Now this Chief-Justice had formerly called Mackenzie a reptile, and the other gentleman had dubbed him a spaniel dog—quite a leap from the general to the special, had but Darwin, then somewhere near American waters casting his search-light of enquiry from H. M. S. Beagle, known of it.
Mackenzie was in despair: “I am disappointed. The prospect before us is indeed dark and gloomy.” But rallying from this despondency, in his usual peppery style he told Mr. Stanley the appointments would be “a spoke in the wheel in another violent revolution in America.” Hume wrote that he judged the disposition of the Secretary was to promote rather than to punish for improper conduct, and thereby encourage the misgovernment in Canada, which Lord Goderich’s policy had been likely to prevent.
Well might a Canadian paper, announcing the advent of the new Attorney-General, Jameson, say: “It is to be hoped he will view the real situation of the people of this province from his own observation.”
The Iroquois was always ready to drink to the King’s health, be he a George or a William; Stanley might declaim about “the most odious and blood-thirsty tyranny of French republicanism;” but this little Canadianized Scotchman, with his clever pen and tongue, misty conceptions of statesmanship, real grievances and revolutionary speech, was more than the Home Government could “thole.” The Earl of Ripon, in 1839, stated that Mackenzie in his correspondence of 1835 sought to make himself appear a very great man, whereas in reality he was a very little man. In his apologetic we find: “Well, he saw Mr. Mackenzie. He did not know that Mr. Mackenzie was a broken-down peddler. He knew that Mr. Mackenzie was an exceedingly troublesome person. He was perfectly satisfied, from the conduct of the individual, that Mr. Mackenzie was as vain and shallow a person as he had ever encountered. If the conference alluded to by Mr. Mackenzie was of only two hours’ duration, he must say it was the longest two hours he had ever known.”
How to make a common unity, a compact and harmonious people, out of their uncommon ancestors became the problem. “Not that our heads are some brown, some black, some auburn, some bald,” said the Canadian mélange, “but that our wits are so diversely coloured.” Some of the men who were to solve the problem do not read as if equipped by appearance or culture to handle with their delicate fingers such homely subjects. Scarcely a week passed without a fresh turn up of the cards in Canada; and although Mr. Warburton wondered if the colony were worth retaining, the game worth the candle, the young Queen, in that part of her speech which dealt with the Canadian question, had an undertone of determination “to maintain her supremacy throughout the whole of the North American colonies,” and how the game would finally turn out became daily involved at Westminster in greater doubt and difficulty. At this time an editor in the United States uttered prophecy: “We do earnestly believe that the Virgin Queen of England is destined to be one of the most extraordinary characters of the present age or any country. She is a little Napoleon in petticoats—as determined, as lofty, as generous, as original as he was. Wait and see.”
“My Lords,” said the Great Duke, referring to her speech quoted from, “I could have wished that this declaration of Her Majesty had been accompanied by corresponding efforts to enable Her Majesty to carry those intentions into effect.”
“Sir Robert Peel, who played upon the House as upon an old fiddle,” regretted that there was not also in that speech a stronger expression of sympathy for the sufferings of their brave and loyal fellow-subjects in the colonies—at which there were cheers from both sides of the House. He could not too much admire the bravery, the loyalty, the devotedness of the Canadians. Nor did this arise from interested motives; it was sincere attachment to monarchical principles, and sincere opposition to a republican form of government.
There were many men, interesting in themselves, in debate on us then; but individually, and as he borrowed interest from his position towards that centre of all observation, the young Queen, came Melbourne.
While still William Lamb he had hated what he called the creeping palsy of misgiving, tried hard to resist it, and developed into one of those not afraid to advance with the age. He had no “extreme faith in religion, politics, or love.” Accordingly, to him patriotism and wisdom were not confined to the Whigs alone. The oh-oh’s and ironical cheers from what he knew to be a powerful majority moved him not; he was as easy, comfortable, good-humoured, as ever. Quaintness, originality of a manner fitful, abrupt, full of irony, at times of a tenderness almost feminine, distinguished him, together with an insuperable aversion to “platitudes, palaverings,”—and bishops. In an age when swearing was as common in drawing-rooms as in the field, England’s Prime Minister was an acknowledged past-master in the art, and by inflections gave a dozen changes to the small familiar four-lettered British adjective in most common use. In ordinary transactions he loved a chirpy oath; but in his dealings with the bishops was forced to coin a “superdamnable.” The Order of the Garter was a great favourite with him, “because there was no damned merit about it.” Utilitarian levelling like Bentham’s he regarded as nonsense; state parsimony like Hume’s, a “pettifogging blunder;” radicalism after the manner of Cobbett and others he called mere ragamuffinism; but he told his peers plainly that the time had gone by when any set of men could put themselves up as a check against national opinion, that antique usages could not prevail against reason and argument—truths spoken with the voice of the Commons in that place where such a voice was almost unknown, seldom heard. Yet rancour was foreign to his nature: “The great fault of the present time (1835) is that men hate each other so damnably; for my part, I love them all.” And all with the air of a good-tempered, jovial gentleman.
“If something of his amiable spirit could be caught by others,” said a friend, “and grafted on Lord Wellesley’s counsel to ‘demolish these people,’ matters would not be difficult.”