DURHAM, John George Lambton, 1er comte de, Report on the

DURHAM, John George Lambton, 1er comte de, Report on the Affairs of British North America
from the Earl of Durham her Majesty's High Commissioner,&c., &c., &c., Montréal, The Morning
Courier Office, 1839, 127 p.
Homme politique anglais (1792-1840), John George Lambton, futur lord Durham, est élu, en 1813,
député whig du comté de Durham puis nommé lord du Sceau privé (1830-1833) à la commission qui
préparait la réforme électorale de 1832. Il devient ambassadeur à Saint-Petersbourg (1835-1837) et,
l'année suivante, il est envoyé au Canada avec la mission d'étudier la situation créée par la rébellion
de 1837. Durant l'hiver qui précède son départ pour le Canada, Durham s'efforce de recueillir le plus
de renseignements possibles sur le Canada. Il s'embarque à bord du Hasting, le 24 avril 1838. Il
arrive au port de Québec le 27 mai suivant. Durant les deux premières journées qui suivent son
arrivée, Durham s'affaire à rencontrer quelques notables anglais et à compléter ses renseignements sur
le Canada à partir des journaux. Il est assermenté quelques jours plus tard. Il reste en tout cinq mois
au Canada. Il demeure à Québec et ne séjourne que cinq jours dans le Haut-Canada. De manière à
étudier à fond les institutions des deux Canadas, Durham crée une dizaine de sous-commissions qui
traiteront de la tenure seigneuriale, de la concession des terres, des institutions municipales, des
bureaux d'enregistrements, de la police et de l'instruction. D'ailleurs, tous ces thèmes feront l'objet
d'une longue dissertation dans le rapport final. Le 1er novembre 1838, Durham, mission accomplie,
retourne en Angleterre. Dès son retour, il rédige son mémoire à partir des données recueillies par ses
secrétaires et sous-commissaires. Le rapport est rendu public l'année suivante. Il demande, entre
autres, la réunion des deux Canadas et l'établissement d'un gouvernement responsable.1
« [...] The conquest has changed them [les Canadiens français] but little.
The higher
classes, and the inhabitants of the towns, have adopted some English customs and feelings; but
the continued negligence of the British government left the mass of the people without any of the
institutions which would have elevated them in freedom and civilization. It has left them without
the education and without the institutions of local self-government, that would have assimilated
their character and habits, in the easiest and best way, to those of the empire of which they
became a part. They remain an old and stationary society, in a new and progressive world. In all
essentials they are still French; but French in every respect dissimilar to those of France in the
present day. They resemble rather the French of the provinces under the old regime.
I cannot pass over this subject without calling particular attention to a peculiarity in the
social condition of this people, of which the important bearing on the troubles of Lower Canada
1 Larousse 1866; Grand dictionnaire encyclopédique Larousse (GDEL); VEYRON, Dictionnaire canadien des
noms propres.
has never, in my opinion, been properly estimated.
The circumstances of a new and unsettled
country, the operation of the French laws of inheritance, and the absence of any means of
accumulation, by commerce or manufactures, have produced a remarkable equality of properties
and conditions.
A few seignorial families possess large, though not often very valuable
properties; the class entirely dependent on wages is very small; the bulk of the population is
composed of the hard-working yeomanry of the country districts, commonly called habitans, and
their connections engaged in other occupations.
It is impossible to exaggerate the want of
education among the habitans, no means of instruction have ever been provided for them, and
they are almost universally destitute of the qualifications even of reading and writing. [...] »
(pp. 11-12)
« There can hardly be conceived a nationality more destitute of all that can invigorate and
elevate a people than that which is exhibited by the descendants of the French in Lower Canada,
owing to their retaining their peculiar language and manners. They are a people with no history,
and no literature. The literature of England is written in a language which is not theirs, and the
only literature which their language renders familiar to them is that of a nation from which they
have been separated by eighty years of a foreign rule, and still more by those changes which the
revolution and its consequences have wrought in the whole political, moral, and social state of
France. Yet it is on a people whom recent history, manners, and modes of thought, so entirely
separate from them, that the French Canadians are wholly dependant for almost all the instruction
and amusement derived from books; it is on this essentially foreign literature, which is conversant
about events, opinions, and habits of life, perfectly strange and unintelligible to them, that they
are compelled to be dependent. Their newspapers are mostly written by natives of France, who
have either come to try their fortunes in the Province, or been brought into it by the party leaders,
in order to supply the dearth of literary talent available for the political press. In the same way
their nationality operates to deprive them of the enjoyments and civilising influence of the arts.
Though descended from the people in the world that most generally love, and have most
successfully cultivated, the drama; though living on a continent in which almost every town,
great or small, has an English theatre, the French population of Lower Canada, cut off from every
people that speaks its own language, can support no national stage. » (pp. 112-113)