Colonial Theory

Colonial Theory and Canada: History

Powerful and suggestive as Wakefield’s mind was, he had, nevertheless, to own a master in colonial theory; for the most distinguished, and by far the clearest, view of the whole matter is contained in Charles Buller’s Responsible Government for the Colonies, which he published anonymously in 1840. Buller was indeed the ablest of the whole group, and his early death was one of the greatest losses which English politics sustained in the nineteenth century—”an intelligent, clear, honest, most kindly vivacious creature; the genialist Radical I have ever met,”[Froude, Early Life of Carlyle, ii. p. 446] said Carlyle.

The ease of his writing and his gift for light satire must not be permitted to obscure the consistency and penetration of his views. Even if Durham contributed more to his Report than seems probable, the view there propounded of the scope of Responsible Government is not nearly so cogent as that of the later pamphlet. Buller, like the other members of his group, believed in the acknowledgment of a supremacy, vested in the mother country, and expressed in control of foreign affairs, inter-colonial affairs, land, trade, immigration, and the like; but outside the few occasions on which these matters called for imperial interference, he was for absolute non-interference, and protested that “that constant reference to the authorities in England, which some persons call responsibility to the mother country, is by no means necessary to insure the maintenance of a beneficial colonial connexion.”[Responsible Government for the Colonies, p. 65].

His originality indeed is best tested by the vigour and truth of his criticisms of the existing administration. First of all representation had been given without executive responsibility. Then for practical purposes the colonists were allowed to make many of their own laws, without the liberty to choose those who would administer them. Then a colonial party, self-styled the party of the connexion, or the loyal party, monopolized office. To Buller the idea of combining a popular representation with an unpopular executive seemed the height of constitutional folly; and, like Wakefield, he understood, as perhaps not five others in England did, the place of party government and popular dictation in colonial constitutional development. “The whole direction of affairs,” he said, “and the whole patronage of the Executive practically are at present in the hands of a colonial party. Now when this is the case, it can be of no importance to the mother country in the ordinary course of things, which of these local parties possesses the powers and emoluments of office.”[Responsible Government for the Colonies, p. 37].

Unlike the majority of his contemporaries, he believed in assuming the colonists to be inspired with love for their mother country, common sense, and a regard for their own welfare; and it seemed obvious that men so disposed were infinitely better qualified than the Colonial Office to manage their own affairs. Nothing but evil {243} could result “from the attempt to conduct the internal affairs of the colonies in accordance with the public opinion, not of those colonies themselves, but of the mother country.”[Responsible Government for the Colonies, p. 98]. It may seem a work of supererogation to complete the sketch of this group with an examination of the opinions expressed in Lord Durham’s Report; yet that Report is so fundamental a document in the development of British imperial opinion that time must be found to dispel one or two popular illusions.[I am inclined to accept John Stuart Mill’s account of the authorship—”written by Charles Buller, partly under the influence of Wakefield”].

It is a mistake to hold that Durham advocated the fullest concession of local autonomy to Canada. Sir Francis Hincks, a protagonist of Responsible Government, once quoted from the Report sentences which seemed to justify all his claims: “The crown must submit to the necessary consequences of representative institutions, and if it has to carry on the government in union with a representative body, it must consent to carry it on by means of those in whom that representative body has confidence”; and again, “I admit that the system which I propose would in fact place the internal government of the colony in the hands of the colonists themselves, and that we should thus leave to them the execution of the laws of which we have long entrusted the making solely to them.”[Quoted by Hincks in A Lecture on the Political History of Canada, p. 9] Public opinion in Canada also put this extreme interpretation on the language of the Report.

Yet, as a first modification, it was Lord Metcalfe’s confident opinion that the responsibility of ministers to the Assembly for which Durham pled, was not that of a united Cabinet, but rather of departmental heads in individual isolation,[Kaye, Papers and Correspondence of Lord Metcalfe, pp. 414-15] and certainly one sentence in the Report can hardly be interpreted otherwise: “This (the change) would induce responsibility for every act of the Government, and, as a natural consequence, it would necessitate the substitution of a system of administration by means of competent heads of departments, for the present rude machinery of an executive council.”[Lord Durham’s Report (Lucas), ii. p. 280]

In the second place, while Durham did indeed speak of making the colonial executive responsible to a colonial Assembly, he discriminated between the internal government of the colony and its imperial aspect.[See an admirable discussion of the point in Lucas’s edition of the Report, i. p. 146 and ii. p. 281] In practice he modified his gift of home rule, by placing, like Wakefield and Buller, many things beyond the scope of colonial responsibility, for example, “the constitution of the form of government, the regulation of foreign relations, and of trade with the mother country, the other British colonies, and foreign nations, and the disposal of the public lands.”[See an admirable discussion of the point in Lucas’s edition of the Report, ii. p. 282] There is too remarkable a consensus of opinion on this point within the group to leave any doubt as to the intention of Durham and his assistants; that an extensive region should be left subject to strictly imperial supervision. Durham’s career ended before his actions could furnish a practical test of his theories, but Buller, like Wakefield, gave a plain statement of what he meant by supporting Metcalfe against his council, at a time when the colonial Assembly seemed to be infringing on imperial rights. “No man,” said Buller, of the Metcalfe affair, “could seriously think of saying that in the appointment of every subordinate officer in every county in Canada, the opinion of the Executive Council was to be taken.”[A speech by Charles Buller in Hansard, 30 May, 1844].

To pass from controversy to certainty, there was one aspect of the Report which made it the most notable deliverance of its authors, and which set that group apart from every other political section in Britain, whether Radical, Whig, or Tory—I mean its robust and unhesitating imperialism. How deeply pessimism concerning the Empire had pervaded all minds at that time, it will be the duty of this chapter to prove, but, in the Report at least, there is no doubt of its authors’ desire, “to perpetuate and strengthen the connexion between this Empire and the North American Colonies, which would then form one of the brightest ornaments in your Majesty’s Imperial Crown.” This confident imperial note, then, was the most striking contribution of the Durham Radicals to colonial development; and the originality and unexpectedness of their confidence gains impressiveness when contrasted with general contemporary opinion.

They contributed, too, in another and less simple fashion, to the constitutional question. Nowhere so clearly as in their writings are both sides of the theoretic contradiction—British supremacy and Canadian autonomy—so boldly stated, and, in spite of the contradiction, so confidently accepted. They would trust implicitly to the sense and feelings, however crude, of the colony: they would surrender the entire control of domestic affairs: they would sanction, as at home, party with all its faults, popular control of the executive, and apparently the decisive influence of that executive in advising the governor in internal affairs. Yet, in the great imperial federation of which they dreamed, they never doubted the right of the mother country to act with overmastering authority in certain crises. That right, and the unquenchable affection of exiles for the land whence they came, constituted for them “the connexion.”

These were the views which came to dominate political opinion in Britain, for Molesworth was right when he declared that to Buller and Wakefield, more than to any other persons, was the country indebted for sound views on colonial policy. The interest of the present inquiry lies in tracing the development of these views into something unlike, and distinctly bolder than, anything which these rash and unconventional thinkers had planned.

Whatever might be the shortcomings of the Radical group, the daring of their trust in the colonists stands out in high relief against a background of conservative restriction and distrust. It was natural for the Tories to think of colonies as they did. Under the leadership of North and George III. they had experienced what might well seem to them the natural consequences of the old constitutional system of colonial administration. After 1782 they were disinclined to experiment in Assemblies as free as those of Massachusetts and Connecticut had been. The reaction caused by the French Revolution deepened their distrust of popular institutions; and the war of 1812 quickened their hatred of the United States—the zone of political no less than military danger for Canada.

The conquests which they made had given them a second colonial empire, and they had administered that empire with financial generosity and constitutional parsimony, hoping against hope that a fabric so unexpected and difficult as colonial empire might after all disappoint their fears by remaining true to Britain. Developing in spite of themselves, and with the times, they had still learned little and forgotten little. So it was that Sir George Arthur, a Tory governor in partibus infidelium, was driven into panic by Durham’s frank criticisms, and expounded to Normanby, his Whig chief, fears not altogether baseless: “The bait of responsible government has been eagerly taken, and its poison is working most mischievously…. The measure recommended by such high authority is the worst evil that has yet befallen Upper Canada”:[Arthur to Normanby, 21 August, 1839.] and again, “since the Earl of Durham’s Report was published, the reform party, as I have already stated, have come out in greater force—not in favour of the Union, nor of the other measures contemplated by the Bill, that has been sent out to this country, but for the daring object so strenuously advocated by Mackenzie, familiarly denominated responsible government.”[Arthur to Normanby, 15 October, 1839.23]

The distrust and timidity of Arthur’s despatches are shared in by practically the entire Tory party in its dealings with Canada, after the Rebellion. The Duke of Wellington opposed the Union of the provinces, because, among other consequences, “the union into one Legislature of the discontented spirits heretofore existing in two separate Legislatures will not diminish, but will tend to augment, the difficulties attending the administration of the government; particularly under the circumstances of the encouragement given to expect the establishment in the united province of a local responsible administration of government.”[Protest of the Duke of Wellington against the Third Reading of a bill, etc., 13 July, 1840]. He was greatly excited when the news of Bagot’s concessions arrived. Arbuthnot describes his chief’s mood as one of anger and indignation. “What a fool the man must have been,” he kept exclaiming, “to act as he has done! and what stuff and nonsense he has written! and what a bother he makes about his policy and his measures, when there are no measures but rolling himself and his country in the mire.”[Parker, Life of Sir Robert Peel, iii. pp. 382-3]. (1)

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