British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government, 1839-1854

by J. L. Morison

When the Assembly met, events moved very rapidly. On the opening day, Neilson brought forward the exciting question of amnesty; and the air was filled with rumours and schemes, of which the most ominous for government was the project of coalition between Conservatives and French Canadians. The time had come for action—if anything could really be done. To understand the boldness of Bagot's tactics, it must be remembered that they went "in the teeth of an almost universal feeling at home ... certainly in opposition to Lord Durham's recorded sentiments, and as certainly to Lord Sydenham's avowed practice"—to say nothing of Stanley's own wishes. La Fontaine was definitely approached on the tenth, and, seemingly, Bagot was not quite prepared for the greatness of his claims—"four places in the Council, with the admission of Mr. Baldwin into it."[[20]] But he had no alternative, for on the 12th he received a plain statement from his cabinet that, if he failed, they were not prepared to carry on the government.[[21]] To his dismay, the surrender, if one may so term it, which he signed next day, was not accepted, since Baldwin could not countenance the pensioning of the ministers, Ogden and Davidson, who had been compulsorily retired, and, although MacNab was at hand with the offer of sixteen Conservative stalwarts, the plan was useless, and, in view of MacNab's general conduct at this time, irritating. When Bagot wrote that night to Stanley it was as a despairing man, for the attack had begun at 3 o'clock, Baldwin leading off with an address, as usual pledging the House to responsible government, and there was every chance that he would defeat the ministry. At this point Bagot took the strange and daring plan of allowing Draper to read his letter to La Fontaine in the House, that the Lower Canadians might "learn how abundantly large an offer their leaders have rejected, and the honest spirit in which that offer was made."[[22]] His unconventionality won the day, by convincing the House that the governor-general was in earnest. Successive adjournments staved off the debate on the address; and by September 16th, terms had been settled. La Fontaine, Small, Aylwin, Baldwin, and Girouard if he cared to take office, were to enter, Draper, Davidson, Ogden and Sherwood passing out. Unfortunately, since neither Ogden nor Sherwood happened to be present, Bagot had to accept their resignations on his own initiative, and without previous consultation with them. Not even that dexterous correspondent could quite disguise the awkwardness of his position when he wrote to tell both men that they had ceased to be his ministers.[[23]] So the crisis ended.

The address was carried by fifty-five votes to five, the malcontents being MacNab, foiled once more in his ambitions; Moffat and Cartwright, representing inflexible Toryism; Neilson, whose position as a recognized opponent of the Union tied his hands, and Johnstone, a disappointed place man. Peace ruled in the Assembly, and the battle passed to the province, the newspapers, and most ominous of all for the governor, to the cabinet and public in Britain. A storm of abuse, criticism, and regrets broke over Bagot's devoted head. The opposition press in Canada called him "a radical, a puppet, an old woman, an apostate, a renegade descendant of old Colonel Bagot who fell at Naseby fighting for his King."[[24]] MacNab, in the House, led a bitterly personal opposition. At least one cabinet meeting in England was called specially to consider the incident, and for some months Stanley tempered assurances that he and the government would support their representative, with caustic expressions of regret. The necessity of the change, he reiterated, had not been fully proven. The French members and Baldwin were doubtful characters. If the worst must be accepted, and a ministry constructed, containing both Baldwin and the French, then Bagot had better obtain from the new cabinet some assurance of "their intention of standing by the provisions of the Act of Union, including the Civil List, and every other debatable question." Then, fearing lest the very citadel of responsibility and control should be surrendered, he set forth his theory of government in an elaborate letter which revealed distinct distrust of his correspondent's power of resistance. "Your position is different from that of the Crown in England. The Crown acts avowedly and exclusively on the advice of its ministers, and has no political opinions of its own. You act in concert with your Executive Council, but the ultimate decision rests with yourself, and you are recognised, not only as having an opinion, but as supreme and irresponsible, except to the Home government, for your acts in your executive capacity. Practically you are (influenced) by the advice you receive, and by motives of prudence, in not running counter to the advice of those who command a majority in the Legislature; but you cannot throw on them the onus of your actions in the same sense that the Crown can in this country."[[25]]

Yet, so far as Canada was concerned, Bagot had reason to feel satisfied. Threatened with half a dozen hostile combinations, he had forestalled them all, and found the Assembly filled with friends, not enemies. He had approached a sullen French nation—and thereafter the French party formed as solid an accession to Canadian political stability as they had once been dangerous to Imperial peace; and their union with the moderate reformers in government, while it gave them all they asked, enabled the governor to exercise a natural restraint on them, should they again be tempted to nationalist excesses. He had not explicitly surrendered to any sweeping doctrine of responsible government. There was peace at last. The Assembly which passed over thirty acts, reaffirmed the rights of the royal prerogative, and was dismissed in the most amiable temper with itself, and the governor-general.

One may discern, however, a curious contradiction between the superficial consequences of the crisis, as described by Bagot, and the fundamental changes the beginnings of which he was able to trace in the months which followed. On the face of it, Bagot's policy of frank expediency had saved Stanley and his party from a crushing defeat and a humiliating surrender to extreme views. So far, he had assisted the cause of conservatism. But the disaster and the humiliation would have come, not from the grant of responsible government, but from the misuse of it to which a victory, won against a more resolute governor, might have tempted Baldwin and La Fontaine, and from the false position in which the imperial government would have stood, towards the men who had challenged imperial authority and won. It is interesting to follow the process by which Bagot came to see all that lay in his action. Yielding to Canadian autonomy, he went on to new surrenders. He had already warned Stanley that the agitation over the Civil List would certainly reawaken; to the end he seems to have been considering the advisability of a complete surrender on that point. When he wrote communicating to the minister the Assembly's acknowledgment of the royal prerogative, in recognizing the right of the Crown to name the capital, he pointed out that, prerogative or no prerogative, the possessor of the purse had the final voice. He rebuked his new minister, Baldwin, for tacking on question-begging constitutional phrases to a legal opinion, but he told Stanley, quite frankly, that, "whether the doctrine of responsible government is openly acknowledged, or is only tacitly acquiesced in, virtually it exists."[[26]] During the remainder of his tenure of office, partly because of his own ill-health, but partly also, I think, from conviction, he gave his ministers the most perfect freedom of action. And, although he did not gain the point, he was willing to make sweeping concessions in answer to the call for an amnesty for the rebels of 1837. He recognized the force of trusting, in a self-governing community, even those who had once striven against the British rule with arms—the final proof in any man that he has come to understand the secrets, at once of Empire, and of constitutional government.

There is little more to tell of Bagot's rule, for the last months of his life were spent in a struggle to overcome extreme bodily sickness in the interest of public duty; and Stanley himself, in the name of the Cabinet, expressed his admiration for the gallantry of his stand.

To the end, he held himself justified in his political actions, and if there were moments when he questioned whether Stanley would see things in a reasonable light, he possessed the perfect confidence of his Canadian ministers, who did not neglect his injunction to them to defend his memory.[[27]]

Nevertheless the irritation of the Colonial Secretary was neither unnatural nor unjustifiable. He confidently expected that separation from England would be the immediate consequence of a surrender to the reform party in Canada; and he believed that Bagot had made that surrender. In the latter opinion he was correct. There are times when the party of reaction sees more clearly than their opponents the scope and consequences of innovation, however blind they may be to the developments which by their parallel advance check the obvious dangers; and Sir Charles Metcalfe, whom Stanley sent to Canada to stay the flowing tide, has furnished the most accurate negative criticism of the Bagot incident: "The result of the struggle naturally increased the conviction that Responsible Government was effectually established, new Councillors were forced on the governor-general.... The Council was no longer selected by the governor. It was thrust on him by the Assembly of the people. Some of the new members of the Council had entered it with extreme notions of the supremacy of the Council over the governor; and the illness of Sir Charles Bagot, after this change, threw the current business of administration almost entirely into their hands, which tended much to confirm these notions."[[28]] It fell to the lot of this critic to attempt to correct Bagot's mistakes.