British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government, 1839-1854

by J. L. Morison

It would be tedious to follow the subject into every detail of Canadian administration; but all existing evidence tends to prove that the representative men of the British Tory party opposed the new interpretation of Canadian rights at every crisis in the period. In the Rebellion Losses debate in 1849, Gladstone, taking in this matter a view more restricted than that of his leader Peel, held that Elgin should have referred to the Home Government at the very first moment, and before public opinion had been appealed to in the colony.[[28]] The fall of the Whig ministry in 1851 was followed by the first of three brief Derby administrations: and the Earl of Derby proved himself to be more wedded than he had been as Lord Stanley to the old restrictive system. The Clergy Reserve dispute was nearing its end, but Derby and Sir John Pakington, his colonial secretary, intervened to introduce one last delay, and to give the Bishop of Toronto his last gleam of hope. The appointment of Pakington, which, according to Taylor, was treated with very general ridicule, was in itself significant: even an ignorant and retrograde politician was adequate for his task when that task was obstruction. After the short-lived Derby administration was over, Pakington continued his defence of Anglican rights in Canada, and although Canadian opinion had declared itself overwhelmingly on the other side, he refused to admit that "the argument of self-government was so paramount that it ought to over-rule the sacred dedication of this property."

So far nothing unexpected has been revealed in the early Victorian colonial policy of the Tories. The party naturally and logically opposed all forms of democratic control; they stood for the strict subordination of the outlying regions to the centre in the administration of dependencies; they were, as they had always and everywhere been, the party of the Church, and of church endowment. But it is surprising to find that the party of Wellington and of British supremacy varied their doctrine of central authority with very pessimistic prophecies concerning the connection between mother country and colonies.

Stanley has already been exhibited, during the Bagot and Metcalfe incidents, as a prophet of pessimism; and at the same period, Peel seems to have shared in the views of his Colonial Secretary. "Let us keep Nova Scotia and New Brunswick," he said, "but the connection with the Canadas against their wills, nay without the cordial co-operation of the predominant party in Canada, is a very onerous one. The sooner we have a distinct understanding on that head the better. The advantage of commercial intercourse is all on the side of the colony, or at least is not in favour of the mother country. Why should we go on fighting not our own battle (I speak now of a civil battle) but theirs—in a minority in the Legislature, the progress of the contest widening daily old differences and begetting new ones! But above all, if the people are not cordially with us, why should we contract the tremendous obligation of having to defend, on a point of honour, their territory against American aggression?"[[29]]

Ten years later, Tory pessimists still talked of separation. Lord John Manners, in an oration which showed as much rhetorical effort as it did little sense and information, was prepared for disaster over no more tragic an issue than the Clergy Reserves. Concession to local demands on that point for him involved something not far from disruption of the Empire. "Far better than this, if you really believe it to be necessary to acknowledge the virtual independence of Canada, recall your Governor-General, call back your army, call home your fleet, and let Canada, if she be so minded, establish her independence and cast off her character as a colony, or seek refuge in the extended arms of the United States."[[30]] But perhaps it is not fair to confront a man with his perorations.

The most remarkable confession of Tory doubt still remains to be told. It is not usually noticed that Disraeli's famous phrase "these wretched colonies will all be independent too in a few years, and are a mill-stone round our necks,"[[31]] was used in connection with Canadian fishery troubles, and belongs to this same region of imperial pessimism. There is, however, another less notorious but perfectly explicit piece of evidence betraying the fears which at this time disturbed the equanimity of the founder of modern imperialism. He had been speaking of the attempts of liberalism to effect the disintegration of the Empire; but the speech, which contained his counter-scheme of imperial consolidation, was itself an evidence of doubt deeper than that harboured by his opponents. "When those subtle views were adopted by the country, under the plausible plea of granting self-government to the Colonies, I confess that I myself thought that the tie was broken. Not that I for one object to self-government. I cannot conceive how our distant colonies can have their affairs administered except by self-government. But self-government, in my opinion, when it is conceded, ought to have been conceded as part of a great policy of Imperial consolidation."[[32]] Disraeli was speaking of the views on colonial government, which he had held, apparently at the time when Grey and Elgin introduced their new system. That system had since been developed under Gladstone's supervision; and, in 1872, the date of Disraeli's speech, it presented not fewer, but more decided signs of colonial independence. Yet the statesman who accused the Whigs and Liberals of planning the disruption of the Empire, never attempted, when in office, to stay the decline of imperial unity by any practical scheme of federation, and must be counted either singularly indifferent to the interests of the empire, or sceptical as to its future. A few years later, when the Imperial Titles Bill was under discussion, Disraeli again revealed a curious disbelief in, or misunderstanding of, the character of the self-governing colonies. He had been challenged to defend his differentiation of the royal title in India from that authorized in the rest of the British Empire. It would have been easy to confess that an imperial dignity, appropriate to the East, would have been singularly out of place in communities more democratic than Britain herself. But he chose to argue from the unsubstantiality of separate colonial existence, and the natural inclination of prosperous colonists to make for England, the moment their fortunes had been made. "The condition of colonial society," he said, "is of a fluctuating character.... There is no similarity between the circumstances of our colonial fellow-subjects and those of our fellow-subjects in India. Our colonists are English; they come and go, they are careful to make fortunes, to invest their money in England; their interests are immense, ramified, complicated, and they have constant opportunities of improving and enjoying the relations which exist between themselves and their countrymen in the metropolis. Their relations to their Sovereign are ample, they satisfy them. The colonists are proud of those relations, they are interested in the titles of the Queen, they look forward to return when they leave England, they do return—in short they are Englishmen."[[33]]

It seems fair to argue from these instances that Disraeli, with all his imagination and insight, did not, even in 1876, understand the constitutional and social self-sufficiency of the greater colonies; or the nature of the bond which held them fast to the mother country. His consummate rhetorical skill persuaded the nation to be imperial, while he himself doubted the very possibility of permanence in an empire organized on the only lines—those of strict autonomy—which the colonists were willing to sanction.

So the party of the earlier British Empire distrusted the foundations laid by Durham and his group for a new structure; and behind all their proclamations of authority, there were ill-concealed fears of another declaration or succession of declarations of independence.

It is now time to turn to the central body of imperial opinion—that which used Durham's views as the foundation of a new working theory of colonial development. Its chief exponents were the Whigs of the more liberal school, who counted Lord John Russell their representative and leader.

It was only at the end of a period dominated by other interests that Lord John Russell was able to turn his attention to colonies, and more particularly to Canada. Even in 1839, the leader of the House of Commons, and the politician on whom, after all, the fate of the Whig party depended, had many other claims on his attention. He was no theorist at general on the subject, and his interest in Canada was largely the product of events, not of his own will. But he came at a decisive moment in Canadian history; his tenure of the Colonial Office coincided with the period in which Durham's Report exercised its greatest influence, and Russell, who had the politician's faculty for flinging himself with all his force into the issue dominating the present, inaugurated what proved to be a new regime in colonial administration.

In attributing so decisive a part to Russell's work at the Colonial Office, one need not estimate very highly his powers of initiative or imagination. It was Lord John Russell's lot, here as in Parliamentary Reform, to read with honest eyes the defects of the existing system, to initiate a great and useful change, and then to predicate finality of an act, which was really only the beginning of greater changes. But in Canadian politics as in British, he must be credited with being better than his words, and with doing nothing to hinder a movement which he only partially understood.