Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 519
Lord Sydenham himself in reality had no more idea of applying colonial self-government in the sense in which it is now known and in which it was understood by Robert Baldwin, than had Sir Francis Head. Indeed, it is necessary to remember that his instructions from Russell had absolutely precluded the establishment of responsible cabinet government. Thomson’s correspondence discloses that he was entirely faithful to the system imposed on him by the imperial government in this connexion. “I am not a bit afraid,” he wrote, “of the responsible government cry; I have already done much to put it down in its inadmissible sense, SYDENHAM’S DESPATCH namely, the demand that the council shall be responsible to the assembly, and that the governor shall take their advice and be bound by it. . . . And I have not met with any one who has not at once admitted the absurdity of claiming to put the council over the head of the governor. . . . I have told the people plainly, that, as I cannot get rid of my responsibility to the home government, I will place no responsibility on the council; that they are a council for the governor to consult, but no more.” Sydenham might claim to have told the people plainly this old-time doctrine of gubernatorial autocracy, but there was a fairly wide belief that constitutional changes were in the air. The governor-general had received from Lord John Russell, under date of October 16th, 1839, a despatch in which the position to be held by colonial executive officers was explained. “You will understand, and will cause it to be generally made known, that hereafter the tenure of colonial offices held during Her Majesty’s pleasure, will not be regarded as equivalent to a tenure during good behaviour: but that not only will such officers be called upon to retire from the public service as often as any sufficient motives of public policy may suggest the expediency of that measure, but that a change in the person of the governor will be considered as a sufficient reason for any alterations which his successor may deem it expedient to make in the list of public functionaries, subject, of course, to the future confirmation of the sovereign.”
The publication of this despatch had been put by Lord Sydenham (who laid it before the legislature of Upper Canada) to a special purpose. It served as a notice to the office-holding Tories of the legislative council that they must either conform to the wishes of the imperial government in proposing the union or forfeit the positions which they held. But the Reform party, not without justice, read in it a still further significance. Interpreted in the light of Lord Durham’s recommendations, it distinctly implied that the executive council, of which in a later paragraph it made particular mention, should be expected by the governor to resign when no longer commanding the confidence of the country. This view had been, moreover, distinctly emphasized by the presentation (December 13th, 1839) of an address to the governor-general, in which it was requested that he would be pleased to inform the House whether any communications had been received from Her Majesty’s principal secretary of state for the colonies on the subject of responsible government. To this Lord Sydenham replied that “it was not BALDWIN ACCEPTS OFFICE in his power to communicate to the House of Assembly any despatches upon the subject referred to,” but added, that “the governor-general has received Her Majesty’s commands to administer the government of the provinces in accordance with the well understood wishes and interests of the people, and to pay to their feelings, as expressed through their representatives, the deference that is justly due to them.” The matter had thus been left, purposely perhaps, in a half light. But in order that there might be no doubt as to the views of the Reform party whose wishes he represented, Baldwin, on accepting office, had addressed to Lord Sydenham and had caused to be published the following statement of his position: “I distinctly avow that in accepting office I consider myself to have given a public pledge that I have a reasonably well grounded confidence that the government of my country is to be carried on in accordance with the principles of responsible government which I have ever held.” In this position, then, the matter rested until the resignation of Baldwin after the union, under circumstances described in the following chapter.
Meantime the union project was carried forward. The special council of Lower Canada, the assembly and the legislative council of Upper Canada, had all adopted resolutions accepting the basis of union proposed by Lord Sydenham on the part of the imperial government. The assembly of Upper Canada accompanied its resolutions with an address requesting that “the use of the English language in all judicial and legislative records be forthwith introduced, and that at the end of a space of a given number of years after the union, all debates in the legislature shall be in English.” It was asked, also, that the seat of government should be in Upper Canada.
The intelligence of the proceedings having been forwarded to England, the Act of Union was duly enacted by the imperial parliament. Its terms, in summary, were as follows. In the place of the two former colonies of Upper and Lower Canada, there was to be a single province of Canada. A legislature was instituted consisting of two Houses, the Upper House, or legislative council, consisting of not fewer than twenty persons appointed for life by the Crown, and the Lower House, or assembly, being elected by the people. Of the eight-four members of the Lower House, forty-two were to be elected from each of the former divisions of the province. English was made the sole official language of legislative records. Out of the consolidated revenue of the province the sum of seventy-five thousand pounds was to be handed over yearly to the Crown for the payment of the civil list, namely, certain salaries, pensions and other fixed charges of the ELECTIONS TO THE ASSEMBLY government. The executive authority was vested in a governor-general, to whom was adjoined an executive council appointed by the Crown. The extent of the responsibility of this council to the parliament is not defined in the Act. Inasmuch, however, as the entire system of responsible, or cabinet government, in Great Britain itself is only a matter of convention and not of positive law, a definite statement of responsibility was in the present case not to be expected. The debt previously contracted in the separate provinces now became a joint burden.
The union thus prepared went into operation (by virtue of a proclamation of the governor-general) on February 10th, 1841. On the thirteenth of the same month the writs were issued for the election of members of the legislature, returnable on April 8th. Robert Baldwin was elected in two constituencies, the south riding of York and the county of Hastings. Francis Hincks offered himself as a candidate to the electors of Oxford, a county which he had been invited to visit shortly before on the strength of his writings in the Examiner, and in which he secured his election. Both Baldwin and Hincks issued election addresses in which they took their stand on the principle of responsible government, a system, “which by giving satisfaction to the colonists, would secure a permanent connection between the British Empire and its numerous dependencies.” The elections in Lower Canada were marked by scenes of unusual fraud and corruption. No pains were spared by the administration to carry the day in favour of union candidates. The governor-general, by virtue of a power conferred under the Act of Union, reconstructed the boundaries of the constituencies of Quebec and Montreal. Elsewhere intimidation and actual violence were used to stifle the hostile vote of the anti-union party. To this was due the defeat of the French-Canadian leader, LaFontaine, in the county of Terrebonne. The latter, in his electoral address, had again denounced the union in embittered terms. “It is,” he said, “an act of injustice and of despotism, in that it is forced upon us without our consent; in that it robs Lower Canada of the legitimate number of its representatives; in that it deprives us of the use of our language in the proceedings of the legislature against the faith of treaties and the word of the governor-general; in that it forces us to pay, without our consent, a debt which we did not incur.” But LaFontaine realized the futility of blind opposition to an accomplished fact. The attempt to repeal the union, he argued, would merely lead to a continuation of despotic government by an appointed council. To him the DEFEAT OF LAFONTAINE key to the situation was to be found in the principle of ministerial responsibility. “I do not hesitate to say,” he said, “that I am in favour of this English principle of responsible government. I see in it the only guarantee that we can have for good, constitutional and effective government. . . . The Reformers in the two provinces form an immense majority. . . . Our cause is common. It is in the interest of the Reformers of the two provinces to meet in the legislature in a spirit of peace, union, friendship and fraternity. Unity of action is necessary now more than ever.”
In despite, however, of the defeat of LaFontaine and several other Reform candidates in Lower Canada, the result of the election of 1841 was not unfavourable to the cause of Reform. Of the eighty-four members of the Lower House only twenty-four were pledged supporters of the governor-general, while the Reform party of both nationalities included well over forty members of the House.
Greville Memoirs, Ch. xvi.
F. Bradshaw, Self-government in Canada, (London, 1902).
Lucas, Durham’s Report, Vol. ii. p-308 (Oxford, 1912).
Ibid, p, 277 ff.
Reminiscences, .
Thompson to Russell, November 18th, 1839; Kennedy, Documents, .
Sir John B. Robinson, Canada and the Canada Bill (London, 1840).
Journals of the Assembly, 1825-40, . The resolution in question appears as an amendment by Mr. Sherwood to the resolution finally passed.
G. Poulett Scrope, Life of Lord Sydenham, (London, 1844).
Thomson to a friend, December 12th, 1839: Kennedy, Documents, .
Russell to Thomson, October 16th, 1839; Kennedy, Documents, p ff.
Ibid, .
Printed in Hincks, Political History, (Montreal, 1877).
See address and note in Kennedy, Documents, p ff.
3 and 4 Vict. c. 35. Kennedy, Documents, p ff.
The proclamation itself was issued under date of February 5th.
Reminiscences, .
See Passim, Turcotte, Le Canada sous l’Union, 1841-1867 (Quebec, 1871); Dent, The Last Forty Years, Vol. i. (Toronto, 1881). David, L’Union des Deux Canadas, 1841-1867 (Montreal, 1898).
Scrope, Life of Lord Sydenham, (London, 1844).
CHAPTER IV. LORD SYDENHAM AND RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT
UNDER THE ACT of 1840 (sec. xxx), the choice of a seat of government for the united provinces was left to the governor-general. In the troubled state of racial feeling, such a selection was naturally a matter of difficulty. While it was clear that the capital city of the country must be chosen in Upper Canada, Sydenham was, nevertheless, anxious to conciliate the French-Canadians as far as might be by appointing a capital neither too remote from their part of the province, nor too little associated with their history. Kingston, situated on the north shore of Lake Ontario, at the point where the lake narrows to the river St. Lawrence, seemed best to fulfil these requirements. The foundation of the settlement antedated by nearly a century the English occupation of Canada, and the fort and trading station then established had been one of the western outposts of the French régime, while its erstwhile name of Frontenac associated the place with the bygone glory of New France. British loyalty, with a characteristic lack of inventiveness, had altered the name of the little town to Kingston. A strong fort built upon the limestone hills that commanded the sheltered harbour, and garrisoned by imperial troops, testified to the military importance of the place. Its central position rendered it at once the key to the navigation of the lake and river, while the construction of the Rideau Canal had placed it in control of an inland waterway whose possession minimized the dangers of an American frontier attack. In this favoured situation there had now sprung up a town, of some seven thousand inhabitants, built largely of the limestone on which it stands and patterned upon the now inevitable rectangular plan. At the time of the union Kingston was a town of about a mile and a half in length, with a breadth of three-quarters of a mile. It contained six churches, was able to boast of three newspapers, and was, moreover, the seat of a very considerable milling industry, large quantities of grain being brought across the lake to be ground at Kingston and exported thence to Great Britain, thereby enjoying the special tariff preference accorded to colonial products. The one hundred and sixty miles which separated it from Toronto represented in those days a steamboat voyage of about eighteen hours, or in winter time a sleigh-drive, under favourable conditions, of about a day and a night’s duration. From Montreal to Kingston, a distance of about one hundred and seventy miles, the journey was accomplished while navigation was open, partly by steamer, partly by stage. A letter of Lord Sydenham’s under date of STEAMBOATS AND STAGES December 3rd, 1839, illustrates the arduousness of travel to and from the new provincial capital. “The journey,” he writes, “was bad enough. A portage (from Montreal) to Lachine; then the steamboat to the cascades, twenty-four miles further; then road again (if road it can be called) for sixteen miles; then steam to Cornwall, forty miles; then road, twelve miles; then by a change of steamers, into Lake Ontario to Kingston.” The all-water route by the Rideau Canal, passing through Bytown (now Ottawa) occupied some forty-eight hours. It was in Kingston, then, that Lord Sydenham had summoned the new Canadian legislature to meet on June 14th, 1841, and in the early summer of that year the little town was already astir with sanguine hopes of becoming the metropolis of Canada.
Before, however, the legislature had as yet come together, the governmental problem, which was to be the central feature of the political life of Canada from now until the administration of Lord Elgin, the problem of ministerial responsibility, had already developed itself. Under the new régime it fell to the task of Lord Sydenham to appoint not only the members of the legislative council, which was to form the Upper House of the parliament, but also those of the executive council. These appointments were made a few days after the inauguration of the union (February 13th, 1841). The list of executive councillors was as follows: from Upper Canada, W. H. Draper as attorney-general of Upper Canada; Robert Baldwin Sullivan, president of the council; J. H. Dunn, receiver-general; S. B. Harrison, provincial secretary for Upper Canada; and Robert Baldwin, solicitor-general for that province. The Lower Province was represented in the executive government by C. R. Ogden, attorney-general for Lower Canada; Dominick Daly, provincial secretary; and C. D. Day as solicitor-general. H. H. Killaly was presently added to the ministry (March 17th, 1841), as commissioner of public works. We have already seen that in accepting a seat in the executive council Robert Baldwin had made it abundantly clear that he did so on the presumption that the operation of the incoming government would be based upon the principle of executive responsibility. Beyond this preliminary declaration, however, Baldwin did not think it desirable to take any further action until the election of the assembly and the relative representation of political parties should have given some indication of the standing of the ministry with the country at large.
The executive council, as thus constituted, was a body of multicoloured complexion and varying views. Ability it undoubtedly possessed, but it represented at the same time so little agreement in political sentiment or conviction, that it might well be doubted whether joint and harmonious action would be possible. Baldwin, as we have seen, was an uncompromising Reformer, devoted to the principles THE FIRST MINISTRY of popular sovereignty and executive responsibility. Sullivan, his cousin, was a man of different temper. Keen in intellect, ready in debate, he brought to the practical business of politics the point of view of the lawyer, the tactician, the man of the world. For abstract principles of government he cared not a brass farthing. It was his wont to say to his colleagues, “Fix on your policy. Take what course you like, and I will find you good reason for doing so.”
William Henry Draper, the attorney-general, differed still more radically in his political outlook from Robert Baldwin. Draper, after an adventurous and wandering youth, had come to Canada some twenty years before, had drifted from school-teaching into law and politics, and at this time belonged, like Baldwin and Sullivan, to the legal fraternity of York. He had sat in the Upper Canadian assembly, been one of the council of Sir Francis Bond Head and had succeeded Christopher Hagerman in 1840 as attorney-general of Upper Canada. This office he still held in the ministry of the united provinces. Draper was a man of great ability, eloquent and persuasive of speech, skilled as a parliamentary manager and dexterous in the game politics. He was by principle and temperament a Conservative, and although of undoubted patriotism and devoted to the cause of good government, he viewed with alarm the increasing tendency of his time towards the extension of democratic rule.
Harrison and Killaly were Liberals of a moderate cast. John Henry Dunn has already been noticed as one of Baldwin’s colleagues of the short-lived ministry of Sir Francis Head, and may be considered as sharing the opinions of the moderate Reform party. The councillors for Lower Canada could lay but little claim to be representative of the sentiments of that province. Dominick Daly, the provincial secretary, and presently member for Megantic, an Irishman now nearly twenty years in Canada, of an easy and affable personality, was not displeasing to the French-Canadians whose religion he shared. Ogden, a lawyer and a former office-holder in the government of Lower Canada, was identified with the British interests and was unpopular with the French. Day represented the same class. It will be observed that the refusal of LaFontaine to accept office left the French-Canadians wholly without representation in the executive government.
