Consequences of Canadian Autonomy in Canada

History

The most obvious and natural effect of Elgin’s concessions was a revolution in the programmes of the provincial parties, and in their relations to each other and to government. It may be remembered that all the governors of the period agreed in reprobating the factiousness and pettiness of Canadian party politics. Even Elgin had been unable to see very much rationality in their methods. There was, he held, little of public principle to divide men, apart from the fundamental question of responsible government. But it is possible to underestimate the reality and importance of the party system as it existed down to 1847.

To have admitted that men differed on the principle of responsible government, was to have admitted that party strife had some justification; and all the other details—affections and antipathies, national, sectarian, and personal—were the circumstances natural to party life as that life has everywhere come into existence. Burke himself sought no higher ground for the grouping of men into parties than that of family connection, and common friendships and enmities. No doubt the squalor and pettiness of early Canadian party life contrasted meanly with the glories of the eighteenth century Whigs, and the struggles of Fox and Pitt. But a nation must begin somewhere, and these trivial divisions received a kind of consecration when they centred round the discussion of colonial self-government. After all, so long as autonomy was only partially conceded, and so long as men felt impelled to take opposite sides on that subject, it was foolish to deny that there were Canadian parties, and that their differences were of some importance.

Moreover, before 1847 there were other good reasons for the existence of two distinct parties. It was true, as Sydenham had said, that the British party names were not quite appropriate to the parties in Canada who had adopted them. Yet there were some links between British and Canadian parties. The British and the Canadian Tories had, in 1840, many views in common. In a time of change both stood for a pronounced distrust of democracy; both regarded the creation of responsible government in Canada as disastrous to the connection; both were the defenders of Church and State. On the other hand, it was not unnatural, as Elgin came to see, to compare the party led by Baldwin and La Fontaine with the Reformers in England who looked to Lord John Russell as their true leader. Until the political traditions, which most of the recent immigrants had brought with them from Britain, had disappeared or been transformed into a new Canadian tradition, and so long as certain grave constitutional defects which cried for remedy remained unaltered, Canadian Tories and Reformers must exist, and government, as Metcalfe discovered, was impossible, unless it recognized in these provincial divisions the motive power of local administration.

But between 1847 and 1854 the foundations of these earlier parties had been, not so much undermined, as entirely removed. “The continuance of agitation on these intensely exciting questions,” wrote Elgin in his latest despatch from Canada, “was greatly to be deprecated, and their settlement, on terms which command the general acquiescence of those who are most deeply interested, can hardly fail to be attended with results in a high degree beneficial.”[He was reporting (18 December, 1854) the passing of acts dealing with the Clergy Reserves, and Seigniorial Tenure].

Elgin had removed the reason for existence of both parties by settling the issues which divided them. At the same time, the growth of a political life different from that of Britain, had, year by year, made the British names more inappropriate. John A. Macdonald, the leader of those who had once called themselves Tories, was confessing the change when he wrote, in 1860, “While I have always been a member of what is called the Conservative party, I could never have been called a Tory, although there is no man who more respects what is called old-fogey Toryism than I do, so long as it is based upon principle.”[3] The fierce battles over constitutional theories, which a series of British governors and governments had so long deprecated, had at last been eliminated by the natural development of Canadian political life.

The same natural development provided a substitute for the older party system. Elgin, as has been seen, belonged to the group of Peelites, who, during the lifetime of their leader and long after it, endeavoured to solve the new administrative problems of the nineteenth century without too strict an adherence to party programmes and lines of division. Curiously enough, he was the chief agent in stimulating a similar political movement in Canada. There was, however, this difference, that while in Peel’s case, and still more in that of his followers, the British party tradition proved overwhelmingly powerful, in Canada, where tradition was weaker, and the need for sound administration far more vital, the movement became dominant in the form of Liberal-conservatism. In other words, in place of small violently antagonistic parties, moderate men inclined to come together to carry out a broad, non-controversial, national programme.

There are few more remarkable developments in Canada between 1840 and 1867 than this tendency {298} towards government by a single party. It was Sydenham’s shrewd insight into the Canadian political situation, even more than his desire to rule, which led him to govern Canada by a coalition of moderate men. His only mistake lay in trying to force on the province what should have come by nature. The Baldwin-La Fontaine compact, which really dominated Canadian politics from 1841, was a partial experiment in government by an alliance of groups; and when the great exciting questions, Responsible Government and Church Establishment, had been settled, and the end in view seemed simply to be the carrying on of the Queen’s government, Liberal-conservatism entered gradually into possession. When Baldwin and La Fontaine made way for Hincks and Morin in 1851, the change was recognized as a step towards the re-union of the moderates. For, in the face of George Brown, and his advocacy of a more provocative radical programme, Francis Hincks declared for some kind of coalition: “I regret to say there have been indications given by a section of the party to which I belong, that it will be difficult indeed, unless they change their policy, to preserve the Union. I will tell these persons (the anti-state church reformers of Upper Canada) {299} that if the Union is not preserved by them, as a necessary consequence, other combinations must be formed by which the Union may be preserved. I am ready to give my cordial support to any combination of parties by which the Union shall be maintained.”

Three years later, the party of moderate reform which had co-operated with Elgin in creating a system of truly responsible government, and which had done so much to restore Canadian political equanimity, fell before a factious combination of hostile groups. But the succeeding administration, nominally Conservative, was actually Liberal-Conservative, and it remained in power chiefly because Francis Hincks, who had led the Reformers, desired his followers to assist it, as Peel and his immediate disciples kept the British Whigs in office after 1846. Robert Baldwin had been the leader of opposition during Sydenham’s rule, and before it; indeed, he may be called the organizer of party division in the days before the grant of responsible government. Yet when the opponents of the compact of 1854 quoted his precedent of party division against Hincks’ principle of union, Baldwin disowned his would-be supporters: “However disinclined myself to adventure upon such combinations, they are unquestionably, in my opinion, under certain circumstances, not only justifiable, but expedient, and even necessary. The government of the country must be carried on. It ought to be carried on with vigour. If that can be done in no other way than by mutual concessions and a coalition of parties, they become necessary.” In consequence, the autumn of 1854 witnessed the remarkable spectacle of a Tory government, headed by Sir Allan MacNab, carrying a bill to end the Clergy Reserve troubles, in alliance with Francis Hincks and their late opponents. The chief dissentients were the extreme radicals, who were now nicknamed the Clear-Grits [the Clear-Grits are thus described in The Globe, 8 October, 1850: “disappointed ministerialists, ultra English radicals, republicans and annexationists…. As a party on their own footing, they are powerless except to do mischief.” Brown had not yet transferred his allegiance].

After 1854, and for ten years, the political history of Canada is a reductio ad absurdum of the older party system. Government succeeded government, only to fall a prey to its own lack of a sufficient majority, and the unprincipled use by its various opponents of casual combinations and alliances. Apart from a little group of Radicals, British and French, who advocated reforms with an absence of moderation which made them impossible as ministers of state, there were not sufficient differences to justify two parties, and hardly sufficient programme even for one. The old Tories disappeared from power with their leader, Sir Allan MacNab, in 1856. The Baldwin-Hincks reformers had distributed themselves through all the parties—Canadian Peelites they may be called. The great majority of the representatives of the French followed moderate counsels, and were usually sought as allies by whatever government held office. The broader principles of party warfare were proclaimed only by the Clear-Grits of Upper Canada and the Rouges of Lower Canada. The latter group was distinct enough in its views to be impossible as allies for any but like-minded extremists: “Le parti rouge,” says La Minerve, “s’est formé à Montreal sous les auspices de M. Papineau, en haine des institutions anglaises, de notre constitution déclarée vicieuse, et surtout du gouvernement responsable regardé comme une duperie, avec des idées d’innovation en religion et en politique, accompagnées d’une haine profond pour le clergé, et avec l’intention {302} bien formelle, et bien prononcée d’annexer le Canada aux Etats-Unis.”

As for the original Clear-Grits, their distinguishing features were the advocacy of reforming ideas in so extreme a form as to make them useless for practical purposes, an anti-clerical or extreme Protestant outlook in religion, and a moral superiority, partly real, but more largely the Pharisaism so inevitably connected with all forms of radical propaganda. They proved their futility in 1858, when George Brown and A. A. Dorion formed their two-days’ administration, and extinguished the credit of their parties, and themselves, as politicians capable of existence apart from moderate allies. Until Canadian politics could have their scope enlarged, and the issues at stake made more vital, and therefore more controversial, it was obvious that the grant of responsible government had rendered the existing party system useless.

The significant moment in this period of Canadian history came in 1864, when all the responsible politicians in the country, and more especially the two great personal enemies, John A. Macdonald and George Brown, came together to carry out a scheme of confederation, which was too great to be the object of petty party strife, and which required the support of all parties to make it successful. Both political parties, as George Brown confessed, had tried to govern the country, and each in turn had failed from lack of steady adequate support. A general election was unlikely to effect any improvement in the situation, and the one hope seemed to lie in a frank combination between opponents to solve the constitutional difficulties which threatened to ruin the province. “After much discussion on both sides,” ran the official declaration, “it was found that a compromise might probably be had in the adoption either of the federal principle for the British North American provinces, as the larger question, or for Canada alone, with provisions for the admission of the Maritime Provinces and the North-Western Territory, when they should express the desire”: and to secure the most perfect unanimity the ministers, Sir E. P. Taché and Mr. Macdonald, “thereon stated that, after the prorogation, they would be prepared to place three seats in the Cabinet at the disposal of Mr. Brown.”[Ministerial explanations read to the House of Assembly, by the Hon. John A. Macdonald, on Wednesday, 22 June, 1864]

It is not within the scope of this essay to discuss developments after Confederation, yet it is an interesting speculation whether, up to a date quite recent, the grant of responsible government did not continue to make a two-party system on the British basis unnatural to Canada. Between 1847 and 1867, the destruction of the dual system, and the creation of government by coalition, were certainly the dominant facts in Canadian politics, and both were the products of the gift of autonomy. Since 1867, it is possible to contend that, while two sets of politicians offer themselves as alternative governments to the electors, their differentiation has reference rather to the holding of office than to a real distinction in programme. Alike in trade, imperial policy, and domestic progress, the inclination has been towards compromise, and either side inclines, or is forced, to steal the programme of the other. Responsible government was the last issue which arrayed men in parties, neither of which could quite accept a compromise with the other. It remains to be seen whether questions of freer trade, imperial organization, and provincial rights, will once more create parties with something deeper in their differences than mere rival claims to hold office.

If the creation of a Liberal-Conservative party was a direct result of the grant of autonomy, so also was the policy which led to Confederation. It is no part of the present volume to trace the growth of the idea of Confederation, or to determine who the actual fathers of Confederation were. The connection between Autonomy and Confederation in the province of Canada was that the former made the latter inevitable.

Earlier chapters have dealt with the French Canadian problem, and the difficulty of combining French nationalité with the Anglo-Saxon elements of the West. In one sense, Elgin’s regime saw nationalism lose all its awkward features. Papineau’s return to public life in 1848, and the revolutionary stir of that year had left Lower Canada untouched, save in the negligible section represented by the Rouges. The inclusion of La Fontaine and his friends in the ministry had proved the bona fides of the governor, and the French, being, as Elgin said, “quiet sort of people,” stood fast by their friend. “Candour compels me to state,” he wrote after a year of annexationist agitation, “that the conduct of the Anglo-Saxon portion of our M.P.Ps contrasts most unfavourably with that of the Gallican…. The French have been rescued from the false position into which they have been driven, and in which they must perforce have remained, so long as they believed that it was the object of the British government, as avowed by Lord Sydenham and others, to break them down, and to ensure to the British race, not by trusting to the natural course of events, but by dint of management and state craft, predominance in the province.”

But while French nationalism had assumed a perfectly normal phase, the operations of autonomy after 1847 made steadily towards the creation of a new nationalist difficulty. That difficulty had two phases.

In the first place, while the Union of Upper and Lower Canada had been based on the assumption that from it a single nationality with common ideals and objects would emerge, experience proved that both the French and the British sections remained aggressively true to their own ways; and the independence bred by self-government only quickened the sense of racial distinction. Now there were questions, such as that of the Clergy Reserves, which chiefly concerned the British section; and others, like the settlement of the seigniorial tenure, of purely French-Canadian character. Others again, chief among them the problem of separate schools, in Lower Canada for Protestants, in Upper Canada for Catholics, seemed to set the two sections in direct opposition. Under the circumstances, a series of conventions was created to meet a situation very involved and dangerous. The happy accident of the dual leadership of La Fontaine and Baldwin furnished a precedent for successive ministries, each of which took its name from a similar partnership of French and English.

Further, although the principle never received official sanction, it became usual to expect that, in questions affecting the French, a majority from Lower Canada should be obtained, and in English matters, one from Upper Canada. It was also the custom to expect a government to prove its stability by maintaining a majority from both Upper and Lower Canada. Nothing, for example, so strengthened Elgin’s hands in the Rebellion Losses fight as the fact that the majority which passed the bill was one in both sections of the Assembly. Yet nearly all cabinet ministers, and all the governors-general, strongly opposed the acknowledgment of “the double majority” as an accepted constitutional principle. “I have told Colonel Taché,” wrote Head, in 1856, “that I {308} expect the government formed by him to disavow the principle of a double majority”;[Head to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, 26 May, 1856] and both Baldwin, and, after him, John A. Macdonald refused to countenance the practice. Unfortunately, while the idea was a constitutional anomaly, threatening all manner of complications to the government of Canada, there were occasions when it had to receive a partial sanction from use. When the Tories were sustained by a majority of 4 in 1856, government suffered reconstruction because there had been a minority of votes from Upper Canada.

As the new Tory leader explained, “I did not, and I do not think that the double majority system should be adopted as a rule. I feel that so long as we are one province and one Parliament, the fact of a measure being carried by a working majority is sufficient evidence that the Government of the day is in power to conduct the affairs of the country. But I could not disguise from myself that it (the recent vote) was not a vote on a measure, but a distinct vote of confidence, or want of confidence; and there having been a vote against us from Upper Canada, expressing a want of confidence in the government, I felt that it was a sufficient indication that the measures of the government would be met with the opposition of those honorable gentlemen who had by their solemn vote withdrawn their confidence from the government.”[Statement of the Hon. John A. Macdonald in the Assembly, 26 May, 1856]. The practice continued in this state of discredit varied by occasional forced use, until a government—that of J. S. Macdonald and Sicotte—which had definitely made the double majority one of the planks in its platform, found that its principal measure, the Separate Schools Act of R. W. Scott, had to be carried by a French majority, although the matter was one of deep concern to Upper Canada. It was becoming obvious that local interests must receive some securer protection than could be afforded by what was after all an evasion of constitutional practice.

Meanwhile complications were arising from another movement, the agitation for a revision of parliamentary representation. The twelfth section of the Union Act had enacted that “the parts of the said Province which now constitute the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada respectively, shall be represented by an equal number of representatives.” At the time of Union the balance of population had inclined decisively towards {310} Lower Canada; indeed that part of the province might fairly claim to have a constitutional grievance. But between 1830 and 1860 the balance had altered. In Lower Canada a population, which in 1831 had been 511,922, had increased by 1844 to almost 700,000; while in Upper Canada the numbers had increased from 334,681 to well over 700,000 in 1848;[see Appendix to the First Report of the Board of Registration and Statistics, Montreal, 1849] and each year saw the west increase in comparison with the east, until George Brown, speaking no doubt with forensic rather than scientific ends in view, estimated that in 1857 Upper Canada possessed a population of over 1,400,000, as against a bare 1,100,000 in Lower Canada.[Life of the Hon. George Brown, p. 263. This is undoubtedly an overestimate—prophetic rather than truthful].

These changes produced a most interesting complication. The representation after 1840 stood guaranteed by a solemn act—the more solemn because it had been the result of a bargain between Sydenham and the provincial authorities in Upper and Lower Canada. It had the appearance rather of a treaty than of an ordinary Act of Parliament. On the other hand, since self-government had been secured, and since self-government seemed to involve the principle of representation in proportion to the numbers of the population, it was, according to the Upper Canadian politicians, absurd to give to 1,100,000 the same representation as to 1,400,000. So George Brown, speaking from his place in Parliament, and using, at the same time, his extraordinary and unequalled influence as editor of The Globe, flung himself into the fray, seeking, as his motion of 1857 ran, “that the representation of the people in Parliament should be based upon population, without regard to a separating line between Upper and Lower Canada.”[Life and Speeches of the Hon. George Brown, p. 267]. His thesis was too cogent, and appealed too powerfully to all classes of the Upper Canada community, to be anything but irresistible. Even Macdonald, whose political existence depended on his alliance with the French, knew that his rival had made many converts among the British Conservatives. “It is an open question,” he wrote of representation by population, in 1861, “and you know two of my colleagues voted in its favour.”[Pope, Life of Sir John Macdonald, p. 234] (1)

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CONSEQUENCES OF CANADIAN AUTONOMY

Notes

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

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This entry was last updated: October 29, 2016