Report On The Affairs of British North America - Enquiry

Enquiry

In Canada, he formed numerous committees consisting of essentially all the opponents of the Patriotes and made many personal observations of life in the colonies. He also visited the United States. Durham wrote that he had assumed he would find that the rebellions were based on liberalism and economics, but he eventually concluded that the real problem was the ethnic conflict between French and English. According to Durham, the French culture in Canada had changed little in 200 years, and showed no sign of progress like British culture had. His 1838 report contains the famous assessment that Lower Canada consisted of "two nations warring within the bosom of a single state".