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Updated: May 21, 2025
Through Sherbrooke's instrumentality the British government now decided to allow the Lower-Canadian legislature to vote the entire revenue of the province, apart from the casual and territorial dues of the Crown and certain duties levied by Act of the Imperial parliament.
The result of the elections of 1854 showed that no one of the three parties the Ministerialists, the Opposition, or the Clear Grits and Lower-Canadian Rouges combined had an independent majority. Upon one point, however, the two last-named groups were equally determined, namely, the defeat of the Government. This they promptly effected by a junction of forces.
In these circumstances Sir Allan resolved upon trying his hand at forming a new Government. He first offered Macdonald the attorney-generalship for Upper Canada, and, availing himself of his young ally's 'friendly relations with the French, entered into negotiations with A. N. Morin, the leader of the Lower-Canadian wing of the late Cabinet. Morin consented to serve in the new Ministry.
In the first place, he did not bring the prisoners to trial because no Lower-Canadian jury at that time could have been induced to convict them, a reasonable inference from the fact that the murder of Weir had gone unavenged, even as the murderers of Chartrand were to be acquitted by a jury a few months later. In the second place, Colborne had not the power to deal with the prisoners summarily.
But the French vehemently insisted on it, and the Ministry, dependent as it was on the Lower-Canadian vote for its existence, had no choice. The Bill provided, as the title indicates, for compensation out of the public treasury to those persons in Lower Canada who had suffered loss of property during the rebellion.
This, though not exactly a suspension of the constitution of Lower Canada and a measure quite legally within the competency of the House of Commons, was a flat negative to the claim of the Lower-Canadian Assembly to control over the executive government, through the power of the purse or otherwise. A long and important debate in Parliament followed on these resolutions.
The relations between these three French-Canadian ministers were hard to define. I frankly confess that, with all my opportunities, I could never master the intricacies of Lower-Canadian politics in those days.
There is little doubt that the real objects of the bill was the extinction of the Lower-Canadian Assembly and the subordination of the French to the English element in the colony. At any rate, the French Canadians saw in the bill a menace to their national existence. Two agents were promptly appointed to go over to London to oppose it.
The parliamentary record of the years immediately succeeding 1858 is not particularly interesting. George Brown continued to fight for representation by population with undiminished vigour, and although both he and his Lower-Canadian colleague, Dorion, were defeated in the general elections of 1861, he was gaining ground.
The rustic gathering of Lower-Canadian habitants who are crowding it with their native ponies and hay-carts and their stuff-coated, deliberate persons, is beginning to break apart as the steamer swings heavily away.
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