Strange as it may seem in face of these disparaging comments, the new governor-general had already determined to make the assertion of his authority the fundamental thing in his policy, although with him authority always wore the velvet glove over the iron hand. In Lower Canada the suspension of the constitution had already placed dictatorial powers in his hand; but, even in the Upper Province, he seemed to have expected that diplomacy would have to be supported by authority to compel it to come into { 79} the Union; and he had no intention of leaving the supremacy over all British North America, which had been conferred on him by his title, to lie unused. The two strenuous years in which he remade Canada fall into natural divisions--the brief episode in Lower Canada of the first month after his arrival; his negotiations with Upper Canada, from November, 1839, to February, 1840; the interregnum of 1840 which preceded the actual proclamation of Union, during which he returned to Montreal, visited the Maritime Provinces, and toured through the Upper Province; and the decisive months, from February till September 19th, 1841, from which in some sort modern Canada took its beginnings.
The first month of his governorship, in which he settled the fate of French Canada, is of greater importance than appears on the surface. The problem of governing Canada was difficult, not simply because Britons in Canada demanded self-government, but because self-government must be shared with French-Canadians. That section of the community, distinct as it was in traditions and political methods, might bring ruin on the Colony either by asserting a supremacy odious to the Anglo-Saxon elements of the population, or by { 80} resenting the efforts of the British to assimilate or dominate them. When Poulett Thomson landed, on October 19th, 1839, at Quebec, he was brought at once face to face with the relation between French nationalism and the constitutional resettlement of Canada.
Durham had had no doubt about the true solution. It was to confer free institutions on the colony, and to trust to the natural energy and increase of the Anglo-Saxon element to swamp French _nationalité_. "I have little doubt," he said, "that the French, when once placed, by the legitimate course of events and the working of natural causes, in a minority, would abandon their vain hopes of nationality."[8] It was in this spirit that his successor endeavoured to govern the French section in Canada. Being both rationalist and utilitarian, like others of his school he minimized the strength of an irrational fact like racial pride, and, almost from the first he discounted the force of French opposition, while he let it, consciously or unconsciously, influence his behaviour towards his French subjects. "If it were possible," he wrote in November, 1839, "the best thing for Lower Canada would be a despotism for ten years { 81} more; for, in truth, the people are not yet fit for the higher class of self-government, scarcely indeed, at present, for any description of it."[9] A few months later, his language had become even stronger:--"I have been back three weeks, and have set to work in earnest in this province. It is a bad prospect, however, and presents a lamentable contrast to Upper Canada. There great excitement existed; the people were quarrelling for realities, for political opinions and with a view to ulterior measures. Here there is no such thing as a political opinion. No man looks to a practical measure of improvement. Talk to any one upon education, or public works, or better laws, let him be English or French, you might as well talk Greek to him. Not a man cares for a single practical measure--the only end, one would suppose, of a better form of government. They have only one feeling--a hatred of race."[10]