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From the time of the surrender of Canada by the capitulation of Vaudreuil at Montreal in 1760, the government of the province presented an unsolved problem, whose difficulties finally culminated in the outbreak of 1837. In the beginning the country was entirely French, an appanage of the British Crown by right of conquest. Its population, some seventy thousand in number, thinly spread along the valley of the St. Lawrence, was almost entirely an agricultural peasantry, among whom education, judged by modern standards, was far from widespread.^[1] Two outstanding characteristics were in general evidence, they cherished towards their Church an unfailing devotion, while a stubborn pride of nationality remained with them as a heritage from the great country from which they had sprung. Of initial loyalty to the British Crown there could be no question. Still less could there be any question of self-government. Military rule was established as a necessity of the situation. Even when, in 1764, a year after the final treaty of cession, the purely military rule was superseded by the institution of an executive council, this body consisted merely of a group of officials appointed by the governor of the province. Nor is it to be said that this form of government was of itself an injustice. The inhabitants of French Canada had known nothing of political rights^[2] or representative institutions. Only in rare cases had appointments or promotions been bestowed upon native Canadians. Even the Church itself, in spite of its democratic tradition in favour of capacity and zeal, had withheld all superior offices from the children of the humble peasantry of the St. Lawrence. To have instituted among such a people a system of democratic self-government on the morrow of the conquest, could only have ended in chaos and disaster.

The government thus established by royal proclamation was systematized and consolidated by the British parliament through the Quebec Act of 1774.^[3] This statute established in Canada a province of magnificent extent. Northward it extended to the Hudson Bay Territory; on the south it bordered New England, New York, Pennsylvania and the Ohio; westward it reached to where all trace of civilization ended with the Mississippi River. The Ohio valley was already THE QUEBEC ACT dotted here and there in its forests and open meadow lands with the cabins of adventurous settlers. Of the rest of Canada the valley of the St. Lawrence was the only occupied part. Thither had come already, since the conquest, a few British immigrants, for the most part small traders and needy adventurers. The upper portion of the province was still a wilderness. The Quebec Act provided for the use of the pre-conquest Coutume de Paris in civil cases, and for English criminal law. In both spheres permission was given to the government of the colony to change the systems with varying local needs The freedom of religion guaranteed by the Peace of Paris (1763) was freed from ambiguities by the Act. The collection of the tithe^[4] was legalized, and a new oath made it possible for Roman Catholics to combine loyalty to the Crown with loyalty to their church. The government was committed to a governor assisted by a nominated legislative council, any five of whom, by later instructions from England, were to form a quorum for provincial business other than legislation.^[5] The Act declared it “inexpedient to call an assembly.” Fox, indeed, pleaded in the House of Commons in favour of representative institutions, but was met with the argument that a Protestant government could not safely entrust power to a Roman Catholic legislature.^[6]

It is a disputed point how far the concessions thus granted to the French were adopted as a means of preserving the country from the infection of the revolutionary discontent, widespread in the colonies of the Atlantic sea-board, and of preventing the French habitant from making common cause with the malcontents of New England and Virginia. Such, if not the purpose, was at any rate the effect of the Act. The pulpits of Massachusetts were loud with denunciation of the toleration of popery enbodied in the statute. The American congress (September 5th, 1774) expressed its alarm in documentary form, and the small British minority already settled in Lower Canada forwarded to England petitions of energetic protest. The fact that the British government, in the face of bigoted opposition, passed and maintained the statute which stands as the charter of religious liberty for Roman Catholic Canada, may be said to have laid the foundation of that firm attachment of the Canadian French to the Crown, which, after the lapse of four generations, has become one of the fundamental factors of the political life of Canada. The Act undoubtedly was an important element in the neutrality of the habitants during the American revolution. The clergy of the province THE LOYALISTS threw the whole weight of their influence in favour of the British side. The agitators sent into the country found but few sympathizers of influence, and the attempt at military conquest ended in failure.

The issue of the Revolutionary War and the separation of the revolted colonies from Great Britain had a momentous effect upon the destinies of British North America. That province now became a haven of refuge for the distressed Loyalists, who abandoned the United States in thousands rather than sever their allegiance from their mother country. Of these nearly thirty thousand found their way into the Maritime Provinces. Others, ascending the St. Lawrence or coming by Lake Champlain, settled in the Eastern Townships of Quebec or near to Montreal itself. Still others, pushing their way up the river or passing over the rough wagon-trails of the forest country of New York, embarked on Lake Ontario to find new homes upon its northern shores. Liberal grants of land were made. Settlements sprang up along the Bay of Quinte, on the Niagara frontier, on the Grand River, on the Thames and as far west as the Detroit River. By the year 1791 there were some thirty thousand settlers in the districts thus thrown open. The newcomers, impoverished as most of them were, made excellent pioneers. Their conviction of the righteousness of their cause lent vigour to their arduous struggle with the wilderness. The sound of the axe resounded amid the stillness of the pine forest; farmsteads and hamlets arose on the shores of the lake and beside its tributary streams. But with the coming of the Loyalists Canada lost its racial unity. The population of the upper country was British, that of the lower, French. French law and custom seemed to the new settlers anomalous and unjust. British Protestantism was abhorrent to the devout Catholics of French Canada. The new settlers, too, accustomed to the political freedom which they had enjoyed in the colonies of their origin, chafed under autocratic control, and in repeated petitions demanded of the home government the privilege of a representative assembly.^[7]

To meet this situation the British parliament adopted the Constitutional Act of 1791.^[8] Under the authority of this Act the province was divided into two separate governments—Upper and Lower Canada. It was presumed that a natural solution of the vexed question of British and French rivalry had thus been found. “I hope,” said Pitt, “that this settlement will put an end to the competition between the old French inhabitants and the new settlers from Britain and the British colonies.” Burke at the same time expressed the opinion that “to attempt to amalgamate two populations composed of races of men diverse in language, laws, THE CONSTITUTIONAL ACT and customs, was a complete absurdity.”^[9] To each province was given a legislature consisting of two Houses, the Lower House, or assembly, being elected by the people, the Upper, called the legislative council, being nominated for life by the Crown. By the Crown also were to be appointed all public officers of each district, including the governor-general of the two provinces, the lieutenant-governor who conducted the administration of Upper Canada, and the members of the executive councils which aided in the administration of each province. The British parliament reserved to itself the right of imposing duties for the regulation of navigation and commerce. The free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion was again guaranteed. It was further enacted that the Crown should set apart one-eighth of all the unallotted Crown land in the province for the maintenance of a Protestant clergy, a provision which subsequently entailed the most serious consequences.

The measure was undoubtedly liberal, and at the time of its passage furnished an instrument of government well suited to the requirements of the situation. It was intended to extend to the Canadas something of the degree of political liberty enjoyed by the people of Great Britain. Its object was declared by Lord Grenville,^[10] to be to “assimilate the constitution to that of Great Britain as nearly as the difference arising from the manners of the people and from the present situation of the province will admit.” John Graves Simcoe, first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, addressing his legislature of twenty-three members assembled, apparently “in marquee tents,” at Niagara spoke of the province as “singularly blessed, not with a mutilated constitution, but with a constitution which has stood the test of experience and is the very image and transcript of that of Great Britain, by which she has long established and secured to her subjects as much freedom and happiness as it is possible to be enjoyed under the subordination necessary to civilized society.”^[11] For some years, indeed, after the adoption of the new constitution, the government of the new provinces was carried on with reasonable success and a fair amount of harmony. Had the constitution been of a more flexible character and had the conduct of the administration been adapted to the progressive settlement of the country, its success might have continued indefinitely. The incoming century found a contented country;^[12] wealth and population were on the increase. A tide of immigration from Scotland and Ireland turned steadily towards Upper Canada. Pennsylvania farmers crossed the POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES lakes to find new homes in the fertile land of the province. The little hamlet of York, on the site of the old Indian post of Toronto, became the seat of government. To the north of it a wide, straight road, called Yonge Street in honour of the secretary of war, carried the tide of settlement towards Lake Simcoe. At the head of Lake Ontario, Dundas Street ran from the settlement at Hamilton to the Thames, and presently was opened eastward as far as York. The inhabitants of the province in the year 1811 were estimated at seventy-seven thousand.^[13] Into Lower Canada also British immigrants had come in considerable numbers. Ere long it began to appear that the racial conflict, which it was the intention of the Act of 1791 to obviate, had but shifted its ground and was renewed with increasing bitterness in the province of Lower Canada. The War of 1812, in which the energies of both French and British settlers were absorbed in repelling American invasion, stilled for the time the internal conflict of races. But with the renewal of peace the political difficulties of both Upper and Lower Canada assumed an increasingly serious aspect.

The political situation in the two provinces in the twenty years succeeding the peace of 1815 presented analogous, though not identical, features. In each of them the fact that the executive was not under the control of the representatives of the people constituted the main cause of complaint. But in the Lower Province the situation was aggravated by the fact that the executive heads of the administration were identified with the interests of the British minority and opposed to the dominance of the French Canadians. Even in Upper Canada, however, the position of affairs was bad enough. The actual administration of the province was in the hands of the lieutenant-governor and his executive council of five, later of seven, members, a wholly irresponsible body of placemen appointed by the Crown from among the judges, public officers and members of the legislative council. Of the legislature itself the Upper House, or legislative council, was, as already said, a nominated body. Under such circumstances the political control of the colony had passed into the hands of a privileged class who engrossed the patronage of the Crown, received liberal grants of land and were able to bid defiance to the efforts of the assembly to free itself from oligarchical control.

Had the constitution been in any real sense a “transcript” of the constitution of Great Britain, the assembly might have fallen back upon the power of the purse as an effective method of political control. But this remedy, under the system in vogue, was inadequate, owing to the fact that the assembly possessed only a limited, power over the finances of the colony. The Crown was in enjoyment THE FAMILY COMPACT of a permanent civil list. Exclusive of the revenue from the clergy reserve, it had at its disposal a patronage of fifty thousand pounds a year. Local expenditure within the province was under the direction of magistrates appointed by the Crown meeting in Quarter Session. The legislative council itself claimed the right to reject, and even to amend, the money bills passed by the representatives of the people. Under such circumstances the House of Assembly found itself deprived of any effective means of forcing its wishes upon the administration. Quite early in the history of the period, it had vigorously protested against the impotence to which it was reduced. In an address^[14] presented to the acting governor in 1818, the assembly drew attention to the “evil that must result from the legislative and executive functions being materially vested in the same persons, as is unfortunately the case in this province, where His Majesty’s executive council is almost wholly composed of the legislative body, and consisting only of the deputy superintendent-general of the Indian department, the receiver-general and the inspector-general, the chief-justice, the speaker of the legislative council, and the honourable and reverend chaplain of that House.” The essence of the financial situation appears in the famous Seventh Report of the Committee on Grievances drawn up in 1835. “Such is the patronage of the colonial office,” it declares, “that the granting or withholding of supplies is of no political importance, unless as an indication of the opinion of the country concerning the character of the government.”^[15]

It has become customary to apply to the privileged class who thus controlled political power and office in the colony of Upper Canada, the term Family Compact. The designation itself appears to be, in strictness, a misnomer, for there existed among the ruling class no further family relationship than what might naturally be expected in a community whose seat of government contained, even in 1830, only two thousand eight hundred and sixty persons. But it is undoubted that, from 1815 onwards, the members of the administration with their friends and adherents formed a distinct political party united by ties of mutual interest and social cohesion, determined to retain the influence they had acquired, and regarding the protests of the plainer people of the province with a certain supercilious contempt. Nor is it to be supposed that the adherents of the Family Compact embodied in themselves the very essence of tyranny. They represented merely, within their restricted sphere, those principles of class government and vested interests which were still the dominant WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE political factor in every country of Europe. Of the high moral quality and sterling patriotism of such men as Robinson, the attorney-general, there can be no doubt. The exaggerated diatribes of the indignant Radicals in which the ruling class figure as the “tools of servile power,”^[16] are as wide of the mark as the later denunciations launched against the party of Reform.

The growing agitation in Upper Canada presently found an energetic leader in William Lyon Mackenzie, a Scotchman of humble parentage. Born at Springfield in Forfarshire in 1795, he came in 1820 to try his fortunes in Canada. He set up in business in a small way at the village of York, removing presently to Dundas. It is typical of the restricted commercial life of the time that Mackenzie and his partner dealt in drugs, hardware, jewelry, toys, confections, dye stuffs and paints, and maintained in addition a circulating library. From Dundas, Mackenzie moved to Queenston. Interested from the first in the political affairs of the colony, he started, in 1824, the publication of the Colonial Advocate, the first number of which, distributed gratuitously through the countryside, commenced an unsparing attack upon the governing class. Its editor, the “westernmost journalist in the British dominions on the continent of America,” assumed, as he himself subsequently expressed it, “the office of a public censor.” He denounced the Family Compact and all its works. He denounced the jobbery of the public land. He denounced the land monopoly of the Church of England, the lack of schools, the perversion of justice and the greed of the official class. The appearance of the Colonial Advocate aided in consolidating the party of Reform. In the elections of 1824 they carried a majority of the seats in the House of Assembly, a victory which only served to reveal the impotence of the opposition in the face of the established system. Dr. Rolph, elected for Middlesex, the stalwart Peter Perry, member for Lennox and Addington, and other leaders of the Reform party, found they could do little beyond selecting a farmer speaker of their own liking and passing resolutions condemning the existing conduct of affairs. None the less their presence as a majority of the House remained as a standing protest and threw into a clearer light the irresponsible position of the executive.

In the late autumn of 1825 Mackenzie moved his printing press to York hoping not merely to assist the Reformers but to promote his own none too successful fortunes. His personality was hardly such as to further either aim. For Mackenzie possessed the defects of his virtues. He had all the WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE fine qualities of his race—its perseverance, its tenacity, its imagination, its zeal, its uncanny energy; but unfortunately he had too large a share of its defects. He was vain and uncompromising. His perseverance and tenacity lacked that sobriety of purpose which dignifies reform movements and rescues them from the violence of uncharted agitation. His imagination magnified the difficulties of the social and political scene and prevented him from seeing them apart from his opponents and as almost a necessary part of the contemporary world. When he marched forth to war he aimed to destroy his enemies, whom he hated far more, it would almost seem, than the system of which they were merely a colonial outpost. Political differences took on with him the colour of bitter personal animosity, and when he poured out the vials of his wrath they were hot with the passion of hatred and blistering with the vitriol of scorn. Incapable of clear political thought, he never gave any one the credit of honesty in a conviction which was not his own. Like the clansmen of his native land he tried to storm an entrenched and strongly fortified position by a frontal attack in which defects in equipment and in tactics were to be made good by a glorious charge whose driving force was the red-blood of passion, whose reserve was the fury of hate. Such was the man whose Colonial Advocate stirred up government and official circles in York.

In the early summer of 1826 Mackenzie enjoyed a perfect surfeit of virulence and abuse. He invited the people of Upper Canada to sweep the “nest of unclean birds” out of power, having too long and shamefully defiled the province with their abominations. Not content with attacking his political opponents Mackenzie descended to the grossest insolence in abusing highly respectable citizens, whose only crime was that they would not march under his banner. So contemptible had his press become that Mackenzie might well feel justified in being absent from York, accepting the security which decent men grant to irresponsible journalists. The older heads remained calm. On the evening, however, of June 8th, 1826, a group of young “bloods,” connected in one way or another with the Family Compact and including a member of the lieutenant-governor’s household, sacked Mackenzie’s office. There is no evidence that the episode was known to, much less inspired by official circles. It was a youthful escapade which recoiled a hundredfold on the perpetrators.

A young society does not lightly condone “the law of the jungle,” especially when the victim is not there to defend his property. As a consequence, many who despised Mackenzie’s methods sympathized with him in the misfortune which he had suffered. Had it ended there, all might have been well. Mackenzie’s fortunes were at a low ebb and the Colonial Advocate was on the eve of financial collapse. His friends, however, shrewdly advised a ARCHDEACON STRACHAN civil action for damages. The facts were not denied and the defence was weakened by the desire not to give the Advocate further publicity by reading out in court the scurrilous abuse which gave rise to the attack. In the issue Mackenzie found himself reimbursed by a favourable verdict for over six hundred pounds. The substantial members of the Compact paid the bill and the insolvent editor had a comfortable balance at the bank after repairing his office and providing himself with a new press.

Bickerings galore soon increased the political agitation. Archdeacon Strachan, not content with the advantageous position enjoyed by the Church of England in the province, took an unfavourable moment to magnify both himself and his church. Already grave doubts had arisen over the Anglican claim to the sole enjoyment of “the clergy reserves” provided for by the Constitutional Act of 1791, and counter claims were gaining ground; on the one hand in favour of a share for the Presbyterians, and on the other in favour of secularization or of educational foundations. Into such a world Strachan launched absurd claims. He forwarded an “ecclesiastical chart” to the British government in which the number of Anglicans was greatly exaggerated. Not content with this method of asking increased support for his Church, he accused the “dissenters” of lukewarmness in their support of British institutions. The Methodists found a champion in Egerton Ryerson, and Strachan’s indiscretion gave a dangerous religious colouring to Upper Canadian agitation. Anglicanism became identified with political autocracy.

Other forces were at work. A large body of immigrants had come into the province after the peace of 1783. A recent decision in England had laid it down that they could not become British subjects or inherit property within the Empire. The judgment, if it stood, meant that a vast number of Upper Canadians had no political or personal rights. The home government advised legislation, and a bill was accordingly introduced in the Legislative Council. The Assembly, however, on receiving the measure found that it fell far short of a complete remedy and threw it out. For several sessions the battle rose and fell and the question was not finally settled before many a settler had his judgment warped and his sense of values numbed by the unseemly squabble. When a new election took place in 1828 the influences of politics, religion, agitation, and class hatred combined to return an Assembly controlled by the Reformers. Mackenzie was elected for the County of York with Jesse Ketchum as colleague. The party included Robert Baldwin’s father, Marshall Bidwell, John Rolph and others destined for good or ill to leave a mark on the political fortunes of the province. Bidwell was elected speaker and an address was voted to the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir John Colborne, regretting that his advisers WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE were those in whom the country had no confidence. Colborne may have had no leanings towards popular government, but he was at least far from being arbitrary and autocratic. If his policy eventually stiffened and if his sympathies were at length entirely on the side of the Family Compact, Mackenzie and his extremists had only themselves to thank.

Mackenzie at least was not content to assume the modesty which might for a time adorn an inexperienced member of the Assembly. He began at once that policy of ceaselessly ferreting out supposed grievances which characterized his journalistic career and eventually robbed his political life of that fruition which is the child of sanity and discipline. He started an agitation over the post office—an Imperial concern—over the chaplaincy of the House, and precious time was wasted which might have been better occupied in building up for the Reformers a platform of successful economic legislation. Political reform does not thrive on the negation of grievances. It is true that something was accomplished, but not enough to prevent the Compact gaining control of the Assembly at the elections of 1830, necessary on the death of George III. The ranks of the Reformers were decimated. Mackenzie and Bidwell survived, but many of the soberer men of the party went down to defeat. There had been no constructive leadership and the Reformers had unfortunately for themselves allowed Mackenzie too much rope. There was no shadow of a political rock in the dry parched land. The general note had been a whine and no evidence had been shown of political vision and constitutional architecture.

The new Assembly was of such a reactionary and “loyal” texture that it in turn served its opponents. Wise leadership was lacking, such as had been displayed by John Beverley Robinson, now Chief-Justice of the Province. Political control fell into the hands of Attorney-General Henry Boulton and Solicitor-General Christopher Hagerman—men singularly wanting in parliamentary virtues, competence, tact, and moderation. With them Mackenzie was bound to clash. He opposed the grant of a permanent civil list, oblivious of the fact that the home government was asking only a small concession to British parliamentary usage while it handed to the province the control over revenue formerly in Imperial hands. Of course, the bill passed, but Mackenzie and his group were undeterred. Once more he attacked the personnel of the Executive Council and the appointment of the chaplain. His soberest suggestions were robbed of a sympathetic hearing by his arrogant methods and by the fact that his paper continued to pour out its stream of invective. Secure from prosecution for libel according to the law of the time by virtue of his membership of the Assembly, Mackenzie was enjoying to the full his career of WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE irresponsible vanity, when the House decided to expel him—a course fully within its rights. The House, however, chose its battleground with singular lack of wisdom when it charged Mackenzie with being guilty of a breach of privilege in publishing the Journals of the Assembly shorn of their appendices. The motion was defeated, as Mackenzie had merely followed British custom. A new motion accusing Mackenzie of publishing libels on the Assembly followed, but prorogation stopped proceedings.

Scarcely was the Session of 1831 opened when Mackenzie’s bitterest enemies once more sought their prey. He had begun an attack in the Colonial Advocate on the Assembly as a body, which culminated in denunciation of it as a “sycophantic office for registering the decrees of a mean and mercenary executive.” The Assembly was not the body to stand wholesale attacks on its honour and declared Mackenzie’s diatribes to be “gross, scandalous and malicious libels.” On December 12th, he was expelled, after being called by the law officers a “spaniel dog,” “a reptile unworthy of the notice of any gentleman.”

However great the provocation the House singularly misjudged public opinion. They had given the Reformers a martyr. Mackenzie basked in the sunshine of popularity, a bad school for a man of his temperament. The by-election of the succeeding January was a severe lesson for the Compact. Their official candidate withdrew and Mackenzie enjoyed a carnival adorned with a gold medal and chain in public approval of his career. Attempts were made to prevent him taking his seat, but enough wisdom remained to recognize that expulsion was not a disability for parliamentary election. Mackenzie, however, was now in the heyday of triumph. His paper shewed neither repentance for past offences nor guarantees for good behaviour. Again he abused the Assembly and again he was expelled with the further declaration that he was incapable of being a member of the sitting Assembly.

The situation had now passed into extremes as foolish as Mackenzie’s own. The Assembly had created a disability, which they could not legally do. York broke out into wild tumult and sympathetic meetings were held throughout the province. The Tory party retaliated, once more attacked the office of the Colonial Advocate and burned Mackenzie in effigy in the streets of the Capital. Meanwhile, while the House was not sitting, Mackenzie had been once more elected. After experiencing a severe personal handling at Hamilton and the general exhibition of Tory violence, he determined to go to England. On May 1st, 1832, he set sail laden with petitions from his constituents and their sympathizers. In England his reception was not entirely a failure, in spite of huge counter petitions. He had several WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE interviews with Lord Goderich, the colonial-secretary. His written communications to the Colonial Office were far from praiseworthy either in form or matter, but they contained enough of a substantial nature to convince Goderich that all was not well, and on November 8th, 1832, he issued a dispatch to the lieutenant-governor which “astonished and astounded” the Compact.^[17] The Compact indeed described it as an “elegant piece of fiddle faddle,” but the indecorous characterization was the measure of their resentment at Goderich’s palpable determination not to judge Upper-Canadian affairs solely from the statements of the Tory group.

When the next session of the legislature opened in October, 1832, Mackenzie, though absent in the body, was present as a perturbing spirit. Boulton and Hagerman gave their matured legal opinion that after a double expulsion Mackenzie could not sit and vote. This extraordinary opinion was upheld by a large majority and a new writ was ordered. So monstrous was this constitutional doctrine that no opponent came forward, and, in November, Mackenzie was returned unopposed. The result coloured the debate on Goderich’s dispatch. Boulton thought that the Colonial Office could have been better employed, while Hagerman declared that the dispatch was worthless being based on the reports of a man discredited by the Assembly. The expulsion of Mackenzie was once more moved. Goderich acted promptly. Hagerman and Boulton were removed from office. The former made such a strong personal appeal to the new colonial-secretary, Lord Stanley, that he was restored, but Boulton after an unworthy experience in Newfoundland returned to Upper Canada a convert to responsible self-government. In spite of Hagerman’s ultimate restoration to favour, Mackenzie had achieved a good deal in England, and he had proved that the Colonial Office was not entirely obtuse. When he returned to York he found he was no longer a member of the House. The old process was once more gone through and once more Mackenzie was returned without a contest.

The sequence forms one of the most shameful episodes in Canadian history. Mackenzie’s followers crowded to the House of Assembly, and a scene of disorder ensued, when he refused to withdraw and demanded to be allowed to take the oath. Next day he was again expelled on an old charge of libel. He appealed to the lieutenant-governor, and on Colborne’s advice he finally went to the clerk of the Executive Council, who administered to him the oath, acting under instructions from the governor. Even with such evidence before them Mackenzie was not allowed to sit. The Assembly disputed his presence and ordered his WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE arrest by the sergeant-at-arms. A fierce debate followed, in which decorum was thrown to the winds. At the end of several hours Mackenzie was released but refused his seat. The parliament was on the eve of dissolution and Mackenzie was content to enjoy the wide popularity which his experiences had brought him. He proved himself an excellent first Mayor of York on its incorporation as the City of Toronto. Unfortunately his success in the municipal sphere did not bring him any political wisdom. He had formed a friendship with Joseph Hume, the English radical, and he rashly published a letter from him, in which phrases were used capable of a disloyal interpretation.^[18]

This lack of political sagacity had its effect in the elections of October, 1834. The publication caused alarm. The constitutionalists among the Reformers began to scan the future, while Ryerson and the Methodists studied the issues with care. The Reformers indeed secured a majority, but the soberer among them had refused to stand. Mackenzie’s journalistic indiscretion had undoubtedly weakened the party. When the legislature assembled Mackenzie then controlled the situation, and a select committee was appointed under his chairmanship to inquire into grievances. Its Report, though never formally approved, may be considered representative of Mackenzie’s political position 1835.

The Seventh Report on Grievances touches on the varied issues: patronage, official salaries, the status of the churches, land granting, pensions, public accounts, and the system of government. Grievances there were in plenty and the Report made the most of them, but once again Mackenzie’s judgment was wanting in that balance which allows concession to conditions and where possible recognizes achievements. Perhaps the most interesting part of the Report is constitutional. There appears to be a recognition that much of the political unrest was due to the machinery of government, and there is undoubted justice in the complaints that the Assembly was in the final analyses powerless. On the other hand, it is impossible to trace in the Report any clear-cut constitutional recommendations, least of all any conception of responsible cabinet government. This fact at any rate illustrates Mackenzie’s limitations. Within a few months his fellow reformer, Robert Baldwin, was to pen, as we shall see, for the Colonial Office a letter which contained the definite cure for colonial troubles.

The Report was at once printed and copies were sent to the colonial-secretary, Lord Glenelg, and to the members of the House of Commons. The British Cabinet grew alarmed. Colborne defended himself to the best of his ability against imperial censure for having apparently misjudged the situation. In spite of his defence he was relieved of his civil duties, and it looked as if Mackenzie WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE had won a signal victory. The lieutenant-governor, however, did not lay down the reins of office before he carried out a singularly unwise act. His executive council advised him to establish and endow out of the clergy reserves fifty-seven Anglican rectories, and patents were actually issued for forty-four. The law and perhaps implicit Imperial approval were on Colborne’s side, but the action was highly inopportune and was charged with political friction. Mackenzie had the experience of finding his apparent success severely discounted. At a moment when his ten years of unequal and uneven agitation seemed likely to result in some sort of change for the better, it was his misfortune to see the church of the Tory party receive distinct public recognition. It was little wonder that the province more than ever began to look on it as a schemer behind the scenes before the hoped for new policy had time to take active form. As a matter of fact, Colborne’s action lost its significance before one of the gravest acts of Imperial indiscretion. His successor was Sir Francis Bond Head, under whom a momentous administration began, to which we shall return.

SIR JOHN COLBORNE

From an engraving in the Public Archives of Canada

At this point it is only necessary to recall the state of affairs and to reconstruct public sentiment the province. After years of agitation, which had acquired ever increasing support, the Compact group had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Their outlook, already narrow enough, became more circumscribed under the appearance of Imperial reproof. Their language and behaviour lost dignity and balance. They failed to understand the issues or to recognize the growth of a newer political consciousness. To political difficulties they added the bitterness of religious superiority and social exclusiveness. Opposed to them was a body of Reformers who may be conveniently divided into liberals and radicals. The former were men of honour and standing who desired some method of working the political machinery which would give the vast body of the people an effective say in their government. This end they sought by constitutional means. The latter wished to hurry the process and were not over anxious about the means. Under Mackenzie’s guidance they lost political perspective. It was unfortunate for the province that the Tory group found a martyr in a man of Mackenzie’s temperament. Every partial success lifted him higher on the plane of vanity; every failure deepened his personal resentment and whetted his passion for revenge. To the rank and file of the people, incapable of making nice calculations of less or more, his outrageous treatment by the Assembly appeared only as an indication of Tory mentality. With Colborne’s removal in one hand, and the patents for the rectories in the other, he momentarily retired to his tent torn by conflicting feelings. His purpose was not clear until Bond Head’s régime drove the iron into his LOWER CANADA soul. He was not cast in the heroic mould of political patience nor disciplined in the fires of public life, and the final tragedy overtook him—the inexorable issue of structureless agitation.

During the same period a still more aggravated situation had been developed in Lower Canada. Here the conflict represented something more than a struggle between an office-holding minority and the excluded masses. It was a conflict intensified by the full bitterness of racial and religious antagonism. It was not merely as in Upper Canada (to use the historic phrases of Lord Durham), “a contest between a government and a people;” the spectacle presented was that of “two nations warring in the bosom of a single state,” a “struggle not of principles, but of races.”^[19] The British minority in the province, insignificant in the early years of the new régime, had grown constantly in numbers and influence. The incoming of the United Empire Loyalists and of immigrants from the mother country had swelled the ranks of a party which, though small in proportion, was determined to assert its claims against the preponderating race. British merchants controlled the bulk of the sea-going trade of the colony.^[20] An Anglican bishop of Quebec had been appointed (1793), and an Anglican cathedral erected (1804) on the site of an ancient convent of the Récollets. The governors of the province looked to the British party for support, and selected from its ranks the majority of their legislative and executive councillors. In the minds of the latter the French Canadians still figured as a conquered people whose claims to political power were equivalent to disloyalty. The blundering patriotism of such a governor as Craig (1807-11), widened the cleavage between the rival races and intensified in the minds of the French inhabitants the sentiment of their national solidarity. Excluded from the control of the executive government, the French fell back upon the assembly, in which they commanded an easy and permanent majority. Nor were they, although in opposition, altogether powerless against the government. The public revenue of Lower Canada during the period under review was raised, in part by virtue of imperial statutes, in part by the provincial legislature itself. To these sources of income were added the “casual and territorial” revenue of the Crown arising from the Jesuits’ Estates, the postal service, the land and timber sales and other minor items. The duties raised by the imperial government, together with the casual and territorial revenue, were inadequate to meet the public expenditure, and it was necessary, therefore, to have recourse to the votes of supply passed by the House of Assembly.^[21] The House of LOUIS-JOSEPH PAPINEAU Assembly, dominated by the French-Canadian party, made full use of the power thus placed in its hands. It insisted (1818) that the detailed items of expenditure should be submitted to its consideration. It asserted its claim to appropriate not merely the revenue raised by its own act, but the whole expenditure of the province. It insisted on voting the civil list from year to year, refusing to vote a permanent provision for the salaried servants of the Crown. On each point it met with a determined opposition, not only from the governor-general but from the legislative council, whose existence thus began to appear as the main obstacle to that full control of the province which had become the avowed aim of the popular party.

With the advent of Lord Dalhousie as governor-general (1820) the quarrel between the two branches of the legislature and the conflict of races from which it had sprung, reached an acute stage. Dalhousie, one of Wellington’s veterans, was more fitted for the camp than the council chamber, a disciplinarian devoid of diplomacy who naturally upheld the side of the British party and discountenanced the financial claims of the assembly.^[22] Meantime the occasion had found the man, and a leader had appeared well-fitted to head the agitation in the province. Louis-Joseph Papineau, born in Montreal in 1789, had been elected to the assembly in 1812 and early distinguished himself by the brilliance of his oratory. In 1815 he was elected speaker of the House, a position which he filled with decorum until the trend of affairs under the Dalhousie administration aroused him to virulent and sustained opposition to the governing class. From now on, petitions and addresses for redress of grievances in Lower Canada poured in upon the imperial government. The French-Canadian press roused the simple farmers of the countryside with the cry of national rights; even a certain minority of the English residents, led by such men as Cuthbert of Berthier and Neilson of Quebec, in close alliance with Papineau, made common cause with the French for a reform of the government of the province. On the other hand, the adherents of the ruling powers openly expressed their desire to rid the country of every vestige of French control. “This province,” the Quebec Mercury had said as long ago as 1810, “is far too French for a British colony. After forty-seven years’ possession it is now fitting that the province become truly British.” Such indeed had become the avowed policy of the dominant faction. Papineau, supported alike by the people, the clergy and the majority of the assembly, became emphatically the man of the hour and figured as the open adversary of the governor-general. A petition signed with eighty-seven thousand names was forwarded (1827) to the home government. Dalhousie, departing in 1828 to take command of the forces in India, was STOPPAGE OF SUPPLIES succeeded by Sir James Kempt, whose efforts at conciliation proved unavailing. In vain the imperial government surrendered its control over the proceeds of its customs duties (1831). The assembly refused to grant a permanent civil list and the leaders of the popular party clamoured for the abolition of the nominated Upper House. Against such a measure of reform, which appeared out of harmony with monarchical institutions, the British ministry resolutely set its face. Stanley, the colonial secretary, hinted that the government might be forced to curtail even the existing privileges of its colonial subjects. Aroused to furious opposition the assembly adopted the famous “Ninety-two Resolutions,” indicating a long catalogue of grievances and denouncing the existence of the Upper House (February 21st, 1834).^[23] The elections of 1834 were attended with riots and tumultuous gatherings. Revolutionary committees sprang into being. Votes of supplies since 1832 had come to a full stop, and the governor, Lord Aylmer (1831-5), had been driven to pay salaries by loans taken from the war chest. The malcontents of French Canada corresponded busily with the “patriot” party of the Upper Province. The current of the two movements ran side by side with increasing swiftness, approaching rapidly the vortex of insurrection.

[1]	For a recent study see Gosselin, L’instruction sous le régime français, 1635-1760 (Quebec, 1911).

[2]	Kennedy, Documents of the Canadian Constitution, pp. 132 ff. (Oxford, 1918). For the Quebec Act, see Coffin, The Province of Quebec and the Early American Revolution (Madison, 1906); Coupland, The Quebec Act (Oxford, 1925).

[3]	14 Geo. III., c. 83. cf. Kennedy, The Constitution of Canada, pp. 16 ff. (Oxford, 1922).

[4]	The tithe, however, was to be collected only from persons professing the Roman Catholic religion.

[5]	Shortt & Doughty, Documents relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, pp. 595; 702-5 (Ottawa, 1918).

[6]	Cavendish, Debates on the Quebec Bill, 1774, pp. 246-8 (London, 1839); Kennedy, Documents, pp. 125 ff.

[7]	See for example those in Shortt & Doughty, pp. 742 ff; 773 ff.

[8]	31 Geo. III. c. 31. Kennedy, Documents, pp. 207 ff.

[9]	See Parliamentary History. Vol. xxvii, p. 1271, vol. xxxix, pp. 359-459.

[10]	Grenville to Dorchester, Oct. 20th, 1789, (Kennedy, Documents, p. 197).

[11]	Journals of the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada, October 15th, 1792.

[12]	McMullen, History of Canada, (1868), pp. 222 et seq.

[13]	J. Bouchette, British Dominions in North America, Vol. I. p, 108. (London, 1831).

[14]	Doughty & McArthur, Documents relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, p. 550 (Ottawa, 1914).

[15]	Report, p. iii. (Toronto, 1835). The Report itself is coloured by political feeling, but the quotation in the text is a fair criticism of the situation. The evidence and appendices are invaluable and the whole is admirably indexed.

[16]

Mackenzie’s Colonial Advocate, No. I. Compare the petition prepared for presentation to the home government by Robert Fleming Gourlay, whose agitation in the second decade of the century was one of the first expressions of the gathering discontent: “Corruption, indeed, has reached such a height in this province that it is thought no part of the British empire witnesses the like.”

[17]	Goderich to Colborne, November 8th, 1832, Seventh Report on Grievances, pp. 217 ff.

[18]	Colonial Advocate, May 22nd, 1834.

[19]	Lucas, Lord Durham’s Report, Vol. II, p. 16. (Oxford, 1912).

[20]	D. B. Read, Rebellion of 1837, p. 49.

[21]	For a discussion of the problem of revenue see, Lucas, op. cit. Vol. I. pp. 38 ff.

[22]	See A. D. DeCelles, Papineau, (Makers of Canada Series) Ch. VI.

[23]	See Kennedy, Documents, pp. 360 ff. The “Resolutions” and the Canadian troubles are discussed in another volume in this series, DeCelles, Papineau.