What that "sound and rational basis" was, is conclusively shown in an extract from one of his own private letters, given on page 143 of the same work:
"I am not a bit afraid of the Responsible Government cry. I have already done much to put it down in its inadmissible sense, namely, that the Council shall be responsible to the Assembly, and that the Government shall take their advice, and be bound by it. In fact, this demand has been made much more for the people than by them. And I have not met with any one who has not at once admitted the absurdity of claiming to put the Council over the head of the Governor. It is but fair too, to say that everything has in times past been done by the different Governors to excite the feelings of the people on this question. First, the Executive Council has generally been composed of the persons most obnoxious to the majority of the Assembly; and next, the Governor has taken extreme care to make every act of his own go forth to the public on the responsibility of the Executive Council. So the people have been carefully taught to believe that the Governor is nobody, and the Executive Council the real power, and that by the Governor himself. At the same time they have seen that power placed in the hands of their opponents. Under such a system it is not to be wondered at, if one argument founded on the responsibility of the Governor to the Home Government falls to the ground. I have told the people plainly that, as I cannot get rid of my responsibility to the Home Government, I will place no responsibility on the Council; that they are a Council for the Governor to consult, but no more. And I have yet met with no 'Responsible Government' man, who was not satisfied with the doctrine. In fact, there is no other theory which has common sense. Either the Governor is the Sovereign or the Minister. If the first, he may have ministers, but he cannot be responsible to the Government at home, and all colonial government becomes impossible. He must, therefore, be the Minister, in which case he cannot be under the control of men in the colony."
It is only just that the truth should be clearly established on this question. Responsible Government was not an issue between Canadian Reformers and Tories in any sense; but exclusively between the Colonies and the statesmen of the Mother Country. On several occasions prior to Mackenzie's Rebellion, Tory majorities had affirmed the principle; and Ogle R. Gowan, an influential Orangeman, had published a pamphlet in its favour. Yet some recent historians of Canada have fallen into the foolish habit of claiming for the Reform party all the good legislation of the past forty years, until they seem really to believe the figment themselves.[11]
I am surprised that writers who condemn Sir F. B. Head for acting as his own Prime Minister, in strict accordance with his instructions, can see nothing to find fault with in Lord Sydenham's doing the very same thing in an infinitely more arbitrary and offensive manner. Where Sir Francis persuaded, Lord Sydenham coerced, bribed and derided.
Lower Canada was never consulted as to her own destiny. Because a fraction of her people chose to strike for independence, peaceable French Canadians were treated bodily as a conquered race, with the undisguised object of swamping their nationality and language, and over-riding their feelings and wishes. It is said that the result has justified the means. But what casuistry is this? What sort of friend to Responsible Government must he be, who employs force to back his argument? To inculcate the voluntary principle at the point of the bayonet, is a peculiarly Hibernian process, to say the least.
CHAPTER XXXI.
TORIES OF THE REBELLION TIMES.
Having, I hope, sufficiently exposed the misrepresentations of party writers, who have persistently made it their business to calumniate the Loyalists of 1837-8, I now proceed to the pleasanter task of recording the good deeds of some of those Loyalists, with whom I was brought into personal contact. I begin with—
ALDERMAN GEORGE T. DENISON, SEN.
No Toronto citizen of '37 can fail to recall the bluff, hale, strongly-built figure of George Taylor Denison, of Bellevue, the very embodiment of the English country squire of the times of Addison and Goldsmith. Resolute to enforce obedience, generous to the poor, just and fair as a magistrate, hospitable to strangers and friends, a sound and consistent Churchman, a brave soldier and a loyal subject, it seemed almost an anachronism to meet with him anywhere else than at his own birth-place of Dover Court, within sight of the Goodwin Sands, in the old-fashioned County of Essex, in England.