In the eyes of Durham's enemies his ordinance of banishment was a ukase; and, at first blush, it looks like an unwarrantable stretching of his powers. But Durham was on the ground and must necessarily have known the conditions prevailing much better than his critics three thousand miles away. Desperate diseases need desperate remedies. The presumption is always that the man on the ground will be right; and posterity has {19} passed a final judgment of approval on Durham's bold slashing of the Gordian knot. New facts have set the whole matter in a new light. A paper of Buller's,[2] hitherto unpublished, shows that the ordinance was promulgated _only after consultation with the prisoners_. 'The prisoners who expected the government to avail itself of its power of packing a jury were very ready to petition to be disposed of without trial, and as I had in the meantime ascertained that the proposed mode of dealing with them would not be condemned by the leading men of the British party, Lord Durham adopted the plan proposed.' They regarded banishment as an unexpected mercy, as well they might. The only alternative was the dock, the condemned cell, and the gallows. On the thirtieth of November Durham landed at Plymouth, and by the middle of the following January he had finished his Report. Early in February it was printed and laid before the House of Commons. The {20} curious legend which credits Buller with the authorship is traceable to Brougham's spite. Macaulay and Brougham met in a London street. The great Whig historian praised the Report. Brougham belittled it. 'The matter,' he averred, 'came from a felon, the style from a coxcomb, and the Dictator furnished only six letters, D-u-r-h-a-m.' The whole question has been carefully discussed by Stuart J. Reid in his _Life and Letters of the First Earl of Durham_, and the myth has been given its quietus. Even if direct external evidence were lacking, a dispassionate examination of the document itself would dispose of the legend. In style, temper, and method it is in the closest agreement with Durham's public dispatches and private letters. The drafting of this most notable of state papers was the last of Durham's services to the Empire. A little more than a year later he was dead and laid to rest in his own county. Fifty thousand people attended his funeral. A mausoleum in the form of a Greek temple marks his grave. The funds for this monument were raised by public subscription, such was the force of popular esteem. His dying words were prophetic: 'Canada will one day do justice to my memory.' {21}