Such was the posture of affairs when Sydenham died.
Sir Charles Bagot.
From an engraving in the Dominion Archives.
The next governor-general of Canada was Sir Charles Bagot, the Tory nominee of the now Tory government of Great Britain. Bagot's familiar portrait in the full insignia of the Order of the Bath shows us the handsome, thoroughbred face of a typical English gentleman. Although Queen Victoria doubted his ability for the post, her distrust was unfounded. Bagot was a man of broad experience and calm wisdom. He possessed poise and real kindness of heart, as well as real courtesy; but he seems also to have been too sensitive to criticism and to opposition. He reached Kingston, the seat of his government, in January 1842. Visits to the various centres of Canada, according to the practice of his predecessors, soon gave him an understanding of popular opinion and feeling; and, although he was expected by the extreme Conservatives to bring back the old, halcyon, ante bellum days, he was most careful to follow the lines of Sydenham's policy. Towards the French he was amiable and conciliatory and made several appointments of French Canadians to positions of trust and emolument. Ever ready to meet courtesy half-way, the French gave their new governor their entire confidence.
During the eight months before parliament should reassemble Bagot wisely set about learning for himself the actual conditions of his new government. Like Sydenham, he was to act as his own prime minister, and his initial difficulty was in forming a suitable Cabinet to act with him. He offered Hincks the post of inspector-general, corresponding in effect to minister of Finance, and Hincks accepted it. He offered the post of solicitor-general to Richard Cartwright (grandfather of the Sir Richard Cartwright of a later day), who refused it because Hincks was in the Cabinet. The position was finally filled by Henry Sherwood, who was, like Cartwright, a Conservative. To LaFontaine the governor offered the attorney-generalship in the most courteous terms, but, for a number of reasons, LaFontaine declined to accept it. Bagot's plan was to form a coalition government, which should embrace all interests; but the Reformers refused to take their place in a Cabinet which contained men of the opposite party. So William Henry Draper, who had acted under Sydenham, continued as leader of a composite Cabinet under Bagot.
The House met at Kingston on September 8, 1842. In the game of Ins and Outs the debate on the Address is recognized as a trial of strength, as a method of ascertaining which party is in a majority. It was found that the Draper government did not command the confidence of the House; and, after a spirited fight, Draper resigned and made way for a new ministry, led by LaFontaine and Baldwin. The principle involved, which seems now the merest common sense, was then scouted as government 'by dint of miserable majorities.' Sullivan was the senior member in the new ministry, though it is known by the names of its leaders. It included Hincks and five other members of the previous Cabinet.
In accordance with another rule of the political game the new ministers had to seek re-election. LaFontaine was peaceably returned for his 'pocket borough,' the fourth riding of York, but the candidacy of Baldwin for Hastings had another issue. In those good old days of open voting an election was no such tame affair as walking into a booth and marking a cross on a piece of paper opposite a name. An election lasted for days or even weeks. There was only one polling-place for the district, and an election was rarely held without an election row. It seems impossible that it is of Canada one reads: 'A number of shanty-men having no votes were hired by Mr Baldwin's party to create a disturbance. They did so and ill-treated Mr Murney's supporters. The latter, however, rallied and drove their dastardly assailants from the field. Two companies of the 23rd Regiment were sent from Kingston to keep the peace, and polling was most unjustly discontinued for one day.' Free fights between bands of rival voters armed with clubs, swords, and firearms, injuries from which men were not expected to recover, order restored by the intervention of the military—these were no unusual incidents in an old-time Canadian election. The contest in Hastings was of this description, and Baldwin was defeated. He stood for election in the second riding of York, and he was again defeated. Finally LaFontaine did for him what he had done for LaFontaine. The French member for Rimouski resigned his seat, and Baldwin was returned for it in January 1843. The French leader and the English leader had thus given unmistakable proofs of their sincere desire to be friends and to work together for the common weal. French and English were found at last working in harmony, side by side. They had formed the first colonial ministry on the approved constitutional model.
The new idea was fiercely assailed. To the British colonial partisan of that day it seemed the height of absurdity to entrust the government of the country to men who had done their best to wreck that government but a few years before. The Tories would have been more than human if they were not exasperated to see actual rebels like Girouard, who fought with rebels at St Eustache, offered a position in the Cabinet. They could not, as yet, accept the hard saying of Macaulay: 'There is only one cure for the evils which newly-acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom.' How would they have regarded Britain's three years' war with the Dutch republics of South Africa and the entrusting of them immediately afterwards to the Boers and General Louis Botha? For accepting the principle of popular government, that the majority must rule, Bagot was assailed with an inhuman vehemence, which astounds the reader of the present day by its venom and its indecency. Because the governor was a just man and loyally followed constitutional usage, he was abused as a fool and a traitor not only in the colony but in England. It is small wonder that his health began to give way under the strain.
That historical first session of 1842 was very short; it lasted only a month. Nor could it be said to have accomplished very much in the way of actual legislation. The criticism of the opposition press was not ill-founded—that there was much cry and little wool. That the criticism was made at all shows how much was expected from the establishment of a principle. Mankind has a pathetic faith in the efficacy of political machinery, remade or remodelled, to grind out happiness and bring in the Age of Gold. None the less, a great political principle had been affirmed, and had been seen in triumphant action. The new constitution was at last set on its legs, and, at last, it really did begin to 'march.'