Was it because Ireland, unlike Canada, was “so near”?  Let us reflect.  Did Durham advocate Canadian Home Rule because Canada was “so far”?  On the contrary, it was a superficial inference, drawn not merely from Ireland, but from Scotland, and since proved to be false both in Canada and South Africa, that made him shrink from the full application of a philosophy which was already far in advance of the political thought and morality of his day.  Is it to be conceived that if he had lived to see the Canadian Federation, the domestic and Imperial results of South African Home Rule, and the consequences of seventy more years of coercive government in Ireland, he would still have regarded the United Kingdom in the light of a successful expedient for “compelling the obedience of refractory populations”?  In truth, Durham, like ninety-nine out of a hundred Englishmen of his day, knew nothing of Ireland, not even that her political system differed, as it still differs, toto coelo from that of Scotland, and came into being under circumstances which had not the smallest analogy in Scotland.  So far as his knowledge went, he was a student of human nature as affected by political institutions.  Wakefield, who advised him, was a doctrinaire theorist who put his preconceived principles into highly successful practice both in Australia and Canada.  They said:  “Your coercive system degrades and estranges your own fellow-citizens.  Change it, and you will make them friendly, manly, and prosperous.”  They were right, and one reflects once more on the terrible significance of Mr. Chamberlain’s admission in 1893, that “if Ireland had been a thousand miles away, she would have what Canada had had for fifty years.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[20] “The Irishman in Canada” (N.F.  Davin), a book to which the author is indebted for much information of the same character.

[21] “William Pitt and the National Revival.”

[22] Canadian Archives, 1905; “History of Prince Edward Island,” D. Campbell; “History of Canada,” C.D.G.  Roberts.  In 1875, after a long period of agitation and discontent, the Land Purchase Act was passed, and the Dominion Government asked Mr. Hugh Childers to adjudicate on the land-sale expressly on the ground that he had been associated with the Irish Land Act of 1870 ("Life of Mr. Childers,” by Lieut.-Col.  Spencer Childers, vol. i., p. 232).

[23] Canadian Archives, 1900.  Note B. Emigration (1831-1834).  Irish immigrants in 1829, 9,614; in 1830, 18,300; in 1831, 34,155; in 1832, 28,024; in 1833, 12,013; in 1834, 19,206:  about double the immigration of English and Scottish together in the same period.

[24] “Self-government in Canada,” F. Bradshaw, p. 96 et seq.

[25] “Durham Report,” p. 130.

[26] Hansard, January 23.

[27] “Self-government in Canada,” F. Bradshaw, p. 17.

[28] “Letters of Queen Victoria,” vol. i., November 22, 1838.