Editing Durham Report (section)

==Inquiry==
[[File:1833-34-The Rt. Honble. John George Lambton Baron Durham.png|thumb|right|Lord Durham, author of the report]]In [[Upper Canada]] and [[Lower Canada]], he formed numerous committees with essentially all the opponents of the [[Patriotes]] and made numerous personal observations on life in the colonies.

Durham knew how to organize support in Upper Canada. His team drew upon a long tradition of petitioning and the example of political activism in Britain. There were extensive advance publicity and public processions to attract audiences for meetings. The goal was to convince London of the widespread popular support in Canada for the report proposals. The meetings were represented as nonpartisan, respectable, loyal, orderly and deserving of parliamentary support.

Durham also visited the United States and wrote that he had assumed that he would find that the rebellions had been based on liberalism and economics. However, he eventually concluded that the real problem was the conflict between the traditionalist French and the modernizing English, and that assimilation of the French minority, through their adoption of the political institutions and the "superior advantages of their English competitors",<ref name=ecodurham/>{{rp|98}} had effectively put an end to the tensions between the two communities.

According to Durham, the culture of the French Canadians had changed little in 200 years and showed no sign of the progress that British culture had made. His report contains the famous assessment that Lower Canada had "two nations warring within the bosom of a single state"<ref>Carol Wilton,  "'A Firebrand amongst the People': The Durham Meetings and Popular Politics in Upper Canada." ''Canadian Historical Review'' 75.3 (1994): 346–375.</ref> and that the French Canadians were "a people with no literature and no history".<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|title=Durham Report {{!}} The Canadian Encyclopedia|url=https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/durham-report#TwoWarringNations|access-date=2021-06-26|website=thecanadianencyclopedia.ca}}</ref>

<blockquote>There can hardly be conceived a nationality more destitute of all that can invigorate and elevate a people, than that which is exhibited by the descendants of the French in Lower Canada, owing to their retaining their peculiar language and manners. They are a people with no history, and no literature. ... 
[I]t is on this essentially foreign [French] literature, which is conversant about events, opinions, and habits of life, perfectly strange and unintelligible to them, that they are compelled to be dependent. ...
In these circumstances I should be indeed surprised, if the more reflecting part of the French Canadians entertained at present any hope of continuing to preserve their nationality.<ref name=ecodurham/>{{rp|95–96}}</blockquote>