decisive with Durham.  At the last moment he gave way to a dread of predominant French influence in Lower Canada, similar at bottom to his dread of the unchecked influence of the British minority.  While he feared that the latter, if let alone, would inaugurate a reign of terror, he added also:  “Never again will the present generation of French-Canadians yield a loyal submission to a British Government.”  The argument is inconsistent with the whole spirit of the Report, which attributes the friction in both Provinces to bad political institutions.  It is probable that Durham was really more influenced by the quite reasonable recognition that the French were relatively backward in civilization and ideas.  He sought, therefore, both to disarm them politically and to anglicize them socially, by amalgamating their political system with that of wholly British Upper Canada.  His calculation was that in a joint assembly the British would have a small but sufficient majority.  The estimated population of Lower Canada was 550,000, of whom 450,000 were French, and 100,000 British and Irish; that of Upper Canada 400,000, all British and Irish.  That is to say, that in both Provinces together there was a British and Irish majority of 100,000.  The calculation over-estimated the British element, but in the event this mistake proved to be immaterial.  Though Durham himself appears to have intended representation to be in strict accordance with population, the Union Act, passed in 1840, allotted an equal number of representatives in the Joint Assembly to each of the old Provinces.  The assumption here was that the British Members from Upper Canada would unite with those of old Lower Canada to vote down the French, just as the Ulster Protestants voted with English members to vote down the Irish majority.

In practice the Union, after lasting twenty-six years, eventually broke down.  Durham’s fear of French disloyalty proved to be as groundless as his ideal of complete anglicization was futile.  It was neither necessary, sensible, nor possible to extinguish French sentiment, and human nature triumphed over this half-hearted effort to apply in dilution the medicine of Fitzgibbonism to the Colonies.  Little harm was done, because the introduction of responsible government, far transcending the Union in importance, worked irresistibly for good.  Parties did not run wholly on racial lines, but racialism was encouraged by the equal representation of the two Provinces in the Assembly, in spite of the greater growth of population in the Upper Province.  The system was unhealthy, and at last produced a state of deadlock, in which two exactly equal parties were balanced, and a stable Government impossible.  When that point was reached, men began to observe the strong and supple Constitution of the adjacent United States, and to recognize that a politically feeble Canada was courting an absorption from that quarter which all Canadians disliked.  The Legislative Union was dissolved by the mutual