Shortly after the session closed Bagot's administration came to an end. The governor was no longer young, and the factious opposition in the colony and the want of support in England wrought upon his health and spirits. The oncoming of the bitter Canadian winter tried severely the shaken man. On medical advice he resigned his post, but when his resignation was accepted he was too ill to travel. He too died at 'Alwington,' Kingston, on May 30, 1843; but the voice of rancorous detraction was not hushed around his death-bed. 'Imbecile' and 'slave' were among the milder terms of abuse. Bagot was the second governor in swift succession to render up his life in the discharge of his duty. And he was not the last. It was as if some blight or curse rested on the office which made it fatal to the holder. The Canadian treatment of Bagot, a high-minded gentleman who honestly performed a thankless task, should make every Canadian hang his head.
Bagot's successor was Sir Charles Metcalfe. He arrived at Kingston from the American side on March 29, 1843, in a close-bodied sleigh drawn by four greys. His experience must have been novel since he landed at Boston and posted overland to reach the capital of the colony. The whole country was still deep in snow and must have presented the strangest aspect to a man who had spent his life in the tropics. He was received at the foot of Arthur Street by an enthusiastic concourse of citizens, with appropriate ceremony and show. 'A thorough-looking Englishman with a jolly visage,' as he was characterized by an eye-witness, he made a favourable first impression upon the people of his government.
Metcalfe had received his training as a 'writer' in the old East India Company and must have been a contemporary of Thackeray's Joseph Sedley. He was born in India, at Lecture House, Calcutta, on January 30, 1785. Eleven years later he entered Eton, where he at once evinced remarkable powers of application and a marked distaste for athletic sports, two traits which would mark him off as an oddity from the herd of English schoolboys. At the age of sixteen he was back in the land of his birth. His was a distinguished career. By 1827 he had risen to membership in the Supreme Council of India. Later he acted as provisional governor-general, and obtained the Grand Cross of the Bath. In 1838 he resigned his position and became governor of Jamaica. Perhaps the most significant incident in his career was his fighting as a volunteer in the storming of Deeg, on Christmas Day 1804. The courage which sends a civilian into a desperate hand-to-hand fight, to which he is not obliged to go, must be above proof. Metcalfe had no pecuniary interest in his position. He was a wealthy man, who spent far more than his official salary in the various ways a governor-general is expected to bestow largesse. His 'jolly visage' bore the marks of a cruel and incurable disease. He is still remembered in India as the author of the bill which established the freedom of the press. The historian Macaulay calls him 'the ablest civil servant I ever knew in India.' Durham, Sydenham, Bagot, Metcalfe—Britain had few more distinguished or more able servants of the state; and they devoted all their powers, without a thought of the cost to themselves, to solving a vital problem in the maintenance of the Empire. Their more obvious rewards were obloquy and death.
Sir Charles Metcalfe.
After a painting by Bradish
The misfortune of Metcalfe was that his entire political training had been gained in governing subject races, Hindus in India and negroes in Jamaica, races 'so accustomed to be trampled on by the strong that they always consider humanity as a sign of weakness.' Now old, and fixed in his mental set, autocratic as an Indian civil servant must be, he came to deal with a rude, unlicked, white democracy, impatient of control as Durham discovered, and acutely jealous of its rights. In theory Metcalfe should have been most sympathetic, for in English politics he was an advanced Whig, strongly in favour of such popular measures as abolition of the Corn Laws, vote by ballot, the extension of the franchise. Besides, he was honestly desirous of playing the peacemaker. None the less, his administration was marked by a reaction towards the old Tory state of affairs, and produced a ministerial crisis which threatened to bring back the reign of Chaos and old Night.
The primal difficulty lay in the governor's mental attitude. He saw with perfect clearness what had already been done. Durham had enunciated a theory, which Sydenham had put into effect by being his own minister, and Bagot had followed resolutely in Sydenham's footsteps. The group of colonial officials known as the Executive Council had in the meantime tasted power. They now ventured to speak of themselves as 'ministers,' as a 'cabinet,' as the 'government,' as the 'administration'; and these terms, with their corollaries and implications, had met with general acceptance. But Metcalfe considered them inadmissible, as limiting too much the power of the governor, and, as a consequence, the authority he represented. He was determined not to be a mere figurehead on the ship of state; he would be captain, in undisputed command. Theoretically, if he were to be guided solely by the advice of the local ministry, he would be 'responsible' to them instead of to his sovereign; his office would be a nullity, and the difference between a colony and an independent state would have disappeared. Theoretically Metcalfe and the Tory pamphleteers who supported him were right in their contentions. Complete freedom to manage its own affairs should, if logic were strictly followed, separate the colony from the mother country; but the British genius for compromise has met the difficulty in a thoroughly British way by avoiding any precise and rigid definition of the relations existing between the mother country and the daughter state. That 'mere sentiment' should hold the two more firmly together than the most deftly worded treaty or legal enactment is proved to the world in these later days by the sacrifices of Canada to the common cause during the Great War. But there was little reason for holding this belief in the forties of the nineteenth century. Conflict between a masterful governor like Metcalfe, accustomed to the old order, and political leaders like Baldwin and LaFontaine, trying to bring in a new order, was inevitable; their modes of thought were diametrically opposed; the only question was when the clash should come.
The third session of the first parliament of Canada opened towards the end of September 1843. In an Assembly of eighty-four members the party of Reform numbered sixty, an overwhelming majority; for the rapprochement between the sympathetic parties of the two provinces was now complete. The leader of the opposition was Sir Allan MacNab of Caroline fame, a typical soldier-politician, narrow but honest in his views, and, like his countryman Alan Breck, a 'bonny fighter.' It was a momentous session. Reform was firmly in the saddle at last. No opposition could hope to defeat whatever measure the government might choose to bring forward. Nor could the government be reproached, as before, with merely talking and doing nothing. Much legislation of the first importance stands to its credit. One of the measures passed at this session provided that the seat of government should be removed from Kingston to the commercial metropolis, Montreal. For how short a time Montreal should have this honour, none could imagine or foresee. By another wise measure placemen were removed from the Assembly; that is to say, permanent officials, such as judges and registrars, could not hold their positions and be members of parliament. For this important change LaFontaine was responsible, as well as for another bill which simplified the judicial system of Lower Canada. An attempt was made to bridle the turbulence of Irish factions, which had brought to Canada the long-standing, cankered quarrels of the Old World. A bill was passed to suppress all secret societies except the Freemasons. It was, of course, aimed straight at the Orange Society, that vigorous politico-religious organization which preserves the memory of a Dutch prince and of a battle he fought in the seventeenth century. To this bill Metcalfe did not assent, but 'reserved' it, as was his undoubted right, for the royal sanction. In the end that sanction was not given, and the Act did not become law. The 'reserving' of this bill seems to have occasioned little comment; but, as will be seen in a subsequent chapter, the refusal of another governor to 'reserve' another bill caused a storm. Hincks, the man of finance, gave the country 'protection' against the competition of the American farmer, a political device which was destined to much wider use. The all-important matter of education received the attention of the Assembly. What had been done before was, most significantly, to make provision for higher education by establishing 'grammar schools' in the different districts, as foundations for the superstructure of a university. It might have been called a provision for aristocratic education. Now a measure became law for the better support of the common schools. This was provision for democratic education, a necessary corollary to popular government, for if Demos is to rule, Demos cannot be left in ignorance; the peril of an ignorant ruler is too frightful.