British Opinion

British Opinion about Canada: History

While these great modifications were being made in the form and spirit of Canadian provincial government, corresponding changes were taking place in British opinion. In the present chapter, it is proposed to examine these as they operated during the first two decades of the Victorian era. But an examination of early Victorian imperialism demands, as a first condition, the dismissal of such prejudices and misjudgments as are implicit in recent terms like “Little-Englander” and “Imperialist.” It is, indeed, one of the objects of this chapter to show how little modern party cries correspond to the ideas prevalent from 1840 to 1860, and to exhibit as the central movement in imperial matters the gradual development of a doctrine for the colonies, and more especially for Canada, not dissimilar to that which dominated the economic theory of the day under the title of laissez faire.

It is important to limit the scope of the inquiry, for the problem of Canadian autonomy was strictly practical and very pressing. There is little need to exhibit the otiose or irresponsible opinions of men or groups of men, which had no direct influence on events. Little, for example, need be said of the views of the British populace. No doubt Joseph Hume expressed views in which he had many sympathizers throughout the country; but his constituents were too ill-informed on Canadian politics to make their opinions worthy of study; and their heated debates, carried on in mutual improvement societies, had even less influence in controlling the actions of government than had the speeches of their leader in Parliament.[In Fenwick (Scotland), the Improvement of Knowledge Society discussed Canadian affairs on 1 January, 1839, when James Taylor proposed the sentiment, “The speedy success of the Canadian struggle for emancipation from British thraldom.” The toast, according to the minute book, was enthusiastically honoured].

After the sensational beginning of the reign in Canada, public opinion directed its attention to Canadian affairs only when fresh sensations offered themselves, and usually exhibited an indifference which was not without its advantages to the authorities. “People here are beginning to forget Canada, which is the best thing they can do,” wrote Grey to Elgin after the Rebellion Losses troubles had fallen quiet.

The British press, too, need claim little attention. On the confession of those mainly concerned, it was wonderfully ignorant and misleading on Canadian subjects. Elgin, who was not indifferent to newspaper criticism, complained bitterly of the unfairness and haphazard methods of the British papers, neglecting, as they did, the real issues, and emphasizing irritating but unimportant troubles. “The English press,” he wrote, after an important viceregal visit to Boston in 1851, “wholly ignores our proceedings both at Boston and Montreal, and yet one would think it was worth while to get the Queen of England as much cheered in New England as she can be in any part of Old England.” Grey in turn had to complain, not merely of indifference, but of misrepresentation, and that too in a crisis in Canadian politics, the Rebellion Losses agitation; “I am misrepresented in The Times in a manner which I fear may do much mischief in Canada. I am reported as having said that the connexion between Canada and this country was drawing rapidly to a close. This is the very opposite of what I really said.”

How irresponsible and inconsistent a great newspaper could be may be gathered from the treatment by The Times of the Annexationist movement in 1849. Professing at first a calm resignation, it refused for the country “the sterile honour of maintaining a reluctant colony in galling subjection”; yet, shortly afterwards, it took the high imperial line of argument and predicted that “the destined future of Canada, and the disposition of her people” would prevent so unfortunate an ending to the connection.[Allin and Jones, Annexation, Preferential Trade, and Reciprocity, Chap. IX]. The fact is that in all political questions demanding expert knowledge, newspaper opinion is practically worthless; except in cases where the services of some specialist are called in, and there the expert exercises influence, not through his articles, but because, elsewhere, he has made good his claims to be heard. Canadian problems owed nothing of their solution to the British press.

Another factor, irresponsible and indirect, yet closer to the scene of political action than the press, was assumed in those years to have a great influence on events—the permanent element in the Colonial Office, and more especially the permanent under-secretary, James Stephen. Charles Buller’s pamphlet on Responsible Government for the Colonies formulates the charge against the permanent men in a famous satiric passage. Buller had been speaking of the incessant change of ministers in the Colonial Office—ten secretaries of state in little more than so many years. “Perplexed with the vast variety of subjects presented to him—alike appalled by the important and unimportant matters forced on his attention—every Secretary of State is obliged at the outset to rely on the aid of some better informed member of his office. His Parliamentary Under-Secretary is generally as new to the business as himself: and even if they had not been brought in together, the tenure of office by the Under-Secretary having on the average been quite as short as that of the Secretary of State, he has never during the period of his official career obtained sufficient information to make him independent of the aid on which he must have been thrown at the outset. Thus we find both these marked and responsible functionaries dependent on the advice and guidance of another; and that other person must of course be one of the permanent members of the office…. That mother-country which has been narrowed from the British Isles into the Parliament, from the Parliament into the executive government, from the executive government into the Colonial Office, is not to be sought in the apartments of the Secretary of State, or his Parliamentary Under-Secretary. Where you are to look for it, it is impossible to say. In some back-room—whether in the attic, or in what storey we know not—you will find all the mother-country which really exercises supremacy, and really maintains connexion with the vast and widely-scattered colonies of Britain.”[Responsible Government for the Colonies, London, 1840. See the extract made by Wakefield in his View of the Art of Colonization, p. 279]

The directness and strength of the influence which men like Sir Henry Taylor and Sir James Stephen exercised, both on opinion and events, may be inferred from Taylor’s confessions with regard to the slave question in the West Indies, and the extent to which even Peel himself had to depend for information, and occasionally for direction, on the permanent men.[The Autobiography of Sir Henry Taylor, passim]. It seems clear, too, that up till the year when Lord John Russell took over the Colonial Office, Stephen had a great say in Canadian affairs, especially under Glenelg’s regime. “As to his views upon other Colonial questions,” says Taylor, “they were perhaps more liberal than those of most of his chiefs; and at one important conjuncture he miscalculated the effect of a liberal confidence placed in a Canadian Assembly, and threw more power into their hands than he intended them to possess.”

On the assumption that he was responsible for Glenelg’s benevolent view of Canadian local rights, one might attribute something of Lord John Russell’s over logical and casuistical declarations concerning responsible government to Buller’s “Mr. Mother-country.” But it is absurd to suppose that Russell’s independent mind operated long under any sub-secretarial influence; more especially since the rapid succession of startling events in Canada made his daring and unconventional statesmanship a fitter means of government than the plodding methods of the bureaucrat.

After 1841, Stanley and Stephen were too little sympathetic towards each other’s methods and ideas, and Gladstone too strongly fortified in his own opinions, for Stephen’s influence to creep in; while the Whig government which entered as he left the Colonial Office, had, in Grey, a Secretary of State too learned in the affairs of his department to reflect the last influences of his retiring under-secretary. Whatever, then, Mr. Over-Secretary Stephen did to dominate Lord Glenelg, and to initiate the concession of responsible government to Canada, his influence must speedily have sunk to a very secondary position, and the independent and conscious intentions of the responsible ministers held complete sway. It is interesting to note that, according to his son, he seems to have come to share “the opinions prevalent among the liberal party that the colonies would soon be detached from the mother-country.”[Leslie Stephen, Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, p. 49. “On the appointment of a Governor-general of Canada, shortly before his resignation of office, he observes in a diary, that it is not unlikely to be the last that will ever be made”].

The actual starting-point of the development of British opinion with regard to Canadian institutions is perfectly definite. It dates from the co-operation and mutual influence of a little group of experts in colonial matters, of whom Charles Buller and Gibbon Wakefield were the moving spirits, and the Earl of Durham the illustrious mouthpiece. The end of the Rebellion furnished the occasion for their propaganda.

The situation was one peculiarly susceptible to the treatment likely to be proposed by these radical and unconventional spirits. It was difficult to describe the constitutional position of Canada without establishing a contradiction in terms, and neither abstract and logical minds like that of Cornewall Lewis, nor bureaucratic intelligences like Stephen’s, could do more than intensify the difficulty and emphasize it. The deus ex machina must appear and solve the preliminary or theoretic difficulties by overriding them. There are some who describe the pioneers of Canadian self-government as philosophic radicals; but they were really not of that school. It was through the absence of any philosophy or rigid logic that they succeeded.

Resources

Notes

1. J. L. Morison, “British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government 1839-1854” (1919), Toronto, S. B. Gundy

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Law is our Passion

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This entry was last updated: October 29, 2016