Upper Canada: Betrayed by Its Politicians and Dominated by Lower Canada

It was just one more aspect of Lower Canadian domination: the baneful consequence of a union based on equal parliamentary representation, which prevented the more populous Upper Canada from exercising its proper weight of numbers, while effectively throwing the balance of power to the close-knit French-Canadian community of Lower Canada. “Both the British and French in Lower Canada persist in ruling us,” the Globe added bitterly. The English minority in the East were in the main as guilty, since they had helped to maintain Lower Canadian ascendancy for their own commercial reasons, and ridden rough-shod over western rights. Worst of all, however, were those Upper Canadian supporters of the governing coalition, the Conservative forces led by John A. Macdonald – mere hired “sepoys” in George Brown’s opinion. For they had sold out their own community for government posts and patronage, and a share in the iniquitous régime.

--J.M.S. Careless, Statesman of Confederation, 1860-1880, vol. 2 of Brown of the Globe (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1989), 9.