But without the complete grant of responsible government it would never have been possible to give to French Canadians their legitimate influence in the administration and legislation of the country, or to reconcile the differences which had grown up between the two nationalities before the union and seemed likely to be perpetuated by the conditions of the Union Act just stated. Lord Durham touched the weakest spot in the old constitutional system of the Canadian provinces when he said that it was not "possible to secure harmony in any other way than by administering the government on those principles which have been found perfectly efficacious in Great Britain." He would not "impair a single prerogative of the crown"; on the contrary he believed "that the interests of the people of these provinces require the protection of prerogatives which have not hitherto been exercised." But he recognized the fact as a constitutional statesman that "the crown must, on the other hand, submit to the necessary consequences of representative institutions; and if it has to carry on the government in unison with a representative body, it must consent to carry it on by means of those in whom that representative body has confidence." He found it impossible "to understand how any English statesman could have ever imagined that representative and irresponsible government could be successfully combined." To suppose that such a system would work well there "implied a belief that French Canadians have enjoyed representative institutions for half a century without acquiring any of the characteristics of a free people; that Englishmen renounce every political opinion and feeling when they enter a colony, or that the spirit of Anglo-Saxon freedom is utterly changed and weakened among those who are transplanted across the Atlantic."