Fortunately, however--fortunately even for those it was intended to invest with so great a power, this measure did not pass. For to give a naturally unprogressive race legislative superiority over an inevitably progressive one, is but to prolong a contest, or make more desperate an immediate struggle. The race that advances will not perpetually strive with a rope round its neck, or a chain round its leg. If it cannot loose itself, it will turn round and fight its holders. The French might have bound the English, but they would have had to fight them. A miss, however, is as good as a mile. It required a vote of two-thirds of the whole house to make such a change in the representation. Fifty-six voters would have done it; they had but fifty-five; so that this part of the storm at all events has passed over. But how did the enlightened reformers of Upper Canada act, upon a measure avowedly and undisguisedly intended to perpetuate French domination? _Every man of them voted for it._ What a melancholy comment this is upon the following--the closing reflection of Lord Durham, upon the government of Canada. What a comment it is upon the attempt to change a people by a measure; to purge out of Frenchmen errors as strong as their nature--out of democrats feelings as large as their souls, by a single pill of abstract right in the shape of responsible government. "In the state of mind in which I have described the French Canadian population, as not only now being, but as likely for a long while to remain, the trusting them with an entire control over this province would be, in fact, only facilitating a rebellion. Lower Canada must be governed now, as it must be hereafter, by an English population; and thus the policy which the necessities of the moment force on us, is in accordance with that suggested by a comprehensive view of the future and permanent improvement of the province."--_Report Can. E._, p. 127.