Canada under British Rule 1760-1900

by John George Bourinot

Soon after the union the legislating obtained full control of the civil list and the post-office. The last tariff framed by the imperial parliament for British North America was mentioned in the speech at the opening of the Canadian legislature in 1842. In 1846 the British colonies in America were authorised by an imperial statute to reduce or repeal by their own legislation duties imposed by imperial acts upon foreign goods imported from foreign countries into the colonies in question. Canada soon availed herself of this privilege, which was granted to her as the logical sequence of the free-trade policy of Great Britain, and, from that time to the present, she has been enabled to legislate very freely with regard to her own commercial interests. In 1849 the imperial parliament repealed the navigation laws, and allowed the river St. Lawrence to be used by vessels of all nations. With the repeal of laws, the continuance of which had seriously crippled Canadian trade after the adoption of free trade by England, the provinces gradually entered on a new career of industrial enterprise.

No part of the constitution of 1840 gave greater offence to the French Canadian population than the clause restricting the use of the French language in the legislature. It was considered as a part of the policy, foreshadowed in Lord Durham's report, to denationalise, if possible, the French Canadian province. The repeal of the clause, in 1848, was one evidence of the harmonious operation of the union, and of a better feeling between the two sections of the population. Still later, provision was made for the gradual establishment of an elective legislative council, so long and earnestly demanded by the old legislature of Lower Canada.

The members of the Lafontaine-Baldwin government became the legislative executors of a troublesome legacy left to them by a Conservative ministry. In 1839 acts had been passed by the special council of Lower Canada and the legislature of Upper Canada to compensate the loyal inhabitants of those provinces for the loss they had sustained during the rebellions. In the first session of the union parliament the Upper Canadian act was amended, and money voted to reimburse all persons in Upper Canada whose property had been unnecessarily, or wantonly, destroyed by persons acting, or pretending to act, on behalf of the crown. An agitation then commenced for the application of the same principle to Lower Canada, and in 1845 commissioners were appointed by the Draper administration to inquire into the nature and value of the losses suffered by her Majesty's loyal subjects in Lower Canada. When their report was presented in favour of certain claims the Draper ministry brought in some legislation on the subject, but went out of office before any action could be taken thereon. The Lafontaine-Baldwin government then determined to set the question at rest, and introduced legislation for the issue of debentures to the amount of $400,000 for the payment of losses sustained by persons who had not been convicted of, or charged with, high treason or other offences of a treasonable nature, or had been committed to the custody of the sheriff in the gaol of Montreal and subsequently transported to the island of Bermuda. Although the principle of this measure was fully justified by the action of the Tory Draper government, extreme Loyalists and even some Reformers of Upper Canada declaimed against it in the most violent terms, and a few persons even declared that they would prefer annexation to the United States to the payment of the rebels. The bill, however, passed the legislature by a large majority, and received the crown's assent through Lord Elgin on the 25th April, 1849. A large crowd immediately assembled around the parliament house—formerly the St. Anne Market House—and insulted the governor-general by opprobrious epithets, and by throwing missiles at him as he drove away to Monklands, his residence in the country. The government and members of the legislature appear to have been unconscious of the danger to which they were exposed until a great crowd rushed into the building, which was immediately destroyed by fire with its fine collection of books and archives. A few days later, when the assembly, then temporarily housed in the hall of Bonsecours Market, attempted to present an address to Lord Elgin, he was in imminent danger of his life while on his way to the government house—then the old Château de Ramesay in Nôtre-Dame Street—and the consequences might have been most serious had he not evaded the mob on his return to Monklands. This disgraceful affair was a remarkable illustration not simply of the violence of faction, but largely of the discontent then so prevalent in Montreal and other industrial centres, on account of the commercial policy of Great Britain, which seriously crippled colonial trade and was the main cause of the creation of a small party which actually advocated for a short time annexation to the United States as preferable to the existing state of things. The result was the removal of the seat of government from Montreal, and the establishment of a nomadic system of government by which the legislature met alternately at Toronto and Quebec every five years until Ottawa was chosen by the Queen as a permanent political capital. Lord Elgin felt his position keenly, and offered his resignation to the imperial government, but they refused to entertain it, and his course as a constitutional governor under such trying circumstances was approved by parliament.

The material condition of the provinces—especially of Upper Canada, which now became the first in population and wealth—kept pace with the rapid progress of the people in self-government. The population of the five provinces had increased from about 1,500,000, in 1841, to about 3,200,000 when the census was taken in 1861 The greatest increase had been in the province of Upper Canada, chiefly in consequence of the large immigration which flowed into the country from Ireland, where the potato rot had caused wide-spread destitution and misery. The population of this province had now reached 1,396,091, or nearly 300,000 more than the population of Lower Canada—an increase which, as I shall show in the next chapter, had important effects on the political conditions of the two provinces. The eastern or maritime provinces received but a small part of the yearly immigration from Europe, and even that was balanced by an exodus to the United States. Montreal had a population of 100,000, or double that of Quebec, and was now recognised as the commercial capital of British North America. Toronto had reached 60,000, and was making more steady progress in population and wealth than any other city, except Montreal. Towns and villages were springing up with great rapidity in the midst of the enterprising farming population of the western province. In Lower Canada the townships showed the energy of a British people, but the habitants pursued the even tenor of ways which did not include enterprise and improved methods of agriculture.

The value of the total exports and imports of the provinces reached $150,000,000 by 1864, or an increase of $100,000,000 in a quarter of a century. The great bulk of the import trade was with Great Britain and the United States, but the value of the exports to the United States was largely in excess of the goods purchased by Great Britain—especially after 1854, when Lord Elgin arranged a reciprocity treaty with the United States. Lord Elgin represented Great Britain in the negotiations at Washington, and the Congress of the United States and the several legislatures of the Canadian provinces passed the legislation necessary to give effect to the treaty. Its most important provisions established free trade between British North America and the United States in products of the forest, mine, and sea, conceded the navigation of the St. Lawrence to the Americans, and the use of the canals of Canada on the same terms as were imposed upon British subjects, gave Canadians the right to navigate Lake Michigan, and allowed the fishermen of the United States to fish on the sea-coasts of the British provinces without regard to distance from the shore, in return for a similar but relatively worthless privilege on the eastern shores of the republic, north of the 30th parallel of north latitude. During the thirteen years the treaty lasted the trade between the two countries rose from over thirty-three million dollars in 1854 to over eighty million dollars in 1866, when it was repealed by the action of the United States government itself, for reasons which I shall explain in a later chapter.

The navigation of the St. Lawrence was now made continuous and secure by the enlargement of the Welland and Lachine canals, and the construction of the Cornwall, Williamsburgh, and Beauharnois canals. Railways received their great stimulus during the government of Sir Francis Hincks, who largely increased the debt of Canada by guaranteeing in 1852 the bonds of the Grand Trunk Railway—a noble, national work, now extending from Quebec to Lake Michigan, with branches in every direction, but whose early history was marred by jobbery and mismanagement, which not only ruined or crippled many of the original shareholders, but cost Canada eventually twenty-three million dollars. In 1864 there were two thousand miles of railway working in British North America, of which the Grand Trunk Railway owned at least one-half. The railways in the maritime provinces were very insignificant, and all attempts to obtain the co-operation of the imperial and Canadian governments for the construction of an Intercolonial Railway through British American territory failed, despite the energetic efforts of Mr. Howe to bring it about.

After the union of the Canadas in 1841, a steady movement for the improvement of the elementary, public, or common schools continued for years, and the services of the Reverend Egerton Ryerson were engaged as chief superintendent of education with signal advantage to the country. In 1850, when the Lafontaine-Baldwin government was in office, the results of the superintendent's studies of the systems of other countries were embodied in a bill based on the principle of local assessment, aided by legislative grants, for the carrying on of the public schools. This measure is the basis of the present admirable school system of Upper Canada, and to a large extent of that of the other English-speaking provinces. In Lower Canada the history of public schools must be always associated with the names of Dr. Meilleur and the Honourable Mr. Chauveau; but the system has never been as effective as in the upper province. In both provinces, separate or dissentient schools were eventually established for the benefit of the Roman Catholics in Upper or Protestant Canada, and of the Protestants in Lower or Catholic Canada. In the maritime provinces satisfactory progress was also made in the development of a sound school system. In Nova Scotia Dr. Tupper, when provincial secretary (1863-1867), laid the foundations of the excellent schools that the province now enjoys.

During this period the newspaper press increased remarkably in influence and circulation. The most important newspaper in the Dominion, the Globe, was established at Toronto in 1844 by Mr. George Brown, a Scotchman by birth, who became a power from that time among the Liberal politicians of Canada. No notable books were produced in the English-speaking provinces except "Acadian Geology," a work by Dr. Dawson, who became in 1855 principal of McGill University, and was, in later years, knighted by the Queen; but the polished verses of Crémazie and the lucid histories of Canada by Ferland and Garneau already showed that French Canada had both a history and a literature.

Towards the close of this memorable period of Canadian development, the Prince of Wales, heir-apparent to the throne, visited the British American provinces, where the people gave full expression to their loyal feelings. This was the third occasion on which these communities had been favoured by the presence of members of the royal family. Prince William Henry, afterward William IV, visited Nova Scotia during the years 1786-1788, in command of a frigate. From 1791 until 1797 Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, father of the present sovereign, was in command of the imperial forces, first at Quebec, and later at Halifax. The year 1860 was an opportune time for a royal visit to provinces where the people were in the full enjoyment of the results of the liberal system of self-government extended to them at the commencement of the Queen's reign by the mother-country.

A quarter of a century had passed after the union of the Canadas when the necessities of the provinces of British North America forced them to a momentous constitutional change, which gave a greater scope to the statesmanship of their public men, and opened up a wider sphere of effort to capital and enterprise. In the following chapter I shall show the nature of the conditions which brought about this union.