His second recommendation was to bring the Upper and Lower Provinces together by a legislative union. He met the threatened danger of a disaffected people endowed with political power by an appeal to arithmetic: "If the population of Upper Canada is rightly estimated at 400,000, the English inhabitants of Lower Canada at 150,000, and the French at 450,000, the union of the two provinces would not only give a clear English majority, but one which would be increased every year by the influence of English emigration....I certainly shall not like," he continues, "to subject the French Canadians to the rule of the identical English minority with which they have so long been contending; but from a majority emanating from so much more extended a source, I do not think that they would have any oppression or injustice to fear." This plea for unity among all the elements of political life in Canada, premature as it was, marked, perhaps, the limitation of Lord Durham's scheme. But although he was mistaken in the degree of allowance to be made for the distinct individuality of the French province--a defect afterwards made good on Dominion Day--the work he did, the counsel he gave, made an epoch in the progress of Canadian nationality, and prepared the ground for the completer measures of the future. [Illustration: THE MARQUIS OF LORNE (DUKE OF ARGYLL)] The treatment of rebels was the most critical question with which Lord Durham had to deal, and it was ultimately the cause of his withdrawal, so timid and unchivalrous was the Government of the day in the face of political and journalistic criticism. While granting a general amnesty to the rank and file of the offenders, the High Commissioner offended constitutional pedants by deporting eight of the leading revolutionists without trial to Bermuda; and although this measure was taken advisedly, with the purpose, as it turned out, of saving the prisoners from the heavier penalty they would certainly have received from a regular court, the Viceroy's numerous enemies did not scruple to use this technical omission as a basis for attacks upon his policy. Moreover, when he was bitterly denounced in the House of Lords by Brougham and Lyndhurst, the ministry of Melbourne offered but a feeble defence of their representative; with the result that Durham, on hearing of this desertion by the Cabinet which had appointed him, sent in his resignation.