Delphi complete works of.., p.462
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 462
J. S. Buckingham, Canada (London, 1843), Chap. v., p et seq.
Before, however, the legislature had as yet come together, the governmental problem, which was to be the central feature of the political life of Canada from now until the administration of Lord Elgin, the problem of ministerial responsibility, had already developed itself. Under the new régime it fell to the task of Lord Sydenham to appoint not only the members of the legislative council, which was to form the Upper House of the parliament, but also those of the executive council. These appointments were made a few days after the inauguration of the union (February 13th, 1841). The list of executive councillors was as follows: from Upper Canada, W. H. Draper as attorney-general of Upper Canada; Robert Baldwin Sullivan, president of the council; J. H. Dunn, receiver-general; S. B. Harrison, provincial secretary for Upper Canada; and Robert Baldwin, solicitor-general for that province. The Lower Province was represented in the executive government by C. R. Ogden, attorney-general for Lower Canada; Dominick Daly, provincial secretary; and C. D. Day as solicitor-general. Mr. H. H. Killaly was presently added to the ministry (March 17th, 1841), as commissioner of public works. We have already seen that in accepting a seat in the executive council Robert Baldwin had made it abundantly clear that he did so on the presumption that the operation of the incoming government would be based upon the principle of executive responsibility. Beyond this preliminary declaration, however, Baldwin did not think it desirable to take any further action until the election of the assembly and the relative representation of political parties should have given some indication of the standing of the ministry with the country at large.
The executive council, as thus constituted, was a body of multicoloured complexion and varying views. Ability it undoubtedly possessed, but it represented at the same time so little agreement in political sentiment or conviction, that it might well be doubted whether joint and harmonious action would be possible. Baldwin, as we have seen, was an uncompromising Reformer, devoted to the principles of popular sovereignty and executive responsibility. Sullivan, his cousin, was a man of different temper. Keen in intellect, ready in debate, he brought to the practical business of politics the point of view of the lawyer, the tactician, the man of the world. For abstract principles of government he cared not a brass farthing. It was his wont to say to his colleagues, “Fix on your policy. Take what course you like, and I will find you good reason for doing so.”
N. F. Davin, The Irishman in Canada (London, 1887), .
William Henry Draper, the attorney-general, differed still more radically in his political outlook from Robert Baldwin. Draper, after an adventurous and wandering youth, had come to Canada some twenty years before, had drifted from school-teaching into law and politics, and at this time belonged, like Baldwin and Sullivan, to the legal fraternity of York. He had sat in the Upper Canadian assembly, been one of the council of Sir Francis Bond Head and had succeeded Christopher Hagerman in 1840 as attorney-general of Upper Canada. This office he still held in the ministry of the united provinces. Draper was a man of great ability, eloquent and persuasive of speech, skilled as a parliamentary manager and dexterous in the game of politics. He was by principle and temperament a Conservative, and although of undoubted patriotism and devoted to the cause of good government, he viewed with alarm the increasing tendency of his time towards the extension of democratic rule.
Harrison and Killaly were Liberals of a moderate cast. John Henry Dunn has already been noticed as one of Baldwin’s colleagues of the short-lived ministry of Sir Francis Head, and may be considered as sharing the opinions of the moderate Reform party. The councillors for Lower Canada could lay but little claim to be representative of the sentiments of that province. Dominick Daly, the provincial secretary, and presently member for Megantic, an Irishman now nearly twenty years in Canada, of an easy and affable personality, was not displeasing to the French-Canadians whose religion he shared. Ogden, a lawyer and a former office-holder in the government of Lower Canada, was identified with the British interests and was unpopular with the French. Day represented the same class. It will be observed that the refusal of LaFontaine to accept office left the French-Canadians wholly without representation in the executive government.
Baldwin appears to have been convinced from the outset that such a ministry would be quite incompatible with any system of government save one under which the governor-general would be the sole motive force of the administration. To his published communication, already cited, he shortly added a letter to Lord Sydenham (February 19th, 1841) in which he wrote: “With respect to those gentlemen [his fellow-members of the council], Mr. Baldwin has himself an entire want of political confidence in all of them except Mr. Dunn, Mr. Harrison and Mr. Daly. He deems it a duty which he owes to the governor-general, at once to communicate his opinion that such an arrangement will not command the support of parliament.” This opinion had been confirmed by the result of the elections and by the correspondence which had ensued between the leaders of the Reform party in the two provinces. In despite of the defeat of LaFontaine, it was plain that the Upper Canadian section of that party would find in Morin, the member for Nicolet, Aylwin of Portneuf, Viger of Richelieu, and others of LaFontaine’s party, a group of sympathizers with whom they might enter into a natural and profitable alliance. On the strength of this expectation, Baldwin called together at Kingston, a few days before the opening of the session, a meeting of the Reform party. The attending members, while not agreeing on a decisive line of public policy, expressed themselves as unanimous in their want of confidence in the administration as existing. Shortly after this meeting, Baldwin addressed to the governor-general (June 12th, 1841) a letter in which he recommended that a reconstruction of the ministry should be made in such a way that the Reform party of French Canada, now prepared to coöperate with their Upper Canadian allies, should be represented in the executive. The Reformers, said Baldwin, could not extend their support to a ministry which included Messrs. Draper, Sullivan, Ogden and Day, whose views differed so entirely from their own. Lord Sydenham, in answer, drew attention to the fact that such a request, at the very moment of the assembly of parliament, was inopportune, and that the French-Canadians whom he proposed to substitute for the ministers to be dismissed, had been radical opponents of the very union of which the new government was the embodiment. The governor-general’s communication, followed by further correspondence of the same tenor, left Baldwin no choice but to resign his office. His resignation, offered on June 12th (1841), was still awaiting its formal acceptance when the House met on the fourteenth.
See in this connection a letter from Morin to Hincks, May 8th, 1841, fully reviewing the situation. Sir F. Hincks, Reminiscences, p-6.
Ibid, .
The action of Robert Baldwin in this connection has been, as already indicated, roundly censured by Lord Sydenham’s biographer. “This transaction,” writes the latter, “looking to the character of the gentleman who was the principal actor in it, and to the manner in which he conducted his negotiation with the representative of the Crown, illustrates more clearly than anything else, the ignorance at that time prevailing, even among the leaders of the political parties in Canada, as to the principles on which a system of responsible government can alone be carried on.” The true explanation of the matter is to be found in reality in the uncompromising stand which Robert Baldwin was prepared to take in defence of his “one idea.” To have formed part of a ministry which would inevitably find itself voted down in the popular assembly (as Baldwin expected would now be the case), and which would have to rely on the expedients of political management for the conduct of public affairs, would have seemed to him nothing short of trafficking with the fundamental right of the people whom he represented. The error that Baldwin made, speaking from the standpoint of practical politics, lay in his overestimating the union and power of the Reform party. He did not fully realize that the party had as yet but an imperfect basis of organization, that its programme was not one of positive agreement but merely of negative opposition, and that this alone was not calculated to give it the cohesion requisite for its ends. The expectation that the government could be voted out of office and that the system of ministerial responsibility could thereby be forced upon Lord Sydenham, was not borne out by the sequel.
Poulett Scrope, Life of Lord Sydenham (1844), .
The difficulties, moreover, of establishing at once an operative system of cabinet government is realized when one views the complex character of the party divisions among the newly-elected members of the assembly. One may distinguish among them at least five different groups. There was, first of all, the party pledged to the support of the administration, drawn chiefly from Upper Canada and led by Attorney-General Draper, as member for the county of Russell. To these were closely affiliated the members elected, largely by coercion, in the British interest in Lower Canada, among whom was Dr. McCulloch who had defeated LaFontaine in Terrebonne. These two groups numbered together about twenty-four. As an extreme Conservative wing, were the Upper Canadian Tories, the remnant of the days of the Compact, some seven in number. These were under the redoubtable leadership of Sir Allan MacNab, the hero of the “men of Gore” of 1837, by whose direction the Caroline had been sent over Niagara Falls, a feat which had earned him the honour of knighthood, a man of the old school, the sterling qualities of whose character redeemed the rigidity of his intellect. Of quite opposed complexion were the Reformers, a large and somewhat uncertain group including the moderates of both provinces, and shading off into the ultra-Reformers and into the group of French Nationalists who as yet stood in no affiliation to the English party of Reform. The classification thus adopted would indicate in the assembly the following numerical divisions: 1st, the party supporting Lord Sydenham, twenty-four; 2nd, the party of Sir Allan MacNab, seven; 3rd, the moderate Reformers, twenty; 4th, ultra-Reformers, five; 5th, French Nationalists, twenty. There were, in addition to these, eight doubtful members that cannot be classified with any of the groups, making up in all eighty-four members of the assembly. Such classification is, however, too precise to indicate the true state of affairs. Party lines were not as yet drawn with precision. The system of the union being still in its experimental stage, party tradition and parliamentary precedent were absent, and individual members were naturally led to follow the dictates of their own judgment, and voted sometimes with and sometimes against the particular group with which their names were chiefly associated.
Meantime a legislative council of twenty-four members had been appointed (June 9th, 1841) by Lord Sydenham. The French-Canadians were represented by René Caron, mayor of Quebec, (a man of liberal views and subsequently a member of LaFontaine’s ministry), Barthélémy, Joliette and six others. Of the sixteen British members of the council, Robert Baldwin Sullivan, Peter McGill of Montreal, William Morris, formerly of the legislative council of Upper Canada and notable as the champion of the Presbyterian Church in the matter of the Clergy Reserves, were of especial prominence.
H. J. Morgan, Sketches of Celebrated Canadians (1862), p et seq.
The constitutional history of the first session of the union parliament which now ensued, and in which the first test was made of the operation of the united government, has the appearance of an indecisive battle. The Reform party, anxious to force the issue, endeavoured to obtain an expression of want of confidence sufficiently emphatic to compel the government to resign office. The government, on the other hand, strove to put the question of parliamentary theory in the background by bringing forward a programme of great public utility and inviting for its accomplishment a united support. The members of the Reform party found themselves thus placed in a dilemma. Should they persist in an uncompromising attitude of opposition, they might delay the carrying out of public works of whose urgency they were themselves convinced. Should they break their ranks and vote with the party of the government in favour of measures of undoubted utility, they thereby seemed to justify the existence of an administration of which they had at the outset expressed their disapproval. It was, in a word, the oft-recurring dilemma occasioned by the conflicting claims of party policy and public welfare. In a long-established legislature where rival parties of balanced powers alternate in office, such a dilemma presents less difficulty, since, with the defeat of the government, the incoming party is enabled to carry on such part of the programme of its opponents as may enlist its support. But in the case of the newly inaugurated government of Canada, both the urgency of the time and the doubtful complexion of the parties themselves seemed to favour individual action as against the claims of party cohesion. It followed as a consequence that the question of responsible government, albeit the real issue of the moment, remained for the time in suspense. Lord Sydenham with his able lieutenant, Attorney-general Draper, was enabled to obtain sufficient support to carry on his government, while the Reformers contrived, nevertheless, to force from the administration a somewhat reluctant assent to the proposition that only this fortuitous support gave them a valid claim to office. It has been necessary to undertake this preliminary explanation in order to make it clear how men, so like-minded in their political views as Hincks and Baldwin, should presently be found voting on opposite sides of the House. But if the state of public affairs at the time is properly understood, it appears but natural that Hincks, as a man of affairs, should have preferred a policy of immediate effectiveness, while Baldwin, of a more theoretical temperament, clung fast to his uncompromising principle.
As already mentioned, the first united parliament met at Kingston on Monday, June 14th, 1841. The place of its meeting was a stone building about a mile to the west of the town, that had been intended to serve as a general hospital, but for the time being was given over for the use of the legislature. The comfort of the members appears to have been well cared for. The halls, both of the council and the assembly, were spacious and well furnished, “with handsome, stuffed arm-chairs of black walnut, covered with green moreen, with a small projection on the side to write upon.” Sydenham himself seems to have been somewhat impressed with the luxurious surroundings of his colonial legislators. “The accommodation,” he wrote home to England, “would be thought splendid by our members of the English House of Commons. But these fellows in their colonies have been spoilt by all sorts of luxuries, — large arm-chairs, desks with stationery before each man, and Heaven knows what, — so I suppose they will complain.”
The governor-general was not present in person at the first meeting of the Houses. In his absence the members were sworn in, and the proclamation convening the parliament read by the clerk of the assembly. After this the assembly addressed itself to the task of electing one of their number as Speaker. Here occurred, in accordance with a plan prearranged by the Reformers, the first passage-at-arms between the government and its opponents. The Reformers had decided to nominate for the speakership a Mr. Cuvillier, member for Huntingdon, a man fluent in both English and French, identified formerly with the popular party in Lower Canada, but moderate in his views and acceptable on all sides. It had been hoped by the Reformers that the government might oppose Mr. Cuvillier’s nomination, and thus be led to make a trial of strength by which means the election of Mr. Cuvillier would appear as an initial defeat of the administration. It seemed, however, as if the administration, either because they considered Mr. Cuvillier well suited to the office or in order to avoid a hostile vote, would allow that gentleman to be elected without opposition. This the Reformers were minded to prevent. “I was determined,” wrote Hincks in a letter to the Examiner in which he described this preliminary onslaught on the government, “that the advisers of His Excellency should swallow the bitter pill by publicly voting for a gentleman who had declared his entire want of confidence in them.” In order, therefore, to force the government into a corner, Hincks rose and stated that he considered it his duty to his constituents of North Oxford to explain publicly why he supported the nomination of Mr. Cuvillier. His reason was, he said, that that gentleman had opposed certain provisions of the Union Bill of which he himself disapproved, notably the provision for a permanent civil list. He was furthermore led to support Mr. Cuvillier because of “his [Mr. Cuvillier’s] entire want of confidence in the present administration.”
Hincks, Reminiscences, .
Cuvillier had been one of those deputed, in 1828, to carry the petition of the eighty-seven thousand to the imperial government, but he had voted against Papineau’s “Ninety-two Resolutions.”
This, of course, was a direct challenge, and left the government and the Tories no choice but to come out and fight. Sir Allan MacNab was proposed as a rival candidate. Aylwin of Portneuf, Morin and others, followed the lead of Hincks. A heated debate followed, in which Mr. Cuvillier’s “want of confidence” did service as an opportune bone of contention. Peace-loving members begged Mr. Cuvillier to state, in the interests of harmony, whether he had, or had not, a “want of confidence.” Mr. Cuvillier did not see fit to do so. The situation became somewhat confused. Smith of Frontenac, an over-belligerent friend of the government, attacked the bad taste of the member for North Oxford in trying to force an adverse vote at such a time, and spoke of a dissolution of parliament as the possible outcome of the day’s proceedings. The dangerous word “dissolution” brought Attorney-general Draper to his feet with soothing words in the interests of peace. MacNab having meanwhile caused is name to be withdrawn, the discussion subsided, and Mr. Cuvillier was declared unanimously elected. Baldwin, being still technically a member of the government (his resignation awaiting its formal acceptance), took no part in this preliminary discussion.
