Читать книгу The Lieutenant-Governors of Upper Canada and Ontario, 1792-1899 - D. B. Read - Страница 14

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It was the policy of the British Government in Governor Simcoe's time, and thenceforward for nearly half a century, to have at the head of the Government in Upper Canada a military man, who from his strength and position would command the confidence of the people of the Province.

If an officer of the army could be found competent to fill the office of Governor, and who at the same time had been in the service during the Revolutionary War, so much the better. Such a man may reasonably be supposed to have had some knowledge of the United Empire Loyalists, who had been engaged in the same service, and who now had become the forest rangers and the cutters and tillers of the virgin soil of a new, unreclaimed domain.

The Honorable Peter Hunter, the first regularly appointed Lieutenant-Governor to succeed Governor Simcoe, was fifty-three years of age when he assumed the governorship of Upper Canada, and, like Simcoe, before coming to the Province had undergone much hardship in the military service of the Crown, in the endeavor to put down the rebellion of the King's subjects in America. Of his antecedents before coming to America not much is known. He was born in the year 1746, and was of a Scottish family, seated at Auchterard, in Perthshire. He took to military life at an early age, worked his way up from small beginnings, became colonel of the 60th Rifle Regiment, and finally attained the rank of lieutenant-general.

General Hunter had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty the King's military forces in British North America before coming to Upper Canada, and when he was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada he retained the post of Commander-in-Chief of the forces.

On his arrival at York in August, 1799, he was met at the landing by the Queen's Rangers, whom he had known so well during the Revolutionary War as Simcoe's regiment, and later in the day received an address from the inhabitants of York, congratulating him on his safe arrival and appointment as Lieutenant-Governor. His reply to this address was characteristic of the man. It was not his custom to waste many words. Duty had his first call, and that he performed with marked ability. His answer to the address by the inhabitants of York was a model of military precision and brevity: "Gentlemen,—Nothing that is within my power shall be wanting to contribute to the welfare of this colony."

The new Governor was of the opinion that his military duties should always have precedence over his civil duties. He considered that, for a time at least, the civil affairs of Upper Canada could be safely administered by a commission, composed of prominent men in whom he had confidence. He would not relegate his duties of Commander-in-Chief to another.

The principal forces of His Majesty in America at the time were in the Province of Lower Canada. Quebec, that fortress commanding the gateway from the sea, always demanded the closest attention of the King's officers in British America. The Governor did not remain long in York on the occasion of his first visit. On the 5th of September he crossed the lake to Niagara to inspect the troops in that garrison. On the 13th September he left Niagara for Kingston on a Government vessel, receiving a salute of the American garrison at Fort Niagara by the hoisting of the American flag in his honor. On arriving at Kingston and inspecting the troops there, he proceeded to Lower Canada to finish his duties in that Province. On leaving Upper Canada he entrusted the Government to a commission composed of the Honorable Peter Russell, previous president and administrator, the Honorable J. Elmsley, Æneas Shaw, Esquire, and the Honorable Peter McGill—all or any one of whom were well qualified for the posts they were appointed to fill. Governor Hunter's military duties detained him in the Province of Lower Canada till the following spring, when he returned to the Upper Province and entered upon the active performance of his civil duties as Governor.

As soon as convenient after his return to Upper Canada he proceeded to call a meeting of the Provincial Parliament at York, which in obedience to his summons convened on the 2nd day of June, 1800.

There were only six Acts of Parliament passed during this session, which was the fourth and last session of the second Parliament of the Province. Two of these Acts were of great general importance. One of them was "An Act for the more equal representation of the commons of Upper Canada in Parliament, and for better defining the qualification of electors;" the other, "An Act for making a temporary provision for the regulation of trade between this Province and the United States of America, by land or by inland navigation."

This Act was supplemented by another Act in the first session of the next Parliament, of a still more important and permanent character than the Act in relation to trade between the United States and Upper Canada of the first Parliament. The facts seem to have been that at this period it was much cheaper for the merchants of Upper Canada to get in goods from Albany and New York than from England. These goods were let in at a lesser duty than English goods, and the cost of carriage was so disproportionate that British interests demanded that a remedy of the evil, from an English point of view, should be applied. The remedy consisted in the passing of an Act by the Legislature for levying the like duties on goods brought into the Province from the United States as was paid on goods imported from Great Britain and other countries.

Both the Inland Revenue and the Customs duties on foreign goods received a good deal of attention during the administration of Governor Hunter. The increase of trade at York necessitated the appointment of a Customs collector at that port. The first to fill that office was Mr. William Allan, appointed by Governor Hunter in 1801. Mr. Allan's name frequently appears about this time in connection with public affairs. In June, 1801, his name appears in the Oracle at the foot of an advertisement as Returning Officer for the Counties of the East Riding of York, Durham and Simcoe, calling on those counties conjointly to elect a knight to represent them in Parliament in pursuance of a writ issued by His Excellency Peter Hunter, Esquire, directing him, William Allan, returning officer, "to cause one knight, girt with a sword, the most fit and discreet, to be freely and indifferently chosen to represent the aforesaid counties in Assembly by those who shall be present on the day of election." From the language of this writ it would appear that the official designation of members of the Assembly at that time was "Knight." As a matter of fact they had not received the Sovereign's patent conferring such title, and the writ was a survival of the old English form imported to Canada, which could not much longer survive in a democratic age.

The Governor, a man of noble character and great integrity in the performance of his civil, administrative and executive acts, and without undue severity, was yet resolute in his purpose that every official connected with the Government should be assiduous in the duties devolving on him.

In illustration of this trait in the Governor's character this incident is related. Certain Quakers of the country north of the Ridge to the north of York, complained to His Excellency of great delay in receiving their patents for lands which they had taken up in that region. The Governor at once sent for the Surveyor-General, D. W. Smith; Mr. Small, Clerk of the Executive Council; Mr. Burns, Clerk of the Crown; and Mr. Jarvis, Secretary and Registrar of the Province, to wait on him the next day at noon, appointing the same hour for the Quakers to attend.

All being present at the appointed time, the Governor, addressing the officials, said to them: "These gentlemen complain that they cannot get their patents." Each of the officials began to offer excuses for the delay. Mr. Jarvis, the secretary and registrar, when it came to his turn, endeavored to explain by asserting that the pressure was so great that he had been absolutely unable, up to that time, to get ready the particular patents referred to. "Sir," was the Governor's immediate rejoinder, "if they are not forthcoming, every one of them, and placed in the hands of these gentlemen here in my presence at noon on Thursday next (it was now Tuesday), by George, I'll un-Jarvis you." It is needless to say the Quakers got their patents and the storm blew over. This incident has much of the military court-martial aspect about it, but then the Governor was more of a military man than a civilian, and the threat to unhorse one of the officials had its effect.

The Governor not only kept the heads of departments strictly to the performance of their duties, but required their subordinates to give full time to their offices. He had published in the Gazette a notice requiring regular attendances for the transaction of public business in the Government offices every day in the year (Sundays, Good Friday and Christmas Day only excepted) from ten o'clock in the morning till three in the afternoon, and from five o'clock in the afternoon till seven in the evening.

In the year 1798 the Legislature had enacted that as soon as the counties of Northumberland and Durham made it appear to the Lieutenant-Governor that there were a thousand souls within said counties, he was authorized to issue a proclamation declaring them a separate district, to be called the District of Newcastle. This the Governor was enabled to do in 1802. In closing the Legislature he, in his address to Parliament, said: "The erection of a new district gives me particular satisfaction, being an indication of the increasing population of the Province and of the happy effects of that plenty and security which, by the blessing of Providence, we at present possess."

In 1803 the population of York had so increased that there was an imperative demand for a public market. Accordingly we find that on the 3rd of November in that year the Governor issued a proclamation that he, the Governor, with the advice of the Executive Council, to promote the interests, advantages and accommodation of the town and township of York and other of His Majesty's subjects in the Province, ordained, established and appointed a public open market to be held on Saturday in each and every week during the year in said County of York, the first market to be held on a certain piece or plot of land in said town.

The plot of land, which is fully described and delimited in the proclamation, was five and one-half acres, bounded by Market, New and Church Streets.

This is the origin of the first market in York, now Toronto. In the same year, 1803, in which it had become necessary to establish a public market in York, the Legislature was impressed with the belief that there were not enough lawyers in the Province to attend to the wants of the people. Consequently an Act was passed "to authorize the Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, or persons administering the government of the Province, to license practitioners in the law." It was not necessary that such persons should have qualified themselves by a course of study, but sufficient for them to have talent that commended them to the consideration of the Court of King's Bench. Acting under this authority, and certificates of fitness obtained from the King's Bench, Governor Hunter, by proclamation, designated Dr. W. W. Baldwin, of York; William Dickson, of Niagara; D'Arcy Boulton, of Augusta; and John Powell, of York, as fit and proper persons to practise the profession of the law and act as advocates in the courts after having been duly examined by the Chief Justice. The gentlemen thus appointed were afterwards sometimes alluded to, by persons jealous of their preferment, as the "heaven-descended barristers."

During Governor Hunter's administration the Duke of Kent, father of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, paid a visit to Canada. His Grace was at that time Commander-in-Chief of the forces at Halifax, and made it a point to visit Niagara Falls. In the course of his journey he visited York, when he was a guest of General Æneas Shaw at Oakhill, and at Niagara was entertained at Navy Hall, the official residence, when the little town was beautifully illuminated in his honor.

Governor Hunter was at all times watchful of the interests of the Province and active in promoting the proper development of the country which he had been appointed to govern. In 1804 the Provincial Government passed "an Act appropriating a certain sum of money annually to defray the expenses of erecting certain public buildings to and for the use of the Province."

The buildings referred to were the buildings for Parliament, the courts of justice, public offices and for general necessities of government. The sum granted was four hundred pounds annually. This sum was, in the judgment of the Governor, so much below what was really required for buildings for the public service, that His Excellency, as an Imperial officer, in sending an address of the Legislature to the Government of England on the matter, informed that Government "that there was not a single public building. The several offices had been established in private houses built for that occasion. The Executive met in a room in the clerk's house. The Houses of the Legislature assembled in two rooms, erected nine years before as a part of the buildings designed for Government House. The Court of Appeal, King's Bench, District Court and Masters' Sessions all held their sittings in the same place."

The two rooms referred to were doubtless the two modest frame buildings which had been used for the Legislative Chambers in the administration of the Honorable Peter Russell. These buildings Governor Hunter scornfully designates as only rooms. They had been, however, connected with a colonnade, giving the appearance of being larger than they really were.

The colonnade must have been of good height, for it was under that colonnade that was erected the hustings for the election of a knight to represent the counties of Durham, East Riding of York, and Simcoe, of which election William Allan was returning officer, as already referred to.

Of Lieutenant-Governor Hunter personally may be said, that he was an honorable, conscientious man, very much devoted to the military profession and to his duties of Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty's forces in the Province of Canada. In his capacity of Civil Governor he trusted so much to his Executive Council that he was reproached in some quarters for not exercising more arbitrarily his civil power; though in the case of Secretary Jarvis and the Quakers we are able to see that he could when necessary in the exercise of that power be strict, even to the verge of arbitrariness.

It has been said that the members of his Council in some cases took advantage of his over-confidence in them unduly to promote the interests of their families and friends, in securing for them grants of land and other benefits, to the detriment of the actual settlers.

That the actual settlers, U. E. Loyalists and their families, were sometimes inconvenienced, and, it may be, deprived of land and other possessions which they considered had been guaranteed to them by the British Government, to the advantage of the new immigration taking place in the Province, there seems to be little doubt. But it must be remembered that during Governor Hunter's time many loyal subjects of the Crown, whom the Irish rebellion of 1798 had compelled to leave Ireland, had come to Canada to make that colony their home. Thence both the Governor and Council had two sets of loyalists to serve, the Irish and the American loyalists, and it was inevitable that in serving both it was hard to avoid offending one or other of the rival claimants to lands and offices. It is not surprising, therefore, that the U. E. Loyalists of America should have been chagrined at the fresh importation of land-seekers, and vented their spleen on the Council, who were, as the U. E. Loyalists thought, too ready to make provision for the newcomers, in some cases to the injury of the original locatee of land and claimant of the right to implements with which to work that land.

If the Governor showed any weakness in the matter all was done in the interests of as faithful subjects of the King as those who may have been unfairly treated.

Governor Hunter, like his predecessor, the Honorable Peter Russell, died as he lived, a bachelor. He expired at Quebec on August 21st, 1805, in the sixtieth year of his age, and was buried in the cemetery attached to the English cathedral in that city. A loving brother caused a tablet to be placed on the walls of that cathedral on which is inscribed his epitaph, which, though modest, truthfully records the prominent features of his life. The memorial states that "his life was spent in the service of his King and country; of the various stations, both civil and military, which he filled, he discharged the duties with spotless integrity, unvaried zeal, and successful abilities."