American Colonies, and that exactly the same arguments, founded on the same inversion of cause and effect, were used to defend the coercion of Canada.  There, also, the Fitzgibbonist doctrine of revenge and oppression by a majority vested with power was freely used, even by Lord John Russell, in his speech of March 6, 1837, and of December 22 in the same year, when he spoke of the “deadly animosity” of the French and “of the wickedness of abandoning the British to proscription, loss of property, and probably of lives.”  He ignored the fact that the same state of anarchy had been reached in uni-racial Upper Canada as in bi-racial Canada, and that the “loyalists” in both cases were not only in the same state of unreasoning alarm for their vested rights, but, in the spirit of the Ulstermen of that day and ever since, were threatening to “cut the painter,” and declare for annexation to the United States if their ascendancy were not sustained by the Home Government.  Then, as to-day, the ascendant minority were supported in their threats by a section of British politicians.  Lord Stanley’s speech of March 8, 1837, where he boasted that the “loyal minority of wealth, education, and enterprise” would protect themselves, and, if necessary, call in the United States, is being matched in speeches of to-day.  In all the debates of the period it is interesting to see the ignorance which prevailed about the troubles in Upper Canada.  The racial question in Lower Canada, owing to the analogy with Ireland, was seized on to the exclusion of the underlying and far more important political question in both Provinces.

Against the policy of the two great political parties in England the little group of Radicals struggled manfully, and in the long run not in vain, although for years they had to submit to insult and contumely in their patriotic efforts to expose the vices of the colonial administration and to avert the rebellion they foresaw in the Canadas.  What they feared, with only too good cause, was that the American and Irish precedents would be followed, and war made for the coercion of the Canadas, to be followed, if successful, by a still more despotic form of government, which would in its turn provoke a new revolt.  Rather than that such a catastrophe should take place, they went, rightly, to the extreme point of saying that an “amicable separation” should be arranged, maintaining, what is indisputable, that the claims of humanity should supersede the claims of possession.  With Russell himself declaring till the eleventh hour that responsible government was out of the question because it meant “separation,” they were quite justified in demanding that separation, if indeed inevitable, should come about by agreement, not as the possible result of a fratricidal war.  For such a war, though Russell could not see it until Durham made him see it, was the only alternative to the grant of responsible government.  But the Radicals never used this argument unless circumstances