The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, John Charles Dent [read a book TXT] 📗

office, he begged that they would not on his account hesitate to do so. As they were very strongly of that opinion, they waited on his Excellency on Saturday, the 12th, and tendered their resignations, which were accepted. They had held office precisely three weeks.
The clue to this puzzle is easily found. Sir Francis had conceived an utter distaste for the persons and political principles of the Reformers of Upper Canada. There was an inherent antagonism between the nature of this shallow, feather-brained sketcher by the wayside and the natures of men like Rolph, Bidwell and the Baldwins, whose quiet earnestness and fixity of purpose had been intensified by the long course of injustice to which they, in common with their party, had been subjected. The earnestness of these gentlemen presented itself to him in the light of importunity, if not of impertinence. He could hardly be expected to sympathize very strongly with their unconquerable zeal for principles which he did not understand: which he was perhaps incapable of understanding. Then, Sir Francis was an eminently social personage, and the social qualities of the leaders of Upper Canadian Reform were not of a high order. To them, small talk across the walnuts and the wine seemed utterly incongruous in view of the momentous public questions which were urgently pressing for a solution. In this particular they presented a marked contrast to the leading spirits of the Compact. The Robinsons, Hagermans and Sherwoods, one and all, could not only advise the Lieutenant-Governor on the affairs of the Province, but could be pleasant and entertaining companions. They were not very different from the county magistrates and other officials with whom he had been accustomed to confer in his capacity of a poor-law commissioner. They were moreover exceedingly diplomatic. They saw the importance of winning him to their side, and governed themselves accordingly. They lost no opportunity of making themselves agreeable to him. Instead of boring him with what, to his understanding, seemed abstruse speculations on executive responsibility and an elective Legislative Council, they scouted such doctrines as myths begotten in the moody brains of unpractical and discontented men. The wide knowledge, long experience and specious eloquence of the Chief Justice enabled him to present the Tory side of these arguments with much plausibility. Sir Francis soon became convinced that the issue was not merely between two sides of colonial politics, but between monarchy and republicanism, between loyalty and disloyalty, between Great Britain and the United States. As he afterwards declared, he believed that he was "sentenced to contend on the soil of America with Democracy,[228]" and that if he did not overpower it, he would himself be compelled to succumb. Having brought himself to this conclusion, he not unnaturally preferred the _role_ of the hammer to that of the anvil. It was surely better to strike than to be struck. Acting on this principle, he made a complete surrender of himself to the Family Compact, and from that time forward was in all essential respects guided by their counsels. His rashness and impetuosity sometimes led him to act on his own motion, and without waiting to take counsel from any quarter; but in all ordinary affairs of administration he was guided by Sir John Robinson quite as effectually as Sir John Colborne had ever been.
No sooner was it announced that the Executive Councillors had all resigned office than the public pulse began to beat at an accelerated pace. The excitement was greatly intensified upon the publication of a letter written by Robert Baldwin to Peter Perry, in which, by the Lieutenant-Governor's special permission, all the attendant circumstances were set forth in detail. This letter, having been written for the express purpose of being read by Mr. Perry from his place in the Assembly, and of being afterwards published in the newspapers, is somewhat formal and official in its tone, but it presents the subject-matter in a clear light, and must be regarded as an important contribution to the history of Responsible Government in Upper Canada. It is the chief, indeed the only trustworthy original authority for the facts as to the precise dispute between Sir Francis and his Council, for the former's account[229] is more than usually incomplete and one-sided when dealing with this episode. The essential portions of Mr. Baldwin's presentation of the case have been embodied in the foregoing narrative. The Lieutenant-Governor lost no time in providing himself with a new Council. On the 14th of March, when the resignation was only two days old, an extraordinary issue of the _Gazette_ announced that Robert Baldwin Sullivan, John Elmsley, Augustus Baldwin and William Allan had been appointed members of the Executive Council of the Province. The reader has already made the acquaintance of all these gentlemen with the exception of Augustus Baldwin, who was a retired naval officer of high character, but of no particular politics; a brother of Dr. Baldwin, and by consequence an uncle of Robert Baldwin. All four of the new Councillors were persons of character and position, but they were not in sympathy with the Liberal sentiments of the period, and the people generally were not disposed to place any political confidence in them. Elmsley and Allan were consistent, old-fashioned Tories. Baldwin's leanings, so far as he had any, were in the same direction. Sullivan's youth and early life had been passed amid more or less Liberal influences, but of late he had shown a retrogressive tendency in political matters. This was largely due to personal rivalry between Mackenzie and himself in municipal affairs. As previously mentioned, he had defeated Mackenzie at the municipal elections for St. David's Ward, and had been elected mayor of Toronto in the beginning of 1835. The contest had been waged between them with unseemly rancour. Sullivan had denounced Mackenzie as a noisy upstart and demagogue; while Mackenzie had characterized Sullivan as an oily-tongued, unprincipled lawyer, who would lie the loudest for the client who had the longest purse. All Mackenzie's supporters during the contest had been Radicals, or at least persons of strong Reform proclivities. This had arrayed the whole Tory and Conservative vote on the side of Sullivan, who was thus in a measure brought under anti-Reform influences. His social tastes also inclined him in the same direction, so that he soon came to be classed as a Conservative. Reformers were disposed to look askance at him as a political renegade, and this disposition was increased upon his acceptance of office under Sir Francis Head at the present juncture. He alone, of all the new Councillors, was a man of exceptional ability. He was not inaccurately described, a few years later, as "an Irishman by birth, and a lawyer by profession; a man who, if he had united consistency of political conduct and weight of personal character with the great and original talents which he unquestionably possessed, might have taken a conspicuous part in the public affairs of any country."[230]
These transactions--the resignation of the Councillors and the appointment of their successors--produced a tremendous effervescence of feeling among the Opposition in the Assembly, who had already conceived strong suspicions of the Lieutenant-Governor's motives. But the excitement was not confined to the Opposition. It was participated in by the Conservatives, and, even, for a time, by most of the ultra-Tories. On the 14th of March, the House, by a vote of fifty-three to two, adopted a resolution unequivocally assertive of the principles which the ex-Councillors had endeavoured to maintain. Ten days later an address to the Lieutenant-Governor, based on this resolution, was passed by a vote of thirty-two to nineteen. It expressed deep regret that his Excellency had consented to accept the resignation of his late Council. It declared the Assembly's entire want of confidence in the new appointments, and humbly requested that immediate steps might be taken to remove the new Councillors from office. Meanwhile, petitions on the all-engrossing subject poured into the Assembly from all over the Province.[231] Public meetings were called in Toronto, as well as in some other of the principal towns, at which resolutions were passed echoing the Assembly's address, imploring the Lieutenant-Governor to dismiss his present advisers, and to call to his Council gentlemen possessing public confidence.
One of these gatherings tended in an especial manner to widen the irreparable breach between Sir Francis Head and the Reform party. On the 25th of March a meeting was held in the City Hall, Toronto, at which an Address to his Excellency of exceptional significance was passed. It dealt at considerable length with the constitutional question at issue; referred to Responsible Government as having been introduced by the Constitutional Act; expressed surprise and sorrow at the resignation of the late Councillors, and an entire want of confidence in their successors. It deplored the apparent fact that his Excellency was acting under the influence of evil and unknown advisers. In conclusion, it claimed all the rights and privileges of the British constitution, and that the representative of the Crown should be advised by men known to and possessing the confidence of the people. When the deputation called at Government House to present this Address, they were treated with an off-hand abruptness and _brusquerie_ which gave them much offence. The reply of his Excellency was wordy and unsatisfying in tone; but its most objectionable feature was the air of assumed superiority by which it was pervaded. It referred to the meeting represented by the deputation as having been composed principally of "the industrious classes," but added, with a seeming loftiness of condescension, that the Address should be replied to with as much attention as if it had proceeded from either of the branches of the Legislature--"although," said his Excellency, "I shall express myself in plainer and more homely language." This was bad enough, but its effect was intensified by the demeanour of the Lieutenant-Governor and several military officers who were in attendance upon him. It seemed to the deputation that those gentlemen regarded them with supercilious impertinence; as a something which viceroyalty must be content, for the nonce, to endure, but as being altogether beyond the pale of their sympathies or interests. Nothing could have been in worse taste than such conduct as this, though it is possible enough that more sensitiveness was displayed than was called for by the actual circumstances. The deputation withdrew, cut to the quick by the indignities which they, rightly or wrongly, conceived themselves to have sustained. On the succeeding evening a meeting of themselves and some of their friends was held at the house of Dr. Morrison--who was now mayor of the city--at which a bitterly sarcastic rejoinder was prepared. It thanked his Excellency for replying to an Address from "the industrious classes" with as much attention as if it had proceeded from either branch of the Legislature, and acknowledged his condescension in expressing himself in plain and homely language--language presumed to be brought down to the level of the plain and homely understandings of his interlocutors, whose deplorable want of education was accounted for by the maladministration by former Governments of the endowments of King's College, and by the impossibility of obtaining a sale of the Clergy Reserves and the appropriation of the proceeds to educational purposes. "It is," proceeded this cutting rejoinder, "because we have been thus maltreated, neglected and despised, in our education and interests, under the system of Government that has hitherto prevailed, that we are now driven to insist upon a change that cannot be for the worse." Reference was made to the desire to bring about a system of Responsible Government, and the utter futility of mere responsibility to Downing Street was pointed out with a pointed eloquence which proved that the signatories were in deadly earnest. The misgovernment of Dalhousie and Aylmer in Lower Canada, and of Gore, Maitland and Colborne in Upper Canada, was touched upon in a few brief, vitriolic sentences. It was shown that, though these gentlemen had been responsible to