“I would not prostitute the name so far, but he always voted with them.”
“At the Whigs it was then his chief pleasure to rail,
He opposed all the Catholic claims tooth and nail....”
“Why, no wonder ... he hates the Tories. They never thought of him while he was with them, and now the Whigs do talk of Joe as if he were somebody. But, as John Bull says,
“‘A very small man with the Tories
Is a very great man ’mong the Whigs.’”
It was a time of general unrest and suspicion, just from the likelihood of change and the alarming precedents set up. No two men could be seen anywhere in the same neighbourhood without arousing ideas of coalition, hope, suspicion and a host of feelings—as, for instance, when “Mr. Roebuck was seen in a quarter which left little doubt that he had been with Lord Brougham. It is very generally thought that something is about to happen.” Mr. Roebuck, like Mr. Hume, was a marked man and an out-and-out Canadian sympathiser. He, according to a well-known and accredited newspaper, “was paid by the Lower Canadian House of Assembly to expatiate on grievances, and to declare at all times and in all places to those who have no personal acquaintance with the Canadas that the people there are restless, dissatisfied, yearning for republican institutions, and that unless the never-ending, still-beginning concessions they require are granted, another American war must be the result.” The effect of his words was weakened by his appearance, which was that of a boy of eighteen. “If we do not immediately take active measures,” was Sir John Colborne’s antiphon from across the sea, “to arm and organize our friends, the province (Lower Canada) will be lost to us.”
He did organize—“Why, slaves, ’tis in our power to hang ye.” “Very likely,” came the answer, “’tis in our power, then, to be hanged and scorn ye.”
What in Canada were called Roebuck’s “remarques ordinaires” were constant philippics against administrative abuses there. He wanted some means to be found as remedy for the defects. He laboured unceasingly. In speeches, writings in journals and pamphlets and periodicals, in season and out of season, he lost no chance to plead the cause of the Canadas. Naturally, he was “abusive and ridiculous” in these letters to such as did not agree with him. Had his nomination been properly confirmed, his income as agent would have been £1,000 a year; but the want of it did not slacken his efforts. “While such is the nature and conduct of this petty and vulgar oligarchy, I beseech the House to consider the peculiar position of the people over whom they domineer.” He then goes on to draw a picture of the superior scene across the St. Lawrence; a natural enough picture to be drawn by an American, born with prejudices in favour of his native land. He goes on: “With such a sight before them it is not wonderful that the Canadian people have imbibed the free spirit of America, and that they bear with impatience the insolence, the ignorance, the incapacity and the vice of the nest of official cormorants who, under the festering domination of England, have constituted themselves an aristocracy, with all the vices of such a body, without one of the redeeming qualities which are supposed to lessen the mischiefs which are the natural attendants of all aristocracies. It is of a people thus high-spirited, pestered and stung to madness by this pestilential brood, that I demand your attention.”
But the Canadians, though grateful, were aware he did not always act with prudence in their behalf. He and Mr. Hume together had presided at a meeting where the latter declared that Canada was of no advantage to Britain. But they gave him and all who mentioned them kindly in the House of Commons—O’Connell, Pakington and others who had spoken for them—their heartfelt thanks.
Labouchere, French by descent, stood up in their defence and vindicated their claims. “I look upon the Act of 1791,” said he, “as the Magna Charta of Canadian freedom,” and contended that a more rigid following of Pitt’s intentions would have resulted in better things. He denounced the prejudice of one race against another, nor deemed a council so altogether British wholesome government for people so entirely French. The French had many champions in that historic chamber. Sir James Mackintosh, author of “Vindiciæ Gallicæ,” a man whose whole bias of mind had been turned and held fast by French revolution, equipped by nature with all the powers and attributes of statesmanship, and who had brought all to bear on home politics and legislation in the broadest imperial sense, was not the least of these. He had undertaken, years before the blooming of that bitter blossom, the Canadian aloe—tenacity of life is one of its virtues,—the successful defence of a French emigrant for libel on the consul; his residence in Bombay, as Recorder, had been famous for his wholesome administration between British and native rights; he had strongly opposed “the green bag and spy system;” had voted against the severe restrictions of the Alien Bill, and had moved against the existing state of the criminal law; so that he did not speak, as many did on Canadian affairs, without special or collateral experience. He wanted the dependency governed on principles of justice, few and simple; protection against alien influence, and freedom to conduct their own affairs and manage their own trade. “A British king see now assume
Judicial sovereignty, ‘coutume,’
And that of Paris cease to reign
Throughout the Canada domain.”[2]
He even allowed merit to that old coutume in comparison with affairs as they existed under British law, and in sarcastic humour ran a parallel between them.
When “Quebec first raised the legal courts
For Does or Roes to hold their sports,”[2]
the spirit of the Conseil Souverain was one which did not at the Conquest migrate to the new body: “Nous avons cru ne pouvoir prendre une meilleure résolution qu’en établisant une justice réglé et un Conseil Souverain dans le dits pays, pour y faire fleurir les lois, maintenir et appuyer les bons, chatier les méchants, et contenir chacun en son droit.”