The opposition to the bureaucrats at first included both English and French elements, but the English minority were pulled in contrary ways. Their antecedents were not such as to lead them to accept meekly either the political or the social pretensions of the "Chateau Clique"; the American settlers in the Eastern Townships, and the Scotch and American merchants who were building up Quebec and Montreal, had called for self-government, not government from above. Yet their racial and religious prejudices were strong and made them unwilling to accept in place of the bureaucrats the dominance of an unprogressive habitant majority. The first leader of the opposition which developed in the a.s.sembly after the War of 1812 was James Stuart, the son of the leading Anglican clergyman of his day, but he soon fell away and became a mainstay of the bureaucracy. His brother Andrew, however, kept up for many years longer a more disinterested fight. Another Scot, John Neilson, editor of the Quebec "Gazette", was until 1833 foremost among the a.s.sailants of the bureaucracy. But steadily, as the extreme nationalist claims of the French-speaking majority provoked reprisals and as the conviction grew upon the minority that they would never be anything but a minority,* most of them accepted clique rule as a lesser evil than "rule by priest and demagogue."
* The natural increase of the French-Canadian race under British rule is one of the most extraordinary phenomena in social history. The following figures ill.u.s.trate the rate of that increase: the number was 16,417 in 1706; 69,810 in 1765; 479,288 in 1825; 697,084 in 1844. The population of Canada East or Lower Canada in 1844 was made up as follows: French Canadians, 524,244; English Canadians. 85,660; English, 11,895; Irish, 43,982; Scotch, 13,393; Americans, 11,946; born in other countries, 1329; place of birth not specified, 4635.
In the reform movement in Upper Canada there were a multiplicity of leaders and a constant shifting of groups. In Lower Canada, after the defection of James Stuart in 1817, there was only one leader, Louis Joseph Papineau. For twenty years Papineau was the uncrowned king of the province. His commanding figure, his powers of oratory, outstanding in a race of orators, his fascinating manners, gave him an easy mastery over his people. Prudence did not hamper his flights; compromise was a word not found in his vocabulary. Few men have been better equipped for the agitator"s task.
His father, Joseph Papineau, though of humble birth, had risen high in the life of the province. He had won distinction in his profession as a notary, as a speaker in the a.s.sembly, and as a soldier in the defense of Quebec against the American invaders of 1775. In 1804 he had purchased the seigneury of La Pet.i.te Nation, far up the Ottawa. Louis Joseph Papineau followed in his father"s footsteps. Born in 1786, he served loyally and bravely in the War of 1812. In the same year he entered the a.s.sembly and made his place at a single stroke. Barely three years after his election, he was chosen Speaker, and with a brief break he held that post for over twenty years.
Papineau did not soon or lightly begin his crusade against the Government. For the first five years of his Speakership, he confined himself to the routine duties of his office. As late as 1820 he p.r.o.nounced a glowing eulogy on the Const.i.tution which Great Britain had granted the province. In that year he tested the extent of the privileges so granted by joining in the attempt of the a.s.sembly to a.s.sert its full control of the purse; but it was not until the project of uniting the two Canadas had made clear beyond dispute the hostility of the governing powers that he began his unrelenting warfare against them.
There was much to be said for a reunion of the two Canadas. The St. Lawrence bound them together, though Acts of Parliament had severed them. Upper Canada, as an inland province, restricted in its trade with its neighbor to the south, was dependent upon Lower Canada for access to the outer world. Its share of the duties collected at the Lower Canada ports until 1817 had been only one-eighth, afterwards increased to one-fifth. This inequality proved a constant source of friction. The crying necessity of cooperation for the improvement of the St. Lawrence waterway gave further ground for the contention that only by a reunion of the two provinces could efficiency be secured. In Upper Canada the Reformers were in favor of this plan, but the Compact, fearful of any disturbance of their vested interests, tended to oppose it. In Lower Canada the chief support came from the English element. The governing clique, as the older established body, had no doubt that they could bring the western section under their sway in case of union. But the main reason for their advocacy was the desire to swamp the French Canadians by an English majority. Sewell, the chief supporter of the project, frankly took this ground. The Governor, Lord Dalhousie, and the Colonial Office adopted his view; and in 1822 an attempt was made to rush a Union Bill through the British Parliament without any notice to those most concerned. It was blocked for the moment by the opposition of a Whig group led by Burdett and Mackintosh; and then Papineau and Neilson sailed to London and succeeded in inducing the Ministry to stay its hand. The danger was averted; but Papineau had become convinced that if his people were to retain the rights given them by their "Sacred Charter" they would have to fight for them. If they were to save their power, they must increase it.
How could this be done? Baldwin"s bold and revolutionary policy of making the Executive responsible to the a.s.sembly did not seem within the range of practical politics. It meant in practice the abandonment of British control, and this the Colonial Office was not willing to grant. Antoine Panet and other a.s.sembly leaders had suggested in 1815 that it would be well, "if it were possible, to grant a number of places as Councillors or other posts of honour and of profit to those who have most influence over the majority in the a.s.sembly, to hold so long as they maintained this influence," and James Stuart urged the same tentative suggestion a year later. But even before this the Colonial Office had made clear its position. "His Majesty"s Government," declared the Colonial Secretary, Lord Bathurst, in 1814, "never can admit so novel & inconvenient a Principle as that of allowing the Governor of a Colony to be divested of his responsibility [to the Colonial Office] for the acts done during his administration or permit him to shield himself under the advice of any Persons, however respectable, either from their character or their Office."
Two other courses had the sanction of precedent, one of English, the other of American example. The English House of Commons had secured its dominant place in the government of the country by its control of the purse. Why should not the a.s.sembly do likewise? One obvious difficulty lay in the fact that the a.s.sembly was not the sole authority in raising revenue. The British Parliament had retained the power to levy certain duties as part of its system of commercial control, and other casual and territorial dues lay in the right of the Crown. From 1820, therefore, the a.s.sembly"s main aim was twofold-to obtain control of these remaining sources of revenue, and by means of this power to bludgeon the Legislative Council and the Governor into compliance with its wishes. The Colonial Office made concessions, offering to resign all its taxing powers in return for a permanent civil list, that is, an a.s.surance that the salaries of the chief officials would not be questioned annually. The offer was reasonable in itself but, as it would have hampered the full use of the revenue bludgeon, it was scornfully declined.
The other aim of the Patriotes, as the Opposition styled themselves, was to conquer the Legislative Council by making it elective. Papineau, in spite of his early prejudices, was drawn more and more into sympathy with the form of democracy worked out in the United States. In fact, he not only looked to it as a model but, as the thirties wore on, he came to hope that moral, if not physical, support might be found there for his campaign against the English Government. After 1830 the demand for an elective Legislative Council became more and more insistent.
The struggle soon reached a deadlock. Governor followed Governor: Lord Dalhousie, Sir James Kempt, Lord Aylmer, all in turn failed to allay the storm. The a.s.sembly raised its claims each session and fulminated against all the opposing powers in windy resolutions. Papineau, embittered by continued opposition, carried away by his own eloquence, and steadied by no responsibility of office, became more implacable in his demands. Many of his moderate supporters-Neilson, Andrew Stuart, Quesnel, Cuvillier-fell away, only to be overwhelmed in the first election at a wave of the great tribune"s hand. Business was blocked, supplies were not voted, and civil servants made shift without salary as best they could.
The British Government awoke, or half awoke, to the seriousness of the situation. In 1835 a Royal Commission of three, with the new Governor General, Lord Gosford, as chairman, was appointed to make inquiries and to recommend a policy. Gosford, a genial Irishman, showed himself most conciliatory in both private intercourse and public discourse. Unfortunately the rash act of the new Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, Sir Francis Bond Head, in publishing the instructions of the Colonial Office, showed that the policy of Downing Street was the futile one of conciliation without concession. The a.s.sembly once more refused to grant supplies without redress of grievances. The Commissioners made their report opposing any substantial change. In March, 1837, Lord John Russell, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Melbourne Ministry, opposed only by a handful of Radical and Irish members, carried through the British Parliament a series of resolutions authorizing the Governor to take from the Treasury without the consent of the a.s.sembly the funds needed for civil administration, offering control of all revenues in return for a permanent civil list, and rejecting absolutely the demands alike for a responsible Executive and for an elective Council.
British statesmanship was bankrupt. Its final answer to the demands for redress was to stand pat. Papineau, without seeing what the end would be, held to his course. Younger men, carried away by the pa.s.sions he had aroused, pushed on still more recklessly. If reform could not be obtained within the British Empire, it must be sought by setting up an independent republic on the St. Lawrence or by annexation to the United States.
In Upper Canada, at the same time, matters had come to the verge of rebellion. Sir John Colborne had, just before retiring as Lieutenant Governor in 1836, added fuel to the flames by creating and endowing some forty-four rectories, thus strengthening the grip of the Anglican Church on the province. His successor, Sir Francis Bond Head, was a man of such rash and unbalanced judgment as to lend support to the tradition that he was appointed by mistake for his cousin, Edmund Head, who was made Governor of United Canada twenty years later. He appointed to his Executive Council three Reformers, Baldwin, Rolph, and Dunn, only to make clear by his refusal to consult them his inability to understand their demand for responsible government. All the members of the Executive Council thereupon resigned, and the a.s.sembly refused supplies. Head dissolved the House and appealed to the people.
The weight of executive patronage, the insistence of the Governor that British connection was at stake, the alarms caused by some injudicious statements of Mackenzie and his Radical ally in England, Joseph Hume, and the defection of the Methodists, whose leader, Egerton Ryerson, had quarreled with Mackenzie, resulted in the overwhelming defeat of the Reformers. The sting of defeat, the failure of the Family Compact to carry out their eleventh hour promises of reform, and the pa.s.sing of Lord John Russell"s reactionary resolutions convinced a section of the Reform party, in Upper Canada as well as in Lower Canada, that an appeal to force was the only way out.
Toward the end of 1837 armed rebellion broke out in both the Canadas. In both it was merely a flash in the pan. In Lower Canada there had been latterly much use of the phrases of revolution and some drilling, but rebellion was neither definitely planned nor carefully organized. The more extreme leaders of the Patriotes simply drifted into it, and the actual outbreak was a haphazard affair. Alarmed by the sudden and seemingly concerted departure of Papineau and some of his lieutenants, Nelson, Brown, and O"Callaghan, from Montreal, the Government gave orders for their arrest. The petty skirmish that followed on November 16, 1837, was the signal for the rallying of armed habitants around impromptu leaders at various points. The rising was local and spasmodic. The vast body of the habitants stood aloof. The Catholic Church, which earlier had sympathized with Papineau, had parted from him when he developed radical and republican views. Now the strong exhortations of the clergy to the faithful counted for much in keeping peace, and in one view justified the policy of the British Government in seeking to purchase their favor. The Quebec and Three Rivers districts remained quiet. In the Richelieu and Montreal districts, where disaffection was strongest, the habitants lacked leadership, discipline, and touch with other groups, and were armed only with old flintlocks, scythes, or clubs. Here and there a brave and skillful leader, such as Dr. Jean Olivier Chenier, was thrown up by the evidence opened a way out of the difficult situation. A year later Peel and Webster, representing the two countries, exchanged formal explanations, and the incident was closed.
In Upper Canada many a rebel sympathizer lay for months in jail, but only two leaders, Lount and Matthews, both brave men, paid the penalty of death for their failure. In Lower Canada the new Governor General, Lord Durham, proved more clement, merely banishing to Bermuda eight of the captured leaders. When, a year later, after Durham"s return to England, a second brief rising broke out under Robert Nelson, it was stamped out in a week, twelve of the ringleaders were executed, and others were deported to Botany Bay.
The rebellion, it seemed, had failed and failed miserably. Most of the leaders of the extreme factions in both provinces had been discredited, and the moderate men had been driven into the government camp. Yet in one sense the rising proved successful. It was not the first nor the last time that wild and misguided force brought reform where sane and moderate tactics met only contempt. If men were willing to die to redress their wrongs, the most easy-going official could no longer deny that there was a case for inquiry and possibly for reform. Lord Melbourne"s Government had acted at once in sending out to Canada, as Governor General and High Commissioner with sweeping powers, one of the ablest men in English public life. Lord Durham was an aristocratic Radical, intensely devoted to political equality and equally convinced of his own personal superiority. Yet he had vision, firmness, independence, and his very rudeness kept him free from the social influences which had ensnared many another Governor. Attended by a gorgeous retinue and by some able working secretaries, including Charles Buller, Carlyle"s pupil, he made a rapid survey of Upper and Lower Canada. Suddenly, after five crowded months, his mission ended. He had left at home active enemies and lukewarm friends. Lord Brougham, one of his foes, called in question the legality of his edict banishing the rebel leaders to Bermuda. The Ministers did not back him, as they should have done; and Durham indignantly resigned and hurried back to England.
Three months later, however, his "Report" appeared and his mission stood vindicated. There are few British state papers of more fame or more worth than Durham"s "Report". It was not, however, the beginning and the end of wisdom in colonial policy, as has often been declared. Much that Durham advocated was not new, and much has been condemned by time. His main suggestions were four: to unite the Canadas, to swamp the French Canadians by such union, to grant a measure of responsible government, and to set up munic.i.p.al government. His att.i.tude towards the French Canadians was prejudiced and shortsighted. He was not the first to recommend responsible government, nor did his approval make it a reality. Yet with all qualifications his "Report" showed a confidence in the liberating and solving power of self-government which was the all-essential thing for the English Government to see; and his reasoned and powerful advocacy gave an impetus and a rallying point to the movement which were to prove of the greatest value in the future growth not only of Canada but of the whole British Empire.
CHAPTER III. THE UNION ERA
The struggle for self-government seemed to have ended in deadlock and chaos. Yet under the wreckage new lines of constructive effort were forming. The rebellion had at least proved that the old order was doomed. For half a century the attempt had been made to govern the Canadas as separate provinces and with the half measure of freedom involved in representative government. For the next quarter of a century the experiment of responsible government together with union of the two provinces was to be given its trial.
The union of the two provinces was the phase of Durham"s policy which met fullest acceptance in England. It was not possible, in the view of the British Ministry, to take away permanently from the people of Lower Canada the measure of self-government involved in permitting them to choose their representatives in a House of a.s.sembly. It was equally impossible, they considered, to permit a French-Canadian majority ever again to bring all government to a standstill. The only solution of the problem was to unite the two provinces and thus swamp the French Canadians by an English majority. Lower Canada, Durham had insisted, must be made "an English province." Sooner or later the French Canadians must lose their separate nationality; and it was, he contended, the part of statesmanship to make it sooner. Union, moreover, would make possible a common financial policy and an energetic development of the resources of both provinces.
This was the first task set Durham"s successor, Charles Poulett Thomson, better known as Lord Sydenham. Like Durham he was a man of outstanding capacity. The British Government had learned at last to send men of the caliber the emergency demanded. Like Durham he was a wealthy Radical politician, but there the resemblance ended. Where Durham played the dictator, Sydenham preferred to intrigue and to manage men, to win them by his adroitness and to convince them by his energy and his business knowledge. He was well fitted for the transition tasks before him, though too masterful to fill the role of ornamental monarch which the advocates of responsible government had cast for the Governor.
Sydenham reached Canada in October, 1839. With the a.s.sistance of James Stuart, now a baronet and Chief Justice of Lower Canada, he drafted a union measure. In Lower Canada the a.s.sembly had been suspended, and the Special Council appointed in its stead accepted the bill without serious demur. More difficulty was found in Upper Canada, where the Family Compact, still entrenched in the Legislative Council, feared the risk to their own position that union would bring and shrank from the task of a.s.similating half a million disaffected French Canadians. But with the support of the Reformers and of the more moderate among the Family Compact party, Sydenham forced his measure through. A confirming bill pa.s.sed the British Parliament; and on February 10, 1841, the Union of Canada was proclaimed.
The Act provided for the union of the two provinces, under a Governor, an appointed Legislative Council, and an elective a.s.sembly. In the a.s.sembly each section of the new province was to receive equal representation, though the population of Lower Canada still greatly exceeded that of Upper Canada. The a.s.sembly was to have full control of all revenues, and in return a permanent civil list was granted. Either English or French could be used in debate, but all parliamentary journals and papers were to be printed in English only.*
* From 1841 to 1867 the whole province was legally known as the "Province of Canada." Yet a measure of administrative separation between the old sections remained, and the terms "Canada East" and "Canada West" received official sanction.
The older terms, "Lower Canada" and "Upper Canada," lingered on in popular usage.
In June, 1841, the first Parliament of united Canada met at Kingston, which as the most central point had been chosen as the new capital. Under Sydenham"s shrewd and energetic leadership a business programme of long-delayed reforms was put through. A large loan, guaranteed by the British Government, made possible extensive provision for building roads, bridges, and ca.n.a.ls around the rapids in the St. Lawrence. Munic.i.p.al inst.i.tutions were set up, and reforms were effected in the provincial administration.
Lord John Russell in England and Sydenham in Canada were anxious to keep the question of responsible government in the background. For the first busy months they succeeded, but the new Parliament contained men quite as strong willed as either and of quite other views. Before the first session had begun, Baldwin and the new French-Canadian leader, La Fontaine, had raised the issue and begun a new struggle in which their single-minded devotion and unflinching courage were to attain a complete success.
Responsible government was in 1841 only a phrase, a watchword. Its full implications became clear only after many years. It meant three things: cabinet government, self-government, and party government. It meant that the government of the country should be carried on by a Cabinet or Executive Council, all members of Parliament, all belonging to the party which had the majority in the a.s.sembly, and under the leadership of a Prime Minister, the working head of the Government. The nominal head, Governor or King, could act only on the advice of his ministers, who alone were held responsible to Parliament for the course of the Government. It meant, further, national self-government. The Governor could not serve two masters. If he must take the advice of his ministers in Canada, he could not take the possibly conflicting advice of ministers in London. The people of Canada would be the ultimate court of appeal. And finally, responsible government meant party government. The cabinet system presupposed a definite and united majority behind the Government. It was the business of the party system to provide that majority, to insure responsible and steady action, and at the same time responsible criticism from Her Majesty"s loyal Opposition. Baldwin saw this clearly in 1841, but it took hard fighting throughout the forties to bring all his fellow countrymen to see likewise and to induce the English Government to resign itself to the prospect.
Sydenham fought against responsible government but advanced it against his will. The only sense in which he, like Russell, was prepared to concede such liberty was that the Governor should choose his advisers as far as possible from men having the confidence of the a.s.sembly. They were to be his advisers only, in fact as well as form. The Governor was still to govern, was to be Prime Minister and Governor in one. When Baldwin, who had been given a seat in the Executive Council, demanded in 1841 that this body should be reconstructed in such a way as to include some French-Canadian members and to exclude the Family Compact men, Sydenham flatly refused. Baldwin then resigned and went into opposition, but Sydenham unwillingly played into his hand. By choosing his council solely from members of the two Houses, he established a definite connection between Executive and a.s.sembly and thus gave an opportunity for the discussion of the administration of policy in the House and for the forming of government and opposition parties. Before the first session closed, the majority which Sydenham had built up by acting as a party leader at the very time he was deriding parties as mere factions, crumbled away, and he was forced to accept resolutions insisting that the Governor"s advisers must be men "possessed of the confidence of the representatives of the people." Fate ended his work at its height. Riding home one September evening, he was thrown from his horse and died from the injuries before the month was out.
It fell to the Tory Government of Peel to choose Sydenham"s successor. They named Sir Charles Bagot, already distinguished for his career in diplomacy and known for his hand in matters which were to interest the greater Canada, the Rush-Bagot Convention with the United States and the treaty with Russia which fixed, only too vaguely, the boundaries of Alaska. He was under strict injunctions from the Colonial Secretary, Lord Stanley, to continue Sydenham"s policy and to make no further concession to the demands for responsible government or party control. Yet this Tory nominee of a Tory Cabinet, in his brief term of office, insured a great advance along this very path toward freedom. His easy-going temper predisposed him to play the part of const.i.tutional monarch rather than of Prime Minister, and in any case he faced a majority in the a.s.sembly resolute in its determination.
The policy of swamping French influence had already proved a failure. Sydenham had given it a full trial. He had done his best, or his worst, by unscrupulous manipulation, to keep the French Canadians from gaining their fair quota of the members in the Union a.s.sembly. Those who were elected he ignored. "They have forgotten nothing and learnt nothing by the Rebellion," he declared, "and are more unfit for representative government than they were in 1791." This was far from a true reading of the situation. The French stood aloof, it is true, a compact and sullen group, angered by the undisguised policy of Anglicization that faced them and by Sydenham"s unscrupulous tactics. But they had learned restraint and had found leaders and allies of the kind most needed. Papineau"s place-for the great tribune was now in exile in Paris, consorting with the republicans and socialists who were to bring about the Revolution of 1848-had been taken by one of his former lieutenants. Louis Hippolyte La Fontaine still stands out as one of the two or three greatest Canadians of French descent, a man of ma.s.sive intellect, of unquestioned integrity, and of firm but moderate temper. With Baldwin he came to form a close and lifelong friendship. The Reformers of Canada West, as Upper Canada was now called, formed a working alliance with La Fontaine which gave them a sweeping majority in the a.s.sembly. Bagot bowed to the inevitable and called La Fontaine and Baldwin to his Council. Ill health made it impossible for him to take much part in the government, and the Council was far on the way to obtaining the unity and the independence of a true Cabinet when Bagot"s death in 1843 brought a new turn in affairs.
The British Ministers had seen with growing uneasiness Bagot"s concessions. His successor, Sir Charles Metcalfe, a man of honest and kindly ways but accustomed to governing oriental peoples, determined to make a stand against the pretensions of the Reformers. In this att.i.tude he was strongly backed both by Stanley and by his successor, that brilliant young Tory, William Ewart Gladstone. Metcalfe insisted once more that the Governor must govern. While the members of the Council, as individuals, might give him advice, it was for him to decide whether or not to take it. The inevitable clash with his Ministers came in the autumn of 1843 over a question of patronage. They resigned, and after months of effort Metcalfe patched up a Ministry with W. H. Draper as the leading member. In an election in which Metcalfe himself took the platform and in which once more British connection was said to be at stake, the Ministry obtained a narrow majority. But opinion soon turned, and when Metcalfe, the third Governor in four years to whom Canada had proved fatal, went home to die, he knew that his stand had been in vain. The Ministry, after a precarious life of three years, went to the country only to be beaten by an overwhelming majority in both East and West. When, in 1848, Baldwin and La Fontaine were called to office under the new Governor General, Lord Elgin, the fight was won. Many years were to pa.s.s before the full implications of responsible government were worked out, but henceforth even the straitest Tory conceded the principle. Responsible government had ceased to be a party cry and had become the common heritage of all Canadians.
Lord Elgin, who was Durham"s son-in-law, was a man well able to bear the mantle of his predecessors. Yet he realized that the day had pa.s.sed when Governors could govern and was content rather to advise his advisers, to wield the personal influence that his experience and sagacity warranted. Hitherto the stages in Canadian history had been recorded by the term of office of the Governors; henceforth it was to be the tenure of Cabinets which counted. Elgin ceased even to attend the Council, and after his time the Governor became more and more the const.i.tutional monarch, busied in laying corner stones and listening to tiresome official addresses. In emergencies, and especially in the gap or interregnum between Ministries, the personality of the Governor might count, but as a rule this power remained latent. Yet in two turning points in Canadian history, both of which had to do with the relations of Canada to the United States, Elgin was to play an important part: the Annexation Movement of 1849 and the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854.
In the struggle for responsible government, loyalty to the British Crown, loyalty of a superior and exclusive brand, had been the creed and the war cry of the Tory party. Yet in 1849 men saw the hotheads of this group in Montreal stoning a British Governor General and setting fire to the Parliament Buildings, while a few months later their elders issued a manifesto urging the annexation of Canada to the United States. Why this sudden shift? Simply because the old colonial system they had known and supported had come to an end. The Empire had been taken to mean racial ascendancy and trade profit. Now both the political and the economic pillars were crumbling, and the Empire appeared to have no further excuse for existence.
In the past British connection had meant to many of the English minority in Lower Canada a means of redressing the political balance, of retaining power in face of a body of French-speaking citizens outnumbering them three or four to one. Now that support had been withdrawn. Britain had consented, unwillingly, to the setting up of responsible government and the calling to office of men who a dozen years before had been in arms against the Queen or fleeing from the province. This was gall and wormwood to the English. But when the Ministry introduced, and the a.s.sembly pa.s.sed, the Rebellion Losses Bill for compensating those who had suffered destruction of property in the outbreak, and when the terms were so drawn as to make it possible, its critics charged, that rebels as well as loyalists would be compensated, flesh and blood could bear no more. The Governor was pelted with rotten eggs when he came down to the House to sign the bill, and the buildings where Parliament had met since 1844, when the capital had been transferred from Kingston to Montreal, were stormed and burned by a street mob.
The anger felt against the Ministry thus turned against the British Government. The English minority felt like an advance guard in a hostile country, deserted by the main forces, an Ulster abandoned to Home Ruler and Sinn Feiner. They turned to the south, to the other great English-speaking Protestant people. If the older branch of the race would not give them protection or a share in dominance, perhaps the younger branch could and would. As Lord Durham had suggested, they were resolved that "Lower Canada must be ENGLISH, at the expense, if necessary, of not being BRITISH."
But it was not only the political basis of the old colonial system that was rudely shattered. The economic foundations, too, were pa.s.sing away, and with them the profits of the Montreal merchants, who formed the backbone of the annexation movement. It has been seen that under this system Great Britain had aimed at setting up a self-contained empire, with a monopoly of the markets of the colonies. Now for her own sake she was sweeping away the tariff and shipping monopoly which had been built up through more than two centuries. The logic of Adam Smith, the experiments of Huskisson, the demands of manufacturers for cheap food and raw materials, the pa.s.sionate campaigns of Cobden and Bright, and the rains that brought the Irish famine, at last had their effect. In 1846 Peel himself undertook the repeal of the Corn Laws. To Lower Canada this was a crushing blow. Until of late the preference given in the British market on colonial goods in return for the control of colonial trade had been of little value; but in 1848 the duties on Canadian wheat and flour had been greatly lowered, resulting in a preference over foreign grain reckoned at eighteen cents a bushel. While in appearance an extension of the old system of preference and protection, in reality this was a step toward its abandonment. For it was understood that American grain, imported into Canada at a low duty, whether shipped direct or ground into flour, would be admitted at the same low rates. The Act, by opening a back door to United States wheat, foreshadowed the triumph of the cheap food agitators in England. But the merchants, the millers, and the forwarders of Montreal could not believe this. The ca.n.a.l system was rushed through; large flour mills were built, and heavy investments of capital were made. Then in 1846 came the announcement that the artificial basis of this brief prosperity had vanished. Lord Elgin summed up the results in a dispatch in 1849: "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 endure?"
In October, 1849, the leading men of Montreal issued a manifesto demanding annexation to the United States. A future Prime Minister of Canada, J. J. C. Abbott, four future Cabinet Ministers, John Rose, Luther Holton, D. L. Macpherson, and A. A. Dorion, and the commercial leaders of Montreal, the Molsons, Redpaths, Torrances, and Workmans, were among the signers. Besides Dorion, a few French Canadians of the Rouge or extreme Radical party joined in. The movement found supporters in the Eastern Townships, notably in A. T. Galt, a financier and railroad builder of distinction, and here and there in Canada West. Yet the great body of opinion was unmistakably against it. Baldwin and La Fontaine opposed it with unswerving energy, the Catholic Church in Canada East denounced it, and the rank and file of both parties in Canada West gave it short shrift. Elgin came out actively in opposition and aided in negotiating the Reciprocity Treaty with the United States which met the economic need. Montreal found itself isolated, and even there the revival of trade and the cooling of pa.s.sions turned men"s thoughts into other channels. Soon the movement was but a memory, chiefly serviceable to political opponents for taunting some signer of the manifesto whenever he later made parade of his loyalty. It had a more unfortunate effect, however, in leading public opinion in the United States to the belief for many years that a strong annexationist sentiment existed in Canada. Never again did annexation receive any notable measure of popular support. A national spirit was slowly gaining ground, and men were eventually to see that the alternative to looking to London for salvation was not looking to Washington but looking to themselves.
In the provinces by the sea the struggle for responsible government was won at much the same time as in Canada. The smaller field within which the contest was waged gave it a bitter personal touch; but racial hostility did not enter in, and the British Government proved less obdurate than in the western conflicts. In both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick little oligarchies had become entrenched. The Government was unprogressive, and fees and salaries were high. The Anglican Church had received privileges galling to other denominations which surpa.s.sed it in numbers. The "powers that were" found a shrewd defender in Haliburton, who tried to teach his fellow Bluenoses through the homely wit of "Sam Slick" that they should leave governing to those who had the training, the capacity, and the leisure it required. In Prince Edward Island the land question still overshadowed all others. Every proposal for its settlement was rejected by the influence of the absentee landlords in England, and the agitation went wearily on.
In Nova Scotia the outstanding figure in the ranks of reform was Joseph Howe. The son of a Loyalist settler, Howe early took to his father"s work of journalism. At first his sympathies were with the governing powers, but a controversy with a brother editor, Jotham Blanchard, a New Hampshire man who found radical backing among the Scots of Pictou, gave him new light and he soon threw his whole powers into the struggle on the popular side. Howe was a man lavishly gifted, one of the most effective orators America has produced, fearing no man and no task however great, filled with a vitality, a humor, a broad sympathy for his fellows that gave him the blind obedience of thousands of followers and the glowing friendship of countless firesides. There are still old men in Nova Scotia whose proudest memory is that they once held Howe"s horse or ran on an errand for a look from his kingly eye.
Howe took up the fight in earnest in 1835. The western demand for responsible government pointed the way, and Howe became, with Baldwin, its most trenchant advocate. In spite of the determined opposition of the st.u.r.dy old soldier Governor, Sir Colin Campbell, and of his successor, Lord Falkland, who aped Sydenham and whom Howe threatened to "hire a black man to horse-whip," the reformers won. In 1848 the first responsible Cabinet in Nova Scotia came to power.
In New Brunswick the transition to responsible government came gradually and without dramatic incidents or brilliant figures on either side. Lemuel Wilmot, and later Charles Fisher, led the reform ranks, gradually securing for the a.s.sembly control of all revenues, abolishing religious inequalities, and effecting some reform in the Executive Council, until at last in 1855 the crowning demand was tardily conceded.
From the Great Lakes to the Atlantic the political fight was won, and men turned with relief to the tasks which strife and faction had hindered. Self-government meant progressive government. With organized Cabinets coordinating and controlling their policy the provinces went ahead much faster than when Governor and a.s.sembly stood at daggers drawn. The forties and especially the fifties were years of rapid and sound development in all the provinces, and especially in Canada West. Settlers poured in, the scattered clearings; widened until one joined the next, and pioneer hardships gave way to substantial, if crude, prosperity. Education, notably under the vigorous leadership of Egerton Ryerson in Canada West, received more adequate attention. Banks grew and with them all commercial facilities increased.
The distinctive feature of this period of Canadian development, however, was the growth of ca.n.a.ls and railroads. The forties were the time of ca.n.a.l building and rebuilding all along the lakes and the St. Lawrence to salt water. Canada spent millions on what were wonderful works for their day, in the hope that the St. Lawrence would become the channel for the trade of all the growing western States bordering on the Great Lakes. Scarcely were these waterway improvements completed when it was realized they had been made largely in vain. The railway had come and was outrivaling the ca.n.a.l. If Canadian ports and channels were even to hold their own, they must take heed of the enterprise of all the cities along the Atlantic coast of the United States, which were promoting railroads to the interior in a vigorous rivalry for the trade of the Golden West. Here was a challenge which must be taken up. The fifties became the first great railway era of Canada. In 1850 there were only sixty-six miles of railway in all the provinces; ten years later there were over two thousand. Nearly all the roads were aided by provincial or munic.i.p.al bonus or guarantee. Chief among the lines was the Grand Trunk, which ran from the Detroit border to Riviere du Loup on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and which, though it halted at that eastern terminus in the magnificent project of connecting with the railways of the Maritime Provinces, was nevertheless at that time the longest road in the world operating under single control.
The railways brought with them a new speculative fever, a more complex financial structure, a business politics which shaded into open corruption, and a closer touch with the outside world. The general subst.i.tution of steam for sail on the Atlantic during this period aided further in lessening the isolation of what had been backwoods provinces and in bringing them into closer relation with the rest of the world.
It was in closer relations with the United States that this emergence from isolation chiefly manifested itself. In the generation that followed the War of 1812 intercourse with the United States was discouraged and was remarkably insignificant. Official policy and the memories of 1783 and 1812 alike built up a wall along the southern border. The spirit of Downing Street was shown in the instructions given to Lord Bathurst, immediately after the close of the war, to leave the territory between Montreal and Lake Champlain in a state of nature, making no further grants of land and letting the few roads which had been begun fall into decay thus a barrier of forest wilderness would ward off republican contagion. This Chinese policy of putting up a wall of separation proved impossible to carry through, but in less extreme ways this att.i.tude of aloofness marked the course of the Government all through the days of oversea authority.
The friction aroused by repeated boundary disputes prevented friendly relations between Canada and the United States. With unconscious irony the framers of the Peace of 1783 had prefaced their long outline of the boundaries of the United States by expressing their intention "that all disputes which might arise in future on the subject of the boundaries of the said United States may be prevented." So vague, however, were the terms of the treaty and so untrustworthy were the maps of the day that ultimately almost every clause in the boundary section gave rise to dispute.
As settlement rolled westward one section of the boundary after another came in question. Beginning in the east, the line between New Brunswick and New England was to be formed by the St. Croix River. There had been a St. Croix in Champlain"s time and a St. Croix was depicted on the maps, but no river known by that name existed in 1783. The British identified it with the Schoodic, the Americans with the Magaguadavic. Arbitration in 1798 upheld the British in the contention that the Schoodic was the St. Croix but agreed with the Americans in the secondary question as to which of the two branches of the Schoodic should be followed. A similar commission in 1817 settled the dispute as to the islands in Pa.s.samaquoddy Bay.
More difficult, because at once more ambiguous in terms and more vitally important, was the determination of the boundary in the next stage westward from the St. Croix to the St. Lawrence. The British position was a difficult one to maintain. In the days of the struggle with France, Great Britain had tried to push the bounds of the New England colonies as far north as might be, making claims that would hem in France to the barest strip along the south sh.o.r.e of the St. Lawrence. Now that she was heir to the territories and claims of France and had lost her own old colonies, it was somewhat embarra.s.sing, but for diplomats not impossible, to have to urge a line as far south as the urgent needs of the provinces for intercommunication demanded. The letter of the treaty was impossible to interpret with certainty. The phrase, "the Highlands which divide those rivers that empty themselves into the river St. Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantic Ocean," meant according to the American reading a watershed which was a marshy plateau, and according to the British version a range of hills to the south which involved some keen hairsplitting as to the rivers they divided. The intentions of the parties to the original treaty were probably much as the Americans contended. From the standpoint of neighborly adjustment and the relative need for the land in question, a strong case in equity could be made out for the provinces, which would be cut asunder for all time if a wedge were driven north to the very brink of the St. Lawrence.