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The autumn, which witnessed on both sides of the Atlantic the excitement over Lord Durham's mission to Canada, was darkened in the home of Lord John by the death at Brighton, on November 1, of his wife. His first impulse was to place the resignation of his office and of leadership in the Commons in the hands of his chief.
Jameson in her "Winter Studies and Summer Rambles," written only a year or two before Lord Durham's report, gives an equally unfavourable comparison between the Canadian and United States sides of the western country.
For nearly twenty years after Durham's investigation the question of abolishing the seigneurial tenures remained a football of Canadian politics. Legislative commissions were appointed; they made investigations; they presented reports; but none succeeded in getting any comprehensive plan of abolition on the statute-books.
Meantime the troops remained statu quo, our cavalry occupying Durham's Station and Chapel Hill. General Slocum's head of column was at Aven's Ferry on Cape Fear River, and General Howard's was strung along the railroad toward Hillsboro'; the rest of the army was in and about Raleigh.
But after Colborne's firmness had repressed the armed risings, and Durham's imperious dictatorship had introduced some kind of order, there followed in Canada a period of high constitutional importance, in which the old issue was frankly faced, both in England and in Canada, almost in the very terms that Burke had used.
We were overtaken by as severe a thunder storm as I have ever seen, of which the King was in such abject fear that he commanded that we land at the Bishop of Durham's palace opposite which we then were. De Montfort, who was residing there, came to meet Henry, with all due respect, observing, 'What do you fear, now, Sire, the tempest has passed? And what thinkest thou old 'waxen heart' replied?
You believed I had this when that I had read it when we were at Taloona? You believed that?" "It was given to me by one of the troopers, who picked it up where you had been kneeling when you attended to Durham's wound. The man said it was either yours or mine. I knew it was not mine, so I took it to give it to you. I should have given it at once, but I forgot it at the moment. When I read it "
He came in a crisis; he left amid a crisis. He had spent five months in office, almost the exact term for which the Romans chose their chief magistrate in a national emergency and named him dictator. In the eyes of Durham's enemies his ordinance of banishment was a ukase; and, at first blush, it looks like an unwarrantable stretching of his powers.
Meantime the troops remained statu quo, our cavalry occupying Durham's Station and Chapel Hill. General Slocum's head of column was at Aven's Ferry on Cape Fear River, and General Howard's was strung along the railroad toward Hillsboro'; the rest of the army was in and about Raleigh.
And his cold ensnaring of this innocent girl is an outrage; it is a crime to make her the hostage of Senator Durham's corrupt friendship." And yet, mindful of Jack Witherspoon's counsel, he took up the trade of an honest Iago, and hid his raging hatred behind the mask of an olden gratitude to the one, a loyal friendship to the other.
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