Delphi complete works of.., p.513
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 513
CHAPTER VI. THE COMING OF METCALFE
CHAPTER VII. THE METCALFE CRISIS
CHAPTER VIII. IN OPPOSITION
CHAPTER IX. THE SECOND LAFONTAINE-BALDWIN MINISTRY
CHAPTER X. THE REBELLION LOSSES BILL
CHAPTER XI. THE END OF THE MINISTRY
Robert Baldwin from an original painting
EDITOR’S PREFACE
IN PREPARING A new and revised edition of Professor Leacock’s Baldwin, LaFontaine and Hincks, I have endeavoured as far as possible to preserve the spirit and form of the original work. The most important changes are: First, at the request of the General Editors, I have extended the account of William Lyon Mackenzie for reasons pointed out in the General Preface to the Series; secondly, the survey of the earlier part of Bagot’s régime has been completely changed in order to present his constitutional experiment from a detailed study of his correspondence, which unfortunately is not yet known in extenso to students and readers of history. I wish to thank Professor Leacock for his courteous permission to deal as I wished with his work and for his kindness during the process of revision. I am indebted to Principal Grant for more help than I can adequately acknowledge. The Oxford University Press has generously given me permission to include in the volume material which has already appeared in my Constitution of Canada.
W. P. M. KENNEDY
University of Toronto,
Toronto,
September 1st, 1925
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY
FROM THE TIME of the surrender of Canada by the capitulation of Vaudreuil at Montreal in 1760, the government of the province presented an unsolved problem, whose difficulties finally culminated in the outbreak of 1837. In the beginning the country was entirely French, an appanage of the British Crown by right of conquest. Its population, some seventy thousand in number, thinly spread along the valley of the St. Lawrence, was almost entirely an agricultural peasantry, among whom education, judged by modern standards, was far from widespread. Two outstanding characteristics were in general evidence, they cherished towards their Church an unfailing devotion, while a stubborn pride of nationality remained with them as a heritage from the great country from which they had sprung. Of initial loyalty to the British Crown there could be no question. Still less could there be any question of self-government. Military rule was established as a necessity of the situation. Even when, in 1764, a year after the final treaty of cession, the purely military rule was superseded by the institution of an executive council, this body consisted merely of a group of officials appointed by the governor of the province. Nor is it to be said that this form of government was of itself an injustice. The inhabitants of French Canada had known nothing of political rights or representative institutions. Only in rare cases had appointments or promotions been bestowed upon native Canadians. Even the Church itself, in spite of its democratic tradition in favour of capacity and zeal, had withheld all superior offices from the children of the humble peasantry of the St. Lawrence. To have instituted among such a people a system of democratic self-government on the morrow of the conquest, could only have ended in chaos and disaster.
The government thus established by royal proclamation was systematized and consolidated by the British parliament through the Quebec Act of 1774. This statute established in Canada a province of magnificent extent. Northward it extended to the Hudson Bay Territory; on the south it bordered New England, New York, Pennsylvania and the Ohio; westward it reached to where all trace of civilization ended with the Mississippi River. The Ohio valley was already THE QUEBEC ACT dotted here and there in its forests and open meadow lands with the cabins of adventurous settlers. Of the rest of Canada the valley of the St. Lawrence was the only occupied part. Thither had come already, since the conquest, a few British immigrants, for the most part small traders and needy adventurers. The upper portion of the province was still a wilderness. The Quebec Act provided for the use of the pre-conquest Coutume de Paris in civil cases, and for English criminal law. In both spheres permission was given to the government of the colony to change the systems with varying local needs The freedom of religion guaranteed by the Peace of Paris (1763) was freed from ambiguities by the Act. The collection of the tithe was legalized, and a new oath made it possible for Roman Catholics to combine loyalty to the Crown with loyalty to their church. The government was committed to a governor assisted by a nominated legislative council, any five of whom, by later instructions from England, were to form a quorum for provincial business other than legislation. The Act declared it “inexpedient to call an assembly.” Fox, indeed, pleaded in the House of Commons in favour of representative institutions, but was met with the argument that a Protestant government could not safely entrust power to a Roman Catholic legislature.
It is a disputed point how far the concessions thus granted to the French were adopted as a means of preserving the country from the infection of the revolutionary discontent, widespread in the colonies of the Atlantic sea-board, and of preventing the French habitant from making common cause with the malcontents of New England and Virginia. Such, if not the purpose, was at any rate the effect of the Act. The pulpits of Massachusetts were loud with denunciation of the toleration of popery enbodied in the statute. The American congress (September 5th, 1774) expressed its alarm in documentary form, and the small British minority already settled in Lower Canada forwarded to England petitions of energetic protest. The fact that the British government, in the face of bigoted opposition, passed and maintained the statute which stands as the charter of religious liberty for Roman Catholic Canada, may be said to have laid the foundation of that firm attachment of the Canadian French to the Crown, which, after the lapse of four generations, has become one of the fundamental factors of the political life of Canada. The Act undoubtedly was an important element in the neutrality of the habitants during the American revolution. The clergy of the province THE LOYALISTS threw the whole weight of their influence in favour of the British side. The agitators sent into the country found but few sympathizers of influence, and the attempt at military conquest ended in failure.
The issue of the Revolutionary War and the separation of the revolted colonies from Great Britain had a momentous effect upon the destinies of British North America. That province now became a haven of refuge for the distressed Loyalists, who abandoned the United States in thousands rather than sever their allegiance from their mother country. Of these nearly thirty thousand found their way into the Maritime Provinces. Others, ascending the St. Lawrence or coming by Lake Champlain, settled in the Eastern Townships of Quebec or near to Montreal itself. Still others, pushing their way up the river or passing over the rough wagon-trails of the forest country of New York, embarked on Lake Ontario to find new homes upon its northern shores. Liberal grants of land were made. Settlements sprang up along the Bay of Quinte, on the Niagara frontier, on the Grand River, on the Thames and as far west as the Detroit River. By the year 1791 there were some thirty thousand settlers in the districts thus thrown open. The newcomers, impoverished as most of them were, made excellent pioneers. Their conviction of the righteousness of their cause lent vigour to their arduous struggle with the wilderness. The sound of the axe resounded amid the stillness of the pine forest; farmsteads and hamlets arose on the shores of the lake and beside its tributary streams. But with the coming of the Loyalists Canada lost its racial unity. The population of the upper country was British, that of the lower, French. French law and custom seemed to the new settlers anomalous and unjust. British Protestantism was abhorrent to the devout Catholics of French Canada. The new settlers, too, accustomed to the political freedom which they had enjoyed in the colonies of their origin, chafed under autocratic control, and in repeated petitions demanded of the home government the privilege of a representative assembly.
To meet this situation the British parliament adopted the Constitutional Act of 1791. Under the authority of this Act the province was divided into two separate governments — Upper and Lower Canada. It was presumed that a natural solution of the vexed question of British and French rivalry had thus been found. “I hope,” said Pitt, “that this settlement will put an end to the competition between the old French inhabitants and the new settlers from Britain and the British colonies.” Burke at the same time expressed the opinion that “to attempt to amalgamate two populations composed of races of men diverse in language, laws, THE CONSTITUTIONAL ACT and customs, was a complete absurdity.” To each province was given a legislature consisting of two Houses, the Lower House, or assembly, being elected by the people, the Upper, called the legislative council, being nominated for life by the Crown. By the Crown also were to be appointed all public officers of each district, including the governor-general of the two provinces, the lieutenant-governor who conducted the administration of Upper Canada, and the members of the executive councils which aided in the administration of each province. The British parliament reserved to itself the right of imposing duties for the regulation of navigation and commerce. The free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion was again guaranteed. It was further enacted that the Crown should set apart one-eighth of all the unallotted Crown land in the province for the maintenance of a Protestant clergy, a provision which subsequently entailed the most serious consequences.
The measure was undoubtedly liberal, and at the time of its passage furnished an instrument of government well suited to the requirements of the situation. It was intended to extend to the Canadas something of the degree of political liberty enjoyed by the people of Great Britain. Its object was declared by Lord Grenville, to be to “assimilate the constitution to that of Great Britain as nearly as the difference arising from the manners of the people and from the present situation of the province will admit.” John Graves Simcoe, first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, addressing his legislature of twenty-three members assembled, apparently “in marquee tents,” at Niagara spoke of the province as “singularly blessed, not with a mutilated constitution, but with a constitution which has stood the test of experience and is the very image and transcript of that of Great Britain, by which she has long established and secured to her subjects as much freedom and happiness as it is possible to be enjoyed under the subordination necessary to civilized society.” For some years, indeed, after the adoption of the new constitution, the government of the new provinces was carried on with reasonable success and a fair amount of harmony. Had the constitution been of a more flexible character and had the conduct of the administration been adapted to the progressive settlement of the country, its success might have continued indefinitely. The incoming century found a contented country; wealth and population were on the increase. A tide of immigration from Scotland and Ireland turned steadily towards Upper Canada. Pennsylvania farmers crossed the POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES lakes to find new homes in the fertile land of the province. The little hamlet of York, on the site of the old Indian post of Toronto, became the seat of government. To the north of it a wide, straight road, called Yonge Street in honour of the secretary of war, carried the tide of settlement towards Lake Simcoe. At the head of Lake Ontario, Dundas Street ran from the settlement at Hamilton to the Thames, and presently was opened eastward as far as York. The inhabitants of the province in the year 1811 were estimated at seventy-seven thousand. Into Lower Canada also British immigrants had come in considerable numbers. Ere long it began to appear that the racial conflict, which it was the intention of the Act of 1791 to obviate, had but shifted its ground and was renewed with increasing bitterness in the province of Lower Canada. The War of 1812, in which the energies of both French and British settlers were absorbed in repelling American invasion, stilled for the time the internal conflict of races. But with the renewal of peace the political difficulties of both Upper and Lower Canada assumed an increasingly serious aspect.
The political situation in the two provinces in the twenty years succeeding the peace of 1815 presented analogous, though not identical, features. In each of them the fact that the executive was not under the control of the representatives of the people constituted the main cause of complaint. But in the Lower Province the situation was aggravated by the fact that the executive heads of the administration were identified with the interests of the British minority and opposed to the dominance of the French Canadians. Even in Upper Canada, however, the position of affairs was bad enough. The actual administration of the province was in the hands of the lieutenant-governor and his executive council of five, later of seven, members, a wholly irresponsible body of placemen appointed by the Crown from among the judges, public officers and members of the legislative council. Of the legislature itself the Upper House, or legislative council, was, as already said, a nominated body. Under such circumstances the political control of the colony had passed into the hands of a privileged class who engrossed the patronage of the Crown, received liberal grants of land and were able to bid defiance to the efforts of the assembly to free itself from oligarchical control.
Had the constitution been in any real sense a “transcript” of the constitution of Great Britain, the assembly might have fallen back upon the power of the purse as an effective method of political control. But this remedy, under the system in vogue, was inadequate, owing to the fact that the assembly possessed only a limited, power over the finances of the colony. The Crown was in enjoyment THE FAMILY COMPACT of a permanent civil list. Exclusive of the revenue from the clergy reserve, it had at its disposal a patronage of fifty thousand pounds a year. Local expenditure within the province was under the direction of magistrates appointed by the Crown meeting in Quarter Session. The legislative council itself claimed the right to reject, and even to amend, the money bills passed by the representatives of the people. Under such circumstances the House of Assembly found itself deprived of any effective means of forcing its wishes upon the administration. Quite early in the history of the period, it had vigorously protested against the impotence to which it was reduced. In an address presented to the acting governor in 1818, the assembly drew attention to the “evil that must result from the legislative and executive functions being materially vested in the same persons, as is unfortunately the case in this province, where His Majesty’s executive council is almost wholly composed of the legislative body, and consisting only of the deputy superintendent-general of the Indian department, the receiver-general and the inspector-general, the chief-justice, the speaker of the legislative council, and the honourable and reverend chaplain of that House.” The essence of the financial situation appears in the famous Seventh Report of the Committee on Grievances drawn up in 1835. “Such is the patronage of the colonial office,” it declares, “that the granting or withholding of supplies is of no political importance, unless as an indication of the opinion of the country concerning the character of the government.”
It has become customary to apply to the privileged class who thus controlled political power and office in the colony of Upper Canada, the term Family Compact. The designation itself appears to be, in strictness, a misnomer, for there existed among the ruling class no further family relationship than what might naturally be expected in a community whose seat of government contained, even in 1830, only two thousand eight hundred and sixty persons. But it is undoubted that, from 1815 onwards, the members of the administration with their friends and adherents formed a distinct political party united by ties of mutual interest and social cohesion, determined to retain the influence they had acquired, and regarding the protests of the plainer people of the province with a certain supercilious contempt. Nor is it to be supposed that the adherents of the Family Compact embodied in themselves the very essence of tyranny. They represented merely, within their restricted sphere, those principles of class government and vested interests which were still the dominant WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE political factor in every country of Europe. Of the high moral quality and sterling patriotism of such men as Robinson, the attorney-general, there can be no doubt. The exaggerated diatribes of the indignant Radicals in which the ruling class figure as the “tools of servile power,” are as wide of the mark as the later denunciations launched against the party of Reform.
The growing agitation in Upper Canada presently found an energetic leader in William Lyon Mackenzie, a Scotchman of humble parentage. Born at Springfield in Forfarshire in 1795, he came in 1820 to try his fortunes in Canada. He set up in business in a small way at the village of York, removing presently to Dundas. It is typical of the restricted commercial life of the time that Mackenzie and his partner dealt in drugs, hardware, jewelry, toys, confections, dye stuffs and paints, and maintained in addition a circulating library. From Dundas, Mackenzie moved to Queenston. Interested from the first in the political affairs of the colony, he started, in 1824, the publication of the Colonial Advocate, the first number of which, distributed gratuitously through the countryside, commenced an unsparing attack upon the governing class. Its editor, the “westernmost journalist in the British dominions on the continent of America,” assumed, as he himself subsequently expressed it, “the office of a public censor.” He denounced the Family Compact and all its works. He denounced the jobbery of the public land. He denounced the land monopoly of the Church of England, the lack of schools, the perversion of justice and the greed of the official class. The appearance of the Colonial Advocate aided in consolidating the party of Reform. In the elections of 1824 they carried a majority of the seats in the House of Assembly, a victory which only served to reveal the impotence of the opposition in the face of the established system. Dr. Rolph, elected for Middlesex, the stalwart Peter Perry, member for Lennox and Addington, and other leaders of the Reform party, found they could do little beyond selecting a farmer speaker of their own liking and passing resolutions condemning the existing conduct of affairs. None the less their presence as a majority of the House remained as a standing protest and threw into a clearer light the irresponsible position of the executive.
