Durham was wisely lenient with the political prisoners waiting for trial at Montreal, but his injudicious step in securing confessions, through an intermediary, from Doctor Nelson and his companions--by inducing them to place themselves at his discretion, and then his condemnation of them without trial to be transported to Bermuda, forbidding them to return under pain of high treason, and his extraordinary ordinance declaring that Papineau and the fifteen others who had escaped and had neither confessed nor been found guilty should suffer death if they returned to Lower Canada--was held in the English parliament, on the initiative of his enemy, Lord Brougham, to be utterly subversive of the principles of English colonial law. Accordingly his ordinance was disallowed; hence his resignation and return to England. He died about eighteen months later, a broken man. But he did much for Canada and his famous report stands out a masterpiece of statesmanship. It is to the credit of Adam Thom, of Montreal, to have been associated in its compilation as Durham’s secretary for the purpose. This report of Durham has had far reaching effect. It was based on a study of the situation. He found an acute political association as follows: The Assembly complained that the constitutional government given them in 1791 was a mockery. They could elect members but members who had no control, who might fret and fume and froth but could not appoint a single crown servant. In name it was a representative body, French, Catholic and popularly elected. The legislative council was all powerful, its members nominated by the government, and holding their offices permanently, but British, Protestant and exclusive, and above all the clatter was the Executive Council and the governor, who were dependent hand and foot on Downing Street officialdom and from it received instructions, so that the few ruled the many, independently of the council’s representation of the latter. Thus a race war had developed, the majority, French, savagely demanding their rights of popular representation and the minority, British, desirous of keeping the upper hand. Thus the French Assembly developed into a permanent opposition to everything British till it flamed out into recourse to arms when British and French paired off into distinct camps.