In 1830, a new Governor, Lord Matthew Aylmer, landed in Quebec with new instructions. Meanwhile, the House of Assembly wanted to settle the question of subsidies, and made control of all the colony’s revenues and expenses a point of principle. Governor Aylmer, however, informed the House that the next subsidy act would have to respect the requirements of the Crown. Once again the situation was deadlocked. Any hopes raised by the actions of 1827, the report of the special committee of the British Commons, and the statements of the English ministers were dashed.
In February 1834, exasperated Assembly members passed Ninety-two Resolutions that summarized their requests and grievances, and sent them to the government in London. The resolutions denounced all the injustices that the Assembly had noted, similar to the memorandum that the Canadian Party–now the Patriot Party–had submitted in 1828. This time, however, the tone was different, and the proposed solutions were of such an uncompromising nature that they rattled the faith of those who had put their trust in the wisdom of the British parliamentary system.
Meanwhile, London had fallen into a position where it could not intervene quickly. A domestic political crisis had caught the full attention of the imperial Parliament: in the space of 11 months, there had been four different ministers responsible for the colonies. Despite this overriding concern, a commission of inquiry was created to study the Canadian situation. During this time, the House of Assembly of Lower Canada decided it would not approve any more budgets so long as London did not accept its demands.
The official response from England arrived three years later, in May 1837. The British Parliament was in possession of the report from the investigative commission, which rejected the theses of the Patriot Party and recommended that the moderate reform begun in 1828 be continued. Armed with this report, the imperial government felt justified in imposing its views on the radicals in Lower Canada.
As a follow-up, the British Parliament adopted the Russell resolutions, which placed an estoppel against the demands from the Lower Canada House of Assembly. The Russell resolutions also authorized the colonial government to do without the consent of the Assembly in the use of public funds, upheld the requirement for a civil list (the administration’s expenses), confirmed the privileges of the British American Land Company, and raised the threat of unifying the two Canadas if they continued to get in each other’s way.
By forcing Papineau and his followers to choose between submission and revolt, these resolutions only served to increase the momentum for revolt.
Discontent peaked in Lower Canada in the spring of 1837. Despite the repeated requests of the Patriot Party, London still refused to reconstitute the Legislative Council as an elected body or to make the Executive Council answerable to the House of Assembly. Protest meetings, soon to be prohibited by Governor Gosford, were held everywhere. Rebellion finally broke out in the fall. “Patriots,” often poorly organized, took up arms against the English army at St. Denis, St. Charles and St. Eustache.
The crackdown was swift: villages were burned, members of the public were attacked, and women and children were put out of their homes just as winter was setting in.
Several Patriots who had taken refuge in the United States were eager to take up the struggle again. In February 1838, under the direction of Robert Nelson, they proclaimed the Republic of Lower Canada and invited volunteer Americans to join them. The American president did not cooperate, however, and threatened to imprison anyone who compromised his government’s neutrality.
In November, the Patriots attacked English troops at Lacolle and Odeltown, but the operation was a fiasco. The second crackdown was worse than the first. More villages were pillaged and burned. Almost 1,000 people were arrested, twice as many as in 1837. Of these, 108 were put on trial, about 60 were deported, and 12 were hanged in the Pied-du-Courant prison in Montreal.
The Catholic clergy was not inactive during this time of revolt. Monsignor Lartigue, the Bishop of Montreal, spoke out against the insubordination of the Patriots and warned the faithful that those who promoted revolt and disobedience to the law might well find themselves refused the sacraments. The Bishop even went so far as to publish a notice that defended the established powers. The Bishop of Quebec adopted the same attitude.
After the armed uprisings, the administrator John Colborne dissolved the House of Assembly and appointed a special council to administer Lower Canada until 1841. England was becoming worried during this time, for riots were also breaking out in Upper Canada and discontent was again on the rise in its Gulf colonies. It appointed John George Lambton, Lord Durham, a radical Whig, as Governor General and High Commissioner to British North America. Lord Durham arrived in Quebec on May 27, 1838, to conduct an investigation.
In 1839, having spent six months on the new continent, Durham presented his report to the English government. It dealt mainly with various tactics he felt would restore peace: ensure the existence of a majority of loyal English people, anglicize the French Canadians who, in his opinion, had no chance of survival in an Anglo-Saxon America, and establish ministerial responsibility. To Durham, harmony could be re-established only by strengthening the influence of the people.
The imperial government immediately rejected ministerial responsibility, as it entailed broadening colonial freedoms. To put the Canadians in a state of political subordination, London introduced the Union Act in 1840. Its purpose was to reunite the two Canadas under a single parliament and make English the only official language. Henceforth, according to the will of London, one was to speak only of United Canada. The English government felt that a colonial assembly dominated by British elements would guarantee that ties to imperialism would be strengthened and that British investors would be reassured.
The Union Act was by and large based on the ideas about assimilation put forward by Durham, who saw in the conflict a confrontation of two races and, in Francophone society, an atrophied cultural group that hobbled Canada’s expansion.
The Union Act was passed by the Parliament in London on July 23, 1840, and came into force on February 10, 1841. It introduced numerous reforms. The two Canadas were to become one United Canada, with one government. This United Canada was to keep the institutions established by the Constitutional Act of 1791: a Governor who was answerable to the British Parliament, an Executive Council appointed by the Crown, a Legislative Council of 24 members, appointed for life, and a House of Assembly of 84 members, half to be elected by East Canada and the other half by West Canada. Officially, East Canada and West Canada simply replaced the names Lower Canada and Upper Canada. In practice, however, the former names did not die quickly.
The implementation of political union, which unified the economy as well, greatly pleased the Canadian business class. However, it only made the French Canadians angry, for several clauses of the constitution humiliated them. For example, East Canada, which had a larger population than West Canada, was allotted the same number of elected representatives: a breach of the principle of democracy. The civil list was raised to 75,000 pounds per year, and elected members no longer had any control over it. Also, section 41 of the Union Act decreed that English was to be the only official language of the country. This was the first time that England had prohibited French in a constitutional text.
The objective pursued by England in the Union Act was clear: hammer together a British-style parliamentary system with an artificial majority, while waiting for immigration to run its course and give the British a real majority. Such a system would in all likelihood adopt policies favourable to British colonization. So it was that French Canadians began their existence as a minority.
The measures of 1841 created deep wounds. In the Quebec City region, petitions called for the abolition of the Act. Some people suggested withdrawal from political life. The reaction was so intense that, in 1848, London had to recognize and accept the use of French.
At that time, the great French-Canadian champion was Louis-Hippolyte La Fontaine. During the rebellion, he had developed his political philosophy around the notion that political parties must be based on “opinions” instead of “origins.” He felt that social peace and prosperity would happen of their own accord once racial distinctions were rooted out of public administration and institutions were given freedom.
As a pragmatic politician who strongly denounced the discriminatory elements of the Union regime, he invited fellow French Canadians to get involved in political life. Without being aware of it, therefore, Louis-Hippolyte La Fontaine was urging his compatriots to take the road that was to lead to Confederation.