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sembly, of bitter struggles with the minority, followed by violent conflicts with the oligarchy. As soon as the decision of the Assembly was rejected by the Council, the session would be suddenly prorogued in the dissenting chamber by the governor, at the instigation of his officials.

Scorn, hostility, hate, developed, deepened, became ever more and more intense; conflicts between the Assembly and the Executive grew more

and more frequent, and each conflict was reflected with an

ever increasing intensity in each element of the population. When rebellion broke out, although there were found Canadians on the side of the English and English among the Canadians, the rebellion was the explosion of racial hate.

The rebellion forced attention and a measure of concession to the démand for selfgovernment. It did not advance the cause of FrenchCanadian nationalism. On the contrary, advantage

wealth and culture and numbers, "a people with no history and no literature," would be absorbed, to their own good. Therefore, the sooner the better. It must "be the first and steady purpose of the British Government to establish an English population, with English laws and language, in this Province, and to trust its government to none but a decidedly English legisla

Sir John A. Macdonald

was taken of the suspension of the Assembly and the discrediting of the Patriotes' cause to revert once more fully and frankly to the policy of Anglicizing the whole province. The more extreme leaders of the English minority called for the permanent disenfranchisement of the French-Canadians. Lord Durham was equally insistent as to the end, if somewhat more moderate as to the means. There could be no peace, he insisted, while the two nationalities stood opposed. There could be no question that in the long run the progressive, enterprising, numerous Englishspeaking people would dominate all North America, and that the FrenchCanadian people, hopelessly inferior in

ture"; the "nationality of the FrenchCanadians" must be "obliterated."

Mr. Laurier condemns Durham's policy and defends his character, and incidentally explains, in a passage equally remarkable for its insight and its

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detachment, the in

fluence of the struggle of the French-Canadians to preserve their nationality upon their material fortunes:

The man who used this harsh language was not an enemy of the race whose annihilation he thus advised. Neither was he one of those unbending spirits who reckon human life and all that may make it precious as of small account when it is a question of attaining a desired result. The name of Lord Durham has always been held in execration among French-Canadians since the day when the sentence he had delivered against their national existence was made known. They believed then that His Majesty's High Commissioner was narrow-minded, and that he had sacrificed the sentiments of justice to race prejudice. This impression, caused by the painful emotion that the publication of his report produced, has not been removed. Nothing, however, is further opposed to the truth; impartial history must give a different verdict. Lord Durham was generous, a mind

supremely liberal. A disciple of Fox, he had like him an innate sympathy for the cause of the weak and the oppressed. He had been one of the champions of the emancipation of the Catholics. He had been one of the authors of electoral reform, and had striven for its accomplishment rather with the passion of an apostle than the calm resolution of a statesman. was one of the most ardent in that ardent school of reformers who, after the Napoleonic wars, undertook to root out of the soil of old England the laws of privilege and caste, and to put within reach of the poorest classes the benefits of civilization and liberty.

He

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The French-Canadian people, disheartened for the moment, soon rallied. Under LaFontaine they found a determined and skilful leader. Their representatives in Parliament for the first few years held together in a solid block. The efforts of governors and ministers to detach a few of their leading men proved unavailing; any person who stood out from his people committed political suicide. Soon these tactics forced concessions in a parliament of divided parties. In 1844 a unanimous resolution passed the Assembly, advocating the recognition of French as an official language, and four years later the British Parliament assented.

At this point a divergence appeared in the ranks of the French-Canadians.

Papineau wished to undo the wrong of coerced union, to revert to the isolation of the Lower Canada of his earlier days. La Fontaine abandoned the demand for repeal of the union and insisted that the legitimate aspirations of French-Canadians could be satisfied under the existing constitution: the union must be judged not by the purposes of its founders, but by the achievements of those who actually administered it. The Rouges' adoption of Papineau's insistence on an extreme and isolated nationalism was curiously tempered by the actual coöperation with the Englishspeaking Tories of Montreal and the Eastern townships and the potential cooperation with the English-speaking people across the border which their temporary conversion to the policy of annexation involved. It was significant that after the rise of the annexation movement "L'Avenir" dropped from its program the clause which had previously headed the list, "Canadienfrançais avant tout."

The alliance of Baldwin and LaFontaine, and later of Macdonald and Cartier, and the common interest in railway development and general economic expansion counted for much in bringing the two races together. Yet there remained two insuperable obstacles to harmony-the system of government and the colonial status.

So long as every detail regarding either part of the province had to be dealt with by a house containing an equal number of representatives from the other part, friction and cries of unwarranted interference, of "French domination," or of "English tyranny," were certain to arise. Only by a federal solution could the most contentious issues be assigned to local legislatures and united action be secured in matters of joint concern.

So long, again, as Canada remained a subordinate and dependent colony, it was hopeless to expect any solution of the racial issue. The people as yet considered themselves English, Irish, Scotch, French, or at most FrenchCanadian, not Canadians. The Englishspeaking peoples in Canada, by their kinship with the dominant power overseas, were in a different political posi

tion from their French-speaking compatriots. To the majority of the English-speaking peoples the old country was still "home." This was not true in the case of the French-Canadians. They were longer rooted in the soil. Even under the French régime, it has been seen, fresh immigration was extraordinarily scanty. After the conquest immigration from France ceased wholly. The ties were not year by year renewed. Still more effective in breaking off all connection was the growth of revolutionary and anti-clerical

sentiment in France. Ninetythree created a great gulf between Old France and New. The Canadian clergy sought to keep their flock free from the slightest contact with a people who scorned all legitimate authority or bowed to upstart dictators. The British Government and the Roman Cathoilc Church, each for its

grounds, of which not the least important was that their political rivals were supporting it. Durham had failed to obliterate French-Canadian nationality by uniting another province with Lower Canada; now Brown and Macdonald and Cartier and Galt were proposing the experiment of uniting five English-speaking provinces with the one Frenchspeaking region.

Sir George-Etienne Cartier

own ends, did their best for generations to hold Canada aloof, and it was not surprising that they succeeded. Such sympathy with France as survived was naturally more common in radical than in conservative circles, but except in the outburst of democratic fervor of the late forties, when Papineau linked Paris and Montreal together, here also it was a weak and transient force. The habitant had ceased to be French; he had not become English; he was Canadien.

When Wilfrid Laurier entered politics, the issue of nationalism had again been brought to the front by the discussion of confederation. His Rouge friends were opposing confederation on the ground that it would mean the overwhelming of the French-Canadians in an English-speaking mass, and on other

Cartier and his friends, on the other hand, insisted that by restoring a separate legislature to Lower Canada, a legislature which would have control over all the matters of intimate concern, they were immensely strengthening the FrenchCanadian position. Laurier did not at first disassociate himself from these. sectional views. In "Le Défricheur" he echoed the criticism, which had no small measure of truth, that Brown desired confederation as a means of lessening FrenchCanadian power,

and that the Conservatives, facing defeat in 1864, had conceded his demand as the price of retaining office. Lower Canada had no more interest in Nova Scotia than in Australia; the only tie that bound them was subjection to the common colonial yoke. Confederation would prove the tomb of the French

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race.

It was not long before his views had widened. The influence of his early associations in New Glasgow, the intercourse with the Scotch and English settlers in the townships, his constant browsing in the classics of English Liberalism, kindled his sympathies with his English-speaking compatriots. His sympathy with his own people never lessened, but he came to see that their future lay not in isolation, nor, for that

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By JANE MANN

Illustrations by Edward Ryan

"Stories have been distilled into these old walls drop by drop from the blood of hearts-hearts which have feared, hated, despaired inside them."

S

PANISH AMERICA: a city of square forms rising tier on tier up the slope of a hill by the ocean; a monastery's burnished dome on top; a sky as hot and dazzling as the inside of a copper pot in the sun; palms leaning toward the water; kites flying from roofs festooned with strings of drying clothes; balconies-green balconies hung like bird-cages against stucco walls above narrow little streets; lounging ladies in the balconies, with black topknots, brilliant, enameled faces, trilling Spanish to one another and lazily watching all beneath.

. Beneath runs the slow, deep, turgid stream which starts when the sun is low: servants and little clerks of selfimportance in fresh-starched clothes; moaning old women in rags and turbans; naked boys with puffed-out bellies; little brown soldiers in white dress uniform, with huge, splayed bare feet.

To the wall above the sea come the men who have been lying all day in the shade. They sit on the wall, with bare feet dug into grass, and they gaze at the ocean. Waves roll in, break high and white on honeycombed rocks, and each wave as it breaks throws up and over its superb white body a rainbow veil of spray, emblem of good in the world. Men in dirt-yellowed rags sit, with hands dangling between knees, and gaze without a move at the evermoving, clean ocean. They gaze like entranced cattle. Why?

The word the city speaks is heritage.
I went down there to paint. It was

a few months before we entered the war. I said to myself at first: "Delight to my eyes, old town! Not a hard line in you. Those old Spaniards knew how to build. The lines of your houses are never ruled. They waver in the light like a violin string when played upon. And the rich colors of your walls -blues, greens, salmon, yellows! Sunrays run along your walls like fingers on a piano keyboard. Beautiful!"

A little later I said: "What is this city, anyway, so brilliant, so romantic on top? I suppose a romantic city is one which holds untold stories, mysteries, and breathes them out so one feels them, though the essence is held back. Stories have been distilled into these old walls drop by drop from the blood of hearts-hearts which have feared, hated, despaired inside them, and on the worn stones of the streets. Perhaps it is this mystery which fascinates me and repels me."

I used to go to the library-there is a handsome public library in the city -and read up everything I could find about the place and people. The assistant librarian was a bumptious little chap of enormous self-esteem, with a blue poll so close-clipped to hide its woolliness that it looked painted instead of like growing hair. He spoke English with every "o" long. When he was in-rare were the occasions-he always blocked my curiosities about his race. I would ask for a certain book. "We have n't it."

"But I saw it on the shelf yesterday." His shoulders would hunch languidly, insolently, "Quien sabe?" and he

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