The Political Thought of Lord
Durham, Janet Azenstat
(McGill - Queen's University Press: Kingston - Montreal, 1988)
Lord Durham was High Commissioner
to Lower and Upper Canada for just one year and sixteen days and stayed in
Canada only five months. Given such a short period, historians, such as Chester
New, have seriously questioned his knowledge of Canadian political and social
life. Janet Ajzenstat's The Political Thought of Lord Durham reveals
that Durham had profound insights into Canadian problems which are still
confounding us, particularly the relationship between equality and nationalism
and the need for an improved constitutional arrangement to end the animosity
many Canadians feel toward each other.
Ajzenstat challenges the
widely-held assumption that Durham was a racist. Such a portrayal is
inconsistent with his liberalism which emphasized equality, individual rights
and freedoms, toleration and a belief in responsible government. What Durham
objected to were nationalist arguments, both English and French, and special
legal protection. His object was to put English and French on the same footing
and he therefore favoured the assimilation of distinctive ways of life. The
Durham Report should not be looked upon as the product of one individual but
rather of the modern liberal tradition. Ajzenstat is sympathetic to that
tradition. She writes: "We may decide in the end that Durham and the
mainstream liberals generally do not give enough place in their thought to the
strength of human loyalties and the desire to be associated with a
collectivity. But we cannot evaluate their argument, or our own thought on the
place of national minorities in a liberal society, if we ignore their central
supposition--that nationalist divisions recognized in law deny liberal rights
to minorities."(p. 12)
Ajzenstat also challenges
conventional opinion that Durham's advocacy of responsible government was aimed
at strengthening democratic institutions, specifically, the power of the lower,
elected Houses. In fact, Durham called for a limitation on the powers of the
lower houses. If two constitutional principles were recognized, the money bill
principle (or the financial initiative of the Crown in legislative matters) and
the confidence convention, a balanced constitution would be created and the
danger of democratic tyranny would be reduced. It should be noted, however,
that the eventual recognition of these two principles in the Legislature of the
United Province of Canada did not create the "balance" Durham was
looking for. While these principles may have resulted in a more equal
relationship between the executive and the Assembly, they essentially crippled
the upper house, the Legislative Council, as an equal partner in the
legislative process. As professor R.A. Mackay has stated in The Unreformed
Senate of Canada by 1849 "for all practical purposes the Canadian
parliament had now become a single chamber."
Ajzenstat refers to the money bill
principle as being "not in operation in the colonies at the time."(p.
59) In fact the money bill principle, while never followed in Upper Canada, did
exist in Lower Canada. One of the rules of the Lower Canadian House of
Assembly, laid down in 1793 and rescinded only in 1834, the year of the passage
of the 92 Resolutions, read "that this House will receive no petition for
any sum of money relating to Public Service, but what is recommended by His Majesty's
Governor, Lieutenant Governor or person administering the Government at the
time." The Legislative Council of Lower Canada, despite the Assembly's
actions, never rescinded its own rule which stated "that the Legislative
Council will not proceed upon any Bill appropriating public money that shall
not within the knowledge of this House have been recommended by the King's
representative."
As other reviewers have noted, this
book has re-opened the question of Lord Durham when for many years it had been
closed. In this the 150th anniversary of the Durham report, such a development
is welcome.
Gary O'Brien, Director, Committees and Private
Legislation, The Senate