Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 472
Mistaken as the views of the governor-general undoubtedly were, there is much to admire in the spirit of indomitable firmness with which he was prepared to confront single-handed, if need be, the whole population of the colony. As the controversy waxed hot, the amenities of political discussion were thrown aside and the divinity that hedges a governor-general was dissipated in a storm of personal attack: the cry of despot, tyrant and autocrat, was heard on all sides, while the satirists of the time dubbed His Excellency “Charles the Simple,” and added the still more crushing epithet of “Old Square Toes.” But Metcalfe was not left to fight single-handed: Mr. Draper’s adherents were with him from the start. To the Tories the aspect of a governor proposing to actually govern was as welcome as sunshine after storm, while needy politicians, office-seekers and personal opponents of the late ministry rallied eagerly to the cause. The people of Canada were soon divided into two great factions, the supporters and the enemies of Metcalfe. Meetings, banquets, speeches, addresses, pamphlets and fierce editorial articles became the order of the day, and the strife of the political combatants waxed more and more furious with the realization that it must culminate in a general election which might mean to either party a general and irretrievable disaster.
The first trial of strength in the momentous conflict was on the floor of the parliament itself. Great was the excitement in and around the legislature, when the news of the ministerial resignation became public. “The library of the assembly,” wrote a private correspondent from Kingston, “was crowded with letter writers eager to circulate the news from Sandwich to Gaspé, and no sound met the ear but the harsh scratching of the pens as they rushed over the paper. In the lobbies and on the landing-places small groups were congregated discussing the news. The politician as he walked the street was button-held (sic) by many a curious and excited enquirer. The stagnation which usually characterizes the metropolis has been converted into a bustling and earnest animation.”
On November 27th, LaFontaine briefly announced to the House the fact that the ministry, with the exception of Mr. Daly, had resigned office. Two days later Baldwin presented to the assembly the reasons for the resignation, and an exciting debate followed, culminating in a triumphant vote of confidence in the ministry. It is unnecessary to repeat at length the arguments presented for and against the ministry, which were practically identical with those contained in the official letters just quoted. Baldwin in his opening speech declared that the ministry had accepted office on principles they had publicly and privately avowed. These principles, he said, had received the sanction of a large majority of the representatives of the people. The ministry stood pledged to maintain them. The head of the government entertained views widely differing from his ministers on the duties and responsibilities of their office: this had left nothing for them but to resign. Baldwin read to the House the resolutions of 1841, in which he and his colleagues found the justification of their present conduct. Hincks, Price, Christie and others supported Baldwin in the assembly, while Sullivan defended the conduct of the late ministry before the legislative council in a speech of exceptional brilliancy and power. Beside the overwhelming arguments thus presented, the defence of the governor-general, in the hands of Mr. Daly, seemed tame and insignificant, and the attempt of the latter to show that Metcalfe was prepared to live up to the September resolutions carried no conviction.
Nor was the fierce onslaught of Sir Allan MacNab on the outgoing cabinet of any greater efficacy. He made no attempt to reconcile the conduct of the governor with the principles of responsible government. He attacked the principles themselves. To him the September resolutions were as chaff to be driven before the wind. Responsible government, he said, should never have been conceded: if persisted in, it could lead to nothing but the ultimate separation of the colony from the mother country. MacNab’s defence of Metcalfe was of a character little likely to defend, and the governor, despite his instinctive sympathy with the Tories, might have wished to be saved from his friends; for Metcalfe found himself in the painful position of being defended by one set of adherents on the ground that he had maintained responsible government, and by the other on the ground that responsible government was not worth maintaining.
Of far more consequence to the cause of the outgoing cabinet was the defection of Mr. Viger. Denis Benjamin Viger had long been one of the prominent leaders of the popular party in Lower Canada and had suffered imprisonment for the cause. The principle of responsible government and the claims of the French-Canadians had had no more ardent supporter than Mr. Viger, and at this time, with the dignity of seventy winters upon him, he was still viewed as one of the leaders of his people. It was not without deep emotion that Viger now announced to the House that he could not endorse the conduct of the leaders of his party. The principle of responsible government he was willing to admit, but the present occasion, he said, offered no adequate grounds for a step so momentous as that which they had seen fit to take. The debate was finally closed by the passage of a resolution, presented by Mr. Price, to the effect that “an humble address be presented to His Excellency, humbly representing to His Excellency the deep regret felt by this House at the retirement of certain members of the provincial administration on the question of their right to be consulted on what this House unhesitatingly avows to be the prerogative of the Crown, — appointments to office: and further, to assure His Excellency that the advocacy of this principle entitles them to the confidence of the House, being in strict accordance with the principles embraced in the resolutions adopted in the House on September 3rd, 1841.” The motion was carried by forty-six votes against twenty-three. On December 9th, 1843, the parliament was prorogued.
La Minerve, December 11th, 1843.
Mr. Viger afterwards published his views on the situation in full in a pamphlet entitled, La Crise Ministerielle, (1844).
Meantime the governor-general was without a ministry. At the moment of prorogation, Mr. Dominick Daly enjoyed the unique honour of being sole adviser to the Crown. On the twelfth of the month (Dec. 1843) Mr. Draper was sworn in as executive councillor, and Mr. Viger, with whom negotiations had at once been opened by Sir Charles Metcalfe, entered also into the service of the government. It was announced in the administration newspapers that these gentlemen constituted a provisional government, and that the governor-general would organize a regular cabinet at the earliest possible moment. Meantime the Reform journals loudly denounced this new form of personal rule.
The prorogation of parliament was the signal for the organization of a vigorous campaign of opposition on the part of the Reform party, whose leaders threw themselves with great ardour into the work of rousing the country in anticipation of a coming election. Baldwin and LaFontaine, returning to the practice of the law in their respective cities, headed the agitation. Hincks, who had severed his connection with the Examiner on assuming office in 1842, now determined to return to newspaper work. As Montreal was to be the future capital of the province, he came to that city shortly after the rising of the House and looked about him for the purchase of a suitable journal. A paper called the Times, — moderately liberal in its complexion, — being at that time without an editor, Hincks acted gratuitously in that capacity for some little while, hoping ultimately to purchase the paper; but finding difficulty in arranging matters with the proprietors, he established (March 5th, 1844) a journal of his own under the name of the Pilot. Adopting the same device as he had already used with success in the case of the Examiner, Hincks printed at the head of his first issue a quotation from Lord Durham’s report in favour of responsible government and backed it up with an opening editorial in which he plunged at once into the present controversy. “If the representative of the sovereign,” said the Pilot, “is in practice to make appointments according to his own personal opinion, and to reject the bills relating to our local affairs because he thinks them unnecessary or inexpedient, it would be infinitely better that the mockery of representative institutions was abolished.” The journalistic career in those days was not without its dangers and difficulties. Hincks and his newspaper were denounced on all sides by the Tory press: he was likened to Marat, to Robespierre and to the iconoclasts of the French revolution. An embittered Orangeman, incensed at certain expressions used by a correspondent of the Pilot, endeavoured to force a duel upon the editor. But in spite of all difficulties Hincks persevered, and remained at his editorial work in Montreal throughout the next four years.
The gentleman in question was Colonel Ogle R. Gowan. A correspondent of the Pilot, in discussing the well-known episode of the queen’s refusal to dismiss the ladies of the bedchamber and its relation to the royal prerogative, had said: “His [Sir Robert Peel’s] demand was complied with, though Colonel Gowan falsely asserted the contrary at Kingston.” Gowan wrote to Hincks (March 12th, 1844) asking the name and address of the correspondent. “Should you decline to accede to my demand,” he said, “I beg you will refer me to a friend on your behalf to meet Captain Weatherly of this city, who will arrange a meeting between us.” Hincks managed to appease the irate colonel by explaining that the falseness of the argument and not the veracity of the speaker was the matter in question.
In addition to his editorial work on the Pilot, Hincks endeavoured to influence opinion in the mother country by contributing a series of letters to the London Morning Chronicle. These were intended to offset the arguments that were being laid before the British public by Gibbon Wakefield. The latter, whom the Reformers now regarded as a snake that they had unwittingly warmed in the bosom of the party, had become the bitter enemy of the late ministry. He had endeavoured to persuade the assembly to adopt an amendment nullifying the vote of confidence. Failing in this, he had published a pamphlet in defence of the conduct of Metcalfe, and was at this time busily contributing articles to the London press on the Canadian question. Wakefield in these writings undertook to make a double misrepresentation; to misrepresent Canadian affairs to the people of Great Britain, and to misrepresent British opinion thereupon to the people of Canada. “The quantity of sympathy with Messrs. Baldwin and LaFontaine existing in the United Kingdom,” he wrote, “is very minute.” The resignation of the ministry he interpreted, not as arising out of the question of responsible government, but simply as a political trick: the difficulty encountered with the university bill and other Upper Canadian legislation had made the Reform party anxious to divert public attention from its ill success by the familiar device of dragging a herring across the scent. Responsible government was merely the herring in question. Hincks easily exposes the fallacies of Wakefield’s argument; for Wakefield’s letters to the press before and after the ministerial rupture were essentially inconsistent. On October 27th, 1843, Wakefield had written that he would have no objection to a quarrel between Metcalfe and the ministers if he “could be sure that the governor would pick well his ground of quarrel.” Again on November 25th he wrote to a correspondent: “The governor-general has had, I think, the opportunity of breaking with his ministers on tenable ground and has let it slip. . . . I am unwilling to do him the bad turn of shooting the bird which I suppose him to be aiming at behind the hedge of reserve which conceals him from vulgar eyes.” In his letter to the Colonial Gazette, after the rupture, and in his pamphlet, Wakefield tries to put the quarrel in the quite different light described above. In his letters to the Chronicle Hincks not only shows the inconsistency of his adversary’s position, but makes a pitiless exposure of the reasons underlying Wakefield’s self-interested desertion of the Reform party.
A View of Sir Charles Metcalfe’s Government in Canada (London, 1844). See also an article, Sir Charles Metcalfe in Canada (Fisher’s Colonial Magazine, 1844) and letters in the Colonial Gazette; see also Edward Gibbon Wakefield by R. Garnett, London, 1898. Dr. Garnett speaks of Wakefield as “exercising irresponsible government in Canada as the secret counsellor of Sir Charles Metcalfe.”
See Hincks’s letters to the Morning Chronicle, July 24th, 1844, etc.
While Hincks was thus busily occupied at Montreal, Baldwin, who had returned to Toronto after the prorogation of the House, was heading the agitation against Metcalfe in Upper Canada. A public banquet was held in honour of the ex-ministers (December 28th, 1843) at the North American Hotel, Robert Baldwin being the guest of the evening. Mr. Ridout, of the Upper Canada Bank, proposed the health of Messrs. LaFontaine, Baldwin and the other members of the cabinet, the “steadfast champions of responsible government,” to which Baldwin replied in a long speech, subsequently printed in full in the Reform journals of both Upper and Lower Canada. A Reform Association was founded in Toronto whose branches rapidly spread over the whole of the province. Under the auspices of the new association there was held in Toronto towards the end of March of the new year, the first of a series of great meetings organized throughout the country. So great was the enthusiasm attendant upon this gathering that the hall of the association, situated in a building on the corner of Front and Scott Streets, was quite inadequate to accommodate the crowd that clamoured for admission, and hundreds were turned from the doors. Robert Baldwin, who occupied the chair, was the central figure of the occasion, and the address with which he opened the proceedings of this first general meeting of the Reform Association, ranks among his most striking speeches. Loud and continued cheering greeted him as he rose to speak, and was renewed at intervals in the pauses of his discourse.
March 25th, 1844.
Baldwin Pamphlets (1844), Toronto Public Library.
“Our objects,” said the speaker, in announcing the formation of the association, “are open and avowed. We seek no concealment for we have nothing to conceal. We demand the practical application of the principles of the constitution of our beloved mother country to the administration of all our local affairs. Not one hair’s breadth farther do we go, or desire to go: but not with one hair’s breadth short of that will we ever be satisfied. . . . Earnestly I recommend to all who value the principles of the British constitution, and to whom the preservation of the connection with the mother country is dear, to lend their aid by joining this organization. Depend upon it, the day will come when one of the proudest boasts of our posterity will be, that they can trace their descent to one who has his name inscribed on this great roll of the contenders for colonial rights.”
After fully developing the nature of colonial self-government and quoting from Lord Durham’s report and the September resolutions in support of his contention, Baldwin went on to show the utter insufficiency of responsible government as conceived by Sir Charles Metcalfe. His Excellency’s system meant nothing more or less than the old disastrous methods of personal government brought back again. “If we are to have the old system,” said Baldwin, “then let us have it under its own name, the ‘Irresponsible System,’ the ‘Compact System,’ or any other name adapted to its hideous deformities; but let us not be imposed upon by a mere name. We have been adjured,” he continued, alluding to an answer recently given by Metcalfe to a group of petitioners, “with reference to this new-fangled responsible government, in a style and manner borrowed with no small degree of care from that of the eccentric baronet who once represented the sovereign in this part of Her Majesty’s dominions, to ‘keep it,’ to ‘cling to it,’ not to ‘throw it away’!! You all, no doubt, remember the story of little Red Ridinghood, and the poor child’s astonishment and alarm, as she began to trace the features of the wolf instead of those of her venerable grandmother: and let the people of Canada beware lest, when they begin to trace the real outlines of this new-fangled responsible government, and are calling out in the simplicity of their hearts, ‘Oh, grandmother, what great big eyes you have!’ it may not, as in the case of little Red Ridinghood, be too late, and the reply to the exclamation, ‘Oh, grandmother, what a great big mouth you have!’ be ‘That’s to gobble you up the better, my child.’”
Sir F. B. Head.
Baldwin was ably followed by his cousin, Robert Sullivan, by William Hume Blake, and a long list of other speakers. Notable among these was one whose name was subsequently to become famous in the annals of Canadian Liberalism. George Brown, a young Scottish emigrant, had just established at Toronto (March 5th, 1844) a weekly newspaper called the Globe, founded in the interest of the Reform party. The Globe was a fighting paper from the start, and the power of its opening editorials with their unsparing onslaughts on the governor-general was already spreading its name from one end of the province to the other. In reality there were strong points of disagreement between the editor of the Globe and the leading Reformers, who at this time aided and encouraged his enterprise, and Brown was destined ultimately to substitute for the moderate doctrines of the Reformers of the union, the programme of the thorough-going Radical. But agreement in opposition is relatively easy. The day of the Radicals and the Clear Grits was not yet, and for the time Brown was heart and soul with the cause of the ex-ministers. In his speech on this occasion he drew a satirical picture of the operation of responsible government à la Metcalfe. “Imagine yourself, sir,” he said to the chairman, “seated at the top of the council table, and Mr. Draper at the bottom, — on your right hand we will place the Episcopal Bishop of Toronto (Dr. John Strachan) and on your left the Reverend Egerton Ryerson, — on the right of Mr. Draper sits Sir Allan MacNab, and on his left Mr. Hincks. We will fill up the other chairs with gentlemen admirably adapted for their situations by the most extreme imaginable differences of opinion — we will seat His Excellency at the middle of the table, on a chair raised above the warring elements below, prepared to receive the advice of his constitutional conscience-keepers. We will suppose you, sir, to rise and propose the opening of King’s College to all Her Majesty’s subjects, — and then, sir, we will have the happiness of seeing the discordant-producing-harmony-principle in the full vigour of peaceful operation.”
