“You’re not seriously suggesting that the authority of the governor or his royal prerogative be subject to the passing whim of the rabble in the assembly?” O’Driscoll fumed.
Assemblyman Baldwin coughed discreetly.
“Let His Lordship speak,” Hepburn said sharply.
“I won’t be silenced!”
That must have been some card game, Marc thought.
“As I was saying,” Durham continued, “I view the issue here as political, with entrenched positions taken up by the established elite on the one hand and the self-made men and prosperous farmers on the other. If I had merely to propose a solution for Upper Canada, my task would be straightforward. I would recommend responsible government along the British model.”
“I knew it!” cried Finney, slapping the table as he did his pulpit on Sundays.
“I don’t see any point in remaining-” O’Driscoll began, starting to rise.
“But, of course, I do not have that luxury,” Durham said, unfazed, and O’Driscoll sat down again. “A rebellious or disaffected Quebec, sharing the St. Lawrence River and a border with the rapacious republic to the south, will guarantee the economic collapse of this province regardless of its political structure. So I am compelled to work out a single, overarching set of solutions involving both the Canadas.”
“But I don’t see the problem,” O’Driscoll said. “We’ve defeated the French. The so-called patriots abroad will be crushed before the new year. What does it matter if the French are disaffected? They forfeited their right to have any say when they took up arms against the monarch.”
“And someday they’ll thank us for freeing them from the pope,” Finney added with the conviction of the righteous.
“But the French are the vast majority in that province,” Durham said. “They aren’t likely to commit mass suicide just to please us.”
“If the provinces were united, however,” Hepburn ventured, “we English would soon be the majority.”
“That’s the conclusion I’ve been moving towards these past few weeks,” Durham said without particular emphasis.
Harris spoke next. “You figure the French will be outmanoeuvred by the English in a single parliament?”
Marc suddenly recalled that Harris was not only Catholic but was married to a woman from Quebec.
“I wouldn’t characterize it in quite those terms,” Durham said, and continued in a much more solemn tone: “My considered opinion is that the Quebec French are principally a rural people, an unsophisticated peasantry under the thumb of their priests and unable to liberate themselves from a medieval and pernicious seigneurial system. The landed aristocracy is minuscule in number, there is an impoverished middle class, and no universal and secular school system. In brief, Quebec is as different from Upper Canada as it is possible to be. My plan on first arriving here was to create a federated state composed of all five provinces-”
“That’s preposterous!” O’Driscoll scoffed. “We can’t get two provinces to agree, how could you persuade five of them?”
“Exactly what I concluded when I saw that Quebec’s conflicts were unresolvable in and of themselves. So I started thinking about my fallback scheme: a union of the two Canadas with a single parliament. In this scheme the British citizens would very nearly equal the French. With the genius of the British political system before them and secure in the protection of British jurisprudence and due process, along with the satisfactions of economic growth and prosperity, the French will, over time, accept and eventually prefer your way of life.”
“You’re suggesting that the French race is inferior?” Harris said, his voice raised for the first time.
“In the particular context and way that I just outlined, yes. As a Whig who is occasionally accused of being a Radical, I believe that political freedom is the first necessity of man. Independence of mind and enlightened self-interest will inexorably lead to the greatest good for the greatest number. They are also most conducive to personal well-being and self-esteem. So in that context and in their current circumstances, yes, the Quebec people are ipso facto inferior.”
“But surely you’re being naive or feckless,” Finney said, “if you expect three hundred thousand Norman peasants who’ve been here for two hundred years to turn into little Geordies in a generation. And don’t go underestimating the pope.”
O’Driscoll grunted his agreement.
“Let me explain more fully,” Durham said. “I don’t for a moment think that the French will abandon their religion or the customs of two centuries. Nor do I envision the English doing so, who are now in charge here and hanging on to their Englishness like a drowning sailor clinging to the last oar.” Durham ignored the multiple harrumphs. “That phenomenon is at the root of your problem. What is perfectly plain to any objective outsider is the degree to which the general populace of Upper Canada, despite its mix of British and American stock, has become neither.”
“Nonsense, sir! You’re uttering pure, republican propaganda,” O’Driscoll fumed again.
“Well, why don’t you look at what’s around you. In two generations most of you native-born have lost your accents without adopting the American twang. You have no effective established church.”
This drew alleluias from Methodist Finney and Presbyterian O’Driscoll.
“You have no entrenched, hereditary aristocracy. Here, a gentleman may soil his hands with labour and still call himself a gentleman. Despite the desperate efforts of the Family Compact to stay the drift towards equality, the levelling of the classes has proceeded apace-not towards the lowest common denominator but, from what I’ve seen, towards the middle. I fought for five years to have Britain’s rotten boroughs eliminated and its cities represented in Parliament after one hundred and forty years of disenfranchisement. I failed to have the secret ballot made part of the Reform Bill, so at home seats in the Commons are still routinely purchased for five thousand pounds by both Whigs and Tories. Here there are no such rotten boroughs. Ridings are created rationally. The property qualification for the franchise is more generous. In my judgement, the broadly based ownership of property-the preponderance of yeoman farmers, so to speak-combined with an advancing and rational political system and freedom from the disease of inherited entitlement is rapidly producing an indigenous British North American culture.”
“What are you saying, then?” Hepburn asked, mystified.
“I’m saying that if we can find a productive political structure, all the other parts are already in place for these provinces to become uniquely something of their own. A hundred years from now, it will not matter whether your ancestors were Norman or Viking or Celt. But this ideal cannot even be whispered aloud until a productive political arrangement is created.”
Which, Marc thought, might well depend on his finding Sarah McConkey’s killer.
“Let’s get back to the notion of a union,” Hepburn said helpfully.
“Surely as victors we would have a majority in any unified assembly,” O’Driscoll declared.
“I think the best we can do, given the larger population of Quebec, is guarantee equal representation.”
“But the capital would have to be here, well away from the evil influences down there,” Finney said. “And only English ought to be spoken in the legislature.”
“I agree, but once the parliament is functioning, these questions will become a matter for the house itself to decide.”
“I can’t see Sir Allan MacNab or John Strachan sitting in the same chamber with men who have taken up the sword,” Finney opined.
“The whole idea is unnecessary,” O’Driscoll said.