Note 11 — Chapter XXX
Reading edition
I am very glad to see that Mr. Dent, in his "Forty Years—Canada since the Union of 1841," recently published, has avoided the current fault of those writers who can recognise no historical truth not endorsed by the Globe. In vol. i, p. 357, he says:
"There can be no doubt that the Reform party, as a whole, were unjust to Mr. Draper. They did not even give him credit for sincerity or good intentions. The historian of to-day, no matter what his political opinions may be, who contemplates Mr. Draper's career as an Executive Councillor, must doubtless arrive at the conclusion that he was wrong; that he was an obstructionist—a drag on the wheel of progress. But this fact was by no means so easy of recognition in 1844 as it is in 1881; and there is no good reason for impugning his motives, which, so far as can be ascertained, were honourable and patriotic. No impartial mind can review the acts and characters of the leading members of the Conservative party of those times, and come to the conclusion that they were all selfish and insincere. Nay, it is evident enough that they were at least as sincere and as zealous for the public good as were their opponents."
I wish I could also compliment Mr. Dent upon doing like justice to Sir Francis B. Head.