And Sir Robert, "looking at all the papers before the House, could not say that there was here any vindication for bringing forward this transcendental power." He asked whether "they had ever treated with so much severity a conquered colony amid the first heat of animosity after the contest." And he traced the history of our government of the island back to the time of Charles II., pointing out (as Burke had formerly argued with respect to our Colonies in North America) that "Jamaica owed its colonization by British subjects to the conquest that was made of it by the arms of Cromwell; that its first English population was composed of those who, disgusted with the excesses of the civil wars, there found a refuge," and who had carried with them that attachment to liberty which, as early as 1678, had led them successfully to repel the attacks made on the privileges of their House of Assembly by the ministers of Charles II. He warned the House, also, that if this measure were passed, "a sympathy for the people of Jamaica would be excited throughout the other West Indian possessions of the crown." And, while fully admitting that the conduct of the Assembly had been "foolish and unjustifiable," he still recommended that it should be treated in a conciliatory spirit, which as yet had not been shown toward it.
The government carried their proposal by a majority of no more than five in a very full house, a success which they regarded as a defeat, and, as has been already mentioned, resigned. But as the state of the question and of the island did not admit of delay, on their resumption of their offices they introduced a fresh measure, which the Conservatives again curtailed of its most severe clauses, and which, in the form in which it was eventually passed, gave the Assembly time to reconsider its conduct, and, without the humiliation of confessing itself guilty, to give a practical recantation of their offensive resolutions, by resuming its work of legislation, any farther delay of which would on many subjects be very mischievous to the island itself. The distinct assertion by both parties of the power of the Parliament to inflict even the severest penalty enabled the Houses to take this conciliatory course without loss of dignity; while the stern disapproval of the conduct of the Assembly which the Conservative leader had expressed, even when pleading for a milder treatment of it, convinced the colonists that any protracted contumacy would be dangerous, and would deprive them for the future of all title to even the modified protection which on this occasion had saved them.
In the discussion of these transactions, Peel, as we have seen, had alluded to the affairs of Canada, which had been of a still more serious complexion; since there the discontent of the colonists in the Lower Province had developed into armed insurrection. We have seen that, from the first moment after the country had passed into our possession, there had been almost constant dissensions between the old French colonists and the English immigrants who crossed over both from England and from the colonies on the southern side of the St. Lawrence in the early part of the reign of George III. The desire of terminating these divisions, which had their root in a difference of religion as well as of race, the French settlers being Roman Catholics, had been one of the chief motives which had led Pitt in 1791 to divide the country into two provinces.[253] And for many years the scheme was fairly successful; but, toward the end of the reign of George IV., the political excitement caused by the agitation in England of the question of Catholic Emancipation, and subsequently of Reform, spread across the Atlantic to the Canadas; and the French portion of the colonists, who almost monopolized the representation in Lower Canada, began to urge the adoption of changes utterly inconsistent with the existing constitution of the colony. In the hope of compelling the compliance of the home government with their demands, in 1832 and the following years they refused to vote the necessary supplies; and, gaining courage, as it were, from the contemplation of their own violence, and under the guidance of a leader of French extraction, a M. Papineau, who scarcely concealed his hope of effecting the complete severance of the Lower Province from the British dominion, they proceeded to put forth farther demands, which they regarded as plausible from the apparent resemblance of the changes which they required to the system of the English constitution, but which, to use the words in which Sir Robert Peel described them, would have established "a French republic." The most important of them were that the Upper or Legislative Council should, like the Assembly, be rendered elective, instead of, as had hitherto been the case, being nominated by the crown. And another asked that the Executive Council should be made responsible to the Assembly, in the same manner as in England the ministers of the crown were responsible to Parliament. As it was at once shown that the ministry at home had no intention of granting these demands, Papineau collected a band of malcontents in arms, with whom he took possession of one or two small towns, and ventured even to measure his strength with the Commander-in-chief of the province, Sir John Colborne, one of the most distinguished of Wellington's comrades and pupils. His force was utterly routed, and he himself fled across the frontier to New York. A similar outbreak, excited in the Upper Province by a newspaper editor, was crushed with equal ease and rapidity.[254] And the next year, 1838, Lord John Russell brought forward a bill to suspend the constitution of the colony, and to confer on a new Governor, who was at once to proceed thither, very ample powers for remodelling the government of the province, subject, of course, to the sanction of the home government. In the previous year he had succeeded in carrying some resolutions announcing the determination of Parliament not to concede the demands of the Assembly of the Lower Province, which have been already mentioned. And the reasons which he gave for this course are worth preserving, as expressing the view recognized by Parliament of the relations properly existing between the mother country and a colony. It was on a proper understanding of them that he based his refusal to make the Executive Council in Canada responsible to the Assembly. He held such a step to be "entirely incompatible with those relations. Those relations require that his Majesty should be represented, not by a person removable by the House of Assembly, but by a Governor sent out by the King, responsible to the King, and responsible to the Parliament of Great Britain. This is the necessary constitution of a colony; and if we have not these relations existing between the mother country and the colony, we shall soon have an end of these relations altogether." And he pointed out the practical difficulties which might reasonably be apprehended if such a change as was asked were conceded. "The person sent out by the King as Governor, and those ministers in whom the Assembly confided, might differ in opinion, and there would be at once a collision between the measures of the King and the conduct of the representatives of the colony."