When the Draper-Viger ministry first showed a readiness to take up the claims of Lower Canada for the same compensation that had been granted to Upper Canada, they had been doubtless influenced, not solely by the conviction that they were called upon to perform an act of justice, but mainly by a desire to strengthen themselves in the French province.  We have already read that their efforts in this direction entirely failed, and that they never obtained in that section any support from the recognized leaders of public opinion, but were obliged to depend upon Denis B. Papineau and Viger to keep up a pretence of French Canadian representation in the cabinet.  It is, then, easy to believe that, when the report of the commissioners came before them, they were not very enthusiastic on the subject, or prepared to adopt vigorous measures to settle the question on some equitable basis, and remove it entirely from the field of political and national conflict.

They did nothing more than make provision for the payment of L9,986, which represented claims fully investigated and recognized as justifiable before the union, and left the general question of indemnity for future consideration.  Indeed, it is doubtful if the Conservative ministry of that day, the mere creation of Lord Metcalfe, kept in power by a combination of Tories and other factions in Upper Canada, could have satisfactorily dealt with a question which required the interposition of a government having the confidence of both sections of the province.  One thing is quite certain.  This ministry, weak as it was, Tory and ultra-loyalist as it claimed to be, had recognized by the appointment of a commission, the justice of giving compensation to French Canada on the principles which had governed the settlement of claims from Upper Canada.  Had the party which supported that ministry been influenced by any regard for consistency or principle, it was bound in 1849 to give full consideration to the question, and treat it entirely on its merits with the view of preventing its being made a political issue and a means of arousing racial and sectional animosities.  As we shall now see, however, party passion, political demagogism, and racial hatred prevailed above all high considerations of the public peace and welfare, when parliament was asked by the LaFontaine-Baldwin ministry to deal seriously and practically with the question of indemnity to Lower Canada.

The session was not far advanced when LaFontaine brought forward a series of resolutions, on which were subsequently based a bill, which set forth in the preamble that “in order to redeem the pledge given to the sufferers of such losses ... it is necessary and just that the particulars of such losses, not yet paid and satisfied, should form the subject of more minute inquiry under legislative authority (see p. 65 ante) and that the same, so far only as they may have arisen from the total or partial, unjust, unnecessary or