conflicts that lasted for so many years in Lower Canada--those years of
trial for all true Canadians--the division between the two races was not
a mere line, but apparently a deep gulf, almost impossible to be bridged
in the then temper of the contending parties. No common education served
to remove and soften the differences of origin and language. The
associations of youth, the sports of childhood, the studies by which the
character of manhood is modified, were totally distinct. [Footnote:
Report of Lord Durham on Canada, pp. 14-15.] With the Union of 1840,
unpalatable as it was to many French Canadians who believed that the
measure was intended to destroy their political autonomy, came a spirit
of conciliation which tended to modify, in the course of no long time,
the animosities of the past, and awaken a belief in the good will and
patriotism of the two races, then working side by side in a common
country, and having the same destiny in the future. And with the
improvement of facilities for trade and intercourse, all sections were
brought into those more intimate relations which naturally give an
impulse not only to internal commerce but to the intellectual faculties
of a people. [Footnote: Lord Macaulay says on this point: Every
improvement of the means of locomotion benefits mankind morally and
intellectually, as well as materially, and not only facilitates the
interchange of the various productions of nature and art, but tends to
remove natural and provincial antipathies and to bind together all the
branches of the human family.] During the first years of the settlement
of Canada there was a vast amount of ignorance throughout the rural
districts, especially in the western Province. Travellers who visited
the country and had abundant opportunities of ascertaining its social
condition, dwelt pointedly on the moral and intellectual apathy that
prevailed outside a few places like York or other centres of
intelligence; but they forgot to make allowance for the difficulties
that surrounded these settlers. The isolation of their lives had