Most conspicuous among the political forces, because the bond of party union was for them {57} something deeper than opinion, and must be called racial, was the French-Canadian group, with the whole weight of _habitant_ support behind it. From the publication of Lord Durham's _Report_, through the Sydenham regime, and down till Sir Charles Bagot surrendered to their claims, the French politicians presented an unbroken and hostile front to the British community. Colborne had repressed their risings at the point of the bayonet; a Whig government had deprived them temporarily of free institutions; Durham--their friend after his fashion--had bidden them be absorbed into the greater British community; Sydenham came to enforce what Durham had suggested; and, with each new check, their pride had grown more stubborn and their nationalism more intense. Bagot, who understood them and whom they came to trust, may be allowed to describe their characteristics, through the troubled first years of union: "On Lord Sydenham's arrival," he wrote to Stanley, "he found the Lower Province deprived of a constitution, the legislative functions of the government being administered by a special council, consisting of a small number of members nominated by the Crown. A large portion of the people, at least those of French origin, prostrate under {58} the effects of the Rebellion, overawed by the power of Great Britain, and excluded from all share in the government, had resigned themselves to a sullen and reluctant submission, or to a perverse but passive resistance to the government. This temper was not improved by the passing of the Act of Union. In this measure, heedless of the generosity of the Imperial government, in overlooking their recent disaffection, and giving them a free and popular constitution, ... they apprehended a new instrument of subjection, and accordingly prepared to resist it. Lord Sydenham found them in this disposition, and despairing, from its early manifestations, of the possibility of overcoming or appeasing it, before the period at which it would be necessary to put in force the Act of Union, he determined upon evincing his indifference to it, and upon taking steps to carry out his views, in spite of the opposition of the French party.... They have from that time declared and evinced their hostility to the Union ... and have maintained a consistent, united, and uncompromising opposition to the government which was concerned in carrying it into execution."[59]