The Colonial Minister must have been sore puzzled to know what to make of this gushing and galloping Lieutenant-Governor, who was so evidently devoid of the peculiar qualifications supposed to be requisite for one in his station, and who framed his official despatches upon the model of a sensation novel. Here was a man who had been selected for an elevated and honourable post because be had been supposed to be an adept in the science of politics, but who, as it now turned out, was utterly unacquainted with the principles and practice of Government; who was ignorant of the proprieties and amenities of official intercourse; who, in what were intended for grave official despatches, indulged in extracts from French vaudevilles, and referred to certain methods of procedure as not being according to Hoyle! By all known theory and precedent, the accession to office of such a man ought to have been attended by immediate and ignominous failure. Yet, so far as could be judged, he had by no means failed. Nay, he actually appeared to have scored a marvellous success, and to have brought about what men of greater ability and wider experience had been utterly unable to accomplish. Such a success was an inscrutable mystery to the official mind, and Lord Glenelg, after the first few weeks, appears to have abandoned all attempts to penetrate it. The entire demeanour of this unconventional Lieutenant-Governor was incomprehensible. He had expressed his total dissent from the policy of the Commissioners of Inquiry in Lower Canada, who had reported in favour of a responsible Executive.[256] He had even gone so far as to tender his resignation in consequence of his inability to concur in the liberal measures of Reform advocated by the Commissioners.[257] But the Home Government had by no means been disposed to accept his resignation just at that time. They had no available person to put in his place, and it had been thought desirable that he should be permitted to try his hand a little longer. And now this news as to the result of the elections seemed to fully justify their determination to retain him in office. If he had really inaugurated a new and improved order of things in Upper Canada, it was only fair that he should enjoy the prestige of his success.

But the ill effects of Sir Francis's superficial and disastrous policy were already beginning to be apparent to those whose eyes were keen enough to look below the surface of things. The Reformers felt that they had been out-manœuvred. That they could have borne, for they had often been compelled to bear a similar infliction in past times. But they considered that they had been cheated out of their rights by one whose especial duty it was to watch over and preserve those rights inviolate. They had endured much at the hands of a Gore, a Maitland and a Colborne. But Gore, Maitland and Colborne had not presented themselves before them in the garb of tried Reformers. They had been the Tory emissaries of Tory superiors beyond sea, whose instructions they had generally carried out. All this had been changed; but the change, so far as Upper Canada was concerned, had been for the worse. The Reformers of the Province felt that the man who had been placed at the helm of State—the man who had been sent over by an ostensibly Liberal Government to redress the accumulated wrongs of the past—was in some respects far more dangerous than any of his predecessors had been. Carlyle had not then delivered his celebrated discourse on fools, but the idea that a fool may sometimes be far more dread-inspiring than a wise man is sufficiently obvious, and had presented itself in vivid shape before the minds of a good many of the Reformers of Upper Canada. They had by this time come to know something of Sir Francis Head. They had brought themselves to regard him as not only a fool, but a fool devoid of right feeling or principle; a fool who would stop at no injustice or iniquity the perpetration whereof would conduce, in however small a degree, to his own glorification. He evidently regarded his personal interference in the elections as a thing upon which he ought to plume himself. Such a state of things was not to be borne. It was clear that life, for Canadian Reformers, would very soon be not worth living. They despaired of the future, which, to their depressed vision, seemed to be overhung by a sky of unrelieved blackness. Their despair was accompanied by a smarting sense of defeat and injustice proportionate to the circumstances. Such feelings were not confined to defeated candidates and their immediate friends, but were participated in by Reformers generally. Some of them began to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of removal from the Province. Others, after the first effervescence of disappointment had expended itself, determined to endure in patience and to hope for the best. A comparatively small number, yielding to the influence of mingled despair and exasperation, began to contemplate armed resistance to authority as among the possibilities of the near future. Constitutional resistance, they thought, had had a fair trial. Might it not be worth while to try a more drastic remedy?

Conspicuous among the personages who were strongly influenced by such thoughts as those last indicated was William Lyon Mackenzie, who, as previously mentioned, had lost his election in the Second Riding of York. It might have been supposed that if any constituency in the Province was beyond the reach of Tory influence, the Second Riding was entitled to that distinction. It was notoriously the most Radical constituency in the colony. It had stood loyally by Mackenzie all through the troubled epoch of the successive expulsions. Yet it had now thrown him overboard on behalf of a political nobody. The explanation is to be found in the fact that the Riding had been the scene of some of the moat scandalous abuses committed during the campaign. The Tories had resolved that Mackenzie should be defeated at any cost, and had resorted to the most reprehensible means to secure that end. To elect a professed Tory would have been an impossibility, so the person fixed upon to oppose him was one whom the author of "Middlemarch" might have had in her eye when she described Sir James Chettam as "a man of acquiescent temper, miscellaneous opinions and uncertain vote."[258] His name was Edward William Thomson, and he professed to be a moderate Reformer. His moderation was acceptable to a considerable proportion of the electors, many of whom were tired of Mackenzie. The official party, however, did not choose to rely upon legitimate means for defeating the Radical candidate. Money was spent freely, and brawny bullies were hired for purposes of intimidation. Good votes were rejected on one side, and bad ones accepted on the other. Patents were sent down to the polling place, certain recipients whereof voted for Thomson. Sheriff Jarvis attended, and by his language and demeanour did what he could to discourage Mackenzie's supporters. Not a stone was left unturned to effect the desired object. Such means as Mackenzie had at his command were altogether insufficient to counteract the devices employed against him. He was beaten, and by a majority of a hundred votes.

This result took Mackenzie completely by surprise. It came upon him in the form of a revelation. He had not permitted himself to entertain any doubt of his success, and the conviction that he had lost his popularity cut him to his inmost soul. He retired to the house of one of his supporters in the neighbourhood, where he completely broke down, and wept with a bitterness which evoked the active sympathy of those present. But this mood did not last. It was succeeded by a sullenness and stolidity such as had never before been observed in him. He knew that he had been beaten unfairly, and resolved to petition against the election. Meanwhile his rage against the party which had been concerned in his defeat was ungovernable, and must have vent. He resolved that he must again have control of a newspaper. He accordingly established The Constitution, a weekly paper, the first number of which made its appearance in Toronto on the sixtieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of the United States—namely, the 4th of July, 1836. Its tone was such as might have been anticipated from the mood of its editor. It was more outspoken than the Advocate had ever been under his management, and might from the first have been styled a revolutionary organ. In its columns every phase of discontent found utterance, and some of its editorial articles were marked by a spirit of bitterness and implacability such as had not commonly been supposed to belong to Mackenzie's nature. Means would doubtless have been taken for its suppression, had not the Government felt that they had achieved a signal triumph, and that they could afford to ignore its attacks.

Many others of the Radicals felt little less rancour towards the Government party than did Mackenzie. Indeed, the conduct of the party in power had been such as to make temporary Radicals of not a few persons who had theretofore been known as moderate Reformers. It may be said indeed that nearly all the moderates had either made common cause with the Government party for fear of the Radicals, or had coalesced with the Radicals from a sense of official tyranny and injustice. Public meetings were held, at which the Lieutenant-Governor and his myrmidons were subjected to the most vehement denunciations. At a meeting of the Constitutional Reform Society Dr. Baldwin, George Ridout, James E. Small and others referred to his Excellency's conduct in terms which public audiences had never before heard from their lips. An official address issued by the Society on the subject of the resignation of the Executive Councillors also contained some severe but well-merited strictures. The Lieutenant-Governor marked his condemnation of the language employed by promptly dismissing the three gentlemen above named from certain offices which they held.[259] As will hereafter be seen, this proceeding eventually led to serious complications between the Home Office and Sir Francis. Meantime, the latter was permitted to have his own way, but not without stubborn attempts at resistance on the part of some of his opponents. A number of the most pronounced Radicals resolved to make a strong representation of election and other abuses to the British House of Commons, and to that end sent Dr. Charles Duncombe to England. Dr. Duncombe had been re-elected for Oxford, but had had to contend against similar influences to those which had been employed in other constituencies, and was thus able to speak of the partisan conduct of the Lieutenant-Governor's emissaries from personal observation. He prepared a statement of the case against Sir Francis, which was laid before the House of Commons by Mr. Hume. The Colonial Secretary despatched a copy of it to Sir Francis for explanations. It is unlikely that Dr. Duncombe's mission would have been a successful one under any circumstances, but he made the mistake of protesting too much. The greater part of the indictment could easily have been substantiated before any impartial tribunal, but it also contained charges which, whether true or not, the prosecutor was unable to prove. As mentioned on a former page[260], the matter was referred to a Committee of the Provincial Assembly, by whom the Lieutenant-Governor was completely exonerated. A further reference to the matter will be made in connection with the proceedings of the following session.

The Lieutenant-Governor was meanwhile engaged in a voluminous correspondence with the Colonial Secretary. The subjects dealt with therein were many and various. Perhaps the most important of all was the Lower Canadian Commission of Inquiry. The Commissioners had made a report in which they had recommended the concession of Responsible Government, and other much-needed Reforms. As previously mentioned, Sir Francis had no sympathy with these views, and distinctly repudiated the policy thus recommended. The idea of a responsible Executive was utterly repugnant to him. He erelong perceived that the Imperial Government would sooner or later yield to the imperative demand made on behalf of the different British North American colonies, but he determined to fight against it as long as opposition was possible, and his despatches teem with what he doubtless regarded as arguments on the negative side. He predicted the most serious results if the policy of the Commissioners was adopted. The language of the Ninety-two resolutions of the Lower Canada Assembly he pronounced to be not only insulting to the British Government, but traitorous. He proposed various measures for establishing the power of the Crown in the Canadas on a firm basis. Among these were the repeal of the Act surrendering the revenue, the annexation of the District of Gaspé to the Province of New Brunswick, and the annexation of Montreal to Upper Canada. It may safely be assumed that these ideas were not his own, and nobody who has read "Canada and the Canada Bill,"[261] published several years later, will entertain much doubt as to the individual from whom he derived his inspiration.

FOOTNOTES:

[236] Sir Francis afterwards denied that this challenge was addressed to the Americans. See his despatch to Lord Glenelg dated 6th November, 1836, embodied in his Narrative, chap, vi. But it is quite evident that the denial, as well as the construction there sought to be put upon his language, was an after-thought. If, as he there asserts, "the Americans had no more to do with the subject than the Chinese," there was no appropriate significance whatever in his doughty defiance.

[237] See despatch of May 28th.

[238] See despatch of 21st April.