asunder by internecine strife, had there been then a weak and passionate man at the head of the executive.  As it will be seen later, he, like the younger Pitt in England, was “the pilot who weathered the storm.”  In Canada, the storm, in which the elements of racial antagonism, of political rivalry and disappointment, of spoiled fortunes and commercial ruin raged tumultuously for a while, threatened not only to drive Canada back for years in its political and material development, but even to disturb the relations between the dependency and the imperial state.

The legislation which gave rise to this serious convulsion in the country was, in a measure, an aftermath of the rebellious risings of 1837 and 1838 in Upper and Lower Canada.  Many political grievances had been redressed since the union, and the French Canadians had begun to feel that their interests were completely safe under a system of government which gave them an influential position in the public councils.  The restoration of their language to its proper place in a country composed of two nationalities standing on a sure footing of equal political and civil rights, was a great consolation to the French people of the east.  The pardon extended to the rash men who were directly concerned in the events of 1837 and 1838, was also well calculated to heal the wounds inflicted on the province during that troublous period.  It needed only the passage of another measure to conceal the scars of those unhappy days, and to bury the past in that oblivion in which all Canadians anxious for the unity and harmony of the two races, and the satisfactory operation of political institutions, were sincerely desirous of hiding it forever.  This measure was pecuniary compensation from the state for certain losses incurred by people in French Canada in consequence of the wanton destruction of property during the revolt.  The obligation of the state to give such compensation had been fully recognized before and after the union.

The special council of Lower Canada and the legislature of Upper Canada had authorized the payment of an indemnity to those loyal inhabitants in their respective provinces who had sustained losses during the insurrections.  It was not possible, however, before the union, to make payments out of the public treasury in accordance with the ordinance of the special council of Lower Canada and the statute of the legislature of Upper Canada.  In the case of both provinces these measures were enacted to satisfy the demands that were made for compensation by a large number of people who claimed to have suffered losses at the outbreak of the rebellions, or during the raids from the United States which followed these risings and which kept the country in a state of ferment for months.  The legislature of the united provinces passed an act during its first session to extend compensation to losses occasioned in Upper Canada by violence on the part of persons “acting or assuming to act” on Her Majesty’s behalf