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

a seat in the Executive Council whose resignation had been the beginning of the contest between the Reformers and the Lieutenant-Governor, had not felt himself at liberty to reject the overtures of his friends. He had been put in nomination for the County of Norfolk, and his candidature had been successful. He was a host in himself, and his return was the one streak of bright light which appeared in the Reform horizon at the close of the campaign.
Perhaps the most unsatisfactory feature about the whole unsatisfactory business, from the Reform point of view, was that the ignominous discomfiture of the Reformers had been brought about by defections from their own ranks. Moderate-minded Reformers had come to think, with the Conservatives, that even Family Compact domination was preferable to the ascendency of such men as Mackenzie. The publication of the baneful domination letter, followed, as it had been, by Tory misrepresentation, had led thousands of persons to believe that the Radicals secretly favoured the separation of the colony from Great Britain. The Wesleyan Methodists, a numerous body, were doubly impelled to oppose Mackenzie and all who favoured his cause. The quarrel between Mackenzie and the Rev. Egerton Ryerson has already been referred to.[252] Mr. Ryerson was in those days one of the most prominent figures in Upper Canadian Methodism, and in conjunction with his brothers, exerted a predominant influence among the members of that body. At the time of the general election of 1836 he was absent from the Province on a mission to England, whither he had gone to obtain a charter for the Upper Canada Academy, and to solicit subscriptions for the establishment and maintenance of that institution, which subsequently developed into the University of Victoria College. But the reverend gentleman's arm was far-reaching, and stretched across the broad expanse of the Atlantic. In common with a large and respectable portion of the Upper Canadian population, he cherished a feeling of personal contempt for Mackenzie, whose character he thoroughly despised, and whose projects he regarded as prejudicial to the welfare of the colony. The publication of the baneful domination letter had convinced him that rebellion and separation were among the cherished schemes of the Radicals. To all such schemes he was prepared to oppose his firmest resistance, for his loyalty was of the perfervid order, and his dislike of Mackenzie probably imparted additional zeal to his opposition. As has been seen, Mackenzie, with the aid of Hume, Roebuck and other British statesmen, had succeeded in creating in the minds of the English public considerable sympathy for Canadian Reform. To counteract this influence Mr. Ryerson, under the signature of "A Canadian," contributed a series of letters to the London _Times_. They were vigorously written, and attracted much attention, not only in England but in Canada, where they were republished in the columns of the Tory newspapers, and where they were circulated in pamphlet form as a campaign document. Mr. Ryerson also wrote to leading members of the Methodist body in Canada, urging them to cast all their influence for Government candidates, and against the revolutionary policy of the Radicals. His appeals served their purpose, and the great bulk of the Wesleyan Methodists of Upper Canada, who had theretofore supported Reform members, went over to the side of the Government. In many constituencies--notably so in Lennox and Addington--they held the balance of power, and their secession from the Reform cause decided the fortunes of the candidates.[253] A few remained unaffected by Mr. Ryerson's lucubrations, and some even went so far as to denounce his conduct and reply to his arguments, but these were too few in number to affect the general result. Some of the successful candidates were compelled to pledge themselves in advance to the Methodists and other Nonconformists to take immediate steps for the settlement of the Clergy Reserves question, but the pledges were neglected or forgotten during the turbulent epoch which ensued.
It will thus be seen that, as is clearly pointed out in the Report of Lord Durham,[254] the contest which had been commenced on the question of a responsible Executive Council had afterwards been adroitly turned by the official party, and had been decided on very different grounds. The question of a responsible Executive, as well as the question of the Clergy Reserves, had for the time sunk out of public notice. All other matters had given way to a resolve to return candidates who would "rally round the throne." The triumph of the Government went far beyond what several members of it had ventured to anticipate. On the 8th of July, Sir Francis was able to report to Lord Glenelg that "the Constitutionists"--by which name he designated the official party and all who supported them--had a majority of twenty-five,[255] whereas in the preceding Assembly they had been in a minority of eleven. In the same despatch he availed himself of the opportunity to malign Mr. Bidwell, whom he characterized as the "twin or Siamese companion of Mr. Speaker Papineau." He descanted upon the powerful reaction which had been brought about, and exultingly informed his Lordship that of the four candidates who had contested the constituency of Lennox and Addington Mr. Bidwell had polled the fewest votes.
The Colonial Minister must have been sore puzzled to know what to make of this gushing and galloping Lieutenant-Governor, who was so evidently devoid of the peculiar qualifications supposed to be requisite for one in his station, and who framed his official despatches upon the model of a sensation novel. Here was a man who had been selected for an elevated and honourable post because be had been supposed to be an adept in the science of politics, but who, as it now turned out, was utterly unacquainted with the principles and practice of Government; who was ignorant of the proprieties and amenities of official intercourse; who, in what were intended for grave official despatches, indulged in extracts from French vaudevilles, and referred to certain methods of procedure as not being _according to Hoyle_! By all known theory and precedent, the accession to office of such a man ought to have been attended by immediate and ignominous failure. Yet, so far as could be judged, he had by no means failed. Nay, he actually appeared to have scored a marvellous success, and to have brought about what men of greater ability and wider experience had been utterly unable to accomplish. Such a success was an inscrutable mystery to the official mind, and Lord Glenelg, after the first few weeks, appears to have abandoned all attempts to penetrate it. The entire demeanour of this unconventional Lieutenant-Governor was incomprehensible. He had expressed his total dissent from the policy of the Commissioners of Inquiry in Lower Canada, who had reported in favour of a responsible Executive.[256] He had even gone so far as to tender his resignation in consequence of his inability to concur in the liberal measures of Reform advocated by the Commissioners.[257] But the Home Government had by no means been disposed to accept his resignation just at that time. They had no available person to put in his place, and it had been thought desirable that he should be permitted to try his hand a little longer. And now this news as to the result of the elections seemed to fully justify their determination to retain him in office. If he had really inaugurated a new and improved order of things in Upper Canada, it was only fair that he should enjoy the prestige of his success.
But the ill effects of Sir Francis's superficial and disastrous policy were already beginning to be apparent to those whose eyes were keen enough to look below the surface of things. The Reformers felt that they had been out-manoeuvred. That they could have borne, for they had often been compelled to bear a similar infliction in past times. But they considered that they had been cheated out of their rights by one whose especial duty it was to watch over and preserve those rights inviolate. They had endured much at the hands of a Gore, a Maitland and a Colborne. But Gore, Maitland and Colborne had not presented themselves before them in the garb of tried Reformers. They had been the Tory emissaries of Tory superiors beyond sea, whose instructions they had generally carried out. All this had been changed; but the change, so far as Upper Canada was concerned, had been for the worse. The Reformers of the Province felt that the man who had been placed at the helm of State--the man who had been sent over by an ostensibly Liberal Government to redress the accumulated wrongs of the past--was in some respects far more dangerous than any of his predecessors had been. Carlyle had not then delivered his celebrated discourse on fools, but the idea that a fool may sometimes be far more dread-inspiring than a wise man is sufficiently obvious, and had presented itself in vivid shape before the minds of a good many of the Reformers of Upper Canada. They had by this time come to know something of Sir Francis Head. They had brought themselves to regard him as not only a fool, but a fool devoid of right feeling or principle; a fool who would stop at no injustice or iniquity the perpetration whereof would conduce, in however small a degree, to his own glorification. He evidently regarded his personal interference in the elections as a thing upon which he ought to plume himself. Such a state of things was not to be borne. It was clear that life, for Canadian Reformers, would very soon be not worth living. They despaired of the future, which, to their depressed vision, seemed to be overhung by a sky of unrelieved blackness. Their despair was accompanied by a smarting sense of defeat and injustice proportionate to the circumstances. Such feelings were not confined to defeated candidates and their immediate friends, but were participated in by Reformers generally. Some of them began to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of removal from the Province. Others, after the first effervescence of disappointment had expended itself, determined to endure in patience and to hope for the best. A comparatively small number, yielding to the influence of mingled despair and exasperation, began to contemplate armed resistance to authority as among the possibilities of the near future. Constitutional resistance, they thought, had had a fair trial. Might it not be worth while to try a more drastic remedy?
Conspicuous among the personages who were strongly influenced by such thoughts as those last indicated was William Lyon Mackenzie, who, as previously mentioned, had lost his election in the Second Riding of York. It might have been supposed that if any constituency in the Province was beyond the reach of Tory influence, the Second Riding was entitled to that distinction. It was notoriously the most Radical constituency in the colony. It had stood loyally by Mackenzie all through the troubled epoch of the successive expulsions. Yet it had now thrown him overboard on behalf of a political nobody. The explanation is to be found in the fact that the Riding had been the scene of some of the moat scandalous abuses committed during the campaign. The Tories had resolved that Mackenzie should be defeated at any cost, and had resorted to the most reprehensible means to secure that end. To elect a professed Tory would have been an impossibility, so the person fixed upon to oppose him was one whom the author of "Middlemarch" might have had in her eye when she described Sir James Chettam as "a man of acquiescent temper, miscellaneous opinions and uncertain vote."[258] His name was Edward William Thomson, and he professed to be a moderate Reformer. His moderation was acceptable to a considerable proportion of the electors, many of whom were tired of Mackenzie. The official party, however, did not choose to rely upon legitimate means for defeating the