An insoluble problem was now presented to successive governors—Sherbrooke, Richmond, Dalhousie, Kempt, Aylmer, Gosford. All in turn addressed themselves to the work of pacification, and all retired baffled by that racial egotism which granted favours with airs of patronage, or met continued concessions with ever increased demands. The English were naturally apprehensive of a French dominance, which might prove dangerous to the security of constitutional union; the French Canadians were too keenly alert for signs of tyranny, too suspicious of a power sullied by nepotism and greed of office. Of all the long series of viceroys, perplexed, discomfited, yet honourably bent on doing their duty to both races and to the constitution, one of the wisest was Sir John Cope Sherbrooke, to whom Prevost resigned the reins of government in 1815. He early saw the expediency of liberal measures, and his wise administration led moderate men to believe that a peaceful era of constitutional progress was forward. Unhappily, however, these hopes were dashed by the succession of the Duke of Richmond two years later—a chivalrous but uncompromising advocate of the extreme views of his party in England. The Duke, however, almost atoned for the political narrowness of his administration by the stimulus he brought to the social life of the capital and the sincerity of his belief that by personal influence he could harmonise contending factions. Under his magnificent patronage Château St. Louis became once more the scene of lavish hospitality. Dinners, dances, and theatricals were the order of the day; and fashionable officers, issuing from their quarters in the citadel, found distractions in St. Louis Street and the Grande Allée, due compensation for all they had left at home. For the exiled sportsman, too, there was the racecourse on the Plains of Abraham, riding to the hounds on the uplands of Lorette, snipe at Sillery Cove, and ducks on the St. Charles Flats.
LIEUT.-COLONEL JOHN BY, R. E.
(Founder of Bytown, now Ottawa)
With pomp and circumstance the Duke of Richmond made progress through his dominions, everywhere speaking, entertaining, endeavouring to conciliate. He travelled up the St. Lawrence by steamer and thence by canoes along the shore of Lake Ontario to Toronto and Niagara. Next, he undertook the more arduous journey in the course of which he was to meet a tragic end.
The little settlement of Richmond, named after the Governor himself, lay thirty miles from Perth, at some distance west from the Ottawa river. Here, following the trail through the woods, the Duke had penetrated in search of adventure. That night he and his small staff stayed at the village inn, and the next day they started in canoes on their way down to the junction with the Rideau river. Hardly had they commenced their journey, however, when the Duke's actions began to excite alarm. The attendants sought in vain to restrain his violence, and the boats drawing in to shore the party landed. Breaking loose from all control, the Duke plunged into the woods, and was found soon afterwards lying exhausted in a fit of hydrophobia, the result of a bite by a tame fox two months before at Sorel. He died the same night; and the body was presently carried back to Quebec, where for two days it lay in state at the Château. An impressive service was held in the English cathedral, and the body of one who had been Canada's most splendid governor since the days of De Tracy and Frontenac, was deposited in the cathedral vault. Minute guns boomed forth from the citadel, and Quebec was plunged from gaiety into mourning.
SIR PEREGRINE MAITLAND
(Lieut.-Governor, Upper Canada, Aug. 1818 to Nov. 1828;
also Administrator as Governor for Canada in 1820
The social brilliance of the Duke of Richmond's rule, however, could not blind the popular party to the inadequacy of the policy for which he stood; and discontent soon began to take a bitter and dangerous form. The concessions grudgingly doled out by Dalhousie and Kempt, succeeding governors, did not touch the main issue of the question, and even when Lord Aylmer removed the last serious grievance, only withholding from the Assembly the right to vote upon the salaries of civil officers, it might have seemed that there was no further ground for agitation. But the essential grievance lay not so much in material disabilities as in the limitation of the abstract right to self-government; and Joseph Papineau, the eloquent and ardent leader of the movement, summed up his party's political creed in the new watchword—La nation Canadienne. Parry and thrust, the fight grew faster, and the temper of the combatants became heated. Papineau was elected to the speakership of the Assembly, a challenge the Governor answered by prorogation. Next, the Progressives demanded an elective council, and the Government replied that such a step would mean abandoning the province wholly to the French, who were yet unprepared to wield complete popular power, and would moreover endanger the interests of the English minority. The demand was formally rejected by Lord John Russell on the return of Lord Gosford's commission in 1835.
