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Title: The Winning of Popular Government:
   A Chronicle of the Union of 1841
   [Vol. 27 of "The Chronicles of Canada"]
Author: MacMechan, Archibald McKellar (1862-1933)
Illustrator: Bradish, Alvah (1806-1901)
Illustrator: Browning, G. (fl. ca. 1820-1830)
Illustrator: Jefferys, Charles William (1869-1951)
Illustrator: Lawrence, Sir Thomas (1769-1830)
Illustrator: Notman, William (1826-1891)
Date of first publication: 1915
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Company, 1920
Date first posted: 5 February 2009
Date last updated: 5 February 2009
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #254

This ebook was produced by: David T. Jones
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

This file was produced from images generously made available
by the Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries




CHRONICLES OF CANADA

Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton

In thirty-two volumes


27

THE WINNING OF
POPULAR GOVERNMENT

By Archibald Macmechan

_Part VII_

_The Struggle for Political Freedom_


[Illustration: 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

[Illustration: logo]

TORONTO

GLASGOW, BROOK & COMPANY

1920


_Copyright in all Countries subscribing to
the Berne Convention_


Press of The Hunter-Rose Co., Limited, Toronto


TO

ROBERT ALEXANDER FALCONER

PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

STUDENT OF HISTORY AND ENCOURAGER OF HISTORIANS


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


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                                       "        118

After a photograph by Notman.

THE EARL OF ELGIN                                             "        136

From a daguerreotype.




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 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 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]

[Footnote 1: The story of the rebellions will be found in two other
volumes of the present Series, _The Family Compact_ and _The Patriotes
of '37._ For earlier cognate history see _The Father of British
Canada_ and _The United Empire Loyalists_.]

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. Hence
arose the huge conspiracy of the 'Hunters' Lodges' all along the
northern border of the United States, of which more in the next
chapter.

Durham took prompt action. He offered a reward of a thousand pounds
for such information as should bring the guilty persons to trial in an
American, not a Canadian, court. Thereby he said in effect, 'This is
not an international affair. It is a plain offence against the laws of
the United States, and I am confident that the United States desires
to prevent such outrages.' He followed up this bold declaration of
faith in American justice by sending his brother-in-law, Colonel Grey
of the 71st Regiment, to Washington to lay the facts before President
Van Buren and to remonstrate vigorously against the laxity which
permitted an armed force to organize within the borders of the
Republic for an attack upon its peaceful neighbour. Such laxity was
against the law of nations. As a result of Durham's spirited action,
the military forces on both sides of the boundary-line worked in
concert to put down such lawlessness. President Van Buren's attitude,
however, cost him his popularity in his own country.

The most pressing and most thorny question was how to deal with the
hundreds of prisoners who, since the rebellion, had filled the
Canadian jails. A large number of these were only suspected of
treason; some had been taken in the act of rebellion; and some were
confined as ringleaders, charged with crimes no government could
overlook and hope to survive. In some countries the solution would
have been a simple one: the prisoners would have been backed against
the nearest wall and fusilladed in batches, as the Communists were
dealt with in Paris in the red quarter of the year 1871. Even in
Canada there were hideous cries for bloody reprisals. But the
ingrained British habit of giving the worst criminal a fair trial
blocked such a ready and easy way of restoring tranquillity. Still, a
fair trial was impossible. In the temper then prevailing in the
province no French jury would condemn, no English jury would acquit, a
Frenchman charged with treason, however great or slight his fault
might prove to be. The process of trying so many hundreds of prisoners
would be simply so many examples of the law's burdensome delay. To
leave them to rot in prison, as King Bomba left political offenders
against his rule, was unthinkable. Durham met the difficulty in a bold
and merciful way. The young Queen was crowned on June 28, 1838. Such
an event is always a season of rejoicing and an opportunity for
exercising the royal clemency in the liberation of captives. Following
this excellent custom, Durham proclaimed on that day an amnesty in his
sovereign's name; and, in a month after his arrival, he gave freedom
to hundreds of unfortunates, who had endured many hardships in the
old, cruel jails of the time, in addition to the tortures of suspense
as to their ultimate fate.

There were some who could not be so released. They were only eight in
number, but they were such men as Wolfred Nelson and Robert Bouchette,
whose treason was open and notorious. They knew, and Durham knew, that
they could not obtain a fair trial. Therefore the High Commissioner
overleapt the law, and by an ordinance banished these ringleaders to
Bermuda during Her Majesty's pleasure. Durham was much pleased at this
happy solution of a difficult and delicate problem. He congratulated
himself, as well he might, on having terminated a rebellion without
shedding a drop of blood. 'The guilty have received justice, the
misguided, mercy,' he wrote to the Queen, 'but at the same time,
security is afforded to the loyal and peaceable subjects of this
hitherto distracted Province.' Furthermore, his proceedings had been
'approved by all parties--Sir J. Colborne and all the British party,
the Canadians and all the French party.' Durham fancied that this
question was now settled, and that he could proceed unhampered with
his main task of reconstruction. But his justifiable satisfaction was
not to last long.

While the High Commissioner was labouring in Canada, as few officials
have ever laboured, for the good of the Empire, his enemies and his
lukewarm friends in England were between them preparing his downfall.
Of his foes, the most bitter and unscrupulous was Brougham, a
political Ishmael, a curious compound of malignity and versatile
intellectual power. He had criticized Durham's delay in starting for
Canada; and he was only too glad of the handle which the autocratic,
czar-like ordinance of banishment to Bermuda offered him against his
enemy. It is nearly always in the power of a party politician to
distort and misrepresent the act of an opponent, however just or
blameless that act may be. Brougham made a great pother about the
rights of freemen, usurpation, dictatorship. As a lawyer he raised the
legal point, that Durham could not banish offenders from Canada to a
colony over which he had no jurisdiction. He enlisted other lawyers on
his side to attack the composition of Durham's council. The storm
Brougham raised might have done no harm, if Durham's political allies
had stood by him like men. But the prime minister Melbourne, always a
timorous friend, bent before the blast, and Durham's ordinance was
disallowed. The High Commissioner, who had been granted such great
powers, was held to have exceeded those powers. Durham belonged to the
caste which felt a stain upon its honour like a wound. The
disallowance of his ordinance by the home authorities was a blow fair
in the face. It put an end to his career in Canada, by undermining his
authority. In those days of slow communication the news of the
disallowance reached him tardily. By a side wind, from an American
newspaper, he first learned the fact on the twenty-fifth of September.
He at once sent in his resignation, told the people of Canada the
reason why in a proclamation, and as soon as possible left the country
for ever. Brougham was burned in effigy at Quebec. The lucky eight,
already in Bermuda, were speedily released. Never did leaders of an
unsuccessful rebellion suffer less for their indiscretion. From
Bermuda they proceeded to New York to renew their agitation. On the
first of November Durham left Quebec, as he had entered that city,
with all the pomp of military pageantry and in a universal display of
public interest. He came in a crisis; he left amid a crisis. He had
spent five months in office, almost the exact term for which the
Romans chose their chief magistrate in a national emergency and named
him dictator.

    *    *    *    *    *

In the eyes of Durham's enemies his ordinance of banishment was a
ukase; and, at first blush, it looks like an unwarrantable stretching
of his powers. But Durham was on the ground and must necessarily have
known the conditions prevailing much better than his critics three
thousand miles away. Desperate diseases need desperate remedies. The
presumption is always that the man on the ground will be right; and
posterity has passed a final judgment of approval on Durham's bold
slashing of the Gordian knot. New facts have set the whole matter in a
new light. A paper of Buller's,[2] hitherto unpublished, shows that
the ordinance was promulgated _only after consultation with the
prisoners_. 'The prisoners who expected the government to avail itself
of its power of packing a jury were very ready to petition to be
disposed of without trial, and as I had in the meantime ascertained
that the proposed mode of dealing with them would not be condemned by
the leading men of the British party, Lord Durham adopted the plan
proposed.' They regarded banishment as an unexpected mercy, as well
they might. The only alternative was the dock, the condemned cell, and
the gallows.

[Footnote 2: A sketch of Lord Durham's mission to Canada in 1838, by
Charles Buller. See the edition of Lord Durham's Report edited, with
an introduction, by Sir C. P. Lucas: Oxford, 1912. The original
document was given to Dr Arthur G. Doughty, Dominion Archivist, by the
present Earl of Durham.]

    *    *    *    *    *

On the thirtieth of November Durham landed at Plymouth, and by the
middle of the following January he had finished his Report. Early in
February it was printed and laid before the House of Commons. The
curious legend which credits Buller with the authorship is traceable
to Brougham's spite. Macaulay and Brougham met in a London street. The
great Whig historian praised the Report. Brougham belittled it. 'The
matter,' he averred, 'came from a felon, the style from a coxcomb, and
the Dictator furnished only six letters, D-u-r-h-a-m.' The whole
question has been carefully discussed by Stuart J. Reid in his _Life
and Letters of the First Earl of Durham_, and the myth has been given
its quietus. Even if direct external evidence were lacking, a
dispassionate examination of the document itself would dispose of the
legend. In style, temper, and method it is in the closest agreement
with Durham's public dispatches and private letters.

The drafting of this most notable of state papers was the last of
Durham's services to the Empire. A little more than a year later he
was dead and laid to rest in his own county. Fifty thousand people
attended his funeral. A mausoleum in the form of a Greek temple marks
his grave. The funds for this monument were raised by public
subscription, such was the force of popular esteem. His dying words
were prophetic: 'Canada will one day do justice to my memory.'

The Report was Durham's legacy to his country. It defined once for all
the principles that should govern the relations of the colony with the
mother country, and laid the foundations of the present Canadian
unity. It did not please the factions in Canada; it was too
plain-spoken. Exception may be taken, even at the present day, to some
of its recommendations and conclusions. But its faithful pictures of
'this hitherto turbulent colony' enable the historical student and the
honest patriot to measure the progress the country has since made on
the road to nationhood. If unpleasant, it is very easy reading. Few
parliamentary reports are closer packed with vital facts or couched in
clearer language. To the task of its composition the author brought
energy, insight, a sense of public duty, a desire to be fair, and,
best of all, an open mind, a perfect readiness to relinquish
prepossessions or prejudices in the face of fresh facts. His ample
scheme of investigation, as carried out by himself and his corps of
able helpers, had put him in control of a huge assemblage of data. On
this he reasoned with admirable results.

The Report consists of four parts. The first, and by far the largest,
portion deals with Lower Canada, as the main storm centre. The second
is concerned with Upper Canada; the third, with the Maritime Provinces
and Newfoundland. Having diagnosed the disease in the body politic,
Durham proposes a remedy. The fourth part is an outline of the
curative process suggested.

'I expected to find a contest between a government and a people; I
found two nations warring in the bosom of a single state.' In that one
sentence Durham precises the situation in Lower Canada. Nothing will
surprise the Canadian of to-day more than the evidence adduced of 'the
deadly animosity' which then existed between the two races. The very
children in the streets fought, French against English. Social
intercourse between the two was impossible. The Report shows the
historical origin and carefully traces the course of this 'deadly
animosity'. It finds much to admire in the character of the French
habitant, but spares neither his faults nor the shortcomings of his
political leaders. It shows that the original racial quarrel was
aggravated by the conduct of the governing officials, both at home and
in Canada, until the French took up arms. The consequences were
'evils which no civilized community can long continue to bear.' There
must be a 'decision'; and it must be 'prompt and final.'

In Upper Canada Durham found a different situation. There the people
were not 'slavish tools of a narrow official clique or a few
purse-proud merchants,' but 'hardy farmers and humble mechanics
composing a very independent, not very manageable, and sometimes a
rather turbulent democracy.' The trouble was that a small party had
secured a monopoly of power and resisted the lawful efforts of
moderate reformers to establish a truly democratic form of government.
Ill-balanced extremists had taken up arms; but the sound political
instinct of the vast majority was against them. Here, too, the
original difficulties had been complicated by official ignorance in
England and the unwisdom of authorities on the spot. The result was
that these 'ample and fertile territories' were in a backward, almost
desperate, condition. Their poverty and stagnation were a depressing
contrast to the prosperity and exhilarating stir of the great American
democracy.

The other outlying provinces presented no such serious problems.
There were various anomalies and difficulties; but they were on their
way to removal.

The 'evils which no civilized community could bear' were to be cured
by a legislative union of the Canadas. The time had gone by for a
federal union. A door must be either open or shut; the French province
must become definitely a British province and find its place in the
Empire. To end the everlasting deadlock between the governor and the
representatives of the people, the Executive should be made
responsible to the Assembly; and, in order to bring the scattered
provinces closer together, an inter-colonial railway should be built.
In other words, the obsolete, bad system of colonial government must
undergo radical reform, both within and without, because 'while the
present state of things is allowed to last, the actual inhabitants of
these provinces have no security for person or property, no enjoyment
of what they possess, no stimulus to industry.'

The story of how this reform was undertaken, and of how, in spite of
many obstacles, it was brought to a triumphant success, must always
remain one of the most important chapters in the political history of
Canada.




CHAPTER II

POULETT THOMSON, PEACEMAKER


Wounded and angry at what he considered an intolerable affront, Durham
had placed the reins of government in the firm hands of that fine old
soldier, Sir John Colborne, and had gone to speak with his enemies in
the gate. Not only was the cause of Canada left bleeding; but as soon
as Durham's back was turned, rebellion broke out once more. This
second outbreak arose from the support afforded the Canadian
revolutionists by American 'sympathizers.' The full story of the
'Hunters' Lodges' has never been told, and the sentiment animating
that organization has been quite naturally misunderstood and
misrepresented by Canadian historians. In the thirties of the
nineteenth century western New York was the 'frontier,' and it was
peopled by wild, illiterate frontiersmen, familiar with the use of the
rifle and the bowie-knife, bred in the Revolutionary tradition and
nourished on Fourth of July oratory to a hatred of everything British.
The memories of 1812 were fresh in every mind. These simple souls were
told by their own leaders and by political refugees from Canada, as we
have noted in a former chapter, that the two provinces were groaning
under the yoke of the 'bloody Queen of England,' that they were
seething with discontent, that all they needed was a little assistance
from free, chivalrous Americans and the oppressed colonists would
shake off British tyranny for ever. Appeal was made to less exalted
sentiment. Each patriot was to receive a handsome grant of land in the
newly gained territory. Accordingly, in the spring and summer of 1838,
a large scheme to give armed support to the republicans of Canada was
secretly organized all along the northern boundary of the United
States. It was a secret society of 'Hunters' Lodges,' with ritual,
passwords, degrees. Each 'Lodge,' was an independent local body, but a
band of organizers kept control of the whole series from New York to
Detroit. The 'Hunters' are uniformly called 'brigands' and 'banditti'
by the British regular officers who fought them, and the terms have
been handed on without critical examination by Canadian historians;
but not with justice. Misled though they were, the 'Hunters' looked
upon Canada only as Englishmen looked upon Greece, or Poland, or Italy
struggling for political freedom: the sentiment, though misdirected,
was anything but ignoble. Acting upon this sentiment, a Polish
refugee, Von Shoultz, led a small force of 'Hunters,' boys and young
men from New York State, in an attack on Prescott, November 10, 1838.
He succeeded in surprising the town and in establishing himself in a
strong position in and about the old windmill, which is now the
light-house. His position was technically a 'bridge-head,' and he
defeated with heavy loss the first attempt to turn him out of it. If
he had been properly supported from the American side of the river,
and if the Canadians had really been ready to rise _en masse_ as he
had been led to believe, the history of Canada might have been
changed. As it was, the invaders were cut off, and, on the threat of
bombardment with heavy guns, surrendered. Their leader paid for his
mistaken chivalry with his life on the gallows within old Fort Henry
at Kingston; and, in recognition of his error, he left in his will a
sum of money to benefit the families of those on the British side who
had lost their lives through his invasion. Of his followers, some were
hanged, some were transported to Tasmania, and some were set free.
During that winter the 'Hunters' made various other attacks along the
border, which were defeated with little effort. Though now the danger
seems to have been slight, it did not seem slight to the rulers of the
Canadas at that time. The numbers and the power of the 'Hunters' were
not known; the sympathy of the American people was with them,
especially while the filibusters were being tried at drum-head
court-martial and hanged; and there was imminent danger of the United
States being hurried by popular clamour into a war with Great Britain.

All through the summer of 1838 the rebel leaders in the United States
had been plotting for a new insurrection. They were by no means
convinced that their cause was lost. Disaffection was kept alive in
parts of Lower Canada and the habitants were fed with hopes that the
armed assistance of American sympathizers would ensure success for a
second attempt at independence. It may be the sheerest accident of
dates; but Durham took ship at Quebec on the first of November, and Dr
Robert Nelson was declared president of the Canadian republic at
Napierville on the fourth. A copy of Nelson's proclamation preserved
in the Archives at Ottawa furnishes clear evidence of the aims and
intentions of the Canadian radicals: they wanted nothing less than a
separate, independent republic, and they solemnly renounced allegiance
to Great Britain. At two points near the American boundary-line,
Napierville and Odelltown, the loyal militia and regulars clashed with
the rebels and dispersed them. Once more the jails were filled, which
the mercy of Durham had emptied. Once more the cry was raised for
rebel blood, and the winter sky was red with the flame of burning
houses which had sheltered the insurgents. Hundreds of French
Canadians fled across the border; and from this year dates the
immigration from Quebec into New England which has had such an
influence on its manufacturing cities and such a reaction on the
population which remained at home. Another fruit of this ill-starred
rebellion was the haunting dirge of Grin-Lajoie, _Un Canadien
errant_. Twelve of the leaders were tried for treason, were found
guilty, and were hanged in Montreal. Some of these had been pardoned
once for their part in the rising of the previous year; some were
implicated in plain murder; all were guilty; but the chill deliberate
formalities of the gallows, the sufferings of the wretched men, their
bearing on the scaffold, the vain efforts to obtain reprieve, produced
a strong revulsion of popular feeling in their favour. By the common
law of nations they were traitors; but they are still named and
accounted 'patriots.'

At Toronto, Lount and Matthews, two of the rebel leaders of Upper
Canada, were hanged in the jail-yard on April 12, 1839. A petition for
mercy was set aside; Lount's wife on her knees begged the
lieutenant-governor to spare her husband's life, but in vain. Here,
too, public feeling was chiefly pity for the unfortunate. But these
executions did not satisfy the extremists. The lieutenant-governor,
Sir George Arthur, who had long been governor of the penal settlement
in Tasmania, was avowedly in favour of further severities; and
vengeful loyalists clamoured in support. All Durham's work seemed
undone. The political outlook of the Canadas in 1839 was, if
anything, darker and more hopeless than it had been two years before.

Almost as grave as the political condition of the country was the
financial situation. The rebellions of '37 coincided with a widespread
financial crisis in the United States, which had its inevitable
reaction upon all business in Canada, and matters had gone from bad to
worse. By the summer of 1839 Upper Canada--the present rich and
prosperous Ontario--was on the verge of bankruptcy. The reason lay in
the ambition of this province. The first roads into any new country
are the rivers. Therefore the population of Canada first followed and
settled along the ancient waterway of the St Lawrence and the Great
Lakes. But this wonderful highway was blocked here and there by
natural obstacles to navigation, long series of rapids and the giant
escarpment of Niagara. To overcome these obstacles the costly Cornwall
and Welland canals had been projected and built. The money for such
vast public works was not to be found in a new country in the pioneer
stage of development; it had to be borrowed outside; and the annual
interest on these borrowings amounted to 75,000, more than half the
annual income of the province. And this huge interest charge was met
by the disastrous policy of further borrowings. After Poulett Thomson,
Durham's successor, became acquainted with Upper Canada--'the finest
country I ever saw,' wrote the man who had seen all Europe--he
testified: 'The finances are more deranged than we believed in
England.... All public works suspended. Emigration going on fast
_from_ the province. Every man's property worth only half what it
was.' Decidedly the political and financial problems of Canada
demanded the highest skill for their solution.

While things had come to this pass in Canada, Lord Durham's Report on
Canada had been presented to the British House of Commons and its
proposals of reform had been made known to the British public. It
revealed the incompetency of Lord Glenelg as colonial secretary; he
resigned and made way for Lord John Russell, who was in hearty accord
with the principles and recommendations of the Report. The chief
recommendation was that the only possible solution of the Canadian
problem lay in the political union of the two provinces. At first the
British government was inclined to bring about this desirable end by
direct Imperial fiat, but in view of the determined opposition of
Upper Canada, it wisely decided to obtain the consent of the two
provinces themselves to a new status, and to induce them, if possible,
to unite of their own motion in a new political entity. The essential
thing was to obtain the consent of the governed; but they were
turbulent, torn by factions, and hard to bring to reason.

For a task of such difficulty and delicacy no ordinary man was
required. Sir John Colborne was not equal to it; he was a plain
soldier, but no diplomat. He was raised to the peerage as Lord Seaton
and transferred. A second High Commissioner, with practically the
powers of a dictator, was appointed governor-general in his stead.
This was a young parliamentarian, of antecedents, training, and
outlook very different from those of his predecessors. Instead of the
Army or the county family, the new governor-general represented the
dignity of old-fashioned London mercantile life. Charles Poulett
Thomson had been in trade; he had been a partner in the firm of
Thomson, Bonar and Co., tallow-chandlers. Now tallow-chandlery is not
generally regarded as a very exalted form of business, or the gateway
to high position; but in the days of candles it was a business of the
first importance. Candles were then the only light for the stately
homes of England, the House of Commons, the theatres. The
battle-lanterns of Britain's thousand ships were lit by candles.
Supplies of tallow must be fetched from far lands, such as Russia. And
this business formed the governor-general of Canada. As a boy in his
teens he was sent into the counting-house, an apprentice to commerce,
and so he escaped the 'education of a gentleman' in the brutal public
schools and the degenerate universities of the time. Business in those
days had a sort of sanctity and was governed by punctilious--almost
religious--routine. In the interests of the business he travelled,
while young and impressionable, to Russia, and mixed to his advantage
with the cosmopolitan society of the capital. Ill-health drove him to
the south of France and Italy, where he resided for two years. His was
the rare nature which really profits by travel. Thus, in a nation of
one tongue, he became a fluent speaker of several European languages;
and, in a nation which prides itself on being blunt and plain, he
was noted for his suave, pleasing, 'foreign' manners. Poulett Thomson
became, in fact, a thorough man of the world, with well-defined
ambitions. He left business and entered politics as a thoroughgoing
Liberal and a convinced free-trader long before free trade became
England's national policy. Another title to distinction was his
friendship with Bentham, who assisted personally in the canvass when
Thomson stood for Dover. From 1830 onwards he was intimately
associated with the leaders of reform. He was a friend of Durham's,
and they had worked together in negotiating a commercial treaty with
France. Continuity in the new Canadian policy was assured by personal
consultations with Durham before Thomson started on his mission.
'Poulett Thomson's policy was based on the Durham Report, and most of
his schemes in regard to Canada were devised under Durham's own roof
in Cleveland Row.'

[Illustration: LORD SYDENHAM
From an engraving by G. Browning in M'Gill University Library]

Business, travel, and politics combined to form the character of
Poulett Thomson. His well-merited titles, Baron Sydenham and Toronto,
tend to obscure the fact that he was essentially a member of the great
middle class, a civilian who had never worn a sword or a military
uniform. He represented that element in English life which is always
enriching the House of Peers by the addition of sheer intellectual
eminence, like that of Tennyson and Kelvin. He had a sense of humour,
a quality of which Head and Durham were devoid. He was amused when he
was not bored by the pomp attending his position. 'The worst part of
the thing to me, individually, is the ceremonial,' he writes. 'The
_bore_ of this is unspeakable. Fancy having to stand for an hour and a
half bowing, and then to sit with one's cocked hat on, receiving
addresses.' In person Thomson was small, slight, elegant,
fragile-looking, with a notably handsome face. He was one of those
clever, agreeable, plausible, managing little men who seem always to
get their own way. They are very adroit and not too scrupulous about
the means they use to attain their ends. They have that absolute
belief in themselves which their friends call self-confidence and
their enemies conceit.

Thomson came to his arduous task brimming with ambition and belief in
his ability to cope with it. He realized to the full the difficulty of
the problem set him and the credit which would accrue if he solved
it. 'After fifteen years,' a friend wrote, 'you have now the golden
opportunity of settling the affairs of Canada upon a safe and firm
footing, ensuring good government to the people, and securing ample
power to the Crown.' He was fully aware of this himself. 'It is a
_great field_ too,' he notes in his private Journal, 'if I can bring
about the union of the provinces and stay for a year to meet the
united assembly and set them to work'; and he contrasts the
opportunity for distinction offered by the Canadian imbroglio with the
tame possibilities of a subordinate position in the Cabinet, which
would be his fate if he remained in England.

The new governor-general reached Quebec in H.M.S. _Pique_ on October
17, 1839, after a stormy passage of thirty-three days. His first task
in Canada was the same as Durham's--to acquaint himself with the
actual conditions--and he flung himself into it with equal energy.
Like Durham, too, he was ably assisted by capable men on his staff,
notably T. W. C. Murdoch, his civil secretary, and James Stuart, the
chief justice of Lower Canada. From the very first he won golden
opinions from all sorts of persons. The tone of his proclamations, the
courtesy and tact of his public utterances, his personal charm made
him speedily popular. The party of Reform was conciliated because he
was known to be in sympathy with the principles of Lord Durham's
Report, while the Conservatives were pleased with his avowed purpose
of strengthening the bonds between the colony and the mother country.
Lower Canada was still a province without a constitution; but it must
have some machinery of government. A makeshift for regular government
was provided by a Legislative Council of fourteen persons of
importance appointed by Sir John Colborne. Their agreement to the
principles of union was soon obtained. The province now seemed
tranquil and the governor-general hurried on to Upper Canada. His
account of his journey from Montreal to Kingston--the changes and
stoppages, the varieties of conveyance--illustrates vividly the
difficulties of travel in those days.

At Toronto Thomson found a totally different set of conditions. Here
was a constitution functioning and a legislature in session; but what
a legislature! Split into half a dozen little cliques and factions, it
was trying to work with no cabinet, no opposition, no party
system--an ideal state of things to which some critics of present
conditions would like to return. The office-holders, that is, the
members of the government, took opposite sides in debate. The Assembly
was a house divided and sub-divided against itself. There was a
widespread and persistent clamour for 'responsible government,' but no
one knew precisely what was meant by it. Who was to be 'responsible'?
for what? and to whom? How was it possible to make the local
government 'responsible' to the people of the colony without reducing
the governor to a figurehead? If his authority were reduced to a
shadow, what became of the 'prerogative' and British connection? Was
not 'responsible government' simply the prelude to the absolute
separation of the colony from the mother country? Then there was the
question of the Clergy Reserves agitating every colonial breast.
One-seventh of the public domain had been set aside for the support of
a favoured church: a plain case of monopoly and privilege, said some;
a wise provision for the maintenance of religion, said others. And the
shadow of bankruptcy was hanging over the unhappy colony. The
situation was one of the utmost difficulty, calling for an almost
superhuman combination of ability, tact, and firmness. Here, as in
Lower Canada, the governor-general's first effort was to obtain the
consent of the people's representatives to the great change in the
status of the province which the union would involve. He carried his
point by meeting men and discussing the project with them--a process
of education. Although there was some opposition on various grounds,
reasonable and unreasonable, the Assembly finally consented to the
following terms: first, each province was to have an equal number of
representatives; secondly, a sufficient civil list was to be granted;
thirdly, the debt incurred by Upper Canada for public works of common
interest should be charged upon the revenue of the new united
province. These terms could not be called ideal, especially in regard
to Lower Canada; but union was the only alternative to benevolent
despotism or civil war. In bringing the legislature of Upper Canada to
consent to these terms Thomson had the valuable aid of the cohort of
Moderate Reformers led by Baldwin and Hincks.

No inconsiderable part of the governor-general's task was a campaign
of education in the _A B C_ of responsible government. Those
elementary ideas of party government now regarded as axiomatic had to
be taught painfully to our rude forefathers in legislation. That the
government should have a definite head or leader in the Assembly, who
should speak for the government, introduce and defend its measures;
that the officials of the government other than those holding
permanent posts should form one body--a ministry--which should
automatically relinquish office and power when it could no longer
command a majority in the legislature, were practically new and by no
means welcome ideas to the old-time law-makers of Canada. The natural
corollary that the opposition also should be organized under a
definite leader, who, on defeating the government, should assume the
responsibility of forming a cabinet, was equally novel. Such a check
on reckless criticism was sadly needed. Of the process by which
Thomson achieved his ends even his fullest biography gives little
information. There must have been endless conferences of homespun,
honest farmers like Willson, men of breeding like Robinson, brilliant
lawyers like Sullivan, plain soldiers like MacNab, with the little,
sickly, understanding governor of the brilliant eyes, the charming
manner, and the persuasive tongue. Of all the varied explaining,
discussing, initiating, little record remains. But the work was done
and the results are manifest to the world. The persuasive little man
succeeded in persuading the law-makers of Upper Canada that the way
out of their difficulties lay not through division but through union.
He persuaded them to a change of status which was a reversal to the
old status prior to the Constitutional Act, and also a prelude to that
larger union of the British colonies in North America which was
destined to embrace half the continent.

Having succeeded almost beyond belief in the first part of his
mission, Thomson turned his attention to the next vexed question. This
was the question of the Clergy Reserves. On this subject much ink had
been spilt and much hard feeling engendered; and it still provokes not
a little ill-directed sarcasm. The whole matter is in danger of being
misunderstood, and eighteenth-century law-makers are blamed for not
possessing ideas a hundred years ahead of their times.

By the terms of the Constitutional Act of 1791 one-seventh of the
public lands thereafter to be granted were devoted to 'the Support and
Maintenance of a Protestant Clergy.' The provision was due, it seems,
to the king himself, pious, homely 'Farmer George'; and to men of his
mind no provision could have seemed more natural or right.
'Establishment' had been the rule from time immemorial. The Church of
England was 'established,' that is, provided by law with an income in
England, in Wales, and in Ireland. The 'Kirk' was similarly
'established' in Scotland. In British America itself the Church of
Rome was 'established' very firmly in Lower Canada. What could be more
natural for a Protestant monarch than to make provision for a
'Protestant Clergy' in a British colony settled by British immigrants,
and purchased with such out-pouring of British blood and British
treasure? And what more ready and easy way could be found of providing
for that 'clergy' than by endowing it with waste lands which taxed no
one and which would increase in value as the country became settled?
In its essence this endowment was a recognition of the value of the
Christian religion in preserving the state. But trouble arose almost
at once in the interpretation of the terms 'Protestant' and 'clergy.'
Was not the Church of Scotland 'Protestant' as well as the Church of
England? Were not the various species of 'Dissenters' also the most
vigorous of 'Protestants'? On the other side it was asked, Was not the
term 'clergy' applied exclusively to the ministers of the Church of
England? It could not apply to any religious teachers outside the
pale; those outside the pale never dreamed of applying it to
themselves. Naturally other denominations wished to share in this most
generous endowment; and quite as naturally the Church of England
desired to stand by the letter of the law and hold what it had of
legal right. Some extremists opposed any and all establishments,
holding that the church should be independent of the state. Let the
endowment be used for the sorely pinched cause of education, and let
the ministers of all denominations depend solely on the Christian
liberality of their people. Perhaps the extremists were in closest
touch with the genius of the new land and the new institutions growing
up in it. To the plain man in the pioneer settlement there seemed
something feudal, something unjust, in creating a privileged church
at the expense of all other churches. Pioneer life brings men back to
primal realities. To the settler in the log-hut the externals of
religion are apt to fade until all churches seem to be much the same:
to set one above all the others seems in his eyes so unjust as to
admit of no argument in its favour. Besides, he had a very real
grievance: the reserved unoccupied lands interfered with his
well-being; they came between farm and farm, increased his taxation,
and prevented the making of the needful roads. How was he to get to
market? to fetch supplies? To-day few will be found to argue for a
state church; but it was not so in the twenties and thirties of the
last century. The battle raged loud and long; and pamphleteer rent
pamphleteer in endless, wordy warfare.

By 1817 the grievance had become clamant; and when that inquisitive
agitator, Robert Gourlay, asked the farmers of Upper Canada what
hindered settlement, he received the answer--Clergy Reserves. Two
years later the Assembly asked for a return of the lands leased and
the revenue derived from them. Up to this time the annual revenue had
not exceeded 700. In the same year, 1819, the 'Kirk' parish of
Niagara applied for a grant of 100, and the law-officers of the Crown
supported the claim. This decision stirred up the Anglicans. They
formed themselves into a corporation in each province to oversee the
administration of the Clergy Reserves. Ownership in the lands was to
be obtained, if obtained at all, through the establishment and
endowment of separate rectories, as provided for in the original act.
Why the directing minds among the Anglicans did not adopt this ready
and easy method of obtaining at least the bulk of the disputed land is
something of a mystery. Apparently they adopted a policy of all or
none. Only in 1836, just before the outbreak of the rebellions, when
political feeling was at fever pitch, did Sir John Colborne, at the
bidding of Bishop Strachan, sign patents for forty-four parishes to be
erected in Upper Canada. The total amount of land devoted to this
purpose was seventeen thousand acres. 'This,' declared Lord Durham,
'is regarded by all other teachers of religion in the country as
having at once degraded them to a position of legal inferiority to the
clergy of the Church of England; and it has been most warmly resented.
In the opinion of many persons, this was the chief predisposing cause
of the recent insurrection, and it is an abiding and unabated cause of
discontent.'

Thomson's way of dealing with this cause of discontent did not dispose
of it for ever, but it at least provided a lenitive. With the business
man's respect for property and vested interests, he was opposed to the
diversion of the grant from its original purpose to the support of
education. He used his powers of persuasion upon 'the leading
individuals among the principal religious communities.' After 'many
interviews' he secured the support of the religious communities to a
measure which he had prepared. By the terms of this bill the remainder
of the reserved land was to be sold and the proceeds were to form a
fund, the income from which should be distributed annually among the
Church of England, the Church of Scotland, and other specified
religious bodies, 'in proportion to their respective numbers.' This
measure was not really acceptable to the Reformers, who wanted to see
the land used in the cause of education; it was distasteful to the
Kirk men; it was gall and wormwood to extreme Anglicans like Bishop
Strachan. None the less, the personal influence of the diplomatic,
strong-willed little man carried it through; and although the Act
itself was disallowed, on excellent grounds, by the Imperial
government, as exceeding the powers of the provincial legislature, yet
the Imperial parliament passed an Act exactly to the same effect.
Thomson had applied a plaster to the sore.

His general view of the political conditions is shown in a private
letter to his chief, Lord John Russell. The picture he draws is
lively, unflattering, but instructive. 'I am satisfied that the mass
of the people are sound--moderate in their demands and attached to
British institutions; but they have been oppressed by a miserable
little oligarchy on the one hand and excited by a few factious
demagogues on the other. I can make a middle reforming party, I am
sure, that will put down both.' The record of seventy-five years and
of two wars shows the attachment of the Canadians to British
institutions, and how justly the governor-general appraised the 'mass
of the people.' Not less clearly did he judge the politicians of the
day, their pettiness, their nave selfishness, their disregard of rule
and form, shocking all the instincts of the British man of business
and the trained parliamentary hand. 'You can form no idea' he
continues, 'of the way a Colonial Parliament transacts its business. I
got them into comparative order and decency by having measures brought
forward by the Government and well and steadily worked through. But
when they came to their own affairs, and, above all, to money matters,
there was a scene of confusion and riot of which no one in England can
have any idea. Every man proposes a vote for his own job; and bills
are introduced without notice and carried through _all_ their stages
in a quarter of an hour! One of the greatest advantages of the Union
will be that it will be possible to introduce a new system of
legislating, and above all, a restriction upon the initiation of
money-votes. Without the last I would not give a farthing for my bill:
and the change would be decidedly popular; for the members all
complain that under the present system they cannot refuse to move a
job for any constituent who desires it.' Canadians of the present day
should study those words without flinching.

When the session was over Thomson posted back to Montreal, assembled
his Special Council, and set to work, in the rle of benevolent
despot, introducing many much-needed reforms. The wheels of government
had been definitely blocked by racial hatred; the constitution was
still suspended. 'There is positively no machinery of government,'
Thomson wrote in a private letter. 'Everything is to be done by the
governor and his secretary.' There were no heads of departments
accessible. When a vacancy occurred, the practice was to appoint two
men to fill it, one French and the other English. There were joint
sheriffs, and joint crown surveyors, who worked against each other.
Ably seconded by the chief justice Stuart, the energetic governor
succeeded in reforming the procedure of the higher courts of
judicature and in establishing district courts after the model of
Upper Canada. Altogether, twenty-one ordinances were passed which had
the force of law. They were indispensable, in Thomson's opinion, in
paving the way for the Union. He was under no illusions as to his
methods. 'Nothing but a despotism could have got them through. A House
of Assembly, whether single or double, would have spent ten years at
them,' he writes, with perfect truth.

The Maritime Provinces next claimed his attention, as they came
within the scope of his commission. In Nova Scotia, likewise, a
struggle for responsible government was in progress, but with striking
differences. The protagonist of the movement, Howe, was the very
reverse of a separatist. He was passionately attached to Britain and
British institutions, and he thought not in terms of his little
province, but of the Empire. Over-topping all other politicians of his
day in native power and breadth of vision, he was successful in
working out the problem of responsible government by purely
constitutional methods, without a symptom of rebellion, the loss of a
single life or any _deus ex machina_ dictator or pacificator from
across the seas. Howe, indeed, was fitted to educate statesmen in the
true principles of democratic government, as his famous letters to
Lord John Russell testify. Howe's achievement must be compared with
the failure of Mackenzie and Papineau, if his true greatness is to
appear. When Thomson and he met, they found that they were at one in
principle and in respect to the measures necessary to bring about the
desired reforms. That month of July 1840 was a very busy one for the
governor-general. He reached Halifax on the ninth and left on the
twenty-eighth for Quebec. In the meantime he had met many men,
discussed many measures, gauged the situation correctly, drafted a
clear memorandum of it, and made a flying visit to St John and
Fredericton. He found New Brunswick happy and contented, a very oasis
of peace in the howling wilderness of colonial politics. His policy
was to get into personal touch with every part of his government and
to see it with his own eyes. On his way back to Montreal from Quebec
he made a detour through the Eastern Townships. Everywhere he
increased his already great popularity.

Apart from his natural and commendable desire to inform himself by the
evidence of his own eyes and ears, these tours were dictated by sound
policy. The governor-general was his own minister, the approaching
election was his election, the Union was his measure; so his public
appearances, speeches, replies to addresses, personal interviews were
all in the nature of an election tour by a modern political leader to
influence public opinion; a legitimate part of his campaign. After
touring the Eastern Townships he made a thorough visitation of the
western province, going round by water, and being nearly wrecked on
Lake Erie and again on Lake Huron, where he found that the inland
freshwater sea could be as turbulent as the Bay of Biscay. Elsewhere
the Canadian autumn weather was delightful. His precarious health
improved. His tour was a triumphal progress. '_All_ parties,' he
writes, 'uniting in addresses in every place, full of confidence in my
government, and of a determination to forget their former disputes.'
He adds a little pen-picture, which shows that the Canadian pioneer
had a knack of impromptu pageantry which his descendants have lost.
'Escorts of two and three hundred farmers on horseback at every place
from township to township, with all the etceteras of guns, music, and
flags.' The governor rode a good deal himself, taking saddle-horses
with him as well as a carriage. Those musical, gun-firing, flag-flying
cavalcades from township to township in the pleasant autumn weather of
1840 enliven the background of a political struggle. 'What is of more
importance,' continues the astute and businesslike little man, 'my
candidates everywhere taken for the ensuing elections.' This western
tour had an important reaction upon public opinion in Toronto,
bringing the divers factions into something like harmony for a time.
Thomson himself was genuinely pleased with what he had seen of that
rich, heart-shaped peninsula lying behind the moat of three inland
seas, with the flowing names, Huron, Erie, Ontario. He writes in
justifiable superlatives. 'You can conceive nothing finer. The most
magnificent soil in the world--four feet of vegetable mould--a climate
certainly the best in North America--the greater part of it admirably
watered. In a word, there is land enough and capabilities enough for
some millions of people and for one of the finest provinces in the
world.' Half a century from the time of writing the governor's vision
was realized and Ontario was the 'banner province' of the Dominion.

During that busy month of July which the governor had spent in the
Maritime Provinces the Act of Union passed by the Imperial parliament
had taken effect. The two provinces were proclaimed to be one province
with one legislature. It was necessary to issue a new commission for
the governor of the new province, and, to mark the importance of his
achievement, Charles Poulett Thomson was created a peer, Baron
Sydenham of Sydenham in Kent and Toronto in Canada. One advantage of
a monarchy is its ability to reward service to the state in a splendid
way. Sydenham's honour was well deserved, but he was not destined to
enjoy it long. His activity in no way relaxed. An essential part of
the scheme of union, as he saw it, was local home rule. The country
was to be divided into small self-governing units--municipalities--taxing
themselves for their own necessary expenditures and controlling the
revenues so raised. This is now such a familiar idea, an institution
which works so well, that it is hard to conceive of Canada ever
lacking it. Even more difficult to conceive is why the idea should
have been opposed by the Imperial parliament so strongly that an
advanced Liberal like Lord John Russell was forced to exclude it from
the Act of Union. But Sydenham was not easily balked. Being on the
ground and seeing the urgent need of such an institution, he called
together his wonderful Special Council for one last session. Between
them they organized the municipal system which, in modified form,
still functions in Quebec. After the Union the system was extended to
Ontario, to the great advantage of that province. So thoroughly are
Canadians accustomed to managing their own affairs, that they do not
realize what a privilege they possess in their municipal system, and
how far Great Britain then lagged behind.

Another important measure passed by the expiring Special Council was
the Registry Act. To the habitant the selling, mortgaging, and
transfer of property was a private affair; he did not see the need for
publicity. So the habit of clandestine transfer of land was almost a
French habit. The same habit prevailed among the Acadians and had to
be dealt with by the English governors. The attempt to put the
transfer of land upon a business basis was regarded as an insidious
attack upon a national custom. Once more the benevolent despot
succeeded in bringing about a much-needed reform. The 'ass's bridge,'
as he calls it, had been impassable for twenty years. Now that it was
crossed, the exploit met 'the nearly universal assent of French and
English.' Some thirty other ukases, all tending to order and the
common weal, were issued in the last session of this extraordinary
legislative body. One fixed the place of the capital. After much
debate on the rival claims of Quebec, Montreal, Toronto, Bytown, and
Kingston, it was decided that the town with the martello towers
guarding the gateway to the Thousand Islands, with its memories of
Frontenac and the War of 1812, should be the capital of the new united
province. And it was so. About the quiet university town, where
Queen's is Grant's monument--_si monumentum requiris, circumspice_--there
lingers still the distinction of the old vice-regal days.

Then came the first election for the new Assembly of the united
province, perhaps the most momentous in the history of Canada. Lower
Canada was vehemently opposed to the whole scheme. To elect a Union
member was, in the words of the Quebec Committee, 'stretching forth
the neck to the yoke which is attempted to be placed upon us.' The
French were organized into a solid phalanx of opposition. In the
western province the Tory and Orange opposition was equally violent
towards a measure which was deemed to favour the French. The elections
of 1841 were held with the bad old-fashioned accompaniments of riot
and bloodshed, especially in the centres, Montreal and Toronto.
Neither side was free from the blame of irregular methods. Certainly
the government was not scrupulous in the means it employed to secure
the return of Union candidates. The results were known early in April.
They were as follows: for the government, twenty-four members; French,
twenty; Moderate Reformers, twenty; ultra-Reformers, five; Compact
party, five; doubtful, seven. The curse of petty faction was not
lifted, nor the machinery of two-party government really installed,
for it was quite possible for several of these groups to combine in
voting down government measures without having sufficient cohesion
among themselves to form a ministry and assume control.

The session opened at Kingston on June 14, 1841. A hospital was turned
into a parliament house, a row of warehouses was appropriated for
government offices, and the fine old stone mansion by the waterside
known as 'Alwington' became the residence of the governor-general.
That last summer of his life was crowded with toil and anxiety, but
crowned with triumph. Acting as his own minister, he had to press
through a chaotic and factious legislature, far-seeing measures of
vital importance to the country; he had to reconcile differences, to
smooth opposition, to continue his campaign of education in
parliamentary procedure. In addition to the immediate problem of
remaking the Canadas into one province, Sydenham was deep in
diplomatic difficulties arising over disputes as to the Maine
boundary. This difficulty was settled in 1842 by the Ashburton Treaty,
which finally delimited the frontier lines. The strain on the
governor-general was severe, and his health, never robust, gave way
under it; but the frail form was upborne by the indomitable spirit of
the man, and by the consciousness that he was winning the long-desired
and doubtful victory. His success was plain to other eyes across the
sea. His chief, Lord John Russell, sent gratifying commendations and
obtained for him the coveted honour of the Grand Cross of the Bath.
Feeling that his mission was accomplished, he sent in his resignation
and made his preparations to return to England. The sound he longed to
hear was the pealing of the guns from the citadel of Quebec in a final
salute to the departing proconsul. He was to obtain release in another
way.

Some idea of Sydenham's difficulties may be formed by a consideration
of the Baldwin incident, as it has been called. Just before the
session opened an effort was made to combine the Moderate Reformers
of Upper Canada and the 'solid' French-Canadian party of Lower Canada
into a compact parliamentary phalanx of forty which would, of course,
take charge of the House. Baldwin was skilfully approached and played
upon until he supported this intrigue. The sequel is best told in
Sydenham's own words.

     Acting upon some principle of conduct, which I can
     reconcile neither with honour nor common sense, he
     strove to bring about this Union, and at last having as
     he thought effected it, coolly proposed to me, on the
     day before Parliament was to meet, to break up the
     Government altogether, dismiss several of his
     Colleagues and replace them by men whom I believe he
     had not known for twenty-four hours, but who are most
     of them thoroughly well known in Lower Canada (without
     going back to darker times) as the principal opponents
     to every measure for the improvement of that Province
     which has been passed by me, and as the most
     uncompromising enemies to the whole of my
     administration of affairs there.

     I had been made aware of this Gentleman's proceedings
     for two or three days, and certainly could hardly bring
     myself to tolerate them, but in my great anxiety to
     avoid if possible any disturbance, I had delayed taking
     any step. Upon receiving, however, from himself this
     extraordinary demand, I at once treated it, joined to
     his previous conduct, as a resignation of his office,
     and informed him that I accepted it without the least
     regret.

Of Baldwin's personal integrity there was no doubt; but the honest man
had been used as a tool. If the intrigue had succeeded, all Sydenham's
labour must have been lost, the Union would have been wrecked in the
launching, and the country thrown back into chaos. Fortunately the
intrigue failed. Baldwin passed over to the opposition, but he was
unable to lead the Reformers of Upper Canada into killing government
measures such as extension of the main highways, reform of the usury
laws, establishment of a comprehensive municipal system. They followed
the sounder leadership of Hincks and supported Sydenham in his wise
efforts to promote the country's good.

The whole session was a series of crises. Sydenham stood pledged to
the cardinal principle of democratic government, that the majority
must rule. Parliamentary procedure, as they have it in England, was a
new thing in Canada. In Great Britain the government does not always
resign when defeated on a vote, nor does the opposition defeat the
government when it has no power to form an alternative government. The
only consistent opposition was Neilson's band of French Canadians, and
their policy was pure obstruction and their object to separate the two
provinces once more. By combining the factions it was possible
sometimes to defeat a government, but for the government to throw down
the reins of power, with no one on the other side capable of taking
them up, would have been madness. The situation craved wary walking
and most delicate balancing; but Sydenham was equal to it. Later in
the session, when the members had learned their lesson, the
governor-general affirmed his position in a series of resolutions
moved by Harrison, the leader of the government. In these he asserted:
first, his position as representative of the monarch, and, as such,
responsible to Imperial authority alone; secondly, the administration
must possess the confidence of the representatives of the people; and
thirdly, that the administration shall act in accordance with the
well-understood wishes and interests of the people. In other words, he
declared himself for British connection plus majority rule.

Critics found the first session of the new parliament of Canada a
'do-nothing-but-talk' session. There was indeed a flow of eloquence in
various kinds during the first few weeks until the different parties
found the proper relations and the serious work of legislation began.
Constructive measures of the first importance became law in due
course. Sydenham's own words sum up his achievement. 'With a most
difficult opening, almost a minority, with passions at boiling heat,
and prejudices such as I never saw, to contend with, I have brought
the Assembly by degrees into perfect order ready to follow wherever I
may lead; have carried all my measures, avoided or beaten off all
disputed topics, and have got a ministry with an avowed and recognized
majority, capable of doing what they think right, and not to be upset
by my successor. I have now accomplished all that I set much value
on; for whether the rest be done now, or some sessions hence, matters
little. The five great works I aimed at have been got through: the
establishment of a board of works with ample powers; the admission of
aliens; the regulation of the public lands ceded by the Crown under
the Union Act; and lastly this District Council Bill.' The financial
difficulties of the province had been met by guaranteed Imperial loan,
and progress had been made in remedying the evils of pauper
immigration. Not often does a constructive statesman live to see his
labours so richly rewarded by success.

Then the end came. A stumble of Sydenham's horse as he mounted a rise
near 'Alwington' threw him to the ground and broke his right leg. His
constitution, never strong, had been weakened by disease, unsparing
work, and ceaseless anxieties. The bones would not set, the laceration
would not heal, and at last lockjaw set in. It was impossible for him
to recover. One does not expect the heroic from a fragile man of the
world, but Sydenham's last thoughts were for the state he had served
so well. In the agonies of tetanus he composed the speech with which
he had hoped to bring the session to a close. The last words were the
dying governor's prayer for Canada. 'May Almighty God bless your
labours, and pour down upon this province all those blessings which in
my heart I am desirous it should enjoy.'

His accident occurred on the fourth of September: he was not released
from his sufferings until the nineteenth. A stately funeral testified
to the universal regret. St George's Cathedral at Kingston, where his
bones lie, should be among the high places of the land, a shrine
doubly sacred, as the tomb of one who had no small part in making
Canada.




CHAPTER III

REFORM IN THE SADDLE


On Parliament Hill at Ottawa is a monument of bronze and marble. It
represents two men standing in close converse; and, in spite of the
dull and untempering effect of modern coats and trousers, the monument
is an artistic success worthy of the noble eminence on which it stands
above the broad-bosomed river and looking towards the distant hills.
It is designed to keep in memory LaFontaine, the man of French blood,
and Baldwin, the man of English blood, who worked together as leaders
in the first parliament of reunited Canada. That they so worked
together for the good of their common country deserves commemoration
in enduring brass; for, happily, ever since their time English and
French have been found working side by side and vying in fraternal
efforts towards the same glorious end.

LaFontaine and Baldwin are typical Canadian politicians of the new
order. They carried on a government under modern conditions.
Sydenham's work had been done once for all. In spite of ignorance, and
errors, and worse, the parliamentarians had really learned the lessons
of procedure which he had so deftly taught, and they now settled down
to the regular game of Ins and Outs, according to established and
accepted rules. The irreconcilables were gradually tamed as wild
animals are--by hunger first, and then by being fed with sufficient
quantities of the loaves and fishes. Power, office, good permanent
positions, fat salaries, proved strong sedatives of yeasty aspirations
towards vague political ideals. There were still to be grave
difficulties, crises, reactions towards the old order of things; but
the cardinal principle of popular government was finally accepted,
and, ever since 1841, has been in continuous operation, as part and
parcel of the constitution.

If Canadian politicians had, in the words of the Shorter Catechism,
been left to the freedom of their own will, it is difficult to see how
they could ever have brought about either the union of the jarring
provinces, or established the principles of popular government. It is
not apparent how half a dozen irreconcilable little factions could
have combined to thwart the sullen determination of John Neilson's
French-Canadian party to wreck the Union. There was a crying need for
intervention by a true statesman from without, who, with his eyes
unblinded by local prejudices and passions, could take his stand above
all parties, and, in benevolent despotism, lead them into concerted
action for their own good and the good of the country. Equally clamant
was the need of information and instruction. Sometimes Canadians are
inclined to write the tale of the building of the nation as if that
splendid fabric were all the work of their own hands, as if 'our own
arm had brought salvation unto us.' This is manifest fallacy. Without
a Durham to diagnose the malady and a Sydenham to apply the remedy,
the condition of the body politic must have been past cure. At least,
no other physicians could avail. Now, it was a matter of treatment and
careful nursing, and being instructed, we were capable of following
the doctor's orders.

The Reform leaders were very unlike each other in character and
antecedents. Robert Baldwin was the son of William Warren Baldwin,
whose father (also a Robert Baldwin) belonged to the humbler class of
landed gentry in Ireland. Tempted, like so many others of his class,
by the bait of cheap land, he came to Canada to 'farm.' His son
William studied medicine at Edinburgh, became a doctor, and, with
Irish powers of adaptation, soon exchanged physic for the more
profitable pursuit of law. Robert the grandson was born in York (now
Toronto) in 1804. He became one of 'Johnny' Strachan's pupils at the
Grammar School, achieving in time the distinction of being 'head boy';
after which he studied law in the old, leisurely, articled-clerk
system, and finally became his father's partner. An opportune legacy
enabled his father to buy a large property outside 'muddy York,' on
which, in accordance with hereditary landholding instinct, he
endeavoured to establish his family, after the old-world fashion. A
broad thoroughfare in Toronto preserves the name of Baldwin's
ambition, 'Spadina.'

Like his father, Robert Baldwin was a Moderate Reformer. He entered
public life (1829) in his native town as draftsman of a petition to
George IV in what was known as the Willis affair. In the same year he
was elected to the Assembly as member for York. Unseated on a
technicality, he was at once re-elected, and took his seat in the
House the following year. In the new elections, however, following the
demise of George IV in 1830, when the House was dissolved, Baldwin was
defeated. He had recently entered into partnership with his wife's
brother, who was also his own cousin, Robert Baldwin Sullivan, a
handsome Irishman with more than a touch of Irish brilliancy. Sullivan
played no small part in the politics of the time. He is the author of
the wittiest pamphlet ever evoked by Canadian party struggles.

Another young Irishman with whom Baldwin became closely associated was
Francis Hincks, who also left his mark on the history of Canada. The
son of a Presbyterian minister, he had received a good general
education, and a sound and extensive business training in Belfast.
Coming to Toronto by way of the West Indies, he became interested in
various local business concerns and speedily proved his outstanding
capacity for all matters of commerce and finance. Besides being the
manager of a bank and the secretary of an insurance company, Hincks
carried on at his house in Yonge Street, next door to Robert Baldwin's
(number 21), a general warehousing business; and, as if these
enterprises did not afford sufficient scope for his energy, he
launched a weekly newspaper, the _Examiner_, in the interests of
Reform. The successful man of business soon became the expert in
finance, to whom all eyes turned in difficulty. In 1833 he was
appointed one of the inspectors of the Welland Canal accounts in a
parliamentary investigation, so swiftly had he come to the front.
Though much unlike in temperament, he and Baldwin were agreed in their
views of political reform, siding with the Moderates as against the
Mackenzie faction of extremists. When in 1836 the Constitutional
Reform Society of Upper Canada was organized, with William Warren
Baldwin as president, Hincks became the secretary. The main objects of
this society were to secure 'responsible advisers to the governor,'
and the abolition of the forty-four rectories established by Sir John
Colborne in accordance with the well-known provisions of the
Constitutional Act. The success of any organization often depends on
one man, the secretary, and in this capacity Hincks evinced his wonted
ability and extraordinary energy.

These two men, Robert Baldwin, with his high principle and solid
character, and Francis Hincks, with his talent for affairs, are
figures of prime importance in this critical stage of the experiment
called responsible government.

But the new province of Canada, as a union of French and English
populations, demanded, as a natural consequence, a union in
leadership. The French-Canadian politician, who in his own province
represented Moderate Reform, was Louis Hippolyte LaFontaine. His
grandfather had been a member of the old Assembly of Lower Canada; his
father was a farmer at Boucherville in Chambly, where Louis Hippolyte
was born in 1804. Educated at the college of Montreal, he afterwards
studied law and began to practise in that city. In 1830 he was elected
member for Terrebonne, and soon showed himself in the House to be a
thoroughgoing follower of Papineau and an agitator for radical change.
But when reform passed over into rebellion and an appeal to armed
force, he tried to dissuade his compatriots from their mad enterprise,
and also approached the governor, Lord Gosford, with a proposal to
assemble parliament, in order to prevent further violence. He then
went to England, from motives which do not seem clear. Fearing arrest
in that country for his share in the agitation before the rebellion,
he fled to France. He did not, in fact, return to Canada until May
1838, when he was caught in the widespread net of arrests and spent
several painful and indignant months in the Montreal jail, demanding
release, but in vain. Incarceration for a political offence is a rare
event in the career of a chief justice and an English baronet, as this
prisoner was to be later. Arrested on suspicion, he was released
without trial. On the tragic collapse of the extremists LaFontaine
became the hope of the moderate men among the French-Canadian
politicians. Like the most of his compatriots, he was strongly opposed
to the union of the Canadas, as threatening the extinction of his
nationality; but seeing no possible alternative to union, he made it
his fixed policy to win, by constitutional methods, whatever could be
won for his people. In appearance he was strikingly like the first
Napoleon, the resemblance being noticed by the old soldiers, when he
visited the Htel des Invalides at Paris. A contemporary cartoon,
representing him flinging money to the habitants, shows the likeness,
even to the lock of hair on the forehead, more plainly than his
portrait. His few years of leadership in parliament, though of great
importance to the country, formed only an episode in a larger legal
career.

In the elections of 1841 LaFontaine was defeated; it is said, by
illegal methods. Baldwin was returned for two constituencies, York and
Hastings, and Hincks for Oxford, on the strength of his articles in
the _Examiner_. Bitterly disappointed as LaFontaine was at his defeat
and the means by which it was accomplished, he could see no hope of
redress except by constitutional means. For the present he could do no
more than protest angrily at the injustice. He was, however, not long
excluded from the House. Through the good offices of Baldwin he was
elected for the fourth riding of York, an act of courtesy and common
sense which was not to lose its reward.

Such was the posture of affairs when Sydenham died.

[Illustration: SIR CHARLES BAGOT
From an engraving in the Dominion Archives]

The next governor-general of Canada was Sir Charles Bagot, the Tory
nominee of the now Tory government of Great Britain. Bagot's familiar
portrait in the full insignia of the Order of the Bath shows us the
hand-some, thoroughbred face of a typical English gentleman.
Although Queen Victoria doubted his ability for the post, her distrust
was unfounded. Bagot was a man of broad experience and calm wisdom. He
possessed poise and real kindness of heart, as well as real courtesy;
but he seems also to have been too sensitive to criticism and to
opposition. He reached Kingston, the seat of his government, in
January 1842. Visits to the various centres of Canada, according to
the practice of his predecessors, soon gave him an understanding of
popular opinion and feeling; and, although he was expected by the
extreme Conservatives to bring back the old, halcyon, _ante bellum_
days, he was most careful to follow the lines of Sydenham's policy.
Towards the French he was amiable and conciliatory and made several
appointments of French Canadians to positions of trust and emolument.
Ever ready to meet courtesy half-way, the French gave their new
governor their entire confidence.

During the eight months before parliament should reassemble Bagot
wisely set about learning for himself the actual conditions of his new
government. Like Sydenham, he was to act as his own prime minister,
and his initial difficulty was in forming a suitable Cabinet to act
with him. He offered Hincks the post of inspector-general,
corresponding in effect to minister of Finance, and Hincks accepted
it. He offered the post of solicitor-general to Richard Cartwright
(grandfather of the Sir Richard Cartwright of a later day), who
refused it because Hincks was in the Cabinet. The position was finally
filled by Henry Sherwood, who was, like Cartwright, a Conservative. To
LaFontaine the governor offered the attorney-generalship in the most
courteous terms, but, for a number of reasons, LaFontaine declined to
accept it. Bagot's plan was to form a coalition government, which
should embrace all interests; but the Reformers refused to take their
place in a Cabinet which contained men of the opposite party. So
William Henry Draper, who had acted under Sydenham, continued as
leader of a composite Cabinet under Bagot.

The House met at Kingston on September 8, 1842. In the game of Ins and
Outs the debate on the Address is recognized as a trial of strength,
as a method of ascertaining which party is in a majority. It was found
that the Draper government did not command the confidence of the
House; and, after a spirited fight, Draper resigned and made way for
a new ministry, led by LaFontaine and Baldwin. The principle involved,
which seems now the merest common sense, was then scouted as
government 'by dint of miserable majorities.' Sullivan was the senior
member in the new ministry, though it is known by the names of its
leaders. It included Hincks and five other members of the previous
Cabinet.

In accordance with another rule of the political game the new
ministers had to seek re-election. LaFontaine was peaceably returned
for his 'pocket borough' the fourth riding of York, but the candidacy
of Baldwin for Hastings had another issue. In those good old days of
open voting an election was no such tame affair as walking into a
booth and marking a cross on a piece of paper opposite a name. An
election lasted for days or even weeks. There was only one
polling-place for the district, and an election was rarely held
without an election row. It seems impossible that it is of Canada one
reads: 'A number of shanty-men having no votes were hired by Mr
Baldwin's party to create a disturbance. They did so and ill-treated
Mr Murney's supporters. The latter, however, rallied and drove their
dastardly assailants from the field. Two companies of the 23rd
Regiment were sent from Kingston to keep the peace, and polling was
most unjustly discontinued for one day.' Free fights between bands of
rival voters armed with clubs, swords, and firearms, injuries from
which men were not expected to recover, order restored by the
intervention of the military--these were no unusual incidents in an
old-time Canadian election. The contest in Hastings was of this
description, and Baldwin was defeated. He stood for election in the
second riding of York, and he was again defeated. Finally LaFontaine
did for him what he had done for LaFontaine. The French member for
Rimouski resigned his seat, and Baldwin was returned for it in January
1843. The French leader and the English leader had thus given
unmistakable proofs of their sincere desire to be friends and to work
together for the common weal. French and English were found at last
working in harmony, side by side. They had formed the first colonial
ministry on the approved constitutional model.

The new idea was fiercely assailed. To the British colonial partisan
of that day it seemed the height of absurdity to entrust the
government of the country to men who had done their best to wreck that
government but a few years before. The Tories would have been more
than human if they were not exasperated to see actual rebels like
Girouard, who fought with rebels at St Eustache, offered a position in
the Cabinet. They could not, as yet, accept the hard saying of
Macaulay: 'There is only one cure for the evils which newly-acquired
freedom produces, and that cure is freedom.' How would they have
regarded Britain's three years' war with the Dutch republics of South
Africa and the entrusting of them immediately afterwards to the Boers
and General Louis Botha? For accepting the principle of popular
government, that the majority must rule, Bagot was assailed with an
inhuman vehemence, which astounds the reader of the present day by its
venom and its indecency. Because the governor was a just man and
loyally followed constitutional usage, he was abused as a fool and a
traitor not only in the colony but in England. It is small wonder that
his health began to give way under the strain.

That historical first session of 1842 was very short; it lasted only
a month. Nor could it be said to have accomplished very much in the
way of actual legislation. The criticism of the opposition press was
not ill-founded--that there was much cry and little wool. That the
criticism was made at all shows how much was expected from the
establishment of a principle. Mankind has a pathetic faith in the
efficacy of political machinery, remade or remodelled, to grind out
happiness and bring in the Age of Gold. None the less, a great
political principle had been affirmed, and had been seen in triumphant
action. The new constitution was at last set on its legs, and, at
last, it really did begin to 'march.'

Shortly after the session closed Bagot's administration came to an
end. The governor was no longer young, and the factious opposition in
the colony and the want of support in England wrought upon his health
and spirits. The oncoming of the bitter Canadian winter tried severely
the shaken man. On medical advice he resigned his post, but when his
resignation was accepted he was too ill to travel. He too died at
'Alwington,' Kingston, on May 30, 1843; but the voice of rancorous
detraction was not hushed around his death-bed. 'Imbecile' and
'slave' were among the milder terms of abuse. Bagot was the second
governor in swift succession to render up his life in the discharge of
his duty. And he was not the last. It was as if some blight or curse
rested on the office which made it fatal to the holder. The Canadian
treatment of Bagot, a high-minded gentleman who honestly performed a
thankless task, should make every Canadian hang his head.

Bagot's successor was Sir Charles Metcalfe. He arrived at Kingston
from the American side on March 29, 1843, in a close-bodied sleigh
drawn by four greys. His experience must have been novel since he
landed at Boston and posted overland to reach the capital of the
colony. The whole country was still deep in snow and must have
presented the strangest aspect to a man who had spent his life in the
tropics. He was received at the foot of Arthur Street by an
enthusiastic concourse of citizens, with appropriate ceremony and
show. 'A thorough-looking Englishman with a jolly visage,' as he was
characterized by an eye-witness, he made a favourable first impression
upon the people of his government.

Metcalfe had received his training as a 'writer' in the old East India
Company and must have been a contemporary of Thackeray's Joseph
Sedley. He was born in India, at Lecture House, Calcutta, on January
30, 1785. Eleven years later he entered Eton, where he at once evinced
remarkable powers of application and a marked distaste for athletic
sports, two traits which would mark him off as an oddity from the herd
of English schoolboys. At the age of sixteen he was back in the land
of his birth. His was a distinguished career. By 1827 he had risen to
membership in the Supreme Council of India. Later he acted as
provisional governor-general, and obtained the Grand Cross of the
Bath. In 1838 he resigned his position and became governor of Jamaica.
Perhaps the most significant incident in his career was his fighting
as a volunteer in the storming of Deeg, on Christmas Day 1804. The
courage which sends a civilian into a desperate hand-to-hand fight, to
which he is not obliged to go, must be above proof. Metcalfe had no
pecuniary interest in his position. He was a wealthy man, who spent
far more than his official salary in the various ways a
governor-general is expected to bestow largesse. His 'jolly visage'
bore the marks of a cruel and incurable disease. He is still
remembered in India as the author of the bill which established the
freedom of the press. The historian Macaulay calls him 'the ablest
civil servant I ever knew in India.' Durham, Sydenham, Bagot,
Metcalfe--Britain had few more distinguished or more able servants of
the state; and they devoted all their powers, without a thought of the
cost to themselves, to solving a vital problem in the maintenance of
the Empire. Their more obvious rewards were obloquy and death.

[Illustration: SIR CHARLES METCALFE
After a painting by Bradish]

The misfortune of Metcalfe was that his entire political training had
been gained in governing subject races, Hindus in India and negroes in
Jamaica, races 'so accustomed to be trampled on by the strong that
they always consider humanity as a sign of weakness.' Now old, and
fixed in his mental set, autocratic as an Indian civil servant must
be, he came to deal with a rude, unlicked, white democracy, impatient
of control as Durham discovered, and acutely jealous of its rights. In
theory Metcalfe should have been most sympathetic, for in English
politics he was an advanced Whig, strongly in favour of such popular
measures as abolition of the Corn Laws, vote by ballot, the extension
of the franchise. Besides, he was honestly desirous of playing the
peacemaker. None the less, his administration was marked by a reaction
towards the old Tory state of affairs, and produced a ministerial
crisis which threatened to bring back the reign of Chaos and old
Night.

The primal difficulty lay in the governor's mental attitude. He saw
with perfect clearness what had already been done. Durham had
enunciated a theory, which Sydenham had put into effect by being his
own minister, and Bagot had followed resolutely in Sydenham's
footsteps. The group of colonial officials known as the Executive
Council had in the meantime tasted power. They now ventured to speak
of themselves as 'ministers,' as a 'cabinet,' as the 'government,' as
the 'administration'; and these terms, with their corollaries and
implications, had met with general acceptance. But Metcalfe considered
them inadmissible, as limiting too much the power of the governor,
and, as a consequence, the authority he represented. He was determined
not to be a mere figurehead on the ship of state; he would be
captain, in undisputed command. Theoretically, if he were to be guided
solely by the advice of the local ministry, he would be 'responsible'
to them instead of to his sovereign; his office would be a nullity,
and the difference between a colony and an independent state would
have disappeared. Theoretically Metcalfe and the Tory pamphleteers who
supported him were right in their contentions. Complete freedom to
manage its own affairs should, if logic were strictly followed,
separate the colony from the mother country; but the British genius
for compromise has met the difficulty in a thoroughly British way by
avoiding any precise and rigid definition of the relations existing
between the mother country and the daughter state. That 'mere
sentiment' should hold the two more firmly together than the most
deftly worded treaty or legal enactment is proved to the world in
these later days by the sacrifices of Canada to the common cause
during the Great War. But there was little reason for holding this
belief in the forties of the nineteenth century. Conflict between a
masterful governor like Metcalfe, accustomed to the old order, and
political leaders like Baldwin and LaFontaine, trying to bring in a
new order, was inevitable; their modes of thought were diametrically
opposed; the only question was when the clash should come.

The third session of the first parliament of Canada opened towards the
end of September 1843. In an Assembly of eighty-four members the party
of Reform numbered sixty, an overwhelming majority; for the
_rapprochement_ between the sympathetic parties of the two provinces
was now complete. The leader of the opposition was Sir Allan MacNab of
_Caroline_ fame, a typical soldier-politician, narrow but honest in
his views, and, like his countryman Alan Breck, a 'bonny fighter.' It
was a momentous session. Reform was firmly in the saddle at last. No
opposition could hope to defeat whatever measure the government might
choose to bring forward. Nor could the government be reproached, as
before, with merely talking and doing nothing. Much legislation of the
first importance stands to its credit. One of the measures passed at
this session provided that the seat of government should be removed
from Kingston to the commercial metropolis, Montreal. For how short a
time Montreal should have this honour, none could imagine or foresee.
By another wise measure placemen were removed from the Assembly; that
is to say, permanent officials, such as judges and registrars, could
not hold their positions and be members of parliament. For this
important change LaFontaine was responsible, as well as for another
bill which simplified the judicial system of Lower Canada. An attempt
was made to bridle the turbulence of Irish factions, which had brought
to Canada the long-standing, cankered quarrels of the Old World. A
bill was passed to suppress all secret societies except the
Freemasons. It was, of course, aimed straight at the Orange Society,
that vigorous politico-religious organization which preserves the
memory of a Dutch prince and of a battle he fought in the seventeenth
century. To this bill Metcalfe did not assent, but 'reserved' it, as
was his undoubted right, for the royal sanction. In the end that
sanction was not given, and the Act did not become law. The
'reserving' of this bill seems to have occasioned little comment; but,
as will be seen in a subsequent chapter, the refusal of another
governor to 'reserve' another bill caused a storm. Hincks, the man of
finance, gave the country 'protection' against the competition of the
American farmer, a political device which was destined to much wider
use. The all-important matter of education received the attention of
the Assembly. What had been done before was, most significantly, to
make provision for higher education by establishing 'grammar schools'
in the different districts, as foundations for the superstructure of a
university. It might have been called a provision for aristocratic
education. Now a measure became law for the better support of the
common schools. This was provision for democratic education, a
necessary corollary to popular government, for if Demos is to rule,
Demos cannot be left in ignorance; the peril of an ignorant ruler is
too frightful.

Then came the difficult problem of the provincial university. It is
interesting to note how the educational history of one Canadian
province is repeated in another. In Nova Scotia, King's College was
founded by the exiled Loyalists from the United States towards the end
of the eighteenth century. It was the child of the Church of England.
The first bishop of Nova Scotia secured for it the support of the
provincial Assembly. Naturally, it was modelled on the great English
university of Oxford, and, like the Oxford of that day, was designed
solely for the education of those within the pale of the national
church. But this provincial university, which has the honour of being
the oldest in the British dominions overseas, was supported by public
funds partly contributed by 'dissenters,' whose creed excluded them
from it. Only at the price of their religious principles could the
'dissenters' of Nova Scotia obtain the boon of higher education.
Therefore they set to work to found an independent 'academy' of their
own. In Upper Canada events marched down the same road. There, another
privileged 'King's College,' exclusively Anglican, was founded early
in the nineteenth century, and richly endowed with public lands. The
excluded 'dissenters' set about founding colleges of their own; and
thus Queen's College and Victoria College took their rise. Robert
Baldwin had the vision of a comprehensive state university, on a broad
non-denominational basis, in which all these colleges should be
component parts. He brought in a bill to found the University of
Toronto, a measure on which time has set its approving seal. The many
stately buildings which adorn Queen's Park, the long distinguished
roll of graduates, the noble group of affiliated colleges, Knox, St
Michael's, Trinity, Wycliffe, Victoria, attest the wisdom of Baldwin's
far-seeing measure. Bishop Strachan, the doughty Aberdonian champion
of Anglican rights and privileges, led a crusade against this 'godless
institution' and raised the cry of spoliation. The echoes of that
wordy warfare have even now hardly died away. Having failed to prevent
the founding of Toronto, the indefatigable bishop founded a new
Anglican university, Trinity, which in the fullness of time was merged
in the great provincial university. But this is to anticipate.
Baldwin's bill had reached its second reading, when the ministry blew
up.

In the end of November the inevitable clash occurred. Metcalfe was no
believer in responsible government as understood by the Reformers; and
he was determined to uphold the prerogative of the Crown. For one
thing, he was not going to surrender the right of appointment. He had
made several appointments without consulting his ministers. When, on
his own authority, he appointed a clerk of the peace, they determined
to make it a test case. They considered that, by ignoring them, he
had violated an important constitutional principle; and when they were
unable to convince him of this in a personal conference, they resigned
in a body (with a single exception) on November 26, 1843. This
produced what is known as the Metcalfe Crisis. In a formal statement
before the House the Reformers took the ground that they could not be
'responsible' for appointments made without their knowledge. The
governor was to act on their advice; but he had acted without giving
them a chance to advise him. Metcalfe, on the other hand, maintained
that the Reformers wanted him to surrender the patronage of the Crown
'for the purchase of parliamentary support.' He opposed patronage for
party purposes. Let the long history of political appointments since
that day, of patronage committees, attest that the governor was partly
in the right. The formal statements of both sides in the dispute were
at once made public and produced a popular furore, second in intensity
only to that which had led up to and attended the rebellion.
Sydenham's confidence that his work could not be undone by any
successor seemed for a time ill-founded.

The resignation of the ministry was only the opening gun in a
political campaign, the object of which was to drive the governor from
office. On laying the reasons for their action before the House the
ministry received an enthusiastic vote of confidence; but their
resignation took effect, and on the ninth of December the Assembly was
prorogued. Both parties then set the battle in array against the
coming election. An agitation of almost unparalleled violence began.
Public meetings, banquets, speeches, pamphlets, newspapers, all
contributed not so much to agitate as to convulse the country. For all
his easy manner Metcalfe was an indomitable fighter, and into this,
his last fight, he threw himself with an amazing energy. And he did
not have to fight alone. There was no little dislike for the
LaFontaine-Baldwin Cabinet and no slight exultation when it was
supposed to be 'dismissed' by a loyal and manly governor. There is no
doubt that in this struggle Metcalfe overstepped the metes and bounds
within which a colonial governor could rightly act. He abandoned any
attitude of official impartiality. He espoused the cause of one party,
and used his great influence to aid that party to power. In the
meantime he had no executive, or an executive of one; and all through
the summer of 1844 he was tireless in his efforts to persuade men of
standing to accept office under Draper. The crux of the situation was
to obtain French-Canadian support for an English Tory governor. One
prominent Frenchman after another was 'approached,' but without
success. Finally Metcalfe managed to scrape together a ministry which
included such noted French Canadians as 'Beau' Viger and D. B.
Papineau, a brother of the leader of '37. Then, having dissolved the
Assembly, the governor issued writs for a new election. That election
in the autumn of 1844 was attended with great riot and disorder. Both
sides resorted to violence. When the House assembled, it was found
that Metcalfe and the Tories had triumphed. The Reformers were in the
minority. While Lower Canada had returned LaFontaine with a strong
following, the western province had sent a phalanx to support the
governor. Among the other curiosities of this remarkable election was
the defeat of Viger by Wolfred Nelson, lately in arms against Her
Majesty's government. In this contest a young lawyer of Scottish
descent carried Kingston for the Tories. He was destined to go far.
His name was John Alexander Macdonald.

Metcalfe had triumphed, but he held power by a very narrow majority;
the parties stood forty-six to thirty-eight. In the usual trial of
strength--the election of a Speaker--Sir Allan MacNab was chosen by a
majority of only three votes. And yet Draper, that expert balancer on
the tight rope, managed to carry on a government under these
conditions for three full years. Perceiving that he must secure the
support of the French if his party was to survive at all, he adroitly
brought in favourite Reform measures as if they were his own, thus
cutting the ground from under his opponents' feet. For example,
English had been made the sole official language of the legislature.
Now, the astute party leader managed to get this obnoxious clause in
the Act of Union repealed. He even went further and endeavoured to win
over the French-Canadian party wholesale by offering desirable
positions; but in this intrigue he failed.

In the meantime the Act appointing a new capital had come into effect.
Kingston gave place to Montreal, for a season. The huge Ste Anne's
market building in the west of the city was turned into a parliament
house, destined to the fate of Troy. Here was held the session of
1844-45. Such legislation as was passed had no direct bearing on the
question of responsible government. Before the session ended news came
that the home government intended to raise the governor to the peerage
as Baron Metcalfe of Fern Hill. His brief two years in Canada formed
only an episode in the long career of a distinguished public servant.
He had made his name and spent his life in India. The contemplated
honour was well deserved; and it was designed by the home government
as recognition of his services to the state as a whole, rather than as
special approval of his administration of Canada. But so the Reformers
construed Metcalfe's elevation; and they were furious. Even the
moderate Baldwin was betrayed into unwonted vehemence. What would have
happened, if Metcalfe had remained in office, none can tell. Perhaps a
second civil war. But 'death cut the inextricable knot.' His deadly
disease returned after a delusive interval, as is its hideous custom.
His health failed; the cancer ate into his eye and destroyed the
sight. It was apparent that he could no longer perform the duties of
his office. He asked to be recalled; but the authorities at home,
knowing of his malady, had anticipated his desire. The courage that
sent the boy 'writer' into the deadly assault on Deeg sustained the
old proconsul through the slow torture of the months of life remaining
to him. He quitted Canada in November 1845, a dying man, and, to the
shame of Canada, amid the untimely exultation of his political
opponents. In less than a year he was dead. Macaulay composed his
epitaph. Metcalfe was a man of mark; and he had his share in building
up the British Empire. His name distinguishes a street in Ottawa and a
hall in Calcutta; and his statue stands in the former capital of
Jamaica.




CHAPTER IV

THE GREAT ADMINISTRATION


On Metcalfe's departure from Canada the administration passed into the
hands of Lord Cathcart, commander-in-chief of the forces. He was one
of the many fine soldiers who have had their part in the upbuilding of
Canada and whose services have received the very slightest
recognition. Of an ancient Scottish family, he had fought in the great
Napoleonic wars from Maida to Waterloo, where he had greatly
distinguished himself. After the peace he had turned his attention to
the study of natural science, and he had made some important
contributions to mineralogy. Cathcart held office from November 26,
1845, until January 30, 1847, some fourteen months. He wisely left
Canadian politics to Canadian politicians, and merely watched the
machinery revolve. At first he was merely administrator, but, on
danger threatening from the unsettled dispute over the Oregon
boundary, he was raised to the rank of governor-general.

[Illustration: CHARLES, EARL GREY
From the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence]

His successor was also a Scot, James Bruce, Earl of Elgin and
Kincardine, directly descended from the patriot king Robert the Bruce.
His father was the British ambassador who salvaged the 'Elgin marbles'
from the Parthenon and sold them to the nation, thus drawing down upon
himself the angry satire of Byron in 'The Curse of Minerva' and
'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.' The new governor-general was young,
poor, and able. Far more than his predecessors, he had enjoyed the
advantages of a regular education. At Eton he had Gladstone for a
school-mate, and at Oxford he was in the same college with Dalhousie,
the future governor-general of India. He was also distinguished in two
ways: he was a sincere Christian of the devout evangelical type, and
he had a gift of speech that would have been remarkable in any man,
but was remarkable most of all in a high official of a rather
tongue-tied race. His native gift of eloquence was carefully
cultivated and proved to be of great value in many points in his
public career. His family ties are interesting. His first wife, a Miss
Bruce, met a tragic fate. The vessel in which she accompanied her
husband to the West Indies was wrecked on the voyage out; she never
recovered from the shock and exposure, and died not long after. His
second wife was a daughter of Lord Durham and a niece of Earl Grey,
who was, in 1845, colonial secretary, and to whose influence Elgin
owed his appointment as governor-general. He was thoroughly well
qualified for the post. At the same time it was a way of providing for
a relative who was not rich. Like Metcalfe, Lord Elgin came to Canada
by way of Jamaica, which he had administered in the dark days that
followed the emancipation of the slaves. His broad training, his
Liberal politics, his family affiliations all predisposed him to
accept the rle which Metcalfe had definitely refused, the rle,
namely, of a constitutional governor-general, guided solely by the
advice of a ministry representing the majority in parliament. In other
words, Elgin had his mind made up to conform entirely to the principle
of responsible government as understood in the colony. He was not long
in the country before he made his intentions public; and to his fixed
policy he adhered through good report and through evil report, at no
small cost to himself, for never were a Canadian governor-general's
principles put to a more severe test.

Elgin reached Montreal in the end of January 1847, and was heartily
welcomed by both political parties. He, on his part, was ready to
admire the 'perfectly independent inhabitants' of this 'glorious
country,' whose demeanour was certainly not that of the recently
liberated slaves in his former satrapy. The 'independent inhabitants'
voted him 'democratic' for walking out to 'Monklands' in a blizzard,
when hardly any one else was stirring abroad. He was made welcome for
another reason. The experiment of popular government was not working
particularly well. The constitution did really 'march,' but with
ominous creakings and groanings, which seemed to threaten a complete
break-down. This must be the case with every government which tried to
perform its functions with but a small majority at its back. The
unanimous welcome accorded to the governor-general by both sides of
politics implied a belief that somehow or other he could find a way
out of the present difficulties and induce the governmental machine to
work smoothly. It was a faith in the efficacy of the god from the
machine The Draper government was growing weaker and weaker, being
continually defeated in the House, and consequently discredited before
the country. Its difficulties were increased by events outside of
Canada over which the government could have no control. The hideous
Irish famine of 1846-47 had its reaction upon Canada, for thousands of
starving emigrants tried to escape to the new land, and, after
enduring the long-drawn horrors of the middle passage, reached Canada
only to die like plague-stricken sheep of fever and sheer misery. The
monument at Grosse Isle does not tell half the shame and suffering of
that tragic time. And the Draper government showed no ability to cope
with the problem. At length, in December 1847, Lord Elgin dissolved
the House and a new election took place. It resulted in a complete
victory at the polls for the party of Reform. The leaders, Baldwin,
LaFontaine, and Hincks, were all returned. Only a handful of the other
party came back; but among them were Sir Allan MacNab and the young
Kingston lawyer, John A. Macdonald.

The new House met on February 25, 1848. In the trial of strength over
the Speakership the Reformers won. Sir Allan MacNab was again the
nominee of the Tories; Baldwin nominated his friend, Morin, who had
command of both French and English, a necessary qualification for the
presiding officer of a bilingual parliament. And Morin was chosen
Speaker by a large majority. In accordance with the rules the remnant
of the Draper ministry resigned, and LaFontaine and Baldwin formed a
new Cabinet. This is known in Canadian history as the 'Great
Administration,' which lasted until the retirement in 1851 of both the
noted leaders from public life. The distinction is well deserved, not
only on account of the high character of the leaders, and the value of
the political principles affirmed and put in practice, but also on
account of the permanent value of the legislative programme which it
carried to successful completion. The ensuing session was very short;
for time was needed to prepare the various important measures which
the Reformers intended to bring forward. The troubled year of European
revolution, 1848, was rather colourless in the annals of Canada; not
so the year which followed.

The eventful session of 1849 opened on the eighteenth of January, in a
parliament building improvised out of St Anne's market near what is
now Place d'Youville, Montreal. The Speech from the Throne announces a
programme of the more important measures to be brought before
parliament. In this case the Speech was a promise to deal with such
vital matters as electoral reform, the University of Toronto, the
improvement of the judicial system, and the completion of the St
Lawrence canals. It also contained two announcements most gratifying
to the French: first, that amnesty was to be offered to all political
offenders implicated in the troubles of '37-'38; and second, that the
clause in the Act of Union which made English the sole official
language had been repealed. The governor-general displayed his tact
and his goodwill by reading the Speech in French as well as in
English, a custom which has continued ever since.

A striking incident in the opening debate on the Address was the
passage at arms between LaFontaine and Papineau, between the new and
the old leader of French-Canadian political opinion. In '37 Papineau
had roused his countrymen to armed resistance of the government; but
he had wisely refrained from placing himself at the head of the
insurgents. Together with his secretary, O'Callaghan, he had
witnessed the fight at St Denis from the other side of the river, but
took no part in it. He had afterwards reached the American border in
safety. From the United States he had passed over to France, where he
had consorted with some of the advanced thinkers of the capital. In
1843 LaFontaine, by his personal exertions with Metcalfe, was able to
gain for his exiled chief the privilege of returning without penalty
to his native land. Papineau, however, did not avail himself of the
privilege until four years later; he found life in Paris quite to his
taste. A curious result of his return, a pardoned rebel, was his
claiming and receiving from the provincial treasury the nine years'
arrearage of salary due to him as Speaker in the old Assembly of Lower
Canada. In the elections of 1847 he stood for St Maurice, and he was
elected. In the new parliament he took the rle of irreconcilable; his
whole policy was obstruction. What he could not realize was, that
during his ten years of absence the whole country had moved away from
the position it had occupied before the outbreak of the rebellion;
and, in moving away, it had left him hopelessly behind. His only
programme was uncompromising opposition to the government which had
forgiven him, and the vague dream of founding an independent French
republic on the banks of the St Lawrence. In the brief session of 1848
he attempted, but without success, to block the wheels of government.
Now, in the second session, the fateful session of 1849, he delivered
one of his old-time reckless philippics denouncing the tyrannical
British power, the Act of Union--the very measure he was supposed to
have battled for--responsible government, and, above all, those of his
own race who supported the new order. LaFontaine took up the gauntlet.
His retort was as obvious as it was crushing. If the French Canadians
had refused to come in under the Act of Union, they would have been
depriving themselves of any share whatever in the government of their
country. If they had refused to come in, Papineau would not have been
permitted to return, or to sit once more as a legislator and a free
man in the national parliament. The reply was unanswerable, and it put
a period to the influence of Papineau. Foiled and discredited, the old
leader was never again to sway the masses of his countrymen as the
moon sways the tides. His day was done. None the less, the prestige
of his name drew after him a small following of the younger and more
ardent men to whom he taught the pure Radical doctrine. In _L'Avenir_,
the propagandist journal which he founded, he preached repeal of the
Union and annexation to the United States. Before long he abandoned an
arena in which he was no longer the great central figure for dignified
seclusion on his seigneury of Montebello beside the noble Ottawa.

In spite of all blind opposition a broad and enlightened programme of
legislation was carried out. Nearly two hundred measures, many of
prime importance, stand to the credit of this busy session. The vexed
question of a provincial university was finally settled. Baldwin's
bill for the founding of the University of Toronto, which had been
laid to one side by the Metcalfe crisis, was taken up again and
carried through all its stages to the status of a law. Conceived as
the apex and crown of a comprehensive scheme of education as broad as
the province, the University of Toronto more than met the hopes of its
founder. A straight road had been devised from the first class in the
common school to the highest department of collegiate instruction. The
needs of the democracy had not been neglected, but wise and ample
provision had been made for the ambitious and aspiring few. How
completely the university has justified its existence is attested by
the spectacle of both political parties competing with each other in
their benevolence towards an honoured, national foundation. By the
multiplying generations of Toronto graduates the name of Robert
Baldwin should be held in high esteem as of the man who made possible
the seat of learning they are so proud to name their _alma mater_.

Another wise measure for which Baldwin deserves no little praise is
the Municipal Corporations Act. The title has a dry, legal look, and
will suggest little or nothing to the general reader except, possibly,
red tape. Moreover, the system by which the subdivisions of the
country--the county, the township, the incorporated village--govern
themselves seems so obvious and works so smoothly in actual practice
that it seems part of the order of nature, and must have existed from
the time beyond which the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.
But the present extended system of home rule in Canada did not descend
from heaven complete, like the Twelve Tables. It was a gradual
growth, or evolution, from the old system, by which the local justices
of the peace, sitting in quarter sessions, assessed the local taxes,
with the difference that it was not an unconscious growth. The plant
set by Sydenham's hand was tended, cultivated, and brought to maturity
by Baldwin. The measure, as it became law in 1849, has proved to be of
the greatest practical value; it has won the approval of competent
critics; and it has served as a model for the organization of other
provinces. Commonplace and humdrum as this measure may seem to
Canadians in the actual domestic working of it, there are other parts
of the Empire--Ireland, for example--which were to lag long behind.
The lack of such privileges is a grievance elsewhere. Even to-day, the
rural districts of England have not as extensive powers of
self-government as the counties of Ontario. If the farmers of the
Tenth Concession had to go to Ottawa and see a bill through the House
every time they wanted a new school, if they had months of waiting for
proper authorization, not to mention expenses of legislation to meet,
they might appreciate more keenly the advantages they enjoy in virtue
of this forgotten Act of 1849. The lover of the picturesque will not
regret that terms with the historic colour of 'reeve' and 'warden'
were made part and parcel of a democratic system in the New World.

It was a session of constructive statesmanship. The judicial system of
the province needed to be revised, extended, and simplified; and these
things were done. The economic condition of Canada was anything but
satisfactory. For years the country had 'enjoyed a preference' in the
British markets, in accordance with the old, plausible theory that
mother country and colony were best held together by trade
arrangements of mutual advantage, by which the colony should supply
the mother country with raw material and the mother country should
supply the colony with manufactured products. Suddenly all Canada's
business was dislocated by Peel's adoption of free trade in 1846. In
consequence Canada had no longer any advantage in the British market
over the rest of the world, and Canadian timber-merchants and
grain-growers had an undoubted grievance. The general commercial
depression, which had set in at the time of the rebellions, became
worse and worse. Lord Elgin's often-quoted words picture the
deplorable state of the country: 'Property in most of the Canadian
towns, and more especially in the capital, has fallen fifty per cent
in value within the last three years. Three-fourths of the commercial
men are bankrupt, owing to free trade; a large proportion of the
exportable produce of Canada is obliged to seek a market in the United
States. It pays a duty of twenty per cent on the frontier. How long
can such a state of things be expected to endure?' For a remedy the
active mind of Hincks turned to the obvious alternative of the British
market, the natural market just across the line; and he opened up
negotiations with the United States looking towards reciprocal trade.
He could scarcely obtain a hearing. The way was blocked by the
complete indifference of the United States Senate towards the whole
project. Not until five years later did relief come; and it came
through the initiative and personal diplomacy of Lord Elgin. To him
belongs the credit for the famous Reciprocity Treaty of 1854. This
signifies that for the twelve years during which the treaty was in
force the artificial barriers to the currents of trade between
adjacent countries were, to a large extent, removed, certainly to the
great advantage of all British North America. It was a unique period
in Canadian history. Never before had the trade relations between
Canada and the United States been so friendly, and never have they
been so friendly since.

In another great enterprise of national importance Hincks was more
successful. The forties of the nineteenth century saw the first great
era of railway building. This novel method of transportation was
perceived to have immense undeveloped possibilities. In Britain, where
steam traction was invented, companies were formed by the score and
lines were projected in every direction. It was a time of wild
speculation, in which emerged for the first time the new type of
company promoter. From England the rage for railways spread to the
Continent and to America. While Hincks was working at the problem in
Canada, Howe was working at it in Nova Scotia. To link the East with
the West, Montreal with Toronto, Montreal with the Atlantic seaboard,
Montreal with the Lake Champlain waterways to the southward, was the
general design of the first Canadian railways. It was in this period
that the first sections were built of those Canadian lines which, in
half a century, have grown into immense systems radiating across the
continent. Hincks's idea was to aid private enterprise by government
guarantees of the interest on half the cost of construction. Canada is
now laced with iron roads from ocean to ocean. The man who laid the
foundation of these immense systems in the day of small beginnings
should never be forgotten.

So the busy session went on, until a measure was introduced which
aroused a storm of opposition, threatened a renewal of civil war, and
tested the principle of responsible government almost to the breaking
strain. This was the Act of Indemnification, a part of the bitter
aftermath of the rebellion twelve years before.

War, even on the smallest scale, means the destruction of property. In
the troubles of '37 buildings were burned down in the course of
military operations. For example, good Father Paquin of St Eustache
had long to mourn the loss of his church and the adjoining school. As
it stood on a point of land at the junction of two streams and was
strongly built of stone, it was an excellent place of defence against
the attack of Colborne's troops. On the fatal fourteenth of December
1837 it was stoutly held by Chnier and his men, until two British
officers broke into the sacristy and overset the stove. Soon the fire
drove the garrison out of the building, which was destroyed along with
the new school-house near by. His parishioners were loyal, Father
Paquin contended in a well-reasoned petition; it was not they but the
discontented people of Grand Brul who had seized the town; yet the
result was ruin. In the affair of Odelltown in 1838 a citizen's barn
was burnt down by orders of the British officer commanding because it
gave shelter to the rebels. Near St Eustache the Swiss adventurer and
leader of the rebels, Amury Girod, took possession of a farm belonging
to a loyal Scottish family. His men cut down the trees about the
farm-house, fortified it rudely, and lived in it at rack and manger
until Colborne came to St Eustache. These were typical cases of loss,
and surely, when order was again restored, they were cases for
compensation. The loyal and the innocent should not have to suffer in
their goods for their innocence and their loyalty.

Claims for compensation were made early. In the very year of the
rebellion the Assembly of Upper Canada passed an Act appointing
commissioners to inquire into the amount of damage done to the
property of loyal citizens; and in the following year it voted a sum
of 4000 to make good the losses. Men were paid for a cow driven off,
or for an old musket commandeered. The Special Council of Lower Canada
made similar provision, as was only natural and right; but its task
was much harder than that of the Assembly's. Clearly, the property of
loyalists destroyed or injured during the civil strife should be made
good. This was mere justice. It was equally clear that the property of
open rebels which had been destroyed or injured should _not_ be made
good. But there was a third category not so easy to deal with. There
were those who were not openly in rebellion, but who were grievously
suspect of sympathy with declared insurgents of their own race and
religion. How far sympathy might have become aid and comfort to
opponents of the government was hard to say. The village of St
Eustache, for example, was set on fire the night following the fight;
the troops turned out in the bitter cold to fight the fire, but did
not master it until some eighty houses were burned. What claim could
the owners have upon the government for their losses? In the winter of
1838 the sky was red with the flames of burning hamlets, says the
_Montreal Herald_.

The law's delay is proverbial. Compensatory legislation dragged its
slow length along for years, and the loyalists who had suffered in
their pocket saw session after session pass, and their claims still
unsatisfied. In 1840 the Assembly of Upper Canada passed an Act
authorizing the expenditure not of four thousand, but of forty
thousand pounds, to indemnify the loyalists who had lost by the
'troubles.' However, as the Assembly, at the same time, forbore to
provide any funds for the purpose, the Act remained with the force of
a pious wish. The claimants for compensation were none the better for
it. Then came the union of the Canadas. Five more years rolled away,
and, in spite of the usual siege operations of those who have money
claims against a government, nothing was done. The various barns and
cows and muskets were still a dead loss. Then in 1845 the Tory
administration of Draper put the necessary finishing touch to the
quaker act of 1840 by providing the sum of money required. By drawing
on the receipts from tavern licences collected in Upper Canada over a
period of four years, the government was in the possession of 38,000
for this specific purpose. But, after the Union, it was manifestly
unjust to pay rebellion losses, as they came to be known, in Upper
Canada and not in Lower Canada. The Reformers of Lower Canada pointed
out with emphasis the manifest injustice of such a proceeding. It
therefore became necessary to extend the scope of the Act.
Accordingly, in November 1845, a commission consisting of five persons
was appointed to investigate the claims for 'indemnity for just losses
sustained' during the rebellion in Lower Canada. This commission was
instructed to distinguish between the loyal and the rebellious, but,
in making this vital distinction, they were not to 'be guided by any
other description of evidence than that furnished by the sentences of
the courts of law.' The commission was also given to understand that
its investigation was not to be final. It was to prepare only a
'general estimate' which would be subject to more particular scrutiny
and revision. Appointed in the end of November 1845, the commission
had finished its task and was ready to report in April 1846. Its
'general estimate' was a handsome total of more than 240,000; it gave
as its opinion that 100,000 would cover all the 'just losses
sustained.' Of the larger amount, it is said that 25,000 was claimed
by those who had actually been convicted of treason by court-martial.
Not unnaturally an outcry rose at once against taking public money to
reward treason. The report could not very well be acted upon; and the
government voted 10,000 to pay claims in Lower Canada which had been
certified before the union of the provinces. Another delay of three
years followed, until LaFontaine took the matter up in the session of
1849.

His general idea was simply to continue and complete the legislation
already in force, in order to do justice to those who had 'sustained
just losses' in the 'troubles' of '37 and '38. The bill provided for a
new commission of five, with power to examine witnesses on oath. In
accordance with the finding of the previous commission, the total sum
to be expended was limited to 100,000. If the losses exceeded that
sum, the individual claims were to be proportionally reduced. The
necessary funds were to be raised on twenty-year debentures bearing
interest at six per cent. LaFontaine introduced and explained the
bill, and Baldwin supported it in a brief speech. It was easy enough,
with their unbroken majority, to vote the measure through; but the
storm of opposition it raised might have made less determined leaders
hesitate or draw back.

The vehemence of the opposition was not due merely to the readiness
with which the faction out of power will seize on the weak aspects of
a question in order to embarrass the government. Such sham-fight
tactics are common enough and may be rated at their proper value. The
leaders of the British party were sincere in their belief that the
success of this measure meant the triumph of the French and the
reversal of all that had been done to hold the colonies for the Empire
against rebels whose avowed purpose was separation. Twelve years had
gone by since they had failed in the overt act. Now Papineau was back
in the House, about to receive his arrears of salary as Speaker. In
Elgin's eyes he was a Guy Fawkes waving flaming brands among all sorts
of combustibles. Mackenzie, like the others, had been granted amnesty
and was about to return to Canada. Wolfred Nelson, who had resisted
Her Majesty's forces at St Denis, was to have his claim for damages
considered. It was not in the flesh and blood of politicians to endure
all this; and before condemning the opposition to this bill, as is the
fashion with Canadian historians, we might ask what we should have
done ourselves in such circumstances. What the Tories did was to raise
the war-cry, 'No pay to rebels.' It resounded from one end of the
province to the other and roused to life all the passion that had
slumbered since the rebellion.

[Illustration: SIR LOUIS H. LAFONTAINE
After a photograph by Notman]

In the debate on the second reading of the bill a scene almost without
parallel took place on the floor of the House. The Tories taunted the
French with being 'aliens and rebels.' Blake, the solicitor-general
for Upper Canada, retorted the charge, and accused the Tories of being
'rebels to their constitution and country.' In a rage Sir Allan MacNab
gave him 'the lie with circumstance,' and the two honourable members
made at each other. Only the prompt intervention of the
sergeant-at-arms prevented actual assault. The two belligerents were
taken into his custody. Some of the excited spectators who hissed and
shouted were also taken into custody; and the debate came to a sudden
end that day. Those were the days of 'the code,' and why a 'meeting'
was not 'arranged' and why Sir Allan did not have an opportunity of
using his silver-mounted duelling pistols is not quite clear. The
tempers of our politicians have much improved since that violent scene
occurred. No slur on the word of an honourable gentleman, no
imputation of falsehood, would now be so hotly resented in our
legislative halls.

The violence and the excitement which prevailed in parliament were
repeated and intensified throughout the country. Everything that could
be effected by public meetings, petitions, protests, was done to
prevent the bill from passing, or, if it passed, to prevent the
governor-general from giving his assent to it, or, as a last resource,
to induce the Queen to disallow the obnoxious measure. The whole
machinery of agitation was set in motion and speeded up, to prevent
the bill becoming law. 'Demonstrations'--in plain English, rows--took
place everywhere. Sedate little Belleville was the scene of fierce
riots. Effigies of Baldwin, Blake, and Mackenzie were paraded through
the streets of Toronto on long poles 'amid the cheers and exultations
of the largest concourse of people beheld in Toronto since the
election of Dunn and Buchanan.' Finally the effigies were burned in a
burlesque _auto-da-f_. This ancient English custom was a milder
method of expressing political disapproval than the native American
invention of tar-and-feathers; but it seems to have been equally
soothing to the feelings. An outside observer, the _New York Herald_,
expected the disturbance to end in 'a complete and perfect separation
of those provinces from the rule of England'; but in those days
American critics were always expecting separation.

No clearer mirror of the crisis is to be found than in the words of
the man on whom lay the heaviest responsibility, the governor-general
himself. This is his private opinion of the bill: 'The measure itself
is not free from objection, and I very much regret that an addition
should be made to our debt for such an object at this time.
Nevertheless I must say I do not see how my present government could
have taken any other course.' He also calls it 'a strict logical
following out' of the Tory party's own acts; and he has 'no doubt
whatsoever that a great deal of property was wantonly and cruelly
destroyed at that time in Lower Canada.' He was petitioned to dissolve
parliament if the bill should pass; his judgment on this alternative
runs: 'If I had dissolved parliament, I might have produced a
rebellion, but most assuredly I should not have produced a change of
ministry.' The other alternative of reserving the bill seemed, as he
balanced it in his mind, cowardly. He would create no precedent. Bills
had been reserved before, and had been refused the royal sanction; to
reserve this one would be no departure from established custom; but,
he writes to Lord Grey, 'by reserving the Bill, I should only throw
upon Her Majesty's Government . . . a responsibility which rests, and
ought, I think, to rest, on my own shoulders.' The sentences which
follow evince an ideal of public service that can only be called
knightly. The executive head of the government was ready to face
failure and disgrace, to the ruin of his career, rather than shirk the
responsibility which was really his. 'If I pass the Bill, whatever
mischief ensues may possibly be repaired, if the worst comes to the
worst, by the sacrifice of me. Whereas if the case be referred to
England, it is not impossible that Her Majesty may have before her the
alternative of provoking a rebellion in Lower Canada . . . or of
wounding the susceptibilities of some of the best subjects she has in
the province.' From the first Elgin had firmly made up his mind to
fill the rle of constitutional governor; he believed that the best
justification of Durham's memory, and of what he had done in Canada,
would be a governor-general working out fairly the Dictator's views of
government. Although he had definitely made up his mind what course of
action to follow, he was never betrayed into committing himself before
the proper time. Deputations waited on him with provocative addresses;
but none was cunning enough to snare him in his speech. The
'sacrifice' came soon enough.

In spite of all the furies of opposition within the House and out of
it, the Indemnity Bill passed by a majority of more than two to one.
The next question was what would Lord Elgin do? Would he give his
assent to the bill, the finishing vice-regal touch which would make it
law, or would he reserve it for Her Majesty's sanction? Some unnamed
persons of respectability had a shrewd suspicion of what he would do,
as the sequel proved. An accident hastened the crisis. In 1849 the
navigation of the St Lawrence opened early; and on the twenty-fifth of
April the first vessel of the season was sighted approaching the port
of Montreal. In order to make his new Tariff Bill immediately
operative on the nearing cargo, Hincks posted out to 'Monklands,' Lord
Elgin's residence, in order to obtain the governor-general's formal
assent to this particular bill. The governor did as he was asked. He
drove in from 'Monklands' in state to the Parliament House for the
purpose. The time seemed opportune to give his assent to several other
bills. Among the rest he assented in Her Majesty's name to the 'Act to
provide for the indemnification of parties in Lower Canada whose
property was destroyed during the Rebellion of 1837 and 1838.' What
happened in consequence is best told in his own words. 'When I left
the House of Parliament, I was received with mingled cheers and
hootings by a crowd by no means numerous, which surrounded the
entrance of the building. A small knot of individuals consisting, it
has since been ascertained, of persons of a respectable class in
society, pelted the carriage with missiles which they must have
brought with them for the purpose.' The 'missiles' which could not be
picked up in the street were rotten eggs. One of them struck Lord
Elgin in the face. That was the Canadian method of expressing
disapproval of a governor-general for acting in strict accordance with
the principles of responsible government. But this was only part of
the price he had to pay for doing right. Worse was to follow.

Immediately after this outrage a notice was issued from one of the
newspapers calling an open-air meeting in the Champ de Mars. Towards
evening the excitement increased, and the fire-bells jangled a tocsin
to call the people into the streets. The Champ de Mars soon filled
with a tumultuous mob, roaring its approbation of wild speeches which
denounced the 'tyranny' of the governor-general and the Reformers. A
cry arose, 'To the Parliament House!' and the mob streamed westward,
wrecking in its passage the office of Hincks's paper the _Pilot_. The
House was in session, and though warned by Sir Allan MacNab that a
riot was in progress, it hesitated to take the extreme step of
calling out the military to protect its dignity. At this time the
whole police force of the city numbered only seventy-two men, and, in
emergencies, law and order were maintained with the aid of the
regiments in garrison, or by a force of special constables. Soon the
House found that Sir Allan's warning was against no imaginary danger.
Volleys of stones suddenly crashed through the lighted windows, and
the members fled for their lives. The rabble flowed into the building
and took possession of the Assembly hall. Here they broke in pieces
the furniture, the fittings, the chandeliers. One of the rioters, a
man with a broken nose, seated himself in the Speaker's chair and
shouted, 'I dissolve this House.' It seems like a scene from a Paris
_meute_ rather than an actual event in a staid Canadian city. Soon a
cry was heard, 'The Parliament House is on fire.' Another band of
rioters had set the western wing alight, and, in a quarter of an hour,
the whole building was a mass of flames. Although the firemen turned
out promptly, they were forcibly prevented by the mob from doing their
duty, until the soldiers came to their support, and then it was too
late to save the building. Next day only the ruined walls were
standing. The Library of Parliament was burned in spite of efforts to
save it, and the student of Canadian history will always mourn the
loss of irreplaceable records and manuscripts in that tragic blaze.
One thing was rescued. Young Sandford Fleming and three others carried
out the portrait of the Queen. It was almost as gallant an act as
rescuing the Lady in person.

Nor was the destruction of the Parliament Building the final outbreak.
Next evening the mob was at its work again, attacking the houses or
lodgings of the various Reform leaders. LaFontaine's government
ordered the arrest of four ringleaders in the last night's riot. In
revenge his house was entered forcibly, the furniture smashed, the
library destroyed, and the stable set on fire. In fact, for three days
Montreal was like a city in revolution. A thousand special constables,
armed with pistols and cutlasses, in addition to the soldiery were
needed to restore something like order in the streets. But the rioting
was not over even yet. The most violent scene of all took place on the
thirtieth of April. The House was naturally incensed at the insults
offered to the governor-general, and drew up an address expressing
the members' detestation of mob violence, their loyalty to the Queen,
and their approval of his just and impartial administration. It was
decided to present the address to him, not at the suburban seat of
'Monklands,' but publicly at Government House, the Chteau de Ramezay
in the heart of the city. Such a decision showed no little courage on
both sides, but the end was almost a tragedy. Lord Elgin came very
near being murdered in the streets of Montreal. On the day appointed
he drove into the city, having for escort a troop of volunteer
dragoons. All through the streets his carriage was pelted with stones
and other missiles, and his entry to Government House was blocked by a
howling mob. His escort forced the crowd to give way, and the
governor-general entered, carrying with him a two-pound stone which
had been hurled into his carriage. It was a piece of unmistakable
evidence as to the treatment the Queen's representative in Canada had
received at the hands of Her Majesty's faithful subjects. When the
ceremony was over he attempted to avoid trouble by taking a different
route back to 'Monklands,' but he was discovered, and literally hunted
out of the city. 'Cabs, calches, and everything that would run were
at once launched in pursuit, and crossing his route, the
governor-general's carriage was bitterly assailed in the main street
of the St Lawrence suburbs. The good and rapid driving of his
postilions enabled him to clear the desperate mob, but not till the
head of his brother, Colonel Bruce, had been cut, injuries inflicted
on the chief of police, Colonel Ermatinger, and on Captain Jones,
commanding the escort, and every panel of the carriage driven in.'
Even at 'Monklands' Lord Elgin was not entirely safe. The mob
threatened to attack him there, and the house was put in a state of
defence. Ladies of his household driving to church were insulted. To
avoid occasion of strife he remained quietly at his country-seat; and,
for his consideration of the public weal, was ridiculed, caricatured,
and dubbed, in contempt, the Hermit of Monklands.

The riots did not end without bloodshed. Once more the rioters
attacked LaFontaine's house by night; shots were fired from the
windows on the mob, and one man was killed. The appeal to racial
passion was irresistible. A man of British blood had been slain by a
Frenchman. The funeral of the chance victim was made a political
demonstration. LaFontaine was actually tried for complicity in the
accident, but was acquitted. Montreal underwent something like a Reign
of Terror; a murderous clash between French and English might come at
any moment. Elgin was urged to proclaim martial law and put down mob
rule by the use of troops. Wisely he refused to go to such extremes.
The city authorities themselves should restore order, and at last they
did so with their thousand special constables. Those April riots of
'49 cost Montreal the honour of being the capital of Canada, and
ultimately caused the transformation of queer little lumbering Bytown
into the stately city of Ottawa, proudly eminent, with the halls of
legislature towering on the great bluff above the glassy river.

Of Elgin's conduct during this long-drawn ordeal it is almost
impossible to speak in terms of moderate praise. He must have been
less or more than human not to feel bitterly the insults heaped upon
him. The natural man spoke in the American who 'could not understand
why you did not shoot them down'; and also in the Canadian who 'would
have reduced Montreal to ashes' before enduring half that the governor
endured. But Elgin acted not as the natural man, but as the Christian
and the statesman. He refused to meet violence with violence; and he
refused to nullify the principles of popular government by bowing
before the blast of popular clamour. But a more unpopular
governor-general never held office in Canada.




CHAPTER V

THE PRINCIPLE ESTABLISHED


The storm raised by the Rebellion Losses Bill did not soon sink to a
calm. It did not end with rabbling the viceroy, burning the House of
Parliament, homicide, and mob rule in the streets of Montreal. In the
British House of Commons the whole matter was thoroughly discussed.
Young Mr Disraeli, the dandified Jewish novelist, held that there were
no rebels in Upper Canada, while young Mr Gladstone, 'the rising hope
of those stern and unbending Tories,' proved that there were virtual
rebels who would be rewarded for their treason under the Canadian
statute. In a letter to _The Times_ Hincks showed, in rebuttal, that
rebels in Upper Canada had already received compensation by the Act of
a Tory government. Who says A must also say B. Between the arguments
of Gladstone and Hincks it is perfectly clear that the Rebellion
Losses Bill was anything but a perfect measure. Its passage had one
more important reaction, the Annexation movement of 1849.

This episode in Canadian history is usually slurred over by our
writers. It is considered to be a national disgrace, a shameful
confession of cowardice, like an attempt at suicide in a man. It did
undoubtedly show want of faith in the future. Those who organized the
movement did 'despair of the republic.' But it is possible to blame
them too much. Annexation to the United States was in the air. Lord
Elgin writes that it was considered to be the remedy for every kind of
Canadian discontent. He was haunted by the fear of it all through his
tenure of office. Annexation had been preached by the Radical journals
for years in Canada; and it was confidently expected by politicians in
the United States. As late as 1866 a bill providing for the admission
of the states of Upper Canada, Nova Scotia, etc., to the Union passed
two readings in the House of Representatives. The Dominion elections
of a quarter of a century later (1891) gave the death-blow to the
notion that Annexation was Canada's manifest destiny; but the idea
died hard.

Action and reaction are equal and opposite. Embittered by defeat, the
very party that had stood like a rock for British connection now moved
definitely for separation. The circular issued by the Annexation
Association of Montreal is a document too seldom studied, but it
repays study. In tone it is the reverse of inflammatory; it is
markedly temperate and reasonable. After a dispassionate review of the
present situation, it considers the possibilities that lie before the
colony--federal union, independence, or reciprocity with the United
States. All that Goldwin Smith was to say about Canada's manifest
destiny is said here. His ideas and arguments are perfectly familiar
to the Annexationists of '49. The appeal at the close contains this
sentence:

     Fellow-Colonists, We have thus laid before you our
     views and convictions on a momentous
     question--involving a change which, though contemplated
     by many of us with varied feelings and emotions, we all
     believe to be inevitable;--one which it is our duty to
     provide for, and lawfully to promote.

There were those who protested against Annexation; but they were
denounced as 'known monopolists and protectionists.' One speaker
said: 'Were it necessary I might multiply citation on citation to
prove that England considers, and has for years considered, our
present relations to her both burdensome and unprofitable.' Another
said: 'It is admitted, I may almost say, on all hands, that Canada
must eventually form a portion of the Great American Republic--that it
is a mere question of time.' There follows a list of some nine hundred
names, beginning with John Torrance and ending with Andrew Stevenson.
There are French names as well as English. Some bearers of those names
to-day are not proud of the fact that they are to be found in that
list. One Tory refused to sign the manifesto: his monument bears the
inscription, 'A British subject I was born, a British subject I will
die.'

The manifesto was supported by various pamphleteers and journalists.
Elgin records his fear of the 'cry for Annexation spreading like
wildfire through the province.' But it did not spread 'like wildfire.'
The original impulse, which may have been partly 'petulance,' seemed
to spend itself. Not all English opinion was in favour of 'cutting the
painter'; and one of the most determined opponents of Annexation was
that very alert politician, the young Queen. Equally determined was
the governor-general of Canada. 'To render Annexation by violence
impossible, and by any other means, as improbable as may be, is,' he
wrote, 'the polar star of my policy.' When he could, he showed clearly
enough what his policy was. The manifesto of the Annexationists
contained not a few names of men holding office under the government,
magistrates, queen's counsel, militia officers, and others. Elgin had
a circular letter sent to these eminently respectable persons holding
commissions at the pleasure of the Crown, asking pertinently if they
had really signed the document in question. Some affirmed, and some
denied; others, again, questioned the governor's right to make the
inquiry. He then removed from office all who did not disavow their
signatures as well as those who admitted them. His action had an
excellent effect and showed that he was no weakling. He was warmly
supported by the colonial secretary, Earl Grey. Hitherto he had been
only a peer of Scotland, but now, in token of the government's
approval, was made a peer of the United Kingdom. Soon the commercial
conditions, which had no small part in the political discontent,
began to mend.

[Illustration: THE EARL OF ELGIN
From a daguerreotype]

The services of Hincks to his adopted country at this time were of the
greatest value. A financier as well as a journalist, he was able to
secure the capital needed for the great public works, and to set the
resources of Canada before the British investor in a most convincing
way. The Welland Canal was completed; the era of railway development
began. Immigration increased and business began to lift its head. In
1849 the last of the old Navigation Laws, which forbade foreign ships
to trade with Canada, were repealed. They were an inheritance from the
imperialism of Cromwell, but were now outworn. Although the Maritime
Provinces did not benefit, the port of Montreal began to come to its
own, as the head of navigation. In 1850 nearly a hundred foreign
vessels sought its wharves.

The next session of parliament was held in Toronto, according to the
odd agreement by which that city was to alternate with Quebec as the
seat of government. Every four years the government with all its
impedimenta was to migrate from the one to the other. The Liberal
party was soon to find that a crushing victory at the polls and a
puny opposition in the House were not unmixed blessings. It began to
fall apart by its own sheer weight. A Radical wing, both English and
French, soon developed. The 'Clear Grit' party in Upper Canada was
moving straight towards republicanism, and so was Papineau's _Parti
Rouge_, with its organ _L'Avenir_ openly preaching Annexation.
Canadian eyes were still dazzled by the marvellously rapid growth of
the United States. American democracy was manifestly triumphant, and
Canada's shortest road to equal prosperity lay through direct
imitation. Salvation was to be found in the universal application of
the elective principle, from policeman to governor. This was before
the unforeseen tendencies of democracy had startled Americans out of
their attitude of self-complacent belief in it, and converted them
first into thoroughgoing critics, and then into determined reformers
of the system that they once thought flawless. The legislation of the
session of 1849-50 has still measures of value. Canada for the first
time assumed full control of her own postal system. The principle of
separate schools for Roman Catholics was confirmed, a measure which
reveals Canada in sharp contrast to the United States, where
sectarian teaching is excluded from a state-aided school system. Not a
single bill was 'reserved,' which the _Globe_ called a fact
'unprecedented in Canadian history.' The colony was now entirely free
to manage its own affairs, well or ill, to misgovern itself if it
chose to do so. Lord Elgin had almost laid down his life for this
idea; henceforth it was never to be called in question.

Two outstanding grievances were finally removed by the Great
Administration during this session. They were both land questions; one
afflicted the English, and the other the French, half of the province.
For a whole decade the grievance of the Clergy Reserves had slumbered;
now it came up for settlement. The Clergy Reserves were finally
secularized. Hincks, the astute parliamentary hand, led the House in
requesting the British parliament to repeal the Act of 1840. This was
the first step, preliminary to devoting the unappropriated land to the
maintenance of the school system. In voting on this measure LaFontaine
opposed, while Baldwin supported it. The divergence of opinion marked
the weakening of the ministry.

The other question, which affected French Canada, was the seigneurial
tenure of the land. The system was an inheritance from the time of
Richelieu. Unlike the English, who allowed their colonies to grow up
haphazard, the French, from the first, organized and regulated theirs
according to a definite scheme. Upon the banks of the St Lawrence they
established the feudal system of holding land, the only system they
knew. There were the seigneurs, or landlords, with their permanent
tenants, or _censitaires_. There were the ancient usages--_cens et
rentes_, _lods et ventes_, _droit de banalit_,[3] the seigneurs'
court, and so on. Seigneuries were also established in Acadia; but
they were bought out by the Crown about 1730, after the cession of
that province to Great Britain. In the opinion of such authorities as
Sulte and Munro the seigneurial system answered its purpose very well.
At first the French would not have it touched. In the troubles of '37
the simple habitants thought they were fighting for the abolition of
the seigneurs' dues. By the middle of the nineteenth century it had
become almost as complete an anomaly as trial by combat. But the
question of reform bristled with difficulties.

[Footnote 3: See _The Seigneurs of Old Canada_, chap. iv.]

Which were the rightful owners of the eight million arpents of
land--the seigneurs, or the _censitaires_? To whom should all this
land be given? Was there a third method, adjustment of rights with
adequate compensation? The Reformers were not agreed among themselves.
Some were for abolition of the seigneurs' rights: some were for
voluntary arrangement with the aid of law. LaFontaine was averse from
change, and Papineau, who was himself a seigneur, held by the ancient
usages. The whole question was referred to a committee, but all
attempts to deal with it during the sessions of 1850 and 1851 came to
nothing. Not until 1854 was definite action taken. All feudal rights
and duties, whether bearing on _censitaire_ or seigneur, were
abolished by law, and a double court was appointed to inquire into the
claims of all parties and to secure compensation in equity for the
loss of the seigneurs' vested interests. It took five years of patient
investigation, and over ten million dollars, to get rid of this
anomaly, but at last it was accomplished to the benefit of the
country. Says Bourinot, 'The money was well spent in bringing about so
thorough a revolution in so peaceable and conclusive a manner.'

Both these questions gave rise to differences of opinion in the
Cabinet. The Clear Grits, or Radical wing, were in constant
opposition, simply because the progress of Reform was not rapid
enough. William Lyon Mackenzie, once more in parliament, rendered them
effective aid. In June 1851 he brought in a motion to abolish the
Court of Chancery, which had been reorganized by Baldwin only two
years before and seemed to be working fairly well. Although the motion
was defeated Baldwin realized that the leadership of the party was
passing from him and his friends, and he resigned from office at the
end of the month. One of the pleasing episodes in the history of
Canadian parliaments was Sir Allan MacNab's sincere expression of
regret on the retirement of his political opponent. There are few
enough of such amenities. In October of the same year LaFontaine also
resigned, sickened of political life. A letter of his to Baldwin, as
early as 1845, lifts the veil. 'I sincerely hope,' he says, 'I will
never be placed in a situation to be obliged to take office again. The
more I see the more I feel disgusted. It seems as if duplicity,
deceit, want of sincerity, selfishness were virtues. It gives me a
poor idea of human nature.' This is not the utterance of a cynic, but
of an honest man smarting from disillusion. His exit from public life
was final. He was made chief justice for Lower Canada and presided
with distinction over the sessions of the Seigneurial Court. His
political career thus closed while he was yet a young man with years
of valuable service before him. Baldwin attempted to re-enter
political life. The resignation of the two leaders involved a new
election, and Baldwin was defeated in his own 'pocket borough' by
Hartman, a Clear Grit. That was the end. He retired to his estate
'Spadina,' his health shattered by his close attention to the service
of the state. He was an entirely honest politician, deservedly
remembered for the integrity of his life and his share in upbuilding
Canada. So the Great Administration reached its period.

It was succeeded by a ministry in which Hincks and Morin were the
leaders. The new parliament included a new force in politics, George
Brown, creator of the _Globe_ newspaper. A Scot by birth, a Radical in
politics, hard-headed, bitter of speech, a foe to compromise, with
Caledonian fire and fondness for facts, he soon commanded a large
following in the country and became a dreaded critic in the House. He
had disapproved of the late ministry for its failure to carry out the
programme approved by the _Globe_, especially the secularization of
the Clergy Reserves. He became the Protestant champion, the denouncer
of such acts as that of the Pope in dividing England into Roman
Catholic sees and naming Cardinal Wiseman Archbishop of Westminster,
and the pugnacious foe of 'French domination.' His activities did not
tend to draw French and English closer together. He lacked the gift of
his successful rival, John A. Macdonald, for making friends and
inspiring personal loyalty.

The Hincks-Morin government was a business man's administration. It is
noteworthy for its successful promotion of various railway, maritime,
and commercial enterprises. It aided in the establishment of a line of
steamers to Britain by offering a substantial subsidy for the carriage
of mails, a policy which has continued, with the approval of the
nation, to the present time. It was this ministry also which pushed
the building of the Grand Trunk, and ultimately succeeded in creating
a national highway from Rivire du Loup to Sarnia and Windsor. This
was the era of reckless railway speculation. Municipalities were
empowered to borrow money on debentures for railway building
guaranteed by the provincial government. Unfortunately they borrowed
extravagant sums and ran into debt, from which, at last, the province
had to rescue them. But, unlike what happened in the case of some of
the American states, there was no repudiation of debts by Canadian
municipalities.

The year 1851 is likewise famous for the Great Exhibition. Britain had
adopted free trade, to her great advantage. All the nations of the
world were expected to follow her example and remove the barriers to
commerce to the benefit of all. The freedom of intercourse between
nation and nation was to slay the jealousy and suspicion which lead to
war. To inaugurate the new era of peace and unfettered trade the
Crystal Palace was reared in Hyde Park--'the palace made of windies,'
as Thackeray calls it--and filled with the products of the world. The
idea originated with the Prince Consort, and it was worthy of him. For
the first time the various nations could compare their resources and
manufactures with one another. Canada had her share in it. As a
demonstration of general British superiority in manufactures the Great
Exhibition was a great success; but as heralding an era of universal
peace it was a mournful failure. Three years later England, France,
and Sardinia were fighting Russia to prop the rotten empire of the
Turk. Then came the Great Mutiny; then the four years of fratricidal
strife between the Northern and Southern States; then the war of
Prussia and Austria; then the overthrow of France by Germany. All
these events had their influence on Canada. The 100th Regiment was
raised in Canada for the Crimea. Joseph Howe went to New York on a
desperate recruiting mission. Nova Scotia ordained a public fast on
the news of the massacre of white women and children by the Sepoys.
Thousands of Canadians enlisted in the Northern armies. The Papal
Zouaves went from Quebec to the aid of the Pope against Garibaldi. All
these were symptoms that Canadians were beginning to outgrow their
narrow provincialism and to perceive their relations to the outer
world, and especially towards Britain. The country was reaching out
towards the rle which in our own day she has played in the Great
War.

Meanwhile Lord Elgin was playing his part as constitutional governor,
standing by his principle of accepting democracy even when democracy
went wrong. Though inconspicuous, he was always planning for the
benefit of the country he had in charge. He had visions of an Imperial
_zollverein_, but he perceived clearly the immense and immediate
advantages of freer trade relations between the British American
colonies and the United States. Those once attained, he thought the
danger of Annexation past. His activities in his last year of office
prove that a man of ability may be a strictly constitutional governor
and yet preserve a power of initiative, of almost inestimable value.
In 1853 Lord Elgin paid a visit to England, and while there obtained
full powers to negotiate with the United States. For several years
Hincks had been doing his best to induce the American government to
consider the question of reciprocity in natural products with Canada,
but without avail. Bills to this effect had even been introduced into
Congress; but they never got beyond the preliminary stages. New
England was inclined to favour the proposal, for agriculture was
declining there before the growth of manufactures. The South favoured
reciprocity rather than Annexation, for the 'irrepressible conflict'
between the slave states and the free states was every day coming
closer to observant eyes, and including Canada in the Union meant a
great accession of strength to the already populous North. Opposition
came from the farmers of the Northern states, who feared the
competition of a country, as yet, almost entirely devoted to
agriculture. General indifference, the opposition of a section,
combined with the feeling that Canada had nothing adequate to offer in
return for access to the huge American market, removed reciprocity
from the domain of practical politics. The scale was turned by the
codfish question.

Ever since the success of the Revolution the fishermen of New England
had a grievance against the British government and against the
colonies which did not revolt. They thought it most unjust that, as
successful rebels, they could not enjoy the fishing privileges of the
North Atlantic which they had enjoyed as loyal subjects. They wanted
to eat their cake and have their penny too. Of course no power on
earth could exclude them from the Banks, the great shoals in the open
sea, where fish feed by millions; but territorial waters were another
matter. By the law of nations the power of a country extends over the
waters which bound it for three miles, the range of a cannon shot, as
the old phrase runs. Now it is precisely in the territorial waters of
the British American provinces that the vast schools of mackerel and
herring strike. To these waters American fishermen had not a shadow of
a right; but Yankee ingenuity was equal to the difficulty and proposed
the question, Where does the three-mile limit extend? The American
jurists and diplomats insisted that it followed all the sinuosities of
the shore. If admitted, this claim would give American fishermen the
right of entrance to huge British bights and bays full of valuable
fish. The Canadian contention was that the three-mile limit ran from
headland to headland, thus excluding the Americans from fishing within
the deeper indentations of the coast-line. By the treaty of 1818 the
Americans were definitely excluded from the territorial waters, but
still they poached on Canada's preserves. It was maddening to Nova
Scotians to see aliens insolently hauling their nets within sight of
shore and taking the bread from their mouths. The Americans applied
the headland to headland rule to their own territorial waters; no
'Bluenose' fisherman could venture into the Chesapeake; but for the
'Britishers' to insist on the same rule was another matter. In 1852
the constant clash of interests almost led to war; for Britain backed
up the just complaints of her colonies by detaching a force of six
cruisers to protect our fisheries and stop the poachers, and the
American government also sent ships to protect their fishermen. There
was no further action, beyond a recommendation in the President's
message to Congress that the whole matter should be settled by treaty.

Such was the situation when Lord Elgin arrived at Washington in May
1854. His suite included Hincks and Laurence Oliphant, the writer,
whose humorous and satiric account of what he saw during the
negotiations makes most amusing reading. The diplomats reached the
American capital at one of the most dramatic moments of American
history. On the very day of their arrival the Kansas-Nebraska Bill
passed Congress. It meant the momentary triumph of the South and the
extension of slavery into the great _hinterland_ beyond the
Mississippi. The passage of the bill was celebrated by the salute of
a hundred guns; and, fearing trouble, legislators sat in the House
armed to the teeth.

Lord Elgin at once began operations which can hardly be distinguished
from an ordinary lobby. From Marcy, the secretary of state, he
ascertained that the kernel of opposition to reciprocity was the
Democratic majority in the Senate, and he set about cultivating the
Democratic senators. There was a round of pleasant dinners and other
entertainments, at which Lord Elgin shone. A British peer is always an
object of interest in a democracy. This one possessed most agreeable
manners, a charm to which Southerners are peculiarly susceptible, and
also an unusual gift of oratory which won him favour with a public
accustomed to the eloquence of Daniel Webster and Wendell Phillips.
These things told with the Democratic majority. That the treaty 'was
floated through on champagne' is an exaggeration; but there was
undoubtedly much hospitality shown on both sides and much good
fellowship. Ten days after his arrival at Washington Lord Elgin was
able to tell Mr Marcy that the Democrats would not oppose the treaty,
and on the fifth of June it was actually signed. Oliphant furnishes
most amusing details of the actual ceremony of appending the
signatures. It went into force only after it had been formally
ratified by the legislatures of Great Britain and the United States.
The most important provisions were as follows.

Natural products were to be admitted free of duty to both countries,
the principal being grain, flour, lumber, bread-stuffs, animals,
fresh, smoked and salted meats, lumber of all kinds, poultry, cotton,
wool, hides, metallic ores, pitch, tar, ashes, flax, hemp, rice, and
unmanufactured tobacco. In return the American fishermen obtained the
coveted privilege of fishing within the territorial waters of the
Maritime Provinces, without any restriction as to distance or
headlands. Canadians were accorded the right to fish in the depleted
American grounds, north of the 36th parallel N. latitude. Nova
Scotians were not pleased at these concessions, especially as they
were not allowed to share in the American coasting trade; but as trade
grew up and prices rose, their discontent naturally vanished.

The benefits accruing to Canada from the treaty were immediate and
plain to every eye. In the first year of its operation the value of
commodities interchanged between the two countries rose from an annual
average of fourteen million dollars to thirty-three millions, an
increase of more than one hundred per cent. The volume of trade rose
steadily at the rate of eight or nine millions per annum. When the war
broke out between the North and the South, prices jumped, and, during
the four years of the struggle, Canada had a greedy market for
everything she could produce. The benefit to both countries was
obvious. For the first time since the Revolution the currents of North
American trade flowed unchecked in their natural channels. Canada had
never known such a period of prosperity, and was never to know such
another, until the great West was opened up by the railways and until
immigrants began to flock in by hundreds of thousands, to draw from
the rich loam of the prairies the bountiful harvests of man-sustaining
wheat. Lord Elgin's pact held good for twelve years. In the last year
the volume of trade was more than eighty-four millions. The agreement
ended from a variety of causes, economic and political. Canada had
raised the tariff on American manufactures in order to meet her
increasing expenditure; and she tried to divert American commerce from
its regular routes to a profitable transit through Canadian territory.
But the chief cause was the bitterness of the United States at the
attitude of Britain during the Civil War. The _Trent_ affair, the
ravages of the _Alabama_ and other commerce destroyers, the open and
avowed sympathy with the South expressed in British journals and
elsewhere, convinced the American people that Britain would be glad to
see the Republic broken up. That, with such provocation, the Americans
should deprive a British colony of a commercial advantage was not
unnatural. One statesman even proposed that the whole of Canada should
be handed over to the United States in compensation for the _Alabama_
claims. That the treaty was negotiated at all, and that the experiment
in trade was so beneficial to both countries, has certain important
lessons. The episode proves that a colonial governor, while governing
in strict accordance with the constitution, can do for his government
what no one else can do. Lord Elgin's success has never been repeated.
Delegation after delegation of Canada's ablest politicians have
pilgrimed from Ottawa to Washington, seeking better trade relations,
with no result. The second lesson is the tendency of trade to mock at
political boundaries and to wed geography. Even now, with high tariffs
on both sides of the line, Canada spends fifty-one dollars in the
United States for every thirty-three she spends in England.

From his triumph at Washington the governor-general returned to Canada
to undergo another experience of democratic manners. The Hincks-Morin
government was nearing its end. Parliament had no sooner assembled in
the ancient capital, Quebec, than it was dissolved. In the political
tug-of-war known as the debate on the Address the government was
defeated. Instead of resigning, the leaders recommended the
governor-general to dissolve the House, so that there might be a new
election, and that the mind of the people might be ascertained on the
two great issues, the Clergy Reserves and Seigneurial Tenure. The
opposition contended that the ministry should either resign, or else
bring in some piece of legislation as a trial of strength. Lord
Elgin's position was precisely the same as in the time of the
Rebellion Losses Bill. He acted on the advice of his ministers. When
he came in state to prorogue the House, a most extraordinary scene
occurred. He was kept waiting for an hour while the parties wrangled,
and when Her Majesty's faithful Commons did present themselves, the
Speaker, John Sandfield Macdonald, read, first in English and then in
French, a reply to the Address which was a calculated insult to Her
Majesty's representative. The point of the reply was that, as no
legislation had been passed, there had been no session; and that this
failure to follow custom was 'owing to the command which your
Excellency has laid upon us to meet you this day for the purpose of
prorogation.' Sandfield Macdonald was an ambitious and vindictive man.
He was wrong, too, in his interpretation of the constitution. Hincks
had denied him a cabinet position which he coveted, and this was his
mode of retaliating upon him. None the less, the House was prorogued,
and the elections were held.

According to the old, bad custom, they were spread over several weeks,
instead of being held on a single day. The result was unfavourable to
the government. Representation had been increased, and out of the
total number of members returned the ministry had only thirty at its
back. The Conservatives numbered twenty-two, the Clear Grits seven,
Independents six, and _Rouges_ nineteen. Papineau was defeated and
retired to his seigneury. Hincks was returned for two constituencies.
In the election of the Speaker he very adroitly thwarted the ambition
of Sandfield Macdonald to fill that post; but, soon afterwards, the
ministry was defeated on a trifling question and resigned. Hincks was
afterwards knighted and made governor of Barbados and Guiana. He
returned to Canada in 1869 to be a member of Sir John Macdonald's
Cabinet. He made a fortune for himself and he had no small part in
making Canada. He died of smallpox in Montreal in 1885. His
_Reminiscences_ is an authority of prime importance for the history of
his times.

That consistent, life-long Tory, Sir Allan MacNab, became the head of
the new ministry. The attorney-general for Upper Canada was John A.
Macdonald. Six members of the old Reform Cabinet sat in the new
ministry side by side with four Conservatives. This signified the
formation of a new party in Canada, the Liberal-Conservative, an
exactly descriptive name, because it composed the best elements of
both parties. Under the leadership of John A. Macdonald it held power
for practically thirty years. That able politician, formed by
education in this country, not outside, perceived instinctively the
essential moderation of the Canadian temperament, and how alien to it
was the extravagance of _Rouge_ and Clear Grit. The national
temperament is cautious and bent to 'shun the falsehood of extremes.'
Under the dominance of the new-formed party the jarring scattered
provinces became one and grew to the stature of a nation.

Lord Elgin's reign was over. In the autumn of 1854 he made a tour of
the province and was everywhere received with unmistakable tokens of
appreciation and goodwill. He was right in thinking 'I have a strong
hold on the people of this country.' His administration represented
the triumph of a statesman's principle over every consideration of
convenience, popularity, and even safety. Thanks to his firmness and
his chivalrous conception of his office, government by the popular
will became established beyond shadow of change. To estimate the value
of his services to the commonwealth, one has only to imagine a Sir
Francis Bond Head in his place during the crisis of the Rebellion
Losses Bill. A weaker man would have plunged the country into anarchy,
or have paltered and postponed indefinitely the true solution of a
vital constitutional problem.

No governor of Canada was ever worse treated by the Canadian people;
and yet no proconsul is entitled to more grateful remembrance in
Canada. In spite of that ill-treatment he grew to like the country.
His eloquent farewell speech at Quebec evinces genuine affection for
the land and genuine regret at having to leave it for ever. Like every
traveller who has known both countries, he was struck by the contrast
between 'the whole landscape bathed in a flood of that bright Canadian
sun' and 'our murky atmosphere on the other side of the Atlantic.' The
majestic beauty of the St Lawrence and citadel-crowned Quebec had won
his heart. Like a wise man and a Christian, he looked forward to the
end; and he imagined that the memory of the sights and sounds he had
grown to love would soothe his dying moments. He left Canada for
service in India, like Dufferin and Lansdowne, and never returned. His
grave is at Dhurmsala under the shadow of the Himalayas. It is marked
by an elaborate monument surmounted by the universal symbol of the
Christian faith; but a nobler and more lasting memorial is the stable
government he gave to 'that true North.'




EPILOGUE


The twelve years that followed Elgin's rgime saw the flood-tide of
Canada's prosperity. Apart altogether from the advantage of the
Reciprocity Treaty, the country flourished. The extension of railways,
the influx of population, developed rapidly the immense natural
resources of the country. Politically, however, things did not move so
well. The old difficulties had disappeared, but new difficulties took
their place. There was no longer any question of the constitution, or
the relation of the governor to it, or of orderly procedure in the
mechanics of administration; but there was violent strife between
parties too evenly balanced. The remedy lay in the formation of a
larger unity, and, in 1867, the four provinces effected a
confederation, which was soon to embrace half the continent from ocean
to ocean. Dominion Day 1867 was the birthday of a new nation, and a
true poet has precised Canada's relation to Britain and the world in
a single stanza.

    A Nation spoke to a Nation,
      A Throne sent word to a Throne:
    'Daughter am I in my mother's house,
      But mistress in my own!
    The doors are mine to open,
      As the doors are mine to close,
    And I abide by my mother's house,'
      Said our Lady of the Snows.

_Quis separabit?_ The confident prophecies of 'cutting the painter'
have all come to naught. In the supreme test of the Great War, Canada
never for a moment faltered. She gave her blood and treasure freely in
support of the Empire and the Right. No severer trial of those bonds
that knit British peoples together can be imagined. To look back upon
the time when British soldiers had to be sent to suppress a Canadian
insurrection from a time when French Canadians and English Canadians
are fighting side by side three thousand miles from their homes for
the maintenance of the Empire is to envisage the most startling of
historical paradoxes. That old, bad time seems as unsubstantial as a
dream; this seems the only reality; and yet the two periods are
separated only by the span of a not very long human life. The truth
is that in those days there were no Canadians. There were French on
the banks of the St Lawrence, but their political horizon was bounded
by the parish limits. Their most renowned leader had no vision but of
an independent French republic, or of one more state in the Union. The
people of the western province consisted of diverse elements. The
solid kernel was of United Empire Loyalist stock, which gave the
province its distinctive character. The Scottish, Irish, English
immigration could not be reckoned among the genuine sons of the soil.
They built their log-huts in the wild-wood clearings, but their hearts
were in the sheiling, the cabin, the cottage they had left beyond the
sea. Their allegiance was divided, a fact of which the perpetuation of
the various national societies is indubitable evidence. They were the
pioneers; they made the wilderness a garden; and their children
entered into a large inheritance. More inharmonious still was the
immigration from south of the border, of persons brought up on the
Declaration of Independence and Fourth of July oratory. Colonel
Cruikshanks's researches have proved how numerous they were and how
disaffected. Mrs Moodie found them and the Americanized natives just
as disagreeable in Ontario as Mrs Trollope did in Cincinnati, and for
the same reasons. Except the Loyalists, all these elements were
divided in their political affections and ideals. Their leaders saw
only two possibilities. British connection was the sheet-anchor of the
old colonial Tories; but their vision of the country's future was an
aristocracy, a landed gentry, a decorous union of church and state--in
short, a colonial replica of old Tory England. On the other hand, the
Radical leaders, French and English alike, saw before them only an
independent republic, or fusion with the United States. How limited
was the vision of both time has made blindingly clear. The instinct of
the nascent nation decided for the golden mean, and chose the middle
path. Canada has stood firm by the Empire--how firm let the
blood-soaked trenches of Flanders attest--and yet she had stood just
as firmly by the creed of democracy and her determination to control
her own affairs.

One son of the soil had a vision wider than that of his
contemporaries. Years before the rebellion the editor of a Halifax
newspaper saw the scattered, jarring British colonies united under
the old flag, and bound together by fellowship within the Empire. He
saw iron roads spanning the continent and the white sails of Canadian
commerce dotting the Pacific. Canadians of this day see what Howe
foresaw--the eye among the blind. Let it be repeated. In those old
days there were no Canadians of Canada. Confederation had to be
achieved, a new generation had to be born and grow to manhood, before
a national sentiment was possible. These new Canadians saw little or
nothing of provinces with outworn feuds and divisions. They saw only
the Dominion of Canada. Their imagination was stirred by the ideal of
half a continent staked out for a second great experiment in
democracy, of a vast domain to be filled and subdued and raised to
power by a new nation. In spite of many faults and failures and
disappointments, Canadians have been true to that ideal. The Canada of
today is something far grander than the Mackenzies and Papineaus ever
dreamed of; she has disappointed the fears and exceeded the hopes of
the Durhams and the Elgins; and she stands on the threshold, as
Canadians firmly trust, of a more illustrious future.




BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE


The following are a few of the works which
should be consulted:

Lord Durham, _Report on the Affairs of British North America_ (1839).

Sir Francis Hincks, _Reminiscences_ (1884).

Dent, _The Last Forty Years_ (1881).

Reid, _Life and Letters of the First Earl of Durham_ (1906).

Shortt, _Lord Sydenham_ (1908).

Wrong, _The Earl of Elgin_ (1906).

Bourinot, _Lord Elgin_ (1905).

Walrond, _Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin_ (1872).

Leacock, _Baldwin, LaFontaine, Hincks_ (1907).

Pope, _Memoirs of Sir John Macdonald_ (1894).

_Canada and its Provinces_, vol. v (1913), the chapters by W. L. Grant,
J. L. Morison, Edward Kylie, Duncan M'Arthur, and Adam Shortt.


Consult also, for individual biographies of the various persons
mentioned in the narrative:

Taylor, _Portraits of British Americans_ (1865);
Dent, _The Canadian Portrait Gallery_ (1880); and
_The Dictionary of National Biography_ (1903).




INDEX


Annexation movement of 1849, the, 133-6.

Arthur, Sir George, his severity, 30.

Assembly: the first election after Union, 57-8;
  composition of parties, 58;
  the Baldwin incident, 59-61;
  measures passed, 61; 63-4;
  majority rule principle, 62-3;
  the Draper government defeated, 76, 115-17;
  --LaFontaine-Baldwin (Reform) Administration, 76-7, 79-80, 84, 85-7;
  placemen removed from Assembly, 87;
  the Common Schools Act, 88;
  University of Toronto, 89-90, 106-7;
  the Metcalfe Crisis, 90-3;
  --Draper (Tory) Administration, 93-4, 101;
  --LaFontaine-Baldwin (the Great) Administration, 101-3, 106, 109-12,
    142-3;
  Municipal Corporations Act, 107-9;
  Rebellion Losses Bill, 117-18, 119-27;
  a breeze in the House, 119-120;
  Clergy Reserves, 139;
  Seigneurial Tenure, 141;
  --Hincks-Morin Administration, 143;
  a business man's government, 144-5, 155-6;
  --MacNab (Liberal-Conservative) Administration, 157.


Bagot, Sir Charles, governor-general, 74-5, 79;
  forms a coalition government, 75-6;
  his death a reproach to Canada, 80-1.

Baldwin, Robert, 68-9;
  a Moderate Reformer, 40, 69-70, 71-2;
  his cool proposal to Sydenham, 60-1;
  his association with LaFontaine, 66, 74, 77-8, 101-2, 118;
  his first administration, 77-8, 85, 89-90;
  the Metcalfe peerage, 95;
  the Great Administration, 101-2, 106-8, 118, 120, 139;
  resigns the leadership, 142;
  retires from public life, 143.

Baldwin, W. W., 68-9;
  president of Constitutional Reform Society, 71.

Blake, W. H., causes an uproar in the House, 119-20;
  burned in effigy, 120.

Bouchette, Robert, 15.

Brougham, Lord, his malign attacks on Durham, 8, 16-17, 20;
  burned in effigy in Quebec, 18.

Brown, George, the Protestant champion, 143-4.

Brown, Thomas Storrow, 4.

Bruce, Colonel, wounded in the attack on Lord Elgin, 129.

Buller, Charles, 8; with Durham in Canada, 19.


Canada, political development in, 3;
  strained relations with United States, 11-13, 25-8;
  Lord Durham's Report, 21-4;
  the 'Hunters' Lodges,' 25-8;
  political and financial situation in 1839, 30-1;
  the capital city, 56-7, 86, 130, 137;
  the Irish famine of 1846-47, 101;
  Municipal Corporations Act, 107-9;
  trade relations dislocated by Britain's adoption of free trade, 109;
  the disturbances in connection with the Rebellion Losses Bill, 112-31;
  the Annexation movement of 1849, 133-6;
  boom periods, 137, 153, 161;
  assumes control of the postal system, 138;
  separate schools, 138-9;
  attains full self-government, 139;
  her interest in world affairs, 146;
  the Reciprocity Treaty, 147-8, 150-5, 110-11;
  the fishery question, 148-50, 152;
  Confederation, 161-2;
  and the Empire, 162, 164.
  See Assembly and Responsible Government.

Cartwright, Richard, and Hincks, 76.

Cathcart, Lord, governor-general, 97-8.

Church of England, and the Clergy Reserves, 43-4, 46, 47.

Church of Scotland, and the Clergy Reserves, 44, 46, 47.

'Clear Grit' party, the, 138, 142.

Clergy Reserves question, the, 39, 42-6;
  Colborne's forty-four parishes, 46, 71;
  Sydenham's solution, 47-8, 64;
  secularized, 139, 155.

Colborne, Sir John, lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, 46;
  quells the Rebellion and acts as administrator in Lower Canada, 4, 8,
    9, 16, 25, 38, 113;
  raised to the peerage, 33.

Constitutional Reform Society, the, 71.


Disraeli, Benjamin, and Canada, 132.

District Council Bill, the, 64.

Draper, W. H., his administrations, 76, 93-4.

Durham, Lord, his early career, 5-7;
  invested with extraordinary powers in the governance of Canada, 4-5, 7-8;
  firmness with conciliation his policy, 9;
  the composition of his councils, 9-10;
  takes prompt action in connection with the border troubles, 11-13;
  proclaims a general amnesty to the rebels, 14-15;
  the disallowance of his ordinance banishing the ringleaders, 15-19;
  his resignation and departure, 17-18, 25, 29;
  posterity's judgment, 18-19;
  his dying words, 20;
  his personality and family ties, 7, 8-9, 99;
  his enemy Lord Brougham, 8, 16-17, 20;
  his Report, 10-11, 19-24, 32, 35, 46, 68.


Elgin, Earl of, 98-9;
  a constitutional governor-general, 99-100, 101, 118, 123, 131, 147, 155;
  initiates the custom of reading the Speech in both
  French and English, 103;
  the Rebellion Losses Bill, 121-3;
  attacked by the mob on the occasions of giving his assent and on
    receiving an Address, 124-5, 127-9;
  the Hermit of Monklands, 129, 130-1;
  on Annexation sentiment in Canada, 133, 135-6;
  negotiates the Reciprocity Treaty with United States, 147, 110, 150-152;
  insulted in the House, 155-6;
  his administrative triumph, 158-60;
  his gift of oratory, 98, 151;
  his connection with Durham, 99.

Ermatinger, Colonel, and the Montreal riots, 129.


Fishery question, the, 148-50, 152.

Fleming, Sandford, his act of gallantry, 127.


Girouard, a rebel, 79.

Gladstone, W. E., and Canada, 132.

Glenelg, Lord, his incompetency, 32.

Gosford, Lord, 72.

Gourlay, Robert, and the Clergy Reserves, 45.

Great Britain, and the 1837 rebellions, 4, 33;
  the Clergy Reserves, 48;
  parliamentary procedure, 62;
  her free trade policy, 109;
  the Rebellion Losses Bill, 132;
  Navigation Laws repealed, 137;
  her colonial policy, 140;
  the Great Exhibition, 145-6;
  the fishery question, 148-50, 152;
  her sympathies with the South in the American Civil War, 154.

Grey, Earl, and Durham, 6.

Grey, Earl (son of above), and Elgin, 99, 136.

Grey, Colonel, his mission of remonstrance, 13.


Harrison, S. B., leader of Sydenham's government, 62.

Hincks, Francis, 70;
  a Reform leader, 40, 61;
  his many interests, 70-1;
  his talent for affairs, 71-2, 74;
  minister of Finance, 76, 77, 132, 137, 157;
  his policy of protection, 87-8, 124;
  his railway policy, 111-112;
  precipitates a crisis, 124-5;
  the Clergy Reserves, 139;
  his administration, 143, 156, 157;
  the Reciprocity Treaty, 147, 110, 150;
  his valuable services, 137;
  governor of Barbados, 157.

Howe, Joseph, and responsible government, 51;
  and railways, 111;
  his recruiting mission, 146;
  his vision of Canada's future, 164-5.

'Hunters' Lodges,' the, 13, 25-8.


Kingston, as the capital, 56-7, 58, 86, 94;
  Sydenham's tomb, 65.


LaFontaine, L. H., his early career and appearance, 72-4;
  his association with Baldwin, 66, 74, 77-8, 101-2, 118;
  his first ministry, 77-8, 85, 87, 93;
  the Great Administration, 101-2, 117-18, 127, 129, 139, 141;
  his crushing reply to Papineau's onslaught, 103-5;
  resigns, 142;
  chief justice for Lower Canada, 143.

Liberal party, a split in the ranks, 137-8. See Reform.

Liberal-Conservative party, the, 157-8.

Lount, Samuel, his execution, 30.

Lower Canada, racial feeling in, 22;
  the Rebellion, 3, 4, 25, 28-30;
  Durham's amnesty and ordinance, 14-19;
  Durham's Report, 21-3;
  political state before Union, 50;
  the Registry Act, 56;
  the opposition to Union, 57, 62, 68, 93;
  amnesty to all political offenders, 103;
  the Rebellion Losses Bill 112-14, 116-17;
  Seigneurial Tenure, 140-1.
  See Quebec and Special Council.

Macaulay, Lord, quoted, 20, 79, 83, 96.

Macdonald, John A., his entry into politics, 93, 101;
  'a British subject I will die,' 135;
  attorney-general, 157;
  his Liberal-Conservative administration, 144, 158.

Macdonald, J. S., his studied insult, 156, 157.

Mackenzie, W. L., incites anti-British feeling in the States, 12, 26;
  granted amnesty and returns to Canada, 118-19, 120, 142.

MacNab, Sir Allan, leader of the Conservative Opposition, 86, 101;
  Speaker, 94;
  gives 'the lie with circumstance,' 119-20, 125;
  his tribute to Baldwin, 142;
  prime minister, 157.

Marcy, W. L., and reciprocity with Canada, 151.

Melbourne, Lord, and Durham, 17.

Metcalfe, Sir Charles, his early career, 82-3;
  his arrival at Kingston, 81;
  upholds the prerogative of the Crown, 84-6, 87;
  refuses to surrender right of appointment, 90-1;
  triumphs over the Reformers, 92-4;
  his peerage and death, 95-6.

Montreal, 124, 137;
  as the capital, 86, 94;
  the riots in connection with the passing of the Indemnity Bill, 120-1;
  the burning of the Parliament Buildings, 1, 124-7;
  the attacks on Lord Elgin, 124-5, 128-9;
  the capital no more, 130;
  the Annexation Association, 134-5.

Morin, A. N., Speaker of the Assembly, 102;
  his administration, 143.

Municipal system of Canada, the, 55-6, 64;
  the Municipal Corporations Act, 107-9;
  municipalities and railways, 145.

Murdoch, T. W. C., secretary to Sydenham, 37.


Neilson, John, his policy of obstruction, 62, 68.

Nelson, Robert, proclaims a Canadian republic, 29.

Nelson, Wolfred, a Rebellion leader, 15, 93;
  his claim for indemnity, 119.

New Brunswick, Sydenham's visit to, 52.

Nova Scotia, the struggle for responsible government in, 51;
  the rise of the colleges, 88-9;
  the fishery question, 149-50, 152.

O'Callaghan, E. B., a rebel leader, 104.

Oliphant, Laurence, and the Reciprocity negotiations, 150, 152.

Ontario, Sydenham's tour in, 53-4;
  its municipal system, 55, 64. See Upper Canada.

Orange Society, the, 87.

Ottawa, the capital city, 130.


Papineau, D. B., 93.

Papineau, L. J., takes refuge in France after Rebellion, 103-4;
  returns to the House, claiming and receiving arrearage of salary as
    Speaker, 104;
  his uncompromising attitude towards the Union, 104-6, 118, 138, 141, 157;
  his retiral, 106, 157.

Paquin, Father, petitions for indemnity, 112-13.

Politics, the game of, 1-2, 67, 76, 77;
  an old-time election, 77-8.


Quebec, its municipal system, 55, 64;
  the seat of government, 137, 155. See Lower Canada.


Railway building in Canada, 111-2, 144-5.

Rebellion Losses Bill, the, 112-8, 132;
  the violent scenes in connection with, 119-31.

Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, the, 110-1, 147-55.

Reform party, the, supports Sydenham, 38, 40, 60-1;
  the Clergy Reserves, 47;
  opposes Bagot's coalition, 76;
  the struggle with Metcalfe, 86, 90-3, 95;
  the Great Administration, 101;
  Liberals and 'Clear Grits,' 137-8;
  Liberal-Conservatives, 157-8.

Registry Act, the, 56.

Reid, Stuart J., on the authorship of Durham's Report, 20.

Responsible Government: Durham's remedy, 24;
  Sydenham's campaign of education, 41, 58-9, 67;
  Howe's achievement, 51;
  majority rule, 62-3, 79;
  the Executive begin to presume, 84;
  the difficulty of reconciling with the colonial status, 84-5;
  placemen removed from Assembly, 87;
  education of the democracy, 88; right of appointment, 90-1;
  the difficulty of government with a small majority, 100;
  from colony to free equal state, 161-2.

Rouge party, the, 138.

Russell, Lord John, colonial secretary, 32, 55.


Seigneurial tenure, 140-1, 155;
  abolished, 141.

Sherwood, Henry, solicitor-general, 76.

Special Council of Quebec, and Sydenham, 38, 49-50, 55, 56, 114-5.

Strachan, Bishop, 69; and the Clergy Reserves, 46, 47;
  his crusade against Baldwin's 'godless institution,' 90.

Stuart, James, chief justice of Lower Canada, 37, 50.

Sullivan, R. B., a Reform leader, 70, 77.

Sydenham, Lord, 68. See Thomson.


Thomson, Charles Poulett, his early career and personality, 33-8;
  his mission of Union of the Canadas, 38-40, 68;
  his responsible government campaign of education, 41-2;
  the Clergy Reserves, 42, 47-8;
  on political and financial conditions in Canada, 32, 48-50;
  his triumphal progress, 50-4;
  his vision of Ontario, 54;
  Baron Sydenham, 54-5;
  initiates Canada's municipal system, 55-6;
  the first Union Assembly, 58-9, 61, 63-4;
  the Baldwin incident, 60-1;
  majority rule, 62-3;
  his five great works, 63-4;
  G.C.B., 59;
  his tragic and heroic end, 64-5.

Toronto, 1;
  the founding of the University, 89-90, 106-7;
  scenes in connection with the Indemnity Bill, 120-1;
  the seat of government, 137.

Turton, Thomas, with Durham in Canada, 8.


Union Act of 1840, the, 54-5.

United Empire Loyalists, the, 163.

United States: American detestation of the British, 11-13;
  'Hunters' Lodges,' 25-8;
  her mistaken views regarding Canada, 121, 133-6;
  her elective system of government, 138;
  her educational system, 139;
  the Reciprocity Treaty with Canada, 110-1, 147-8, 150-5;
  the fishery question, 148-50, 152;
  the Civil War, 148, 153, 154.

University of Toronto, the founding of, 89-90, 106-7.

Upper Canada: its political and financial state prior to Union, 23,
    31-2, 38-9, 48-9, 114, 115;
  the execution of the Rebellion leaders, 30;
  opposition to Union, 33, 57;
  the terms of Union, 40;
  Clergy Reserves, 45;
  Sydenham's tour, 53-4;
  the rise of the colleges, 88-90;
  the Metcalfe crisis, 93.


Van Buren, President, and Durham, 13.

Victoria, Queen, 75, 136.

Viger, 'Beau', 93.

Von Shoultz, his chivalrous sacrifice, 27-8.


Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, with Durham, 8.


Transcriber's Note:

In the Index, for several items, the referenced page numbers
were sorted into numerical order.




THE CHRONICLES OF CANADA

PART I. THE FIRST EUROPEAN VISITORS

1. _The Dawn of Canadian History_
  A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada
  BY STEPHEN LEACOCK

2. _The Mariner of St Malo_
  A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier
  BY STEPHEN LEACOCK


PART II. THE RISE OF NEW FRANCE

3. _The Founder of New France_
  A Chronicle of Champlain
  BY CHARLES W. COLBY

4. _The Jesuit Missions_
  A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness
  BY THOMAS GUTHRIE MARQUIS

5. _The Seigneurs of Old Canada_
  A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism
  BY WILLIAM BENNETT MUNRO

6. _The Great Intendant_
  A Chronicle of Jean Talon
  BY THOMAS CHAPAIS

7. _The Fighting Governor_
  A Chronicle of Frontenac
  BY CHARLES W. COLBY


PART III. THE ENGLISH INVASION

8. _The Great Fortress_
  A Chronicle of Louisbourg
  BY WILLIAM WOOD

9. _The Acadian Exiles_
  A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline
  BY ARTHUR G. DOUGHTY

10. _The Passing of New France_
  A Chronicle of Montcalm
  BY WILLIAM WOOD

11. _The Winning of Canada_
  A Chronicle of Wolfe
  BY WILLIAM WOOD


PART IV. THE BEGINNINGS OF BRITISH CANADA

12. _The Father of British Canada_
  A Chronicle of Carleton
  BY WILLIAM WOOD

13. _The United Empire Loyalists_
  A Chronicle of the Great Migration
  BY W. STEWART WALLACE

14. _The War with the United States_
  A Chronicle of 1812
  BY WILLIAM WOOD


PART V. THE RED MAN IN CANADA

15. _The War Chief of the Ottawas_
  A Chronicle of the Pontiac War
  BY THOMAS GUTHRIE MARQUIS

16. _The War Chief of the Six Nations_
  A Chronicle of Joseph Brant
  BY LOUIS AUBREY WOOD

17. _Tecumseh_
  A Chronicle of the last Great Leader of his People
  BY ETHEL T. RAYMOND


PART VI. PIONEERS OF THE NORTH AND WEST

18. _The 'Adventurers of England' on Hudson Bay_
  A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North
  BY AGNES C. LAUT

19. _Pathfinders of the Great Plains_
  A Chronicle of La Vrendrye and his Sons
  BY LAWRENCE J. BURPEE

20. _Adventurers of the Far North_
  A Chronicle of the Arctic Seas
  BY STEPHEN LEACOCK

21. _The Red River Colony_
  A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba
  BY LOUIS AUBREY WOOD

22. _Pioneers of the Pacific Coast_
  A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters
  BY AGNES C. LAUT

23. _The Cariboo Trail_
  A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia
  BY AGNES C. LAUT


PART VII. THE STRUGGLE FOR POLITICAL FREEDOM

24. _The Family Compact_
  A Chronicle of the Rebellion in Upper Canada
  BY W. STEWART WALLACE

25. _The Patriotes of '37_
  A Chronicle of the Rebellion in Lower Canada
  BY ALFRED D. DECELLES

26. _The Tribune of Nova Scotia_
  A Chronicle of Joseph Howe
  BY WILLIAM LAWSON GRANT

27. _The Winning of Popular Government_
  A Chronicle of the Union of 1841
  BY ARCHIBALD MACMECHAN


PART VIII. THE GROWTH OF NATIONALITY

28. _The Fathers of Confederation_
  A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion
  BY A. H. U. COLQUHOUN

29. _The Day of Sir John Macdonald_
  A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion
  BY SIR JOSEPH POPE

30. _The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier_
  A Chronicle of Our Own Times
  BY OSCAR D. SKELTON


PART IX. NATIONAL HIGHWAYS

31. _All Afloat_
  A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways
  BY WILLIAM WOOD

32. _The Railway Builders_
  A Chronicle of Overland Highways
  BY OSCAR D. SKELTON


Published by
Glasgow, Brook & Company

TORONTO, CANADA


[End of _The Winning of Popular Government_
by Archibald McKellar MacMechan]
