitutional agitation as one of the boldest of the agitators. His first action in the legislature was to second a motion for the refusal of supplies, and throughout the years preceding the rebellion, both from his place in parliament and in the press, he exerted himself unceasingly in the cause of the popular party. When the storm broke in 1837, he endeavoured in vain to dissuade his fellowcountrymen from taking up arms. A few days after the skirmishes on the Richelieu (December, 1837) he went from Montreal to Quebec to beg Lord Gosford to call a meeting of the legislature with a view to prevent further violence. On the refusal of the governor to do so, LaFontaine took ship for England. Fearing, however, that his complicity in the agitation preceding the Canadian revolt might lead to his arrest, he fled from England and spent some little time in France. Thence he returned to Canada in May, 1838. This was the moment when Sir John Colborne was busily employed in extinguishing the still smouldering ashes of revolt. Wholesale arrests of supposed sympathizers were made. An ordinance passed by Sir John Colborne and his special council, appointed under the Act suspending the constitution of Lower Canada,1 declared the Habeas Corpus Act

11 and 2 Vict. c. g. For the Habeas Corpus Act question see R. Christie, History of the Late Province of Lower Canada, Vol. VI., pp. 263 et seq.

LAFONTAINE AND THE REBELLION

to be without force in the province. The prisons were soon filled to overflowing. Among those arrested was Hippolyte LaFontaine, an arrest for which legal grounds were altogether lacking. LaFontaine, since his return to Canada, had written a letter to Girouard, one of his associates in the constitutional agitation, in regard to the frontier disturbances of 1838, recommending, in what was clearly and evidently an ironical vein, a continuance of the insurrection. On the strength of this and on the ground of his having been notorious as a leader of the French-Canadian faction, he was arrested on November 7th, 1838, and imprisoned at Montreal. The evident insufficiency of the charges against him, led shortly to his release without trial.1 The collapse of the rebellion, the flight of Papineau and O'Callaghan, and the arrest of Wolfred Nelson and many other leaders, naturally induced the despairing people of Lower Canada to look for guidance to the moderate members of the party who had realized from the first the folly of armed revolt. In the period

1 The following extract from a letter written by Sir Charles Bagot to Lord Stanley under date of November 25th, 1842, is of interest in this connection:-"With regard to Mr. LaFontaine, I have always understood that he was arrested upon mere suspicion. He protested strongly at the time, and subsequently, against the unjustifiableness of the proceeding, and demanded, but in vain, to see the warrant or affidavit on which he was arrested. The public offices furnish no record of the transaction, but Mr. Daly has supplied me with a copy of a letter which Mr. LaFontaine addressed to him from New York, and which was shown by him to Lord Durhan. This document bears satisfactory evidence of his readiness to court inquiry." (Archives of Canada. MS. Letters of Sir C. Bagot.)

of reconstruction which now followed under the rule of Lord Durham and Lord Sydenham, LaFontaine was recognized as the leader of the national Reform party of Lower Canada, energetic in its protest against the proposed system of union and British preponderance but determined by constitutional means, when the union was forced upon them, to turn it to account in the interest of French Canada.

THE

CHAPTER 111

THE UNION OF THE CANADAS

HE collapse of the rebellion of 1837 opens a new era, not merely in the history of Canada itself, but in the history of colonial government. The revolt, unsuccessful though it was, had brought into clear light the fact that the previous system of colonial management could not permanently endure, that its continuance must inevitably mean discontent and discord which could only terminate in forcible separation. The lesson that the mother country had failed to learn from the loss of its Atlantic colonies in 1776 had now been repeated. This time, fortunately for the mother country and the colonies, there were statesmen ready to give heed to the lessons of the past. The years of reconstruction that ensued may be considered to constitute the truly critical period of our colonial history. The position was indeed a difficult one. England found itself in possession of a colony still bleeding from the strife of civil war, and torn with racial and religious antagonism. The majority of its inhabitants cherished, indeed, a conscientious loyalty to the British connection, but smarted from a sense of unredressed wrongs and long-continued misgovernment, while those who had been forced into submission at the point of the bayonet, harboured an

embittered hatred against their conquerors. That a means was found to establish, in such a situation, a form of government fitted to restore peace, prosperity and loyalty, ranks among the finest triumphs of British administrative skill; and it stands as the great political achievement of the colonial statesmen whose work forms the subject of the present volume, that they both planned the adoption and sustained the execution of the sole policy that could preserve to an illustrious future the colonial system of Great Britain. Responsible government was the chief, indeed the only, demand of Robert Baldwin and his associates; it had been a leading demand of the Radicals in Upper Canada who had been drawn into revolt, and it had been one of the demands of the French-Canadian party of discontent. The history of British administration, like the structure of British government, is filled with inconsistencies and contradictions. Nor is there any inconsistency more striking than this: that the imperial government, after strenuously denying the possibility of colonial self-government and suppressing the rebellion of its subjects who had taken up arms largely to obtain it, proceeded to grant to the conquered colony the privilege which peaceful agitation had constantly failed to obtain.

The British government, stirred from the lethargy and ignorance which had so long characterized its colonial administration, was now anxious to redeem the past. "The Downing Street conscience," as a