In an early paragraph of these instructions, Lord Glenelg had objected, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, to any resort on the part of the Assembly to that ulterior measure—the stoppage of the supplies—to which allusion had been made in the Address of that body, and had referred to it as a proceeding to be justified only by an extreme emergency. He concluded with an expression of earnest hope that the representatives of the Upper Canadian people would receive with gratitude and cordiality this renewed proof of His Majesty's paternal solicitude for the welfare of his loyal subjects in the Province, and that, laying aside all groundless distrusts, they would cheerfully coöperate with the King and the Lieutenant-Governor in advancing the prosperity of "that interesting and valuable portion of the British Empire."
As already mentioned, the full text of the instructions was communicated by the new Lieutenant-Governor to the Upper Canadian Assembly. Apart from the fact that this proceeding was not warranted either by usage or express permission, it was short-sighted and unwise, for the instructions were not such as to be by any means satisfactory, either to the official party or the Opposition. The Opposition perceived that, under a cover of many fair words and specious phrases, there was very little substantial concession. To the official party it seemed that the spirit of concession was manifested much too strongly, and as the appointment of Sir Francis Head had been hailed by the Reformers as a triumph, anything in the nature of concession, filtered through such a medium, was naturally regarded with strong suspicion. As for Sir Francis himself, his mind seems to have been for some weeks in a chaotic state. He had not been installed in office many days before he had a succession of private interviews with several leading members of the Reform party. In the course of a conversation with Mr. Bidwell, who, it will be remembered, was Speaker of the Assembly, he for the first time became aware that the Report of the Grievance Committee was not recognized by the Reform party as being a complete exposition of the case as between the Home Government and themselves.[219] He soon after had an interview with Mackenzie, who, in conjunction with Dr. Morrison, was chiefly responsible for the existence of the Report. "I thought," writes Sir Francis,[220] "that of course he would be too happy to discuss with me the contents of his own book, but his mind seemed to nauseate its subjects even more than Mr. Bidwell's. Afraid to look me in the face, he sat, with his feet not reaching the ground, and with his countenance averted from me, at an angle of about seventy degrees; while, with the eccentricity, the volubility, and indeed the appearance of a madman, the tiny creature raved about grievances here and grievances there, which the Committee, he said, had not ventured to enumerate." This was a revelation to the Lieutenant-Governor, and set him thinking. He attempted to discuss the merits of the Report with various persons, but encountered what was to him an inexplicable reluctance to talk about it. All were ready to discuss the grievances themselves, but no leading Reformer was disposed to admit the Report into the discussion. The reason of this was doubtless because the Report had been chiefly fathered by Mackenzie, and they were unwilling to accept him as their mouthpiece. As for Mackenzie's own disinclination to enter into a discussion of the matter, it probably arose from a feeling that it would be unwise for him to tie himself down to a particular record, beyond which he would not be permitted to travel. Sir Francis, writing three years afterwards, declares that "the light of truth" at once burst upon his mind, and that he perceived that the Grievance Report was a mere pretext for Rebellion.[221] It is quite clear that he perceived nothing of the kind, and that "the light of truth" was a mere after-thought with him. It is impossible for one in his sober senses to see what does not exist, and at this time there was no purpose of rebellion in the heart of anyone with whom the Lieutenant-Governor came in contact—not even in the heart of Mackenzie himself, who might easily have been conciliated by wisdom and prudence. Had Sir Francis been half as clever and astute as he professed to believe himself to be—nay, had he even been fairly honest and truthful, and possessed of the most ordinary good sense—there would probably have been no such thing as an Upper Canadian Rebellion.
He had not been a fortnight in the country when suggestions began to be made to him from various quarters as to the membership of the Executive Council. That body, for the nonce, consisted of only three persons, namely, Peter Robinson, Commissioner of Crown Lands; George Herchmer Markland, Inspector-General; and Joseph Wells, Bursar of King's College. The presence of all three of these persons was necessary to the formation of a quorum, and in case of the illness or unavoidable absence of any one of them the public business would have been interrupted and delayed. Mr. Robinson, moreover, was not only an Executive Councillor, but, as just mentioned, was also Commissioner of Crown Lands. In the former capacity the duty was imposed upon him of taking part in the auditing of his own accounts. This invidious necessity would no longer exist if additional members were appointed, as a quorum could easily be obtained without Mr. Robinson's presence being required at the Council Board. These facts were indisputable, and the argument to be deduced therefrom was unanswerable. Additional Councillors must be appointed. But from what class of the community should they be selected? Sir Francis, the "Tried Reformer," had begun to conceive a distaste for the Reformers of Upper Canada. There seemed to be a natural antagonism between him and them. The reason is not far to seek. Persons of the social grade of Mackenzie were inconceivably odious to this "diner-out of the first water;" while men like Bidwell and Baldwin made him painfully conscious of his own littleness and insufficiency for the task which he had undertaken. Yet he could not venture to call to his Council any of the remnant of the Tory Compact, and thereby utterly ignore the Liberal principles which were presumed to have dictated his appointment. The Tories, moreover, had seen fit to petition the King against his very first administrative act—the appointment of a Surveyor-General. As for the Conservatives, as distinct from the Tories, they had not yet formulated a distinct policy, and none of their leaders had come very conspicuously to the front.
It seemed clear, then, that the choice must be made from the Reform ranks. After much deliberation and inquiry,[222] the Lieutenant-Governor came to the conclusion that approaches should be made to Robert Baldwin, a gentleman to whom he refers as "highly respected for his moral character, being moderate in his politics, and possessing the esteem and confidence of all parties."[223] His Excellency's resolve on this subject was approved of by the Speakers of the two Houses, as well as by the three members of the Council, to all of whom the project was submitted before any attempt was made to carry it out. When the proposal was made to Mr. Baldwin it was received by him with becoming respect, but with a coolness of demeanour which was far from flattering to the vanity of Sir Francis, who seems to have expected that the recipient would be well-nigh overwhelmed by the honour. The latter stated that he was very reluctant to again embark in public life, and he explained his views on the political situation with great frankness. There were several interviews, in the course of which Sir Francis did his utmost to induce Mr. Baldwin to accede to his wishes. Mr. Baldwin required time for consideration, an indulgence which was of course accorded. The Lieutenant-Governor being anxious to carry his point, sent for Mr. Baldwin's father, Dr. W. W. Baldwin, for the purpose of securing his influence in the negotiations. Father and son were both of one mind. There was little or nothing in common between the political sentiments of the three members of the existing Executive Council and the man whom it was proposed to add to their number. How, then, could it be expected that they would agree as to the policy of the Administration. If they did not agree, what would Mr. Baldwin's single voice avail against the other three? And, even admitting that this anomaly could be got rid of, it was deemed necessary that there should be some understanding on the subject of Executive responsibility before Mr. Baldwin could consent to accept a seat in the Council. He and his father, from whom his political ideas had been chiefly derived, had for years contended that Responsible Government already existed in Upper Canada by virtue of the Constitutional Act, and that when a Government failed to command a majority of votes in the Assembly it was legally bound to resign. It was of course notorious that this principle had never been recognized by the Provincial Administration, but Mr. Baldwin was of opinion that the constitution had been systematically violated in this particular. In talking over the matter with the Lieutenant-Governor he now discovered that the latter was entirely unacquainted with constitutional questions, and that he had no ideas on the subject whatever, beyond such as he had picked up within the past few days. Still, his Excellency's good temper, and his seeming anxiety to do his duty, won upon the sympathies of Mr. Baldwin, who naturally felt desirous to be of service to a man who had come to Canada in the guise of a tried Reformer, and who professed to be actuated by a sincere desire to govern the colony on Liberal principles. After several courteous refusals, and after much consideration and repeated consultations with his friends, Mr. Baldwin consented to accept office, provided that seats in the Council were at the same time offered to his father, and to Dr. Rolph and Mr. Bidwell. Dr. Baldwin was so unwilling to accept the cares of office that his name was dropped by common consent. To Dr. Rolph no objection was felt, but his Excellency had conceived an antagonism towards Mr. Bidwell, with whom he had had frequent interviews, and who had not scrupled to express himself with much freedom on the necessity for a regular system of Provincial Reform. After considerable discussion, it was agreed that John Henry Dunn, the Provincial Receiver-General, should be substituted for Mr. Bidwell. Mr. Dunn was not a member of any political party, nor had he any special aptitude for political life; but he was a man of high character and moderate views, and was held in much public estimation. On Saturday the 20th of February the three new Councillors were sworn into office and gazetted, "until the King's pleasure be known."[224] The three old members retained their places.
This manifestation of a resolve to carry on the Government of the Province by means of Councillors possessing the public confidence was hailed with great favour by the Reform party, and indeed by the Conservatives as well, for Messieurs Baldwin, Rolph and Dunn were persons for whom the highest respect was felt by all classes of the community, and were regarded as being altogether above suspicion. Even the members of the Compact were disposed to favour the arrangement, for, in consequence of rumours which had reached their ears, they had dreaded that the Lieutenant-Governor might possibly ally himself with the Radicals, who, if placed in power, would have done their utmost to exact a reckoning for past abuses. Upon the whole, then, Sir Francis had materially strengthened his position. But the strength was fictitious rather than real, and the baseless fabric which he had reared with such pains quickly tottered and fell. The three new Councillors were not long in discovering that their places were sinecures. His Excellency wanted none of their counsel, and had no intention of permitting them to have any real voice in the carrying-on of the Government. To one person only did he apply for advice in every emergency. That person was not a member of the Government, and was therefore an unsworn counsellor, under no semblance of responsibility to anybody. He was a power behind the throne, with all the privileges and none of the disabilities attaching to such a position. The gentleman elevated to this anomalous dignity was Chief Justice Robinson, Speaker of the Legislative Council, the master-spirit of the Family Compact, and the life-long champion of those very abuses which the "Tried Reformer" was currently supposed to have been sent out to remove. The Councillors, old as well as new, were treated as mere figure-heads. They were consulted about land matters and insignificant questions of detail, but the policy and measures of the Government seldom passed under their review, or were submitted to them for advice.[225] Some of these measures were such as they could not approve or sanction. His Excellency nominated two adherents of the old official party to vacant offices upon which they had no sort of claim. He refused the royal assent to the Felons' Counsel Bill, a measure "demanded by justice and humanity, and passed for more than ten years, almost unanimously, by repeated and different Houses of Assembly."[226] The Councillors were thus made to seem responsible for acts over which they had no control, and of which some of them, at least, highly disapproved. The Reform party were astonished to see such things done under the auspices of a Government of which Robert Baldwin and Dr. Rolph were members. They however acquitted both those gentleman of having advised such acts. It was believed by Reformers generally that the three new Councillors were not consulted, or else that the old members, with the umpirage of the Lieutenant-Governor, predominated.[227]
This state of things could not be allowed to continue. The Executive Councillors consulted together, and determined upon a remonstrance with the Lieutenant-Governor. This remonstrance was formally prepared in writing, and sent in to his Excellency on Friday, the 4th of March. The three old members concurred in it, and it was signed by all the six in order of seniority. The mere fact of this concurrence affords strong evidence of the growth of the power of public opinion in the Province. In past times members of the Executive Council had been content to pose as figure-heads year after year, while John Beverley Robinson and one or two others manipulated and directed the whole course of public affairs. It is probable, however, that in the present instance the three senior Councillors may have been influenced by the arguments of Baldwin and Rolph, who felt very strongly on the question at issue.
The Lieutenant-Governor's reply, every paragraph of which bears evidence of the Chief Justice's cunning hand, is dated on the following day, but was not actually communicated until the next regular Council day, which was Thursday, the 10th. It contained a firm but courteous expression of his Excellency's dissent from the opinions expressed by the Executive Councillors as to their privileges and duties. It was contended that the Lieutenant-Governor was the sole responsible minister, and the difference between the constitution of the mother-country and the colony was referred to as being highly advantageous to the latter. His Excellency, it was said, was only bound to consult his Council when he felt the need of their advice, and to do so on the innumerable subjects upon which he was daily compelled to decide would be "as utterly impossible as for any one but himself to decide upon what points his mind required or needed" advice. The position taken by the Councillors was declared to be unconstitutional, but his Excellency informed them that his estimation of their talents and integrity, as well as his personal regard for them, remained unshaken, and that he was not insensible to the difficulties to which he would be exposed should they deem it necessary to resign. He added, however, that should they be of opinion that their oaths required them to retire from office, he begged that they would not on his account hesitate to do so. As they were very strongly of that opinion, they waited on his Excellency on Saturday, the 12th, and tendered their resignations, which were accepted. They had held office precisely three weeks.
The clue to this puzzle is easily found. Sir Francis had conceived an utter distaste for the persons and political principles of the Reformers of Upper Canada. There was an inherent antagonism between the nature of this shallow, feather-brained sketcher by the wayside and the natures of men like Rolph, Bidwell and the Baldwins, whose quiet earnestness and fixity of purpose had been intensified by the long course of injustice to which they, in common with their party, had been subjected. The earnestness of these gentlemen presented itself to him in the light of importunity, if not of impertinence. He could hardly be expected to sympathize very strongly with their unconquerable zeal for principles which he did not understand: which he was perhaps incapable of understanding. Then, Sir Francis was an eminently social personage, and the social qualities of the leaders of Upper Canadian Reform were not of a high order. To them, small talk across the walnuts and the wine seemed utterly incongruous in view of the momentous public questions which were urgently pressing for a solution. In this particular they presented a marked contrast to the leading spirits of the Compact. The Robinsons, Hagermans and Sherwoods, one and all, could not only advise the Lieutenant-Governor on the affairs of the Province, but could be pleasant and entertaining companions. They were not very different from the county magistrates and other officials with whom he had been accustomed to confer in his capacity of a poor-law commissioner. They were moreover exceedingly diplomatic. They saw the importance of winning him to their side, and governed themselves accordingly. They lost no opportunity of making themselves agreeable to him. Instead of boring him with what, to his understanding, seemed abstruse speculations on executive responsibility and an elective Legislative Council, they scouted such doctrines as myths begotten in the moody brains of unpractical and discontented men. The wide knowledge, long experience and specious eloquence of the Chief Justice enabled him to present the Tory side of these arguments with much plausibility. Sir Francis soon became convinced that the issue was not merely between two sides of colonial politics, but between monarchy and republicanism, between loyalty and disloyalty, between Great Britain and the United States. As he afterwards declared, he believed that he was "sentenced to contend on the soil of America with Democracy,[228]" and that if he did not overpower it, he would himself be compelled to succumb. Having brought himself to this conclusion, he not unnaturally preferred the role of the hammer to that of the anvil. It was surely better to strike than to be struck. Acting on this principle, he made a complete surrender of himself to the Family Compact, and from that time forward was in all essential respects guided by their counsels. His rashness and impetuosity sometimes led him to act on his own motion, and without waiting to take counsel from any quarter; but in all ordinary affairs of administration he was guided by Sir John Robinson quite as effectually as Sir John Colborne had ever been.
No sooner was it announced that the Executive Councillors had all resigned office than the public pulse began to beat at an accelerated pace. The excitement was greatly intensified upon the publication of a letter written by Robert Baldwin to Peter Perry, in which, by the Lieutenant-Governor's special permission, all the attendant circumstances were set forth in detail. This letter, having been written for the express purpose of being read by Mr. Perry from his place in the Assembly, and of being afterwards published in the newspapers, is somewhat formal and official in its tone, but it presents the subject-matter in a clear light, and must be regarded as an important contribution to the history of Responsible Government in Upper Canada. It is the chief, indeed the only trustworthy original authority for the facts as to the precise dispute between Sir Francis and his Council, for the former's account[229] is more than usually incomplete and one-sided when dealing with this episode. The essential portions of Mr. Baldwin's presentation of the case have been embodied in the foregoing narrative. The Lieutenant-Governor lost no time in providing himself with a new Council. On the 14th of March, when the resignation was only two days old, an extraordinary issue of the Gazette announced that Robert Baldwin Sullivan, John Elmsley, Augustus Baldwin and William Allan had been appointed members of the Executive Council of the Province. The reader has already made the acquaintance of all these gentlemen with the exception of Augustus Baldwin, who was a retired naval officer of high character, but of no particular politics; a brother of Dr. Baldwin, and by consequence an uncle of Robert Baldwin. All four of the new Councillors were persons of character and position, but they were not in sympathy with the Liberal sentiments of the period, and the people generally were not disposed to place any political confidence in them. Elmsley and Allan were consistent, old-fashioned Tories. Baldwin's leanings, so far as he had any, were in the same direction. Sullivan's youth and early life had been passed amid more or less Liberal influences, but of late he had shown a retrogressive tendency in political matters. This was largely due to personal rivalry between Mackenzie and himself in municipal affairs. As previously mentioned, he had defeated Mackenzie at the municipal elections for St. David's Ward, and had been elected mayor of Toronto in the beginning of 1835. The contest had been waged between them with unseemly rancour. Sullivan had denounced Mackenzie as a noisy upstart and demagogue; while Mackenzie had characterized Sullivan as an oily-tongued, unprincipled lawyer, who would lie the loudest for the client who had the longest purse. All Mackenzie's supporters during the contest had been Radicals, or at least persons of strong Reform proclivities. This had arrayed the whole Tory and Conservative vote on the side of Sullivan, who was thus in a measure brought under anti-Reform influences. His social tastes also inclined him in the same direction, so that he soon came to be classed as a Conservative. Reformers were disposed to look askance at him as a political renegade, and this disposition was increased upon his acceptance of office under Sir Francis Head at the present juncture. He alone, of all the new Councillors, was a man of exceptional ability. He was not inaccurately described, a few years later, as "an Irishman by birth, and a lawyer by profession; a man who, if he had united consistency of political conduct and weight of personal character with the great and original talents which he unquestionably possessed, might have taken a conspicuous part in the public affairs of any country."[230]
These transactions—the resignation of the Councillors and the appointment of their successors—produced a tremendous effervescence of feeling among the Opposition in the Assembly, who had already conceived strong suspicions of the Lieutenant-Governor's motives. But the excitement was not confined to the Opposition. It was participated in by the Conservatives, and, even, for a time, by most of the ultra-Tories. On the 14th of March, the House, by a vote of fifty-three to two, adopted a resolution unequivocally assertive of the principles which the ex-Councillors had endeavoured to maintain. Ten days later an address to the Lieutenant-Governor, based on this resolution, was passed by a vote of thirty-two to nineteen. It expressed deep regret that his Excellency had consented to accept the resignation of his late Council. It declared the Assembly's entire want of confidence in the new appointments, and humbly requested that immediate steps might be taken to remove the new Councillors from office. Meanwhile, petitions on the all-engrossing subject poured into the Assembly from all over the Province.[231] Public meetings were called in Toronto, as well as in some other of the principal towns, at which resolutions were passed echoing the Assembly's address, imploring the Lieutenant-Governor to dismiss his present advisers, and to call to his Council gentlemen possessing public confidence.