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Title: The Winning of Popular Government
A Chronicle of the Union of 1841
Author: Archibald Macmechan
Release Date: November 13, 2009 [EBook #30470]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WINNING OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT ***
Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: Burning of the Parliament Buildings, Montreal, 1849.
From a colour drawing by C. W. Jefferys]
THE WINNING OF
POPULAR GOVERNMENT
A Chronicle of the Union of 1841
BY
ARCHIBALD MACMECHAN
TORONTO
GLASGOW, BROOK & COMPANY
1916
Copyright in all Countries subscribing to
the Berne Convention
TO
ROBERT ALEXANDER FALCONER
PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
STUDENT OF HISTORY AND ENCOURAGER
OF HISTORIANS
{ix}
CONTENTS
Page
I. DURHAM THE DICTATOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
II. POULETT THOMSON, PEACEMAKER . . . . . . . . . . 25
III. REFORM IN THE SADDLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
IV. THE GREAT ADMINISTRATION . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
V. THE PRINCIPLE ESTABLISHED . . . . . . . . . . . 132
EPILOGUE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
{xi}
ILLUSTRATIONS
BURNING OF THE PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS, MONTREAL, 1849 _Frontispiece_
From a colour drawing by C. W. Jefferys.
THE EARL OF DURHAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Facing page_ 6
After the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence.
LORD SYDENHAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " 34
From an engraving by G. Browning in M'Gill
University Library.
SIR CHARLES BAGOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " 74
From an engraving in the Dominion Archives.
SIR CHARLES METCALFE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " 82
After a painting by Bradish.
CHARLES, EARL GREY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " 98
From the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence.
SIR LOUIS H. LAFONTAINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " 108
After a photograph by Notman.
THE EARL OF ELGIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " 136
From a daguerreotype.
{1}
CHAPTER I
DURHAM THE DICTATOR
And let him be dictator
For six months and no more.
The curious sightseer in modern Toronto, conducted through the
well-kept, endless avenues of handsome dwellings which are that city's
pride, might be surprised to learn that at the northern end of the
street which cuts the city in two halves, east and west, bands of armed
Canadians met in battle less than a century ago. If he continued his
travels to Montreal, he might be told, at a certain point, 'Here stood
the Parliament Buildings, when our city was the capital of the country;
and here a governor-general of Canada was mobbed, pelted with rotten
eggs and stones, and narrowly escaped with his life.' And if the
intelligent traveller asked the reason for such scenes, where now all
is peace, the answer might be given in one word--Politics.
To the young, politics seems rather a stupid {2} sort of game played by
the bald and obese middle-aged, for very high stakes, and governed by
no rules that any player is bound to respect. Between the rival teams
no difference is observable, save that one enjoys the sweets of office
and the mouth of the other is watering for them. But this is, of
course, the hasty judgment of uncharitable youth. The struggle between
political parties in Canada arose in the past from a difference in
political principles. It was a difference that could be defined; it
could be put into plain words. On the one side and the other the
guiding ideas could be formulated; they could be defended and they
could be attacked in logical debate. Sometimes it might pass the wit
of man to explain the difference between the Ins and the Outs.
Sometimes politics may be a game; but often it has been a battle. In
support of their political principles the strongest passions of men
have been aroused, and their deepest convictions of right and wrong.
The things by which men live, their religious creeds, their pride of
race, have been enlisted on the one side and the other. This is true
of Canadian politics.
That ominous date, 1837, marks a certain climax or culmination in the
political {3} development of Canada. The constitution of the country
now works with so little friction that those who have not read history
assume that it must always have worked so. There is a real danger in
forgetting that, not so very long ago, the whole machinery of
government in one province broke down, that for months, if not for
years, it looked as if civil government in Lower Canada had come to an
end, as if the colonial system of Britain had failed beyond all hope.
_Deus nobis haec otia fecit_. But Canada's present tranquillity did
not come about by miracle; it came about through the efforts of faulty
men contending for political principles in which they believed and for
which they were even ready to die. The rebellions of 1837 in Upper and
Lower Canada, and what led up to them, the origins and causes of these
rebellions, must be understood if the subsequent warfare of parties and
the evolution of the scattered colonies of British North America into
the compact united Dominion of Canada are not to be a confused and
meaningless tale.[1]
{4}
Futile and pitiful as were the rebellions, whether regarded as attempts
to set up new government or as military adventures, they had widespread
and most serious consequences within and without the country. In
Britain the news caused consternation. Two more American colonies were
in revolt. Battles had been fought and British troops had been
defeated. These might prove, as thought Storrow Brown, one of the
leaders of the 'Sons of Liberty' in Lower Canada, so many Lexingtons,
with a Saratoga and a Yorktown to follow. Sir John Colborne, the
commander-in-chief, was asking for reinforcements. In Lower Canada
civil government was at an end. There was danger of international
complications. For disorders almost without precedent the British
parliament found an almost unprecedented remedy. It invested one man
with extraordinary powers. He was to be captain-general and
commander-in-chief over the provinces of British North America, and
also 'High Commissioner for the adjustment of certain important
questions depending in the ... Provinces of Lower and Upper Canada
respecting the form and future government of the said Provinces.' He
was given 'full power and authority ... by {5} all lawful ways and
means, to inquire into, and, as far as may be possible, to adjust all
questions ... respecting the Form and Administration of the Civil
Government' of the provinces as aforesaid. These extraordinary powers
were conferred upon a distinguished politician in the name of the young
Queen Victoria and during her pleasure. The usual and formal language
of the commission, 'especial trust and confidence in the courage,
prudence, and loyalty' of the commissioner, has in this case deep
meaning; for courage, prudence, and loyalty were all needed, and were
all to be put to the test.
The man born for the crisis was a type of a class hardly to be
understood by the Canadian democracy. He was an aristocratic radical.
His recently acquired title, Lord Durham, must not be allowed to
obscure the fact that he was a Lambton, the head of an old county
family, which was entitled by its long descent to look down upon half
the House of Peers as parvenus. At the family seat, Lambton Castle, in
the county of Durham, Lambton after Lambton had lived and reigned like
a petty prince. There John George was born in August 1792. His father
had been a Whig, a consistent friend of Charles James {6} Fox, at a
time when opposition to the government, owing to the wars with France,
meant social ostracism; and he had refused a peerage. The son had
enjoyed the usual advantages of the young Englishman in his position.
He had been educated at Eton and at the university of Cambridge. Three
years in a crack cavalry regiment at a time when all England was under
arms could have done little to lessen his feeling for his caste. A
Gretna Green marriage with an heiress, while he was yet a minor, is
characteristic of his impetuous temperament, as is also a duel which he
fought with a Mr Beaumont in 1820 during the heat of an election
contest. After the period of political reaction following Waterloo,
reaction in which all Europe shared, England proceeded on the path of
reform towards a modified democracy; and Lambton, entering parliament
at the lucky moment, found himself on the crest of the wave. His Whig
principles had gained the victory; and his personal ability and energy
set him among the leaders of the new reform movement. He was a
son-in-law of Earl Grey, the author of the Reform Bill of 1832, and he
became a member of the Grey Cabinet. Before the Canadian crisis he had
shown his {7} ability to cope with a difficult situation in a
diplomatic mission to Russia, where he is said to have succeeded by the
exercise of tact. He was nicknamed 'Radical Jack,' but any one less
'democratic,' as the term is commonly understood, it would be hard to
find. He surrounded himself with almost regal state during his brief
overlordship of Canada. In Quebec, at the Castle of St Louis, he lived
like a prince. Many tales are told of his arrogant self-assertion and
hauteur. In person he was strikingly handsome. Lawrence painted him
when a boy. He was an able public speaker. He had a fiery temper
which made co-operation with him almost impossible, and which his weak
health no doubt aggravated. He was vain and ambitious. But he was
gifted with powers of political insight. He possessed a febrile energy
and an earnest desire to serve the common weal. Such was the physician
chosen by the British government to cure the cankers of misrule and
disaffection in the body politic of Canada.
[Illustration: The Earl of Durham. After the painting by Sir Thomas
Lawrence.]
Lord Durham received his commission in March 1838. But, though the
need was urgent for prompt action, he did not immediately set out for
Canada. For the delay {8} he was criticized by his political
opponents, particularly by Lord Brougham, once his friend, but now his
bitterest enemy. On the twenty-fourth of April, however, Durham sailed
from Plymouth in H.M.S. _Hastings_ with a party of twenty-two persons.
Besides his military aides for decorative purposes, he brought in his
suite some of the best brains of the time, Thomas Turton, Edward Gibbon
Wakefield, and Carlyle's gigantic pupil, Charles Buller. It is
characteristic of Durham that he should bring a band of music with him
and that he should work his secretaries hard all the way across the
Atlantic. On the twenty-ninth of May the _Hastings_ was at Quebec.
Lord Durham was received by the acting administrator, Sir John
Colborne, and conducted through the crowded streets between a double
hedge of soldiery to the Castle of St Louis, the vice-regal residence.
If Durham had been slow in setting out for the scene of his labours, he
wasted no time in attacking his problems upon his arrival in Canada.
'Princely in his style of living, indefatigable in business, energetic
and decided, though haughty in manner, and desirous to benefit the
Canadas,' is the {9} judgment of a contemporary upon the new ruler. On
the day he was sworn to office he issued his first proclamation. Its
most significant statements are: 'The honest and conscientious
advocates of reform ... will receive from me, without distinction of
party, race, or politics, that assistance and encouragement which their
patriotism has a right to command ... but the disturbers of the public
peace, the violators of the law, the enemies of the Crown and of the
British Empire will find in me an uncompromising opponent, determined
to put in force against them all the powers civil and military with
which I have been invested.' It was a policy of firmness united to
conciliation that Durham announced. He came bearing the sheathed sword
in one hand and the olive branch in the other. The proclamation was
well received; the Canadians were ready to accept him as 'a friend and
arbitrator.' He was to earn the right to both titles.
Durham was determined to begin with a clean slate. With a
characteristic disregard for precedent, he dismissed the existing
Executive Council as well as Colborne's special band of advisers, and
formed two new councils in their place, consisting of {10} members of
his personal staff, military officers, Canadian judges, the provincial
secretary, and the commissary-general. Together they formed a
committee of investigation and advice; and, being composed of both
local and non-local elements, it was a committee specially fitted to
supply the necessary information, and to judge all questions
dispassionately from an outside point of view. This committee acting
with the High Commissioner took the place of regular constitutional
government in Lower Canada. It was an arbitrary makeshift adopted to
meet a crisis.
During the long, tedious voyage of the _Hastings_ the High Commissioner
had not been idle. He had worked steadily for many hours a day at the
knotty Canadian question, studying papers, drafting plans, discussing
point after point with his secretaries. Once in the country, he set to
work in the most thoroughgoing and systematic way to gather further
knowledge. He appointed commissions to report on all special problems
of government--education, immigration, municipal government, the
management of the crown lands. He obtained reports from all sources;
he conferred with men of all shades {11} of political opinion; he
called representative deputations from the uttermost regions under his
sway; he made a flying visit to Niagara in order to see the country
with his own eyes and to study conditions. Such labours were beyond
the capacity of any one man; but Durham was ably supported by his band
of loyal helpers and a public eager to co-operate. The result of all
this activity was the amassing of the priceless data from which was
formed the great document known as Lord Durham's Report.
It is generally overlooked that at this period Canada stood in danger
from external as well as internal enemies. Hardly had Durham landed at
Quebec when there occurred a series of incidents which might have led
to war between Great Britain and the United States. A Canadian
passenger steamer, the _Sir Robert Peel_, sailing from Prescott to
Kingston, was boarded at Wells Island by one 'Bill' Johnson and a band
of armed men with blackened faces. The passengers and crew were put
ashore without their effects, and the steamer was set on fire and
destroyed. Very soon afterwards an American passenger steamer was
fired on by over-zealous sentries at Brockville. Together {12} the
twin outrages were almost enough, in the state of feeling on both
sides, to set the Empire and the Republic by the ears.
The significance of these and other similar incidents can only be
understood by recalling the mental attitude of Americans of the day.
They had a robust detestation of everything British. It is not grossly
exaggerated by Dickens in Martin Chuzzlewit. And that attitude was
entirely natural. The Americans had, or thought they had, beaten the
British in two wars. The very reason for the existence of their nation
was their opposition to British tyranny. They saw that tyranny in all
its balefulness blighting the two Canadas. They saw those oppressed
colonies rising, as they themselves had risen, against their
oppressors. To make the danger all the more acute, the exiled
Canadians, notably William Lyon Mackenzie, went from place to place in
the United States inciting the freeborn citizens of the Republic to aid
the cause of freedom across the line. There was precedent for
intervention. Just a year before the fight at St Charles, an American
hero, Sam Houston, had wrested the huge state of Texas from the misrule
of Mexico and founded a new and independent republic. {13} Hence arose
the huge conspiracy of the 'Hunters' Lodges' all along the northern
border of the United States, of which more in the next chapter.
Durham took prompt action. He offered a reward of a thousand pounds
for such information as should bring the guilty persons to trial in an
American, not a Canadian, court. Thereby he said in effect, 'This is
not an international affair. It is a plain offence against the laws of
the United States, and I am confident that the United States desires to
prevent such outrages.' He followed up this bold declaration of faith
in American justice by sending his brother-in-law, Colonel Grey of the
71st Regiment, to Washington to lay the facts before President Van
Buren and to remonstrate vigorously against the laxity which permitted
an armed force to organize within the borders of the Republic for an
attack upon its peaceful neighbour. Such laxity was against the law of
nations. As a result of Durham's spirited action, the military forces
on both sides of the boundary-line worked in concert to put down such
lawlessness. President Van Buren's attitude, however, cost him his
popularity in his own country.
{14}
The most pressing and most thorny question was how to deal with the
hundreds of prisoners who, since the rebellion, had filled the Canadian
jails. A large number of these were only suspected of treason; some
had been taken in the act of rebellion; and some were confined as
ringleaders, charged with crimes no government could overlook and hope
to survive. In some countries the solution would have been a simple
one: the prisoners would have been backed against the nearest wall and
fusilladed in batches, as the Communists were dealt with in Paris in
the red quarter of the year 1871. Even in Canada there were hideous
cries for bloody reprisals. But the ingrained British habit of giving
the worst criminal a fair trial blocked such a ready and easy way of
restoring tranquillity. Still, a fair trial was impossible. In the
temper then prevailing in the province no French jury would condemn, no
English jury would acquit, a Frenchman charged with treason, however
great or slight his fault might prove to be. The process of trying so
many hundreds of prisoners would be simply so many examples of the
law's burdensome delay. To leave them to rot in prison, as King Bomba
left political offenders {15} against his rule, was unthinkable.
Durham met the difficulty in a bold and merciful way. The young Queen
was crowned on June 28, 1838. Such an event is always a season of
rejoicing and an opportunity for exercising the royal clemency in the
liberation of captives. Following this excellent custom, Durham
proclaimed on that day an amnesty in his sovereign's name; and, in a
month after his arrival, he gave freedom to hundreds of unfortunates,
who had endured many hardships in the old, cruel jails of the time, in
addition to the tortures of suspense as to their ultimate fate.
There were some who could not be so released. They were only eight in
number, but they were such men as Wolfred Nelson and Robert Bouchette,
whose treason was open and notorious. They knew, and Durham knew, that
they could not obtain a fair trial. Therefore the High Commissioner
overleapt the law, and by an ordinance banished these ringleaders to
Bermuda during Her Majesty's pleasure. Durham was much pleased at this
happy solution of a difficult and delicate problem. He congratulated
himself, as well he might, on having terminated a rebellion without
shedding a drop of blood. 'The {16} guilty have received justice, the
misguided, mercy,' he wrote to the Queen, 'but at the same time,
security is afforded to the loyal and peaceable subjects of this
hitherto distracted Province.' Furthermore, his proceedings had been
'approved by all parties--Sir J. Colborne and all the British party,
the Canadians and all the French party.' Durham fancied that this
question was now settled, and that he could proceed unhampered with his
main task of reconstruction. But his justifiable satisfaction was not
to last long.
While the High Commissioner was labouring in Canada, as few officials
have ever laboured, for the good of the Empire, his enemies and his
lukewarm friends in England were between them preparing his downfall.
Of his foes, the most bitter and unscrupulous was Brougham, a political
Ishmael, a curious compound of malignity and versatile intellectual
power. He had criticized Durham's delay in starting for Canada; and he
was only too glad of the handle which the autocratic, czar-like
ordinance of banishment to Bermuda offered him against his enemy. It
is nearly always in the power of a party politician to distort and
misrepresent the act {17} of an opponent, however just or blameless
that act may be. Brougham made a great pother about the rights of
freemen, usurpation, dictatorship. As a lawyer he raised the legal
point, that Durham could not banish offenders from Canada to a colony
over which he had no jurisdiction. He enlisted other lawyers on his
side to attack the composition of Durham's council. The storm Brougham
raised might have done no harm, if Durham's political allies had stood
by him like men. But the prime minister Melbourne, always a timorous
friend, bent before the blast, and Durham's ordinance was disallowed.
The High Commissioner, who had been granted such great powers, was held
to have exceeded those powers. Durham belonged to the caste which felt
a stain upon its honour like a wound. The disallowance of his
ordinance by the home authorities was a blow fair in the face. It put
an end to his career in Canada, by undermining his authority. In those
days of slow communication the news of the disallowance reached him
tardily. By a side wind, from an American newspaper, he first learned
the fact on the twenty-fifth of September. He at once sent in his
resignation, told the {18} people of Canada the reason why in a
proclamation, and as soon as possible left the country for ever.
Brougham was burned in effigy at Quebec. The lucky eight, already in
Bermuda, were speedily released. Never did leaders of an unsuccessful
rebellion suffer less for their indiscretion. From Bermuda they
proceeded to New York to renew their agitation. On the first of
November Durham left Quebec, as he had entered that city, with all the
pomp of military pageantry and in a universal display of public
interest. He came in a crisis; he left amid a crisis. He had spent
five months in office, almost the exact term for which the Romans chose
their chief magistrate in a national emergency and named him dictator.
In the eyes of Durham's enemies his ordinance of banishment was a
ukase; and, at first blush, it looks like an unwarrantable stretching
of his powers. But Durham was on the ground and must necessarily have
known the conditions prevailing much better than his critics three
thousand miles away. Desperate diseases need desperate remedies. The
presumption is always that the man on the ground will be right; and
posterity has {19} passed a final judgment of approval on Durham's bold
slashing of the Gordian knot. New facts have set the whole matter in a
new light. A paper of Buller's,[2] hitherto unpublished, shows that
the ordinance was promulgated _only after consultation with the
prisoners_. 'The prisoners who expected the government to avail itself
of its power of packing a jury were very ready to petition to be
disposed of without trial, and as I had in the meantime ascertained
that the proposed mode of dealing with them would not be condemned by
the leading men of the British party, Lord Durham adopted the plan
proposed.' They regarded banishment as an unexpected mercy, as well
they might. The only alternative was the dock, the condemned cell, and
the gallows.
On the thirtieth of November Durham landed at Plymouth, and by the
middle of the following January he had finished his Report. Early in
February it was printed and laid before the House of Commons. The {20}
curious legend which credits Buller with the authorship is traceable to
Brougham's spite. Macaulay and Brougham met in a London street. The
great Whig historian praised the Report. Brougham belittled it. 'The
matter,' he averred, 'came from a felon, the style from a coxcomb, and
the Dictator furnished only six letters, D-u-r-h-a-m.' The whole
question has been carefully discussed by Stuart J. Reid in his _Life
and Letters of the First Earl of Durham_, and the myth has been given
its quietus. Even if direct external evidence were lacking, a
dispassionate examination of the document itself would dispose of the
legend. In style, temper, and method it is in the closest agreement
with Durham's public dispatches and private letters.
The drafting of this most notable of state papers was the last of
Durham's services to the Empire. A little more than a year later he
was dead and laid to rest in his own county. Fifty thousand people
attended his funeral. A mausoleum in the form of a Greek temple marks
his grave. The funds for this monument were raised by public
subscription, such was the force of popular esteem. His dying words
were prophetic: 'Canada will one day do justice to my memory.'
{21}
The Report was Durham's legacy to his country. It defined once for all
the principles that should govern the relations of the colony with the
mother country, and laid the foundations of the present Canadian unity.
It did not please the factions in Canada; it was too plain-spoken.
Exception may be taken, even at the present day, to some of its
recommendations and conclusions. But its faithful pictures of 'this
hitherto turbulent colony' enable the historical student and the honest
patriot to measure the progress the country has since made on the road
to nationhood. If unpleasant, it is very easy reading. Few
parliamentary reports are closer packed with vital facts or couched in
clearer language. To the task of its composition the author brought
energy, insight, a sense of public duty, a desire to be fair, and, best
of all, an open mind, a perfect readiness to relinquish prepossessions
or prejudices in the face of fresh facts. His ample scheme of
investigation, as carried out by himself and his corps of able helpers,
had put him in control of a huge assemblage of data. On this he
reasoned with admirable results.
The Report consists of four parts. The {22} first, and by far the
largest, portion deals with Lower Canada, as the main storm centre.
The second is concerned with Upper Canada; the third, with the Maritime
Provinces and Newfoundland. Having diagnosed the disease in the body
politic, Durham proposes a remedy. The fourth part is an outline of
the curative process suggested.
'I expected to find a contest between a government and a people; I
found two nations warring in the bosom of a single state.' In that one
sentence Durham precises the situation in Lower Canada. Nothing will
surprise the Canadian of to-day more than the evidence adduced of 'the
deadly animosity' which then existed between the two races. The very
children in the streets fought, French against English. Social
intercourse between the two was impossible. The Report shows the
historical origin and carefully traces the course of this 'deadly
animosity.' It finds much to admire in the character of the French
habitant, but spares neither his faults nor the shortcomings of his
political leaders. It shows that the original racial quarrel was
aggravated by the conduct of the governing officials, both at home and
in Canada, until the French took up arms. {23} The consequences were
'evils which no civilized community can long continue to bear.' There
must be a 'decision'; and it must be 'prompt and final.'
In Upper Canada Durham found a different situation. There the people
were not 'slavish tools of a narrow official clique or a few
purse-proud merchants,' but 'hardy farmers and humble mechanics
composing a very independent, not very manageable, and sometimes a
rather turbulent democracy.' The trouble was that a small party had
secured a monopoly of power and resisted the lawful efforts of moderate
reformers to establish a truly democratic form of government.
Ill-balanced extremists had taken up arms; but the sound political
instinct of the vast majority was against them. Here, too, the
original difficulties had been complicated by official ignorance in
England and the unwisdom of authorities on the spot. The result was
that these 'ample and fertile territories' were in a backward, almost
desperate, condition. Their poverty and stagnation were a depressing
contrast to the prosperity and exhilarating stir of the great American
democracy.
The other outlying provinces presented no {24} such serious problems.
There were various anomalies and difficulties; but they were on their
way to removal.
The 'evils which no civilized community could bear' were to be cured by
a legislative union of the Canadas. The time had gone by for a federal
union. A door must be either open or shut; the French province must
become definitely a British province and find its place in the Empire.
To end the everlasting deadlock between the governor and the
representatives of the people, the Executive should be made responsible
to the Assembly; and, in order to bring the scattered provinces closer
together, an inter-colonial railway should be built. In other words,
the obsolete, bad system of colonial government must undergo radical
reform, both within and without, because 'while the present state of
things is allowed to last, the actual inhabitants of these provinces
have no security for person or property, no enjoyment of what they
possess, no stimulus to industry.'
The story of how this reform was undertaken, and of how, in spite of
many obstacles, it was brought to a triumphant success, must always
remain one of the most important chapters in the political history of
Canada.
[1] The story of the rebellions will be found in two other volumes of
the present Series, _The Family Compact_ and _The Patriotes of '37_,
For earlier cognate history see _The Father of British Canada_ and _The
United Empire Loyalists_.
[2] A sketch of Lord Durham's mission to Canada in 1838, by Charles
Buller. See the edition of Lord Durham's Report edited, with an
introduction, by Sir C. P. Lucas: Oxford, 1912. The original document
was given to Dr Arthur G. Doughty, Dominion Archivist, by the present
Earl of Durham.
{25}
CHAPTER II
POULETT THOMSON, PEACEMAKER
Wounded and angry at what he considered an intolerable affront, Durham
had placed the reins of government in the firm hands of that fine old
soldier, Sir John Colborne, and had gone to speak with his enemies in
the gate. Not only was the cause of Canada left bleeding; but as soon
as Durham's back was turned, rebellion broke out once more. This
second outbreak arose from the support afforded the Canadian
revolutionists by American 'sympathizers.' The full story of the
'Hunters' Lodges' has never been told, and the sentiment animating that
organization has been quite naturally misunderstood and misrepresented
by Canadian historians. In the thirties of the nineteenth century
western New York was the 'frontier,' and it was peopled by wild,
illiterate frontiersmen, familiar with the use of the rifle and the
bowie-knife, bred in the Revolutionary {26} tradition and nourished on
Fourth of July oratory to a hatred of everything British. The memories
of 1812 were fresh in every mind. These simple souls were told by
their own leaders and by political refugees from Canada, such as
William Lyon Mackenzie, that the two provinces were groaning under the
yoke of the 'bloody Queen of England,' that they were seething with
discontent, that all they needed was a little assistance from free,
chivalrous Americans and the oppressed colonists would shake off
British tyranny for ever. Appeal was made to less exalted sentiment.
Each patriot was to receive a handsome grant of land in the newly
gained territory. Accordingly, in the spring and summer of 1838, a
large scheme to give armed support to the republicans of Canada was
secretly organized all along the northern boundary of the United
States. It was a secret society of 'Hunters' Lodges,' with ritual,
passwords, degrees. Each 'Lodge,' was an independent local body, but a
band of organizers kept control of the whole series from New York to
Detroit. The 'Hunters' are uniformly called 'brigands' and 'banditti'
by the British regular officers who fought them, and the terms have
been {27} handed on without critical examination by Canadian
historians; but not with justice. Misled though they were, the
'Hunters' looked upon Canada only as Englishmen looked upon Greece, or
Poland, or Italy struggling for political freedom: the sentiment,
though misdirected, was anything but ignoble. Acting upon this
sentiment, a Polish refugee, Von Shoultz, led a small force of
'Hunters,' boys and young men from New York State, in an attack on
Prescott, November 10, 1838. He succeeded in surprising the town and
in establishing himself in a strong position in and about the old
windmill, which is now the lighthouse. His position was technically a
'bridge-head,' and he defeated with heavy loss the first attempt to
turn him out of it. If he had been properly supported from the
American side of the river, and if the Canadians had really been ready
to rise _en masse_ as he had been led to believe, the history of Canada
might have been changed. As it was, the invaders were cut off, and, on
the threat of bombardment with heavy guns, surrendered. Their leader
paid for his mistaken chivalry with his life on the gallows within old
Fort Henry at Kingston; and, {28} in recognition of his error, he left
in his will a sum of money to benefit the families of those on the
British side who had lost their lives through his invasion. Of his
followers, some were hanged, some were transported to Tasmania, and
some were set free. During that winter the 'Hunters' made various
other attacks along the border, which were defeated with little effort.
Though now the danger seems to have been slight, it did not seem slight
to the rulers of the Canadas at that time. The numbers and the power
of the 'Hunters' were not known; the sympathy of the American people
was with them, especially while the filibusters were being tried at
drum-head court-martial and hanged; and there was imminent danger of
the United States being hurried by popular clamour into a war with
Great Britain.
All through the summer of 1838 the rebel leaders in the United States
had been plotting for a new insurrection. They were by no means
convinced that their cause was lost. Disaffection was kept alive in
parts of Lower Canada and the habitants were fed with hopes that the
armed assistance of American sympathizers would ensure success for a
second attempt at independence. It may be {29} the sheerest accident
of dates; but Durham took ship at Quebec on the first of November, and
Dr Robert Nelson was declared president of the Canadian republic at
Napierville on the fourth. A copy of Nelson's proclamation preserved
in the Archives at Ottawa furnishes clear evidence of the aims and
intentions of the Canadian radicals: they wanted nothing less than a
separate, independent republic, and they solemnly renounced allegiance
to Great Britain. At two points near the American boundary-line,
Napierville and Odelltown, the loyal militia and regulars clashed with
the rebels and dispersed them. Once more the jails were filled, which
the mercy of Durham had emptied. Once more the cry was raised for
rebel blood, and the winter sky was red with the flame of burning
houses which had sheltered the insurgents. Hundreds of French
Canadians fled across the border; and from this year dates the
immigration from Quebec into New England which has had such an
influence on its manufacturing cities and such a reaction on the
population which remained at home. Another fruit of this ill-starred
rebellion was the haunting dirge of Gérin-Lajoie, _Un Canadien errant_.
Twelve of the leaders were {30} tried for treason, were found guilty,
and were hanged in Montreal. Some of these had been pardoned once for
their part in the rising of the previous year; some were implicated in
plain murder; all were guilty; but the chill deliberate formalities of
the gallows, the sufferings of the wretched men, their bearing on the
scaffold, the vain efforts to obtain reprieve, produced a strong
revulsion of popular feeling in their favour. By the common law of
nations they were traitors; but they are still named and accounted
'patriots.'
At Toronto, Lount and Matthews, two of the rebel leaders of Upper
Canada, were hanged in the jail-yard on April 12, 1839. A petition for
mercy was set aside; Lount's wife on her knees begged the
lieutenant-governor to spare her husband's life, but in vain. Here,
too, public feeling was chiefly pity for the unfortunate. But these
executions did not satisfy the extremists. The lieutenant-governor,
Sir George Arthur, who had long been governor of the penal settlement
in Tasmania, was avowedly in favour of further severities; and vengeful
loyalists clamoured in support. All Durham's work seemed undone. The
political outlook of {31} the Canadas in 1839 was, if anything, darker
and more hopeless than it had been two years before.
Almost as grave as the political condition of the country was the
financial situation. The rebellions of '37 coincided with a
wide-spread financial crisis in the United States, which had its
inevitable reaction upon all business in Canada, and matters had gone
from bad to worse. By the summer of 1839 Upper Canada--the present
rich and prosperous Ontario--was on the verge of bankruptcy. The
reason lay in the ambition of this province. The first roads into any
new country are the rivers. Therefore the population of Canada first
followed and settled along the ancient waterway of the St Lawrence and
the Great Lakes. But this wonderful highway was blocked here and there
by natural obstacles to navigation, long series of rapids and the giant
escarpment of Niagara. To overcome these obstacles the costly Cornwall
and Welland canals had been projected and built. The money for such
vast public works was not to be found in a new country in the pioneer
stage of development; it had to be borrowed outside; and the annual
interest on these borrowings amounted {32} to £75,000, more than half
the annual income of the province. And this huge interest charge was
met by the disastrous policy of further borrowings. After Poulett
Thomson, Durham's successor, became acquainted with Upper Canada--'the
finest country I ever saw,' wrote the man who had seen all Europe--he
testified: 'The finances are more deranged than we believed in
England.... All public works suspended. Emigration going on fast
_from_ the province. Every man's property worth only half what it
was.' Decidedly the political and financial problems of Canada
demanded the highest skill for their solution.
While things had come to this pass in Canada, Lord Durham's Report on
Canada had been presented to the British House of Commons and its
proposals of reform had been made known to the British public. It
revealed the incompetency of Lord Glenelg as colonial secretary; he
resigned and made way for Lord John Russell, who was in hearty accord
with the principles and recommendations of the Report. The chief
recommendation was that the only possible solution of the Canadian
problem lay in the political union of the two provinces. At first the
British {33} government was inclined to bring about this desirable end
by direct Imperial fiat, but in view of the determined opposition of
Upper Canada, it wisely decided to obtain the consent of the two
provinces themselves to a new status, and to induce them, if possible,
to unite of their own motion in a new political entity. The essential
thing was to obtain the consent of the governed; but they were
turbulent, torn by factions, and hard to bring to reason.
For a task of such difficulty and delicacy no ordinary man was
required. Sir John Colborne was not equal to it; he was a plain
soldier, but no diplomat. He was raised to the peerage as Lord Seaton
and transferred. A second High Commissioner, with practically the
powers of a dictator, was appointed governor-general in his stead.
This was a young parliamentarian, of antecedents, training, and outlook
very different from those of his predecessors. Instead of the Army or
the county family, the new governor-general represented the dignity of
old-fashioned London mercantile life. Charles Poulett Thomson had been
in trade; he had been a partner in the firm of Thomson, Bonar and Co.,
tallow-chandlers. Now tallow-chandlery is not {34} generally regarded
as a very exalted form of business, or the gateway to high position;
but in the days of candles it was a business of the first importance.
Candles were then the only light for the stately homes of England, the
House of Commons, the theatres. The battle-lanterns of Britain's
thousand ships were lit by candles. Supplies of tallow must be fetched
from far lands, such as Russia. And this business formed the
governor-general of Canada. As a boy in his teens he was sent into the
counting-house, an apprentice to commerce, and so he escaped the
'education of a gentleman' in the brutal public schools and the
degenerate universities of the time. Business in those days had a sort
of sanctity and was governed by punctilious--almost religious--routine.
In the interests of the business he travelled, while young and
impressionable, to Russia, and mixed to his advantage with the
cosmopolitan society of the capital. Ill-health drove him to the south
of France and Italy, where he resided for two years. His was the rare
nature which really profits by travel. Thus, in a nation of one
tongue, he became a fluent speaker of several European languages; and,
in a nation which prides itself on being blunt {35} and plain, he was
noted for his suave, pleasing, 'foreign' manners. Poulett Thomson
became, in fact, a thorough man of the world, with well-defined
ambitions. He left business and entered politics as a thoroughgoing
Liberal and a convinced free-trader long before free trade became
England's national policy. Another title to distinction was his
friendship with Bentham, who assisted personally in the canvass when
Thomson stood for Dover. From 1830 onwards he was intimately
associated with the leaders of reform. He was a friend of Durham's,
and they had worked together in negotiating a commercial treaty with
France. Continuity in the new Canadian policy was assured by personal
consultations with Durham before Thomson started on his mission.
'Poulett Thomson's policy was based on the Durham Report, and most of
his schemes in regard to Canada were devised under Durham's own roof in
Cleveland Row.'
[Illustration: Lord Sydenham. From an engraving by G. Browning in
M'Gill University Library.]
Business, travel, and politics combined to form the character of
Poulett Thomson. His well-merited titles, Baron Sydenham and Toronto,
tend to obscure the fact that he was essentially a member of the great
middle class, a civilian who had never worn a sword or {36} a military
uniform. He represented that element in English life which is always
enriching the House of Peers by the addition of sheer intellectual
eminence, like that of Tennyson and Kelvin. He had a sense of humour,
a quality of which Head and Durham were devoid. He was amused when he
was not bored by the pomp attending his position. 'The worst part of
the thing to me, individually, is the ceremonial,' he writes. 'The
_bore_ of this is unspeakable. Fancy having to stand for an hour and a
half bowing, and then to sit with one's cocked hat on, receiving
addresses.' In person Thomson was small, slight, elegant,
fragile-looking, with a notably handsome face. He was one of those
clever, agreeable, plausible, managing little men who seem always to
get their own way. They are very adroit and not too scrupulous about
the means they use to attain their ends. They have that absolute
belief in themselves which their friends call self-confidence and their
enemies conceit.
Thomson came to his arduous task brimming with ambition and belief in
his ability to cope with it. He realized to the full the difficulty of
the problem set him and {37} the credit which would accrue if he solved
it. 'After fifteen years,' a friend wrote, 'you have now the golden
opportunity of settling the affairs of Canada upon a safe and firm
footing, ensuring good government to the people, and securing ample
power to the Crown.' He was fully aware of this himself. 'It is a
_great field_ too,' he notes in his private Journal, 'if I can bring
about the union of the provinces and stay for a year to meet the united
assembly and set them to work'; and he contrasts the opportunity for
distinction offered by the Canadian imbroglio with the tame
possibilities of a subordinate position in the Cabinet, which would be
his fate if he remained in England.
The new governor-general reached Quebec in H.M.S. _Pique_ on October
17, 1839, after a stormy passage of thirty-three days. His first task
in Canada was the same as Durham's--to acquaint himself with the actual
conditions--and he flung himself into it with equal energy. Like
Durham, too, he was ably assisted by capable men on his staff, notably
T. W. C. Murdoch, his civil secretary, and James Stuart, the chief
justice of Lower Canada. From the very first he won golden {38}
opinions from all sorts of persons. The tone of his proclamations, the
courtesy and tact of his public utterances, his personal charm made him
speedily popular. The party of Reform was conciliated because he was
known to be in sympathy with the principles of Lord Durham's Report,
while the Conservatives were pleased with his avowed purpose of
strengthening the bonds between the colony and the mother country.
Lower Canada was still a province without a constitution; but it must
have some machinery of government. A makeshift for regular government
was provided by a Legislative Council of fourteen persons of importance
appointed by Sir John Colborne. Their agreement to the principles of
union was soon obtained. The province now seemed tranquil and the
governor-general hurried on to Upper Canada. His account of his
journey from Montreal to Kingston--the changes and stoppages, the
varieties of conveyance--illustrates vividly the difficulties of travel
in those days.
At Toronto Thomson found a totally different set of conditions. Here
was a constitution functioning and a legislature in session; but what a
legislature! Split into half a dozen little cliques and factions, it
was {39} trying to work with no cabinet, no opposition, no party
system--an ideal state of things to which some critics of present
conditions would like to return. The office-holders, that is, the
members of the government, took opposite sides in debate. The Assembly
was a house divided and sub-divided against itself. There was a
wide-spread and persistent clamour for 'responsible government,' but no
one knew precisely what was meant by it. Who was to be 'responsible'?
for what? and to whom? How was it possible to make the local
government 'responsible' to the people of the colony without reducing
the governor to a figurehead? If his authority were reduced to a
shadow, what became of the 'prerogative' and British connection? Was
not 'responsible government' simply the prelude to the absolute
separation of the colony from the mother country? Then there was the
question of the Clergy Reserves agitating every colonial breast.
One-seventh of the public domain had been set aside for the support of
a favoured church: a plain case of monopoly and privilege, said some; a
wise provision for the maintenance of religion, said others. And the
shadow of bankruptcy was {40} hanging over the unhappy colony. The
situation was one of the utmost difficulty, calling for an almost
superhuman combination of ability, tact, and firmness. Here, as in
Lower Canada, the governor-general's first effort was to obtain the
consent of the people's representatives to the great change in the
status of the province which the union would involve. He carried his
point by meeting men and discussing the project with them--a process of
education. Although there was some opposition on various grounds,
reasonable and unreasonable, the Assembly finally consented to the
following terms: first, each province was to have an equal number of
representatives; secondly, a sufficient civil list was to be granted;
thirdly, the debt incurred by Upper Canada for public works of common
interest should be charged upon the revenue of the new united province.
These terms could not be called ideal, especially in regard to Lower
Canada; but union was the only alternative to benevolent despotism or
civil war. In bringing the legislature of Upper Canada to consent to
these terms Thomson had the valuable aid of the cohort of Moderate
Reformers led by Baldwin and Hincks.
{41}
No inconsiderable part of the governor-general's task was a campaign of
education in the _ABC_ of responsible government. Those elementary
ideas of party government now regarded as axiomatic had to be taught
painfully to our rude forefathers in legislation. That the government
should have a definite head or leader in the Assembly, who should speak
for the government, introduce and defend its measures; that the
officials of the government other than those holding permanent posts
should form one body--a ministry--which should automatically relinquish
office and power when it could no longer command a majority in the
legislature, were practically new and by no means welcome ideas to the
old-time law-makers of Canada. The natural corollary that the
opposition also should be organized under a definite leader, who, on
defeating the government, should assume the responsibility of forming a
cabinet, was equally novel. Such a check on reckless criticism was
sadly needed. Of the process by which Thomson achieved his ends even
his fullest biography gives little information. There must have been
endless conferences of homespun, honest farmers like Willson, men of
breeding like {42} Robinson, brilliant lawyers like Sullivan, plain
soldiers like MacNab, with the little, sickly, understanding governor
of the brilliant eyes, the charming manner, and the persuasive tongue.
Of all the varied explaining, discussing, initiating, little record
remains. But the work was done and the results are manifest to the
world. The persuasive little man succeeded in persuading the
law-makers of Upper Canada that the way out of their difficulties lay
not through division but through union. He persuaded them to a change
of status which was a reversal to the old status prior to the
Constitutional Act, and also a prelude to that larger union of the
British colonies in North America which was destined to embrace half
the continent.
Having succeeded almost beyond belief in the first part of his mission,
Thomson turned his attention to the next vexed question. This was the
question of the Clergy Reserves. On this subject much ink had been
spilt and much hard feeling engendered; and it still provokes not a
little ill-directed sarcasm. The whole matter is in danger of being
misunderstood, and eighteenth-century lawmakers are blamed for not
possessing ideas a hundred years ahead of their times.
{43}
By the terms of the Constitutional Act of 1791 one-seventh of the
public lands thereafter to be granted were devoted to 'the Support and
Maintenance of a Protestant Clergy.' The provision was due, it seems,
to the king himself, pious, homely 'Farmer George'; and to men of his
mind no provision could have seemed more natural or right.
'Establishment' had been the rule from time immemorial. The Church of
England was 'established,' that is, provided by law with an income in
England, in Wales, and in Ireland. The 'Kirk' was similarly
'established' in Scotland. In British America itself the Church of
Rome was 'established' very firmly in Lower Canada. What could be more
natural for a Protestant monarch than to make provision for a
'Protestant Clergy' in a British colony settled by British immigrants,
and purchased with such outpouring of British blood and British
treasure? And what more ready and easy way could be found of providing
for that 'clergy' than by endowing it with waste lands which taxed no
one and which would increase in value as the country became settled?
In its essence this endowment was a recognition of the value of the
Christian religion in preserving {44} the state. But trouble arose
almost at once in the interpretation of the terms 'Protestant' and
'clergy.' Was not the Church of Scotland 'Protestant' as well as the
Church of England? Were not the various species of 'Dissenters' also
the most vigorous of 'Protestants'? On the other side it was asked,
Was not the term 'clergy' applied exclusively to the ministers of the
Church of England? It could not apply to any religious teachers
outside the pale; those outside the pale never dreamed of applying it
to themselves. Naturally other denominations wished to share in this
most generous endowment; and quite as naturally the Church of England
desired to stand by the letter of the law and hold what it had of legal
right. Some extremists opposed any and all establishments, holding
that the church should be independent of the state. Let the endowment
be used for the sorely pinched cause of education, and let the
ministers of all denominations depend solely on the Christian
liberality of their people. Perhaps the extremists were in closest
touch with the genius of the new land and the new institutions growing
up in it. To the plain man in the pioneer settlement there seemed
something feudal, something {45} unjust, in creating a privileged
church at the expense of all other churches. Pioneer life brings men
back to primal realities. To the settler in the log-hut the externals
of religion are apt to fade until all churches seem to be much the
same: to set one above all the others seems in his eyes so unjust as to
admit of no argument in its favour. Besides, he had a very real
grievance: the reserved unoccupied lands interfered with his
well-being; they came between farm and farm, increased his taxation,
and prevented the making of the needful roads. How was he to get to
market? to fetch supplies? To-day few will be found to argue for a
state church; but it was not so in the twenties and thirties of the
last century. The battle raged loud and long; and pamphleteer rent
pamphleteer in endless, wordy warfare.
By 1817 the grievance had become clamant; and when that inquisitive
agitator, Robert Gourlay, asked the farmers of Upper Canada what
hindered settlement, he received the answer--Clergy Reserves. Two
years later the Assembly asked for a return of the lands leased and the
revenue derived from them. Up to this time the annual revenue had not
exceeded £700. In the same {46} year, 1819, the 'Kirk' parish of
Niagara applied for a grant of £100, and the law-officers of the Crown
supported the claim. This decision stirred up the Anglicans. They
formed themselves into a corporation in each province to oversee the
administration of the Clergy Reserves. Ownership in the lands was to
be obtained, if obtained at all, through the establishment and
endowment of separate rectories, as provided for in the original act.
Why the directing minds among the Anglicans did not adopt this ready
and easy method of obtaining at least the bulk of the disputed land is
something of a mystery. Apparently they adopted a policy of all or
none. Only in 1836, just before the outbreak of the rebellions, when
political feeling was at fever pitch, did Sir John Colborne, at the
bidding of Bishop Strachan, sign patents for forty-four parishes to be
erected in Upper Canada. The total amount of land devoted to this
purpose was seventeen thousand acres. 'This,' declared Lord Durham,
'is regarded by all other teachers of religion in the country as having
at once degraded them to a position of legal inferiority to the clergy
of the Church of England; and it has been most warmly resented. In the
opinion of many persons, {47} this was the chief predisposing cause of
the recent insurrection, and it is an abiding and unabated cause of
discontent.'
Thomson's way of dealing with this cause of discontent did not dispose
of it for ever, but it at least provided a lenitive. With the business
man's respect for property and vested interests, he was opposed to the
diversion of the grant from its original purpose to the support of
education. He used his powers of persuasion upon 'the leading
individuals among the principal religious communities.' After 'many
interviews' he secured the support of the religious communities to a
measure which he had prepared. By the terms of this bill the remainder
of the reserved land was to be sold and the proceeds were to form a
fund, the income from which should be distributed annually among the
Church of England, the Church of Scotland, and other specified
religious bodies, 'in proportion to their respective numbers.' This
measure was not really acceptable to the Reformers, who wanted to see
the land used in the cause of education; it was distasteful to the Kirk
men; it was gall and wormwood to extreme Anglicans like Bishop
Strachan. None the less, the personal {48} influence of the
diplomatic, strong-willed little man carried it through; and although
the Act itself was disallowed, on excellent grounds, by the Imperial
government, as exceeding the powers of the provincial legislature, yet
the Imperial parliament passed an Act exactly to the same effect.
Thomson had applied a plaster to the sore.
His general view of the political conditions is shown in a private
letter to his chief, Lord John Russell. The picture he draws is
lively, unflattering, but instructive. 'I am satisfied that the mass
of the people are sound--moderate in their demands and attached to
British institutions; but they have been oppressed by a miserable
little oligarchy on the one hand and excited by a few factious
demagogues on the other. I can make a middle reforming party, I am
sure, that will put down both.' The record of seventy-five years and
of two wars shows the attachment of the Canadians to British
institutions, and how justly the governor-general appraised the 'mass
of the people.' Not less clearly did he judge the politicians of the
day, their pettiness, their naïve selfishness, their disregard of rule
and form, shocking all the instincts of the British man of business and
{49} the trained parliamentary hand. 'You can form no idea,' he
continues, 'of the way a Colonial Parliament transacts its business. I
got them into comparative order and decency by having measures brought
forward by the Government and well and steadily worked through. But
when they came to their own affairs, and, above all, to money matters,
there was a scene of confusion and riot of which no one in England can
have any idea. Every man proposes a vote for his own job; and bills
are introduced without notice and carried through _all_ their stages in
a quarter of an hour! One of the greatest advantages of the Union will
be that it will be possible to introduce a new system of legislating,
and above all, a restriction upon the initiation of money-votes.
Without the last I would not give a farthing for my bill: and the
change would be decidedly popular; for the members all complain that
under the present system they cannot refuse to move a job for any
constituent who desires it.' Canadians of the present day should study
those words without flinching.
When the session was over Thomson posted back to Montreal, assembled
his Special Council, and set to work, in the rôle of {50} benevolent
despot, introducing many much-needed reforms. The wheels of government
had been definitely blocked by racial hatred; the constitution was
still suspended. 'There is positively no machinery of government,'
Thomson wrote in a private letter. 'Everything is to be done by the
governor and his secretary.' There were no heads of departments
accessible. When a vacancy occurred, the practice was to appoint two
men to fill it, one French and the other English. There were joint
sheriffs, and joint crown surveyors, who worked against each other.
Ably seconded by the chief justice Stuart, the energetic governor
succeeded in reforming the procedure of the higher courts of judicature
and in establishing district courts after the model of Upper Canada.
Altogether, twenty-one ordinances were passed which had the force of
law. They were indispensable, in Thomson's opinion, in paving the way
for the Union. He was under no illusions as to his methods. 'Nothing
but a despotism could have got them through. A House of Assembly,
whether single or double, would have spent ten years at them,' he
writes, with perfect truth.
The Maritime Provinces next claimed his {51} attention, as they came
within the scope of his commission. In Nova Scotia, likewise, a
struggle for responsible government was in progress, but with striking
differences. The protagonist of the movement, Howe, was the very
reverse of a separatist. He was passionately attached to Britain and
British institutions, and he thought not in terms of his little
province, but of the Empire. Over-topping all other politicians of his
day in native power and breadth of vision, he was successful in working
out the problem of responsible government by purely constitutional
methods, without a symptom of rebellion, the loss of a single life or
any _deus ex machina_ dictator or pacificator from across the seas.
Howe, indeed, was fitted to educate statesmen in the true principles of
democratic government, as his famous letters to Lord John Russell
testify. Howe's achievement must be compared with the failure of
Mackenzie and Papineau, if his true greatness is to appear. When
Thomson and he met, they found that they were at one in principle and
in respect to the measures necessary to bring about the desired
reforms. That month of July 1840 was a very busy one for the
governor-general. He reached Halifax on the ninth and left on {52} the
twenty-eighth for Quebec. In the meantime he had met many men,
discussed many measures, gauged the situation correctly, drafted a
clear memorandum of it, and made a flying visit to St John and
Fredericton. He found New Brunswick happy and contented, a very oasis
of peace in the howling wilderness of colonial politics. His policy
was to get into personal touch with every part of his government and to
see it with his own eyes. On his way back to Montreal from Quebec he
made a detour through the Eastern Townships. Everywhere he increased
his already great popularity.
Apart from his natural and commendable desire to inform himself by the
evidence of his own eyes and ears, these tours were dictated by sound
policy. The governor-general was his own minister, the approaching
election was his election, the Union was his measure; so his public
appearances, speeches, replies to addresses, personal interviews were
all in the nature of an election tour by a modern political leader to
influence public opinion, a legitimate part of his campaign. After
touring the Eastern Townships he made a thorough visitation of the
western province, going round by water, and {53} being nearly wrecked
on Lake Erie and again on Lake Huron, where he found that the inland
freshwater sea could be as turbulent as the Bay of Biscay. Elsewhere
the Canadian autumn weather was delightful. His precarious health
improved. His tour was a triumphal progress. '_All_ parties,' he
writes, 'uniting in addresses in every place, full of confidence in my
government, and of a determination to forget their former disputes.'
He adds a little pen-picture, which shows that the Canadian pioneer had
a knack of impromptu pageantry which his descendants have lost.
'Escorts of two and three hundred farmers on horseback at every place
from township to township, with all the etceteras of guns, music, and
flags.' The governor rode a good deal himself, taking saddle-horses
with him as well as a carriage. Those musical, gun-firing, flag-flying
cavalcades from township to township in the pleasant autumn weather of
1840 enliven the background of a political struggle. 'What is of more
importance,' continues the astute and businesslike little man, 'my
candidates everywhere taken for the ensuing elections.' This western
tour had an important reaction upon public opinion in Toronto, bringing
the {54} divers factions into something like harmony for a time.
Thomson himself was genuinely pleased with what he had seen of that
rich, heart-shaped peninsula lying behind the moat of three inland
seas, with the flowing names, Huron, Erie, Ontario. He writes in
justifiable superlatives. 'You can conceive nothing finer. The most
magnificent soil in the world--four feet of vegetable mould--a climate
certainly the best in North America--the greater part of it admirably
watered. In a word, there is land enough and capabilities enough for
some millions of people and for one of the finest provinces in the
world.' Half a century from the time of writing the governor's vision
was realized and Ontario was the 'banner province' of the Dominion.
During that busy month of July which the governor had spent in the
Maritime Provinces the Act of Union passed by the Imperial parliament
had taken effect. The two provinces were proclaimed to be one province
with one legislature. It was necessary to issue a new commission for
the governor of the new province, and, to mark the importance of his
achievement, Charles Poulett Thomson was created a peer, Baron Sydenham
of Sydenham in Kent and Toronto in Canada. {55} One advantage of a
monarchy is its ability to reward service to the state in a splendid
way. Sydenham's honour was well deserved, but he was not destined to
enjoy it long. His activity in no way relaxed. An essential part of
the scheme of union, as he saw it, was local home rule. The country
was to be divided into small self-governing
units--municipalities--taxing themselves for their own necessary
expenditures and controlling the revenues so raised. This is now such
a familiar idea, an institution which works so well, that it is hard to
conceive of Canada ever lacking it. Even more difficult to conceive is
why the idea should have been opposed by the Imperial parliament so
strongly that an advanced Liberal like Lord John Russell was forced to
exclude it from the Act of Union. But Sydenham was not easily balked.
Being on the ground and seeing the urgent need of such an institution,
he called together his wonderful Special Council for one last session.
Between them they organized the municipal system which, in modified
form, still functions in Quebec. After the Union the system was
extended to Ontario, to the great advantage of that province. So
thoroughly are Canadians {56} accustomed to managing their own affairs,
that they do not realize what a privilege they possess in their
municipal system, and how far Great Britain then lagged behind.
Another important measure passed by the expiring Special Council was
the Registry Act. To the habitant the selling, mortgaging, and
transfer of property was a private affair; he did not see the need for
publicity. So the habit of clandestine transfer of land was almost a
French habit. The same habit prevailed among the Acadians and had to
be dealt with by the English governors. The attempt to put the
transfer of land upon a business basis was regarded as an insidious
attack upon a national custom. Once more the benevolent despot
succeeded in bringing about a much-needed reform. The 'ass's bridge,'
as he calls it, had been impassable for twenty years. Now that it was
crossed, the exploit met 'the nearly universal assent of French and
English.' Some thirty other ukases, all tending to order and the
common weal, were issued in the last session of this extraordinary
legislative body. One fixed the place of the capital. After much
debate on the rival claims of Quebec, Montreal, Toronto, Bytown, and
{57} Kingston, it was decided that the town with the martello towers
guarding the gateway to the Thousand Islands, with its memories of
Frontenac and the War of 1812, should be the capital of the new united
province. And it was so. About the quiet university town, where
Queen's is Grant's monument--_si monumentum requiris,
circumspice_--there lingers still the distinction of the old vice-regal
days.
Then came the first election for the new Assembly of the united
province, perhaps the most momentous in the history of Canada. Lower
Canada was vehemently opposed to the whole scheme. To elect a Union
member was, in the words of the Quebec Committee, 'stretching forth the
neck to the yoke which is attempted to be placed upon us.' The French
were organized into a solid phalanx of opposition. In the western
province the Tory and Orange opposition was equally violent towards a
measure which was deemed to favour the French. The elections of 1841
were held with the bad old-fashioned accompaniments of riot and
bloodshed, especially in the centres, Montreal and Toronto. Neither
side was free from the blame of irregular methods. Certainly the
government was not {58} scrupulous in the means it employed to secure
the return of Union candidates. The results were known early in April.
They were as follows: for the government, twenty-four members; French,
twenty; Moderate Reformers, twenty; ultra-Reformers, five; Compact
party, five; doubtful, seven. The curse of petty faction was not
lifted, nor the machinery of two-party government really installed, for
it was quite possible for several of these groups to combine in voting
down government measures without having sufficient cohesion among
themselves to form a ministry and assume control.
The session opened at Kingston on June 14, 1841. A hospital was turned
into a parliament house, a row of warehouses was appropriated for
government offices, and the fine old stone mansion by the waterside
known as 'Alwington' became the residence of the governor-general.
That last summer of his life was crowded with toil and anxiety, but
crowned with triumph. Acting as his own minister, he had to press
through a chaotic and factious legislature, far-seeing measures of
vital importance to the country; he had to reconcile differences, to
smooth opposition, to continue his campaign of education in {59}
parliamentary procedure. In addition to the immediate problem of
remaking the Canadas into one province, Sydenham was deep in diplomatic
difficulties arising over disputes as to the Maine boundary. This
difficulty was settled in 1842 by the Ashburton Treaty, which finally
delimited the frontier lines. The strain on the governor-general was
severe, and his health, never robust, gave way under it; but the frail
form was upborne by the indomitable spirit of the man, and by the
consciousness that he was winning the long-desired and doubtful
victory. His success was plain to other eyes across the sea. His
chief, Lord John Russell, sent gratifying commendations and obtained
for him the coveted honour of the Grand Cross of the Bath. Feeling
that his mission was accomplished, he sent in his resignation and made
his preparations to return to England. The sound he longed to hear was
the pealing of the guns from the citadel of Quebec in a final salute to
the departing proconsul. He was to obtain release in another way.
Some idea of Sydenham's difficulties may be formed by a consideration
of the Baldwin incident, as it has been called. Just before the
session opened an effort was made to {60} combine the Moderate
Reformers of Upper Canada and the 'solid' French-Canadian party of
Lower Canada into a compact parliamentary phalanx of forty which would,
of course, take charge of the House. Baldwin was skilfully approached
and played upon until he supported this intrigue. The sequel is best
told in Sydenham's own words.
Acting upon some principle of conduct, which I can reconcile neither
with honour nor common sense, he strove to bring about this Union, and
at last having as he thought effected it, coolly proposed to me, on the
day before Parliament was to meet, to break up the Government
altogether, dismiss several of his Colleagues and replace them by men
whom I believe he had not known for twenty-four hours, but who are most
of them thoroughly well known in Lower Canada (without going back to
darker times) as the principal opponents to every measure for the
improvement of that Province which has been passed by me, and as the
most uncompromising enemies to the whole of my administration of
affairs there.
I had been made aware of this Gentleman's {61} proceedings for two or
three days, and certainly could hardly bring myself to tolerate them,
but in my great anxiety to avoid if possible any disturbance, I had
delayed taking any step. Upon receiving, however, from himself this
extraordinary demand, I at once treated it, joined to his previous
conduct, as a resignation of his office, and informed him that I
accepted it without the least regret.
Of Baldwin's personal integrity there was no doubt; but the honest man
had been used as a tool. If the intrigue had succeeded, all Sydenham's
labour must have been lost, the Union would have been wrecked in the
launching, and the country thrown back into chaos. Fortunately the
intrigue failed. Baldwin passed over to the opposition, but he was
unable to lead the Reformers of Upper Canada into killing government
measures such as extension of the main highways, reform of the usury
laws, establishment of a comprehensive municipal system. They followed
the sounder leadership of Hincks and supported Sydenham in his wise
efforts to promote the country's good.
{62}
The whole session was a series of crises. Sydenham stood pledged to
the cardinal principle of democratic government, that the majority must
rule. Parliamentary procedure, as they have it in England, was a new
thing in Canada. In Great Britain the government does not always
resign when defeated on a vote, nor does the opposition defeat the
government when it has no power to form an alternative government. The
only consistent opposition was Neilson's band of French Canadians, and
their policy was pure obstruction and their object to separate the two
provinces once more. By combining the factions it was possible
sometimes to defeat a government, but for the government to throw down
the reins of power, with no one on the other side capable of taking
them up, would have been madness. The situation craved wary walking
and most delicate balancing; but Sydenham was equal to it. Later in
the session, when the members had learned their lesson, the
governor-general affirmed his position in a series of resolutions moved
by Harrison, the leader of the government. In these he asserted:
first, his position as representative of the monarch, and, as such,
responsible to Imperial {63} authority alone; secondly, the
administration must possess the confidence of the representatives of
the people; and thirdly, that the administration shall act in
accordance with the well-understood wishes and interests of the people.
In other words, he declared himself for British connection plus
majority rule.
Critics found the first session of the new parliament of Canada a
'do-nothing-but-talk' session. There was indeed a flow of eloquence in
various kinds during the first few weeks until the different parties
found the proper relations and the serious work of legislation began.
Constructive measures of the first importance became law in due course.
Sydenham's own words sum up his achievement. 'With a most difficult
opening, almost a minority, with passions at boiling heat, and
prejudices such as I never saw, to contend with, I have brought the
Assembly by degrees into perfect order ready to follow wherever I may
lead; have carried all my measures, avoided or beaten off all disputed
topics, and have got a ministry with an avowed and recognized majority,
capable of doing what they think right, and not to be upset by my
successor. I have now accomplished all that I set much {64} value on;
for whether the rest be done now, or some sessions hence, matters
little. The five great works I aimed at have been got through: the
establishment of a board of works with ample powers; the admission of
aliens; the regulation of the public lands ceded by the Crown under the
Union Act; and lastly this District Council Bill.' The financial
difficulties of the province had been met by guaranteed Imperial loan,
and progress had been made in remedying the evils of pauper
immigration. Not often does a constructive statesman live to see his
labours so richly rewarded by success.
Then the end came. A stumble of Sydenham's horse as he mounted a rise
near 'Alwington' threw him to the ground and broke his right leg. His
constitution, never strong, had been weakened by disease, unsparing
work, and ceaseless anxieties. The bones would not set, the laceration
would not heal, and at last lockjaw set in. It was impossible for him
to recover. One does not expect the heroic from a fragile man of the
world, but Sydenham's last thoughts were for the state he had served so
well. In the agonies of tetanus he composed the speech with which he
had hoped to bring the session {65} to a close. The last words were
the dying governor's prayer for Canada. 'May Almighty God bless your
labours, and pour down upon this province all those blessings which in
my heart I am desirous it should enjoy.'
His accident occurred on the fourth of September: he was not released
from his sufferings until the nineteenth. A stately funeral testified
to the universal regret. St George's Cathedral at Kingston, where his
bones lie, should be among the high places of the land, a shrine doubly
sacred, as the tomb of one who had no small part in making Canada.
{66}
CHAPTER III
REFORM IN THE SADDLE
On Parliament Hill at Ottawa is a monument of bronze and marble. It
represents two men standing in close converse; and, in spite of the
dull and untempering effect of modern coats and trousers, the monument
is an artistic success worthy of the noble eminence on which it stands
above the broad-bosomed river and looking towards the distant hills.
It is designed to keep in memory LaFontaine, the man of French blood,
and Baldwin, the man of English blood, who worked together as leaders
in the first parliament of reunited Canada. That they so worked
together for the good of their common country deserves commemoration in
enduring brass; for, happily, ever since their time English and French
have been found working side by side and vying in fraternal efforts
towards the same glorious end.
LaFontaine and Baldwin are typical Canadian {67} politicians of the new
order. They carried on a government under modern conditions.
Sydenham's work had been done once for all. In spite of ignorance, and
errors, and worse, the parliamentarians had really learned the lessons
of procedure which he had so deftly taught, and they now settled down
to the regular game of Ins and Outs, according to established and
accepted rules. The irreconcilables were gradually tamed as wild
animals are--by hunger first, and then by being fed with sufficient
quantities of the loaves and fishes. Power, office, good permanent
positions, fat salaries, proved strong sedatives of yeasty aspirations
towards vague political ideals. There were still to be grave
difficulties, crises, reactions towards the old order of things; but
the cardinal principle of popular government was finally accepted, and,
ever since 1841, has been in continuous operation, as part and parcel
of the constitution.
If Canadian politicians had, in the words of the Shorter Catechism,
been left to the freedom of their own will, it is difficult to see how
they could ever have brought about either the union of the jarring
provinces, or established the principles of popular government. It is
not apparent how half a dozen {68} irreconcilable little factions could
have combined to thwart the sullen determination of John Neilson's
French-Canadian party to wreck the Union. There was a crying need for
intervention by a true statesman from without, who, with his eyes
unblinded by local prejudices and passions, could take his stand above
all parties, and, in benevolent despotism, lead them into concerted
action for their own good and the good of the country. Equally clamant
was the need of information and instruction. Sometimes Canadians are
inclined to write the tale of the building of the nation as if that
splendid fabric were all the work of their own hands, as if 'our own
arm had brought salvation unto us.' This is manifest fallacy. Without
a Durham to diagnose the malady and a Sydenham to apply the remedy, the
condition of the body politic must have been past cure. At least, no
other physicians could avail. Now, it was a matter of treatment and
careful nursing, and being instructed, we were capable of following the
doctor's orders.
The Reform leaders were very unlike each other in character and
antecedents. Robert Baldwin was the son of William Warren Baldwin,
whose father (also a Robert Baldwin) {69} belonged to the humbler class
of landed gentry in Ireland. Tempted, like so many others of his
class, by the bait of cheap land, he came to Canada to 'farm.' His son
William studied medicine at Edinburgh, became a doctor, and, with Irish
powers of adaptation, soon exchanged physic for the more profitable
pursuit of law. Robert the grandson was born in York (now Toronto) in
1804. He became one of 'Johnny' Strachan's pupils at the Grammar
School, achieving in time the distinction of being 'head boy'; after
which he studied law in the old, leisurely, articled-clerk system, and
finally became his father's partner. An opportune legacy enabled his
father to buy a large property outside 'muddy York,' on which, in
accordance with hereditary landholding instinct, he endeavoured to
establish his family, after the old-world fashion. A broad
thoroughfare in Toronto preserves the name of Baldwin's ambition,
'Spadina.'
Like his father, Robert Baldwin was a Moderate Reformer. He entered
public life (1829) in his native town as draftsman of a petition to
George IV in what was known as the Willis affair. In the same year he
was elected to the Assembly as member for York. {70} Unseated on a
technicality, he was at once re-elected, and took his seat in the House
the following year. In the new elections, however, following the
demise of George IV in 1830, when the House was dissolved, Baldwin was
defeated. He had recently entered into partnership with his wife's
brother, who was also his own cousin, Robert Baldwin Sullivan, a
handsome Irishman with more than a touch of Irish brilliancy. Sullivan
played no small part in the politics of the time. He is the author of
the wittiest pamphlet ever evoked by Canadian party struggles.
Another young Irishman with whom Baldwin became closely associated was
Francis Hincks, who also left his mark on the history of Canada. The
son of a Presbyterian minister, he had received a good general
education, and a sound and extensive business training in Belfast.
Coming to Toronto by way of the West Indies, he became interested in
various local business concerns and speedily proved his outstanding
capacity for all matters of commerce and finance. Besides being the
manager of a bank and the secretary of an insurance company, Hincks
carried on at his house in Yonge Street, next door to Robert Baldwin's
(number 21), a {71} general warehousing business; and, as if these
enterprises did not afford sufficient scope for his energy, he launched
a weekly newspaper, the _Examiner_, in the interests of Reform. The
successful man of business soon became the expert in finance, to whom
all eyes turned in difficulty. In 1833 he was appointed one of the
inspectors of the Welland Canal accounts in a parliamentary
investigation, so swiftly had he come to the front. Though much unlike
in temperament, he and Baldwin were agreed in their views of political
reform, siding with the Moderates as against the Mackenzie faction of
extremists. When in 1836 the Constitutional Reform Society of Upper
Canada was organized, with William Warren Baldwin as president, Hincks
became the secretary. The main objects of this society were to secure
'responsible advisers to the governor,' and the abolition of the
forty-four rectories established by Sir John Colborne in accordance
with the well-known provisions of the Constitutional Act. The success
of any organization often depends on one man, the secretary, and in
this capacity Hincks evinced his wonted ability and extraordinary
energy.
These two men, Robert Baldwin, with his {72} high principle and solid
character, and Francis Hincks, with his talent for affairs, are figures
of prime importance in this critical stage of the experiment called
responsible government.
But the new province of Canada, as a union of French and English
populations, demanded, as a natural consequence, a union in leadership.
The French-Canadian politician, who in his own province represented
Moderate Reform, was Louis Hippolyte LaFontaine. His grandfather had
been a member of the old Assembly of Lower Canada; his father was a
farmer at Boucherville in Chambly, where Louis Hippolyte was born in
1804. Educated at the college of Montreal, he afterwards studied law
and began to practise in that city. In 1830 he was elected member for
Terrebonne, and soon showed himself in the House to be a thoroughgoing
follower of Papineau and an agitator for radical change. But when
reform passed over into rebellion and an appeal to armed force, he
tried to dissuade his compatriots from their mad enterprise, and also
approached the governor, Lord Gosford, with a proposal to assemble
parliament, in order to prevent further violence. He then went to
England, from {73} motives which do not seem clear. Fearing arrest in
that country for his share in the agitation before the rebellion, he
fled to France. He did not, in fact, return to Canada until May 1838,
when he was caught in the widespread net of arrests and spent several
painful and indignant months in the Montreal jail, demanding release,
but in vain. Incarceration for a political offence is a rare event in
the career of a chief justice and an English baronet, as this prisoner
was to be later. Arrested on suspicion, he was released without trial.
On the tragic collapse of the extremists LaFontaine became the hope of
the moderate men among the French-Canadian politicians. Like the most
of his compatriots, he was strongly opposed to the union of the
Canadas, as threatening the extinction of his nationality; but seeing
no possible alternative to union, he made it his fixed policy to win,
by constitutional methods, whatever could be won for his people. In
appearance he was strikingly like the first Napoleon, the resemblance
being noticed by the old soldiers when he visited the Hôtel des
Invalides at Paris. A contemporary cartoon, representing him flinging
money to the habitants, shows the likeness, even to the {74} lock of
hair on the forehead, more plainly than his portrait. His few years of
leadership in parliament, though of great importance to the country,
formed only an episode in a larger legal career.
In the elections of 1841 LaFontaine was defeated; it is said, by
illegal methods. Baldwin was returned for two constituencies, York and
Hastings, and Hincks for Oxford, on the strength of his articles in the
_Examiner_. Bitterly disappointed as LaFontaine was at his defeat and
the means by which it was accomplished, he could see no hope of redress
except by constitutional means. For the present he could do no more
than protest angrily at the injustice. He was, however, not long
excluded from the House. Through the good offices of Baldwin he was
elected for the fourth riding of York, an act of courtesy and common
sense which was not to lose its reward.
Such was the posture of affairs when Sydenham died.
[Illustration: Sir Charles Bagot. From an engraving in the Dominion
Archives.]
The next governor-general of Canada was Sir Charles Bagot, the Tory
nominee of the now Tory government of Great Britain. Bagot's familiar
portrait in the full insignia of the Order of the Bath shows us the
{75} handsome, thoroughbred face of a typical English gentleman.
Although Queen Victoria doubted his ability for the post, her distrust
was unfounded. Bagot was a man of broad experience and calm wisdom.
He possessed poise and real kindness of heart, as well as real
courtesy; but he seems also to have been too sensitive to criticism and
to opposition. He reached Kingston, the seat of his government, in
January 1842. Visits to the various centres of Canada, according to
the practice of his predecessors, soon gave him an understanding of
popular opinion and feeling; and, although he was expected by the
extreme Conservatives to bring back the old, halcyon, _ante bellum_
days, he was most careful to follow the lines of Sydenham's policy.
Towards the French he was amiable and conciliatory and made several
appointments of French Canadians to positions of trust and emolument.
Ever ready to meet courtesy half-way, the French gave their new
governor their entire confidence.
During the eight months before parliament should reassemble Bagot
wisely set about learning for himself the actual conditions of his new
government. Like Sydenham, he was to act as his own prime minister,
and {76} his initial difficulty was in forming a suitable Cabinet to
act with him. He offered Hincks the post of inspector-general,
corresponding in effect to minister of Finance, and Hincks accepted it.
He offered the post of solicitor-general to Richard Cartwright
(grandfather of the Sir Richard Cartwright of a later day), who refused
it because Hincks was in the Cabinet. The position was finally filled
by Henry Sherwood, who was, like Cartwright, a Conservative. To
LaFontaine the governor offered the attorney-generalship in the most
courteous terms, but, for a number of reasons, LaFontaine declined to
accept it. Bagot's plan was to form a coalition government, which
should embrace all interests; but the Reformers refused to take their
place in a Cabinet which contained men of the opposite party. So
William Henry Draper, who had acted under Sydenham, continued as leader
of a composite Cabinet under Bagot.
The House met at Kingston on September 8, 1842. In the game of Ins and
Outs the debate on the Address is recognized as a trial of strength, as
a method of ascertaining which party is in a majority. It was found
that the Draper government did not command the confidence of the House;
and, after a spirited {77} fight, Draper resigned and made way for a
new ministry, led by LaFontaine and Baldwin. The principle involved,
which seems now the merest common sense, was then scouted as government
'by dint of miserable majorities.' Sullivan was the senior member in
the new ministry, though it is known by the names of its leaders. It
included Hincks and five other members of the previous Cabinet.
In accordance with another rule of the political game the new ministers
had to seek re-election. LaFontaine was peaceably returned for his
'pocket borough,' the fourth riding of York, but the candidacy of
Baldwin for Hastings had another issue. In those good old days of open
voting an election was no such tame affair as walking into a booth and
marking a cross on a piece of paper opposite a name. An election
lasted for days or even weeks. There was only one polling-place for
the district, and an election was rarely held without an election row.
It seems impossible that it is of Canada one reads: 'A number of
shanty-men having no votes were hired by Mr Baldwin's party to create a
disturbance. They did so and ill-treated Mr Murney's supporters. The
latter, however, {78} rallied and drove their dastardly assailants from
the field. Two companies of the 23rd Regiment were sent from Kingston
to keep the peace, and polling was most unjustly discontinued for one
day.' Free fights between bands of rival voters armed with clubs,
swords, and firearms, injuries from which men were not expected to
recover, order restored by the intervention of the military--these were
no unusual incidents in an old-time Canadian election. The contest in
Hastings was of this description, and Baldwin was defeated. He stood
for election in the second riding of York, and he was again defeated.
Finally LaFontaine did for him what he had done for LaFontaine. The
French member for Rimouski resigned his seat, and Baldwin was returned
for it in January 1843. The French leader and the English leader had
thus given unmistakable proofs of their sincere desire to be friends
and to work together for the common weal. French and English were
found at last working in harmony, side by side. They had formed the
first colonial ministry on the approved constitutional model.
The new idea was fiercely assailed. To the British colonial partisan
of that day it {79} seemed the height of absurdity to entrust the
government of the country to men who had done their best to wreck that
government but a few years before. The Tories would have been more
than human if they were not exasperated to see actual rebels like
Girouard, who fought with rebels at St Eustache, offered a position in
the Cabinet. They could not, as yet, accept the hard saying of
Macaulay: 'There is only one cure for the evils which newly-acquired
freedom produces, and that cure is freedom.' How would they have
regarded Britain's three years' war with the Dutch republics of South
Africa and the entrusting of them immediately afterwards to the Boers
and General Louis Botha? For accepting the principle of popular
government, that the majority must rule, Bagot was assailed with an
inhuman vehemence, which astounds the reader of the present day by its
venom and its indecency. Because the governor was a just man and
loyally followed constitutional usage, he was abused as a fool and a
traitor not only in the colony but in England. It is small wonder that
his health began to give way under the strain.
That historical first session of 1842 was {80} very short; it lasted
only a month. Nor could it be said to have accomplished very much in
the way of actual legislation. The criticism of the opposition press
was not ill-founded--that there was much cry and little wool. That the
criticism was made at all shows how much was expected from the
establishment of a principle. Mankind has a pathetic faith in the
efficacy of political machinery, remade or remodelled, to grind out
happiness and bring in the Age of Gold. None the less, a great
political principle had been affirmed, and had been seen in triumphant
action. The new constitution was at last set on its legs, and, at
last, it really did begin to 'march.'
Shortly after the session closed Bagot's administration came to an end.
The governor was no longer young, and the factious opposition in the
colony and the want of support in England wrought upon his health and
spirits. The oncoming of the bitter Canadian winter tried severely the
shaken man. On medical advice he resigned his post, but when his
resignation was accepted he was too ill to travel. He too died at
'Alwington,' Kingston, on May 30, 1843; but the voice of rancorous
detraction was not hushed around {81} his death-bed. 'Imbecile' and
'slave' were among the milder terms of abuse. Bagot was the second
governor in swift succession to render up his life in the discharge of
his duty. And he was not the last. It was as if some blight or curse
rested on the office which made it fatal to the holder. The Canadian
treatment of Bagot, a high-minded gentleman who honestly performed a
thankless task, should make every Canadian hang his head.
Bagot's successor was Sir Charles Metcalfe. He arrived at Kingston
from the American side on March 29, 1843, in a close-bodied sleigh
drawn by four greys. His experience must have been novel since he
landed at Boston and posted overland to reach the capital of the
colony. The whole country was still deep in snow and must have
presented the strangest aspect to a man who had spent his life in the
tropics. He was received at the foot of Arthur Street by an
enthusiastic concourse of citizens, with appropriate ceremony and show.
'A thorough-looking Englishman with a jolly visage,' as he was
characterized by an eye-witness, he made a favourable first impression
upon the people of his government.
{82}
Metcalfe had received his training as a 'writer' in the old East India
Company and must have been a contemporary of Thackeray's Joseph Sedley.
He was born in India, at Lecture House, Calcutta, on January 30, 1785.
Eleven years later he entered Eton, where he at once evinced remarkable
powers of application and a marked distaste for athletic sports, two
traits which would mark him off as an oddity from the herd of English
schoolboys. At the age of sixteen he was back in the land of his
birth. His was a distinguished career. By 1827 he had risen to
membership in the Supreme Council of India. Later he acted as
provisional governor-general, and obtained the Grand Cross of the Bath.
In 1838 he resigned his position and became governor of Jamaica.
Perhaps the most significant incident in his career was his fighting as
a volunteer in the storming of Deeg, on Christmas Day 1804. The
courage which sends a civilian into a desperate hand-to-hand fight, to
which he is not obliged to go, must be above proof. Metcalfe had no
pecuniary interest in his position. He was a wealthy man, who spent
far more than his official salary in the various ways a
governor-general {83} is expected to bestow largesse. His 'jolly
visage' bore the marks of a cruel and incurable disease. He is still
remembered in India as the author of the bill which established the
freedom of the press. The historian Macaulay calls him 'the ablest
civil servant I ever knew in India.' Durham, Sydenham, Bagot,
Metcalfe--Britain had few more distinguished or more able servants of
the state; and they devoted all their powers, without a thought of the
cost to themselves, to solving a vital problem in the maintenance of
the Empire. Their more obvious rewards were obloquy and death.
[Illustration: Sir Charles Metcalfe. After a painting by Bradish]
The misfortune of Metcalfe was that his entire political training had
been gained in governing subject races, Hindus in India and negroes in
Jamaica, races 'so accustomed to be trampled on by the strong that they
always consider humanity as a sign of weakness.' Now old, and fixed in
his mental set, autocratic as an Indian civil servant must be, he came
to deal with a rude, unlicked, white democracy, impatient of control as
Durham discovered, and acutely jealous of its rights. In theory
Metcalfe should have been most sympathetic, for in English politics he
was an advanced Whig, strongly in favour of such {84} popular measures
as abolition of the Corn Laws, vote by ballot, the extension of the
franchise. Besides, he was honestly desirous of playing the
peacemaker. None the less, his administration was marked by a reaction
towards the old Tory state of affairs, and produced a ministerial
crisis which threatened to bring back the reign of Chaos and old Night.
The primal difficulty lay in the governor's mental attitude. He saw
with perfect clearness what had already been done. Durham had
enunciated a theory, which Sydenham had put into effect by being his
own minister, and Bagot had followed resolutely in Sydenham's
footsteps. The group of colonial officials known as the Executive
Council had in the meantime tasted power. They now ventured to speak
of themselves as 'ministers,' as a 'cabinet,' as the 'government,' as
the 'administration'; and these terms, with their corollaries and
implications, had met with general acceptance. But Metcalfe considered
them inadmissible, as limiting too much the power of the governor, and,
as a consequence, the authority he represented. He was determined not
to be a mere figurehead on the ship of state; he would {85} be captain,
in undisputed command. Theoretically, if he were to be guided solely
by the advice of the local ministry, he would be 'responsible' to them
instead of to his sovereign; his office would be a nullity, and the
difference between a colony and an independent state would have
disappeared. Theoretically Metcalfe and the Tory pamphleteers who
supported him were right in their contentions. Complete freedom to
manage its own affairs should, if logic were strictly followed,
separate the colony from the mother country; but the British genius for
compromise has met the difficulty in a thoroughly British way by
avoiding any precise and rigid definition of the relations existing
between the mother country and the daughter state. That 'mere
sentiment' should hold the two more firmly together than the most
deftly worded treaty or legal enactment is proved to the world in these
later days by the sacrifices of Canada to the common cause during the
Great War. But there was little reason for holding this belief in the
forties of the nineteenth century. Conflict between a masterful
governor like Metcalfe, accustomed to the old order, and political
leaders like Baldwin and LaFontaine, trying to {86} bring in a new
order, was inevitable; their modes of thought were diametrically
opposed; the only question was when the clash should come.
The third session of the first parliament of Canada opened towards the
end of September 1843. In an Assembly of eighty-four members the party
of Reform numbered sixty, an overwhelming majority; for the
_rapprochement_ between the sympathetic parties of the two provinces
was now complete. The leader of the opposition was Sir Allan MacNab of
_Caroline_ fame, a typical soldier-politician, narrow but honest in his
views, and, like his countryman Alan Breck, a 'bonny fighter.' It was
a momentous session. Reform was firmly in the saddle at last. No
opposition could hope to defeat whatever measure the government might
choose to bring forward. Nor could the government be reproached, as
before, with merely talking and doing nothing. Much legislation of the
first importance stands to its credit. One of the measures passed at
this session provided that the seat of government should be removed
from Kingston to the commercial metropolis, Montreal. For how short a
time Montreal should have this honour, none could imagine {87} or
foresee. By another wise measure placemen were removed from the
Assembly; that is to say, permanent officials, such as judges and
registrars, could not hold their positions and be members of
parliament. For this important change LaFontaine was responsible, as
well as for another bill which simplified the judicial system of Lower
Canada. An attempt was made to bridle the turbulence of Irish
factions, which had brought to Canada the long-standing, cankered
quarrels of the Old World. A bill was passed to suppress all secret
societies except the Freemasons. It was, of course, aimed straight at
the Orange Society, that vigorous politico-religious organization which
preserves the memory of a Dutch prince and of a battle he fought in the
seventeenth century. To this bill Metcalfe did not assent, but
'reserved' it, as was his undoubted right, for the royal sanction. In
the end that sanction was not given, and the Act did not become law.
The 'reserving' of this bill seems to have occasioned little comment;
but, as will be seen in a subsequent chapter, the refusal of another
governor to 'reserve' another bill caused a storm. Hincks, the man of
finance, gave the country 'protection' against the {88} competition of
the American farmer, a political device which was destined to much
wider use. The all-important matter of education received the
attention of the Assembly. What had been done before was, most
significantly, to make provision for higher education by establishing
'grammar schools' in the different districts, as foundations for the
superstructure of a university. It might have been called a provision
for aristocratic education. Now a measure became law for the better
support of the common schools. This was provision for democratic
education, a necessary corollary to popular government, for if Demos is
to rule, Demos cannot be left in ignorance; the peril of an ignorant
ruler is too frightful.
Then came the difficult problem of the provincial university. It is
interesting to note how the educational history of one Canadian
province is repeated in another. In Nova Scotia, King's College was
founded by the exiled Loyalists from the United States towards the end
of the eighteenth century. It was the child of the Church of England.
The first bishop of Nova Scotia secured for it the support of the
provincial Assembly. Naturally, it was modelled on the {89} great
English university of Oxford, and, like the Oxford of that day, was
designed solely for the education of those within the pale of the
national church. But this provincial university, which has the honour
of being the oldest in the British dominions overseas, was supported by
public funds partly contributed by 'dissenters,' whose creed excluded
them from it. Only at the price of their religious principles could
the 'dissenters' of Nova Scotia obtain the boon of higher education.
Therefore they set to work to found an independent 'academy' of their
own. In Upper Canada events marched down the same road. There,
another privileged 'King's College,' exclusively Anglican, was founded
early in the nineteenth century, and richly endowed with public lands.
The excluded 'dissenters' set about founding colleges of their own; and
thus Queen's College and Victoria College took their rise. Robert
Baldwin had the vision of a comprehensive state university, on a broad
non-denominational basis, in which all these colleges should be
component parts. He brought in a bill to found the University of
Toronto, a measure on which time has set its approving seal. The many
stately buildings which adorn {90} Queen's Park, the long distinguished
roll of graduates, the noble group of affiliated colleges, Knox, St
Michael's, Trinity, Wycliffe, Victoria, attest the wisdom of Baldwin's
far-seeing measure. Bishop Strachan, the doughty Aberdonian champion
of Anglican rights and privileges, led a crusade against this 'godless
institution' and raised the cry of spoliation. The echoes of that
wordy warfare have even now hardly died away. Having failed to prevent
the founding of Toronto, the indefatigable bishop founded a new
Anglican university, Trinity, which in the fullness of time was merged
in the great provincial university. But this is to anticipate.
Baldwin's bill had reached its second reading, when the ministry blew
up.
In the end of November the inevitable clash occurred. Metcalfe was no
believer in responsible government as understood by the Reformers; and
he was determined to uphold the prerogative of the Crown. For one
thing, he was not going to surrender the right of appointment. He had
made several appointments without consulting his ministers. When, on
his own authority, he appointed a clerk of the peace, they determined
to make it a test case. They considered that, by {91} ignoring them,
he had violated an important constitutional principle; and when they
were unable to convince him cf this in a personal conference, they
resigned in a body (with a single exception) on November 26, 1843.
This produced what is known as the Metcalfe Crisis. In a formal
statement before the House the Reformers took the ground that they
could not be 'responsible' for appointments made without their
knowledge. The governor was to act on their advice; but he had acted
without giving them a chance to advise him. Metcalfe, on the other
hand, maintained that the Reformers wanted him to surrender the
patronage of the Crown 'for the purchase of parliamentary support.' He
opposed patronage for party purposes. Let the long history of
political appointments since that day, of patronage committees, attest
that the governor was partly in the right. The formal statements of
both sides in the dispute were at once made public and produced a
popular furore, second in intensity only to that which had led up to
and attended the rebellion. Sydenham's confidence that his work could
not be undone by any successor seemed for a time ill-founded.
The resignation of the ministry was only {92} the opening gun in a
political campaign, the object of which was to drive the governor from
office. On laying the reasons for their action before the House the
ministry received an enthusiastic vote of confidence; but their
resignation took effect, and on the ninth of December the Assembly was
prorogued. Both parties then set the battle in array against the
coming election. An agitation of almost unparalleled violence began.
Public meetings, banquets, speeches, pamphlets, newspapers, all
contributed not so much to agitate as to convulse the country. For all
his easy manner Metcalfe was an indomitable fighter, and into this, his
last fight, he threw himself with an amazing energy. And he did not
have to fight alone. There was no little dislike for the
LaFontaine-Baldwin Cabinet and no slight exultation when it was
supposed to be 'dismissed' by a loyal and manly governor. There is no
doubt that in this struggle Metcalfe overstepped the metes and bounds
within which a colonial governor could rightly act. He abandoned any
attitude of official impartiality. He espoused the cause of one party,
and used his great influence to aid that party to power. In the
meantime he had no executive, or an executive of one; and all {93}
through the summer of 1844 he was tireless in his efforts to persuade
men of standing to accept office under Draper. The crux of the
situation was to obtain French-Canadian support for an English Tory
governor. One prominent Frenchman after another was 'approached,' but
without success. Finally Metcalfe managed to scrape together a
ministry which included such noted French Canadians as 'Beau' Viger and
D. B. Papineau, a brother of the leader of '37. Then, having dissolved
the Assembly, the governor issued writs for a new election. That
election in the autumn of 1844 was attended with great riot and
disorder. Both sides resorted to violence. When the House assembled,
it was found that Metcalfe and the Tories had triumphed. The Reformers
were in the minority. While Lower Canada had returned LaFontaine with
a strong following, the western province had sent a phalanx to support
the governor. Among the other curiosities of this remarkable election
was the defeat of Viger by Wolfred Nelson, lately in arms against Her
Majesty's government. In this contest a young lawyer of Scottish
descent carried Kingston for the Tories. He was destined to go far.
His name was John Alexander Macdonald.
{94}
Metcalfe had triumphed, but he held power by a very narrow majority;
the parties stood forty-six to thirty-eight. In the usual trial of
strength--the election of a Speaker--Sir Allan MacNab was chosen by a
majority of only three votes. And yet Draper, that expert balancer on
the tight rope, managed to carry on a government under these conditions
for three full years. Perceiving that he must secure the support of
the French if his party was to survive at all, he adroitly brought in
favourite Reform measures as if they were his own, thus cutting the
ground from under his opponents' feet. For example, English had been
made the sole official language of the legislature. Now, the astute
party leader managed to get this obnoxious clause in the Act of Union
repealed. He even went further and endeavoured to win over the
French-Canadian party wholesale by offering desirable positions; but in
this intrigue he failed.
In the meantime the Act appointing a new capital had come into effect.
Kingston gave place to Montreal, for a season. The huge Ste Anne's
market building in the west of the city was turned into a parliament
house, destined to the fate of Troy. Here was held {95} the session of
1844-45. Such legislation as was passed had no direct bearing on the
question of responsible government. Before the session ended news came
that the home government intended to raise the governor to the peerage
as Baron Metcalfe of Fern Hill. His brief two years in Canada formed
only an episode in the long career of a distinguished public servant.
He had made his name and spent his life in India. The contemplated
honour was well deserved; and it was designed by the home government as
recognition of his services to the state as a whole, rather than as
special approval of his administration of Canada. But so the Reformers
construed Metcalfe's elevation; and they were furious. Even the
moderate Baldwin was betrayed into unwonted vehemence. What would have
happened, if Metcalfe had remained in office, none can tell. Perhaps a
second civil war. But 'death cut the inextricable knot.' His deadly
disease returned after a delusive interval, as is its hideous custom.
His health failed; the cancer ate into his eye and destroyed the sight.
It was apparent that he could no longer perform the duties of his
office. He asked to be recalled; but the authorities at {96} home,
knowing of his malady, had anticipated his desire. The courage that
sent the boy 'writer' into the deadly assault on Deeg sustained the old
proconsul through the slow torture of the months of life remaining to
him. He quitted Canada in November 1845, a dying man, and, to the
shame of Canada, amid the untimely exultation of his political
opponents. In less than a year he was dead. Macaulay composed his
epitaph. Metcalfe was a man of mark; and he had his share in building
up the British Empire. His name distinguishes a street in Ottawa and a
hall in Calcutta; and his statue stands in the former capital of
Jamaica.
{97}
CHAPTER IV
THE GREAT ADMINISTRATION
On Metcalfe's departure from Canada the administration passed into the
hands of Lord Cathcart, commander-in-chief of the forces. He was one
of the many fine soldiers who have had their part in the upbuilding of
Canada and whose services have received the very slightest recognition.
Of an ancient Scottish family, he had fought in the great Napoleonic
wars from Maida to Waterloo, where he had greatly distinguished
himself. After the peace he had turned his attention to the study of
natural science, and he had made some important contributions to
mineralogy. Cathcart held office from November 26, 1845, until January
30, 1847, some fourteen months. He wisely left Canadian politics to
Canadian politicians, and merely watched the machinery revolve. At
first he was merely administrator, but, on danger threatening from the
unsettled dispute over {98} the Oregon boundary, he was raised to the
rank of governor-general.
[Illustration: Charles, Earl Grey. From the painting by Sir Thomas
Lawrence]
His successor was also a Scot, James Bruce, Earl of Elgin and
Kincardine, directly descended from the patriot king Robert the Bruce.
His father was the British ambassador who salvaged the 'Elgin marbles'
from the Parthenon and sold them to the nation, thus drawing down upon
himself the angry satire of Byron in 'The Curse of Minerva' and 'Childe
Harold's Pilgrimage.' The new governor-general was young, poor, and
able. Far more than his predecessors, he had enjoyed the advantages of
a regular education. At Eton he had Gladstone for a school-mate, and
at Oxford he was in the same college with Dalhousie, the future
governor-general of India. He was also distinguished in two ways: he
was a sincere Christian of the devout evangelical type, and he had a
gift of speech that would have been remarkable in any man, but was
remarkable most of all in a high official of a rather tongue-tied race.
His native gift of eloquence was carefully cultivated and proved to be
of great value in many points in his public career. His family ties
are interesting. His first wife, a Miss Bruce, met a tragic fate. The
vessel in which {99} she accompanied her husband to the West Indies was
wrecked on the voyage out; she never recovered from the shock and
exposure, and died not long after. His second wife was a daughter of
Lord Durham and a niece of Earl Grey, who was, in 1845, colonial
secretary, and to whose influence Elgin owed his appointment as
governor-general. He was thoroughly well qualified for the post. At
the same time it was a way of providing for a relative who was not
rich. Like Metcalfe, Lord Elgin came to Canada by way of Jamaica,
which he had administered in the dark days that followed the
emancipation of the slaves. His broad training, his Liberal politics,
his family affiliations all predisposed him to accept the rôle which
Metcalfe had definitely refused, the rôle, namely, of a constitutional
governor-general, guided solely by the advice of a ministry
representing the majority in parliament. In other words, Elgin had his
mind made up to conform entirely to the principle of responsible
government as understood in the colony. He was not long in the country
before he made his intentions public; and to his fixed policy he
adhered through good report and through evil report, at no small cost
to himself, for {100} never were a Canadian governor-general's
principles put to a more severe test.
Elgin reached Montreal in the end of January 1847, and was heartily
welcomed by both political parties. He, on his part, was ready to
admire the 'perfectly independent inhabitants' of this 'glorious
country,' whose demeanour was certainly not that of the recently
liberated slaves in his former satrapy. The 'independent inhabitants'
voted him 'democratic' for walking out to 'Monklands' in a blizzard,
when hardly any one else was stirring abroad. He was made welcome for
another reason. The experiment of popular government was not working
particularly well. The constitution did really 'march,' but with
ominous creakings and groanings, which seemed to threaten a complete
break-down. This must be the case with every government which tried to
perform its functions with but a small majority at its back. The
unanimous welcome accorded to the governor-general by both sides of
politics implied a belief that somehow or other he could find a way out
of the present difficulties and induce the governmental machine to work
smoothly. It was a faith in the efficacy of the god from the machine.
{101} The Draper government was growing weaker and weaker, being
continually defeated in the House, and consequently discredited before
the country. Its difficulties were increased by events outside of
Canada over which the government could have no control. The hideous
Irish famine of 1846-47 had its reaction upon Canada, for thousands of
starving emigrants tried to escape to the new land, and, after enduring
the long-drawn horrors of the middle passage, reached Canada only to
die like plague-stricken sheep of fever and sheer misery. The monument
at Grosse Isle does not tell half the shame and suffering of that
tragic time. And the Draper government showed no ability to cope with
the problem. At length, in December 1847, Lord Elgin dissolved the
House and a new election took place. It resulted in a complete victory
at the polls for the party of Reform. The leaders, Baldwin,
LaFontaine, and Hincks, were all returned. Only a handful of the other
party came back; but among them were Sir Allan MacNab and the young
Kingston lawyer, John A. Macdonald.
The new House met on February 25, 1848. In the trial of strength over
the Speakership the Reformers won. Sir Allan MacNab was {102} again
the nominee of the Tories; Baldwin nominated his friend, Morin, who had
command of both French and English, a necessary qualification for the
presiding officer of a bilingual parliament. And Morin was chosen
Speaker by a large majority. In accordance with the rules the remnant
of the Draper ministry resigned, and LaFontaine and Baldwin formed a
new Cabinet. This is known in Canadian history as the 'Great
Administration,' which lasted until the retirement in 1851 of both the
noted leaders from public life. The distinction is well deserved, not
only on account of the high character of the leaders, and the value of
the political principles affirmed and put in practice, but also on
account of the permanent value of the legislative programme which it
carried to successful completion. The ensuing session was very short;
for time was needed to prepare the various important measures which the
Reformers intended to bring forward. The troubled year of European
revolution, 1848, was rather colourless in the annals of Canada; not so
the year which followed.
The eventful session of 1849 opened on the eighteenth of January, in a
parliament building improvised out of St Anne's market near {103} what
is now Place d'Youville, Montreal. The Speech from the Throne
announces a programme of the more important measures to be brought
before parliament. In this case the Speech was a promise to deal with
such vital matters as electoral reform, the University of Toronto, the
improvement of the judicial system, and the completion of the St
Lawrence canals. It also contained two announcements most gratifying
to the French: first, that amnesty was to be offered to all political
offenders implicated in the troubles of '37-'38; and second, that the
clause in the Act of Union which made English the sole official
language had been repealed. The governor-general displayed his tact
and his goodwill by reading the Speech in French as well as in English,
a custom which has continued ever since.
A striking incident in the opening debate on the Address was the
passage at arms between LaFontaine and Papineau, between the new and
the old leader of French-Canadian political opinion. In '37 Papineau
had roused his countrymen to armed resistance of the government; but he
had wisely refrained from placing himself at the head of the
insurgents. Together with his secretary, {104} O'Callaghan, he had
witnessed the fight at St Denis from the other side of the river, but
took no part in it. He had afterwards reached the American border in
safety. From the United States he had passed over to France, where he
had consorted with some of the advanced thinkers of the capital. In
1843 LaFontaine, by his personal exertions with Metcalfe, was able to
gain for his exiled chief the privilege of returning without penalty to
his native land. Papineau, however, did not avail himself of the
privilege until four years later; he found life in Paris quite to his
taste. A curious result of his return, a pardoned rebel, was his
claiming and receiving from the provincial treasury the nine years'
arrearage of salary due to him as Speaker in the old Assembly of Lower
Canada. In the elections of 1847 he stood for St Maurice, and he was
elected. In the new parliament he took the rôle of irreconcilable; his
whole policy was obstruction. What he could not realize was, that
during his ten years of absence the whole country had moved away from
the position it had occupied before the outbreak of the rebellion; and,
in moving away, it had left him hopelessly behind. His only programme
was {105} uncompromising opposition to the government which had
forgiven him, and the vague dream of founding an independent French
republic on the banks of the St Lawrence. In the brief session of 1848
he attempted, but without success, to block the wheels of government.
Now, in the second session, the fateful session of 1849, he delivered
one of his old-time reckless philippics denouncing the tyrannical
British power, the Act of Union--the very measure he was supposed to
have battled for--responsible government, and, above all, those of his
own race who supported the new order. LaFontaine took up the gauntlet.
His retort was as obvious as it was crushing. If the French Canadians
had refused to come in under the Act of Union, they would have been
depriving themselves of any share whatever in the government of their
country. If they had refused to come in, Papineau would not have been
permitted to return, or to sit once more as a legislator and a free man
in the national parliament. The reply was unanswerable, and it put a
period to the influence of Papineau. Foiled and discredited, the old
leader was never again to sway the masses of his countrymen as the moon
sways the tides. His day was done. None the less, {106} the prestige
of his name drew after him a small following of the younger and more
ardent men to whom he taught the pure Radical doctrine. In _L'Avenir_,
the propagandist journal which he founded, he preached repeal of the
Union and annexation to the United States. Before long he abandoned an
arena in which he was no longer the great central figure for dignified
seclusion on his seigneury of Montebello beside the noble Ottawa.
In spite of all blind opposition a broad and enlightened programme of
legislation was carried out. Nearly two hundred measures, many of
prime importance, stand to the credit of this busy session. The vexed
question of a provincial university was finally settled. Baldwin's
bill for the founding of the University of Toronto, which had been laid
to one side by the Metcalfe crisis, was taken up again and carried
through all its stages to the status of a law. Conceived as the apex
and crown of a comprehensive scheme of education as broad as the
province, the University of Toronto more than met the hopes of its
founder. A straight road had been devised from the first class in the
common school to the highest department of collegiate instruction. The
needs of the {107} democracy had not been neglected, but wise and ample
provision had been made for the ambitious and aspiring few. How
completely the university has justified its existence is attested by
the spectacle of both political parties competing with each other in
their benevolence towards an honoured, national foundation. By the
multiplying generations of Toronto graduates the name of Robert Baldwin
should be held in high esteem as of the man who made possible the seat
of learning they are so proud to name their _alma mater_.
Another wise measure for which Baldwin deserves no little praise is the
Municipal Corporations Act. The title has a dry, legal look, and will
suggest little or nothing to the general reader except, possibly, red
tape. Moreover, the system by which the subdivisions of the
country--the county, the township, the incorporated village--govern
themselves seems so obvious and works so smoothly in actual practice
that it seems part of the order of nature, and must have existed from
the time beyond which the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.
But the present extended system of home rule in Canada did not descend
from heaven complete, like the {108} Twelve Tables. It was a gradual
growth, or evolution, from the old system, by which the local justices
of the peace, sitting in quarter sessions, assessed the local taxes,
with the difference that it was not an unconscious growth. The plant
set by Sydenham's hand was tended, cultivated, and brought to maturity
by Baldwin. The measure, as it became law in 1849, has proved to be of
the greatest practical value; it has won the approval of competent
critics; and it has served as a model for the organization of other
provinces. Commonplace and humdrum as this measure may seem to
Canadians in the actual domestic working of it, there are other parts
of the Empire--Ireland, for example--which were to lag long behind.
The lack of such privileges is a grievance elsewhere. Even to-day, the
rural districts of England have not as extensive powers of
self-government as the counties of Ontario. If the farmers of the
Tenth Concession had to go to Ottawa and see a bill through the House
every time they wanted a new school, if they had months of waiting for
proper authorization, not to mention expenses of legislation to meet,
they might appreciate more keenly the advantages they enjoy in virtue
of this {109} forgotten Act of 1849. The lover of the picturesque will
not regret that terms with the historic colour of 'reeve' and 'warden'
were made part and parcel of a democratic system in the New World.
It was a session of constructive statesmanship. The judicial system of
the province needed to be revised, extended, and simplified; and these
things were done. The economic condition of Canada was anything but
satisfactory. For years the country had 'enjoyed a preference' in the
British markets, in accordance with the old, plausible theory that
mother country and colony were best held together by trade arrangements
of mutual advantage, by which the colony should supply the mother
country with raw material and the mother country should supply the
colony with manufactured products. Suddenly all Canada's business was
dislocated by Peel's adoption of free trade in 1846. In consequence
Canada had no longer any advantage in the British market over the rest
of the world, and Canadian timber-merchants and grain-growers had an
undoubted grievance. The general commercial depression, which had set
in at the time of the rebellions, became worse and worse. {110} Lord
Elgin's often-quoted words picture the deplorable state of the country:
'Property in most of the Canadian towns, and more especially in the
capital, has fallen fifty per cent in value within the last three
years. Three-fourths of the commercial men are bankrupt, owing to free
trade; a large proportion of the exportable produce of Canada is
obliged to seek a market in the United States. It pays a duty of
twenty per cent on the frontier. How long can such a state of things
be expected to endure?' For a remedy the active mind of Hincks turned
to the obvious alternative of the British market, the natural market
just across the line; and he opened up negotiations with the United
States looking towards reciprocal trade. He could scarcely obtain a
hearing. The way was blocked by the complete indifference of the
United States Senate towards the whole project. Not until five years
later did relief come; and it came through the initiative and personal
diplomacy of Lord Elgin. To him belongs the credit for the famous
Reciprocity Treaty of 1854. This signifies that for the twelve years
during which the treaty was in force the artificial barriers to the
currents of trade between {111} adjacent countries were, to a large
extent, removed, certainly to the great advantage of all British North
America. It was a unique period in Canadian history. Never before had
the trade relations between Canada and the United States been so
friendly, and never have they been so friendly since.
In another great enterprise of national importance Hincks was more
successful. The forties of the nineteenth century saw the first great
era of railway building. This novel method of transportation was
perceived to have immense undeveloped possibilities. In Britain, where
steam traction was invented, companies were formed by the score and
lines were projected in every direction. It was a time of wild
speculation, in which emerged for the first time the new type of
company promoter. From England the rage for railways spread to the
Continent and to America. While Hincks was working at the problem in
Canada, Howe was working at it in Nova Scotia. To link the East with
the West, Montreal with Toronto, Montreal with the Atlantic seaboard,
Montreal with the Lake Champlain waterways to the southward, was the
general design of the first Canadian railways. It was in this period
that the first {112} sections were built of those Canadian lines which,
in half a century, have grown into immense systems radiating across the
continent. Hincks's idea was to aid private enterprise by government
guarantees of the interest on half the cost of construction. Canada is
now laced with iron roads from ocean to ocean. The man who laid the
foundation of these immense systems in the day of small beginnings
should never be forgotten.
So the busy session went on, until a measure was introduced which
aroused a storm of opposition, threatened a renewal of civil war, and
tested the principle of responsible government almost to the breaking
strain. This was the Act of Indemnification, a part of the bitter
aftermath of the rebellion twelve years before.
War, even on the smallest scale, means the destruction of property. In
the troubles of '37 buildings were burned down in the course of
military operations. For example, good Father Paquin of St Eustache
had long to mourn the loss of his church and the adjoining school. As
it stood on a point of land at the junction of two streams and was
strongly built of stone, it was an excellent {113} place of defence
against the attack of Colborne's troops. On the fatal fourteenth of
December 1837 it was stoutly held by Chenier and his men, until two
British officers broke into the sacristy and overset the stove. Soon
the fire drove the garrison out of the building, which was destroyed
along with the new school-house near by. His parishioners were loyal,
Father Paquin contended in a well-reasoned petition; it was not they
but the discontented people of Grand Brulé who had seized the town; yet
the result was ruin. In the affair of Odelltown in 1838 a citizen's
barn was burnt down by orders of the British officer commanding because
it gave shelter to the rebels. Near St Eustache the Swiss adventurer
and leader of the rebels, Amury Girod, took possession of a farm
belonging to a loyal Scottish family. His men cut down the trees about
the farm-house, fortified it rudely, and lived in it at rack and manger
until Colborne came to St Eustache. These were typical cases of loss,
and surely, when order was again restored, they were cases for
compensation. The loyal and the innocent should not have to suffer in
their goods for their innocence and their loyalty.
{114}
Claims for compensation were made early. In the very year of the
rebellion the Assembly of Upper Canada passed an Act appointing
commissioners to inquire into the amount of damage done to the property
of loyal citizens; and in the following year it voted a sum of £4000 to
make good the losses. Men were paid for a cow driven off, or for an
old musket commandeered. The Special Council of Lower Canada made
similar provision, as was only natural and right; but its task was much
harder than that of the Assembly's. Clearly, the property of loyalists
destroyed or injured during the civil strife should be made good. This
was mere justice. It was equally clear that the property of open
rebels which had been destroyed or injured should _not_ be made good.
But there was a third category not so easy to deal with. There were
those who were not openly in rebellion, but who were grievously suspect
of sympathy with declared insurgents of their own race and religion.
How far sympathy might have become aid and comfort to opponents of the
government was hard to say. The village of St Eustache, for example,
was set on fire the night following the fight; the troops turned out in
the bitter cold to fight the fire, {115} but did not master it until
some eighty houses were burned. What claim could the owners have upon
the government for their losses? In the winter of 1838 the sky was red
with the flames of burning hamlets, says the _Montreal Herald_.
The law's delay is proverbial. Compensatory legislation dragged its
slow length along for years, and the loyalists who had suffered in
their pocket saw session after session pass, and their claims still
unsatisfied. In 1840 the Assembly of Upper Canada passed an Act
authorizing the expenditure not of four thousand, but of forty thousand
pounds, to indemnify the loyalists who had lost by the 'troubles.'
However, as the Assembly, at the same time, forbore to provide any
funds for the purpose, the Act remained with the force of a pious wish.
The claimants for compensation were none the better for it. Then came
the union of the Canadas. Five more years rolled away, and, in spite
of the usual siege operations of those who have money claims against a
government, nothing was done. The various barns and cows and muskets
were still a dead loss. Then in 1845 the Tory administration of Draper
put the necessary finishing touch to the quaker act of 1840 by {116}
providing the sum of money required. By drawing on the receipts from
tavern licences collected in Upper Canada over a period of four years,
the government was in the possession of £38,000 for this specific
purpose. But, after the Union, it was manifestly unjust to pay
rebellion losses, as they came to be known, in Upper Canada and not in
Lower Canada. The Reformers of Lower Canada pointed out with emphasis
the manifest injustice of such a proceeding. It therefore became
necessary to extend the scope of the Act. Accordingly, in November
1845, a commission consisting of five persons was appointed to
investigate the claims for 'indemnity for just losses sustained' during
the rebellion in Lower Canada. This commission was instructed to
distinguish between the loyal and the rebellious, but, in making this
vital distinction, they were not to 'be guided by any other description
of evidence than that furnished by the sentences of the courts of law.'
The commission was also given to understand that its investigation was
not to be final. It was to prepare only a 'general estimate' which
would be subject to more particular scrutiny and revision. Appointed
in the end of November 1845, the {117} commission had finished its task
and was ready to report in April 1846. Its 'general estimate' was a
handsome total of more than £240,000; it gave as its opinion that
£100,000 would cover all the 'just losses sustained.' Of the larger
amount, it is said that £25,000 was claimed by those who had actually
been convicted of treason by court-martial. Not unnaturally an outcry
rose at once against taking public money to reward treason. The report
could not very well be acted upon; and the government voted £10,000 to
pay claims in Lower Canada which had been certified before the union of
the provinces. Another delay of three years followed, until LaFontaine
took the matter up in the session of 1849.
His general idea was simply to continue and complete the legislation
already in force, in order to do justice to those who had 'sustained
just losses' in the 'troubles' of '37 and '38. The bill provided for a
new commission of five, with power to examine witnesses on oath. In
accordance with the finding of the previous commission, the total sum
to be expended was limited to £100,000. If the losses exceeded that
sum, the individual claims were to be proportionally reduced. {118}
The necessary funds were to be raised on twenty-year debentures bearing
interest at six per cent. LaFontaine introduced and explained the
bill, and Baldwin supported it in a brief speech. It was easy enough,
with their unbroken majority, to vote the measure through; but the
storm of opposition it raised might have made less determined leaders
hesitate or draw back.
[Illustration: Sir Louis H. LaFontaine. After a photograph by Notman]
The vehemence of the opposition was not due merely to the readiness
with which the faction out of power will seize on the weak aspects of a
question in order to embarrass the government. Such sham-fight tactics
are common enough and may be rated at their proper value. The leaders
of the British party were sincere in their belief that the success of
this measure meant the triumph of the French and the reversal of all
that had been done to hold the colonies for the Empire against rebels
whose avowed purpose was separation. Twelve years had gone by since
they had failed in the overt act. Now Papineau was back in the House,
about to receive his arrears of salary as Speaker. In Elgin's eyes he
was a Guy Fawkes waving flaming brands among all sorts of combustibles.
Mackenzie had been granted amnesty by the monarch {119} he had called
'the bloody Queen of England.' Wolfred Nelson, who had resisted Her
Majesty's forces at St Denis, was to have his claim for damages
considered. It was not in the flesh and blood of politicians to endure
all this; and before condemning the opposition to this bill, as is the
fashion with Canadian historians, we might ask what we should have done
ourselves in such circumstances. What the Tories did was to raise the
war-cry, 'No pay to rebels.' It resounded from one end of the province
to the other and roused to life all the passion that had slumbered
since the rebellion.
In the debate on the second reading of the bill a scene almost without
parallel took place on the floor of the House. The Tories taunted the
French with being 'aliens and rebels.' Blake, the solicitor-general
for Upper Canada, retorted the charge, and accused the Tories of being
'rebels to their constitution and country.' In a rage Sir Allan MacNab
gave him 'the lie with circumstance,' and the two honourable members
made at each other. Only the prompt intervention of the
sergeant-at-arms prevented actual assault. The two belligerents were
taken into his custody. Some of the excited spectators who {120}
hissed and shouted were also taken into custody; and the debate came to
a sudden end that day. Those were the days of 'the code,' and why a
'meeting' was not 'arranged' and why Sir Allan did not have an
opportunity of using his silver-mounted duelling pistols is not quite
clear. The tempers of our politicians have much improved since that
violent scene occurred. No slur on the word of an honourable
gentleman, no imputation of falsehood, would now be so hotly resented
in our legislative halls.
The violence and the excitement which prevailed in parliament were
repeated and intensified throughout the country. Everything that could
be effected by public meetings, petitions, protests, was done to
prevent the bill from passing, or, if it passed, to prevent the
governor-general from giving his assent to it, or, as a last resource,
to induce the Queen to disallow the obnoxious measure. The whole
machinery of agitation was set in motion and speeded up, to prevent the
bill becoming law. 'Demonstrations'--in plain English, rows--took
place everywhere. Sedate little Belleville was the scene of fierce
riots. Effigies of Baldwin, Blake, and Mackenzie were paraded through
the streets of Toronto {121} on long poles 'amid the cheers and
exultations of the largest concourse of people beheld in Toronto since
the election of Dunn and Buchanan.' Finally the effigies were burned
in a burlesque _auto-da-fé_. This ancient English custom was a milder
method of expressing political disapproval than the native American
invention of tar-and-feathers; but it seems to have been equally
soothing to the feelings. An outside observer, the _New York Herald_,
expected the disturbance to end in 'a complete and perfect separation
of those provinces from the rule of England'; but in those days
American critics were always expecting separation.
No clearer mirror of the crisis is to be found than in the words of the
man on whom lay the heaviest responsibility, the governor-general
himself. This is his private opinion of the bill: 'The measure itself
is not free from objection, and I very much regret that an addition
should be made to our debt for such an object at this time.
Nevertheless I must say I do not see how my present government could
have taken any other course.' He also calls it 'a strict logical
following out' of the Tory party's own acts; and he has 'no doubt
whatsoever {122} that a great deal of property was wantonly and cruelly
destroyed at that time in Lower Canada.' He was petitioned to dissolve
parliament if the bill should pass; his judgment on this alternative
runs: 'If I had dissolved parliament, I might have produced a
rebellion, but most assuredly I should not have produced a change of
ministry.' The other alternative of reserving the bill seemed, as he
balanced it in his mind, cowardly. He would create no precedent.
Bills had been reserved before, and had been refused the royal
sanction; to reserve this one would be no departure from established
custom; but, he writes to Lord Grey, 'by reserving the Bill, I should
only throw upon Her Majesty's Government ... a responsibility which
rests, and ought, I think, to rest, on my own shoulders.' The
sentences which follow evince an ideal of public service that can only
be called knightly. The executive head of the government was ready to
face failure and disgrace, to the ruin of his career, rather than shirk
the responsibility which was really his. 'If I pass the Bill, whatever
mischief ensues may possibly be repaired, if the worst comes to the
worst, by the sacrifice of me. Whereas {123} if the case be referred
to England, it is not impossible that Her Majesty may have before her
the alternative of provoking a rebellion in Lower Canada ... or of
wounding the susceptibilities of some of the best subjects she has in
the province.' From the first Elgin had firmly made up his mind to
fill the rôle of constitutional governor; he believed that the best
justification of Durham's memory, and of what he had done in Canada,
would be a governor-general working out fairly the Dictator's views of
government. Although he had definitely made up his mind what course of
action to follow, he was never betrayed into committing himself before
the proper time. Deputations waited on him with provocative addresses;
but none was cunning enough to snare him in his speech. The
'sacrifice' came soon enough.
In spite of all the furies of opposition within the House and out of
it, the Indemnity Bill passed by a majority of more than two to one.
The next question was what would Lord Elgin do? Would he give his
assent to the bill, the finishing vice-regal touch which would make it
law, or would he reserve it for Her Majesty's sanction? Some unnamed
{124} persons of respectability had a shrewd suspicion of what he would
do, as the sequel proved. An accident hastened the crisis. In 1849
the navigation of the St Lawrence opened early; and on the twenty-fifth
of April the first vessel of the season was sighted approaching the
port of Montreal. In order to make his new Tariff Bill immediately
operative on the nearing cargo, Hincks posted out to 'Monklands,' Lord
Elgin's residence, in order to obtain the governor-general's formal
assent to this particular bill. The governor did as he was asked. He
drove in from 'Monklands' in state to the Parliament House for the
purpose. The time seemed opportune to give his assent to several other
bills. Among the rest he assented in Her Majesty's name to the 'Act to
provide for the indemnification of parties in Lower Canada whose
property was destroyed during the Rebellion of 1837 and 1838.' What
happened in consequence is best told in his own words. 'When I left
the House of Parliament, I was received with mingled cheers and
hootings by a crowd by no means numerous, which surrounded the entrance
of the building. A small knot of individuals consisting, it has since
been {125} ascertained, of persons of a respectable class in society,
pelted the carriage with missiles which they must have brought with
them for the purpose.' The 'missiles' which could not be picked up in
the street were rotten eggs. One of them struck Lord Elgin in the
face. That was the Canadian method of expressing disapproval of a
governor-general for acting in strict accordance with the principles of
responsible government. But this was only part of the price he had to
pay for doing right. Worse was to follow.
Immediately after this outrage a notice was issued from one of the
newspapers calling an open-air meeting in the Champ de Mars. Towards
evening the excitement increased, and the fire-bells jangled a tocsin
to call the people into the streets. The Champ de Mars soon filled
with a tumultuous mob, roaring its approbation of wild speeches which
denounced the 'tyranny' of the governor-general and the Reformers. A
cry arose, 'To the Parliament House!' and the mob streamed westward,
wrecking in its passage the office of Hincks's paper the _Pilot_. The
House was in session, and though warned by Sir Allan MacNab that a riot
was in progress, it hesitated to take the extreme step of {126} calling
out the military to protect its dignity. At this time the whole police
force of the city numbered only seventy-two men, and, in emergencies,
law and order were maintained with the aid of the regiments in
garrison, or by a force of special constables. Soon the House found
that Sir Allan's warning was against no imaginary danger. Volleys of
stones suddenly crashed through the lighted windows, and the members
fled for their lives. The rabble flowed into the building and took
possession of the Assembly hall. Here they broke in pieces the
furniture, the fittings, the chandeliers. One of the rioters, a man
with a broken nose, seated himself in the Speaker's chair and shouted,
'I dissolve this House.' It seems like a scene from a Paris _émeute_
rather than an actual event in a staid Canadian city. Soon a cry was
heard, 'The Parliament House is on fire.' Another band of rioters had
set the western wing alight, and, in a quarter of an hour, the whole
building was a mass of flames. Although the firemen turned out
promptly, they were forcibly prevented by the mob from doing their
duty, until the soldiers came to their support, and then it was too
late to save the building. Next day only the ruined walls {127} were
standing. The Library of Parliament was burned in spite of efforts to
save it, and the student of Canadian history will always mourn the loss
of irreplaceable records and manuscripts in that tragic blaze. One
thing was rescued. Young Sandford Fleming and three others carried out
the portrait of the Queen. It was almost as gallant an act as rescuing
the Lady in person.
Nor was the destruction of the Parliament Building the final outbreak.
Next evening the mob was at its work again, attacking the houses or
lodgings of the various Reform leaders. LaFontaine's government
ordered the arrest of four ringleaders in the last night's riot. In
revenge his house was entered forcibly, the furniture smashed, the
library destroyed, and the stable set on fire. In fact, for three days
Montreal was like a city in revolution. A thousand special constables,
armed with pistols and cutlasses, in addition to the soldiery were
needed to restore something like order in the streets. But the rioting
was not over even yet. The most violent scene of all took place on the
thirtieth of April. The House was naturally incensed at the insults
offered to the governor-general and drew up an address expressing the
{128} members' detestation of mob violence, their loyalty to the Queen,
and their approval of his just and impartial administration. It was
decided to present the address to him, not at the suburban seat of
'Monklands,' but publicly at Government House, the Château de Ramezay
in the heart of the city. Such a decision showed no little courage on
both sides, but the end was almost a tragedy. Lord Elgin came very
near being murdered in the streets of Montreal. On the day appointed
he drove into the city, having for escort a troop of volunteer
dragoons. All through the streets his carriage was pelted with stones
and other missiles, and his entry to Government House was blocked by a
howling mob. His escort forced the crowd to give way, and the
governor-general entered, carrying with him a two-pound stone which had
been hurled into his carriage. It was a piece of unmistakable evidence
as to the treatment the Queen's representative in Canada had received
at the hands of Her Majesty's faithful subjects. When the ceremony was
over he attempted to avoid trouble by taking a different route back to
'Monklands,' but he was discovered, and literally hunted out of the
city. 'Cabs, {129} calèches, and everything that would run were at
once launched in pursuit, and crossing his route, the
governor-general's carriage was bitterly assailed in the main street of
the St Lawrence suburbs. The good and rapid driving of his postilions
enabled him to clear the desperate mob, but not till the head of his
brother, Colonel Bruce, had been cut, injuries inflicted on the chief
of police, Colonel Ermatinger, and on Captain Jones, commanding the
escort, and every panel of the carriage driven in.' Even at
'Monklands' Lord Elgin was not entirely safe. The mob threatened to
attack him there, and the house was put in a state of defence. Ladies
of his household driving to church were insulted. To avoid occasion of
strife he remained quietly at his country-seat; and, for his
consideration of the public weal, was ridiculed, caricatured, and
dubbed, in contempt, the Hermit of Monklands.
The riots did not end without bloodshed. Once more the rioters
attacked LaFontaine's house by night; shots were fired from the windows
on the mob, and one man was killed. The appeal to racial passion was
irresistible. A man of British blood had been slain by a Frenchman.
The funeral {130} of the chance victim was made a political
demonstration. LaFontaine was actually tried for complicity in the
accident, but was acquitted. Montreal underwent something like a Reign
of Terror; a murderous clash between French and English might come at
any moment. Elgin was urged to proclaim martial law and put down mob
rule by the use of troops. Wisely he refused to go to such extremes.
The city authorities themselves should restore order, and at last they
did so with their thousand special constables. Those April riots of
'49 cost Montreal the honour of being the capital of Canada, and
ultimately caused the transformation of queer little lumbering Bytown
into the stately city of Ottawa, proudly eminent, with the halls of
legislature towering on the great bluff above the glassy river.
Of Elgin's conduct during this long-drawn ordeal it is almost
impossible to speak in terms of moderate praise. He must have been
less or more than human not to feel bitterly the insults heaped upon
him. The natural man spoke in the American who 'could not understand
why you did not shoot them down'; and also in the Canadian {131} who
'would have reduced Montreal to ashes' before enduring half that the
governor endured. But Elgin acted not as the natural man, but as the
Christian and the statesman, He refused to meet violence with violence;
and he refused to nullify the principles of popular government by
bowing before the blast of popular clamour. But a more unpopular
governor-general never held office in Canada.
{132}
CHAPTER V
THE PRINCIPLE ESTABLISHED
The storm raised by the Rebellion Losses Bill did not soon sink to a
calm. It did not end with rabbling the viceroy, burning the House of
Parliament, homicide, and mob rule in the streets of Montreal. In the
British House of Commons the whole matter was thoroughly discussed.
Young Mr Disraeli, the dandified Jewish novelist, held that there were
no rebels in Upper Canada, while young Mr Gladstone, 'the rising hope
of those stern and unbending Tories,' proved that there were virtual
rebels who would be rewarded for their treason under the Canadian
statute. In a letter to _The Times_ Hincks showed, in rebuttal, that
rebels in Upper Canada had already received compensation by the Act of
a Tory government. Who says A must also say B. Between the arguments
of Gladstone and Hincks it is perfectly clear that the Rebellion Losses
Bill was anything but a perfect measure. Its passage had one {133}
more important reaction, the Annexation movement of 1849.
This episode in Canadian history is usually slurred over by our
writers. It is considered to be a national disgrace, a shameful
confession of cowardice, like an attempt at suicide in a man. It did
undoubtedly show want of faith in the future. Those who organized the
movement did 'despair of the republic.' But it is possible to blame
them too much. Annexation to the United States was in the air. Lord
Elgin writes that it was considered to be the remedy for every kind of
Canadian discontent. He was haunted by the fear of it all through his
tenure of office. Annexation had been preached by the Radical journals
for years in Canada; and it was confidently expected by politicians in
the United States. As late as 1866 a bill providing for the admission
of the states of Upper Canada, Nova Scotia, etc., to the Union passed
two readings in the House of Representatives. The Dominion elections
of a quarter of a century later (1891) gave the death-blow to the
notion that Annexation was Canada's manifest destiny; but the idea died
hard.
Action and reaction are equal and opposite. {134} Embittered by
defeat, the very party that had stood like a rock for British
connection now moved definitely for separation. The circular issued by
the Annexation Association of Montreal is a document too seldom
studied, but it repays study. In tone it is the reverse of
inflammatory; it is markedly temperate and reasonable. After a
dispassionate review of the present situation, it considers the
possibilities that lie before the colony--federal union, independence,
or reciprocity with the United States. All that Goldwin Smith was to
say about Canada's manifest destiny is said here. His ideas and
arguments are perfectly familiar to the Annexationists of '49. The
appeal at the close contains this sentence:
Fellow-Colonists, We have thus laid before you our views and
convictions on a momentous question--involving a change which, though
contemplated by many of us with varied feelings and emotions, we all
believe to be inevitable;--one which it is our duty to provide for, and
lawfully to promote.
There were those who protested against Annexation; but they were
denounced as {135} 'known monopolists and protectionists.' One speaker
said: 'Were it necessary I might multiply citation on citation to prove
that England considers, and has for years considered, our present
relations to her both burdensome and unprofitable.' Another said: 'It
is admitted, I may almost say, on all hands, that Canada must
eventually form a portion of the Great American Republic--that it is a
mere question of time.' There follows a list of some nine hundred
names, beginning with John Torrance and ending with Andrew Stevenson.
There are French names as well as English. Some bearers of those names
to-day are not proud of the fact that they are to be found in that
list. One Tory refused to sign the manifesto: his monument bears the
inscription, 'A British subject I was born, a British subject I will
die.'
The manifesto was supported by various pamphleteers and journalists.
Elgin records his fear of the 'cry for Annexation spreading like
wildfire through the province.' But it did not spread 'like wildfire.'
The original impulse, which may have been partly 'petulance,' seemed to
spend itself. Not all English opinion was in favour of 'cutting the
painter'; and one of the most determined {136} opponents of Annexation
was that very alert politician, the young Queen. Equally determined
was the governor-general of Canada. 'To render Annexation by violence
impossible, and by any other means, as improbable as may be, is,' he
wrote, 'the polar star of my policy.' When he could, he showed clearly
enough what his policy was. The manifesto of the Annexationists
contained not a few names of men holding office under the government,
magistrates, queen's counsel, militia officers, and others. Elgin had
a circular letter sent to these eminently respectable persons holding
commissions at the pleasure of the Crown, asking pertinently if they
had really signed the document in question. Some affirmed, and some
denied; others, again, questioned the governor's right to make the
inquiry. He then removed from office all who did not disavow their
signatures as well as those who admitted them. His action had an
excellent effect and showed that he was no weakling. He was warmly
supported by the colonial secretary, Earl Grey. Hitherto he had been
only a peer of Scotland, but now, in token of the government's
approval, was made a peer of the United Kingdom. Soon the commercial
conditions, {137} which had no small part in the political discontent,
began to mend.
[Illustration: The Earl of Elgin. From a daguerreotype]
The services of Hincks to his adopted country at this time were of the
greatest value. A financier as well as a journalist, he was able to
secure the capital needed for the great public works, and to set the
resources of Canada before the British investor in a most convincing
way. The Welland Canal was completed; the era of railway development
began. Immigration increased and business began to lift its head. In
1849 the last of the old Navigation Laws, which forbade foreign ships
to trade with Canada, were repealed. They were an inheritance from the
imperialism of Cromwell, but were now outworn. Although the Maritime
Provinces did not benefit, the port of Montreal began to come to its
own, as the head of navigation. In 1850 nearly a hundred foreign
vessels sought its wharves.
The next session of parliament was held in Toronto, according to the
odd agreement by which that city was to alternate with Quebec as the
seat of government. Every four years the government with all its
impedimenta was to migrate from the one to the other. The Liberal
party was soon to find that a crushing {138} victory at the polls and a
puny opposition in the House were not unmixed blessings. It began to
fall apart by its own sheer weight. A Radical wing, both English and
French, soon developed. The 'Clear Grit' party in Upper Canada was
moving straight towards republicanism, and so was Papineau's _Parti
Rouge_, with its organ _L'Avenir_ openly preaching Annexation.
Canadian eyes were still dazzled by the marvellously rapid growth of
the United States. American democracy was manifestly triumphant, and
Canada's shortest road to equal prosperity lay through direct
imitation. Salvation was to be found in the universal application of
the elective principle, from policeman to governor. This was before
the unforeseen tendencies of democracy had startled Americans out of
their attitude of self-complacent belief in it, and converted them
first into thoroughgoing critics, and then into determined reformers of
the system that they once thought flawless. The legislation of the
session of 1849-50 has still measures of value. Canada for the first
time assumed full control of her own postal system. The principle of
separate schools for Roman Catholics was confirmed, a measure which
reveals Canada in sharp contrast to the {139} United States, where
sectarian teaching is excluded from a state-aided school system. Not a
single bill was 'reserved,' which the Globe called a fact
'unprecedented in Canadian history.' The colony was now entirely free
to manage its own affairs, well or ill, to misgovern itself if it chose
to do so. Lord Elgin had almost laid down his life for this idea;
henceforth it was never to be called in question.
Two outstanding grievances were finally removed by the Great
Administration during this session. They were both land questions; one
afflicted the English, and the other the French, half of the province.
For a whole decade the grievance of the Clergy Reserves had slumbered;
now it came up for settlement. The Clergy Reserves were finally
secularized. Hincks, the astute parliamentary hand, led the House in
requesting the British parliament to repeal the Act of 1840. This was
the first step, preliminary to devoting the unappropriated land to the
maintenance of the school system. In voting on this measure LaFontaine
opposed, while Baldwin supported it. The divergence of opinion marked
the weakening of the ministry.
The other question, which affected French {140} Canada, was the
seigneurial tenure of the land. The system was an inheritance from the
time of Richelieu. Unlike the English, who allowed their colonies to
grow up haphazard, the French, from the first, organized and regulated
theirs according to a definite scheme. Upon the banks of the St
Lawrence they established the feudal system of holding land, the only
system they knew. There were the seigneurs, or landlords, with their
permanent tenants, or _censitaires_. There were the ancient
usages--_cens et rentes, lods et ventes, droit de banalité_.[1] the
seigneurs' court, and so on. Seigneuries were also established in
Acadia; but they were bought out by the Crown about 1730, after the
cession of that province to Great Britain. In the opinion of such
authorities as Sulte and Munro the seigneurial system answered its
purpose very well. At first the French would not have it touched. In
the troubles of '37 the simple habitants thought they were fighting for
the abolition of the seigneurs' dues. By the middle of the nineteenth
century it had become almost as complete an anomaly as trial by combat.
But the question of reform bristled with difficulties. {141} Which
were the rightful owners of the eight million arpents of land--the
seigneurs, or the _censitaires_? To whom should all this land be
given? Was there a third method, adjustment of rights with adequate
compensation? The Reformers were not agreed among themselves. Some
were for abolition of the seigneurs' rights: some were for voluntary
arrangement with the aid of law. LaFontaine was averse from change,
and Papineau, who was himself a seigneur, held by the ancient usages.
The whole question was referred to a committee, but all attempts to
deal with it during the sessions of 1850 and 1851 came to nothing. Not
until 1854 was definite action taken. All feudal rights and duties,
whether bearing on _censitaire_ or seigneur, were abolished by law, and
a double court was appointed to inquire into the claims of all parties
and to secure compensation in equity for the loss of the seigneurs'
vested interests. It took five years of patient investigation, and
over ten million dollars, to get rid of this anomaly, but at last it
was accomplished to the benefit of the country. Says Bourinot, 'The
money was well spent in bringing about so thorough a revolution in so
peaceable and conclusive a manner.'
{142}
Both these questions gave rise to differences of opinion in the
Cabinet. The Clear Grits, or Radical wing, were in constant
opposition, simply because the progress of Reform was not rapid enough.
William Lyon Mackenzie, once more in parliament, rendered them
effective aid. In June 1851 he brought in a motion to abolish the
Court of Chancery, which had been reorganized by Baldwin only two years
before and seemed to be working fairly well. Although the motion was
defeated Baldwin realized that the leadership of the party was passing
from him and his friends, and he resigned from office at the end of the
month. One of the pleasing episodes in the history of Canadian
parliaments was Sir Allan MacNab's sincere expression of regret on the
retirement of his political opponent. There are few enough of such
amenities. In October of the same year LaFontaine also resigned,
sickened of political life. A letter of his to Baldwin, as early as
1845, lifts the veil. 'I sincerely hope,' he says, 'I will never be
placed in a situation to be obliged to take office again. The more I
see the more I feel disgusted. It seems as if duplicity, deceit, want
of sincerity, selfishness were virtues. It gives me a poor idea of
{143} human nature.' This is not the utterance of a cynic, but of an
honest man smarting from disillusion. His exit from public life was
final. He was made chief justice for Lower Canada and presided with
distinction over the sessions of the Seigneurial Court. His political
career thus closed while he was yet a young man with years of valuable
service before him. Baldwin attempted to re-enter political life. The
resignation of the two leaders involved a new election, and Baldwin was
defeated in his own 'pocket borough' by Hartman, a Clear Grit. That
was the end. He retired to his estate 'Spadina,' his health shattered
by his close attention to the service of the state. He was an entirely
honest politician, deservedly remembered for the integrity of his life
and his share in upbuilding Canada. So the Great Administration
reached its period.
It was succeeded by a ministry in which Hincks and Morin were the
leaders. The new parliament included a new force in politics, George
Brown, creator of the _Globe_ newspaper. A Scot by birth, a Radical in
politics, hard-headed, bitter of speech, a foe to compromise, with
Caledonian fire and fondness for facts, he soon commanded a large {144}
following in the country and became a dreaded critic in the House. He
had disapproved of the late ministry for its failure to carry out the
programme approved by the _Globe_, especially the secularization of the
Clergy Reserves. He became the Protestant champion, the denouncer of
such acts as that of the Pope in dividing England into Roman Catholic
sees and naming Cardinal Wiseman Archbishop of Westminster, and the
pugnacious foe of 'French domination.' His activities did not tend to
draw French and English closer together. He lacked the gift of his
successful rival, John A. Macdonald, for making friends and inspiring
personal loyalty.
The Hincks-Morin government was a business man's administration. It is
noteworthy for its successful promotion of various railway, maritime,
and commercial enterprises. It aided in the establishment of a line of
steamers to Britain by offering a substantial subsidy for the carriage
of mails, a policy which has continued, with the approval of the
nation, to the present time. It was this ministry also which pushed
the building of the Grand Trunk, and ultimately succeeded in creating a
national highway from Rivière du Loup to {145} Sarnia and Windsor.
This was the era of reckless railway speculation. Municipalities were
empowered to borrow money on debentures for railway building guaranteed
by the provincial government. Unfortunately they borrowed extravagant
sums and ran into debt, from which, at last, the province had to rescue
them. But, unlike what happened in the case of some of the American
states, there was no repudiation of debts by Canadian municipalities.
The year 1851 is likewise famous for the Great Exhibition. Britain had
adopted free trade, to her great advantage. All the nations of the
world were expected to follow her example and remove the barriers to
commerce to the benefit of all. The freedom of intercourse between
nation and nation was to slay the jealousy and suspicion which lead to
war. To inaugurate the new era of peace and unfettered trade the
Crystal Palace was reared in Hyde Park--'the palace made of windies,'
as Thackeray calls it--and filled with the products of the world. The
idea originated with the Prince Consort, and it was worthy of him. For
the first time the various nations could compare their resources and
manufactures with one another. Canada {146} had her share in it. As a
demonstration of general British superiority in manufactures the Great
Exhibition was a great success; but as heralding an era of universal
peace it was a mournful failure. Three years later England, France,
and Sardinia were fighting Russia to prop the rotten empire of the
Turk. Then came the Great Mutiny; then the four years of fratricidal
strife between the Northern and Southern States; then the war of
Prussia and Austria; then the overthrow of France by Germany. All
these events had their influence on Canada. The 100th Regiment was
raised in Canada for the Crimea. Joseph Howe went to New York on a
desperate recruiting mission. Nova Scotia ordained a public fast on
the news of the massacre of white women and children by the Sepoys.
Thousands of Canadians enlisted in the Northern armies. The Papal
Zouaves went from Quebec to the aid of the Pope against Garibaldi. All
these were symptoms that Canadians were beginning to outgrow their
narrow provincialism and to perceive their relations to the outer
world, and especially towards Britain. The country was reaching out
towards the rôle which in our own day she has played in the Great War.
{147}
Meanwhile Lord Elgin was playing his part as constitutional governor,
standing by his principle of accepting democracy even when democracy
went wrong. Though inconspicuous, he was always planning for the
benefit of the country he had in charge. He had visions of an Imperial
_zollverein_, but he perceived clearly the immense and immediate
advantages of freer trade relations between the British American
colonies and the United States. Those once attained, he thought the
danger of Annexation past. His activities in his last year of office
prove that a man of ability may be a strictly constitutional governor
and yet preserve a power of initiative, of almost inestimable value.
In 1853 Lord Elgin paid a visit to England, and while there obtained
full powers to negotiate with the United States. For several years
Hincks had been doing his best to induce the American government to
consider the question of reciprocity in natural products with Canada,
but without avail. Bills to this effect had even been introduced into
Congress; but they never got beyond the preliminary stages. New
England was inclined to favour the proposal, for agriculture was
declining there before the growth of {148} manufactures. The South
favoured reciprocity rather than Annexation, for the 'irrepressible
conflict' between the slave states and the free states was every day
coming closer to observant eyes, and including Canada in the Union
meant a great accession of strength to the already populous North.
Opposition came from the farmers of the Northern states, who feared the
competition of a country, as yet, almost entirely devoted to
agriculture. General indifference, the opposition of a section,
combined with the feeling that Canada had nothing adequate to offer in
return for access to the huge American market, removed reciprocity from
the domain of practical politics. The scale was turned by the codfish
question.
Ever since the success of the Revolution the fishermen of New England
had a grievance against the British government and against the colonies
which did not revolt. They thought it most unjust that, as successful
rebels, they could not enjoy the fishing privileges of the North
Atlantic which they had enjoyed as loyal subjects. They wanted to eat
their cake and have their penny too. Of course no power on earth could
exclude them from the Banks, the great shoals in the {149} open sea,
where fish feed by millions; but territorial waters were another
matter. By the law of nations the power of a country extends over the
waters which bound it for three miles, the range of a cannon shot, as
the old phrase runs. Now it is precisely in the territorial waters of
the British American provinces that the vast schools of mackerel and
herring strike. To these waters American fishermen had not a shadow of
a right; but Yankee ingenuity was equal to the difficulty and proposed
the question, Where does the three-mile limit extend? The American
jurists and diplomats insisted that it followed all the sinuosities of
the shore. If admitted, this claim would give American fishermen the
right of entrance to huge British bights and bays full of valuable
fish. The Canadian contention was that the three-mile limit ran from
headland to headland, thus excluding the Americans from fishing within
the deeper indentations of the coast-line. By the treaty of 1818 the
Americans were definitely excluded from the territorial waters, but
still they poached on Canada's preserves. It was maddening to Nova
Scotians to see aliens insolently hauling their nets within sight of
shore and taking the bread from their mouths. {150} The Americans
applied the headland to headland rule to their own territorial waters;
no 'Bluenose' fisherman could venture into the Chesapeake; but for the
'Britishers' to insist on the same rule was another matter. In 1852
the constant clash of interests almost led to war; for Britain backed
up the just complaints of her colonies by detaching a force of six
cruisers to protect our fisheries and stop the poachers, and the
American government also sent ships to protect their fishermen. There
was no further action, beyond a recommendation in the President's
message to Congress that the whole matter should be settled by treaty.
Such was the situation when Lord Elgin arrived at Washington in May
1854. His suite included Hincks and Laurence Oliphant, the writer,
whose humorous and satiric account of what he saw during the
negotiations makes most amusing reading. The diplomats reached the
American capital at one of the most dramatic moments of American
history. On the very day of their arrival the Kansas-Nebraska Bill
passed Congress. It meant the momentary triumph of the South and the
extension of slavery into the great _hinterland_ beyond the
Mississippi. {151} The passage of the bill was celebrated by the
salute of a hundred guns; and, fearing trouble, legislators sat in the
House armed to the teeth.
Lord Elgin at once began operations which can hardly be distinguished
from an ordinary lobby. From Marcy, the secretary of state, he
ascertained that the kernel of opposition to reciprocity was the
Democratic majority in the Senate, and he set about cultivating the
Democratic senators. There was a round of pleasant dinners and other
entertainments, at which Lord Elgin shone. A British peer is always an
object of interest in a democracy. This one possessed most agreeable
manners, a charm to which Southerners are peculiarly susceptible, and
also an unusual gift of oratory which won him favour with a public
accustomed to the eloquence of Daniel Webster and Wendell Phillips.
These things told with the Democratic majority. That the treaty 'was
floated through on champagne' is an exaggeration; but there was
undoubtedly much hospitality shown on both sides and much good
fellowship. Ten days after his arrival at Washington Lord Elgin was
able to tell Mr Marcy that the Democrats would not oppose the treaty,
and on the fifth of {152} June it was actually signed. Oliphant
furnishes most amusing details of the actual ceremony of appending the
signatures. It went into force only after it had been formally
ratified by the legislatures of Great Britain and the United States.
The most important provisions were as follows.
Natural products were to be admitted free of duty to both countries,
the principal being grain, flour, lumber, bread-stuffs, animals, fresh,
smoked and salted meats, lumber of all kinds, poultry, cotton, wool,
hides, metallic ores, pitch, tar, ashes, flax, hemp, rice, and
unmanufactured tobacco. In return the American fishermen obtained the
coveted privilege of fishing within the territorial waters of the
Maritime Provinces, without any restriction as to distance or
headlands. Canadians were accorded the right to fish in the depleted
American grounds, north of the 36th parallel N. latitude. Nova
Scotians were not pleased at these concessions, especially as they were
not allowed to share in the American coasting trade; but as trade grew
up and prices rose, their discontent naturally vanished.
The benefits accruing to Canada from the treaty were immediate and
plain to every {153} eye. In the first year of its operation the value
of commodities interchanged between the two countries rose from an
annual average of fourteen million dollars to thirty-three millions, an
increase of more than one hundred per cent. The volume of trade rose
steadily at the rate of eight or nine millions per annum. When the war
broke out between the North and the South, prices jumped, and, during
the four years of the struggle, Canada had a greedy market for
everything she could produce. The benefit to both countries was
obvious. For the first time since the Revolution the currents of North
American trade flowed unchecked in their natural channels. Canada had
never known such a period of prosperity, and was never to know such
another, until the great West was opened up by the railways and until
immigrants began to flock in by hundreds of thousands, to draw from the
rich loam of the prairies the bountiful harvests of man-sustaining
wheat. Lord Elgin's pact held good for twelve years. In the last year
the volume of trade was more than eighty-four millions. The agreement
ended from a variety of causes, economic and political. Canada had
raised the tariff on American manufactures in order to meet {154} her
increasing expenditure; and she tried to divert American commerce from
its regular routes to a profitable transit through Canadian territory.
But the chief cause was the bitterness of the United States at the
attitude of Britain during the Civil War. The _Trent_ affair, the
ravages of the _Alabama_ and other commerce destroyers, the open and
avowed sympathy with the South expressed in British journals and
elsewhere, convinced the American people that Britain would be glad to
see the Republic broken up. That, with such provocation, the Americans
should deprive a British colony of a commercial advantage was not
unnatural. One statesman even proposed that the whole of Canada should
be handed over to the United States in compensation for the _Alabama_
claims. That the treaty was negotiated at all, and that the experiment
in trade was so beneficial to both countries, has certain important
lessons. The episode proves that a colonial governor, while governing
in strict accordance with the constitution, can do for his government
what no one else can do. Lord Elgin's success has never been repeated.
Delegation after delegation of Canada's ablest politicians have
pilgrimed from Ottawa to Washington, seeking {155} better trade
relations, with no result. The second lesson is the tendency of trade
to mock at political boundaries and to wed geography. Even now, with
high tariffs on both sides of the line, Canada spends fifty-one dollars
in the United States for every thirty-three she spends in England.
From his triumph at Washington the governor-general returned to Canada
to undergo another experience of democratic manners. The Hincks-Morin
government was nearing its end. Parliament had no sooner assembled in
the ancient capital, Quebec, than it was dissolved. In the political
tug-of-war known as the debate on the Address the government was
defeated. Instead of resigning, the leaders recommended the
governor-general to dissolve the House, so that there might be a new
election, and that the mind of the people might be ascertained on the
two great issues, the Clergy Reserves and Seigneurial Tenure. The
opposition contended that the ministry should either resign, or else
bring in some piece of legislation as a trial of strength. Lord
Elgin's position was precisely the same as in the time of the Rebellion
Losses Bill. He acted on the advice of his ministers. {156} When he
came in state to prorogue the House, a most extraordinary scene
occurred. He was kept waiting for an hour while the parties wrangled,
and when Her Majesty's faithful Commons did present themselves, the
Speaker, John Sandfield Macdonald, read, first in English and then in
French, a reply to the Address which was a calculated insult to Her
Majesty's representative. The point of the reply was that, as no
legislation had been passed, there had been no session; and that this
failure to follow custom was 'owing to the command which your
Excellency has laid upon us to meet you this day for the purpose of
prorogation.' Sandfield Macdonald was an ambitious and vindictive man.
He was wrong, too, in his interpretation of the constitution. Hincks
had denied him a cabinet position which he coveted, and this was his
mode of retaliating upon him. None the less, the House was prorogued,
and the elections were held.
According to the old, bad custom, they were spread over several weeks,
instead of being held on a single day. The result was unfavourable to
the government. Representation had been increased, and out of the
total number of members returned the {157} ministry had only thirty at
its back. The Conservatives numbered twenty-two, the Clear Grits
seven, Independents six, and Rouges nineteen. Papineau was defeated
and retired to his seigneury. Hincks was returned for two
constituencies. In the election of the Speaker he very adroitly
thwarted the ambition of Sandfield Macdonald to fill that post; but,
soon afterwards, the ministry was defeated on a trifling question and
resigned. Hincks was afterwards knighted and made governor of Barbados
and Guiana. He returned to Canada in 1869 to be a member of Sir John
Macdonald's Cabinet. He made a fortune for himself and he had no small
part in making Canada. He died of smallpox in Montreal in 1885. His
_Reminiscences_ is an authority of prime importance for the history of
his times.
That consistent, life-long Tory, Sir Allan MacNab, became the head of
the new ministry. The attorney-general for Upper Canada was John A.
Macdonald. Six members of the old Reform Cabinet sat in the new
ministry side by side with four Conservatives. This signified the
formation of a new party in Canada, the Liberal-Conservative, an
exactly {158} descriptive name, because it composed the best elements
of both parties. Under the leadership of John A. Macdonald it held
power for practically thirty years. That able politician, formed by
education in this country, not outside, perceived instinctively the
essential moderation of the Canadian temperament, and how alien to it
was the extravagance of _Rouge_ and Clear Grit. The national
temperament is cautious and bent to 'shun the falsehood of extremes.'
Under the dominance of the new-formed party the jarring scattered
provinces became one and grew to the stature of a nation.
Lord Elgin's reign was over. In the autumn of 1854 he made a tour of
the province and was everywhere received with unmistakable tokens of
appreciation and goodwill. He was right in thinking 'I have a strong
hold on the people of this country.' His administration represented
the triumph of a statesman's principle over every consideration of
convenience, popularity, and even safety. Thanks to his firmness and
his chivalrous conception of his office, government by the popular will
became established beyond shadow of change. To estimate the value of
his services to the commonwealth, {159} one has only to imagine a Sir
Francis Bond Head in his place during the crisis of the Rebellion
Losses Bill. A weaker man would have plunged the country into anarchy,
or have paltered and postponed indefinitely the true solution of a
vital constitutional problem.
No governor of Canada was ever worse treated by the Canadian people;
and yet no proconsul is entitled to more grateful remembrance in
Canada. In spite of that ill-treatment he grew to like the country.
His eloquent farewell speech at Quebec evinces genuine affection for
the land and genuine regret at having to leave it for ever. Like every
traveller who has known both countries, he was struck by the contrast
between 'the whole landscape bathed in a flood of that bright Canadian
sun' and 'our murky atmosphere on the other side of the Atlantic.' The
majestic beauty of the St Lawrence and citadel-crowned Quebec had won
his heart. Like a wise man and a Christian, he looked forward to the
end; and he imagined that the memory of the sights and sounds he had
grown to love would soothe his dying moments. He left Canada for
service in India, like Dufferin and Lansdowne, and never returned. His
grave is at Dhurmsala {160} under the shadow of the Himalayas. It is
marked by an elaborate monument surmounted by the universal symbol of
the Christian faith; but a nobler and more lasting memorial is the
stable government he gave to 'that true North.'
[1] See _The Seigneurs of Old Canada_, chap. iv.
{161}
EPILOGUE
The twelve years that followed Elgin's régime saw the flood-tide of
Canada's prosperity. Apart altogether from the advantage of the
Reciprocity Treaty, the country flourished. The extension of railways,
the influx of population, developed rapidly the immense natural
resources of the country. Politically, however, things did not move so
well. The old difficulties had disappeared, but new difficulties took
their place. There was no longer any question of the constitution, or
the relation of the governor to it, or of orderly procedure in the
mechanics of administration; but there was violent strife between
parties too evenly balanced. The remedy lay in the formation of a
larger unity, and, in 1867, the four provinces effected a
confederation, which was soon to embrace half the continent from ocean
to ocean. Dominion Day 1867 was the birthday of a new nation, and a
true poet has precised {162} Canada's relation to Britain and the world
in a single stanza.
A Nation spoke to a Nation,
A Throne sent word to a Throne:
'Daughter am I in my mother's house,
But mistress in my own!
The doors are mine to open,
As the doors are mine to close,
And I abide by my mother's house,'
Said our Lady of the Snows.
_Quis separabit_? The confident prophecies of 'cutting the painter'
have all come to naught. In the supreme test of the Great War, Canada
never for a moment faltered. She gave her blood and treasure freely in
support of the Empire and the Right. No severer trial of those bonds
that knit British peoples together can be imagined. To look back upon
the time when British soldiers had to be sent to suppress a Canadian
insurrection from a time when French Canadians and English Canadians
are fighting side by side three thousand miles from their homes for the
maintenance of the Empire is to envisage the most startling of
historical paradoxes. That old, bad time seems as unsubstantial as a
dream; this seems the only reality; and yet the two periods are
separated only by the span of a not very long human life. {163} The
truth is that in those days there were no Canadians. There were French
on the banks of the St Lawrence, but their political horizon was
bounded by the parish limits. Their most renowned leader had no vision
but of an independent French republic, or of one more state in the
Union. The people of the western province consisted of diverse
elements. The solid kernel was of United Empire Loyalist stock, which
gave the province its distinctive character. The Scottish, Irish,
English immigration could not be reckoned among the genuine sons of the
soil. They built their log-huts in the wildwood clearings, but their
hearts were in the sheiling, the cabin, the cottage they had left
beyond the sea. Their allegiance was divided, a fact of which the
perpetuation of the various national societies is indubitable evidence.
They were the pioneers; they made the wilderness a garden; and their
children entered into a large inheritance. More inharmonious still was
the immigration from south of the border, of persons brought up on the
Declaration of Independence and Fourth of July oratory. Colonel
Cruikshanks's researches have proved how numerous they were and how
disaffected. Mrs Moodie found {164} them and the Americanized natives
just as disagreeable in Ontario as Mrs Trollope did in Cincinnati, and
for the same reasons. Except the Loyalists, all these elements were
divided in their political affections and ideals. Their leaders saw
only two possibilities. British connection was the sheet-anchor of the
old colonial Tories; but their vision of the country's future was an
aristocracy, a landed gentry, a decorous union of church and state--in
short, a colonial replica of old Tory England. On the other hand, the
Radical leaders, French and English alike, saw before them only an
independent republic, or fusion with the United States. How limited
was the vision of both time has made blindingly clear. The instinct of
the nascent nation decided for the golden mean, and chose the middle
path. Canada has stood firm by the Empire--how firm let the
blood-soaked trenches of Flanders attest--and yet she had stood just as
firmly by the creed of democracy and her determination to control her
own affairs.
One son of the soil had a vision wider than that of his contemporaries.
Years before the rebellion the editor of a Halifax newspaper saw the
scattered, jarring British colonies {165} united under the old flag,
and bound together by fellowship within the Empire. He saw iron roads
spanning the continent and the white sails of Canadian commerce dotting
the Pacific. Canadians of this day see what Howe foresaw--the eye
among the blind. Let it be repeated. In those old days there were no
Canadians of Canada. Confederation had to be achieved, a new
generation had to be born and grow to manhood, before a national
sentiment was possible. These new Canadians saw little or nothing of
provinces with outworn feuds and divisions. They saw only the Dominion
of Canada. Their imagination was stirred by the ideal of half a
continent staked out for a second great experiment in democracy, of a
vast domain to be filled and subdued and raised to power by a new
nation. In spite of many faults and failures and disappointments,
Canadians have been true to that ideal. The Canada of to-day is
something far grander than the Mackenzies and Papineaus ever dreamed
of; she has disappointed the fears and exceeded the hopes of the
Durhams and the Elgins; and she stands on the threshold, as Canadians
firmly trust, of a more illustrious future.
{166}
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The following are a few of the works which should be consulted:
Lord Durham, _Report on the Affairs of British North America_ (1839).
Sir Francis Hincks, _Reminiscences_ (1884).
Dent, _The Last Forty Years_ (1881).
Reid, _Life and Letters of the First Earl of Durham_ (1906).
Shortt, _Lord Sydenham_ (1908).
Wrong, _The Earl of Elgin_ (1906).
Bourinot, _Lord Elgin_ (1905).
Walrond, _Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin_ (1872).
Leacock, _Baldwin, LaFontaine, Hincks_ (1907).
Pope, _Memoirs of Sir John Macdonald_ (1894).
_Canada and its Provinces_, vol. v (1913), the chapters by W. L. Grant,
J. L. Morison, Edward Kylie, Duncan M'Arthur, and Adam Shortt.
Consult also, for individual biographies of the various persons
mentioned in the narrative, Taylor, _Portraits of British Americans_
(1865); Dent, _The Canadian Portrait Gallery_ (1880); and _The
Dictionary of National Biography_ (1903).
{167}
INDEX
Annexation movement of 1849, the, 133-6.
Arthur, Sir George, his severity, 30.
Assembly: the first election after Union, 57-8; composition of parties,
58; the Baldwin incident, 59-61; measures passed, 61, 63-4; majority
rule principle, 62-3; the Draper government defeated, 76, 115-17; --
LaFontaine-Baldwin (Reform) Administration, 76-7, 79-80, 84, 85-7;
placemen removed from Assembly, 87; the Common Schools Act, 88;
University of Toronto, 89-90, 106-7; the Metcalfe Crisis, 90-3; --
Draper (Tory) Administration, 93-4, 101; -- LaFontaine-Baldwin (the
Great) Administration, 101-3, 106, 109-12; 142-3; Municipal
Corporations Act, 107-9; Rebellion Losses Bill, 117-18, 119-27; a
breeze in the House, 119-120; Clergy Reserves, 139; Seigneurial Tenure,
141; -- Hincks-Morin Administration, 143; a business man's government,
144-5, 155-6; -- MacNab (Liberal-Conservative) Administration, 157.
Bagot, Sir Charles, governor-general, 74-5, 79; forms a coalition
government, 75-6; his death a reproach to Canada, 80-1.
Baldwin, Robert, 68-9; a Moderate Reformer, 40, 69-70, 71-2; his cool
proposal to Sydenham, 60-1; his association with LaFontaine, 66, 74,
77-8, 101-2, 118; his first administration, 77-8, 85, 80-90; the
Metcalfe peerage, 95; the Great Administration, 101-2, 106-8, 118, 120,
139; resigns the leadership, 142; retires from public life, 143.
Baldwin, W. W., 68-9; president of Constitutional Reform Society, 71.
Blake, W. H., causes an uproar in the House, 119-20; burned in effigy,
120.
Bouchette, Robert, 15.
Brougham, Lord, his malign attacks on Durham, 8, 16-17, 20; burned in
effigy in Quebec, 18.
Brown, George, the Protestant champion, 143-4.
Brown, Thomas Storrow, 4.
Bruce, Colonel, wounded in the attack on Lord Elgin, 129.
Buller, Charles, 8; with Durham in Canada, 19.
Canada, political development in, 3; strained relations with United
States, 11-13, 25-8; Lord Durham's Report, 21-4; the 'Hunters' Lodges,'
25-8; political and financial situation in 1839, 30-1; the capital
city, 56-7, 86, 137, 130; the Irish famine of 1846-47, 101; Municipal
Corporations Act, 107-9; trade relations dislocated by Britain's
adoption of free trade, 109; the disturbances in connection with the
Rebellion Losses Bill, 112-31; the Annexation movement of 1849, 133-6;
boom periods, 137, 153, 161; assumes control of the postal system, 138;
separate schools, 138-9; attains full self-government, 139; her
interest in world affairs, 146; the Reciprocity Treaty, 147-8, 150-5,
110-11; the fishery question, 148-50, 152; Confederation, 161-2; and
the Empire, 162, 164. See Assembly and Responsible Government.
Cartwright, Richard, and Hincks, 76.
Cathcart, Lord, governor-general, 97-8.
Church of England, and the Clergy Reserves, 43-4, 46, 47.
Church of Scotland, and the Clergy Reserves, 44, 46, 47.
'Clear Grit' party, the, 138, 142.
Clergy Reserves question, the, 39, 42-6; Colborne's forty-four
parishes, 46, 71; Sydenham's solution, 47-8, 64; secularized, 139, 155.
Colborne, Sir John, lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, 46; quells the
Rebellion and acts as administrator in Lower Canada, 4, 8, 9, 16, 25,
38, 113; raised to the peerage, 33.
Constitutional Reform Society, the, 71.
Disraeli, Benjamin, and Canada, 132.
District Council Bill, the, 64.
Draper, W. H., his administrations, 76, 93-4.
Durham, Lord, his early career, 5-7; invested with extraordinary powers
in the governance of Canada, 4-5, 7-8; firmness with conciliation his
policy, 9; the composition of his councils, 9-10; takes prompt action
in connection with the border troubles, 11-13; proclaims a general
amnesty to the rebels, 14-15; the disallowance of his ordinance
banishing the ringleaders, 15-19; his resignation and departure, 17-18,
25, 29; posterity's judgment, 18-19; his dying words, 20; his
personality and family ties, 7, 8-9, 99; his enemy Lord Brougham, 8,
16-17, 20; his Report, 10-11, 19-24, 32, 35, 46, 68.
Elgin, Earl of, 98-9; a constitutional governor-general, 99-100, 101,
118, 123, 131, 147, 155; initiates the custom of reading the Speech in
both French and English, 103; the Rebellion Losses Bill, 121-3;
attacked by the mob on the occasions of giving his assent and on
receiving an Address, 124-5, 127-9; the Hermit of Monklands, 129,
130-1; on Annexation sentiment in Canada, 133, 135-6; negotiates the
Reciprocity Treaty with United States, 147, 150-152, 110; insulted in
the House, 155-6; his administrative triumph, 158-60; his gift of
oratory, 98, 151; his connection with Durham, 99.
Ermatinger, Colonel, and the Montreal riots, 129.
Fishery question, the, 148-50, 152.
Fleming, Sandford, his act of gallantry, 127.
Girouard, a rebel, 79.
Gladstone, W. E., and Canada, 132.
Glenelg, Lord, his incompetency, 32.
Gosford, Lord, 72.
Gourlay, Robert, and the Clergy Reserves, 45.
Great Britain, and the 1837 rebellions, 4, 33; the Clergy Reserves, 48;
parliamentary procedure, 62; her free trade policy, 109; the Rebellion
Losses Bill, 132; Navigation Laws repealed, 137; her colonial policy,
140; the Great Exhibition, 145-6; the fishery question, 148-50, 152;
her sympathies with the South in the American Civil War, 154.
Grey, Earl, and Durham, 6.
Grey, Earl (son of above), and Elgin, 99, 136.
Grey, Colonel, his mission of remonstrance, 13.
Harrison, S. B., leader of Sydenham's government, 62.
Hincks, Francis, 70; a Reform leader, 40, 61; his many interests, 70-1;
his talent for affairs, 71-2, 74; minister of Finance, 76, 77, 132,
137, 157; his policy of protection, 87-8, 124; his railway policy,
111-112; precipitates a crisis, 124-5; the Clergy Reserves, 139; his
administration, 143, 156, 157; the Reciprocity Treaty, 147, 150, 110;
his valuable services, 137; governor of Barbados, 157.
Howe, Joseph, and responsible government, 51; and railways, 111; his
recruiting mission, 146; his vision of Canada's future, 164-5.
'Hunters' Lodges,' the, 13, 25-8.
Kingston, as the capital, 56-7, 58, 86, 94; Sydenham's tomb, 65.
LaFontaine, L. H., his early career and appearance, 72-4; his
association with Baldwin, 66, 74, 77-8, 101-2, 118; his first ministry,
77-8, 85, 87, 93; the Great Administration, 101-2, 117-18, 127, 129,
139, 141; his crushing reply to Papineau's onslaught, 103-5; resigns,
142; chief justice for Lower Canada, 143.
Liberal party, a split in the ranks, 137-8. See Reform.
Liberal-Conservative party, the, 157-8.
Lount, Samuel, his execution, 30.
Lower Canada, racial feeling in, 22; the Rebellion, 3, 4, 25, 28-30;
Durham's amnesty and ordinance, 14-19; Durham's Report, 21-3; political
state before Union, 50; the Registry Act, 56; the opposition to Union,
57, 62, 68, 93; amnesty to all political offenders, 103; the Rebellion
Losses Bill, 112-14, 116-17; Seigneurial Tenure, 140-1. See Quebec and
Special Council.
Macaulay, Lord, quoted, 20, 79, 83, 96.
Macdonald, John A., his entry into politics, 93, 101; 'a British
subject I will die,' 135; attorney-general, 157; his
Liberal-Conservative administration, 158, 144.
Macdonald, J. S., his studied insult, 156, 157.
Mackenzie, W. L., incites anti-British feeling in the States, 12, 26;
granted amnesty and returns to Canada, 118-19, 120, 142.
MacNab, Sir Allan, leader of the Conservative Opposition, 86, 101;
Speaker, 94; gives 'the lie with circumstance,' 119-20, 125; his
tribute to Baldwin, 142; prime minister, 157.
Marcy, W. L., and reciprocity with Canada, 151.
Melbourne, Lord, and Durham, 17.
Metcalfe, Sir Charles, his early career, 82-3; his arrival at Kingston,
81; upholds the prerogative of the Crown, 84-6, 87; refuses to
surrender right of appointment, 90-1; triumphs over the Reformers,
92-4; his peerage and death, 95-6.
Montreal, 124, 137; as the capital, 86, 94; the riots in connection
with the passing of the Indemnity Bill, 120-1; the burning of the
Parliament Buildings, 124-7, 1; the attacks on Lord Elgin, 124-5,
128-9; the capital no more, 130; the Annexation Association, 134-5.
Morin, A. N., Speaker of the Assembly, 102; his administration, 143.
Municipal system of Canada, the, 55-6, 64; the Municipal Corporations
Act, 107-9; municipalities and railways, 145.
Murdoch, T. W. C., secretary to Sydenham, 37.
Neilson, John, his policy of obstruction, 62, 68.
Nelson, Robert, proclaims a Canadian republic, 29.
Nelson, Wolfred, a Rebellion leader, 15, 93; his claim for indemnity,
119.
New Brunswick, Sydenham's visit to, 52.
Nova Scotia, the struggle for responsible government in, 51; the rise
of the colleges, 88-9; the fishery question, 149-50, 152.
O'Callaghan, E. B., a rebel leader, 104.
Oliphant, Laurence, and the Reciprocity negotiations, 150, 152.
Ontario, Sydenham's tour in, 53-4; its municipal system, 55, 64. See
Upper Canada.
Orange Society, the, 87.
Ottawa, the capital city, 130.
Papineau, D. B., 93.
Papineau, L. J., takes refuge in France after Rebellion, 103-4; returns
to the House, claiming and receiving arrearage of salary as Speaker,
104; his uncompromising attitude towards the Union, 104-6, 118, 138,
141, 157; his retiral, 157, 106.
Paquin, Father, petitions for indemnity, 112-13.
Politics, the game of, 1-2, 67, 76, 77; an old-time election, 77-8.
Quebec, its municipal system, 55, 64; the seat of government, 137, 155.
See Lower Canada.
Railway building in Canada, 111-12, 144-5.
Rebellion Losses Bill, the, 112-118, 132; the violent scenes in
connection with, 119-31.
Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, the, 110-11, 147-55.
Reform party, the, supports Sydenham, 38, 40, 60-1; the Clergy
Reserves, 47; opposes Bagot's coalition, 76; the struggle with
Metcalfe, 86, 90-3, 95; the Great Administration, 101; Liberals and
'Clear Grits,' 137-8; Liberal-Conservatives, 157-8.
Registry Act, the, 56.
Reid, Stuart J., on the authorship of Durham's Report, 20.
Responsible Government: Durham's remedy, 24; Sydenham's campaign of
education, 41, 58-9, 67; Howe's achievement, 51; majority rule, 62-3,
79; the Executive beg-in to presume, 84; the difficulty of reconciling
with the colonial status, 84-5; placemen removed from Assembly, 87;
education of the democracy, 88; right of appointment, 90-91; the
difficulty of government with a small majority, 100; from colony to
free equal state, 161-2.
Rouge party, the, 138.
Russell, Lord John, colonial secretary, 32, 55.
Seigneurial tenure, 140-1, 155; abolished, 141.
Sherwood, Henry, solicitor-general, 76.
Special Council of Quebec, and Sydenham, 38, 49-50, 55, 56, 114-15.
Strachan, Bishop, 69; and the Clergy Reserves, 46, 47; his crusade
against Baldwin's 'godless institution,' 90.
Stuart, James, chief justice of Lower Canada, 37, 50.
Sullivan, R. B., a Reform leader, 70, 77.
Sydenham, Lord, 68. See Thomson.
Thomson, Charles Poulett, his early career and personality, 33-8; his
mission of Union of the Canadas, 38-40, 68; his responsible government
campaign of education, 41-2; the Clergy Reserves, 42, 47-8; on
political and financial conditions in Canada, 48-50, 32; his triumphal
progress, 50-4; his vision of Ontario, 54; Baron Sydenham, 54-5;
initiates Canada's municipal system, 55-6; the first Union Assembly,
58-9, 61, 63-4; the Baldwin incident, 60-1; majority rule, 62-3; his
five great works, 63-4; G.C.B., 59; his tragic and heroic end, 64-5.
Toronto, 1; the founding of the University, 89-90, 106-7; scenes in
connection with the Indemnity Bill, 120-1; the seat of government, 137.
Turton, Thomas, with Durham in Canada, 8.
Union Act of 1840, the, 54-5.
United Empire Loyalists, the, 163.
United States: American detestation of the British, 11-13; 'Hunters'
Lodges,' 25-28; her mistaken views regarding Canada, 121, 133-6; her
elective system of government, 138; her educational system, 139; the
Reciprocity Treaty with Canada, 147-8, 150-5, 110-11; the fishery
question, 148-50, 152; the Civil War, 148, 153, 154.
University of Toronto, the founding of, 89-90, 106-7.
Upper Canada: its political and financial state prior to Union, 23,
31-2, 38-9, 48-9, 114, 115; the execution of the Rebellion leaders, 30;
Opposition to Union, 33, 57; the terms of Union, 40; Clergy Reserves,
45; Sydenham's tour, 53-4; the rise of the colleges, 88-90; the
Metcalfe Crisis, 93.
Van Buren, President, and Durham, 13.
Victoria, Queen, 75, 136.
Viger, 'Beau,' 93.
Von Shoultz, his chivalrous sacrifice, 27-8.
Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, with Durham, 8.
Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press
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