Canada: the Empire of the North

A >> Agnes C. Laut >> Canada: the Empire of the North

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[Illustration: JOHN MCLOUGHLIN]

{409} Presently come American settlers and missionaries over the
mountains. The American government delays settling that treaty of joint
occupancy, for the more American settlers that come, the stronger will be
the American claim to the territory. McLoughlin helps the settlers who
would have starved without his aid, and McLoughlin receives such sharp
censure from his company for this that he resigns. When the American
settlers set up a provisional government, the foolish cry is raised, "54,
40 or fight," which means the Americans claim all the way up to Alaska,
and for this there is no warrant either through their own occupation or
discovery. The boundary is compromised by the Treaty of Oregon in 1846
at the 49th parallel.

When settlers come, fur-bearing animals leave. Long ago the Hudson's Bay
Company had foreseen the end and moved the capital of its Pacific Empire
up to Victoria. A string of fur posts extends up Fraser River to New
Caledonia.

{410}

CHAPTER XVI

FROM 1820 TO 1867

How the Family Compact worked--The old order changeth--"Loyalty
cry"--Gourley driven mad--Richmond's tragic death--Patriots of the
plow--Defeat of patriots--Duncombe's escape--Execution of
patriots--Bloodshed in Quebec--Chenier's tragic death--Durham gives
Canada a Magna Charta--Confederation--What of the future

It will be recalled that on the coming of the United Empire Loyalists
to Canada, the form of government was changed by the Constitutional Act
of 1791, dividing the country into Upper and Lower Canada, the
government of each province to consist of a governor, the legislative
council, and the assembly. Unfortunately, self-government for the
colonies was not yet a recognized principle of English rule. While the
assemblies of the two provinces were elected by the people, the power
of the assemblies was practically a blank, for the governor and council
were the real rulers, and they were appointed by the Crown, which meant
Downing Street, which meant in turn that the two Canadas were regarded
as the happy hunting ground for incompetent office seekers of the great
English parties. From the governor general to the most insignificant
postal clerk, all were appointed from Downing Street. Influence, not
merit, counted, which perhaps explains why one can count on the fingers
of one hand the number of governors and lieutenants from 1791 to 1841
who were worthy of their trust and did not disgrace their position by
blunders that were simply notorious. Prevost's disgraceful retreat
from Lake Champlain in the War of 1812 is a typical example of the
mischief a political jobber can work when placed in position of trust;
but the life-and-death struggle of the war prevented the people turning
their attention to questions of misgovernment, and it is hardly an
exaggeration to say that the Act of 1791 reduced Canadian affairs to
the chaos of a second Ireland and retarded the progress of the country
for a century.

It has become customary for English writers to slur over the disorders
of 1837 as the results of the ignorant rabble following {411} the bad
advice of the hot-heads, MacKenzie and Papineau; but it is worth
remembering that everything the rabble fought for, and hanged for, has
since been incorporated in Canada's constitution as the very woof and
warp of responsible government.

Let us see how the system worked out in detail.

After the War of 1812 Prevost dies before court-martial can pronounce
on his misconduct at Plattsburg, and Sir Gorden Drummond, the hero of
Fort Erie's siege, is sworn in.

Canada is governed from Downing Street, and it is my Lord Bathurst's
brilliant idea that forever after the war there shall be a belt of
twenty miles left waste forest and prairie between Canada and the
United States, presumably to prevent democracy rolling across the
northern boundary. Fortunately the rough horse sense of the
frontiersman is wiser than the wisdom of the British statesman, and
settlement continues along the boundary in spite of Bathurst's
brilliant idea.

Those who fought in the War of 1812 are to be rewarded by grants of
land,--rewarded, of course, by the Crown, which means the Governor; but
the Governor must listen to the advice of his councilors, who are
appointed for life; and to the heroes of 1812 the councilors grant
fifty acres apiece, while to themselves the said councilors vote grants
of land running from twenty thousand to eighty thousand acres apiece.

After the war it is agreed that neither Canada nor the United States
shall keep war vessels on the lakes, except such cruisers as shall be
necessary to maintain order among the fisheries; but the credit for
this wise arrangement does not belong to the councils at Toronto or
Quebec, for the suggestions came from Washington.

As the legislative councilors are appointed for life, they control
enormous patronage, recommending all appointments to government
positions and meeting any applicants for office, who are outside the
"_family_" ring, with the curt refusal that has become famous for its
insolence, "_no one but a gentleman_."

Judges are appointed by favor. So are local magistrates. So are
collectors at the different ports of entry. Smaller cities like {412}
Kingston are year after year refused incorporation, because
incorporation would confer self-government, and that would oust members
of the "_family compact_" who held positions in these places.

Officeholders are responsible to the Crown only, not to the people.
Therefore when Receiver General Caldwell of Quebec does away with
96,000 pounds, or two years' revenue of Lower Canada, he accounts for
the defalcation to his friends with the explanation of unlucky
investments, and goes scot free.

Quebec is a French province, but appointments are made in England; so
that out of 71,000 pounds paid to its civil servants 58,000 pounds go
to the English officeholders, 13,000 pounds to French; out of 36,000
pounds paid to judges only 8,000 pounds go to the French.

And in Upper Canada, Ontario, it was even worse. In Quebec there was
always the division of French against English, and Catholic against
Protestant; but in Upper Canada "_the family compact_" of councilors
against commoners was a solid and unbroken ring. When the assembly
raises objections to some items of expense sent down by the council,
writes Lieutenant Governor Simcoe in high dudgeon, "I will send the
rascals," meaning the commoners, "packing about their business," and he
prorogues the House.

Not all the governors and their lieutenants are as foolishly blind to
the faults of the system as Simcoe of Ontario. Sir John Sherbrooke of
Quebec, who succeeds Drummond in Lower Canada, knows very well he is
surrounded by a pack of thieves; but they are his councilors, appointed
for life, and there he is, bound to abide by their advice.
Nevertheless, he kicks over traces vigorously now and then, like the
old war horse that he is. The commissary general comes to him with
word that 600 pounds is missing from the military chest, and he needs a
warrant for search.

"Search, indeed!" roars Sir John. "There's not the slightest need!
Whenever there is a robbery in _your_ department, it is among
yourselves! Go and find it!"

{413}

[Illustration: SIR JOHN SHERBROOKE, GOVERNOR GENERAL OF CANADA,
1816-1818]

Curious it is how good men reared in the old school, where the masses
exist for the benefit of the classes and the governed are to be allowed
to exist only by favor of those who govern--curious how good men fail
to read the sign of the times. Colonel Tom Talbot's settlement in West
Ontario has, by 1832, increased to 50,000 people, and the mad
harum-scarum of court days is becoming an old man. Talbot has been a
legislative councilor for life, but it is not on record that he ever
attended the council in Toronto. Still he views with high disfavor
this universal discontent with "being governed." The secret meetings
held to agitate for responsible government, Tom Talbot regards as "a
pestilence" leading on to the worst disease from which humanity can
suffer, namely, democracy. The old bear stirs uneasily in his lair, as
reports come in of louder and louder demands that the colony shall be
_permitted to govern itself_. What would become of kings and colonels
and land grants by special favor, if colonies governed themselves?
Colonel Tom Talbot doffs his homespun and his coon cap, and he dons the
satin ruffles of twenty-five years ago, and he mounts his steed and he
rides pompously forth to the market place of St. Thomas Town on St.
George's Day of 1832. Bands play; flags wave; the country people from
twenty miles round come riding to town. Banners {414} inscribed with
"Loyalty to the Constitution" are carried at the head of parades. The
venerable old colonel is greeted with burst after burst of shouting as
he comes prancing on horseback up the hill. The band plays "the
British Grenadiers." The Highland bagpipes skurl a welcome. Then the
old man mounts the rostrum and delivers a speech that ought to be
famous as an exposition of good old Tory doctrine:

Some black sheep have slipped into my flock, and very black they are,
and what is worse, they have got the rot, a distemper not known in this
settlement till some I shall call for short "rebels" began their work
of darkness under cover of organizing Blanked Cold Water Drinking
Societies, where they meet at night to communicate their poisonous
schemes and circulate the infection and delude the unwary! Then they
assumed a more daring aspect under mask of a grievance petition, which,
when it was placed before me, I would not take the trouble to read,
being aware it was trash founded on falsehood, fabricated to create
discontent.

At the end of a half hour's tirade, of which these lines are a sample,
the good old Tory raised his hands, and in the words of the Church's
benediction blessed his people and prayed Heaven to keep their minds
untainted by sedition.

Looking back less than a century, it is almost impossible to believe
that the colonel's speech--it cannot be called reasoning--was applauded
to the echo and regarded as a masterly justification of people "being
governed" rather than governing themselves.

Perhaps, after all, it was not so much the Constitution of Canada that
caused the conflict as the clash between the old-time feudalism and the
spirit of modern, aggressive democracy. The United States _fought_
this question out in 1776. Canada _wrestled_, it cannot be called a
_fight_, the same question out in 1837.

It is necessary to give one or two cases of individual persecution to
understand how the disorders flamed to open rebellion.

One Matthews, an officer of the 1812 War, living on a pension, had
incurred the distrust of the governing ring by expressing sympathy with
the agitators. Now to be an agitator was bad enough in the eyes of
"_the family compact_," but for one of their {415} own social circle to
sympathize with the outsiders was, to the snobocracy clique of the
little city of ten thousand at Toronto, almost an unpardonable sin.
Such sins were punished by social ostracism, by the grand dames of
Toronto not inviting the officer's wife to social functions, by the
families of the upper clique literally freezing the sinner's children
out of the foremost circles of social life. Many a Canadian family is
proud to trace lineage back to some old lady of this tempestuous
period, whose only claim to recognition is that she waged petty
persecution against the heroes of Canadian progress. Now the annals of
the times do not record that this special sinner's wife and children so
suffered. At all events Matthews' spirits were not cast down by social
snobbery. He continued to sympathize with the agitators. The "_family
compact_" bided their time, and their time came a few months later,
when a company of American actors came to Toronto. A band concert had
been given. When the British national air struck up, all hats were
off. Then some one called for "Yankee Doodle," and in compliment to
the visitors, when the American air struck up, Matthews shouted out for
"hats off." For this sin the legislative council ordered the
lieutenant governor to cut off Matthews' pension, and, to the
everlasting shame of Sir Peregrine Maitland, the advice was taken,
though Matthews had twenty-seven years of service to his credit.
Matthews appealed to England, and his pension was restored, so that in
this case "_the family compact_" for political reasons was pretending
to be more British than Great Britain. It was not to be the last
occasion on which "the loyalty cry" was to be used as a political dodge.

The persecution of Robert Gourlay was yet more outrageous.

He had come to Canada soon after the War of 1812, and in the course of
collecting statistics for a book on the colony was quick to realize how
Canada's progress was being literally gagged by the policy of the
ruling clique. Gourlay attacked the local magistrates in the press.
He pointed out that the land grants were notorious. He advocated
bombarding the evils from two sides at once, by appealing to the home
government and by {416} holding local conventions of protest. The pass
to which things had come may be realized by the attitude of the
council. It held that the colony must hold no communications with the
imperial government except through the Governor General; in other
words, individual appeals not passing through the hands of the
legislative council were to be regarded as illegal. It is sad to have
to acknowledge that such a palpably dishonest measure was ever
countenanced by people in their right minds. But "_the family
compact_" went a step farther. It passed an order forbidding meetings
to discuss public grievances. This part of Canada's story reads more
like Russia than America, and shows to what length men will go when
special privileges rather than equal rights prevail in a country.
Gourlay met these infamous measures by penning some witty doggerel,
headed "Gagged, gagged, by Jingo!" The editor in whose paper Gourlay's
writings had appeared, was arrested, and the offending sheet was
compelled to suspend. Gourlay himself is arrested for sedition and
libel at least four times, but each time the jury acquits him. At any
cost the governing clique must get rid of this scribbling fellow, whose
pen voices the rising discontent. An alien act, passed before the War
of 1812, compelling the deportation of seditious persons, is revived.
Under the terms of the act Gourlay is arrested, tried, and sentenced to
be exiled, but Gourlay declares he is not an alien. He is a British
subject, and he refuses to leave the country. He is thrown in jail at
Niagara, and for a year and a half left in a moldy, close cell. One
dislikes to write that this outrage on British justice was perpetrated
under Chief Justice Powell, whose failure to obtain decisions from the
jury in the Red River trials brought down such harsh criticism on the
bench. At the end of twenty months Gourlay is again hauled before the
jury and sentenced to deportation on pain of death if he refuses. He
was calmly asked if he had anything to say, if there were any reason
why sentence should not be pronounced.

"Anything . . . to . . . say? Any reason . . . why . . .
sentence . . . should not be pronounced?" From 1818 to 1820 {417}
Gourlay had been having things "to say," had been giving good and
sufficient reasons why sentence should not be pronounced! The question
is repeated: "Robert Gourlay stand up! Have you anything to say?" The
court waits, Chief Justice Powell, bewigged and wearing his grandest
manner, all unconscious that the scene is to go down to history with
blot of ignominy against _his_ name, not Gourlay's.

Gourlay's face twitches, and he breaks into shrieks of maniacal
laughter. The petty persecutions of a provincial tyranny have driven a
man, who is true patriot, out of his mind. As Gourlay drops out of
Canada's story here, it may be added that the English government later
pronounced the whole trial an outrage, and Gourlay was invited back to
Canada.

If at this stage a man had come to Canada as governor, big enough and
just enough to realize that colonies had some rights, there might have
been remedy; for the imperial government, eager to right the wrong, was
misled by the legislative councilors, and all at sea as to the source
of the trouble. While men were being actually driven out of Canada by
the governing ring on the charge of disloyalty, the colonial minister
of England was sending secret dispatches to the Governor General,
instructing him plainly that if independence was what Canada wanted,
then the mother country, rather than risk a second war with the United
States, or press conclusions with the Canadas themselves, would
willingly cede independence. It is as well to be emphatic and clear on
this point. _It was not the tyranny of England that caused the
troubles of 1837_. It was the dishonesty of the ruling rings at Quebec
and Toronto, and this dishonesty was possible because of the
Constitutional Act of 1791.

Unfortunately, just when imperial statesmen of the modern school were
needed, governors of the old school were appointed to Canada. After
Sir John Sherbrooke came the Duke of Richmond to Quebec, and his
son-in-law, Sir Peregrine Maitland, as lieutenant governor to Ontario.
Men of more courtly manners never graced the vice-regal chairs of
Quebec and Toronto. {418} Richmond, who was some fifty years of age,
had won notoriety in his early days by a duel with a prince of the
blood royal, honor on both sides being satisfied by Richmond shooting
away a curl from the royal brow; but presto, an Irish barrister takes
up the quarrel by challenging Richmond to a second duel for having
dared to fight a prince; and here Richmond satisfies claims of honor by
a well-directed ball aimed to wound, not kill. Long years after, when
the duke became viceroy of Ireland, the Irishman appeared at one of
Richmond's state balls.

"Hah," laughed the barrister, "the last time we met, your Grace gave
_me_ a ball."

"Best give you a brace of 'em now," retorted the witty Richmond; and he
sent his quondam foe invitation to two more balls.

Richmond it was who gave the famous ball before the defeat of Napoleon
at Waterloo. The story of his daughter's love match with Sir Peregrine
Maitland is of a piece with the rest of the romance in Richmond's life.
Richmond and Maitland had been friends in the army, but when the duke
began to observe that his daughter, Lady Sarah, and the younger man
were falling in love, he thought to discourage the union with a poor
man by omitting Maitland's name from invitation lists. When Lady Sarah
came downstairs to a ball she surmised that Maitland had not been
invited, and, withdrawing from the assembled guests, drove to her
lover's apartments. She married Maitland without her father's consent,
but a reconciliation had been patched up. Father and son-in-law now
came to Canada as governor and lieutenant governor.

The military and social life of both unfitted them to appreciate the
conditions in Canada. Socially both were the lions of the hour. As a
man and gentleman Richmond was simply adored, and Quebec's love of all
the pomp of monarchy was glutted to the full. No more distinguished
governor ever played host in the old Chateau St. Louis; but as rulers,
as pacifiers, as guides of the ship of state, Richmond and Maitland
were dismal failures. To them Canada's demand for responsible {419}
government seemed the rallying cry of an impending republic. "We must
overcome democracy or it will overcome us," pronounced Richmond. He
failed to see that resistance to the demand for self-government would
bring about the same results in Canada as resistance had brought about
in the United States, and he could not guess--for the thing was new in
the world's history--that the grant of self-government would but bind
the colony the closer to the mother land.

[Illustration: THE FOURTH DUKE OF RICHMOND, GOVERNOR GENERAL OF CANADA,
1818-1819]

It is sad to write of two such high-minded, well-intentioned rulers,
that the worst acts of misgovernment in Canada took place in their
regime.

Richmond's death was as unusual as his life. Two accounts are given of
the cause. One states that he permitted a pet dog to touch a cut in
his face. The other account has it that he was bitten by a tame fox at
a fair in Sorel, and the date of Richmond's death, late in August of
1819, exactly two months from the time he was bitten at Sorel,--which
is the length of time that hydrophobia takes to develop in a grown
person,--would seem to substantiate the latter story. He was traveling
on horseback from Perth to Richmond, on the Ottawa, and had complained
of feeling poorly. A small stream had to be crossed. The sight of the
stream brought the strange water delirium to Richmond, when he begged
his attendants to take him quickly to Montreal. It need scarcely be
explained here that hydrophobia {420} is not caused by lack of water,
but by contagious transmission. The feeling passed, as the first
terrors of the disease are usually spasmodic, and the Governor was
proceeding through the woods with his attendants, when he suddenly
broke away deliriously, leading them a wild race to a farm shed. There
he died during the night, crying out as the lucid intervals broke the
delirium of his agonies: "For shame! for shame Lenox! Richmond, be a
man! Can you not bear it?"

Public affairs are meanwhile passing from bad to worse. William Lyon
MacKenzie has become leader of the agitators in his newspaper, _The
Advocate_, of Toronto. A band of young vandals, sons of the ruling
clique, wreck his newspaper office and throw the type into Toronto Bay,
but MacKenzie recovers $3000 damages and goes on agitating. Four times
he is publicly expelled from the House, and four times he is returned
by the electors. What are they asking, these agitators, branded as
rebels, expelled from the assembly, in some cases cast in prison by the
councilors, in others threatened with death?

Control of public revenues.
Reform in the land system.
Municipal rights for towns and cities.
The exclusion of judges from Parliament.
That the council be directly responsible to the people
rather than the Crown.

Since 1818 the reformers have been agitating to have wrongs righted,
and for nineteen years the clique has prevented official inquiry,
gagged the press, bludgeoned conventions out of existence, and thrown
leaders of opposition in prison.

MacKenzie now makes the mistake of publishing in his papers a letter
from the English radical Hume, advocating the freedom of Canada "from
the baneful domination of the mother country." At once, with a jingo
whoop, the loyalty cry is emitted by "_the family compact_." Is not
this what they have been telling the Governor from the first,--these
reformers are republicans in {421} disguise? By trickery and
manipulation they swing the next election so that MacKenzie is
defeated. From that moment MacKenzie's tone changed. It may be that,
losing all hope of reform, he became a republican. If this were
treason, then the English ministers, who were advocating the same
remedy, were guilty of the same treason. With MacKenzie, secretly and
openly, are a host of sympathizers,--Dr. Rolph, Tom Talbot's old
friend, come up from the London district to practice medicine in
Toronto, and Van Egmond, who has helped to settle the Huron Tract of
the Canada Company, founded by John Galt, the novelist, and some four
thousand others whose names MacKenzie has on a list in his carpet bag.

[Illustration: WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE]

All the autumn of 1837 Fitzgibbons, now commander of the troops in
Toronto, hears vague rumors of farmers secretly drilling, of workmen
extemporizing swords out of scythes, of old soldiers furbishing up
their arms of the 1812 War. What does it mean? Sir Francis Bond Head,
the new governor of Ontario, refuses to believe his own ears. Neither
does _the family compact_ realize that there is any danger to their
long tenure of power. They affect to sneer at these poor patriots of
the plow, little dreaming that the rights which these poor patriots of
the scythe swords are burning to defend, will, by and by, be the pride
of England's colonial system. The story of plot and counter plot
cannot be told in detail here; it is too {422} long. But on the night
of Monday, December 4, Toronto wakes up to a wild ringing of college
bells. The rebel patriots have collected at Montgomery's Tavern
outside Toronto, and are advancing on the city.

Poor MacKenzie's plans have gone all awry. Four thousand patriots had
pledged themselves to assemble at the tavern on December 7, but Dr.
Rolph, or some other friend in the city, sends word that the date has
been discovered. The only hope of seizing the city is for them to come
sooner; and MacKenzie arrives at the tavern on December 3, with only a
few hundred followers, who have neither food nor firearms; and I doubt
much if they had even definite plans; of such there are no records.
Before Van Egmond comes from Seaforth, doubt and dissension and
distrust of success depress the insurgents; and it does n't help their
spirits any to have four Toronto scouts break through their lines in
the dark and back again with word of their weakness, though they plant
a fatal bullet neatly in the back of one poor loyalist. If they had
advanced promptly on the 4th, as planned, they might have given Sir
Francis Bond Head and Fitzgibbons a stiff tussle for possession of the
city, for Toronto's defenders at this time numbered scarcely three
hundred; but during the days MacKenzie's followers delayed north of
Yonge Street, Allan McNab came up from Hamilton with more troops. By
Wednesday, the 6th, there were twelve hundred loyalist troops in
Toronto; and noon of the 7th, out marches the loyalist army by way of
Yonge Street, bands playing, flags flying, horses prancing under
Fitzgibbons and McNab. It was a warm, sunny day. From the windows of
Yonge Street women waved handkerchiefs and cheered. At street corners
the rabble shouted itself hoarse, just as it would have cheered
MacKenzie had he come down Yonge Street victorious.

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