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 pa.s.sions at boiling heat, and prejudices such as I never saw, to contend with, I have brought the a.s.sembly 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 {64} 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 const.i.tution, 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 teta.n.u.s he composed the speech with which he had hoped to bring the session {65} to a close. The last words were the dying governor"s prayer for Canada. "May Almighty G.o.d 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.
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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 n.o.ble 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 bra.s.s; 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 {67} 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 quant.i.ties 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 const.i.tution.
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 {68} 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 pa.s.sions, 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) {69} belonged to the humbler cla.s.s of landed gentry in Ireland. Tempted, like so many others of his cla.s.s, 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 pet.i.tion to George IV in what was known as the Willis affair. In the same year he was elected to the a.s.sembly as member for York. {70} 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 a.s.sociated 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 {71} 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 Ca.n.a.l 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 Const.i.tutional 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 Const.i.tutional 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 {72} 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 a.s.sembly 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.semble parliament, in order to prevent further violence. He then went to England, from {73} 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 const.i.tutional 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 Hotel des Invalides at Paris. A contemporary cartoon, representing him flinging money to the habitants, shows the likeness, even to the {74} 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 const.i.tuencies, 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 const.i.tutional 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 {75} handsome, 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 rea.s.semble 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 {76} 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 {77} 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, {78} rallied and drove their dastardly a.s.sailants 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 const.i.tutional model.
The new idea was fiercely a.s.sailed. To the British colonial partisan of that day it {79} 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 a.s.sailed 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 const.i.tutional 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 {80} 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 const.i.tution 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 {81} 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.
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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 {83} 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 {84} 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 att.i.tude. 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 {85} 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 {86} 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 a.s.sembly 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 pa.s.sed 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 {87} or foresee. By another wise measure placemen were removed from the a.s.sembly; 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sent, 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 {88} compet.i.tion 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 a.s.sembly. 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 a.s.sembly. Naturally, it was modelled on the {89} 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 {90} Queen"s Park, the long distinguished roll of graduates, the n.o.ble 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 "G.o.dless inst.i.tution" 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 antic.i.p.ate.
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 {91} ignoring them, he had violated an important const.i.tutional principle; and when they were unable to convince him cf 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 {92} 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 a.s.sembly 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 att.i.tude 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 {93} 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 sc.r.a.pe 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 a.s.sembly, 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 a.s.sembled, 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.