THE CANADIAN REVOLUTION.
The progress of years did not allay, but, on the contrary, steadily
enhanced the fever of political discontent which now pervaded the
colonies. The measure of representation which they enjoyed had seemed,
when the Act of Pitt conferred it upon them, fairly satisfactory; but
after the close of the great European war political opinion ripened
fast, and the freedom which had seemed ample in 1791 was intolerably
insufficient forty years later. The colonists perceived that they were
living under a despotism. Their Executive and one of their legislative
chambers were appointed by the Crown, without regard to the popular
wish. Only the Lower Chamber was chosen by the people, and its action
was constantly frustrated by the Governor, the aristocratic advisers by
whom his policy was guided, and his ally the Council. On their southern
border lay the territories of a great nation, whose people enjoyed
complete political freedom and appointed all their rulers. The United
States had so prospered that their population was now tenfold that of
Canada; and their more rapid growth was traced, in the general belief,
to the larger freedom of their institutions. In England the engrossing
occupation of the people had been, for many years, the extending of
their liberties, the rescue of political power from the hands by which
it had been irregularly appropriated. The Englishmen of Canada could
not remain unmoved by the things which had come to pass among the
Englishmen of America and of England.
[Sidenote: 1820 A.D.] When the Canadians of the Upper Province were
awakening to a perception of the evils under which they suffered,
there arrived among them an adventurous young Scotchman destined to
leave deep traces on their political history. His name was William
Lyon Mackenzie. He had already played many parts in various Scotch
and English towns, with but indifferent success. In Canada he resumed
his quest of a livelihood; but finding nothing at first to meet his
requirements, he devoted himself to political reform, and set up a
newspaper. His love of reform and his hatred of abuses were genuine
and deep; his mind was acute and energetic; but his temperament was
too impulsive to permit sufficient consideration of the course which
he intended to pursue. The very first number of his paper awakened
the sensibilities of all who profited by corruption. He continued his
unwelcome diligence in the investigation and exposure of abuses, and in
rousing the public mind to demand an enlargement of political privilege.
There were many grounds of difference between the party of Reform and
the governing power. Justice, it was said, was impurely administered;
the Governor persisted in refusing to yield to the Assembly control
over certain important branches of the public revenue, and continued
to administer these at his own pleasure. The Governors fell into the
hands of the small influential party known as the Family Compact,
which filled all public offices with its own adherents. The grievances
of which the Assembly complained were debated in a spirit of intense
bitterness. On one occasion the Assembly censured the Governor, and
was in turn rebuked for its want of courtesy. Mackenzie was five
times expelled from the House, and was as often elected. On one
occasion the Assembly refused to grant supplies to the Governor, and
the Governor avenged himself by rejecting the Bill which members had
passed for payment of their own salaries. But gradually, with growing
enlightenment, all these trivial discontents consolidated into one loud
and urgent demand for responsible government. It was perceived that
with a Ministry responsible to the Assembly an adequate measure of
constitutional liberty would be secured.
The politics of the Lower Province were more complex. There was a
British Reform party, having aims identical with those of their
brethren in the west: the overthrow of the despotic Family Compact,
full control of revenue by the Assembly, better administration of
justice, improved management of Crown lands--all summed up in the
demand for responsible government. There was also a French party,
greatly more numerous than the other, and seeming to concur with it in
many of its opinions. But the real aims of the Frenchmen were wholly at
variance with those of the British. They desired to increase the power
of the Assembly, because they themselves composed seven-eighths of that
body. It was still their hope to establish a French nation on the banks
of the St. Lawrence; to preserve old French law and custom; to shut out
British immigrants, and possess the soil for their own people.
The British Government was bewildered by the complicated strife in
which it was constantly importuned to interfere. There were petitions
full of grievances; on one occasion there were ninety-two resolutions,
which were laid before King and Parliament by the French party, and
copiously answered by the British; there were constant and querulous
statements of wrongs presented to the Governor. Out of doors a bitter
and uncompromising strife raged. The British were denounced as tyrants,
usurpers, foreigners. The French were scorned as a subjugated race, and
reprobated as ungrateful rebels who had been treated too leniently.
The British Government manifested an anxious desire to understand and
to heal those pernicious strifes. It decreed Committees of Inquiry; it
sent Commissions to investigate on the spot; it appointed conciliatory
Governors; it made numerous small concessions, in the vain hope of
appeasing the entangled and inexplicable discontents of its distant
subjects.
The disaffected Frenchmen were ruled, during their unhappy progress
towards rebellion, by Louis Joseph Papineau, a man whose years should
have brought him wisdom, for he was now in middle-life; ambitious,
restless, eloquent, with power to lead his ignorant countrymen at his
pleasure, and without prudence to direct his authority to good ends.
[Sidenote: 1837 A.D.] This mischievous person occupied himself in
persuading the peasants of the Montreal district to throw off the
British yoke and establish themselves as an independent nation. His
efforts were not wholly without success. The peasantry began to arm
and to drill. The symbols of French dominion, the tri-coloured flag
and the eagle, were constantly displayed; the revolutionary songs of
France were sung by turbulent mobs in the streets of Montreal. These
evidences of inflamed feeling pointed decisively to violence. The
Roman Catholic clergy took part with the Government, and sought to
hold the excited people to their duty by threatening disturbers of the
peace with the extreme penalties of ecclesiastical law. Many persons
were restrained by the terrors thus announced, and the dimensions of
the rebellious movement were lessened. But no considerations, sacred
or secular, sufficed to restrain Papineau and his deluded followers
from a series of violent proceedings, which have been dignified by the
name of rebellion, but which were really nothing more than serious
riots. Bands of armed peasantry ranged the country around Montreal;
the well-affected inhabitants sought shelter in the city, and their
homesteads were ravaged by the invaders. At several points a few
hundred men drew together to withstand the Government forces and were
defeated. One such body, unable to abide the conflict which they had
provoked, threw down their arms and implored pardon. During a period
of five or six weeks these disorders continued, but the firm action of
the Governor restored tranquillity. Papineau, the unworthy instigator
of the disturbances, fled so soon as fighting began, and sought
inglorious security beyond the frontier. A little later, some bodies of
American marauders appeared in the Montreal district, hoping to renew
the disturbance; but they too were quickly dispersed. The Governor
acted with much leniency towards those rebels who became his prisoners.
With few exceptions they were set at liberty; and even those who were
detained for a time were discharged on giving security for future good
behaviour. Of the foreigners who were captured in arms, several were
put to death, and many suffered lengthened captivity.
The disorders of the Lower Province had scarcely been quelled, when
Mackenzie, followed by the more extreme and injudicious advocates of
reform, precipitated in Upper Canada a movement equally insignificant
and unsuccessful. These persons went to war avowedly to secure complete
responsibility of government to the people. This was undeniably the
prevailing desire of the province; but it was found that while many
desired this excellent reform, few were prepared to incur for its sake
the evils which rebellion must necessarily bring. Fifteen hundred men
enrolled themselves under the banner of Mackenzie. An attack upon
Toronto was devised, and was defeated with ease. [Sidenote: Dec.
1837 A.D.] Mackenzie fled to the United States, where he was able to
organize some bands of lawless men for a marauding expedition into
Canada. They, too, were routed, and order was easily restored.
These wretched disturbances served a purpose which peaceful agitation
had thus far failed to accomplish--they compelled the earnest attention
of the British Parliament to the wishes of the colonists. On the eve
of the rebellion, Government had explicitly refused to grant the boon
of ministerial responsibility, and carried an Act by which powers were
given to the Governor to make certain payments which the Assembly had
for some years refused to make. The British Government of the day was a
Liberal Government. Lord John Russell was one of its members, a man who
for many years had devoted himself to the cause of reform at home. It
was Lord John Russell who now led the House of Commons in its denial to
the colonies of that popular control over government which was deemed
essential for England. No perception of the glaring inconsistency
disturbed the minds of the most genuine reformers, for an erring theory
of the true position and rights of colonists still prevailed. Even
the Liberal party had not yet learned to recognize an Englishman who
had taken up his abode in the valley of the St. Lawrence as the equal
in political right of the Englishman who remained at home. A colony
was still an association of persons who had established themselves on
some distant portion of national territory, and whose affairs were
to be administered with reference chiefly to the interests of the
mother country. Colonists were not allowed to trade freely where they
chose. They must purchase from England all the goods which they might
require; all their surplus productions must be sent home for sale.
Their attempts to manufacture were sternly repressed. It was expected
of them that they should cultivate that portion of the national soil
which had been assigned to them, reserving for the mother country the
profitable supply of all their wants, the profitable disposal of all
their productions. The ships of strangers were rigorously excluded; no
foreign keel had ploughed the waters of the St. Lawrence since French
ships bore home to Europe the men whom Wolfe defeated.
No less clear was the political inferiority of the colonist. A colony
was still regarded as a subordinate and dependent portion of the
empire, whose position rendered impossible its admission to equality
of privilege. It could not be intrusted with the unqualified control
of its own destinies; it must needs accept also the guidance of the
Colonial Office. This was the tie which bound the colony to the mother
country; but for this Canada would certainly yield to the influences
of prosperous republicanism in its neighbourhood, and cast off the
authority of the Crown. So reasoned the Whig statesmen of forty years
ago; and their reasoning was replied to by widespread discontent, the
depth of which was revealed by lurid and ominous flashes of rebellion.
It became necessary to revise the traditional estimate of colonial
right.
[Sidenote: October, 1839 A.D.] The progress of ministerial opinion
made itself apparent in the despatches of Lord John Russell. His
Lordship would not yet explicitly acknowledge the responsibility of
the Executive to the representatives of the people. But he assured the
colonists that Her Majesty would in future look to their “affectionate
attachment” as the best security for permanent dominion, and that she
would not maintain among them any policy which opinion condemned. The
friends of responsible government perceived that their hour of triumph
was near.
Many evils had flowed from the separation of the provinces effected
by Pitt fifty years before. It still suited the interests of the
unreforming party in the Upper Province and the French Canadians in
the Lower to maintain the separation. But it was clear to all men who
sought merely the public good that existing arrangements had become
unendurable. The position of both colonies called urgently for measures
of reconstruction. The constitution of Lower Canada had been suspended
during the rebellion, and had not yet been restored. The finances of
the Upper Province were in disorder; public works were discontinued;
business was paralyzed; immigration had ceased. It was widely felt that
industrial progress was fatally impeded by separation; that the only
remedy for the evils under which Canada suffered was the legislative
union of the two provinces.
The British Government was known to favour this measure; the Liberals
in both provinces were eager in its support; the Conservatives of
the Upper Province ceased from resistance under loyal impulses; the
French Canadians had by their attitude during the late disturbances
forfeited their claim to consideration. [Sidenote: July, 1840 A.D.] The
Union Bill was passed by the Legislatures of both provinces and by the
Imperial Parliament, and the enfeebling separation which the jealousies
of an earlier time had imposed was finally cancelled.
Canada was henceforth to be ruled by a Governor, a Legislative Council,
and a Legislative Assembly. The Governor and Council were appointed by
the Crown; the Assembly was chosen by the people. The representation
was shared equally by the provinces--ten members of Council, and
forty-two members of Assembly being assigned to each. The Assembly
had control of all branches of the public revenue. The Governor was
advised by an Executive Council of eight members, who, if they were
members of Assembly, required re-election when they accepted a place
in the Council. When the Council no longer commanded a majority in the
Assembly it ceased to hold office. The long-desired boon of responsible
government was thus at length secured; the traditional inferiority of
the colonist was cancelled; it was recognized that an Englishman who
bore his part in building up new empires in distant places did not
therefore forfeit the rights of a free-born English subject. To insure
and hasten the use of this new method of colonial government, a command
came to the Governor-General, in the Queen’s name, to the effect that
he should rule in accordance with the feelings and opinions of the
people, as these were expressed by the popular representatives. For a
few years there was an imperfect application of a principle hitherto
unknown in Canadian history; but gradually the people learned to
enforce and the Government to recognize the newly conferred privilege.
The great revolution which raised the Canadians to the rank of a fully
self-governing people was complete.
The foundations were now laid upon which the colonists could peacefully
build themselves up into a great industrial nation. But the antipathies
of race which had hitherto vexed and frustrated them were not
immediately allayed. The united British population of the two provinces
now outnumbered the French, and was able to give law to the colony.
The French element was surrounded by a British element of superior
strength, of superior intelligence and energy, attracting continually
reinforcements from the mother country. The hope of erecting a French
power in the valley of the St. Lawrence was now extinct, and the
Frenchmen had no longer any higher prospect than that of peaceful
citizenship under the rule of men whom they regarded as foreigners.
They remained apart, following their own customs, cherishing their own
prejudices, refusing to intermingle with the British population among
whom they lived.
Political animosity was for some years exceptionally bitter. Soon after
the union it was roused to unwonted fury by a proposal to compensate
those persons in Lower Canada who had suffered destruction of their
property during the rebellion. The British Conservative party offered
a discreditable resistance to this proposal. It was not intended that
any persons engaged in the rebellion should participate in the benefits
of the measure. But the unreasonable British asserted that they, the
loyal men, were being taxed for the advantage of rebels. [Sidenote:
1849 A.D.] When the Bill was passed, the rabble of Montreal pelted with
stones Lord Elgin, who was then Governor-General; they threatened,
in their unbridled rage, to annex themselves with the United States;
they invaded and dispersed the Assembly; they burned to the ground
the building in which their Parliament held its sittings. From that
day Montreal ceased to be the seat of Government. For a few years
Parliament alternated between Quebec and Toronto. That system having
been found inconvenient, the Queen was requested to select a permanent
home for the Government of the colony. [Sidenote: 1858 A.D.] Her
Majesty’s choice fell upon Bytown, a thriving little city, occupying a
situation of romantic beauty, on the river which divided the provinces.
The capital of the Dominion received a name more fully in keeping with
its metropolitan dignity, and was henceforth styled Ottawa.
The course of prosperous years soothed the bitterness of party hatred,
and the Canadian Legislature applied itself to measures of internal
amelioration and development. Thus far the inestimable advantage of
municipal institutions had not been enjoyed in Canada. The Legislature
regulated all local concerns;--took upon itself the charge of roads,
bridges, and schools; of the poor; of such sanitary arrangements as
existed; and the people contracted the enfeebling habit of leaving
their local affairs to be administered by the Government. [Sidenote:
1849 A.D.] This grave evil was now corrected; the Legislature was
relieved of unnecessary burdens; and the people learned to exercise an
intelligent interest in the conduct of their own local business.
Canada had now to accept the perfect freedom of trade which the mother
country had at length adopted for herself. [Sidenote: 1846-50 A.D.]
All restraints were now withdrawn; all duties which bestowed upon the
colonist advantages over his foreign rival ceased. The Canadians might
now buy and sell where they chose. Foreign ships were now free to sail
the long-forbidden waters of the St. Lawrence. The change was not, in
the outset, a welcome one. The Canadians were not fully prepared for an
open competition with their neighbours of the United States. For a time
trade languished, and there was a loud and bitter cry that the mother
country disregarded the interests of her dependency. But the wholesome
discipline of necessity taught the Canadians self-reliance. The
adoption of a policy of unaided and unrestricted commerce inaugurated
for the Canadians a period of enterprise and development such as they
had not previously known.
After some years of steadily growing commerce, the Canadians bethought
them of the mutual benefits which would result from freedom of
trade between themselves and their neighbours of the United States.
[Sidenote: 1854 A.D.] Lord Elgin, who was then Governor-General, was
able to arrange a treaty by which this end was gained. The products of
each country were admitted, without duty, to the other. The Americans
gained free access to the great fisheries of Canada, to the rivers
St. Lawrence and St. John, and all the canals by which navigation was
facilitated. For eleven years this treaty remained in force, to the
advantage of both the contracting powers. But the idea of protection
had gained during those years increased hold upon the minds of the
American people. [Sidenote: 1866 A.D.] The American Government now
resolved to terminate the treaty. Grave inconveniences resulted to many
classes of Americans. The New England States missed the supplies of
cheap food which their manufacturing population received from Canada.
The brewers of New York and Philadelphia had to find elsewhere, and
at higher prices, the barley which Canada was accustomed to send.
Woollen manufacturers could not obtain the serviceable varieties of
raw material which the flocks of their northern neighbours supplied.
Railway companies experienced the sudden loss of a large and lucrative
traffic. Canada did not suffer materially by the termination of the
Reciprocity Treaty. She found new outlets for her products, and the
growth of her commerce was not appreciably interrupted.
The progress of education had in the Upper Province kept pace with
the increase of population. But the common school was yet very
insufficiently established in Lower Canada. The polite, genial,
industrious French _habitant_ was almost wholly uninstructed, and
suffered his children to grow up in the blind ignorance of which
he himself had not even discovered the evils. [Sidenote: 1850 A.D.]
There was now set up an educational system adapted to his special
requirements, but of which he was not swift to avail himself.
The question of the Clergy Reserves had been for generations a
perennial source of vexation. The Episcopalians persisted in
asserting themselves as the only Protestant Church; the Presbyterians
and Methodists rejected with indignation and scorn the audacious
pretension. In all countries where religious divisions prevail, the
exaltation of any one sect above the others is obviously unjust, and
must in its results disturb the harmony of the nation. Especially is
this true of a colony where the notion of equality is indigenous, and
men do not so easily, as in an old country, reconcile themselves to the
assumption of superiority by a favoured class. The existence of a State
Church became intolerable to the Canadian people. [Sidenote: 1854 A.D.]
An Act was passed which severed the connection of Church and State. All
life-interests--Episcopalian and Presbyterian--having been provided
for, the lands and funds which remained were divided among the several
municipalities on the basis of the population which they possessed.
No important question of an ecclesiastical nature has since that time
disturbed the tranquillity of the colony, if we except the demand of
the Roman Catholics for a system of education apart from that of the
common school.
The feudal tenure of lands still prevailed among the Frenchmen of
the Lower Province. The seigneurs to whose ancestors Louis XIV. had
granted large tracts of land, in the hope of building up a Canadian
aristocracy, still levied their dues; still enforced their right to
grind, at oppressive rates of charge, all the corn grown upon their
land; still imposed upon the Canadians those cruel exactions which
Frenchmen of seventy years ago had been unable to endure. The system
was long complained against as a grievance which held the French
population in a position of inferiority to the British. [Sidenote:
1859 A.D.] The rights of the seigneurs were now purchased by the
province for a payment of one million dollars, and this antiquated and
barbarous method of holding ceased to press upon the interests of the
colony.
For some years after the union of the provinces there had been a sudden
influx of settlers attracted from the old country by the improving
prospects of the colony. In the quarter century which followed the
battle of Waterloo, half a million of emigrants left Britain for
Canada. But in the two years of 1846-47, the number was a quarter of a
million, and the average for ten years had been nearly sixty thousand.
Means were now used to stimulate these enriching currents. Hitherto
the emigrant had been unregarded. He was suffered to take his passage
in ships which were not seaworthy, and which were fatally overcrowded.
When he arrived, often poor and ignorant, sometimes plague-stricken,
he was uncared for. Now he was welcomed as a stranger who came to
contribute to the wealth and greatness of the Dominion. Officers were
appointed to protect him from the plunderers who lay in wait for him.
His urgent wants were supplied; information was given him by which his
future course might safely be guided.
The passion for constructing railways, which raged in England in the
year 1845, sent its influences into Canada. The colonists began to
discuss arrangements for connecting the great cities of their extended
Dominion. But the need in Canada was less urgent than elsewhere, and
the difficulties were greater. The inhabited region lay for the most
part on the shores of the Great Lakes, or of the St. Lawrence and its
tributaries, where easy communication by steam-boat was enjoyed. On the
other hand, distances were great, population was scanty; capital for
the construction of railways and traffic for their support were alike
awanting. For years Canada was unable to pass beyond the initial stage
of surveys and reports and meetings to discuss, and vain attempts to
obtain help from the imperial exchequer. [Sidenote: 1852 A.D.] After
seven years thus passed, a railway mania burst out in Canada. In one
session of Parliament fifteen railway Bills were passed, and the number
rose to twenty-eight in the following session. The most notable of
the projects thus authorized was the Grand Trunk Railway--a gigantic
enterprise, which proposed to connect Montreal with Toronto, and Quebec
with Rivière du Loup. So urgent was now the desire for railways, that
the Legislature incurred liabilities on account of this undertaking to
the enormous amount of nearly five million sterling; to which extent
the colonial exchequer is and will probably always remain a loser.
The financial position of Canada had been hitherto satisfactory. Her
entire debt was four million and a half; an expenditure of £600,000 met
all her requirements, and her revenue largely exceeded this sum; her
securities bore a premium on the Stock Exchanges of England. [Sidenote:
1852 A.D.] But now Canada, in her eagerness for more rapid development,
began with liberal hand to offer aid to industrial undertakings.
She contributed freely to the making of railways. She encouraged
the municipalities to borrow upon her security for the construction
of roads and bridges, and for other necessary public works. The
municipalities, with responsive alacrity, borrowed and expended; a
genial activity pervaded all industries; and the development of Canada
advanced with more rapid step than at any previous period. But the
country was providing for wants which had not yet arisen, and the
premature expenditure brought upon her unwelcome and oppressive burdens
of debt and of taxation.[19]