The anxiety of the British Government to bury in oblivion the unfortunate events of 1837-38 was proved by an amnesty that was granted soon after the union of 1841, to the banished offenders against the public peace and the Crown. William Lyon Mackenzie, Louis Joseph Papineau, and Wolfred Nelson came back and were elected to Parliament, though the two first never exercised any influence in the future.
Then occurred an event which had its origin in the rebellion, and in the racial antagonism which was still slumbering in the bosom of the State. In the first session of the Union Parliament, compensation was granted to those loyalists of Upper Canada, whose property had been unnecessarily or wantonly { 370} destroyed during the outbreak. The claim was then raised on behalf of persons similarly situated in Lower Canada. The Conservative Draper government of 1845 agreed to pay a small amount of rebellion losses as a sequence of a report made by commissioners appointed to inquire into the subject. At a later time, when Lord Elgin was governor-general, the Baldwin-Lafontaine ministry brought down a measure to indemnify all those persons who had not taken part in the rebellion, but were justly entitled to compensation for actual losses. The Tory opposition raised the cry, "No pay to rebels," and some of them in their anger even issued a manifesto in favour of annexation. The parliament house at Montreal was burned down, a great number of books and records destroyed, and Lord Elgin grossly insulted for having assented to the bill. This very discreditable episode in the political history of Canada proved the extremes to which even men, professing extreme loyalty, can be carried at times of political passion and racial difficulty.
The union of 1841 did its work, and the political conditions of Canada again demanded another radical change commensurate with the material and political development of the country, and capable of removing the difficulties that had arisen in the operation of the act of 1840. The claims of Upper Canada to larger representation, equal to its increased population since 1840, owing to the great immigration which had naturally sought a rich and fertile province, were steadily resisted by the French Canadians as an unwarrantable interference with the { 371} security guaranteed to them under the act. This resistance gave rise to great irritation in Upper Canada, where a powerful party made representation by population their platform, and government at last became practically impossible on account of the { 372} close political divisions for years in the assembly. At the head of the party demanding increased representation was Mr. George Brown, an able man of Scotch birth, who became the conductor of a most influential organ of public opinion, _The Toronto Globe_, and the leader of the "Grits," or extreme wing of the Reformers or Liberals. In opposition to him were allied Mr. George Etienne Cartier, once a follower of Papineau, but now a loyal leader of his race, and Mr. John Alexander Macdonald, who had occupied a prominent position for years as a Conservative leader.