FOUNDING MODERN CANADA
1786-1796
Carleton now enjoyed two years of uninterrupted peace at
his country seat in England. His active career seemed to
have closed at last. He had no taste for party politics.
He was not anxious to fill any position of civil or
military trust, even if it had been pressed upon him.
And he had said farewell to America for good and all when
he had left New York. Though as full of public spirit as
before and only just turned sixty, he bid fair to spend
the rest of his life as an English country gentleman.
His young wife was well contented with her lot. His manly
boys promised to become worthy followers of the noble
profession of arms. And the overseeing of his little
estate occupied his time very pleasantly indeed. Like
most healthy Englishmen he was devoted to horses, and,
unlike some others, he was very successful with his
thoroughbreds.
He had first bought a place near Maidenhead, beside the
Thames, which is nowhere lovelier than in that sylvan
neighbourhood. Then he bought the present family seat of
Greywill Hill near the little village of Odiham in
Hampshire. As an ex-governor and commander-in-chief, a
county magnate, a personage of great importance to the
Empire, and the one victorious British general in the
unhappy American war, he had more than earned a peerage.
But it was not till 1786, on the eve of his sixty-second
birthday, and at a time when his services were urgently
required again, that he received it. Needless to say this
peerage had nothing whatever to do with his acceptance
of another self-sacrificing duty. It was not given till
several months after he had promised to return to Canada;
and he would certainly have refused it if it had been
held out to him as an inducement to go there. He became
Baron Dorchester and was granted the not very extravagant
addition to his income of a thousand pounds a year payable
during four lives, his own, his wife's, and those of his
two eldest sons. His elevation to the House of Lords met
with the almost unanimous approval of his fellow-peers,
in marked contrast to the open hostility they had shown
towards his old enemy, Lord George Germain, when that
vile wrecker had been 'kicked upstairs' among them. The
Carleton motto, crest, and supporters are all most
appropriate. The crest is a strong right arm with the
hand clenched firmly on an arrow. The motto is _Quondam
his vicimus armis_--_We used to conquer with these arms_.
The supporters are two beavers, typifying Canada, while
their respective collars, one a naval the other a military
coronet, show how her British life was won and saved and
has been kept.
Carleton was a man of great reserve and self-control.
But his kindly nature must have responded to the cordial
welcome which he received on his return to Quebec in
October 1786. It was not without reason that the people
of Canada rejoiced to have him back as their leader. All
that the Indians imagined the Great White Father to be
towards themselves he was in reality towards both red
man and white. Stern, when the occasion forced him to be
stern, just in all his dealings between man and man,
dignified and courteous in all his ways, a soldier through
every inch of his stalwart six feet, he was a ruler with
whom no one ever dreamt of taking liberties. But neither
did any deserving one in trouble ever hesitate to lay
the most confidential case before him in the full assurance
that his head and heart were at the service of all
committed to his care. And no other governor, before his
time or since, ever inspired his followers with such a
firm belief that all would turn out for the best so long
as he was in command.
This power of inspiring confidence was now badly needed.
Everything in Canada was still provisional. Owing to the
war the Quebec Act of 1774 had never been thoroughly
enforced. Then, when the war was over, the Loyalists
arrived and completely changed the circumstances which
the act had been designed to meet. The next constitution,
the Canada Act of 1791, was of a very different character.
During the seventeen years between these two constitutions
all that could be done was to make the best of a very
confusing state of flux. Not that the Quebec Act was a
dead letter--far from it--but simply that it could not
go beyond restoring the privileges of the French-Canadian
priests and seigneurs within the area then effectively
occupied by the French-Canadian race. Carleton, as we
have seen, had faced its problem for the first four years.
Haldimand had carried on the government under its provisions
for the following six. Hamilton and Hope, successive
lieutenant-governors, had bridged the two years between
Haldimand's retirement and Carleton's second appointment.
Now Carleton was to pick up the threads and make what he
could of the tangled skein for the next five years.
Haldimand had not been popular with either of the two
chief parties into which the leading French Canadians
were divided. The seigneurs had nothing like the same
regard for a Swiss soldier of fortune that they had for
aristocratic British commanders like Murray and Carleton.
The clergy also preferred these Anglicans to such a strong
Swiss Protestant. The habitants and agitators, who were
far less favourable to the new regime, had passionately
resented Haldimand's firmness at times of crisis. But,
despite all this French-Canadian animus, he was not such
an absolute martinet as some writers would have us think.
The war with France and with the American Revolutionists
required strong government in Canada; while the influx
of Loyalists had introduced an entirely new set of most
perplexing circumstances. On the whole, Haldimand had
done very well in spite of many personal and public
drawbacks; and it was through no special fault of his,
nor yet of Hope's, that the threads which Carleton picked
up formed such a perversely tangled skein.
The troubles that now dogged the great conciliator's
every step were of all kinds--racial, religious, social,
political, military, diplomatic, legal. The confusion
resulting from the intermixture of French and English
civil laws had become a great deal more confounded since
he had left Canada eight years before. The old proportions
of races and religions to each other had changed most
disturbingly. The Loyalists were of quite a different
social class from the English-speaking immigrants of
earlier days. They wanted a parliament, public schools,
and many other things new to the country; and they were
the sort of people who had a right to have them. The
problem of defence was always a vexed one with the
inadequate military forces at hand and the insuperable
difficulties concerning the militia. The British still
held the Western forts pending the settlement of the
frontier and the execution of the treaty of peace in
full. This naturally annoyed the American government and
gave Carleton endless trouble. But more serious still
was the ceaseless western march of the American
backwoodsmen, who were everywhere in conflict with the
Indians. The Indians, in their turn, were confused between
the British and Americans under the new conditions. They
and their ever-receding rights and territories had not
been mentioned in the treaty. But, seeing that they would
be better off under British than under American rule,
they were inclined to take sides accordingly. There were
now no openly hostile sides to take. But, for all that,
the British posts in the hinterland looked like weak
little islands which might be suddenly engulfed in the
sea of Indian troubles raging round them. Then, at the
other end of the British line, there were the three
maritime provinces to watch over. New Brunswick had been
divided off from Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island
had been taken from the direct supervision of the home
authorities and placed under the command of the new
governor at Quebec. Thus Carleton had to deal directly
with everything that happened from the far West to Gaspe,
while dealing indirectly with the three maritime provinces
and all the troubles that proved too much for their own
lieutenant-governors. There was no chance of concentrating
on one thing at a time. Nothing would wait. The governor
had to watch the writhing tangle as a whole during every
minute he devoted to any one kinked and knotted thread.
Fortunately there were some good men in office on both
sides of the Atlantic. Lords Sydney and Grenville, the
two cabinet ministers with whom Carleton had most to do,
were both sensible and sympathetic. Years afterwards
Grenville, the favourite cousin of Pitt, became the
colleague of Fox at the head of the celebrated 'Ministry
of All the Talents.' Hope was an acceptable
lieutenant-governor, and his successor, Sir Alured Clarke,
was better still. Francois Bailly, the coadjutor Roman
Catholic bishop of Quebec, who had gone to England as
French tutor to Carleton's children, was a most enlightened
cleric. So too was Charles Inglis, the Anglican bishop
of Nova Scotia, appointed in 1787. He was the first
Canadian bishop of the Anglican communion and his diocese
comprised the whole of British North America. William
Smith, the new chief justice, was as different from
Carleton's last chief justice, Livius, as angels are from
devils. Smith had been an excellent chief justice of his
native New York in the old colonial days, and, like
Inglis, was a very ardent Loyalist. He respected all
reasonable French-Canadian peculiarities. But he favoured
the British-Constitutional way of 'broadening down from
precedent to precedent' rather than the French way of
referring to a supposedly infallible written regulation.
We shall soon meet him as a far-seeing statesman. But he
well deserves an honoured place in Canadian history for
his legal services alone. To him, more than to any other
man, is due the nicely balanced adjustments which eventually
harmonized the French and English codes into a body of
laws adapted to the extraordinary circumstances of the
province of Quebec.
Besides the committee on laws Carleton had nominated
three other active committees of his council, one on
police, another on education, and a third on trade and
commerce. The police committee was of the usual kind and
dealt with usual problems in the usual way. But the
education committee brought out all the vexed questions
of French and English, Protestant and Roman Catholic,
progressive and reactionary. Strangely enough, the sharpest
personal controversy was that between Hubert, the Roman
Catholic bishop of Quebec, and his coadjutor Bailly.
Hubert enumerated all the institutions already engaged
in educational work and suggested that 'rest and be
thankful' was the only proper attitude for the committee
to assume. But Bailly very neatly pointed out that his
respected superior's real opinions could not be those
attributed to him over his own signature because they
were at variance with the facts. Hubert had said that
the cures were spreading education with most commendable
zeal, had repudiated the base insinuation that only three
or four people in each parish could read and write, and
had wound up by thinking that while there was so much
land to clear the farmers would do better to keep their
sons at home than send them to a university, where they
would be under professors so 'unprejudiced' as to have
no definite views on religion. Bailly argued that the
bishop could not mean what these words seemed to imply,
as the logical conclusion would be to wait till Canada
was cleared right up to the polar circle. In the end the
committee made three very sanguine recommendations: a
free common school in every parish, a secondary school
in every town or district, and an absolutely non-sectarian
central university. This educational ladder was never
set up. There was nothing to support either end of it.
The financial side was one difficulty. The Jesuits'
estates were intended to be made over into educational
endowments under government control. But Amherst's claim
that they had been granted to him in 1760 was not settled
for forty years; and by that time all chance of carrying
out the committee's intentions was seen to be hopeless.
Commerce was another burning question and one of much
more immediate concern. In 1791 the united populations
of all the provinces amounted to only a quarter of a
million, of whom at least one-half were French Canadians.
Quebec and Montreal had barely ten thousand citizens
apiece. But the commercial classes, mostly English-speaking,
had greatly increased in numbers, ability, and social
standing. The camp-following gangs of twenty years before
had now either disappeared or sunk down to their appropriate
level. So petitions from the 'British merchants' required
and received much more consideration than formerly. The
Loyalists had not yet had time to start in business. All
their energies were needed in hewing out their future
homes. But two parts of the American Republic, Vermont
and Kentucky, were very anxious to do business with the
British at any reasonable price. Some of their citizens
were even ready for a change of allegiance if the terms
were only good enough. Vermont wanted a 'free trade'
outlet to the St Lawrence by way of the Richelieu. The
rapids between St Johns and Chambly lay in British
territory. But Vermont was ready to join in building a
canal and would even become British to make sure. The
old Green Mountain Boys had changed their tune. Ethan
Allen himself had buried the hatchet and, like his brother,
become Carleton's friendly correspondent. He frankly
explained that what Vermonters really wanted was 'property
not liberty' and added that they would stand no coercion
from the American government. About the same time Kentucky
was bent on getting an equally 'free trade' outlet to
the Gulf of Mexico by way of the Mississippi. The fact
that France Spain, the British Empire, and the United
States might all be involved in war over it did not
trouble the conspirators in the least. The central
authority of the new Republic was still weak. The individual
states were still ready to fly asunder. Federal taxation
was greatly feared. Anything that savoured of federal
interference with state rights was passionately resented.
The general spirit of the westerners was that of the
exploiting pioneer in a virgin wilderness--a law unto
itself alone. There were various plans for opening the
coveted Mississippi. One was to join Spain. Another was
to seize New Orleans, turn out the French, and bring in
the British. Then, to make the plot complete, the French
minister to the United States was asking permission to
make a tour through Canada at the very time when Carleton
was sending home reams of documents bearing on the
impending troubles. The letters exchanged on this subject
are perfect models of politeness. But Carleton's answer
was an emphatic No.
Foreign complications were thickening fast. The French
Revolution had already begun, though its effect was not
yet felt in Canada. The American government was anxiously
watching its refractory states, while an anti-British
political party was making headway in the South. As if
this was not enough to engage whatever attention Carleton
had to spare from the internal affairs of Canada, he
suddenly heard that the Spaniards had been seizing British
vessels trading to a British post on Vancouver Island.
[Footnote: _See Pioneers of the Pacific Coast_ in this
Series.] This Nootka Affair, which nearly brought on a
war with Spain in 1790, was settled in London and Madrid.
But the threat of war added to Carleton's anxieties.
Meanwhile the governor was busily employed with an
immigration problem. It was desirable that the
English-speaking immigrants should settle on the land
with the least possible friction between them and the
French Canadians. The French Canadians differed among
themselves. But no such differences brought them any
closer to their new neighbours on questions of land
settlement. The French had granted lands in seigneuries.
The British would hear of nothing but free and common
socage. French farms were measured by the arpent and were
staked out in long and narrow oblongs. British farms were
measured by the acre and staked out 'on the square.'
Language, laws, religion, manners and customs, ways of
life, were also different. So there was hardly any
intermixture of settlements. The French Canadians remained
where they were. Most of the new Anglo-Canadians settled
in the Maritime Provinces or moved west into what is now
Ontario. A few settled in rural Quebec on lands outside
the line of seigneuries. The Eastern Townships, that part
of the province lying east of the Richelieu and nearest
the American frontier, absorbed many English, Irish, and
Scots, as well as a good many Americans who were attracted
by cheap land. Ontario, or Upper Canada, received still
more Americans, who were to be a thorn in the side of
the British during the War of 1812.
But Carleton's work comprised much more than this. There
were the Church of England, the Post Office, a refractory
lieutenant-governor down in Prince Edward Island, two
royal visitors, and many other distracting matters. The
only Anglican see thus far established was at Halifax;
but the bishop there had authority over the whole country
and the government intended to establish the Church of
England in Canada and endow it. The Presbyterians also
petitioned for the establishment of the Scottish Church.
The fortunes or misfortunes of the Clergy Reserves
belong to another chapter of Canadian history. But the
root of their good or evil was planted in the time of
Carleton. The postal service was surrounded by enormous
difficulties--the vast extent of wild country, the few
towns, the long winters, the poverty of the people.
The question of the winter port was even then a live
one between St John and Halifax. Each of these towns
asserted its advantages and promised twelve trips a year
and connection with Quebec overland by means of walking
postmen till a bush road should be cut from Quebec to the
sea. In Prince Edward Island the old lieutenant-governor,
Walter Patterson, declined to make way for the new one,
Edmund Fanning. In the end Patterson gave up the contest.
But the incident, trivial as it now appears, shows what
a governor-general had to face in the early days when
each province had queer little ways of its own. Patterson
had no precise official reason. But he said he could
not go home to answer charges he did not understand and
leave an island which had been his very successful hobby
for so many years! The people sided with him so vigorously
that time had to be given them to cool down before the
transfer could be peaceably effected.
A judge whose court is in perpetual session or a commander
whose inadequate forces are continually surrounded by
prospective enemies has little time for the amenities of
purely social life. So Carleton generally left his young
consort to rule the viceregal court at the Chateau St
Louis with a perfect blend of London and Versailles. Two
Princes of the Blood, however, demanded more than the
usual attention from the governor. Prince William Henry,
afterwards King William IV, was the first member of the
Royal Family to set foot in the New World when he arrived
in H.M.S. _Pegasus_ in 1787. He was the proverbial jolly
Jack Tar, extremely affable to everybody; and he quickly
won golden opinions from all who met him, except perhaps
from Lady Dorchester and sundry would-be partners for
his duty dances. Philippe Aubert de Gaspe and other
privileged chroniclers record with slightly shocked
delight how often he would break loose from Lady
Dorchester's designing care, long before she thought it
right for him to do so, and 'command' his partners for
their pretty faces instead of by precedence. At Sorel
the people were so carried away by their enthusiasm that
they insisted on changing the name of their little town
to William Henry. Happily this name never took root in
public sentiment and the old one soon came back to stay.
The second member of the Royal Family to come to Canada
was Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, fourth son of George
III, father of Queen Victoria and grandfather of Prince
Arthur, Duke of Connaught, who became the first royal
governor-general in 1911, exactly a hundred and twenty
years later. The Duke of Kent would have gladly returned
to Quebec as governor-general, and the people would have
gladly welcomed him. But he was not a favourite with the
government at home, and so he never came. There was no
doubt about his being a popular favourite in Quebec during
the three years he spent there as colonel of the 7th
Fusiliers. Nor has he been forgotten to the present day.
Kent House is still the name of his quarters in the town
as well as of his country residence at Montmorency Falls
seven miles away, while the only new opening ever made
in the walls is called Kent Gate.
The duke made fast friends with several of the seigneurial
families, more especially with the de Salaberrys, whose
manor-house at Beauport stood half-way between Montmorency
and Quebec and not far from Montcalm's headquarters in
1759. The de Salaberrys were a military family. All the
sons went into the Army and one became the hero of
Chateauguay in the War of 1812. But the duke mixed freely
with many other people than the local aristocracy. He
was young, high-spirited, and loved adventure, as was
proved by his subsequent gallantry at Martinique. He was
also fond of driving round incognito, a habit which on
at least one occasion obliged him to put his skill at
boxing to good use. This was at Charlesbourg, a village
near Quebec, where he was watching the fun at the first
election ever held. Perhaps, from a meticulously
constitutional point of view, the scene of a hotly
contested election was not quite the place for Princes
of the Blood. But, however that might be, when the duke
saw two electors pommelling a third, who happened to be
a friend of his, he dashed in to the rescue and floored
both of them with a neatly planted right and left. One
of these men, who lived to see King Edward VII arrive in
1860, as Prince of Wales, always took the greatest pride
in telling successive generations of voters how Queen
Victoria's father had knocked him down.
Like his brother before him the duke was very fond of
dancing, and kept many a reluctant senior and many a
tired-out chaperone up till all hours at the grand ball
given in honour of his twenty-fourth birthday. Also like
his brother he was inclined to reduce his duty dances to
a minimum, much to Lady Dorchester's dismay. She had gone
home with her husband for two years shortly after the
duke's arrival. But she had seen enough of him, and was
to see enough again on her return, to make her regret
the good old times of more exacting ceremony. To her
dying day, half a century later, she kept up a prodigious
stateliness of manner. Before meals she expected the
whole company to assemble and remain standing till she
had made her royal progress through the room. She was a
living anachronism for many years before her death, with
her high-heeled, gold-buttoned, scarlet-coloured shoes,
her Marie-Antoinette _coiffure_ raised high above her
head and interlaced with ribbons, her elaborately gorgeous
dress, her intricate array of ornaments, and her long,
jet-black, official-looking cane. But she was no anachronism
to herself; for she still lived in the light of other
days, in the fondly remembered times when, as the vice-reine
of the Chateau St Louis, she helped her consort to settle
nice points of etiquette and maintain a dignity befitting
His Majesty's chosen representative. How did the seigneurs
rank among themselves and with the leading English-speaking
people? Who were to dance in the state minuet? Should
dancing cease when the bishops came in, and for how long?
Was that curtsy dropped quite low enough to her viceregal
self, and did that _debutante_ offer her blushing cheek
in quite the proper way to Carleton when he graciously
gave her the presentation kiss? How immeasurably far away
it all seems now, that stately little court where the
echoes of a dead Versailles lived on for seven years
after the fall of the Bastille! And yet there is still
one citizen o Quebec whose early partners were chaperoned
by ladies who had danced the minuet with Lord and Lady
Dorchester.
The two royal visits were not without their political
significance--using the word political in its larger
meaning. But the three years between them--that is,
1788-89-90--formed the really pregnant time of
constitutional development, when the Canada Act of 1791
was taking shape in the minds of its chief authors
--Carleton and Smith in Canada, Grenville and Pitt in
England. The Loyalists and the English-speaking merchants
of Quebec and Montreal took good care to make themselves
heard at every stage of the proceedings. Most French
Canadians would have preferred to be left without the
suspected blessings of a parliament. The clergy and
seigneurs wished for a continuance of the Quebec Act,
and the habitants wanted they knew not what, provided it
would enable them to get more and give less. The
English-speaking people, on the other hand, were all for
a parliament. But they differed widely as to what kind
of parliament would suit their purpose best. As a rule
they acquiesced, with a more or less bad grace, in the
necessity of admitting French Canadians on the same terms
as themselves. If Canada, without the Maritime Provinces,
should be taken as a whole then the French Canadians
would only be in a moderate majority. If, however, two
provinces, Upper Canada and Lower Canada, were to be
erected, then the English-speaking minority in Lower
Canada would be outvoted three or four to one.
There was a third alternative: no less than the
establishment of a regular Dominion of British North
America in 1790, a step which might have saved much
trouble between that time and the Confederation of 1867.
William Smith was its strongest advocate, Carleton its
most cautious and judicious supporter. The chief justice
was in favour of federating Upper and Lower Canada with
the Maritime Provinces and Newfoundland into a single
dominion. Each of the six provinces would have its own
parliament under a lieutenant-governor, while there would
also be a central parliament under a governor-general.
Carleton forwarded the suggestion to the home government;
but he nowhere committed himself to any very definite
scheme. His own preference was for keeping the existing
province of Quebec a little longer, then dividing it,
and afterwards drawing in the other provinces. The chief
justice preferred to make a constitution. The governor
preferred to let it grow. The home government's preference
could not be stated better than in Grenville's dispatch
to Carleton of the 20th of October 1789: 'The general
object is 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. ... Attention is due to the
prejudices and habits of the French Inhabitants and every
caution should be used to continue to them the enjoyment
of those civil and religious Rights which were secured
to them by the Capitulation or which have since been
granted by the liberal and enlightened spirit of the
British Government.' Except for its rather too
self-righteous conclusion this confidential announcement
really is an admirable statement of the 'liberal and
enlightened' views which prevailed at Westminster.
The bill, postponed in 1790, was introduced by Pitt
himself in the House of Commons on the 7th of March 1791.
Sixteen days later Adam Lymburner, a representative
merchant of Quebec, whom Carleton described as 'a quiet,
decent man, not unfriendly to the administration,' pleaded
for hours before the committee of the House of Commons
against the division of the province. All the
English-speaking minority in the prospective province of
Lower Canada were afraid of being swamped by the
French-Canadian vote, and so of being hampered in liberty
and trade. The London merchants naturally backed Lymburner.
Fox opposed the bill as not being liberal enough. Burke
flared up into the speech which led to his final breach
with Fox. Pitt, the pilot who was to weather far greater
storms in the years to come, eventually got the bill
through both Houses with substantial majorities. On the
14th of May it became law. Quebec and Ontario were parted
for good, notwithstanding the legislative union of fifty
years later.
The Canada Act, or, as it is better known, the
Constitutional Act, cut off Upper Canada. Lower Canada
was now the old Quebec reduced to its right size, endowed
with clarified laws and a brand-new parliament, and made
as acceptable as possible to the English-speaking minority
without any injustice to the vastly greater French
majority. Quebec, Three Rivers, Montreal, and Sorel got
each two members in the new parliament, an allotment
which ensured a certain representation of the 'British'
merchants. The franchise was the same in both provinces:
in the country parts a forty-shilling freehold or its
equivalent, and in the towns either a five-pound annual
ownership value or twice that for a tenant. The Crown
gave up all taxation except commercial duties, which were
to be applied solely for the benefit of the provinces.
Lands outside the seigneuries were to be in free and
common socage, while seigneurial tenure itself could be
converted into freehold on petition. One-seventh of the
Crown lands was reserved for the endowment of the Church
of England. The Crown kept all rights of veto and
appointment. The legislatures were small in membership.
The Upper Houses could be made hereditary; though the
actual tenure was never more than for life during good
behaviour. Carleton favoured the hereditary principle
whenever it could be applied with advantage. But he knew
the ups and downs of colonial fortunes too well to believe
that Canada was ready for any such experiment.
No one dreamt of having what is now known as responsible
government, that is, an executive sitting in the legislature
and responsible to the legislature for its acts. Nor was
the greatest of all parliamentary powers--the power of
the purse--given outright. This, however, was owing to
simple force of circumstances and not to any desire of
abridging the liberties of the people. The fact is that
at this time eighty per cent of the total civil expenditure
had to be paid by the home government. It is frequently
ignored that the mother country paid most of Canada's
bills till long after the War of 1812, that she paid
nearly all the naval and military accounts for longer
still, and that she has borne far more than her own share
of the common defence down to the present day.
The new constitution came into force on the 26th of
December 1791; and, for the first time, Upper and Lower
Canada had the right to elect their own representatives.
Assemblies, of course, were nothing new in British North
America. Nova Scotia had an assembly in 1758, the year
that Louisbourg was taken. Prince Edward Island had one
in 1773, the year before the Quebec Act was passed. New
Brunswick had one in 1786, the year Carleton began his
second term. But assemblies still had all the charm of
novelty in 'Canada proper.' Perhaps it would be more
appropriate to say that Upper Canada experienced more
charm than novelty while Lower Canada experienced more
novelty than charm. The Anglo-Canadians in all five
provinces were used to parliaments in America. Their
ancestors had been used to them for centuries in England.
So the little parliament of Upper Canada at Newark passed
as many bills in five weeks as that of Lower Canada passed
in seven months. The fact that there were fifty members
in the Assembly at Quebec, while there were only half as
many in both chambers at Newark, doubtless had something
to do with it. But the fact that the Quebec parliament
was an innovation, while the one at Newark was a simple
development, had very much more.
There is no need to follow the course of legislation in
any of the five provinces. As most of the civil and
practically all the naval and military expenditure had
to be met by the Imperial Treasury, and as Canada was
five parts and no whole from her own parliamentary point
of view, the legislation required for a grand total of
two hundred and fifty thousand people could not be of
the national kind. But at Quebec the scene, the setting,
and the unheard-of innovation itself all give a special
interest to every detail of the opening ceremony on the
17th of December 1792.
Carleton was in England, so the Speech from the Throne
was read by the lieutenant-governor, Major-General Sir
Alured Clarke. Half of the Upper House and two-thirds of
the Lower were French Canadians. A French-Canadian member
was nominated for the speakership and elected unanimously.
Both races were for the most part represented by members
whose official title of 'Honourable Gentlemen' was not
at all a misnomer. The French members of the Assembly
were half distrustful both of it and of themselves. But
they knew how to add grace and dignity to a very notable
occasion. The old Bishop's Palace served as the Houses
of Parliament and so continued for many years to come.
It was a solid rather than a stately pile. But it stood
on a commanding site at the head of Mountain Hill between
the Grand Battery and the Chateau St Louis. Every one
was in uniform or in what corresponded to court dress.
Round the throne stood many officers in their red and
gold, conspicuous among them the Duke of Kent. In front
sat the Executive and Legislative Councillors, corresponding
to the modern cabinet ministers and senators. Their roll,
as well as the Assembly's, bore many names that recalled
the glories of the old regime--St Ours, Longueuil, de
Lanaudiere, Boucherville, de Salaberry, de Lotbiniere,
and many more. The Council chamber was crowded in every
part long before the governor arrived. 'The Ladies
introduced into the House' were 'without Hat, Cloak, or
Bonnet,' the 'Doorkeeper of His Majesty's Council' having
taken good care to see them 'leave the same in the Great
Committee Room previous to their Introduction.' 'The
Ladies attached to His Excellency's Suite' were admitted
'within the railing or body of the House' and 'accommodated
with the seats of the members as far as possible.'
Outwardly it was all very much the same in principle as
the opening of any other British parliament--the escort,
guard, and band, the royal salute, the brilliant staff,
the scarlet cloth of state, the few and quiet members of
the Upper House, the many of the Lower, jostling each
other to get a good place near Mr Speaker at the bar,
the radiant ladies, the crowded galleries corniced with
inquiring faces and craned necks, the Gentlemen Ushers
and their quaint bows, the Speech from the Throne and
the occasional lifting of His Excellency's hat, the
retiring in full state; and then the ebbing away of all
the sightseers, their eddying currents of packed humanity
in the halls and passages, the porch, the door, the
emptying street. But inwardly what a world of difference!
For here was the first British parliament in which
legislators of foreign birth and blood and language were
shaping British laws as British subjects.
In September 1793 Carleton returned from his two years'
absence and was welcomed more warmly than ever. Quebec
blazed with illuminations. The streets swarmed with eager
crowds. The first session of the first parliament had
been better than any one had dared to hope for. There
was a general tendency to give the new constitution a
fair trial; and all classes looked to Carleton to make
the harmony that had been attained both permanent and
universal. Dr Jacob Mountain, first Anglican bishop of
Quebec, also arrived shortly afterwards and was warmly
greeted by the Roman Catholic prelate, who embraced him,
saying, 'It's time you came to shepherd your own flock.'
Mountain was statesman and churchman in one. He had been
chosen by the elder Pitt to be the younger's tutor and
then chosen by the younger to be his private secretary. The
fact that the Anglican bishop of Quebec was then and for
many years afterwards a sort of Canadian chaplain-general
to the Imperial troops and that most of the leading
officials and leading Loyalists belonged to the Church
of England made him a personage of great importance. It
was fortunate that, as in the case of Inglis down in
Halifax, the choice could not have fallen on a better
man or on one who knew better how to win the esteem of
communions other than his own. This same year (1793) died
William Smith, full of honours. But the next year his
excellent successor arrived in the person of William
Osgoode, the new chief justice, an eminent English lawyer
who had served for two years as chief justice of Upper
Canada and whose name is commemorated in Osgoode Hall,
Toronto. He had come out on the distinct understanding
that no fees were to be attached to his office, only a
definite salary. This was a great triumph for Carleton,
who certainly practised what he preached.
So far, so good. But the third conspicuous new arrival,
John Graves Simcoe, lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada,
who had come out the year before, was a great deal less
to Carleton's liking. Simcoe was a good officer who threw
himself heart and soul into the work of settling the new
province. He won the affectionate regard of his people
and is gratefully remembered by their posterity. But he
was too exclusively of his own province in his civil and
military outlook and was disposed to ignore Carleton as
his official chief. Moreover, he was appointed in spite
of Carleton's strongly expressed preference for Sir John
Johnson, who, to all appearances, was the very man for
the post. Sir William Johnson, the first baronet, had
been the great British leader of the Indians and a person
of much consequence throughout America. His son John
inherited many of his good qualities, thoroughly understood
the West and its problems, was a devoted Loyalist all
through the Revolution, when he raised the King's Royal
Regiment of New York, and would have been second only to
Carleton himself in the eyes of all Canadians, old and
new. But the government thought his private interests
too great for his public duty--an excellent general
principle, though misapplied in this particular case. At
any rate, Simcoe came instead, and the friction began at
once. Simcoe's commission clearly made him subordinate
to Carleton. Yet Simcoe made appointments without consulting
his superior and argued the point after he had been
brought to book. He communicated directly with the home
government over his superior's head and was not rebuked
by the minister to whom he wrote--Henry Dundas, afterwards
first Viscount Melville. Dundas, indeed, was half inclined
to snub Carleton. Simcoe desired to establish military
posts wherever he thought they would best promote immediate
settlement, a policy which would tend to sap both the
government's resources and the self-reliance of the
settlers. He also wished to fix the capital at London
instead of York, now Toronto, and to make York instead
of Kingston the naval base for Lake Ontario. Thus the
friction continued. At length Carleton wrote to the Duke
of Portland, Pitt's home secretary, saying: 'All command,
civil and military, being thus disorganized and without
remedy, your Grace will, I hope, excuse my anxiety for
the arrival of any successor, who may have authority
sufficient to restore order, lest these insubordinations
should extend to mutiny among the troops and sedition
among the people.' That was in November 1795. The
government, however, took no decisive action, and next
year both Carleton and Simcoe left Canada for ever.
When this unfortunate quarrel began (1793) Canada was in
grave danger of being attacked by both the French and
the American republics. The danger, however, had been
greatly lessened by Jay's Treaty of 1794 and was to be
still further lessened (1796) by the transfer of the
Western Posts to the United States and by the presidential
election which gave the Federal party a new lease of
power, though no longer under Washington. Had Carleton
remained in Canada these felicitous events would have
offered him a unique opportunity of strengthening the
friendly ties between the British and the Americans in
a way which might have saved some trouble later on. But
that was not to be.
To understand the dangers which threatened Canada during
the last three years of Carleton's rule we must go back
to February 1793, when revolutionary France declared war
on England and there then began that titanic struggle
which only ended twenty-two years later on the field of
Waterloo. The Americans were divided into two parties,
one disposed to be friendly towards Great Britain, the
other unfriendly. The names these parties then bore must
not be confused with those borne by their political
offspring at the present day. The Federals, progenitors
of the present Republicans, formed the friendly party
under Washington, Hamilton, and Jay. The Republicans,
progenitors of the present Democrats, formed the unfriendly
party under Jefferson, Madison, and Randolph. The Federals
were in power, the Republicans in opposition. When the
Republicans got into power in 1801 under Jefferson they
pursued their anti-British policy till they finally
brought on the War of 1812 under the presidency of Madison.
The strength of the peace party lay in the North; that
of the war party lay in the South. The peaceful Federals,
now that Independence had been gained, were in favour of
meeting the amicable British government half-way. When
Pitt came into power in 1783 he at once held out the
olive branch. Now, ten years later, the more far-seeing
statesmen on both sides were preparing to confirm the
new friendship in the practical form of Jay's Treaty,
which put the United States into what is at present known
as a most-favoured-nation position with regard to British
trade and commerce. Moreover, Washington and his Northern
Federals much preferred a British Canada to a French one,
while Jefferson and the Southern Republicans thought any
stick was good enough to beat the British dog with.
The Jeffersonians eagerly seized on the reports of a
speech which Carleton made to the Miamis, who lived just
south of Detroit, and used it to the utmost as a means
of stirring up anti-British feeling. Carleton had said:
'You are witnesses that we have acted in the most peaceable
manner and borne the language and conduct of the United
States with patience. But I believe our patience is almost
exhausted.' Applied to the vexed questions of the Western
Posts, of the lawless ways of the exterminating American
pioneers, and of the infinitely worse jobbing politicians
behind them, this language was mildness itself. But in
view of the high statesmanship of Washington and his
government it was injudicious. All the same, Dundas, more
especially because he was a cabinet minister, was even
more injudicious when he adopted a tone of reproof towards
Carleton, whose great services, past and present, entitled
him to unusual respect and confidence. The negotiations
for Jay's Treaty were then in progress in London, and
Jefferson saw his chance of injuring both the American
and British governments by magnifying Carleton's speech
into an 'unwarrantable outrage.' He also hoped that an
Indian war would upset the treaty and bring on a British
war as well. And the prospect did look encouragingly
black in the West, where the American general Wayne was
ready waiting south of Lake Erie, while the trade in
scalps was unusually brisk. Forty dollars was the regular
market price for an ordinary Indian's scalp. But as much
as a thousand was offered for Simon Girty's in the hope
of getting that inconvenient British scout put quickly
out of the way. Nearer home Jefferson and his band of
demagogues had other arguments as well. The Federal North
would suffer most by war, while the Republican South
might use war as a means of repudiating all the debts
she owed to Englishmen. This would have been a very
different thing from the insolvency of the Continental
Congress during the Revolution. It was dire want, not
financial infamy, that made the Revolutionary paper money
'not worth a Continental.' But it would have been sheer
theft for the Jeffersonian South to have made its honest
obligations 'rotten as a Pennsylvanian bond.'
The wild French-Revolutionary rage that swept through
the South now fanned the flame and made the sparks fly
over into Canada. In April 1793 a fiery Red Republican,
named Genet, landed at Charleston as French minister to
the United States and made a triumphal progress to
Philadelphia. Nobody bothered about the fundamental
differences between the French and American revolutions.
France and England were going to war and that was enough.
Genet was one of those 'impossibles' whom revolutions
throw into ridiculous power. When he began his campaign
the Republican South was at his feet. Planters and
legislators donned caps of liberty and danced themselves
so crazy over the rights of abstract man that they had
no enthusiasm left for such concrete instances as Loyalists,
Englishmen, and their own plantation slaves. Then Genet
made his next step in the new diplomacy by fitting out
French privateers in American harbours and seizing British
vessels in American waters. This brought Washington down
on him at once. Then he lost his head completely, abused
everybody, including Jefferson, and retired from public
life as an American citizen, being afraid to go home.
Genet's absurd career was short, but very meteoric while
it lasted, and full of anti-British mischief-making. His
agents were everywhere; and his successor, Adet, carried
on the underground agitation with equal zeal and more
astuteness. Vermont offered an excellent base of operations.
Finding that its British proclivities had not produced
the Chambly canal for its trade with the St Lawrence, it
had become more violently anti-British than ever before
and even proposed taking Canada single-handed. This time
its new policy remained at fever heat for over three
years and only cooled down when a British man-of-war
captured the incongruously named _Olive Branch_, in which
Ira Allen was trying to run the blockade from Ostend with
twenty thousand muskets and other arms which he represented
as being solely for the annual drill of the Vermont
militia. Thus Carleton had to watch the raging South,
the dangerous West, and bellicose Vermont, all together,
besides taking whatever measures he could against the
swarms of secret enemies within the gates. The American
immigrants who wanted 'property not liberty' were ready
enough for a change of flag whenever it suited them. But
they were few compared with the mass of French Canadians
who were being stirred into disaffection. The seigneurs,
the clergy, and the very few enlightened people of other
classes had no desire for being conquered by a regicide
France or an obliterating American Republic. But many of
the habitants and of the uneducated in the towns lent a
willing ear to those who promised them all kinds of
liberty and property put together.
The danger was all the greater because it was no longer
one foreigner intriguing against another, as in 1775, but
French against British and class against class. Some of the
appeals were still ridiculous. The habitants found themselves
credited with an unslakable thirst for higher education.
They were promised 'free' maritime intercommunication
between the Old World and the New, a wonderful extension
of representative institutions, and much more to the same
effect, universal revolutionary brotherhood included.
But when Frenchmen came promising fleets and armies, when
these emissaries were backed by French Canadians who had
left home for good reasons after the troubles of 1775,
and when the habitants were positively assured by all
these credible witnesses that France and the United States
were going to drive the British out of Canada and make
a heaven on earth for all who would turn against Carleton,
then there really was something that sensible men could
believe. Everything for nothing--or next to nothing. Only
turn against the British and the rest would be easy. No
more tithes to the cures, no more seigneurial dues, no
more taxes to a government which put half the money in
its own pocket and sent the other half to the king, who
spent it buying palaces and crowns.
'Nothing is too absurd for them to believe, wrote Carleton,
who felt all the old troubles of 1775 coming back in a
greatly aggravated form. He lost no time in vain regrets,
however, but got a militia bill through parliament,
improved the defences of Quebec, and issued a proclamation
enjoining all good subjects to find out, report, and
seize every sedition-monger they could lay their hands
on. An attempt to embody two thousand militiamen by ballot
was a dead failure. The few English-speaking militiamen
required came forward 'with alacrity.' The habitants hung
back or broke into riotous mobs. The ordinary habitant
could hardly be blamed. He saw little difference between
one kind of English-speaking people and another. So he
naturally thought it best to be on the side of the
prospective winners, especially when they persuaded him
that he would get back everything taken from him by 'the
infamous Quebec Act.' There really was no way whatever
of getting him to see the truth under these circumstances.
The mere fact that his condition had improved so much
under British rule made him all the readier to cry for
the Franco-American moon. Things presently went from bad
to worse. A glowing, bombastic address from 'The Free
French to their Canadian Brothers' (who of course were
'slaves') was even read out at more than one church door.
Then the Quebec Assembly unanimously passed an Alien Act
in May 1794, and suspected characters began to find that
two could play at the game. This stringent act was not
passed a day too soon. By its provisions the Habeas Corpus
Act could be suspended or suppressed and the strongest
measures taken against sedition in every form. Monk, the
attorney-general, reported that 'It is astonishing to
find the same savagery exhibited here as in France.' The
habitants and lower class of townsfolk had beers well
worked up 'to follow France and the United States by
destroying a throne which was the seat of hypocrisy,
imposture, despotism, greed, cruelty' and all the other
deadly sins. The first step was to be the assassination
of all obnoxious officials and leading British patriots
the minute the promised invasion began to prove successful.
No war came. And, as we have seen already, Carleton's
last year, 1796, was more peaceful than his first. But
even then the external dangers made the governor-general's
post a very trying one, especially when internal troubles
were equally rife. Thus Carleton never enjoyed a single
day without its anxious moments till, old and growing
weary, though devoted as ever, he finally left Quebec on
the 9th of July. This was the second occasion on which
he had been forced to resign by unfair treatment at the
hands of those who should have been his best support. It
was infinitely worse the first time, when he was stabbed
in the back by that shameless political assassin, Lord
George Germain. But the second was also inexcusable
because there could be no doubt whatever as to which of
the incompatibles should have left his post--the replaceable
Simcoe or the irreplaceable Carleton. Yet as H.M.S.
_Active_ rounded Point Levy, and the great stronghold of
Quebec faded from his view, Carleton had at least the
satisfaction of knowing that he had been the principal
saviour of one British Canada and the principal founder
of another.