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Title: The Tribune of Nova Scotia
A Chronicle of Joseph Howe
Author: W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
Release Date: March 28, 2008 [eBook #24932]
Language: English
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Transcriber's note:
Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed
in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page
breaks occurred in the original book. For its Index, a page
number has been placed only at the start of that section.
Footnotes have been renumbered sequentially and moved to the
end of their respective chapters.
_Chronicles of Canada_
Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton
In thirty-two volumes
26
THE TRIBUNE OF NOVA SCOTIA
by
WILLIAM LAWSON GRANT
Part VII
The Struggle for Political Freedom
[Frontispiece: THE TRIBUNE OF NOVA SCOTIA--AFTER A SPEECH IN MASON
HALL. From a colour drawing by C. W. Jefferys]
THE TRIBUNE OF NOVA SCOTIA
A Chronicle of Joseph Howe
by
WILLIAM LAWSON GRANT
Toronto
Glasgow, Brook & Company
1915
Copyright in all Countries subscribing to the Berne Convention
{vii}
PREFACE
In May-August 1875 my father, the Rev. G. M. Grant, published in the
_Canadian Monthly_ four articles on Joseph Howe, which give, in my
opinion, the best account ever likely to be written of Howe's
character, motives, and influence. Twenty-five years later he had
begun to write for the 'Makers of Canada' a life of Howe, but his death
left this task to Mr Justice Longley. In this he had thought to
incorporate much of his earlier articles, and his copies of them remain
in my hands, with excisions and emendations in his own handwriting. In
the present little book I have not scrupled to embody these portions of
my father's work.
Howe's speeches and public letters are the basis for any story of his
career. They were originally published in two volumes in Boston in
1858, nominally edited by William Annand, {viii} really by Howe
himself. In 1909 a revised edition, with chapters covering the last
fourteen years of his life, was published at Halifax, excellently
edited by Mr J. A. Chisholm, K.C. The Journals of the Legislative
Council and Legislative Assembly of Nova Scotia contain the dispatches
from the Colonial Office quoted in the text. Incidents and anecdotes
have been taken from the biographies by Mr Joseph Fenety and Mr Justice
Longley. I have also consulted the collection of his father's papers
presented to the Canadian Archives by Mr Sydenham Howe, and a
manuscript life of Howe by his old friend the late George Johnson.
Lord Grey, with his invariable interest in things Canadian, has had the
private correspondence of his uncle searched for anything that might
throw light on the railway imbroglio of 1851, but without result.
W. L. GRANT.
QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY,
KINGSTON, 1914.
{ix}
CONTENTS
Page
PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
I. NOVA SCOTIA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
II. BIRTH AND TRAINING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
III. THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
IV. THE FIGHT FOR RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT . . . . . . . . 47
V. RAILWAYS AND IMPERIAL CONSOLIDATION . . . . . . . . 91
VI. BAFFLED HOPES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
{xi}
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE TRIBUNE OF NOVA SCOTIA--AFTER
A SPEECH IN MASON HALL . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
From a colour drawing by C. W. Jefferys.
THOMAS CHANDLER HALIBURTON . . . . . . . . . . . . . Facing page 42
From an engraving in the Dominion Archives.
SIR JOHN HARVEY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " 86
From a portrait in the John Ross Robertson
Collection, Toronto Public Library.
JOSEPH HOWE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " 124
From a painting by T. Debaussy, London, 1857.
Reproduced in Chisholm's 'Speeches and Public
Letters of Joseph Howe.'
JOSEPH HOWE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " 144
From a photograph by Notman, taken about 1871.
{1}
CHAPTER I
NOVA SCOTIA
Joseph Howe was in a very special sense at once the child and the
father of Nova Scotia. His love for his native province was deep and
passionate. He was one in whom her defects and excellences could be
seen in bold outline; one who knew and loved her with unswerving love;
who caught the inspiration of her woods, streams, and shores; and who
gave it back in verses not unmeet, in a thousand stirring appeals to
her people, and in that which is always more heroic than words, namely,
civic action and life-service. 'Joe' Howe was Nova Scotia incarnate.
Once, at a banquet somewhere in England, in responding to the toast of
the colonies, he painted the little province he represented with such
tints that the chairman at the close announced, in half fun, half
earnest, that he intended to pack up his portmanteau that night and
start for Nova Scotia, and he advised all {2} present to do the same.
'You boast of the fertility and beauty of England,' said Howe, in a
tone of calm superiority; 'why, there's one valley in Nova Scotia where
you can ride for fifty miles under apple blossoms.' And, again: 'Talk
of the value of land, I know an acre of rocks near Halifax worth more
than an acre in London. Scores of hardy fishermen catch their
breakfasts there in five minutes, all the year round, and no tillage is
needed to make the production continue equally good for a thousand
years to come.' In a speech at Southampton his description of her
climate was a terse, off-hand statement of facts, true, doubtless, but
scarcely the whole truth. 'I rarely wear an overcoat,' said he,
'except when it rains; an old chief justice died recently in Nova
Scotia at one hundred and three years of age, who never wore one in his
life. Sick regiments invalided to our garrison recover their health
and vigour immediately, and yellow fever patients coming home from the
West Indies walk about in a few days.' 'Boys,' he said on one occasion
to a Nova Scotia audience, 'brag of your country. When I'm abroad I
brag of everything that Nova Scotia is, has, or can produce; and when
they beat me at everything else, I {3} turn round on them and say, "How
high does your tide rise?"' He always had them there--no other country
could match the tides of the Bay of Fundy. He loved and he sang of her
streams and her valleys, her woods and her wild-flowers, most of all of
the 'Mayflower,' the trailing arbutus of early spring, with its fresh
pink petals and its wonderful fragrance, long since adopted as the
provincial emblem. After more than one political fight he retired to
the country for a month or for a year, and there let nature breathe
into his soul her beauty and her calm. Of one such occasion he wrote:
'For a month I did nothing but play with the children and read old
books to my girls. I then went into the woods and called moose with
the old hunters, camping out night after night, listening to their
stories, calming my thoughts with the perfect stillness of the forest,
and forgetting the bitterness of conflict amid the beauties of nature.'
But while he was thus the child of Nova Scotia, he was her creator as
well. Early Nova Scotia was rather a collection of scattered little
settlements than a province. To Howe, in great measure, she owed her
unity.
{4}
The first settlements in the Acadian peninsula were made by the French,
in the fertile diked lands at the head of the Bay of Fundy. To the
number of six thousand these Acadians were driven out on the eve of the
Seven Years' War, a tragedy told of in Longfellow's _Evangeline_. In
after years many of them crept back to different parts of their beloved
province, and little settlements here and there, from Pubnico in the
south to Cheticamp in the north-west, still speak the speech of Old
France.
In 1713 the province became British, and in 1749 Halifax was founded by
the British government. From this time on, bands of emigrants from
various countries settled in districts often widely separated, and
established rude farming and fishing communities, very largely
self-contained. Howe knew and loved them all. In one of his speeches
he thus sketched the process: 'A small band of English adventurers,
under Cornwallis, laid the foundation of Halifax. These, at a critical
moment, were reinforced by the Loyalist emigration, which flowed into
our western counties and laid broad and deep the foundation of their
prosperity. A few hardy emigrants from the old colonies and their {5}
descendants built up the maritime county of Yarmouth. Two men of that
stock first discovered the value of Locke's Island, the commercial
centre of East Shelburne. A few hundreds of sturdy Germans peopled the
beautiful county of Lunenburg. A handful of emigrants from Yorkshire
gave animation to the county of Cumberland. The vale of Colchester has
been made to blossom as the rose by the industry of a few adventurers
from the north of Ireland. Half a century ago a few poor but pious
Lowland Scotsmen penetrated into Pictou. They were followed by a few
hundreds of Highlanders, many of them "evicted" from the Duchess of
Sutherland's estates. Look at Pictou now, with its beautiful river
slopes and fertile mountain settlements, its one hundred schools, its
numerous churches and decent congregations, its productive mines and
thirty thousand inhabitants, living in comfort and abundance. The
picture rises like magic before the eye, and yet every cheerful tint
and feature has been supplied by emigration. At the last election it
was said that two hundred and seventy Frasers voted in that county--all
of them heads of families and proprietors of land. I doubt if as many
of the same name {6} can be found in all Scotland who own real
estate.'[1]
Thus the little settlements gradually expanded into prosperous fishing
and farming communities, on the statistics of whose steadily growing
exports and imports Howe loved to dwell. But they long lacked a common
consciousness, and no man did so much to knit them together as Howe.
Germans of Lunenburg, New Englanders of Annapolis and Cornwallis,
Loyalists of Shelburne, Scottish Presbyterians of Pictou, Scottish
Roman Catholics of Antigonish, French of Tracadie and Cheticamp, and
Irish of Halifax, all learned from him to be Nova Scotians and to 'brag
of their country.' The chief influences making for union were the
growth of roads, the growth of political discussion, and the growth of
newspapers; and to all three Howe contributed. Both as politician and
as editor he toured the province from end to end, walked, drove, or
rode along the country lanes, and in learning to love its every nook
and cranny taught its people their duty to one another and to the
province. In those days when there were few highways, and bridle-paths
were dignified with the name of roads; {7} when the fishermen and
farmers along the coast did their business with Halifax by semi-annual
visits in their boats or smacks; when the postmen carried Her Majesty's
mail to Annapolis in a queer little gig that could accommodate one
passenger; when the mail to Pictou and the Gulf of St Lawrence was
stowed away in one of the great-coat pockets of a sturdy pedestrian,
who kept the other pocket free for the partridges he shot on the way,
we can fancy what an event in any part of the province the appearance
of Joe Howe must have been.
Halifax, the capital, where Howe was born, engrossed most of the social
and political life of the province; in fact, it _was_ the province.
The only other port in Nova Scotia proper that vessels could enter with
foreign produce was Pictou. A few Halifax merchants did all the trade.
Halifax was an old city, as colonial cities count. It was near Great
Britain as compared with Quebec, Kingston, or Toronto; much nearer,
relatively, then than now. The harbour was open all the year round,
giving unbroken communication with the mother country. Halifax had a
large garrison, and it was the summer headquarters of the North
American fleet. On these and other accounts {8} it seemed to be the
most desirable place for a British gentleman to settle in, and many
accordingly did settle in it. Their children entered the Army or Navy
or Civil Service, and many distinguished themselves highly.
Halifax was essentially a naval and military town. As such it was
proud of its great traditions. It was into Halifax Harbour, on
Whitsunday 1813, just as the bells were calling to church, that the
_Shannon_ towed the _Chesapeake_. Captain Broke had been wounded and
the first lieutenant killed, and the _Shannon_ was commanded by a
Halifax boy, her second lieutenant. Of these glories no one was
prouder than Howe. 'On some of the hardest fought fields of the
Peninsula,' he said, 'my countrymen died in the front rank, with their
faces to the foe. The proudest naval trophy of the last American war
was brought by a Nova Scotian into the harbour of his native town; and
the blood that flowed from Nelson's death-wound in the cockpit of the
_Victory_ mingled with that of a Nova Scotian stripling beside him,
struck down in the same glorious fight.'[2]
On summer nights the whole population turned out to hear the regimental
band. One of the great functions of the week was the {9} Sunday church
parade of the garrison to St Paul's Church, which had been built in the
year of the founding of the city. On these occasions the scarlet and
ermine of the chief justice vied in splendour with the gold lace of the
admiral and of the general. Whether this was altogether good for the
town may be doubted. It gave the young men of civilian families a
tendency to ape the military classes and to despise business. The
private soldiers and non-commissioned officers, with little to do in
the piping times of peace, took to the dissipations of the garrison
town. Drunkenness was common, though not more so than in the England
of that day. 'I ask you,' said Howe in his first great speech, 'if
ever you knew a town of the size and respectability of Halifax where
the peace was worse preserved? Scarcely a night passes that there are
not cries of murder in the upper streets; scarcely a day that there are
not two or three fights upon the wharves.'
Yet along with the drink and the snobbishness went much of finer grain.
Many of the British officers brought traditions and standards of social
life and of culture sometimes lacking in the Canada of to-day. At the
dinner-tables of Halifax in the early nineteenth {10} century, when the
merchant aristocracy dined the officers, the standard of manners was
often high and the range of the conversation wide.
From the rest of British North America Nova Scotia was cut off by
hundreds of miles of tumbled, lake-studded rock and hill. Its
intercourse with the outer world was wholly by sea. The larger loyalty
was to England across the Atlantic. It was by sea that Halifax traded
with St John and Boston and Portland, which were a hundred times better
known in Nova Scotia than were Montreal and Toronto. The staple trade
of the merchants was with the West Indies, to which they sent fish and
coal and lumber, receiving in return sugar and rum and molasses. Most
of this sea-borne commerce centred at Halifax, rather to the detriment
of the rest of the province, for from Halifax inland the ways were
rough and difficult. But gradually the other coast towns won their
privileges and became ports of entry. At Pictou, especially, the
industry of building wooden ships grew up, which, until knocked on the
head by the use of iron and steel, made Nova Scotian industry known on
every sea, and gave her in the fifties a larger tonnage than all the
other British colonies combined.
[1] Chisholm, _Speeches and Letters_, vol. ii, p. 177.
[2] See _The War with the United States_, chap. v.
{11}
CHAPTER II
BIRTH AND TRAINING
Howe was born on the 13th of December 1804, in an old-fashioned cottage
on the steep hill that rises up from the city side of the Northwest Arm,
a beautiful inlet of the sea stealing up from the entrance of the harbour
for three or four miles into the land behind the city of Halifax. A
'lawn with oak-trees round the edges,' a little garden and orchard with
apple and cherry trees, surrounded the house. Behind, sombre pine-groves
shut it out from the world, and in front, at the foot of the hillside,
the cheery waters of the 'Arm' ebbed and flowed in beauty. On the other
side of the water, which is not much more than a quarter of a mile wide,
rose knolls clothed with almost every native variety of wood, and bare
rocky hills, with beautiful little bays sweeping round their feet and
quiet coves eating in here and there. A vast country, covered with
boulders and dotted with lovely lakes, stretched {12} far beyond. Amid
these surroundings the boy grew up, and his love of nature grew with him.
In later years he was never tired of praising the 'Arm's enchanted
ground,' while for the Arm itself his feelings were those of a lover for
his mistress. Here is a little picture he recalls to his sister Jane's
memory in after days:
Not a cove but still retaineth
Wavelets that we loved of yore,
Lightly up the rock-weeds lifting,
Gently murmuring o'er the sand;
Like romping girls each other chasing,
Ever brilliant, ever shifting,
Interlaced and interlacing,
Till they sink upon the strand.
In his boyish days he haunted these shores, giving to them every hour he
could snatch from school or work. He became very fond of the water, and
was always much at home in it. He loved the trees and the flowers; but
naturally enough, as a healthy boy should, he loved swimming, rowing,
skating, lobster-spearing by torch-light, or fishing, much more. He
himself describes these years:
The rod, the gun, the spear, the oar,
I plied by lake and sea--
Happy to swim from shore to shore,
Or rove the woodlands free.
In the summer months he went to a school in {13} the city, taught by a Mr
Bromley on Lancaster's system. 'What kind of a boy was Joe?' was asked
of an old lady who had gone to school with him sixty years before. 'Why,
he was a regular dunce; he had a big nose, a big mouth, and a great big
ugly head; and he used to chase me to death on my way home from school,'
was her ready answer. It is easy to picture the eager, ugly, bright-eyed
boy, fonder of a frolic with the girls than of Dilworth's spelling-book.
He never had a very handsome face; his features were not chiselled, and
the mould was not Grecian. Face and features were Saxon; the eyes light
blue, and full of kindly fun. In after years, when he filled and rounded
out, he had a manly open look, illumined always as by sunlight for his
friends, and a well-proportioned, 'buirdly' form, that well entitled him
to the name of man in Queen Elizabeth's full sense of the word. And when
his face glowed with the inspiration that burning thoughts and words
impart, and his great deep chest swelled and broadened, he looked noble
indeed. His old friends describe him as having been a splendid-looking
fellow in his best days; while old foes just as honestly assure you that
he always had a 'common' look. It is easy {14} to understand that both
impressions of him could be justifiably entertained. Very decided merits
of expression were needed to compensate for the total absence of beard
and for the white face, into which only strong excitement brought any
glow of colour.
Howe was fortunate in his father. John Howe was a Loyalist, of Puritan
stock which had come to Massachusetts in the seventeenth century. When
the American Revolution broke out, alone of his family he was true to the
British flag. Many years afterwards his son told a Boston audience that
his father 'learned the printing business in this city. He had just
completed his apprenticeship, and was engaged to a very pretty girl, when
the Revolution broke out. He saw the battle of Bunker's Hill from one of
the old houses here; he nursed the wounded when it was over. Adhering to
the British side, he was driven out at the evacuation, and retired to
Newport, where his betrothed followed him. They were married there, and
afterwards settled at Halifax. He left all his household goods and gods
behind him, carrying away nothing but his principles and the pretty girl.'
In politics John Howe was a high Tory; in religion a dissenter of the
dissenters, {15} belonging to a small sect known as Sandemanians. But
neither narrow orthodoxy in politics nor narrow heterodoxy in religion
can hide from us the noble, self-less character of Joe Howe's father. No
matter how early in the morning his son might get up, if there was any
light in the eastern sky, there was the old gentleman sitting at the
window, the Bible on his knee. On Sunday mornings he would start early
to meet the little flock to whom for many years he preached in an upper
room, not as an ordained minister, but as a brother who had gifts--who
could expound the Word in a strain of simple eloquence. Puritan in
character, in faith, and in devotion to a simple ritual, he gave token
that the Puritan organ of combativeness was not undeveloped in him. As a
magistrate, also, he doubtless believed that the sword should not be
borne in vain; and being an unusually tall, stately man, possessing
immense physical strength, he could not have been pleasant in the eyes of
law-breakers. The story is told that one Sunday afternoon, as Mr Howe
was walking homewards, Bible under his arm, Joe trotting by his side,
they came upon two men fighting out their little differences. The old
gentleman sternly commanded them to desist, but, very {16} naturally,
they only paused long enough to answer him with raillery. 'Hold my
Bible, Joe,' said his father. Taking hold of each of the combatants by
the neck, and swinging them to and fro as if they were a couple of noisy
newspaper boys, he bumped their heads together two or three times; then,
with a lunge from the left shoulder, followed by another from the right,
he sent them staggering off, till brought up by the ground some twenty or
thirty feet apart. 'Now, lads,' calmly remarked the mighty magistrate to
the prostrate twain, 'let this be a lesson to you not to break the
Sabbath in future'; and, taking his Bible under his arm, he and Joe
resumed their walk homewards, the little fellow gazing up with a new
admiration on the slightly flushed but always beautiful face of his
father. As boy or man, the son never wrote or spoke of him but with
reverence. 'For thirty years,' he once said, 'he was my instructor, my
play-fellow, almost my daily companion. To him I owe my fondness for
reading, my familiarity with the Bible, my knowledge of old Colonial and
American incidents and characteristics. He left me nothing but his
example and the memory of his many virtues, for all that he ever earned
was given to the poor. He was {17} too good for this world; but the
remembrance of his high principles, his cheerfulness, his childlike
simplicity and truly Christian character, is never absent from my mind.'
It was John Howe's practice for years 'to take his Bible under his arm
every Sunday afternoon, and, assembling around him in the large room all
the prisoners in the Bridewell, to read and explain to them the Word of
God. . . . Many were softened by his advice and won by his example; and
I have known him to have them, when their time had expired, sleeping
unsuspected beneath his roof, until they could get employment in the
country.' So testified his son concerning him in Halifax. When too old
to do any regular work, he often visited the houses of the poor and
infirm in the city and beyond Dartmouth, filling his pockets at a
grocer's with packages of tea and sugar before setting out on his
expeditions.
After the Revolution Great Britain was not regardless of her exiled
children. She treated the Loyalists with a liberality far exceeding that
of the United States to the war-worn soldiers of Washington. John Howe
was rewarded with the offices of King's Printer, and {18}
Postmaster-General of Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island, New
Brunswick, and the Bermudas. But in spite of these high-sounding titles,
the family income was small, and all the economies of Joe's mother--his
father's second wife, a shrewd practical Nova Scotian widow--could not
stretch it very far. At the age of thirteen young Joe was told that he
must go to work. His eldest brother had succeeded to his father's
positions, and into the printing-office the boy was sent. He began at
the lowest rung of the ladder, learned his trade from the bottom upwards,
sweeping out the office, delivering the _Gazette_, and doing all the
multitudinous errands and jobs of printer's boy before he attained to the
dignity of setting up type. 'So you're the devil,' said a judge to him
on one occasion when the boy was called on as a witness. 'Yes, sir, in
the office, but not in the Court House,' he at once answered, with a look
and gesture that threw the name back on his lordship, to the great
amusement of all present.
His education went on while he learned his trade. The study of books,
talks in the long evenings with his father, and intimate loving communion
with nature, all contributed to {19} build up his character. While he
read everything he could lay hold of, the Bible and Shakespeare were his
great teachers. He knew these thoroughly, and to his intimate
acquaintance with them he owed that pure well of English undefiled which
streamed with equal readiness from his lips and his pen. His taste was
formed on English classics, not on cheap novels. His knowledge, not only
of the great highways of English literature, but of its nooks, corners,
and byways, was singularly thorough. In after years it could easily be
seen in his speeches that his knowledge was not of the kind that is
crammed for the occasion. It flowed from him without effort, and gave a
charm to his ordinary conversation. Though living in the city during his
teens, he spent as much of his time at home as he possibly could. He
loved the woods, and as he seldom got away from work on a week day, he
often spent Sundays among the trees in preference to attending the
terribly long-drawn-out Sandemanian service.
His apprenticeship itself was a process of self-education. He worked the
press from morn till night, and found in the dull metal the knowledge and
the power he loved. One woman--a relative--taught him French. With {20}
other women, who were attracted by his brightness, he read the early
English dramatists and the more modern poets, especially Campbell, Mrs
Hemans, and Byron. He delighted in fun and frolic and sports of all
kinds, and was at the head of everything. But amid all his reading and
his companionships elsewhere, he never forgot home. He would go out to
it in the evening, as often as he could, and after a long swim in the Arm
would spend the night with his father. One evening his love for home
saved him from drowning. Running out from town and down to the water
below the house, he plunged in as usual, but, when a little distance out
from shore, was seized with cramp. The remedies in such a case--to kick
vigorously or throw oneself on one's back and float--are just the
remedies a man feels utterly unable at the time to try. He was alone and
drowning when, his eye being turned at the moment to the cottage upon the
hillside, he saw the candle for the night just being placed on the
window-sill. The light arrested him, and 'there will be sorrow there
to-morrow when I'm missed' passed through his mind. The thought made him
give so fierce a kick that he fairly kicked the cramp out of his leg. A
few strokes {21} brought him to the shore, where he sank down utterly
exhausted with excitement.
Had he been anything of a coward, this experience would have kept him
from solitary swims for the rest of his life. But he was too fond of the
water to give it up so easily. When working in after years at his own
paper, midnight often found him at the desk or at the press. After such
toil most young men would have gone upstairs (for he lived above his
office then) and thrown themselves on their beds, all tired and soiled
with ink; but for six or seven months in the year his practice was to
throw off his apron and run down to the market slip, and soon the moon or
the stars saw him bobbing like a wild duck in the harbour. Cleaned,
braced in nerve, and all aglow, he would run back again, and be sleeping
the sleep of the just ten minutes after. When tired with literary or
political work, a game of rackets always revived him. There was not a
better player in Halifax, civilian or military. To his latest days he
urged boys to practise manly sports and exercises of all kinds.
Such a boy, fond of communing with nature, with young blood running riot
in his veins, and with wild vague ideals and passions intertwined in his
heart, inevitably took to writing {22} poetry. But though he had the
poet's heart, he had not the concentration of the great poet. All
through his life he loved to string together verses, grave and gay. Some
of his pasquinades are very clever; some of his serious verse is
mellifluous enough; but as a poet he is not even a minor bard. Yet one
of his early effusions, named _Melville Island_, written when he was
twenty, was not without influence on his future. Such was its merit that
Sir Brenton Halliburton, a very grand old gentleman indeed, went out of
his way to compliment the lad and to advise him to cultivate his powers.
The few words of praise from a man deservedly respected roused in Howe
the high resolve to make letters his career. He deluged the local
newspapers with prose and verse, much of which was accepted. In 1827,
when just twenty-three years of age, he and another lad bought the
_Weekly Chronicle_, and changed its name to the _Acadian_, with Howe as
editor-in-chief. Before the year had ended his young ambition urged him
to sell out to his partner and to buy a larger and more ambitious paper,
the _Nova Scotian_, into possession of which he entered in January 1828.
To find the purchase-money he did not hesitate to go deeply into debt.
{23}
In the same month he added to his responsibilities and his happiness by
his marriage with Catharine Susan Ann Macnab. Men's wives bulk less
largely in their biographies than in their lives. Mrs Howe's sweetness
and charm were an unfailing strength to her husband. She moderated his
extravagance, and bore cheerfully with his habit, so trying to a
housekeeper, of filling the house with his friends at all hours and at
every meal. Above all, she never nagged, or said 'I told you so.' She
believed in him and in his work, and cheered him in his hours of
depression. A man of such buoyant feelings, with such charm of manner,
was quick to feel the attractions of the bright eyes of the pretty Nova
Scotian girls. Many a wife would have taken deep offence at her
husband's numerous but superficial flirtations, but Mrs Howe knew better;
and when in 1840 he was called out to fight a duel, he could say with
truth, in a letter which he wrote to her, and which he entrusted to a
friend to be delivered in case he should not return: 'I cannot trust
myself to write what I feel. You had my boyish heart, and have shared my
love and entire confidence up to this hour.'
Thus in January 1828 Howe found himself {24} with a wife to support and a
newspaper to establish. He had to fight with his own hand, and to fight
single-handed. When he commenced, he had not 'a single individual, with
one exception, capable of writing a paragraph, upon whom he could fall
back.' He had to do all himself: to report the debates in the House of
Assembly and important trials in the courts, to write the local items as
well as the editorials, to prepare digests of British, foreign, and
colonial news; in a word, to 'run the whole machine.' He wrote
voluminous descriptions of every part of the province that he visited,
under the title of 'Eastern and Western Ramblings.' Those rambles laid
the foundation of much of his future political power and popularity. He
became familiar not only with the province and the character and extent
of its resources, but also with every nook and corner of the popular
heart. He graduated with honours at the only college he ever
attended--what he called 'the best of colleges--a farmer's fireside.' He
was admirably qualified physically and socially for this kind of life.
He didn't know that he had a digestion, and was ready to eat anything and
to sleep anywhere. These were strong points in his favour; for in the
{25} hospitable countryside of Nova Scotia, if a visitor does not eat a
Benjamin's portion, the good woman of the house suspects that he does not
like the food, and that he is pining for the dainties of the city. He
would talk farm, fish, or horse with the people as readily as politics or
religion. He made himself, or rather he really felt, equally at home in
the fisherman's cabin or the log-house of the new settler as with the
substantial farmer or well-to-do merchant; he would kiss the women,
remember all about the last sickness of the baby, share the jokes of the
men and the horse-play of the lads, and be popular with all alike. He
came along fresh, hearty, healthy, full of sunlight, brimming over with
news, fresh from contact with the great people in Halifax,--yet one of
the plain people, hailing them Tom and Jack, and as happy with them as if
in the king's palace. 'Joe Howe came to our house last night,' bragged a
little girl as she skipped along to school next morning; 'he kissed mamma
and kissed me too.' The familiarity was seldom rebuked, for his
heartiness was contagious. He was as full of jokes as a pedlar, and had
as few airs. A brusqueness of manner and coarseness of speech, which was
partly natural, became thus {26} ingrained in him, and party struggles
subsequently coarsened his moral fibre. From this absence of refinement
flowed a lack of perception of the fitting that often made him speak
loosely, even when men and women were by to whom such a style gave
positive pain. No doubt much of his coarseness, like that of every
humorist, was based on honesty and hatred of shams. When he saw silly
peacocks strutting about and trying to fill the horizon with their tails,
he could not help ruffling their feathers and making them scream, were it
only to let the world know how unmelodious were their voices. It was
generally in the presence of prudes that he referred to unnamable things;
and he most affected low phrases when he talked to very superfine people.
Still, the vein of coarseness was in him, like the baser stuffs in the
ores of precious metals; but his literary taste kept his writings pure.
From his twenty-third to his thirty-first year his education went on in
connection with his editorial and other professional work. He became
intimate with the leading men in the town. He had trusty friends all
over the country. His paper and he were identified as paper and editor
have seldom been. All correspondence was addressed, not to an {27}
unknown figure of vast, ill-defined proportions called Mr Editor, but
simply to Joseph Howe. Even when it was known that he was absent in
Europe, the country correspondence always came, and was published in the
old way:
'Mr Joseph Howe, Sir----.' He cordially welcomed literary talent of all
kinds, giving every man full swing on his own hobby, and changing rapidly
from grave to gay, from lively to severe. He cultivated from the first
the journalistic spirit of giving fair play in his columns to both sides,
even when one of the sides was the editor or the proprietor. After he
entered the House of Assembly, the speeches of opponents were as fully
and promptly reported as his own. Able men--and the province could boast
then of an extraordinary number of really able men--gathered round him or
sent contributions to the paper, while from all parts of the country came
correspondence, telling Mr Howe what was going on. As he began to feel
his powers, and to know that he had power in reserve; to hold his own
with older and better educated men; and to taste the sweets of popular
applause, that fame which he, like all young poets, had affected to
despise appeared beautiful and beckoned him onwards. He loved his
country from the first, and, as it responded to {28} him, that love
increased, until it became one of his chief objects to excite in the
bosoms of the people the attachment to the soil that gave them birth,
which is the fruitful parent of the virtues of every great nation.
To promote this object he made sacrifices. He published, between 1828
and 1839, ten volumes, connected with the history, the law, and the
literature of the province, often at his own risk. Another of his
literary enterprises was the formation of 'The Club,' a body composed of
a number of friends who met in Howe's house, discussed the questions of
the day, and planned literary sketches, afterwards published in the _Nova
Scotian_. Among those who thus gathered round him, such men as S. G. W.
Archibald, Beamish Murdoch, and Jotham Blanchard are now only remembered
by students of Nova Scotian history. Even the Irish wit and humour of
Laurence O'Connor Doyle gives him but a local immortality. But the names
of Thomas C. Haliburton (Sam Slick) and Captain John Kincaid of the Rifle
Brigade are known even to superficial students of English literature, and
no two men were more regular members of 'The Club.'
Literary rambles and literary sketches were {29} all very well, but what
really roused enthusiasm in those days was the political struggle.
'Poetry was the maiden I loved,' said Howe in after years, 'but politics
was the harridan I married.' In the early nineteenth century aristocracy
and democracy, alike in politics and in society, were fighting their
battle all over Europe, and the struggle had spread to the British
colonies. In the first year of his editorship Howe had a little brush
with the lieutenant-governor and his circle, but not for some time did
the crisis come. On the 1st of January 1835 an anonymous letter appeared
in the _Nova Scotian_ criticizing the financial administration of the
city of Halifax and impugning the integrity of its administrators. Howe
as editor was responsible. With his trial for criminal libel, and his
speech in his defence, his real political life begins.
{30}
CHAPTER III
THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM
To understand the system of government which Howe assailed, we must go
back to the very origin of the British colonies. In the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries an exaggerated importance was attached to money
as such. A dollar's worth of gold or silver was held to be of more
value than a dollar's worth of grain or timber; not merely more
convenient, or more portable, or more easily exchangeable, but
absolutely of more value. A country was supposed to be rich in
proportion to the amount of money or bullion which it possessed. At
first the only colonies prized were those which, like the Spanish, sent
bullion to the mother country. Later on, when it was found that
bullion need not be brought directly into a country, but might come in
the course of trade, this exaggerated belief in money compelled the
mother country so to regulate the trade of the colonies as to {31}
increase her stores of bullion. To keep as much money as possible
within the Empire the colonies were compelled to buy their manufactures
in the mother country, and as far as possible to restrict their
productions to such raw materials as she herself could not produce, and
which she would otherwise be compelled to buy from the foreigner. In
carrying out this policy the mother country did her best to be fair;
the relation was not so much selfish as maternal. If the colonies were
restricted in some ways, they were encouraged in others. If, for
example, Virginia was forbidden manufactures, her tobacco was admitted
into Great Britain at a lower rate of duty than that of Spain or other
foreign countries, and tobacco-growing in England was forbidden
altogether.
This system, which was embodied in a series of Acts known as Acts of
Trade, or Navigation Acts, did not, in the state of development they
had reached, hurt the colonies. In some ways it was actually of
advantage to them. A new country, with cheap land and dear labour,
must always devote itself mainly to the production of raw materials,
and to many of these colonial raw materials Great Britain gave a
preference or bounties. At the same {32} time, as was only natural,
the tendency was for the colonies to look on the advantages as no more
than their due, and on the restrictions as selfish and unjustifiable.
Though attempting thus to regulate the economic development of the
colonies, the mother country paid little attention to their political
growth. There was indeed in each colony a governor, sent out from
England, and a Council, which was supposed to help him in legislation
and in government; but more and more power passed, with but little
resistance from Great Britain, into the hands of an Assembly elected by
the people of the colony. As one Loyalist wrote of them, the Assembly
soon discovered 'that themselves were the substance, and the Governor
and Board of Council were shadows in their political frame.'
At the American Revolution the revolutionary leaders were, in the main,
men of the people, trained in political arts and eloquence in these
local assemblies; their complaints against the mother country were, in
part at least, against her restrictive colonial system. Hence, after
the winning of American independence, when the mother country
endeavoured to draw lessons from her defeat, it {33} appeared to her
statesmen that the colonies had been lost through too much political
democracy in them and too much economic control by her. Thus after the
Revolution we find a series of favours given to colonial trade. The
timber trade and the shipbuilding of Nova Scotia were aided by bounties
and preferential duties. Her commerce was still largely with Great
Britain, where she purchased manufactured articles, though even here
certain concessions were made; but so important were the favours
considered that not even Howe thought the control a grievance, and when
in 1846-49 Great Britain inaugurated free trade and put the colonies
upon their own feet, Nova Scotians, while not despairing as openly as
did the people of Montreal, yet thought it a very great blow indeed.
While conferring these favours, Great Britain exercised a growing
control over Nova Scotian political affairs. The Assembly, granted in
1758, was indeed retained, but a restraining hand was kept on it by the
Colonial Office in London, through the governor and the Council. An
attempt was made to combine representative and irresponsible
government. The House of Assembly might talk, and raise money, but it
did not control the expenditure, the {34} patronage, or the
administration, and it could neither make nor unmake the ministry. The
more important House was the Council, which consisted of twelve
gentlemen appointed by the king, and holding their offices practically
for life. This body was at once the Upper House of the Legislature,
corresponding to our present Senate, and the Executive or Cabinet. It
was also to a certain extent a judicial body, being the Supreme Court
of Divorce for the province. It sat with closed doors, admitting no
responsibility to the people. Yet no bill could pass but by its
consent. It discharged all the functions of government; all patronage
was vested in it. It might do these things ill; its administration
might be condemned by every one of the representatives of the people;
but its authority remained unaffected.
In this Council sat the heads of departments, as they do in our modern
Cabinet. They were appointed in and by Great Britain, and helped to
control the commercial policy. Another member was the bishop of the
Anglican Church, for the seemly ceremonies and graded orders of clergy
of this body were deemed to be a counterpoise to popular vagaries and
vulgarity. Prior to the American Revolutionary War there had been no
colonial bishopric; {35} three years after its close the first bishop
of Nova Scotia was appointed.
Owing to the favour shown to this Church, education long remained
almost entirely in its hands, and to the political struggle an element
of religious bitterness was added. King's College at Windsor, at first
the only institution of higher learning in the province, was not open
to any person who should 'frequent the Romish mass, or the meeting
houses of Presbyterians, Baptists, or Methodists, or the conventicles
or places of worship of any other dissenters from the Church of
England, or where divine service shall not be performed according to
the liturgy of the Church of England.' It is true that the Church
enjoyed no rights which she did not at the time enjoy in England, and
that King's College was less illiberal than were the Universities of
Oxford and Cambridge; but the circumstances were widely different. In
England the Anglicans comprised the bulk of the people, and almost the
whole of the cultivated and leisured classes; in Nova Scotia they were
in the minority. Yet when, in 1820 and again in 1838, an attempt was
made to found Dalhousie College at Halifax on a more liberal basis, the
opposition of {36} the Church of England led to the failure of the
scheme.
In the Council the chief justice had a seat. As a member of the
Legislature he made the law; as one of the Executive he administered
the law; and as judge he interpreted the law.
But the most potent element in the Council was for some time the
bankers. Early in the nineteenth century, when there was no bank in
the province, the government had issued notes, for the redemption of
which the revenues of the province were pledged. In 1825 some of the
more important merchants founded a bank, and issued notes payable in
gold, silver, or provincial paper. The Halifax Banking Company, as
this institution was called, was simply a private company, with no
charter from the province, and that it was allowed to issue notes is an
instance of the easy-going ways of those early days. No less than five
of its partners were members of the Council. Thus the state of affairs
for some years was that there was but one bank in the province, that
its notes were redeemable in provincial paper, and that the Council was
largely composed of its directors, who could order the province to
print as much paper as they wished!
The Halifax Banking Company was of {37} great benefit to the provincial
merchants, and, though its partners made large profits, there is no
proof that they abused their position on the Council to aid them in
business. But the general feeling in the province was one of
suspicion, and the combination of financial and legislative monopoly
was certainly dangerous. Soon some other citizens endeavoured to found
another bank and to have it regularly incorporated by provincial
charter, with the proviso that all paper money issued by it should be
redeemable in coin. The directors of the Halifax Banking Company
fought this proposal fiercely, both in business circles and in the
Council, arguing that as the balance of trade was against Nova Scotia,
there would rarely be enough 'hard money' in the province to redeem the
notes outstanding. In 1832, however, popular clamour forced the
legislature to grant its charter to the second bank, the Bank of Nova
Scotia. The Halifax Banking Company[1] also continued to do a
flourishing business, and during the struggle of Howe and his
fellow-reformers against the Council, the influence of its partners was
one of the chief causes of complaint.
{38}
Thus the Council comprised the leaders in Church and State, among them
the chief lawyers and business men. These formed the 'Society' of
Halifax, and to them were added the government officials, who were
usually appointed from England. Some of the latter were men of honour
and energy, but others were mere placemen in need of a job. When the
famous Countess of Blessington wished to aid one of her impecunious
Irish relations, she had only to give a smile and a few soft words to
the Duke of Wellington, and her scape-grace brother found himself
quartered for life upon the revenues of Nova Scotia. Charles Duller,
in his pamphlet _Mr Mother Country of the Colonial Office_, hardly
exaggerated when he said that 'the patronage of the Colonial Office is
the prey of every hungry department of our government. On it the Horse
Guards quarters its worn-out general officers as governors; the
Admiralty cribs its share; and jobs which even parliamentary rapacity
would blush to ask from the Treasury are perpetrated with impunity in
the silent realm of Mr Mother Country. O'Connell, we are told, after
very bluntly informing Mr Ruthven that he had committed a fraud which
would forever unfit him for the society of gentlemen {39} at home,
added, in perfect simplicity and kindness of heart, that if he would
comply with his wishes and cease to contest Kildare, he might probably
be able to get some appointment for him in the colonies.'
When the governor came out entirely ignorant of colonial conditions he
naturally fell under the influence of those with whom he dined, and as
all dealings with the British government were carried on through him,
the Council and the officials had by this means the ear of the Colonial
Office. An office-holding oligarchy thus grew up, with traditions and
prestige, and known, as in Upper Canada, by the name of the 'Family
Compact.' Nowhere did this system seem so strong as in Nova Scotia;
nowhere did its leaders show so much ability or a higher sense of
honour; nowhere did they endeavour to govern the province in so liberal
a spirit. Yet it was fundamentally un-British, and it was to be
completely overthrown by the attack of a printer's boy turned editor.
The leaders of the Family Compact in Nova Scotia were not only men of
ability and integrity, they had also a reasoned theory of government.
Their ablest exponent of this theory and the stoutest defender of the
old {40} system was Thomas Chandler Haliburton, Howe's lifelong
personal friend and political antagonist.
Haliburton was at once a scholar and a wit. In 1829 Howe published for
him his _Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia_, a work
which, in spite of its mistakes, may still be read with profit. In
1836-37 a series of sketches appeared in the _Nova Scotian_, which were
reprinted with the title of _The Clockmaker; or the Sayings and Doings
of Sam Slick of Slickville_. These were issued in volume form in 1837,
and took by storm the English-speaking world. The book has no plot.
It tells how the author and his friend Sam, a shrewd vulgar Down-East
Yankee, ride up and down the province discoursing on anything and
everything. Shrewd, kindly, humorous, with an unfailing eye for a
pretty woman or a good horse, selling his clocks by 'a mixture of soft
sawder and human natur',' so keen on a trade that he will make a bad
bargain rather than none at all, yet so knowing that he almost always
comes out ahead, Sam is real to the finger-tips. From Haliburton flows
the great stream of American dialect humour. Mark Twain, Artemus Ward,
and a dozen others, all trace their descent from him.
{41}
But Haliburton's real object was intensely serious. He desired to
awake Nova Scotians from their lethargy. 'How much it is to be
regretted,' he wrote, 'that, laying aside personal attacks and petty
jealousies, they would not unite as one man, and with one mind and one
heart apply themselves sedulously to the internal improvement and
development of this beautiful province. Its value is utterly unknown,
either to the general or local government.' It is in his writings that
we find the best exposition and defence of the 'Compact' theory of
government.
'Responsible Government,' says Haliburton, 'is responsible nonsense.'
Some one must be supreme, and as between colony and mother country, it
must be the latter. The governor is sent out by the Colonial Office,
and to that office he must be responsible. Were he responsible to his
ministers or to the local House of Assembly, he might have to act in a
way displeasing to the mother country, and subordination would be at an
end. Responsible Government is a form of government only fit for an
independent country. It is incompatible with the colonial status.
But not only was Responsible Government impossible for a colony; it
would, in any case, {42} be a bad system for Nova Scotia, because it
would be too democratic. A wise constitution must be, like that of
Great Britain, composed of various elements. Such a mixed constitution
Nova Scotia had. The governor contributed a bit of Monarchy, the
Council a bit of Aristocracy, the Assembly a bit of Democracy. All had
thus their fair share. Under Responsible Government, with all power in
the hands of the Legislative Assembly, the balance would be overthrown
and the democracy would be supreme. To Haliburton, control by the
democracy meant control by the crafty, self-seeking professional
politician, as he saw him, or thought he saw him, in the neighbouring
United States. The people, well meaning, but ignorant and greedy, were
at the mercy of the appeals to prejudice and pocket of these wily
knaves. Government should be the affair of the enlightened minority,
placed, as far as might be, in a position of security and freedom from
temptation. This government would not be perfect, for 'power has a
natural tendency to corpulency,' but it would be far superior to an
unbridled democracy.
[Illustration: THOMAS CHANDLER HALIBURTON. From an engraving in the
Dominion Archives]
Speaking of the tree of Liberty, which had grown so splendidly in the
United States, {43} Haliburton makes an American say to Sam: 'The mobs
have broken in and torn down the fences, and snapped off the branches,
and scattered all the leaves about, and it looks no better than a
gallows tree.' Let the people attend to business, build their
railways, develop their water-powers, their farms, and their forests,
secure under the fostering care of the select few. 'I guess if they'd
talk more of _rotations_ and less of _elections_, more of them ar
_dykes_ and less of _banks_, and attend more to _top-dressing_ and less
to _re-dressing_, it 'ed be better for 'em. . . . Members in general
ain't to be depended on, I tell you. Politics makes a man as crooked
as a pack does a pedlar, not that they are so awful heavy, neither, but
it teaches a man to stoop in the long run.'
Such, then, was the system and theory of government in Nova Scotia.
Well defended as it was, it had one fundamentally weak point: the
people of Nova Scotia did not want it. Howe had no great regard for
the professional politician, whether in the legislature or in the
village store. 'Rum and politics are the two curses of Nova Scotia,'
he said. But he saw that it would be absurd to tell the people to let
well enough alone, when, rightly or wrongly, {44} they were
discontented with their government. The way to put an end to hectic
agitation was not to curse or to satirize poor human nature, but to
remove the cause of the agitation.
From early days there had been struggles against the oligarchy. In
1830 the speaker of the House, S. G. W. Archibald, protested against an
attempt of the Council to lower the duty on brandy. Apart from the
evident desire of the great merchants on the Council to get brandy in
cheap and sell it dear, he took his stand on the fundamental maxim that
taxation was the affair of the people's House alone, that there should
be 'no taxation without representation.' A man is not necessarily a
village politician because he lives in a village, or a great statesman
because the stage on which he struts is wide. In this petty scuffle in
an obscure colony were involved the same principles on which John
Hampden defied King Charles. The Council gave way, and the old system
went on as before.
Then, on the 1st of January 1835, a letter appeared in the _Nova
Scotian_, accusing the magistrates of Halifax of neglect,
mismanagement, and corruption, in the government of the city. No names
were mentioned; the tone was moderate; but the magistrates were {45}
sensitive and prosecuted Howe for libel. At this time there was not an
incorporated city in any part of the province. All were governed by
magistrates who held their commission from the Crown. When Howe
received the attorney-general's notice of trial, he went to two or
three lawyers in succession, and asked their opinion. They told him
that he had no case, as no considerations were allowed to mitigate the
severe principle of those days, that 'the greater the truth the greater
the libel.' He resolved to defend himself. The next two weeks he gave
up wholly to mastering the law of libel and the principles upon which
it was based, and to selecting his facts and documents. With his head
full of the subject, and only the two opening paragraphs of his speech
written out and committed to memory, he faced the jury. He had spoken
before, but only to small meetings, and on no subjects that touched him
keenly. Now the Court House was crowded, popular sympathy entirely on
his side, and the real subject himself. That magic in the tone that
gives a vibrating thrill to an audience sounded for the first time in
his voice. All eyes turned to him; all faces gleamed on him; he
noticed the tears trickling down one old gentleman's {46} cheeks; he
received the sympathy of the crowd, and without knowing gave it back in
eloquence. He spoke for six hours and a quarter, and though the chief
justice adjourned the court to the next day, the spell was unbroken.
He was not only acquitted, but borne home in triumph on the shoulders
of the crowd, the first, but by no means the last, time that such an
extremely inconvenient honour was paid him by the Halifax populace.
When once inside his own house, he rushed to his room and, throwing
himself on his bed, burst into passionate weeping--tears of pride, joy,
and overwrought emotion--the tears of one who has discovered new founts
of feeling and new forces in himself.
On that day the editor leaped into fame as an orator. Early in the
next year (1836) the House of Assembly was dissolved. Howe and his
friend William Annand were chosen as the Liberal candidates for the
county of Halifax, and were elected by large majorities. On taking his
seat Howe was at once recognized as the leader of the party, and
without delay began the fight.
[1] In 1872 it obtained a charter from the Dominion, but in 1903 was
absorbed by the Canadian Bank of Commerce.
{47}
CHAPTER IV
THE FIGHT FOR RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT
One of the oldest political struggles in the world is that of the people
to control their government. In this struggle the barons faced King John
at Runnymede. In this struggle King Charles I was sent to the block. It
is a struggle of which the end is not yet. In the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries the British people worked out what seemed to them a
satisfactory solution of the problem, by making the Executive, or
Government, responsible to the House of Commons, which in its turn had at
certain periods to appeal to the people in a general election.
In this system the Executive holds office just so long as it can obtain
the support of a majority in the House of Commons. Thus, while certain
members of the Executive may be chosen from the House of Lords or the
Legislative Council or the Senate or whatever the Upper House may be
called, most of its {48} members must sit in the House of Commons, in
order to explain or defend their policy. From this arrangement certain
consequences follow.
(1) To be endurable a government must be more or less permanent, must
have time to initiate and, partly at least, to carry out its policy.
Constantly shifting governments would be intolerable. But if the
government depends on the will of a majority, then that majority must
also be more or less permanent. Hence we get the party system, by which
the House of Commons is divided into two parties, each with a coherent
policy. The leaders of the party which has the majority at the general
election form the Executive, or Government, and, if they can keep their
majority together, these leaders hold office till the people pronounce
their verdict at the next general election.
(2) Members of a party will only work together under their leaders if
those leaders have a coherent policy on which they agree, and which wins
the sympathy of their followers. 'It doesn't matter much what we say,
gentlemen,' said a British prime minister to his colleagues on a famous
occasion, 'but we must all say the same thing.' Once a government {49}
under this system has made up its mind, each member must sink his
individual opinion, or must resign.
(3) But while the Cabinet as a body must 'say the same thing,' its
members must also be heads of departments, for the competent
administration of which they are responsible. One man must have charge
of the Customs, another of Finance, another of Justice, and so on.
This system of heads of departments, each responsible for his own branch,
but all uniting in a common responsibility for the common policy, and
holding office at the will of a majority in the House of Commons, is
known as Responsible Government. Under it the sovereign, as has been
said, 'reigns but does not govern.' The monarch of England acts only on
the will of his advisers. Once the Cabinet has decided, and has had its
decision ratified by a majority in the two Houses of Parliament, the
monarch has no choice but to obey. Dignified and honourable functions
the Crown still has; but in administration the ultimate decision rests
with the ministers. 'In England the ministers are king,' said a European
monarch.
To every man alike in Great Britain and in {50} the colonies this form of
government seemed, as has been said, fit only for an independent nation,
and inconsistent with the colonial status. To Howe it was the essential
birthright of British freemen, and he determined to vindicate it for his
native province.
But Howe was no doctrinaire, bound at all costs to uphold a system. He
was a practical man, fighting practical abuses. When parliament met,
early in 1837, the young editor, already recognized as the Liberal
leader, in company with Laurence O'Connor Doyle, began the fight by
bringing in a resolution against the practice of the Council of sitting
with closed doors. To this the Council replied that such a matter of
procedure concerned themselves alone. Howe replied by introducing into
the Assembly a series of twelve resolutions, embracing a general attack
on the Council for its secrecy, its irresponsibility, and its
ecclesiastical and social one-sidedness, and ending by an appeal to His
Majesty 'to take such steps as will ensure responsibility to the
Commons.' Eloquent though his speech was in defence of these
resolutions, he showed that he did not yet see the line along which
salvation was to come. 'You are aware,' he said, 'that in Upper {51}
Canada an attempt was made to convert the Executive Council into the
semblance of an English ministry, having its members in both branches of
the legislature, and holding their positions while they retained the
confidence of the country. I am afraid that these colonies, at all
events this province, is hardly prepared for the erection of such
machinery: I doubt whether it would work well here: and the only other
remedy which presents itself is, to endeavour to make both branches of
the legislature elective.' Howe had thus diagnosed the disease, but he
was inclined to prescribe an inadequate and probably harmful remedy.
The debate on the twelve resolutions was hot. On the question of opening
the doors of the Council, Howe had been unanimously followed, but his
general attack on that body roused strong feelings among its friends and
adherents in the Assembly, and though all his resolutions were passed, on
each vote there was a resolute minority. Yet the debate, though hot, was
on a high level, and does credit to the political capacity and the sense
of decorum of early Nova Scotia.
The Council were prompt to take up the gage of battle. A day or two
after their {52} receipt of the resolutions they returned a message which
ignored eleven of the twelve, but insisted on the rescinding of the one
which spoke of the disposition of some of their members 'to protect their
own interests and emoluments at the expense of the public.' They hinted
in unmistakable terms that, unless this was rescinded, they would refuse
to concur in a bill for voting supply. Their refusal to do so would have
meant that, while they were prepared to vote public funds to pay the
salaries of the officials, they would hold up all grants for roads,
bridges, education, and other public needs.
Great was the consternation. The members of the majority in the House of
Assembly saw themselves in anticipation compelled to appear before their
constituents and explain that they had been unable to vote this money
because they had joined with a pestilent young editor in an attack on his
elders and betters.
Howe sat up all night wondering what he should do. Then he determined to
take his medicine like a man. On the next day he entered the House with
cheerful face and buoyant step. He threw back his coat, a gesture
already growing familiar, and stood {53} four-square to the Assembly. 'I
feel,' he said, 'that we have now arrived at a point which I had to a
certain extent anticipated from the moment I sat down to prepare the
resolutions . . . the position in which we are now placed does not take
me by surprise. . . . But it may be said, What is to be done? And I
answer, Sacrifice neither the revenue nor the cause of reform. In
dealing with an enemy who is disposed to take us at disadvantage, like
politic soldiers, let us fight with his own weapons. . . . The Council
ask us to rescind a particular resolution; I am prepared to give more
than they ask and to rescind them all. . . . But I shall follow up that
motion by another, for the appointment of a committee to draw up an
address to the Crown on the state of the Colony. . . . It is not for me
to say, when a committee is appointed, what the address shall contain;
but I presume that having these resolutions before them, and knowing what
a majority of this Assembly think and feel, they will do their duty, and
prepare such a document as will attain the objects for which we have been
contending.'[1]
{54}
A motion to rescind the twelve resolutions followed and was carried, and
the revenues were saved. Before the end of the session Howe's thinking
had advanced, and the address to the Crown which his committee prepared
implored the monarch either 'to grant us an elective Legislative Council;
or to separate the Executive from the Legislative Council, providing for
a just representation of all the great interests of the province in both;
and, by the introduction into the former of some members of the popular
branch and otherwise securing responsibility to the Commons, confer upon
the people of this province what they value above all other possessions,
the blessings of the British constitution.'
Lord Glenelg, at this time the colonial secretary, was a weak but amiable
man. He could not see that in the full grant to the colonies of
Responsible Government lay safety; he deemed it 'inconsistent with a due
adherence to the essential distinctions between a Metropolitan and a
Colonial Government.[1] But he was a kindly soul, who was honestly
shocked at the predominance in the Council of the Church of England and
the bankers, and he went as far as he dared. In August 1837 dispatches
from him arrived, directing {55} the lieutenant-governor to separate the
Legislative and the Executive Councils. Of the wisdom of this step he
was by no means sure, but he yielded to the wish of the Assembly,
'convinced that their advice will be dictated by more exact and abundant
knowledge of the wants and wishes of their constituents than any other
persons possess or could venture to claim.' In the new Executive Council
the chief justice was not to sit, and the banking and Church of England
influences were to be lessened. The Council of Twelve thus became an
Executive merely, while a new Legislative Council, or Upper House, of
nineteen members, came into being. Though no responsibility to the
Commons was acknowledged, and though 'the Queen can give no pledge that
the Executive Council will always comprise some members of the Assembly,'
four members of the new Executive did actually sit in the Lower House and
three in the Upper. Already the fortress was giving way. Instead of
finding out the policy of the Executive by an elaborate interchange of
written communications, the Assembly could now, whenever it so desired,
interrogate such members of the Executive as were chosen from its own
body.
{56}
Towards the end of this year broke out the rebellion headed in Lower
Canada by Papineau and in Upper Canada by William Lyon Mackenzie. Its
ignominious failure threatened for a time to overwhelm Howe with charges
of similar disloyalty. Luckily he had in 1835 written to Mr H. S.
Chapman, a prominent Upper Canadian Reformer, a long letter in which,
while sympathizing with the grievances of the Reformers, he had
indignantly denounced any attempt to use force, and had vindicated the
loyalty of Nova Scotia. This letter he now published, and triumphantly
cleared his character.
The rebellion had at least the merit of awakening the British government.
When houses went up in smoke, when Canadians with fixed bayonets chased
other Canadians through burning streets and slew them as they cried for
mercy, the most fat-hearted place-man could not say that all was for the
best in the best of all possible colonies. The British government sent
out as High Commissioner one of England's ablest men, Lord Durham. His
report, published early in 1839, is a landmark in the history of British
colonial administration. Disregarding all half-measures, he declared
that in Responsible Government {57} alone could salvation for the
colonies be found. In clarion tones he proclaimed that thus alone could
the deep, pathetic, and ill-repaid loyalty of the Canadas be preserved.
But the report had still to be acted on. Lord John Russell, the ablest
man in the government, had succeeded Lord Glenelg, and in 1839 he made a
speech which did indeed mark an advance on the views of his predecessor,
but which fell far short of the wishes of the Canadian Reformers. The
internal government of the province, he admitted, must be carried on in
accordance with the well-understood wishes of the Canadian people, but he
still held Responsible Government to be incompatible with the colonial
status. The governor of a colony can be responsible, he said, only to
the Crown; to make him responsible to his ministers would be to proclaim
him head of an independent state. If the governor must act on the advice
of his ministers, he might be forced to choose ministers whose acts would
embroil the province, and thereby the whole Empire, with a foreign power.
In answer to this speech Howe wrote to Lord John Russell four open
letters, which were republished in almost every Canadian newspaper, and
which, issued in pamphlet {58} form, were sent to every British newspaper
and member of parliament. Never did he reach a higher level. Vigorous,
sparkling, full of apt illustration and sound political thought, they
grip 'little Johnny Russell's' speech and shake it to tatters. 'By the
beard of the prophet!'--to use one of Howe's favourite oaths--here is a
big man, a man with a gift of expression and a grip of principle. They
should be read in full, for an extract gives but a truncated idea of
their power.
He ridicules the arrogation to itself by the 'Compact' of a monopoly of
loyalty. 'It appears to me that a very absurd opinion has long prevailed
among many worthy people on both sides of the Atlantic: that the
selection of an Executive Council, who, upon most points of domestic
policy, will differ from the great body of the inhabitants and the
majority of their representatives, is indispensable to the very existence
of colonial institutions; and that, if it were otherwise, the colony
would fly off, by the operation of some latent principle of mischief,
which I have never seen very clearly defined. By those who entertain
this view, it is assumed that Great Britain is indebted for the
preservation of her colonies, not to the natural affection of their
inhabitants--to {59} their pride in her history, to their participation
in the benefit of her warlike, scientific, or literary achievements--but
to the disinterested patriotism of a dozen or two of persons, whose names
are scarcely known in England, except by the clerks in Downing Street;
who are remarkable for nothing above their neighbours in the colony,
except perhaps the enjoyment of offices too richly endowed; or their
zealous efforts to annoy, by the distribution of patronage and the
management of public affairs, the great body of the inhabitants, whose
sentiments they cannot change.'[2]
He applies Lord John's reasoning to the British towns of London or
Glasgow or Aberdeen, and shows what absurd results it would produce. He
admits fully that Nova Scotia cannot be independent, and that there are
limits beyond which, were her responsible Executive mad enough to pass
them, the governor might rightly interpose his veto. But he shows in
what a fiasco any such situation would necessarily end. The powers which
he leaves to the British government would now, indeed, be thought
excessive.
'From what has been already written, it {60} will be seen that I leave to
the Sovereign and to the Imperial Parliament the uncontrolled authority
over the military and naval force distributed over the colonies; that I
carefully abstain from trenching upon their right to bind the whole
empire by treaties and other diplomatic arrangements with foreign states;
or to regulate the trade of the colonies with the mother country and with
each other. I yield to them also the same right of interference which
they now exercise over colonies and over English incorporated towns;
whenever a desperate case of factious usage of the powers confided, or
some reason of state, affecting the preservation of peace and order, call
for that interference.'[3]
But he pleads eloquently that the loyalty of Nova Scotia need not be
maintained by sending over to govern her a well-intentioned military man,
gallant and gouty, with little knowledge of her history or her civil
institutions, with a tendency to fall under the control of a small social
set, whose interests are different from or adverse to those of the great
majority; that it will only strike deeper root if the governor is given
as his advisers not such an irresponsible council, but the popular {61}
leaders, men strong in the confidence of the province.
Events moved rapidly. In October 1839 Lord John Russell sent out to the
governors of the various British North American colonies a circular
dispatch of such importance that it was recognized by Sir John Harvey,
the governor of New Brunswick, as 'a new and improved constitution.' In
this it was said that 'the governor must only oppose the wishes of the
Assembly where the honour of the Crown, or the interests of the Empire,
are deeply concerned,' and office-holders were warned that they were
liable to removal from office 'as often as any sufficient motives of
public policy may suggest the expediency of that measure.' A subsequent
paragraph stated clearly that this was not meant to introduce the 'spoils
system,' but to apply only to the heads of departments and to the other
members of the Executive Council.
Sir Colin Campbell, at this time lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, was
a very gallant soldier of unstained honour and kindly disposition, a
personal friend of the Duke of Wellington, under whom he had proved his
valour in India and in the Peninsula. When {62} in 1834 an epidemic of
cholera ravaged Halifax, Sir Colin went down into the thick of it, and
worked day and night to assuage the distressing agonies of the sufferers.
In politics, however, he was under the sway of the Council. He now
refused to communicate Lord John Russell's dispatch to the House, and
when that body passed a vote of want of confidence in the Executive, Sir
Colin met them with a curt reply to the effect that 'I have had every
reason to be satisfied with the advice and assistance which they [the
Executive] have at all times afforded me.'
But 'there was the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees.'
Mr J. B. Uniacke rose in the House and stated that, in the conviction of
the absurdity of the present irresponsible system, he had tendered to the
governor his resignation as an Executive Councillor. Mr Uniacke, a man
of fine presence, oratorical gifts, and high social position, had
hitherto been the Tory leader and Howe's chief opponent in the House, and
his conversion to the side of Responsible Government was indeed a
triumph. But there was fierce work still to do. By a large majority the
House passed an address to the governor expressing unfeigned sorrow at
his refusal to administer {63} the government in accordance with Lord
John Russell's dispatch. To this Sir Colin replied that the matter was
of too great moment for him to decide, and that he would refer it to Her
Majesty's government. This in effect meant that he would spin the affair
out for another six months or so, and so shift the burden of decision to
his successor. The patience of the House was at an end, and an address
to the Crown was passed, detailing the struggle and requesting 'Your
Majesty to remove Sir Colin Campbell and send to Nova Scotia a governor
who will not only represent the Crown, but carry out its policy with
firmness and good faith.'
To ask Her Majesty to remove her representative was an extreme measure.
From one end of the province to the other meetings were held. With one
antagonist after another Howe crossed swords, and was ever victorious.
Lord Sydenham, the governor-general, who though resident in Canada had
authority over all British North America, came down to Halifax to look
into the matter. He had a long talk with Howe and each yielded to the
charm of the other. Such warm friends did they become that during the
rest of Sydenham's short life they exchanged frequent letters, and {64}
Howe called one of his sons by the name of Sydenham. In September 1840
Lord Falkland was sent out as lieutenant-governor, Sir Colin Campbell
having been 'promoted' to the governorship of Ceylon. It is pleasant to
think of the old soldier's last meeting with Howe. Passing out from Lord
Falkland's first levee, Howe bowed to Sir Colin and would have passed on.
The veteran stopped him, and held out his hand, exclaiming, 'We must not
part in this way, Mr Howe. We fought out our differences of opinion
honestly. You have acted like a man of honour. There is my hand.' The
hand was warmly grasped, and on Sir Colin's departure a fine tribute to
his chivalry and sense of honour was paid by the _Nova Scotian_.
With the coming of Lord Falkland the first stage in the struggle was
over. That nobleman endeavoured to carry out in Nova Scotia the policy
of Lord Sydenham in Canada and to remain in a half-way house. Greatly to
their rage, four members of the Executive Council, who held seats in
neither branch of the legislature, were at once informed that their
services could no longer be retained. Three of the places so vacated
were given {65} to Uniacke, Howe, and a third Liberal, and it was agreed
that other Liberals should be brought into the Executive Council as
vacancies occurred.
This account gives but a poor idea of the excitement in Halifax during
these years. In so small a community, where every one knew every one
else, personal, social, and political questions became hopelessly
intertwined. The fighting was bitter. 'Forced into a cleft stick, there
was nothing left for us but to break it,' was Howe's pithy way of putting
the case. Naturally enough, the stick objected to being broken. And as
in every war, for one man killed in battle five or six die from other
causes connected with the war--bad boots, bad food, bad rum, wet clothes,
the trenches for beds, hospital fever, and such like--so the open
opposition of debate was the least that Howe had to fear. That, as one
of the finest peasantry in the world said of Donnybrook, 'was enjoyment.'
Howe was once asked by an old sportsman, with whom he had gone fishing
for salmon, how he liked that sport. 'Pretty well,' was the answer;
'but, after all, it's not half so exciting as a fortnight's debate in the
Legislature, and a doubt as to the division.' The personal {66} slanders
in private circles--and he could not afford to be wholly indifferent to
them; the misrepresentation not only of motives, but of the actual
objects sought to be attained, which circulate from mouth to mouth till
they become the established 'they say' of society; those ceaseless petty
annoyances and meannesses of persecution which Thackeray declares only
women are capable of inflicting; these were showered about and on him
like a rain of small-shot, and they _do_ gall, no matter how smilingly a
man may bear himself. After all, these people did as most of us would
probably have done. They were taught, and they believed easily, that the
printer Howe was bad, that he spoke evil of dignitaries, that he was a
red republican, and a great many other things equally low. The
dignitaries could not control themselves when they had to refer to him;
to take him down to the end of a wharf and blow him away from a cannon's
mouth into space was the only thing that would satisfy their ideas of the
fitness of things. Their women, if they saw him passing along the
street, would run from the windows shrieking as if he were a monster
whose look was pollution. Their sons talked of horse-whipping, ducking
in a horse-pond, {67} fighting duels with him, or doing anything in an
honourable or even semi-honourable way to abate the nuisance. Nor did
they confine themselves to talk. On one occasion, before Howe became a
member of the House, a young fellow inflamed by drink mounted his horse
and rode down the street to the printing-office, with broadsword drawn,
declaring he would kill Howe. He rode up on the wooden sidewalk, and
commenced to smash the windows, at the same time calling on Howe to come
forth. Howe, hearing the clatter, rushed out. He had been working at
the case, and his trousers were bespattered with ink and his waistcoat
was only half buttoned. He appeared on the doorstep with bare head and
shirt-sleeves partly rolled up, just as he had been working, and took in
the situation at a glance. He did not delay a minute or say a word. His
big white face glowed with passion, and going up to the shouting creature
he caught him by the wrist, disarmed and unhorsed him, and threw him on
his back in a minute. Some years later another young man challenged Howe
to a duel. Howe went out, received his fire, and then fired in the air.
He was challenged afterwards by several others, but refused to go out
again. {68} And he was no coward. There was not a drop of coward's
blood in his body. Even a mob did not make him afraid. Once, when the
'young Ireland' party had inflamed the Halifax crowd against him, he
walked among them on election day as fearlessly as in the olden time when
they were all on his side. He knew that any moment a brickbat might
come, crushing in the back of his head, but his face was cheery as usual,
and his joke as ready. He fought as an Englishman fights: walking
straight up to his enemy, looking him full in the face, and keeping cool
as he hit from the shoulder with all his might. And when the fighting
was over, he wished it to be done with. 'And now, boys,' said he once to
a mob that had gathered at his door, 'if any of you has a stick, just
leave it in my porch for a keepsake.' With shouts of laughter the
shillelaghs came flying over the heads of the people in front till the
porch was filled. The pleasantry gave Howe a stock of fuel, and sent
away the mob disarmed and in good humour.
We can see the true resolve that was in such a man, but those who fought
hand to hand with him may be excused if they could not see it. He was
the enemy of their privileges, therefore of their order, therefore of
{69} themselves. It was a bitter pill to swallow when a man in his
position was elected member for the county. The flood-gates seemed to
have opened. Young gentlemen in and out of college swore great oaths
over their wine, and the deeper they drank the louder they swore. Their
elders declared that the country was going to the dogs, that in fact it
was no longer fit for gentlemen to live in. Young ladies carried
themselves with greater hauteur than ever, heroically determined that
they at least would do their duty to Society. Old ladies spoke of
Antichrist, or sighed for the millennium. All united in sending Howe to
Coventry. He felt the stings. 'They have scorned me at their feasts,'
he once burst out to a friend, 'and they have insulted me at their
funerals!'
When Uniacke left the Tory camp, his own friends and relatives cut him in
the street. When Lord Falkland requested the resignations of the four
irresponsible councillors, their loyalty to the Crown did not restrain
their attacks upon himself. His sending his servants to a concert was
spoken of as a deliberate insult to the society of Halifax; and his
secretary was accused of robbing a pawnbroker's shop to replenish his
wardrobe.
There was too much of human nature in Joe {70} Howe to take all this
without striking hard blows in return. He did strike, and he struck from
the shoulder. He said what he thought about his opponents with a
bluntness that was absolutely appalling to them. He went straight to the
mark aimed at with Napoleonic directness. They were stunned. They had
been accustomed to be treated so differently. Hitherto there had been so
much courtliness of manner in Halifax; the gradations of rank had been
recognized by every one; and the great men and the great women had been
treated always with deference. But here was a Jacobin who changed all
this; who in dealing with them called a spade a spade; who searched
pitilessly into their claims to public respect, and if he found them
impostors declared them to be impostors; and who advocated principles
that would turn everything upside down.
Lord Falkland was a well-meaning young nobleman of great good looks and
small political experience. His ruling characteristic was pride.
Shortly before leaving Halifax he had his carriage-horses shot, lest on
his departure they should fall into plebeian hands. His hauteur was
fortified by his wife, {71} daughter by a morganatic marriage of King
William IV. Could such a man carry through a compromise, by which men of
opposite views should sit in his Cabinet? In Canada it had taken all the
skill and political experience of Lord Sydenham; under Sir Charles
Metcalfe the new wine burst the old bottles, bespattering more than one
reputation in the process. That the new governor would soon take offence
at the jovial, self-confident, free manners of Howe was almost certain.
The new Executive Council was a compromise. Prime minister there was
none. Its head was still the governor, whom Howe himself admitted to be
'still responsible only to his sovereign.' On the question which in
Canada brought about the quarrel between Sir Charles Metcalfe and his
advisers, Howe said in 1840 that in Nova Scotia 'the patronage of the
country is at his [the governor's] disposal to aid him in carrying on the
government.' In 1841 he still accorded him the initiative, saying that
'the governor, as the Queen's representative, still dispenses the
patronage, but that as the Council are bound to defend his appointments,
the responsibility even as regards appointments is nearly as great in the
one case as in the other.'
{72}
During these years Howe had a delicate role to play. The extreme and
logical members of his own party attacked him as a trimmer; on the other
hand, any one of the four extruded councillors was considered by Society
to be worth a hundred Howes, and Society was not slow to make its
feelings known. The fight was fiercest in the Executive Council, where
the party of caution, if not of reaction, was led by the Hon. J. W.
Johnston. Tall and distinguished in appearance, with dark flashing eyes
and imperious temper, of fine probity in his private life, and with a
keen, though somewhat lawyer-like, intellect, Johnston was no unworthy
antagonist to the great tribune of the people. Though of good birth, and
recognized in Society as Howe was not, he was a Baptist, and so not
hampered in the popular mind by any connection with the official Church.
Nor were his views on government illiberal. The controversy between him
and Howe was rather of temperament than of principles, between the keen
lawyer, mistrustful of spontaneity, lingering fondly over his precedents,
and the impulsive, over-trustful, over-generous lover of humanity. In
the working out of the new system anomalies soon developed, which
Falkland {73} was not the man to minimize. Howe himself was still a
little misty in his views, and accepted the speakership as well as a seat
in the Executive Council, thus becoming at once umpire and participant, a
position impossible to-day. In the next year, however, he resigned the
speakership to accept the post of collector of customs for Halifax.
But the great wrangle was over the extent to which Responsible Government
had been conceded. One member of the government said that 'Responsible
Government was responsible nonsense--it was independence. It would be a
severing of the link which bound the colony to the mother country.'
Johnston, at the time sitting in the Upper House, did not go so far, but
said that 'in point of fact it is not the intention to recognize the
direct responsibility which has been developed in the address. To
concede such would be inconsistent with colonial relations.' There was
no fundamental discrepancy between Johnston's views and those of Howe.
Later on in the same speech, Johnston, while considering the subject to
be 'incapable of exact definition,' yet said that 'the change simply is
that it becomes the duty of the representative of Her Majesty to
ascertain the wishes and feelings {74} of the people through their
representatives, and to make the measures of government conform to these
so far as is consistent with his duty to the mother country.' This is
really much the same as Howe's statement that 'the Executive, which is to
carry on the administration of the country, should sympathize with to a
large extent, and be influenced by, and when proper be composed of to a
certain degree, those who possess the confidence of the country';
especially when this is taken in connection with his other statement that
he had no wish for colonial assemblies 'to interfere in the great
national regulations, in arrangements respecting the army or navy of the
Empire, or the prerogatives of the parliament or Crown.' But the
emphasis was different. Howe insisted on the greatness of the change in
local administration; Johnston on the amount of still surviving control
by the mother country. The little rift in the lute was already apparent,
and was increased by the natural tendency of the governor to consult the
courtly Johnston, and to show impatience at the brusque familiarity of
Howe.
The tension became greater and greater. There is no reason to doubt that
both Howe {75} and Johnston tried to play the game. But their
temperaments and their associates were different, and they grew more and
more mistrustful of each other. Accusations of treachery began to fly.
By the autumn of 1842 Howe had ceased to disguise his 'conviction that
the administration, as at present constituted, cannot go on a great while
longer.' The final break-up came over the question of education. It is
sad that this should have been so, for Howe well knew that education
should bring peace and not a sword. We may make education a
battle-ground,' he said, 'where the laurels we reap may be wet with the
tears of our country.' At this time primary education was optional,
given in private schools, aided in some cases by provincial grants. Both
Howe and Johnston would fain have substituted a compulsory system,
supported by local assessments, but both feared the repugnance of the
country voters to direct taxation, and it was not till 1864 that Dr
(afterwards Sir) Charles Tupper took this fearless and notable step
forward. In the mean time both Howe and Johnston supported the increase
of grants to education, the establishment of circulating libraries, and
the appointment of a superintendent of education.
{76}
But if schools were too few, universities were too many, and it was here
that the quarrel began. King's College at Windsor was avowedly Anglican.
An attempt had been made in 1838 to revive Dalhousie as undenominational,
but the bigotry of Sir Colin Campbell and of a rump board of governors
under Presbyterian influence refused to appoint as professor the Rev. Dr
Crawley, on the almost openly avowed ground that he was a Baptist. The
aggrieved denomination then hived off, and started at Wolfville their own
university, known as Acadia. The Roman Catholics had for some time had
in operation St Mary's College at Halifax. All these received grants
from the government, and were endeavouring to do university work in a
very imperfectly educated community of three hundred thousand people.
Theoretically this system was absurd. But each of the little colleges
had its band of devoted adherents, held fast to it by the strongest of
all ties, that of religion. Most of all was this the case with Acadia,
founded in hot and justifiable anger, and eager to justify its existence.
Had Howe been a wary politician, he would have thought twice before
stirring up such a wasp's nest, more especially as the {77} Baptists had
hitherto been his faithful supporters. But Howe was both more and less
than a wary politician, and when early in 1843 a private member brought
in resolutions in favour of withdrawing the grants from the existing
colleges, and of founding 'one good college, free from sectarian control,
and open to all denominations, maintained by a common fund,' Howe
supported him with all his might. In thus differing from his colleagues
on a question of primary importance he was undoubtedly guilty of ignoring
the doctrine of collective Cabinet responsibility.
The heather was soon on fire. Johnston came vigorously to the rescue of
Acadia. The Baptist newspaper attacked Howe in no measured terms.
Crawley himself in public speeches endeavoured to show 'the extreme
danger to religion of the plan projected by Mr Howe of one college in
Halifax without any religious character, and which would be liable to
come under the influence of infidelity.' Howe repaid invective with
invective. 'I may have been wrong, but yet when I compare these
peripatetic, writing, wrangling, grasping professors, either with the
venerable men who preceded them in the ministry of their own Church, or
in the advent of {78} Christianity, I cannot but come to the conclusion
that either one set or the other have mistaken the mode. Take all the
Baptist ministers from one end of the province to the other--the
Hardings, the Dimocks, the Tuppers,--take all that have passed away, from
Aline to Burton; men who have suffered every privation, preaching peace
and contentment to a poor and scattered population; and the whole
together never created as much strife, exhibited so paltry an ambition,
or descended to the mean arts of misrepresentation to such an extent, in
all their long and laborious lives, as these two arrogant professors of
philosophy and religion have done in the short period of half a dozen
years.'[4]
In reply to Dr Crawley he contrasted the students of an undenominational
college, 'drinking at the pure streams of science and philosophy,' with
the students of Acadia 'imbibing a sour sectarian spirit on a hill.' 'It
is said, if a college is not sectarian, it must be infidel. Is
infidelity taught in our academies and schools? No; and yet not one of
them is sectarian. A college would be under strict discipline,
established by its governors; clergymen would occupy some of its chairs;
{79} moral philosophy, which to be sound must be based on Christianity,
must be conspicuously taught; and yet the religious men who know all this
raise the cry of infidelity to frighten the farmers in the country.'
Johnston, in evident alarm at the success of Howe's agitation, persuaded
the governor to dissolve the House and hold a general election. At the
same time he himself, with great courage, resigned his life-membership of
the Legislative Council, and offered himself as a candidate for the
Assembly. A hot election followed, in which both Howe and Johnston were
returned at the head of approximately equal numbers.
By this time Howe had learned his lesson. A half-way house might be a
useful stopping-place, but could not be a terminus. A unanimous Cabinet
was a necessity, and a unanimous Cabinet was possible only if backed by a
unanimous party. He therefore offered Lord Falkland either to resign, or
to form a Liberal administration from which Johnston and those who
thought with him should be excluded. This Lord Falkland could not see,
nor yet could Johnston. The latter 'unequivocally denounced the system
of a party government, and avowed his preference for {80} a government in
which all parties should be represented.' At last, on Falkland's urgent
request, Howe consented to remain in the government till the House met.
A few days later the governor suddenly appointed to the Executive Council
Mr Almon, a high Tory and Johnston's brother-in-law. It was too much;
Howe and his Liberal colleagues at once resigned.
Was he in the right? With Almon as a man they had no quarrel. Howe and
Johnston were both well qualified to serve their native province. Why
should one consume his energy in trying to keep out the other? The
answer is that a government is not merely composed of heads of separate
departments. It is a unity, responsible for a coherent policy, and as
such cannot contain two men, however estimable, who differ on political
fundamentals. It is Howe's merit that he saw this, while Johnston and
Falkland did not. After all, their loud cries for a non-party
administration only meant an administration in which their own party was
supreme. Howe was wholly in the right when he said that Johnston's
epitaph should be, 'Here lies the man who denounced party government,
that he might form one; and professing justice to all parties, gave every
office to his own.'
{81}
There followed three years of hard fighting. Johnston formed an
administration, which was sustained by a majority varying from one to
three. Debates of thirteen and fourteen days were common. Howe's
relations with Lord Falkland had at first been those of intimate
friendship, and for a time the quarrel was conducted with decorum.
Several months after his resignation he could write, 'personal or
factious opposition to your Lordship I am incapable of.' But a literary
gentleman, in close connection with Lord Falkland, began in the press a
series of fierce attacks on Howe and the other Liberal leaders. Of Lord
Falkland's sanction and approval there could be little doubt. His
Lordship himself said in private conversation that between him and Howe
it was 'war to the knife,' and personally denounced him in his dispatches
to the Colonial Office. Howe was not the man to refuse such a challenge.
Though retaining his seat in the House, he resumed the editorship of the
_Nova Scotian_, which he had abandoned in 1841. From his editorial chair
he not only guided the parliamentary Opposition, but pelted the governor
himself with a shower of pasquinades in prose and verse. Lord Falkland
has practically put himself at {82} the head of the Tory party, said
Howe, and as a political opponent he shall have no mercy. A flood of
Rabelaisian banter was poured upon the head of the unhappy nobleman. He
was attacked in his pride, his tenderest place. It is impossible not to
wish that Howe had shown more moderation. He had, of course, precedent
on his side. Nothing which he wrote was so bad as the language of Queen
Elizabeth to her councillors, or of Frederick the Great to Voltaire. He
was neither more savage than Junius, nor more indecent than Sir Charles
Hanbury Williams in his attacks on King George II. But times had
changed. Mouths and manners had grown cleaner, and much of Howe's banter
is over-coarse for present-day palates. But of its effectiveness there
is no doubt. He fairly drove the unhappy Falkland out of the province.
After all, his raillery was an instrument in the fight for freedom, and a
less deadly one than the scythes and muskets of Mackenzie or Papineau.
A squib which produced much comment in its day was 'The Lord of the
Bedchamber,' which begins thus:
The Lord of the Bedchamber sat in his shirt,
(And D--dy the pliant was there),
And his feelings appeared to be very much hurt
And his brow overclouded with care.
{83}
It was plain, from the flush that o'ermantled his cheek,
And the fluster and haste of his stride,
That, drowned and bewildered, his brain had grown weak
By the blood pumped aloft by his pride.
So it goes on, not unamusing, full of topical allusions and bad puns.
The serious Johnston, with some lack of humour, brought the matter up in
the House, and came near to accusing Howe of High Treason. Howe wisely
refused to take the matter seriously, and defended himself in a speech of
which a fair sample is: 'This is the first time I ever suspected that to
hint that noblemen wore shirts was a grave offence, to be prosecuted in
the High Court of Parliament by an Attorney General. Had the author said
that the Lord of the Bedchamber wore no shirt, or that it stuck through
his pantaloons, there might have been good ground of complaint.' On the
more serious question he said: 'The time has come when I must do myself
justice. An honest fame is as dear to me as Lord Falkland's title is to
him. His name may be written in Burke's Peerage; mine has no record but
on the hills and valleys of the country which God has given us for an
inheritance, and must live, if it lives at all, in the hearts of those
who tread them. Their confidence and respect {84} must be the reward of
their public servants. But if these noble provinces are to be preserved,
those who represent the sovereign must act with courtesy and dignity and
truth to those who represent the people. Who will go into a Governor's
Council if, the moment he retires, he is to have his loyalty impeached;
to be stabbed by secret dispatches; to have his family insulted; his
motives misrepresented, and his character reviled? What Nova Scotian
will be safe? What colonist can defend himself from such a system, if a
governor can denounce those he happens to dislike and get up personal
quarrels with individuals it may be convenient to destroy?'[5]
In 1846 the quarrel came to a crisis. The speaker of the House and his
brother, a prominent member of the Opposition, were connected with an
English company formed for building Nova Scotian railways. To the
astonishment of everybody, a dispatch from Lord Falkland to the Colonial
Office was brought down and read before the speaker's face, in which his
own name and that of his brother were repeatedly mentioned, and in which
they were held up to condemnation as the associates of 'reckless' and
'insolvent' {85} men. Howe was justly indignant at this gross breach of
constitutional procedure, and indeed of ordinary good manners. Leaping
to his feet, he said: 'I should but ill discharge my duty to the House or
to the country, if I did not, this instant, enter my protest against the
infamous system pursued (a system of which I can speak more freely, now
that the case is not my own), by which the names of respectable colonists
are libelled in dispatches sent to the Colonial Office, to be afterwards
published here, and by which any brand or stigma may be placed upon them
without their having any means of redress. If that system be continued,
some colonist will, by and by, or I am much mistaken, hire a black fellow
to horsewhip a lieutenant-governor.'[6]
In reply to a vote of censure by the House, he defended himself in a
letter to his constituents, of which the pith is in the final sentences:
'"But," I think I hear some one say, "after all, friend Howe, was not the
supposititious case, which you anticipated might occur, somewhat quaint
and eccentric and startling?" It was, because I wanted to startle, to
rouse, to flash the light of truth over every hideous feature of the
system. {86} The fire-bell startles at night; but if it rings not the
town may be burned; and wise men seldom vote him an incendiary who pulls
the rope, and who could not give the alarm and avert the calamity unless
he made a noise. The prophet's style was quaint and picturesque when he
compared the great king to a sheep-stealer; but the object was not to
insult the king, it was to make him think, to rouse him; to let him see
by the light of a poetic fancy the gulf to which he was descending, that
he might thereafter love mercy, walk humbly, and, controlling his
passions, keep untarnished the lustre of the Crown. David let other
men's wives alone after that flight of Nathan's imagination; and I will
venture to say that whenever, hereafter, our rulers desire to grille a
political opponent in an official dispatch, they will recall my homely
picture and borrow wisdom from the past.'[7]
Later in the year Lord Falkland was recalled, and appointed governor of
Bombay. Soon afterwards Howe wrote to a friend: 'Poor Falkland will not
soon forget Nova Scotia, where he learned more than ever he did at Court.
I ought to be grateful to him, for but for the passages of arms between
us, {87} there were some tricks of fence I had not known. Besides, I now
estimate at their true value some sneaking dogs that I should have been
caressing, for years to come, and lots of noble-hearted friends that only
the storms of life could have taught me adequately to prize.'
[Illustration: SIR JOHN HARVEY. From a portrait in the John Ross
Robertson Collection, Toronto Public Library]
Falkland's successor was Sir John Harvey, in old days a hero of the War
of 1812, more recently governor of New Brunswick. Shortly after his
coming he endeavoured to induce Howe and his friends to enter the
government, but Howe now saw victory within his grasp, and had no mind
for further coalitions. To a friend he wrote: 'I do not in the abstract
disapprove of coalitions, where public exigencies, or an equal balance of
parties, create a necessity for them, but hold that, when formed, the
members should act in good faith, and treat each other like
gentlemen--should form a party, in fact, and take the field against all
other parties without. If they quarrel and fight, and knock the
coalition to smithereens, then a governor who attempts to compel men who
cannot eat together, and are animated by mutual distrust, to serve in the
same Cabinet, and bullies them if they refuse, is mad.'
Foiled in his well-meant attempt, Sir John then consulted the Colonial
Office. Into that {88} department a new spirit had come with the arrival
in 1846 of Lord Grey, who replied with a dispatch in which the principles
of Responsible Government were laid down in the clearest terms, while at
the same time the Reformers were warned that only the holders of the
great political offices should be subject to removal, and that there
should be no approach to the 'spoils system,' which was at the time
disgracing the United States. In 1847 the Reformers carried the
province, and Sir John Harvey gave to their leaders his loyal support.
Mr Uniacke was called on to form an administration, in which Howe was
given the post of provincial secretary. There was a final flurry. For a
month or two the province was convulsed by the conduct of the former
provincial secretary, Sir Rupert D. George, who, amid the plaudits of
fashionable Halifax, refused to resign. But Sir Rupert was dismissed
with a pension, and Joe Howe ruled in his stead. The ten years' conflict
was at an end. The printer's boy had faced the embattled oligarchy, and
had won.
It was a bloodless victory. Heart-burning indeed there was, and the
breaking up of friendships. But it is the glory of Howe that
responsibility was won in the Maritime {89} Provinces without rebellion.
In the next year, in his song for the centenary of the landing of the
Britons in Halifax, he exultantly broke out:
The blood of no brother, in civil strife poured,
In this hour of rejoicing encumbers our souls!
The frontier's the field for the patriot's sword,
And cursed is the weapon that faction controls!
In conclusion we must ask ourselves, was it worth while? Was the winning
of Responsible Government a good thing? We are apt to take this for
granted. Too many of our historians write as if all the members of the
Family Compact had been selfish and corrupt, and all our present
statesmen were altruistic and pure. Both propositions are equally
doubtful. A man is not necessarily selfish and corrupt because he is a
Tory, nor altruistic and pure because he calls himself a Liberal or a
Reformer. It is very doubtful whether Nova Scotia is better governed
to-day than it was in the days of Lord Dalhousie or Sir Colin Campbell.
Native Nova Scotians have shown that we do not need to go abroad for lazy
and impecunious placemen. But two things are certain. Nova Scotia is
more contented, if not with its government, at least with the system by
which that government is chosen, {90} and it has within itself the
capacity for self-improvement. Before Joseph Howe Nova Scotians were
under tutors and governors; he won for them the liberty to rise or fall
by their own exertions, and fitted them for the expansion that was to
come.
[1] The full text of this speech will be found in Chisholm, _Speeches and
Letters_, vol. i, p. 144.
[2] Chisholm, _Speeches and Letters_, vol. i, p. 223.
[3] Chisholm, _Speeches and Letters_, vol. i, p. 252.
[4] Chisholm, _Speeches and Letters_, vol. i, p. 432.
[5] Chisholm, _Speeches and Letters_, vol. i, p. 531.
[6] Chisholm, _Speeches and Letters_, vol. i, p. 594.
[7] Chisholm, _Speeches and Letters_, vol. i, p. 600.
{91}
CHAPTER V
RAILWAYS AND IMPERIAL CONSOLIDATION
In 1825 a train of cars, carrying coal, drawn by a steam locomotive,
ran from Stockton to Darlington in Lancashire. In a week the price of
coals in Darlington fell from eighteen shillings to eight shillings and
sixpence. In 1830 the 'Rocket,' designed by George Stephenson, ran
from Liverpool to Manchester at a rate of nearly forty miles an hour,
and the possibilities of the new method of transportation became
manifest. But the jealousy of the landed interest, eager to maintain
the beauty and the privacy of the countryside, retarded till the
forties the growth of English railways. Meanwhile, by the use of
railways the United States altered her whole economic life and outlook.
In 1830 she had twenty-three miles of railway, five years later over a
thousand, and by 1840 twenty-eight hundred miles; and thereafter till
1860 she almost doubled her mileage every five years.
{92}
In the meantime Canada lagged behind, though in no other country were
the steel bands eventually to play so important a part in creating
national unity. The vision of Lord Durham first saw what the railway
might do for the unification of British North America. 'The formation
of a railroad from Halifax to Quebec,' he wrote in 1839, 'would
entirely alter some of the distinguishing characteristics of the
Canadas.' Even before this, young Joseph Howe had seen what the
steam-engine might do for his native province, and in 1835 he had
advocated, in a series of articles in the _Nova Scotian_, a railway
from Halifax to Windsor. Judge Haliburton was an early convert; and in
1837 he makes 'Sam Slick' harp again and again on the necessity of
railways. 'A railroad from Halifax to the Bay of Fundy' is the burden
of many of Sam's conversations, and its advantages are urged in his
most racy dialect. But the world laughed at Haliburton's jokes and
neglected his wisdom. Though in 1844 the British government directed
the survey of a military road to unite Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and
Quebec, and though in 1846 the three provinces joined to pay the
expenses of such a survey, which was completed in 1848, British {93}
North America was for the ten years which followed Lord Durham's Report
too busy assimilating his remedy of Responsible Government to have much
energy left for practical affairs. But in 1848, along with the triumph
of the Reformers alike in the Canadas, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia,
railways succeeded Responsible Government as the burning political
question, and to no man did their nation-building power appeal with
greater force than to Howe.
Already he had witnessed one proof of the power of steam. In 1838, in
company with Haliburton, he was on his way to England on the _Tyrian_,
one of the old ten-gun brigs which carried the mails, slow and
uncomfortable at the best, unseaworthy death-traps in a storm. As she
lay rolling in a flat calm with flapping sails, a few hundred miles
from England, a smear appeared on the western horizon. The smear grew
to a smudge, the smudge to a shape, and soon there steamed up alongside
the _Sirius_, a steamer which had successfully crossed the Atlantic,
and was now on her return to England. The captain of the _Tyrian_
determined to send his mails on board. Howe accompanied them, took a
glass of champagne with the officers, and returned to the {94} brig.
Then the _Sirius_ steamed off, leaving the _Tyrian_ to whistle for a
breeze. On their arrival in England, Howe and Haliburton succeeded in
combining the chief British North American interests in a letter to the
Colonial Office. That much-abused department showed sympathy and
promptitude. Negotiations were entered into, contracts were let, and
in 1840 the mails were carried from England to Halifax by the steamers
of a company headed by Samuel Cunard, a prominent Halifax merchant,
founder of the line which still bears his name. At once the distance
from England to Nova Scotia was reduced from fifty days to twelve.
Certainty replaced uncertainty; danger gave way to comparative
security. It was the forging of a real link of Empire.
A decade later Howe saw that the railway could play the same part. At
this time the question was being discussed in all the provinces. Nova
Scotia wished to link her harbours with the trade of the Canadian and
American West and of the Gulf of St Lawrence, so as to be at least the
winter port of the northern half of North America. New Brunswick
wished to give to the fertile valley of the St John and the shores of
the Bay of Fundy {95} an exit to the sea, and to unite them with the
American railways by a line from St John to Portland. The need of
Canada was still more pressing; between 1840 and 1850 she had completed
her St Lawrence system of canals, only to find them side-tracked by
American railways. A line from Montreal to Windsor, opposite Detroit,
became a necessity.
It is characteristic of Howe that he was at first attracted by the
thought of what might benefit Nova Scotia, and that he gradually passed
from this to a great vision of Empire, in which his early idea was
absorbed though not destroyed. His first speech on the subject was
delivered on the 25th of March 1850, and is chiefly notable for his
strong advocacy of government construction. In July a convention to
discuss the matter was called at Portland, to which the Nova Scotian
government sent a more or less official representative. This gathering
passed resolutions in favour of a line from Portland to Halifax through
St John. But Maine and Portland had no money wherewith to build, and
the British provinces could not borrow at less than six per cent, if at
that. Howe had not been present at Portland, but he was the leader at
an enthusiastic Halifax meeting in August, {96} which voted unanimously
in favour of government construction of a line from Halifax to the New
Brunswick boundary, to connect with whatever line that province should
build. Later in the year he was sent by his government as a delegate
to Great Britain, in the endeavour to secure an Imperial guarantee,
which would reduce the interest on the money borrowed from six to three
and a half per cent. It seemed a hopeless quest. Earl Grey, who at
the time presided over the Colonial Office, was a strong believer in
private enterprise, and was opposed to government interference. In
July he had returned a curt refusal to Nova Scotia's request. But Howe
had a strong and, as the result proved, a well-founded belief in his
own powers of persuasion.
His visit was a triumph, or rather a series of triumphs. Landing early
in November, he had several interviews with Lord Grey, and with the
under-secretary, Mr Hawes. On the 25th of November 1850 he addressed
to Grey a long and forcible open letter, in which he urged the claims
of Nova Scotia. A month later he was met with a refusal. But Howe
knew that there were ways and means of bringing a government office to
terms. He had friends in Southampton, and at once arranged with {97}
them that a spontaneous request to address the citizens of that town
should come to him from the city authorities. Then he wrote to Lord
Grey and requested an interview. The reply came that 'His Lordship
will be glad to see Mr Howe on Monday.' Howe's comment in his private
diary is as follows:
'Will he, though? He would be glad if I were with the devil, or on the
sea with Hawes's note [of refusal] sticking out of my pocket. We shall
see. Head clears, as it always does when the tug of war approaches.
To-morrow must decide my course, and we shall have peace and fair
treatment, or a jolly row. Message from Hawes: "Don't despair." Never
did: What does the under-secretary mean? If kindness and rational
expectations, it is well; if more humbug, the hardest must fend off.'
His account of the interview is given in his diary: 'Letters from home;
thank God, all well, but evidently anxious. I am glad they do not know
how this day's work may affect their fortunes. Read letters and papers
and try to divert myself till hour for interview comes.
'It comes at last: a thousand thoughts go rushing through my brain as,
with a scowling {98} brow and infernal mental struggle to control my
passions, I ride, smoking, down to Downing Street. To be calm and
good-natured, even playful, down to the last, is my policy; to hint at
my resources without bullying and menace will be good taste. The
Ante-Room, the Abomination of Desolation. Enter Mr Howe at last, Earl
Grey and Mr Hawes looking very grim and self-complacent. Two to one is
long odds. But here goes at you: "Ye cogging Greeks, have at ye both."
The interview lasted two hours. What passed may be guessed by the
result. When I entered the room, my all trembled in the balance. When
I came out, Hawes had his letter of the 28th in his pocket, it being
suppressed and struck off the files. I had permission to go my own way
and finish my case before any decision was given. I had, besides,
general assurances of sympathy and aid, and permission to feel the
pulse of the public in any way I pleased. Viva! "Boldness in civil
business," says old Bacon, but as I go down Downing Street my heart is
too full of thankfulness to leave room for any throb of triumph.'
Thus his threat to appeal from Downing Street to parliament and people
had won; but could he win before the people? On the 14th {99} of
January he faced a crowded meeting at Southampton, which grew more and
more enthusiastic as he went on. Two days later he addressed another
open letter to Lord Grey, the result of six weeks' hard labour, during
which, he says, 'it seemed to me that I had read a cart-load and
written a horse-load.' Three times was it copied before he had it to
his satisfaction. The draft was carefully gone over by Lord Grey, who
suggested certain excisions and additions. Both of his open letters
and his Southampton speech were widely circulated, and attracted great
attention. Howe's name was on every lip. His praises were sung by
members of both parties in the House of Lords. After some delay, due
to a reorganization of the government, on the 10th of March he received
a formal letter from Mr Hawes, of which not only Lord Grey and himself
but also the Cabinet had already seen and approved the draft, pledging
the credit of the British government to the extent of seven million
pounds to an intercolonial railway uniting Canada, New Brunswick, and
Nova Scotia. Very few conditions were attached. As Howe said on his
return to Nova Scotia: 'She virtually says to us by this offer, There
are seven millions of sovereigns, at half {100} the price that your
neighbours pay in the markets of the world; construct your railways;
people your waste lands; organize and improve the boundless territory
beneath your feet; learn to rely upon and to defend yourselves, and God
speed you in the formation of national character and national
institutions.'[1]
What were the arguments by which Howe brought about this great reversal
of policy? Though knowing Grey to be opposed to the general principle
of public ownership, he began by singing its praises. The best road is
the queen's highway. The toll-bar and the turn-pike are disappearing.
'All our roads in Nova Scotia, made by the industry and resources of
the people, are free to the people at this hour.' The railway should
be built with the same ideal. 'If our government had means sufficient
to build railroads and carry the people free, we believe that would be
sound policy.' This being impossible, government ownership would at
least keep down the rates, and save the people from the private greed
which was at the time so manifest in the conduct of English lines.
He then went on to show with a wealth of statistics that Nova Scotia
was thoroughly {101} solvent, and that the Imperial guarantee was
almost certain never to be called on. This done, he turned gladly to
the constitutional side. That the road would pay, he believed; but he
advocated it not as a 'paying proposition,' but as a great link of
Empire. British North America must be united, and must be given a
place in the Empire. At present the colonial is doomed to a colonial
existence. 'The North American provinces must,' he wrote to Grey,
'either:
Be incorporated into the Realm of England,
Join the American Confederacy,
Be formed into a nation.
If the first can be accomplished, the last may be postponed
indefinitely, or until all parties are prepared for it. If it cannot,
Annexation comes as a matter of course. To avert it is the duty of
Englishmen, on both sides of the Atlantic.' It rests with Great
Britain to say which road British North America is to take. 'The
higher paths of ambition, on every hand inviting the ardent spirits of
the Union, are closed to us. From equal participation in common right,
from fair competition with them in the more elevated duties of
government and the distribution of its prizes, our British brethren on
the other side as carefully {102} exclude us. The president of the
United States is the son of a schoolmaster. There are more than one
thousand schoolmasters teaching the rising youth of Nova Scotia with
the depressing conviction upon their minds that no very elevated walks
of ambition are open either to their pupils or their own
children. . . . Suppose that, having done my best to draw attention to
the claims of those I have the honour to represent, I return to them
without hope; how long will high-spirited men endure a position in
which their loyalty subjects their mines to monopoly, their fisheries
to unnatural competition, and in which cold indifference to public
improvement or national security is the only response they meet when
they make to the Imperial authorities a proposition calculated to keep
alive their national enthusiasm, while developing their internal
resources?'[2] There is a balance of power in Europe which British
diplomacy labours incessantly to maintain. Each possible transfer of a
few acres of ground by some petty German princeling is carefully
studied by the Foreign Office. Is the creation of a power in North
America to balance the United States to be forever considered of no
{103} importance? Nova Scotia especially, whose praises he sings with
lusty eloquence, has been unfairly treated. As the result of a
rebellion which cost the mother country millions, Canada had been
granted a large loan. Nova Scotia had kept loyal; had put every man
and every dollar in the province at the service of her sister province
of New Brunswick, when trouble with the United States over the boundary
seemed near. Yet she had received no loan; instead, she had been
burdened by the grant to an English company of the monopoly of her coal
areas.
Then he turns to the subject of emigration, at the time much in the
public eye, and shows how superior is British North America to
Australia, then highly spoken of. He paints vividly the heart-rending
poverty of the British lower classes, and the fertility of the acres
waiting to receive them.
'Whence come Chartism, Socialism, O'Connor land-schemes, and all sorts
of theoretic dangers to property, and prescriptions of new modes by
which it may be acquired? From this condition of real estate. The
great mass of the people in these three kingdoms own no part of the
soil, have no bit of land, however small, no homestead for their
families {104} to cluster round, no certain provision for their
children.
'A new aspect would be given to all the questions which arise out of
this condition of property at home, if a wise appropriation were made
of the virgin soil of the Empire. Give the Scotchman who has no land a
piece of North America, purchased by the blood which stained the tartan
on the Plains of Abraham. Let the Irishman or the Englishman whose
kindred clubbed their muskets at Bloody Creek, or charged the enemy at
Queenston,[3] have a bit of the land their fathers fought for. Let
them have at least the option of ownership and occupation, and a bridge
to convey them over. Such a policy would be conservative of the rights
of property and permanently relieve the people. It would silence
agrarian complaint and enlarge the number of proprietors.'[4]
To convey such emigrants, to give them work, to find them markets, the
railway was a necessity. To bring them over he urged government
supervised and subsidized steamers, 'the Ocean omnibus.'
{105}
These ideas he developed on his return to Halifax in one of the noblest
of his speeches. 'But, sir, daring as may appear the scope of this
conception, high as the destiny may seem which it discloses for our
children, and boundless as are the fields of honourable labour which it
presents, another, grander in proportions, opens beyond; one which the
imagination of a poet could not exaggerate, but which the statesman may
grasp and realize, even in our own day. Sir, to bind these disjointed
provinces together by iron roads; to give them the homogeneous
character, fixedness of purpose, and elevation of sentiment, which they
so much require, is our first duty. But, after all, they occupy but a
limited portion of that boundless heritage which God and nature have
given to us and to our children. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are but
the frontage of a territory which includes four millions of square
miles, stretching away behind and beyond them to the frozen regions on
the one side and to the Pacific on the other. Of this great section of
the globe, all the northern provinces, including Prince Edward Island
and Newfoundland, occupy but 486,000 square miles. The Hudson's Bay
territory includes 250,000 square miles. Throwing aside the more bleak
{106} and inhospitable regions, we have a magnificent country between
Canada and the Pacific, out of which five or six noble provinces may be
formed, larger than any we have, and presenting to the hand of industry
and to the eye of speculation every variety of soil, climate, and
resource. With such a territory as this to overrun, organize, and
improve, think you that we shall stop even at the western bounds of
Canada, or even at the shores of the Pacific? Vancouver's Island, with
its vast coal measures, lies beyond. The beautiful islands of the
Pacific and the growing commerce of the ocean are beyond. Populous
China and the rich East are beyond; and the sails of our children's
children will reflect as familiarly the sunbeams of the South as they
now brave the angry tempests of the North. The Maritime Provinces
which I now address are but the Atlantic frontage of this boundless and
prolific region--the wharves upon which its business will be transacted
and beside which its rich argosies are to lie. Nova Scotia is one of
these. Will you then put your hands unitedly, with order,
intelligence, and energy, to this great work? Refuse, and you are
recreants to every principle which lies at the base of your country's
prosperity and {107} advancement; refuse, and the Deity's handwriting
upon land and sea is to you unintelligible language; refuse, and Nova
Scotia, instead of occupying the foreground as she now does, should
have been thrown back, at least behind the Rocky Mountains. God has
planted your country in the front of this boundless region; see that
you comprehend its destiny and resources--see that you discharge with
energy and elevation of soul the duties which devolve upon you in
virtue of your position. Hitherto, my countrymen, you have dealt with
this subject in a becoming spirit, and, whatever others may think or
apprehend, I know that you will persevere in that spirit until our
objects are attained. I am neither a prophet nor a son of a prophet,
yet I will venture to predict that in five years we shall make the
journey hence to Quebec and Montreal and home through Portland and St
John, by rail; and I believe that many in this room will live to hear
the whistle of the steam-engine in the passes of the Rocky Mountains
and to make the journey from Halifax to the Pacific in five or six
days.'[5]
The question of the future of British North America had long occupied
his mind. His first recorded speech was a call to young Nova {108}
Scotians to raise their province to a place amid the nations of the
earth. The easy patronage of Englishmen, whose intellectual equal he
knew himself to be, roused him the more because he felt it to be in a
sense justified. America by rebellion had risen to manhood; was Nova
Scotia by loyalty to be doomed to inferiority? At first independence
attracted him, but by the date of his letters to Grey he had come to
believe in 'annexation to our mother country' as a better choice,
though he reiterated that independence would be preferable to the
indefinite endurance of the present position. The change might come
gradually, but come it must. Colonial regiments; a colonial navy, if
only of a few frigates; colonial representation in the Imperial
parliament, the colonies sending 'to the House of Commons one, two, or
three members of their cabinets, according to their size, population,
and relative importance.'
This idea of Imperial Federation goes back to the days before the
American Revolution, and was brought in with them by the Loyalists. It
was a much greater favourite with the 'Family Compact' than with the
Reformers, and was urged alike by John Beverley Robinson in Upper
Canada and by Haliburton in {109} Nova Scotia, from whom Howe probably
derived it. But though not its originator, Howe was at least its
eloquent exponent, and he did much to rouse Nova Scotians to the
conviction that some remedy for their inferiority must be found.
At the end of his second letter he boldly speaks in a way which must
have endeared him to Lord Grey's heart. The transportation of
criminals had long been a recognized part of British policy, but at
this time it was breaking down before the growth of the penitentiary
system in England and the colonial dislike of the system. South Africa
had just been brought to the verge of rebellion by the arrival of a
shipload of gallows-birds; armed colonists had forbidden them to land,
and very rough messages had been sent home to Lord Grey. It may be
imagined with what joy the harassed colonial secretary welcomed a
proposal of Howe that selected convicts, confined for light offences,
should be lent to Nova Scotia for work under military supervision along
the more unsettled portions of the line. Their continuance in the
country was evidently expected, for Howe said: 'If a portion of
comparatively wilderness country were selected for the experiment, the
men {110} might have sixpence per day carried to their credit from
colonial funds while they laboured, to accumulate till their earnings
are sufficient to purchase a tract of land upon the line, with seed and
implements to enable them to get a first crop when the period of
service had expired.'[6]
To this Grey replied that while no convicts would be sent unless
definitely asked for by a colonial government, in that event a moderate
number would be provided 'without any charge for their custody and
subsistence to the province which may have applied for them.' After
returning to Nova Scotia Howe defended his proposal, with the express
proviso that the safeguards were sufficiently strict; but the
experience of other countries tends to show that the idea was
dangerous, and that Nova Scotia did well not to act on it.
On his return Howe was at the height of his fame. His mission had been
successful beyond the dreams of the most sanguine. His quick dramatic
temper thrilled to the core at his reception. 'The father, in classic
story, whose three sons had gained three Olympic prizes in the same
day, felt it was time to die. But, {111} having gained the confidence
of three noble provinces, I feel it is time to live.'
'It is clear that, unless done by the government, these great railways
cannot be done at all. Even if companies could make them, they would
cost fourteen millions instead of seven. But, sir, what is a
government for, if it is not to take the lead in noble enterprises; to
stimulate industry; to elevate and guide the public mind? You seat
eight or nine men on red cushions or gilded chairs, with nothing to do
but pocket their salaries, and call that a government. To such a
pageant I have no desire to belong. Those who aspire to govern others
should neither be afraid of the saddle by day nor of the lamp by night.
In advance of the general intelligence, they should lead the way to
improvement and prosperity. I would rather assume the staff of Moses
and struggle with the perils of the wilderness and the waywardness of
the multitude than be a golden calf, elevated in gorgeous
inactivity--the object of a worship which debased.'[7]
There were still difficulties to overcome. New Brunswick, though
willing to co-operate in his plan, was much more eager for the {112}
Portland line, which would run through her settled southern portion and
link it with her natural market and base of supplies in the United
States. During Howe's absence she had partially committed herself to
the construction of such a line by a private company, but Howe was soon
able to convert her government to the view that it was better to build
both lines with money costing only three and a half per cent than to
build one at six per cent. In June her most influential man, Mr
Chandler, accompanied Howe to Toronto, where an agreement was soon come
to with the Canadian statesmen, of whom the chief was Mr (afterwards
Sir) Francis Hincks. In November the Railway Bills were brought down
in the Nova Scotian legislature. And then, just when the cup was at
Howe's lips, it was dashed from them. A brief dispatch from Lord Grey
announced that there had been a misapprehension. The Portland line
could not be guaranteed. 'The only railway for which Her Majesty's
Government would think it right to call upon Parliament for assistance
would be one calculated to promote the interests of the whole British
Empire, by establishing a line of communication between the three
provinces in North America.' Howe's {113} attempt to have the verdict
rescinded led only to its iteration.
The blow fell with crushing force. It was at once obvious that New
Brunswick would withdraw from the bargain, and that she would have
right on her side in doing so. With the dropping out of the middle
section, the intercolonial railway and all that it meant must collapse.
Was success still possible? In January 1852 Hincks and Chandler came
to Halifax with a new proposal. If the route could be changed from the
Gulf shore to the valley of the St John, New Brunswick would still
accept. The change would ensure the support of the southern part of
that province, and would also shorten the route to Montreal. Mr
Hawes's letter had expressly said that the mother country would not
insist on the northern route, if a shorter and better could be found.
The reception of the two representatives was cold. Halifax feared that
the proposed route would turn to St John both the grain trade of the
west and that of the Gulf of St Lawrence. Howe personally was
depressed and sullen. Probably his latent egoism was beginning to show
itself. He was asked to {114} sacrifice his scheme, his darling, and
to aid in a plan patched up by others. Long conferences were held.
Eventually the financial terms were amended in favour of Nova Scotia,
and her government, Howe included, gave a somewhat reluctant assent to
the new proposal.
A wretched chapter of accidents followed. Early in March Hincks sailed
for England; Chandler soon followed; on a series of pretexts Howe
delayed his departure. In England, Hincks and Chandler quarrelled with
Sir John Pakington, the Conservative mediocrity who had succeeded Grey,
and Hincks, brusquely turning his back upon plans of government
ownership and control, entered upon negotiations with a great private
company which ended in the construction of the Grand Trunk Railway. Of
the subsequent series of errors in the financing and building of that
line, which left Canadian credit water-logged for thirty years, it is
not necessary to speak.[8]
Of this fiasco Howe felt, spoke, and wrote very bitterly. He accused
Hincks of having 'ended by throwing our common policy overboard, and
rushing into the arms of the great contractors.' Now, it is true that
in Halifax {115} in February Hincks had favoured government
construction; but he had expressly warned his hearers that if the
present plan did not go through, Canada might be compelled to look
elsewhere. What Canada most of all desired was connection between
Montreal and Portland on the one side and between Quebec and Detroit on
the other. For the construction of a 'grand trunk line' running east
and west she had already voted several millions. Howe's absence and
the quarrel with Pakington had destroyed all hope of success for the
government line; instead of crying over spilt milk, Canada must seek a
new dairy. Into the question of Hincks's motives or of his financial
integrity there is no need to go. The real culprit was Howe, in
refusing to help in the final negotiation. He himself has given his
defence; it is weak and egoistical. He says that he was worn down by
the travel, excitement, and fatigue of the last fifteen months, and
that in the depth of winter his opponents forced him to fight a
contested election. This might indeed have delayed his departure,
while he took a fortnight's holiday; further than that the excuse has
no weight. 'Had he gone, he must either have differed from his
co-delegates, or have {116} been compromised by their acts. By not
going, he left himself free to strike out an independent policy for his
own province, when that which had been forced upon Nova Scotia should,
as he probably anticipated, have failed.' It is the apology of an
egoist. Once again, at Confederation, we shall see him 'striking out
an independent policy for his own province,' and with results equally
disastrous.
What of his conflict with Lord Grey? On the whole, his Lordship comes
out badly. If there is any meaning in words, Mr Hawes had promised
that the guarantee should include the Portland line. In the very
middle of a paragraph of concessions and stipulations occur the words:
'It is also to be understood that Her Majesty's Government will by no
means object to its forming part of the plan which may be determined
upon, that it should include a provision for establishing a
communication between the projected railway and the railways of the
United States.' Grey afterwards stated 'that nothing further was
contemplated in that passage than that Her Majesty's Government would
sanction such a provision for this purpose as the legislature of New
Brunswick may deem expedient to make {117} upon its own liabilities.'
A lamer excuse has rarely been penned. The whole letter deals with the
guarantee of the British government for 'the plan which may be
determined upon,' and neither by word nor by implication gives any
countenance to the idea that here in the middle of the paragraph, for
one sentence, the idea of an Imperial guarantee is dropped and that of
unaided provincial construction substituted.
What was Howe's explanation of his Lordship's tergiversation? It was
the same as that which he had for Hincks's _volte-face_. 'A powerful
combination of great contractors, having large influence in the
Government and Parliament of England, were determined to seize upon the
North American railroads and promote their own interests at the expense
of the people.' 'If ever all the facts should be brought to light, I
believe it will be shown that by some astute manipulation the British
provinces on that occasion were sold for the benefit of English
contractors and English members of Parliament.'
Put thus crudely the charge is absurd. The reputation of some of the
contractors who built the British North American railways is indeed
none too good. Howe scarcely {118} exaggerated when he wrote about one
of them to the lieutenant-governor that 'in his private offices there
is more jobbing, scheming, and corruption in a month than in all the
public departments in seven years.' But whatever Lord Grey's mistakes
in colonial policy, his long career shows him personally incorruptible,
and in some ways almost pedantically high-minded. The charge must be
put in another way. Grey was irritable, strong-willed, and inclined to
self-righteousness. Nothing is easier than for a self-righteous man to
confuse his wishes and his principles. It is probable that he came to
feel that Mr Hawes's letter went further than was desirable. To the
hot fit induced by Howe's eloquence succeeded cold shivers, which the
great contractors naturally encouraged. Of the great firm of Jackson,
Peto, Betts, and Brassey, which eventually built the Grand Trunk and
the early railways of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, two at least were
influential Whig members of the British House of Commons. Very
possibly Lord Grey found that with the Portland guarantee annexed he
would have difficulty in forcing the plan through parliament. He may
have believed that with the guarantee struck out the provinces would
{119} still be able to finance the Portland line. Howe is on sounder
lines when he makes the fiasco an argument in favour of his plan of
colonial representation in the Imperial parliament. 'The interests of
a few members of parliament and rich contractors were on one side, and
the interests of the colonists on the other; and in such a case there
was no great difficulty in giving two meanings to a dispatch, or in
telling a Nova Scotian with no seat in parliament or connections or
interest in England that he had made a mistake.
'The Provinces were proceeding to fulfil the conditions, when,
unfortunately, two or three members of the Imperial parliament took a
fancy to add to the cost of the roads as much more as the guarantee
would have saved. It was for their interest that the guarantee should
not be given. It was withdrawn. The faith of England--till then
regarded as something sacred--was violated; and the answer was a
criticism on a phrase--a quibble upon the construction of a sentence,
which all the world for six months had read one way. The secret
history of this wretched transaction I do not seek to penetrate.
Enough is written upon stock-books and in the records of courts in
Canada to give us the proportions of that {120} scheme of jobbery and
corruption by which the interests of British America were overthrown.
But, sir, who believes that if these provinces had ten members in the
Imperial parliament, who believes--and I say it not boastingly--had
Nova Scotia had but one who could have stated her case before six
hundred English gentlemen, that the national faith would have been
sullied or a national pledge withdrawn?'[9]
It was the turning-point in Howe's career. For the first time he had
attempted Imperial work on a great scale; he had put forward his best
powers; and he had failed. His failure wrecked his trust in British
and Canadian statesmen, and in the great business interests of England.
It did more; it hardened and coarsened his nature. Not that the
deterioration was sudden or complete. Some of his most beautiful
poetry, some of his finest speeches, were written subsequently. But
the weakening had set in, and when in after years he was again called
on to face a great crisis, it showed itself with fatal results.
[1] Chisholm, _Speeches and Letters_, vol. ii, p. 169.
[2] Chisholm, _Speeches and Letters_, vol. ii, pp. 113, 115.
[3] See _The War Chief of the Ottawas_, chap. iv, and _The War with the
United States_, chap. iv.
[4] Chisholm, _Speeches and Letters_, vol. ii, pp. 130-1.
[5] Chisholm, _Speeches and Letters_, vol. ii, pp. 169-70.
[6] Chisholm, _Speeches and Letters_, vol. ii, p. 140.
[7] Chisholm, _Speeches and Letters_, vol. ii, p. 171.
[8] See _The Railway Builders_ in this Series.
[9] Chisholm, _Speeches and Letters_, vol. ii, pp. 289-90.
{121}
CHAPTER VI
BAFFLED HOPES
Foiled in the great scheme, the government of Nova Scotia nevertheless
went ahead with its policy of provincial railway construction, and in
1854 Howe, to the surprise of many, withdrew from the Executive to
accept the post of Railway Commissioner. His motives were probably in
part a desire to provide for his family, which his personal
extravagance and political honour alike had kept in a continual state
of penury, and in part that disgust at partisan bickering which so
often seizes upon provincial politicians in their hours of reflection.
He had long had a great desire to enter the Imperial civil service. In
the four years between June 1855 and June 1859 the colonies were
administered by no less than six secretaries of state: Lord John
Russell, Sir William Molesworth, Mr H. Labouchere, Lord Derby, Sir E.
Bulwer Lytton, and the Duke of {122} Newcastle. To each of them Howe
wrote long letters setting forth his claims to office. To Lord John
Russell he says: 'I have exhausted the range of ambitions which that
province [Nova Scotia] affords'; and he asks to be made a permanent
under-secretary at the Colonial Office, a rank corresponding to the
Canadian title of deputy minister. Later in the year, when in London
on a provincial mission, he again approached Lord John Russell, writing
to him two long letters and having at least one interview. 'A colonial
governorship, if there was a vacancy, I would not refuse, but I would
prefer employment in your department here, with the hope that I might
win my way into parliament, distinguish myself by my pen, or by the
intelligent dispatch of public business entrusted to my care. . . . To
win a position here, in the heart of my fatherland, is my highest
ambition.' To this Lord John Russell returned the official answer that
his claims would be kept in mind.
Later in the year Howe made the same request to Sir William Molesworth.
Sir William wrote back a very civil and straight-forward letter, saying
that the principle of taking colonials into the Imperial service had
{123} just been recognized in the appointment of Mr Hincks to the
governorship of Barbados, and that Howe's own claims would be kept in
mind, but that 'I have not at present, nor do I see any immediate
prospect of my having, any vacancy suitable for you at my disposal
either at home or abroad.' Howe naturally viewed with mixed feelings
the appointment of his enemy Hincks, and replied: 'If Mr Hincks's
appointment be followed up by judicious selection from time to time, as
fair opportunities occur, a new spirit will be infused into all the
colonies. If it be not, it will only be regarded as an indication of
the strength of English combinations which that gentleman has served,
and which others, and myself among the number, have not conciliated by
the freedom with which we have expressed independent opinions.
'As my letter is to be placed on record, I shall be glad, with your
permission, to chiefly found my claim to consideration on the service
which I have rendered as the exponent and advocate of the new system of
administration that pervades British America, and which we call
Responsible Government.'
In 1856 come similar letters to Mr Labouchere; and to Mr Blackwood, a
prominent {124} official at the Colonial Office, he thus summarizes his
claims: 'I am quite aware that there are many claimants on the
patronage of the Crown, and I would not wish importunately to press my
own claims. If men of greater worth and capacity are appointed over my
head, I trust that I shall have too much good sense and good taste to
complain. . . . I am quite aware that you have many military, naval,
and civil officers to provide for, and I am also aware of the
advantages which they all possess, in comparison with any colonial
gentleman, from being in England or having friends in the House, or
elsewhere, to press their claims. As I cannot be on the spot, and have
no such aids to rely upon, will you do me the favour, when such matters
may be fairly pressed, to urge:
'1. That eighteen years of parliamentary and official life ought to
have trained me to comprehend and to administer colonial government.
'2. That mainly by my exertions, the constitution of my native
province was remodelled and established upon sound principles.
'3. That a system of public works, devised by me, and now rapidly
advancing, is {125} regarded as so important to the prosperity of Nova
Scotia and of the provinces generally that all parties acknowledge
their value and give me their support.
'4. That, irrespective of colonial interests or feelings, these works,
by which troops can be conveyed in a few hours from the depot at
Halifax to the Gulf of St Lawrence or Bay of Fundy, and regiments of
militia from the eastern and western counties can be concentrated for
the defence of its citadel, arsenals, and dockyard, ought to be
considered in any comparison in which mere military or naval service
may be supposed to outweigh my claims. When completed, these works may
fairly be contrasted as a means of defence with all that your engineers
have done in the Maritime Provinces for half a century.'
[Illustration: JOSEPH HOWE. From a painting by T. Debaussy, London,
1831. Reproduced in Chisholm's _Speeches and Public Letters of Joseph
Howe_]
Attempts in 1857 to approach Mr Labouchere through the
lieutenant-governor, Sir Gaspard Le Marchant, and through his brother,
Sir Denis, a well-known literary man, failed, but in 1858 Lord Derby,
whom Howe had known earlier as Lord Stanley, became prime minister, and
Howe renewed his claim. With statesmanlike intuition he saw the
possibilities of the Pacific slope, now, by the {126} Oregon Treaty,
shared between Great Britain and the United States, and asked for the
governorship of British Columbia and Vancouver Island, which he thought
should be united under the name of British Oregon. Here he could guide
the infant steps of a vaster Nova Scotia; here were mountain and valley
and sea, farm and forest and fisheries; here were international
problems, not only of relations with the United States, but with the
awakening East. Lord Derby's answer was delayed, through no fault of
his own, and when in November Howe brought out an edition of his
collected speeches and public letters, he took advantage of the
opportunity to send presentation copies, with long letters, to Lord
John Russell, Lord Derby, Sir E. B. Lytton, Mr Merivale, the permanent
under-secretary of the Colonial Office, and to several other men of
influence. To the colonial secretary he complained bitterly that 'our
system denies to a colonist, so trained, the distinctions which others
of less experience, with no knowledge of the provinces they are sent to
govern, and intellectually not my superiors, readily obtain.' Lord
Derby was an English gentleman, and he replied in what Howe himself
called 'a very handsome letter,' {127} saying that as he could not
interfere with the patronage of the Colonial Office, he had therefore
left the matter to Sir E. B. Lytton. 'I regret to find by your letter
that you think that you have cause to complain of the conduct of the
Colonial Office, in reference to position in the public service. . . .
I am unable to express any opinion upon the subject, except a very
confident one that Sir E. Lytton cannot have any disposition to
underrate public services, the value of which must be known to all who
within the last twenty years have been connected with the North
American Colonies.'
Howe's hopes were high. 'I suppose they will now do something with or
for me,' he wrote to a friend. But the governorship of British
Columbia was not for him. Nor indeed could it be, richly though he had
deserved that or any other governorship. The chief interest in the new
province was that of the Hudson's Bay Company; for twenty years this
company's interests and those of Great Britain had been protected on
the Pacific by Sir James Douglas, to whom the governorship rightly fell.
In 1859 Howe made a last appeal to the Duke of Newcastle, with a like
result.
{128}
It is a sad spectacle, that of the great man knocking at preferment's
door, and knocking in vain. Howe was a statesman, with his head full
of ideas of Imperial consolidation. His was a great wild heart, deeply
touched indeed with ambition, 'the last infirmity of noble minds,' but
deeply conscious also of great powers, emotional and intellectual.
Small wonder that he raged as he felt that to reach his goal he had to
crawl through so narrow a portal, had to abase himself before
well-meaning mediocrities like Labouchere or Newcastle.
He could not do it. In none of his letters do we find the real tone of
the office-seeker. The man who so haughtily wrote back to Molesworth
his opinion of the appointment of Hincks was not the man to commend
himself to an official superior. His very merits closed the door
against him. Government departments usually prefer to let sleeping
dogs lie, to be content with honest administration along existing
lines, and to distrust innovation. To bring a new idea into a
government department is little less dangerous than to bring a live
mouse into a sewing circle. A government department wishes for honest
and able men; but the kind of ability it {129} desires is the ability
which will run in harness, an unoriginative industry, a mind plastic to
the will of its superiors. The Colonial Office had no fancy for a
turbulent, great-hearted, idealistic Howe, with views on Imperial
consolidation, who avowedly wanted office as a means of influencing the
British public, and if possible of entrance into the Imperial
parliament. Colonial secretaries were little likely to choose as their
assistant the man who had taught Lord John Russell his business, who
had first forced Lord Grey to do violence to his cherished convictions,
and later on had accused his Lordship of lack of courtesy, if not of
honesty.
Moreover, the Colonial Office of the day was, as a rule, in the control
of men who thought the Empire was big enough, if not too big. Honestly
doing their duty in the station to which it had pleased God to call
them, they yet, most of them, had a half-formed thought that the
natural end for a colony was independence, and had no mind for Imperial
consolidation.
Howe knew all this; he knew that to them he was only a colonial, and
Nova Scotia only a detail; he knew that all his services counted for
less in their eyes than did the claims of {130} some 'sumph' whose
father or uncle could influence a vote on a division. He knew that for
the English statesman of the day, as for the Nova Scotian, charity
began at home. Unfortunately, his knowledge did not turn him to the
idea of building up a great Canada wherein a man could find
satisfaction for his utmost ambition; his larger loyalty had ever been
to England. It was eastwards and not westwards that the Nova Scotian
of his day turned for a career.
A man in this mood, with no job big enough to occupy his mind, full of
an almost open contempt for his Nova Scotian colleagues, was a very
doubtful asset to a government. Yet he could not be dispensed with,
for in or out of the provincial Executive he was indisputably the
foremost figure in the province. To him the Cabinet turned so often
for advice in hours of crisis that he became known as the 'government
cooper'; and a government which is known to depend upon a power behind
the scenes is invariably weakened.
In 1854 the Crimean War with Russia had broken out. Great Britain had
enjoyed profound peace since Waterloo, and the mechanism of the War
Office was rusty and inadequate. She soon became hard pressed for
troops, and {131} under the Foreign Enlistment Act Howe was sent, in
1855, by the lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia to the United States
with the object of getting men to Halifax, there to be sworn in. It
was a delicate and unthankful task. Men did not come forward with
enthusiasm, and Howe was driven to employ doubtful methods and doubtful
agents. The sympathy of the United States was with Russia, a sympathy
especially shown by the thousands of Roman Catholic Irish who had
arrived in the past ten years. As a result of the attempted
enlistments, Mr Crampton, the British ambassador, was given his
passports by the American government; in New York Howe was mobbed, and
compelled to escape from his hotel through a window. Meanwhile, the
Irish in Nova Scotia had been roused against him. He returned from a
mission on which he had hoped to win Imperial reputation under a cloud
of failure, out of pocket, and with the Catholic vote, for the past
twenty years his sheet-anchor, alienated.
Other misfortunes followed. Of late there had been rising into
prominence in the Conservative ranks a country doctor, Charles Tupper
by name. In 1852 he had demanded to be heard at one of Howe's
meetings. 'Let {132} us hear the little doctor by all means,' said
Howe, with contemptuous generosity. 'I would not be any more affected
by anything he might say than by the mewing of yonder kitten.' So
vigorous was Tupper's speech that a bystander muttered that 'it was
possible Joe would find the little doctor a cat that would scratch his
eyes out.' In 1855 the prophecy was fulfilled. In his own county of
Cumberland Howe was defeated by Tupper, and throughout the province the
Conservatives obtained a decisive majority. In the next year Howe was
elected for the county of Hants, but before he took his seat events
occurred of which he took a short-sighted advantage.
The Irish Catholics of the province, whose numbers were now largely
increased by the prospect of work on the railways, were for the most
part hostile to the Protestant population. In face of their undoubted
provocations, an equally narrow and irrational Protestant feeling was
aroused. Late in 1856 this latent bitterness was roused to fury by a
brutal attack by some Irish Catholics upon their fellow-labourers at
Gourley's Shanty, along the line of railway construction. So savage
was the fighting that the military were called out to restore order,
which was not done without {133} bloodshed. Howe saw his chance of
revenge for the unjust treatment he had received at the hands of the
Irish the year before--a chance of forming an almost solid Protestant
party, on the back of which he might ride to power again. Beginning
with justified condemnation of lawlessness and fanaticism, the lust of
conflict and the delirium of the orator soon swept him into a campaign
of attack, and led him to ridicule some of the most sacred tenets of
Catholicism.
It is a sad spectacle. Howe had noble ideas of religious freedom. In
his early struggle against the Oligarchy, when accused of hostility to
the Church of England, he had said, and said with deep sincerity: 'I
wish to see Nova Scotians one happy family worshipping one God, it may
be in different modes at different altars, yet feeling that their
religious belief makes no distinction in their civil privileges, but
that the government and the law are as universal as the atmosphere,
pressing upon yet invigorating all alike.' A few years later, in his
struggle for one undenominational college, he had taken the same
generous stand. In 1849, at a time of great bitterness, he had
supported, before the English of Quebec, the rights of the {134}
French-Canadian Catholics. 'How long will you be making converts of
the compact mass of eight hundred thousand French Canadians, who must
by and by multiply to millions, and who will adhere all the more
closely to their customs and their faith, if their attachment to them
be made the pretext for persecution? In the sunshine, the Frenchman
may cast aside his grey capote; but, depend upon it, when the storm
blows, he will clasp it more closely to his frame. You ask me what is
to be done with these recusants? Just what is done now in Nova Scotia
on a small scale, and by republican America on a large one: know no
distinctions of origin, of race, of creed. Treat all men alike.'
Yet now we find the same Howe shrilling forth the very blasts of
persecution which he had denounced. Provocation he had--bitter,
violent provocation. But he had yielded place unto wrath; his egoism,
his worship of success, were getting the better of his nobler side.
He had his reward. In 1860 his party was victorious at the general
election. For the next three years he was in office, outwardly the
same cheery Joe as ever, inwardly distracted, rebellious, pining for a
wider field. But in 1863 Tupper and the Conservatives {135} swept the
province with the cry of retrenchment. In a house of fifty-four Howe
had but fourteen followers. For the moment he was glad to be quit of
office. 'If ever I can be of use to Nova Scotia, let me know,' were
his words to Dr Tupper as he handed over the keys of the provincial
secretary's office. Later in the year he accepted from the Imperial
government the important post of Fishery Commissioner. He was sixty
years of age, and his part on the political stage seemed to have been
played. But to the drama of his life a stirring last act and a
peaceful epilogue were to be added.
Ever since the American colonies had torn away, the plan of a union,
legislative or federal, of the remainder of British North America had
been mooted, and nowhere with greater favour than in Nova Scotia.
Geographical difficulties long made it an impossibility, but the
steam-engine gave man the triumph over geography, and by 1860 an
intercolonial railway, though not built, was evidently buildable. In
1864 the exigencies of Canadian party politics forced federation to the
front with startling suddenness. Weary of long jangling, resulting in
a deadlock which {136} two elections and four governments within three
years had failed to break, the nobler spirits of both parties in Canada
resolved to find a solution in a wider federation. In the same year Dr
Tupper had brought about a conference at Charlottetown, which met in
September to discuss the question of Maritime Union. To this Howe,
though a political opponent, had been invited, but pressure of work had
prevented his attendance. Delegates from Canada persuaded the
conference to take a wider sweep. Howe would now have liked to be
present, but the season was getting late, and when he asked for a boat
on the pretext of doing some inspection along the Island shore, the
admiral on the station refused to furnish it. 'If I had had any idea
of why he really wanted that ship, he could have had my whole
squadron,' said the rueful admiral in after years. After some
preliminary talk, the members of the conference adjourned to Quebec,
and there gradually wrought out the resolutions which are at the basis
of the British North America Act. They then returned to their homes,
to endeavour to secure the adoption of these resolutions by the
legislatures and people of their several provinces.
{137}
In Nova Scotia rumours of dissatisfaction were soon heard. The
merchant aristocracy of Halifax at once saw that free trade between the
provinces, an essential part of the projected plan, would destroy their
monopoly of the provincial market. They were wealthy and influential,
and an opposition soon was formed, including members of both political
parties. Their prospects of success hinged largely on the attitude of
Howe.
At first it seemed as though for Joe Howe there could be but one side.
It was taken for granted that he, who had spoken so many eloquent
words, all pointing to the magnificent future of British North America,
all tending to inspire its youth with love of country as something far
higher than mere provincialism, would now be among the advocates of
federation, and the wise and loving critic of the scheme to be
submitted to the legislatures. Though his ideal had ever looked beyond
to a wider Imperial federation, he had at his best always regarded
Canadian federation as a necessary preparation for it. In the
troublous times of 1849, when the Montreal merchants shouted for
Annexation, he had urged Confederation as a nobler remedy. It had been
the incentive to his work for the {138} inter-colonial railway. In
1861 he had moved in the legislature a resolution in its favour. As
late as August 1864, on the visit to Halifax of some Canadian
delegates, he had been convivially eloquent in favour of union. While
all this in no way committed him to the details of the Quebec plan, it
went far to binding him to its principle. Yet it soon began to be
rumoured that he was talking against it, and in January 1865 a series
of letters on 'The Botheration Scheme' appeared in the _Morning
Chronicle_, in which none could fail to recognize the hand of the
veteran.
What were his objections to the plan? He sets them out in a letter to
Lord John Russell in January 1865.
1. The Maritime Provinces, and especially his beloved Nova Scotia, are
being swamped. A little later he wrote to another friend: 'I have no
invincible objection to become an unionist provided any one will show
me a scheme which does not sacrifice the interests of the Maritime
Provinces.'
2. They will be swamped by Canadians, a poor lot of people, a little
eccentric at all times, and at the worst given to rebellion--led by
political tricksters of the type of his old enemy Hincks.
{139}
3. A federation is cumbrous, and inferior to a legislative union, such
as that of the British Isles.
4. It will involve a raising of the low tariff of Nova Scotia, and
ultimately protection.
To these arguments he afterwards added that a union of such widely
scattered provinces was geographically difficult, and that it would
arouse the suspicion and hostility of the United States.
These reasons, feeble enough at best, were at least political;
unfortunately he had other reasons, deeper and more personal.
There can be no doubt that if he had gone to Charlottetown and Quebec,
as one of the delegates, he would have thrown himself heartily into the
project, and left his mark on the proposed constitution. It galled him
that the Quebec scheme had been completed to the minutest detail, and
published to the world, without any assistance from himself. He soon
found that the people of the Maritime Provinces generally were averse
to the scheme, and that many were already arrayed in downright
opposition to it. What was he to do? He paused for a little. Two
courses were open, one noble, one less noble. Not only in youth has
Hercules' Choice to be made. Stern {140} principle called on him to
take one course, a hundred pleasant voices called on the other side.
Was he to be the lieutenant of Dr Tupper, the man who had taken the
popular breeze out of his sails, who had politically annihilated him
for a time, with whom, too, his contest had been mainly personal, for
no great political question had been involved between them; or was he
to put himself at the head of old friends and old foes, regain his
proper place, and steer the ship in his own fashion? In the
circumstances, only a hero could have done his duty. There are few
heroes in the world, and it is doubtful if modern statecraft conduces
to make men heroic. And Howe was an egoist. Friends and colleagues
had known his weakness before, but had scarce ventured to speak of it
in public. In his cabinets he had suffered no rival. To those who
submitted he was sweet as summer. He would give everything to or for
them, keeping nothing for himself. They might have the pelf if he had
the power. Proposals that did not emanate from himself got scant
justice in council or caucus. This egoism, which long feeding on
popular applause had developed into a vanity almost incomprehensible in
one so strong, was not {141} known to the outside world. But now, in
his hour of trial, his sin had found him out. The real reason of his
opposition was given in his savage words to a friend: 'I will not play
second fiddle to that d----d Tupper.'
But the egoist was also 'a bonny fighter.' He flung himself into the
fray as wild with excitement as any soldier on a stricken field. With
every artifice of the orator he wrought the people of Nova Scotia to
madness. It was poor stuff, most of it; coarse jokes, recrimination,
crowd-catching claptrap. Eighty cents per head of population was,
according to the agreement, to be the subsidy from the federal to the
provincial government. 'We are sold for the price of a sheep-skin,'
was Howe's slogan on a hundred platforms. Dr Tupper had passed a
measure, instituting compulsory primary education, based on direct
local assessment. In his heart of hearts Howe knew that it was a noble
measure, such as he himself had wished to introduce but dared not; yet
he did not scruple to play upon the hatred of the farmer against direct
taxation. Instead of rousing, as of old, their love of Nova Scotia
till it included all British North America and widened ever outward
till the whole Empire was within, he made {142} of it a bitter, selfish
thing, localism and provincialism incarnate. Yet as an orator he was
supreme.
Darkened so, yet shone
Above them all the archangel.
When the ablest speakers on behalf of federation met him on the
platform, they were swept away in the blast of his ridicule and his
passion.
In the midst of it his nobler self shone out again. The Reciprocity
Treaty between Canada and the United States, negotiated by Lord Elgin
in 1854, had been denounced by the government of the United States. To
discuss this action, a great convention of representatives of the
Boards of Trade and other commercial bodies of the northern and western
States met in Detroit in August 1865, and was visited by Canadian
delegates, of whom Howe was one. On the 14th of August he spoke as the
representative of the British North American provinces. The audience
at first was hostile. Gradually the skill and fire of the orator
warmed them. At the last these hundreds of hard-headed business men
rose spontaneously to their feet, and, amid tumultuous cheering, by a
unanimous standing vote passed a resolution recommending the {143}
renewal of the treaty. Seldom can orator have won a more signal
triumph.
For a time his anti-federation campaign went merrily, and received an
impetus from the defeat in 1865 of the pro-federation government of New
Brunswick. But Howe reckoned without the unflinching will of Tupper, a
political bull-dog with a touch of fox. Though the province was
obviously against him, the Conservative leader had a majority in the
legislature in his favour. That this majority had been elected on
other issues, and that the proper constitutional course was to consult
the people, mattered not to him. Here was a big thing to do, and he
was not the man to be squeamish on a point of constitutional
correctness. He held his majority together by the strong hand. In
1866 he succeeded in getting a resolution passed, authorizing the
sending of 'delegates to arrange with the Imperial government a scheme
of union which will effectively ensure just provisions for the rights
and interests of the province.' The Quebec Resolutions were not
mentioned, but it was to support the Quebec Resolutions that the
delegates went.
Howe also visited London, and endeavoured to sidetrack the federation
scheme by a {144} revival of his old idea of an organic union of the
Empire with colonial representation in the Imperial parliament. To the
pamphlet in which he put forward his views Tupper published a smashing
reply, which consisted solely of extracts from Howe's own previous
speeches in favour of British North American union. Against Howe he
set Howe, and seldom was an opponent more effectively demolished.
Meanwhile conferences between the representatives of Canada, New
Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, presided over by the British secretary of
state for the Colonies, wrought out the British North America Act. In
March 1867 it became law, and on the 1st of July 1867 it came into
force.
[Illustration: JOSEPH HOWE. From a photograph by Notman, taken about
1871]
What was Nova Scotia to do? At the first election subsequent to
federation, among the nineteen Nova Scotian delegates, Tupper alone of
the Conservatives was elected. Eighteen others, with Howe at their
head, went to Ottawa pledged to secure repeal. In the local house, of
thirty-eight members two only supported federation. Howe had his
majority; but what was he to do with it? Repeal could come only from
England, and to England Howe went. One good argument he had, and one
only, that Tupper had refused to consult the electorate on a question
involving their {145} whole constitutional status as a province; that,
as he put it, they had been entrapped into a revolution. With the aid
of this he won the support of the great English orator, John Bright,
and had the matter brought up in the House of Commons. But Bright's
motion for a committee of investigation was voted down by an
overwhelming majority.
Meanwhile Tupper, with fine courage, had followed him to London, and
had made his first call upon Howe himself. Howe was not at home, but
Tupper left his card, and Howe returned the call. Over forty years
later the veteran, now Sir Charles Tupper, told in his _Recollections_
the story of their interview.
'I can't say that I am glad to see you,' said Howe, 'but we must make
the best of it.'
'When you fail in the mission that brought you here,' said Tupper;
'when you find out the Imperial government and parliament are
overwhelmingly against you--what then?'
Howe replied: 'I have eight hundred men in each county in Nova Scotia
who will take an oath that they will never pay a cent of taxation to
the Dominion, and I defy the government to enforce Confederation.'
'You have no power of taxation, Howe,' Tupper replied, 'and in a few
years you will {146} have every sensible man cursing you, as there will
be no money for schools, roads, or bridges. I will not ask that troops
be sent to Nova Scotia, but I shall recommend that if the people refuse
to obey the law, that the federal subsidy be withheld.'
'Howe,' he continued, 'you have a majority at your back, but if you
will enter the Cabinet and assist in carrying on the work of
Confederation, you will find me as strong a supporter as I have been an
opponent.'
'Two hours of free and frank discussion followed,' writes Tupper. That
very night Tupper wrote to Sir John Macdonald that he thought Howe
would join the Dominion Cabinet.
On his return to Nova Scotia, Howe found that the extreme repealers in
the local legislature were talking secession and hinting at annexation
to the United States. He could countenance neither. The son of the
Loyalist was loyal at the last. The whole province was like tinder. A
spark would have kindled a fire that would have ruined it, or thrown it
back ten or twenty years. Howe trampled the spark under his feet.
Meanwhile, in Ottawa, an unrivalled political tactician was watching
the situation. While {147} the fever in Nova Scotia was at its height,
Sir John Macdonald had refused to say a word. Now that the fever had
run its course, now that the one able leader of the repeal cause
realized the _impasse_ into which he had brought his beloved province,
Macdonald saw that it was the time for him 'from the nettle danger to
pluck the flower safety.' He entered into negotiations with Howe,
employing all his art and all his sagacity. Clearly he put the choice.
Nova Scotia was in the Dominion, and the only way out led direct to
Washington. Was not the only possible course for the greatest Nova
Scotian to sink his personal feelings, and to join in giving to Nova
Scotia her due part in a nation stretching from sea to sea and from the
Arctic to the Great Lakes, puissant and loyal beneath the flag of
Britain?
Against this conclusion Howe fought hard. It meant for him an act of
inconsistency which he well knew his recent allies would stigmatize as
apostasy. But the logic of the situation was too strong for him, and
with noble self-sacrifice he faced it. In January 1869 he entered the
Cabinet of Sir John Macdonald, and by so doing won for Nova Scotia the
better financial terms which removed her {148} most tangible grievance.
By this time most of the leaders of the repeal party were ready for
this step, even though their followers were not. Had Howe sunk his
egoism and consulted them before he crossed the Rubicon, had there been
no telegraph between Ottawa and Halifax, so that he could have come
personally and have been the first to explain to them the improved
financial terms which he had won, and the necessity of his entering the
Cabinet as a pledge of his sincerity, they would probably have been
satisfied. But the telegraph spoiled all, especially as there were men
in the local legislature who were fretting against his leadership.
They felt themselves to be in a false position, from which they could
escape by making Howe the scapegoat. For ten days the only fact that
was made to stand out before all eyes was that the leader of the
anti-confederate and repeal party had taken office under Sir John
Macdonald. The cry was raised, Howe has sold himself; Howe is a
traitor. They condemned him unheard. When he returned to Halifax, old
friends crossed the street to avoid speaking to him, and young friends,
who once would have felt honoured by a word, walked as close before or
behind him as possible that he might hear {149} their insults. He was
getting old; during his labours in 1866 in England bronchitis had
fastened on him; and now the love and trust of the people--that which
had been the breath of his nostrils--failed him utterly.
Having accepted Cabinet rank, he had to resign his seat in Hants
county, and to appeal to his constituents for re-election. The result
was the fiercest fight in the history of the province. Money was
openly lavished by both sides. Howe fought well, but his health gave
way, and for the first time in his life his buoyancy and courage
deserted him. Finally, at a little village where he and a prominent
opponent were to face each other, Howe broke down, and sent a friend to
ask his antagonist to postpone the meeting.
'Why must it be postponed?' was the reply.
'Sir, to speak to-night would kill Mr Howe.'
'Damn him! that's what we want,' was the fierce reply, symbolic of the
merciless spirit of the contest.
Howe dragged himself to the platform, too ill to stand. Eventually he
gained his election, but his health was shattered, and he was never the
old Joe Howe again.
Then came the end. In the Cabinet he was not a success. He
represented a small {150} province with few votes, and even so he
shared the leadership with Tupper. To Sir John Macdonald, too intent
on a few great ends to have any place for unprofitable sentiment, the
weary Titan was of less account than half a dozen Quebec or Ontario
members with less than one-tenth of his ability, but with twice the
number of votes in their control. Howe chafed under Macdonald's
drastic though kindly sway, and by impetuous outbreaks more than once
got the government into trouble. Late in 1869 he was sent to the Red
River Settlement, in the hope of smoothing out the difficulties there.
He did no good, still further weakened his health, and on his return
was involved in a bitter quarrel with one of his colleagues, the Hon.
William M'Dougall.
In 1872 he shared with Tupper the triumph of carrying in favour of the
Conservative party eighteen of the nineteen seats in Nova Scotia, and
of finally silencing the cry of repeal. In May 1873 his failing health
led to his being appointed lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia. He died
suddenly on the 1st of June 1873.
Here, with a few words, we close our sketch of this man, the greatest
that Nova Scotia has produced. Judging him not by single acts, {151}
as no one ever should be judged, but by his life as a whole, he may be
called a great man. His honesty of purpose and love of country, his
creative faculty, width of view, and power of will combined, entitle
him to be called a great statesman. He was more than a politician and
more than an orator. He had qualities that made men willing to follow
him even when they did not see where they were going, or only saw that
they were going in a direction different from their former course.
Steering in the teeth of former professions, he bade them have
patience, for he was tacking; and they believed him. True, they were
swayed by his eloquence, and gladdened by his sympathy and his humour.
The fascination of the orator thrilled them; but had they not believed
that at bottom he was sincere, the charm would soon have ceased to
work. As it was, they followed him as few parties have ever followed a
leader. Men followed him against their own interests, against their
own Church, against their own prejudices and convictions.
Episcopalians fought by his side against the Church of England;
Baptists fought with him against the demands of their denomination;
Roman Catholics stood by him when he assailed the doctrines of their
Church.
{152}
Though he was merciless in conflict, bitterness did not dwell in his
heart. He was always willing to shake hands, in true English fashion,
when the war was over. If friends expostulated about the generosity of
his language or actions to political opponents, 'Oh! what's the use,'
he would reply, 'he has got a pretty wife'; or, 'he is not such a bad
fellow after all'; or, 'life is too short to keep that sort of thing
up.' He was generous partly because he felt he could afford it, for he
had boundless confidence in his own resources. This self-confidence
gave him a hearty, cheery manner, no matter what straits he was in,
that acted on his followers like wine.
The one thing lacking was that he had not wholly subordinated self to
duty and to God. He was immersed in active engagements and all the
cares of life from early years. He was capable of enjoying, and he did
enjoy without stint, every sweet cup that was presented to his lips.
He was conscious of great powers that never seemed to fail him, but
enabled him to rise with the occasion ever higher and higher. Small
wonder, then, that he cast himself as a strong swimmer into the boiling
currents of life, little caring whither they bore {153} him, because
proudly confident that he could hold his own, or, at any rate, regain
the shore whenever he liked.
A thorough intellectual training would have done much for him. The
discipline of a university career enables even a young man to know
somewhat of his own strength and weakness, especially somewhat of his
own awful ignorance; and self-knowledge leads to self-control.
Circumstances put this beyond his reach; but something more excellent
than even a college was within his reach, had he only been wise enough
to understand and possess it as his own. In his father he had a
pattern of things in the heavens; a life in which law and freedom meant
the same thing; in which the harmony between his own will and the will
of God gave unity, harmony, and nobleness to life and life's work. The
teaching of the old Loyalist's life was the eternal teaching of the
stars:
Like as a star
That maketh not haste,
That taketh not rest,
Let each be fulfilling
His God-given hest.
But the veins of the son were full of blood and his bones moistened
with marrow. Passion {154} spoke in his soul, and he heard and loved
the sweet voices of nature, and of men and women. Not that the
whispers of heaven were unheard. No; nor were they disregarded; but
they were not absolutely and implicitly obeyed. And so, like the vast
crowd, all through life he was partly the creature of impulse and
partly the servant of principle. Often it would have been difficult
for himself to say which was uppermost in him. Had he attained to
unity and harmony of nature, he could have been a poet, or a statesman
of the old heroic type. But he did not attain, for he did not seek
with the whole heart. And he puzzled others, because he had never read
the riddle of himself.
All Nova Scotians are glad that he spent his last days in Government
House. It was an honour he himself felt to be his due--a light, though
it were but the light of a wintry sun, that fell on his declining days.
Many old friends flocked to see him; and the meetings were sometimes
very touching. An old follower, one who had never failed him, came to
pay his tribute of glad homage. His chief had reached a haven of rest
and the height of his ambition. When the door was opened, the governor
was at the other end of the room. {155} He turned, and the two
recognized each other. Not a word was spoken. The rugged face of the
liegeman was tremulous. He looked round; yes, it was actually old
Government House, and his chief was in possession. After all the
storms and disappointments, it had actually come to this. The two men
drew near, and as hand touched hand the two heads bowed together, and
without a word they embraced as two children would. Are there many
such little wells of poetry in the arid wilderness of political life?
On the day of his arrival in Halifax a true and tried relative called.
'Well, Joseph, what would your old father have thought of this?'
'Yes,' was the answer, 'it would have pleased the old man. I have had
a long fight for it, and have stormed the castle at last. But now that
I have it, what does it all amount to? I shall be here but a few days;
and instead of playing governor, I feel like saying with Wolsey, to the
Abbot of Leicester:
An old man, broken with the storms of State,
Is come to lay his weary bones among ye;
Give him a little earth for charity.'
That was almost all that was given him. The only levee he held in
Government House was {156} after his death, when he lay in state, and
thousands crowded round to take a long last look at their old idol.
On the morning after Howe's death a wealthy Halifax merchant, one who
had been a devoted friend of his, saw as he was entering his place of
business a farmer or drover, one well known for 'homespun without, and
a warm heart within,' sitting on a box outside near the door, his head
leaning on his hand, his foot monotonously swinging to and fro, looking
as if he had sat there for hours and had no intention of getting up in
a hurry. 'Well, Stephen, what's the matter?' 'Oh, nauthin',' was the
dull response. 'Is it Howe?' was the next question, in a softer tone.
The sound of the name unsealed the fountain. 'Yes, it's Howe.' The
words came with a gulp, and then followed tears, dropping on the
pavement large and fast. He did not weep alone. In many a hamlet, in
many a fishing village, in many a nook and corner of Nova Scotia, as
the news went over the land, Joseph Howe had the same tribute of tears.
Vex not his ghost; O let him pass! he hates him
That would upon the rack of this rough world
Stretch him out longer.
{157} He sleeps in Camphill Cemetery, not far from the pines and salt
sea water of his boyhood, a column of Nova Scotian granite marking his
resting-place; and his memory abides in the hearts of thousands of his
countrymen.
{158}
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Besides the two noble volumes, _Speeches and Public Letters of Joseph
Howe_, edited by Joseph Andrew Chisholm, K. C. (Halifax, 1909), the
reader should consult the biography of Howe by Mr Justice Longley in
the 'Makers of Canada' series, and the account of Nova Scotian history
by Professor Archibald MacMechan in _Canada and its Provinces_, vol.
xiii. See also _Recollections of Sixty Years in Canada_ by Sir Charles
Tupper (London, 1914); and, in this Series, _The Winning of Popular
Government_ and _The Railway Builders_. For an intimate study of life
in Nova Scotia there are no books equal to the works of Thomas Chandler
Haliburton.
{159}
INDEX
Acadia College, 76, 77, 78.
Acadians, their expulsion, 4.
Almon, Mr, his appointment to the Executive Council objected to, 80.
American Revolution, its effect on Britain's colonial policy, 32-3.
Annand, William, and Howe, 46.
Archibald, S. G. W., 28; takes his stand on 'no taxation
without representation,' 44.
Assembly, the, representative but irresponsible, 33-4; the
fight for Responsible Government, 50-5, 88-9; Howe's
Twelve Resolutions, 50-4; the struggle with the governor
over Lord John Russell's dispatch, 61-4; the victory of
the Reformers, 88-90.
Bank of Nova Scotia, founding of the, 37.
Blanchard, Jotham, and Howe, 28.
Blessington, Countess of, her method of aiding impecunious
relations, 38.
Bright, John, and Howe, 145.
British North America Act, the, 136, 144.
Buller, Charles, on the patronage of the Colonial Office, 38-9.
Campbell, Sir Colin, lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, 61-64, 76.
Canada, the railway question in, 92, 95, 115.
Chandler, E. B., his railway mission, 112, 113, 114.
Chapman, H. S., and Howe, 56.
Church of England, its power in Nova Scotia, 34-6, 55.
Colonial Office, its patronage, 38, 39; and Howe's desire to
enter Imperial service, 128-9.
Council, the, its composition and powers, 33-4, 36, 38; its
influence and integrity, 39; attempts to lower the duty on
brandy, 44; opposes Howe's Twelve Resolutions, 50-4;
changes in its constitution, 54-5, 64-5; the coming of
Responsible Government, 71-74, 88.
Crawley, Rev. Dr, 76; his education campaign, 77.
Cunard, Samuel, his steamship line founded, 94.
Dalhousie College, 35-6, 76.
Derby, Lord, 121, 125; his 'handsome letter' to Howe, 126-7.
Douglas, Sir James, lieutenant-governor of British Columbia, 127.
Doyle, Laurence O'Connor, and Howe, 28, 50.
Durham, Lord, his Report on the state of Canada, 56-7, 92.
Elgin, Lord, his Reciprocity Treaty, 142.
Executive Council, 55. See Council.
Falkland, Lord, lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, 64,
69, 70, 72-3; his quarrel with Howe, 74, 79, 80, 81-6; leaves
the province, 86.
'Family Compact' of Nova Scotia, the, 39-40, 58, 108;
the struggle against, 44, 89. See Council.
George, Sir Rupert D., refuses to resign office, 88.
Glenelg, Lord, colonial secretary, 54-5.
Gourley's Shanty, the brawl at, 132-3.
Grand Trunk Railway, the, 114.
Great Britain, her treatment of the Loyalists, 17; her
restrictive colonial system, 30-3; her control over Nova Scotian
political affairs, 33; her system of Responsible Government, 47-9;
her survey for an intercolonial railway in Canada, 92;
her promise of a guarantee, 99, 112-13, 116;
sends Howe on a recruiting mission to the United States, 130-1.
Grey, Lord, his dispatch instituting Responsible Government
in Nova Scotia, 88; his railway policy, 96, 100; his promise
to Howe of an Imperial guarantee, 96-100; his
evasion, 112-13, 116-18, 129; and Howe's convict scheme, 109-10.
Haliburton, T. C. (Sam Slick), 28; his theory of government,
39-43, 108; his voyage with Howe, 92, 93-4.
Halifax, 4; its importance, 7-8, 10, 94; its traditions and life
in the early nineteenth century, 8-10; 'Society' and
Howe, 38, 65-9, 72; and Confederation, 137.
Halifax Banking Company, its financial and legislative monopoly, 36-7.
Halliburton, Sir Brenton, compliments Howe, 22.
Harvey, Sir John, 61; lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, 87, 88.
Hawes, Mr, and Howe's railway campaign, 96-9, 113, 116, 118.
Hincks, Sir Francis, 112; his railway mission, 113, 114-15;
and Howe, 123, 138.
Howe, John, his career and character, 14-18, 153.
Howe, Joseph, his birth and school days, 11-13; his education,
18-20, 26; his admiration for his father, 15-17, 20; his
apprenticeship, 18, 19; an early drowning experience,
20-1; resolves to make letters his career, 22, 26; from the
'Acadian' to the 'Nova Scotian,' 22, 24, 26-9, 81-3;
his marriage, 23; inaugurates 'The Club,' 28; impugns the
integrity of the administration of Halifax, 29, 43, 9; his
great triumph in the prosecution for libel, 44-6; leaps into
fame as an orator, 46, 142-3; elected to the Assembly
determined to obtain Responsible Government, 46, 50, 88-90, 123;
begins the attack on the Council with Twelve Resolutions, 50-4, 37;
his address to the Crown, 54; gives proof of his loyalty, 56, 108,
130, 146, 147; his defence of Responsible Government in
answer to Lord John Russell, 57-61, 74; his meeting with
Lord Sydenham, 63-4; and Sir Colin Campbell, 64; appointed
to the Executive Council, 65, 72; becomes an object of hatred to
Halifax 'Society,' 65-70; shows his grit and courage, 23, 67-70;
on patronage, 71; resigns the speakership to become collector
of customs, 73; his controversy with Johnston, 74-80, 83;
his agitation in favour of an undenominational college, 75, 76-9,
133, 141; advocates the party government system, 79; and resigns
from the Executive Council, 80; his quarrel with Lord Falkland
ends with the governor's recall, 81-7; refuses to assist
in forming a coalition government, 87; becomes provincial
secretary in the first Reform administration, 88, 124-5, 135;
advocates the building of railways, 92-4; his voyage with
Haliburton on the 'Tyrian,' 93-4; his policy of state
ownership and construction, 95, 100, 104; his railway
campaign in England, 96-100; his interview with Lord
Grey, 96-8; secures an Imperial guarantee for an inter-colonial
railway, 99-104; on the inferior position of the
colonial, 101-3, 108, 109; advocates emigration to Canada
as a solution of the poverty problem in Britain, 103-4; on
Imperial consolidation, 101-107; his visions of a great
future for Canada, 105-7; his rousing call to Nova Scotia
and his prophecy, 105-8; favours Imperial Federation,
108-9, 119-20, 137, 144; his scheme of settling convicts in
Nova Scotia, 109-10; on the duty of a government, 111;
his railway plans come to grief, 111-13, 117, 119-20;
evades joining Hincks's mission to England, 114-16, 123;
withdraws from the Executive Council to become a Railway
Commissioner, 121; his efforts to enter the Imperial
civil service, 121-7; the causes of his failure, 128-30;
his disastrous recruiting mission in the United States,
130-1; the Irish vote fails him in his contest with
Tupper, 131-2, 140-1; his Protestant campaign, 133-4; appointed
Fishery Commissioner, 135; his anti-Confederation campaign, 136,
137-44; his signal triumph as Canadian delegate to the Reciprocity
convention held in Detroit, 142-3; returned to the Dominion parliament
pledged to secure repeal of the British North America Act, 144; his
mission to London, where he is interviewed by Tupper, 145-146;
enters Sir John Macdonald's Cabinet, 147-8, 149-50;
his heart-rending struggle, 149; lieutenant-governor of
Nova Scotia, 150, 154-5; his death, 150, 154-6; his character,
16, 23, 25-7, 67-8, 82-3, 113, 114, 116, 120, 134, 139-140,
151-4; his appearance, 13-14; his popularity, 6-7, 24-25, 151;
his love for Nova Scotia, 1-3, 8, 19, 24, 27-8, 138-9; his poetic
gift, 12, 22, 29, 82-3; his noble ideas of religious freedom, 133-4.
Howe, Mrs Joseph, 23.
Jackson, Peto, Betts, and Brassey, railway contractors, 114, 117, 118.
Johnston, Hon. J. W., his controversy with Howe, 72-80;
denounces party government, 79; his administration, 81, 83.
Kincaid, Captain John, and Howe, 28.
King's College, 35, 76.
Labouchere, H., colonial secretary, 121, 123-5, 128.
Legislature, the. See Council and Assembly.
Le Marchant, Sir Gaspard, lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, 125.
Lytton, Sir E. B., colonial secretary, 121, 126-7.
Macdonald, Sir John, induces Howe to join his Cabinet, 146-7, 150.
M'Dougall, Hon. William, and Howe, 150.
Mackenzie, W. L., his revolt in Upper Canada, 56.
Metcalfe, Sir Charles, governor-general of Canada, 71.
Molesworth, Sir William, colonial secretary, 121, 122-3.
Murdoch, Beamish, and Howe, 28.
Navigation Acts, the, 30-2.
Newcastle, Duke of, and Howe, 121, 127, 128.
New Brunswick, the railway question in, 94-5, 111-12, 113.
Nova Scotia, and Joseph Howe, 1-3, 6, 130, 156; early settlements
in, 4-7; trade development of, 10, 33; her political
system, 33-4, 36, 38, 42, 43, 54-5, 64-5, 73-4, 88-90;
religious strife in, 35, 77-8, 132-3; and Colonial Office
patronage, 38; the railway question in, 92-3, 94, 96, 114,
121; loyalty of, 103; favours a maritime union, 135; her
hostility to Confederation, 137, 144, 146-8, 150.
Pakington, Sir John, colonial secretary, 114.
Papineau, L. J., his rebellion in Lower Canada, 56.
Reciprocity Treaty, the, Howe's great speech in connection with, 142-3.
Reformers, their success in 1847, 88.
Responsible Government, Haliburton on, 41-3; in Great
Britain, 47-9; the fight for in Nova Scotia, 50-5, 73-4, 80, 88-90.
Robinson, J. B., and Imperial Federation, 108.
Russell, Lord John, on Responsible Government, 57; his
dispatch conferring greater powers on the Assembly, 61,
63; and Howe, 121, 122, 126, 129.
St Mary's College, 76.
South Africa, her objection to Britain's gallows-birds, 109.
Southampton, Howe's meeting at, 2, 96-7, 99.
Stephenson, George, his locomotive, 91.
Sydenham, Lord, his meeting with Howe, 63-4.
Tupper, Sir Charles, his tilt with Howe, 131-2, 134-5,
143-4; his efforts on behalf of Confederation, 136, 143-4,
150; institutes compulsory education, 75, 141; his interview
with Howe in London, 145-6.
Uniacke, J. B., converted to Responsible Government, 62,
69; member of Executive Council, 65; his Reform
administration, 88.
United States, and the 'spoils system,' 88; railway development
in, 91; Howe's recruiting mission in, 131;
and the Reciprocity Treaty, 142-3.
War of 1812, and Halifax, 8.
{165}
THE CHRONICLES OF CANADA
Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton of the University of Toronto
A series of thirty-two freshly-written narratives for popular reading,
designed to set forth, in historic continuity, the principal events and
movements in Canada, from the Norse Voyages to the Railway Builders.
PART I. THE FIRST EUROPEAN VISITORS
1. The Dawn of Canadian History
A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada
BY STEPHEN LEACOCK
2. The Mariner of St Malo
A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier
BY STEPHEN LEACOCK
PART II. THE RISE OF NEW FRANCE
3. The Founder of New France
A Chronicle of Champlain
BY CHARLES W. COLBY
4. The Jesuit Missions
A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness
BY THOMAS GUTHRIE MARQUIS
5. The Seigneurs of Old Canada
A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism
BY WILLIAM BENNETT MUNRO
6. The Great Intendant
A Chronicle of Jean Talon
BY THOMAS CHAPAIS
7. The Fighting Governor
A Chronicle of Frontenac
BY CHARLES W. COLBY
PART III. THE ENGLISH INVASION
8. The Great Fortress
A Chronicle of Louisbourg
BY WILLIAM WOOD
9. The Acadian Exiles
A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline
BY ARTHUR G. DOUGHTY
10. The Passing of New France
A Chronicle of Montcalm
BY WILLIAM WOOD
11. The Winning of Canada
A Chronicle of Wolfe
BY WILLIAM WOOD
PART IV. THE BEGINNINGS OF BRITISH CANADA
12. The Father of British Canada
A Chronicle of Carleton
BY WILLIAM WOOD
13. The United Empire Loyalists
A Chronicle of the Great Migration
BY W. STEWART WALLACE
14. The War with the United States
A Chronicle of 1812
BY WILLIAM WOOD
PART V. THE RED MAN IN CANADA
15. The War Chief of the Ottawas
A Chronicle of the Pontiac War
BY THOMAS GUTHRIE MARQUIS
16. The War Chief of the Six Nations
A Chronicle of Joseph Brant
BY LOUIS AUBREY WOOD
17. Tecumseh
A Chronicle of the last Great Leader of his People
BY ETHEL T. RAYMOND
PART VI. PIONEERS OF THE NORTH AND WEST
18. The 'Adventurers of England' on Hudson Bay
A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North
BY AGNES C. LAUT
19. Pathfinders of the Great Plains
A Chronicle of La Vérendrye and his Sons
BY LAWRENCE J. BURPEE
20. Adventurers of the Far North
A Chronicle of the Arctic Seas
BY STEPHEN LEACOCK
21. The Red River Colony
A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba
BY LOUIS AUBREY WOOD
22. Pioneers of the Pacific Coast
A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters
BY AGNES C. LAUT
23. The Cariboo Trail
A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia
BY AGNES C. LAUT
PART VII. THE STRUGGLE FOR POLITICAL FREEDOM
24. The Family Compact
A Chronicle of the Rebellion in Upper Canada
BY W. STEWART WALLACE
25. The Patriotes of '37
A Chronicle of the Rebellion in Lower Canada
BY ALFRED D. DECELLES
26. The Tribune of Nova Scotia
A Chronicle of Joseph Howe
BY WILLIAM LAWSON GRANT
27. The Winning of Popular Government
A Chronicle of the Union of 1841
BY ARCHIBALD MACMECHAN
PART VIII. THE GROWTH OF NATIONALITY
28. The Fathers of Confederation
A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion
BY A. H. U. COLQUHOUN
29. The Day of Sir John Macdonald
A Chronicle of the Early Years of the Dominion
BY SIR JOSEPH POPE
30. The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier
A Chronicle of Our Own Times
BY OSCAR D. SKELTON
PART IX. NATIONAL HIGHWAYS
31. All Afloat
A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways
BY WILLIAM WOOD
32. The Railway Builders
A Chronicle of Overland Highways
BY OSCAR D. SKELTON
***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRIBUNE OF NOVA SCOTIA***
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