The language of the report is now very familiar, and it is difficult to realize the revolution which its acceptance implied. It was the great good fortune of Great Britain that, when her whole system of colonial government had to be altered root and branch, the course to be followed was pointed out by a statesman at once so possessed with the idea of British Empire and so staunch to the traditions of British liberties as was this Elisha to the principles of Chatham. The coincidence of the hour and the man perhaps decided for centuries the future of Greater Britain.

AUTHORITIES

Lord Durham's Report was reprinted in 1902 by Messrs. Methuen. It has been edited in three volumes by Sir Charles Lucas: Vol. i, Introduction; Vol. ii, Text (with notes); Vol. iii, Appendixes.

Life and Letters of the first Earl of Durham. 2 vols. By Stuart J. Reid. 1906. Vol. ii draws upon a very valuable unpublished account of the mission by Charles Buller.

Some of the more important dispatches of Lord Durham are printed in Egerton and Grant, op. cit.

Self-government in Canada. By F. Bradshaw, 1903. Contains a full account of Durham's stay in Canada, and an admirable analysis of the report.

Nova Scotia and the

CHAPTER XIII

THE MARITIME PROVINCES

In the previous volume of this history the affairs of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton played a prominent part; but they played it in connexion with the war between France and Great Britain, and it is difficult within a short compass to bring out the internal development of small communities.

Nova Scotia remained unshaken by the example of the southern colonies; but the results of the American War American greatly affected it by causing a numerous. immigration of

War.

Internal reforms.

American loyalists, no less than thirteen thousand arriving at Halifax, Annapolis, and other places within a few months. In consequence of the accession of population in the southern portion of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick was in 1784 constituted a separate colony. Nova Scotia was for many years a preparatory school, where governors of Lower Canada passed a period of apprenticeship. Sir George Prevost, Sir John Coape Sherbrooke, Lord Dalhousie, and Sir James. Kempt were all moved to Quebec from Halifax. Sir Peregrine Maitland, on the other hand, went from Upper Canada to Nova Scotia.

The public life of the colony was for years very peaceful, the governors being able to confine their attention, for the most part, to the subjects of agriculture, education, and road making. Lord Dalhousie was very active in the encouragement of the two former. Grammar schools had been established in many places as early as 1811, but to Dalhousie was owing the establishment of Dalhousie College (1841), founded

on the undenominational basis prevailing in the Scottish universities. The eight years of Sir James Kempt's administration (1820-8) were chiefly remarkable for the great improvements effected in the public roads. The question of Question of quit quit rents came to the fore in 1829 and 1830. In 1759 rents. Governor Lawrence had announced that the public lands granted would be subject to a quit rent of one shilling a year for every fifty acres, but the collection of this rent was suspended indefinitely. In 1811 an attempt was made to collect it, and in 1827 all arrears were remitted, and the collection ordered to be for the future enforced. In reply to a remonstrance from the colony, the Secretary of State professed willingness to agree to a commutation of these rents. The colonial Assembly, however, wished neither to commute nor to pay, and declared that the relinquishment of the claim would give general satisfaction, as its long suspension had induced the belief that it would never be insisted upon, and transfers of land had, almost invariably, been made under this impression. It was not till 1830, Beginning under the government of the incapable Maitland, that con- tional of constitustitutional questions began to agitate the colony. In that dispute. year a contest between the Assembly and the Legislative Council over the amendment by the latter of a revenue bill was a foretaste of what was to follow. Economic distress and an outbreak of cholera, which ensued in 1834, were not calculated to allay any feeling of unrest, and when voice was given to vague dissatisfaction by the appearance upon the political stage in 1835 of Joseph Howe, the most powerful political speaker and writer whom British North America had yet produced, the way was made clear for a new direction to be given to public life.

It must be remembered that the first years of the century had been in Nova Scotia, upon the whole, marked by great prosperity. During the war with France money was spent by the British Government in the purchase of

Effect of peace.

goods; and the sale of ships and cargoes brought in by British cruisers was a cause of riches to the colony. The ships of war, which lay in the harbours and the dockyard, created a great demand for all sorts of produce, and high prices were obtained by the occupiers of land for what they brought to market. But with the coming of peace the sources of this artificial prosperity were dried. Real estate fell in price almost immediately; trade declined, and a general gloom settled over the province. Valuable coal mines had indeed been discovered in 1798 in Pictou County, but it was not till a later date that the industry became of importance. Lumbering was the main business of the people of Pictou, who were for the most part Scottish Highlanders, to whom the wild life in the forest was congenial. With the failure of the timber trade after the war, more serious attention was given to agriculture, though wooden shipbuilding remained a most important industry in Nova Scotia. Position of As was the case in Upper Canada, one of the first serious Church of England.. causes of political strife arose out of the attempts of the Church of England to assume, under wholly different conditions, the position which it occupied in the mother-country. Thus the Pictou Academy, started in 1816, with the object of providing for dissenters the opportunities which were given by King's College, Windsor, for members of the Church of England, was wrecked on the reefs of religious bigotry. Neither the economic nor political circumstances had been such as to give leisure for political theorizing; but the system of government which held the field was bound, sooner or later, to cause the same agitation which distracted Dominant the other colonies. There were a few individuals in Halifax, oligarchy. representing the social and business life of the Colony, who were able to direct public opinion, and not only to influence, but to control, all public measures. Seated in the capital, they governed the movements of all the different parts; as they touched the spring the wires moved throughout the

different counties and towns. Nowhere was the dominant oligarchy more firmly entrenched.

Although the great majority of the population were not members of the Church of England, two-thirds at least of the Council belonged to that Church. The English bishop was a member of Council, while the Roman Catholic bishop and clergymen of all other denominations were excluded. The Assembly for years asserted their right to control the casual and territorial revenues of the country, but the Commissioner for Lands, who was a leading member of the Council, was interested in the maintenance of the old system, and the efforts of the Assembly were for long unavailing. There was the same Council for legislative and executive purposes, and it sat with closed doors. Against the serried ranks of the 'Council of Twelve' the assaults of the popular Assembly for some time broke in vain.

towards

ment.

The story of the full accomplishment of responsible govern- Movement ment in Nova Scotia belongs to a later period, but we may responsible note the different results which followed from Lord John governRussell's dispatch of 1839, notifying that henceforth officials in the colonies could not count on a permanent tenure in Nova Scotia and in New Brunswick. In the latter the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir John Harvey, warmly welcomed the proposed change, while in the former Sir Colin Campbell did all he could to preserve the old system. In some respects the struggle for self-government was more difficult in Nova Scotia than in the other colonies. In Lower Canada the movement had behind it the force of racial patriotism, and both Upper Canada and New Brunswick were essentially democratic. But in Nova Scotia there was a stronghold of aristocratic prejudices such as existed in no other colony. Halifax has been described as not the capital of the province so much as the province itself. The harbour was open all the Position of Halifax. year round; and it was within much easier communication with Great Britain than was any other British possession in