A history of Canada, 1763-1812

by Sir Charles Prestwood Lucas

FOOTNOTES:

[189] In the interval the government was administered (i) from the date of Haldimand’s departure till November 2, 1785, by Henry Hamilton; (ii) from the latter date till Dorchester’s arrival, by Colonel Hope. The command of the troops was at first separated from the acting governorship, and placed in the hands of St. Leger. Hamilton, who during the war had come into notice as having been in command of the expedition to the Illinois posts in 1779, when he was taken prisoner by George Rogers Clark, subsequently proved to be unfit to act as governor, and was summarily recalled.

[190] The Commission given to Carleton as Governor-in-Chief of Nova Scotia constituted him also Governor-in-Chief of the islands of St. John (now Prince Edward Island) and Cape Breton; but, though the terms of the Commission are not very clear, those two islands were at the time separate both from Nova Scotia and from each other.

[191] See the Parliamentary History, vol. xxvi, pp. 190-5.

[192] See the Censuses of Canada 1665-1871, given in the fourth volume of the Census of Canada, 1870-1, published in 1876. Introduction pp. xxxviii-xliii, and p. 74. On p. 74 is the following note: ‘The number of settlers of British origin then in Lower Canada was estimated at 15,000 souls. The United Empire Loyalists settled in Canada West, not enumerated in this census, were estimated at 10,000 souls.’ On p. xxxviii, under the year 1784, it is stated:

‘There were at that time (1784) in Upper Canada about 10,000 United Empire Loyalists, according to a memorandum contained in the Appendices of the House of Assembly of Upper Canada for 1823. These 10,000 are not included in the preceding census.

‘1784 British population of Nova Scotia, including Cape Breton and the mainland, estimated at 32,000 souls, having been increased by the arrival of about 20,000 United Empire Loyalists (Haliburton, Nova Scotia, vol. ii, p. 275). This estimate of the population of Nova Scotia, which still included New Brunswick and Cape Breton, cannot include the Acadians, who then numbered in all about 11,000.’

For the numbers of the United Empire Loyalists, see last chapter. The figures relating to this time are, in most cases, probably little more than guesswork.

[193] When the office of Secretary of State for the American Department was abolished by Burke’s Act of 1782, colonial matters were placed under the Secretary of State for the Home Department. This office was in 1787 held by Lord Sydney, who was succeeded by W. W. Grenville, youngest son of George Grenville, and afterwards Lord Grenville. When Grenville was raised to the peerage and became Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, he was succeeded in the Home and Colonies Department by Dundas, afterwards Lord Melville, and Dundas was succeeded by the Duke of Portland.

[194] See above, pp. 105-6.

[195] See above, pp. 88 (note) and 193.

[196] For these petitions see Mr. Brymner’s Introductory Report on Canadian Archives, 1890, pp. xxi-ii and pp. 146, 150, 157 of the Calendar, and see Shortt and Doughty, Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, pp. 502-5, 524-7.

[197] See Shortt and Doughty, pp. 520-4 and notes; and Debrett’s Parliamentary Debates, vol. xx (1786), pp. 132-49. The statement that two years had passed since the petition was presented was not strictly correct, as the petition was dated November 24, 1784.

[198] See Shortt and Doughty, p. 652, note, and Debrett’s Parliamentary Debates, vol. xxiii (1787-8), pp. 684-707.

[199] In 1789, Hugh Finlay, Postmaster-General of the province and member of council, wrote suggesting that ‘We might make the people entirely English by introducing the English language. This is to be done by free schools, and by ordaining that all suits in our courts shall be carried on in English after a certain number of years’. See Shortt and Doughty, p. 657. He anticipated to some extent Lord Durham’s views.

[200] The correspondence is given in full in Mr. Brymner’s Report on Canadian Archives for 1890, Note B, p. 10. See also Shortt and Doughty, Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1759-91, and Egerton and Grant, Canadian Constitutional Developments.

[201] Compare the very similar language used by Carleton in a private memorandum written in 1786 and quoted in note 3, p. 551, Shortt and Doughty.

[202] No. 46 in ‘Papers relative to the province of Quebec ordered to be printed April 21, 1791’. The Order in Council is referred to in Lord Dorchester’s Commission as having been made on August 19, 1791; but that was the date on which the report was made upon which the Order was based. The boundary line sketched out in the Parliamentary Paper, and adopted almost word for word in the Order in Council, was again adopted by Sec. 6 of the British North America Act of 1867, when the Dominion was formed and the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, i.e. Upper and Lower Canada, were, after having been re-united by the Act of 1840, again separated from each other.

[203] 18 Geo. III, cap. 12: ‘An Act for removing all doubts and apprehensions concerning taxation by the Parliament of Great Britain in any of the colonies, provinces, and plantations in North America and the West Indies, &c.’ The preamble ran as follows: ‘Whereas taxation by the Parliament of Great Britain, for the purpose of raising a revenue in H.M.’s colonies, provinces and plantations in North America, has been found by experience to occasion great uneasiness and disorders among H.M.’s faithful subjects, who may nevertheless be disposed to acknowledge the justice of contributing to the common defence of the Empire, provided such contribution should be raised under the authority of the general court or general assembly of each respective colony.’

[204] The above statement represents the general effect and intent of the Act, but a long and complicated controversy arose subsequently as to the disposal of the taxes raised under the Imperial Act of 1774 (14 Geo. III, cap. 88), ‘to establish a fund towards further defraying the charges of the Administration of Justice and support of the Civil Government within the Province of Quebec in America.’ It was contended that the effect of the Declaratory Act of 1778, together with the Constitution Act of 1791, was to hand over the proceeds of these taxes to be disposed of by the provincial legislatures. The contention had no real basis, and the Law officers of the Crown reported it to be unfounded, but eventually, by an Act of 1831 (1 and 2 Will. IV, cap. 23), the legislatures of the two Canadas were empowered to appropriate the revenues in question.

[205] Report on Canadian Archives, 1891; State Papers, Upper Canada, p. 16.

[206] The monument is in the North Choir aisle. The inscription runs as follows:

‘Sacred to the memory of John Graves Simcoe, Lieutenant-General in the army and Colonel of the 22nd regiment of Foot, who died on the 26th day of October, 1806, aged 54, in whose life and character the virtues of the Hero, the Patriot, and the Christian were so eminently conspicuous that it may be justly said he served his King and his country with a zeal exceeded only by his piety towards his God.

‘During the erection of this monument, his eldest son, Francis Gwillim Simcoe, lieutenant of the 27th regiment of Foot, born at Wolford Lodge in this county, June 6, 1791, fell in the breach at the siege of Badajoz, April 6, 1812, in the 21st year of his age.’

[207] See vol. v, part 1, of the Historical Geography of the British Colonies, p. 196 and note.

[208] Bouchette wrote of York or Toronto in 1815: ‘In the year 1793, the spot on which it stands presented only one solitary Indian wigwam; in the ensuing spring the ground for the future metropolis of Upper Canada was fixed upon, and the buildings commenced under the immediate superintendence of the late General Simcoe, then Lieutenant-Governor.’ A Topographical description of the Province of Lower Canada, with remarks upon Upper Canada, &c., by Joseph Bouchette, Surveyor-General of Lower Canada (1st ed.), London, 1815, pp. 607-8.

According to this account, therefore, the building did not begin till 1794.

[209] The name of the Thames had been previously for a short time given to another Canadian river, the Gananoque. See Shortt and Doughty, p. 651 and note.

[210] Writing in February, 1796, Simcoe stated that the Legislature would meet at Niagara (Newark) on May 7, but that he proposed to dissolve the House of Assembly before the fort was evacuated.

[211] Similarly Sir George Prevost was very popular in St. Lucia when he was commandant and governor in that island, 1798-1802.

[212] This dispatch is printed on pp. 111-21 of Canadian Constitutional Development (Grant and Egerton).

[213] Cp. the similar views expressed by Carleton at an earlier date. See pp. 91-4 above.

[214] The average annual revenue of Lower Canada for the five years 1795-9 inclusive was calculated at £13,000, p. a., of which only £1,500 was derived from Crown Lands, and the average annual expenditure at £25,000, leaving an annual deficit of £12,000.

[215] Brymner’s Report on Canadian Archives for 1892, Calendar and Introduction, p. vi. Cp. Murray’s views as given on p. 67 above, note.

CHAPTER VI
SIR JAMES CRAIG

As has been told in the last chapter, Milnes and Hunter, Lieutenant-Governors of Lower and Upper Canada respectively, took up their appointments in the summer of 1799 when the Governor-General Prescott was recalled Changes in administration. to England. General Hunter was not only Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada but also Commander of the Forces in both provinces. These two men held their appointments for six years, until August, 1805. On the 5th of that month Milnes, who was by this time a baronet, Sir Robert Shore Milnes,[216] left for England on leave of absence, and on the 21st of the month General Hunter died at Quebec. For the time being, two civilians acted as Lieutenant-Governors, Thomas Dunn, senior Executive Councillor at Quebec, acting in Lower Canada, and Alexander Grant acting in Upper Canada. Milnes remained on leave of absence in England and drew his salary for over three years. A new Lieutenant-Governor of Lower Canada was then appointed, who in his turn also remained in England for many years and received pay in respect of an office the duties of which he did not perform.[217]

Evils of absenteeism.

Thus it resulted that, at a very critical time, two provinces of the British Empire, whose conditions were specially critical, were left without a Governor-General, without Lieutenant-Governors, and without a regular Commander of the Forces, while two men, one holding the office of Governor-General of the two Canadas and the other holding the office of Lieutenant-Governor of Lower Canada, were spending their time and drawing their pay in England. We have learnt something in the last hundred years, in regard to colonial administration, and it is now difficult to appreciate a state of public morality which showed so much indifference to the interests of the colonies, so much acquiescence in sinecures, and so much readiness on the part of capable and honourable public officers to take pay without doing the work to which the pay was nominally attached. But the fact that such things took place, affords a very simple explanation of the difficulties which had already arisen and which subsequently arose in the history of European colonization between a mother country and her colonies. Men could put two and two together in those days as in ours. If colonists saw the rulers of the ruling land treating high offices in the colony as a matter of individual profit and public indifference, they could only come to the conclusion that they had better take care of themselves; and if the answer came that governors and lieutenant-governors were paid not by the colony but by the mother country, then the colonists must needs have concluded that they themselves would prefer to find the money and to have the money’s worth. This may well have been in the minds of the members of the elected Assembly in Lower Canada when, at a little later date, in 1810, they passed uninvited a resolution that the province shall pay the cost of the civil government, a resolution of which more was heard in the course of the long constitutional struggle.

What made for keeping up the connexion with the mother country was not so much what the mother country did for the colonies in peace, as the need which the colonies had for the mother country in case of war. An attempt has been made in the preceding chapters of this book to show that good fortune has attended Canada in her development into a nation. The conquest by Great Britain tended to this end, so did the loss by Great Britain of the provinces which now form the United States. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the cloud of war hung over Canada, but still her good fortune did not desert her. There was perpetual External dangers which threatened Canada at the beginning of the nineteenth century. danger from two quarters, from France and from the United States. With France Canada, as being part of the British Empire, was nominally at open war throughout the closing years of the eighteenth and the early years of the nineteenth century, except for the very short interval which followed the conclusion of the Peace of Amiens in 1802; but it is noteworthy how the political complications inured to the preservation of Canada as Hostility of France to Great Britain. a British possession. France and the United States had strong bonds of sympathy. To French intervention the United States largely owed their independence. Having parted with their monarchy, the French were more attractive than before to the citizens of the American republic; and in the days of the American revolutionary war Congress had pledged itself to defend for ever the French possessions in America. The bulk of the Canadians, French in race, tradition, language and religion, might well be expected to be French in sympathies. How great then might have seemed the probability that England in war with France would lose Canada? It was no wonder that such incidents as a visit of Jerome Bonaparte to the United States caused uneasiness, or again that a report was spread that Moreau, the French republican general then living in exile in America, was likely to lead an invasion of Canada.

French Canadians not in sympathy with the French Revolution.

But, as a matter of fact, neither were the Canadians inclined to return to their French allegiance nor were the people of the United States in the least likely to permit France to regain Canada. The Canadians had known forty years of British rule, clean and just in comparison with what had gone before, and the France which would reclaim them was widely different from the France to which they had once belonged. The King was gone; religion was at a discount; Canadian sympathies, at any rate in the earlier years of the revolutionary wars, were rather with Royalist emigrés than with the national armies who went on from victory to victory. Above all antipathy to the United States, without whose abetting or connivance, no French projects for regaining Canada could have effect, tended to keep the Canadians firm in their British allegiance. Thus the news of the victory of Trafalgar was welcomed in Canada.

The United States not disposed to allow the French to regain Canada.

Nor again were the Americans, however well disposed to France, in any way or at any time minded to enable her to regain her lost possessions in North America. A Canadian who had left Canada for France when Canada was annexed by Great Britain, wrote, before the conclusion of the Peace of Amiens, expressing the hope that Canada would be regained by France. He regarded Canada, from the French point of view, ‘as a colony essential to trade and as an outlet for merchandize and men’; and he wrote that, if restored to France, it ‘would constantly furnish the means of speculation which would improve the future of the citizens whom war and revolution have reduced to wretchedness’.[218] The words read as those of a man who had known and still sighed for the days of the old French régime in Canada, when men grew rich by illicit traffic; but, apart from the views of individuals, there is no doubt that, as the eighteenth century closed, France and the French people, after the wars of the Revolution, with their power consolidated at home, were in the stage of development favourable to colonial expansion, and mindful of possessions beyond the seas which had once been French but were French no longer.

Napoleon’s views as to St. Domingo and Louisiana.

Napoleon, as writers have shown, in negotiating for and concluding the Peace of Amiens which gave him respite from the sea power of Great Britain, had in view the reconquest of St. Domingo where Toussaint L’Ouverture had secured practical independence, and the recovery of Louisiana. By secret bargain with Spain in 1800, he had secured the retrocession of Louisiana; and, had the arrangement been carried out and the French power been firmly planted again at New Orleans and on the Mississippi, a new impetus and a new motive would have been given for French designs on Canada. But the losses in the St. Domingo campaigns were heavy, and in regard to Louisiana Napoleon had to reckon with the American people. Realizing that his policy, if persisted in, would draw the United States away from France and towards Great Britain, he came, with some suddenness, to the conclusion that the game was not worth the candle, Abandonment of his American schemes. and selling in 1803 to the United States the great territory on the line of the Mississippi which after all was not his to sell, he put an end for ever to French aspirations for recovering their North American dominions.

Napoleon’s decision set Canada free from any possible danger of French conquest; but, at the same time, it Danger to Canada from the United States. set him free also to renew war with Great Britain, and cut short any tendency to more cordial relations between Great Britain and the United States. The danger for Canada now was that, either as the direct result of friendship between France and the United States, or indirectly through the incidents to which the maritime war between France and Great Britain gave rise, war would take place between Great Britain and the United States, involving American invasion and not improbably American conquest of Canada. Eventually, in 1812, war came to pass. Once more England was called upon to fight France and the United States at the same time; but in this second war the Canadians, heart-whole in defending their province against their rivals of old time, themselves largely contributed to the saving of Canada.

The causes which led to the war of 1812 have been noted in another book.[219] One of the incidents which The incident of the Leopard and the Chesapeake. preluded it was the action of a British ship of war, the Leopard, in firing on the American frigate Chesapeake and carrying off four men, who were claimed as deserters from the British navy. This high-handed proceeding naturally caused the strongest resentment in the United States, and raised the whole question of the right of search. There was talk of invading Canada, which was answered by calling out the Canadian militia; the Canadians answered readily to the call; and shortly afterwards a new Governor-General arrived in Canada, a man well tried in war, Sir James Craig. On the 10th of August, Sir James Craig appointed Governor-General of Canada. 1807, General Prescott, still Governor-General of Canada, though he had left in July, 1799, was delicately informed by Lord Castlereagh, then Secretary of State, that it was necessary to appoint a new Governor-General. The terms of the letter were that Lord Castlereagh lamented that circumstances required an arrangement to be made which might interfere with Prescott’s emoluments. Sir James Craig accordingly received his commission on the last day of August, 1807, and landed at Quebec on the 18th of October, too ill to take the oaths of office until the 24th of that month, when he took them in his bedroom. Craig, though in failing health, governed Canada for four years. Like his predecessors he was a distinguished soldier. He was a Scotchman but was born at Gibraltar, His previous career. where his father held the post of civil and military judge in the fortress. He was born in 1748 and was only fifteen years old when he joined the army in 1763, the year of the great Peace. He was wounded at Bunker’s Hill; in 1776 he went to Canada and commanded the advanced guard of the forces which under Carleton’s command drove the Americans out of Canada. He took part in Burgoyne’s expedition, was twice wounded, was present at Saratoga, and was chosen to carry home dispatches.[220] Later in the war he served with distinction under Lord Cornwallis in North Carolina. In 1794 he became a major-general, and in 1795 he was sent to the Cape to take it over from the Dutch. The Netherlands, recently over-run by a French army under Pichegru, had been transformed into the Batavian republic, and the Prince of Orange, then a refugee in England, sent orders by the British fleet under Admiral Elphinstone, which carried Craig and his troops, that the British force should be admitted as having come to protect the colony from the French. The Dutch governor, however, was not prepared to hand over his charge to British keeping. Craig accordingly landed his troops at Simonstown, and successfully attacked the Dutch at Muizenberg, but was not able to occupy Capetown until the arrival of a force from India, which had been ordered to co-operate, and which was under the command of a senior officer, Sir Alured Clarke, the late Lieutenant-Governor of Lower Canada. On Clarke’s arrival the Dutch capitulated, and Craig became the first British Governor of the Cape, being succeeded in 1797 by a civilian, Lord Macartney. He served about five years in India, being promoted to be Lieutenant-General in 1801; and, after returning to England in 1802, was sent in 1805 to the Mediterranean in charge of an abortive expedition to Naples, in which British and Russian troops were to combine against the French. It ended in his transferring his force to Sicily, where the Neapolitan court had taken refuge. He then went home in ill health, and in 1807 went out to Canada. His appointment was no doubt mainly due to his military reputation, for war with the United States seemed close at hand; but he was well qualified for it also by his wide experience of the colonies, and by the fact that, like Prescott, he had already had a short term of colonial administration. He left behind him at the Cape a good record as governor, and but for the state of his health seemed clearly the man for Canada.

The beginning of his administration.

In his first speech to the Legislature of Lower Canada in January, 1808, Craig expressed his gratification at meeting the members of the two Houses ‘in the exercise of the noblest office to which the human mind can be directed, that of legislating for a free people’, and he added that he looked forward to the most perfect harmony and co-operation between them and himself. His anticipations were not fulfilled, and during the years of his administration the inevitable struggle for further power on the part of the elected representatives of the community became accentuated. The session of 1808 lasted from January to April. It was the last session of an existing Parliament. No point of difference arose in this short time between the Assembly and the Executive; but, the Assembly having passed a Bill, undoubtedly right in principle though directed against a particular individual, that judges should be incapable of being elected to or sitting in the House, the Bill was thrown out by the Legislative Council. This caused ill feeling between the two branches of the Legislature, and at the same time the Assembly came into collision with one of the constituencies, that of Three Rivers, by passing a resolution which excluded from the House a Jew who had been duly elected as member for Three Rivers and was promptly re-elected. At the conclusion of the session a General Election took place in May, but the Legislature was not called together till April, 1809, and in the meantime friction began between the governor and the popular representatives.

Friction between the governor and the Assembly.

In June, 1808, Craig dismissed certain gentlemen from their appointments as officers in the town militia on account of their connexion with the French opposition paper Le Canadien. One of them, M. Panet, had been Speaker of the House of Assembly in the late Parliament, and when the new House met he was again chosen to be Speaker, the choice being confirmed by the governor. The House sat for five weeks in 1809, wrangling over the same questions that had been prominent in the preceding year, viz. the exclusion from the House of judges and of members of the Jewish religion: it was then peremptorily dissolved by the governor, who rated the members as so many children for wasting time and abusing their functions at a critical season of national affairs. The election took place in the following October; and, when the Legislature met in January, 1810, the Assembly was composed of much the same representatives as before, any change being rather against than in favour of the governor. In his opening speech the governor intimated that the Royal approval would be given to any proper Bill passed by both Houses, rendering the judges ineligible for seats in the Assembly. The House of Assembly on their side, having passed a resolution to the effect that any attempt on the part of the Executive or the other branch of the Legislature to dictate to them or censure their proceedings was a breach of their privileges, went on to pass loyal addresses appropriate to the fiftieth year of the King’s reign, their loyalty being, perhaps, quickened by the strong reference which had been made in the governor’s speech ‘to the high-sounded resentment of America’, coupled with an assurance that in the event of war Canada would receive ‘the necessary support of regular troops in the confident expectation of a cheerful exertion of the interior force of the country’. There followed an Address to the King and the Imperial Parliament, to which reference has already been made, and in which the Assembly, with many expressions of gratitude, intimated that the prosperity of Lower Canada was now so great that they could in that session pay all the expenses of the civil government. This Address the governor promised to lay before the King, though he pointed out that it was unconstitutional in, among other points, ignoring the Legislative Council. A Bill excluding the judges was then passed and sent up to the Legislative Council, who amended it by adding a clause which postponed its effect until the next Parliament, whereupon the Assembly passed a resolution excluding by name a certain judge who had a seat in the House, and the governor, rightly deeming their action in the matter to be unconstitutional, on the 26th of February again dissolved Parliament.

Proceedings taken by the governor against Le Canadien.

The French newspaper, Le Canadien, abounded weekly in scurrilous abuse of the authorities. On the 17th of March Craig took the strong step of seizing the printing press and all the papers, and committing to prison various persons connected with the paper, three of whom had been members of the late House of Assembly. He justified his action in a proclamation to the country at large. The prisoners were released in the course of the summer on the score of ill health or submission, with the exception of one French Canadian named Bedard, who refused to come to terms with the Executive and was still in prison when the new Assembly, to which he had been elected, met on the 12th of December, 1810. The governor, in his masterful proceedings, had acted under the authority of a temporary law entitled ‘an Act for the better preservation of His Majesty’s Government, as by law happily established in this province’. This Act was now expiring, and in his opening address he called attention to the necessity for renewing it. He carried his point, the Act was renewed, and, in addition to resolutions on the subject of Mr. Bedard’s imprisonment, the Assembly did some useful legislative work before the Legislature was prorogued on the 21st of March, 1811. Shortly after the prorogation Mr. Bedard was Craig retires on ill health. released, and on the 19th of June, 1811, Sir James Craig left Canada. He had long been in failing health, and in the proclamation, in which he defended his seizure of Le Canadien and those responsible for it, he had referred pathetically to his life as ‘ebbing not slowly to its period under the pressure of disease acquired in the service of my country’. His resignation had been for some months in the hands of the Government, and it was only in order to suit their convenience that he put off his departure to the date when it actually took place. He reached England alive, but died in the following January in his His death and character. sixty-second year. He was a man of conspicuous honesty and of undoubted courage and firmness. He had a soldier’s view as to discipline and subordination, which made him peremptory as a governor, and his addresses tended to be long-winded and dictatorial. But his personal popularity was great, he was dignified, hospitable, and open-handed, and he commanded respect even from his political opponents and from those whom he put into prison. He may well have been forgiven much not only for his personal qualities, but also because his military reputation was no small asset to Canada. His dealings with the United States were fair and courteous, but behind them was the known fact of his capacity and experience as a soldier. He might dispute with those whom he governed in the sphere of civil action, but in the event of war they had in him a leader upon whom they could rely. The Canadians too had reason to be Prosperity of Canada under Sir James Craig. in the main satisfied with his rule, in that the years during which Craig was governor were years of much prosperity. It was at this time that, stimulated by Napoleon’s attempts to cut off Great Britain from the Baltic trade and by the Non Intercourse Acts of the United States, Growth of the lumber trade. lumber became an important industry of Canada. It was at this time too, at the beginning of November, 1809, that a citizen of Montreal, John Molson, put the first steamer on the St. Lawrence, her passage from Montreal The first steamer on the St. Lawrence. to Quebec taking sixty-six hours, during thirty of which she was at anchor. Craig himself contributed to improvement of communication in Lower Canada by constructing Road to the Eastern Townships. sixty miles of road which bore his name, and which linked the Eastern Townships, then being settled largely by immigrants from the United States, to the southern bank of the St. Lawrence over against Quebec. This road, which was carried out by the troops under the Quartermaster-General, afterwards Sir James Kempt, Administrator of Canada, was, as Craig wrote to his friend and secretary Ryland, much wanted ‘not merely for the purpose of procuring us the necessary supplies but for the purpose also of bringing the people to our doors’:[221] and it resulted in the price of beef falling in the Quebec market from 7½d. to 4½d. a lb.[222] It gave an outlet to Quebec to a fine agricultural district, and it opened a direct route to Boston from the capital of Canada.

Ryland’s mission to England.

When Craig wrote these letters to Ryland, the latter was in England. He had been sent by the governor to lay the views of the latter upon the political situation in Canada before the Home Government; and, reaching England at the end of July, 1810, he was active in interviewing ministers and supplying them verbally and by written memoranda with first-hand information. Ryland had gone out to America in 1781 as a paymaster in the army during the War of Independence; and, returning with Carleton at the end of the war, had been taken by him to Canada as confidential secretary. He continued to hold that office to successive governors for twenty years, until 1813, when Sir George Prevost, who followed Craig as Governor-General and with whom Ryland was not in harmony, suggested that other arrangements should be made for the secretaryship. Ryland then resigned his office of governor’s secretary but remained clerk to the Executive Council, living in the suburbs of Quebec, until his death in 1838. He seems to have been an able, honourable man, strongly opposed to the democratic party in Lower Canada, to the French and Roman Catholic section of the community. In England he was brought into relations chiefly with Lord Liverpool, who was Secretary of State for War and the Colonies[223] in the Percival ministry, having succeeded Lord Castlereagh in that office, and with the Under-Secretary of State, Robert Peel. Peel was then beginning his public life, and Ryland’s impression of him on his first interview was that ‘though a very young man and but a few days in office [he] appears to be very much au fait in matters of public business’. A week or two later he wrote of him as ‘a very elegant young man of fine talents, as I am informed’, and very pleasing manners.[224] With these two ministers and with various other public men, including George Canning, Ryland conferred or corresponded during his stay in England, which lasted for the better part of two years. On one occasion, soon after his arrival, he was present at a Cabinet Council, being seated, as we learn from the full account which he wrote to Craig, between Percival and Lord Liverpool. He was asked a large number of questions, including a query as to the number of regular troops in Canada, and, as the result, he appears to have formed a very poor opinion of the knowledge and capacity of the ministry.

Craig’s views on the political situation in Lower Canada.

He had brought with him to England a very long dispatch in which Craig had set out his views. Craig estimated the population of Lower Canada at the time when he wrote, May, 1810, at between 250,000 and 300,000 souls, out of whom he computed that no more than 20,000 to 25,000 were English or Americans. The remainder, the French Canadians, he represented as, in the main, wholly alienated from the British section of the community, French in religion, laws, language and manners, and becoming more attracted to France and more alienated from Great Britain, in proportion as the power of France in Europe became more consolidated. The large mass of the people were, so he wrote, wholly uneducated, following unscrupulous men, their leaders in the country and in the House of Assembly. The Roman Catholic priests were anti-English on grounds of race and religion; their attachment to France had been renewed since Napoleon made his concordat with the Pope; and, being largely drawn from the lower orders of society, and headed by a bishop who exercised more authority than in the days of the old régime and who arrogated complete independence of the civil government, they were hardly even outwardly loyal to the British Crown. The growing nationalist and democratic feeling was reflected and embodied in the elected House of Assembly. When the constitution was first granted, some few Canadian gentlemen had come forward and been elected; but, at the time when the governor wrote, the Canadian members of the Assembly, who formed an overwhelming majority, according to his account consisted of avocats and notaries, shopkeepers and habitants, some of the last named being unable either to read or write. The organ of the party was the paper Le Canadien, which vilified the Executive officers as ‘gens en place’, and aimed at bringing the government into contempt.

To meet the evils which he deemed so great and emphasized so strongly, Craig proposed that the existing constitution should be either cancelled or suspended. His view, as expressed in a letter to Ryland written in Constitutional changes recommended. November, 1810,[225] was that it should be suspended during the continuance of the war with France and for five years afterwards, and that in this interval the former government by means of a governor and a nominated Legislative Council should be revived. He argued that representative institutions had been prematurely granted, before French Canadians were prepared for them; that they had been demanded by the English section of the inhabitants, not the French; and that at the time the best informed Canadians had been opposed to the change. In the alternative, he discussed the reunion of the two provinces, so as to leaven the Assembly with a larger number of British members, though he did not advocate this course; and the re-casting of the electoral divisions in Lower Canada, so as to give more adequate representation to those parts of the province, such as the Eastern Townships, where the English-speaking element could hold its own. In any case he pointed out the necessity of enacting a property qualification for the members of the Assembly, no such qualification being required under the Act of 1791, although that Act prescribed a qualification for the voters who elected the members. Craig went on to urge, as Milnes had urged before him, that the Royal supremacy should be exercised over the Roman Catholic priesthood, additional salary being given to the bishop, in consideration of holding his position under the Crown, and the curés being given freehold in their livings under appointment from the Crown. There was a further point. The Sulpician seminary at Montreal was possessed of large estates, and Craig considered this clerical body to be dangerous in view of the fact that it consisted largely of French emigrant priests. He proposed therefore that the Crown should resume the greater part of the lands.

Craig’s views not accepted by the Imperial Government.

Ryland soon found that the ministry were not prepared to face Parliament with any proposals for a constitutional change in Canada, and that they were more inclined to what he called ‘the namby-pamby system of conciliation’.[226] They thought that it had been a mistake in the first instance to divide Canada into two provinces, but the only step which they now took was to procure a somewhat superfluous opinion from the Attorney-General to the effect that the Imperial Parliament could alter the constitution of the provinces, or could reunite them with one Council and Assembly; and a rather less self-evident opinion that the governor could not redistribute the electoral divisions of Lower Canada without being authorized to do so by an Act either of the Imperial or of the Colonial Legislature.

Critical condition of England at the time of Ryland’s mission.

To Ryland the affairs of Canada were all in all; to the ministry whom he deemed so weak, they were overshadowed by events and difficulties at home and abroad, compared with which the political questions which troubled Lower Canada were insignificant, noteworthy only as likely, if not carefully handled, to add to the burden which was laid on the statesmen responsible for the safe-keeping of the Empire. In 1809 Talavera had been fought and hardly won, but it was the year also of the disastrous expedition to Walcheren. In 1810, behind the lines of Torres Vedras, Wellington was beginning to turn the tide of French invasion in the Peninsula. The next year saw Massena’s retreat, but at home the political situation was complicated by the insanity of the old King and the consequent necessity of declaring a regency. In 1812, the year of Salamanca, Percival the Prime Minister was assassinated, his place being taken by Lord Liverpool, who, as long as Ryland was in England, had been in charge of the colonies. In the same year, war with the United States long threatened, came to pass. These years were in England years of financial distress and of widespread misery. William Cobbett giving voice to the hungry discontent of the poor was fined and imprisoned, and Ryland hoped that his fate would have some effect in Canada.[227]

Lord Liverpool, however, was very loyal to Craig, though he did not support any such drastic measures as the latter had suggested. At the end of July, 1811, by which time Craig had left Canada, he wrote a letter to him expressing the Prince Regent’s high approbation of his general conduct in the administration of the government of the North American provinces and the Prince’s particular regret at the cause which had necessitated his retirement. He wrote too to Craig’s successor, Sir George Prevost, highly praising Ryland and expressing a hope that he would be retained in his appointment. Legal opinion as to patronage to appointments in the Roman Catholic Church in Canada, and as to the Sulpician estates. The law officers of the Crown in England had been consulted as to the Roman Catholic Church in Canada in view of the governor’s proposals, and advised that so much of the patronage of Roman Catholic benefices as was exercised by the Bishop of Quebec under the French Government had of right devolved on the Crown. On the further question, whether the Crown had the right of property in the estates of the Sulpician seminary at Montreal, they advised that legally the Crown had the right, inasmuch as the Sulpicians who remained in Canada after the British conquest had no legal capacity to hold lands apart from the parent body at Paris which had since been dissolved, and had not obtained a licence from the Crown to hold the estates; but the law officers, seeing the hardship which would be involved in wholesale confiscation of the lands after so many years of undisturbed tenure, suggested that the question was one for compromise or amicable arrangement. In the end nothing was done in the matter in the direction of Craig’s and Ryland’s views, and many years later, in 1840,[228] by an ordinance of Lower Canada, the Sulpicians of Montreal were incorporated under certain conditions and confirmed in the possession of their estates.

Sir James Craig’s administration.

It is not easy to form an accurate estimate of Sir James Craig’s administration. His views and his methods have been judged in the light of later history rather than in that of the years which had gone before. It is somewhat overlooked that at the beginning of the nineteenth century the normal conditions of the world were conditions of war not of peace, and that the governors of colonies were as a rule soldiers whose first duty was the military charge of possessions held by no very certain tenure. The account usually given and received is that Craig was an honest but mistaken man, tactless and overbearing, trying to uphold an impossible system of bureaucratic despotism, instead of realizing the merits of representative institutions and giving them full play. The apology made for him has been that he was guided by and saw with the eyes of a few rapacious officials, who had no interest in the general welfare of the community. ‘The government, in fact,’ writes Christie, ‘was a bureaucracy, the governor himself little better than a hostage, and the people looked upon and treated as serfs and vassals by their official lords.’[229]

Constitutions and systems of government are good or bad according to the kinds of people to which they are applied, the stage of development which they have reached, and the particular circumstances existing at a given time inside and outside the land. It was only with much hesitation that representative institutions had been given to Canada; and one governor and another, bearing in mind the conditions which had preceded the War of Independence, had laid stress on the necessity of having a strong Executive, and on the growing danger of colonial democracy. They were not ignorant or shortsighted men; they looked facts in the face and argued from past experience in America. Again, if the officials were incompetent placemen, out of sympathy with the people, it was the governors who laid stress on the necessity of filling official positions with first-rate men and who occasionally took a strong line with the men whom they did not consider to be adequate. Moreover some of the officials, notably the judicial and legal officers, placed themselves in opposition to the local government and posed as defenders of the people. Craig dispensed, for the time at any rate, with the services of two law officers. One of them, Uniacke, who had Uniacke. been in Nova Scotia, was made Attorney-General of Lower Canada by Lord Liverpool, and, being considered by the governor to be unfit for his duties, was sent on leave to England in 1810 with a request that he should be removed from his office. He subsequently returned to his work in Canada. The other, James Stuart, became James Stuart. a notable figure in Canadian history. He was the son of a United Empire Loyalist, the rector of Kingston in Ontario. He had been appointed Solicitor-General of Lower Canada by Milnes in 1801, but after Craig’s arrival ranged himself, as a member of the Assembly, in opposition to the governor, and in 1809 was obliged to resign his appointment. After some years of bitter opposition to the government, he lived to become a leading advocate of reunion of the two provinces, to be appointed Attorney-General, to be impeached by the Assembly and again deprived of his office, and finally to be appointed by Lord Durham Chief Justice of Lower Canada and to be created a baronet for his public services.

Meanwhile in Upper Canada, where a young Lieutenant-Governor, Francis Gore, from 1807 to 1811 carried on the administration firmly and well, various holders of offices opposed the government and tried to play the part of popular leaders. Judge Thorpe has already been mentioned, Thorpe and Willcocks. on the Bench and in the House of Assembly a blatant and disloyal demagogue; another man of the same kind was Wyatt the Surveyor-General, and another Willcocks, sheriff of one of the districts, and owner or nominal owner of a libellous newspaper, for the contents of which the House of Assembly committed him to jail on the ground of breach of privilege. These three men were suspended from their appointments, and eventually disappeared from Canada to make their voices heard in England or in the United States; and the end of Willcocks was to be killed fighting against his country in the war of 1812. One thing is certain that in their official positions they were disloyal to the government, and that in their disloyalty they received no support from the elected Assembly of Upper Canada. Gore had a difficulty too with his Attorney-General, Firth, a man sent out from England. Firth ended by returning to England without leave and joining in misrepresentations against the Lieutenant-Governor.

It may fairly be summed up that in the Canadas many men were found in office who had been pitchforked into appointments for which they were unsuited; but that they were by no means invariably supporters of the Executive against the representatives of the people, nor were the governors their tools. On the contrary there were constant cases of such officials opposing the governors, while the governors in their turn stood out conspicuously in opposition to the practice of appointing men from outside to offices in Canada which required special qualifications in addition to good character and general capacity. But a distinction must be drawn between Upper and Lower Canada. In Upper Canada the voters and their nominees, however democratic, were, with the exception of a few traitorous individuals, intensely loyal to the British connexion. In Lower Canada, on the other hand, the all-important race question complicated the situation, and here Craig saw in the French Canadians, who were also the democratic party, the elements of disloyalty to Great Britain and rapprochement with France. In August, 1808, he wrote Craig’s opinion of the French Canadians. that the Canadians were French at heart; that, while they did not deny the advantages which they enjoyed under British rule, there would not be fifty dissentient voices, if the proposition was made of their re-annexation to France: and that the general opinion among the English in Canada was that they would even join the Americans if the latter were commanded by a French officer. His views on this point were fully shared by another man of clear head and sound judgement, Isaac Brock. For reasons which have been given Craig seems Real attitude of the French Canadians. to have exaggerated any danger of the kind. Republican France, which attracted American sympathies, repelled those of the French Canadians. France under Napoleon, brought back to law and order and to at any rate the outward conventionalities of religion, became more attractive to the French Canadians, but at the same time, in view of the Napoleonic despotism, it became less attractive to the United States. But at no time probably was there any real intention on the part of the French Canadians to take any active step to overthrow British supremacy. Certainly at no time was there the slightest possibility of their changing their status except by becoming absorbed in the United States. They were as a whole an unthinking people, to whom representative institutions and a free press were a novelty; their leaders liked the words and phrases which they had learnt from English-speaking demagogues or imported from revolutionary France. Their priesthood was not loyal, because it claimed to be independent of the civil government, especially when it was the government of a Protestant Power. The general aim was to see to what uses the new privileges could be applied and how much latitude would be given. The elected representatives opposed the second chamber, the Legislative Council, as much as they opposed the governor; they played with edged tools, but it may be doubted whether at this early stage of the proceedings they meant much more than play.

Under the circumstances, perhaps a fair judgement upon Sir James Craig’s administration would be that he took the Parliamentary situation in Lower Canada too seriously, and did not give sufficient rope to the local politicians. He reprimanded the Assembly when they acted unconstitutionally, and dissolved them when they did not do their work. The strong measures which he adopted, and the repeated dissolutions, were a bad precedent for the future: and the course which he recommended, viz. suspension of the constitution, would, if carried into effect, have been premature and unwise. But for the moment the steps which he took were effective. By his summary action in regard to the newspaper Le Canadien, he showed that he had the ultimate power and was not afraid to use it; and the result was that the very law which gave the Executive extraordinary powers was renewed by the Assembly which objected to those powers. Meanwhile Canada thrived, the governor was personally respected, and repeated elections did no one any harm. It was a time of danger from without and unrest within, but many countries with admirable constitutions have fared much worse than did Lower Canada under the rule of a strong soldier confronted by a recalcitrant Assembly.

He was succeeded by a man of wholly different type, Sir George Prevost, who endeared himself greatly to the French Canadians; but internal differences were soon to be overshadowed by foreign invasion, for in one year to the day from the date when Sir James Craig left Canada, Madison, President of the United States, issued a proclamation which began the war of 1812.