This was the first task set Durham's successor, Charles Poulett Thomson, better known as Lord Sydenham. Like Durham he was a man of outstanding capacity. The British Government had learned at last to send men of the caliber the emergency demanded. Like Durham he was a wealthy Radical politician, but there the resemblance ended. Where Durham played the dictator, Sydenham preferred to intrigue and to manage men, to win them by his adroitness and to convince them by his energy and his business knowledge. He was well fitted for the transition tasks before him, though too masterful to fill the role of ornamental monarch which the advocates of responsible government had cast for the Governor.
Sydenham reached Canada in October, 1839. With the assistance of James Stuart, now a baronet and Chief Justice of Lower Canada, he drafted a union measure. In Lower Canada the Assembly had been suspended, and the Special Council appointed in its stead accepted the bill without serious demur. More difficulty was found in Upper Canada, where the Family Compact, still entrenched in the Legislative Council, feared the risk to their own position that union would bring and shrank from the task of assimilating half a million disaffected French Canadians. But with the support of the Reformers and of the more moderate among the Family Compact party, Sydenham forced his measure through. A confirming bill passed the British Parliament; and on February 10, 1841, the Union of Canada was proclaimed.
The Act provided for the union of the two provinces, under a Governor, an appointed Legislative Council, and an elective Assembly. In the Assembly each section of the new province was to receive equal representation, though the population of Lower Canada still greatly exceeded that of Upper Canada. The Assembly was to have full control of all revenues, and in return a permanent civil list was granted. Either English or French could be used in debate, but all parliamentary journals and papers were to be printed in English only.*
* From 1841 to 1867 the whole province was legally known as
the "Province of Canada." Yet a measure of administrative
separation between the old sections remained, and the terms
"Canada East" and "Canada West" received official sanction.
The older terms, "Lower Canada" and "Upper Canada," lingered
on in popular usage.
In June, 1841, the first Parliament of united Canada met at Kingston, which as the most central point had been chosen as the new capital. Under Sydenham's shrewd and energetic leadership a business programme of long-delayed reforms was put through. A large loan, guaranteed by the British Government, made possible extensive provision for building roads, bridges, and canals around the rapids in the St. Lawrence. Municipal institutions were set up, and reforms were effected in the provincial administration.
Lord John Russell in England and Sydenham in Canada were anxious to keep the question of responsible government in the background. For the first busy months they succeeded, but the new Parliament contained men quite as strong willed as either and of quite other views. Before the first session had begun, Baldwin and the new French-Canadian leader, La Fontaine, had raised the issue and begun a new struggle in which their single-minded devotion and unflinching courage were to attain a complete success.
Responsible government was in 1841 only a phrase, a watchword. Its full implications became clear only after many years. It meant three things: cabinet government, self-government, and party government. It meant that the government of the country should be carried on by a Cabinet or Executive Council, all members of Parliament, all belonging to the party which had the majority in the Assembly, and under the leadership of a Prime Minister, the working head of the Government. The nominal head, Governor or King, could act only on the advice of his ministers, who alone were held responsible to Parliament for the course of the Government. It meant, further, national self-government. The Governor could not serve two masters. If he must take the advice of his ministers in Canada, he could not take the possibly conflicting advice of ministers in London. The people of Canada would be the ultimate court of appeal. And finally, responsible government meant party government. The cabinet system presupposed a definite and united majority behind the Government. It was the business of the party system to provide that majority, to insure responsible and steady action, and at the same time responsible criticism from Her Majesty's loyal Opposition. Baldwin saw this clearly in 1841, but it took hard fighting throughout the forties to bring all his fellow countrymen to see likewise and to induce the English Government to resign itself to the prospect.
Sydenham fought against responsible government but advanced it against his will. The only sense in which he, like Russell, was prepared to concede such liberty was that the Governor should choose his advisers as far as possible from men having the confidence of the Assembly. They were to be his advisers only, in fact as well as form. The Governor was still to govern, was to be Prime Minister and Governor in one. When Baldwin, who had been given a seat in the Executive Council, demanded in 1841 that this body should be reconstructed in such a way as to include some French-Canadian members and to exclude the Family Compact men, Sydenham flatly refused. Baldwin then resigned and went into opposition, but Sydenham unwillingly played into his hand. By choosing his council solely from members of the two Houses, he established a definite connection between Executive and Assembly and thus gave an opportunity for the discussion of the administration of policy in the House and for the forming of government and opposition parties. Before the first session closed, the majority which Sydenham had built up by acting as a party leader at the very time he was deriding parties as mere factions, crumbled away, and he was forced to accept resolutions insisting that the Governor's advisers must be men "possessed of the confidence of the representatives of the people." Fate ended his work at its height. Riding home one September evening, he was thrown from his horse and died from the injuries before the month was out.
It fell to the Tory Government of Peel to choose Sydenham's successor. They named Sir Charles Bagot, already distinguished for his career in diplomacy and known for his hand in matters which were to interest the greater Canada, the Rush-Bagot Convention with the United States and the treaty with Russia which fixed, only too vaguely, the boundaries of Alaska. He was under strict injunctions from the Colonial Secretary, Lord Stanley, to continue Sydenham's policy and to make no further concession to the demands for responsible government or party control. Yet this Tory nominee of a Tory Cabinet, in his brief term of office, insured a great advance along this very path toward freedom. His easy-going temper predisposed him to play the part of constitutional monarch rather than of Prime Minister, and in any case he faced a majority in the Assembly resolute in its determination.
The policy of swamping French influence had already proved a failure. Sydenham had given it a full trial. He had done his best, or his worst, by unscrupulous manipulation, to keep the French Canadians from gaining their fair quota of the members in the Union Assembly. Those who were elected he ignored. "They have forgotten nothing and learnt nothing by the Rebellion," he declared, "and are more unfit for representative government than they were in 1791." This was far from a true reading of the situation. The French stood aloof, it is true, a compact and sullen group, angered by the undisguised policy of Anglicization that faced them and by Sydenham's unscrupulous tactics. But they had learned restraint and had found leaders and allies of the kind most needed. Papineau's place—for the great tribune was now in exile in Paris, consorting with the republicans and socialists who were to bring about the Revolution of 1848—had been taken by one of his former lieutenants. Louis Hippolyte La Fontaine still stands out as one of the two or three greatest Canadians of French descent, a man of massive intellect, of unquestioned integrity, and of firm but moderate temper. With Baldwin he came to form a close and lifelong friendship. The Reformers of Canada West, as Upper Canada was now called, formed a working alliance with La Fontaine which gave them a sweeping majority in the Assembly. Bagot bowed to the inevitable and called La Fontaine and Baldwin to his Council. Ill health made it impossible for him to take much part in the government, and the Council was far on the way to obtaining the unity and the independence of a true Cabinet when Bagot's death in 1843 brought a new turn in affairs.