old constitution was revoked on the outbreak of the rebellion. It was,
consequently, with some reason, considered an act of injustice to make
the people of French Canada pay the debts of a province whose revenue
had not for years met its liabilities. Then, to add to these decided
grievances, there was a proscription of the French language, which was
naturally resented as a flagrant insult to the race which first
settled the valley of the St. Lawrence, and as the first blow levelled
against the special institutions so dear to French Canadians and
guaranteed by the Treaty of Paris and the Quebec Act. Mr. LaFontaine,
whose name will frequently occur in the following chapters of this
book, declared, when he presented himself at the first election under
the Union Act, that "it was an act of injustice and despotism"; but,
as we shall soon see, he became a prime minister under the very act he
first condemned. Like the majority of his compatriots, he eventually
found in its provisions protection for the rights of the people, and
became perfectly satisfied with a system of government which enabled
them to obtain their proper position in the public councils and
restore their language to its legitimate place in the legislature.

But without the complete grant of responsible government it would
never have been possible to give to French Canadians their legitimate
influence in the administration and legislation of the country, or to
reconcile the differences which had grown up between the two
nationalities before the union and seemed likely to be perpetuated by
the conditions of the Union Act just stated. Lord Durham touched the
weakest spot in the old constitutional system of the Canadian
provinces when he said that it was not "possible to secure harmony in
any other way than by administering the government on those principles
which have been found perfectly efficacious in Great Britain." He
would not "impair a single prerogative of the crown"; on the contrary