Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 531
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 CAMPAIGN AGAINST METCALFE 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.”
Resolutions were adopted at the meeting endorsing the principles and conduct of the late administration and condemning in strong terms the interim government of Sir Charles Metcalfe. “We have commenced the campaign,” said the Globe, in commenting on the proceedings, “the ball has received its first impulse in this city, — let it be taken up in every village, and in every hamlet of the country.” At these meetings Baldwin was a frequent speaker and addresses from all parts of the country were forwarded to him. Not the least interesting among them was an address from his constituents of Rimouski setting forth that “a public meeting of the citizens of the different parishes of the county had been held immediately after mass on Sunday, February 4th,” and that resolutions had been adopted fully approving the “conduct in parliament of the Hon. Robert Baldwin.” In the course of the summer Baldwin not only spoke in various towns of Upper Canada but found time also, in July, to visit the Lower Provinces. In his own constituency, the county of Rimouski, Baldwin’s tour became a triumphal procession. The inhabitants flocked to meet him and his visit was made the occasion of universal gaiety and merry-making. The village street of Kamouraska was decorated with flags and a long cortège of vehicles accompanied the Reform leader on his entry: the river at Rimouski was crossed in a boat gaily adorned with bunting for the occasion, while repeated salvos of musketry attended the transit of Baldwin and his party. At Rimouski village itself, an assembly of some four hundred parishioners with their curé at their head was marshalled before the village church to present an address of welcome. Everywhere the cordial hospitality of the people was conjoined with the warmest expressions of political approval.
A shower of addresses fell also upon Sir Charles Metcalfe, addresses of advice, of hearty approval, and of angry expostulation. The “inhabitants of the town of London” begged to “approach His Excellency with feelings of gratitude and admiration which they could not sufficiently express.” The townspeople of Orillia had been “particularly disgusted with the studied insult so continually offered to all the faithful and loyal of the land, and by the advancement to situations of honour and employment of suspected and disloyal persons.” A SHOWER OF ADDRESSES The Tories of Toronto, Belleville, and a host of other places, sent up similar addresses. On the other hand, “the magistracy, freeholders, and inhabitants generally of the district of Talbot, observed with painful regret the unhappy rupture between His Excellency and a council which possessed so largely the confidence of the people. The principle of responsible government, which has occasioned this rupture, they had fondly hoped had been so clearly defined and so fully recognized and established as to obviate all difficulty and altercation for the future.” The district council of Gore took upon itself to go even further. They assured His Excellency that “public opinion in this district and, we believe, throughout the length and breadth of Canada, will fully sustain the late executive council in the stand they have taken, and in the views they have expressed.” Altogether some hundred addresses were forwarded to the governor-general. The greater part of them, as might be expected, emanated from Conservative sources and chorused a jubilant approbation of Metcalfe’s conduct. British loyalty, the old flag and the imperial connection were put to their customary illogical use, and did duty for better arguments against responsible government. Even the “Mohawk Indians of the Bay of Quinté” were pressed into political service. On the subject of responsible government the ideas of the chiefs were doubtless a little hazy and they discreetly avoided it, but their prayer that the “Great Spirit would long spare their gracious Mother to govern them” may be taken as a rude paraphrase of the Tory argument against the ministry. They regretted “the removal of the great council fire from Cataraqui to some hundred miles nearer the sun’s rising,” but lapsed into language much less convincingly Indian by saying that “the question is simply this, whether this country is to remain under the protection and government of the queen, or to become one of the United States.”
The Mohawk Indians were not the only ones who insisted on saying that this latter was the main question at issue. There was at Kingston a rising young barrister and politician of the Tory party, John A. Macdonald by name, who at this juncture coöperated in founding a United Empire Association.
Meantime the condition of affairs in Canada, and the fact that Metcalfe was conducting the government of the country with an executive council which consisted of only three persons, were exciting attention in the mother country and had become the subject of debate in the imperial parliament. Ever since the agitation and rebellion of 1837, there had been in the House of Commons a group of Radical members who were ready at any time to espouse the cause of the colonists against the BRITISH OPINION governors. This was done, it must in fairness be admitted, largely in ignorance of actual Canadian affairs. The sympathy of the British Radicals proceeded partly from the general philanthropy that marked their thought, partly from their abstract and doctrinaire conception of individual rights, and partly also from their desire to use the colonial agitation as a weapon of attack against the Tory government. Hume and Roebuck, it will be remembered, had been in correspondence with Mackenzie and Papineau. They had been the London agents of the Canadian Alliance Association founded by Mackenzie in 1834. Since that period the cause of self-government in Canada had found consistent supporters among the British Radicals. But the bearing of this sympathetic connection must not be misinterpreted. Trained in the narrow school of “little Englandism” the Radicals regarded every colony as necessarily moving towards the manifest destiny of ultimate independence, and the value of their sympathetic connection with the Baldwin-LaFontaine party in the present crisis must not be estimated apart from this element in their political philosophy. Indeed a little examination shows that between the ideas of the British Radicals and those of Robert Baldwin and his party, a great gulf was fixed. To the former, colonial self-government was justified as a necessary prelude to colonial independence: to the latter, it appeared as a bond — as the only stable and permanent bond — which would maintain intact the connection with the mother country. This latter point cannot be too strongly emphasized. There is hardly a speech made by Robert Baldwin at this period in which he does not assert his devotion to the unity of the empire and his firm belief that responsible government in the colonies was the true means of its maintenance. With the lapse of time the narrow view of the British Radicals has been discredited and lost from sight in the larger prospect of an imperial future. But no portion of that discredit should fall upon the Reformers of Canada, to whom at this moment they offered their support.
In answer to a question in the House of Commons, Lord Stanley, the colonial secretary, had (February 2nd, 1844) declared that the imperial government fully approved of the conduct of Sir Charles Metcalfe. Although Sir Charles LORD STANLEY’S VIEWS Metcalfe, he said, went out to carry out the views of the government at home, yet he was equally determined to resist any demands inconsistent with the dignity of the Crown; in pursuing this course he would have the entire support of the home government. A still more emphatic approval of Metcalfe’s conduct, together with a declaration of the principles of colonial government, was given by Lord Stanley some four months later (May 30th, 1844) in a debate which was presently known in Canada as the “great debate.” The statements made by Lord Stanley on that occasion, and the concurrence expressed by Lord John Russell, leave no doubt that neither the British statesmen of the Conservative party nor their Liberal opponents had as yet accepted the principle of colonial autonomy as we now know it. They were still haunted by the lingering idea that a colony must of necessity be subservient to its governor, and that complete self-government meant independence of Great Britain.
Mr. Roebuck had called the attention of the House of Commons to the condition of affairs in Canada, and the colonial secretary made a lengthy speech in reply. “The honourable member,” he said, “drew an analogy between the position of the ministers in the colony and the position of the ministers of the Crown in the mother country. He [Lord Stanley] denied the analogy. The constitution of Canada was so framed as to render it impossible that it could possess all the ingredients of the British constitution.” In Great Britain, he said, the Crown “exercised great influence because of the love, veneration, and attachment of the people. The governor was entirely destitute of the influence thus attached to royalty. . . . The House of Lords exercised the power derived from rank, station, wealth, territorial possession and hereditary title. The council [legislative] in Canada had none of these adventitious advantages.” The reasoning thus presented by the colonial secretary seems to bear in the wrong direction. But his remarks which follow essentially reveal the attitude of his mind on the question. “Place the governor of Canada,” he said, “in a state of absolute dependence on his council and they at once would make Canada an independent and republican colony. . . . It was inconsistent with a monarchical government that the governor should be nominally responsible, and yet was to be stripped of all power and authority, and to be reduced to that degree of power which was vested in the sovereign of this country: it was inconsistent with colonial dependence altogether and was overlooking altogether the distinction which must subsist between an independent STANLEY DEFENDS METCALFE country and a colony subject to the domination of the mother country. . . . The power for which a minister is responsible in England is not his own power but the power of the Crown, of which he is for the time the organ. It is obvious that the executive councillor of a colony is in a situation totally different. The governor, under whom he serves, receives his orders from the Crown of England. But can the colonial council be the advisers of the Crown of England? Evidently not, for the Crown has other advisers for the same functions and with superior authority.” Stanley’s words must have made a special appeal to Lord John Russell as the latter had used identical phrases in his dispatches to Sydenham five years earlier.
In the latter part of his speech Lord Stanley dealt more directly with the question of colonial appointments: his remarks show all too plainly that he too persisted in dividing the Canadians into two groups of “rebels” and “honest men,” and in viewing the present controversy as a strife between the two. “Did not the honourable and learned gentleman,” he asked, referring to Mr. Roebuck, “think that the minority in a colonial society, be it Tory, Radical, Whig, French, or English, had more chance of fair play if the honours and rewards in the gift of the government were distributed by the Crown than if they were dispensed exclusively by political partisans.” The magnificent stupidity of this remark can be realized if one imagines Lord Stanley being asked whether it might not be advisable to allow the queen to make personal appointments to all offices in order to shelter the British minority from the rapacity of the Conservative party. But what Stanley had in his mind becomes clear when he goes on to say:— “Would it be consistent with the dignity, the honour, the metropolitan interests of the Crown that its patronage should be used by the administration [of Canada] to reward the very men who had held back in the hour of danger? and would it be just or becoming to proscribe and drive from the service of the country those who, in the hour of peril, had come forward to manifest their loyalty and to maintain the union of Canada with the Crown of England?” The union of Canada and England had as little to do with the present argument as the union of Sweden and Norway, but the reference to it passed current in both countries for nobility of sentiment. Lord Stanley concluded his remarks by referring to the LaFontaine-Baldwin ministry as “unprincipled demagogues” and “mischievous advisers.”
Stanley’s defense of Metcalfe and his views on colonial self-government read somewhat strangely at the present day. What is still more strange is that the Liberal leader, Lord John Russell, who spoke on the same occasion, was prepared to put IRRESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT the same interpretation on the Canadian situation. He would, he said, have condemned Sir Charles Metcalfe if he had said that he would in no case take the opinion of his executive council respecting appointments; but it would be impossible for the governor to say that he would in all cases follow the will of the executive council. Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Charles Buller, one of the principal collaborators of Lord Durham in the composition of his report, spoke also to the same effect.
During all this time Sir Charles Metcalfe remained without a ministry. Even the two new councillors in office, Draper and Viger, had merely been sworn in as executive councillors without being assigned to offices of emolument. As the spring passed and the summer wore on, the chances of being able to obtain a ministry on anything like a representative basis still appeared remote. The Tories of the assembly had given to Sir Charles Metcalfe from the outset a cordial support, but in view of the overwhelming numbers of the Reformers and French Canadians, the attempt to construct a ministry from the ranks of the Tories would have been foredoomed to failure. On the other hand, the governor-general was well aware that continued government without a ministry meant ruin to his cause and tended of itself to prove the contention of his opponents. No effort was spared, therefore, to obtain support from the Reform party itself and to encourage secession from the ranks of the French Canadians by tempting offers of office. It was hoped that the example of Mr. Viger might induce others of his nationality to desert the cause of the late administration. Barthe, a fellow-prisoner of Viger in the days of the rebellion, and since then editor of L’Avenir du Canada and member for Yamaska, had been offered a seat in the cabinet shortly after the ministerial resignation and had refused. Four French Canadians in turn had rejected the offer of the position of attorney-general for Lower Canada, and the same position had been offered in vain to two British residents. Viger found himself with but small support among his fellow-countrymen. It was in vain that he appealed to them in a pamphlet in which he sought to prove that LaFontaine and Baldwin had acted without constitutional warrant. The subtleties of Mr. Viger’s arguments availed nothing against the instinctive sympathy of the French Canadians with their chosen leader. At the end of the month of June, Mr. Draper, anxious to realize the situation at first hand, visited the Lower Province and spent some weeks in a vain attempt at obtaining organized support for the government. As a result of his investigations he wrote to Sir Charles Metcalfe that “after diligently prosecuting his inquiries and extending A DEADLOCK his observations in all possible quarters, he could come to no other conclusion than that the aid of the French-Canadian party was not to be obtained on any other than the impossible terms of the restoration of Baldwin and LaFontaine.”
“The difficulty, indeed,” says Metcalfe’s biographer, “seemed to thicken. According to Mr. Draper, it was one from which there was no escape. After the lapse of seven months, during which the country had been without an executive government, Metcalfe was told by one of the ablest, the most clear-headed and one of the most experienced men in the country, that it was impossible to form a ministry, according to the recognized principle of responsible government, without the aid of the French-Canadian party, and that aid was impossible to obtain. What was to be done?” Well might the governor-general and his private advisers ask themselves this question. As Mr. Draper himself informed His Excellency, the want of an executive government was beginning to have a disastrous effect upon the commerce and credit of the country.
