Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 482
An admirable account of the system is to be found in the recent work of Professor W. H. Munro of Harvard University, The Seigniorial System in Canada. (Longmans, Green, & Co., N. Y., 1907.)
The end of the great ministry came in the succeeding session, that of 1851. The opposition of the Clear Grits to the government was growing more and more pronounced and the two unsolved questions proved a standing hindrance to the reunion of the Reform party. A Canadian writer has said that the Reform party had become too ponderous to be held together and that it broke of its own weight. Indeed the united strength of the Reformers, Radicals, Clear Grits, Independents and the Parti Rouge, so completely outnumbered the Conservatives, that it was vain to expect to find all sections of the party disregarding their own special views for the sake of continuing to outvote so small a minority. The temptation was rather for the leaders of the separate groups to court new alliances, which might convert their subordinate position in the Reform party into a dominant position in a new combination. In this way we can understand the vote which, midway in the session of 1851, led to the resignation of Robert Baldwin.
F. Taylor, Portraits of British Americans, Vol. III, .
Mackenzie, who was aiding the Clear Grits in their persistent opposition to the cabinet, brought in a motion (June 26th, 1851) in favour of abolishing the court of chancery — one of the reforms recommended in the platforms of the Clear Grits. This court, formerly a valid subject of grievance, had been reorganized by Baldwin in his Act of 1849, and he had seen no reason to regard its present operation as unsatisfactory. Mackenzie’s motion was rejected, but its rejection was only effected by the votes of LaFontaine and his French-Canadian supporters: twenty-seven of the Upper Canadian votes were given against Baldwin, many of them representing the opinion of Upper Canadian lawyers. Under happier auspices Baldwin might not have regarded this vote as a matter of vital importance, for he had never professed himself a believer in the doctrine of the “double majority,” the need, that is to say, of a majority support in each section of the province at the same time. But the mortification arising in this instance was coupled with a realization of the difficulties that were thickening about the government, and with a knowledge that the Reform party was passing under other guidance than that of its early leaders. The vote on the chancery question was merely made the occasion for a resignation which could henceforth only be a question of time.
Turcotte (Canada sous l’Union, ) says that Baldwin by his resignation sanctioned the principle of the “double majority.” But compare Hincks, Political History, . See also letter of Baldwin to LaFontaine, cited above, p-5.
Baldwin’s resignation was tendered on June 30th, 1851. All parties united in courteous expressions of appreciation of his great services to the country, and the chivalrous MacNab expressed his regret at the determination of his old-time adversary. Almost immediately after the resignation of Baldwin, LaFontaine expressed his intention of retiring from public life after the close of the session. He, too, had wearied of the struggle to maintain union where none was. The committee on seigniorial tenure, moreover, reported a proposal for a bill which LaFontaine found himself compelled to consider a measure of confiscation. The consciousness that his views on this all-important subject could no longer command a united support confirmed him in his intention to abandon political life. Indeed, for some years, LaFontaine had suffered keenly from the disillusionment that attends political life. As far back as September 23rd, 1845, he had expressed his weariness of office in a confidential letter to Baldwin. “As to myself,” he wrote, “I sincerely hope I will never be placed in a situation to be obliged to take office again. The more I see, the more I feel disgusted. It seems as if duplicity, deceit, want of sincerity, selfishness, were virtues. It gives me a poor idea of human nature.”
MS. Letters of LaFontaine and Baldwin. Toronto Public Library.
The parliamentary session terminated on August 30th, 1851. It was generally known throughout the country that LaFontaine would carry into effect, in the ensuing autumn, the intention of resignation which he had expressed. His approaching retirement from public life was made the occasion of a great banquet in his honour held at the St. Lawrence Hotel, Montreal, (October 1st, 1851.) Morin, the life-long associate in the political career of the leader of French Canada, occupied the chair, while Leslie, Holmes, Nelson and other prominent Reformers were among those present. The speech of LaFontaine on this occasion, on which he bid farewell to public life, is of great interest. In it he passes in review the political evolution of French Canada during his public career.
“Twenty-one years ago,” said LaFontaine, “when first I entered upon political life, we were under a very different government. I refer to the method of its administration. We had a government in which the parliament had no influence, — the government of all British colonies. Under this government the people had no power, save only the power of refusing subsidies. This was the sole resource of the House of Assembly, and we can readily conceive with what danger such a resource was fraught. It was but natural that this system should give occasion to many abuses.
The speech is translated from La Minerve, October 4th, 1851.
“We commenced, therefore, our struggle to extirpate these abuses, to establish that form of government that it was our right to have and which we have to-day, — true representative English government. Let it be borne in mind that under our former system of government all our struggles were vain and produced only that racial hate and animosity which is happily passing from us to-day, and which, I venture to hope, this banquet may tend still further to dissipate.
“I hope that I give offence to none if, in speaking of the union of the provinces, I say that history will record the fact that the union was a project, which, in the mind of its author, aimed at the annihilation (anéantissement) of the French-Canadians. It was in this light that I regarded it. But after having subsequently examined with care this rod of chastisement that had been prepared against my compatriots, I besought some of the most influential among them to let me make use of this very instrument to save those whom it was designed to ruin, to place my fellow-countrymen in a better position than any they had ever occupied. I saw that this measure contained in itself the means of giving to the people the control which they ought to have over the government, of establishing a real government in Canada. It was under these circumstances that I entered parliament. The rest you know. From this moment we began to understand responsible government, the favourite watchword of to-day; it was then that it was understood that the governor must have as his executive advisers men who possessed the confidence of the public, and it was thus that I came to take part in the administration.
“For fifteen months things went fairly well. Then came the struggle between the ministry, of which I formed part, and Governor Metcalfe. The result of this struggle has been that you have in force in this country, the true principles of the English constitution. Power to-day is in the hands of the people. . . .
“I have said that the union was intended to annihilate the French-Canadians. But the matter has resulted very differently. The author of the union was mistaken. He wished to degrade one race among our citizens, but the facts have shown that both races among us stand upon the same footing. The very race that had been trodden under foot (dans l’abaissement) now finds itself, in some sort by this union, in a position of command to-day. Such is the position in which I leave the people of my race. I can only deprecate the efforts now made to divide the population of French Canada, but I have had a long enough experience to assure you that such efforts cannot succeed: my compatriots have too much common sense to forget that, if divided, they would be powerless and we be, to use the expression of a Tory of some years ago, ‘destined to be dominated and led by the people of another race.’ For myself, I spurn the efforts that are made to sunder the people of French Canada. Never will they succeed.”
LaFontaine resigned in October, 1851. The break-up of the ministry was, of course, followed by a general election in which he played no part. Baldwin presented himself to the electors of the fourth riding of York and was defeated by Hartman, a Clear Grit. In his speech to the electors, after the announcement of his defeat, he declared that he had felt it his duty once more to place himself before them and “not to take upon himself the responsibility of originating the disruption of a bond which had been formed and repeatedly renewed between him and the electors of the north riding.” With the election of 1851, Robert Baldwin’s public career entirely terminates. From that time until his death, seven years later, he lived in complete retirement at “Spadina.” Though but forty-seven years of age at the time of his resignation, his health had suffered much from the assiduity of his parliamentary labours. In 1854 he was created a Companion of the Bath, and in the following year the government of John A. Macdonald offered him the position of chief-justice of the common pleas. This offer, and the later invitation (1858) to accept a nomination for the legislative council (then become elective), Baldwin’s failing health compelled him to decline. He died on December 9th, 1858, and was buried in the family sepulchre, called St. Martin’s Rood, on the Spadina estate, whence his remains were subsequently removed to St. James Cemetery, Toronto.
LaFontaine, in retiring from political life at the age of forty-four, had yet a distinguished career before him on the bench. Returning, after his resignation, to legal occupations, he was appointed in 1853 chief-justice of Lower Canada, and in the year following was credited a baronet in recognition of his distinguished career. As chief-justice, Sir Louis LaFontaine presided over the sittings of the seigniorial tenure court established for the adjustment of claims under the Act of 1854, and attained a distinction as a jurist which rivalled his eminence as a political leader. In 1860 LaFontaine, whose first wife, as has been seen, had died many years before, married a Madame Kinton, widow of an English officer. Of this marriage were born two sons, both of whom died young. Sir Louis LaFontaine died at Montreal, February 26th, 1864.
See page 47.
See L. O. David, Biographies Canadiennes (Montreal, 1870): Sir Louis H. LaFontaine.
It is beyond the scope of the present volume to follow the subsequent political career of Francis Hincks. His reconstruction of the Reform party, his joint premiership with Morin, and the “sleepless vigilance” of his policy of railroad development and public improvement, form an important chapter in the history of Canada to which Sir John Bourinot and other authors of the present series have done ample justice. Hincks’s career as a colonial governor in Barbadoes and Guiana, his subsequent return to Canada as Sir Francis Hincks, and the story of his services as minister of finance (1869-73) under Sir John A. Macdonald, lie altogether apart from the subject-matter of this book. Sir Francis Hincks died August 18th, 1885, after a long, active and useful life. His Reminiscences of his Public Life, published in 1884, is precisely one of those books which it is greatly to be desired that men who have taken a large part in public affairs would more frequently give to the world. For Canadian political history from 1840 to 1854, it will always remain an authority of the first importance.
It may, at first sight, appear strange that the two great Reformers, whose joint career has been chronicled in the foregoing pages, should have abandoned political life at an age when most statesmen are but on the threshold of their achievements. But the resignation of Baldwin and LaFontaine meant that their work was done. To find a real basis of political union between French and British Canada, to substitute for the strife of unreconciled races the fellow-citizenship of two great peoples, and set up in the foremost of British colonies an ensample of self-government that should prove the lasting basis of empire, — this was the completed work by which they had amply earned the rest of eventide after the day of toil.
Adventurers of the Far North
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. THE GREAT ELIZABETHAN NAVIGATORS
CHAPTER II. HEARNE’S OVERLAND JOURNEY TO THE NORTHERN OCEAN
CHAPTER III. MACKENZIE DESCENDS THE GREAT RIVER OF THE NORTH
CHAPTER IV. THE MEMORABLE EXPLOITS OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN
CHAPTER V. THE TRAGEDY OF FRANKLIN’S FATE
CHAPTER VI. EPILOGUE. THE CONQUEST OF THE POLE
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The Arctic Council, discussing a plan of search for Sir John Franklin. . From the National Portrait Gallery.
Routes of Explorers in the Far North
CHAPTER I. THE GREAT ELIZABETHAN NAVIGATORS
THE MAP OF Canada offers to the eye and to the imagination a vast country more than three thousand miles in width. Its eastern face presents a broken outline to the wild surges of the Atlantic. Its western coast commands from majestic heights the broad bosom of the Pacific. Along its southern boundary is a fertile country of lake and plain and woodland, loud already with the murmur of a rising industry, and in summer waving with the golden wealth of the harvest.
But on its northern side Canada is set fast against the frozen seas of the Pole and the desolate region of barren rock and ice-bound island that is joined to the polar ocean by a common mantle of snow. For hundreds and hundreds of miles the vast fortress of ice rears its battlements of shining glaciers. The unending sunshine of the Arctic summer falls upon untrodden snow. The cold light of the aurora illumines in winter an endless desolation. There is no sound, save when at times the melting water falls from the glistening sides of some vast pinnacle of ice, or when the leaden sea forces its tide between the rock-bound islands. Here in this vast territory civilization has no part and man no place. Life struggles northward only to die out in the Arctic cold. The green woods of the lake district and the blossoms of the prairies are left behind. The fertility of the Great West gives place to the rock-strewn wilderness of the barren grounds. A stunted and deformed vegetation fights its way to the Arctic Circle. Rude grasses and thin moss cling desperately to the naked rock. Animal life pushes even farther. The seas of the frozen ocean still afford a sustenance. Even mankind is found eking out a savage livelihood on the shores of the northern sea. But gradually all fades, until nothing is left but the endless plain of snow, stretching towards the Pole.
Yet this frozen northern land and these forbidding seas have their history. Deeds were here done as great in valour as those which led to the conquest of a Mexico or the acquisition of a Peru. But unlike the captains and conquerors of the South, the explorers have come and gone and left behind no trace of their passage. Their hopes of a land of gold, their vision of a new sea-way round the world, are among the forgotten dreams of the past. Robbed of its empty secret, the North still stretches silent and untenanted with nothing but the splendid record of human courage to illuminate its annals.
For us in our own day, the romance that once clung about the northern seas has drifted well nigh to oblivion. To understand it we must turn back in fancy three hundred years. We must picture to ourselves the aspect of the New World at the time when Elizabeth sat on the throne of England, and when the kingdoms of western Europe, Britain, France, and Spain, were rising from the confusion of the Middle Ages to national greatness. The existence of the New World had been known for nearly a hundred years. But it still remained shadowed in mystery and uncertainty. It was known that America lay as a vast continent, or island, as men often called it then, midway between Europe and the great empires of the East. Columbus, and after him Verrazano and others, had explored its eastern coast, finding everywhere a land of dense forests, peopled here and there with naked savages that fled at their approach. The servants of the king of Spain had penetrated its central part and reaped, in the spoils of Mexico, the reward of their savage bravery. From the central isthmus Balboa had first seen the broad expanse of the Pacific. On this ocean the Spaniard Pizarro had been borne to the conquest of Peru. Even before that conquest Magellan had passed the strait that bears his name, and had sailed westward from America over the vast space that led to the island archipelago of Eastern Asia. Far towards the northern end of the great island, the fishermen of the Channel ports had found their way in yearly sailings to the cod banks of Newfoundland. There they had witnessed the silent procession of the great icebergs that swept out of the frozen seas of the north, and spoke of oceans still unknown, leading one knew not whither. The boldest of such sailors, one Jacques Cartier, fighting his way westward had entered a great gulf that yawned in the opening side of the continent, and from it he had advanced up a vast river, the like of which no man had seen. Hundreds of miles from the gulf he had found villages of savages, who pointed still westward and told him of wonderful countries of gold and silver that lay beyond the palisaded settlement of Hochelaga.
But the discoveries of Columbus and those who followed him had not solved but had only opened the mystery of the western seas. True, a way to the Asiatic empire had been found. The road discovered by the Portuguese round the base of Africa was known. But it was long and arduous beyond description. Even more arduous was the sea-way found by Magellan: the whole side of the continent must be traversed. The dreadful terrors of the straits that separate South America from the Land of Fire must be essayed: and beyond that a voyage of thirteen thousand miles across the Pacific, during which the little caravels must slowly make their way northward again till the latitude of Cathay was reached, parallel to that of Spain itself. For any other sea-way to Asia the known coast-line of America offered an impassable barrier. In only one region, and that as yet unknown, might an easier and more direct way be found towards the eastern empires. This was by way of the northern seas, either round the top of Asia or, more direct still perhaps, by entering those ice-bound seas that lay beyond the Great Banks of Newfoundland and the coastal waters visited by Jacques Cartier. Into the entrance of these waters the ships of the Cabots flying the English flag had already made their way at the close of the fifteenth century. They seem to have reached as far, or nearly as far, as the northern limits of Labrador, and Sebastian Cabot had said that beyond the point reached by their ships the sea opened out before them to the west. No further exploration was made, indeed, for three-quarters of a century after the Cabots, but from this time on the idea of a North-West Passage and the possibility of a great achievement in this direction remained as a tradition with English seamen.
