AUSTRALIA AND CANADA
The outcasts of an old Society cannot form the foundation of a new
one.--_Parl. Report of 28th July 1785._
The more enormous of our offenders might be sent to Tunis, Algiers,
and other Mahometan ports, for the redemption of Christian slaves;
others might be compelled to dangerous expeditions, or be sent to
establish new colonies, factories, and settlements on the coast
of Africa and on small islands for the benefit of navigation.--W.
EDEN, _A Discourse on Banishment_.
The first settlement of the white man on a Continent where all was
strange might seem to be a topic more engaging, as well as more
important, than the escapades of a selfish young prince and the
insanity of his father. But the piles of printed paper respecting
the affairs of Carlton House and the Regency attest the perennial
preference of mankind for personal topics; and its disregard of wide
issues that affect the destinies of nations is seen in the mere scraps
of information concerning the early colonization of Australia. The
statement of the late Sir John Seeley that the British people founded
an Empire in a fit of absence of mind is nowhere more true than of the
events of the years 1787, 1788, which marked the beginning of a new
epoch of expansive energy.
There is a curious periodicity about the colonizing efforts of
the British race. At one time the islanders send forth swarms of
adventurers and make wide conquests. At another time the colonies
languish for lack of settlers; so that one is tempted to compare these
movements, albeit slow and irregular, with those of the blood in the
human organism. They have had beneficial results. The contracting
impulse has prevented that untimely diffusion of the nation’s energies
which leads to atrophy of the essential organs. But when these are
once more in full vigour they can do naught else but send forth their
vitalizing streams. By this systole and diastole the nation recovers
strength and makes use of that strength. The variation of effort is
doubly beneficent. It prevents the too great effusion of life-blood
which enfeebled Portugal in the sixteenth century; and the recurrence
of the colonizing instinct has saved England from the undue absorption
in domestic affairs which until recently narrowed the life of France.
The terrible drain of the American War naturally concentrated the
attention of Britons for some time on home affairs. The most imperious
need of the body politic was rest; and, as we have seen, Pitt used all
his tact and energy to bestow and prolong that boon. Fortunately, the
loss of life had been slight. Lack of money rather than of men put a
stop to colonizing efforts and induced the belief that they weakened
the State. But the life-blood was there in abundance, ready to flow
forth as soon as confidence returned and the will was quickened.
Meanwhile, for want of a firm and intelligent lead, the experiment
began slowly and awkwardly. As is well known, it was excess of
population, of a particular type, which led the authorities to take
action. The savage penal code of that age hanged or immured in gaol
numbers who would now escape with a small fine. As many as 160 offences
were punishable with death, and this gives the measure of the code, in
its less Draconian enactments. Indeed, but for sleepy Dogberries, and
reluctant jurymen, a tenth part of the population might have lodged
in the filthy gaols which formed the fruitful seed-bed of crime.
Goldsmith in his “Vicar of Wakefield” asks whether the licentiousness
of our people or the stupid severity of our laws was responsible for
the numbers of our convicts doubling those of continental lands. The
question impelled John Howard and Romilly to their life-long efforts.
Meanwhile the State continued to avert the need of building
more gaols by extending its time-honoured methods, hanging and
transportation.[696] During the years 1714–65 those two cures for
overcrowding enjoyed increasing favour. Under the first George any
one found guilty of larceny, either “grand” or “petit,” might be
transported to America for seven years. The same penalty was inflicted
in the next reign on poachers who were caught, with arms in their
hands, in the act of chasing or taking deer in unenclosed forests;
or, again, it fell to be the lot of those who assaulted magistrates
or officers engaged in salving wrecks, and likewise on all who were
married without banns or licence. It was reserved for the law makers
of George III to allot seven years of transportation to all who stole
or took fish “in any water within a park, paddock, orchard or yard,
and the receivers, aiders and abettors.” Sir William Eden, in his
“Discourse on Banishment,” cites these offences as about the average
of the crimes punishable by transportation; but he hints that many
less heinous offences led to the same dreary goal. That philanthropist
apparently did not think it an ingenious means of torture to send some
of these convicts to Algiers to rescue from life-long slavery the
Christians caught by the Barbary rovers.
Meanwhile, the United States having closed their doors against
poachers, thieves, and those who married in too great haste, a paternal
Government found it necessary either to relax the penal code, to
build more prisons, to commission more hulks, or to found new penal
settlements. Georgian legislators, being practical men, turned their
thoughts to the last alternative. The subject was brought up in the
House of Commons by Burke on 16th March 1785. He asserted that as
many as 100,000 convicts were then liable to transportation; and
protested against the rigour, cruelty, and expense attending that
mode of punishment. Lord Beauchamp again called the attention of the
House to that topic on 11th April, when Pitt admitted the importance
of finding a new penal settlement. The Gambia River in West Africa had
been used for that purpose; and Burke now rose to protest against the
inhumanity of sending convicts to any part of that deadly coast. He was
interrupted by the Prime Minister, who assured him that such a plan was
not in contemplation, and that a Report would soon be issued.[697]
Parliamentary Papers on this subject appeared on 9th May and 28th
July. The latter is remarkable for the statesmanlike utterance, quoted
as a motto at the head of this chapter, which shows that at least
some of our politicians looked on a new settlement as something more
than a chapel-of-ease of our prisons. In other respects the Report is
somewhat puerile. It recommended the need of strict discipline in the
new settlement, and pointed out the district of the River das Voltas
as desirable. If this were the same as the River Volta of the Gold
Coast, the Committee evidently regarded fever as the most effective of
governors.
It is curious to speculate on the results that might have attended
these weak and stumbling moves. Probably the strenuous opposition of
Burke vetoed the Gambia and Gold Coast schemes; but the Government,
still intent upon the Atlantic coast of Africa, sent a sloop, H.M.S.
“Nautilus,” to survey the south-west coast between 15° 50´ and 33°.
Very fortunately for the future of the British people the whole coast
was found to be inhospitable. If the _hinterland_ of Walfisch Bay or
Angra Pequeña had been less barren it is almost certain that the new
penal colony would have been formed at one of those spots. Ministers
also turned their attention to the coasts adjacent to Cape Town; for
we find Pitt writing to Grenville on 2nd October 1785: “I have desired
Devagnes also to send you some papers relative to a scheme of a
settlement on the Caffre coast, to answer in some respects the purposes
of the Cape, and to serve also as a receptacle for convicts, which I
hope you will have time to look at.”[698]
This points to a plan for settling some point of the coast of
Caffraria, possibly Algoa Bay or what is now East London. There were
special reasons for gaining a foothold in that quarter, seeing that the
Dutch Republic was falling more and more under the control of France,
and the union of those two Powers in the East would have threatened
the existence of our Indian Empire. A British stronghold on the South
African coast was therefore highly desirable; but perhaps matters were
too strained in the years 1786 and 1787 for this menacing step to be
taken.
Whatever may have been the cause, Pitt and his colleagues failed to
find a point on the African coast suitable for their purpose, which
was to found a penal settlement furnishing relief alike to the prison
system and to British ships midway on the voyage to India. Had they
discovered such a place the course of history might have been very
different. The English-speaking race would early have taken so firm
a hold of South Africa as to press on a solution of the Anglo-Dutch
question. But in the meantime the Pacific coast of Australia would
have gone to France. The one study in which Louis XVI shone, and in
which Pitt was most deficient, was geography. The lord of Versailles
found his chief mental recreation in maps and books of travel. Already
he had sent out expeditions to rival that of Captain Cook; and, as we
shall see, only by the infinitesimal margin of six days did Britons
secure a foothold in Australia in advance of their rivals.
The honour of turning the attention of Ministers to the Pacific coast
of “New Holland” belongs to Sir Joseph Banks, James Matra, and Admiral
Sir George Young. In his description of the voyage of Captain Cook
along the coast of New South Wales, Banks had spoken of the rich
soil and wealth of vegetation around Botany Bay, a description which
undoubtedly led Matra and Young to take up the matter. Sir Joseph Banks
did not pursue the theme. At least in his letters and papers in the
British Museum there is no hint that he induced Pitt or Lord Sydney
to people that terrestrial paradise. Perhaps the work of the Royal
Society, of which he was President, engaged all his attention.
James Maria Matra, a Corsican who had long been in the British service
and had accompanied Banks in the memorable voyage of Captain Cook,[699]
was the first to formulate a definite scheme for the colonization of
Botany Bay. In a long letter, dated 23rd August 1783, he pointed out
to the Coalition Cabinet the great extent of the land, the fertility
of the soil, and the paucity of the natives as marking it out for
settlement, especially by the American Loyalists, whose dire distress
then aroused deep sympathy. He also declared that the nearness of
New South Wales to the Spice Islands, India, China, and Japan, was
favourable for commerce; that the growth of New Zealand flax would
provide endless supplies of cordage for shipping; and that, in case of
war, the harbours of New South Wales would furnish a useful base of
naval operations against the Dutch and Spanish settlements in the East.
In his original scheme Matra did not mention settlement by convicts. He
desired to found a colony either by means of United Empire Loyalists,
or “marines accustomed to husbandry,”[700] a suggestion which recalls,
not very felicitously, the Roman plan of planting veteran soldiers on
the outposts of the realm.
The discredit of making the first suggestion in favour of a convict
settlement at Botany Bay probably belongs to Lord Sydney, Secretary of
State for Home Affairs in the Pitt Cabinet. Matra had a conversation
with him on 6th April 1784, in which the Minister hinted at the
desirability of relieving the congestion in the prisons, which was
giving trouble to the authorities. The details of the conversation
are not known; but apparently it led Matra to add a postscript to
his scheme, in which he referred to the interview and remarked on
the frightful mortality among the convicts sent to the West Coast of
Africa. Out of 746 sent there in 1775–6, 334 died, 271 deserted, and
nothing was known of the remainder. Obviously in a distant and healthy
climate like Botany Bay, men must either work or starve; certainly they
could not return.[701] Nothing definite seems to have come of Matra’s
conversation with Sydney or his plan, even as now modified.
Scarcely more successful were the efforts of Admiral Sir George Young
to interest Ministers in the subject. His scheme was sent by the
Attorney-General, Sir Richard Pepper Arden, to Sydney on 13th January
1785. The admiral called attention to the facilities which New South
Wales would enjoy for a lucrative trade with New Spain, China, and
the East Indies. He laid stress on the fertility of the soil and the
variety of climates in the new possession, which would ensure the
growth of all tropical and sub-tropical products. New Zealand flax
would by itself furnish several requisites for ship-building and
repairing, thereby freeing us from dependence on Russia. Metals would
probably be found; and thus at a small expense (about £2,000) an
important commercial mart might be founded. Sir George Young deprecated
any plan of emigration from Great Britain as weakening to her; but he
suggested that the distressed American Loyalists should be transferred
to New South Wales, and that labourers might be collected from the
Society Islands and China. “All the people required from England are
only a few that are possessed of the useful arts, and those comprised
among the crews of the ships that may be sent on that service.” He,
however, added that convict settlements might most suitably be planted
there. Finally, he claimed that the whole scheme would further the
cause of religion and humanity, and redound to the prosperity and glory
of King George III.[702]
The ideas and the phraseology of the Memorandum are so similar to those
used by Matra as to suggest that Sir George Young founded his plan on
that of the Corsican; and the Admiral at the end of his Plan introduced
three sentences on the suitability of parts of New South Wales for
convicts. Possibly this was inserted in order to attract Ministers.
Nevertheless they took no action on the matter; and possibly, but for
the pressure exerted by Lord Beauchamp and Burke on 11th April 1785,
this vitally important question would have remained in abeyance. Pitt,
however, then promised that Government would take it up. The “Nautilus”
was accordingly sent to the African coast, with the result that we have
seen; and the humiliating truth must be confessed that the Ministry
showed no sign of interest, if we except the single sentence in Pitt’s
letter of 2nd October 1785, quoted above, respecting a settlement in
Caffraria.
Not until 18th August 1786 do we find any sign that the Government
sought to redeem its promise to Parliament. The Pitt Papers, however,
afford proof that Ministers had before them at least one other
scheme for the disposing of convicts elsewhere than in New Holland.
On 14th September 1786 William Pulteney wrote to Pitt an important
letter (quoted in part in Chapter XIV), which concluded as follows:
“I mentioned to Mr. Dundas that a much better plan had been proposed
to Lord Sidney [_sic_] for disposing of our felons than that which
I see is advertised, that of sending them to Botany Bay; but his
Lordship had, too hastily I think, rejected it; if you wish to know the
particulars, Mr. Dundas can in great measure explain them, and I can
get the whole in writing.”[703]
Pitt gave no encouragement to his correspondent, and the official plan,
already drafted, ran its course. On 18th August 1786, Sydney sent to
the Lords of the Treasury a statement that, considering the crowded
state of the prisons and the impossibility of finding a suitable site
for a settlement in Africa, the King had fixed on Botany Bay, owing to
the accounts given by those who had sailed with Captain Cook. As many
as 750 convicts would therefore be sent out, along with 180 marines,
provisions for two years, seeds, tools, and other necessaries for the
founding of a settlement. The importance of growing New Zealand flax
was named,--a sign that Ministers had consulted the reports of Matra
and Sir George Young, and saw the need of having a naval station in the
Pacific. A fortnight later Sydney sent a similar letter to the Lords of
the Admiralty.[704]
In this halting and prosaic way did Ministers set their hands to one
of the most fruitful undertakings of all time. We do not know which
member took the initiative. Probably it was Sydney, as Minister for
Home Affairs; but Pitt certainly gave his approval, and there are two
letters which show that he took interest in details. One is his letter
to Evan Nepean, Under Secretary for Home Affairs, requesting him to
obtain from the Secretary of the Admiralty, Sir Charles Middleton,
an estimate of the expenses of the expedition.[705] The second is a
letter from the Lord Chief Justice, Earl Camden, to Pitt, who must have
consulted him about the legal questions involved in the formation of
the colony:
Hill St., _Jany. 29, 1787_.[706]
DEAR PITT,
... I have looked over the draught of the Bill for establishing a
summary Jurisdiction in Botany Bay. I believe such a jurisdiction
in the present state of that embryo (for I can’t call it either
settlement or colony) is necessary, as the component parts of it
are not of the proper stuff to make jurys [_sic_] in capital cases
especially. However, as this is a novelty in our constitution,
would it not be right to require the Court to send over to England
every year a report of all the capital convictions, that we may be
able to see in what manner this jurisdiction has been exercised?
For I presume it is not meant to be a lasting jurisdiction; for if
the colony thrives and the number of inhabitants increase, one sh^d
wish to grant them trial by jury as soon as it can be done with
propriety.
Clearly, then, Pitt had a distinct share in the drafting of the Bill
for establishing the settlement. The general plan had been decided at
a Council held at St. James’s Palace on 6th December 1786.[707] The
Letters Patent forming the Courts of Law were issued on 2nd April
1787; but it was not until 12th May that H.M.S. “Sirius” and “Supply,”
escorting the transports “Alexander,” “Charlotte,” “Scarborough,”
“Prince of Wales,” “Friendship,” and “Lady Penrhyn,” set sail from
Spithead on their dreary voyage of eight months. On 20th January
1788 Governor Phillip landed at Botany Bay, and a few days later he
transferred his strange company to the land-locked and beautiful Port
Jackson, on an inlet of which he founded the infant settlement of
Sydney. He was just in time to anticipate the French expedition under
La Pérouse, which sailed into the harbour only six days after Phillip
landed at Botany Bay. Thus, by extraordinary good luck, despite all
the delays at Westminster, the British narrowly forestalled their
rivals in the occupation of that magnificent coast. Captain Cook, it is
true, had claimed it for the British Crown; but in international law
effective occupation is a necessary sequel to so vague and sweeping a
declaration. The choice of the name “Sydney” for the infant settlement
attests the conviction of Governor Phillip that the whole plan owed
very much to the initiative of that nobleman. It is, however, strange
that the name of Pitt was not given to some town or river of the
colony; for he certainly played an important part in the undertaking.
Nevertheless, the whole question reflects no great credit either on
Pitt or Sydney. Neither of them had shown much insight or eagerness in
the matter. Especially may they and their colleagues be blamed for not
having resolved, though at slightly increased cost, to found the colony
worthily by means of the American Loyalists who had suffered so much
for their devotion to King and Fatherland.
The question of the American Loyalists will be referred to later
in this chapter; and it is not here suggested that those Loyalists
who had migrated to the lands soon to be known as New Brunswick and
Ontario should have been sent to the Southern Seas. There were many
others, who had set sail with the British garrisons leaving New York
and other towns, now available for that experiment. They were living
in England in penury and with hope deferred, while the question of the
indemnity in honour due to them from the United States slowly petered
out. The British Parliament was investigating their claims and finally
acknowledged its obligations to them; but in the meantime they were in
want. Would not the Ministry have consulted their interests and the
welfare of the Empire by offering to them to commute their pecuniary
claims for grants of land and expenses of settlement in New South
Wales? The possible objection, that their claims had not been entirely
investigated by the year 1787, is trifling. The offer might surely have
been made to those whose cases and characters were well known, and who
were suited to a life of hardship and adventure. There must have been
very many who would have preferred a free and active life to one of
wretchedness in London; and when we reflect on the great accession of
strength brought by the Loyalists to Canada and New Brunswick, it will
ever remain a matter of regret that Ministers acted on the motive which
appealed so forcibly to Lord Sydney, that of easing the pressure on
prisons.
For the time, it is true, their experiment was highly economical, the
cost of the expedition and settlement at Sydney from October 1786 to
October 1789 being only £8,632, or one-eighteenth part of the sum which
in the year 1787 Parliament unanimously voted for the discharge of the
debts of a spendthrift prince.[708] It is scarcely fair to read the
ideas of our age into one from which we have moved very far away, or
to censure Pitt for his complaisance to the future George IV, while
he pared down the expenses of the greatest colonial experiment of his
generation. No one could foresee the splendid future of the “Isle of
Continent.” Even Matra and Sir George Young, who gazed far ahead,
believed that the work of the settlement must be done mainly by Chinese
and South Sea Islanders.
Nevertheless, seeing that the advantage of utilizing the energies of
American Loyalists was clearly laid before Ministers, it is astonishing
that they paid no heed to a plan which might ultimately have proved to
be more economical even than the export of convicts. Certainly it would
have furnished the new land with the best of colonists. The kith and
kin of the men who built up Ontario and New Brunswick would have laid
broad and deep the foundations of New South Wales. The greatest good
fortune of North America was the advent of Puritan leaders as founders
of a State; and the transfer to the Southern Continent of their
descendants, who rivalled them in the staunchness of their fidelity
to principle, would have been an Imperial asset of priceless worth.
There are times when the foresight and imagination of a statesman
mean infinitely much to the future of the race; and no action is more
fruitful in results than the settlement of a new Continent. The Greeks
did well to solemnize the sending forth of colonists by the honours
of the State and the sanction of religion. And what they did for the
founding of one more Greek city, Great Britain ought to have done for
the occupation of a coast-line known to possess vast possibilities of
growth.
The painful truth must be faced that in this matter Pitt lacked the
Imperial imagination. Despite vague assertions to the contrary by
professed panegyrists, I cannot find a word in his speeches or letters
which evinced any interest in the Botany Bay experiment. Thus, in the
debate of 9th February 1791, on the condition of the young settlements
and the question of stopping the transportation of 1,850 more convicts,
Pitt spoke of that experiment as if it were an improved and economical
prison. His speech did not rise to the level of that of Sir Charles
Bunbury and Mr. Jekyll, the mover and seconder of the motion for an
inquiry into the whole subject of transportation. They both pleaded
for more rational methods of punishment, wherein the depraved would
cease to contaminate the less guilty. Bunbury commented on the alarming
increase of crime of late years, the number of sentences of death
having been doubled, while convictions for felony had quadrupled. Both
he and Jekyll pressed for the construction of penitentiaries where the
system of “that good and useful citizen, Mr. Howard,” might be better
enforced; and they mentioned the report that the settlements in New
South Wales were ill-suited to this purpose, owing to the sterility of
the soil.
To this last charge Pitt made no effective answer. So far as we
can judge from the semi-official reports, he sought refuge in the
miserable reply that “in point of expense no cheaper mode of disposing
of the convicts could be found,” and that, as the chief cost of
starting that settlement had been already incurred--how paltry the
cost we have seen--it would be foolish to seek for some other place
where those expenses must again be met! He expressed his approval of
penitentiaries, said nothing about that fruitful mother of crime,
the penal code, and declined to take any steps for stopping the
transport of the 1,850 convicts. It was something that, amidst these
frigid negations, he did not oppose the motion for an inquiry into
the condition of Botany Bay. Curiously enough, he did not once name
the only considerable settlement, Sydney,[709] so limited was his
outlook on social and colonial problems. Wide as were his views on most
questions, it must be admitted that here was his blind side; and he
must be held partly responsible for spreading over new lands a social
taint which long blighted their progress.
That taint was to vanish; and its disappearance in a few generations
is a signal proof that, under fit conditions, the human race does not
degenerate but wins its way to higher levels. Nevertheless, in view of
the power of historic ideas and traditions, we must ever regret that
Pitt and his colleagues did not resolve to make the new settlement a
living proof of Britain’s care for the staunchest and truest of her
children.
* * * * *
By a transition which, however abrupt in a geographical sense, is
slight in the sphere of politics, we pass from the settlement of New
South Wales to the adjustment of affairs in Canada. Both questions
resulted from the American War. The refugees from the old American
colonies, who now huddled with their families in the purlieus of Soho,
formed the tough nucleus of what had been a very large and influential
band of men in the States. Writers of the school of Bancroft used
to treat the Loyalists as traitors who richly deserved the hanging
or shooting in cold blood which not seldom befell them at the hands
of righteous patriots. Those, however, who regard history, not as a
means of enforcing certain opinions, but of reflecting the life of
the time, are generally agreed that the Loyalists acted from sincere
conviction, which led them deliberately to face cruel and prolonged
persecution. At the outset of the war they numbered about one third of
the population of the States; and, at least 20,000 of them joined the
British forces.[710] By the end of the war about 60,000 Loyalists were
compelled to leave the States, of whom nearly one half settled in the
future province of New Brunswick; some 10,000 went to found the British
population in Upper Canada (Ontario); but many sailed with the retiring
garrisons to Great Britain.[711]
It is with these last that we are here at first concerned. Their number
was given as 428 in the official inquiry of 1782–3,[712] but that list
was probably incomplete. Their condition soon became pitiable. By the
Treaty of Versailles (September 1783) the American Congress pledged
itself to recommend the States of the Union to restore the property
confiscated from the Loyalists. The States ignored the recommendation.
Pitt has sometimes been blamed for not doing more to press the
fulfilment of this treaty obligation, which was carried out only by
South Carolina. But he seems to have taken the only means possible,
namely, of refusing to surrender certain of the western forts of the
States, until satisfaction was accorded on this head.[713] John Adams,
who arrived in London as ambassador from the United States in 1786,
received that answer to his protest, a fact which suffices to disprove
the statement that the clause of the treaty relating to the Loyalists
was inserted merely for effect.[714]
Pitt further sought to carry out the stipulations for the collection
of debts due to the Loyalists before the beginning of the war. He sent
out a Mr. Anstey to deal with these thorny and almost hopeless claims.
The matter dragged on; and a letter forwarded to the Prime Minister on
30th January 1787 refers to the inquiry as still incomplete.[715] In
1785 Pitt offered to grant due compensation to the American Loyalists;
but long and most discreditable delays ensued. Several petitions
forwarded to Pitt show that payments were either inadequate or were
often deferred, and that the petitioners were in much distress.[716]
The letter above referred to states that from £60,000 to £80,000 a
year had been granted in pensions; but that in 1787, owing to deaths
and other causes, the amount fell to £50,000. Even this exceeds
the average of the official amount by some £7,000.[717] The writer
goes on to assert that the utmost possible had been done to relieve
the distress, and shows the unreasonableness of the claim of some
Loyalists for compensation for the loss of their professions. Finally
the whole matter was cleared up by the proposal of Pitt to the House
of Commons on 6th June 1788 to vote the sum of £1,228,239 to the
Loyalists in proportion to the merits of their cases, and £113,952
to the claimants from West Florida. To this the House agreed, Burke
commending the proposal as “a new and noble instance of national bounty
and generosity.”[718]
Pitt evidently considered the question as settled by the distribution
of this sum and of certain grants of land in Canada; for in the year
1792, when other claims were forwarded to him through the medium of Sir
Henry Clinton, he replied as follows in a letter of 29th May 1792:
On the fullest consideration of the subject, I have not thought
myself justified in proposing to open the Commission again for
inquiry into those cases which were not brought forward within any
of the periods before limited; and under these circumstances it
seems impossible to give any compensation for particular losses.
The plan has therefore been adopted of giving some provision by
grants of land in Canada, to such persons of this description
as may be willing to accept it; and of advancing them certain
sums of money (according to the classes in which they have been
distributed) for the purpose of assisting them in removing and
in settling themselves. With respect to the three persons whom
you particularly mention of the name of Plater, Harding and
Williams, the granting to them the sums recommended by Col.
Delaney was delayed from its appearing that they had formerly had
an advance for the purpose of enabling them to go to America; but
notwithstanding this circumstance it has been determined from the
nature of their cases and your strong testimony in their favour,
to comply with this recommendation, which will be immediately
carried into effect.[719]
The settlement of the Loyalists in Canada and Nova Scotia produced
far-reaching results. About 28,000 settled in Nova Scotia, the larger
portion of them selecting the banks of the River St. John. Besides
being far removed from Halifax, the seat of government, they found
themselves absolutely without influence in the administration, as
the Governor refused to enlarge the Legislative Council by admitting
one of their number. They therefore petitioned the Home Government
for separation from Nova Scotia--a request which was at once granted
(1784). Pitt thus showed his complete confidence in the Loyalists and
in the policy of according full liberty in local affairs to a community
which obviously needed such a boon.
Not very dissimilar were the results of the influx of the Loyalists
into Canada Proper. About 10,000 of them crossed Lake Ontario or the
Niagara River, and formed a thin fringe of settlements along the Upper
St. Lawrence and Lakes Ontario and Erie. In 1784 Governor Haldimand
granted to them large tracts of land, generally in proportion to the
services rendered during the war.[720] In many cases, the settlement
was of a semi-military character; and everywhere the colonists took a
pride in adding to their names “U.E.,” to denote the United Empire for
which they had fought and suffered. The lot of many of them was hard
in the extreme; but it seems that even those who had been reared in
luxury preferred the rigours of the Canadian winter in a log-hut to the
persecutions which would have been their lot in the United States.
A settlement of a very different kind was that of de Puisaye and some
fifty French royalists in the autumn of 1798. Puisaye was a man of
fine physique and perseverance, as appeared in his continuance of the
Breton revolt long after the unmanly departure of the Comte d’Artois
from the Ile d’Yeu in 1795 (see Chapter XXXVI). But by the year 1798 he
wearied of that fell work, and proposed with other adventurous spirits
to settle in Canada. The Duke of Portland and Windham favoured the
scheme; and a district named Windham was allotted to them between York
(Toronto) and Lake Simcoe. But the ill-fortune of the French noblesse
dogged them in the New World. They arrived too late. Probably they
knew nothing of the work required of them. Even more probably they
quarrelled, intrigued, and formed factions. Puisaye left the place and
settled for a time near the Niagara River, until at the Peace of Amiens
he went back to England. The Windham settlement went to pieces, thus
once more revealing the incompetence of that product of the _ancien
régime_, the French _seigneur_.[721]
* * * * *
The arrival of the United Empire Loyalists altered the political
situation in Canada in two ways: it provided for the first time a
relatively large body of English-speaking settlers, and it brought to
the front the question of representative institutions. Hitherto the
French _habitans_, scattered sparsely along the Lower St. Lawrence and
the Richelieu Rivers, had shown little or no desire in that direction;
but questions arising out of the war caused some stir in those
primitive communities. A time of much unrest followed. The British
merchants and traders at Quebec and Montreal also had their grievances
against the Government and the French majority; so that in 1784 a
Committee comprising men of those towns petitioned the Governor for an
elective House of Assembly.
In order to understand the meaning of this request, we must remember
that election had no place in the Canadian Government. By the Quebec
Act of 1774, which regulated public affairs for the colony, the
administration of affairs rested with a Governor representing the
King, an Executive Council consisting of members selected by him, and
a Legislative Council formed on the same basis. The framers of that
measure had also frankly recognized the fact that the population of
the colony was overwhelmingly French. They therefore provided for the
continuance of French law and French customs, both religious and
agrarian--a well-meant measure which, while ensuring the loyalty of the
Canadians during the American War of Independence, aroused the anger of
British settlers and merchants. The United Empire Loyalists in Upper
Canada found these French customs insufferable. They had not left the
United States in order to merge themselves in a community modelled on
the France of Louis XIV.
Moreover, in other respects, the Quebec Act failed to meet the needs
of the colonists; so that Fox described Canada as having no settled
government.[722] Here he erred. The bane of that land was too much
government. The settlers were beset by too many decrees, several
of which were inapplicable to the needs of the growing mercantile
communities at Quebec and Montreal, who found themselves hampered
by the French laws and were in constant friction with the “ancient”
colonists. They therefore sent the petition of 1784, requesting the
bestowal of representative institutions and of British law, both
mercantile and criminal; but they admitted the need of retaining French
laws for agriculture, property, religion, and social life. Such an
admission was repugnant to settlers in the upper districts, who in 1785
petitioned for entire exemption from French laws and customs.[723]
As was but natural, Pitt and his colleagues seem to have been perplexed
by the difficulty of this problem, which certainly was one of infinite
complexity. It soon appeared, as the outcome of official inquiries,
that, taking Canada as a whole, there was only one English-speaking
colonist to fifteen French. The small British population was centred
almost entirely in Quebec and Montreal (even there it was only a third
of the population), or else straggled along the Upper St. Lawrence into
the almost unknown wilds between Lakes Ontario and Huron. How was it
possible, at the bidding of so insignificant a minority, to repeal the
French laws and enrage the majority? Would not France and the States be
certain to intervene and thus fill to the full the cup of disaster?
For the present the Pitt Cabinet limited its efforts to the
strengthening of the executive powers at Quebec by enlarging the
powers of the new Governor-General, Lord Dorchester (1786) so that
they extended over the upper districts, and also over New Brunswick
and Nova Scotia. Meanwhile Pitt and Sydney awaited the results of the
inquiries set on foot in Canada; and, though the resulting delay was
irritating at the time, it proved to be beneficial; for before the
Ministry at home could frame its Bill, the outbreak of the French
Revolution had minimized the danger of intervention from France.
Mishaps to the despatches, the substitution of Grenville for Sydney
as Home Secretary, in June 1789, and the General Election of 1790,
further retarded legislation on this subject. Twice in the year
1790 Grenville had to apologize to the House for delays due to the
terrible weather of the winter of 1789–90.[724] On the latter occasion
he described his endeavours to get at the truth of the situation in
Canada, his conferences with his colleagues, and his assiduity in
drafting the Bill which he promised to place before them as soon as he
received Dorchester’s replies to certain questions. This declaration
is interesting as showing that the famous Act of 1791 was really
drafted by Grenville, and that he considered it his own. In view,
however, of his very recent appointment to the Home Office, and of his
intimate relations to Pitt, we may be sure that the spirit informing
the measure was that of the Prime Minister. We now know, however, that
Grenville was responsible for the proposal to confer hereditary titles
on the members of the Governor’s Legislative Council;[725] and it is
significant that, while Pitt acquiesced in it, no such creation of a
colonial nobility ever took place.
Grenville having been raised to the peerage in November 1790, Pitt
moved for leave to bring in the Canada Bill to the Lower House (4th
March 1791). In an explanatory speech, he stated the aim of the measure
to be “to promote the happiness and internal policy [progress?] of the
province and to put an end to the differences of opinion and growing
competition that had for some years existed in Canada between the
ancient inhabitants and the new settlers from England and America
[_sic_] on several important points, and to bring the government of
the province, as near as the nature and situation of it would admit,
to the British Constitution.” He therefore proposed to divide Canada
into an Upper and a Lower Province, “the former for the English and
American settlers, the lower for the Canadians.” The inconveniences
that might result to the minority in the latter province would, he
hoped, be averted by the election of a House of Assembly, which
would propose measures, acting therein conjointly with a Legislative
Council, of members nominated for life. As it has been stated that Pitt
avowed his intention to create two provinces whose mutual jealousies
would prevent rebellion, it is desirable to notice that in this first
speech he insisted that separation would be the only means of ending
the existing strifes and of according to each of them the blessings
of the English Constitution.[726] We may also remark that Pitt seems
to have paid no heed to the suggestion that the Lower Province might
be governed autocratically, while Upper Canada had representative
institutions. This would become impossible when the French _habitans_
gained political consciousness; and Pitt was surely right in rejecting
that makeshift.
His policy was, however, to be sharply criticized, especially by
the British minority in Lower Canada. In a petition dated London,
15th March 1791 (which is printed in full in “Pitt and Napoleon
Miscellanies”), seven firms engaged in the Canada trade pointed out
the defects of the measure; and it is highly significant that some of
their objections foreshadowed those which were to be so ably set forth
in Lord Durham’s Report on Canada (1839). The petition was drafted
by Lymburner, a Quebec merchant who had drawn up that of 1784. The
Memorialists declared that the Bill before Parliament would perpetuate
many of the worst evils of the Quebec Act, which sprang from the
attempt to impose one code of laws on two peoples differing widely in
their manner of life, customs, and needs. They asserted that the only
means of soothing the strifes was to apply English law to the English
population and French law to the French; that any division of the
colony would be artificial and would debar Upper Canada from maritime
trade. The petition concluded with the statesmanlike suggestion that
the only cure for the ills of Canada was to merge her two peoples in a
self-governing community.
Already Dorchester had offered objections to the proposed division of
Canada; but Grenville in his despatch of 20th October 1789 set aside
his arguments on the ground that, while weighty as against the present
non-representative system, they did not apply to that which was about
to be proposed.
When (he wrote) the resolution was taken of establishing a
Provincial Legislature, ... to be chosen in part by the people,
every consideration of policy seemed to render it desirable that
the great preponderance possessed in the Upper Districts by the
King’s antient subjects, and in the lower by the French Canadians,
should have this effect and operation in separate Legislatures,
rather than that these two bodies of people should be blended
together in the first formation of the new Constitution, and
before sufficient time has been allowed for the removal of antient
prejudices, by the habit of obedience to the same Government and by
the sense of a common interest.[727]
These words imply not so much distrust of the colonists as a sense of
the need of proceeding tentatively with what was a novel departure. It
is clear that Ministers looked on the proposed arrangements as more or
less provisional, and in the last phrases we seem to catch a glimpse
of a more peaceful future when reunion would be the natural step. For
the present, Grenville continued, it would be well to strengthen the
Governor’s Legislative Council by according to its members some title
of honour (a baronetage was first hinted at) which would attach them
to the new institutions. Another desirable step was the reservation of
Crown Lands in the new districts, in order to provide the Government
with a fixed and improving revenue. Grenville even suggested that, had
this been done in the original thirteen colonies, a cause of friction
and revolt would have been removed.
Ministers must have had a deep sense of the advantages of their
proposal when they disregarded the advice of the Governor-General and
the firm opposition of the British settlers in Lower Canada and of
their connections in London. The measure was pushed on, despite a long
speech against it by Lymburner at the bar of the House, in which he
asserted that the division of the provinces, when once accomplished,
could never be reversed--an assertion falsified by facts in 1841. The
debates on the subject were rendered memorable by an incident which
will be described later (Chapter XXIV). Burke had persisted in dragging
the French Revolution into the discussion, and, when interrupted by
Fox, passionately declared that the friendship between them was at an
end. As for the question before the House, Fox opposed, while Burke
defended, the proposed division of Canada. The Whig leader further
objected to the proposal to make a legislative councillorship an
hereditary honour; and he urged Ministers to increase the size of the
Houses of Assembly. Pitt carried his proposal that they should number
sixteen for the Upper Province and fifty for the Lower. Finally the
House agreed to leave open the question of the hereditary tenure of
councillorships; and it is noteworthy that no hereditary title was
conferred. The Bill became law on 14th May 1791.
To discuss the suitability of this measure to Canada would involve a
recital of events in that colony down to the time of Lord Durham’s
famous Report of 1839. All that concerns us here is the question of
Pitt’s attitude towards those complex problems. His conduct cannot be
pronounced hasty or doctrinaire. Not until official evidence and advice
were forthcoming did he and his colleagues sketch the first outlines
of the scheme. But when he had made up his mind, he held on his way
with resolute purpose. This will appear if we remember that three
Ministers were successively responsible for the Bill. Sydney drafted
it. Grenville revised the evidence and recast the Bill;[728] but it
fell to Henry Dundas to amend it and carry it into execution. As the
Bill was but little changed, we may infer that one mind was at all
times paramount.
Canadian historians have generally allowed that the motives of Pitt
were enlightened; and, the assertion sometimes made, that they were
based on a resolve to make use of the hostility of French and British
settlers so as to prevent revolt, is contradicted by all that is known
of his manly and hopeful nature. His speeches ring with a feeling of
confidence in the healing effect of representative institutions; and it
should be remembered that, if in 1837 they were found inadequate to the
needs of the progressive Upper Province, they yet nursed that little
community into youth. This is all that can be expected from a measure
which was necessarily tentative.[729] The chief objections against his
division of the provinces were that it tended to weaken the British
community in the Lower Province, while it also cut off the Upper
Province from the sea and placed it at the mercy of the Customs’ laws
framed at Quebec.
To this it may be replied that, even if the infant settlements of the
Upper St. Lawrence had remained bound up with the French districts,
the English-speaking population would still have been in a decided
minority, and that it was better to allow the United Empire Loyalists
to carve out their own destiny, as they were doing in New Brunswick,
in the hope that time would bring about an equipoise between the two
peoples. The erection of a new Customs’ barrier was truly a serious
matter; but it resulted from geographical and racial conditions which
were irreversible, save by the Act of Union, which, under happier
auspices, came exactly half a century later. In the period 1791–1841
Upper Canada grew from a population of about 10,000 to 465,000; and
in that fact may be found the best justification for Pitt’s Canadian
policy. When looked at from the point of view of 1791, it seems to
deserve higher praise than has generally been its meed.