British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government, 1839-1854 Part 6

[58] _Journals of the House of a.s.sembly_, 3 September, 1841.

[59] I have used as my chief authority here the reports in _The Quebec Gazette_, more especially the issue of Friday, 10 September, 1841.

[60] Elgin-Grey Correspondence: Elgin to Grey, 26 April, 1847.

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CHAPTER IV.

THE GOVERNORS-GENERAL: SIR CHARLES BAGOT.

Sir Charles Bagot, the second governor-general of United Canada, contrasted strangely with his predecessor in character and political methods. He was a man of the Regency, and of Canning's set. Since 1814 he had occupied positions of considerable importance in the diplomatic world, not because of transcendent parts, but because of his connections. He had been amba.s.sador at Washington, St. Petersburg, and the Hague; and in the United States, where, to the end, his friends remembered him with real affection, he had rendered service permanently beneficial both to Britain and to America by negotiating the Rush-Bagot treaty, which established the neutralization of the great lakes. In Europe, he had been known to fame mainly as the recipient of George Canning's rhyming despatch; and for the rest, he allowed the great minister to make him, as he had made all {127} his other agents, a p.a.w.n in the game where he alone was player. In his correspondence he stands out as an old-fashioned, worldly, cultured, and unbusiness-like diplomatist, worthy perhaps of a satiric but kindly portraiture by Thackeray--a genuine citizen of Vanity Fair. Apart from his correspondence, his friendships, and his American achievements, he might have pa.s.sed through life, deserving nothing more than some few references in memoirs of the earlier nineteenth century. But by one freak of fortune he found himself transported to Canada in 1842, and, by another, he became one of the foremost figures in the history of Canadian const.i.tutional development. There have been few better examples of the curious good-fortune which has attended on the growth of British greatness than the story of Bagot's short career in Canada.

When a very eminent personage demanded from the existing government some explanation of their selection of Bagot, Stanley, who was then Secretary of State for the Colonies, pointed, not to administrative qualifications, but to his diplomatic services in the United States.

Relations with the American Republic do not here concern us, but it may be remembered that the situation in 1841 and 1842, just before the {128} Ashburton Treaty, was full of peril; and Bagot was sent to Canada as a person not displeasing to the Americans, and a diplomatist of conciliatory temper. But his work was to be concerned with domestic, not international, diplomacy.

Three factors must be carefully studied in the year of political turmoil which followed: the Imperial government, the Canadian political community, and the new governor-general.

During this and the following governor-generalship, the predominant influence at the Colonial Office was Lord Stanley, almost the most distinguished of the younger statesmen of the day. Peel's judicial and scientific mind usually controlled those of his subordinates; but even Peel found it hard to check the brilliant individualism of his colonial secretary; and this most interesting of all the great failures in English politics exercised an influence in Canadian affairs, such as not even Lord John Russell attempted. Judged from his colonial despatches, Stanley seems to have found it very hard to understand that there could be another side to any question on which he had made up his mind. His party had consented to a modification of the old oligarchic rule in Canada; but they were intent upon limiting the scope of the {129} change, and upon conducting all their operations in a very conservative spirit. Stanley's instructions to Bagot had been drawn up in no ungenerous fashion. Bagot was to know no distinctions of national origin or religious creed, and in so far as it might be consistent with his duty to his Sovereign, he was to consult the wishes of the ma.s.s of the community.[1] Their happiness it was his main duty to secure. In ecclesiastical matters, Stanley, who had changed his party rather than consent to weaken the Anglican Church in Ireland, was willing to acknowledge "that the habits and opinions of the people of Canada were, in the main, averse from the absolute predominance of any single church."[2] But the theory inspiring the instructions was one which denied to the colonists any but the most partial responsibility and independence, and which regarded their party divisions as factious and at times treasonable. This disbelief in the reality of Canadian parties was, however, discounted, and yet at the same time rendered more insulting to the reformers, because the colonial secretary regarded the fragments of old Family Compact Toryism as still the best guarantee in Canada for the British connection. "Although {130} I am far from wishing to re-establish the old Family Compact of Upper Canada," he wrote, at a later date, "if you come into difficulties, that is the cla.s.s of men to fall back upon, rather than the ultra-liberal party."[3] Confidence in political adventurers and the disaffected French seemed to him a kind of madness. In addition to this att.i.tude towards existing parties, Stanley held stiffly to every const.i.tutional expedient which a.s.serted the supremacy of the Imperial government. The Union had, by fixing a Civil List, taken the power of the purse within certain limits from Canadian hands, and this Civil List Stanley regarded as quite essential to the maintenance of British authority.[4] In fact, any discussion of the subject seemed to him the "reopening of a chapter which has already led to such serious consequences, and in the prosecution of which I contemplate seriously the prospect of the dismemberment of the Empire."[5] Holding views so resolute, he could not, like Russell, trust his representative on the spot; and, from the first, the troubles of the new governor-general were multiplied by Stanley's {131} determination to make the views of the Colonial Office prevail in Canada. "I very much doubt," wrote Murdoch, Sydenham's former secretary, "how far Lord Stanley is really alive to the true state of Canada, and to the necessity of governing through the a.s.sembly."[6]

Local influences provide the second factor in the situation. As has been seen, the Canadian political community was demanding both responsible government, and the admission of the French to a share in office. Sydenham had exhibited the most wonderful skill in working an anomalous system of government, and he had found himself on the brink of failure. His Council, which Bagot had inherited, "might be said to represent the Reform or popular party of Upper Canada, and the moderate Conservatives of both provinces, to the exclusion of the French and the ultra-conservatives of both provinces,"[7] but the compromise represented less a popular demand for moderation, than Sydenham's own individual idea of what a Canadian Council should be. There had been uneasiness in adjusting the opinions of individual members; there was a steady decline in the willingness of the a.s.sembly {132} and the country to support them; and a determined const.i.tutional opposition found additional strength through the support of the French party, whom the governor had alienated not simply as a political division but as a race. In a sense, there was no imminent danger, as there had been in 1837, for Sydenham's sound administration had given the country peace and prosperity. English money and immigrants were flowing in; the woods were ringing with the axes of settlers too busy in clearing the ground to trouble much with politics; the lines of communication were being improved and transportation simplified; and, thanks to Ashburton, the war-cloud to the south had vanished over the horizon. Yet the politicians held the central position--everything depended on them; and the crisis for Bagot would arise, first, when he should be called on to fill certain places in the Executive Council, and then, when Parliament met. It is often a.s.sumed that public opinion was seriously divided on the question of the responsibility of the ministry to the a.s.sembly, and of the extent of the concessions to be made to the French; and that the opposition to reform was almost equal in the numbers of its supporters to the progressive party. But this is to over-estimate the forces of {133} reaction. The Family Compact men had fallen on evil days.

Strachan with his church party, and MacNab with his tail of Tory irreconcilables, had really very little substantial backing; and honest Tory gentlemen, like J. S. Cartwright, who openly advocated an aristocratic administration, were unlikely to attract the crowd. The work of Sydenham had contributed much to the political education of Canada; popular opinion was now firmer and more self-consistent, and that opinion went directly contrary to the views of Stanley and his supporters. One may find evidence of this in the views of moderates on either side.

Harrison, who represented the moderate reforming party in Sydenham's ministry, held that responsible government, in some form or other, was essential, and that French nationalism must also receive concessions.

"Looking at the present position of parties," he wrote to Bagot in July, "it may, I think, be safely laid down that, to obtain a working majority in the House of a.s.sembly, it is absolutely necessary that the government should be able to carry with it the bulk of the French-Canadian members.... There is no disguising the fact that the French members possess the power of the country; and he who directs that {134} power, backed by the most efficient means of controlling it, is in a situation to govern the province best."[8] It was his opinion that Bagot should antic.i.p.ate the coming crisis by calling in Baldwin and the French, before events forced that step on him.

On the Conservative side, a moderate man like W. H. Draper, the attorney-general for Upper Canada in Sydenham's ministry, argued in favour of a policy almost identical. While his views tended to oscillate, now to this side, now to that, their general direction was clear. He felt that the ideal condition was one of union between the parties of Western Canada, which would "render the position of the government safer in its dealings with the French-Canadians." But no such union was possible, and Draper, with that honest opportunism which best expressed his mind and capacity, a.s.sured Bagot that action in the very teeth of his instructions was the only possible course. "One thing I do not doubt at all," he wrote in July 1842, "and that is that, with the present House of a.s.sembly, you cannot get on without the French, while it is necessary for me at the same time to declare frankly that I cannot sit at the {135} council-board with Mr.

Baldwin."[9] In other words, since Draper admitted that the opposition leaders must receive office, and at the same time declared the impossibility of his holding office with them, he was consenting to Cabinet government, not in the restricted form permitted in Lord John Russell's despatches, but after the regular British fashion.

Outside the sphere of party politics moderate opinion took precisely the same stand. Murdoch had been Sydenham's right-hand man, and was still the fairest critic of Canadian politics. That he distrusted Stanley's methods is apparent in his letters to Bagot; and it was his suggestion that the Imperial position should be modified, and that some concession should be made to French national feeling. "No half measures," he told Bagot, "can now be safely resorted to. After the Rebellion, the government had the option, either of crushing the French and anglifying the province, or of pardoning them and making them friends. And as the latter policy was adopted, it must be carried out to its legitimate consequences."[10]

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The situation in Canada during the spring and summer of 1842 stood thus. A governor-general, entirely new to the work of domestic administration, and to the province which had fallen to his lot, faced a curious dilemma. The British cabinet, the minister responsible for the colonies, and all those in Canada who claimed to be the peculiar friends of the British connection, bade him govern for, but not by the people, and exclude from office almost all the French-Canadians, on the ground that they were devotedly French in sympathies. Another group, at times aggressive, and very little accustomed to the orthodox methods of parliamentary opposition, bade him venture and trust; and warned him that no half measures would satisfy the claims of const.i.tutional liberty and nationality.

The administration of Bagot occupied a single year, and its more important episodes were crowded into a few weeks in the autumn of 1842.

Yet there have been few years of equal significance in the history of Canadian political development. There were intervals in which Bagot had time to reveal to Canada his genius for making friends; and the foundation of a provincial university in Toronto deeply interested one who had something of {137} Canning's wit and literary inclinations.

But politics usually claimed all his attention. The Union of the Provinces, and the Imperial supremacy, had to be defended against their a.s.sailants; the vacant places in the Executive Council had to be filled, as nearly as was possible in harmony with the wishes of the community; and whatever the character of that council might be, it would have to face the test of criticism from an a.s.sembly, which had already striven not unsuccessfully with Sydenham. In his attempt to answer these various problems, Bagot was at his worst in finance. He had not the requisite business training, and entirely lacked Sydenham's knowledge, boldness, and precision. In the correspondence over the mode in which the province should dispose of the British loan of 1,500,000, Stanley's views show a clearness and force, lacking in those of Bagot; and in the one really unfortunate episode of the year, his want of financial skill drew on the governor-general's head the remonstrances of both Stanley and the Treasury authorities. To escape financial difficulties in Canada, Bagot had antic.i.p.ated the loan, by drawing on British funds for 100,000, and the Treasury did not spare him. "He ought," wrote the Chancellor of the Exchequer, "to have {138} considered those (difficulties) which must arise here from the presentation of large drafts at the Treasury, for which Parliament had made no provision; and for which, as Parliament was not sitting, no regular provision could be made. The situation to which the Treasury is reduced is this: either to protest the bills for want of funds, or to accept the bills, and find within thirty days the means of paying them."[11] This incident furnished to Stanley fresh proof, if any were needed, of Bagot's inexperience. An anxious and mistrustful temper appears in all his despatches to Bagot; but, in fact, with little justification. He never learned how completely the governor for whom he trembled was his master in the art of governing a half-autonomous colony.

As early as March, Bagot had begun to feel that the views of the Cabinet in Britain were impracticable: and that even the Civil List might not be so easily defended as Stanley imagined. "I know well by what a slender thread the adhesion of the colony will hang whenever we consent to leave the matter entirely in its own hands.... But the present supply is not sufficient for its purposes. We must always be dependent on the Legislature for provision to meet its excess; and I cannot but {139} think that the sooner the Legislature succeeds, if they are to succeed, in carrying the point, the more generous they may possibly be in the use of their victory."[12] Bagot was already defining the policy which was to be peculiarly his own. He had a singularly clear eye for facts, even when they contradicted his preconceived ideas; and, being a man of the world, he saw that compromise with the opposition was as natural in Canada as in Britain.

But in answer to his despatches, proposing such a compromise, Stanley, with his dogmatic omniscience, and eloquent certainty, had nothing but regrets to express, and difficulties to suggest. England, he thought, had dealt generously with Canada in the terms of the Act of Union, and sound statesmanship lay in resolute defence of that measure. And, since there always seems to be in such imperialists a sense of political pathos--the _lacrymae rerum politicarum_--he began to have pessimistic views of the permanence of the connection: "I am very far from underrating the value to Great Britain of her extensive and rapidly improving North American possessions, but I cannot conceal from myself the fact that they are maintained to her at no light cost, and at no {140} trifling risk. To all this she willingly submits, so long as the bonds of union between herself and her colonies are strengthened by mutual harmony, good will, and confidence; and it would be indeed painful to me to contemplate the possibility that embarra.s.sments, arising from uncalled for and unfounded jealousies on the part of Canada, might lead the people of England to entertain a doubt how far the balance of advantages preponderated in favour of the continuance of the present relations."[13] The Civil List raised the fundamental question, but it was a simple issue, and it lay still far in the future. The const.i.tution of the ministry, however, and its relation to the coming parliament, could be neither evaded nor delayed.

Bagot's instructions gave him a certain scope, for he was permitted to avail himself of the advice and services of the ablest men, without reference to the distinction of local party. In making use of this liberty, Bagot had to consider chiefly the need of finding a majority in the Lower House--happily he could postpone their meeting till September. Of the probable tone of that a.s.sembly the estimates varied, but Murdoch, who knew the situation as well as any man, calculated that while {141} the government party would number thirty, the French, with their British Radical friends, would be thirty-six strong, the old Conservatives eight, and some ten or so would "wait on providence or rather on patronage."[14] In Sydenham's last days, the government majority, which he had so subtly, and by means so machiavellian, got together, had vanished. Reformers, not all of them so scrupulous as Baldwin, were ready to ruin a government which kept them from a complete triumph. Sir Allan MacNab with his old die-hards, fulminating against all enemies of the British tradition, was still willing to make an unholy alliance with the French, if only he could checkmate a governor-general who did not seem to appreciate his past services to Britain. And the French themselves, alienated and insulted by Sydenham, sat gloomily alone, restless over the Union, seemingly on the threshold of some fresh racial conflict. Everything was uncertain, save the coming government defeat.[15]

At the very outset, Bagot had this question of French Canada thrust upon him. From the moment of his arrival his council advised the {142} admission of the French Canadians to a share in power. He refused, for Stanley had very carefully instructed him on that subject. The Colonial Secretary had spoken of the wisdom of forgetting old divisions, but he never permitted himself to forget that the French leaders--La Fontaine, Viger, Girouard--had all been, in some fashion or other, involved in the troubles of 1837. He believed that there still existed in Lower Canada a gloomy, rebellious, French Canadian party, which no responsible British statesman could afford to recognize.

Sober-minded Canadian statesmen told him that it was useless to attempt to detach from the party individuals--_les Vendus_ their compatriots called them. He answered that he would like to multiply such _Vendus_; and he hoped for a day when the anglicising of the Lower Province should have been completed. It was his intention to break down all forces tending in the opposite direction. He was conscious of a repulsion, equally strong, in his feelings towards Baldwin, and the Reform party. Whether it came by French racial hate, or Upper Canadian republicanism, which was the name he gave to all views of a reforming colour, the ruin of the Empire would follow hard on concession to agitation. In his heart, he trusted only {143} the old Tories, and not all his disgust at MacNab's interested advances could alter his conviction that one party alone cared for Britain--the former Family Compact men. When he bade Bagot disregard party divisions in his choice of ministers, he was unconsciously limiting Bagot's choice to a very little circle, all of them most unmistakably displeasing to the populace, whose wishes he professed to be willing to consult. He claimed to be a man of principle--mistaking the clearness of doctrinaire ignorance for the certainty of honest knowledge.

Happily the governor-general of Canada was not in this sense a man of principle. He observed, took counsel, and began to shape his own policy. It is not easy to describe that policy in a sentence, or even to make it absolutely clear. He had come out to Canada, forewarned against Baldwin and the school of const.i.tutionalists a.s.sociated with him; and the warning made him reluctant to consent to their ideas. He had been advised to draw his councillors from all directions, and his naturally moderate spirit approved a policy of judicious selection.

But the noteworthy feature in the line of action which he ultimately followed was that he allowed his diplomatic instincts to overbalance the advice imposed on him by the British ministry. {144} In selecting individuals for his councils, he almost unconsciously followed the wishes of Baldwin and his party, until, at the end, he found himself in the hands of resolute advocates of responsible government, and did nothing to withstand their doctrine. But this is to antic.i.p.ate events, and to simplify what was actually a process involved in some confusion.

He filled two vacant places--one with the most brilliant of reforming financiers, Francis Hincks, whose merits he saw at once; the other, after a gentlemanly refusal from Cartwright, with Sherwood, a sound but comparatively moderate Conservative from Upper Canada. In an admirable letter to Stanley at the beginning of the summer, he outlined his policy. Stanley, ever fearful of rash experiments, warned him that a combination of black and white does not necessarily produce grey. To this he answered: "My hope is that, circ.u.mstanced as I am, I possibly may be able to do this, that is, to take from all sides the best and fittest men for the public service.... The attempt to produce such a grey, whether it succeed or not, must, I think, after all that has pa.s.sed, and at this particular crisis in which I find myself here, be the safest line."[16] Stanley, then, limited his {145} choice of men, and in the event of a crisis, was prepared that he should risk a defeat and the violent imposition of an alien ministry, on the chance that such a reverse might provoke a loyalist uprising to defend the British connection. Baldwin dreamed of a consistently Radical cabinet.

MacNab, with his eyes shut to the consequences, seems to have considered a leap in the dark--a coalition between his men and the French Canadians. Bagot, as opportunist as the Tories, but opportunist for the sake of peace, and some kind of const.i.tutional progress, laid aside lofty ideals, and said, as his most faithful advisers also said, that the future lay with _judicious selection_, no party being barred except where their conduct should have made recognition of them impossible to a self-respecting governor.

It is difficult to name all the influences which operated on Bagot's mind. He corresponded largely and usefully with Draper, the soundest of his conservative advisers. His own innate courtesy led him to end the social ostracism of the French, and taught him their good qualities. Being quick-witted and observant, his political instincts began almost unconsciously to force a new programme upon him. Before August, he had conciliated moderate reforming opinion through Hincks; he {146} had proved to the French, by legal appointments, which met with a stiff and forced acquiescence in Stanley, that at least he was not their enemy. He had begun to question the certainty of Stanley's wisdom on the Civil List, and various other subjects. Then, between July 28th and September 26th, the date of two sets of despatches, which, if despatches ever deserve the term, must be called works of genius, he completed his plan, brought it to the test of practice, and challenged the home government to acquiesce, or recall him. With his ministry const.i.tuted as it was in July, he had to face the certainty of a vote of no confidence as soon as parliament met. Were he to do nothing, some unholy alliance of groups would defeat the government.

In that case, his ministers, pledged as they were to const.i.tutionalism by the resolutions of September, 1841, had warned him beforehand, that they would resign in a body. All hold over the French would be lost, and responsible government, whether he and Stanley willed it or not, would be established in its most obnoxious form. To fill the vacant places, or to reconstruct the ministry, the field of choice was very small, even if men of every connection were included. "Out of the 84 members of the House of {147} a.s.sembly," he told Stanley, "not above 30, as far as I can judge, are at all qualified for office, by the common advantages of intelligence and education, and of these, ten at least are not in a position to accept it."[17] In the case of the French he seemed to have reached an absolute deadlock. He found offers to individual Frenchmen useless, for he did not gain the party, and he ruined the men whom he honoured. The a.s.sembly was to meet on the 8th of September, and as that date drew near, the excitement rose. It was a crisis with many possibilities both for England and for Canada.

As certainly as Stanley, with all the wisdom of Peel's cabinet behind him, was wrong, and fatally so, Bagot's conduct between September 10th and September 14th was precisely right. In a correspondence with Peel, just before the crisis, Stanley sought to get his great leader to take his view. Even Peel's genius proved incompetent to settle a problem of local politics, three thousand miles away from the scene of action.

The wisdom of his answer lay, not in its suggestions, which were useless to Bagot, but in its hint "that much must be left to the judgment and discretion of those who have to act at a great distance from the supreme {148} authority."[18] Stanley himself, from first to last, was for allowing Bagot to face defeat, although he always thought it possible that stubborn resistance to what he counted treason would rally a secure majority to Bagot and the Crown. Time and again after a.s.suring Bagot that he and the ministry acquiesced, which, to do them justice, they did like men, he harked back to the idea of allowing events to prove that the government was indeed powerless, before it made a definitive surrender. Long before Parliament met, the situation had been discussed in all its bearings; and the only doubt that remained was concerning which out of three or four foreshadowed catastrophes would end the existence of the government. The ministers themselves had their negative programme ready; for, having consented to the const.i.tutional resolutions of September, 1841, they forewarned Bagot that if they were left in a minority, or in a very small majority, they should feel themselves compelled to resign, and they added that, if Bagot did not accept their recommendation to admit the French Canadians, they would insist upon his accepting their resignation.[19]

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When the a.s.sembly met, events moved very rapidly. On the opening day, Neilson brought forward the exciting question of amnesty; and the air was filled with rumours and schemes, of which the most ominous for government was the project of coalition between Conservatives and French Canadians. The time had come for action--if anything could really be done. To understand the boldness of Bagot's tactics, it must be remembered that they went "in the teeth of an almost universal feeling at home ... certainly in opposition to Lord Durham's recorded sentiments, and as certainly to Lord Sydenham's avowed practice"--to say nothing of Stanley's own wishes. La Fontaine was definitely approached on the tenth, and, seemingly, Bagot was not quite prepared for the greatness of his claims--"four places in the Council, with the admission of Mr. Baldwin into it."[20] But he had no alternative, for on the 12th he received a plain statement from his cabinet that, if he failed, they were not prepared to carry on the government.[21] To his dismay, the surrender, if one may so term it, which he signed next day, was not accepted, since Baldwin could not {150} countenance the pensioning of the ministers, Ogden and Davidson, who had been compulsorily retired, and, although MacNab was at hand with the offer of sixteen Conservative stalwarts, the plan was useless, and, in view of MacNab's general conduct at this time, irritating. When Bagot wrote that night to Stanley it was as a despairing man, for the attack had begun at 3 o'clock, Baldwin leading off with an address, as usual pledging the House to responsible government, and there was every chance that he would defeat the ministry. At this point Bagot took the strange and daring plan of allowing Draper to read his letter to La Fontaine in the House, that the Lower Canadians might "learn how abundantly large an offer their leaders have rejected, and the honest spirit in which that offer was made."[22] His unconventionality won the day, by convincing the House that the governor-general was in earnest. Successive adjournments staved off the debate on the address; and by September 16th, terms had been settled. La Fontaine, Small, Aylwin, Baldwin, and Girouard if he cared to take office, were to enter, Draper, Davidson, Ogden and Sherwood pa.s.sing out.

Unfortunately, since neither Ogden nor Sherwood happened to be {151} present, Bagot had to accept their resignations on his own initiative, and without previous consultation with them. Not even that dexterous correspondent could quite disguise the awkwardness of his position when he wrote to tell both men that they had ceased to be his ministers.[23]

So the crisis ended.

The address was carried by fifty-five votes to five, the malcontents being MacNab, foiled once more in his ambitions; Moffat and Cartwright, representing inflexible Toryism; Neilson, whose position as a recognized opponent of the Union tied his hands, and Johnstone, a disappointed place man. Peace ruled in the a.s.sembly, and the battle pa.s.sed to the province, the newspapers, and most ominous of all for the governor, to the cabinet and public in Britain. A storm of abuse, criticism, and regrets broke over Bagot's devoted head. The opposition press in Canada called him "a radical, a puppet, an old woman, an apostate, a renegade descendant of old Colonel Bagot who fell at Naseby fighting for his King."[24] MacNab, in the House, led a bitterly personal opposition. At least one {152} cabinet meeting in England was called specially to consider the incident, and for some months Stanley tempered a.s.surances that he and the government would support their representative, with caustic expressions of regret. The necessity of the change, he reiterated, had not been fully proven. The French members and Baldwin were doubtful characters. If the worst must be accepted, and a ministry constructed, containing both Baldwin and the French, then Bagot had better obtain from the new cabinet some a.s.surance of "their intention of standing by the provisions of the Act of Union, including the Civil List, and every other debatable question." Then, fearing lest the very citadel of responsibility and control should be surrendered, he set forth his theory of government in an elaborate letter which revealed distinct distrust of his correspondent's power of resistance. "Your position is different from that of the Crown in England. The Crown acts avowedly and exclusively on the advice of its ministers, and has no political opinions of its own. You act in concert with your Executive Council, but the ultimate decision rests with yourself, and you are recognised, not only as having an opinion, but as supreme and irresponsible, except to the Home government, for {153} your acts in your executive capacity.

Practically you are (influenced) by the advice you receive, and by motives of prudence, in not running counter to the advice of those who command a majority in the Legislature; but you cannot throw on them the onus of your actions in the same sense that the Crown can in this country."[25]

Yet, so far as Canada was concerned, Bagot had reason to feel satisfied. Threatened with half a dozen hostile combinations, he had forestalled them all, and found the a.s.sembly filled with friends, not enemies. He had approached a sullen French nation--and thereafter the French party formed as solid an accession to Canadian political stability as they had once been dangerous to Imperial peace; and their union with the moderate reformers in government, while it gave them all they asked, enabled the governor to exercise a natural restraint on them, should they again be tempted to nationalist excesses. He had not explicitly surrendered to any sweeping doctrine of responsible government. There was peace at last. The a.s.sembly which pa.s.sed over thirty acts, reaffirmed the rights of the royal prerogative, and {154} was dismissed in the most amiable temper with itself, and the governor-general.

One may discern, however, a curious contradiction between the superficial consequences of the crisis, as described by Bagot, and the fundamental changes the beginnings of which he was able to trace in the months which followed. On the face of it, Bagot's policy of frank expediency had saved Stanley and his party from a crushing defeat and a humiliating surrender to extreme views. So far, he had a.s.sisted the cause of conservatism. But the disaster and the humiliation would have come, not from the grant of responsible government, but from the misuse of it to which a victory, won against a more resolute governor, might have tempted Baldwin and La Fontaine, and from the false position in which the imperial government would have stood, towards the men who had challenged imperial authority and won. It is interesting to follow the process by which Bagot came to see all that lay in his action.

Yielding to Canadian autonomy, he went on to new surrenders. He had already warned Stanley that the agitation over the Civil List would certainly reawaken; to the end he seems to have been considering the advisability of a complete surrender {155} on that point. When he wrote communicating to the minister the a.s.sembly's acknowledgment of the royal prerogative, in recognizing the right of the Crown to name the capital, he pointed out that, prerogative or no prerogative, the possessor of the purse had the final voice. He rebuked his new minister, Baldwin, for tacking on question-begging const.i.tutional phrases to a legal opinion, but he told Stanley, quite frankly, that, "whether the doctrine of responsible government is openly acknowledged, or is only tacitly acquiesced in, _virtually it exists_."[26] During the remainder of his tenure of office, partly because of his own ill-health, but partly also, I think, from conviction, he gave his ministers the most perfect freedom of action. And, although he did not gain the point, he was willing to make sweeping concessions in answer to the call for an amnesty for the rebels of 1837. He recognized the force of trusting, in a self-governing community, even those who had once striven against the British rule with arms--the final proof in any man that he has come to understand the secrets, at once of Empire, and of const.i.tutional government.

There is little more to tell of Bagot's rule, for {156} the last months of his life were spent in a struggle to overcome extreme bodily sickness in the interest of public duty; and Stanley himself, in the name of the Cabinet, expressed his admiration for the gallantry of his stand.

To the end, he held himself justified in his political actions, and if there were moments when he questioned whether Stanley would see things in a reasonable light, he possessed the perfect confidence of his Canadian ministers, who did not neglect his injunction to them to defend his memory.[27]

Nevertheless the irritation of the Colonial Secretary was neither unnatural nor unjustifiable. He confidently expected that separation from England would be the immediate consequence of a surrender to the reform party in Canada; and he believed that Bagot had made that surrender. In the latter opinion he was correct. There are times when the party of reaction sees more clearly than their opponents the scope and consequences of innovation, however blind they may be to the developments which by their parallel advance check the obvious dangers; and Sir Charles Metcalfe, whom Stanley sent to Canada to stay the flowing tide, has furnished the most accurate negative criticism of {157} the Bagot incident: "The result of the struggle naturally increased the conviction that Responsible Government was effectually established, new Councillors were forced on the governor-general....

The Council was no longer selected by the governor. It was thrust on him by the a.s.sembly of the people. Some of the new members of the Council had entered it with extreme notions of the supremacy of the Council over the governor; and the illness of Sir Charles Bagot, after this change, threw the current business of administration almost entirely into their hands, which tended much to confirm these notions."[28] It fell to the lot of this critic to attempt to correct Bagot's mistakes.

[1] Stanley to Bagot, 8 October, 1841.

[2] _Ibid._

[3] Bagot Correspondence: Stanley to Bagot, 17 May, 1842. The term _Bagot Correspondence_ is used to denote the letters to and from Bagot, other than despatches, in the possession of the Canadian Archives.

[4] Stanley to Bagot, 8 October, 1841.

[5] _Ibid._

[6] Bagot Correspondence: Murdoch to Bagot, 18 October, 1842.

[7] Bagot to Stanley, 26 September, 1842.

[8] Bagot Correspondence: Harrison to Bagot, 11 July, 1842