PART IV. THE FEDERATIONS AND 
THE UNION! 
CHAPTER 1 
THE DOMINION OF CANADA 
§ 1. Tue ORIGIN OF THE DOMINION 
For many years after the union of Upper and Lower 
Canada in 1840 the attempted amalgamation worked as badly 
a8 could have been expected. It was natural to hope, as 
did Lord Durham, that in the end the Canadas would become 
thoroughly English and under an English Legislature, for 
the power of nationality was not realized in his day, and 
the error was, if not altogether pardonable, at least natural. 
But the French Canadians were suspicious of a measure 
which seemed destined to ruin their nationality, and in the 
beginning they had a serious grievance in the fact that, 
though the population of the lower province was very 
considerably greater than that of the upper province, the 
epresentation of both in the Legislature was the same. 
Soon enough, however, the grievance became the other way, 
and the British in the upper province became justly annoyed 
by the disproportionate representation of Lower Canada. 
But it was quite impossible to do anything, for the Bill 
to amend the proportions would have required two-thirds 
Majorities in either House, and though a mysterious repeal 
of this section took place in 1854 2 in the Imperial Act which 
authorized the making of the Upper House elective, nothing 
ver came of the idea, as parties were too evenly balanced 
to permit of the carrying of such a measure. The principle 
Was adopted in the first decade that the Government of the 
: Cf. Egerton, Federations and Unions in the British Empire (1911). 
ton a & 18 Vict. ¢, 118, 5. 5. See Garneau, Histoire du Canada, iii. 275, 376, 
eo e controversy as to the origin of the change, which had not been asked 
v the Legislature or Government.