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5.

Britain were completely incompatible." With such a difficult background
of home opinion Durham began his work. He found French and
British in Quebec at bitter enmity, and the British in Ontario torn
by dissensions, and the United States very ready to fish in troubled
waters. He found, too, that questions like the fate of the political
prisoners and the Clergy Reserves had complicated the real problem.

I need not remind you of the main lines of his report.
Some of his work did not endure. The union of Upper and Lower Canada,
designed to provide an English majority, led to a stalemate and
had to be reversed; but it should be remembered that Durham regarded
this as only a temporary expedient, and looked forward always to that
scheme of federation which was to be realised in the next twenty
years. The foundation stone of his structure was the gift of responsible
government, and that endured. The kernel of the report is
to be found in the famous words, "The Crown must consent to carry
the government on by means of those in whom the representative members
have confidence." The old gibe that Durham had little to do
with the report, that it was conceived by Gibbon Wakefield, written
by Charles Buller, and only signed by Durham, has no truth in it; the
report, it is clear, was Durham's own from start to finish. There
was nothing novel in the doctrine. It was the creed of Burke and Fox,
of Pitt and Canning; it had long been the accepted British policy.
Durham's achievement lay in the fact that he had the courage to give
it a wider application, to shake off the dead hand of Colonial Office
paternalism and to trust the Canadian people. Gentlemen, I need not
remind you that there may be as much orginality in applying an ac-