Home rule -- Ireland; Ireland -- Politics and government
[37] "It is true that in the case of Canada full responsible government
was conceded, a few years after a troublous period culminating in a
brief armed rising, to a population composed of races then not very
friendly to each other, though now long since happily reconciled. But
the Canadas had by that time enjoyed representative institutions for
over fifty years, the French-Canadians had since the year 1763 been
continuously British subjects, and the disorders which preceded Lord
Durham's Mission and the subsequent grant of self-government could not
compare in any way with a war like that of 1899-1902. It is also the
fact that in the United Colony of Upper and Lower Canada, during the
period of 1840-1867, parties were formed mainly upon the lines of races,
and that, as the representatives of the races were in number nearly
balanced, stability of Government was not attained, a difficulty which
was not overcome until the Federation of 1867, accompanied by the
relegation of provincial affairs to provincial Legislatures, placed the
whole political Constitution of Canada upon a wider basis."
Few would gather from the first sentence that the races were "not very
friendly to each other" precisely because they lived under a coercive
political system; and that, in the long-run, they were "happily
reconciled" because they received responsible government. Nor could it
be deduced from the obscure reference lower down to the union of the two
Provinces that the Union was the one blot upon Durham's scheme, the one
point in which, fearing the predominance of a French majority in Lower
Canada, he shrank from his own principles and recommended an unworkable
Union which tended to encourage the formation "of parties on the lines
of races." From the further allusion to the Federal Union of 1867, no
one would imagine that that great scheme was founded on a cessation of
racial antipathy inside the Quebec Province, and on a voluntary
recognition among all races and parties that it was best for that
Province to have a local autonomy of its own, parallel with that of the
Ontario Province and under the supreme central authority of the
Dominion.
[38] February 26, March 27, 1906.
CHAPTER VIII
THE ANALOGY
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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