35.1 KT3 - Canada and the Durham Report, 1837-40

Enquiry Frame and Chronology

This is a Paper 3 depth enquiry. That means the key task is not to narrate every Canadian
event between 1837 and 1840. It is to explain how political structure, colonial grievance,
rebellion, fear of the United States and imperial reform connected.

Keep three enquiry questions in view.

The chronology is short, but the causes go back to the constitutional settlement of 1791.

The title, "Learning from past mistakes", points back to Britain's loss of the thirteen
American colonies. Ministers did not want another settler society to conclude that
independence or annexation by the United States was the only route to political control.
The Durham Report's deeper significance is that it offered a different imperial bargain:
local self-government for colonial loyalty.

Two Canadas and Unworkable Government

The political system of Upper and Lower Canada looked partly representative, but it was not
responsible government. Under the Constitutional Act of 1791, each colony had an elected
assembly. That mattered because voters could choose representatives who criticised the
government, passed money bills and claimed to speak for local opinion. However, the real
executive authority sat elsewhere.

In each colony the governor or lieutenant-governor represented the Crown. He was advised by
an appointed Executive Council. There was also an appointed Legislative Council, which
acted as an upper chamber. These councils were not answerable to the elected assembly.
They were usually drawn from wealthy, well-connected local elites. The assembly could
complain, delay, refuse supply and produce petitions, but it could not replace the people
who actually advised the governor and controlled patronage.

That made the system frustrating. If an assembly did nothing, voters blamed it for failure.
If it challenged the executive too hard, the governor and councils could block it. This
produced a politics of deadlock, suspicion and accusation.

Lower Canada was the more explosive case because politics fused with nationality. The
Patriotes argued that an elected assembly dominated by French Canadians should control
taxation and government. The Chateau Clique and British merchant interests feared that a
French Canadian majority might block economic development, protect seigneurial and French
civil traditions, or restrict British immigration and commerce. This does not mean all
French Canadians were rebels or all English speakers were loyalists. Wolfred Nelson, for
example, was an English-speaking Patriote. The point is that political deadlock was
sharpened by identity.

Upper Canada had a different political nature. It was not a French-English national
conflict. Its grievances centred on the Family Compact's grip on land, office and church
privilege. Crown reserves and clergy reserves removed large blocks of land from ordinary
settlement, complicated road-building and encouraged resentment against Anglican privilege.
Many Methodists, Presbyterians, farmers and newer settlers saw the Compact as a self-serving
elite using public power for private advantage. Mackenzie made that anger louder and more
republican, but he did not represent all reformers. Moderates such as Baldwin wanted
responsible government within the empire, not a small Canadian version of the American
Revolution.

The perceived threat from the United States gave all of this extra urgency. Britain had
already lost the thirteen colonies and had fought the United States again in 1812-15. The
border was long, porous and socially connected. Many settlers in Upper Canada had family,
trade links or previous lives in the United States. American newspapers, republican
language and Jacksonian democratic ideas crossed the border easily. After the rebellions,
exiled rebels also found American sympathisers willing to supply money, arms, volunteers
or applause.

This threat should be handled carefully. The United States government did not officially
invade Canada in 1837-38, and President Martin Van Buren's administration tried to restrain
neutrality-breaking raids. Yet British officials could still see a real danger. If colonial
government remained unresponsive, discontented settlers might look south and decide that
republican institutions, or even annexation, offered a better future. Durham's later
argument for responsible government was partly designed to remove that temptation.

Lower Canada Rebellion

Lower Canada produced the more serious and violent rebellion because long-running
constitutional grievance became bound up with French Canadian political identity. The
elected assembly was dominated by the Parti patriote, led by Louis-Joseph Papineau. Its
support came from professionals, notaries, lawyers, journalists, small merchants, farmers
and artisans. Its programme was not simply "French against British". It included liberal
demands for elected power and local control. Yet it also drew strength from fears that
French Canadian law, language, Catholic institutions and rural society were threatened by
British merchants and colonial officials.

The political crisis sharpened after 1834. The Ninety-Two Resolutions set out Patriote
grievances, including demands for an elected Legislative Council and stronger assembly
control over revenue. London did not concede. In 1837 Russell's Ten Resolutions rejected
the central Patriote demands and authorised the use of colonial revenues without the
assembly's consent. To many Patriotes, this looked like proof that peaceful pressure had
failed.

There were also social and economic pressures. Rural habitants faced falling living
standards, pressure on land, debt and uncertainty. Cholera outbreaks and immigration
fuelled suspicion. British merchants wanted canals, roads and commercial development.
French Canadian reformers often feared that such development would strengthen an English
commercial minority at their expense. By 1837, meetings, boycotts and political clubs had
made the atmosphere more confrontational. Radical Patriotes could present resistance as a
defence of popular rights, while loyalists could present it as treason and ethnic
intimidation.

The immediate course of the revolt moved quickly from protest to battle.

Saint-Denis matters because it shows the rebels were not merely a debating society. Nelson
used local knowledge, stone buildings and determined defenders to defeat a British column.
However, the victory did not create a strategy. Papineau fled, coordination was weak and
the British still had regular troops, loyalist volunteers and better command. Saint-Charles
and Saint-Eustache revealed the imbalance. Once British forces concentrated, rural Patriote
positions could be isolated and destroyed.

The 1838 rising had a different tone. Some exiles now spoke more clearly of a Lower
Canadian republic. Robert Nelson proclaimed the Republic of Lower Canada, and secretive
organisations planned invasion from the United States. Yet the attempt was a fiasco. Poor
planning, weak supplies and limited local mobilisation meant that battles such as Odelltown
ended in dispersal rather than liberation.

The impact was severe. Martial law, arrests, executions, deportations and the burning of
property deepened bitterness. The constitution of Lower Canada was suspended, replacing
normal politics with special rule. The rebellion also fixed in British minds the idea that
Lower Canada contained not only a constitutional dispute, but a dangerous conflict between
French Canadian nationalism and an English loyalist minority. Durham would turn that
diagnosis into the most controversial part of his Report.

For exam judgement, do not reduce the causes to one word such as "race" or "democracy".
The strongest answer shows interaction: an unworkable constitution gave the elected
assembly too little power; French Canadian cultural anxiety made that conflict sharper;
economic strain widened support; and Russell's Ten Resolutions convinced radicals that
London would not reform unless forced.

Upper Canada and the Border

The Upper Canadian rebellion was smaller, less deadly in its first phase and more chaotic
than the Lower Canadian rebellion. It still mattered because it made British officials ask
whether even a loyal, English-speaking settler colony could be alienated by bad government.
It also turned the American border into a crisis zone.

Upper Canada's causes centred on the Family Compact. Reformers attacked the way a small
network dominated offices, legal institutions, the Bank of Upper Canada, land policy and
church privilege. Clergy reserves were especially resented because large land blocks set
aside for Protestant clergy, especially Anglican interests, slowed settlement and symbolised
elite privilege. Crown lands and patronage gave the executive sources of influence that
were not controlled by the elected assembly.

Sir Francis Bond Head made the situation worse. Arriving as lieutenant-governor in 1836,
he briefly brought reformers such as Robert Baldwin and John Rolph into the Executive
Council, then ignored their advice. When they resigned, he treated reform as a loyalty
test. In the 1836 election he appealed to British loyalty and portrayed reformers as
dangerously American in spirit. The election defeated many reformers, including Mackenzie.
For moderates this was a serious setback. For radicals it seemed to prove that ordinary
constitutional politics had been rigged by the governor.