The proclamation published immediately on Lord Durham's arrival in Canada gave promise of fair dealing to all parties. "I invite from you," he assures them, "the most free, unreserved communications. I beg you to consider me as a friend and arbitrator, ready at all times to listen to your wishes, complaints, and grievances. If you, on your side, will abjure all party and sectarian animosities, and unite with me in the blessed work of peace and harmony, I feel assured that I can lay the foundations of such a system of government as will protect the rights and interests of all classes.... "In one province the most deplorable events have rendered the suspension of its representative constitution, unhappily, a matter of necessity; and the supreme power has devolved upon me. The great responsibility which is thereby imposed on me, and the arduous nature of the functions which I have to discharge, naturally make me most anxious to hasten the arrival of that period when the executive power shall again be surrounded by all the constitutional checks of free, liberal, and British institutions."[47] The problem to be solved is stated and partly solved in the famous report on the affairs of Canada subsequently published by the High Commissioner--perhaps the most remarkable document in British colonial history. It showed the keenest insight into knotted complications, and at the same time it made practical and far-seeing suggestions, which reduced the problem to its simplest terms, and prepared the way for a legislative union upon a sovereign scale, and with a provincial autonomy having the happiest results. "I expected," he declared, "to find a contest between a government and a people; I found two nations warring in the bosom of a single state." [Footnote 47: _Quebec Gazette_, 29th May, 1838.]