escaped from the United States, and should it be considered at any time
advisable to remove any of the West Indian population, it would be very
wise to give them land on the Upper Canada frontiers. The negroes
thrive there uncommonly well, and have acquired habits of industry; and,
as may be supposed, are most inveterate against the Americans, as was
proved in the late disturbances, when they could hardly be controlled.
They imagine (and very truly) that if the Americans were to obtain
possession of Canada, that they would return to slavery, and it is
certain that they are not only brave, but would die rather than be taken
prisoners. This is a question worth consideration, as out of an idle
and useless race in the West Indies may be formed, at very little
expense, a most valuable frontier population to these provinces. I am
happy to perceive that, in the Report of Lord Durham, the importance of
these provinces to the mother country is fully acknowledged.
"These interests are indeed of great magnitude; and on the course which
your Majesty and your Parliament may adopt, with respect to the North
American colonies, will depend the future destinies, not only of the
million and a half of your Majesty's subjects who at present inhabit
those provinces, but of that vast population which those ample and
fertile territories are fit and destined hereafter to support. No
portion of the American continent possesses greater natural resources
for the maintenance of large and flourishing communities. An almost
boundless range of the richest soil still remains unsettled, and may be
rendered available for the purposes of agriculture. The wealth of
inexhaustible forests of the best timber in America, and of extensive
regions of the most valuable minerals, have as yet been scarcely
touched. Along the whole line of sea-coast, around each island, and in
every river, are to be found the greatest and richest fisheries in the
world. The best fuel and the most abundant water-power are available
for the coarser manufactures, for which an easy and certain market will
be found. Trade with other continents is favoured by the possession of
a large number of safe and spacious harbours; long, deep, and numerous
rivers, and vast inland seas, supply the means of easy intercourse; and
the structure of the country generally affords the utmost facility for
every species of communication by land. Unbounded materials of
agricultural, commercial and manufacturing industry are there; it
depends upon the present decision of the Imperial Legislature to
determine for whose benefit they are to be rendered available. The
country which has founded and maintained these colonies at a vast
expense of blood and treasure, may justly expect its compensation in
turning their unappropriated resources to the account of its own
redundant population: they are the rightful patrimony of the English
people, the ample appanage which God and Nature have set aside in the
New World for those whose lot has assigned them but insufficient portion
in the Old. Under wise and free institutions, these great advantages
may yet be secured to your Majesty's subjects; and a connexion, secured
by the link of kindred origin and mutual benefits, may continue to bind
to the British Empire the ample territories of its North American
provinces, and the large and flourishing population by which they will
assuredly be filled."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1. The building of this Church was undertaken by the inhabitants
of Peterborough and its vicinity, belonging to the church of England.
In 1835 it was commenced, and, by great exertions, opened for Divine
worship in December 1836, though not altogether finished. Nine hundred
pounds was raised by voluntary contributions, not one farthing having
been given by any public body to it. The gentlemen composing the
building committee are responsible for the remainder due, being five
hundred pounds. An advertisement for subscriptions to liquidate this
debt has been for some weeks past inserted in a London newspaper.
VOLUME THREE, CHAPTER FOUR.
THE CANADAS, CONTINUED.
Previous to my entering into a further examination of the Canada
question, it will perhaps be better to recapitulate, in as few words as
possible, what has already occurred, and the principal causes of the
late insurrection.
When the Canadian provinces were reduced by the British arms, the
inhabitants, being entirely French, were permitted to retain their own
laws, their own language in Courts and public offices, and all their
vested rights which had been granted to them by the French government.
It was a generous, but, as it has been proved, an unwise policy. The
form of government, as an English colony, was proposed, and acceded to
by the French population, who, gratified by the liberality of their new
rulers, cheerfully took the oath of allegiance. For many years, indeed
it may be said until the close of the war of 1814, the population
remained almost entirely French. England had been so long engaged in
war, and the annual expenditure of life in her armies and her navies was
so great, that she could not permit, much less encourage, emigration.
At the close of the war of 1814, the census of the population in the two
Canadian provinces was as follows:--In Lower Canada, between three and
four hundred thousand; in Upper Canada, from thirty to forty thousand,
of which nineteen-twentieths were of French extraction. But the
emigration during the last twenty-five years of peace has made a
considerable change. The population of Lower Canada has increased to
six hundred thousand, and that of Upper Canada now amounts to upwards of
four hundred thousand. As the emigration has been almost wholly from
the British dominions, it may be now fairly assumed that, taking the two
provinces together, the English and French population are now on a par
as to numbers; the English preponderate in the Upper province as much as
the French do in the Lower. But if we are to consider the two nations
of settlers as to their respective value as emigrants to the provinces,
on the point of capital, industry, and enterprise, the scale will
descend immediately in favour of the English population. The French are
inactive, adverse to speculation, or even improvement. Every _habitant_
is content with his farm as handed down to him by his progenitor, and
the higher classes who hold the seigneuries are satisfied with their
seignorial rights and the means of exaction which they afford to them.
The privileges of these seigneurs, or lords of the manor, in Lower
Canada, are very extensive, and a bar to all improvement or advance.
They hold the exclusive right of hunting and fishing; all the water
privileges, such as the erection of saw-mills, etcetera, are insured to
them. The _habitant_ is even compelled to send his flour to be ground
at the mill of the lord of the manor. At the sale of every property,
the lord of the manor receives one-twelfth of the proceeds. Thus, if a
farm worth a few hundred pounds was to fall into the hands of an
enterprising man, and he was to raise it to the value of thousands, more
than the prime-cost would be deducted for the lord of the manor if he
were compelled to part with it. This, with the other impediments to
enterprise, has left Lower Canada in a state of quiescence, and the
emigrants who have gone over have passed it by that they might settle on
the more fertile and free province of Upper Canada. One of the writers
in the daily press of New York has very truly remarked:--
"When the British first obtained the Canadas, its commerce consisted of
a few peltries, conveyed to France by the vessels which brought out the
troops and carried back the disbanded regiments. The lumber trade was
unknown. The importations were a nonentity. While at present many
hundreds of vessels are engaged in the direct timber trade, and more
than one hundred and fifty vessels have been frequently counted on the
river St Lawrence. These, it must be remembered, are almost
exclusively owned by British merchants; while the French Canadians own
the land in the same proportion as the English do the trade."
It was the knowledge of these facts, and that the English were every
year rising in importance, (for they had not only secured the whole
trade, but were gradually occupying the more fertile land of the Upper
province,) which has created the jealousy and ill-will, and has been
such a source of irritation to the French inhabitants of the Lower
province. I have dwelt upon these facts because there is a very general
opinion (which has most unfortunately been acted upon by our
Government), that the legislature of the province should be guided by
the interests of the majority, and this they have considered to be in
favour of the French population; whereas in numbers they are about
equal, and in point of wealth and importance, the English population are
most decidedly in the advance; besides that, the former population would
willingly separate themselves from the mother-country, and therefore
deserve but little favour, while the latter are loyal and attached to
it. The French having the ascendancy of five to one in the Lower
province, have done all they can to check improvement. Public works
which have cost large sums, have remained uncompleted, because the House
of Assembly in the Lower province has refused to allow them to be
carried on. Indeed, had the Lower province been allowed to continue in
her career of opposition, she would have eventually rendered difficult
all communication between the Upper province and the mother-country.
This is acknowledged in Lord Durham's report, which says:--
"Without going so far as to accuse the Assembly of a deliberate design
to check the settlement and improvement of Lower Canada, it cannot be
denied that they looked with considerable jealousy and dislike on the
increase and prosperity of what they regarded as a foreign and hostile
race; they looked on the province as the patrimony of their own race;
they viewed it not as a country to be settled, but as one already
settled; and instead of legislating in the American spirit, and first
providing for the future population of the province, their primary care
was, in the spirit of legislation which prevails in the old world, to
guard the interests and feelings of the present race of inhabitants, to
whom they considered the newcomers as subordinate; they refused to
increase the burthens of the country by imposing taxes to meet the
expenditure required for improvement, and they also refused to direct to
that object any of the funds previously devoted to other purposes. The
improvement of the harbour of Montreal was suspended, from a political
antipathy to a leading English merchant who had been the most active of
the commissioners, and by whom it had been conducted with the most
admirable success. It is but just to say, that some of the works which
the Assembly authorised and encouraged, were undertaken on a scale of
due moderation, and satisfactorily perfected and brought into operation.
Others, especially the great communications which I have mentioned
above, the Assembly showed a great reluctance to promote or even to
permit. It is true that there was considerable foundation for their
objections to the plan on which the Legislature of Upper Canada had
commenced some of these works, and to the mode in which it had carried
them on; but the English complained that, instead of profiting by the
experience which they might have derived from this source, the Assembly
seemed only to make its objections a pretext for doing nothing. The
applications for banks, railroads, and canals were laid on one side
until some general measures could be adopted with regard to such
undertakings; but the general measures thus promised were never passed,
and the particular enterprises in question were prevented. The adoption
of a registry was refused, on the alleged ground of its inconsistency
with the French institutions of the province, and no measure to attain
this desirable end in a less obnoxious mode, was prepared by the leaders
of the Assembly. The feudal tenure was supported, as a mild and just
provision for the settlement of a new country; a kind of assurance given
by a committee of the Assembly, that some steps should be taken to
remove the most injurious incidents of the seignorial tenure, produced
no practical results; and the enterprises of the English were still
thwarted by the obnoxious laws of the country. In all these decisions
of the Assembly, in its discussions, and in the apparent motives of its
conduct, the English population perceived traces of a desire to repress
the influx and the success of their race. A measure for imposing a tax
on emigrants, though recommended by the Home Government, and warranted
by the policy of those neighbouring States which give the greatest
encouragement to emigration, was argued on such grounds in the Assembly,
that it was not unjustly regarded as indicative of an intention to
exclude any further accession to the English population; and the
industry of the English was thus retarded by this conduct of the
Assembly. Some districts, particularly that of the Eastern Townships,
where the French race have no footing, were seriously injured by the
refusal of necessary improvements; and the English inhabitants generally
regarded the policy of; the Assembly as a plan for preventing any
further emigration to the province, of stopping the growth of English
wealth, and of rendering precarious the English property already
invested or acquired in Lower Canada."
It may be said, that latterly the French party, by the inconsiderate
yielding of the Government at home, legislate for both provinces; and
finding that they never could compete with the English in other points,
their object has been to crush them as much as possible. [See Note 1.]
The policy pursued by M. Papineau and his adherents, has therefore been
to keep the Lower Province entirely in the hands of the French, and with
this view they have as much as possible, prevented British settlers from
obtaining land in Lower Canada; and that their rule might be absolute,
over the French population, they have prevented their education, so that
they might blindly follow those who guided them. These two assertions
will be fully borne out by an examination into the public records.
The land being almost wholly in the possession of the French, M.
Papineau's first object was, to make the possession of _landed property_
the tenure by which any employment of the trust under government could
be held; and in this great object he succeeded. It must at once be
perceived that, by this regulation alone, all British residents were
excluded, and that if possessed of capital to any amount, whatever their
stake in the colony might be, they were ruled and dictated to by the
French party. No person could be an officer in the militia unless he
was a landowner. The wealthy English merchant had to fall into the
ranks, and be ordered about by an ignorant French farmer, a man who
could not write or read, but made his cross to any paper presented to
him for his signature.
By another enactment the grand juries were to be selected from those who
were land-owners, and the consequence was, that in two grand juries
selected in two succeeding years, there was only one man who could write
or read out of the whole number, and the others fixed their cross to the
bills found.
What was still more absurd was, that the office of trustee for the
schools could only be held by the same tenure, and in the Act passed, it
is provided, that the trustees for national education may be permitted
to affix their _cross_ to the school reports, a more convincing proof of
the state of ignorance in which the Canadian French population have been
held and acknowledged to be so by the French party, by the making such a
proviso in the statute. I had a convincing proof myself of the
ignorance of the French population during the rebellion in Lower Canada.
I handed a printed circular to about four hundred prisoners who were
collected, for one of them to read aloud to the rest, and there was not
one who could read _print_.
Having secured the party in the province, the next object of M.
Papineau and his adherents was, to blind the Government at home: they
sent home a list of grievances which required redress, and in this they
were joined by the English republican party. Among other demands, they
insisted upon the right to the Lower Assembly having the control of the
colonial revenues. So earnest was the Government at home to satisfy
them, that every concession was made, and even the last great question
of controlling their own expenditure was consented to, upon the sole
condition that the civil list, for the payment of the salary of the
governor and other state officers, was secured.
What was the conduct of M. Papineau and his party as soon as they had
gained their point? They immediately broke their faith with the
Government at home, and refused to vote the sum for the civil list.
For three years, the governor and all the public officers were without
their salaries, which were at last provided for by a vote of the English
Parliament at home. This nefarious conduct of the French Party had one
good effect, it created a disunion with the English republican party,
who, although they wished for reform, would be no participators in such
a breach of honour.
That for many years there has been sad mismanagement on the part of the
Government at home, cannot be denied, but the error has been the
continual yielding to French clamour and misrepresentation, and the
Government having lost sight of the fact that the English population
were rapidly increasing, and had an equal right to the protection of the
mother-country. It is the English population who have had real cause of
complaint, and who are justified in demanding redress. The French have
been only too well treated, and their demands became more imperious in
proportion to the facility with which the Government yielded to them in
their earnest, but mistaken, desire to put an end to the agitation of M.
Papineau and his party. Mistaking the forbearance of the English
government for weakness, M. Papineau issued his inflammatory appeals;
the people were incited to rebellion; but even this conduct did not seem
to rouse the Government at home, who had probably formed the idea that
the French Canadian was too peaceful to have recourse to arms.
Emboldened by the conduct on the part of the Government, which was
ascribed to fear, and finding themselves supported by Mr Joseph Hume
and Mr Roebuck at home, the republican party in Upper Canada openly
declared itself, and a portion of the Canadian press issued the most
treasonable articles without molestation. The Americans were not idle
in fomenting this ill-will towards the mother country in the Upper
Province, and the Papineau party proceeded to more active measures.
Arrangements were made for a general rising of the Lower Province; the
meeting of St Charles took place, and resolutions were passed of a
nature which could no longer be overlooked by the Provincial Government.
For many months previous to the meeting at St Charles, the Provincial
Government had been aroused and aware of the danger, and Lord Gosford
perceived the necessity of acting contrary to the orders received from
home. Proofs had been obtained against those who were most active in
the intended rebellion, and at last warrants were issued by the
Attorney-General for their apprehension. It was this sudden and
unexpected issue of the warrants which may be said to have saved the
provinces. It defeated all the plans of the conspirators, who had not
intended to have flown to arms until the _next Spring_, when their
arrangements would have been fully made and organised. This fact I had
from Bouchette, and three or four of the ringleaders, whom I visited in
prison. They intended to have had the leaf on the tree, and the cold
weather over, before they commenced operations; and had they waited till
then the result might have been very serious, but the issue of the
warrants for the apprehension of the leaders placed them in the awkward
dilemma of either being deprived of them, or of having recourse to arms
before their plans were fully matured. The latter was the alternative
preferred; and the results of this unsuccessful attempt are well
described in Lord Durham's report:--
"The treasonable attempt of the French party to carry its political
objects into effect by an appeal to arms, brought these hostile races
into general and armed collision. I will not dwell on the melancholy
scenes exhibited in the progress of the contest, or the fierce passions
which held an unchecked sway during the insurrection, or immediately
after its suppression. It is not difficult to conceive how greatly the
evils, which I have described as previously existing, have been
aggravated by the war; how terror and revenge nourished, in each portion
of the population, a bitter and irreconcilable hatred to each other, and
to the institutions of the country. The French population, who had for
some time exercised a great and increasing power through the medium of
the House of Assembly, found their hopes unexpectedly prostrated in the
dust. The physical force which they had vaunted was called into action,
and proved to be utterly inefficient. The hope of recovering their
previous ascendancy under a constitution similar to that suspended,
almost ceased to exist. Removed from all actual share in the government
of their smaller country, they brood in silence over the memory of their
fallen countrymen, of their burnt villages, of their ruined property, of
their extinguished ascendancy, and of their humbled nationality. To the
Government and the English they ascribe these wrongs, and nourish
against both an indiscriminating and eternal animosity. Nor have the
English inhabitants forgotten in their triumph, the terror with which
they suddenly saw themselves surrounded by an insurgent majority, and
the incidents which alone appeared to save them from the unchecked
domination of their antagonists. They find themselves still a minority
in the midst of a hostile and organised people; apprehensions of secret
conspiracies and sanguinary designs haunt them unceasingly, and their
only hope of safety is supposed to rest on systematically terrifying and
disabling the French, and in preventing a majority of that race from
ever and again being predominant in any portion of the legislature of
the province. I describe in strong terms the feelings which appear to
me to animate each portion of the population; and the picture which I
draw represents a state of things so little familiar to the personal
experience of the people of this country, that many will probably regard
it as the work of mere imagination; but I feel confident that the
accuracy and moderation of my description will be acknowledged by all
who have seen the state of society in Lower Canada during the last year.
Nor do I exaggerate the inevitable constancy, any more than the
intensity of this animosity. Never again will the present generation of
French Canadians yield a loyal submission to a British Government; never
again will the English population tolerate the authority of a House of
Assembly in which the French shall possess or even approximate to a
majority."
Although M. Papineau and his party were very willing to fraternise with
the discontented party in Upper Canada, and to call forth the sympathy
and the assistance of the Americans, their real intentions and wishes
were to have made the Canadas an independent French province, in strict
alliance with France. [See Note 2.] The assistance of the Upper Canada
party would have been accepted until they were no longer required, and
then there would have been an attempt, and very probably a successful
one, to drive away by every means in their power the English settlers in
Upper Canada to the United States. The Americans, on the other hand,
cared nothing about the French or English grievances; their sympathy
arose from nothing less than a wish to add the Canadas to their already
vast territories, and to drive the English from their last possessions
in America; but they also knew how to wear the cloak as well as M.
Papineau, and had the insurrection been successful, both French and
English would by this time have been subjected to their control, and M.
Papineau would have found that he had only been a tool in the hands of
the more astute and ambitious Americans. Such is my conviction: but
this is certain, that whatever may have been the result of the former
insurrection, or whatever may be the result of any future one (for the
troubles are not yet over), the English in Upper Canada must fall a
sacrifice to either one party or the other, unless they can succeed
(which, with their present numbers and situation, will be difficult) in
overpowering them both.
It may be inquired, what were the causes of discontent which occasioned
the partial rising in Upper Canada. Strange to say, although Mackenzie
and his party were in concert and correspondence with M. Papineau, the
chief cause of discontent arose from the partiality shown by the English
government to the French Canadians in Lower Canada; their grievances
were their own, and they had no fellow-feeling with the French
Canadians. If they had any prepossession at all, it was in favour of
joining the American States, and to this they were instigated by the
number of Americans who had settled in Upper Canada. There were several
minor causes of discontent: the Scotch emigrants were displeased because
the Government had decided that the clergy revenues were to be allotted
only for the support of the Episcopal church, and not for the
Presbyterian. But the great discontent was because the English settlers
considered that they had been unfairly treated, and sacrificed by the
government at home. But although discontent was general, a wish to
rebel was not so, and here it was that Mackenzie found himself in error,
and M. Papineau was deceived; instead of being joined by thousands, as
they expected, from the Upper Province, they could only muster a few
hundreds, who were easily dispersed: the feelings of loyalty prevailed,
and those whom the rebel-leaders expected would have joined the standard
of insurrection, enrolled themselves to trample it tinder foot. The
behaviour of the settlers in Upper Canada was worthy of all praise; they
had just grounds of complaint; they had been opposed and sacrificed to a
malevolent and ungrateful French party in the Lower Province; yet when
the question arose as to whether they should assist, or put down the
insurrection, they immediately forgot their own wrongs, and proved their
loyalty to their country.
The party who adhered to Mackenzie may well be considered as an American
party; for Upper Canada had been so neglected and uncared for, that the
Americans had already obtained great influence there. Indeed, when it
is stated that Mathews and Lount, the two _members of the Upper House of
Assembly_ who were executed for treason, were both _Americans_, it is
evident that the Americans had even obtained a share in the legislation
of the province. When I passed through the Upper Province, I remarked
that, independently of some of the best land being held by Americans,
the landlords of the inns, the contractors for transporting the mails,
and drivers of coaches, were almost without exception, Americans.
One cause of the Americans wishing that the Canadas should be wrested
from the English was that, by an Act of the Legislature, they were not
able to hold lands in the province. It is true that they could purchase
them, but if they wished to sell them, the title was not valid. Colonel
Prince, whose name was so conspicuous during the late troubles, brought
in a bill to allow Americans to hold land in Upper Canada, but the bill
was thrown out. It scarcely need be observed that Colonel Prince is now
as violent an opponent to the bill. See Note 3. He has had quite
enough of Americans in Upper Canada.
It was fortunate for the country that there was such a man as Sir John
Colborne, and aided by Sir Francis Head, at that period in the command
of the two provinces. Of the first it is not necessary that I should
add my tribute of admiration to that which Sir John Colborne has already
so unanimously received. Sir Francis Head has not been quite so
fortunate, and has been accused (most unjustly) of rashness and want of
due precaution. Now the only grounds upon which this charge can be
preferred is, his sending down to Sir John Colborne all the regular
troops, when he was requested if possible so to do. I was at this
period at Toronto, and as I had the pleasure of being intimate with Sir
Francis, I had fell knowledge of the causes of this decision. Sir
Francis said, "I have but two hundred regular troops; they will be of
great service in the Lower Province, when added to those which Sir John
Colborne already has under his command. Here they are not sufficient to
stem an insurrection if it be formidable. I do not know what may be the
strength of the rebels until they show themselves, but I think I do know
the number who will support me. Should the rebels prove in great three,
these two companies of regular troops will be overwhelmed, and what I
consider is, not any partial success of the rebel party, but the moral
effect which success over regular troops will create. There are, I am
sure, thousands who are at present undecided, who, if they heard that
the _regular troops_, of whom they have such dread, were overcome, would
join the rebel cause. This is what I fear; as for any advantage gained
over me, when I have only _militia_ to oppose to them, that is of little
consequence. When Sir John Colborne has defeated them in Lower Canada,
he can then come up here, with the regular troops."
I believe these to be the very words used by Sir Francis Head when he
asked my opinion on the subject, and I agreed with him most cordially;
but if any one is inclined to suppose, from the light, playful, and I
must say, undiplomatic style of Sir Francis's despatches, that he had
not calculated every chance, and made every disposition which prudence
and foresight could suggest, they are very much mistaken. The most
perfect confidence was reposed in him by all parties; and the event
proved that he was not out in his calculations, for with the militia
alone he put down the rebellion. During the short time from Sir Francis
Head's going out, until he requested to be recalled, he did more good to
that province, and more to secure the English dominion than could be
imagined, and had he not been governor of the province for some time
previous to the rebellion, I strongly surmise that it would have been
lost to this country.
The events of the rebellion are too fresh in the reader's memory to be
mentioned here. It is, however, necessary to examine into the present
state of affairs, for it must not be supposed that the troubles have yet
ceased.
First, as to the French Canadian party. If I am not very much mistaken,
this may be considered as broken up; the severe lesson received from the
English troops, and the want of confidence in their leaders from their
cowardice and inability, will prevent the French Canadians from again
taking up arms. They are naturally a peaceable, inoffensive,
good-tempered people, and nothing but the earnest instigation of a
portion of their priests, the notaries, and the doctors, (the three
parties who most mix with the _habitants_), would have ever roused them
to rebellion. As it is, I consider that they are efficiently quelled,
and will be quiet, at least for one generation, if the measures of the
government at home are judicious. The cause of the great influence
obtained by the people I have specified over the _habitants_ is well
explained in Lord Durham's Report. Speaking of the public seminaries,
he says:--
"The education given in these establishments greatly resembles the kind
given in the English public schools, though it is rather more varied.
It is entirely in the hands of the Catholic clergy. The number of
pupils in these establishments is estimated altogether at about a
thousand; and they turn out every year, as far as I could ascertain,
between two and three hundred young men thus educated. Almost all of
these are members of the family of some habitant, whom the possession of
greater quickness than his brothers has induced the father or the curate
of the parish to select and send to the seminary. These young men,
possessing a degree of information immeasurably superior to that of
their families, are naturally averse to what they regard as descending
to the humble occupations of their parents. A few become priests; but
as the military and naval professions are closed against the colonist,
the greater part can only find a position suited to their notions of
their own qualifications in the learned professions of advocate, notary,
and surgeon. As from this cause these professions are greatly
overstocked, we find every village in Lower Canada filled with notaries
and surgeons, with little practice to occupy their attention, and living
among their own families, or at any rate among exactly the same class.
Thus the persons of most education in every village belong to the same
families, and the same original station in life, as the illiterate
_habitants_ whom I have described. They are connected with them by all
the associations of early youth, and the ties of blood. The most
perfect equality always marks their intercourse, and the superior in
education is separated by no barrier of manners, or pride, or distinct
interests, from the singularly ignorant peasantry by which he is
surrounded. He combines, therefore, the influences of superior
knowledge, and social equality, and wields a power over the mass, which
I do not believe that the educated class of any other portion of the
world possess."
The second party, which are the discontented, yet loyal English of Upper
Canada, are entitled to, and it is hoped will receive the justice they
claim they well deserve it. It is the duty, as well as the interest of
the mother country to foster loyalty, enterprise, and activity, and it
is chiefly in Upper Canada that it is to be found. One great advantage
has arisen from the late troubles, which is, that they have driven most
of the Americans out of the province, and have created such a feeling of
indignation and hatred towards them in the breasts of the Upper
Canadians, that there is no chance of their fraternising for at least
another half century. Nothing could have proved more unfortunate to the
American desire of obtaining the Canadas than the result of the late
rebellions. Should the Upper Canadians, from any continued injustice
and misrule on the part of the mother country, be determined to
separate, at all events it will not be to ally themselves with the
Americans. In Lord Durham's Report we have the following remarks:--
"I have, in despatches of a later date than that to which I have had
occasion so frequently to refer, called the attention of the Home
Government to the growth of this alarming state of feeling among the
English population. The course of the late troubles, and the assistance
which the French insurgents derived from some citizens of the United
States, have caused a most intense exasperation among the Canadian
loyalists against the American government and people. Their papers have
teemed with the most unmeasured denunciations of the good faith of the
authorities, of the character and morality of the people, and of the
political institutions of the United States. Yet, under this surface of
hostility, it is easy to detect a strong under-current of an exactly
contrary feeling. As the general opinion of the American people became
more and more apparent during the course of the last year, the English
of Lower Canada were surprised to find how strong, in spite of the first
burst of sympathy, with a people supposed to be struggling for
independence, was the real sympathy of their republican neighbours with
the great objects of the minority. Without abandoning their attachment
to their mother country, they have begun, as men in a state of
uncertainty are apt to do, to calculate the probable consequences of a
separation, if it should unfortunately occur, and be followed by an
incorporation with the United States. In spite of the shock which it
would occasion their feelings, they undoubtedly think that they should
find some compensation in the promotion of their interests; they believe
that the influx of American emigration would speedily place the English
race in a majority; they talk frequently and loudly of what has occurred
in Louisiana, where, by means which they utterly misrepresent, the end
nevertheless of securing an English predominance over a French
population has undoubtedly been attained; they assert very confidently,
that the Americans would make a very speedy and decisive settlement of
the pretensions of the French; and they believe that, after the first
shock of an entirely new political state had been got over, they and
their posterity would share in that amazing progress, and that great
material prosperity, which every day's experience shows them is the lot
of the people of the United States. I do not believe that such a
feeling has yet sapped their strong allegiance to the British empire;
but their allegiance is founded on their deep-rooted attachment to
British, as distinguished from French institutions. And if they find
that that authority which they have maintained against its recent
assailants, is to be exerted in such a manner as to subject them to what
they call a French dominion, I feel perfectly confident that they would
attempt to avert the result, by courting, on any terms, an union with an
Anglo-Saxon people."
Here I do not agree with his lordship. That such was the feeling
previous to the insurrection I believe, and notwithstanding the defeat
of the insurgents, would have remained so, had it not been for the
piratical attacks of the Americans, which their own government could not
control. This was a lesson to the Upper Canadians. They perceived that
there was no security for life or property--no law to check outrage--and
they felt severely the consequences of this state of things in the
destruction of their property and the attempts upon their lives by a
nation professing to be in amity with them. Fraternise with the
Americans the Upper Canadians will not. They may be subdued by them if
they throw off the allegiance and protection of the mother-country, as
they would be hemmed in between two hostile parties, and find it almost
impossible, with their present population, to withstand their united
efforts. But should a conflict of this kind take place, and the Upper
Canadians be allowed but a short period of repose, or could they hold
the Americans in check for a time, they would sweep the whole race of
the Lower Canadians from the face of the earth. Their feelings towards
the Lower Canadians are well explained in Lord Durham's Report:--
"In the despatch above referred to I also described the state of feeling
among the English population, nor can I encourage a hope that that
portion of the community is at all more inclined to any settlement of
the present quarrel that would leave any share of power to the hostile
race. Circumstances having thrown the English into the ranks of the
government, and the folly of their opponents having placed them, on the
other hand, in a state of permanent collision with it, the former
possess the advantage of having the force of government, and the
authority of the laws on their side in the present state of the contest.
Their exertions during the recent troubles have contributed to maintain
the supremacy of the law, and the continuance of the connexion with
Great Britain; but it would, in my opinion, be dangerous to rely on the
continuance of such a state of feeling, as now prevails among them, in
the event of a different policy being adopted by the Imperial
government. Indeed the prevalent sentiment among them is one of any
thing but satisfaction with the course which has been long pursued, with
reference td Lower Canada, by the British legislature and executive.
The calmer view, which distant spectators are enabled to take of the
conduct of the two parties, and the disposition which is evinced to make
a fair adjustment of the contending claims, appear iniquitous and
injurious in the eyes of men who think that they alone have any claim to
the favour of that government, by which they alone have stood fast.
They complain loudly and bitterly of the whole course pursued by the
Imperial Government, with respect to the quarrel of the two races, as
having been rounded on an utter ignorance of, or disregard to the real
question at issue, as having fostered the mischievous pretensions of
French nationality, and as having, by the vacillation and inconsistency
which marked it, discouraged loyalty and fomented rebellion. Every
measure of clemency, or even justice, towards their opponents, they
regard with jealousy, as indicating a disposition towards that
conciliatory policy which is the subject of their angry recollection;
for they feel that being a minority, any return to the due course of
constitutional government would again subject them to a French majority:
and to this I am persuaded they would never peaceably submit. They do
not hesitate to say that they will not tolerate much longer the being
made the sport of parties at home, and that if the mother country
forgets what is due to the loyal and enterprising men of her own race,
they must protect themselves. In the significant language of one of
their own ablest advocates, they assert that `Lower Canada must be
_English_, at the expense, if necessary, of not being _British_.'"
The third party, which is the American, is the only one at present
inclined to move, and in all probability they will commence as soon as
the winter sets in; for however opposed to this shameful violation of
the laws of nations the President, officers, and respectable portion of
the American Union may be, it is certain that the _majority_ are
represented by these marauders, and the removal of our troops would be a
signal for immediate aggression.
The Americans will tell you that the sympathy, as they term it, only
exists on the borders of the lakes; that it extends no further, and that
they are all opposed to it, etcetera. Such is not the case. The
greatest excitement which was shown any where was perhaps at Albany, the
capital of the State of New York, on the Hudson river, and two hundred
miles at least from the boundary; but not only there, but even on the
Mississippi the feeling was the same; in fact, it was the feeling of the
majority. In a letter I received the other day from a friend in New
York, there is the following remark:--
"Bill Johnson (the pirate on lake Ontario) _held his levees_ here during
the winter. They were _thronged_ with all the _best people_ of the
city."
Now, the quarter from whence I received this intelligence is to be
relied upon; and that it was the case I have no doubt. And why should
they feel such interest about a pirate like Bill Johnson? Simply
because he had assailed the English. This may appear a trifle; but a
straw thrown up shows in what direction the wind blows.
At present there is no want of troops to defend the Canadas against a
foreign attack, and little inclination to rebel in the provinces
themselves. That now required is, that the legislature should be
improved so as to do justice to all parties, and such an encouragement
given to enterprise and industry as to induce a more extended
emigration.
Lord Durham has very correctly observed, that it is not now a conflict
of principles between the English and French, but a conflict of the two
races. He says:--
"I expected to find a contest between a government and a people: I found
two nations warring in the bosom of a single state: I found a struggle,
not of principles, but of races; and I perceived that it would be idle
to attempt any amelioration of laws or institutions until we could first
succeed in terminating a deadly animosity that now separates the
inhabitants of Lower Canada into the hostile divisions of French and
English."
But why should this conflict between the two races have taken place?
Firstly, because the French, by the injudicious generosity of our
Government in allowing them to retain their language in public affairs,
with all their customs and usages, were allowed to remain a French
colony, instead of amalgamating them with the English, as might have
been done. Subsequently, because the interests of the English colonists
have been sacrificed to the French, who, nevertheless, became
disaffected, and would have thrown off the English dominion. Lord
Durham very correctly adds:--
"Such is the lamentable and hazardous state of things produced by the
conflict of races which has so long divided the province of Lower
Canada, and which has assumed the formidable and irreconcilable
character which I have depicted. In describing the nature of this
conflict, I have specified the causes in which it originated; and though
I have mentioned the conduct and constitution of the colonial
government, as modifying the character of the struggle, I have not
attributed to political causes a state of things which would, I believe,
tinder any political institutions have resulted from the very
composition of society. A jealousy between two races, so long
habituated to regard each other with hereditary enmity, and so differing
in habits, in language, and in laws, would have been inevitable under
any form of government. That liberal institutions and prudent policy
might have changed the character of the struggle, I have no doubt; but
they could not have prevented it; they could only have softened its
character, and brought it more speedily to a more decisive and peaceful
conclusion. Unhappily, however, the system of government pursued in
Lower Canada has been based on the policy of perpetuating that very
separation of the races, and encouraging these very notions of
conflicting nationalities which it ought to have been the first and
chief care of Government to check and extinguish. From the period of
the conquest to the present time, the conduct has aggravated the evil,
and the origin of the present extreme disorder may be found in the
institutions by which the character of the colony was determined."
We have, therefore, to legislate between the two parties, and let us,
previous to entering upon the question, examine into their respective
merits. On the one hand we have a French population who, after having
received every favour which could be granted with a due regard to
freedom, have insisted upon, and have obtained much more, and who in
return for all the kindness heaped upon them, excited by envy and
jealousy of an energy and enterprise of which they were incapable, have
risen in rebellion, with the hopes of making themselves an independent
nation.
On the other hand we have a generous, high-spirited race of our own
blood, and migrating from our own soil, who having been unfairly
treated, and _having just grounds_ of complaint against the
mother-country, have nevertheless forgotten their own wrongs, and, to a
mail, flown to arms, willing to shed their blood in defence of the
mother-country.
Add to this, we have the French inhabiting a comparatively sterile
country, without activity or enterprise; the English, in a country
fertile to excess, possessing most of the capital, and the only portion
of the colonists to whom we can safely confide the defence of that which
I trust I have proved to the reader to be the most important outpost in
the English dominions. Bearing all this in mind, and also remembering
that if the emigration to Upper Canada again revive, that this latter
population will in a few years be an immense majority, and will
ultimately wholly swallow up all the former, we may now proceed to
consider what should be the policy of the mother-country.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1. It was not long after the conquest, that another and larger
class of English settlers began to enter the province. English capital
was attracted to Canada by the vast quantity and valuable nature of the
exportable produce of the country, and the great facilities for
commerce, presented by the natural means of internal intercourse. The
ancient trade of the country was conducted on a much larger and more
profitable scale; and new branches of industry were explored. The
active and regular habits of the English capitalist drove out of all the
more profitable kinds of industry their inert and careless competitors
of the French race; but in respect of the greater part (almost the
whole) of the commerce and manufactures of the country, the English
cannot be said to have encroached on the French; for, in fact, they
created employments and profits which had not previously existed. A few
of the ancient race smarted under the loss occasioned by the success of
English competition; but all felt yet more acutely the gradual increase
of a class of strangers in whose hands the wealth of the country
appeared to centre, and whose expenditure and influence eclipsed those
of the class which had previously occupied the first position in the
country. Nor was the intrusion of the English limited to commercial
enterprises. By degrees, large portions of land were occupied by them;
nor did they confine themselves to the unsettled and distant country of
the townships. The wealthy capitalist invested his money in the
purchase of seignorial properties; and it is estimated, that at the
present moment full half of the more valuable seignories are actually
owned by English proprietors. The seignorial tenure is one so little
adapted to our notions of proprietary rights, that the new seigneur,
without any consciousness or intention to injustice, in many instances
exercised his rights in a manner which would appear perfectly fair in
this country, but which the Canadian settler reasonably regarded as
oppressive. The English purchaser found an equally unexpected and just
cause of complaint in that uncertainty of the laws, which rendered his
possession of property precarious, and in those incidents of the tenure
which rendered its alienation or improvement difficult. But an
irritation, greater than that occasioned by the transfer of the large
properties, was caused by the competition of the English with the French
farmer. The English farmer carried with him the experience and habits
of the most improved agriculture in the world. He settled himself in
the townships bordering on the seignories, and brought a fresh soil and
improved cultivation to compete with the worn-out and slovenly farm of
the _habitant_. He often took the very farm which the Canadian settler
had abandoned, and, by superior management, made that a source of profit
which had only impoverished his predecessor. The ascendancy which an
unjust favouritism had contributed to give to the English race in the
government and the legal profession, their own superior energy, skill
and capital secured to them in every branch of industry. They have
developed the resources of the country; they have constructed or
improved its means of communication; they have created its internal and
foreign commerce. The entire wholesale, and a large portion of the
retail trade of the province, with the most profitable and flourishing
farms, are now in the hands of this numerical minority of the
population.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 2. "Nor does there appear to be the slightest chance of putting an
end to this animosity during the present generation. Passions inflamed
during so long a period, cannot speedily be calmed. The state of
education which I have previously described as placing the peasantry
entirely at the mercy of agitators, the total absence of any class of
persons, or any organisation of authority that could counteract this
mischievous influence, and the serious decline in the district of
Montreal of the influence of the clergy, concur in rendering it
absolutely impossible for the Government to produce any better state of
feeling among the French population. It is even impossible to impress
on a people so circumstanced the salutary dread of the power of Great
Britain, which the presence of a large military force in the province
might be expected to produce. I have been informed, by witnesses so
numerous and trustworthy that I cannot doubt the correctness of their
statements, that the peasantry were generally ignorant of the large
amount of force which was sent into their country last year. The
newspapers that circulate among them had informed them that Great
Britain had no troops to send out; that in order to produce an
impression on the minds of the country-people, the same regiments were
marched backwards and forwards in different directions, and represented
as additional arrivals from home. This explanation was promulgated
among the people by the agitators of each village; and I have no doubt
that the mass of the inhabitants really believed that the government was
endeavouring to impose on them by this species of fraud. It is a
population with whom authority has no means of contact or explanation.
It is difficult even to ascertain what amount of influence the ancient
leaders of the French party continue to possess. [The name of M.
Papineau is still cherished by the people; and the idea is current that,
at the appointed time, he will return, at the head of an immense army,
and re-establish "La Nation Canadienne."] But there is great reason to
doubt whether his name be not used as a mere watchword; whether the
people are not in fact running entirely counter to his councils and
policy; and whether they are not really under the guidance of separate
petty agitators, who have no plan but that of a senseless and reckless
determination to show in every way their hostility to the British
Government and English race. Their ultimate designs and hopes are
equally unintelligible. Some vague expectation of absolute independence
still seems to delude them. The national vanity, which is a remarkable
ingredient in their character, induces many to flatter themselves with
the idea of a Canadian Republic; the sounder information of others has
led them to perceive that a separation from Great Britain must be
followed by a junction with the great confederation on their southern
frontier. But they seem apparently reckless of the consequences,
provided they can wreak their vengeance on the English. There is no
people against which early associations and every conceivable difference
of manners and opinions have implanted in the Canadian mind a more
ancient and rooted national antipathy than that which they feel against
the people of the United States. Their more discerning leaders feel
that their chances of preserving their nationality would be greatly
diminished by an incorporation with the United States; and recent
symptoms of Anti-Catholic feeling in New England, well known to the
Canadian population, have generated a very general belief that their
religion, which even they do not accuse the British party of assailing,
would find little favour or respect from their neighbours. Yet none
even of these considerations weigh against their present all-absorbing
hatred of the English; and I am persuaded that they would purchase
vengeance and a momentary triumph by the aid of any enemies, or
submission to any yoke. This provisional but complete cessation of
their ancient antipathy to the Americans, is now admitted even by those
who most strongly denied it during the last spring, and who then
asserted that an American war would as completely unite the whole
population against the common enemy, as it did in 1813. My subsequent
experience leaves no doubt in my mind that the views which were
contained in my despatch on the 9th of August are perfectly correct; and
that an invading American army might rely on the co-operation of almost
the entire French population of Lower Canada."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 3. Colonel Prince is the gentleman who took with his own hands
General Sutherland and his aide-de-camp, and who ordered the Yankee
pirates to be shot. Mr Hume has thought proper to make a motion in the
House of Commons, reprobating this act as one of murder. I believe
there is little difference whether a man breaks into your house, and
steals your money; or burns your house, and robs you of your cattle and
other property. One is as much a case of burglary as the other. In the
first instance you are justified in taking the robber's life, and why
not in the second? Those people who attacked the inhabitants of a
country with whom they were in profound peace, were disowned by their
own government, consequently they were outlaws and pirates, and it is a
pity that Sutherland and every other prisoner taken had not been
immediately shot. Mr Hume may flare up in the House of Commons, but I
should like to know what Mr Hume's opinion would be if he was the party
who had all his property stolen and his house burnt over his head, in
the depth of a Canadian winter. I suspect he would say a very different
say, as he has no small respect for the _meum_; indeed, I should be
sorry to be the party to be sentenced by Mr Hume, if I had stolen a few
ducks out of the honourable gentleman's duck decoys near Yarmouth.
VOLUME THREE, CHAPTER FIVE.
THE CANADAS, CONTINUED.
In the last chapter I pointed out that in our future legislation for
these provinces, we had to decide between the English and French
inhabitants; up to the present the French have been in power, and have
been invariably favoured by the Government, much to the injury of the
English population. Before I offer any opinion on this question, let us
inquire what has been the conduct of the French in their exercise of
their rights as a Legislative Assembly, and what security they offer us,
to incline us again to put confidence in them. In examining into this
question, I prefer, as a basis, the Report of Lord Durham, made to the
English Parliament. His lordship, adverting to the state of hostility
between the representative and executive powers in our colonies,
prefaces with a remark relative to our own country, which I think late
events do not fully bear out; he says:--
"However partial the monarch might be to particular ministers, or
however he might have personally committed himself to their policy, he
has been _invariably_ constrained to abandon both, as soon as the
opinion of the people has been irrevocably pronounced against them,
through the medium of the House of Commons."
This he repeats in an after part of the Report:--
"When a ministry ceases to command a majority in Parliament on great
questions of policy, its doom is immediately sealed; and it would appear
to us as strange to attempt, for any time, to carry on a Government by
means of ministers perpetually in a minority, as it would be to pass
laws with a majority of votes against them."
If such be an essential part of our constitution, as his lordship
asserts, surely we have suffered an inroad into it lately.
That the system of Colonial Government is defective, I grant, but it is
not so much from the check which the Legislative Council puts upon the
Representative Assembly, as from the secrecy of the acts and decisions
of that council. This, indeed, his lordship admits in some cases, and I
think that I can fully establish that, without this salutary check, the
Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada would have soon voted themselves
Free and Independent States. Lord Durham observes:--
"I am far from concurring in the censure which the Assembly and its
advocates have attempted to cast on the acts of the Legislative Council.
I have no hesitation in saying that many of the bills which it is most
severely blamed for rejecting, were bills which it could not have passed
without a dereliction of its duty to the constitution, the connexion
with Great Britain, and the whole English population of the colony. If
there is any censure to be passed on its general conduct, it is for
having confined itself to the merely negative and defensive duties of a
legislative body; for having too frequently contented itself with merely
defeating objectionable methods of obtaining desirable ends, without
completing its duty by proposing measures, which would have achieved the
good in view without the mixture of evil. The national animosities
which pervaded the legislation of the Assembly, and its thorough want of
legislative skill or respect for constitutional principles, rendered
almost all its bills obnoxious to the objections made by the Legislative
Council; and the serious evil which their enactment would have
occasioned, convinces me that the colony has reason to congratulate
itself on the existence of an institution which possessed and used the
power of stopping a course of legislation that, if successful, would
have _sacrificed every British interest_, and _overthrown every
guarantee of order and national liberty_."
Again:--
"One glaring attempt which was made directly and openly to _subvert the
constitution of the country, was_, by passing a bill for the formal
repeal of those parts of the 31 Geo. 3, c. 31, commonly called the
Constitutional Act, by which the constitution and powers of the
Legislative Council were established. It can hardly be supposed that
the framers of this bill were unaware, or hoped to make any concealment
of the obvious illegality of a measure, which, commencing as all
Canadian Acts do, by a recital of the 31 Geo. 3, as the foundation of
the legislative authority of the Assembly, proceeded immediately to
infringe some of the most important provisions of that very statute; nor
can it be supposed that the Assembly hoped really to carry into effect,
this extraordinary assumption of power, inasmuch as the bill could
derive no legal effect from passing the Lower House, unless it should
subsequently receive the assent of the very body which it purported to
annihilate."
Take again the following observations of his lordship:--
"But the evils resulting from such open attempts to dispense with the
constitution were small, in comparison with the disturbance of the
regular course of legislation by systematic abuse of constitutional
forms, for the purpose of depriving the other branches of the
legislature of all real legislative authority.
"It remained, however, for the Assembly of Lower Canada to reduce the
practice to a regular system, in order that it might have the most
important institutions of the province periodically at its mercy, and
use the necessities of the government and the community for the purpose
of extorting the concession of whatever demands it might choose to make.
Objectionable in itself, on account of the uncertainty and continual
changes which it tended to introduce into legislation, this system of
temporary laws derived its worst character from the facilities which it
afforded to the practice of `tacking' together various legislative
measures.
"A singular instance of this occurred in 1836, with respect to the
renewal of the jury law, to which the Assembly attached great
importance, and to which the Legislative Council felt a strong
repugnance, on account of its having in effect placed the juries
entirely in the hands of the French portion of the population. In order
to secure the renewal of this law, the Assembly coupled it in the same
bill by which it renewed the tolls of the Lachine Canal, calculating on
the Council not venturing to defeat a measure of so much importance to
the revenue as the latter by resisting the former. The council,
however, rejected the bill; and thus the canal remained toll-free for a
whole season, because the two Houses differed about a jury law."
So much for their attempts to subvert the constitution. Now let us
inquire how far these patriots were disinterested in their enactments.
First, as to grants for local improvements, how were they applied? His
lordship observes:--
The great business of the Assemblies is, literally, parish business; the
making parish roads and parish bridges. There are in none of these
provinces any local bodies possessing authority to impose local
assessments, for the management of local affairs. To do these things is
the business of the Assembly; and to induce the Assembly to attend to
the particular interests of each county, is the especial business of its
county member. The surplus revenue of the province is swelled to as
large an amount as possible, by cutting down the payment of public
services to as low a scale as possible; and the real duties of
government are, sometimes, insufficiently provided for, in order that
more may be left to be divided among the constituent bodies. `When we
want a bridge, we take a judge to build it,' was the quaint and forcible
way in which a member of a provincial legislature described the tendency
to retrench, in the most necessary departments of the public service, in
order to satisfy the demands for local works. This fund is voted by the
Assembly on the motion of its members; the necessity of obtaining the
previous consent of the Crown to money votes never having been adopted
by the Colonial Legislatures from the practice of the British House of
Commons. There is a perfect scramble among the whole body to get as
much as possible of this fund for their respective constituents; cabals
are formed, by which the different members mutually play into each
other's hands; general politics are made to bear on private business,
and private business on general politics; and at the close of the
Parliament, the member who has succeeded in securing the largest portion
of the prize for his constituents, renders an easy account of his
stewardship, with confident assurance of his re-election.
"Not only did the leaders of the Lower Canadian Assembly avail
themselves of the patronage thus afforded, by the large surplus revenue
of the province, but they turned this system to much greater account, by
_using it to obtain influence over the constituencies_.
"The majority of the Assembly of Lower Canada is accused by its
opponents of having, in the most systematic and persevering manner,
employed this means of corrupting the electoral bodies. The adherents
of M. Papineau are said to have been lavish in their promises of the
benefits which they could obtain from the Assembly for the county, whose
suffrages they solicited. By such representations, the return of
members of opposition politics is asserted, in many instances, to have
been secured; and obstinate counties are alleged to have been sometimes
starved into submission, by an entire withdrawal of grants, until they
returned members favourable to the majority. Some of the English
members who voted with M. Papineau, excused themselves to their
countrymen by alleging that they were compelled to do so, in order to
get a road or a bridge, which their constituents desired. Whether it be
true or false, that the abuse was ever carried to such a pitch, it is
obviously one, which might have been easily and safely perpetrated by a
person possessing M. Papineau's influence in the Assembly."
Next for the grants for public education.
"But the most bold and extensive attempt for erecting a system of
patronage, wholly independent of the Government, was that which was, for
some time, carried into effect by the grants for education made by the
Assembly, and regulated by the Act, which the Legislative Council has
been most bitterly reproached with refusing to renew. It has been
stated, as a proof of the deliberate intention of the Legislative
Council to crush every attempt to civilise and elevate the great mass of
the people, that it thus stopped at once the working of about 1,000
schools, and deprived of education no less than 40,000 scholars, who
were actually profiting by the means of instruction thus placed within
their reach. But the reasons which induced, or rather compelled, the
Legislative Council to stop this system, are clearly stated in the
Report of that body, which contains the most unanswerable justification
of the course which it pursued. By that it appears, that the whole
superintendence and patronage of these schools had, by the expired law,
been vested in the hands of the county members; and they had been
allowed to manage the funds, without even the semblance of sufficient
accountability. The Members of the Assembly had thus a patronage, in
this single department, of about 25,000 pounds per annum, an amount
equal to half of the whole ordinary civil expenditure of the Province.
They were not slow in profiting by the occasion thus placed in their
hands; and as there existed in the Province no sufficient supply of
competent schoolmasters and mistresses, they nevertheless immediately
filled up the appointments with persons who were _utterly and obviously
incompetent. A great proportion of the teachers could neither read
nor write_. The gentleman whom I directed to inquire into the state of
education in the Province, showed me a petition from certain
schoolmasters, which had come into his hands; and the majority of the
signatures were those of _marks-men_. These ignorant teachers could
convey no useful instruction to their pupils; the utmost amount which
they taught them was to say the Catechism by rote. Even within seven
miles of Montreal, there was a schoolmistress thus unqualified. These
appointments were, as might have been expected, jobbed by the members
among the political partisans; nor were the funds _very honestly_
managed. In many cases the members were suspected, or accused, of
misapplying them to their own use; and in the case of Beauharnois, where
the seigneur, Mr Ellice, has, in the same spirit of judicious
liberality by which his whole management of that extensive property has
been marked, contributed most largely towards the education of his
tenants, the school funds were proved to have been misappropriated by
the county member. The whole system was a gross political abuse; and,
however laudable we must hold the exertions of those who really laboured
to relieve their country from the reproach of being the least furnished
with the means of education of any on the North American continent, the
more severely must we condemn those who sacrificed this noble end, and
perverted ample means to serve the purposes of party."
We will now claim the support of his lordship upon another question,
which is, how far is it likely that the law will be duly administered if
the power is to remain in the hands of the French Canadian population?
Speaking of the Commissioners of Small Causes, his lordship observes:--
"I shall only add, that some time previous to my leaving the Province, I
was very warmly and forcibly urged, by the highest legal authorities in
the country, to abolish all these tribunals at once, on the ground that
a great many of them, being composed entirely of disaffected French
Canadians, were busily occupied in harassing loyal subjects, by
entertaining actions against them on account of the part they had taken
in the late insurrection. There is no appeal from their decision; and
it was stated that they had in the most barefaced manner given damages
against loyal persons for acts done in the discharge of their duty, and
judgments by default against persons who were absent, as volunteers in
the service of the Queen, and enforced their judgment by levying
distresses on their property."
Relative to the greatest prerogative of an Englishman, the trial by
jury, his lordship observes:--
"But the most serious mischief in the administration of criminal
justice, arises from the entire perversion of the institution of juries,
by the political and national prejudices of the people. The trial by
jury was introduced with the rest of the English criminal law. For a
long time the composition of both grand and petit juries was settled by
the governor, and they were at first taken from the cities, which were
the _chefs lieux_ of the district. Complaints were made that this gave
an undue preponderance to the British in those cities; though, from the
proportions of the population, it is not very obvious how they could
thereby obtain more than an equal share. In consequence, however, of
these complaints, an order was issued under the government of Sir James
Kempt, directing the sheriffs to take the juries not only from the
cities, but from the adjacent country, for fifteen leagues in every
direction. An Act was subsequently passed, commonly called `Mr Viger's
Jury Act,' extending these limits to those of the district. The
principle of taking the jury from the whole district to which the
jurisdiction of the court extended, is, undoubtedly, in conformity with
the principles of English law; and Mr Viger's Act, adopting the other
regulations of the English jury law, provided a fair selection of
juries. But if we consider the hostility and proportions of the two
races, the practical effect of this law was to give the French an entire
preponderance in the juries. This Act was one of the temporary Acts of
the Assembly, and, having expired in 1836, the Legislative Council
refused to renew it. Since that period, there has been no jury law
whatever. The composition of the juries has been altogether in the
hands of the Government: private instructions, however, have been given
to the sheriff to act in conformity with Sir James Kempt's ordinance;
but though he has always done so, the public have had no security for
any fairness in the selection of the juries. There was no visible check
on the sheriff; the public knew that he could pack a jury whenever he
pleased, and supposed, as a matter of course, that an officer, holding a
lucrative appointment at the pleasure of Government, would be ready to
carry into effect those unfair designs which they were always ready to
attribute to the Government. When I arrived in the Province, the public
were expecting the trials of the persons accused of participation in the
late insurrection. I was, on the one hand, informed by the law officers
of the Crown, and the highest judicial authorities, that not the
slightest chance existed, under any fair system of getting a jury, that
would convict any of these men, however clear the evidence of their
guilt might be; and, on the other side, I was given to understand, that
the prisoners and their friends supposed that, as a matter of course,
they would be tried by packed juries, and that even the most clearly
innocent of them would be convicted.
"It is, indeed, a lamentable fact which must not be concealed, that
there does not exist in the minds of the people of this Province the
slightest confidence in the administration of criminal justice; nor were
the complaints, or the apparent grounds for them, confined to one party.
"The trial by jury is, therefore, at the present moment, not only
productive in Lower Canada of no confidence in the honest administration
of the laws, but also provides impunity for every political offence."
I have made these long quotations from Lord Durham's Report as his
lordship's authority, he having been sent out as Lord High Commissioner
to the Province, to make the necessary inquiries, must carry more weight
with the public than any observations of mine. All I can do is to
assert that his lordship is very accurate; and, having made this
assertion, I ask, what chance, therefore, is there of good government,
if the power, or any portion of the power, be left in the hands of those
who have in every way proved themselves so adverse to good government,
and who have wound up such conduct by open rebellion.
The position of the Executive in Canada has, for a long while, been just
what our position in this country would be if the House of Commons were
composed of Chartist leaders. Every act brought forward by them would
tend to revolution, and be an infringement of the Constitution, and all
that the House of Lords would have to do, would be firmly to reject
every bill carried to the Upper House. If our House of Commons were
filled with rebels and traitors, the Government must stand still, and
such has been for these ten years the situation of the Canadian
government; and, fortunate it is, that the outbreak has now put us in a
position that will enable us to retrieve our error, and re-model the
constitution of these Provinces. The questions which must therefore be
settled previous to any fresh attempts at legislation for these
Canadians, are,--are, or are not, the French population to have any
share in it? Can they be trusted? Are they in any way deserving of it?
In few words, are the Canadas to be hereafter considered as a French or
an English colony?
When we legislate, unless we intend to change, we must look to futurity.
The question, then, is not, who are the majority of to-day, but who
will hereafter be the majority in the Canadian Provinces; for all agree
upon one point, which is, that we must legislate for the majority. At
present, the population is nearly equal, but every year increases the
preponderance of the English; and it is to be trusted that, by good
management, and the encouragement of emigration, in half a century the
French population will be so swallowed up by the English, as to be
remembered but on record. If, again, we put the claims of British
loyalty against the treason of the French--the English energy, activity,
and capital, in opposition to the supineness, ignorance, and incapacity
of the French population,--it is evident, that not only in justice and
gratitude, but with a due regard to our own interests, the French
Canadians must now be _wholly deprived_ of any share of that power which
they have abused, and that confidence of which they have proved
themselves so unworthy. I am much pleased to find that Lord Durham has
expressed the same opinion, in the following remarks; and I trust their
importance will excuse to the reader the length of the quotation.
"The English have already in their hands the majority of the larger
masses of property in the country; they have the decided superiority of
intelligence on their side; they have the certainty that colonisation
must swell their numbers to a majority; and they belong to the race
which wields the Imperial Government, and predominates on the American
continent. If we now leave them in a minority, they will never abandon
the assurance of being a majority hereafter, and never cease to continue
the present contest with all the fierceness with which it now rages. In
such a contest, they will rely on the sympathy of their countrymen at
home; and if that is denied them, they feel very confident of being able
to awaken the sympathy of their neighbours of kindred origin. They feel
that if the British Government intends to maintain its hold of the
Canadas, it can rely on the English population alone; that if it
abandons its colonial possessions, they must become a portion of that
great Union which will speedily send forth its swarms of settlers, and,
by force of numbers and activity, quickly master every other race. The
French Canadians, on the other hand, are but the remains of an ancient
colonisation, and are and ever must be isolated in the midst of an
Anglo-Saxon world. Whatever may happen, whatever government shall be
established over them, British or American, they can see no hope for
their nationality. They can only sever themselves from the British
empire by waiting till some general cause of dissatisfaction alienates
them, together with the surrounding colonies, and leaves them part of an
English confederacy; or, if they are able, by effecting a separation
singly, and so either merging in the American Union, or keeping up for a
few years a wretched semblance of feeble independence, which would
expose them more than ever to the intrusion of the surrounding
population. I am far from wishing to encourage, indiscriminately, these
pretensions to superiority on the part of any particular race; but while
the greater part of every portion of the American continent is still
uncleared and unoccupied, and while the English exhibit such constant
and marked activity in colonisation, so long will it be idle to imagine
that there is any portion of that continent into which that race will
not penetrate, or in which, when it has penetrated, it will not
predominate. It is but a question of time and mode; it is but to
determine whether the small number of French who now inhabit Lower
Canada shall be made English, under a government which can protect them,
or whether the process shall be delayed until a much larger number shall
have to undergo, at the rude hands of its uncontrolled rivals, the
extinction of a nationality strengthened and embittered by continuance.
"And is this French Canadian nationality one which, for the good merely
of that people, we ought to strive to perpetuate, even if it were
possible? I know of no national distinctions marking and continuing a
more hopeless inferiority. The language, the laws, the character of the
North American Continent are English; and every race but the English (I
apply this to all who speak the English language) appears there in a
condition of inferiority. It is to elevate them from that inferiority
that I desire to give to the Canadians our English character. I desire
it for the sake of the educated classes, whom the distinction of
language and manners keeps apart from the great empire to which they
belong. At the best, the fate of the educated and aspiring colonist is,
at present, one of little hope, and little activity; but the French
Canadian is cast still further into the shade, by a language and habits
foreign to those of the Imperial Government. A spirit of exclusion has
closed the higher professions on the educated classes of the French
Canadians, more, perhaps, than was absolutely necessary; but it is
impossible for the utmost liberality on the part of the British
Government to give an equal position in the general competition of its
vast population to those who speak a foreign language. I desire the
amalgamation still more for the sake of the humbler classes. Their
present state of rude and equal plenty is fast deteriorating under the
pressure of population in the narrow limits to which they are confined.
If they attempt to better their condition, by extending themselves over
the neighbouring country, they will necessarily get more and more
mingled with an English population; if they prefer remaining stationary,
the greater part of them must be labourers in the employ of English
capitalists. In either case it would appear, that the great mass of the
French Canadians are doomed, in some measure, to occupy an inferior
position, and to be dependent on the English for employment. The evils
of poverty and dependence would merely be aggravated in a ten-fold
degree, by a spirit of jealous and resentful nationality, which should
separate the working class of the community from the possessors of
wealth and employers of labour.
"I will not here enter into the question of the effect of the mode of
life and division of property among the French Canadians, on the
happiness of the people. I will admit, for the moment, that it is as
productive of well-being as its admirers assert. But, be it good or
bad, the period in which it is practicable, is past; for there is not
enough unoccupied land left in that portion of the country in which
English are not already settled, to admit of the present French
population possessing farms sufficient to supply them with their present
means of comfort, under their present system of husbandry. No
population has increased by mere births so rapidly as that of the French
Canadians has since the conquest. At that period their number was
estimated at 60,000: it is now supposed to amount to more than seven
times as many. There has been no proportional increase of cultivation,
or of produce from the land already under cultivation; and the increased
population has been in a great measure provided for by mere continued
subdivision of estates. In a Report from a Committee of the Assembly in
1826, of which Mr Andrew Steuart was chairman, it is stated, that since
1784 the population of the seignories had quadrupled, while the number
of cattle had only doubled, and the quantity of land in cultivation had
only increased one-third. Complaints of distress are constant, and the
deterioration of the condition of a great part of the population
admitted on all hands. A people so circumstanced must alter their mode
of life. If they wish to maintain the same kind of rude, but
well-provided agricultural existence, it must be by removing into those
parts of the country in which the English are settled; or if they cling
to their present residence, they can only obtain a livelihood by
deserting their present employment, and working for wages on farms, or
on commercial occupations under English capitalists. But their present
proprietary and inactive condition is one which no political
arrangements can perpetuate. Were the French Canadians to be guarded
from the influx of any other population, their condition in a few years
would be similar to that of the poorest of the Irish peasantry.
"There can hardly be conceived a nationality more destitute of all that
can invigorate and elevate a people, than that which is exhibited by the
descendants of the French in Lower Canada, owing to their retaining
their peculiar language and manners. They are a people with no history,
and no literature. The literature of England is written in a language
which is not theirs; and the only literature which their language
renders familiar to them, is that of a nation from which they have been
separated by eighty years of a foreign rule, and still more by those
changes which the Revolution and its consequences have wrought in the
whole political, moral, and social state of France. Yet it is on a
people whom recent history, manners, and modes of thought, so entirely
separate from them, that the French Canadians are wholly dependent for
almost all the instruction and amusement derived from books: it is on
this essentially foreign literature, which is conversant about events,
opinions and habits of life, perfectly strange and unintelligible to
them, that they are compelled to be dependent. Their newspapers are
mostly written by natives of France, who have either come to try their
fortunes in the province, or been brought into it by the party leaders,
in order to supply the dearth of literary talent available for the
political press. In the same way their nationality operates to deprive
them of the enjoyments and civilising influence of the arts. Though
descended from the people in the world that most generally love, and
have most successfully cultivated the drama--though living on a
continent, in which almost every town, great or small, has an English
theatre, the French population of Lower Canada, cut off from every
people that speak its own language, can support no national stage.
"In these circumstances, I should be indeed surprised if the more
reflecting part of the French Canadians entertained at present any hope
of continuing to preserve their nationality. Much as they struggle
against it, it is obvious that the process of assimilation to English
habits is already commencing. The English language is gaining ground,
as the language of the rich and of the employers of labour naturally
will. It appeared by some of the few returns, which had been received
by the Commissioner of Inquiry into the state of education, that there
are about ten times the number of French children in Quebec learning
English, as compared with the English children who learn French. A
considerable time must, of course, elapse before the change of a
language can spread over a whole people; and justice and policy alike
require, that while the people continue to use the French language,
their government should take no such means to force the English language
upon them as would, in fact, deprive the great mass of the community of
the protection of the laws. But, I repeat, that the alteration of the
character of the province ought to be immediately entered on, and
firmly, though cautiously, followed up; that in any plan, which may be
adopted for the future management of Lower Canada, the first object
ought to be that of making it an English province; and that, with this
end in view, the ascendancy should never again be placed in any hands
but those of an English population. Indeed, at the present moment, this
is obviously necessary: in the state of mind in which I have described
the French Canadian population, as not only now being, but as likely for
a long while to remain, the trusting them with an entire control over
this province would be, in fact, only facilitating a rebellion. Lower
Canada must be governed now, as it must be hereafter, by an English
population; and thus the policy, which the necessities of the moment
force on us, is in accordance with that suggested by a comprehensive
view of the future and permanent improvement of the province."
VOLUME THREE, CHAPTER SIX.
THE CANADAS, CONTINUED.
I have quoted largely from Lord Durham's Report, as in most points
relative to _Lower Canada_, especially as to the causes which produced
the rebellion, the unwarrantable conduct of the Legislative Assembly,
and his opinions as to the character of the French Canadians, I consider
that the remarks are correct: they are corroborated by my own opinions
and observations: but I think that the information he has received
relative to _Upper Canada_ is not only very imperfect, but certainly
derived from parties who were not to be trusted: take one simple
instance. His lordship says in his Report, that the petitioners in
favour of Mathews and Lount, who were executed, amounted to 30,000,
whereas it is established, that the whole number of six natures only
amounted to 4,574. Those who deceive his lordship in one point would
deceive him in another; indeed his lordship had a task of peculiar
difficulty, going out as he did, vested with such powers, and the
intents of his mission being so well known. It is not those who are in
high office that are likely to ascertain the truth, which is much more
likely to be communicated to a humble individual like myself, who
travels through a country and hears what is said on both sides. The
causes stated by his lordship for discontent in Upper Canada are not
correct. I have before said, and I repeat it, that they may almost be
reduced to the following: the check put upon their enterprise and
industry by the acts of the Lower Canadian Assembly; and the favour
shewn to the French by the Colonial Office, aided by the machinations of
the American party, who fomented any appearance of discontent.
There is in his lordship's Report, an apparent leaning towards the
United States, and its institutions, at which I confess that I am
surprised. Why his lordship, after shewing that the representative
government did all they possibly could to overthrow the constitution,
should propose an increase of power to that representative government,
unless, indeed, he would establish a democracy in the provinces, I am at
a loss to imagine.
That a representative body similar to that which attempted to overturn
the constitution in Lower Canada can work well, and even usefully reform
when in the hands of loyal English subjects, is acknowledged by his
lordship, who says, "the course of the Parliamentary contest in Upper
Canada has not been marked by that singular neglect of the great duties
of a legislative body, which I have remarked in the proceedings of the
Parliament of Lower Canada. The statute book of the Upper Province
abounds with useful and well-constructed measures of reform, and
presents an honourable contrast to that of the Lower Province."
Indeed, unless I have misunderstood his lordship he appears to be
inconsistent, for in one portion he claims the extension of the power of
the representative, and in another he complains of the want of vigorous
administration of the royal prerogative, for he says:--
"The defective system of administration in Lower Canada, commences at
the very _source_ of power; and the efficiency of the public service is
impaired throughout by the entire want in the colony of any vigorous
administration of the prerogative of the crown."
To increase the power of the representative is to increase the power of
the people, in fact to make them the _source_ of power; and yet his
lordship in this sentence acknowledges that the crown is the _source_ of
power, and that a more vigorous administration of its prerogative is
required.
There are other points commented upon in his lordship's Report, which
claim earnest consideration: one is, that of the propriety of municipal
institutions. Local improvements, when left in the hands of
representative assemblies, are seldom judicious or impartial, and should
therefore be made over either to the inhabitants or executive. The
system of townships has certainly been one great cause of the prosperity
of the United States, each township taxing itself for its own
improvement. Although the great roads extending through the whole of
the Union are in the hands of the Federal Government, and the States
Government take up the improvement on an extensive scale in the States
themselves, the townships, knowing exactly what they require, tax
themselves for their minor advantages. The system in England is much
the same, although perhaps not so well regulated as in America. Are
not, however, municipal institutions valuable in another point of view?
Do they not prepare the people for legislating? are they not the
rudiments of legislation by which a free people learn to tax themselves?
And indeed, it may also be asked, would not the petty influence and
authority confided to those who are ambitious by their townsmen satisfy
their ambition, and prevent them from becoming demagogues and disturbing
the country?
Whatever may be the future arrangements for ruling these provinces, it
appears to me that there are two great evils in the present system; one
is, that the governors of the provinces have not sufficient
discretionary power, and the other, that they are so often removed. The
evils arising from the first cause have been pointed out in Lord
Durham's Report:--
"The complete and unavoidable ignorance in which the British public, and
even the great body of its legislators, are with respect to the real
interests of distant communities, so entirely different from their own,
produces a general indifference, which nothing but so me great colonial
crisis ever dispels; and responsibility to Parliament, or to the public
opinion of Great Britain, would, except on these great and rare
occasions, be positively mischievous, if it were not impossible. The
repeated changes caused by political events at home having no connexion
with colonial affairs, have left, to most of the various representatives
of the Colonial Department in Parliament, too little time to acquire
even an elementary knowledge of the condition of those numerous and
heterogeneous communities for which they have had both to administer and
legislate. The persons with whom the real management of these affairs
has or ought to have rested, have been the permanent but utterly
irresponsible members of the office. Thus the real government of the
colony has been entirely dissevered from the slight nominal
responsibility which exists. Apart even from this great and primary
evil of the system, the presence of multifarious business thus thrown on
the Colonial Office, and the repeated changes of its ostensible
directors, have produced disorders in the management of public business
which have occasioned serious mischief, and very great irritation. This
is not my own opinion merely; for I do but repeat that of a select
committee of the House of Assembly in Upper Canada, who, in a Report
dated February 8, 1838, say, `It appears to your committee, that one of
the chief causes of dissatisfaction with the administration of colonial
affairs arises from the frequent changes in the office of secretary of
state, to whom the Colonial department is intrusted. Since the time the
late Lord Bathurst retired from that charge, in 1827, your committee
believe there has not been less than eight colonial ministers, and that
the policy of each successive statesman has been more or less marked by
a difference from that of his predecessor. This frequency of change in
itself almost necessarily entails two evils; _first_, an imperfect
knowledge of the affairs of the colonies on the part of the chief
secretary, and the consequent necessity of submitting important details
to the subordinate officers of the department; and, _second_, the want
of stability and firmness in the general policy of the Government, and
which, of course, creates much uneasiness on the part of the Governors,
and other officers of the colonies, as to what measures may be approved.
"`But undoubtedly (continues the Report) by far the greatest objection
to the system is the impossibility it occasions of any colonial
minister, unaided by persons possessing local knowledge, becoming
acquainted with the wants, wishes, feelings, and prejudices of the
inhabitants of the colonies, during his temporary continuance in office,
and of deciding satisfactorily upon the conflicting statements and
claims that are brought before him. A firm, unflinching resolution to
adhere to the principles of the constitution, and to maintain the just
and necessary powers of the crown, would do much towards supplying the
want of local information. But it would be performing more than can be
reasonably expected from human sagacity, if any man, or set of men,
should always decide in an unexceptionable manner on subjects that have
their origin thousands of miles from the seat of the Imperial
Government, where they reside, and of which they have no personal
knowledge whatever; and therefore wrong may be often done to
individuals, or a false view taken of some important political question,
that in the end may throw a whole community into difficulty and
dissension, not from the absence of the most anxious desire to do right,
but from an imperfect knowledge of facts upon which to form an
opinion.'"
This is all very true. There is nothing so difficult as to legislate
for a colony from home. The very best theory is useless; it requires
that you should be on the spot, and adapt your measures to the
circumstances and the growing wants of the country. I may add that it
is wrong for the Home Government to consider the government given to the
colony as permanent. All that the mother-country can do is to give it
one which, in theory, appears best adapted to secure the true freedom
and happiness of the people; but leaving that form of government to be
occasionally modified, so as to meet the changes which the colony may
require, and to conform with its wants and its rising interests: all of
which being unforeseen could not be provided for by the prescience of
man. The governor, therefore, of a colony should be invested with more
discretionary power.
The constant removal of the governor from the colony is also much to be
deprecated. On his first arrival, he can only have formed theoretical
views, which, in all probability, he will have to discard in a few
months. He finds himself surrounded by people in office, interested in
their own peculiar policy, and viewing things through their own medium.
In all colonies you will usually find an oligarchy, cemented by mutual
interest and family connection, and so bound up together as to become
formidable if opposed to the Government. Into the hands of these people
a governor must, to a certain degree, fall; and must remain in them
until he has had time to see clearly and to judge for himself. But by
the time that he has just disenthralled himself, he is removed, and
another appointed in his place, and the work has to commence _de novo_.
Lord Durham has proposed that the Canadas should be united, and there
certainly are some benefits which would arise _could_ their union take
place. He asserts most positively that the French party must be
annihilated. He says:--"It must henceforth be the first and steady
purpose of the British Government to establish an English population,
with English laws and language in this province, and to trust its
government to none but a decidedly English legislature." This is plain
and clear; but how is it to be effected? The land of Lower Canada is
still in the hands of the French, and nearly five hundred thousand out
of six hundred thousand of the population are French.
How, then, are we to make the Lower Canadas English? We may buy up the
seigneuries; we may insist upon the English language being used in the
Assembly and courts of law, in public documents, etcetera; we may alter
the laws to correspond with those of the mother-country; but will that
make the province English? We may even insist that none but
English-born subjects, or Canadian-born English, shall be elected to the
House of Assembly, or hold any public office; but will that make the
province English? Certainly not. There is no want of English-born
demagogues, as well as French, in the province. The elections of the
Lower province are decided by the Canadian French, who are in the
majority, and they would find no difficulty in obtaining representatives
who would continue the former system of controlling the executive and
advocating rebellion. Is it, then, by altogether taking away from the
Canadian French the elective franchise and giving it entirely into the
hands of the English, that the province is to be made English? If so,
although I admit the French have proved themselves undeserving, and have
by their rebellion forfeited their birth-right, you then place them in
the situation of an injured, oppressed, and sacrificed people; reducing
them to a state of slavery which, notwithstanding their offences, would
still be odious to the present age. By what means, therefore, does his
lordship intend that the province shall become English--by immigration?
That requires time; and before the immigration necessary can take place
the Canadas may be again thrown into a rebellion by the French
machinations. In our future legislation for the Canadas, we must always
bear in mind that the French population will be opposed to the
Government and to the mother-country; and that there is no chance of a
better state of feeling in the Lower province until they shall become
amalgamated and swallowed up by British immigration. Until that takes
place, the union of the Canadas will only create a conflict between the
two races, as opposed to each other as fire and water, and nearly equal
in numbers. It will be an immense cauldron, bubbling, steaming, and
boiling over--an incessant scene of strife and irritation--a source of
anxiety and expense to the mother-country, and, so far from going
a-head, I should not be surprised if, in twenty years hence, the English
population should be found to be smaller than it now is. Political
dissensions would paralyse enterprise, frighten away capital, and, in
all probability, involve us in a conflict with the United States.
Until, therefore, I understand how the Lower Province is to become
British, I cannot think a union between the Canadas advisable.
Whether his lordship is aware of it or not, I cannot say; but there
appears to me to be a strong inclination to democracy in all his
proposed plans, and an evident leaning towards the institutions of the
United States. He wishes to make the Executive Government responsible
to the people; he would make one Federal Union of all our provinces, and
institute the Supreme Court of Appeal which they have in the United
States. In short, change but the word governor for president, and we
should have the American constitution, and a "free and enlightened
people;"--that is to say, the French Canadians, who can _neither read
nor write_, governing themselves.
So far from a Federal union between all our transatlantic possessions
being advisable, I should think, from their contiguity with the
Americans, that it would be advisable to keep them separate. I am of
the same opinion respecting the Canadas. I consider that, even as two
provinces, they are too vast in territory already. Whether it be a
woman looking after her servants and household affairs, or a captain
commanding a ship, or a governor ruling over a province, large or small
as may be the scale of operation, one of the most important points in
good legislation, is the _eye_. A governor of a vast province cannot
possibly be aware of the wants of the various portions of the province.
He is obliged to take the reports of others, and consequently very often
legislates unadvisedly.
That the two provinces cannot remain in their present state is
acknowledged by all. The question therefore is, can we rationally
expect any improvement from their union? Perhaps it may appear
presumptuous in me to venture to differ from Lord Durham, who is a
statesman born and bred--for this is not a party question in which a
difference of politics may bias one: it is a question as to the
well-governing of a most important colony, and no one will for a moment
doubt that his lordship is as anxious as the Duke of Wellington, and
every other well-wisher to his country, to decide upon that which he
considers honestly and honourably to be the best. It is really,
therefore, with great deference that I submit to him, whether another
arrangement should not be well considered, before the union of the two
provinces is finally decided upon.
His lordship has very truly observed, that in legislating, we are to
legislate for futurity; if not, we must be prepared for change. Acting
upon this sound principle, we are to legislate upon the supposition that
the whole country of Upper and Lower Canada _is_ well peopled. We are
not to legislate for the present population, but for the future. And
how is this to be done in the present condition of the provinces? Most
assuredly by legislating for territory--for the amount of square acres
which will eventually be filled up by emigration. I perfectly agree
with his lordship in the remark that, "if the Canadians are to be
deprived of their representative government, it would be better to do it
in a straightforward way;" but I submit that it would be done in a
straightforward way by the plan I am about to submit to him, and I
consider it more advisable than that of convulsing the two provinces by
bringing together two races so inveterate against each other. Instead
of a union of the two provinces, I should think it more advisable to
separate the Canadas into three: Upper, Lower, and Middle Canada,--the
line of demarcation, and the capitals of each Province appearing already
to be marked out. The Lower province would have Quebec, and be
separated from the Middle province by the Ottawa river. The Middle
province would have Montreal, and would extend to a line drawn from Lake
Simcoe to Lake Ontario, throwing into it _all the townships on the
American side of the St Lawrence_, which would do away with the great
objection of the Upper province being dependent upon the Lower for the
transport of goods up the river, and the necessity of dividing between
the provinces the custom-house revenues. Under any circumstances, it
would be very advantageous to have sport of entry and a custom-house, in
or nearer to the Gulf of St Lawrence, as ships would then be able to
make an extra voyage every year. I should say that about Gaspe would be
the spot. This bay being on the American side of the river St Lawrence
would become the entry port for the Upper and Middle provinces,
rendering them wholly independent of the Lower. The Upper province
would comprehend all the rest of the territory west of the line, drawn
from Lake Superior, and have Toronto for its capital. This would be a
pretty fair division of territory, and each province would be more than
sufficient for the eye of the most active governor. Let each province
have its separate sub-governor and House of Assembly; but let the Upper
House, or Senate, be selected of _equal numbers_ from _each_ province,
and assemble at Quebec, to decide, with the _Governor-in-chief of the
provinces_, upon the passing or rejecting of the bills of the three
respective Lower Houses. This, although perfectly fair, would at once
give in the _Senate_ the preponderance to the English of the Upper and
Middle provinces. It would still leave to the Lower Canadians their
franchise; and their House of Assembly would be a species of
safety-valve for the demagogues to give vent to their opinions, (without
their being capable of injuring the interests of the provinces,) until
they gradually amalgamated with the British immigration. I merely offer
this plan as a suggestion to his lordship, and, of course, enter into no
further detail.