Political Reform

History

The Reform leaders were very unlike each other in character and antecedents. Robert Baldwin was the son of William Warren Baldwin, whose father (also a Robert Baldwin) belonged to the humbler class of landed gentry in Ireland. Tempted, like so many others of his class, by the bait of cheap land, he came to Canada to ‘farm.’ His son William studied medicine at Edinburgh, became a doctor, and, with Irish powers of adaptation, soon exchanged physic for the more profitable pursuit of law. Robert the grandson was born in York (now Toronto) in 1804. He became one of ‘Johnny’ Strachan’s pupils at the Grammar School, achieving in time the distinction of being ‘head boy’; after which he studied law in the old, leisurely, articled-clerk system, and finally became his father’s partner. An opportune legacy enabled his father to buy a large property outside ‘muddy York,’ on which, in accordance with hereditary landholding instinct, he endeavoured to establish his family, after the old-world fashion. A broad thoroughfare in Toronto preserves the name of Baldwin’s ambition, ‘Spadina.’

Like his father, Robert Baldwin was a Moderate Reformer. He entered public life (1829) in his native town as draftsman of a petition to George IV in what was known as the Willis affair. In the same year he was elected to the Assembly as member for York. Unseated on a technicality, he was at once re-elected, and took his seat in the House the following year. In the new elections, however, following the demise of George IV in 1830, when the House was dissolved, Baldwin was defeated. He had recently entered into partnership with his wife’s brother, who was also his own cousin, Robert Baldwin Sullivan, a handsome Irishman with more than a touch of Irish brilliancy. Sullivan played no small part in the politics of the time. He is the author of the wittiest pamphlet ever evoked by Canadian party struggles.

Another young Irishman with whom Baldwin became closely associated was Francis Hincks, who also left his mark on the history of Canada. The son of a Presbyterian minister, he had received a good general education, and a sound and extensive business training in Belfast. Coming to Toronto by way of the West Indies, he became interested in various local business concerns and speedily proved his outstanding capacity for all matters of commerce and finance. Besides being the manager of a bank and the secretary of an insurance company, Hincks carried on at his house in Yonge Street, next door to Robert Baldwin’s (number 21), a general warehousing business; and, as if these enterprises did not afford sufficient scope for his energy, he launched a weekly newspaper, the Examiner, in the interests of Reform. The successful man of business soon became the expert in finance, to whom all eyes turned in difficulty.

In 1833 he was appointed one of the inspectors of the Welland Canal accounts in a parliamentary investigation, so swiftly had he come to the front. Though much unlike in temperament, he and Baldwin were agreed in their views of political reform, siding with the Moderates as against the Mackenzie faction of extremists. When in 1836 the Constitutional Reform Society of Upper Canada was organized, with William Warren Baldwin as president, Hincks became the secretary. The main objects of this society were to secure ‘responsible advisers to the governor,’ and the abolition of the forty-four rectories established by Sir John Colborne in accordance with the well-known provisions of the Constitutional Act. The success of any organization often depends on one man, the secretary, and in this capacity Hincks evinced his wonted ability and extraordinary energy.

These two men, Robert Baldwin, with his high principle and solid character, and Francis Hincks, with his talent for affairs, are figures of prime importance in this critical stage of the experiment called responsible government.

But the new province of Canada, as a union of French and English populations, demanded, as a natural consequence, a union in leadership. The French-Canadian politician, who in his own province represented Moderate Reform, was Louis Hippolyte LaFontaine. His grandfather had been a member of the old Assembly of Lower Canada; his father was a farmer at Boucherville in Chambly, where Louis Hippolyte was born in 1804. Educated at the college of Montreal, he afterwards studied law and began to practise in that city. In 1830 he was elected member for Terrebonne, and soon showed himself in the House to be a thoroughgoing follower of Papineau and an agitator for radical change. But when reform passed over into rebellion and an appeal to armed force, he tried to dissuade his compatriots from their mad enterprise, and also approached the governor, Lord Gosford, with a proposal to assemble parliament, in order to prevent further violence. He then went to England, from motives which do not seem clear. Fearing arrest in that country for his share in the agitation before the rebellion, he fled to France. He did not, in fact, return to Canada until May 1838, when he was caught in the widespread net of arrests and spent several painful and indignant months in the Montreal jail, demanding release, but in vain.

Incarceration for a political offence is a rare event in the career of a chief justice and an English baronet, as this prisoner was to be later. Arrested on suspicion, he was released without trial. On the tragic collapse of the extremists LaFontaine became the hope of the moderate men among the French-Canadian politicians. Like the most of his compatriots, he was strongly opposed to the union of the Canadas, as threatening the extinction of his nationality; but seeing no possible alternative to union, he made it his fixed policy to win, by constitutional methods, whatever could be won for his people. In appearance he was strikingly like the first Napoleon, the resemblance being noticed by the old soldiers when he visited the Hôtel des Invalides at Paris. A contemporary cartoon, representing him flinging money to the habitants, shows the likeness, even to the lock of hair on the forehead, more plainly than his portrait. His few years of leadership in parliament, though of great importance to the country, formed only an episode in a larger legal career.

In the elections of 1841 LaFontaine was defeated; it is said, by illegal methods. Baldwin was returned for two constituencies, York and Hastings, and Hincks for Oxford, on the strength of his articles in the Examiner. Bitterly disappointed as LaFontaine was at his defeat and the means by which it was accomplished, he could see no hope of redress except by constitutional means. For the present he could do no more than protest angrily at the injustice. He was, however, not long excluded from the House. Through the good offices of Baldwin he was elected for the fourth riding of York, an act of courtesy and common sense which was not to lose its reward. (…)

The misfortune of Metcalfe was that his entire political training had been gained in governing subject races, Hindus in India and negroes in Jamaica, races ‘so accustomed to be trampled on by the strong that they always consider humanity as a sign of weakness.’ Now old, and fixed in his mental set, autocratic as an Indian civil servant must be, he came to deal with a rude, unlicked, white democracy, impatient of control as Durham discovered, and acutely jealous of its rights. In theory Metcalfe should have been most sympathetic, for in English politics he was an advanced Whig, strongly in favour of such popular measures as abolition of the Corn Laws, vote by ballot, the extension of the franchise. Besides, he was honestly desirous of playing the peacemaker. None the less, his administration was marked by a reaction towards the old Tory state of affairs, and produced a ministerial crisis which threatened to bring back the reign of Chaos and old Night. (…)

he third session of the first parliament of Canada opened towards the end of September 1843. In an Assembly of eighty-four members the party of Reform numbered sixty, an overwhelming majority; for the rapprochement between the sympathetic parties of the two provinces was now complete. The leader of the opposition was Sir Allan MacNab of Caroline fame, a typical soldier-politician, narrow but honest in his views, and, like his countryman Alan Breck, a ‘bonny fighter.’ It was a momentous session. Reform was firmly in the saddle at last. No opposition could hope to defeat whatever measure the government might choose to bring forward. Nor could the government be reproached, as before, with merely talking and doing nothing. Much legislation of the first importance stands to its credit. One of the measures passed at this session provided that the seat of government should be removed from Kingston to the commercial metropolis, Montreal.

For how short a time Montreal should have this honour, none could imagine or foresee. By another wise measure placemen were removed from the Assembly; that is to say, permanent officials, such as judges and registrars, could not hold their positions and be members of parliament. For this important change LaFontaine was responsible, as well as for another bill which simplified the judicial system of Lower Canada. An attempt was made to bridle the turbulence of Irish factions, which had brought to Canada the long-standing, cankered quarrels of the Old World. A bill was passed to suppress all secret societies except the Freemasons. It was, of course, aimed straight at the Orange Society, that vigorous politico-religious organization which preserves the memory of a Dutch prince and of a battle he fought in the seventeenth century.

To this bill, Metcalfe did not assent, but ‘reserved’ it, as was his undoubted right, for the royal sanction. In the end that sanction was not given, and the Act did not become law. The ‘reserving’ of this bill seems to have occasioned little comment; but, as will be seen in a subsequent chapter, the refusal of another governor to ‘reserve’ another bill caused a storm. Hincks, the man of finance, gave the country ‘protection’ against the competition of the American farmer, a political device which was destined to much wider use. The all-important matter of education received the attention of the Assembly. What had been done before was, most significantly, to make provision for higher education by establishing ‘grammar schools’ in the different districts, as foundations for the superstructure of a university. It might have been called a provision for aristocratic education. Now a measure became law for the better support of the common schools. This was provision for democratic education, a necessary corollary to popular government, for if Demos is to rule, Demos cannot be left in ignorance; the peril of an ignorant ruler is too frightful. (…)

(H)aving dissolved the Assembly, the governor issued writs for a new election. That election in the autumn of 1844 was attended with great riot and disorder. Both sides resorted to violence. When the House assembled, it was found that Metcalfe and the Tories had triumphed. The Reformers were in the minority. While Lower Canada had returned LaFontaine with a strong following, the western province had sent a phalanx to support the governor. Among the other curiosities of this remarkable election was the defeat of Viger by Wolfred Nelson, lately in arms against Her Majesty’s government. In this contest a young lawyer of Scottish descent carried Kingston for the Tories. He was destined to go far. His name was John Alexander Macdonald. (…)

In the meantime the Act appointing a new capital had come into effect. Kingston gave place to Montreal, for a season. The huge Ste Anne’s market building in the west of the city was turned into a parliament house, destined to the fate of Troy. Here was held the session of 1844-45. Such legislation as was passed had no direct bearing on the question of responsible government. Before the session ended news came that the home government intended to raise the governor to the peerage as Baron Metcalfe of Fern Hill. His brief two years in Canada formed only an episode in the long career of a distinguished public servant. He had made his name and spent his life in India.

The contemplated honour was well deserved; and it was designed by the home government as recognition of his services to the state as a whole, rather than as special approval of his administration of Canada. But so the Reformers construed Metcalfe’s elevation; and they were furious. Even the moderate Baldwin was betrayed into unwonted vehemence. What would have happened, if Metcalfe had remained in office, none can tell. Perhaps a second civil war. But ‘death cut the inextricable knot.’ His deadly disease returned after a delusive interval, as is its hideous custom. His health failed; the cancer ate into his eye and destroyed the sight. It was apparent that he could no longer perform the duties of his office. He asked to be recalled; but the authorities at home, knowing of his malady, had anticipated his desire. The courage that sent the boy ‘writer’ into the deadly assault on Deeg sustained the old proconsul through the slow torture of the months of life remaining to him. He quitted Canada in November 1845, a dying man, and, to the shame of Canada, amid the untimely exultation of his political opponents. In less than a year he was dead. Macaulay composed his epitaph. Metcalfe was a man of mark; and he had his share in building up the British Empire. His name distinguishes a street in Ottawa and a hall in Calcutta; and his statue stands in the former capital of Jamaica. (1)

Resources

Notes

1. Archibald MacMechan, “Popular Govrerment. A Chronicle of the Union of 1841” (1916), Toronto, Glasgow, Brook and Company

See Also

Law is our Passion

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This entry was last updated: October 29, 2016