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

Downing Street, they had not only met with no punishment, but had actually been promoted to higher honours. "We do not mean," said they, "in our plain and homely statement, to be discourteous, by declaring our unalterable conviction that a nominal responsibility to Downing Street, which has failed of any good with the above gentlemen of high pretensions to honour, character and station, cannot have any magic operation in your Excellency's administration, which, should it end as it has unhappily begun, might make us drink the cup of national misgovernment to the very dregs, without (as experience proves) redress on our part, or retribution on yours." There was much more of the same sort. The document concluded by stating that if the Lieutenant-Governor would not govern upon sound constitutional principles he would violate the charter, virtually abrogate the law, and justly forfeit submission to his authority.
This was beyond doubt the most vigorously-written protest that had ever been presented to an Upper Canadian Lieutenant-Governor. It was signed by Jesse Ketchum, James Hervey Price, James Lesslie, Andrew McGlashan, James Shannon, Robert McKay, M. McLellan, Timothy Parsons, William Lesslie, John Mills, E. T. Henderson, John Doel, John E. Tims, and William J. O'Grady. All these were ardent Radicals, and coadjutors of Mackenzie. Two of them--Jesse Ketchum and James Lesslie--delivered the rejoinder at Government House, without waiting for a reply. It was already in type, and during the next day was widely read and commented upon. The Lieutenant-Governor was not insensible to its cutting irony, but it did not admit of any sur-rejoinder, and after the first transient ebullition of his wrath, the matter, so far as he was concerned, was quietly permitted to drop out of sight. The document, however, acted as an additional stimulus to the public excitement, and it continued to be quoted against Sir Francis from time to time so long as he remained in the colony.
While these events were occurring the Provincial Legislature still remained in session. A Committee having been appointed by the Assembly to consider the correspondence between the Lieutenant-Governor and the ex-Councillors, it proceeded to deal with the question in the usual manner. The report was presented to the Assembly on the 18th of April. In the course of the debate which ensued, several eloquent speeches were made on the Tory side. The most effective Tory arguments were founded upon the assumption that the concession of Responsible Government would be a mere preliminary to separation from the mother country. The speech made by Mr. Hagerman on this occasion was one of the most brilliant efforts of his life. Mere verbal eloquence, however, exhausted itself in vain. The report was adopted by a vote of thirty-two to twenty-one. It was even more directly condemnatory of the Lieutenant-Governor than the rejoinder above referred to had been. It expressed the Committee's belief that the appointment of the three ex-Councillors had been a deceitful manoeuvre to gain credit with the country for Liberal feelings and intentions where none really existed. The question of Executive responsibility was gone into at considerable length, and the conduct of the ex-Councillors was approved of in every particular. There is no need to analyze the entire report, which was long and exhaustive. It distinctly recommended the withholding of the annual supplies. The Assembly, by adopting the report, and by committing itself to this extreme measure, proved that, in the language of Lord Glenelg's instructions,[232] it regarded the present in the light of "an emergency." The supplies, however, were not entirely withheld. Money was granted for the construction of roads, for schools, for the improvement of navigation, and other useful purposes; but all these grants were nullified by the Lieutenant-Governor, who signified his disapprobation of the Assembly's conduct by refusing his assent to the money-bills of the session. He afterwards stated as one of his reasons for this refusal that he had good grounds for believing a portion of the money would have been spent by the Assembly in sending an agent to England[233]--which was probably the fact.
The Assembly, feeling that some reason should be assigned for their action in the matter of the supplies, which were now withheld for the first time in the history of Upper Canada, passed an Address to the King, in which the Lieutenant-Governor's conduct was painted in no neutral tints. He was directly charged with being despotic, tyrannical, unjust and deceitful. His conduct was declared to have been "derogatory to the honour" of his Majesty, and "demoralizing to the community." A memorial to the House of Commons was also adopted, in which his public acts were referred to as having been arbitrary and vindictive, and wherein he was charged with mis-statements, misrepresentations, and "deviations from candour and truth." This bitterly-worded memorial was formally signed by Mr. Bidwell as Speaker of the House--a circumstance which was long remembered against him by the person implicated.
It must have been gall and wormwood to Sir Francis to be compelled to forward these documents to the Colonial Office. It was the first time that clear and undisguised charges of so humiliating a nature had been officially laid against a colonial Lieutenant-Governor, and one must needs confess that nothing short of the most unassailable evidence could have justified the employment of such terms in a communication between two representative bodies respecting a trusted servant of the Crown, more especially in the case of one occupying so lofty a position. Something is due to the proprieties, and to accuse a man of deviations from candour and truth is of course merely a slightly periphrastic method of charging him with falsehood. The Assembly, however, had become convinced, not without reason, that Sir Francis's word was not to be trusted. Other persons who had been brought into more or less intimate relations with him had been driven to the same conclusion.[234] The fact is that when his feelings were much stirred he knew not how to speak the language of truth and soberness. He talked so much and so thoughtlessly that he very frequently gave utterance to the thing which was not. Some excuse might perhaps be made for one who, in the heat or haste of verbal controversy, gives currency to erroneous statements. But Sir Francis's mis-statements were not confined to verbal controversy. He had been distinctly convicted of "a deviation from candour and truth" in a deliberate official communication. The Assembly had requested that they might be furnished with copies of any bond or agreement between him and his Councillors respecting the administration of the Government in the event of his Excellency's death or removal. To this request Sir Francis had replied, explicitly denying the existence of any document of such a nature. Yet upon the examination of certain of the Councillors it had been proved that an agreement on the subject had actually been made, and that it had been reduced to writing by his Excellency's own hand. The devices to which he had had recourse in his attempts to prove that he had merely been guilty of tergiversation instead of downright lying, were such as positively to aggravate the original offence, and to fully justify the Assembly in refusing to attach any weight to his unsupported statement upon any subject.[235] As the weeks passed by, the quarrel between him and the Assembly waxed positively ferocious. On the 20th of April he prorogued Parliament, making a speech on the occasion which must have occupied a full hour or more in delivery, and wherein he reviewed, in his own inimitable fashion, and from his own point of view, the various events by which his Administration had up to this time been characterized. Any attempt to analyze it here is altogether out of the question. It should be read in its entirety in the official Journal of the session.
During the weeks following the prorogation the public excitement continued to increase, until it had reached a height without precedent in the history of the Province. The Reformers felt that they had been wofully deceived in the Lieutenant-Governor, and many of them placed no bounds to their censure. Some of the Reform newspapers hinted pretty strongly that no people could be expected to remain permanently loyal when they were deprived of their rights year after year, and when all their petitions were set at naught. The political atmosphere was charged with electricity. The outlook was lurid and ominous. Some of the loyalists began to dread an actual uprising of the people. Such an uprising, they thought, would be a legitimate sequel to so extraordinary a proceeding as the stoppage of the supplies. To not a few well-meaning but old-fashioned people the mere act of refusing to vote the supplies was in itself a species of treason. To more practical people this act presented itself in a different aspect. It seemed to them indicative of a niggard and ruinous parsimony. They gazed with ill-concealed envy at the marvellous prosperity of the neighbouring State of New York. Any one crossing the Canadian frontier in that direction at once became aware that he had passed from a land of comparative stagnation to a land of activity and progress. This contrast had been largely brought about by the construction of great public works, and a lavish policy on the part of the State Legislature. There seemed no reason to doubt that the adoption of a similar policy would bring about similar results in Upper Canada, where large and costly public works were urgently needed for the proper development of the resources of the colony. But, instead of liberal grants of money for such purposes, the Assembly had cut down the supplies to meet the barest works of necessity. The colony could never hope to hold up its head by the side of its enterprising neighbour while such a cheese-paring system prevailed.
The Lieutenant-Governor's advisers were shrewd enough to make the most of this unpromising state of affairs. The cheese-paring policy went for something, but it was almost lost sight of in the much more effective imputation of disloyalty to the Empire. Nothing was so certain to turn the scale of public opinion in favour of his Excellency as an apparently well-founded stigma of disloyalty cast upon his opponents. The official party accordingly set themselves deliberately to work to disseminate the belief that the bulk of the Opposition were ripe for treason, and that, under the guise of agitation for Reform, they concealed a design of effecting the separation of the colony from Great Britain. It is not improbable that many of those who industriously circulated the report did so in good faith, for the language of some of the Reformers, used in moments of irritation, was of a nature to lead to such a conclusion. No sooner did this report gain credence than there was a very perceptible turning of the scale of popular opinion. Many who had grumbled loudly at Sir Francis's conduct now declared themselves as being on his side. They favoured the doctrine of a responsible Executive, but devotion to the mother country was as the breath of their nostrils. Whatever tended to relax the tie which bound the colony to the Empire was a thing to be utterly opposed and stamped out. The domination of the Compact was bad, but even at its worst it was better than separation. So argued many persons who had always been conspicuous for the moderation of their political views. The official party of course turned such sentiments as these to the utmost account. The cry of disloyalty was heard on every side. The state of the Lower Province, which was rapidly gliding into insurrection, was triumphantly pointed to as evidence of what was to be looked for if democratic ideas were allowed to make headway. Twice within the last four years had the Lower Canadian Assembly resorted to the extreme measure of refusing to grant supplies to the Government. By so doing they had embroiled themselves with the Imperial