Delphi complete works of.., p.534
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 534
If so powerful a combination of parties, and one so obviously advantageous to the interests of his race could have been formed, LaFontaine was perfectly willing, if need be, to retire from his leadership of the party in order to facilitate the new arrangement. “What French-Canadians should do above everything,” he wrote, “is to remain united and to make themselves respected. I will not serve as a means of dividing my compatriots. If an administration is formed which merits my confidence, I will support it with all my heart. If it has not my confidence but possesses that of the THE DOUBLE MAJORITY majority of my compatriots, not being able to support it, I will willingly resign my seat, rather than cast division in our ranks.” But to meet LaFontaine’s views, Mr. Draper would have been called upon to go further than he had intended. To break entirely with the Canadian Tories and to throw overboard Mr. Dominick Daly, — the “permanent secretary,” as he was now facetiously entitled, — was more than Mr. Draper had bargained for. These difficulties caused the negotiations to hang fire until the recall of Lord Metcalfe changed the position of affairs. “The whole affair,” says a Canadian historian, “suddenly collapsed, and the only result was to intensify the political atmosphere, and aggravate the quarrel between a weak government and a powerful opposition.”
Among the correspondence of Robert Baldwin in reference to the proposed reconstruction of parties, appears a letter of considerable interest addressed to LaFontaine which bears no date, but which was probably written in the autumn of 1845, after the failure of Mr. Caron’s negotiations. Baldwin expresses an emphatic disapproval of any attempt to set up the principle of a “double majority.” Such a system of government would be calculated, in his opinion, rather to intensify than to obliterate the racial animosity and end in precipitating a desperate struggle for supremacy. “You already know,” he wrote, “my opinion of the ‘double majority’ as respects the interests of the province at large. When I gave you that opinion I hesitated to dwell on what appears to me to be its extreme danger to our Lower Canadian friends of French origin themselves. . . . I speak not of the present public men of the province, or of the course which they or any of them may take. Some may be swept away from the arena altogether; others may retire; but in the event of such an arrangement being carried out, all who remain upon the political sea will, I am satisfied, have to go with the stream. The arrangement will be viewed as one based essentially upon a natural, original distinction and equally uninfluenced by the political principles. British and French will then become in reality, what our opponents have so long wished to make them, the essential distinctions of party, and the final result will scarcely admit of doubt. The schemes of those who looked forward to the union as a means of crushing the French-Canadians, and who advocated it with no other views, will then be crowned with success, and the latter will themselves have become the instruments to accomplish it. That this will be the final result of any successful attempt to reorganize the ministry upon such a foundation, I have no doubt whatever. It will not, however, be injurious to the French-Canadian portion of our population alone. It appears to me equally clear that it will be most calamitous to the country in general. It will perpetuate distinctions, METCALFE RECALLED initiate animosities, sever the bonds of political sympathy and sap the foundation of political morality.”
In the autumn of 1845 the progress of Lord Metcalfe’s malady was such as rapidly to render him unfit for further exertions. His disease had almost destroyed his sight and his constant sufferings rendered the transaction of official business a matter of extreme difficulty. At the end of October he asked for his recall. But the imperial government, aware of his distressing condition, had anticipated his request, and Stanley had already forwarded to him the official acceptance of a resignation which he might use at any time that seemed proper to him. “You will retire, whenever you retire,” wrote the colonial secretary, “with the entire approval and admiration of Her Majesty’s government.” Lord Metcalfe left Montreal at the end of November, 1845, and returned to England. All attempts to stay the ravages of his dreadful malady proved unavailing and after months of suffering, borne with admirable constancy, he died on September 5th, 1846. Not even the melancholy circumstances of Lord Metcalfe’s departure from Canada could still the animosity of his opponents, and a section of the Reform press greeted the news of his retirement with untimely exultation.
On Metcalfe’s departure the government was entrusted to Lord Cathcart, commander of the forces, at first as administrator and afterwards as governor-general. Cathcart was a soldier, a veteran of the Peninsula and Waterloo, whose main interest in the Canadian situation lay in the question whether the dispute then pending in regard to the Oregon territory would end in war with the United States. Indeed it was on account of the threatening aspect of the boundary question that the imperial government had elevated Cathcart to the governorship. The matter of responsible government concerned him not, and during his administration he left the civil government of the country to his ministers to conduct as best they might. Their best was indeed but poor. In the session of parliament that ran from March 20th until June 9th, 1846, the government was quite unable to maintain itself. Mr. Draper tried in vain to repeat his thunder-stealing policy and although he carried through parliament an Act to provide for a civil list, which was intended (with imperial consent) to take the place of the existing imperial arrangement, his government on other measures was repeatedly defeated. In the summer and autumn of the year, difficulties crowded upon him. The Draper-Caron correspondence was made public, whereat many Tories took offence and Sherwood, the solicitor-general, dropped out of Mr. Draper’s cabinet. The leader of the government had failed A NEW BRITISH CABINET in his attempted alliance with the Liberals of Lower Canada, and had excited resentment and distrust in the minds of his Tory following. It was indeed becoming very evident that the only method of salvation for the Draper government was to make it a government without Mr. Draper.
Meantime events had happened in England calculated to exercise an immediate effect upon the course of Canadian policy. With the disruption of the Tories over the passage of the Corn Law Repeal (in the summer of 1846), Sir Robert Peel’s government had come to an end, and the Liberals under Lord John Russell had come into power. With Lord John was associated as colonial secretary, Earl Grey, the son of the great Whig prime minister of the Reform Bill. The name of the second Earl Grey will always be associated with the establishment of actual democratic government in the mother country by means of parliamentary reform: that of the third will be forever connected with the final and definite adoption of the principle of colonial self-government. The moment was a critical one. The abandonment of the older system of commercial restrictions had destroyed the doctrine that the value of the colonies lay in the monopoly of their trade by the mother country. To the Radical wing of the British party this seemed to mean that the time had come to permit the colonies to depart in peace. But to Earl Grey, himself a former under-secretary of state for the colonies, and enlightened by the study of recent events in Canada, and by the similar struggle that had been in progress in Nova Scotia, it appeared that the time was opportune for establishing the colonial system upon another and more durable basis, and for the creation of such a system of government as might combine colonial liberty with imperial stability. He repudiated the idea of abandoning the dependencies of the empire to a separate destiny. “The nation,” he said, “has incurred a responsibility of the highest kind which it is not at liberty to throw off.”
The advent to power of the British Liberal ministry was viewed by the Reform party in Canada as most auspicious for their cause. “I cannot help regarding it as a circumstance full of promise,” said Robert Baldwin at a public dinner (November 11th, 1846) given to him by the Reform electors of the east riding of Halton, “that the imperial councils should at the present time be presided over by the statesman who, as colonial secretary, has given the imperial imprimatur to the doctrines of Lord Durham’s Report, and the colonial department directed by one so nearly connected with the great statesman to whom England and the colonies were both so much indebted for that invaluable state document.” POLICY OF LORD GREY The new British cabinet could not, of course, put forth an official repudiation of the conduct of its predecessors towards the colonies. This would have been contrary to the most obvious considerations of imperial policy, and would also have been unadvisable owing to the attitude taken in earlier years by Lord John Russell himself. But the cabinet were fully aware, none the less, that the situation in British North America could only be met by a frank recognition of the right of the colonists of Nova Scotia and Canada to manage their own affairs. The sphere of action which Earl Grey considered proper for a governor to assume may be best understood by a despatch addressed by him to Sir John Harvey, lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, (November 3rd, 1846). “This,” says Lord Grey himself, “contains the best explanation I can give of the . . . means to be adopted for the purpose of bringing into full and successful operation the system of constitutional government which it seemed to be the desire of the inhabitants of British North America to have established among them.” Harvey, whose executive council was incomplete and unable to carry on the government, had found himself in a situation analogous to that in Canada. “I am of opinion,” runs Lord Grey’s despatch, “that, under all the circumstances of the case, the best course for you to adopt is to call upon the members of your present executive council to propose to you the names of the gentlemen whom they would recommend to supply the vacancies which I understand to exist in the present board. If they should be successful in submitting to you an arrangement to which no valid objection arises, you will of course continue to carry on the government through them, so long as it may be possible to do so satisfactorily, and as they possess the necessary support from the legislature. Should the present council fail in proposing to you an arrangement which it would be proper for you to accept, it would then be your natural course, in conformity with the practice in analogous cases in this country, to apply to the opposite party: and should you be able through their assistance to form a satisfactory council, there will be no impropriety in dissolving the assembly upon their advice: such a measure, under those circumstances, being the only mode of escaping from the difficulty which would otherwise exist of carrying on the government of the province upon the principles of the constitution. The object with which I recommend to you this course, is that LORD GREY’S DESPATCHES of making it apparent that any transfer which may take place of political power from the hands of one party in the province to those of another, is the result, not of an act of yours, but of the wishes of the people themselves. . . . In giving, therefore, all fair and proper support to your council for the time being, you will carefully avoid any acts which can possibly be supposed to imply the slightest objection to their opponents, and also refuse to assent to any measures which may be proposed to you by your council which may appear to you to involve an improper exercise of the authority of the Crown for party rather than for public objects. In exercising, however, this power of refusing to sanction measures which may be submitted to you by your council, you must recollect that this power of opposing a check upon extreme measures proposed by the party for the time in the government, depends entirely for its efficacy upon its being used sparingly and with the greatest possible discretion. A refusal to accept advice tendered to you by your council is a legitimate ground for its members to tender to you their resignation, — a course which they would doubtless adopt, should they feel that the subject on which a difference had arisen between you and themselves was one upon which public opinion would be in their favour. Should it prove to be so, concession to their views must sooner or later become inevitable, since it cannot be too distinctly acknowledged that it is neither possible nor desirable to carry on the government of any of the British provinces in North America in opposition to the opinion of the inhabitants.”
In order to carry into effect in the province of Canada the views thus indicated, the new British government determined to send out to the colony a governor-general whose especial task it should be to set right the unfortunate situation created by the mistaken policy of Lord Metcalfe. The conclusion of the Oregon treaty had by this time removed any immediate prospect of rupture with the United States, and it was no longer necessary to retain a military man at the head of Canadian affairs. The Whig ministry therefore resolved to send out Lord Elgin, whose appointment had already been proposed to Stanley by Queen Victoria before the fall of the Tory government. Elgin presented, in many respects, a marked contrast to the governors who had preceded him. He was still a young man, and his vigorous health and ardent spirits gave reason to hope that he was destined to break the spell that seemed to hang over the Canadian governors, and that there was little likelihood of his dying in office. His proficiency in the French language, his geniality and the charm of his address, prepared for him, from the moment of his landing, a social and personal success. But these advantages were the least of Lord Elgin’s qualifications for his new position. His chief claim VIEWS OF GREY AND RUSSELL to distinction, and the fact which gives his name a high and enduring place in the record of Canadian history, was his masterly grasp of the colonial situation, and the course he was prepared to take in instituting a real system of colonial self-government.
Lord Durham recommended responsible government: Baldwin and LaFontaine contended for it: Earl Grey sanctioned it, and Lord Elgin, as governor-general, first successfully applied it. For this full credit should be given to him. There seems to have been in the minds of Earl Grey and Lord John Russell some lingering of the old leaven, — a certain reservation in the grant of colonial autonomy they were prepared to make. The fact appears in certain passages of the despatch quoted above, and it is not difficult to find in Lord Grey’s other writings expressions of opinion which imply a hesitancy to accept the doctrine of colonial self-government in its entire sense. Lord John Russell in earlier years (1836) had told the House of Commons that the demands of the Canadian Reformers were incompatible with British sovereignty. Prior to his departure for the colony Lord Elgin had, indeed, been given by the colonial secretary the most liberal instructions in regard to the conduct of the Canadian government. Had he been of the temper of Lord Metcalfe or Lord Sydenham, he could easily have assumed a certain latitude in his application of the constitutional system. But Lord Elgin was not so minded. He was inclined, if anything, to improve on his instructions, and having grasped the fundamental idea of colonial self-government, was determined to bring it fully into play.
Lord Elgin was a thorough believer in the doctrines enunciated in Lord Durham’s Report. Moreover, his marriage with Durham’s daughter gave him an especial and sympathetic interest in proving the truth of Lord Durham’s views. “I still adhere,” he wrote to his wife, “to my opinion that the real and effectual vindication of Lord Durham’s memory and proceedings will be the success of a governor-general of Canada who works out his views of government fairly.” Where Lord Elgin showed a political sagacity far in advance of the governors who had preceded him was in his perception of the fact that a governor, in frankly accepting his purely constitutional position, did not thereby abandon his prestige and influence in the province, nor cease to be truly representative of the British Crown. Sydenham’s pride had revolted at the prospect of nonentity: Metcalfe’s loyalty had taken fright at the spectre of colonial ARRIVAL OF LORD ELGIN independence; but Elgin had the insight to perceive and to demonstrate the real nature of the governor’s position. He was once asked, later on, “whether the theory of the responsibility of provincial ministers to the provincial parliament, and of the consequent duty of the governor to remain absolutely neutral in the strife of political parties, had not a necessary tendency to degrade his office into that of a mere roi fainéant.” This Elgin emphatically denied. “I have tried,” he said, “both systems. In Jamaica, there was no responsible government; but I had not half the power I have here, with my constitutional and changing cabinet.”
Lord Elgin left England at the beginning of January, 1847, and entered Montreal on the twenty-ninth of the month. The people of the city, irrespective of political leanings, united in an address of welcome, and, in the perplexed state of Canadian politics, all parties were inclined to look to the new governor to give a definite lead to the current of affairs. It was strongly in Elgin’s favour that neither party associated his past career with the cause of their opponents. In British politics a Tory, he came to Canada as the appointee of a British Liberal government. “Lord Elgin,” said Hincks in the Pilot, “is said to be a Tory and there is no doubt that he is of a Tory family. We look upon his bias as an English politician with the most perfect indifference. We do not think it matters one straw to us Canadians whether our governor is a Tory or a Whig, more especially a Tory of the Peel school. We have to rely on ourselves not the governor; and if we are true to ourselves, the private opinions of the governor will be of very little importance.”
