Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 537
The legislative measures that fell to the share of LaFontaine were the political bills relating to Lower Canada. Here also the judicial system was amended, a court of queen’s bench being established with four judges of its own, and the superior court also undergoing a revision. A REPRESENTATION AND POPULATION general law of amnesty gave effect to the intention of the Crown. An attempt to carry a bill for redistributing the seats in the legislature failed of its purpose. It was LaFontaine’s object to give to each province seventy-five instead of forty-two members, in order to permit a subdivision of the larger constituencies: the equality of representation between the two provinces was to be retained, although it was now evident that Upper Canada would soon surpass in population the lower section of the province. For a measure of this kind a majority of two-thirds was necessitated by the Act of Union. The opposition to the bill came from the Upper Canadian Tories and from Papineau and certain other French-Canadian Radicals, who insisted on carrying the democratic principle of equal representation to its full extent, even against the interests of their own nationality. LaFontaine’s measure fell short of the required two-thirds by one vote. Of far more importance was a measure now before parliament for whose introduction LaFontaine was responsible, and whose passage almost threatened to bring the country to a civil war. The Rebellion Losses Bill is, however, of such importance as to require a chapter to itself.
See note on page 214.
Blake, who was absent in Europe, did not enter on office until April, 1849.
Walrond, Letters of Lord Elgin, .
Journals of the Legislative Assembly, January 18th, 1849.
Speech of January 23rd, 1849. (Translated from La Minerve.)
12 Vict. c. 1.
12 Vict. c. 13.
12 Vict. cc. 28, 29.
12 Vict. cc. 38, 41, 63, 64.
12 Vict. c. 58.
12 Vict. c. 81.
12 Vict. c. 82.
See J. Loudon, History of the University of Toronto, Canada: an Encyclopædia, Vol. IV.
Shortt, “Municipal Government in Ontario” (University of Toronto Studies, No. 2, Municipal Government). The following account of the steps leading to the Baldwin Act is largely based on this monograph.
56 Geo. III. c. 33.
2 Will. IV. c. 17.
See p, 120.
The importance of this line lay in the fact that it connected the St. Lawrence navigation (through the Richelieu River) with that of Lake Champlain and the Hudson.
CHAPTER X. THE REBELLION LOSSES BILL
THE ACT OF Indemnification of 1849, or — to give it the name by which it was known during its passage through parliament and by which it is still remembered — the Rebellion Losses Bill, is of unparalleled importance in the history of Canada. The bill was a measure for the compensation of persons in Lower Canada whose property had suffered in the suppression of the rebellion of 1837 and 1838. It excited throughout Canada a furious opposition. It was denounced both in Canada and in England as a scheme for rewarding rebels. Its passage led to open riots in Montreal, to the invasion of the legislature by a crowd of malcontents, to the burning of the houses of parliament and to the mobbing of Lord Elgin in the streets of the city. These facts alone would have made it an episode of great prominence in the narrative of our history; but the bill is of still greater importance in the development of the constitution of Canada. The fact that in despite of the opposition of the Loyalists, in despite of the flood of counter-petitions and addresses, in despite of the imminent prospect of civil strife, Lord Elgin fulfilled his constitutional duty, refused to dissolve the parliament or to reserve the bill for the royal sanction, and that the home government accepted the situation and refused to interfere, shows that we have here arrived at the complete realization of colonial self-government. The passage of the Rebellion Losses Bill gives to the doctrine of the right of the people of the colony to manage their own affairs, the final seal of a general acceptance.
The circumstances leading to the introduction of the measure were as follows. The outbreak of 1837-8 had occasioned throughout the two provinces a very considerable destruction of private property. Some of this had been caused by the overt acts of the rebels; but there had also been a good deal of property destroyed, injured or confiscated by the troops and the Loyalists in the suppression of the rebellion.
It was, from the beginning, the intention of the government to make reparation to persons who had suffered damage from the acts of rebels. The parliament of Upper Canada had passed an Act (1 Vict, c. 13) appointing commissioners to estimate the damages, and had presently voted (2 Vict. c. 48) the issue of some four thousand pounds in debentures in payment of the claims. The special council of Lower Canada had taken similar action. But the question of damage done in suppressing the outbreak was of a somewhat different complexion. A part of the property destroyed was the property of persons COMPENSATION IN UPPER CANADA actually in arms against the government. To these, plainly enough, no compensation was owing. In other cases the owners of injured property were adherents of the government, whose losses were occasioned either fortuitously or by the necessities of war. To these, equally clearly, a compensation ought to be paid. But between these two classes was a large number of persons whose property had suffered, who were not openly and provably rebels but who had belonged to the disaffected class, or who at any rate were identified in race and sympathy with the disaffected part of the population. This element gave to the equities of the question a very perplexed appearance.
In the last session of its existence the parliament of Upper Canada had adopted an Act (October 22nd, 1840) voting compensation on a large scale for damage done by the troops and otherwise. The sum of forty thousand pounds was to be applied to claims preferred under the Act. As no means were laid down for raising the necessary funds, this Act remained inoperative. Then followed the union of the Canadas and the election of a joint parliament. In despite of repeated petitions and individual representations to the government nothing more was done in regard to Rebellion Losses Claims until the year 1845 when the Draper government passed an Act to render operative the Upper Canadian statute of 1840. The funds for the measure were to be supplied out of the receipts from tavern licenses for Upper Canada, which were set aside for that purpose. The sums collected under this Act of parliament between April 5th, 1845 and January 24th, 1849, amounted to £38,658.
At the time when Mr. Draper’s Act of 1845 was before parliament, the Reformers of Lower Canada protested against the inequity of extending to one section of the country a privilege not enjoyed by the other, and demanded similar legislation for Lower Canada. The government, presumably in order to obtain their support for its own measure, indicated its readiness to act upon this demand, and a unanimous address was presented to Lord Metcalfe (February 28th, 1845) asking him to institute an enquiry into the losses sustained in Lower Canada during the period of the insurrection. A commission consisting of five persons was accordingly appointed (November 24th, 1845). The commissioners were asked to distinguish between participants in the rebellion and persons innocent of complicity, but they were also informed that “the object of the executive government was merely to obtain a general estimate of the rebellion losses, the particulars of which should form the subject of more minute investigation thereafter under legislative authority.” The result was that the commission found themselves compelled to report that “the want of TORY OPPOSITION power to proceed to a strict and regular investigation of the losses in question left the commissioners no other resource than to trust to the allegation of the claimants as to the amount and nature of their losses.” Needless to say that, under the circumstances, many of the allegations in question were very wide of the truth: the total sum claimed amounted to over two hundred and forty thousand pounds, and of this it is said that about twenty-five thousand pounds represented claims of persons who had been convicted by court-martial of complicity in the rebellion. It will easily be understood that under these circumstances the cry arose from the Canadian Tories and their British sympathizers that the whole scheme amounted to nothing more than plundering the public treasury in favour of the disloyal. It was impossible for the government to take action upon a report of so unreliable a character. Indeed it is likely that the government was anxious merely to tide the matter over as best it might. It voted some ten thousand pounds in payment of claims that had been certified in Lower Canada before the union, and with that it let the matter rest.
As the question stood at the opening of the LaFontaine-Baldwin administration, it is plain that a grave injustice rested upon many injured persons in Lower Canada as compared with their fellow-citizens of Upper Canada who had received compensation for their losses: granted that there were black sheep among the claimants, this did not affect the validity of the other claims. It was this injustice that LaFontaine, whose constant policy it was to safeguard the rights of his nationality, now determined to rectify. Early in the session he moved, seconded by Robert Baldwin, a series of seven resolutions, reciting the failure of the previous commission and demanding the appointment of a new body with proper powers, and the payment of claims. The resolutions, carried by large majorities (the vote on the first one, for example, was fifty-two to twenty) were followed (February 27th) by the introduction of a bill to bring them into effect. The measure was entitled, “An Act to provide for the indemnification of parties in Lower Canada whose property was destroyed during the rebellion of the years 1837 and 1838.” There was no difficulty, as far as voting power went in carrying the bill through parliament. It was passed by the House of Assembly (March 9th, 1849) by a vote of forty-seven to eighteen, and accepted without amendment by the legislative council by twenty against fourteen votes. The fact that the measure received overwhelming support in a legislature only recently elected, must be carefully noted in considering the constitutional aspect of the question involved.
Under the provisions of the Act the governor-general was empowered to appoint five commissioners PROVISIONS OF THE ACT whose duty it should be “faithfully and without partiality to enquire into and to ascertain the amount of the losses sustained during the rebellion.” The commissioners were given authority to summon witnesses and examine them under oath. For the payment of the claims the governor was empowered to issue debentures, payable out of the consolidated revenue of the province at or within twenty years after the date of issue and bearing interest at six per cent. The maximum amount to be expended on the claims (including the expenses incurred under the Act and the sum of £9,986 issued in debentures under the Act of June 9th, 1846) was not to exceed £100,000; if the claims allowed amounted to a higher total, a proportionate distribution was to be effected. The Act also provided that no claim should be recognized on the part of any persons “who had been convicted of treason during the rebellion, or who, having been taken into custody, had submitted to Her Majesty’s will and been transported to Bermuda.”
The introduction and explanation of the bill before parliament naturally fell to the task of LaFontaine, who made a number of speeches in its support, traversing the whole question of indemnity from 1837 onwards and affording an admirable history of the measure. Baldwin took but little part in the debates on the Rebellion Losses Bill. It has often been said that this was from lack of sympathy with the measure, and insinuations of this kind were made in the House of Assembly. But a speech made by Baldwin during the debate on the introduction of the preliminary resolutions (February 27th, 1849) emphatically affirms his concurrence in LaFontaine’s proposed measure. He had been accused, he said, of wilfully abstaining from speaking on the measure, but this was an error, for he had merely refrained from speaking because there was no necessity to do so. The whole matter had been set in such a clear light by his friends that it would be impossible to elucidate it still further. In the brief speech which followed, Baldwin went on to show that the measure contemplated by the resolutions would merely do for Lower Canada what had already been done for the upper part of the province. If the resolutions failed to indicate how to avoid indemnifying any who had taken up arms, so too had the Act of 1841.
The passage of the bill was, of course, an easy matter as far as obtaining a majority went. But nothing could exceed the furious opposition excited both within and without the parliament by the introduction of the bill. The old battle of the rebellion was fought over again. With Papineau back in the assembly, Mackenzie now revisiting the country under the Amnesty Act, the legislature NO PAY FOR REBELS in session at Montreal and a French-Canadian at the head of the administration, it seemed to the excited Tories as if the days of 1837 had come back, and that they must rally again to fight the cause of British loyalty against the encroachments of an alien race. The bill for payment of the losses seemed like the crowning triumph of their foes, and the cry, “No pay for rebels,” resounded throughout the province. Many Canadian writers, as for example, the late Sir John Bourinot in his Lord Elgin, have seen in the opposition of the Tories nothing more than a party contest, the familiar game in which a likely issue is seized upon in the hope of a sudden overthrow of the government. “The issue,” he says, “was not one of public principle or of devotion to the Crown, it was simply a question of obtaining a party victory per fas aut nefas.”
The issue was not, indeed, in the real truth of the matter, a question of devotion to the Crown and the retention of the British connection. But the Tories, many of them, in all honesty saw it so. One has but to read the newspapers of the day to realize that something more than a mere party question was at issue. It was a contest in which right and justice were fighting hand to hand against a blind but honest fanaticism to whose distorted vision the Rebellion Losses Bill undid the work of the Loyalists of 1837. The rabble of the Montreal streets that burned the houses of parliament were doubtless inspired by no higher motive than the fierce lust of destruction that animates an inflamed and unprincipled mob. But the opposition of Sir Allan MacNab and the reputable leaders of Conservatism was based on a genuine conviction that the safety of the country was at stake. In the blindness of their rage the Tories entirely overlooked the fact that they themselves had sanctioned the payment of compensation for losses in Upper Canada, that the Draper government had itself originated the present movement, and that the bill expressly stipulated that nothing should be paid to “rebels” in the true sense of the term. The reasoned logic of LaFontaine’s presentation of the bill fell upon ears which the passion of the hour made deaf to argument: the fiery invective of Solicitor-general Blake, who answered the Tory accusation of disloyalty with a counter-accusation of the same character, only maddened them to fury. In the debate on the second reading of the bill the parliament became a scene of wild confusion. MacNab had called the French Canadians “aliens and rebels.” Blake in return taunted him with the disloyalty that prompts a meaningless and destructive opposition.
“I am not come here,” said Blake, “to learn lessons of loyalty from honourable gentlemen BLAKE AND MACNAB opposite. . . . I have no sympathy with the would-be loyalty of honourable gentlemen opposite, which, while it at all times affects peculiar zeal for the prerogative of the Crown, is ever ready to sacrifice the liberty of the subject. This is not British loyalty: it is the spurious loyalty which at all periods of the world’s history has lashed humanity into rebellion. . . . The expression ‘rebel’ has been applied by the gallant knight opposite to some gentlemen on this side of the House, but I tell gentlemen on the other side that their public conduct has proved that they are the rebels to their constitution and country.” For a man of MacNab’s fighting temper, this was too much. “If the honourable member means to apply the word ‘rebel’ to me,” he shouted, “I must tell him that it is nothing else than a lie.” In a moment the House was in an uproar: Blake and MacNab were only prevented from coming to blows by the intervention of the sergeant-at-arms, while a storm of shouts and hisses from the crowded galleries added to the confusion of the House. Blake and MacNab were taken into custody by the sergeant-at-arms, several of the wilder spirits of the galleries were arrested, and the debate ended for the day.
