REFORM IN THE SADDLE
On Parliament Hill at Ottawa is a monument of bronze and marble. It represents two men standing in close converse; and, in spite of the dull and untempering effect of modern coats and trousers, the monument is an artistic success worthy of the noble eminence on which it stands above the broad-bosomed river and looking towards the distant hills. It is designed to keep in memory LaFontaine, the man of French blood, and Baldwin, the man of English blood, who worked together as leaders in the first parliament of reunited Canada. That they so worked together for the good of their common country deserves commemoration in enduring brass; for, happily, ever since their time English and French have been found working side by side and vying in fraternal efforts towards the same glorious end.
LaFontaine and Baldwin are typical Canadian politicians of the new order. They carried on a government under modern conditions. Sydenham's work had been done once for all. In spite of ignorance, and errors, and worse, the parliamentarians had really learned the lessons of procedure which he had so deftly taught, and they now settled down to the regular game of Ins and Outs, according to established and accepted rules. The irreconcilables were gradually tamed as wild animals are—by hunger first, and then by being fed with sufficient quantities of the loaves and fishes. Power, office, good permanent positions, fat salaries, proved strong sedatives of yeasty aspirations towards vague political ideals. There were still to be grave difficulties, crises, reactions towards the old order of things; but the cardinal principle of popular government was finally accepted, and, ever since 1841, has been in continuous operation, as part and parcel of the constitution.
If Canadian politicians had, in the words of the Shorter Catechism, been left to the freedom of their own will, it is difficult to see how they could ever have brought about either the union of the jarring provinces, or established the principles of popular government. It is not apparent how half a dozen irreconcilable little factions could have combined to thwart the sullen determination of John Neilson's French-Canadian party to wreck the Union. There was a crying need for intervention by a true statesman from without, who, with his eyes unblinded by local prejudices and passions, could take his stand above all parties, and, in benevolent despotism, lead them into concerted action for their own good and the good of the country. Equally clamant was the need of information and instruction. Sometimes Canadians are inclined to write the tale of the building of the nation as if that splendid fabric were all the work of their own hands, as if 'our own arm had brought salvation unto us.' This is manifest fallacy. Without a Durham to diagnose the malady and a Sydenham to apply the remedy, the condition of the body politic must have been past cure. At least, no other physicians could avail. Now, it was a matter of treatment and careful nursing, and being instructed, we were capable of following the doctor's orders.
The Reform leaders were very unlike each other in character and antecedents. Robert Baldwin was the son of William Warren Baldwin, whose father (also a Robert Baldwin) belonged to the humbler class of landed gentry in Ireland. Tempted, like so many others of his class, by the bait of cheap land, he came to Canada to 'farm.' His son William studied medicine at Edinburgh, became a doctor, and, with Irish powers of adaptation, soon exchanged physic for the more profitable pursuit of law. Robert the grandson was born in York (now Toronto) in 1804. He became one of 'Johnny' Strachan's pupils at the Grammar School, achieving in time the distinction of being 'head boy'; after which he studied law in the old, leisurely, articled-clerk system, and finally became his father's partner. An opportune legacy enabled his father to buy a large property outside 'muddy York,' on which, in accordance with hereditary landholding instinct, he endeavoured to establish his family, after the old-world fashion. A broad thoroughfare in Toronto preserves the name of Baldwin's ambition, 'Spadina.'
Like his father, Robert Baldwin was a Moderate Reformer. He entered public life (1829) in his native town as draftsman of a petition to George IV in what was known as the Willis affair. In the same year he was elected to the Assembly as member for York. Unseated on a technicality, he was at once re-elected, and took his seat in the House the following year. In the new elections, however, following the demise of George IV in 1830, when the House was dissolved, Baldwin was defeated. He had recently entered into partnership with his wife's brother, who was also his own cousin, Robert Baldwin Sullivan, a handsome Irishman with more than a touch of Irish brilliancy. Sullivan played no small part in the politics of the time. He is the author of the wittiest pamphlet ever evoked by Canadian party struggles.
Another young Irishman with whom Baldwin became closely associated was Francis Hincks, who also left his mark on the history of Canada. The son of a Presbyterian minister, he had received a good general education, and a sound and extensive business training in Belfast. Coming to Toronto by way of the West Indies, he became interested in various local business concerns and speedily proved his outstanding capacity for all matters of commerce and finance. Besides being the manager of a bank and the secretary of an insurance company, Hincks carried on at his house in Yonge Street, next door to Robert Baldwin's (number 21), a general warehousing business; and, as if these enterprises did not afford sufficient scope for his energy, he launched a weekly newspaper, the Examiner, in the interests of Reform. The successful man of business soon became the expert in finance, to whom all eyes turned in difficulty. In 1833 he was appointed one of the inspectors of the Welland Canal accounts in a parliamentary investigation, so swiftly had he come to the front. Though much unlike in temperament, he and Baldwin were agreed in their views of political reform, siding with the Moderates as against the Mackenzie faction of extremists. When in 1836 the Constitutional Reform Society of Upper Canada was organized, with William Warren Baldwin as president, Hincks became the secretary. The main objects of this society were to secure 'responsible advisers to the governor,' and the abolition of the forty-four rectories established by Sir John Colborne in accordance with the well-known provisions of the Constitutional Act. The success of any organization often depends on one man, the secretary, and in this capacity Hincks evinced his wonted ability and extraordinary energy.
These two men, Robert Baldwin, with his high principle and solid character, and Francis Hincks, with his talent for affairs, are figures of prime importance in this critical stage of the experiment called responsible government.
But the new province of Canada, as a union of French and English populations, demanded, as a natural consequence, a union in leadership. The French-Canadian politician, who in his own province represented Moderate Reform, was Louis Hippolyte LaFontaine. His grandfather had been a member of the old Assembly of Lower Canada; his father was a farmer at Boucherville in Chambly, where Louis Hippolyte was born in 1804. Educated at the college of Montreal, he afterwards studied law and began to practise in that city. In 1830 he was elected member for Terrebonne, and soon showed himself in the House to be a thoroughgoing follower of Papineau and an agitator for radical change. But when reform passed over into rebellion and an appeal to armed force, he tried to dissuade his compatriots from their mad enterprise, and also approached the governor, Lord Gosford, with a proposal to assemble parliament, in order to prevent further violence. He then went to England, from motives which do not seem clear. Fearing arrest in that country for his share in the agitation before the rebellion, he fled to France. He did not, in fact, return to Canada until May 1838, when he was caught in the widespread net of arrests and spent several painful and indignant months in the Montreal jail, demanding release, but in vain. Incarceration for a political offence is a rare event in the career of a chief justice and an English baronet, as this prisoner was to be later. Arrested on suspicion, he was released without trial. On the tragic collapse of the extremists LaFontaine became the hope of the moderate men among the French-Canadian politicians. Like the most of his compatriots, he was strongly opposed to the union of the Canadas, as threatening the extinction of his nationality; but seeing no possible alternative to union, he made it his fixed policy to win, by constitutional methods, whatever could be won for his people. In appearance he was strikingly like the first Napoleon, the resemblance being noticed by the old soldiers when he visited the Hôtel des Invalides at Paris. A contemporary cartoon, representing him flinging money to the habitants, shows the likeness, even to the lock of hair on the forehead, more plainly than his portrait. His few years of leadership in parliament, though of great importance to the country, formed only an episode in a larger legal career.
In the elections of 1841 LaFontaine was defeated; it is said, by illegal methods. Baldwin was returned for two constituencies, York and Hastings, and Hincks for Oxford, on the strength of his articles in the Examiner. Bitterly disappointed as LaFontaine was at his defeat and the means by which it was accomplished, he could see no hope of redress except by constitutional means. For the present he could do no more than protest angrily at the injustice. He was, however, not long excluded from the House. Through the good offices of Baldwin he was elected for the fourth riding of York, an act of courtesy and common sense which was not to lose its reward.