The Winning of Popular Government / A Chronicle of the Union of 1841

by Archibald MacMechan

CHAPTER II

POULETT THOMSON, PEACEMAKER

Wounded and angry at what he considered an intolerable affront, Durham had placed the reins of government in the firm hands of that fine old soldier, Sir John Colborne, and had gone to speak with his enemies in the gate. Not only was the cause of Canada left bleeding; but as soon as Durham's back was turned, rebellion broke out once more. This second outbreak arose from the support afforded the Canadian revolutionists by American 'sympathizers.' The full story of the 'Hunters' Lodges' has never been told, and the sentiment animating that organization has been quite naturally misunderstood and misrepresented by Canadian historians. In the thirties of the nineteenth century western New York was the 'frontier,' and it was peopled by wild, illiterate frontiersmen, familiar with the use of the rifle and the bowie-knife, bred in the Revolutionary tradition and nourished on Fourth of July oratory to a hatred of everything British. The memories of 1812 were fresh in every mind. These simple souls were told by their own leaders and by political refugees from Canada, such as William Lyon Mackenzie, that the two provinces were groaning under the yoke of the 'bloody Queen of England,' that they were seething with discontent, that all they needed was a little assistance from free, chivalrous Americans and the oppressed colonists would shake off British tyranny for ever. Appeal was made to less exalted sentiment. Each patriot was to receive a handsome grant of land in the newly gained territory. Accordingly, in the spring and summer of 1838, a large scheme to give armed support to the republicans of Canada was secretly organized all along the northern boundary of the United States. It was a secret society of 'Hunters' Lodges,' with ritual, passwords, degrees. Each 'Lodge,' was an independent local body, but a band of organizers kept control of the whole series from New York to Detroit. The 'Hunters' are uniformly called 'brigands' and 'banditti' by the British regular officers who fought them, and the terms have been handed on without critical examination by Canadian historians; but not with justice. Misled though they were, the 'Hunters' looked upon Canada only as Englishmen looked upon Greece, or Poland, or Italy struggling for political freedom: the sentiment, though misdirected, was anything but ignoble. Acting upon this sentiment, a Polish refugee, Von Shoultz, led a small force of 'Hunters,' boys and young men from New York State, in an attack on Prescott, November 10, 1838. He succeeded in surprising the town and in establishing himself in a strong position in and about the old windmill, which is now the lighthouse. His position was technically a 'bridge-head,' and he defeated with heavy loss the first attempt to turn him out of it. If he had been properly supported from the American side of the river, and if the Canadians had really been ready to rise en masse as he had been led to believe, the history of Canada might have been changed. As it was, the invaders were cut off, and, on the threat of bombardment with heavy guns, surrendered. Their leader paid for his mistaken chivalry with his life on the gallows within old Fort Henry at Kingston; and, in recognition of his error, he left in his will a sum of money to benefit the families of those on the British side who had lost their lives through his invasion. Of his followers, some were hanged, some were transported to Tasmania, and some were set free. During that winter the 'Hunters' made various other attacks along the border, which were defeated with little effort. Though now the danger seems to have been slight, it did not seem slight to the rulers of the Canadas at that time. The numbers and the power of the 'Hunters' were not known; the sympathy of the American people was with them, especially while the filibusters were being tried at drum-head court-martial and hanged; and there was imminent danger of the United States being hurried by popular clamour into a war with Great Britain.

All through the summer of 1838 the rebel leaders in the United States had been plotting for a new insurrection. They were by no means convinced that their cause was lost. Disaffection was kept alive in parts of Lower Canada and the habitants were fed with hopes that the armed assistance of American sympathizers would ensure success for a second attempt at independence. It may be the sheerest accident of dates; but Durham took ship at Quebec on the first of November, and Dr Robert Nelson was declared president of the Canadian republic at Napierville on the fourth. A copy of Nelson's proclamation preserved in the Archives at Ottawa furnishes clear evidence of the aims and intentions of the Canadian radicals: they wanted nothing less than a separate, independent republic, and they solemnly renounced allegiance to Great Britain. At two points near the American boundary-line, Napierville and Odelltown, the loyal militia and regulars clashed with the rebels and dispersed them. Once more the jails were filled, which the mercy of Durham had emptied. Once more the cry was raised for rebel blood, and the winter sky was red with the flame of burning houses which had sheltered the insurgents. Hundreds of French Canadians fled across the border; and from this year dates the immigration from Quebec into New England which has had such an influence on its manufacturing cities and such a reaction on the population which remained at home. Another fruit of this ill-starred rebellion was the haunting dirge of Gérin-Lajoie, Un Canadien errant. Twelve of the leaders were tried for treason, were found guilty, and were hanged in Montreal. Some of these had been pardoned once for their part in the rising of the previous year; some were implicated in plain murder; all were guilty; but the chill deliberate formalities of the gallows, the sufferings of the wretched men, their bearing on the scaffold, the vain efforts to obtain reprieve, produced a strong revulsion of popular feeling in their favour. By the common law of nations they were traitors; but they are still named and accounted 'patriots.'

At Toronto, Lount and Matthews, two of the rebel leaders of Upper Canada, were hanged in the jail-yard on April 12, 1839. A petition for mercy was set aside; Lount's wife on her knees begged the lieutenant-governor to spare her husband's life, but in vain. Here, too, public feeling was chiefly pity for the unfortunate. But these executions did not satisfy the extremists. The lieutenant-governor, Sir George Arthur, who had long been governor of the penal settlement in Tasmania, was avowedly in favour of further severities; and vengeful loyalists clamoured in support. All Durham's work seemed undone. The political outlook of the Canadas in 1839 was, if anything, darker and more hopeless than it had been two years before.

Almost as grave as the political condition of the country was the financial situation. The rebellions of '37 coincided with a wide-spread financial crisis in the United States, which had its inevitable reaction upon all business in Canada, and matters had gone from bad to worse. By the summer of 1839 Upper Canada—the present rich and prosperous Ontario—was on the verge of bankruptcy. The reason lay in the ambition of this province. The first roads into any new country are the rivers. Therefore the population of Canada first followed and settled along the ancient waterway of the St Lawrence and the Great Lakes. But this wonderful highway was blocked here and there by natural obstacles to navigation, long series of rapids and the giant escarpment of Niagara. To overcome these obstacles the costly Cornwall and Welland canals had been projected and built. The money for such vast public works was not to be found in a new country in the pioneer stage of development; it had to be borrowed outside; and the annual interest on these borrowings amounted to £75,000, more than half the annual income of the province. And this huge interest charge was met by the disastrous policy of further borrowings. After Poulett Thomson, Durham's successor, became acquainted with Upper Canada—'the finest country I ever saw,' wrote the man who had seen all Europe—he testified: 'The finances are more deranged than we believed in England.... All public works suspended. Emigration going on fast from the province. Every man's property worth only half what it was.' Decidedly the political and financial problems of Canada demanded the highest skill for their solution.

While things had come to this pass in Canada, Lord Durham's Report on Canada had been presented to the British House of Commons and its proposals of reform had been made known to the British public. It revealed the incompetency of Lord Glenelg as colonial secretary; he resigned and made way for Lord John Russell, who was in hearty accord with the principles and recommendations of the Report. The chief recommendation was that the only possible solution of the Canadian problem lay in the political union of the two provinces. At first the British government was inclined to bring about this desirable end by direct Imperial fiat, but in view of the determined opposition of Upper Canada, it wisely decided to obtain the consent of the two provinces themselves to a new status, and to induce them, if possible, to unite of their own motion in a new political entity. The essential thing was to obtain the consent of the governed; but they were turbulent, torn by factions, and hard to bring to reason.

For a task of such difficulty and delicacy no ordinary man was required. Sir John Colborne was not equal to it; he was a plain soldier, but no diplomat. He was raised to the peerage as Lord Seaton and transferred. A second High Commissioner, with practically the powers of a dictator, was appointed governor-general in his stead. This was a young parliamentarian, of antecedents, training, and outlook very different from those of his predecessors. Instead of the Army or the county family, the new governor-general represented the dignity of old-fashioned London mercantile life. Charles Poulett Thomson had been in trade; he had been a partner in the firm of Thomson, Bonar and Co., tallow-chandlers. Now tallow-chandlery is not generally regarded as a very exalted form of business, or the gateway to high position; but in the days of candles it was a business of the first importance. Candles were then the only light for the stately homes of England, the House of Commons, the theatres. The battle-lanterns of Britain's thousand ships were lit by candles. Supplies of tallow must be fetched from far lands, such as Russia. And this business formed the governor-general of Canada. As a boy in his teens he was sent into the counting-house, an apprentice to commerce, and so he escaped the 'education of a gentleman' in the brutal public schools and the degenerate universities of the time. Business in those days had a sort of sanctity and was governed by punctilious—almost religious—routine. In the interests of the business he travelled, while young and impressionable, to Russia, and mixed to his advantage with the cosmopolitan society of the capital. Ill-health drove him to the south of France and Italy, where he resided for two years. His was the rare nature which really profits by travel. Thus, in a nation of one tongue, he became a fluent speaker of several European languages; and, in a nation which prides itself on being blunt and plain, he was noted for his suave, pleasing, 'foreign' manners. Poulett Thomson became, in fact, a thorough man of the world, with well-defined ambitions. He left business and entered politics as a thoroughgoing Liberal and a convinced free-trader long before free trade became England's national policy. Another title to distinction was his friendship with Bentham, who assisted personally in the canvass when Thomson stood for Dover. From 1830 onwards he was intimately associated with the leaders of reform. He was a friend of Durham's, and they had worked together in negotiating a commercial treaty with France. Continuity in the new Canadian policy was assured by personal consultations with Durham before Thomson started on his mission. 'Poulett Thomson's policy was based on the Durham Report, and most of his schemes in regard to Canada were devised under Durham's own roof in Cleveland Row.'

Lord Sydenham.
From an engraving by G. Browning
in M'Gill University Library.

Business, travel, and politics combined to form the character of Poulett Thomson. His well-merited titles, Baron Sydenham and Toronto, tend to obscure the fact that he was essentially a member of the great middle class, a civilian who had never worn a sword or a military uniform. He represented that element in English life which is always enriching the House of Peers by the addition of sheer intellectual eminence, like that of Tennyson and Kelvin. He had a sense of humour, a quality of which Head and Durham were devoid. He was amused when he was not bored by the pomp attending his position. 'The worst part of the thing to me, individually, is the ceremonial,' he writes. 'The bore of this is unspeakable. Fancy having to stand for an hour and a half bowing, and then to sit with one's cocked hat on, receiving addresses.' In person Thomson was small, slight, elegant, fragile-looking, with a notably handsome face. He was one of those clever, agreeable, plausible, managing little men who seem always to get their own way. They are very adroit and not too scrupulous about the means they use to attain their ends. They have that absolute belief in themselves which their friends call self-confidence and their enemies conceit.

Thomson came to his arduous task brimming with ambition and belief in his ability to cope with it. He realized to the full the difficulty of the problem set him and the credit which would accrue if he solved it. 'After fifteen years,' a friend wrote, 'you have now the golden opportunity of settling the affairs of Canada upon a safe and firm footing, ensuring good government to the people, and securing ample power to the Crown.' He was fully aware of this himself. 'It is a great field too,' he notes in his private Journal, 'if I can bring about the union of the provinces and stay for a year to meet the united assembly and set them to work'; and he contrasts the opportunity for distinction offered by the Canadian imbroglio with the tame possibilities of a subordinate position in the Cabinet, which would be his fate if he remained in England.

The new governor-general reached Quebec in H.M.S. Pique on October 17, 1839, after a stormy passage of thirty-three days. His first task in Canada was the same as Durham's—to acquaint himself with the actual conditions—and he flung himself into it with equal energy. Like Durham, too, he was ably assisted by capable men on his staff, notably T. W. C. Murdoch, his civil secretary, and James Stuart, the chief justice of Lower Canada. From the very first he won golden opinions from all sorts of persons. The tone of his proclamations, the courtesy and tact of his public utterances, his personal charm made him speedily popular. The party of Reform was conciliated because he was known to be in sympathy with the principles of Lord Durham's Report, while the Conservatives were pleased with his avowed purpose of strengthening the bonds between the colony and the mother country. Lower Canada was still a province without a constitution; but it must have some machinery of government. A makeshift for regular government was provided by a Legislative Council of fourteen persons of importance appointed by Sir John Colborne. Their agreement to the principles of union was soon obtained. The province now seemed tranquil and the governor-general hurried on to Upper Canada. His account of his journey from Montreal to Kingston—the changes and stoppages, the varieties of conveyance—illustrates vividly the difficulties of travel in those days.

At Toronto Thomson found a totally different set of conditions. Here was a constitution functioning and a legislature in session; but what a legislature! Split into half a dozen little cliques and factions, it was trying to work with no cabinet, no opposition, no party system—an ideal state of things to which some critics of present conditions would like to return. The office-holders, that is, the members of the government, took opposite sides in debate. The Assembly was a house divided and sub-divided against itself. There was a wide-spread and persistent clamour for 'responsible government,' but no one knew precisely what was meant by it. Who was to be 'responsible'? for what? and to whom? How was it possible to make the local government 'responsible' to the people of the colony without reducing the governor to a figurehead? If his authority were reduced to a shadow, what became of the 'prerogative' and British connection? Was not 'responsible government' simply the prelude to the absolute separation of the colony from the mother country? Then there was the question of the Clergy Reserves agitating every colonial breast. One-seventh of the public domain had been set aside for the support of a favoured church: a plain case of monopoly and privilege, said some; a wise provision for the maintenance of religion, said others. And the shadow of bankruptcy was hanging over the unhappy colony. The situation was one of the utmost difficulty, calling for an almost superhuman combination of ability, tact, and firmness. Here, as in Lower Canada, the governor-general's first effort was to obtain the consent of the people's representatives to the great change in the status of the province which the union would involve. He carried his point by meeting men and discussing the project with them—a process of education. Although there was some opposition on various grounds, reasonable and unreasonable, the Assembly finally consented to the following terms: first, each province was to have an equal number of representatives; secondly, a sufficient civil list was to be granted; thirdly, the debt incurred by Upper Canada for public works of common interest should be charged upon the revenue of the new united province. These terms could not be called ideal, especially in regard to Lower Canada; but union was the only alternative to benevolent despotism or civil war. In bringing the legislature of Upper Canada to consent to these terms Thomson had the valuable aid of the cohort of Moderate Reformers led by Baldwin and Hincks.

No inconsiderable part of the governor-general's task was a campaign of education in the ABC of responsible government. Those elementary ideas of party government now regarded as axiomatic had to be taught painfully to our rude forefathers in legislation. That the government should have a definite head or leader in the Assembly, who should speak for the government, introduce and defend its measures; that the officials of the government other than those holding permanent posts should form one body—a ministry—which should automatically relinquish office and power when it could no longer command a majority in the legislature, were practically new and by no means welcome ideas to the old-time law-makers of Canada. The natural corollary that the opposition also should be organized under a definite leader, who, on defeating the government, should assume the responsibility of forming a cabinet, was equally novel. Such a check on reckless criticism was sadly needed. Of the process by which Thomson achieved his ends even his fullest biography gives little information. There must have been endless conferences of homespun, honest farmers like Willson, men of breeding like Robinson, brilliant lawyers like Sullivan, plain soldiers like MacNab, with the little, sickly, understanding governor of the brilliant eyes, the charming manner, and the persuasive tongue. Of all the varied explaining, discussing, initiating, little record remains. But the work was done and the results are manifest to the world. The persuasive little man succeeded in persuading the law-makers of Upper Canada that the way out of their difficulties lay not through division but through union. He persuaded them to a change of status which was a reversal to the old status prior to the Constitutional Act, and also a prelude to that larger union of the British colonies in North America which was destined to embrace half the continent.

Having succeeded almost beyond belief in the first part of his mission, Thomson turned his attention to the next vexed question. This was the question of the Clergy Reserves. On this subject much ink had been spilt and much hard feeling engendered; and it still provokes not a little ill-directed sarcasm. The whole matter is in danger of being misunderstood, and eighteenth-century lawmakers are blamed for not possessing ideas a hundred years ahead of their times.

By the terms of the Constitutional Act of 1791 one-seventh of the public lands thereafter to be granted were devoted to 'the Support and Maintenance of a Protestant Clergy.' The provision was due, it seems, to the king himself, pious, homely 'Farmer George'; and to men of his mind no provision could have seemed more natural or right. 'Establishment' had been the rule from time immemorial. The Church of England was 'established,' that is, provided by law with an income in England, in Wales, and in Ireland. The 'Kirk' was similarly 'established' in Scotland. In British America itself the Church of Rome was 'established' very firmly in Lower Canada. What could be more natural for a Protestant monarch than to make provision for a 'Protestant Clergy' in a British colony settled by British immigrants, and purchased with such outpouring of British blood and British treasure? And what more ready and easy way could be found of providing for that 'clergy' than by endowing it with waste lands which taxed no one and which would increase in value as the country became settled? In its essence this endowment was a recognition of the value of the Christian religion in preserving the state. But trouble arose almost at once in the interpretation of the terms 'Protestant' and 'clergy.' Was not the Church of Scotland 'Protestant' as well as the Church of England? Were not the various species of 'Dissenters' also the most vigorous of 'Protestants'? On the other side it was asked, Was not the term 'clergy' applied exclusively to the ministers of the Church of England? It could not apply to any religious teachers outside the pale; those outside the pale never dreamed of applying it to themselves. Naturally other denominations wished to share in this most generous endowment; and quite as naturally the Church of England desired to stand by the letter of the law and hold what it had of legal right. Some extremists opposed any and all establishments, holding that the church should be independent of the state. Let the endowment be used for the sorely pinched cause of education, and let the ministers of all denominations depend solely on the Christian liberality of their people. Perhaps the extremists were in closest touch with the genius of the new land and the new institutions growing up in it. To the plain man in the pioneer settlement there seemed something feudal, something unjust, in creating a privileged church at the expense of all other churches. Pioneer life brings men back to primal realities. To the settler in the log-hut the externals of religion are apt to fade until all churches seem to be much the same: to set one above all the others seems in his eyes so unjust as to admit of no argument in its favour. Besides, he had a very real grievance: the reserved unoccupied lands interfered with his well-being; they came between farm and farm, increased his taxation, and prevented the making of the needful roads. How was he to get to market? to fetch supplies? To-day few will be found to argue for a state church; but it was not so in the twenties and thirties of the last century. The battle raged loud and long; and pamphleteer rent pamphleteer in endless, wordy warfare.

By 1817 the grievance had become clamant; and when that inquisitive agitator, Robert Gourlay, asked the farmers of Upper Canada what hindered settlement, he received the answer—Clergy Reserves. Two years later the Assembly asked for a return of the lands leased and the revenue derived from them. Up to this time the annual revenue had not exceeded £700. In the same year, 1819, the 'Kirk' parish of Niagara applied for a grant of £100, and the law-officers of the Crown supported the claim. This decision stirred up the Anglicans. They formed themselves into a corporation in each province to oversee the administration of the Clergy Reserves. Ownership in the lands was to be obtained, if obtained at all, through the establishment and endowment of separate rectories, as provided for in the original act. Why the directing minds among the Anglicans did not adopt this ready and easy method of obtaining at least the bulk of the disputed land is something of a mystery. Apparently they adopted a policy of all or none. Only in 1836, just before the outbreak of the rebellions, when political feeling was at fever pitch, did Sir John Colborne, at the bidding of Bishop Strachan, sign patents for forty-four parishes to be erected in Upper Canada. The total amount of land devoted to this purpose was seventeen thousand acres. 'This,' declared Lord Durham, 'is regarded by all other teachers of religion in the country as having at once degraded them to a position of legal inferiority to the clergy of the Church of England; and it has been most warmly resented. In the opinion of many persons, this was the chief predisposing cause of the recent insurrection, and it is an abiding and unabated cause of discontent.'

Thomson's way of dealing with this cause of discontent did not dispose of it for ever, but it at least provided a lenitive. With the business man's respect for property and vested interests, he was opposed to the diversion of the grant from its original purpose to the support of education. He used his powers of persuasion upon 'the leading individuals among the principal religious communities.' After 'many interviews' he secured the support of the religious communities to a measure which he had prepared. By the terms of this bill the remainder of the reserved land was to be sold and the proceeds were to form a fund, the income from which should be distributed annually among the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, and other specified religious bodies, 'in proportion to their respective numbers.' This measure was not really acceptable to the Reformers, who wanted to see the land used in the cause of education; it was distasteful to the Kirk men; it was gall and wormwood to extreme Anglicans like Bishop Strachan. None the less, the personal influence of the diplomatic, strong-willed little man carried it through; and although the Act itself was disallowed, on excellent grounds, by the Imperial government, as exceeding the powers of the provincial legislature, yet the Imperial parliament passed an Act exactly to the same effect. Thomson had applied a plaster to the sore.

His general view of the political conditions is shown in a private letter to his chief, Lord John Russell. The picture he draws is lively, unflattering, but instructive. 'I am satisfied that the mass of the people are sound—moderate in their demands and attached to British institutions; but they have been oppressed by a miserable little oligarchy on the one hand and excited by a few factious demagogues on the other. I can make a middle reforming party, I am sure, that will put down both.' The record of seventy-five years and of two wars shows the attachment of the Canadians to British institutions, and how justly the governor-general appraised the 'mass of the people.' Not less clearly did he judge the politicians of the day, their pettiness, their naïve selfishness, their disregard of rule and form, shocking all the instincts of the British man of business and the trained parliamentary hand. 'You can form no idea,' he continues, 'of the way a Colonial Parliament transacts its business. I got them into comparative order and decency by having measures brought forward by the Government and well and steadily worked through. But when they came to their own affairs, and, above all, to money matters, there was a scene of confusion and riot of which no one in England can have any idea. Every man proposes a vote for his own job; and bills are introduced without notice and carried through all their stages in a quarter of an hour! One of the greatest advantages of the Union will be that it will be possible to introduce a new system of legislating, and above all, a restriction upon the initiation of money-votes. Without the last I would not give a farthing for my bill: and the change would be decidedly popular; for the members all complain that under the present system they cannot refuse to move a job for any constituent who desires it.' Canadians of the present day should study those words without flinching.

When the session was over Thomson posted back to Montreal, assembled his Special Council, and set to work, in the rôle of benevolent despot, introducing many much-needed reforms. The wheels of government had been definitely blocked by racial hatred; the constitution was still suspended. 'There is positively no machinery of government,' Thomson wrote in a private letter. 'Everything is to be done by the governor and his secretary.' There were no heads of departments accessible. When a vacancy occurred, the practice was to appoint two men to fill it, one French and the other English. There were joint sheriffs, and joint crown surveyors, who worked against each other. Ably seconded by the chief justice Stuart, the energetic governor succeeded in reforming the procedure of the higher courts of judicature and in establishing district courts after the model of Upper Canada. Altogether, twenty-one ordinances were passed which had the force of law. They were indispensable, in Thomson's opinion, in paving the way for the Union. He was under no illusions as to his methods. 'Nothing but a despotism could have got them through. A House of Assembly, whether single or double, would have spent ten years at them,' he writes, with perfect truth.

The Maritime Provinces next claimed his attention, as they came within the scope of his commission. In Nova Scotia, likewise, a struggle for responsible government was in progress, but with striking differences. The protagonist of the movement, Howe, was the very reverse of a separatist. He was passionately attached to Britain and British institutions, and he thought not in terms of his little province, but of the Empire. Over-topping all other politicians of his day in native power and breadth of vision, he was successful in working out the problem of responsible government by purely constitutional methods, without a symptom of rebellion, the loss of a single life or any deus ex machina dictator or pacificator from across the seas. Howe, indeed, was fitted to educate statesmen in the true principles of democratic government, as his famous letters to Lord John Russell testify. Howe's achievement must be compared with the failure of Mackenzie and Papineau, if his true greatness is to appear. When Thomson and he met, they found that they were at one in principle and in respect to the measures necessary to bring about the desired reforms. That month of July 1840 was a very busy one for the governor-general. He reached Halifax on the ninth and left on the twenty-eighth for Quebec. In the meantime he had met many men, discussed many measures, gauged the situation correctly, drafted a clear memorandum of it, and made a flying visit to St John and Fredericton. He found New Brunswick happy and contented, a very oasis of peace in the howling wilderness of colonial politics. His policy was to get into personal touch with every part of his government and to see it with his own eyes. On his way back to Montreal from Quebec he made a detour through the Eastern Townships. Everywhere he increased his already great popularity.

Apart from his natural and commendable desire to inform himself by the evidence of his own eyes and ears, these tours were dictated by sound policy. The governor-general was his own minister, the approaching election was his election, the Union was his measure; so his public appearances, speeches, replies to addresses, personal interviews were all in the nature of an election tour by a modern political leader to influence public opinion, a legitimate part of his campaign. After touring the Eastern Townships he made a thorough visitation of the western province, going round by water, and being nearly wrecked on Lake Erie and again on Lake Huron, where he found that the inland freshwater sea could be as turbulent as the Bay of Biscay. Elsewhere the Canadian autumn weather was delightful. His precarious health improved. His tour was a triumphal progress. 'All parties,' he writes, 'uniting in addresses in every place, full of confidence in my government, and of a determination to forget their former disputes.' He adds a little pen-picture, which shows that the Canadian pioneer had a knack of impromptu pageantry which his descendants have lost. 'Escorts of two and three hundred farmers on horseback at every place from township to township, with all the etceteras of guns, music, and flags.' The governor rode a good deal himself, taking saddle-horses with him as well as a carriage. Those musical, gun-firing, flag-flying cavalcades from township to township in the pleasant autumn weather of 1840 enliven the background of a political struggle. 'What is of more importance,' continues the astute and businesslike little man, 'my candidates everywhere taken for the ensuing elections.' This western tour had an important reaction upon public opinion in Toronto, bringing the divers factions into something like harmony for a time. Thomson himself was genuinely pleased with what he had seen of that rich, heart-shaped peninsula lying behind the moat of three inland seas, with the flowing names, Huron, Erie, Ontario. He writes in justifiable superlatives. 'You can conceive nothing finer. The most magnificent soil in the world—four feet of vegetable mould—a climate certainly the best in North America—the greater part of it admirably watered. In a word, there is land enough and capabilities enough for some millions of people and for one of the finest provinces in the world.' Half a century from the time of writing the governor's vision was realized and Ontario was the 'banner province' of the Dominion.

During that busy month of July which the governor had spent in the Maritime Provinces the Act of Union passed by the Imperial parliament had taken effect. The two provinces were proclaimed to be one province with one legislature. It was necessary to issue a new commission for the governor of the new province, and, to mark the importance of his achievement, Charles Poulett Thomson was created a peer, Baron Sydenham of Sydenham in Kent and Toronto in Canada. One advantage of a monarchy is its ability to reward service to the state in a splendid way. Sydenham's honour was well deserved, but he was not destined to enjoy it long. His activity in no way relaxed. An essential part of the scheme of union, as he saw it, was local home rule. The country was to be divided into small self-governing units—municipalities—taxing themselves for their own necessary expenditures and controlling the revenues so raised. This is now such a familiar idea, an institution which works so well, that it is hard to conceive of Canada ever lacking it. Even more difficult to conceive is why the idea should have been opposed by the Imperial parliament so strongly that an advanced Liberal like Lord John Russell was forced to exclude it from the Act of Union. But Sydenham was not easily balked. Being on the ground and seeing the urgent need of such an institution, he called together his wonderful Special Council for one last session. Between them they organized the municipal system which, in modified form, still functions in Quebec. After the Union the system was extended to Ontario, to the great advantage of that province. So thoroughly are Canadians accustomed to managing their own affairs, that they do not realize what a privilege they possess in their municipal system, and how far Great Britain then lagged behind.

Another important measure passed by the expiring Special Council was the Registry Act. To the habitant the selling, mortgaging, and transfer of property was a private affair; he did not see the need for publicity. So the habit of clandestine transfer of land was almost a French habit. The same habit prevailed among the Acadians and had to be dealt with by the English governors. The attempt to put the transfer of land upon a business basis was regarded as an insidious attack upon a national custom. Once more the benevolent despot succeeded in bringing about a much-needed reform. The 'ass's bridge,' as he calls it, had been impassable for twenty years. Now that it was crossed, the exploit met 'the nearly universal assent of French and English.' Some thirty other ukases, all tending to order and the common weal, were issued in the last session of this extraordinary legislative body. One fixed the place of the capital. After much debate on the rival claims of Quebec, Montreal, Toronto, Bytown, and Kingston, it was decided that the town with the martello towers guarding the gateway to the Thousand Islands, with its memories of Frontenac and the War of 1812, should be the capital of the new united province. And it was so. About the quiet university town, where Queen's is Grant's monument—si monumentum requiris, circumspice—there lingers still the distinction of the old vice-regal days.

Then came the first election for the new Assembly of the united province, perhaps the most momentous in the history of Canada. Lower Canada was vehemently opposed to the whole scheme. To elect a Union member was, in the words of the Quebec Committee, 'stretching forth the neck to the yoke which is attempted to be placed upon us.' The French were organized into a solid phalanx of opposition. In the western province the Tory and Orange opposition was equally violent towards a measure which was deemed to favour the French. The elections of 1841 were held with the bad old-fashioned accompaniments of riot and bloodshed, especially in the centres, Montreal and Toronto. Neither side was free from the blame of irregular methods. Certainly the government was not scrupulous in the means it employed to secure the return of Union candidates. The results were known early in April. They were as follows: for the government, twenty-four members; French, twenty; Moderate Reformers, twenty; ultra-Reformers, five; Compact party, five; doubtful, seven. The curse of petty faction was not lifted, nor the machinery of two-party government really installed, for it was quite possible for several of these groups to combine in voting down government measures without having sufficient cohesion among themselves to form a ministry and assume control.

The session opened at Kingston on June 14, 1841. A hospital was turned into a parliament house, a row of warehouses was appropriated for government offices, and the fine old stone mansion by the waterside known as 'Alwington' became the residence of the governor-general. That last summer of his life was crowded with toil and anxiety, but crowned with triumph. Acting as his own minister, he had to press through a chaotic and factious legislature, far-seeing measures of vital importance to the country; he had to reconcile differences, to smooth opposition, to continue his campaign of education in parliamentary procedure. In addition to the immediate problem of remaking the Canadas into one province, Sydenham was deep in diplomatic difficulties arising over disputes as to the Maine boundary. This difficulty was settled in 1842 by the Ashburton Treaty, which finally delimited the frontier lines. The strain on the governor-general was severe, and his health, never robust, gave way under it; but the frail form was upborne by the indomitable spirit of the man, and by the consciousness that he was winning the long-desired and doubtful victory. His success was plain to other eyes across the sea. His chief, Lord John Russell, sent gratifying commendations and obtained for him the coveted honour of the Grand Cross of the Bath. Feeling that his mission was accomplished, he sent in his resignation and made his preparations to return to England. The sound he longed to hear was the pealing of the guns from the citadel of Quebec in a final salute to the departing proconsul. He was to obtain release in another way.

Some idea of Sydenham's difficulties may be formed by a consideration of the Baldwin incident, as it has been called. Just before the session opened an effort was made to combine the Moderate Reformers of Upper Canada and the 'solid' French-Canadian party of Lower Canada into a compact parliamentary phalanx of forty which would, of course, take charge of the House. Baldwin was skilfully approached and played upon until he supported this intrigue. The sequel is best told in Sydenham's own words.

Acting upon some principle of conduct, which I can reconcile neither with honour nor common sense, he strove to bring about this Union, and at last having as he thought effected it, coolly proposed to me, on the day before Parliament was to meet, to break up the Government altogether, dismiss several of his Colleagues and replace them by men whom I believe he had not known for twenty-four hours, but who are most of them thoroughly well known in Lower Canada (without going back to darker times) as the principal opponents to every measure for the improvement of that Province which has been passed by me, and as the most uncompromising enemies to the whole of my administration of affairs there.

I had been made aware of this Gentleman's proceedings for two or three days, and certainly could hardly bring myself to tolerate them, but in my great anxiety to avoid if possible any disturbance, I had delayed taking any step. Upon receiving, however, from himself this extraordinary demand, I at once treated it, joined to his previous conduct, as a resignation of his office, and informed him that I accepted it without the least regret.

Of Baldwin's personal integrity there was no doubt; but the honest man had been used as a tool. If the intrigue had succeeded, all Sydenham's labour must have been lost, the Union would have been wrecked in the launching, and the country thrown back into chaos. Fortunately the intrigue failed. Baldwin passed over to the opposition, but he was unable to lead the Reformers of Upper Canada into killing government measures such as extension of the main highways, reform of the usury laws, establishment of a comprehensive municipal system. They followed the sounder leadership of Hincks and supported Sydenham in his wise efforts to promote the country's good.

The whole session was a series of crises. Sydenham stood pledged to the cardinal principle of democratic government, that the majority must rule. Parliamentary procedure, as they have it in England, was a new thing in Canada. In Great Britain the government does not always resign when defeated on a vote, nor does the opposition defeat the government when it has no power to form an alternative government. The only consistent opposition was Neilson's band of French Canadians, and their policy was pure obstruction and their object to separate the two provinces once more. By combining the factions it was possible sometimes to defeat a government, but for the government to throw down the reins of power, with no one on the other side capable of taking them up, would have been madness. The situation craved wary walking and most delicate balancing; but Sydenham was equal to it. Later in the session, when the members had learned their lesson, the governor-general affirmed his position in a series of resolutions moved by Harrison, the leader of the government. In these he asserted: first, his position as representative of the monarch, and, as such, responsible to Imperial authority alone; secondly, the administration must possess the confidence of the representatives of the people; and thirdly, that the administration shall act in accordance with the well-understood wishes and interests of the people. In other words, he declared himself for British connection plus majority rule.

Critics found the first session of the new parliament of Canada a 'do-nothing-but-talk' session. There was indeed a flow of eloquence in various kinds during the first few weeks until the different parties found the proper relations and the serious work of legislation began. Constructive measures of the first importance became law in due course. Sydenham's own words sum up his achievement. 'With a most difficult opening, almost a minority, with passions at boiling heat, and prejudices such as I never saw, to contend with, I have brought the Assembly by degrees into perfect order ready to follow wherever I may lead; have carried all my measures, avoided or beaten off all disputed topics, and have got a ministry with an avowed and recognized majority, capable of doing what they think right, and not to be upset by my successor. I have now accomplished all that I set much value on; for whether the rest be done now, or some sessions hence, matters little. The five great works I aimed at have been got through: the establishment of a board of works with ample powers; the admission of aliens; the regulation of the public lands ceded by the Crown under the Union Act; and lastly this District Council Bill.' The financial difficulties of the province had been met by guaranteed Imperial loan, and progress had been made in remedying the evils of pauper immigration. Not often does a constructive statesman live to see his labours so richly rewarded by success.

Then the end came. A stumble of Sydenham's horse as he mounted a rise near 'Alwington' threw him to the ground and broke his right leg. His constitution, never strong, had been weakened by disease, unsparing work, and ceaseless anxieties. The bones would not set, the laceration would not heal, and at last lockjaw set in. It was impossible for him to recover. One does not expect the heroic from a fragile man of the world, but Sydenham's last thoughts were for the state he had served so well. In the agonies of tetanus he composed the speech with which he had hoped to bring the session to a close. The last words were the dying governor's prayer for Canada. 'May Almighty God bless your labours, and pour down upon this province all those blessings which in my heart I am desirous it should enjoy.'

His accident occurred on the fourth of September: he was not released from his sufferings until the nineteenth. A stately funeral testified to the universal regret. St George's Cathedral at Kingston, where his bones lie, should be among the high places of the land, a shrine doubly sacred, as the tomb of one who had no small part in making Canada.