So little were the causes of the phenomenon of separating understood by the rulers of the British Isles, that Canada, in turn, came to the verge of a revolt which "was in fact a war of nationality in the British Empire, though it wore the disguise of a war of liberty."[162-3] "The settlement of the difficulty was effected by means not very commonly in high favour. For once_ systematic thought was brought to bear upon politics_. . . . a young peer of considerable promise, Lord Durham, was sent out as Governor in 1838; he issued a famous report, due to the pen of Charles Buller, in which the Radical philosophers' principles were vigorously applied . . . and in 1840 Parliament was persuaded to give effect to the proposals made in the report; . . . the main point was that _the Executive branch of government was brought under the control of the colonists. . . . The year 1841 is therefore the year of the inauguration of modern Colonial government._"[162-4] The year 1841, therefore, inaugurated the {163} policies that were in time to check the separating tendency. Not only was separation the desire of certain of the younger groups, but it was to some extent the desire and foregone conclusion of one group from which separation might take place. The attitude of the British public concerning those portions of the British world where English-speaking white men were claiming increasingly the right to govern themselves was in itself more than an invitation to these "colonies" to separate themselves from the Mother Country. Comparison was made to a tree whose ripened fruit in due season detaches itself from the parent stem. The loss of the richest area in whose conquest the British government ever shared had so impressed statesmen that such men as Gladstone could desire the separation from the British Isles of various Pan-Angle nations.