British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government, 1839-1854

by J. L. Morison

But the chief significance of the session lies in the persistent warfare waged between Sydenham and the advocates of a more extended system of autonomy. The result, as will be shewn, was indecisive, but, under the circumstances a drawn battle was equivalent to defeat for the governor-general.

Sydenham had never before flung himself so completely into the fight. "I actually breathe, eat, drink, and sleep nothing but government and politics," was his own description of life in Kingston. He had accomplished with little resistance from others all that his opening speech had promised. His ministry owned him as their actively directing head. His power of managing individuals in spite of themselves passed into a jest. Playing with men's vanity, tampering with their interests, their passions and their prejudices, placing himself in a position of familiarity with those from whom he might at once obtain assistance and information—such, according to an eccentric writer of the day, were the secrets of Sydenham's success.[[43]] Few men ever played the part of benevolent despot more admirably, and his achievements were the more creditable because he could count on no allegiance except that which he induced by his persuasive arts, and by the proofs he had given of a sincere desire to promote Canadian prosperity.

Nevertheless, throughout the summer months, there occurred a series of sharp encounters with a half-organized party of reform; and the end of the session, while it saw Sydenham successful, saw also his adversaries as eager as ever, and much more learned than they had been in the ways of political opposition and agitation. The opposition leaders massed their whole strength on one fundamental point—the claim to possess as fully as their fellow-citizens in Great Britain did, the cabinet and party system of government. In other words, if any group, or coalition of groups, should succeed in establishing an ascendency in the popular assembly, that ascendency must receive acknowledgment by the creation of a cabinet, and the appointment of a prime minister, approved by the parliamentary majority and responsible to them; and Sydenham's ingenious device of an eclectic ministry responsible to him alone was denounced as unconstitutional. The first encounter came, two days before the session started, and Robert Baldwin of Toronto was the leader of the revolt. In February, 1840, Sydenham had invited Robert Baldwin to be his Solicitor-General in the Upper Province. Baldwin, although his powers were not those of a politician of the first rank, was perhaps the soundest constitutionalist in Western Canada. He had been from the first a reformer, but he had never encouraged the wild ideas of the rebels of 1837. Sir F. B. Head had called him to his councils in 1836, as a man "highly respected for his moral character, moderate in his politics and possessing the esteem and confidence of all parties,"[[44]] and only Head's impracticability had driven him from public service. There is not a letter or official note from his pen, which does not bear the stamp of unusual conscientiousness, and a very earnest desire to serve his country. So little was he a self-seeker, that he earned the lasting ill-will of his eldest son by passing a bill abolishing primogeniture, and thus ending any hopes that existed of founding a great colonial family. The Earl of Elgin, who saw much of him after 1847, regarded him not merely as a great public servant, but as one who was worth "two regiments to the British connection," and perhaps the most truly conservative statesman in the province.[[45]] In his quiet, determined way, he had made up his mind that responsible government, in the sense condemned by both Sydenham and Russell, must be secured for Canada, and Sydenham's benevolent plans did not disguise from him the insidious attempt to limit what he counted the legitimate constitutional liberty of the colony. It cannot justly be objected that his acceptance of office misled the governor-general, either in 1840 or in 1841. "I distinctly avow," he wrote publicly in 1840, "that, in accepting office, I consider myself to have given a public pledge that I have a reasonably well-grounded confidence that the government of my country is to be carried on in accordance with the principles of Responsible Government which I have ever held.... I have not come into office by means of any coalition with the Attorney-General,[[46]] or with any others now in the public service, but have done so under the governor-general, and expressly from my confidence in him."[[47]] In the same way, when Sydenham chose him for the Solicitor-Generalship of Upper Canada in the Union Ministry, Baldwin, who had no belief in Sydenham's cabinet of all the talents, wrote bluntly to say that he "had an entire want of political confidence in all of his colleagues except Mr. Dunn, Mr. Harrison, and Mr. Daly."[[48]] In view of his later action, his critics charged him with error in thus accepting an office which placed him in an impossible position; but Baldwin's ready answer was: "The head of the government, the heads of departments in both provinces, and the country itself, were in a position almost anomalous. That of the head of the government was one of great difficulty and embarrassment. While he (Baldwin) felt bound to protect himself against misapprehensions as to his views and opinions, he also felt bound to avoid, as far as possible, throwing any difficulties in the way of the governor-general. At the time he was called to a seat in the Executive Council, he was already one of those public servants, the political character newly applied to whose office made it necessary for them to hold seats in that Council. Had he, on being called to take that seat, refused to accept it, he must of course have left office altogether, or have been open to the imputation of objecting to an arrangement for the conduct of public affairs which had always met with his most decided approbation."[[49]] At worst, the Solicitor-General can only be blamed for letting his abnormally sensitive conscience lead him into political casuistry, the logic of which might not appear so cogent to the governor as to himself, when the crisis should come. How sensitive that conscience was, may be gathered from the fact that his acceptance of office in 1841 was accompanied with an avowal of want of confidence, made openly to those colleagues with whom he disagreed. It was further illustrated when he made a difficulty with Sydenham over taking the Oath of Supremacy, which, in a country, many of whose inhabitants were Roman Catholics protected in their religion by treaty rights, declared that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state or potentate hath or ought to have any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence of authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual within this realm."[[50]]

The crisis came, as Baldwin expected it to come, when parliament met. Already, as has been seen, the French Canadians had organized their forces and formed the most compact group in the Assembly, while the little band of determined reformers from Upper Canada made up in decision and principle what they lacked in numbers. Hincks, who was one of the latter group, says that, before parliament met, the two sections consulted together concerning the government, and although La Fontaine had lost his election through a display of physical force on the other side, Baldwin was able to lead the combined groups into action. On June 12th, he wrote to Sydenham stating that the United Reform Party represented the political views of the vast majority of Canadians, that four ministers—Sullivan, Ogden, Draper, and Day—were hostile to popular sympathies and ideals, and that he thought the accession of Lower Canada Reformers absolutely essential to a sound popular administration. It was a perfectly consistent, if somewhat unhappily executed, attempt to secure the absolute responsibility of the Executive Council to the representatives of the people; and a week later, in the Assembly, when no longer in office, he defended his action. He believed that when the election had determined of what materials the House of Assembly was to be composed, it then became his duty to inform the head of the government that the administration did not possess the confidence of the House of Assembly, and to tender to the representative of his sovereign the resignation of the office which he held, having first, as he was bound to do, offered his advice to his Excellency that the administration of the country should be reconstructed.[[51]]

It was the directest possible challenge to Sydenham's system. Baldwin's claim was that, once the representatives of the people had made known the people's will, it was the duty of the ministry to reflect that will in their programme and actions, or to resign. As for the governor-general, he must obviously adjust whatever theories he might have, to a situation where colonial ministers were content to hold office only where they had the confidence of the people.

The action of the governor-general was characteristically summary. His answer to Baldwin reproved him for a "proposal in the highest degree unconstitutional, as dictating to the crown who are the particular individuals whom it should include in the ministry"; intimated the extreme displeasure of his Excellency, and assumed the letter to be equivalent to resignation.[[52]] To the home government he spoke of the episode with anger and some contempt: "Acting upon some principle of conduct which I can reconcile neither with honour nor common sense, he strove to bring about this union (between Upper and Lower Canadian reformers), and at last, having as he thought effected it, coolly proposed to me, on the day before Parliament was to meet, to break up the Government altogether, dismiss several of his colleagues, and replace them by men whom I believe he had not known for 24 hours—but who are most of them thoroughly well known in Lower Canada as the principal opponents of any measure for the improvement of the province."[[53]]

The crisis once passed, Sydenham hoped, and not without justification, that Baldwin would carry few supporters over to the opposition, and that the Assembly would settle quietly down to enact the measures so bountifully set out in the opening speech. The first day of Assembly saw the party of responsible government make a smothered effort to state their views in the debate on the election of a speaker. On June 18th, an elaborate debate, nominally on the address, really on the fundamental point, found the attorney-general stating the case for the government, and Baldwin and Hincks pushing the logic of responsible government to its natural conclusion. Baldwin once more grappled with the problem of the responsibility of the members of council, and the advice they should offer to the governor-general. He admitted freely that unless the representative of the sovereign should acquiesce in the measures so recommended, there would be no means by which that advice could be made practically useful; but this consideration did not for a moment relieve a member of the council from the fulfilment of an imperative duty. If his advice were accepted, well and good; if not, his course would be to tender his resignation.[[54]]

The government came triumphantly out of the ordeal, and all amendments, whether affecting the Union, or responsible government, were defeated by majorities, usually of two to one. "I have got the large majority of the House ready to support me upon any question that can arise," Sydenham wrote at the end of June; "and, what is better, thoroughly convinced that their constituents, so far as the whole of Upper Canada and the British part of Lower Canada are concerned, will never forgive them if they do not."[[55]]

But the enemy was not so easily routed. There had been much violence at the recent elections; and, among others, La Fontaine had a most just complaint to make, for disorder, and, as he thought, government trickery had ousted him from a safe seat at Terrebonne. Unfortunately the protests were lodged too late, and a furious struggle sprang up, as to whether the legal period should, in the cases under consideration, be extended, or whether, as the government contended, an inquiry and amendments affecting only the future should suffice. It was ominous for the cause of limited responsibility, that the government had to own defeat in the Lower House, and saved itself only by the veto of the Legislative Council. Nor was that the end. A mosaic work of opposition, old Tories, French Canadians, British anti-unionists, and Upper Canada Reformers, was gradually formed, and at any moment some chance issue might lure over a few from the centre to wreck the administration. Most of the greater measures passed through the ordeal safely, including a bill reforming the common schools and another establishing a Board of Works. The critical moment of the latter part of the session, however, came with the introduction of a bill to establish District Councils in Upper Canada, to complete the work already done in Lower Canada. The forces in opposition rallied to the attack, Conservatives because the bill would increase the popular element in government, Radicals because the fourth clause enacted that the governor of the province might appoint, under the Great Seal of the province, fit and proper persons to hold during his pleasure the office of Warden of the various districts;[[56]] and, as Sydenham himself hinted, there were those who regretted the loss to members of Assembly of a great opportunity for jobbery. One motion passed by the chairman's casting vote; and nothing, in the governor-general's judgment, saved the bill but the circumstance of his having already established such councils in Lower Canada.[[57]]