“The Foundations of Freedom and Civilization”: The Durham Report, Municipal Institutions and Liberalism

Abstract Lord Durham was sent to Canada to investigate the causes of the Rebellions of 1837–1838 and to propose constitutional reforms to restore stability in the province. In his report, presented to the Colonial Office on February 4, 1839, he recommended the legislative union of the two Canadas, as well as the implementation of responsible government. He also noted that the proper functioning of such a government required the creation of a system of municipal institutions. This article offers a new reading of Lord Durham’s recommendations concerning municipal institutions, included in the last section of his famous report. By placing the document in the context of the debates raised by the constitutional and administrative reforms conducted in Britain during the 1830s, it shows that its author understood autonomous municipalities as an essential components of a modern mixed government. Such language was then employed by reformist Whigs in order to justify the policies which they thought were necessary to strengthen the country’s political institutions by adapting them to changing social circumstances. The analysis presented here challenges the interpretation provided by most contemporary commentators on the report. Many of them have concluded that Lord Durham’s understanding of local institutions is based on a liberal conception of political life, found in the writings of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. These studies tend to reduce early British liberalism to philosophical radicalism. They seek to demonstrate that liberals wish to deprive local communities of their political autonomy by integrating their institutions into the juridical structure of a highly centralized state. By focusing on the rhetoric used by Lord Durham to write his report, this article allows us to appreciate the heterogeneity of the definition of the municipality developed by liberalism.