[42] The Montreal Witness, December, 1845. "We do not mean to criticize those prohibitory regulations, but, however good their motives, the effect has been to girdle the tree of knowledge in Canada, by shutting out the people from the only available supplies of books."

[43] Lord Durham's Report, ii. p. 138.

[44] Strachan, A Journal of Visitation to the Western Portion of his Diocese (1842). Third edition, London, 1846.

[45] Memorial of the Rev. E. Black, D.D., to the Secretary of State for the Colonies.

[46] Memorials of the Rev. J. Machar, D.D., p. 38.

[47] Bell, Hints to Emigrants, p. 86.

[48] Robinson, Life of Sir J. B. Robinson, p. 179.

[49] Dent, The Last Forty Years, i. p. 109.

[50] Sir G. Grey to the Rev. E. Black, 25 March, 1837, in Correspondence relating to the Churches of England and Scotland in Canada (15 April, 1840).

[51] Bell, Hints to Emigrants, p. 101.

[52] Lord Sydenham to Lord John Russell, 22 January, 1840.

[53] Quoted from Dent, The Last Forty Years, ii. p. 192.

[54] That is, his bill for dividing the Reserves in certain proportions among the churches.

[55] Poulett Scrope, Life of Lord Sydenham, pp. 160-1.

[56] See the Elgin-Grey Correspondence (Canadian Archives) for the year 1850.

[57] Christie, History of Lower Canada, v. pp. 113-14.

[58] Faithful unto Death, a Memorial of John Anderson, late Janitor of Queen's College, p. 26.

[59] Sir Charles Bagot to Lord Stanley, 26 September, 1842.

[60] Bagot Correspondence: Cartwright to Bagot, 16 May, 1842.

[61] Arthur to Normanby, 2 July, 1839.

[62] Lord Sydenham to Lord John Russell, 23 February, 1841.

[63] Elgin-Grey Correspondence: W. L. Mackenzie to Major Campbell, 14 February, 1848.

[64] Hincks, Reminiscences, p. 15.

[65] Poulett Scrope, Life of Lord Sydenham, p. 165.

[66] See, for example, a despatch—Metcalfe to Stanley, 24 June, 1843—descriptive of troubles on the Beauharnois Canal.

[67] A bill of 1833, penes me.

[68] Metcalfe to Stanley, 23 December, 1843.



{70}

CHAPTER III.

THE GOVERNORS-GENERAL: LORD SYDENHAM.

Between 1839 and 1854, four governors-general exercised authority over Canada, the Right Honourable Charles Poulett Thomson, later Lord Sydenham, Sir Charles Bagot, Charles, Lord Metcalfe, and the Earl of Elgin.[1] Their statesmanship, their errors, the accidents which modified their policies, and the influence of their decisions and despatches on British cabinets, constitute on the whole the most important factor in the creation of the modern Canadian theory of government. In consequence, their conduct with reference to colonial autonomy and all the questions therewith connected, demands the most careful and detailed treatment.

When Lord John Russell, then leader of the House of Commons, and Secretary of State for the {71} Colonies, selected a new governor-general of Canada to complete the work begun by Durham, he entrusted to him an elaborate system of government, most of it experimental and as yet untried. He was to superintend the completion of that Union between Upper and Lower Canada, which Durham had so strenuously advocated; and the Union was to be the centre of a general administrative reconstruction. The programme outlined in Russell's instructions proposed "a legislative union of the two provinces, a just regard to the claims of either province in adjusting the terms of that union, the maintenance of the three Estates of the Provincial Legislature, the settlement of a permanent Civil List for securing the independence of the judges, and, to the executive government, that freedom of action which is necessary for the public good, and the establishment of a system of local government by representative bodies, freely elected in the various cities and rural districts."[2] In attaining these ends, all of them obviously to the advantage of the colony, the Colonial Secretary desired to consult, and, as far as possible, to defer to Canadian public opinion.[3]

{72}

Nevertheless, Lord John Russell had no sooner entered upon his administrative reforms, than he found himself face to face with a fundamental constitutional difficulty. He proposed to play the part of a reformer in Canada; but the majority of reformers in that province added to his programme the demand for executive councils, not merely sympathetic to popular claims, but responsible to the representatives of the people in a Canadian Parliament. Now according to all the traditions of imperial government a demand so far-reaching involved the disruption of the empire, and ended the connection between Canada and England. To this general objection the British minister added a subtler point in constitutional law. To yield to colonial reforming ideas would be to contradict the existing conventions of the constitution. "The power for which a minister is responsible in England," he wrote to his new governor, "is not his own power, but the power of the crown, of which he is for the time the organ. It is obvious that the executive councillor of a colony is in a situation totally different.... Can the colonial council be the advisers of the crown of England? Evidently not, for the crown has other advisers for the same functions, and with {73} superior authority. It may happen, therefore, that the governor receives, at one and the same time, instructions from the Queen and advice from his executive council totally at variance with each other. If he is to obey his instructions from England, the parallel of constitutional responsibility entirely fails; if, on the other hand, he is to follow the advice of his council, he is no longer a subordinate officer, but an independent sovereign."[4] The governor-general, then, was in no way to concede to the Canadian assembly a responsibility and power which resided only in the British ministry.

At the same time large concessions, in spirit if not in letter, helped to modify the rigour of this constitutional doctrine. "I have not drawn any specific line," Russell wrote at the end of the despatch already quoted, "beyond which the power of the governor on the one hand, and the privileges of the assembly on the other, ought not to extend.... The governor must only oppose the wishes of the assembly when the honour of the crown, or the interests of the empire, are deeply concerned; and the assembly must be ready to modify {74} some of its measures for the sake of harmony, and from a reverent attachment to the authority of Great Britain."

Two days later, an even more important modification than was contained in this exhortation to charity and opportunism was proposed. It had been the chief grievance in both provinces that the executive positions in Canada had been filled with men who held them as permanencies, and in spite of the clamour of public opinion against them. Popular representative rights had been more than counterbalanced by entire executive irresponsibility. A despatch, nominally of general application to British colonies, but, under the circumstances, of special importance to the United Provinces of Canada, changed the status of colonial executive offices: "You will understand, and will cause it to be generally known, that hereafter the tenure of colonial offices held during her Majesty's pleasure, will not be regarded as equivalent to a tenure during good behaviour, but that not only such officers will be called upon to retire from the public service as often as any sufficient motives of public policy may suggest the expediency of that measure, but that a change in the person of the governor will be considered as a sufficient reason for any {75} alterations which his successor may deem it expedient to make in the list of public functionaries, subject of course to the future confirmation of the Sovereign. These remarks do not apply to judicial offices, nor are they meant to apply to places which are altogether ministerial and which do not devolve upon the holders of them duties in the right discharge of which the character and policy of the government are directly involved. They are intended to apply rather to the heads of departments, than to persons serving as clerks or in similar capacities under them; neither do they extend to officers in the service of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury. The functionaries who will be chiefly, though not exclusively, affected by them are the Colonial Secretary, the Treasurer or Receiver-General, the Surveyor-General, the Attorney and Solicitor-General, the Sheriff or Provost Marshal, and other officers who, under different designations from these, are entrusted with the same or similar duties. To this list must also be added the Members of the Council, especially in those colonies in which the Executive and Legislative Councils are distinct bodies."[5]

{76}

The importance of this general circular of October 16th is that, at a time when the Colonial Secretary was exhorting the new governor-general to part with none of his prerogatives, and in a colony where public opinion was importuning with some persistence for a more popular executive, one of the best excuses for withholding from the people their desires was removed. The representative of the crown in consequence found himself with a new and not altogether comfortable opportunity for exercising his freedom of choice.

It fell to Charles Poulett Thomson, President of the Board of Trade in the Whig ministry, to carry out the Union of the two Canadian provinces, and to administer them in accordance with this doctrine of modified autonomy. The choice of the government seemed both wise and foolish. Poulett Thomson had had an admirable training for the work. In a colony where trade and commerce were almost everything, he brought not Durham's aristocratic detachment but a real knowledge of commerce, since his was a great mercantile family. In Parliament, he had become a specialist in the financial and economic issues, which had already displaced the diplomatic or purely political questions of the last generation. {77} His speeches on the revision of taxes, the corn laws, and British foreign trade, proved that, in a utilitarian age, he knew the science of utilities and had freed himself from bureaucratic red tape. His parliamentary career too had taught him the secret of the management of assemblies, and Canada would under him be spared the friction which the rigid attitude of soldiers, trained in the school of Wellington, had been causing throughout the British colonies for many years.

There were, however, many who doubted whether the man had a character and will powerful enough to dominate the turbulent forces of Canadian politics. Physically he was far from strong, and almost the first comment made by Canadians on him was that their new governor-general came to them a valetudinarian. There seemed to be other and more serious elements of weakness. Charles Greville spoke of him with just a tinge of good-natured contempt as "very good humoured, pleasing and intelligent, but the greatest coxcomb I ever saw, and the vainest dog, though his vanity is not offensive or arrogant";[6] and a writer in the Colonial Gazette, whose words reached Canada {78} almost on the day when the new governor arrived, warned Canadians of the imbecility of character which the world attributed to him. "While therefore," the article continues, "we repeat our full conviction that Mr. Thomson is gone to Canada with the opinions and objects which we have here enumerated, let it be distinctly understood that we have little hope of seeing them realised, except through the united and steadfast determination of the Colonists to make use of him as an instrument for accomplishing their own ends."[7] With such an introduction one of the most strongly marked personalities ever concerned with government in Canada entered on his work.

Strange as it may seem in face of these disparaging comments, the new governor-general had already determined to make the assertion of his authority the fundamental thing in his policy, although with him authority always wore the velvet glove over the iron hand. In Lower Canada the suspension of the constitution had already placed dictatorial powers in his hand; but, even in the Upper Province, he seemed to have expected that diplomacy would have to be supported by authority to compel it to come into {79} the Union; and he had no intention of leaving the supremacy over all British North America, which had been conferred on him by his title, to lie unused. The two strenuous years in which he remade Canada fall into natural divisions—the brief episode in Lower Canada of the first month after his arrival; his negotiations with Upper Canada, from November, 1839, to February, 1840; the interregnum of 1840 which preceded the actual proclamation of Union, during which he returned to Montreal, visited the Maritime Provinces, and toured through the Upper Province; and the decisive months, from February till September 19th, 1841, from which in some sort modern Canada took its beginnings.

The first month of his governorship, in which he settled the fate of French Canada, is of greater importance than appears on the surface. The problem of governing Canada was difficult, not simply because Britons in Canada demanded self-government, but because self-government must be shared with French-Canadians. That section of the community, distinct as it was in traditions and political methods, might bring ruin on the Colony either by asserting a supremacy odious to the Anglo-Saxon elements of the population, or by {80} resenting the efforts of the British to assimilate or dominate them. When Poulett Thomson landed, on October 19th, 1839, at Quebec, he was brought at once face to face with the relation between French nationalism and the constitutional resettlement of Canada.

Durham had had no doubt about the true solution. It was to confer free institutions on the colony, and to trust to the natural energy and increase of the Anglo-Saxon element to swamp French nationalite. "I have little doubt," he said, "that the French, when once placed, by the legitimate course of events and the working of natural causes, in a minority, would abandon their vain hopes of nationality."[8] It was in this spirit that his successor endeavoured to govern the French section in Canada. Being both rationalist and utilitarian, like others of his school he minimized the strength of an irrational fact like racial pride, and, almost from the first he discounted the force of French opposition, while he let it, consciously or unconsciously, influence his behaviour towards his French subjects. "If it were possible," he wrote in November, 1839, "the best thing for Lower Canada would be a despotism for ten years {81} more; for, in truth, the people are not yet fit for the higher class of self-government, scarcely indeed, at present, for any description of it."[9] A few months later, his language had become even stronger:—"I have been back three weeks, and have set to work in earnest in this province. It is a bad prospect, however, and presents a lamentable contrast to Upper Canada. There great excitement existed; the people were quarrelling for realities, for political opinions and with a view to ulterior measures. Here there is no such thing as a political opinion. No man looks to a practical measure of improvement. Talk to any one upon education, or public works, or better laws, let him be English or French, you might as well talk Greek to him. Not a man cares for a single practical measure—the only end, one would suppose, of a better form of government. They have only one feeling—a hatred of race."[10]

But at the outset his task was simple. His powers in Lower Canada, as he confessed on his first arrival, were of an extraordinary nature; and indeed it lay with him, and his Special Council, to settle the fate of the province. Pushing on {82} from Quebec to Montreal, he lost no time in calling a meeting of the Special Council, whose members, eighteen in number, he purposely left unchanged from the regime of his predecessor On November 13th and 14th, after discussions in which the minority never exceeded three, that body accepted Union with the Upper Province in six propositions, affirming the principle of union, agreeing to the assimilation of the two provincial debts, and declaring it to be their opinion "that the present temporary legislature should, as soon as practicable, be succeeded by a permanent legislature, in which the people of these two provinces may be adequately represented, and their constitutional rights exercised and maintained."[11] Before he left Montreal, he assured the British ministry that the large majority of those with whom he had spoken, English and French, in the Lower Province were warm advocates of Union.[12]

Yet here lay his first mis judgment, and one of the most serious he made. It was true and obvious that the British inhabitants of Eastern Canada earnestly desired a union which would promote {83} their racial interests; true also that a group of Frenchmen took the same point of view. But the governor was guilty of a grave political error, when he ignored the feeling generally prevalent among the French that Union must be fought. Colborne's judgment in 1839, that French aversion to Union was growing less, seems to have been mistaken.[13] The British government, more especially in the person of Durham, had not disguised their intention—the destruction of French nationalism as it had hitherto existed. They had taken, and were taking, the risk of conducting the experiment in the face of a grant of self-government to the doomed community; and the first governor-general of union and constitutionalism was now to find that French racial unity, combined with self-government, was too strong even for his masterful will, although he had all the weight of Imperial authority behind him. But, for the time, Lower Canada had to be left to its council, and the centre of interest changed to Toronto and Upper Canada.

There, although no racial troubles awaited him, the governor had to persuade a popular assembly before he could have his way; and there for the {84} first time he was made aware of the perplexing cross-currents and side eddies, and confusion of public opinion, which existed everywhere in Canadian politics. So doubtful was the main issue that he debated with himself whether he should venture to meet the Assembly without a dissolution and election on the definite issue of the Union; but the need for haste, and his natural inclination to take risks, and to trust to his powers of management, decided him to face the existing local parliament. By the end of November he had arrived at Toronto, and the Assembly met on December 3rd. Two plain but difficult tasks lay before him: to persuade both houses of Parliament to accept his scheme of Union, and to arrange, on some moderate basis, the whole Clergy Reserve question. To complicate these practical duties, the speculative problem of responsible government, long keenly canvassed in Toronto, and the peculiar conditions and methods of local politics, lay as dangerous obstacles in his path. The manners and methods of the politicians of Upper Canada drew him even in his despatches into vivid criticism. After a month's observation, he sent Russell a long and very able description of the prevailing disorders. In spite of a general loyalty the people {85} had been fretted into vexations and petty divisions, and for the most part felt deep-rooted animosity towards the executive authorities. Indeed, apart from the party bias of the government, its inefficiency and uncertainty had destroyed all public confidence in it. Under the executive government, the authority of the legislative council had been exercised by a very few individuals, representing a mere clique in the capital, frequently opposed both to the government and to the Assembly, and considered by the people hostile to their interests. In the lower chamber, the loss of public influence by the ministry had introduced absolute legislative chaos, and even the control over expenditure, and the examination of accounts, were of the loosest and most irregular character.[14] In a private letter he allowed himself a freedom of expression which renders his description the locus classicus for political conditions before the Union:—"The state of things here is far worse than I had expected. The country is split into factions animated with the most deadly hatred to each other. The people have got into the way of talking so much of separation, {86} that they begin to believe in it. The Constitutional party is as bad or worse than the other, in spite of all their professions of loyalty. The finances are more deranged than we believed even in England. The deficit, L75,000 a year, more than equal to the income. All public works suspended. Emigration going on fast from the province. Every man's property worth only half what it was. When I look to the state of government, and to the departmental administration of the province, instead of being surprised at the condition in which I find it, I am only astonished it has been endured so long. I know that, much as I dislike Yankee institutions and rule, I would not have fought against them, which thousands of these poor fellows, whom the Compact call rebels, did, if it were only to keep up such a Government as they got.... Then the Assembly is such a House! Split into half a dozen parties. The Government having none—and no one man to depend on! Think of a house in which half the members hold places, yet in which the Government does not command a single vote; in which the place-men generally vote against the Executive; and where there is no one to defend the Government when attacked, or {87} to state the opinion and views of the Governor."[15]

With the eye of a political strategist, Poulett Thomson prepared his alternative system, a curious kind of despotism, based, however, simply on his own powers of influencing opinion in the House. It was plain to him that the previous governments had wantonly neglected public opinion.[16] It was also plain that the populace had regarded these governments as consisting not of the governor with his ministers under him, but of the Family Compact clique in place of the governor.[17] The system which he proposed to substitute expressed very fully his working theory. Responsible government in the sweeping sense of that term employed by the reforming party he resisted, holding that, whether against his ministers, or the electors, he must be personally responsible for all his administrative acts. At the same time he assured parliament that "he had received her Majesty's commands to administer the government of these provinces in accordance with the well-understood wishes and interests of the people, and to pay to their feelings, {88} as expressed through their representatives, the deference that is justly due to them."[18] To secure this end, he called public attention to the despatch from Russell, definitely announcing the change of tenure of all save judicial and purely ministerial places, thereby making it clear that no man would be retained in office longer than he seemed acceptable to the governor and the community. Then he set to work to build up, out of moderate men drawn from all groups, a party of compromise and good sense to support him and his ministry; and finally, he claimed for himself the central authority without any modifying conditions. Concerning the ultimate seat of that authority he never hesitated. Whatever power he had came from the Home Ministry as representing the Crown, and to them alone he acknowledged responsibility. For the rest, he had to carry on the Queen's government; that is, to govern Canada so that peace and prosperity might remain unshaken; and as a first condition he had to defer to the wishes of the people. But it cannot be too strongly re-asserted that he refused to surrender one iota of his responsibility, and that the ideal which he set for himself was a combination of governor and prime-minister. The efficiency {89} of his system was to depend on the honestly benevolent intentions which the governor-general cherished towards the people, and on the fidelity of both the ministry and the parliamentary majority established and secured through belief in those intentions.

The new system met with an astounding success. The scheme of Union was laid before both Houses. On the thirteenth of December the Council, which had hitherto been the chief obstacle, approved of the scheme by fourteen votes to eight, the minority consisting of Toronto 'die-hards' with the Bishop, recalcitrant as usual, at their head. Ten days later, the governor-general was able to assure Russell that the Lower House had, after some strenuous debates and divisions, assented also; the only change from his own outline being an amendment that "such part of the civil list as did not relate to the salaries of the judges, and the governor, and the administration of justice, which are made permanent, should be granted for the lifetime of the Queen, or for a period of not less than ten years."[19] On one point, not without its influence in embittering opinion among the French, {90} Parliament and Governor were agreed, that while the debates in the Union parliament might be conducted in either English or French, in the publication of all records of the Legislature the English language only should be adopted.[20]

Swept on by this great initial success, Poulett Thomson determined if possible to settle the Clergy Reserve trouble out of hand. As has been shown above, this ecclesiastical difficulty affected the whole life of the community; and its settlement would mean peace, such as Upper Canada had not known for a generation. The pacificator, however, had to face two groups of irreconcilables, the Bishop of Toronto with his extremist following, and the secularizing party resolute to have done with any form of subsidy to religion. As he himself confessed, he had little hope of succeeding in the Assembly, but he trusted to his new popularity, then at its spring tide, and he won. Before the end of January the question had been settled on a compromise, by a majority of 28 to 20 in the Assembly, and of 14 to 4 in the Council. It was even more satisfactory to know that out of 22 members of Assembly who were communicants of the Church of England, only 8 {91} voted in favour of the status quo. There was but one set-back. Legal opinion in England decided that the local assembly had not powers to change the original act of 1791; and in the Imperial legislation which this check made necessary, other influences crept in, and the governor-general bitterly complained that the monstrous proportion allotted to the Church of England, and the miserable proportion set apart for other churches, rendered the Act only less an evil than if the question had been left unsettled.[21] Still, the settlement retained existing reserves for religious purposes, ended the creation of fresh reserves, divided past sales of land between the Churches of England and of Scotland, and arranged for the distribution of the proceeds of future sales roughly in proportion to the numbers and importance of all the churches in Canada. It was not an ideal arrangement, but quiet men were anxious to clear the obstacle from the way, and through such men Poulett Thomson worked his will. It is the most striking testimony to the governor's power of management that, as a politician stated in 1846, three-quarters of the people believed the arrangement unjust and partial, and acquiesced only because their political head desired it. But {92} the end was not yet, and the uneasy ambition of the Bishop of Toronto was in a few years to bring on his head just retribution for the strife his policy continued to create. Nothing now remained but to close this, the last parliament of Upper Canada under the old regime, and the governor, who never suffered from lack of self-appreciative optimism, wrote home in triumph: "Never was such unanimity. When the speaker read my speech in the Commons, after the prorogation, they gave me three cheers, in which even the ultras joined."[22] It was perhaps the last remnant of this pardonable exultation which swept him over the 360 miles between Toronto and Montreal in thirty-six hours, breaking all records for long-distance sleighing in the province.

The primary duty of the governor had now been accomplished, for he had persuaded both local governments to accept an Imperial Act of Union, and it might seem natural to pass over the intervening months, until Union had been officially proclaimed, and the first Union parliament had been elected and had met. But the interregnum from February, 1840, to February, 1841, must not be ignored. In these twelve short months he turned {93} once again to the problem of Lower Canada, hurried on a short visit to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to settle constitutional difficulties there, returned in a kind of triumphal procession through the English-speaking district of Lower Canada known as the Eastern Townships,[23] and spent the autumn in a tour through the Western part of the newly united colony. It was only fitting that a grateful Queen and Ministry should bestow on him a peerage; henceforward he must appear as Baron Sydenham of Sydenham and Toronto.

But apart from these mere physical activities, he was preparing for the culmination of his work in the new parliament. It must be remembered not only that he distrusted the intelligence and initiative of colonial ministers too much to dream of giving place to them, but that his theory of his own position—the benevolent despot, secured in his supremacy through popular management—forced on him an elaborate programme of useful administration. He must face the new Parliament with a good record, and definite promises. The failure of the home ministry to include the local government clauses, which formed a fundamental {94} part of the Union Bill, made such efforts even more necessary than before. It had been plain to Durham and Charles Buller, as well as to Sydenham, that, if an Act of Union were to pass, it could only be made operative by joining to it an entirely new system of local government. Accordingly, when opposition forced Russell to omit the essential clauses from his Act of Union, Sydenham penned one of his most vigorous despatches in reply. "Owing to this (rejection), duties the most unfit to be discharged by the general legislature are thrown upon it; powers equally dangerous to the subject and to the Crown are assumed by the Assembly. The people receive no training in those habits of self-government which are indispensable to enable them rightly to exercise the power of choosing representatives in parliament. No field is open for the gratification of ambition in a narrow circle, and no opportunity given for testing the talents or integrity of those who are candidates for popular favour. The people acquire no habits of self-dependence for the attainment of their own local objects. Whatever uneasiness they may feel—whatever little improvement in their respective neighbourhoods may appear to be neglected, afford grounds for complaint against the executive. All {95} is charged upon the Government, and a host of discontented spirits are ever ready to excite these feelings. On the other hand, whilst the Government is thus brought directly in contact with the people, it has neither any officer in its own confidence, in the different parts of these extended provinces, from whom it can seek information, nor is there any recognized body, enjoying the public confidence, with whom it can communicate, either to determine what are the real wants and wishes of the locality, or through whom it may afford explanation."[24]

Nothing could be done to remedy the evil in Upper Canada, until the new parliament had met, but the temporary dictatorship still remained in French Canada, and at once Sydenham set to work to create all that he wanted there, recognizing shrewdly that what had been granted in the Lower Province to the French must prove a powerful argument for a similar grant to Upper Canada, when the time should come for action. About the same time, he established by ordinance a popular system of registry offices, to simplify the difficulties introduced into land transfers by the French law—"all {96} the old French law of before the Revolution, Hypotheques tacites et occultes, Dowers' and Minors' rights, Actes par devant notaires, and all the horrible processes by which the unsuspecting are sure to be deluded, and the most wary are often taken in."[25]

Curiously enough, although his love of good government drove him to amend conditions among the French, Sydenham's relations with that people seem to have grown steadily worse. He had made advances to the foremost French politician, La Fontaine, offering him the solicitor-generalship of Lower Canada; but La Fontaine, who never had any enthusiasm for British Whig statesmanship,[26] regarded the offer as a bribe to draw him away from his countrymen and their national ideal, and declined it, thereby increasing the tension. Thus, as the time for the election drew near, the French were still further hardening their hearts against the governor-general of United Canada, and Sydenham, his patience now exhausted, could but exclaim in baffled anger, "As for the French, nothing but time will do anything with them. They hate British rule—British connection—improvements of {97} all kinds, whether in their laws or their roads; so they will sulk, and will try, that is, their leaders, to do all the mischief they can."[27]

Meantime he had prepared two other politic strokes before he called Parliament: the regulation of immigration, and a project for raising a British loan in aid of Canadian public works. Immigration, more especially now that the current had set once more towards Canada, was one of the essential facts in the life of the colony; and yet the evils attendant on it were still as obvious as the gains. Most of the defects so vividly portrayed by Durham and his commissioners still persisted—unsuitable immigrants, over-crowded ships, disease which spread from ship to land and overcrowded the local hospitals, wretched and poverty-stricken masses lingering impotently at Quebec, and a straggling line of westbound settlers, who obtained work and land with difficulty and after many sorrows.[28] Sydenham had none of Gibbon Wakefield's doctrinaire enthusiasm on the subject; and, as he said, the inducements, to parishes and landlords to send out their surplus population were already {98} sufficiently strong. But much could and must be done by way of remedy. It was his plan to regulate more strictly the conditions on board emigrant ships, and to humanize the process of travelling. Government agents must safeguard the rights of ignorant settlers; relief, medical and otherwise, should be in readiness for the destitute and afflicted when they arrived; sales of land were to be simplified and made easier; and a system of public works might enable the local authorities to solve two problems at one time, by giving the poorer settler steady employment, and by completing the great tasks, only half performed in days when money and labour alike were wanting.[29] The final achievement of these objects Sydenham reserved until he should meet parliament, but he had laid his plans, and had primed the home authorities with facts long before that date.

In the same way he had foreseen the need of Canada for Imperial assistance, both in her public works, and in her finance. Assistance in the former of these matters was peculiarly important. Colonists, more especially in the Upper Province, had undertaken the development of Canadian natural resources, but poverty had called a halt {99} before the development was complete, or, by preventing necessary additions and improvements, had rendered useless what had already been done. Conspicuous among such imperfect works were the canals; and Sydenham realized the strange dilemma into which provincial enterprise seemed doomed to run. The province, he told Russell, was sinking under the weight of engagements which it could only meet by fresh outlay, whilst that outlay the condition of its credit preventing it from making.[30] He was therefore prepared to come before the United Parliament with a proposal, backed by the British Ministry, for a great loan of L1,500,000 to be negotiated by the home government, and to be utilized, partly in redeeming the credit of the province, and partly in completing its public works. "It will therefore be absolutely necessary that Her Majesty's government should enable the governor of the province of Canada to afford this relief when the Union is completed, and the financial statement takes place; and I know of no better means than those originally proposed—of guaranteeing a loan which would remove a considerable charge arising from the high rate of interest payable by the province on the debt already contracted, or {100} which it would have to pay for raising fresh loans which may be required hereafter for great local improvements."[31]

There remained now the last and greatest of Sydenham's labours before his stewardship could be honourably accounted for and surrendered, the summoning, meeting, and managing, of a parliament representative of that Canada, English and French, which he had restored and irritated. His reputation must depend the more on this political adventure, because he had already determined that 1841 should be his last year in Canada—he would not stay, he said, though they made him Duke of Canada and Prince of Regiopolis. And indeed the Parliament of 1841, in all its circumstances, still remains one of the salient points in modern Canadian history.

The Union came into force on the tenth of February, but long before that time all the diverse political interests in Canada had organized themselves for the fray. Sydenham himself naturally occupied the foremost place. He was acting now, not merely as governor-general, but as the prime minister of a new cabinet, and as a party manager, {101} whose main duty it was to secure parliamentary support for his men and his measures by the maintenance of a sound central group. By the beginning of the year he thought he had evidence for believing that, in Upper Canada, a great majority of the members would be men who had at heart the welfare of the province, and the British connection, and who desired to make the Act of Union operate to the advantage of the country.[32] But even in Upper Canada there were doubtful elements. The Family Compact men, few as they might be in number, were unlikely to leave their enemy, the governor-general, in peace; nor were all the Reformers prepared to acquiesce in Sydenham's very restrained and limited interpretation of responsible government. Late in 1840, and early in 1841, the Upper Canadian progressives had organized their strength; and additional significance was given to their action by their communications with Lower Canada.[33] There, indeed, was the crux of the experiment. The French Canadians, already organized in sullen opposition, had just received what they counted a fresh insult. But Sydenham may be allowed to {102} explain his own action. "There were," he wrote to Russell in March, 1841, "attached to the cities, both of Montreal and Quebec, very extensive suburbs, inhabited generally by a poor population, unconnected with the mercantile interests to which these cities owe their importance. Had these cities been brought within the electoral limits, the number of their population would have enabled them to return one, if not both, of the members for each city. But such a result would have been directly at variance with the grounds on which increased representation was given by Parliament to these cities. On referring to the discussions which took place in both houses when the Union Bill was before them, I find that members on all sides laid great stress on the necessity of securing ample representation to the mercantile interests of Canada.... Feeling myself, therefore, bound in duty to carry out the views of the British parliament in this matter, I was compelled in fixing the limits of Quebec and Montreal to transfer to the county a large portion of the suburbs of each."[34] Whatever Sydenham's intentions may have been, the actual result of his action was to secure for his party four seats in the very heart of the enemy's country; {103} and the French Canadians, naturally embittered, resented the governor's action as a piece of gerrymandering, which had practically disfranchised many French voters. Already, in 1840, under the active leadership of Neilson of Quebec, a British supporter of French claims, an anti-union movement had been started.[35] In July of the same year La Fontaine visited Toronto, to canvass, said scandal, for the speaker's chair in the united assembly; and in any case he was able to assure his compatriots that they had sympathizers among the British in the West. The Tory paper in Sydenham's new capital, Kingston, in a review and forecast of the situation, settled on this Anglo-French co-operation as one of the serious possibilities of the future;[36] and Sydenham as he watched developments in the Lower Province, found himself growing unwontedly pessimistic. "In Lower Canada," he wrote, "the elections will be bad. The French Canadians have forgotten nothing and learnt nothing by the Rebellion, and the suspension of the constitution, and are more unfit for representative government {104} than they were in 1791. In most of the French counties, members, actuated by the old spirit of the Assembly, and without any principle except that of inveterate hostility to British rule and British connection, will be returned without a possibility of opposition."[37]

The elections began on the 8th of March, and the date on which parliament was to meet was postponed, first from April 8th to May 26th, and then, in consequence of the continued lateness of the season,[38] from May 26th to June 14th. The result of the elections, known early in April, gave matter for serious thought to many, Sydenham himself not excluded. Absolute precision is difficult, but Sydenham's biographer has tabulated the groups as follows:

Government Members - - - - 24 French Members - - - - - - 20 Moderate Reformers - - - - 20 Ultra Reformers - - - - - 5 Compact Party - - - - - - 7 Doubtful - - - - - - - - - 6 Special Return - - - - - - 1 Double Return - - - - - - 1 — 84[39]

{105}

In the confusion of groups, Sydenham still trusted to the centre—a party almost precisely similar to that which in 1867 was called Liberal-Conservative. This centre he hoped to create out of moderate Conservatives who had enlarged their earlier views, and moderate Reformers who anxiously desired to see Sydenham's proposed improvements carried out.[40] A shrewd observer, himself a member, and appreciatively critical of Sydenham's work, counted at least five parties in the new parliament. Three of these groups came from Upper Canada—the Conservatives under Sir Allan MacNab; the Ministerialists, that is the Reformers and moderate Conservatives, under the Attorney-General Draper, and the Secretary Harrison, and the ultra-reformers who looked to Robert Baldwin for guidance. From Lower Canada came the French nationalists, with some British supporters, under Morin, Neilson, and Aylwin, and the defenders of the Union policy, chiefly British, but with a few conservative French allies. "The division lists of the session 1841," writes the same observer, "cannot fail to strike anyone acquainted with the state of parties, as extraordinary. Mr. Baldwin on several occasions voted with considerable {106} majorities in opposition to the Government, while as frequently he was in insignificant minorities. There was a decided tendency towards a coalition with the Reformers of French origin, on the part of Sir Allan MacNab and the Upper Canada Conservatives. The Ministerial strength lay in the support which it received from the British party of Lower Canada, and from the majority of the Upper Canada Reformers."[41] Well might Sydenham speak of the delusive nature of the party nicknames borrowed by his legislators from England.

Whatever were the characteristic faults of the parliament in 1841, sloth was not one of them. All through the summer it worked with feverish energy. Writing to his brother at the end of August, Sydenham boasted—"The five great works I aimed at have been got through—the establishment of a board of works with ample powers; the admission of aliens; a new system of county courts; the regulation of the public lands ceded by the Crown under the Union Act; and lastly the District Council Bill. I think you will admit this to be pretty good work for one session, especially when superadded to half a dozen minor measures, as well {107} as the fact of having set up a government, brought together two sets of people, who hated each other cordially, and silenced all the threatened attacks upon the Union, which were expected to be so formidable.... What do you think of this, you miserable people in England, who spend two years upon a single measure?"[42]

But the chief significance of the session lies in the persistent warfare waged between Sydenham and the advocates of a more extended system of autonomy. The result, as will be shewn, was indecisive, but, under the circumstances a drawn battle was equivalent to defeat for the governor-general.

Sydenham had never before flung himself so completely into the fight. "I actually breathe, eat, drink, and sleep nothing but government and politics," was his own description of life in Kingston. He had accomplished with little resistance from others all that his opening speech had promised. His ministry owned him as their actively directing head. His power of managing individuals in spite of themselves passed into a jest. Playing with men's vanity, tampering with their interests, their passions and their prejudices, placing himself in a position of familiarity with those from whom {108} he might at once obtain assistance and information—such, according to an eccentric writer of the day, were the secrets of Sydenham's success.[43] Few men ever played the part of benevolent despot more admirably, and his achievements were the more creditable because he could count on no allegiance except that which he induced by his persuasive arts, and by the proofs he had given of a sincere desire to promote Canadian prosperity.

Nevertheless, throughout the summer months, there occurred a series of sharp encounters with a half-organized party of reform; and the end of the session, while it saw Sydenham successful, saw also his adversaries as eager as ever, and much more learned than they had been in the ways of political opposition and agitation. The opposition leaders massed their whole strength on one fundamental point—the claim to possess as fully as their fellow-citizens in Great Britain did, the cabinet and party system of government. In other words, if any group, or coalition of groups, should succeed in establishing an ascendency in the popular assembly, that ascendency must receive acknowledgment by the creation of a cabinet, and the appointment of {109} a prime minister, approved by the parliamentary majority and responsible to them; and Sydenham's ingenious device of an eclectic ministry responsible to him alone was denounced as unconstitutional. The first encounter came, two days before the session started, and Robert Baldwin of Toronto was the leader of the revolt. In February, 1840, Sydenham had invited Robert Baldwin to be his Solicitor-General in the Upper Province. Baldwin, although his powers were not those of a politician of the first rank, was perhaps the soundest constitutionalist in Western Canada. He had been from the first a reformer, but he had never encouraged the wild ideas of the rebels of 1837. Sir F. B. Head had called him to his councils in 1836, as a man "highly respected for his moral character, moderate in his politics and possessing the esteem and confidence of all parties,"[44] and only Head's impracticability had driven him from public service. There is not a letter or official note from his pen, which does not bear the stamp of unusual conscientiousness, and a very earnest desire to serve his country. So little was he a self-seeker, that he earned the lasting ill-will of his eldest son by passing a bill abolishing primogeniture, and thus {110} ending any hopes that existed of founding a great colonial family. The Earl of Elgin, who saw much of him after 1847, regarded him not merely as a great public servant, but as one who was worth "two regiments to the British connection," and perhaps the most truly conservative statesman in the province.[45] In his quiet, determined way, he had made up his mind that responsible government, in the sense condemned by both Sydenham and Russell, must be secured for Canada, and Sydenham's benevolent plans did not disguise from him the insidious attempt to limit what he counted the legitimate constitutional liberty of the colony. It cannot justly be objected that his acceptance of office misled the governor-general, either in 1840 or in 1841. "I distinctly avow," he wrote publicly in 1840, "that, in accepting office, I consider myself to have given a public pledge that I have a reasonably well-grounded confidence that the government of my country is to be carried on in accordance with the principles of Responsible Government which I have ever held.... I have not come into office by means of any coalition with the Attorney-General,[46] or with any others now in {111} the public service, but have done so under the governor-general, and expressly from my confidence in him."[47] In the same way, when Sydenham chose him for the Solicitor-Generalship of Upper Canada in the Union Ministry, Baldwin, who had no belief in Sydenham's cabinet of all the talents, wrote bluntly to say that he "had an entire want of political confidence in all of his colleagues except Mr. Dunn, Mr. Harrison, and Mr. Daly."[48] In view of his later action, his critics charged him with error in thus accepting an office which placed him in an impossible position; but Baldwin's ready answer was: "The head of the government, the heads of departments in both provinces, and the country itself, were in a position almost anomalous. That of the head of the government was one of great difficulty and embarrassment. While he (Baldwin) felt bound to protect himself against misapprehensions as to his views and opinions, he also felt bound to avoid, as far as possible, throwing any difficulties in the way of the governor-general. At the time he was called to a seat in the Executive Council, he was already one of those public servants, the political character {112} newly applied to whose office made it necessary for them to hold seats in that Council. Had he, on being called to take that seat, refused to accept it, he must of course have left office altogether, or have been open to the imputation of objecting to an arrangement for the conduct of public affairs which had always met with his most decided approbation."[49] At worst, the Solicitor-General can only be blamed for letting his abnormally sensitive conscience lead him into political casuistry, the logic of which might not appear so cogent to the governor as to himself, when the crisis should come. How sensitive that conscience was, may be gathered from the fact that his acceptance of office in 1841 was accompanied with an avowal of want of confidence, made openly to those colleagues with whom he disagreed. It was further illustrated when he made a difficulty with Sydenham over taking the Oath of Supremacy, which, in a country, many of whose inhabitants were Roman Catholics protected in their religion by treaty rights, declared that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state or potentate hath or ought to have any jurisdiction, {113} power, superiority, pre-eminence of authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual within this realm."[50]

The crisis came, as Baldwin expected it to come, when parliament met. Already, as has been seen, the French Canadians had organized their forces and formed the most compact group in the Assembly, while the little band of determined reformers from Upper Canada made up in decision and principle what they lacked in numbers. Hincks, who was one of the latter group, says that, before parliament met, the two sections consulted together concerning the government, and although La Fontaine had lost his election through a display of physical force on the other side, Baldwin was able to lead the combined groups into action. On June 12th, he wrote to Sydenham stating that the United Reform Party represented the political views of the vast majority of Canadians, that four ministers—Sullivan, Ogden, Draper, and Day—were hostile to popular sympathies and ideals, and that he thought the accession of Lower Canada Reformers absolutely essential to a sound popular administration. It was a perfectly consistent, if somewhat unhappily executed, attempt to secure {114} the absolute responsibility of the Executive Council to the representatives of the people; and a week later, in the Assembly, when no longer in office, he defended his action. He believed that when the election had determined of what materials the House of Assembly was to be composed, it then became his duty to inform the head of the government that the administration did not possess the confidence of the House of Assembly, and to tender to the representative of his sovereign the resignation of the office which he held, having first, as he was bound to do, offered his advice to his Excellency that the administration of the country should be reconstructed.[51]

It was the directest possible challenge to Sydenham's system. Baldwin's claim was that, once the representatives of the people had made known the people's will, it was the duty of the ministry to reflect that will in their programme and actions, or to resign. As for the governor-general, he must obviously adjust whatever theories he might have, to a situation where colonial ministers were content to hold office only where they had the confidence of the people.

The action of the governor-general was {115} characteristically summary. His answer to Baldwin reproved him for a "proposal in the highest degree unconstitutional, as dictating to the crown who are the particular individuals whom it should include in the ministry"; intimated the extreme displeasure of his Excellency, and assumed the letter to be equivalent to resignation.[52] To the home government he spoke of the episode with anger and some contempt: "Acting upon some principle of conduct which I can reconcile neither with honour nor common sense, he strove to bring about this union (between Upper and Lower Canadian reformers), and at last, having as he thought effected it, coolly proposed to me, on the day before Parliament was to meet, to break up the Government altogether, dismiss several of his colleagues, and replace them by men whom I believe he had not known for 24 hours—but who are most of them thoroughly well known in Lower Canada as the principal opponents of any measure for the improvement of the province."[53]

The crisis once passed, Sydenham hoped, and not without justification, that Baldwin would carry few supporters over to the opposition, and {116} that the Assembly would settle quietly down to enact the measures so bountifully set out in the opening speech. The first day of Assembly saw the party of responsible government make a smothered effort to state their views in the debate on the election of a speaker. On June 18th, an elaborate debate, nominally on the address, really on the fundamental point, found the attorney-general stating the case for the government, and Baldwin and Hincks pushing the logic of responsible government to its natural conclusion. Baldwin once more grappled with the problem of the responsibility of the members of council, and the advice they should offer to the governor-general. He admitted freely that unless the representative of the sovereign should acquiesce in the measures so recommended, there would be no means by which that advice could be made practically useful; but this consideration did not for a moment relieve a member of the council from the fulfilment of an imperative duty. If his advice were accepted, well and good; if not, his course would be to tender his resignation.[54]

{117}

The government came triumphantly out of the ordeal, and all amendments, whether affecting the Union, or responsible government, were defeated by majorities, usually of two to one. "I have got the large majority of the House ready to support me upon any question that can arise," Sydenham wrote at the end of June; "and, what is better, thoroughly convinced that their constituents, so far as the whole of Upper Canada and the British part of Lower Canada are concerned, will never forgive them if they do not."[55]

But the enemy was not so easily routed. There had been much violence at the recent elections; and, among others, La Fontaine had a most just complaint to make, for disorder, and, as he thought, government trickery had ousted him from a safe seat at Terrebonne. Unfortunately the protests were lodged too late, and a furious struggle sprang up, as to whether the legal period should, in the cases under consideration, be extended, or whether, as the government contended, an inquiry and amendments affecting only the future should suffice. It was ominous for the cause of limited responsibility, that the government had to own defeat in the Lower House, and saved itself only {118} by the veto of the Legislative Council. Nor was that the end. A mosaic work of opposition, old Tories, French Canadians, British anti-unionists, and Upper Canada Reformers, was gradually formed, and at any moment some chance issue might lure over a few from the centre to wreck the administration. Most of the greater measures passed through the ordeal safely, including a bill reforming the common schools and another establishing a Board of Works. The critical moment of the latter part of the session, however, came with the introduction of a bill to establish District Councils in Upper Canada, to complete the work already done in Lower Canada. The forces in opposition rallied to the attack, Conservatives because the bill would increase the popular element in government, Radicals because the fourth clause enacted that the governor of the province might appoint, under the Great Seal of the province, fit and proper persons to hold during his pleasure the office of Warden of the various districts;[56] and, as Sydenham himself hinted, there were those who regretted the loss to members of Assembly of a great opportunity for jobbery. One motion passed by the chairman's casting vote; {119} and nothing, in the governor-general's judgment, saved the bill but the circumstance of his having already established such councils in Lower Canada.[57]

There was one more attack in force before the session ended. On September 3rd, Baldwin, seconded by a French Canadian, moved "that the most important as well as the most undoubted of the political rights of the people of the province, is that of having a provincial parliament for the protection of their liberties, for the exercise of a constitutional influence over the executive departments of the government, and for legislation upon all matters, which do not on the ground of absolute necessity constitutionally belong to the jurisdiction of the Imperial parliament, as the paramount authority of the Empire."[58] The issue was stated moderately but quite directly, and there are critics of Sydenham who hold that his answer—for it was his voice that spoke—surrendered the whole position. That answer took the form of resolutions, moved by the most moderate reformer in the Assembly, S. B. Harrison:

(i) That the head of the provincial executive {120} government of the province, being within the limits of his government the representative of the Sovereign, is not constitutionally responsible to any other than the authority of the Empire.

(ii) That the representative of the Sovereign, for the proper conduct and efficient disposal of public business, is necessarily obliged to make use of the advice and assistance of subordinate officers in the administration of his government.

(iii) That in order to preserve the harmony between the different branches of the Provincial Parliament which is essential to the happy conduct of public affairs, the principal of such subordinate officers, advisers of the representative of the Sovereign, and constituting as such the provincial administration under him ... ought always to be men possessed of the public confidence of the people, thus affording a guarantee that the well-understood wishes and interests of the people, which our gracious Sovereign has declared shall be the rule of the Provincial Government, will on all occasions be faithfully represented and advocated.

(iv) That the house has the constitutional right of holding such advisers politically responsible for every act of the Provincial Government of a local {121} character sanctioned by such government while such advisers continue in office."[59]

Of Sydenham's own doctrine of colonial government the outlines are unmistakeable. A governor-general existed, responsible for his actions solely to the imperial authority. Under that government the people had full liberty to elect their representatives, through whom their desires could be made known. It was the duty of the governor-general to consult, on every possible detail, the popular will. Sydenham therefore held it essential that the governor-general in Canada should be one trained in the Imperial Parliament to interpret and to guide popular expression of opinion; and he believed that in such parliamentary diplomacy the governor-general would have to make many minor surrenders. But he never recoiled from a position, which was also that of Durham, that, as the proclamation of Union asserted, the grant of local autonomy was subject to certain limitations, and that these limitations no action of the Provincial Legislature could affect. Nor did he admit that his own responsibility to the Crown could be modified by the existence of a responsibility on the {122} part of his ministers to the Canadian people. Moreover, his own imperious temper and sense of superior enlightenment made him act in the very spirit of his doctrine with a resolution which few imperial servants of his time could have surpassed. It may be then that the final resolutions, and especially the last of them, were marked by a gentler mode of expression than before, but they were actually a reaffirmation of Sydenham's early views, and were quite consistent with the initial despatch of the colonial secretary.

The end was now near. Sydenham had already applied for and received permission, first to leave Canada, should his health require that step, and then, to resign. He had delayed to act on this permission, until he should see the end of the session, and the accomplishment of his ambitions. But, on September 4th, a fall from horseback inflicted injuries which grew more complicated through his generally enfeebled condition, and he died on Sunday, September 19th. On the preceding day, one of the most useful and notable sessions in the history of the Canadian Parliament came to an end.

Both by his errors, and by his acts of statesmanship, Sydenham contributed more than any other {123} man, except Elgin, to establish that autonomy in Canada which his theories rejected. Before self-government could flourish in the colony, there must be some solid material progress, and two years of incessant legislation and administrative innovation, all of it suggested by Sydenham, had turned the tide of Canadian fortunes. It was necessary, too, that some larger field than a trivial provincial assembly with its local jobs should be provided for the new adventure in self-government; and Sydenham not only engineered a difficult Act of Union past all preliminary obstacles, but, of his own initiative, gave Canada the local institutions through which alone the country could grow into disciplined self-dependence.

But even his errors aided Canadian development. Acting for a government in whose counsels there was no hesitation, Sydenham expounded in word and practice a perfectly self-consistent theory of colonial government. It was he who, by the virility of his thought and action, forced those who demanded responsible government to test and think over again their own position. The criticism which Elgin passed on him in 1847 is final: "I never cease to marvel what study of human nature, or of history, led him to the conclusion {124} that it would be possible to concede to a pushing and enterprising people, unencumbered by an aristocracy, and dwelling in the immediate vicinity of the United States, such constitutional privileges as were conferred on Canada at the time of Union, and yet restrict in practice their powers of self-government as he proposed."[60] Yet he had raised the question, for both sides, to a higher level, and his adversaries owed something of their triumph, when it came, to the man who had taught them a more spacious view of politics.

But it may be urged that he roused the French, insulted them, excluded them, and almost precipitated a new French rising. Undoubtedly he was an enemy to French claims, but, at the time, most of these claims were inadmissible. The French had brought the existing system of local government to a standstill. Few of those who took part in the Rebellion had any reasonable or adequate conception of a reformed constitution. As a people they had set themselves to obstruct the statesmen who came to assist them, and to oppose a Union which was doubtless imperfect as an instrument of government, but which was a necessary stage in the construction of a {125} better system. Here again Sydenham aimed at carrying out a perfectly clear and consistent programme, the political blending of the French with the British colonists. Unfortunately that programme was impossible. It had been constructed by men who did not understand the racial problem, and who, even if they had understood it, would not have accepted the modern solution. Yet French nationalism, between 1839 and 1841, had certain negative lessons still to learn. As, in Upper Canada, Robert Baldwin discovered from his opposition to the governor-general the methods and limits of parliamentary opposition, so La Fontaine, the worthiest representative of French Canada, began in these years to substitute constitutional co-operation with the reformers of the West, for the old sullen negative nationalism which had failed so utterly in 1837, as the most suitable means for maintaining the rights of his people.



[1] I disregard Cathcart's tenure of office. For all practical purposes it was merely that of an acting governor.

[2] Instructions to the Right Hon. C. Poulett Thomson, 7 September, 1839.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Lord John Russell to the Rt. Hon. C. Poulett Thomson, 14 October, 1839.

[5] Lord John Russell to the Right Hon. C. P. Thomson, 16 October, 1839.

[6] Greville, A Journal of the Reigns of George IV. and William IV., iii. p. 330.

[7] Quoted from The Kingston Chronicle and Gazette, 19 October, 1839.

[8] Lord Durham's Report (Lucas), ii. p. 307.

[9] Poulett Scrope, Life of Lord Sydenham, p. 148.

[10] Poulett Scrope, p. 168.

[11] Journals of the Special Council of Lower Canada, 13 November, 1839.

[12] The Right Hon. C. P. Thomson to Lord John Russell, 18 November, 1839.

[13] Sir John Colborne to Lord Normanby, 19 August, 1839.

[14] The Right Hon. C. P. Thomson to Lord John Russell, 15 December 1839.

[15] Poulett Scrope, pp. 148-9.

[16] The Right Hon. C. P. Thomson to Lord John Russell, 15 December, 1839.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Poulett Scrope, p. 163.

[19] Correspondence relative to the Reunion of Upper and Lower Canada (23rd March, 1840), p. 20.

[20] Ibid. p. 33.

[21] Sydenham to Russell, 13 January, 1841.

[22] Poulett Scrope, p. 164.

[23] Poulett Scrope, p. 183. "I have done nothing for two days, but pass under triumphal arches, and receive addresses of thanks and praise."

[24] Correspondence relative to the Affairs of Canada (1841): The Right Hon. C. P. Thomson to Lord John Russell, 16 September, 1840.

[25] Poulett Scrope, p. 198.

[26] Baldwin Correspondence: La Fontaine to Baldwin, 26 July, 1845, "You know that I do not like the Whigs."

[27] Poulett Scrope, p. 181.

[28] See a report from the agent for emigration at Toronto, made to Sydenham, 6 January, 1841.

[29] Sydenham to Russell, 26 January, 1841.

[30] Sydenham to Russell, 22 February, 1841.

[31] The Right Hon. C. P. Thomson to Lord John Russell, 27 June, 1840.

[32] Sydenham to Russell, 26 February, 1841.

[33] Merritt, Life of the Hon. W. H. Merritt, M.P. See under the years 1840 and 1841.

[34] Sydenham to Russell, 6 March, 1841. The italics are my own.

[35] Poulett Scrope, p. 205.

[36] The Kingston Chronicle and Gazette, 12 February, 1841. "A powerful struggle will be made at the next election to secure the return of representatives, who will coincide with the views of the French party in the Lower Province."

[37] Sydenham to Russell, 26 February, 1841.

[38] Ibid., 1 June, 1841.

[39] Poulett Scrope, p. 217. As the Canadian portion of the biography was the work of Sydenham's secretary, Murdoch, it carries with it considerable authority. Murdoch was, indeed, one of the most competent of the men round Sydenham.

[40] Sydenham to Russell, 26 June, 1841.

[41] Hincks, Lecture on the Political History of Canada, 1840-1855, pp. 22-23.

[42] Poulett Scrope, p. 243.

[43] Richardson, in his curious characterization of the man in Eight Years in Canada.

[44] Sir F. B. Head to Lord Glenelg, February, 1836.

[45] The references to Baldwin in the Elgin-Grey Correspondence are, without exception, most cordial, and usually complimentary.

[46] The Hon. W. H. Draper, a moderate Conservative.

[47] Quoted in Hincks, Lecture on the Political History of Canada, p. 19.

[48] Ibid. pp. 18-19.

[49] Baldwin's own explanation, furnished to a volume The Irishman in Canada. He was peculiarly fond of memoranda or declarations, written in the third person.

[50] Sydenham to Russell, 28 May, 1841. Sydenham dispensed with the oath on the advice of his legal officials.

[51] The Mirror of Parliament (published in Kingston), 23 June, 1841.

[52] Sydenham to Baldwin, 13 June, 1841.

[53] Ibid., 23 June, 1841.

[54] The Mirror of Parliament, reporting Baldwin's speech of 18th June. I have chosen to give Baldwin's own language in all its awkwardness and stiffness.

[55] Poulett Scrope, p. 233.

[56] District Municipal Council Act (1841), Cl. IV.

[57] Sydenham to Russell, 28 August, 1841.

[58] Journals of the House of Assembly, 3 September, 1841.

[59] I have used as my chief authority here the reports in The Quebec Gazette, more especially the issue of Friday, 10 September, 1841.

[60] Elgin-Grey Correspondence: Elgin to Grey, 26 April, 1847.



{126}

CHAPTER IV.

THE GOVERNORS-GENERAL: SIR CHARLES BAGOT.

Sir Charles Bagot, the second governor-general of United Canada, contrasted strangely with his predecessor in character and political methods. He was a man of the Regency, and of Canning's set. Since 1814 he had occupied positions of considerable importance in the diplomatic world, not because of transcendent parts, but because of his connections. He had been ambassador at Washington, St. Petersburg, and the Hague; and in the United States, where, to the end, his friends remembered him with real affection, he had rendered service permanently beneficial both to Britain and to America by negotiating the Rush-Bagot treaty, which established the neutralization of the great lakes. In Europe, he had been known to fame mainly as the recipient of George Canning's rhyming despatch; and for the rest, he allowed the great minister to make him, as he had made all {127} his other agents, a pawn in the game where he alone was player. In his correspondence he stands out as an old-fashioned, worldly, cultured, and unbusiness-like diplomatist, worthy perhaps of a satiric but kindly portraiture by Thackeray—a genuine citizen of Vanity Fair. Apart from his correspondence, his friendships, and his American achievements, he might have passed through life, deserving nothing more than some few references in memoirs of the earlier nineteenth century. But by one freak of fortune he found himself transported to Canada in 1842, and, by another, he became one of the foremost figures in the history of Canadian constitutional development. There have been few better examples of the curious good-fortune which has attended on the growth of British greatness than the story of Bagot's short career in Canada. When a very eminent personage demanded from the existing government some explanation of their selection of Bagot, Stanley, who was then Secretary of State for the Colonies, pointed, not to administrative qualifications, but to his diplomatic services in the United States. Relations with the American Republic do not here concern us, but it may be remembered that the situation in 1841 and 1842, just before the {128} Ashburton Treaty, was full of peril; and Bagot was sent to Canada as a person not displeasing to the Americans, and a diplomatist of conciliatory temper. But his work was to be concerned with domestic, not international, diplomacy.

Three factors must be carefully studied in the year of political turmoil which followed: the Imperial government, the Canadian political community, and the new governor-general.

During this and the following governor-generalship, the predominant influence at the Colonial Office was Lord Stanley, almost the most distinguished of the younger statesmen of the day. Peel's judicial and scientific mind usually controlled those of his subordinates; but even Peel found it hard to check the brilliant individualism of his colonial secretary; and this most interesting of all the great failures in English politics exercised an influence in Canadian affairs, such as not even Lord John Russell attempted. Judged from his colonial despatches, Stanley seems to have found it very hard to understand that there could be another side to any question on which he had made up his mind. His party had consented to a modification of the old oligarchic rule in Canada; but they were intent upon limiting the scope of the {129} change, and upon conducting all their operations in a very conservative spirit. Stanley's instructions to Bagot had been drawn up in no ungenerous fashion. Bagot was to know no distinctions of national origin or religious creed, and in so far as it might be consistent with his duty to his Sovereign, he was to consult the wishes of the mass of the community.[1] Their happiness it was his main duty to secure. In ecclesiastical matters, Stanley, who had changed his party rather than consent to weaken the Anglican Church in Ireland, was willing to acknowledge "that the habits and opinions of the people of Canada were, in the main, averse from the absolute predominance of any single church."[2] But the theory inspiring the instructions was one which denied to the colonists any but the most partial responsibility and independence, and which regarded their party divisions as factious and at times treasonable. This disbelief in the reality of Canadian parties was, however, discounted, and yet at the same time rendered more insulting to the reformers, because the colonial secretary regarded the fragments of old Family Compact Toryism as still the best guarantee in Canada for the British connection. "Although {130} I am far from wishing to re-establish the old Family Compact of Upper Canada," he wrote, at a later date, "if you come into difficulties, that is the class of men to fall back upon, rather than the ultra-liberal party."[3] Confidence in political adventurers and the disaffected French seemed to him a kind of madness. In addition to this attitude towards existing parties, Stanley held stiffly to every constitutional expedient which asserted the supremacy of the Imperial government. The Union had, by fixing a Civil List, taken the power of the purse within certain limits from Canadian hands, and this Civil List Stanley regarded as quite essential to the maintenance of British authority.[4] In fact, any discussion of the subject seemed to him the "reopening of a chapter which has already led to such serious consequences, and in the prosecution of which I contemplate seriously the prospect of the dismemberment of the Empire."[5] Holding views so resolute, he could not, like Russell, trust his representative on the spot; and, from the first, the troubles of the new governor-general were multiplied by Stanley's {131} determination to make the views of the Colonial Office prevail in Canada. "I very much doubt," wrote Murdoch, Sydenham's former secretary, "how far Lord Stanley is really alive to the true state of Canada, and to the necessity of governing through the assembly."[6]

Local influences provide the second factor in the situation. As has been seen, the Canadian political community was demanding both responsible government, and the admission of the French to a share in office. Sydenham had exhibited the most wonderful skill in working an anomalous system of government, and he had found himself on the brink of failure. His Council, which Bagot had inherited, "might be said to represent the Reform or popular party of Upper Canada, and the moderate Conservatives of both provinces, to the exclusion of the French and the ultra-conservatives of both provinces,"[7] but the compromise represented less a popular demand for moderation, than Sydenham's own individual idea of what a Canadian Council should be. There had been uneasiness in adjusting the opinions of individual members; there was a steady decline in the willingness of the Assembly {132} and the country to support them; and a determined constitutional opposition found additional strength through the support of the French party, whom the governor had alienated not simply as a political division but as a race. In a sense, there was no imminent danger, as there had been in 1837, for Sydenham's sound administration had given the country peace and prosperity. English money and immigrants were flowing in; the woods were ringing with the axes of settlers too busy in clearing the ground to trouble much with politics; the lines of communication were being improved and transportation simplified; and, thanks to Ashburton, the war-cloud to the south had vanished over the horizon. Yet the politicians held the central position—everything depended on them; and the crisis for Bagot would arise, first, when he should be called on to fill certain places in the Executive Council, and then, when Parliament met. It is often assumed that public opinion was seriously divided on the question of the responsibility of the ministry to the Assembly, and of the extent of the concessions to be made to the French; and that the opposition to reform was almost equal in the numbers of its supporters to the progressive party. But this is to over-estimate the forces of {133} reaction. The Family Compact men had fallen on evil days. Strachan with his church party, and MacNab with his tail of Tory irreconcilables, had really very little substantial backing; and honest Tory gentlemen, like J. S. Cartwright, who openly advocated an aristocratic administration, were unlikely to attract the crowd. The work of Sydenham had contributed much to the political education of Canada; popular opinion was now firmer and more self-consistent, and that opinion went directly contrary to the views of Stanley and his supporters. One may find evidence of this in the views of moderates on either side.

Harrison, who represented the moderate reforming party in Sydenham's ministry, held that responsible government, in some form or other, was essential, and that French nationalism must also receive concessions. "Looking at the present position of parties," he wrote to Bagot in July, "it may, I think, be safely laid down that, to obtain a working majority in the House of Assembly, it is absolutely necessary that the government should be able to carry with it the bulk of the French-Canadian members.... There is no disguising the fact that the French members possess the power of the country; and he who directs that {134} power, backed by the most efficient means of controlling it, is in a situation to govern the province best."[8] It was his opinion that Bagot should anticipate the coming crisis by calling in Baldwin and the French, before events forced that step on him.

On the Conservative side, a moderate man like W. H. Draper, the attorney-general for Upper Canada in Sydenham's ministry, argued in favour of a policy almost identical. While his views tended to oscillate, now to this side, now to that, their general direction was clear. He felt that the ideal condition was one of union between the parties of Western Canada, which would "render the position of the government safer in its dealings with the French-Canadians." But no such union was possible, and Draper, with that honest opportunism which best expressed his mind and capacity, assured Bagot that action in the very teeth of his instructions was the only possible course. "One thing I do not doubt at all," he wrote in July 1842, "and that is that, with the present House of Assembly, you cannot get on without the French, while it is necessary for me at the same time to declare frankly that I cannot sit at the {135} council-board with Mr. Baldwin."[9] In other words, since Draper admitted that the opposition leaders must receive office, and at the same time declared the impossibility of his holding office with them, he was consenting to Cabinet government, not in the restricted form permitted in Lord John Russell's despatches, but after the regular British fashion.

Outside the sphere of party politics moderate opinion took precisely the same stand. Murdoch had been Sydenham's right-hand man, and was still the fairest critic of Canadian politics. That he distrusted Stanley's methods is apparent in his letters to Bagot; and it was his suggestion that the Imperial position should be modified, and that some concession should be made to French national feeling. "No half measures," he told Bagot, "can now be safely resorted to. After the Rebellion, the government had the option, either of crushing the French and anglifying the province, or of pardoning them and making them friends. And as the latter policy was adopted, it must be carried out to its legitimate consequences."[10]

{136}

The situation in Canada during the spring and summer of 1842 stood thus. A governor-general, entirely new to the work of domestic administration, and to the province which had fallen to his lot, faced a curious dilemma. The British cabinet, the minister responsible for the colonies, and all those in Canada who claimed to be the peculiar friends of the British connection, bade him govern for, but not by the people, and exclude from office almost all the French-Canadians, on the ground that they were devotedly French in sympathies. Another group, at times aggressive, and very little accustomed to the orthodox methods of parliamentary opposition, bade him venture and trust; and warned him that no half measures would satisfy the claims of constitutional liberty and nationality.

The administration of Bagot occupied a single year, and its more important episodes were crowded into a few weeks in the autumn of 1842. Yet there have been few years of equal significance in the history of Canadian political development. There were intervals in which Bagot had time to reveal to Canada his genius for making friends; and the foundation of a provincial university in Toronto deeply interested one who had something of {137} Canning's wit and literary inclinations. But politics usually claimed all his attention. The Union of the Provinces, and the Imperial supremacy, had to be defended against their assailants; the vacant places in the Executive Council had to be filled, as nearly as was possible in harmony with the wishes of the community; and whatever the character of that council might be, it would have to face the test of criticism from an Assembly, which had already striven not unsuccessfully with Sydenham. In his attempt to answer these various problems, Bagot was at his worst in finance. He had not the requisite business training, and entirely lacked Sydenham's knowledge, boldness, and precision. In the correspondence over the mode in which the province should dispose of the British loan of L1,500,000, Stanley's views show a clearness and force, lacking in those of Bagot; and in the one really unfortunate episode of the year, his want of financial skill drew on the governor-general's head the remonstrances of both Stanley and the Treasury authorities. To escape financial difficulties in Canada, Bagot had anticipated the loan, by drawing on British funds for L100,000, and the Treasury did not spare him. "He ought," wrote the Chancellor of the Exchequer, "to have {138} considered those (difficulties) which must arise here from the presentation of large drafts at the Treasury, for which Parliament had made no provision; and for which, as Parliament was not sitting, no regular provision could be made. The situation to which the Treasury is reduced is this: either to protest the bills for want of funds, or to accept the bills, and find within thirty days the means of paying them."[11] This incident furnished to Stanley fresh proof, if any were needed, of Bagot's inexperience. An anxious and mistrustful temper appears in all his despatches to Bagot; but, in fact, with little justification. He never learned how completely the governor for whom he trembled was his master in the art of governing a half-autonomous colony.