Liberalism means many things. In my first article, I referred to Lord Durham's splendid Report. Bob Rae referred to it in his first article as well, but did not praise it. According to him, it was "disastrous, but fortunately short-lived." Au contraire! It was a splendid piece of work and so filled with of foresight that even today it informs Canadian political life at its best. To see why, we must understand Durham's liberalism on its own terms, removed from what present-day liberalism has become.

Lord Durham was a confident, strong, and spirited liberal. He believed liberalism was worth defending and was eager to criticize its enemies. Conventional readings of the Durham Report praise the author for recommending responsible government, but criticize his proposal to assimilate French-speaking colonists. In these days of official bilingualism and semi-official multiculturalism, this looks intolerant, and -- because contemporary liberals can tolerate anything but intolerance -- to some it looks illiberal as well.

But consider the circumstances in which Durham found himself. Following the Rebellion of 1837, he was faced with a "fatal feud" between the French- and the English-speaking colonists of Lower Canada. He also had to consider the dissatisfaction with British rule in the other colonies. Only by adapting to a common North American way of living, he believed, could French-speakers enjoy genuine liberty and equality. Thus did he advocate equality of opportunity and British constitutional practices for all colonists. Thus too, his liberalism: According to Durham, no religious cult, no clan, no caste, no nation, no collective, no faction, and no king, should usurp the right to legislate on behalf of others.

Existing practices, Durham was convinced, would ensure that "the great part" of French-speakers would remain "labourers in the employ of English capitalists," and so poor, dependent and resentful. He was not in error. The French-speaking colonists did not, he said, wish to "remain stationary", but had been held back by a misguided policy that both permitted immigration of aggressive English-speaking entrepreneurs to Quebec and maintained the old seigneuries. Because the seigneuries could not easily be sold, the French-speakers' economic competitiveness was reduced. Regardless of whether British policy was inspired by a goodhearted desire to maintain the noble but vanishing life of the ancien regime, or by prejudice against the Catholic and French inhabitants of the colony, the result was identical: the English-speaking minority prospered while the majority of French-speakers did not. It was a recipe for strife. It was also the reason the colonists on both sides argued in terms of "race." That is, the English-speakers sought to protect their group privileges, and the French-speakers challenged them on the same grounds.

Durham was also perhaps the first to notice the mauvaise foi of nationalist rhetoric. It was designed not to resist assimilation to a liberal, British political order, but to protest the exclusion of French-speakers from the prosperous, liberal society of the English-speaking merchants. Durham therefore opposed legal protection for a "distinct society" in Lower Canada - he called it a society of ancient virtue - because, like the "separate but equal" institutions of the American South, it violated his faith in equality of opportunity.

Much like the sovereigntists today, the Patriote rebels of 1837 were not as dedicated to preserving the ancient virtues and cultural traditions of their ethnic garrison as is sometimes assumed. Although they invoked nationalist sentiments to justify their position, their appeal to the pre-modern and pre-liberal habitants was intended to gain electoral support — a thoroughly modern, liberal objective — in order to effect liberal reforms against the discriminatory laws supported by the English-speaking faction. The Patriotes were moved by ambition, not nostalgia.

Likewise today's sovereigntists, no less than today's federalists, share liberal political habits. This is why the sovereigntists become so irritated when their opponents criticize their pure laine rhetoric as ethnocentric, and worse. And yet, like the Patriotes of 1837, they do make archaic and anti-liberal appeals against, for example, "money and the ethnic vote," to use the unforgettable phrase of Jacques Parizeau.

In recommending equal opportunity for all the colonists, Durham's message was simple: wherever ethnic, linguistic, or religious differences are politically institutionalized, there one finds injustice. This liberal principle has endured in Canada because it guarantees the dignity of all citizens, whatever language they speak. That is what makes Lord Durham such a great liberal, and why his Report remains an enduring statement of Canadian liberalism.

In the context of Durham's arguments rightly understood, it is correct to observe, as Mr. Rae did last week, "Canada is a federation, not just a nation, and that says it all." It doesn't quite say it all, but it says a great deal: We are a "political nation," to use Cartier's formula in the Confederation Debates, and we are a federation. It is not, however, "cookie-cutter" federalism, as Mr. Rae has suggested, to treat the provinces as formally equal. Acknowledging the reality of equal provinces has become a political necessity, largely for the same reasons Durham made plain as day in his Report. A liberal society permits variety, indeed, requires variety for its survival. Federalism, a mode of governance that enhances liberal "experiments in living", is the institutional expression of variety concentrated.

Today few would dispute that Quebec is more distinct from PEI than Saskatchewan is from Manitoba, but the two prairie provinces are not cookie cut-outs either. Here is where the former premier of Canada's most populous province is too timid in his understanding of what federalism can do for diversity in Canada.

There are good reasons for Quebec to take pride in its own language laws, and even its own sign laws, whatever English-speakers in British Columbia might think. By the same token, there is no reason Saskatchewan should not take pride in its own gun laws, regardless of what the good burghers of Montreal might think. Likewise, Alberta can take pride in its own health laws, despite the disapproval of the bien pensants of Toronto. B.C. would certainly take pride in formulating its own salmon laws.

That, after all, is the point of federalism. It encourages the kind of variety that is both the foundation of liberal society and its fullest expression. Quebec's sign laws, no less than the existence of Nunavut, are experiments. In both places, citizens are able to use local or regional government for their own purposes, to organize their common life without being intimidated by a remote and massive central government, and to take pride in their achievements. Federalism encourages these liberal experiments by promoting government that is not just responsible, but also responsive.