British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government, 1839-1854

by J. L. Morison

Earlier chapters have dealt with the French Canadian problem, and the difficulty of combining French nationalité with the Anglo-Saxon elements of the West. In one sense, Elgin's regime saw nationalism lose all its awkward features. Papineau's return to public life in 1848, and the revolutionary stir of that year had left Lower Canada untouched, save in the negligible section represented by the Rouges. The inclusion of La Fontaine and his friends in the ministry had proved the bona fides of the governor, and the French, being, as Elgin said, "quiet sort of people," stood fast by their friend. "Candour compels me to state," he wrote after a year of annexationist agitation, "that the conduct of the Anglo-Saxon portion of our M.P.Ps contrasts most unfavourably with that of the Gallican.... The French have been rescued from the false position into which they have been driven, and in which they must perforce have remained, so long as they believed that it was the object of the British government, as avowed by Lord Sydenham and others, to break them down, and to ensure to the British race, not by trusting to the natural course of events, but by dint of management and state craft, predominance in the province."[[9]]

But while French nationalism had assumed a perfectly normal phase, the operations of autonomy after 1847 made steadily towards the creation of a new nationalist difficulty. That difficulty had two phases.

In the first place, while the Union of Upper and Lower Canada had been based on the assumption that from it a single nationality with common ideals and objects would emerge, experience proved that both the French and the British sections remained aggressively true to their own ways; and the independence bred by self-government only quickened the sense of racial distinction. Now there were questions, such as that of the Clergy Reserves, which chiefly concerned the British section; and others, like the settlement of the seigniorial tenure, of purely French-Canadian character. Others again, chief among them the problem of separate schools, in Lower Canada for Protestants, in Upper Canada for Catholics, seemed to set the two sections in direct opposition. Under the circumstances, a series of conventions was created to meet a situation very involved and dangerous. The happy accident of the dual leadership of La Fontaine and Baldwin furnished a precedent for successive ministries, each of which took its name from a similar partnership of French and English. Further, although the principle never received official sanction, it became usual to expect that, in questions affecting the French, a majority from Lower Canada should be obtained, and in English matters, one from Upper Canada. It was also the custom to expect a government to prove its stability by maintaining a majority from both Upper and Lower Canada. Nothing, for example, so strengthened Elgin's hands in the Rebellion Losses fight as the fact that the majority which passed the bill was one in both sections of the Assembly. Yet nearly all cabinet ministers, and all the governors-general, strongly opposed the acknowledgment of "the double majority" as an accepted constitutional principle. "I have told Colonel Taché," wrote Head, in 1856, "that I expect the government formed by him to disavow the principle of a double majority";[[10]] and both Baldwin, and, after him, John A. Macdonald refused to countenance the practice. Unfortunately, while the idea was a constitutional anomaly, threatening all manner of complications to the government of Canada, there were occasions when it had to receive a partial sanction from use. When the Tories were sustained by a majority of 4 in 1856, government suffered reconstruction because there had been a minority of votes from Upper Canada. As the new Tory leader explained, "I did not, and I do not think that the double majority system should be adopted as a rule. I feel that so long as we are one province and one Parliament, the fact of a measure being carried by a working majority is sufficient evidence that the Government of the day is in power to conduct the affairs of the country. But I could not disguise from myself that it (the recent vote) was not a vote on a measure, but a distinct vote of confidence, or want of confidence; and there having been a vote against us from Upper Canada, expressing a want of confidence in the government, I felt that it was a sufficient indication that the measures of the government would be met with the opposition of those honorable gentlemen who had by their solemn vote withdrawn their confidence from the government."[[11]] The practice continued in this state of discredit varied by occasional forced use, until a government—that of J. S. Macdonald and Sicotte—which had definitely made the double majority one of the planks in its platform, found that its principal measure, the Separate Schools Act of R. W. Scott, had to be carried by a French majority, although the matter was one of deep concern to Upper Canada. It was becoming obvious that local interests must receive some securer protection than could be afforded by what was after all an evasion of constitutional practice.

Meanwhile complications were arising from another movement, the agitation for a revision of parliamentary representation. The twelfth section of the Union Act had enacted that "the parts of the said Province which now constitute the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada respectively, shall be represented by an equal number of representatives." At the time of Union the balance of population had inclined decisively towards Lower Canada; indeed that part of the province might fairly claim to have a constitutional grievance. But between 1830 and 1860 the balance had altered. In Lower Canada a population, which in 1831 had been 511,922, had increased by 1844 to almost 700,000; while in Upper Canada the numbers had increased from 334,681 to well over 700,000 in 1848;[[12]] and each year saw the west increase in comparison with the east, until George Brown, speaking no doubt with forensic rather than scientific ends in view, estimated that in 1857 Upper Canada possessed a population of over 1,400,000, as against a bare 1,100,000 in Lower Canada.[[13]] These changes produced a most interesting complication. The representation after 1840 stood guaranteed by a solemn act—the more solemn because it had been the result of a bargain between Sydenham and the provincial authorities in Upper and Lower Canada. It had the appearance rather of a treaty than of an ordinary Act of Parliament. On the other hand, since self-government had been secured, and since self-government seemed to involve the principle of representation in proportion to the numbers of the population, it was, according to the Upper Canadian politicians, absurd to give to 1,100,000 the same representation as to 1,400,000. So George Brown, speaking from his place in Parliament, and using, at the same time, his extraordinary and unequalled influence as editor of The Globe, flung himself into the fray, seeking, as his motion of 1857 ran, "that the representation of the people in Parliament should be based upon population, without regard to a separating line between Upper and Lower Canada."[[14]] His thesis was too cogent, and appealed too powerfully to all classes of the Upper Canada community, to be anything but irresistible. Even Macdonald, whose political existence depended on his alliance with the French, knew that his rival had made many converts among the British Conservatives. "It is an open question," he wrote of representation by population, in 1861, "and you know two of my colleagues voted in its favour."[[15]]

Yet nothing was better calculated to rouse into wild agitation the quiescent feeling of French nationalism. The attempt of Durham and his successors to end, by natural operation, the separate existence of French nationality was now being renewed with far greater vigour, and with all the weight of a normal constitutional reform. If George Brown was hateful to the French electorate because of his Protestant and anti-clerical agitation, he was even more odious as the statesman who threatened, in the name of Canadian autonomy, the existence of old French tradition, custom, and right. It was in answer to this twofold difficulty that Canadian statesmen definitely thought of Confederation. There were many roads leading to that event—the desire of Britain for a more compact and defensible colony; the movement in the maritime provinces for a local federation; the dream, or vague aspiration, cherished by a few Canadians, of a vaster dominion, and one free from petty local divisions and strifes. But it was no dream or imperial ideal which forced Canadian statesmen into action; it was simply the desire, on the one hand, to give to the progressive west the increased weight it claimed as due to its numbers; and on the other, to safeguard the ancient ways and rights of the French community. From this point of view, it was George Brown, the man who preached representation by population in season and out of season, who actually forced Canadian statesmen to have resort to a measure, the details of which he himself did not at first approve; and the argument used to drive the point home was not imperial, but a bitter criticism of existing conditions. After the great Reform convention of 1859, Brown moved in Parliament "that the existing legislative union between Upper and Lower Canada has failed to realize the anticipations of its promoters: has resulted in a heavy debt, burdensome taxation, great political abuses, and universal dissatisfaction; and it is the matured conviction of this Assembly, from the antagonisms developed through difference of origin, local interests, and other causes, that the union in its present form can be no longer continued with advantage to the people."[[16]] In 1864 a distracted province found itself at the end of its resources. Its futile efforts at the game of political party had resulted in the defeat of four ministries within three years; its attempt to balance majorities in Upper and Lower Canada had hopelessly broken down; and the moment in which the stronger British west obtained the increased representation it sought, the French feeling for nationality would probably once more produce rebellion.

So Confederation came—to satisfy George Brown, because in the Dominion Assembly his province would receive adequate representation—to satisfy, on the other hand, a loyal Frenchman like Joseph Cauchon, because, as he said, "La confédération des deux Canadas, ou de toutes les provinces, en nous donnant une constitution locale, qui sauverait, cependant, les priviléges, les droits acquis et les institutions des minorités, nous offrirait certainement une mesure de protection, comme Catholiques et comme Français, autrement grand que l'Union actuelle, puisque de minorité nous deviendrons et resterons, à toujours, la majorité nationale et la majorité religieuse."[[17]] That was the second, and perhaps the greatest of all the results of self-government.

Before passing to inquire into the influence of autonomy on Canadian loyalty, it may prove interesting to note the political manners and morals of the statesmen who worked the system in its earlier stages. In passing judgment, however, one must bear in mind the newness of the country and the novelty of the experiment; the fact that a democratic constitution far more daring than Britain allowed herself at home, was being tested; and the severity of the struggle for existence, which left Canadians little time and money to devote to disinterested service of their country. In view of all these facts, and in spite of some ugly defects, the verdict must be on the whole favourable to the colony.

Of direct malversation, or actual sordid dishonesty, there was, thanks probably to a vigorous opposition, far less than might have been expected. The cause célèbre was that of Francis Hincks, premier from 1851 to 1854, who was accused, among other things, of having profited through buying shares in concerns with which government had dealings—a fault not unknown in Britain; of having induced government to improve the facilities of regions in which he had holdings, and generally of having used his position as minister to make great private gains. A most minute inquiry cleared him on all scores, but the committee of the Legislative Council, without entering further into the questions, mentioned as points worthy of consideration by Parliament, "whether it is beneficial to the due administration of the affairs of this country for its ministers to purchase lands sold at public competition, and Municipal Debentures, also offered in open market or otherwise; whether the public interests require an expression of the opinions of the Two Houses of Parliament in that respect; and whether it would be advisable to increase the salaries of the Members of the Executive Council to such a figure, as would relieve them from the necessity of engaging in private dealings, to enable them to support their families and maintain the dignity of their position, without resorting to any kind of business transactions while in the service of the crown."[[18]] Canada was passing through an ordeal, which, sooner or later, Britain too must face. Her answer, in this case, to the dilemma between service of the community and self-aggrandisement was not unworthy of the mother country.

Still, in spite of the acquittal of Hincks, there were cases of complicated corruption, and a multitude of little squalid sins. Men like Sir Allan MacNab, who had been bred in a system of preferments and petty political gains, found it difficult to avoid small jobbery. "He has such an infernal lot of hangers on to provide for," wrote one minister to another, concerning the gallant knight, "that he finds it difficult to do the needful for them all."[[19]] It is clear, too, that when John A. Macdonald succeeded MacNab as Tory leader, purity did not increase. It was no doubt easy for George Brown to criticize Macdonald's methods from a position of untempted rectitude, and no doubt also Brown had personal reasons for criticism; but he was speaking well within the truth, when he attacked the Tory government of 1858, not only for grave corruption in the late general election, but for other weightier offences. It was elicited, he said, by the Public Accounts Committee that £500,000 of provincial debentures had been sold in England by government at 99¼, when the quotation of the Stock Exchange was 105 @ 107, by which the province was wronged to the extent of £50,000. It was elicited that a member of Parliament, supporting the government, sold to the government £20,000 of Hamilton debentures at 97¼ which were worth only 80 in the market.... It was elicited that large sums were habitually drawn from the public chest, and lent to railway companies, or spent on services for which no previous sanction of Parliament had been obtained.[[20]] It is, perhaps, the gravest charge against Macdonald that, at the entrance of Canada into the region of modern finance and speculation, he never understood that incorrupt administration was the greatest gift a man could give to the future of his country.