Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: Burning of the Parliament Buildings, Montreal, 1849.
From a colour drawing by C. W. Jefferys]
THE WINNING OF
POPULAR GOVERNMENT
A Chronicle of the Union of 1841
BY
ARCHIBALD MACMECHAN
TORONTO
GLASGOW, BROOK & COMPANY
1916
Copyright in all Countries subscribing to
the Berne Convention
TO
ROBERT ALEXANDER FALCONER
PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
STUDENT OF HISTORY AND ENCOURAGER
OF HISTORIANS
{ix}
CONTENTS
Page
I. DURHAM THE DICTATOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
II. POULETT THOMSON, PEACEMAKER . . . . . . . . . . 25
III. REFORM IN THE SADDLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
IV. THE GREAT ADMINISTRATION . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
V. THE PRINCIPLE ESTABLISHED . . . . . . . . . . . 132
EPILOGUE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
{xi}
ILLUSTRATIONS
BURNING OF THE PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS, MONTREAL, 1849 _Frontispiece_
From a colour drawing by C. W. Jefferys.
THE EARL OF DURHAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Facing page_ 6
After the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence.
LORD SYDENHAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " 34
From an engraving by G. Browning in M'Gill
University Library.
SIR CHARLES BAGOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " 74
From an engraving in the Dominion Archives.
SIR CHARLES METCALFE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " 82
After a painting by Bradish.
CHARLES, EARL GREY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " 98
From the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence.
SIR LOUIS H. LAFONTAINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " 108
After a photograph by Notman.
THE EARL OF ELGIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " 136
From a daguerreotype.
{1}
CHAPTER I
DURHAM THE DICTATOR
And let him be dictator
For six months and no more.
The curious sightseer in modern Toronto, conducted through the
well-kept, endless avenues of handsome dwellings which are that city's
pride, might be surprised to learn that at the northern end of the
street which cuts the city in two halves, east and west, bands of armed
Canadians met in battle less than a century ago. If he continued his
travels to Montreal, he might be told, at a certain point, 'Here stood
the Parliament Buildings, when our city was the capital of the country;
and here a governor-general of Canada was mobbed, pelted with rotten
eggs and stones, and narrowly escaped with his life.' And if the
intelligent traveller asked the reason for such scenes, where now all
is peace, the answer might be given in one word--Politics.
To the young, politics seems rather a stupid {2} sort of game played by
the bald and obese middle-aged, for very high stakes, and governed by
no rules that any player is bound to respect. Between the rival teams
no difference is observable, save that one enjoys the sweets of office
and the mouth of the other is watering for them. But this is, of
course, the hasty judgment of uncharitable youth. The struggle between
political parties in Canada arose in the past from a difference in
political principles. It was a difference that could be defined; it
could be put into plain words. On the one side and the other the
guiding ideas could be formulated; they could be defended and they
could be attacked in logical debate. Sometimes it might pass the wit
of man to explain the difference between the Ins and the Outs.
Sometimes politics may be a game; but often it has been a battle. In
support of their political principles the strongest passions of men
have been aroused, and their deepest convictions of right and wrong.
The things by which men live, their religious creeds, their pride of
race, have been enlisted on the one side and the other. This is true
of Canadian politics.
That ominous date, 1837, marks a certain climax or culmination in the
political {3} development of Canada. The constitution of the country
now works with so little friction that those who have not read history
assume that it must always have worked so. There is a real danger in
forgetting that, not so very long ago, the whole machinery of
government in one province broke down, that for months, if not for
years, it looked as if civil government in Lower Canada had come to an
end, as if the colonial system of Britain had failed beyond all hope.
_Deus nobis haec otia fecit_. But Canada's present tranquillity did
not come about by miracle; it came about through the efforts of faulty
men contending for political principles in which they believed and for
which they were even ready to die. The rebellions of 1837 in Upper and
Lower Canada, and what led up to them, the origins and causes of these
rebellions, must be understood if the subsequent warfare of parties and
the evolution of the scattered colonies of British North America into
the compact united Dominion of Canada are not to be a confused and
meaningless tale.[1]
{4}
Futile and pitiful as were the rebellions, whether regarded as attempts
to set up new government or as military adventures, they had widespread
and most serious consequences within and without the country. In
Britain the news caused consternation. Two more American colonies were
in revolt. Battles had been fought and British troops had been
defeated. These might prove, as thought Storrow Brown, one of the
leaders of the 'Sons of Liberty' in Lower Canada, so many Lexingtons,
with a Saratoga and a Yorktown to follow. Sir John Colborne, the
commander-in-chief, was asking for reinforcements. In Lower Canada
civil government was at an end. There was danger of international
complications. For disorders almost without precedent the British
parliament found an almost unprecedented remedy. It invested one man
with extraordinary powers. He was to be captain-general and
commander-in-chief over the provinces of British North America, and
also 'High Commissioner for the adjustment of certain important
questions depending in the ... Provinces of Lower and Upper Canada
respecting the form and future government of the said Provinces.' He
was given 'full power and authority ... by {5} all lawful ways and
means, to inquire into, and, as far as may be possible, to adjust all
questions ... respecting the Form and Administration of the Civil
Government' of the provinces as aforesaid. These extraordinary powers
were conferred upon a distinguished politician in the name of the young
Queen Victoria and during her pleasure. The usual and formal language
of the commission, 'especial trust and confidence in the courage,
prudence, and loyalty' of the commissioner, has in this case deep
meaning; for courage, prudence, and loyalty were all needed, and were
all to be put to the test.
The man born for the crisis was a type of a class hardly to be
understood by the Canadian democracy. He was an aristocratic radical.
His recently acquired title, Lord Durham, must not be allowed to
obscure the fact that he was a Lambton, the head of an old county
family, which was entitled by its long descent to look down upon half
the House of Peers as parvenus. At the family seat, Lambton Castle, in
the county of Durham, Lambton after Lambton had lived and reigned like
a petty prince. There John George was born in August 1792. His father
had been a Whig, a consistent friend of Charles James {6} Fox, at a
time when opposition to the government, owing to the wars with France,
meant social ostracism; and he had refused a peerage. The son had
enjoyed the usual advantages of the young Englishman in his position.
He had been educated at Eton and at the university of Cambridge. Three
years in a crack cavalry regiment at a time when all England was under
arms could have done little to lessen his feeling for his caste. A
Gretna Green marriage with an heiress, while he was yet a minor, is
characteristic of his impetuous temperament, as is also a duel which he
fought with a Mr Beaumont in 1820 during the heat of an election
contest. After the period of political reaction following Waterloo,
reaction in which all Europe shared, England proceeded on the path of
reform towards a modified democracy; and Lambton, entering parliament
at the lucky moment, found himself on the crest of the wave. His Whig
principles had gained the victory; and his personal ability and energy
set him among the leaders of the new reform movement. He was a
son-in-law of Earl Grey, the author of the Reform Bill of 1832, and he
became a member of the Grey Cabinet. Before the Canadian crisis he had
shown his {7} ability to cope with a difficult situation in a
diplomatic mission to Russia, where he is said to have succeeded by the
exercise of tact. He was nicknamed 'Radical Jack,' but any one less
'democratic,' as the term is commonly understood, it would be hard to
find. He surrounded himself with almost regal state during his brief
overlordship of Canada. In Quebec, at the Castle of St Louis, he lived
like a prince. Many tales are told of his arrogant self-assertion and
hauteur. In person he was strikingly handsome. Lawrence painted him
when a boy. He was an able public speaker. He had a fiery temper
which made co-operation with him almost impossible, and which his weak
health no doubt aggravated. He was vain and ambitious. But he was
gifted with powers of political insight. He possessed a febrile energy
and an earnest desire to serve the common weal. Such was the physician
chosen by the British government to cure the cankers of misrule and
disaffection in the body politic of Canada.
[Illustration: The Earl of Durham. After the painting by Sir Thomas
Lawrence.]
Lord Durham received his commission in March 1838. But, though the
need was urgent for prompt action, he did not immediately set out for
Canada. For the delay {8} he was criticized by his political
opponents, particularly by Lord Brougham, once his friend, but now his
bitterest enemy. On the twenty-fourth of April, however, Durham sailed
from Plymouth in H.M.S. _Hastings_ with a party of twenty-two persons.
Besides his military aides for decorative purposes, he brought in his
suite some of the best brains of the time, Thomas Turton, Edward Gibbon
Wakefield, and Carlyle's gigantic pupil, Charles Buller. It is
characteristic of Durham that he should bring a band of music with him
and that he should work his secretaries hard all the way across the
Atlantic. On the twenty-ninth of May the _Hastings_ was at Quebec.
Lord Durham was received by the acting administrator, Sir John
Colborne, and conducted through the crowded streets between a double
hedge of soldiery to the Castle of St Louis, the vice-regal residence.
If Durham had been slow in setting out for the scene of his labours, he
wasted no time in attacking his problems upon his arrival in Canada.
'Princely in his style of living, indefatigable in business, energetic
and decided, though haughty in manner, and desirous to benefit the
Canadas,' is the {9} judgment of a contemporary upon the new ruler. On
the day he was sworn to office he issued his first proclamation. Its
most significant statements are: 'The honest and conscientious
advocates of reform ... will receive from me, without distinction of
party, race, or politics, that assistance and encouragement which their
patriotism has a right to command ... but the disturbers of the public
peace, the violators of the law, the enemies of the Crown and of the
British Empire will find in me an uncompromising opponent, determined
to put in force against them all the powers civil and military with
which I have been invested.' It was a policy of firmness united to
conciliation that Durham announced. He came bearing the sheathed sword
in one hand and the olive branch in the other. The proclamation was
well received; the Canadians were ready to accept him as 'a friend and
arbitrator.' He was to earn the right to both titles.
Durham was determined to begin with a clean slate. With a
characteristic disregard for precedent, he dismissed the existing
Executive Council as well as Colborne's special band of advisers, and
formed two new councils in their place, consisting of {10} members of
his personal staff, military officers, Canadian judges, the provincial
secretary, and the commissary-general. Together they formed a
committee of investigation and advice; and, being composed of both
local and non-local elements, it was a committee specially fitted to
supply the necessary information, and to judge all questions
dispassionately from an outside point of view. This committee acting
with the High Commissioner took the place of regular constitutional
government in Lower Canada. It was an arbitrary makeshift adopted to
meet a crisis.
During the long, tedious voyage of the _Hastings_ the High Commissioner
had not been idle. He had worked steadily for many hours a day at the
knotty Canadian question, studying papers, drafting plans, discussing
point after point with his secretaries. Once in the country, he set to
work in the most thoroughgoing and systematic way to gather further
knowledge. He appointed commissions to report on all special problems
of government--education, immigration, municipal government, the
management of the crown lands. He obtained reports from all sources;
he conferred with men of all shades {11} of political opinion; he
called representative deputations from the uttermost regions under his
sway; he made a flying visit to Niagara in order to see the country
with his own eyes and to study conditions. Such labours were beyond
the capacity of any one man; but Durham was ably supported by his band
of loyal helpers and a public eager to co-operate. The result of all
this activity was the amassing of the priceless data from which was
formed the great document known as Lord Durham's Report.
It is generally overlooked that at this period Canada stood in danger
from external as well as internal enemies. Hardly had Durham landed at
Quebec when there occurred a series of incidents which might have led
to war between Great Britain and the United States. A Canadian
passenger steamer, the _Sir Robert Peel_, sailing from Prescott to
Kingston, was boarded at Wells Island by one 'Bill' Johnson and a band
of armed men with blackened faces. The passengers and crew were put
ashore without their effects, and the steamer was set on fire and
destroyed. Very soon afterwards an American passenger steamer was
fired on by over-zealous sentries at Brockville. Together {12} the
twin outrages were almost enough, in the state of feeling on both
sides, to set the Empire and the Republic by the ears.
The significance of these and other similar incidents can only be
understood by recalling the mental attitude of Americans of the day.
They had a robust detestation of everything British. It is not grossly
exaggerated by Dickens in Martin Chuzzlewit. And that attitude was
entirely natural. The Americans had, or thought they had, beaten the
British in two wars. The very reason for the existence of their nation
was their opposition to British tyranny. They saw that tyranny in all
its balefulness blighting the two Canadas. They saw those oppressed
colonies rising, as they themselves had risen, against their
oppressors. To make the danger all the more acute, the exiled
Canadians, notably William Lyon Mackenzie, went from place to place in
the United States inciting the freeborn citizens of the Republic to aid
the cause of freedom across the line. There was precedent for
intervention. Just a year before the fight at St Charles, an American
hero, Sam Houston, had wrested the huge state of Texas from the misrule
of Mexico and founded a new and independent republic. {13} Hence arose
the huge conspiracy of the 'Hunters' Lodges' all along the northern
border of the United States, of which more in the next chapter.
Durham took prompt action. He offered a reward of a thousand pounds
for such information as should bring the guilty persons to trial in an
American, not a Canadian, court. Thereby he said in effect, 'This is
not an international affair. It is a plain offence against the laws of
the United States, and I am confident that the United States desires to
prevent such outrages.' He followed up this bold declaration of faith
in American justice by sending his brother-in-law, Colonel Grey of the
71st Regiment, to Washington to lay the facts before President Van
Buren and to remonstrate vigorously against the laxity which permitted
an armed force to organize within the borders of the Republic for an
attack upon its peaceful neighbour. Such laxity was against the law of
nations. As a result of Durham's spirited action, the military forces
on both sides of the boundary-line worked in concert to put down such
lawlessness. President Van Buren's attitude, however, cost him his
popularity in his own country.
{14}
The most pressing and most thorny question was how to deal with the
hundreds of prisoners who, since the rebellion, had filled the Canadian
jails. A large number of these were only suspected of treason; some
had been taken in the act of rebellion; and some were confined as
ringleaders, charged with crimes no government could overlook and hope
to survive. In some countries the solution would have been a simple
one: the prisoners would have been backed against the nearest wall and
fusilladed in batches, as the Communists were dealt with in Paris in
the red quarter of the year 1871. Even in Canada there were hideous
cries for bloody reprisals. But the ingrained British habit of giving
the worst criminal a fair trial blocked such a ready and easy way of
restoring tranquillity. Still, a fair trial was impossible. In the
temper then prevailing in the province no French jury would condemn, no
English jury would acquit, a Frenchman charged with treason, however
great or slight his fault might prove to be. The process of trying so
many hundreds of prisoners would be simply so many examples of the
law's burdensome delay. To leave them to rot in prison, as King Bomba
left political offenders {15} against his rule, was unthinkable.
Durham met the difficulty in a bold and merciful way. The young Queen
was crowned on June 28, 1838. Such an event is always a season of
rejoicing and an opportunity for exercising the royal clemency in the
liberation of captives. Following this excellent custom, Durham
proclaimed on that day an amnesty in his sovereign's name; and, in a
month after his arrival, he gave freedom to hundreds of unfortunates,
who had endured many hardships in the old, cruel jails of the time, in
addition to the tortures of suspense as to their ultimate fate.
There were some who could not be so released. They were only eight in
number, but they were such men as Wolfred Nelson and Robert Bouchette,
whose treason was open and notorious. They knew, and Durham knew, that
they could not obtain a fair trial. Therefore the High Commissioner
overleapt the law, and by an ordinance banished these ringleaders to
Bermuda during Her Majesty's pleasure. Durham was much pleased at this
happy solution of a difficult and delicate problem. He congratulated
himself, as well he might, on having terminated a rebellion without
shedding a drop of blood. 'The {16} guilty have received justice, the
misguided, mercy,' he wrote to the Queen, 'but at the same time,
security is afforded to the loyal and peaceable subjects of this
hitherto distracted Province.' Furthermore, his proceedings had been
'approved by all parties--Sir J. Colborne and all the British party,
the Canadians and all the French party.' Durham fancied that this
question was now settled, and that he could proceed unhampered with his
main task of reconstruction. But his justifiable satisfaction was not
to last long.
While the High Commissioner was labouring in Canada, as few officials
have ever laboured, for the good of the Empire, his enemies and his
lukewarm friends in England were between them preparing his downfall.
Of his foes, the most bitter and unscrupulous was Brougham, a political
Ishmael, a curious compound of malignity and versatile intellectual
power. He had criticized Durham's delay in starting for Canada; and he
was only too glad of the handle which the autocratic, czar-like
ordinance of banishment to Bermuda offered him against his enemy. It
is nearly always in the power of a party politician to distort and
misrepresent the act {17} of an opponent, however just or blameless
that act may be. Brougham made a great pother about the rights of
freemen, usurpation, dictatorship. As a lawyer he raised the legal
point, that Durham could not banish offenders from Canada to a colony
over which he had no jurisdiction. He enlisted other lawyers on his
side to attack the composition of Durham's council. The storm Brougham
raised might have done no harm, if Durham's political allies had stood
by him like men. But the prime minister Melbourne, always a timorous
friend, bent before the blast, and Durham's ordinance was disallowed.
The High Commissioner, who had been granted such great powers, was held
to have exceeded those powers. Durham belonged to the caste which felt
a stain upon its honour like a wound. The disallowance of his
ordinance by the home authorities was a blow fair in the face. It put
an end to his career in Canada, by undermining his authority. In those
days of slow communication the news of the disallowance reached him
tardily. By a side wind, from an American newspaper, he first learned
the fact on the twenty-fifth of September. He at once sent in his
resignation, told the {18} people of Canada the reason why in a
proclamation, and as soon as possible left the country for ever.
Brougham was burned in effigy at Quebec. The lucky eight, already in
Bermuda, were speedily released. Never did leaders of an unsuccessful
rebellion suffer less for their indiscretion. From Bermuda they
proceeded to New York to renew their agitation. On the first of
November Durham left Quebec, as he had entered that city, with all the
pomp of military pageantry and in a universal display of public
interest. He came in a crisis; he left amid a crisis. He had spent
five months in office, almost the exact term for which the Romans chose
their chief magistrate in a national emergency and named him dictator.
In the eyes of Durham's enemies his ordinance of banishment was a
ukase; and, at first blush, it looks like an unwarrantable stretching
of his powers. But Durham was on the ground and must necessarily have
known the conditions prevailing much better than his critics three
thousand miles away. Desperate diseases need desperate remedies. The
presumption is always that the man on the ground will be right; and
posterity has {19} passed a final judgment of approval on Durham's bold
slashing of the Gordian knot. New facts have set the whole matter in a
new light. A paper of Buller's,[2] hitherto unpublished, shows that
the ordinance was promulgated _only after consultation with the
prisoners_. 'The prisoners who expected the government to avail itself
of its power of packing a jury were very ready to petition to be
disposed of without trial, and as I had in the meantime ascertained
that the proposed mode of dealing with them would not be condemned by
the leading men of the British party, Lord Durham adopted the plan
proposed.' They regarded banishment as an unexpected mercy, as well
they might. The only alternative was the dock, the condemned cell, and
the gallows.
On the thirtieth of November Durham landed at Plymouth, and by the
middle of the following January he had finished his Report. Early in
February it was printed and laid before the House of Commons. The {20}
curious legend which credits Buller with the authorship is traceable to
Brougham's spite. Macaulay and Brougham met in a London street. The
great Whig historian praised the Report. Brougham belittled it. 'The
matter,' he averred, 'came from a felon, the style from a coxcomb, and
the Dictator furnished only six letters, D-u-r-h-a-m.' The whole
question has been carefully discussed by Stuart J. Reid in his _Life
and Letters of the First Earl of Durham_, and the myth has been given
its quietus. Even if direct external evidence were lacking, a
dispassionate examination of the document itself would dispose of the
legend. In style, temper, and method it is in the closest agreement
with Durham's public dispatches and private letters.
The drafting of this most notable of state papers was the last of
Durham's services to the Empire. A little more than a year later he
was dead and laid to rest in his own county. Fifty thousand people
attended his funeral. A mausoleum in the form of a Greek temple marks
his grave. The funds for this monument were raised by public
subscription, such was the force of popular esteem. His dying words
were prophetic: 'Canada will one day do justice to my memory.'
{21}
The Report was Durham's legacy to his country. It defined once for all
the principles that should govern the relations of the colony with the
mother country, and laid the foundations of the present Canadian unity.
It did not please the factions in Canada; it was too plain-spoken.
Exception may be taken, even at the present day, to some of its
recommendations and conclusions. But its faithful pictures of 'this
hitherto turbulent colony' enable the historical student and the honest
patriot to measure the progress the country has since made on the road
to nationhood. If unpleasant, it is very easy reading. Few
parliamentary reports are closer packed with vital facts or couched in
clearer language. To the task of its composition the author brought
energy, insight, a sense of public duty, a desire to be fair, and, best
of all, an open mind, a perfect readiness to relinquish prepossessions
or prejudices in the face of fresh facts. His ample scheme of
investigation, as carried out by himself and his corps of able helpers,
had put him in control of a huge assemblage of data. On this he
reasoned with admirable results.
The Report consists of four parts. The {22} first, and by far the
largest, portion deals with Lower Canada, as the main storm centre.
The second is concerned with Upper Canada; the third, with the Maritime
Provinces and Newfoundland. Having diagnosed the disease in the body
politic, Durham proposes a remedy. The fourth part is an outline of
the curative process suggested.
'I expected to find a contest between a government and a people; I
found two nations warring in the bosom of a single state.' In that one
sentence Durham precises the situation in Lower Canada. Nothing will
surprise the Canadian of to-day more than the evidence adduced of 'the
deadly animosity' which then existed between the two races. The very
children in the streets fought, French against English. Social
intercourse between the two was impossible. The Report shows the
historical origin and carefully traces the course of this 'deadly
animosity.' It finds much to admire in the character of the French
habitant, but spares neither his faults nor the shortcomings of his
political leaders. It shows that the original racial quarrel was
aggravated by the conduct of the governing officials, both at home and
in Canada, until the French took up arms. {23} The consequences were
'evils which no civilized community can long continue to bear.' There
must be a 'decision'; and it must be 'prompt and final.'
In Upper Canada Durham found a different situation. There the people
were not 'slavish tools of a narrow official clique or a few
purse-proud merchants,' but 'hardy farmers and humble mechanics
composing a very independent, not very manageable, and sometimes a
rather turbulent democracy.' The trouble was that a small party had
secured a monopoly of power and resisted the lawful efforts of moderate
reformers to establish a truly democratic form of government.
Ill-balanced extremists had taken up arms; but the sound political
instinct of the vast majority was against them. Here, too, the
original difficulties had been complicated by official ignorance in
England and the unwisdom of authorities on the spot. The result was
that these 'ample and fertile territories' were in a backward, almost
desperate, condition. Their poverty and stagnation were a depressing
contrast to the prosperity and exhilarating stir of the great American
democracy.
The other outlying provinces presented no {24} such serious problems.
There were various anomalies and difficulties; but they were on their
way to removal.
The 'evils which no civilized community could bear' were to be cured by
a legislative union of the Canadas. The time had gone by for a federal
union. A door must be either open or shut; the French province must
become definitely a British province and find its place in the Empire.
To end the everlasting deadlock between the governor and the
representatives of the people, the Executive should be made responsible
to the Assembly; and, in order to bring the scattered provinces closer
together, an inter-colonial railway should be built. In other words,
the obsolete, bad system of colonial government must undergo radical
reform, both within and without, because 'while the present state of
things is allowed to last, the actual inhabitants of these provinces
have no security for person or property, no enjoyment of what they
possess, no stimulus to industry.'
The story of how this reform was undertaken, and of how, in spite of
many obstacles, it was brought to a triumphant success, must always
remain one of the most important chapters in the political history of
Canada.
[1] The story of the rebellions will be found in two other volumes of
the present Series, _The Family Compact_ and _The Patriotes of '37_,
For earlier cognate history see _The Father of British Canada_ and _The
United Empire Loyalists_.
[2] A sketch of Lord Durham's mission to Canada in 1838, by Charles
Buller. See the edition of Lord Durham's Report edited, with an
introduction, by Sir C. P. Lucas: Oxford, 1912. The original document
was given to Dr Arthur G. Doughty, Dominion Archivist, by the present
Earl of Durham.
{25}