



Produced by Al Haines










[Frontispiece: Burning of the Parliament Buildings, Montreal, 1849.
From a colour drawing by C. W. Jefferys]





THE WINNING OF

POPULAR GOVERNMENT


A Chronicle of the Union of 1841


BY

ARCHIBALD MACMECHAN





TORONTO

GLASGOW, BROOK & COMPANY

1916




  Copyright in all Countries subscribing to
  the Berne Convention




  TO

  ROBERT ALEXANDER FALCONER

  PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
  STUDENT OF HISTORY AND ENCOURAGER
  OF HISTORIANS




{ix}

CONTENTS

                                                        Page

   I. DURHAM THE DICTATOR ..............     1
  II. POULETT THOMSON, PEACEMAKER ..........    25
 III. REFORM IN THE SADDLE..............    66
  IV. THE GREAT ADMINISTRATION............    97
   V. THE PRINCIPLE ESTABLISHED ...........   132
      EPILOGUE....................   161
      BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE..............   166
      INDEX .....................   167




{xi}

ILLUSTRATIONS


BURNING OF THE PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS, MONTREAL, 1849    _Frontispiece_
  From a colour drawing by C. W. Jefferys.

THE EARL OF DURHAM.................  _Facing page_ 6
  After the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence.

LORD SYDENHAM ...................        "      34
  From an engraving by G. Browning in M'Gill
    University Library.

SIR CHARLES BAGOT .................        "      74
  From an engraving in the Dominion Archives.

SIR CHARLES METCALFE................        "      82
  After a painting by Bradish.

CHARLES, EARL GREY.................        "      98
  From the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence.

SIR LOUIS H. LAFONTAINE ..............        "     108
  After a photograph by Notman.

THE EARL OF ELGIN .................        "     136
  From a daguerreotype.




{1}

CHAPTER I

DURHAM THE DICTATOR

  And let him be dictator
  For six months and no more.

The curious sightseer in modern Toronto, conducted through the
well-kept, endless avenues of handsome dwellings which are that city's
pride, might be surprised to learn that at the northern end of the
street which cuts the city in two halves, east and west, bands of armed
Canadians met in battle less than a century ago.  If he continued his
travels to Montreal, he might be told, at a certain point, 'Here stood
the Parliament Buildings, when our city was the capital of the country;
and here a governor-general of Canada was mobbed, pelted with rotten
eggs and stones, and narrowly escaped with his life.'  And if the
intelligent traveller asked the reason for such scenes, where now all
is peace, the answer might be given in one word--Politics.

To the young, politics seems rather a stupid {2} sort of game played by
the bald and obese middle-aged, for very high stakes, and governed by
no rules that any player is bound to respect.  Between the rival teams
no difference is observable, save that one enjoys the sweets of office
and the mouth of the other is watering for them.  But this is, of
course, the hasty judgment of uncharitable youth.  The struggle between
political parties in Canada arose in the past from a difference in
political principles.  It was a difference that could be defined; it
could be put into plain words.  On the one side and the other the
guiding ideas could be formulated; they could be defended and they
could be attacked in logical debate.  Sometimes it might pass the wit
of man to explain the difference between the Ins and the Outs.
Sometimes politics may be a game; but often it has been a battle.  In
support of their political principles the strongest passions of men
have been aroused, and their deepest convictions of right and wrong.
The things by which men live, their religious creeds, their pride of
race, have been enlisted on the one side and the other.  This is true
of Canadian politics.

That ominous date, 1837, marks a certain climax or culmination in the
political {3} development of Canada.  The constitution of the country
now works with so little friction that those who have not read history
assume that it must always have worked so.  There is a real danger in
forgetting that, not so very long ago, the whole machinery of
government in one province broke down, that for months, if not for
years, it looked as if civil government in Lower Canada had come to an
end, as if the colonial system of Britain had failed beyond all hope.
_Deus nobis haec otia fecit_.  But Canada's present tranquillity did
not come about by miracle; it came about through the efforts of faulty
men contending for political principles in which they believed and for
which they were even ready to die.  The rebellions of 1837 in Upper and
Lower Canada, and what led up to them, the origins and causes of these
rebellions, must be understood if the subsequent warfare of parties and
the evolution of the scattered colonies of British North America into
the compact united Dominion of Canada are not to be a confused and
meaningless tale.[1]

{4}

Futile and pitiful as were the rebellions, whether regarded as attempts
to set up new government or as military adventures, they had widespread
and most serious consequences within and without the country.  In
Britain the news caused consternation.  Two more American colonies were
in revolt.  Battles had been fought and British troops had been
defeated.  These might prove, as thought Storrow Brown, one of the
leaders of the 'Sons of Liberty' in Lower Canada, so many Lexingtons,
with a Saratoga and a Yorktown to follow.  Sir John Colborne, the
commander-in-chief, was asking for reinforcements.  In Lower Canada
civil government was at an end.  There was danger of international
complications.  For disorders almost without precedent the British
parliament found an almost unprecedented remedy.  It invested one man
with extraordinary powers.  He was to be captain-general and
commander-in-chief over the provinces of British North America, and
also 'High Commissioner for the adjustment of certain important
questions depending in the... Provinces of Lower and Upper Canada
respecting the form and future government of the said Provinces.'  He
was given 'full power and authority... by {5} all lawful ways and
means, to inquire into, and, as far as may be possible, to adjust all
questions... respecting the Form and Administration of the Civil
Government' of the provinces as aforesaid.  These extraordinary powers
were conferred upon a distinguished politician in the name of the young
Queen Victoria and during her pleasure.  The usual and formal language
of the commission, 'especial trust and confidence in the courage,
prudence, and loyalty' of the commissioner, has in this case deep
meaning; for courage, prudence, and loyalty were all needed, and were
all to be put to the test.

The man born for the crisis was a type of a class hardly to be
understood by the Canadian democracy.  He was an aristocratic radical.
His recently acquired title, Lord Durham, must not be allowed to
obscure the fact that he was a Lambton, the head of an old county
family, which was entitled by its long descent to look down upon half
the House of Peers as parvenus.  At the family seat, Lambton Castle, in
the county of Durham, Lambton after Lambton had lived and reigned like
a petty prince.  There John George was born in August 1792.  His father
had been a Whig, a consistent friend of Charles James {6} Fox, at a
time when opposition to the government, owing to the wars with France,
meant social ostracism; and he had refused a peerage.  The son had
enjoyed the usual advantages of the young Englishman in his position.
He had been educated at Eton and at the university of Cambridge.  Three
years in a crack cavalry regiment at a time when all England was under
arms could have done little to lessen his feeling for his caste.  A
Gretna Green marriage with an heiress, while he was yet a minor, is
characteristic of his impetuous temperament, as is also a duel which he
fought with a Mr Beaumont in 1820 during the heat of an election
contest.  After the period of political reaction following Waterloo,
reaction in which all Europe shared, England proceeded on the path of
reform towards a modified democracy; and Lambton, entering parliament
at the lucky moment, found himself on the crest of the wave.  His Whig
principles had gained the victory; and his personal ability and energy
set him among the leaders of the new reform movement.  He was a
son-in-law of Earl Grey, the author of the Reform Bill of 1832, and he
became a member of the Grey Cabinet.  Before the Canadian crisis he had
shown his {7} ability to cope with a difficult situation in a
diplomatic mission to Russia, where he is said to have succeeded by the
exercise of tact.  He was nicknamed 'Radical Jack,' but any one less
'democratic,' as the term is commonly understood, it would be hard to
find.  He surrounded himself with almost regal state during his brief
overlordship of Canada.  In Quebec, at the Castle of St Louis, he lived
like a prince.  Many tales are told of his arrogant self-assertion and
hauteur.  In person he was strikingly handsome.  Lawrence painted him
when a boy.  He was an able public speaker.  He had a fiery temper
which made co-operation with him almost impossible, and which his weak
health no doubt aggravated.  He was vain and ambitious.  But he was
gifted with powers of political insight.  He possessed a febrile energy
and an earnest desire to serve the common weal.  Such was the physician
chosen by the British government to cure the cankers of misrule and
disaffection in the body politic of Canada.

[Illustration: The Earl of Durham.  After the painting by Sir Thomas
Lawrence.]

Lord Durham received his commission in March 1838.  But, though the
need was urgent for prompt action, he did not immediately set out for
Canada.  For the delay {8} he was criticized by his political
opponents, particularly by Lord Brougham, once his friend, but now his
bitterest enemy.  On the twenty-fourth of April, however, Durham sailed
from Plymouth in H.M.S. _Hastings_ with a party of twenty-two persons.
Besides his military aides for decorative purposes, he brought in his
suite some of the best brains of the time, Thomas Turton, Edward Gibbon
Wakefield, and Carlyle's gigantic pupil, Charles Buller.  It is
characteristic of Durham that he should bring a band of music with him
and that he should work his secretaries hard all the way across the
Atlantic.  On the twenty-ninth of May the _Hastings_ was at Quebec.
Lord Durham was received by the acting administrator, Sir John
Colborne, and conducted through the crowded streets between a double
hedge of soldiery to the Castle of St Louis, the vice-regal residence.

If Durham had been slow in setting out for the scene of his labours, he
wasted no time in attacking his problems upon his arrival in Canada.
'Princely in his style of living, indefatigable in business, energetic
and decided, though haughty in manner, and desirous to benefit the
Canadas,' is the {9} judgment of a contemporary upon the new ruler.  On
the day he was sworn to office he issued his first proclamation.  Its
most significant statements are: 'The honest and conscientious
advocates of reform... will receive from me, without distinction of
party, race, or politics, that assistance and encouragement which their
patriotism has a right to command... but the disturbers of the public
peace, the violators of the law, the enemies of the Crown and of the
British Empire will find in me an uncompromising opponent, determined
to put in force against them all the powers civil and military with
which I have been invested.'  It was a policy of firmness united to
conciliation that Durham announced.  He came bearing the sheathed sword
in one hand and the olive branch in the other.  The proclamation was
well received; the Canadians were ready to accept him as 'a friend and
arbitrator.'  He was to earn the right to both titles.

Durham was determined to begin with a clean slate.  With a
characteristic disregard for precedent, he dismissed the existing
Executive Council as well as Colborne's special band of advisers, and
formed two new councils in their place, consisting of {10} members of
his personal staff, military officers, Canadian judges, the provincial
secretary, and the commissary-general.  Together they formed a
committee of investigation and advice; and, being composed of both
local and non-local elements, it was a committee specially fitted to
supply the necessary information, and to judge all questions
dispassionately from an outside point of view.  This committee acting
with the High Commissioner took the place of regular constitutional
government in Lower Canada.  It was an arbitrary makeshift adopted to
meet a crisis.

During the long, tedious voyage of the _Hastings_ the High Commissioner
had not been idle.  He had worked steadily for many hours a day at the
knotty Canadian question, studying papers, drafting plans, discussing
point after point with his secretaries.  Once in the country, he set to
work in the most thoroughgoing and systematic way to gather further
knowledge.  He appointed commissions to report on all special problems
of government--education, immigration, municipal government, the
management of the crown lands.  He obtained reports from all sources;
he conferred with men of all shades {11} of political opinion; he
called representative deputations from the uttermost regions under his
sway; he made a flying visit to Niagara in order to see the country
with his own eyes and to study conditions.  Such labours were beyond
the capacity of any one man; but Durham was ably supported by his band
of loyal helpers and a public eager to co-operate.  The result of all
this activity was the amassing of the priceless data from which was
formed the great document known as Lord Durham's Report.

It is generally overlooked that at this period Canada stood in danger
from external as well as internal enemies.  Hardly had Durham landed at
Quebec when there occurred a series of incidents which might have led
to war between Great Britain and the United States.  A Canadian
passenger steamer, the _Sir Robert Peel_, sailing from Prescott to
Kingston, was boarded at Wells Island by one 'Bill' Johnson and a band
of armed men with blackened faces.  The passengers and crew were put
ashore without their effects, and the steamer was set on fire and
destroyed.  Very soon afterwards an American passenger steamer was
fired on by over-zealous sentries at Brockville.  Together {12} the
twin outrages were almost enough, in the state of feeling on both
sides, to set the Empire and the Republic by the ears.

The significance of these and other similar incidents can only be
understood by recalling the mental attitude of Americans of the day.
They had a robust detestation of everything British.  It is not grossly
exaggerated by Dickens in Martin Chuzzlewit.  And that attitude was
entirely natural.  The Americans had, or thought they had, beaten the
British in two wars.  The very reason for the existence of their nation
was their opposition to British tyranny.  They saw that tyranny in all
its balefulness blighting the two Canadas.  They saw those oppressed
colonies rising, as they themselves had risen, against their
oppressors.  To make the danger all the more acute, the exiled
Canadians, notably William Lyon Mackenzie, went from place to place in
the United States inciting the freeborn citizens of the Republic to aid
the cause of freedom across the line.  There was precedent for
intervention.  Just a year before the fight at St Charles, an American
hero, Sam Houston, had wrested the huge state of Texas from the misrule
of Mexico and founded a new and independent republic.  {13}