Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: Lord Elgin]
British Supremacy
&
Canadian Self-Government
1839-1854
By
J. L. Morison, M.A., D.Litt.
Professor of Colonial History in Queen's University, Kingston, Canada
Late Lecturer on English Literature in the University of Glasgow
Toronto
S. B. Gundy
_Publisher in Canada for Humphrey Milford_
1919
GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.
To
M. T.
{vi}
PREFACE
The essay which follows had been printed, and was on the point of being
published, when the outbreak of war involved my venture in the general
devastation from which we are only now emerging. More than four years
of military service lie between me and the studies of which this book
is the summary. It was written under one dispensation; it is being
published under another. My first impulse, therefore, was to ask
whether the change which has rendered so much of the old world obsolete
had not invalidated also the conclusions here arrived at. But
reflection has simply confirmed me in the desire to complete the
arrangements for publication. Self-government is the keynote of the
essay, and it is unlikely that self-government will cease to be the
central principle of sane politics either in the British Empire or in
the world outside. I watched a Canadian division coming out of the
last great battle in France, battered and reduced in numbers, but with
all {viii} its splendid energy and confidence untouched. The presence
of the Canadians there, their incomparable spirit and resolution, the
sacrifices they had just been making, with unflinching generosity, for
the Empire, seemed only the last consequences of the political struggle
for autonomy described in the pages which follow. They would have been
impossible had the views of all the old imperialists from Wellington to
Disraeli prevailed.
The material on which this volume is based falls into three groups.
First in importance are the state papers and general correspondence of
the period, contained in the Canadian Archives at Ottawa. In addition
to the correspondence, ordinary and confidential, between the
Secretaries of State for the Colonies, and the Governors-General, from
1839 to 1867, I read two very notable collections, designated in the
foot-notes the Bagot Correspondence and the Elgin-Grey Correspondence.
In the former are contained not only Bagot's private correspondence
with Lord Stanley, but also letters from Bagot's British friends and
Canadian political advisers. These constitute the most important
evidence which exists for Bagot's year of office. In the same way, the
private correspondence, carried on between Earl Grey and the Earl of
Elgin from {ix} 1847 to 1852, takes precedence of all other Canadian
material of that period; and is, indeed, the most enlightening series
of documents in existence on mid-Victorian Colonial policy.
The second group is composed of pamphlets and early newspapers, more
especially the admirable collection of pre-confederation pamphlets in
the Archives at Ottawa, and the Bell and Morris collections at Queen's
University. Kingston. I cannot pretend to have mastered all the
material supplied by the newspapers of the period; but I have attempted
to work through such representative journals as the _Toronto Globe_,
the _Montreal Witness_, and the Kingston papers published while
Kingston was capital of the united Provinces. I consulted certain
others, French and English, on definite points of political interest,
such as the reappearance of Papineau in politics in 1847.
The _Canadiana_ of Queen's University Library gave me my third group of
documents: and the facts from books were confirmed or modified by
information gathered, chiefly in Kingston, from persons whose memories
of the period under discussion were still fresh and interesting.
As the work proceeded, certain impressions were {x} very definitely
created in my mind. It seemed clear, in the first place, that no
statesman, whose experience was limited by unbroken residence in
Europe, quite understood the elements which, between 1839 and 1867,
constituted the Home Rule problem in Canada. More especially on
fundamental points concerning Canadian opinion, and the general temper
of the populace, even the best men in England seemed singularly
ignorant. A second impression was that, while the colony remained
throughout essentially loyal, and while the political leaders in Canada
displayed really great qualities of statesmanship at critical moments,
the general development of Canadian political life was seriously
delayed by the crudities and rudeness of provincial politicians.
British ignorance was not the only obstacle in the way.
The last impression was that the relations between Britain and Canada
depended then, as now, not on constitutional forms, or commercial
bargains, or armed protection, but on racial solidarity, and community
in social and moral ideals. It was this solidarity, far more than
conscious statesmanship, which held Canada and Britain together. These
impressions I have tried to analyse and elucidate in the chapters which
follow.
{xi}
I have to thank the Dominion Archivist, Dr. A. G. Doughty, for many
kindnesses, and more especially for permitting me to read the
Elgin-Grey Correspondence. To my friends, Mr. K. K. M. Leys, of
University College, Oxford, Dr. Adam Shortt, Ottawa, and Professor W.
D. Taylor, of Queen's University, Kingston, I am indebted for advice
and information. Mr. James MacLehose and Dr. George Neilson made the
final stages of printing easy by their generous assistance. The
opinions which I express are my own, occasionally in spite of my
friends' remonstrances.
J. L. MORISON.
INNELLAN, ARGYLLSHIRE,
_May_, 1919.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
II. THE CANADIAN COMMUNITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
III. THE GOVERNORS-GENERAL: LORD SYDENHAM . . . . . . . . . . 70
IV. THE GOVERNORS-GENERAL: SIR CHARLES BAGOT . . . . . . . . 126
V. THE GOVERNORS-GENERAL: LORD METCALFE . . . . . . . . . . 158
VI. THE GOVERNORS-GENERAL: LORD ELGIN . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
VII. BRITISH OPINION AND CANADIAN AUTONOMY . . . . . . . . . . 230
VIII. THE CONSEQUENCES OF CANADIAN AUTONOMY . . . . . . . . . . 293
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
{1}
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
There are antinomies in politics as in philosophy, problems where the
difficulty lies in reconciling facts indubitably true but mutually
contradictory. For growth in the political world is not always
gradual; accidents, discoveries, sudden developments, call into
existence new creations, which only the generous logic of events and
the process of time can reconcile with pre-existing facts and systems.
It is the object of this essay to examine one of these political
antinomies--the contradiction between imperial ascendancy and colonial
autonomy--as it was illustrated by events in early Victorian Canada.
The problem was no new one in 1839. Indeed it was coeval with the
existence of the empire, and sprang from the very nature of colonial
government. Beneath the actual facts of the great {2} American
revolution--reaching far beyond quarrels over stamp duties, or the
differentiation between internal and external taxation, or even the
rights of man--was the fundamental difficulty of empire, the need to
reconcile colonial independence with imperial unity. It was the
perception of this difficulty which made Burke so much the greatest
political thinker of his time. As he wrote in the most illuminating of
his letters, "I am, and ever have been, deeply sensible of the
difficulty of reconciling the strong presiding power, that is so useful
towards the conservation of a vast, disconnected, infinitely
diversified empire, with that liberty and safety of the provinces,
which they must enjoy (in opinion and practice, at least), or they will
not be provinces at all. I know, and have long felt, the difficulty of
reconciling the unwieldy haughtiness of a great ruling nation,
habituated to command, pampered by enormous wealth, and confident from
a long course of prosperity and victory, to the high spirit of free
dependencies, animated with the first glow and activity of juvenile
heat, and assuming to themselves as their birthright, some part of that
very pride which oppresses them."[1]
{3}
Dissatisfied as he ever was with merely passive or negative views,
Burke was led to attempt a solution of the problem. He had never been
under any illusion as to the possibility of limiting colonial
constitutional pretensions. A free government was what the colonists
thought free, and only they could fix the limit to their claims. But
many considerations made him refuse to despair of the empire. His
intensely human view of politics led him to put more trust in the bonds
of kindred and affection than in constitutional forms. He hated the
petty quibbles of political legists and pedants--their dilemmas, and
metaphysical distinctions, and catastrophes. In his opinion the bulk
of mankind was not excessively curious concerning any theories whilst
they were really happy. But perhaps his political optimism depended
most on his belief that institutions, as living things, were
indefinitely adaptable, and that the logic of life and progress
naturally overcame all opposing arguments. In his ideal state there
was room for many mansions, and he did not speak of disaster when
American colonists proposed to build according to designs not ratified
in Westminster.
I have dwelt on the views of Burke because here, as in Indian affairs,
he was the first of British {4} statesmen to recognize what was implied
in the empire, and because his views still stand. But his
contemporaries failed utterly, either to see the danger as he saw it,
or to meet it as he bade them meet it. Save Chatham, they had no
understanding of provincial opinion; in their political methods they
were corrupt individualists, and their general equipment in imperial
politics was contemptibly inadequate.
After the loss of the American colonies, the government in England
contrived for a time to evade the problems and responsibilities of
colonial empire. The colonies which remained to England were limited
in extent and population; and such difficulties as existed were faced,
not so much by the government in London, as beyond the seas by
statesmen with local knowledge, like Dorchester. At the same time, the
consequences of the French Revolution and the great wars drew to
themselves the attention of all active minds. Under these
circumstances imperial policy lost much of its prestige, and imperial
problems either vanished or were evaded. It was a period of "crown
colony" administration.[2] The connexion, as it was called, was
maintained through oligarchic {5} institutions, strictly controlled
from Westminster; local officials were selected from little groups of
semi-aristocrats, more English than the home government itself; and the
only policy which recommended itself to a nation, which still lacked
both information and imagination, was to try no rash constitutional
experiments, and to conciliate colonial opinion by economic favours and
low taxation.
Yet the old contradiction between British ascendancy and colonial
autonomy could not for long be ignored; and as in the early nineteenth
century a new colonial empire arose, greater and more diversified than
the old, the problem once more recurred, this time in Canada. It is
not the purpose of this book to discuss the earlier stages of the
Canadian struggle. The rebellions under Mackenzie in the West and
Papineau in the East were abnormal and pathological episodes, in
considering which the attention is easily diverted from the essential
questions to exciting side issues and personal facts. In any case,
that chapter in Canadian history has received adequate attention.[3]
But after Colborne's firmness had repressed the {6} armed risings, and
Durham's imperious dictatorship had introduced some kind of order,
there followed in Canada a period of high constitutional importance, in
which the old issue was frankly faced, both in England and in Canada,
almost in the very terms that Burke had used. It is not too much to
say that the fifteen years of Canadian history which begin with the
publication, in 1839, of _Durham's Report_, are the most important in
the history of the modern British empire; and that in them was made the
experiment on the success of which depended the future of that empire.
These years are the more instructive, because in them there are few
distracting events drawing the attention from the main constitutional
question. There were minor points--whether voluntaryism, or the
principle of church establishment, was best for Canada; what place
within the empire might safely be conceded to French-Canadian
nationalism; how Canadian commerce was to relate itself to that of
Britain and of the United States. All of these, however, were included
in, or dominated by, the essential difficulty of combining, in one
empire, Canadian self-government and British supremacy.
{7}
The phrase, responsible government, appears everywhere in the writings
and speeches of those days with a wearisome iteration. Yet the
discussion which hinged on that phrase was of primary importance. The
British government must either discover the kind of self-government
required in the greater dependencies, the _modus vivendi_ to be
established between the local and the central governments, and the seat
of actual responsibility, or cease to be imperial. Under four
governors-general[4] the argument proceeded, and it was not until 1854
that Elgin, in his departure from Canada, was able to assure the
British government that the question had been for the time settled.
The essay which follows will describe the character of the political
community within which the question was raised; the fortunes and policy
of the governors-general concerned in the discussion; the modifications
introduced into British political thought by the Canadian agitation;
and the consequences, in England and Canada, of the firm establishment
of colonial self-government.
[1] Burke, _Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol_.
[2] Sir C. P. Lucas, _Introduction to Lord Durham's Report_, p. 266.
[3] Its latest statement may be found in Sir C. P. Lucas's admirable
edition of _Lord Durham's Report_, Oxford, 1912.
[4] I omit from my reckoning the brief and unimportant tenure of office
by the Earl Cathcart, who filled a gap between Metcalfe's retirement
and Elgin's arrival.
{8}