Source.—Durham's Proclamation of 9th October, 1838, quoted in The Report and Despatches of the Earl of Durham. London, 1839.

... I have also to notify the disallowance by her Majesty of the Ordinance ... "to provide for the security of the Province of Lower Canada."

I cannot perform these official duties without at the same time informing you, the people of British America, of the course which the measures of the Imperial Government and Legislature make it incumbent on me to pursue....

I did not accept the Government of British North America without duly considering the nature of the task which I imposed on myself, or the sufficiency of my means for performing it. When Parliament concentrated all legislative and executive power in Lower Canada in the same hands, it established an authority, which, in the strictest sense of the word, was despotic. This authority her Majesty was graciously pleased to delegate to me....

To encourage and stimulate me in my arduous task, I had great and worthy objects in view. My aim was to elevate the province of Lower Canada to a thoroughly British character, to link its people to the sovereignty of Britain, by making them all participators in those high privileges, conducive at once to freedom and order, which have long been the glory of Englishmen. I hoped to confer on an united people, a more extensive enjoyment of free and responsible government, and to merge the petty jealousies of a small community, and the odious animosities of origin, in the higher feelings of a nobler and more comprehensive nationality....

I had reason to believe that I was armed with all the power which I thought requisite.... I also trusted that I should enjoy, throughout the course of my administration, all the strength which the cordial and steadfast support of the authorities at home can alone give to their distant officers; and that even party feeling would refrain from molesting me whilst occupied in maintaining the integrity of the British Empire.

In these just expectations I have been painfully disappointed. From the very commencement of my task, the minutest details of my administration have been exposed to incessant criticism, in a spirit which has evinced an entire ignorance of the state of this country, and of the only mode in which the supremacy of the British Crown can here be upheld and exercised. Those who have in the British Legislature systematically depreciated my powers, and the ministers of the Crown by their tacit acquiescence therein, have produced the effect of making it too clear that my authority is inadequate for the emergency which called it into existence. At length an act of my Government, the first and most important which was brought under the notice of the authorities at home, has been annulled; and the entire policy, of which that act was a small though essential part, has thus been defeated....

In these conflicting and painful circumstances, it is far better that I should at once and distinctly announce my intention of desisting from the vain attempt to carry my policy and system of administration into effect with such inadequate and restricted means....

You will easily believe that, after all the exertions which I have made, it is with feelings of deep disappointment that I find myself thus suddenly deprived of the power of conferring great benefit on that province to which I have referred; of reforming the administrative system there, and eradicating the manifold abuses which had been engendered by the negligence and corruption of former times, and so lamentably fostered by civil dissensions. I cannot but regret being obliged to renounce the still more glorious hope of employing unusual legislative powers in the endowment of that province with those free municipal institutions, which are the only sure basis of local improvement and representative liberty, of establishing a system of general education, of revising the defective laws which regulate real property and commerce, and of introducing a pure and competent administration of justice. Above all, I grieve to be thus forced to abandon the realisation of such large and solid schemes of colonisation and internal improvement, as would connect the distant portions of these extensive colonies, and lay open the unwrought treasures of the wilderness to the wants of British industry and the energy of British enterprise.

... Our exertions, however, will not, cannot be thrown away. The information which we have acquired, although not as yet fit for the purposes of immediate legislation, will contribute to the creation of juster views as to the resources, the wants and the interests of these colonies, than ever yet prevailed in the mother country.