Parallel with this disruptive tendency in the new economic policy, another in military matters began to make itself felt. As Canada received her successive grants of liberties, and ever new liberties, the imperial authorities began to consider the advisability of withdrawing imperial troops by degrees, and of leaving Canada to meet the ordinary demands of her own defence. Grey and Elgin had corresponded largely on the point; and the result had been a very general reduction of British troops {288} in Canada, the assumption being that Canada would look to her own protection. To discover the character of the change thus introduced, and its bearing on imperial politics, it again becomes necessary to travel beyond the limit set, and to examine its results between 1860 and 1867. In these years the military situation developed new and alarming possibilities for Canada. The re-organization of the Canadian tariff excited much ill-feeling in the United States, for it seemed an infringement of the arrangements made by Elgin in 1854.[61] Then followed the Trent episode, the destruction created by the Alabama, the questionable policy both of England and of Canada in taking sides, no matter how informally, in the war. In addition, the Irish-American section of the population, which had furnished its share, both of rank and file, and of leaders, to the war, was in those years bitterly hostile to the British Empire, and plotted incessantly some secret stroke which should wound Britain through Canada. The gravest danger threatening British peace and supremacy at that time lay, not in Europe, but along the Canadian {289} frontier, nor would it be fair to say that Britain alone, not Canada, had helped to provoke the threatened American attack. Under these circumstances, partly because of the expense, but partly also through factiousness and provincial shortsightedness, the Canadian assembly rejected a scheme for providing an adequate militia, and left a situation quite impossible from the military point of view. Instantly a storm of criticism broke over the heads of the colonies, so bitter and unqualified that there are those who believe that to this day the mutual relations of Britain and Canada have never quite recovered their old sincerity.[62] A member of the Canadian parliament, who was travelling at the time in England, found the country in arms against his province: "You have no idea of the feeling that exists here about the Militia Bill, and the defences of Canada generally. No one will believe that there is not a want of loyalty among the Canadians, and whenever I try to defend Canada, the answer is always the same, that 'the English look for actions not assertions'; many hard and unjust things are now said about the country, all of which add strength to the Goldwin Smith party, which, after {290} all, is not a very small one; and the Derbyites make no secret of what they would do if they were in power,—let Canada take her chance."[63] Even Earl Grey was prepared, at that crisis, to submit to the British and Canadian parliaments a clear issue, calling on the latter to afford adequate support to the British forces left in British North America, or to permit the last of them to leave a country heedless of its own safety.[64] From that time forth, more especially after Lee, Jackson, Grant, and Sherman had revealed the military possibilities of the American Republic, even military men began to accept the strategic arguments against the retention of Canada as unanswerable, and joined the ranks of those who called for separation. Richard Cartwright, who had opportunities for testing British opinion, more especially among military officers, found a universal agreement that Canada was indefensible, and that separation had better take place, before rather than after war.[65] So John Bright and the leaders of the British army had at last found a point in diplomacy and strategy on which they might agree.

{291}

A considerable portion of authoritative British opinion has now been traversed; and beneath all its contradictions and varieties a deep general tendency has been discovered. That tendency made for the separation of Canada from England and the Empire. It is strange to see how resolutely writers have evaded the conclusion, and yet, if the views discussed above have been fairly stated, only four men of note and authority, Durham, Buller, Elgin, and Grey remained unaffected by the growing pessimism of the time, and of these, the last seemed at the end to find it difficult to maintain the confidence of 1853 under the trials of 1862. Britain was, in fact, undergoing a great secular change of policy. She had been driven, step by step, from the old position of supremacy and authority. As in commerce the security of protection had been abandoned for the still doubtful advantages of free trade, so, in the colonies, the former cast-iron system of imperial control had been abandoned for one of laissez-faire and self-government. It would have been impossible for British statesmen to follow any other course than that which they actually chose. Self-government, and self-government to the last detail and corollary of the argument they must perforce concede. But {292} in the stress of their imperial necessities, it was not strange that they should discern all the signs of disruption, rather than the gleams of hope; and men like Disraeli who claimed at a later date that they had never despaired of the Empire, did so at the expense of their sincerity, and could do so only because the false remedies they prescribed were happily incapable of application. Little Englandism, if that unfortunate term may be used to describe an essential and inevitable phase of imperial expansion, was the creed of all but one or two of the most capable and daring statesmen of the mid-Victorian age.

Strangely enough, while they had exhausted the materials for their argument so far as these lay in Britain, they had all failed to regard the one really important factor in the situation—the inclinations of the Canadian people. For the connection of Britain with Canada depended less on what the ministers of the Crown thought of Canada than on what the Canadians thought of their mother country.



[1] In Fenwick (Scotland), the Improvement of Knowledge Society discussed Canadian affairs on 1 January, 1839, when James Taylor proposed the sentiment, "The speedy success of the Canadian struggle for emancipation from British thraldom." The toast, according to the minute book, was enthusiastically honoured.

[2] Elgin-Grey Correspondence: Elgin to Grey, 1 November, 1851.

[3] Elgin-Grey Correspondence: Grey to Elgin, 11 May, 1849.

[4] Allin and Jones, Annexation, Preferential Trade, and Reciprocity, Chap. IX.

[5] Responsible Government for the Colonies, London, 1840. See the extract made by Wakefield in his View of the Art of Colonization, p. 279.

[6] The Autobiography of Sir Henry Taylor, passim.

[7] Ibid. ii. pp. 302-3.

[8] Leslie Stephen, Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, p. 49. "On the appointment of a Governor-general of Canada, shortly before his resignation of office, he observes in a diary, that it is not unlikely to be the last that will ever be made."

[9] Wakefield, Art of Colonization, p. 317.

[10] Ibid. pp. 312-3.

[11] Froude, Early Life of Carlyle, ii. p. 446.

[12] Responsible Government for the Colonies, p. 65.

[13] Responsible Government for the Colonies, p. 37.

[14] Responsible Government for the Colonies, p. 98.

[15] I am inclined to accept John Stuart Mill's account of the authorship—"written by Charles Buller, partly under the influence of Wakefield."

[16] Quoted by Hincks in A Lecture on the Political History of Canada, p. 9.

[17] Kaye, Papers and Correspondence of Lord Metcalfe, pp. 414-15.

[18] Lord Durham's Report (Lucas), ii. p. 280.

[19] See an admirable discussion of the point in Lucas's edition of the Report, i. p. 146 and ii. p. 281.

[20] Ibid. ii. p. 282.

[21] A speech by Charles Buller in Hansard, 30 May, 1844.

[22] Arthur to Normanby, 21 August, 1839.

[23] Ibid. 15 October, 1839.

[24] Protest of the Duke of Wellington against the Third Reading of a bill, etc., 13 July, 1840.

[25] Parker, Life of Sir Robert Peel, iii. pp. 382-3.

[26] Stanley to Metcalfe, 18 June, 1845.

[27] Gladstone to Cathcart, 3 February, 1846.

[28] Gladstone's speech in Hansard, 14 June, 1849.

[29] Parker, Life of Sir Robert Peel, iii. p. 389.

[30] Hansard, 4 March, 1853.

[31] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, i. p. 344: Disraeli to Malmesbury, 13 August, 1852.

[32] The Speeches of the Earl of Beaconsfield, ii. p. 530.

[33] Hansard, 9 March, 1876. The whole speech is an admirable example of Disraeli's gift of irresponsible paradox.

[34] Hansard, 3 June, 1839.

[35] Ibid. 30 May, 1844.

[36] Hansard, 16 January, 1838.

[37] Walpole, Life of Lord John Russell, pp. 339-40.

[38] Walpole, Life of Lord John Russell, pp. 339-40.

[39] The reference is to the Rebellion Losses Act riots.

[40] Elgin-Grey Correspondence: Grey to Elgin, 8 August, 1849.

[41] Hansard, 30 May, 1844.

[42] Elgin-Grey Correspondence: Grey to Elgin, 18 May, 1849.

[43] Ibid.: Grey to Elgin, 6 April, 1849.

[44] Earl Grey to Sir John Harvey, 3 November, 1846.

[45] Elgin-Grey Correspondence: Grey to Elgin, 22 February, 1848.

[46] Grey, Colonial Policy, i. p. 25.

[47] Elgin-Grey Correspondence: Grey to Elgin, 5 December, 1850.

[48] Elgin-Grey Correspondence: Grey to Elgin, 25 October, 1849.

[49] Elgin-Grey Correspondence: Grey to Elgin, 20 July, 1849.

[50] Ibid.: Grey to Elgin, 22 March, 1848.

[51] Grey, Colonial Policy, i. pp. 13-14.

[52] Molesworth in Hansard, 22 December, 1837.

[53] Molesworth in Hansard, 6 March, 1838.

[54] Roebuck before the House of Commons, 22 January, 1838.

[55] Brougham in Hansard, 18 January, 1838.

[56] See, for a very complete statement of Bright's views on the point, his speech on Canadian Fortifications, 23 March, 1865. Cobden's colonial policy is scattered broadcast through his speeches.

[57] Morley, Life of Gladstone, i. p. 269.

[58] See the preliminary chapter in his Colonial Policy.

[59] Elgin-Grey Correspondence: Elgin to Grey, 6 December, 1848.

[60] See Galt, Canada from 1849 to 1859, and his memorandum of 25 October, 1859.

[61] See a despatch from Lord Lyons respecting the Reciprocity Treaty, Washington, 28 February, 1862: enclosing a copy of the report of the committee of the House of Representatives on the Reciprocity Treaty.

[62] See Dent, The Last Forty Years, ii. p. 426.

[63] Pope, Life of Sir John Macdonald, i. p. 242.

[64] Earl Grey, in Hansard, 18 July, 1862.

[65] Sir Richard Cartwright, Reminiscences, p. 55.



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CHAPTER VIII.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF CANADIAN AUTONOMY.

A change so informally achieved, and yet so decisive, as the completion of a system of self-government in Canada could not but have far-reaching and unexpected secondary consequences. It is the object of this chapter to trace the more important of these as they appeared in the institutions and public life of Canada, and in the modification of Canadian sentiment towards Great Britain.

The most obvious and natural effect of Elgin's concessions was a revolution in the programmes of the provincial parties, and in their relations to each other and to government. It may be remembered that all the governors of the period agreed in reprobating the factiousness and pettiness of Canadian party politics. Even Elgin had been unable to see very much rationality in their methods. There was, he held, little of public principle to divide {294} men, apart from the fundamental question of responsible government.[1] But it is possible to underestimate the reality and importance of the party system as it existed down to 1847. To have admitted that men differed on the principle of responsible government, was to have admitted that party strife had some justification; and all the other details—affections and antipathies, national, sectarian, and personal—were the circumstances natural to party life as that life has everywhere come into existence. Burke himself sought no higher ground for the grouping of men into parties than that of family connection, and common friendships and enmities. No doubt the squalor and pettiness of early Canadian party life contrasted meanly with the glories of the eighteenth century Whigs, and the struggles of Fox and Pitt. But a nation must begin somewhere, and these trivial divisions received a kind of consecration when they centred round the discussion of colonial self-government. After all, so long as autonomy was only partially conceded, and so long as men felt impelled to take opposite sides on that subject, it was foolish to deny that there were Canadian parties, and that their differences were of some importance.

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Moreover, before 1847 there were other good reasons for the existence of two distinct parties. It was true, as Sydenham had said, that the British party names were not quite appropriate to the parties in Canada who had adopted them. Yet there were some links between British and Canadian parties. The British and the Canadian Tories had, in 1840, many views in common. In a time of change both stood for a pronounced distrust of democracy; both regarded the creation of responsible government in Canada as disastrous to the connection; both were the defenders of Church and State. On the other hand, it was not unnatural, as Elgin came to see, to compare the party led by Baldwin and La Fontaine with the Reformers in England who looked to Lord John Russell as their true leader. Until the political traditions, which most of the recent immigrants had brought with them from Britain, had disappeared or been transformed into a new Canadian tradition, and so long as certain grave constitutional defects which cried for remedy remained unaltered, Canadian Tories and Reformers must exist, and government, as Metcalfe discovered, was impossible, unless it recognized in these provincial divisions the motive power of local administration.

{296}

But between 1847 and 1854 the foundations of these earlier parties had been, not so much undermined, as entirely removed. "The continuance of agitation on these intensely exciting questions," wrote Elgin in his latest despatch from Canada, "was greatly to be deprecated, and their settlement, on terms which command the general acquiescence of those who are most deeply interested, can hardly fail to be attended with results in a high degree beneficial."[2] Elgin had removed the reason for existence of both parties by settling the issues which divided them. At the same time, the growth of a political life different from that of Britain, had, year by year, made the British names more inappropriate. John A. Macdonald, the leader of those who had once called themselves Tories, was confessing the change when he wrote, in 1860, "While I have always been a member of what is called the Conservative party, I could never have been called a Tory, although there is no man who more respects what is called old-fogey Toryism than I do, so long as it is based upon principle."[3] The fierce battles over constitutional theories, {297} which a series of British governors and governments had so long deprecated, had at last been eliminated by the natural development of Canadian political life.

The same natural development provided a substitute for the older party system. Elgin, as has been seen, belonged to the group of Peelites, who, during the lifetime of their leader and long after it, endeavoured to solve the new administrative problems of the nineteenth century without too strict an adherence to party programmes and lines of division. Curiously enough, he was the chief agent in stimulating a similar political movement in Canada. There was, however, this difference, that while in Peel's case, and still more in that of his followers, the British party tradition proved overwhelmingly powerful, in Canada, where tradition was weaker, and the need for sound administration far more vital, the movement became dominant in the form of Liberal-conservatism. In other words, in place of small violently antagonistic parties, moderate men inclined to come together to carry out a broad, non-controversial, national programme.

There are few more remarkable developments in Canada between 1840 and 1867 than this tendency {298} towards government by a single party. It was Sydenham's shrewd insight into the Canadian political situation, even more than his desire to rule, which led him to govern Canada by a coalition of moderate men. His only mistake lay in trying to force on the province what should have come by nature. The Baldwin-La Fontaine compact, which really dominated Canadian politics from 1841, was a partial experiment in government by an alliance of groups; and when the great exciting questions, Responsible Government and Church Establishment, had been settled, and the end in view seemed simply to be the carrying on of the Queen's government, Liberal-conservatism entered gradually into possession. When Baldwin and La Fontaine made way for Hincks and Morin in 1851, the change was recognized as a step towards the re-union of the moderates. For, in the face of George Brown, and his advocacy of a more provocative radical programme, Francis Hincks declared for some kind of coalition: "I regret to say there have been indications given by a section of the party to which I belong, that it will be difficult indeed, unless they change their policy, to preserve the Union. I will tell these persons (the anti-state church reformers of Upper Canada) {299} that if the Union is not preserved by them, as a necessary consequence, other combinations must be formed by which the Union may be preserved. I am ready to give my cordial support to any combination of parties by which the Union shall be maintained."[4] Three years later, the party of moderate reform which had co-operated with Elgin in creating a system of truly responsible government, and which had done so much to restore Canadian political equanimity, fell before a factious combination of hostile groups. But the succeeding administration, nominally Conservative, was actually Liberal-Conservative, and it remained in power chiefly because Francis Hincks, who had led the Reformers, desired his followers to assist it, as Peel and his immediate disciples kept the British Whigs in office after 1846. Robert Baldwin had been the leader of opposition during Sydenham's rule, and before it; indeed, he may be called the organizer of party division in the days before the grant of responsible government. Yet when the opponents of the compact of 1854 quoted his precedent of party division against Hincks' principle of union, Baldwin disowned his would-be supporters: "However disinclined myself to {300} adventure upon such combinations, they are unquestionably, in my opinion, under certain circumstances, not only justifiable, but expedient, and even necessary. The government of the country must be carried on. It ought to be carried on with vigour. If that can be done in no other way than by mutual concessions and a coalition of parties, they become necessary."[5] In consequence, the autumn of 1854 witnessed the remarkable spectacle of a Tory government, headed by Sir Allan MacNab, carrying a bill to end the Clergy Reserve troubles, in alliance with Francis Hincks and their late opponents. The chief dissentients were the extreme radicals, who were now nicknamed the Clear-Grits.[6]

After 1854, and for ten years, the political history of Canada is a reductio ad absurdum of the older party system. Government succeeded government, only to fall a prey to its own lack of a sufficient majority, and the unprincipled use by its various opponents of casual combinations and {301} alliances. Apart from a little group of Radicals, British and French, who advocated reforms with an absence of moderation which made them impossible as ministers of state, there were not sufficient differences to justify two parties, and hardly sufficient programme even for one. The old Tories disappeared from power with their leader, Sir Allan MacNab, in 1856. The Baldwin-Hincks reformers had distributed themselves through all the parties—Canadian Peelites they may be called. The great majority of the representatives of the French followed moderate counsels, and were usually sought as allies by whatever government held office. The broader principles of party warfare were proclaimed only by the Clear-Grits of Upper Canada and the Rouges of Lower Canada. The latter group was distinct enough in its views to be impossible as allies for any but like-minded extremists: "Le parti rouge," says La Minerve, "s'est forme a Montreal sous les auspices de M. Papineau, en haine des institutions anglaises, de notre constitution declaree vicieuse, et surtout du gouvernement responsable regarde comme une duperie, avec des idees d'innovation en religion et en politique, accompagnees d'une haine profond pour le clerge, et avec l'intention {302} bien formelle, et bien prononcee d'annexer le Canada aux Etats-Unis."[7]

As for the original Clear-Grits, their distinguishing features were the advocacy of reforming ideas in so extreme a form as to make them useless for practical purposes, an anti-clerical or extreme Protestant outlook in religion, and a moral superiority, partly real, but more largely the Pharisaism so inevitably connected with all forms of radical propaganda. They proved their futility in 1858, when George Brown and A. A. Dorion formed their two-days' administration, and extinguished the credit of their parties, and themselves, as politicians capable of existence apart from moderate allies. Until Canadian politics could have their scope enlarged, and the issues at stake made more vital, and therefore more controversial, it was obvious that the grant of responsible government had rendered the existing party system useless.

The significant moment in this period of Canadian history came in 1864, when all the responsible politicians in the country, and more especially the two great personal enemies, John A. Macdonald and George Brown, came together to carry out a scheme of confederation, which was too great to {303} be the object of petty party strife, and which required the support of all parties to make it successful. Both political parties, as George Brown confessed, had tried to govern the country, and each in turn had failed from lack of steady adequate support. A general election was unlikely to effect any improvement in the situation, and the one hope seemed to lie in a frank combination between opponents to solve the constitutional difficulties which threatened to ruin the province. "After much discussion on both sides," ran the official declaration, "it was found that a compromise might probably be had in the adoption either of the federal principle for the British North American provinces, as the larger question, or for Canada alone, with provisions for the admission of the Maritime Provinces and the North-Western Territory, when they should express the desire": and to secure the most perfect unanimity the ministers, Sir E. P. Tache and Mr. Macdonald, "thereon stated that, after the prorogation, they would be prepared to place three seats in the Cabinet at the disposal of Mr. Brown."[8]

It is not within the scope of this essay to discuss {304} developments after Confederation, yet it is an interesting speculation whether, up to a date quite recent, the grant of responsible government did not continue to make a two-party system on the British basis unnatural to Canada. Between 1847 and 1867, the destruction of the dual system, and the creation of government by coalition, were certainly the dominant facts in Canadian politics, and both were the products of the gift of autonomy. Since 1867, it is possible to contend that, while two sets of politicians offer themselves as alternative governments to the electors, their differentiation has reference rather to the holding of office than to a real distinction in programme. Alike in trade, imperial policy, and domestic progress, the inclination has been towards compromise, and either side inclines, or is forced, to steal the programme of the other. Responsible government was the last issue which arrayed men in parties, neither of which could quite accept a compromise with the other. It remains to be seen whether questions of freer trade, imperial organization, and provincial rights, will once more create parties with something deeper in their differences than mere rival claims to hold office.

If the creation of a Liberal-Conservative party {305} was a direct result of the grant of autonomy, so also was the policy which led to Confederation. It is no part of the present volume to trace the growth of the idea of Confederation, or to determine who the actual fathers of Confederation were. The connection between Autonomy and Confederation in the province of Canada was that the former made the latter inevitable.

Earlier chapters have dealt with the French Canadian problem, and the difficulty of combining French nationalite with the Anglo-Saxon elements of the West. In one sense, Elgin's regime saw nationalism lose all its awkward features. Papineau's return to public life in 1848, and the revolutionary stir of that year had left Lower Canada untouched, save in the negligible section represented by the Rouges. The inclusion of La Fontaine and his friends in the ministry had proved the bona fides of the governor, and the French, being, as Elgin said, "quiet sort of people," stood fast by their friend. "Candour compels me to state," he wrote after a year of annexationist agitation, "that the conduct of the Anglo-Saxon portion of our M.P.Ps contrasts most unfavourably with that of the Gallican.... The French have been rescued from the false position into which they {306} have been driven, and in which they must perforce have remained, so long as they believed that it was the object of the British government, as avowed by Lord Sydenham and others, to break them down, and to ensure to the British race, not by trusting to the natural course of events, but by dint of management and state craft, predominance in the province."[9]

But while French nationalism had assumed a perfectly normal phase, the operations of autonomy after 1847 made steadily towards the creation of a new nationalist difficulty. That difficulty had two phases.

In the first place, while the Union of Upper and Lower Canada had been based on the assumption that from it a single nationality with common ideals and objects would emerge, experience proved that both the French and the British sections remained aggressively true to their own ways; and the independence bred by self-government only quickened the sense of racial distinction. Now there were questions, such as that of the Clergy Reserves, which chiefly concerned the British section; and others, like the settlement of the seigniorial tenure, of purely French-Canadian {307} character. Others again, chief among them the problem of separate schools, in Lower Canada for Protestants, in Upper Canada for Catholics, seemed to set the two sections in direct opposition. Under the circumstances, a series of conventions was created to meet a situation very involved and dangerous. The happy accident of the dual leadership of La Fontaine and Baldwin furnished a precedent for successive ministries, each of which took its name from a similar partnership of French and English. Further, although the principle never received official sanction, it became usual to expect that, in questions affecting the French, a majority from Lower Canada should be obtained, and in English matters, one from Upper Canada. It was also the custom to expect a government to prove its stability by maintaining a majority from both Upper and Lower Canada. Nothing, for example, so strengthened Elgin's hands in the Rebellion Losses fight as the fact that the majority which passed the bill was one in both sections of the Assembly. Yet nearly all cabinet ministers, and all the governors-general, strongly opposed the acknowledgment of "the double majority" as an accepted constitutional principle. "I have told Colonel Tache," wrote Head, in 1856, "that I {308} expect the government formed by him to disavow the principle of a double majority";[10] and both Baldwin, and, after him, John A. Macdonald refused to countenance the practice. Unfortunately, while the idea was a constitutional anomaly, threatening all manner of complications to the government of Canada, there were occasions when it had to receive a partial sanction from use. When the Tories were sustained by a majority of 4 in 1856, government suffered reconstruction because there had been a minority of votes from Upper Canada. As the new Tory leader explained, "I did not, and I do not think that the double majority system should be adopted as a rule. I feel that so long as we are one province and one Parliament, the fact of a measure being carried by a working majority is sufficient evidence that the Government of the day is in power to conduct the affairs of the country. But I could not disguise from myself that it (the recent vote) was not a vote on a measure, but a distinct vote of confidence, or want of confidence; and there having been a vote against us from Upper Canada, expressing a want of confidence in the government, I felt that it was a sufficient indication that the measures of the government {309} would be met with the opposition of those honorable gentlemen who had by their solemn vote withdrawn their confidence from the government."[11] The practice continued in this state of discredit varied by occasional forced use, until a government—that of J. S. Macdonald and Sicotte—which had definitely made the double majority one of the planks in its platform, found that its principal measure, the Separate Schools Act of R. W. Scott, had to be carried by a French majority, although the matter was one of deep concern to Upper Canada. It was becoming obvious that local interests must receive some securer protection than could be afforded by what was after all an evasion of constitutional practice.

Meanwhile complications were arising from another movement, the agitation for a revision of parliamentary representation. The twelfth section of the Union Act had enacted that "the parts of the said Province which now constitute the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada respectively, shall be represented by an equal number of representatives." At the time of Union the balance of population had inclined decisively towards {310} Lower Canada; indeed that part of the province might fairly claim to have a constitutional grievance. But between 1830 and 1860 the balance had altered. In Lower Canada a population, which in 1831 had been 511,922, had increased by 1844 to almost 700,000; while in Upper Canada the numbers had increased from 334,681 to well over 700,000 in 1848;[12] and each year saw the west increase in comparison with the east, until George Brown, speaking no doubt with forensic rather than scientific ends in view, estimated that in 1857 Upper Canada possessed a population of over 1,400,000, as against a bare 1,100,000 in Lower Canada.[13] These changes produced a most interesting complication. The representation after 1840 stood guaranteed by a solemn act—the more solemn because it had been the result of a bargain between Sydenham and the provincial authorities in Upper and Lower Canada. It had the appearance rather of a treaty than of an ordinary Act of Parliament. On the other hand, since self-government had been secured, and since self-government seemed to involve the principle of representation in proportion {311} to the numbers of the population, it was, according to the Upper Canadian politicians, absurd to give to 1,100,000 the same representation as to 1,400,000. So George Brown, speaking from his place in Parliament, and using, at the same time, his extraordinary and unequalled influence as editor of The Globe, flung himself into the fray, seeking, as his motion of 1857 ran, "that the representation of the people in Parliament should be based upon population, without regard to a separating line between Upper and Lower Canada."[14] His thesis was too cogent, and appealed too powerfully to all classes of the Upper Canada community, to be anything but irresistible. Even Macdonald, whose political existence depended on his alliance with the French, knew that his rival had made many converts among the British Conservatives. "It is an open question," he wrote of representation by population, in 1861, "and you know two of my colleagues voted in its favour."[15]

Yet nothing was better calculated to rouse into wild agitation the quiescent feeling of French nationalism. The attempt of Durham and his successors to end, by natural operation, the separate {312} existence of French nationality was now being renewed with far greater vigour, and with all the weight of a normal constitutional reform. If George Brown was hateful to the French electorate because of his Protestant and anti-clerical agitation, he was even more odious as the statesman who threatened, in the name of Canadian autonomy, the existence of old French tradition, custom, and right. It was in answer to this twofold difficulty that Canadian statesmen definitely thought of Confederation. There were many roads leading to that event—the desire of Britain for a more compact and defensible colony; the movement in the maritime provinces for a local federation; the dream, or vague aspiration, cherished by a few Canadians, of a vaster dominion, and one free from petty local divisions and strifes. But it was no dream or imperial ideal which forced Canadian statesmen into action; it was simply the desire, on the one hand, to give to the progressive west the increased weight it claimed as due to its numbers; and on the other, to safeguard the ancient ways and rights of the French community. From this point of view, it was George Brown, the man who preached representation by population in season and out of season, who actually forced {313} Canadian statesmen to have resort to a measure, the details of which he himself did not at first approve; and the argument used to drive the point home was not imperial, but a bitter criticism of existing conditions. After the great Reform convention of 1859, Brown moved in Parliament "that the existing legislative union between Upper and Lower Canada has failed to realize the anticipations of its promoters: has resulted in a heavy debt, burdensome taxation, great political abuses, and universal dissatisfaction; and it is the matured conviction of this Assembly, from the antagonisms developed through difference of origin, local interests, and other causes, that the union in its present form can be no longer continued with advantage to the people."[16] In 1864 a distracted province found itself at the end of its resources. Its futile efforts at the game of political party had resulted in the defeat of four ministries within three years; its attempt to balance majorities in Upper and Lower Canada had hopelessly broken down; and the moment in which the stronger British west obtained the increased representation it sought, the French feeling for nationality would probably once more produce rebellion.

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So Confederation came—to satisfy George Brown, because in the Dominion Assembly his province would receive adequate representation—to satisfy, on the other hand, a loyal Frenchman like Joseph Cauchon, because, as he said, "La confederation des deux Canadas, ou de toutes les provinces, en nous donnant une constitution locale, qui sauverait, cependant, les privileges, les droits acquis et les institutions des minorites, nous offrirait certainement une mesure de protection, comme Catholiques et comme Francais, autrement grand que l'Union actuelle, puisque de minorite nous deviendrons et resterons, a toujours, la majorite nationale et la majorite religieuse."[17] That was the second, and perhaps the greatest of all the results of self-government.

Before passing to inquire into the influence of autonomy on Canadian loyalty, it may prove interesting to note the political manners and morals of the statesmen who worked the system in its earlier stages. In passing judgment, however, one must bear in mind the newness of the country and the novelty of the experiment; the fact that a democratic constitution far more daring than {315} Britain allowed herself at home, was being tested; and the severity of the struggle for existence, which left Canadians little time and money to devote to disinterested service of their country. In view of all these facts, and in spite of some ugly defects, the verdict must be on the whole favourable to the colony.

Of direct malversation, or actual sordid dishonesty, there was, thanks probably to a vigorous opposition, far less than might have been expected. The cause celebre was that of Francis Hincks, premier from 1851 to 1854, who was accused, among other things, of having profited through buying shares in concerns with which government had dealings—a fault not unknown in Britain; of having induced government to improve the facilities of regions in which he had holdings, and generally of having used his position as minister to make great private gains. A most minute inquiry cleared him on all scores, but the committee of the Legislative Council, without entering further into the questions, mentioned as points worthy of consideration by Parliament, "whether it is beneficial to the due administration of the affairs of this country for its ministers to purchase lands sold at public competition, and Municipal Debentures, also {316} offered in open market or otherwise; whether the public interests require an expression of the opinions of the Two Houses of Parliament in that respect; and whether it would be advisable to increase the salaries of the Members of the Executive Council to such a figure, as would relieve them from the necessity of engaging in private dealings, to enable them to support their families and maintain the dignity of their position, without resorting to any kind of business transactions while in the service of the crown."[18] Canada was passing through an ordeal, which, sooner or later, Britain too must face. Her answer, in this case, to the dilemma between service of the community and self-aggrandisement was not unworthy of the mother country.

Still, in spite of the acquittal of Hincks, there were cases of complicated corruption, and a multitude of little squalid sins. Men like Sir Allan MacNab, who had been bred in a system of preferments and petty political gains, found it difficult to avoid small jobbery. "He has such an infernal lot of hangers on to provide for," wrote one minister to another, concerning the gallant knight, "that he finds it difficult to do the {317} needful for them all."[19] It is clear, too, that when John A. Macdonald succeeded MacNab as Tory leader, purity did not increase. It was no doubt easy for George Brown to criticize Macdonald's methods from a position of untempted rectitude, and no doubt also Brown had personal reasons for criticism; but he was speaking well within the truth, when he attacked the Tory government of 1858, not only for grave corruption in the late general election, but for other weightier offences. It was elicited, he said, by the Public Accounts Committee that L500,000 of provincial debentures had been sold in England by government at 99-1/4, when the quotation of the Stock Exchange was 105 @ 107, by which the province was wronged to the extent of L50,000. It was elicited that a member of Parliament, supporting the government, sold to the government L20,000 of Hamilton debentures at 97-1/4 which were worth only 80 in the market.... It was elicited that large sums were habitually drawn from the public chest, and lent to railway companies, or spent on services for which no previous sanction of Parliament had been obtained.[20] It is, perhaps, the gravest charge {318} against Macdonald that, at the entrance of Canada into the region of modern finance and speculation, he never understood that incorrupt administration was the greatest gift a man could give to the future of his country.

In a young and not yet civilized community it was natural that the early days of self-government should witness some corruption among the voters, the more so because, at election times "there were no less than four days, the nomination, two days' polling, and declaration day, on all of which, by a sort of unwritten law, the candidates in many constituencies were compelled to keep open house for their supporters," while direct money bribes were often resorted to, especially on the second day's polling in a close contest.[21]

Apart from jobbery and frank corruption, Canadian politicians condescended at times to ignoble trickery, and to evasions of the truth which came perilously near breaches of honour. The most notorious breach of the constitutional decencies was the celebrated episode nicknamed the "Double Shuffle." Whatever apologists may say, John A. Macdonald sinned in the very first essentials of political fair-play. He had already {319} led George Brown into a trap by forcing government into his hands. When Brown, too late to save his reputation, discovered the sheer futility of his attempt to make and keep together a government, and when it once more fell to the Conservatives to take office, Macdonald saved himself and his colleagues the trouble of standing for re-election by a most shameful constitutional quibble. According to a recent act, if a member of Legislative Council or Assembly "shall resign his office, and within one month after his resignation, accept any other of the said offices (enumerated above), he shall not vacate his seat in the said Assembly or Council."[22] It was a simple, and a disgraceful thing, for the ministers, once more in power, to accept offices other than those which they had held before resignation, and then, at once, to pass on to the reacceptance of the old appropriate positions. They saved their seats at the expense of their honour. In spite of Macdonald's availability, there was too much of the village Machiavelli about his political tactics to please the educated and honest judgment.

It was very natural too that, in these early struggles towards independence and national {320} self-consciousness, the crudities inseparable from early colonial existence should be painfully apparent. In Canada at least, vice could not boast that it had lost half its evil by losing all its grossness. According to Sir Richard Cartwright, the prolonged absence from domestic associations, led to a considerable amount of dissipation among members of parliament. The minister who dominated Canadian politics for so many years before and after Confederation set an unfortunate example to his flock; and many of the debates read as though they drew their heat, if not their light, from material rather than intellectual sources. Apart from offences against sobriety and the decalogue, there can be no doubt that something of the early ferocity of politics still continued, and the disgrace of the Montreal riots which followed Elgin's sanction of the Rebellion Losses bill was rendered tenfold more disgraceful by the participation in them of gentlemen and politicians of position. Half the success of democratic institutions lies in the capacity of the legislators for some public dignity, and a certain chivalrous good nature towards each other. But that is perhaps too high a standard to set for the first colonial Assembly which had exercised full {321} powers of self-government since 1776. After all, there were great stretches of honesty and high purpose to counterbalance the squalid jobs and tricks. If Macdonald sinned in one direction, Alexander Mackenzie had already begun his course of almost too austere rectitude in another. Opposition kept a keen eye on governmental misdoings, and George Brown, impulsive, imprudent, often lacking in sane statesmanship, and, once or twice, in nice honour, still raised himself, the readers of his newspaper, and the Assembly which he often led in morals, if not in politics, to a plane not far below that of the imperial Parliament. But the highest level of feeling and statesmanship reached by Canadian politicians before 1867 was attained in those days of difficulty in 1864, when the whole future of Canada was at stake, and when none but Canadians could guide their country into safety. There were many obstacles in the way of united action between the leaders on both sides; the attempt to create a federal constitution was no light task even for statesmen of genius; and the adaptation of means to end, of public utilities to local jealousies, demanded temper, honesty, breadth of view. George Brown, who with all his impracticability and lack of restraint, behaved with {322} notable public spirit at this time, spoke for the community when he said, "The whole feeling in my mind is one of joy and thankfulness that there were found men of position and influence in Canada, who, at a moment of serious crisis, had nerve and patriotism enough to cast aside political partizanship, to banish personal considerations, and unite for the accomplishment of a measure so fraught with advantage to their common country."[23] In the debate from which these words are taken, Canadian statesmen excelled themselves, and it is not too much to say that whether in attack or defence, the speakers exhibited a capacity and a public spirit not unworthy of the imperial Parliament at its best.[24]

It would, however, be a mistake to exhibit the Canadian Assembly of early Victorian days as characterized for long by so sublime and Miltonic a spirit as is suggested by the Confederation debates. After all, they were mainly provincial lawyers and shrewd uncultured business men who guided the destinies of Canada, guilty of many lapses from dignity in their public behaviour, and exhibiting {323} not infrequently a democratic vulgarity learned from the neighbouring republic. That was a less elevated, but altogether living and real picture of the Canadian politician, which Sir John Macdonald's biographer gave of his hero, and the great opposition leader, as they returned, while on an imperial mission, from a day at the Derby: "Coming home, we had lots of fun: even George Brown, a covenanting old chap, caught its spirit. I bought him a pea-shooter and a bag of peas, and the old fellow actually took aim at people on the tops of busses, and shot lots of peas on the way home."[25]

It now becomes necessary to answer the question which, for twenty years, English politicians had been putting to those who argued in favour of Canadian self-government. Given a system of local government, really autonomous, what will become of the connection with Great Britain? So far as the issue is one purely constitutional and legal, it may be answered very shortly. Responsible government in Canada seriously diminished the formal bonds which united that province to the mother country. For long the pessimists in Britain had been proclaiming that the diminution of the governor-general's authority and {324} responsibility would end the connection. After the retirement of Lord Elgin, that diminution had taken place. It is a revelation of constitutional change to pass from the full, interesting, and many-sided despatches and letters of Sydenham, Bagot, and Elgin, to the perfunctory reports of Head and Monck. Elgin had contended that a governor might hope to establish a moral influence, which would compensate for the loss of power, consequent on the surrender of patronage to an executive responsible to the local parliament;[26] but it was not certain that either Head or Monck possessed this indirect control. In 1858 Sir Edmund Head acted with great apparent independence, when he refused to allow George Brown and his new administration the privilege of a dissolution; and the columns of The Globe resounded with denunciations which recalled the days of Metcalfe and tyranny. But, even if Head were independent, it was not with an authority useful to the dignity of his position; and the whole affair has a suspicious resemblance to one of John A. Macdonald's tricks. The voice is Macdonald's voice, if the hands are the hands of Head. Under Monck, the most conspicuous assertion of independence was the {325} governor's selection of J. S. Macdonald to lead the ministry of 1862, instead of Foley, the more natural alternative for premier. Nevertheless Monck's despatches, concerned as they are with diplomatic and military details, present a striking contrast to those of Sydenham and Elgin, who proved how active was the part they played in the life of the community by the vividness of their sketches of Canadian politics and society. So sparing, indeed, was Monck in his information, that Newcastle had to reprove him, in 1863, for sending so little news that the Colonial Office could have furnished no information on Canada to the Houses of Parliament had they called for papers.[27] During the confederation negotiations, the governor made an admirable referee, or impartial centre, round whom the diverse interests might group themselves: but no one could say that events were shaped or changed by his action. The warmest language used concerning Her Majesty's representative in Canada may be found in the speech of Macdonald in the confederation debate: "We place no restriction on Her Majesty's prerogative in the selection of her representative. The Sovereign has unrestricted freedom of choice. Whether in making {326} her selection she may send us one of her own family, a Royal Prince, as a Viceroy to rule us, or one of the great statesmen of England to represent her, we know not.... But we may be permitted to hope that when the union takes place, and we become the great country which British North America is certain to be, it will be an object worthy the ambition of the statesmen of England to be charged with presiding over our destinies."[28]

Apart from the viceregal operations of the governor, the direct action of the Crown was called for by the province in one notable but unfortunate incident, the choice of a new capital. Torn asunder by the strife of French and English, Canada was unable, or at least unwilling, to commit herself to the choice of a definitive capital, after Montreal had been rendered impossible by the turbulence of its mobs. So the Queen's personal initiative was invited. But the awkwardness of the step was revealed in 1858, when a division in the House practically flung her decision contemptuously aside—happily only for the moment, and informally. George Brown was absolutely right when he said: "I yield to no man for a single {327} moment in loyalty to the Crown of England, and in humble respect and admiration of Her Majesty. But what has this purely Canadian question to do with loyalty? It is a most dangerous and ungracious thing to couple the name of Her Majesty with an affair so entirely local, and one as to which the sectional feelings of the people are so excited."[29] It had become apparent, long before 1867, that while the loyalty of the province to the Sovereign, and the personal influence of her representative were bonds of union, real, if hard to describe in set terms, the headship over the Canadian people was assumed to be official, ornamental, and symbolical, rather than utilitarian.

In other directions, the formal and legal elements of the connection were loosening—-more especially in the departments of commerce and defence.[30] The careers of men like Buchanan and Galt, through whom the Canadian tariff received a complete revision, illustrate how little the former links to Britain were allowed to remain in trade relations. There was a day when, as Chatham himself would have contended, the regulation of trade was an indefeasible right of the Crown. That contention {328} received a rude check not only in the elaboration of a Canadian tariff in 1859, but in the claims made by the minister of finance: "It is therefore the duty of the present government, distinctly to affirm the right of the Canadian Legislature to adjust the taxation of the people in the way they judge best, even if it should meet the disapproval of the Imperial ministry. Her Majesty cannot be advised to disallow such acts, unless her advisers are prepared to assume the administration of the affairs of the colony, irrespective of the views of the inhabitants."[31] Similarly, the adverse vote on the militia proposals of 1862, which so exercised opinion in Britain, was but another result of the spirit of self-government operating naturally in the province. It was not that Canadians desired consciously to check the military plans of the empire. It was only that the grant of autonomy had permitted provincial rather than imperial counsels to prevail, and that a new laxity, or even slipshodness, had begun to appear in Canadian military affairs, weakening the formal military connection between Britain and {329} Canada. Canadian defence, from being part of imperial policy, had become a detail in the strife of domestic politics. "There can be no doubt," Monck reported, "that the proposed militia arrangements were of a magnitude far beyond anything which had, up to that time, been proposed, and this circumstance caused many members, especially from Lower Canada, to vote against it; but I think there was also, on the part of a portion of the general supporters of government, an intention to intimate by their vote the withdrawal of their confidence from the administration."[32]

Even before 1867, then, it had become apparent that the imperial system administered on Home Rule principles was something entirely different from a federation like that of the United States, with carefully defined State and Federal rights. All the presumption, in the new British state, was in favour of the so-called dependency, and the British Tories were correct, when they prophesied a steady retrogression in the legal rights possessed by the mother country. But the element which they had ignored was that of opinion. Public feeling rather than constitutional law was to be the new foundation of empire. How did the {330} development of Canadian political independence affect public sentiment towards Britain?

The new regime began under gloomy auspices. In 1849 Lord Elgin gave the most decisive proof of his allegiance to Canadian autonomy; and in 1849 a violent agitation for annexation to the United States began.[33] Many forces assisted in the creation of the movement, and many groups, of the most diverse elements, combined to constitute the party of annexation. There was real commercial distress, in part the result of the commercial revolution in Britain, and Montreal more especially felt the strain acutely. "Property," wrote Elgin to Grey in 1849,[34] "in most of the Canadian towns, and more especially in the Capital, has fallen 50 per cent. in value within the last three years. Three-fourths of the commercial men are bankrupt. Owing to free trade a large proportion of the exportable produce of Canada is obliged to seek a market in the States. It pays a duty of 20 per cent. on the frontier. If free navigation, and reciprocal trade with the Union be not secured for us, the worst, I fear, will come, {331} and at no distant day." Now, for that distress there seemed to be one natural remedy. Across the border were prosperity and markets. A change in allegiance would open the doors, and bring trade and wealth flowing into the bankrupt province. Consequently many of the notable names among the Montreal business men may be found attached to annexation proclamations.

Again, in spite of the great change in French opinion wrought by Elgin's acceptance of French ministers, there was a little band of French extremists, the Rouges, entirely disaffected towards England. At their head, at first, was Papineau. Papineau's predilections, according to one who knew him well, were avowedly democratic and republican,[35] and his years in Europe, at the time when revolution was in the air, had not served to moderate his opinions. The election address with which he once more entered public life, at the end of 1847, betrays everywhere hatred of the British government, a decided inclination for things American, and a strong dash of European revolutionary sentiment, revealed in declamations over patriotes and oppresseurs.[36] Round him gathered a little band {332} of anti-clericals and ultra-radicals, as strongly drawn to the United States as they were repelled by Britain. Even after Papineau had reduced himself to public insignificance, the group remained, and in 1865 Cartier, the true representative of French-Canadian feeling, spoke of the Institut Canadien of Montreal as an advocate, not of confederation, but of annexation.[37]

After the years of famine in Ireland, there was more than a possibility that, in Canada, as in the United States, the main body of Irish immigrants would be hostile to Britain, and Elgin watched with anxious eyes for symptoms of a rising, sympathetic with that in Ireland, and fostered by Irish-American hatred of England. Throughout the province the Irish community was large and often organized—in 1866 D'Arcy M'Gee counted thirty counties in which the Irish-Catholic votes ranged from a third to a fifth of the whole constituency.[38] Now while, {333} in 1866, M'Gee spoke with boldness of the loyalty of his countrymen, it is undoubtedly true that, in 1848 and 1849, there were hostile spirits, and an army of Irish patriots across the border, only too willing to precipitate hostilities.

For the rest, there were Americans in the province who still thought their former country the perfect state, and who did not hesitate to use British liberty to promote republican ends; there were radicals and grumblers of half a hundred shades and colours, who connected their sufferings with the errors of British rule, and who spoke loosely of annexation as a kind of general remedy for all their public ills. For it cannot be too distinctly asserted that, from that day to this, there has always been a section of discontented triflers to whom annexation, a word often on their lips, means nothing more than their fashion of damning a government too strong for them to assail by rational processes.

The annexation cry found echoes throughout the province, both in the press and on the platform, and it continued to reassert its existence long after the outburst of 1849 had ended. Cartwright declares that, even after 1856, he discovered in Western Ontario a sentiment both strong and {334} widespread in favour of union with the United States. But the actual movement, which at first seemed to have a real threat implicit in it, came to a head in 1849, and found its chief supporters within the city of Montreal. "You find in this city," wrote Elgin in September, 1849, "the most anti-British specimens of each class of which our community consists. The Montreal French are the most Yankeefied French in the province; the British, though furiously anti-Gallican, are with some exceptions the least loyal; and the commercial men the most zealous annexationists which Canada furnishes."[39]

Two circumstances, apparently unconnected with annexationism, intensified that movement, the laissez faire attitude of British politicians towards their colonies, and the behaviour of the defeated Tory party in Canada. Of the first enough has already been said; but it is interesting to note that The Independent, which was the organ of the annexationists, justified its views by references to "English statesmen and writers of eminence," and that the Second Annexation Manifesto quoted largely from British papers.[40] The second fact {335} demands some examination. The Tories had been from the first the party of the connection, and had been recognized as such in Britain. But the loss of their supremacy had put too severe a strain on their loyalty, and it has already been seen that when Elgin, obeying constitutional usage, recognized the French as citizens, equally entitled to office with the Tories, and passed the Rebellion Losses Bill in accordance with La Fontaine's wishes, the Tory sense of decency gave way. Many of them, not content with abusing the governor-general, and petitioning for his recall, actually declared themselves in favour of independence, or joined the ranks of the annexation party. In an extraordinary issue of the Montreal Gazette, a recognized Tory journal, the editor, after speaking of Elgin as the last governor of Canada, proclaimed that "the end has begun. Anglo-Saxons! You must live for the future. Your blood and race will now be supreme, if true to yourselves. You will be English at the expense of not being British."[41] But other journals and politicians were not content with the half-way house of independence, and the majority of those who signed the first annexation manifesto belonged to the Tory party.[42] John {336} A. Macdonald, who was shrewd and cool-headed enough to refuse to sign the manifesto, admitted that "our fellows lost their heads"; but he cannot be allowed to claim credit for having advocated the formation of another organization, the British-American League, as a safety-valve for Tory feeling.[43] Unfortunately for his accuracy, the League was formed in the spring of 1849; it held its first convention in July; and the manifesto did not appear till late autumn. Still, it is true that the meetings of the League provided some occupation for minds which, in their irritable condition, might have done more foolish things, and Mr. Holland MacDonald described the feelings of the wiser of his fellow-leaguers when he said at Kingston: "I maintain that there is not an individual in this Assembly, at this moment, prepared to go for annexation, although some may be suspected of having leanings that way."[44] It was a violent but passing fit of petulance which for the moment obscured Tory loyalty. When it had ended, chiefly because Elgin acted not only with prudence, but with great insight, in pressing for a reciprocity treaty with the United States, the British American {337} League and the Annexation Manifesto vanished into the limbo of broken causes and political indiscretions.

The truth was that every great respectable section of the Canadian people was almost wholly sound in its allegiance. Regarded even racially, it is hard to find any important group which was not substantially loyal. The Celtic and Gallic sections of the populace might have been expected to furnish recruits for annexation; and disaffection undoubtedly existed among the Canadian Irish. Yet Elgin was much more troubled over possible Irish disaffection in 1848 than he was in 1849; the Orange societies round Toronto seem to have refused to follow their fellow Tories into an alliance with annexationists; and, as has been already seen, D'Arcy M'Gee was able, in 1866, to speak of the Irish community as wholly loyal.

The great mass of the French-Canadians stood by the governor and Britain. Whatever influence the French priesthood possessed was exerted on the side of the connection; from Durham to Monck there is unanimity concerning the consistent loyalty of the Catholic Church in Canada. Apart from the church, the French-Canadians, when once their just rights had been conceded, {338} furnished a stable, conservative, and loyal body of citizens. Doubtless they had their points of divergence from the ideals of the Anglo-Saxon west. It was they who ensured the defeat of the militia proposals of 1862, and there were always sufficient Rouges to raise a cry of nationality or annexation. But the national leaders, La Fontaine and Cartier, were absolutely true to the empire, and journalists like Cauchon flung their influence on the same side, even if they hinted at "jours qui doivent necessairement venir, que nous le voulions ou que nous ne le voulions pas"—to wit, of independence.[45]

Of the English and Scottish elements in the population it is hardly necessary to say that their loyalty had increased rather than diminished since they had crossed the Atlantic; but at least one instance of Highland loyalty may be given. It was when Elgin had been insulted, and when the annexation cause was at its height. Loyal addresses had begun to pour in, but there was one whose words still ring with a certain martial loyalty, and which Elgin answered with genuine emotion. The Highlanders of Glengarry county, after assuring {339} their governor of their personal allegiance to him, passed to more general sentiments: "Our highest aspirations for Canada are that she may continue to flourish under the kindly protection of the British flag, enjoying the full privilege of that constitution, under which the parent land has risen to so lofty an eminence; with this, United Canada has nothing to covet in other lands; with less than this, no true Briton would rest satisfied."[46]

As all the distinctive elements in the population remained true to Britain, so too did all the statesmen of eminence. It would be easy to prove the fact by a political census of Upper and Lower Canada; but let three representative men stand for those groups which they led—Robert Baldwin for the constitutional reformers, George Brown for the Clear-Grits and progressives, John A. Macdonald for the conservatives. Robert Baldwin was the man whom Elgin counted worth two regiments to the connection, and who had expressed dismay at Lord John Russell's treason to the Empire. When the annexation troubles came on, he made it perfectly clear to one of his followers, who had trifled with annexation, that he must change his views, or remain outside the Baldwin connection. {340} "I felt it right to write to Mr. Perry, expressing my decided opinions in respect of the annexation question, and that I could look upon those only who are in favour of the continuance of the connection with the mother country as political friends; those who are against it as political opponents.... I believe that our party are hostile to annexation. I am at all events hostile to it myself, and if I and my party differ upon it, it is necessary we should part company. It is not a question upon which a compromise is possible."[47]

Loyalty so strong as this seems natural in a Whig like Baldwin, but one associates agitation and radicalism with other views. The progressive, when he is not engaged in decrying his own state, often exhibits a philosophic indifference to all national prejudice—he is a cosmopolitan whose charity begins away from home. There were those among the Canadian Radicals who were as bad friends to Britain as they were good friends to the United States, but the Clear-Grit party up to confederation was true to Britain, largely because their leader, after 1850, was George Brown, and because Brown was the loyalest Scot in Canada. Brown was in a sense the most remarkable figure of the time in {341} his province. Fierce in his opinions, a vehement speaker, an agitator whose best qualities unfitted him for the steadier work of government, he committed just those mistakes which make the true agitator's public life something of a tragedy, or at least a disappointment. But Brown's work was done out of office. His passionate advocacy of the policy of Abraham Lincoln and the abolition of slavery kept relations with the United States calm through a diplomatic crisis. He it was who made confederation not possible, but necessary, by his agitation for a sounder representation. His work as opposition leader, and as the greatest editor known to Canadian journalism, saved Canadian politics from becoming the nest of jobs and corruption which—with all allowance for his good qualities—John A. Macdonald would have made them. Never before, and certainly never since his day, has any Canadian influenced the community as Brown did through The Globe. "There were probably many thousand voters in Ontario," says Cartwright,[48] "especially among the Scotch settlers, who hardly read anything except their Globe and their Bible, and whose whole political creed was practically dictated to them {342} by the former." Now that influence was exerted, from first to last, in favour of Britain. In his maiden speech in parliament Brown protested against a reduction of the governor's salary, and on the highest ground: "The appointment of that high authority is the only power which Great Britain still retains. Frankly and generously she has one by one surrendered all the rights which were once held necessary to the condition of a colony—the patronage of the Crown, the right over the public domain, the civil list, the customs, the post office have all been relinquished ... she guards our coasts, she maintains our troops, she builds our forts, she spends hundreds of thousands among us yearly; and yet the paltry payment to her representative is made a topic of grumbling and popular agitation."[49] In the same spirit he fought annexation, and killed it, among his followers; and, when confederation came, he helped to make the new dominion not only Canadian, but British. In that age when British faith in the Empire was on the wane, it was not English statesmanship which tried to inspire Canadian loyalty, but the loyalty of men like Brown which called to England to be of better heart. "I am much concerned {343} to observe," he wrote to Macdonald in 1864, "that there is a manifest desire in almost every quarter that ere long, the British American colonies should shift for themselves, and in some quarters, evident regret that we did not declare at once for independence. I am very sorry to observe this, but it arises, I hope, from the fear of invasion of Canada by the United States, and will soon pass away with the cause that excites it."[50]

Of Sir John Macdonald's loyalty it would be a work of supererogation to speak. His first political address proclaimed the need in Canada of a permanent connection with the mother country,[51] and his most famous utterance declared his intention of dying a British subject. But Macdonald's patriotism struck a note all its own, and one due mainly to the influence of Canadian autonomy working on a susceptible imagination. He was British, but always from the standpoint of Canada. He had no desire to exalt the Empire through the diminution of Canadian rights. For the old British Tory, British supremacy had necessarily involved colonial dependence; for Macdonald, the Canadian Conservative, the glory of the Empire lay in the {344} fullest autonomous development of each part. "The colonies," he said in one of his highest flights, "are now in a transition stage. Gradually a different colonial system is being developed—and it will become, year by year, less a case of dependence on our part, and of over-ruling protection on the part of the Mother Country, and more a case of healthy and cordial alliance. Instead of looking upon us as a merely dependent colony, England will have in us a friendly nation—a subordinate but still a powerful people—to stand by her in North America in peace or in war. The people of Australia will be such another subordinate nation. And England will have this advantage, if her colonies progress under the new colonial system, as I believe they will, that though at war with all the rest of the world, she will be able to look to the subordinate nations in alliance with her, and owning allegiance to the same Sovereign, who will assist in enabling her again to meet the whole world in arms, as she has done before."[52]

These words serve as a fitting close to the argument and story of Canadian autonomy. A review of the years in which it attained its full strength {345} gives the student of history but a poor impression of political foresight. British and Canadian Tories had predicted dissolution of the Empire, should self-government be granted, and they described the probable stages of dissolution. But all the events they had predicted had happened, and the Empire still stood, and stood more firmly united than before. British progressives had advocated the grant, while they had denied that autonomy need mean more than a very limited and circumscribed independence. But the floods had spread and overwhelmed their trivial limitations, and the Liberals found themselves triumphant in spite of their fears, and the restrictions which these fears had recommended. Canadian history from 1839 to 1867 furnishes certain simple and direct political lessons: that communities of the British stock can be governed only according to the strictest principles of autonomy; that autonomy, once granted, may not be limited, guided, or recalled; that, in the grant, all distinctions between internal and imperial, domestic and diplomatic, civil authority and military authority, made to save the face of British supremacy, will speedily disappear; and that, up to the present time, the measure of local independence has also been the measure of local loyalty {346} to the mother country. It may well be that, as traditions grow shadowy, as the old stock is imperceptibly changed into a new nationality, and as, among men of the new nationality, the pride in being British is no longer a natural incident of life, the autonomy of the future may prove disruptive, not cohesive. Nothing, however, is so futile as prophecy, unless it be pessimism. The precedents of three-quarters of a century do not lend themselves to support counsels of despair. The Canadian community has, after its own fashion, stood by the mother country in war; it may be that, in the future, the attempt to seek peace and ensue it will prove a more lasting, as it must certainly be a loftier, reason for continued union.



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

[2] He was reporting (18 December, 1854) the passing of acts dealing with the Clergy Reserves, and Seigniorial Tenure.

[3] Pope, Life of Sir John Macdonald, i. p. 151.

[4] Life and Speeches of the Hon. George Brown, pp. 47-48.

[5] Baldwin to Hincks, 22 September, 1854: in Hincks, Lecture on the Political History of Canada, pp. 80-81.

[6] The Clear-Grits are thus described in The Globe, 8 October, 1850: "disappointed ministerialists, ultra English radicals, republicans and annexationists.... As a party on their own footing, they are powerless except to do mischief." Brown had not yet transferred his allegiance.

[7] Quoted from Dent, The Last Forty Years, ii. p. 190.

[8] Ministerial explanations read to the House of Assembly, by the Hon. John A. Macdonald, on Wednesday, 22 June, 1864.

[9] Elgin-Grey Correspondence: Elgin to Grey, 2 August, 1850.

[10] Head to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, 26 May, 1856.

[11] Statement of the Hon. John A. Macdonald in the Assembly, 26 May, 1856.

[12] See Appendix to the First Report of the Board of Registration and Statistics, Montreal, 1849.

[13] Life of the Hon. George Brown, p. 263. This is undoubtedly an overestimate—prophetic rather than truthful.

[14] Life and Speeches of the Hon. George Brown, p. 267.

[15] Pope, Life of Sir John Macdonald, p. 234.

[16] Life and Speeches of the Hon. George Brown, p. 72.

[17] Cauchon, L'Union des provinces de l'Amerique Britannique du Nord, p. 45.

[18] Report from the Select Committee of the Legislative Council, p. xiv., Quebec, 1855.

[19] Pope, Life of Sir John Macdonald, p. 149.

[20] Life and Speeches of the Hon. George Brown, p. 271.

[21] Sir Richard Cartwright, Reminiscences, pp. 20-21.

[22] The Independence of Parliament Act—20 Victoria, c. 22.

[23] Life and Speeches of the Hon. George Brown, p. 299.

[24] See the volume containing the Parliamentary Debates on confederation, in 1865.

[25] Pope, Life of Sir John Macdonald, i. p. 283.

[26] Elgin-Grey Correspondence: Elgin to Grey, 13 July, 1847.

[27] The Secretary of State for the Colonies to Monck, 10 July, 1863.

[28] Confederation Debates (1865), p. 34.

[29] Life and Speeches of the Hon. George Brown, p. 272.

[30] See the previous chapter, pp. 283-290.

[31] See the most important statement by Galt, dated 25 October, 1859, and contained in Sessional Papers of the Canadian Parliament, vol. xviii., No. 4.

[32] Monck to Newcastle, 28 July, 1863.

[33] See, on the Annexation movement, Allin and Jones, Annexation, Preferential Trade, and Reciprocity, a useful summary of Canadian opinion in 1849 and 1850.

[34] Elgin-Grey Correspondence: Elgin to Grey, 23 April, 1849.

[35] Christie, History of Lower Canada, iv. p. 539.

[36] See La Revue Canadienne, 21 December, 1847.

[37] Confederation Debates, p. 56. In answer to Cartier, "the Hon. Mr. Dorion said that was not the case. The honorable gentleman had misquoted what had passed there (i.e. at the Institut). The Hon. Mr. Cartier said he was right. If resolutions were not passed, sentiments were expressed to that effect. Then the organ of the Institute—L'Ordre he thought—had set forth that the interests of Lower Canada would be better secured by annexation to the United States than by entering into a Confederation with the British American Provinces."

[38] The Irish Position in British, and in Republican North America—a lecture, p. 13.

[39] Elgin-Grey Correspondence: Elgin to Grey, 3 September, 1849.

[40] Allin and Jones, op. cit. pp. 91 and 164.

[41] Montreal Gazette, 25 April, 1849.

[42] Allin and Jones, op. cit. p. 115.

[43] Pope, Life of Sir John Macdonald, i. p. 71.

[44] Convention of the British American League, 1849, p. li.

[45] Joseph Cauchon, L'Union des provinces de L'Amerique Britannique du Nord, p. 51.

[46] Further Papers relative to the Affairs of Canada (7 June, 1849), p. 25.

[47] Quoted from Dent, The Last Forty Years, ii. pp. 181-2.

[48] Sir Richard Cartwright, Reminiscences, pp. 9-10.

[49] Life and Speeches of the Hon. George Brown, p. 50.

[50] Written from England. Pope, Life of Sir John Macdonald, ii. p. 274.

[51] Ibid. p. 32.

[52] Confederation Debates, p. 44.



{347}

INDEX

A

Agriculture of the Habitants, 16

"Alabama" affair, the, 288

Alien Admission Bill, 106

America, United States of, Bagot's diplomatic services in, 126, 127-8 and Canadian Annexation, 204, 218, 219 and Canada, Federation in, differences between, 329 Elgin's skilful Diplomacy with, 191 Politics in, as affecting Canadian (1852), 200, 207, 215 Relations with Great Britain as affected by Canadian Autonomy, 287 Tory feeling to, after 1812, 248 Trade of, with Canada as affected by Free Trade, 272, Grey's views on, 273

American Aggression, and the Defence of Canada, Peel on, 254 Education, Burke on, 40 Immigrants, Annexation views of, 333 War, the, attitude to, of Canada and Great Britain, 288; Military power shown by, 290

Amnesty, Bagot's attitude to, 155

Anderson, John, political indifference of, 55-6 &n.

Anglicanism (see also Clergy Reserves), in Canada, 43-4, 47; Imperial support to, 48, 49

Anglicization of French Canada, views on, of various Governors, 57, 59, 83, 142, 211, 306, 311-12

Anglo-French Reforming bloc, evolution of, 65, 161 Attitude of, on Metcalfe's arrival, 161 et sqq.

Annexation, Federation as alternative to, Russell on, 265 Manifestoes on, 334, 337 Movement in favour of, activity in 1849, 330; Inconsistencies on, of The Times, 233; Opposition to, of Brown, 342; Supporters of, 204, 330 et sqq.; Rouges views on, 302 Risk of, on Elgin's arrival, 191 Tory views on, 204, 254, 255

Anti-Union attitude of French Canadians, 124

Ashburton Treaty, the, Difficulties solved by, 127-8, 132

Armstrong, Peter, Typical Squatter, 29

Art of Colonization, by Wakefield, 239

Arthur, Sir George, Governor-General, Timid despatches of, 249 on Colonial Disloyalty, 60-1 on the Durham Report and its effect, 248-9

Autonomy, Canadian, the Struggle for, passim British opinion on, changes in, 230 et sqq. Conditions demanded by, 277 Limitations on, views of Durham and Sydenham on, 119-21 Macdonald's views on, 344 Movement towards, as affected by Successive Governors, 122-5, 138, 228, by Elgin, 228-9, and by Grey, 268-71 Natural outcome of Laissez-faire, 291 Results, as affecting Anglo-American relations, 287; Confederation, 305; Connexion of Canada and Great Britain, 323 et sqq.; Party system, 302-5; Summary of, 345-6

Aylwin, T. C., in office, 150

B

Bagot, Sir Charles, Governor-General, 70, 126 et sqq., 156, 163; as Financier, 237-8; and King's College, Toronto, 36; Political antecedents of, 126-7; Political opportunism of, 138 et sqq., 143-6, wisdom of his methods, 147; the practical surrender of Responsible Government by, 158, 161, 228-9; Russell's view on, 261, Stanley's view on, 278; Relations with French-Canadians, 57, 146-7, 149-50; Stanley's instructions to, 129, and relations with, 127 et sqq. Work of his period of office, three factors of, 128 et sqq. on Autonomy, Separation, and Loyalty, 138; on the Crown's right to name the Capital, 155; on the French Canadians after the Union, 57-8

Baldwin, Robert, Leader of Reforming Loyalists, 64, 105, 125, 197, 295; Anti-annexation actions of, 339; Averse to the "Double majority," 308; Bagot and, 143, 144; Challenge by, to Sydenham's system, 143-6; Character and Politics of, 109 et sqq., 141; Check to, 155; and the Clergy Reserve question, 52; and Elgin, 203; Harrison's views on, and Draper's, 134; Insistence by, on Responsible Government, 113-5, 116, 119, 150, 161-2, 176; Loyalty of, 339; Motion by, demanding a Provincial Parliament, 119; Office claimed for, 149; and the Patronage crisis, 168; as Solicitor-General of Upper Canada, 109 et sqq.; Stanley's attitude to, 142. on Coalition government, 299-300; on Patronage, and the position of the Council, 175; on Russell's Colonial Administration Speech (1850), 264

Baldwin-Hincks Reformers, in Politics, 301

Baldwin-La Fontaine Ministry, the, 161, 212, and the origin of Anglo-French Solidarity, 215-6, 229, 295, 298; Precedent provided by, 307

Belleville, Population (1846), 24

Bentinck, Lord William, Governor-General of India, 159

Black, Dr., and the Clergy Reserve question, 48

Board of Works for Canada set up, 106, 118

Boston, Elgin's official visit to (1851), 232

Bridges, Lack of, 12

Bright, John, and Separation, 283, 290

British aid to Canada, need of (1839), and Sydenham's Loan Scheme, 68-9, 97 et sqq. Approval of Metcalfe's methods, and those of earlier Governors, 170, 175, 180, 182, 186, 193 Colonial Empire, maintenance of, views on, 275, 277 et sqq. Communities, Government of, Lesson on, from Canadian history, 345 Community, attempted absorption in, of French-Canadians, 57, 59, 83, 142, 211, 306, 311-12 Empire, permanence of, some firm believers in, 274; World-value of, Grey's view on, 275-6

British Half-pay Officers as Colonists, 18-20 Opinion on Canadian Autonomy, changes in, 235 et sqq. Predominance, passim; Russell's theory of, effects of, 228-9 Universities, relations of, with Canadian College Education, 37-8 &n.1 Views on Imperialism, early Victorian, 230, gradual change in, 230 et sqq.

British-American League, aims of, 336-7

British-Canadian connexion, on what chiefly dependent, 292

Brockville, Population (1846), 25

Brougham, Lord, and Separation, 281, 282-7

Brown, George, pioneer of Political journalism, Scottish origin of, 23; Characteristics of, 323, 340-3; and the Clear-Grits, 300 &n.2, 340-1; and Confederation, 312-14, 341, 342; as Editor, and Leader, 341; Loyalty of, 339; and Macdonald's federation scheme, 302 &n. et sqq.; Macdonald's unfairness to, 319; Political rectitude of, 321; Political views of, 298; Why disliked by the French, 312 on Canadian loyalty, 326-7; on Canadian population distribution (1857), 310-11, and Parliamentary representation, 310-11; on Political corruption, 317; on Public spirit connected with Confederation, 322

Brown-Dorion two days' administration, the, 302

Buchanan, Isaac, and Canadian Tariff, 327

Buller, Arthur, on the Illiteracy of the Habitants, 16

Buller, Charles, characteristics of, 241; as Educator in sound Colonial policy, 247, 251; Imperialism of, 162, 245; La Fontaine's objection to, 162; and Local Government, 94; Non-belief of, in Separation, 278, 281; Views of, on Colonial affairs, 94, 162, 234-5, 236, 237, 240-3, 247, 251, 278, 281, 291 famous pamphlet by, 234-5, 236, 240-3 on Permanent Officials and Changing Heads at the Colonial Office, 234-5, 236; on Russell's Imperialism, 262

Burke, Edmund, on American Education and Book-reading, 40; on Colonial Independence and Imperial Unity, 2, 3; on Party, 294; on the Whigs, 166

Bytown (Ottawa), and the Immigrants, 21; Population (1846), 24; Social conditions at, 30

C

Campbell, Robert, as School-master, 33

Canada, Autonomy of, see Autonomy. Communications in, and to, in early days, 9 et sqq. Disaffection in, how cured by Elgin, 222 as Envisaged by Grey and by Durham, 276-7 History of, Political lessons from, 345-6 Loyalty of, as affected by Autonomy, 203, 229, 314, 323 et sqq., 342; Mistrust of, over Militia Bill, 289 Relations of, with Great Britain, as affected by Autonomy, in anticipation (Stanley's), 139-40, 156, and in fact, 156, 323 et sqq.; true basis of, 239 Social and Physical conditions in (circa 1839), 8 et sqq. Tariff reorganisation in, difficulties created by, with U.S.A., 288

Canal-works, condition in 1841, 99

Canning, George, 189; and Bagot, 126, 137

Capital, the, Crown's right to name, Bagot on, 155; Brown on, 326-7

Carlyle, Thomas, on Buller, 241

Caron, Rene Edouard, Speaker of Upper House, and La Fontaine, 177

Cartier, Sir George Etienne, French-Canadian Leader, 14; and French-Canadian feeling, 332 &n.; Loyalty of, 338

Cartwright, J. S., 144; Political views of, 60, 133, 151

Cartwright, Sir Richard, and British views on Separation, 290 on Annexation views after 1856, 333-4; on Personal Morals of Members of Canadian Assemblies, 320; on the Political influence of The Globe, 341-2

Cathcart, Earl of, as interim Governor-General, 7 n., 70 n., 187 &n.

Cauchon, Joseph, and Confederation, 314; Loyalty of, 338

Chatham, Earl of, 4

China, Elgin's work in, 189, 191

Christian Guardian, The, 38 &n.2

Church of England in Canada (see also Clergy Reserves), 43-4, 47, 49

Church Support, Voluntary principle of, Rolph on, 51-2

Civil List difficulties, 138, 140, 146, 154, 155, 163; Grey's attitude as to, 272; Stanley's views on, 130; the Surrender, 154-5, 163, 279

Clear-Grit party, Loyalty of, 339; Politics of, 300 &n.2, 301, 302

Clericalism in French Canada, 14, 15, 17; and School Control, 31-2

Clergy Reserve Question, dispute on, 47-54, 62, 64, 252-3, 254-5, 268; Settlement of, by compromise, 90-2, 279, 306

Coalition Governments in Canada (see Baldwin-Hincks & others), 298-9, 304

Cobden, Richard, and Separation, 217, 283, 284, 285

Coburg, Population (1846), 25; Social conditions and prices at (1845), 27-8

Colborne, Sir John, Acting Governor, and the Anglican Church, 43; French risings quelled by, 5, 57, 214; on the French and the Union, 83

Colleges and Universities, Canadian, 35-8, 136

Colonial Administration, Russell's speech on, 1850, 263 Autonomy (see also Autonomy, Canadian), MacDonald's views on, 344 Connexion with the Empire, Continuance of, various views on (see also Annexation, Separation, &c.), 2, 3, 277 et sqq., 323 et sqq. Government, Conflicting views on, passim Independence, Burke's view on, 2, 3 Parliaments, Defects of, 65-6, 289 Unity, Conditions adverse to, 24

Colonial Office, the, Elgin's influence on, 222-5; Permanent officials of, Buller on, 234-5, 236

Colonial Advocate, The, 38

Colonial Gazette, on Poulett Thomson, 77-8

Colonial Policy, by Earl Grey, Canada chapter in, inspired by Elgin, 275

Colonies, Responsible Government for, Buller's famous pamphlet, 234-5 &n., 236, 240

Colonies, Secretaries of State for, see also under Names Lord J. Russell, 1839 Lord Stanley, 1841 Gladstone, 1846 Earl Grey, 1846 Sir J. Pakington, 1852 Duke of Newcastle, 1852 Sir George Gray, 1854 Views on, of British Politicians, 2, 3, 217, 230 et sqq., 255-8, 262, 264, 283, 284, 285, 290, 292 et alibi

Colonists, Buller's views on, 242; Cartwright's opinion of, 60

Colonization, The Art of, by Wakefield, 239

Commercial crisis, Canadian, in 1849, Elgin on, 331 Marine, as a pillar of Empire, 262 Relations, Peel on, 254 Treaty, see Reciprocity Treaty

Compromise, Bagot's views on, and Stanley's, 139-40

Confederation of British North American Colonies, various Schemes for, 196-7; the result of Autonomy, 305; Difficulties connected with, 279-80, 312; Russell's aim in furthering, 265; Scheme of Brown and Macdonald for, 302 et sqq., 312-14, 341, 342

"Connexion," the Basis of, sentimental rather than practical, 239; Effect on, of Autonomy, 323 et sqq.

Conservative Party, Canadian (see also Family Compact, & Tory Party), in 1841, 105; Loyalty of, 339