Act of Union 1840
Encyclopedia
The Act of Union, formally the The British North America Act, 1840 (3 & 4 Victoria, c.35), was enacted in July 1840 and proclaimed 10 February 1841. It abolished the legislatures of Lower Canada
Lower Canada
The Province of Lower Canada was a British colony on the lower Saint Lawrence River and the shores of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence...

 and Upper Canada
Upper Canada
The Province of Upper Canada was a political division in British Canada established in 1791 by the British Empire to govern the central third of the lands in British North America and to accommodate Loyalist refugees from the United States of America after the American Revolution...

 and established a new political entity, the Province of Canada
Province of Canada
The Province of Canada, United Province of Canada, or the United Canadas was a British colony in North America from 1841 to 1867. Its formation reflected recommendations made by John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham in the Report on the Affairs of British North America following the Rebellions of...

 to replace them. This act effected the political union of The Canadas
The Canadas
The Canadas is the collective name for Upper Canada and Lower Canada, two British colonies in Canada. They were both created by the Constitutional Act of 1791 and abolished in 1841 with the union of Upper and Lower Canada....

, and was similar in nature and in goals to the other Acts of Union enacted by the British Parliament.

History

The inspiration for the Act is typically attributed to Lord Durham's Report on Canada
Report on the Affairs of British North America (1839)
The Report on the Affairs of British North America, commonly known as The Durham Report, is an important document in the history of Quebec, Ontario, Canada and the British Empire....

. Lord Durham
John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham
John George Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham GCB, PC , also known as "Radical Jack" and commonly referred to in history texts simply as Lord Durham, was a British Whig statesman, colonial administrator, Governor General and high commissioner of British North America...

 was sent to the colonies to examine the causes of the Rebellions of 1837
Rebellions of 1837
The Rebellions of 1837 were a pair of Canadian armed uprisings that occurred in 1837 and 1838 in response to frustrations in political reform. A key shared goal was the allowance of responsible government, which was eventually achieved in the incident's aftermath.-Rebellions:The rebellions started...

 in both Upper and Lower Canada. The union was also proposed to solve pressing financial issues in Upper Canada, which had become increasingly indebted under the previous regime dominated by the Family Compact
Family Compact
Fully developed after the War of 1812, the Compact lasted until Upper and Lower Canada were united in 1841. In Lower Canada, its equivalent was the Château Clique. The influence of the Family Compact on the government administration at different levels lasted to the 1880s...

. These debts stemmed mostly from poor investments in canal
Canal
Canals are man-made channels for water. There are two types of canal:#Waterways: navigable transportation canals used for carrying ships and boats shipping goods and conveying people, further subdivided into two kinds:...

s connecting Upper Canada to the port of Montreal in Lower Canada via the Great Lakes and St-Lawrence river. Due to Upper Canada's considerable debt and chronic budget shortfalls, it was hoped that its finances could be salvaged by merging it with the then-solvent Lower Canada.

Upper Canada, with its British
English Canadian
An English Canadian is a Canadian of English ancestry; it is used primarily in contrast with French Canadian. Canada is an officially bilingual state, with English and French official language communities. Immigrant cultural groups ostensibly integrate into one or both of these communities, but...

 and Protestant majority, was growing more rapidly than Lower Canada, with the French-Canadian and Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...

 majority. It was hoped that by merging the two colonies, the French-Canadian cultural presence in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

 would gradually disappear through assimilation. As such, the Act also contained measures banning the French language from official use in the Legislative Assembly
Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada
The Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada was the lower house of the legislature for the Province of Canada, which consisted of the former provinces of Lower Canada, then known as Canada East and later the province of Quebec, and Upper Canada, then known as Canada West and later the...

. However, despite the amalgamation, the distinct legal systems of the two colonies was retained with Upper Canada becoming referred to as Canada West (with English common law
Common law
Common law is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals rather than through legislative statutes or executive branch action...

) and Lower Canada as Canada East
Canada East
Canada East was the eastern portion of the United Province of Canada. It consisted of the southern portion of the modern-day Canadian Province of Quebec, and was primarily a French-speaking region....

 (with French civil law
Civil law (legal system)
Civil law is a legal system inspired by Roman law and whose primary feature is that laws are codified into collections, as compared to common law systems that gives great precedential weight to common law on the principle that it is unfair to treat similar facts differently on different...

).

The new, merged colony was named the Province of Canada and the seat of government was moved to Kingston
Kingston, Ontario
Kingston, Ontario is a Canadian city located in Eastern Ontario where the St. Lawrence River flows out of Lake Ontario. Originally a First Nations settlement called "Katarowki," , growing European exploration in the 17th Century made it an important trading post...

 by Lord Sydenham. Canada West, with its 450,000 inhabitants, was represented by 42 seats in the Legislative Assembly, the same number as the more-populated Canada East, with 650,000 inhabitants. The French-Canadian majority as well as numerous anglophones considered this an injustice. In Lower Canada, Louis-Joseph Papineau
Louis-Joseph Papineau
Louis-Joseph Papineau , born in Montreal, Quebec, was a politician, lawyer, and the landlord of the seigneurie de la Petite-Nation. He was the leader of the reformist Patriote movement before the Lower Canada Rebellion of 1837–1838. His father was Joseph Papineau, also a famous politician in Quebec...

 demanded representation by population and the recall of the union the minute he entered the new Parliament of United Canada.

The granting of responsible government
Responsible government
Responsible government is a conception of a system of government that embodies the principle of parliamentary accountability which is the foundation of the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy...

 to the colony is typically attributed to reforms in 1848 (principally the effective transfer of control over patronage from the Governor to the elected ministry). These reforms resulted in the appointment of the second Baldwin
Robert Baldwin
Robert Baldwin was born at York . He, along with his political partner Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, led the first responsible ministry in Canada, regarded by some as the first truly Canadian government....

-Lafontaine
Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine
Sir Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine , 1st Baronet, KCMG was the first Canadian to become Prime Minister of the United Province of Canada and the first head of a responsible government in Canada. He was born in Boucherville, Lower Canada in 1807...

 government that quickly removed many of the disabilities on French-Canadian political participation in the colony.

By the late 1850s, massive immigration from the British Isles to Canada West changed the previous demographic imbalance between the English and French sections of the colony. Many politicians in Canada West began to lobby for representation by population as they no longer considered the equal representation mandated by the Act of Union to be just.

At last, the Act of Union failed at shutting down French-Canadian political influence, especially after responsible government was granted to the colony. By voting en bloc while the Anglophones of Canada West were highly factionalized, the French-Canadians of Canada East guaranteed a strong, unified French Canadian presence in the legislative assembly. As a result, bills proposed by one of the Anglophone Canada-West factions required the support of the French-Canadian Canada-East voting bloc in order to be passed. This was known as the "double majority principle".
However, their presence remained inferior to their demographic weight in the executive and legislative councils. The government of Lafontaine-Baldwin succeeded in repealing the measure against the French language in the Assembly, in the courts, and in the civil administration. With the double majority principle, West and East Canada were so to speak "reseparated" and for a short while, both sides were managed independently. Joint premierships shared by a British-Canadian from Canada West and a French-Canadian from Canada East became the convention, but did not prevent continual legislative deadlock resulting from the conflicting aspirations of the two Canadas. Dissatisfaction resulting from this deadlock was a chief factor leading to Canadian Confederation
Canadian Confederation
Canadian Confederation was the process by which the federal Dominion of Canada was formed on July 1, 1867. On that day, three British colonies were formed into four Canadian provinces...

 in 1867.

See also

  • Acts of Union of the British Empire
    Act of Union
    -In the British Isles:* Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542, passed by the Parliament of England, annexing Wales to England, sometimes known as the "Acts of Union"* Tender of Union, , annexation of Scotland by the Commonwealth of England...

  • Constitutional history of Canada
    Constitutional history of Canada
    The constitutional history of Canada begins with the 1763 Treaty of Paris, in which France ceded most of New France to Great Britain. Canada was the colony along the St Lawrence River, part of present-day Ontario and Quebec. Its government underwent many structural changes over the following century...

  • History of Quebec
    History of Quebec
    Quebec has played a special role in Canadian history; it is the site where French settlers founded the colony of Canada in the 17th and 18th centuries.-Paleoindian Era :...

  • Lower Canada Rebellion
    Lower Canada Rebellion
    The Lower Canada Rebellion , commonly referred to as the Patriots' War by Quebeckers, is the name given to the armed conflict between the rebels of Lower Canada and the British colonial power of that province...

  • Durham Report
  • Quebec nationalism
    Quebec nationalism
    Quebec nationalism is a nationalist movement in the Canadian province of Quebec .-1534–1774:Canada was first a french colony. Jacques Cartier claimed it for France in 1534, and permanent French settlement began in 1608. It was part of New France, which constituted all French colonies in North America...

  • History of Canada
    History of Canada
    The history of Canada covers the period from the arrival of Paleo-Indians thousands of years ago to the present day. Canada has been inhabited for millennia by distinctive groups of Aboriginal peoples, among whom evolved trade networks, spiritual beliefs, and social hierarchies...


External links

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