The Canadian Question - Softcover

Gilbert Ainslie Young

Softcover

ISBN 10: 046155674X ISBN 13: 9780461556742

Publisher: HardPress, 2021

Synopsis

The Canadian Question by Gilbert Ainslie Young. This 1839 volume gathers the observations first published in the British and Foreign Review (July 1838 and January 1839) and reissued to address what the author calls The Canadian Question. It provides a broad historical and political analysis of Canada in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, focusing on Lower Canada (and the Canadas more generally) as a colony marked by two rival racial and cultural groups—the Anglo-Canadians and the French Canadians—and by divergent legal and social systems inherited from English common law and the French coutume. The work contrasts the democratic, self-governing tendencies of New England’s Puritan settlement with the centralized, feudal and clerically dominated structure of French Canada, arguing that elements such as education, property, religion, and land tenure shaped national character and political conflict. A central thesis advocates the union of Upper and Lower Canada and the amalgamation of the two races under a single constitutional framework, cautioning against transplanted British models and urging reform through a more pragmatic governance structure. The text also surveys key episodes—including the early French settlement, the Quebec Act, the North-West Company, the North American fur trade, and the Montreal petitions of 1822—to illustrate how history, law, and policy intersect in shaping Canada’s constitutional future.

Edition details

• Publisher: HardPress
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 046155674X
• ISBN 13: 9780461556742
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 100