British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government, 1839-1854

by J. L. Morison

This indeed was battle à outrance between two conflicting theories of government. Russell, Sydenham, and Metcalfe, had refused to admit self-government beyond a certain limit, and Metcalfe, in accepting the situation created by the resignation of his ministers, was battling very directly for his view. On the other side, Baldwin and the colonial politicians had claimed autonomy as far as it might be granted within the empire. By resigning their offices, they called on their opponents to make the alternative system work. For two years Metcalfe occupied himself with the task they set him.

It is not necessary to enter into all the details of those years. The relevant facts group themselves round three centres of interest—the painful efforts put forth by Metcalfe to build up a new council, the general election through which he sought to find a party for his ministers, and the attitude of the colony towards the new ministers, and of both toward the representative of the Crown on the eve of his departure for England in 1845.

The struggle to reconstruct the ministry was peculiarly distressing, and ended in a very qualified success. Daly, Metcalfe's one remaining councillor, carried no weight in the country. Baldwin and his group could not be approached; and Harrison, the most moderate of the reformers, had previously resigned over the question of the removal of the seat of government from Kingston. In Lower Canada, Metcalfe found himself almost as much the object of French hatred as Sydenham had been, and it was with great difficulty that he secured Viger to represent the French Canadians in his council—at the expense of Viger's influence among his compatriots.[[17]] By the end of 1843, Metcalfe had secured the services of three men, "Viger representing the French party, and Mr. Daly and Mr. Draper representing in some degree as to each both the British and moderate Reform parties."[[18]] Officious supporters, of whom Egerton Ryerson was chief, did their best to introduce to the governor competent outsiders, and Draper used his reputation for moderation in the effort to secure suitable candidates. Even after the election of 1844 was over, Draper, and Caron, the Speaker in the Upper House, actually attempted an intrigue with La Fontaine; and although the episode brought little credit to any of the parties concerned, La Fontaine at least recognized how much was involved in acceptance or rejection of the proposals of government—when he said: "If under the system of accepting office at any price, there are persons, who, for a personal and momentary advantage, do not fear to break the only bond which constitutes our strength, union among ourselves, I do not wish to be, and I never will be, of the number."[[19]] Eventually a patchwork ministry was constructed, but its pitiable weakness proved how difficult it was to create a council, except along orthodox British party lines. It was a reductio ad absurdum of the eclectic principle of cabinet building.

The reconstruction of the council involved a dissolution of Parliament. The late councillors had a steady and decisive majority in the existing Assembly; and the governor-general found it necessary to face the risk of an appeal to the country. The fate of Lower Canada he could imagine beforehand; nothing but accident could prevent the return of an overwhelming majority against his men. Even among the western British settlers an unprejudiced observer reported early in 1844 that more than nine-tenths of the western voters were supporters of the late Executive Council.[[20]] Montreal, which, thanks to Sydenham's manoeuvres, counted among the British seats, returned an opponent of the new Ministers at a bye-election in April, 1844, although the government party explained away the defeat by stories of Irish violence. But Metcalfe's extraordinary persistence, and his belief that the battle was really one for the continuance of the British connection, gave him and his supporters renewed vigour, and, even to-day, the election of November, 1844, is remembered as one of the fiercest in the history of the colony. Politics in Canada still recognized force as one of the natural, if not quite legitimate, elements in the situation, and it was eminently characteristic of local conditions that, early in his term of office, Metcalfe should have reported that meetings had been held near Kingston at which large numbers of persons attended armed with bludgeons, and, in some cases, with firearms.[[21]] Montreal, with all its possibilities of conflict, and with its reputation for disorder to maintain, led the-way in election riots. In April, 1844, according to the loyalists, the reformers had won through the use of Irish labourers brought in from the Lachine canal. However that may be, the military had been called in, and at least one death had resulted from the confused rioting of the day.[[22]] In November, the loyalists in their turn organized a counter demonstration, and the success of the loyal party was not altogether disconnected with physical force.[[23]] From the west came similar stories of violence and trickery. In the West Riding of Halton, the Tories were said to have delayed voting, which seemed to be setting against them, by various stratagems, including the swearing in of old grey-headed men as of 21 years of age, and among the accusations made by the defeated candidate was one that certain deputy returning officers had allowed seven women to vote for the sitting member.[[24]] On the whole the election went in favour of the governor-general, although Metcalfe took too favourable a view of the situation when he reported the avowed supporters of government as 46, as against 28 avowed adversaries. At best his majority could not rise above six. Yet even so, the decision of the country still seems astonishing. There was the unflinching Tory element at the centre; and the British members from Lower Canada. Ryerson had used his great influence among the Methodists, and, since the cry was one of loyalty to the Crown, many waverers may have voted on patriotic grounds for the government candidates. Metcalfe's reputation, too, counted for him, for he had already become known as more than generous, and one of his successors estimated that he spent £6,000 a year in excess of his official income. "It must be admitted," he himself wrote to Stanley, "that this majority has been elected by the loyalty of the majority of the people of Upper Canada, and of those of the Eastern townships in Lower Canada."[[25]]

The government, and presumably also the governor-general, were accused of having secured their victory by doubtful tactics, and Elgin reported in 1847 that his Assembly, which was that of the 1844 election, had had much discredit thrown on it on the ground that the late governor-general had interfered unduly in the elections.[[26]] Neither side had been perfectly scrupulous in its methods of warfare, and it is not necessary to blame Metcalfe for the misguided zeal and cunning of his Ministers and his country supporters. Be that as it may, the governor-general had won a hard-fought victory—Pyrrhic as it proved.

Throughout this political warfare, Metcalfe had been sustained by the strong support of the home government. The cabinet announced itself ready to give him every possible support in maintaining the authority of the Queen, and of her representative, against unreasonable and exorbitant pretensions.[[27]] In the debate on the troubles, which Roebuck introduced on May 30th, 1844, all the leading men on either side, Stanley, Peel, Russell, and Buller, warmly supported the governor, Russell and Buller being as strong in their reprobation of the demands of the council as Stanley himself.[[28]] And the chorus of approval culminated in the letters from Peel and Stanley, which announced the conferring of a peerage on Metcalfe "as a public mark of her Majesty's cordial approbation of the judgment, ability, and fidelity, with which he had discharged the important trust confided to him by her Majesty."[[29]] In a sense the honours and praise were not altogether out of place. Metcalfe had been sent out to conduct the administration of Canada on what we now regard as an impossible system; and unlike his immediate predecessors he had conceded not one point to the other side. In spite of all that his enemies could say, his personal honour and dignity remained untarnished. The nicknames and cruel taunts flung at him, in the earlier months, apparently by his own ministers, recoil now on their heads, as the petty insults of unmannerly politicians; indeed, the accusations which they made of simplicity and honesty, simply reinforce the impression of quixotic high-mindedness, which was not the least noble feature in Metcalfe's character. His generosity had been unaffected by his difficulties; and there are few finer things in the history of British administration than the sense of duty exhibited throughout 1845 by Lord Metcalfe, when, dying of cancer in the cheek, almost blind, and altogether unable to write his despatches, he still clung to his post "to secure the preservation of this colony and the supremacy of the mother country." It is easy to separate the man from the official, and to praise the former as one of the noblest of early Victorian administrators.

But even before Lord Metcalfe's departure at the end of 1845, the inadequacy of his system stood revealed. He had indeed a majority in the Assembly, but a small and doubtful majority; and since its members had been elected rather to support Metcalfe than to co-operate with his ill-assorted ministry, difficulties very soon revealed themselves. There were causes of dissension, chief among them the University question in Upper Canada, which threatened to wreck the government party. But the most ominous sign of coming defeat was the incompatibility of temper which rapidly developed between loyal ministers and loyal Assembly. "It is remarkable," Metcalfe wrote in May, 1845, "that none of the Executive Council, although all are estimable and respectable, exercise any great influence over the party which supports the government. Mr. Draper is universally admitted to be the most talented man in either House of the Legislature, and his presence in the Legislative Assembly was deemed to be so essential, that he resigned his seat in the Upper House, sacrificing his own opinions in order that he might take the lead in the Assembly; nevertheless he is not popular with the party that supports the government, nor with any other, and I do not know that, strictly speaking, he can be said to have a single follower. The same may be remarked of every other member of the Executive Council; and although I have much reason to be satisfied with them, and have no expectation of finding others who would serve her Majesty better, still I do not perceive that any of them individually have brought much support to the government."[[30]]

That is the confession of a man who has attempted the impossible, and who is being forced reluctantly to witness his own defeat. The ministry which he had created lacked the authority which can come only from the best political talent of a people acting in sympathy with the opinions of that people. He had, with great difficulty, found a House of Assembly willing by a narrow majority to support him, but personal support is not in itself a political programme, and the fallacy of his calculations appeared when work in detail had to be accomplished. He had reprobated party, and he found in a party—narrower in practice even than that which he had displaced—the only possible foundation for his authority. He had come to Canada to complete the reconciliation of opposing races within the colony, and, when he left, the French seemed once more about to retreat into their old position of invincible hostility to all things British. The governor-generalship of Lord Metcalfe is almost the clearest illustration in the nineteenth century of the weakness of the doctrinaire in practical politics. Unfortunately, the doctrine which Metcalfe had strenuously enforced was backed by the highest of imperial authorities, and sanctioned by monarchy itself. In less than ten years after the Rebellion, the renovated theory of colonial autonomy had produced a new dilemma. It remained with Metcalfe's successor to decide whether Britain preferred a second rebellion and probable separation to a radical change of system.