Why this sudden
shift? Simply because the old colonial system they had known and
supported had come to an end. The Empire had been taken to mean
racial ascendancy and trade profit. Now both the political and
the economic pillars were crumbling, and the Empire appeared to
have no further excuse for existence.
In the past British connection had meant to many of the English
minority in Lower Canada a means of redressing the political
balance, of retaining power in face of a body of French-speaking
citizens outnumbering them three or four to one. Now that support
had been withdrawn. Britain had consented, unwillingly, to the
setting up of responsible government and the calling to office of
men who a dozen years before had been in arms against the Queen
or fleeing from the province. This was gall and wormwood to the
English. But when the Ministry introduced, and the Assembly
passed, the Rebellion Losses Bill for compensating those who had
suffered destruction of property in the outbreak, and when the
terms were so drawn as to make it possible, its critics charged,
that rebels as well as loyalists would be compensated, flesh and
blood could bear no more. The Governor was pelted with rotten
eggs when he came down to the House to sign the bill, and the
buildings where Parliament had met since 1844, when the capital
had been transferred from Kingston to Montreal, were stormed and
burned by a street mob.
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