British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government, 1839-1854

by J. L. Morison

Durham had had no doubt about the true solution. It was to confer free institutions on the colony, and to trust to the natural energy and increase of the Anglo-Saxon element to swamp French nationalité. "I have little doubt," he said, "that the French, when once placed, by the legitimate course of events and the working of natural causes, in a minority, would abandon their vain hopes of nationality."[[8]] It was in this spirit that his successor endeavoured to govern the French section in Canada. Being both rationalist and utilitarian, like others of his school he minimized the strength of an irrational fact like racial pride, and, almost from the first he discounted the force of French opposition, while he let it, consciously or unconsciously, influence his behaviour towards his French subjects. "If it were possible," he wrote in November, 1839, "the best thing for Lower Canada would be a despotism for ten years more; for, in truth, the people are not yet fit for the higher class of self-government, scarcely indeed, at present, for any description of it."[[9]] A few months later, his language had become even stronger:—"I have been back three weeks, and have set to work in earnest in this province. It is a bad prospect, however, and presents a lamentable contrast to Upper Canada. There great excitement existed; the people were quarrelling for realities, for political opinions and with a view to ulterior measures. Here there is no such thing as a political opinion. No man looks to a practical measure of improvement. Talk to any one upon education, or public works, or better laws, let him be English or French, you might as well talk Greek to him. Not a man cares for a single practical measure—the only end, one would suppose, of a better form of government. They have only one feeling—a hatred of race."[[10]]

But at the outset his task was simple. His powers in Lower Canada, as he confessed on his first arrival, were of an extraordinary nature; and indeed it lay with him, and his Special Council, to settle the fate of the province. Pushing on from Quebec to Montreal, he lost no time in calling a meeting of the Special Council, whose members, eighteen in number, he purposely left unchanged from the regime of his predecessor On November 13th and 14th, after discussions in which the minority never exceeded three, that body accepted Union with the Upper Province in six propositions, affirming the principle of union, agreeing to the assimilation of the two provincial debts, and declaring it to be their opinion "that the present temporary legislature should, as soon as practicable, be succeeded by a permanent legislature, in which the people of these two provinces may be adequately represented, and their constitutional rights exercised and maintained."[[11]] Before he left Montreal, he assured the British ministry that the large majority of those with whom he had spoken, English and French, in the Lower Province were warm advocates of Union.[[12]]

Yet here lay his first mis judgment, and one of the most serious he made. It was true and obvious that the British inhabitants of Eastern Canada earnestly desired a union which would promote their racial interests; true also that a group of Frenchmen took the same point of view. But the governor was guilty of a grave political error, when he ignored the feeling generally prevalent among the French that Union must be fought. Colborne's judgment in 1839, that French aversion to Union was growing less, seems to have been mistaken.[[13]] The British government, more especially in the person of Durham, had not disguised their intention—the destruction of French nationalism as it had hitherto existed. They had taken, and were taking, the risk of conducting the experiment in the face of a grant of self-government to the doomed community; and the first governor-general of union and constitutionalism was now to find that French racial unity, combined with self-government, was too strong even for his masterful will, although he had all the weight of Imperial authority behind him. But, for the time, Lower Canada had to be left to its council, and the centre of interest changed to Toronto and Upper Canada.

There, although no racial troubles awaited him, the governor had to persuade a popular assembly before he could have his way; and there for the first time he was made aware of the perplexing cross-currents and side eddies, and confusion of public opinion, which existed everywhere in Canadian politics. So doubtful was the main issue that he debated with himself whether he should venture to meet the Assembly without a dissolution and election on the definite issue of the Union; but the need for haste, and his natural inclination to take risks, and to trust to his powers of management, decided him to face the existing local parliament. By the end of November he had arrived at Toronto, and the Assembly met on December 3rd. Two plain but difficult tasks lay before him: to persuade both houses of Parliament to accept his scheme of Union, and to arrange, on some moderate basis, the whole Clergy Reserve question. To complicate these practical duties, the speculative problem of responsible government, long keenly canvassed in Toronto, and the peculiar conditions and methods of local politics, lay as dangerous obstacles in his path. The manners and methods of the politicians of Upper Canada drew him even in his despatches into vivid criticism. After a month's observation, he sent Russell a long and very able description of the prevailing disorders. In spite of a general loyalty the people had been fretted into vexations and petty divisions, and for the most part felt deep-rooted animosity towards the executive authorities. Indeed, apart from the party bias of the government, its inefficiency and uncertainty had destroyed all public confidence in it. Under the executive government, the authority of the legislative council had been exercised by a very few individuals, representing a mere clique in the capital, frequently opposed both to the government and to the Assembly, and considered by the people hostile to their interests. In the lower chamber, the loss of public influence by the ministry had introduced absolute legislative chaos, and even the control over expenditure, and the examination of accounts, were of the loosest and most irregular character.[[14]] In a private letter he allowed himself a freedom of expression which renders his description the locus classicus for political conditions before the Union:—"The state of things here is far worse than I had expected. The country is split into factions animated with the most deadly hatred to each other. The people have got into the way of talking so much of separation, that they begin to believe in it. The Constitutional party is as bad or worse than the other, in spite of all their professions of loyalty. The finances are more deranged than we believed even in England. The deficit, £75,000 a year, more than equal to the income. All public works suspended. Emigration going on fast from the province. Every man's property worth only half what it was. When I look to the state of government, and to the departmental administration of the province, instead of being surprised at the condition in which I find it, I am only astonished it has been endured so long. I know that, much as I dislike Yankee institutions and rule, I would not have fought against them, which thousands of these poor fellows, whom the Compact call rebels, did, if it were only to keep up such a Government as they got.... Then the Assembly is such a House! Split into half a dozen parties. The Government having none—and no one man to depend on! Think of a house in which half the members hold places, yet in which the Government does not command a single vote; in which the place-men generally vote against the Executive; and where there is no one to defend the Government when attacked, or to state the opinion and views of the Governor."[[15]]

With the eye of a political strategist, Poulett Thomson prepared his alternative system, a curious kind of despotism, based, however, simply on his own powers of influencing opinion in the House. It was plain to him that the previous governments had wantonly neglected public opinion.[[16]] It was also plain that the populace had regarded these governments as consisting not of the governor with his ministers under him, but of the Family Compact clique in place of the governor.[[17]] The system which he proposed to substitute expressed very fully his working theory. Responsible government in the sweeping sense of that term employed by the reforming party he resisted, holding that, whether against his ministers, or the electors, he must be personally responsible for all his administrative acts. At the same time he assured parliament that "he had received her Majesty's commands to administer the government of these provinces in accordance with the well-understood wishes and interests of the people, and to pay to their feelings, as expressed through their representatives, the deference that is justly due to them."[[18]] To secure this end, he called public attention to the despatch from Russell, definitely announcing the change of tenure of all save judicial and purely ministerial places, thereby making it clear that no man would be retained in office longer than he seemed acceptable to the governor and the community. Then he set to work to build up, out of moderate men drawn from all groups, a party of compromise and good sense to support him and his ministry; and finally, he claimed for himself the central authority without any modifying conditions. Concerning the ultimate seat of that authority he never hesitated. Whatever power he had came from the Home Ministry as representing the Crown, and to them alone he acknowledged responsibility. For the rest, he had to carry on the Queen's government; that is, to govern Canada so that peace and prosperity might remain unshaken; and as a first condition he had to defer to the wishes of the people. But it cannot be too strongly re-asserted that he refused to surrender one iota of his responsibility, and that the ideal which he set for himself was a combination of governor and prime-minister. The efficiency of his system was to depend on the honestly benevolent intentions which the governor-general cherished towards the people, and on the fidelity of both the ministry and the parliamentary majority established and secured through belief in those intentions.

The new system met with an astounding success. The scheme of Union was laid before both Houses. On the thirteenth of December the Council, which had hitherto been the chief obstacle, approved of the scheme by fourteen votes to eight, the minority consisting of Toronto 'die-hards' with the Bishop, recalcitrant as usual, at their head. Ten days later, the governor-general was able to assure Russell that the Lower House had, after some strenuous debates and divisions, assented also; the only change from his own outline being an amendment that "such part of the civil list as did not relate to the salaries of the judges, and the governor, and the administration of justice, which are made permanent, should be granted for the lifetime of the Queen, or for a period of not less than ten years."[[19]] On one point, not without its influence in embittering opinion among the French, Parliament and Governor were agreed, that while the debates in the Union parliament might be conducted in either English or French, in the publication of all records of the Legislature the English language only should be adopted.[[20]]

Swept on by this great initial success, Poulett Thomson determined if possible to settle the Clergy Reserve trouble out of hand. As has been shown above, this ecclesiastical difficulty affected the whole life of the community; and its settlement would mean peace, such as Upper Canada had not known for a generation. The pacificator, however, had to face two groups of irreconcilables, the Bishop of Toronto with his extremist following, and the secularizing party resolute to have done with any form of subsidy to religion. As he himself confessed, he had little hope of succeeding in the Assembly, but he trusted to his new popularity, then at its spring tide, and he won. Before the end of January the question had been settled on a compromise, by a majority of 28 to 20 in the Assembly, and of 14 to 4 in the Council. It was even more satisfactory to know that out of 22 members of Assembly who were communicants of the Church of England, only 8 voted in favour of the status quo. There was but one set-back. Legal opinion in England decided that the local assembly had not powers to change the original act of 1791; and in the Imperial legislation which this check made necessary, other influences crept in, and the governor-general bitterly complained that the monstrous proportion allotted to the Church of England, and the miserable proportion set apart for other churches, rendered the Act only less an evil than if the question had been left unsettled.[[21]] Still, the settlement retained existing reserves for religious purposes, ended the creation of fresh reserves, divided past sales of land between the Churches of England and of Scotland, and arranged for the distribution of the proceeds of future sales roughly in proportion to the numbers and importance of all the churches in Canada. It was not an ideal arrangement, but quiet men were anxious to clear the obstacle from the way, and through such men Poulett Thomson worked his will. It is the most striking testimony to the governor's power of management that, as a politician stated in 1846, three-quarters of the people believed the arrangement unjust and partial, and acquiesced only because their political head desired it. But the end was not yet, and the uneasy ambition of the Bishop of Toronto was in a few years to bring on his head just retribution for the strife his policy continued to create. Nothing now remained but to close this, the last parliament of Upper Canada under the old regime, and the governor, who never suffered from lack of self-appreciative optimism, wrote home in triumph: "Never was such unanimity. When the speaker read my speech in the Commons, after the prorogation, they gave me three cheers, in which even the ultras joined."[[22]] It was perhaps the last remnant of this pardonable exultation which swept him over the 360 miles between Toronto and Montreal in thirty-six hours, breaking all records for long-distance sleighing in the province.

The primary duty of the governor had now been accomplished, for he had persuaded both local governments to accept an Imperial Act of Union, and it might seem natural to pass over the intervening months, until Union had been officially proclaimed, and the first Union parliament had been elected and had met. But the interregnum from February, 1840, to February, 1841, must not be ignored. In these twelve short months he turned once again to the problem of Lower Canada, hurried on a short visit to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to settle constitutional difficulties there, returned in a kind of triumphal procession through the English-speaking district of Lower Canada known as the Eastern Townships,[[23]] and spent the autumn in a tour through the Western part of the newly united colony. It was only fitting that a grateful Queen and Ministry should bestow on him a peerage; henceforward he must appear as Baron Sydenham of Sydenham and Toronto.

But apart from these mere physical activities, he was preparing for the culmination of his work in the new parliament. It must be remembered not only that he distrusted the intelligence and initiative of colonial ministers too much to dream of giving place to them, but that his theory of his own position—the benevolent despot, secured in his supremacy through popular management—forced on him an elaborate programme of useful administration. He must face the new Parliament with a good record, and definite promises. The failure of the home ministry to include the local government clauses, which formed a fundamental part of the Union Bill, made such efforts even more necessary than before. It had been plain to Durham and Charles Buller, as well as to Sydenham, that, if an Act of Union were to pass, it could only be made operative by joining to it an entirely new system of local government. Accordingly, when opposition forced Russell to omit the essential clauses from his Act of Union, Sydenham penned one of his most vigorous despatches in reply. "Owing to this (rejection), duties the most unfit to be discharged by the general legislature are thrown upon it; powers equally dangerous to the subject and to the Crown are assumed by the Assembly. The people receive no training in those habits of self-government which are indispensable to enable them rightly to exercise the power of choosing representatives in parliament. No field is open for the gratification of ambition in a narrow circle, and no opportunity given for testing the talents or integrity of those who are candidates for popular favour. The people acquire no habits of self-dependence for the attainment of their own local objects. Whatever uneasiness they may feel—whatever little improvement in their respective neighbourhoods may appear to be neglected, afford grounds for complaint against the executive. All is charged upon the Government, and a host of discontented spirits are ever ready to excite these feelings. On the other hand, whilst the Government is thus brought directly in contact with the people, it has neither any officer in its own confidence, in the different parts of these extended provinces, from whom it can seek information, nor is there any recognized body, enjoying the public confidence, with whom it can communicate, either to determine what are the real wants and wishes of the locality, or through whom it may afford explanation."[[24]]

Nothing could be done to remedy the evil in Upper Canada, until the new parliament had met, but the temporary dictatorship still remained in French Canada, and at once Sydenham set to work to create all that he wanted there, recognizing shrewdly that what had been granted in the Lower Province to the French must prove a powerful argument for a similar grant to Upper Canada, when the time should come for action. About the same time, he established by ordinance a popular system of registry offices, to simplify the difficulties introduced into land transfers by the French law—"all the old French law of before the Revolution, Hypothèques tacites et occultes, Dowers' and Minors' rights, Actes par devant notaires, and all the horrible processes by which the unsuspecting are sure to be deluded, and the most wary are often taken in."[[25]]