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Sydenham’s political labours in the two provinces before Union have been discussed elsewhere; the present chapter must confine itself to parties and politics in the first Union parliament. In certain aspects that parliament of 1841 is unique in the annals of the country. It was the first elaborate experiment in democratic government since democracy had seriously entered the arena of Canadian politics; it was the first national gathering after the various risings; it saw French Canadians and Upper Canada Britons meeting on a new footing; and it introduced to the collective political intelligence of Canada a governor-general whose ideas on democratic colonial assemblies promised interesting developments.

There was a vast amount of work to be done; and when the speech from the throne was delivered at Kingston on June 15, 1841, besides alluding to such exciting issues as Anglo-Saxon diplomacy presented, it promised bills in connection with public works, the postal system, immigration, education, local self-government, and in addition to general finance it intimated a loan of £1,500,000, made on imperial guarantees, to assist the united provinces. With the eye of a great parliamentary strategist Sydenham estimated the dangers and the possibilities. Where so much hard labour was called for, mere party politics were out of place, and yet party politics seemed almost certain to emerge. French Canada lay in sullen discontent, and the spent issues of the great rising might possibly revive in the assembly at Kingston. ‘There,’ said Sydenham, ‘the elections will be bad. The French Canadians have forgotten nothing and learnt nothing by the Rebellion and the suspension of the constitution, and are more unfit for Representative Government than they were in 1791.’ Even had the prospects been rosier, the hardly veiled hostility of these words promised doubtful peace between the governor-general and his French-Canadian subjects. Fragments of the Family Compact would still survive, and the unintelligent activities of MacNab suggested the possibility of tory ‘excursions’; while the responsible government men, realizing to the full the shortcomings of the imperial definition of self-government, could hardly be expected to accept their fetters without a struggle.

Sydenham faced the situation with characteristic assurance and definiteness. Long before the parliament met in June he was preparing the way. As early as September 1840 he could write: ‘My candidates are everywhere taken for the ensuing elections.... The mass only wanted the vigorous interference of well-intentioned government, strong enough to control both of the extreme parties, and to proclaim wholesome truths, and act for the benefit of the country at large in defiance of ultras on either side.’ In his endeavours ‘to make the province essentially British,’ he had given French Canadians the impression that he was tampering with constituencies against their interests, and all Canada felt sure that he had unduly concerned himself in the actual elections. If only his method had been legitimate, his general conception of Canadian politics would have been not merely sound but incontrovertible. There were, he held, no real parties, and no real dividing issues. Parliamentary strife must needs consist of battles of kites and crows, in which local jobs would provide the objects, and personal animosities the inspiration for battle. He desired a central Canadian party, and here Sydenham’s enemies and critics may remember that when the colony had learned its lesson, it came back, in the practice of the liberal-conservatives under Macdonald and Cartier, to the identical political ideal with which Sydenham began.

His success seemed in his own eyes complete, for he was able to declare in June 1841: ‘I have got the large majority of the House ready to support me upon any question that can arise; and, what is better, thoroughly convinced that their constituents, so far as the whole of Upper Canada, and the British part of Lower Canada are concerned, will never forgive them if they do not.’ There was one serious storm when parliament met. Robert Baldwin, who, although he had accepted office, was perhaps the most conscientious and persistent advocate of completely responsible government in the province, had no intention of allowing the governor-general to break up parties by selecting strong men from each, to form a central and non-party administration. On the very day before parliament met he informed Sydenham that it would be ‘expedient that Mr Sullivan, Mr Ogden, Mr Draper, and Mr Day should no longer form a part [of the government], and that some gentlemen from the Reformers of Eastern Canada should be introduced.’ Whatever faults there may have been in his tactics, Baldwin was attempting to regulate Canadian practice in accordance with the best British cabinet precedents, and if in any sense these held good for Canada, he was right when he contended that a cabinet should be as nearly homogeneous as possible, and that popular government demanded that no interest should be so excluded from recognition as were the French Canadians under La Fontaine. Baldwin’s tactical mistakes gave the governor a chance to read him one of his stiffest lectures, but the political tutor, as he corrected the manners of his disobedient pupil, hardly realized that in the future of Canada the man he scolded for unbecoming conduct, and whose memorandum he accepted as a resignation, was the true master and teacher.

But the storm blew past, and although there are indications of opposition in his dispatches, Sydenham’s language from first to last is that of a victorious master. As late as August 28, and on a topic so controversial as the establishment of local government, he reported unanimity in his council and a clear majority in the assembly. The success of his parliamentary manœuvres may be discovered not only in his letters and dispatches, but in the list of acts with which the session closed. But the price which he paid, or which he forced his successor to pay for him, is written in a long and confidential dispatch of Sir Charles Bagot, which stands out as the most searching and adverse estimate of Lord Sydenham’s parliamentary career in Canada.

Were I to lift the thin veil of success which covers it [Lord Sydenham’s policy], much of deformity would be found underneath. Towards the French Canadians, his conduct was very unwise.... He treated those who approached him with slight and rudeness, and thus he converted a proud and courteous people—which even their detractors acknowledge them to be, into personal and irreconcilable enemies.... The mode in which several of the elections were carried in both provinces, but especially in Lower Canada, weakened his position with the honest and uncompromising Reformers of the Upper Province, and gave even Sir Allan M^cNab a pretext for annoying and opposing him.... It was only by dint of the greatest energy, and, I must add, the unscrupulous personal interference of Lord Sydenham, combined with practices which I would not use, and your Lordship would not recommend, in addition to the promise of the loan, and the bribe of the Public works, that Lord Sydenham managed to get through the session.... Lord Sydenham was in fact the sole government, he decided everything and did it himself—sometimes consulting his council, but generally following his own opinion, and seldom bringing them together or consulting them collectively.

Nor was it only in voting strength that his government declined. It had been formed, as will be shown below, in accordance with a theory hostile to the complete grant of responsible government as Canadian radicals defined it. Yet when Baldwin introduced his resolutions on responsible government on Friday, September 3, Harrison only warded off defeat by counter-resolutions, really drawn up by Sydenham himself, which gave to the enemy practically every position for which he had contended. More particularly his third resolution swept away the refinements and limitations to which the imperial government clung as essential to the British connection:

That, in order to preserve between the different branches of the provincial parliament, that harmony which is essential to the peace, welfare, and good government of the province, the chief advisers of the representative of the Sovereign constituting a provincial administration under him, ought to be men possessed of the confidence of the representatives of the people, thus affording a guarantee that the well understood wishes and interests of the people, which our gracious Sovereign has declared shall be the rule of the provincial government, will on all occasions be faithfully represented and advocated.

So passed the first session of the Union parliament, and the last chapter of Lord Sydenham’s life.