Durham Report

In Upper Canada and Lower Canada, he formed numerous committees with essentially all the opponents of the Patriotes and made numerous personal observations on life in the colonies.

Durham knew how to organize support in Upper Canada. His team drew upon a long tradition of petitioning and the example of political activism in Britain. There were extensive advance publicity and public processions to attract audiences for meetings. The goal was to convince London of the widespread popular support in Canada for the report proposals. The meetings were represented as nonpartisan, respectable, loyal, orderly and deserving of parliamentary support.

Durham also visited the United States and wrote that he had assumed that he would find that the rebellions had been based on liberalism and economics. However, he eventually concluded that the real problem was the conflict between the traditionalist French and the modernizing English.

According to Durham, the French culture in Canada had changed little in 200 years and showed no sign of the progress that British culture had made. His report contains the famous assessment that Lower Canada had "two nations warring within the bosom of a single state."[4] and called the French Canadians "a people with no literature and no history".[5]

Durham had become the Governor-General in Lower Canada in 1837 but soon submitted his resignation because of his conflict with British Parliament mostly because of his progressive nature. He believed the British Parliament should give the colonies more power by a responsible government. Lord Durham was sent back to Canada in 1838 by British Parliament and the Crown to investigate the cause behind the rebellions of both Upper and Lower Canada and propose suggestions to fix any remaining problems and lessen the chance of future rebellions.

Lord Durham found that although the rebellions of Upper and Lower Canada were over, peace and unity were yet to be found in Canada. The people living in both colonies in Canada were struggling, as the economic situation in both areas all but collapsed. Poor farming conditions that year led to reduced harvests and increased poverty for farmers. As well as increased political tension and bitterness between parties and races of people, particularly in Lower Canada. Both Canadas were in a state of distress. Durham brought along a small but highly talented staff, most notably including Charles Buller and Edward Gibbon Wakefield. The three of them collaborated to prepare and write the report. It was generally disparaged or ignored in Britain but did draw attention from some leading British intellectuals such as John Stuart Mill.[6] Much more important was the impact on Anglophone Canada, where led by Joseph Howe, Robert Baldwin, and Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine it produced dramatic reforms.[7]

The report was entitled "Report on the Affairs of British North America". It was considered controversial as it suggested radical ideas for the time, such as for the British Parliament granting the Canadas a responsible government.

The two most well-known suggestions from Lord Durham's report were the fusion of Upper and Lower Canada, to become a single unified colony, the Province of Canada, ruled under a single legislature, and to introduce a responsible government. Durham had believed that to be inevitable because of the progressive nature of the colony's neighbour, the United States. He believed as those ideas were already available to the people and understood, nothing less would be accepted or tolerated and so it must be embraced to satisfy the people and maintain the peace: "establishing a representative government in the North American Colonies. That has been irrevocably done and the experiment of depriving the people of their present constitutional power is not to be thought of."[8]

Durham also recommended the creation of a municipal government and a supreme court in British North America. He was interested in not only unifying Upper and Lower Canada but also including Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. He also wanted to resolve the issue of land over Prince Edward Island, but those suggestions failed to come to fruition since the Maritime Provinces were then uninterested.[9] Those suggestions would be put into place decades later, during the Confederation of Canada.

However, Durham believed that the problems in mostly Lower Canada were not of a political nature, but rather of an ethnic one. It was his opinion that those problems could be solved through the assimilation that he would expect to result from the way he recommends uniting the Canadas, factoring in the Anglophone majority in Upper Canada.[5]

"The French complained of the arrogance and injustice of the English; the English accused the French of the vices of a weak and conquered people, and charged them with meanness and perfidy. The entire mistrust which the two races have thus learned to conceive of each other's intentions, induces them to put the worst construction on the most innocent conduct; to judge every word, every act, and every intention unfairly; to attribute the most odious designs, and reject every overture of kindness or fairness, as covering secret designs of treachery and malignity."[12]

"At first sight it appears much more difficult to form an accurate idea of the state of Upper than of Lower Canada. The visible and broad line of demarcation which separates parties by the distinctive characters of race, happily has no existence in the Upper Province. The quarrel is one of an entirely English, if not British population. Like all such quarrels, it has, in fact, created, not two, but several parties; each of which has some objects in common with some one of those to which it is opposed. They differ on one point, and agree on another; the sections, which unite together one day, are strongly opposed the next; and the very party, which acts as one, against a common opponent, is in truth composed of divisions seeking utterly different or incompatible objects. It is very difficult to make out from the avowals of parties the real objects of their struggles, and still less easy is it to discover any cause of such importance as would account for its uniting any large mass of the people in an attempt to overthrow, by forcible means, the existing form of Government."[13]

"We are not now to consider the policy of establishing representative government in the North American Colonies. That has been irrevocably done; and the experiment of depriving the people of their present constitutional power, is not to be thought of. To conduct their Government harmoniously, in accordance with its established principles, is now the business of its rulers; and I know not how it is possible to secure that harmony in any other way, than by administering the Government on those principles which have been found perfectly efficacious in Great Britain. I would not impair a single prerogative of the Crown; on the contrary, I believe that the interests of the people of these Colonies require the protection of prerogatives, which have not hitherto been exercised. But the Crown must, on the other hand, submit to the necessary consequences of representative institutions; and if it has to carry on the Government in unison with a representative body, it must consent to carry it on by means of those in whom that representative body has confidence."[8]

"A plan by which it is proposed to ensure the tranquil government of Lower Canada, must include in itself the means of putting an end to the agitation of national disputes in the legislature, by settling, at once and for ever, the national character of the Province. I entertain no doubts as to the national character which must be given to Lower Canada; it must be that of the British Empire; that of the majority of the population of British America; that of the great race which must, in the lapse of no long period of time, be predominant over the whole North American Continent. Without effecting the change so rapidly or so roughly as to shock the feelings and trample on the welfare of the existing generation, it must henceforth be the first and steady purpose of the British Government to establish an English population, with English laws and language, in this Province, and to trust its government to none but a decidedly English Legislature."[14]

Durham made two main recommendations:

• that Upper and Lower Canada be united into one province, and
• the introduction of responsible government for all colonies in British North America

The British Parliament implemented the first point immediately but not the second. Responsible government was only granted to these colonies after 1848.[15]

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

History of the Insurrection in Canada in refutation of the report of Lord Durham

In exile in France, Louis-Joseph Papineau published the Histoire de la résistance du Canada au gouvernement anglais (History of the resistance of Canada to the English government) in the French La Revue du Progrès in May 1839. In June, it appeared in Canada in Ludger Duvernay's La Revue canadienne as Histoire de l'insurrection du Canada en réfutation du Rapport de Lord Durham (History of the insurrection of Canada in refutation of the Report of Lord Durham). Lord Durham believed that, to eliminate the possibility of rebellions, French Canadians had to adopt British-Canadian culture and the English language.

The assertion that the so-called "French" Canadians had no history and no culture and that the conflict was primarily that of two ethnic groups evidently outraged Papineau. It was pointed out that many of the Patriote leaders were of British or British Canadian origin, including among others Wolfred Nelson, the hero of the Battle of Saint-Denis; Robert Nelson, author of the Declaration of Independence of Lower Canada, who would have become President of Lower Canada had the second insurrection succeeded; journalist Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan; and Thomas Storrow Brown, general during the Battle of St-Charles. It was also pointed out that an uprising had occurred in Upper Canada where there was only one "race". According to Papineau and other Patriotes, the analysis of the economic situation of French Canadians was biased. Indeed, from 1791 to the rebellions, the elected representatives of Lower Canada had been demanding control over the budget of the colony.

The general conclusions of the report regarding self-governance eventually spread to various other white settler colonies, including Australia and New Zealand in the 1850s (with Western Australia receiving self-government in 1890). The parallel nature of government organization in Australia and Canada to this day is an ongoing proof of the long-enduring effects of the report's recommendations.

The report did not see any of its recommendations come into force in the African and Asian colonies, but some limited democratic reforms in India became possible that otherwise would not have been.

Durham resigned on 9 October 1838 amid controversy excited in London by his decision of the penal questions[19] and was soon replaced by Charles Poulett Thomson, 1st Baron Sydenham, who was responsible for implementing the Union of the Canadas. The report of Durham was laid before Parliament in London on 11 February 1839.[19]

• History of Canada
• Rebellions of 1837
• Charles Buller
• Edward Gibbon Wakefield
• Richard Hanson (Australian politician)

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Report on the Affairs of British North America

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• Cameron, David R. "Lord Durham Then and Now." Journal of Canadian Studies 25.1 (1990): 5–23+ online
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• Mills, David. Durham Report, in The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historical Foundation, 2008
• Morissette, Benoît. "'The Foundations of Freedom and Civilization': The Durham Report, Municipal Institutions and Liberalism." World Political Science 15.1 (2019): 99–124. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/wps-2019-0003 online
• New, Chester. "Lord Durham and the British Background of His Report." Canadian Historical Review 20.2 (1939): 119–135. online
• Newbould, I. D. C. "Lord Durham, the Whigs and Canada, 1838: The Background to Durham's Return" Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 8#4 (1976), pp. 351–374 DOI: 10.2307/4048187 online
• Smith, William. "The Reception of the Durham Report in Canada." Report of the Annual Meeting. 7#1 The Canadian Historical Association/La Société historique du Canada, 1928. online

• "Critical Review of Sir Francis Head’s Narrative and of Lord Durham’s Report" and "A Narrative" at Faded Page (Canada)
• "Lord Durham's Report on the Affairs of British North America, Volume 2: Text of the Report" at Faded Page (Canada)