Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 459
See Sir F. Hincks, Reminiscences of his Public Life, (Montreal, 1884) Chap. i.
J. S. Buckingham, Canada, (1843) . See also H. Scadding, Toronto of Old, p, 28.
Buckingham, Op. cit., loc. cit.
According to Walton’s York Directory (1833-4), No. 23 Yonge Street was occupied by “Baldwin, Dr. W. Warren; Baldwin, Robert, Esq., Attorney, etc., Baldwin and Sullivan’s office and Dr. Baldwin’s surrogate office round the corner in King Street, 195½.” Dr. Baldwin lived at Spadina only a part of each year.
At the time when Baldwin, Hincks, and their friends among the constitutional Reformers of Upper Canada were viewing with alarm the increasing bitterness which separated the rival parties, a new lieutenant-governor arrived in the province whose coming was destined to bring matters rapidly to a crisis. Francis Bond Head was one of those men whose misfortune it was to have greatness thrust upon them unsought. He was awakened one night at his country home in Kent by a king’s messenger, who brought a letter from the colonial-secretary offering to him the lieutenant-governorship of Upper Canada. Head was a military man, a retired half-pay major who received his sudden elevation to the governorship with what he himself has described as “utter astonishment.” On the field of Waterloo and during his experience as an engineer in the Argentine Republic, he had given proof that he was not wanting in personal courage. Of civil government, beyond the fact that he had been an assistant poor law commissioner, he had no experience. Of politics in general he knew practically nothing; of Canada even less. Nor had he a range of intellect such as to enable him to rise to the difficulties of his position. With a natural incapacity he combined a natural conceit, to be presently enhanced still further by his elevation to a baronetcy. Convinced of his own ability from the very oddness of his appointment, he betook himself to Canada puffed up with the pride of a professional pacificator. How Lord Glenelg, the colonial secretary, could have been induced to make such an appointment, remains one of the mysteries of Canadian history. Rumour indeed has not scrupled to say that the whole affair was an error, that the name of Francis Head had been confused with that of Sir Edmund Head, also a poor law commissioner and a young man of rising promise and attainments. Hincks in his Reminiscences asserts that he was informed of this fact in later years by Mr. Roebuck and that a “distinguished imperial statesman had also spoken of it.”
D. B. Read, Lieutenant-Governors of Upper Canada and Ontario (Toronto, 1900), p et seq.
Reminiscences, p, 15.
In so far as he had had any political affiliations in England, Head had been a Whig. The news of this simple fact had gone before him, and the Reform party were prepared to find in him a champion of their interests; Sir Francis in consequence found the rôle of saviour of the country already prepared for his acceptance. “It was with no little surprise,” he writes in his Narrative, in speaking of his first entry into Toronto (January, 1836), “I observed the walls placarded with large letters which designated me as Sir Francis Head, a tried Reformer.” The administration on which the new governor now entered was from first to last a series of blunders. It had been impressed upon him by the British cabinet that he must seek to conciliate the Reform party and to compose the factious differences by which the province was torn. The Seventh Report on Grievances had become, since his appointment, the object of his constant perusal, and the Reformers of the province crowded about him in the fond hope of political redress. It was impossible, therefore, that Sir Francis should fail to make some advances to the Reform party. This indeed he was most anxious to do, although the tone of his opening address to his parliament, in which he asked for a loyal support of himself, already began to alienate the sympathy of those whose support he was most anxious to secure. As a pledge, however, of his good intentions, he determined to add three members to his executive council and to fill their places from among the Reform party. The men upon whom his choice fell were Robert Baldwin, Dr. John Rolph, a leader of the Mackenzie faction, and John Henry Dunn who had filled the office of receiver-general but had not been identified with either of the rival parties. In a despatch addressed to the colonial secretary, the lieutenant-governor speaks thus of Baldwin:— “After making every enquiry in my power, I became of opinion that Mr. Robert Baldwin, advocate, a gentleman already recommended to your Lordship by Sir John Colborne for a seat in the legislative council, was the first individual I should select, being highly respected for his moral character, being moderate in his politics and possessing the esteem and confidence of all parties.”
Sir Francis B. Head, Bart., A Narrative (London, 1839), p, 33.
Head to Glenelg, February 22nd, 1836.
Now came a critical moment in the history of the time. With a majority in the assembly and with a proper control over the executive offices, the Reform party would find themselves arrived at that goal of responsible government which had been the object of their every effort. They conceived, nevertheless, that the acceptance of office was of no import or significance unless it were conjoined with an actual control of the policy of the administration. Such, however, was by no means the idea of Sir Francis Head. The “smooth-faced insidious doctrine” of responsible government, as he afterwards called it, and the self-effacement of the governor which it implied, could commend itself but little to one who had confessedly come to Canada as a “political physician” proposing to rectify the troubled situation by his own administrative skill. Interviews followed between Baldwin and Sir Francis Head, at which the former refused to hold office unless the remaining Tory members of the executive, who were also legislative councillors, should be dismissed. Baldwin indeed, suffering from the domestic affliction he had just sustained in the loss of his wife, appears to have been reluctant to assume the cares of office. On reconsideration, however, the Reformers decided to accept the positions offered and were duly appointed (February 20th, 1836). It was, nevertheless, made quite clear to the governor that Baldwin and his friends accepted office only on the understanding that they must have his entire confidence. A letter, written at this time by Baldwin to Peter Perry, his father’s friend and fellow Reformer, accurately explains the situation and elucidates also the full force of the “one idea” by which the writer was animated. “His Excellency having done me the honour to send for me . . . . expressed himself most desirous that I should afford him my assistance by joining his executive council, assuring me that in the event of my acceding to his proposals I should enjoy his full and entire confidence . . . . I proceeded to state that . . . . I would not be performing my duty to my sovereign or the country, if I did not with His Excellency’s permission, explain fully to His Excellency my views of the constitution of the province and the change necessary in the practical administration of it, particularly as I considered the delay in adopting this change as the great and all absorbing grievance before which all others in my mind sank into insignificance, and the remedy for which would most effectually lead, and that in a constitutional way, to the redress of every other grievance . . . . and that these desirable objects would be accomplished without the least entrenching upon the just and necessary prerogative of the Crown, which I consider, when administered by a lieutenant-governor through the medium of a provincial ministry responsible to the provincial parliament, to be an essential part of the constitution of the province.” Baldwin adds that the “call for an elective legislative council which had been formally made from Lower Canada, and which had been taken up and appeared likely to be responded to in this province, was as distasteful to me as it could be to any one.”
Sir Francis Bond Head, A Narrative, .
See Lord Durham’s Report (Ed. 1902), .
The new ministry were no sooner appointed than they found themselves in a quite impossible position. Head had no intention of governing according to their advice. On the contrary he proceeded at once to make official appointments from among the ranks of their opponents, calling down thereby the censure of the assembly. The new council now found themselves called to account by the country for executive acts in which they had had no share. The formal remonstrances which they addressed to the lieutenant-governor drew from him a direct denial of their cardinal principle of government. “The lieutenant-governor maintains,” they were informed, “that responsibility to the people who are already represented in the House of Assembly, is unconstitutional; that it is the duty of the council to serve him, not them.” To say this was, of course, to throw down the gauntlet. The new ministers resigned at once (March 4th, 1836), and henceforth there was war to the knife between the governor and the party of Reform. The majority of the assembly, espousing the cause of the outgoing ministers, refused to vote the appropriation of the moneys over which it had control. Sir Francis had recourse to a dissolution (May 28th, 1836). In the general election which followed, he exerted himself strenuously on the side of the Tories. To Lord Glenelg he denounced the “low-bred antagonist democracy” which he felt it his duty to combat. In an address issued to the electors of the Newcastle district, the voters were told, “if you choose to dispute with me and live on bad terms with the mother country, you will, to use a homely phrase, only quarrel with your bread and butter.” The Tories made desperate efforts. Large sums of money were subscribed. The Anglican interest was enlisted on behalf of the clergy reserves, the special landed provision for the Anglican Church (under the Constitutional Act of 1791) out of which Sir John Colborne, the preceding governor, had endowed forty-four rectories, a policy to which the Reformers were bitterly opposed. The Methodists, fearing to be carried to extremes, veered away from the party of Reform. The latter, meanwhile, were not idle. Baldwin himself, indeed, had no share in the campaign, having sailed for England shortly after his resignation, pursued by a letter from the irate governor to Lord Glenelg in which he was denounced as an agent of the revolutionary party.
Durham’s Report (Ed. 1902), p et seq. C. Lindsey, Life and Times of William Lyon Mackenzie, p et seq.
See D. B. Read, Rebellion of 1837, .
See Egerton Ryerson, Story of my Life, Chapters xviii-xxx, and see also Hincks, Reminiscences, p, 19.
Meantime the Reform party had organized a Constitutional Reform Society of Upper Canada (July 16th, 1836) of which Dr. William Baldwin was president and Francis Hincks secretary. The programme of the society called for “responsible advisers to the governor” and the “abolition of the rectories established by Sir John Colborne.” In the tumultuous election which ensued, the governor and his party, with the aid of intimidation, violence and fraud, carried the day. Sir Francis found himself supported by a “bread and butter parliament,” as the new assembly was christened in memory of the Newcastle address. Henceforth the extreme party of the Reformers lost hope of constitutional redress.
It is no part of the present narrative to relate the story of the armed rebellion which followed and in which the subjects of the present biography had no share. Mackenzie and his adherents now gathered the farmers of the colony into revolutionary clubs. Messengers went back and forth to the malcontents of Lower Canada. Vigilance committees were formed, and in secret hollows of the upland and in the openings of the forest the yeomanry of the countryside gathered at their nightly drill. Mackenzie passed to and fro among the farmers as a harbinger of the coming storm. He composed and printed a new and purified constitution for Upper Canada, blameless save for its unconscionable length. An attack on Toronto, unprotected by royal troops and offering a fair mark for capture, was planned for December 7th, 1837. A veteran soldier, one Van Egmond who had been a colonel under Napoleon, was made generalissimo of the rebel forces. The whole affair ended in a fiasco. Rolph, joint organizer of the revolt with Mackenzie, fearing detection, hurriedly changed the date of the rising to December 4th. The rebels gathering from the outlying country moved in irregular bands to Montgomery’s tavern, some three miles north of the town, and waited in vain for the advent of sufficient members to hazard an attack. In Toronto, for some days intense apprehension reigned. The alarm bells rang, the citizens were hurriedly enrolled and the onslaught of the rebels was hourly expected. With the arrival of support from the outside in the shape of a steamer from the town of Hamilton with sixty men led by Colonel Allan MacNab, confidence was renewed. More reinforcements arriving, the volunteer militia on a bright December afternoon (December 7th, 1837) marched northward with drums beating, colours flying, two small pieces of artillery following their advance guard, and scattered the rebel forces in headlong flight. The armed insurrection, save for random attempts at invasion of the country from the American frontier in the year following, had collapsed.
The text is given in D. B. Read’s Rebellion of 1837, p et seq.
In the insurrectionary movement, neither Baldwin nor Hincks, as already said, had any share. The former who had now returned from England, did, however, play a certain part in the exciting days of December, a part which in later days his political opponents wilfully misconstrued. Sir Francis Bond Head in the disorder of the first alarm, whether from a sudden collapse of nerves or with a shrewd idea of gaining time, was anxious to hold parley with the rebels. Robert Baldwin was hurriedly summoned to the governor and despatched, along with Dr. John Rolph, under a flag of truce, to ask of the rebels the reason of their appearance in arms. Baldwin and Rolph rode out on horseback to Montgomery’s tavern, where Mackenzie informed them that the rebels wanted independence and that if Sir Francis Head wished to communicate with them it must be done in writing. Rolph meanwhile, who was himself one of the organizers of the revolt, entered into private conversation with Samuel Lount (hanged later in Toronto for his share in the rebellion), telling Lount in an undertone to pay no attention to the message. Baldwin returned to Toronto, but, finding that the governor would put no message in writing, he again rode out to the rebel camp and apprised Mackenzie of this fact. The peculiar nature of this embassy and the known complicity of Rolph in the revolt, gave a false colour in the minds of the malicious to Baldwin’s conduct. By the partisan press he was denounced as a rebel and a traitor. Even on the floor of the Canadian parliament (October 13th, 1842) Sir Allan MacNab did not scruple to taunt him with his share in the events of the revolt. But it is beyond a doubt that Baldwin had no complicity in the rebellion, nor was his embassy anything more than a reluctant task undertaken from a sense of public duty.
While these affairs were happening in Upper Canada, the insurrectionary movement in the Lower Province had run a like disastrous course. The home government, alarmed at the continued legislative deadlock, had ordered an investigation at the hands of a special commission with a new governor-general, Lord Gosford, (who arrived on August 23rd, 1835) at its head. Gosford tried in vain the paths of peace, spoke the malcontents fair and invited the leaders of the party to his table. But the assembly would hear nothing of Lord Gosford’s overtures. Papineau denied the powers of the imperial commissioners and boasted on the floor of the assembly that an “epoch is approaching when America will give republics to Europe.” The report of the commissioners (March, 1837) dissipated the last hopes of constitutional redress. It condemned the principle of an elective Upper House, declared that ministerial responsibility was inadmissible, suggested that means should be found to elect a British majority by altering the franchise, and recommended coercion in the last resort. Following on the report came a series of resolutions moved in the House of Commons by Lord John Russell, who declared in terms that “an elective council for legislation and a responsible executive council combined with a representative assembly would be quite incompatible with the rightful inter-relationship of any colony with the mother country.” A bill was brought forward to dispose of the revenue of Lower Canada without the consent of the assembly. After this the leader of the movement saw no recourse but open rebellion. The peasantry of the Montreal district, obedient to the call, took up arms. There was a short, sharp struggle along the Richelieu, at the little villages of St. Denis and St. Charles, and southward on the American frontier. Sir John Colborne, hurriedly recalled to Canada to take command, crushed out the revolt. Papineau fled to the United States, leaving to his followers nothing but the memory of a lost cause.
