British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government, 1839-1854

by J. L. Morison

Elgin, then, found a distracted ministry, a doubtful Assembly, and an irritated country. His ministers he thought lacking in pluck, and far too willing to appeal to selfish and sordid motives in possible supporters.[[6]] He was irritated by what seemed to him the petty and inconsistent divisions of Canadian party life: "In a community like this, where there is little, if anything, of public principle to divide men, political parties will shape themselves under the influence of circumstances, and of a great variety of affections and antipathies, national, sectarian, and personal.... It is not even pretended that the divisions of party represent corresponding divisions of sentiment on questions which occupy the public mind, such as voluntaryism, Free Trade, etc., etc. Responsible Government is the one subject on which this coincidence is alleged to exist."[[7]] The French problem he found peculiarly difficult. Metcalfe's policy had had results disconcerting to the British authorities. Banishing, as he thought, sectarianism or racial views, he had yet practically shut out French statesmen from office so successfully, that, when Elgin, acting through Colonel Taché, attempted to approach them, he found in none of them any disposition to enter into alliance with the existing ministry.[[8]] Elgin, who was willing enough to give fair play to every political section, could not but see the obvious fault of French Canadian nationalism. "They seem incapable of comprehending that the principles of constitutional government must be applied against them, as well as for them," he wrote to Grey. "Whenever there appears to be a chance of things taking this turn they revive the ancient cry of nationality, and insist on their right to have a share in the administration, not because the party with which they have chosen to connect themselves is in the ascendant, but because they represent a people of distinct origin."[[9]] Most serious of all, because it hampered his initiative, he found every party except that in office suspicious of the governor's authority, and newspapers like Hincks' Pilot grumbling over Imperial interference.

One sweeping remedy, he had, within a few months of his arrival, laid aside as impossible. Lord John Russell and Grey had discussed with him the possibility of raising Canadian politics out of their pettiness by a federal union of all the British North American colonies. But as early as May 1847, Elgin had come to doubt whether the free and independent legislatures of the colonies would be willing to delegate any of their authority to please a British ministry.[[10]] It was necessary then to fall back on the unromantic alternative of modifying the constitution of the ministry; and here French solidarity had made his task difficult. Yet the amazing thing in Elgin was the speed, the ease, and the accuracy, with which he saw what none of his predecessors had seen—the need to concede, and the harmlessness of conceding, responsible government in Baldwin's sense of the term. Within two months of his accession to power, he declared, "I am determined to do nothing which will put it out of my power to act with the opposite party, if it is forced upon me by the representatives of the people."[[11]] Two months later, sick of the struggles by which his ministers were trying to gain here and there some trivial vote to keep them in office, he recurred to the same idea as not merely harmless but sound. That ministers and opposition should occasionally change places struck him not merely as constitutional, but as the most conservative convention in the constitution; and in answer to the older school to whom a change of ministers at the dictation of a majority in the Assembly meant the degradation of the governor-generalship, he hoped "to establish a moral influence in the province, which will go far to compensate for the loss of power consequent on the surrender of patronage to an executive responsible to the local parliament."[[12]]

To give his ministers a last fair chance of holding on to office, he dissolved parliament at the end of 1847, recognizing that, in the event of a victory, their credit would be immensely increased. The struggle of December 1847, to January 1848, was decisive. While the French constituencies maintained their former position, even in Upper Canada the discredited ministry found few supporters. The only element in the situation which disturbed Elgin was the news that Papineau, the arch-rebel of 1837, had come back to public life with a flourish of agitating declarations; and that the French people had not condemned with sufficient decisiveness his seditious utterances. Yet he need have had no qualms. La Revue Canadienne in reviewing the situation certainly refused to condemn Papineau's extravagances, but its conclusion took the ground from under the agitator's feet, for it declared that "cette modération de nos chefs politiques a puissamment contribué à placer notre parti dans la position avantageuse qu'il occupe maintenant."[[13]] Now Papineau was incapable of political moderation.

The fate of the ministry was quickly settled. Their candidate for the speakership of the Lower House was defeated by 54 votes to 19; a vote of no confidence was carried by 54 to 20; on March 23rd parliament was prorogued and a new administration, the first truly popular ministry in the history of Canada, accepted office, and the country, satisfied at last, was promised "various measures for developing the resources of the province, and promoting the social well-being of its inhabitants."[[14]]

The change was the more decisive because it was made with the approval of the Whig government in England. "I can have no doubt," Grey wrote to Elgin on February 22nd, "that you must accept such a council as the newly elected parliament will support, and that however unwise as relates to the real interests of Canada their measures may be, they must be acquiesced in, until it shall pretty clearly appear that public opinion will support a resistance to them. There is no middle course between this line of policy, and that which involves in the last resort an appeal to parliament to overrule the wishes of the Canadians, and this I agree with Gladstone and Stanley in thinking impracticable."[[15]] The only precaution he bade Elgin take was to register his dissent carefully in cases of disagreement. Having conceded the essential, it mattered little that Grey could not quite rid himself of doubts as to the consequences of his previous daring. The concession had come most opportunely, for Elgin, who feared greatly the disturbing influences of European revolutionism, Irish discontent, and American democracy in its cruder forms, believed that, had the change not taken place, "we should by this hour (November 30th, 1848) either have been ignominiously expelled from Canada, or our relations with the United States would have been in a most precarious condition."

It is not necessary to follow Elgin through all the details of more than seven busy years. It will suffice to watch him at work on the three great allied problems which combined to form the constitutional question in Canada; the character of the government to be conceded to, and worked along with, the colonists; the recognition to be given to French nationalist feeling; and the nature of the connection between Britain and Canada which would exist after concessions had been made on these points. The significance of his policy is the greater, because the example of Canada was certain, mutatis mutandis, to be followed by the other greater colonies. Elgin's solution of the question of responsible government was so natural and easy that the reader of his despatches forgets how completely his task had baffled all his predecessors, and that several generations of colonial secretaries had refused to admit what in his hands seemed a self-evident truth. At the outset Elgin's own mind had not been free from serious doubt. He had come to Canada with a traditional suspicion of the French Canadians and the progressives of Upper Canada; yet within a year, since the country so willed it, he had accepted a cabinet, composed entirely of these two sections. On his way to the formation of that cabinet he not only brushed aside old suspicions, but he refused to surrender to the seductions of the eclectic principle, which allowed his predecessors to evade the force of popular opinion by selecting representatives of all shades of that opinion. He saw the danger of allowing responsible government to remain a party cry, and he removed "that most delicate and debatable subject" from party politics by conceding the whole position. The defects of the Canadian party system never found a severer critic than Elgin, but he saw that by party Canada would be ruled, and he could not, as Metcalfe had done, deceive himself into thinking he had abolished it by governing in accordance with the least popular party in the state. With the candour and the discriminating judgment which so distinguished all his doings in Canada, he admitted that, notwithstanding the high ground Lord Metcalfe had taken against party patronage, the ministers favoured by that governor-general had "used patronage for party purposes with quite as little scruple as his first council."[[16]]

Since the first general election had proved beyond a doubt that Canadians desired a progressive ministry, he made the change with perfect success, and remained a consistent guide and friend to his new ministers.

There was something dramatic in the contrast between the possibilities of trouble in the year when the concession was made, and the peace which actually ensued. It was the year of revolution, and the men whom he called to his assistance were "persons denounced very lately by the Secretary of State to the Governor-General as impracticable and disloyal";[[17]] but before the year was out he was able to boast that when so many thrones were tottering and the allegiance of so many people was waxing faint, there is less political disaffection in Canada than there ever had been before. From 1848 until the year of his recall, he remained in complete accord with his liberal administration, and never was constitutional monarch more intimately and usefully connected with his ministers than was Elgin, first with Baldwin and La Fontaine, and then with Hincks and Morin.