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CANADA UNDER BRITISH RULE 1760-1900
BY
SIR JOHN G. BOURINOT, K.C.M.G., LL.D., LITT.D.
Author of 'Parliamentary Procedure and Practice', 'Constitutional
History of Canada,' 'The Story of Canada,' etc
WITH EIGHT MAPS
1900
CAMBRIDGE HISTORICAL SERIES
EDITED BY G. W. PROTHERO, LITT.D., LL.D.
Honorary Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and Late Professor of
History in the University of Edinburgh.
GENERAL PREFACE.
The aim of this series is to sketch the history of Modern Europe, with that of its chief colonies and conquests, from about the end of the fifteenth century down to the present time. In one or two cases the story commences at an earlier date: in the case of the colonies it generally begins later. The histories of the different countries are described, as a rule, separately, for it is believed that, except in epochs like that of the French Revolution and Napoleon I, the connection of events will thus be better understood and the continuity of historical development more clearly displayed.
The series is intended for the use of all persons anxious to understand the nature of existing political conditions. "The roots of the present lie deep in the past"; and the real significance of contemporary events cannot be grasped unless the historical causes which have led to them are known. The plan adopted makes it possible to treat the history of the last four centuries in considerable detail, and to embody the most important results of modern research. It is hoped therefore that the series will be useful not only to beginners but to students who have already acquired some general knowledge of European History. For those who wish to carry their studies further, the bibliography appended to each volume will act as a guide to original sources of information and works more detailed and authoritative.
Considerable attention is paid to political geography, and each volume is furnished with such maps and plans as may be requisite for the illustration of the text.
G.W. PROTHERO.
PREFACE.
I devote the first chapter of this short history to a brief review of the colonisation of the valley of the St. Lawrence by the French, and of their political and social conditions at the Conquest, so that a reader may be able to compare their weak and impoverished state under the repressive dominion of France with the prosperous and influential position they eventually attained under the liberal methods of British rule. In the succeeding chapters I have dwelt on those important events which have had the largest influence on the political development of the several provinces as British possessions.
We have, first, the Quebec Act, which gave permanent guarantees for the establishment of the Church of Rome and the maintenance of the language and civil law of France in her old colony. Next, we read of the coming of the United Empire Loyalists, and the consequent establishment of British institutions on a stable basis of loyal devotion to the parent state. Then ensued the war of 1812, to bind the provinces more closely to Great Britain, and create that national spirit which is the natural outcome of patriotic endeavour and individual self-sacrifice. Then followed for several decades a persistent popular struggle for larger political liberty, which was not successful until British statesmen awoke at last from their indifference, on the outbreak of a rebellion in the Canadas, and recognised the necessity of adopting a more liberal policy towards their North American dependencies. The union of the Canadas was succeeded by the concession of responsible government and the complete acknowledgment of the rights of the colonists to manage their provincial affairs without the constant interference of British officials. With this extension of political privileges, the people became still more ambitious, and established a confederation, which has not only had the effect of supplying a remarkable stimulus to their political, social and material development, but has given greater security to British interests on the continent of North America. At particular points of the historical narrative I have dwelt for a space on economic, social, and intellectual conditions, so that the reader may intelligently follow every phase to the development of the people from the close of the French régime to the beginning of the twentieth century In my summary of the most important political events for the last twenty-five years, I have avoided all comment on matters which are "as yet"—to quote the language of the epilogue to Mr. Green's "Short History"—"too near to us to admit of a cool and purely historical treatment." The closing chapter is a short review of the relations between Canada and the United States since the treaty of 1783—so conducive to international disputes concerning boundaries and fishing rights—until the present time, when the Alaskan and other international controversies are demanding adjustment.
I have thought, too, that it would be useful to students of political institutions to give in the appendix comparisons between the leading provisions of the federal systems of the Dominion of Canada and the Commonwealth of Australia. I must add that, in the revision of the historical narrative, I have been much aided by the judicious criticism and apt suggestions of the Editor of the Series, Dr. Prothero.
HOUSE OF COMMONS, OTTAWA, CANADA. 1st October, 1900
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE FRENCH RÉGIME (1534—1760)
Section 1. Introduction
Section 2. Discovery and Settlement of Canada by France
Section 3. French exploration in the valleys of North America
Section 4. End of French Dominion in the valley of the St. Lawrence
Section 5. Political, Economic, and Social Conditions of Canada during French Rule
CHAPTER II.
BEGINNINGS OF BRITISH RULE (1749—1774)
Section 1. From the Conquest until the Quebec Act
Section 2. The Foundation of Nova Scotia (1749—1783)
CHAPTER III.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AND THE UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS (1763—1784)
Section 1. The successful Revolution of the Thirteen Colonies in America
Section 2. Canada and Nova Scotia during the Revolution.
Section 3. The United Empire Loyalists
CHAPTER IV.
DEVELOPMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE INSTITUTIONS (1784-1812)
Section 1. Beginnings of the Provinces of New Brunswick, Lower Canada and Upper Canada.
Section 2. Twenty years of Political Development. (1792-1812)
CHAPTER V.
THE WAR OF 1812-1815
Section 1. Origin of the war between Great Britain and the United States
Section 2. Canada during the War
CHAPTER VI.
THE EVOLUTION OF RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT (1815-1839)
Section 1. The Rebellion in Lower Canada
Section 2. The Rebellion in Upper Canada
Section 3. Social and Economic Conditions of the Provinces in 1838
CHAPTER VII.
A NEW ERA OF COLONIAL GOVERNMENT (1839-1867)
Section 1. The Union of the Canadas and the establishment of Responsible Government
Section 2. Results of Self-government from 1841 to 1864
CHAPTER VIII.
THE EVOLUTION OF CONFEDERATION (1789-1867)
Section 1. The beginnings of Confederation
Section 2. The Quebec Convention of 1864
Section 3. Confederation accomplished
CHAPTER IX.
CONFEDERATION (1867—1900)
Section 1. The First Parliament of the Dominion of Canada (1867—1873)
Section 2. Extension of the Dominion from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean (1869—1873)
Section 3. Summary of Noteworthy Events from 1873 until 1900
Section 4. Political and Social Conditions of Canada under Confederation
CHAPTER X.
CANADA'S RELATIONS WITH THE UNITED STATES AND HER INFLUENCE IN IMPERIAL COUNCILS (1783—1900)
APPENDIX A: COMPARISONS BETWEEN CONSTITUTIONS OF THE CANADIAN DOMINION AND AUSTRALIAN COMMONWEALTH.
APPENDIX B: BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
INDEX
PLANS AND MAPS.
Map showing Boundary between Canada and the United States by Treaty of 1783.
Map of British America to illustrate the Charter of the Hudson's Bay
Company.
International Boundary as finally established in 1842 at Lake of the
Woods.
Map of the North-Eastern Boundary as established in 1842.
Map of British Columbia and Yukon District showing disputed Boundary between Canada and the United States.
France, Spain, and Great Britain, in North America, 1756—1760.
Outline map of British Possessions in North America, 1763—1775.
Map of the Dominion of Canada illustrating the boundaries of Provinces and Provisional Districts.
A SHORT HISTORY OF CANADA UNDER BRITISH RULE.
CHAPTER I.
THE FRENCH RÉGIME. 1534—1760.
SECTION I.—Introduction.
Though the principal object of this book is to review the political, economic and social progress of the provinces of Canada under British rule, yet it would be necessarily imperfect, and even unintelligible in certain important respects, were I to ignore the deeply interesting history of the sixteen hundred thousand French Canadians, about thirty per cent of the total population of the Dominion. To apply to Canada an aphorism of Carlyle, "The present is the living sum-total of the whole past"; the sum-total not simply of the hundred and thirty years that have elapsed since the commencement of British dominion, but primarily of the century and a half that began with the coming of Champlain to the heights of Quebec and ended with the death of Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham. The soldiers and sailors, the missionaries and pioneers of France, speak to us in eloquent tones, whether we linger in summer time on the shores of the noble gulf which washes the eastern portals of Canada; whether we ascend the St. Lawrence River and follow the route taken by the explorers, who discovered the great lakes, and gave to the world a knowledge of the West and the Mississippi, whether we walk on the grassy mounds that recall the ruins of the formidable fortress of Louisbourg, which once defended the eastern entrance to the St. Lawrence; whether we linger on the rocks of the ancient city of Quebec with its many memorials of the French régime; whether we travel over the rich prairies with their sluggish, tortuous rivers, and memories of the French Canadians who first found their way to that illimitable region. In fact, Canada has a rich heritage of associations that connect us with some of the most momentous epochs of the world's history. The victories of Louisbourg and Quebec belong to the same series of brilliant events that recall the famous names of Chatham, Clive, and Wolfe, and that gave to England a mighty empire in Asia and America. Wolfe's signal victory on the heights of the ancient capital was the prelude to the great drama of the American revolution. Freed from the fear of France, the people of the Thirteen Colonies, so long hemmed in between the Atlantic Ocean and the Appalachian range, found full expression for their love of local self-government when England asserted her imperial supremacy. After a struggle of a few years they succeeded in laying the foundation of the remarkable federal republic, which now embraces forty-five states with a population of already seventy-five millions of souls, which owes its national stability and prosperity to the energy and enterprise of the Anglo-Norman race and the dominant influence of the common law, and the parliamentary institutions of England. At the same time, the American Revolution had an immediate and powerful effect upon the future of the communities that still remained in the possession of England after the acknowledgement of the independence of her old colonies. It drove to Canada a large body of men and women, who remained faithful to the crown and empire and became founders of provinces which are now comprised in a Dominion extending for over three thousand miles to the north and east of the federal republic.
The short review of the French régime, with which I am about to commence this history of Canada, will not give any evidence of political, economic, or intellectual development under the influence of French dominion, but it is interesting to the student of comparative politics on account of the comparisons which it enables us to make between the absolutism of old France which crushed every semblance of independent thought and action, and the political freedom which has been a consequence of the supremacy of England in the province once occupied by her ancient rival. It is quite true, as Professor Freeman has said, that in Canada, which is pre-eminently English in the development of its political institutions, French Canada is still "a distinct and visible element, which is not English,—an element older than anything English in the land,—and which shows no sign of being likely to be assimilated by anything English." As this book will show, though a hundred and forty years have nearly passed since the signing of the treaty of Paris, many of the institutions which the French Canadians inherited from France have become permanently established in the country, and we see constantly in the various political systems given to Canada from time to time—notably in the constitution of the federal union—the impress of these institutions and the influence of the people of the French section. Still, while the French Canadians by their adherence to their language, civil law and religion are decidedly "a distinct and visible element which is not English"—an element kept apart from the English by positive legal and constitutional guarantees or barriers of separation,—we shall see that it is the influence and operation of English institutions, which have made their province one of the most contented communities of the world. While their old institutions are inseparably associated with the social and spiritual conditions of their daily lives, it is after all their political constitution, which derives its strength from English, principles, that has made the French Canadians a free, self-governing people and developed the best elements of their character to a degree which was never possible under the depressing and enfeebling conditions of the French régime.
SECTION 2.—Discovery and settlement of Canada by France.
Much learning has been devoted to the elucidation of the Icelandic Sagas, or vague accounts of voyages which Bjorne Heriulfson and Lief Ericsson, sons of the first Norse settlers of Greenland, are supposed to have made at the end of the tenth century, to the eastern parts of what is now British North America, and, in the opinion of some writers, even as far as the shores of New England. It is just possible that such voyages were made, and that Norsemen were the first Europeans who saw the eastern shores of Canada. It is quite certain, however, that no permanent settlements were made by the Norsemen in any part of these countries; and their voyages do not appear to have been known to Columbus or other maritime adventurers of later times, when the veil of mystery was at last lifted from the western limits of what was so long truly described as the "sea of darkness." While the subject is undoubtedly full of interest, it is at the same time as illusive as the fata morgana, or the lakes and rivers that are created by the mists of a summer's eve on the great prairies of the Canadian west.
Five centuries later than the Norse voyagers, there appeared on the great field of western exploration an Italian sailor, Giovanni Caboto, through whose agency England took the first step in the direction of that remarkable maritime enterprise which, in later centuries, was to be the admiration and envy of all other nations. John Cabot was a Genoese by birth and a Venetian citizen by adoption, who came during the last decade of the fifteenth century, to the historic town of Bristol. Eventually he obtain from Henry VII letters-patent, granting to himself and his three sons, Louis, Sebastian, and Sancio, the right, "at their own cost and charges, to seek out and discover unknown lands," and to acquire for England the dominion over the countries they might discover. Early in May, 1497, John Cabot sailed from Bristol in "The Matthew," manned by English sailors. In all probability he was accompanied by Sebastian, then about 21 years of age, who, in later times, through the credulity of his friends and his own garrulity and vanity, took that place in the estimation of the world which his father now rightly fills. Some time toward the end of June, they made a land-fall on the north-eastern coast of North America. The actual site of the land-fall will always be a matter of controversy unless some document is found among musty archives of Europe to solve the question to the satisfaction of the disputants, who wax hot over the claims of a point near Cape Chidley on the coast of Labrador, of Bonavista, on the east shore of Newfoundland, of Cape North, or some other point, on the island of Cape Breton. Another expedition left Bristol in 1498, but while it is now generally believed that Cabot coasted the shores of North America from Labrador or Cape Breton as far as Cape Hatteras, we have no details of this famous voyage, and are even ignorant of the date when the fleet returned to England.
The Portuguese, Gaspar and Miguel Cortereal, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, were lost somewhere on the coast of Labrador or Newfoundland, but not before they gave to their country a claim to new lands. The Basques and Bretons, always noted for their love of the sea, frequented the same prolific waters and some of the latter gave a name to the picturesque island of Cape Breton. Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine by birth, who had for years led a roving life on the sea, sailed in 1524 along the coasts of Nova Scotia and the present United States and gave a shadowy claim of first discovery of a great region to France under whose authority he sailed. Ten years later Jacques Cartier of St. Malo was authorised by Francis I to undertake a voyage to these new lands, but he did not venture beyond the Gulf of St. Lawrence, though he took possession of the picturesque Gaspé peninsula in the name of his royal master. In 1535 he made a second voyage, whose results were most important for France and the world at large. The great river of Canada was then discovered by the enterprising Breton, who established a post for some months at Stadacona, now Quebec, and also visited the Indian village of Hochelaga on the island of Montreal. Here he gave the appropriate name of Mount Royal to the beautiful height which dominates the picturesque country where enterprise has, in the course of centuries, built a noble city. Hochelaga was probably inhabited by Indians of the Huron-Iroquois family, who appear, from the best evidence before us, to have been dwelling at that time on the banks of the St. Lawrence, whilst the Algonquins, who took their place in later times, were living to the north of the river.
The name of Canada—obviously the Huron-Iroquois word for Kannata, a town—began to take a place on the maps soon after Cartier's voyages. It appears from his Bref Récit to have been applied at the time of his visit, to a kingdom, or district, extending from Ile-aux-Coudres, which he named on account of its hazel-nuts, on the lower St. Lawrence, to the Kingdom of Ochelay, west of Stadacona; east of Canada was Saguenay, and west of Ochelay was Hochelaga, to which the other communities were tributary. After a winter of much misery Cartier left Stadacona in the spring of 1536, and sailed into the Atlantic by the passage between Cape Breton and Newfoundland, now appropriately called Cabot's Straits on modern maps. He gave to France a positive claim to a great region, whose illimitable wealth and possibilities were never fully appreciated by the king and the people of France even in the later times of her dominion. Francis, in 1540, gave a commission to Jean François de la Roque, Sieur de Roberval, to act as his viceroy and lieutenant-general in the country discovered by Cartier, who was elevated to the position of captain general and master pilot of the new expedition. As the Viceroy was unable to complete his arrangements by 1541, Cartier was obliged to sail in advance, and again passed a winter on the St. Lawrence, not at Stadacona but at Cap Rouge, a few miles to the west, where he built a post which he named Charlesbourg-Royal. He appears to have returned to France some time during the summer of 1542, while Roberval was on his way to the St. Lawrence. Roberval found his way without his master pilot to Charlesbourg-Royal, which he renamed France-Roy, and where he erected buildings of a very substantial character in the hope of establishing a permanent settlement. His selection of colonists—chiefly taken from jails and purlieus of towns—was most unhappy, and after a bitter experience he returned to France, probably in the autumn of 1543, and disappeared from Canadian history.
From the date of Cartier's last voyage until the beginning of the seventeenth century, a period of nearly sixty years, nothing was done to settle the lands of the new continent. Fishermen alone continued to frequent the great gulf, which was called for years the "Square gulf" or "Golfo quadrado," or "Quarré," on some European maps, until it assumed, by the end of the sixteenth century, the name it now bears. The name Saint-Laurens was first given by Cartier to the harbour known as Sainte-Geneviève (or sometimes Pillage Bay), on the northern shore of Canada, and gradually extended to the gulf and river. The name of Labrador, which was soon established on all maps, had its origin in the fact that Gaspar Cortereal brought back with him a number of natives who were considered to be "admirably calculated for labour."
In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the English began to take a prominent part in that maritime enterprise which was to lead to such remarkable results in the course of three centuries. The names of the ambitious navigators, Frobisher and Davis, are connected with those arctic waters where so much money, energy, and heroism have been expended down to the present time. Under the influence of the great Ralegh, whose fertile imagination was conceiving plans of colonization in America, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, his brother-in-law, took possession of Newfoundland on a hill overlooking the harbour of St. John's. English enterprise, however, did not extend for many years to any other part of North Eastern America than Newfoundland, which is styled Baccalaos on the Hakluyt map of 1597, though the present name appeared from a very early date in English statutes and records. The island, however, for a century and longer, was practically little more than "a great ship moored near the banks during the fishing season, for the convenience of English fishermen," while English colonizing enterprise found a deeper interest in Virginia with its more favourable climate and southern products. It was England's great rival, France, that was the pioneer at the beginning of the seventeenth century in the work of exploring, and settling the countries now comprised within the Dominion of Canada.
France first attempted to settle the indefinite region, long known as La Cadie or Acadie[1]. The Sieur de Monts, Samuel Champlain, and the Baron de Poutrincourt were the pioneers in the exploration of this country. Their first post was erected on Dochet Island, within the mouth of the St. Croix River, the present boundary between the state of Maine and the province of New Brunswick; but this spot was very soon found unsuitable, and the hopes of the pioneers were immediately turned towards the beautiful basin, which was first named Port Royal by Champlain. The Baron de Poutrincourt obtained a grant of land around this basin, and determined to make his home in so beautiful a spot. De Monts, whose charter was revoked in 1607, gave up the project of colonizing Acadia, whose history from that time is associated for years with the misfortunes of the Biencourts, the family name of Baron de Poutrincourt; but the hopes of this adventurous nobleman were never realized. In 1613 an English expedition from Virginia, under the command of Captain Argall, destroyed the struggling settlement at Fort Royal, and also prevented the establishment of a Jesuit mission on the island of Monts-Déserts, which owes its name to Champlain. Acadia had henceforth a checquered history, chiefly noted for feuds between rival French leaders and for the efforts of the people of New England to obtain possession of Acadia. Port Royal was captured in 1710 by General Nicholson, at the head of an expedition composed of an English fleet and the militia of New England. Then it received the name of Annapolis Royal in honour of Queen Anne, and was formally ceded with all of Acadia "according to its ancient limits" to England by the treaty of Utrecht.
[1: This name is now generally admitted to belong to the language of the Micmac Indians of the Atlantic provinces. It means a place, or locality, and is always associated with another word descriptive of some special natural production; for instance, Shubenacadie, or Segubunakade, is the place where the ground-nut, or Indian potato, grows. We find the first official mention of the word in the commission given by Henry IV of France to the Sieur de Monts in 1604.]
It was not in Acadia, but in the valley of the St. Lawrence, that France made her great effort to establish her dominion in North America. Samuel Champlain, the most famous man in the history of French Canada, laid the foundation of the present city of Quebec in the month of June, 1608, or three years after the removal of the little Acadian colony from St. Croix Island to the basin of the Annapolis. The name Quebec is now generally admitted to be an adaptation of an Indian word, meaning a contraction of the river or strait, a distinguishing feature of the St. Lawrence at this important point. The first buildings were constructed by Champlain on a relatively level piece of ground, now occupied by a market-house and close to a famous old church erected in the days of Frontenac, in commemoration of the victorious repulse of the New England expedition led by Phipps. For twenty-seven years Champlain struggled against constantly accumulating difficulties to establish a colony on the St. Lawrence. He won the confidence of the Algonquin and Huron tubes of Canada, who then lived on the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers, and in the vicinity of Georgian Bay. Recognizing the necessity of an alliance with the Canadian Indians, who controlled all the principal avenues to the great fur-bearing regions, he led two expeditions, composed of Frenchmen, Hurons, and Algonquins, against the Iroquois or Confederacy of the Five Nations[2]—the Mohawks, the Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas—who inhabited the fertile country stretching from the Genesee to the Hudson River in the present state of New York. Champlain consequently excited against his own people the inveterate hostility of the bravest, cruellest and ablest Indians with whom Europeans have ever come in contact in America. Champlain probably had no other alternative open to him than to become the active ally of the Canadian Indians, on whose goodwill and friendship he was forced to rely; but it is also quite probable that he altogether underrated the ability and bravery of the Iroquois who, in later years, so often threatened the security of Canada, and more than once brought the infant colony to the very verge of ruin.
[2: In 1715 the confederacy was joined by the Tuscaroras, a southern branch of the same family, and was then called more properly the Six Nations.]
It was during Champlain's administration of affairs that the Company of the Hundred Associates was formed under the auspices of Cardinal Richelieu, with the express object of colonizing Canada and developing the fur-trade and other commercial enterprises on as large a scale as possible. The Company had ill-fortune from the outset. The first expedition it sent to the St. Lawrence was captured by a fleet commanded by David Kirk, a gentleman of Derbyshire, who in the following year also took Quebec, and carried Champlain and his followers to England. The English were already attempting settlements on the shores of Massachusetts Bay; and the poet and courtier, Sir William Alexander, afterwards known as the Earl of Stirling, obtained from the King of England all French Acadia, which he named Nova Scotia and offered to settlers in baronial giants. A Scotch colony was actually established for a short time at Port Royal under the auspices of Alexander, but in 1632, by the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, both Acadia and Canada were restored to France. Champlain returned to Quebec, but the Company of the Hundred Associates had been severely crippled by the ill-luck which attended its first venture, and was able to do very little for the struggling colony during the three remaining years of Champlain's life.
The Recollets or Franciscans, who had first come to the country in 1615, now disappeared, and the Jesuits assumed full control in the wide field of effort that Canada offered to the missionary. The Jesuits had, in fact, made their appearance in Canada as early as 1625, or fourteen years after two priests of their order, Ennemond Massé and Pierre Biard, had gone to Acadia to labour among the Micmacs or Souriquois. During the greater part of the seventeenth century, intrepid Jesuit priests are associated with some of the most heroic incidents of Canadian history.
When Champlain died, on Christmas-day, 1635, the French population of Canada did not exceed 150 souls, all dependent on the fur-trade. Canada so far showed none of the elements of prosperity; it was not a colony of settlers but of fur-traders. Still Champlain, by his indomitable will, gave to France a footing in America which she was to retain for a century and a quarter after his death. His courage amid the difficulties that surrounded him, his fidelity to his church and country, his ability to understand the Indian character, his pure unselfishness, are among the remarkable qualities of a man who stands foremost among the pioneers of European civilization in America.
From the day of Champlain's death until the arrival of the Marquis de Tracy, in 1665, Canada was often in a most dangerous and pitiable position. That period of thirty years was, however, also distinguished by the foundation of those great religious communities which have always exercised such an important influence upon the conditions of life throughout French Canada. In 1652 Montreal was founded under the name of Ville-Marie by Paul Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve, and a number of other religious enthusiasts. In 1659, the Abbé de Montigny, better known to Canadians as Monseigneur de Laval, the first Roman Catholic bishop, arrived in the colony and assumed charge of ecclesiastical affairs under the titular name of Bishop of Petraea. Probably no single man has ever exercised such powerful and lasting influence on Canadian institutions as that famous divine. Possessed of great tenacity of purpose, most ascetic in his habits, regardless of all worldly considerations, always working for the welfare and extension of his church, Bishop Laval was eminently fitted to give it that predominance in civil as well as religious affairs which it so long possessed in Canada.
While the Church of Rome was perfecting its organization throughout Canada, the Iroquois were constantly making raids upon the unprotected settlements, especially in the vicinity of Montreal. The Hurons in the Georgian Bay district were eventually driven from their comfortable villages, and now the only remnants of a powerful nation are to be found in the community of mixed blood at Lorette, near Quebec, or on the banks of the Detroit River, where they are known as Wyandots. The Jesuit mission of Sainte-Marie in their country was broken up, and Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant suffered torture and death.
Such was the pitiable condition of things in 1663, when Louis XIV made of Canada a royal government. At this time the total population of the province did not exceed 2500 souls, grouped chiefly in and around Quebec, Three Rivers and Montreal. In 1665 the Marquis de Tracy and Governor de Courcelles, with a brilliant retinue of officers and a regiment of soldiers, arrived in the colony, and brought with them conditions of peace and prosperity. A small stream of immigration flowed steadily into the country for some years, as a result of the new policy adopted by the French government. The Mohawks, the most daring and dangerous nation of the Iroquois confederacy, were humbled by Tracy in 1667, and forced to sue for peace. Under the influence of Talon, the ablest intendant who ever administered Canadian affairs, the country enjoyed a moderate degree of prosperity, although trade continued entirely dependent on the orders and regulations of the King and his officials.
Among the ablest governors of Canada was undoubtedly Louis de la Buade, Count de Frontenac, who administered public affairs from 1672-1687 and from 1689-1698. He was certainly impatient, choleric and selfish whenever his pecuniary interests were concerned; but, despite his faults of character, he was a brave soldier, dignified and courteous on important occasions, a close student of the character of the Indians, always ready when the necessity arose to adapt himself to their foibles and at the same time able to win their confidence. He found Canada weak, and left it a power in the affairs of America. He infused his own never-failing confidence into the hearts of the struggling colonists on the St. Lawrence, repulsed Sir William Phipps and his New England expedition when they attacked Quebec in 1690, wisely erected a fort on Lake Ontario as a fur-trading post and a bulwark against the Iroquois, encouraged the fur-trade, and stimulated exploration in the west and in the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi. The settlements of New England trembled at his name, and its annals contain many a painful story of the misery inflicted by his cruel bands of Frenchmen and Indians.
Despite all the efforts of the French government for some years, the total immigration from 1663 until 1713, when the great war between France and the Grand Alliance came to an end by the treaty of Utrecht, did not exceed 6000 souls, and the whole population of the province in that year was only 20,000, a small number for a century of colonization. For some years after the formation of the royal government, a large number of marriageable women were brought to the country under the auspices of the religious communities, and marriages and births were encouraged by exhortations and bounties. A considerable number of the officers and soldiers of the Carignan-Salières regiment, who followed the Marquis de Tracy into Canada, were induced to remain and settle new seigniories, chiefly in palisaded villages in the Richelieu district for purposes of defence against Iroquois expeditions. Despite all the paternal efforts of the government to stimulate the growth of a large population, the natural increase was small during the seventeenth century. The disturbing influence, no doubt, was the fur-trade, which allured so many young men into the wilderness, made them unfit for a steady life, and destroyed their domestic habits. The emigrants from France came chiefly from Anjou, Saintonge, Paris and its suburbs, Normandy, Poitou, Beauce, Perche, and Picardy. The Carignan-Salières regiment brought men from all parts of the parent state. It does not appear that any number of persons ever came from Brittany. The larger proportion of the settlers were natives of the north-western provinces of France, especially from Perche and Normandy, and formed an excellent stock on which to build up a thrifty, moral people. The seigniorial tenure of French Canada was an adaptation of the feudal system of France to the conditions of a new country, and was calculated in some respects to stimulate settlement. Ambitious persons of limited means were able to form a class of colonial noblesse. But unless the seignior cleared a certain portion of his grant within a limited time, he would forfeit it all. The conditions by which the censitaires or tenants of the seigniorial domain held their grants of land were by no means burdensome, but they signified a dependency of tenure inconsistent with the free nature of American life. A large portion of the best lands of French Canada were granted under this seigniorial system to men whose names frequently occur in the records of the colony down to the present day: Rimouski, Bic and Métis, Kamouraska, Nicolet, Verchères, Lotbinière, Berthier, Beloeil, Rouville, Juliette, Terrebonne, Champlain, Sillery, Beaupré, Bellechasse, Portneuf, Chambly, Sorel, Longueuil, Boucherville, Chateauguay, Lachine, are memorials of the seigniorial grants of the seventeenth century.
The whole population of the Acadian Peninsula in 1710-13, was not more than 1500 souls, nearly all descendants of the people brought to the country by Poutrincourt and his successors Razilly and Charnisay. At no time did the French government interest itself in immigration to neglected Acadia. Of the total population, nearly 1000 persons were settled in the beautiful country which the industry and ingenuity of the Acadian peasants, in the course of many years, reclaimed from the restless tides of the Bay of Fundy at Grand Pré and Minas. The remaining settlements were at Beau Bassin, Annapolis, Piziquit (now Windsor), Cobequit (now Truro), and Cape Sable. Some small settlements were also founded on the banks of the St. John River and on the eastern bays of the present province of New Brunswick.
SECTION 3.—French exploration in the great valleys of North America.
The hope of finding a short route to the rich lands of Asia by the St. Lawrence River and its tributary lakes and streams, influenced French voyagers and explorers well into the middle of the eighteenth century. When Cartier stood on Mount Royal and saw the waters of the Ottawa there must have flashed across his mind the thought that perhaps by this river would be found that passage to the western sea of which he and other sailors often dreamed both in earlier and later times. L'Escarbot tells us that Champlain in his western explorations always hoped to reach Asia by a Canadian route. He was able, however, long before his death to make valuable contributions to the geography of Canada. He was the first Frenchman to ascend the River of the Iroquois, now the Richelieu, and to see the beautiful lake which still bears his name. In 1615 he found his way to Georgian Bay by the route of the Ottawa and Mattawa Rivers, Lake Nipissing and French River. Here he visited the Huron villages which were situated in the district now known as Simcoe county in the province of Ontario. Father le Caron, a Recollet, had preceded the French explorer, and was performing missionary duties among the Indians, who probably numbered 20,000 in all. This brave priest was the pioneer of an army of faithful missionaries—mostly of a different order—who lived for years among the Indians, suffered torture and death, and connected their names not only with the martyrs of their faith but also with the explorers of this continent. From this time forward we find the trader and the priest advancing in the wilderness; sometimes one is first, sometimes the other.
Champlain accompanied his Indian allies on an expedition against the Onondagas, one of the five nations who occupied the country immediately to the south of the upper St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario. The party reached Lake Ontario by the system of inland navigation which stretches from Lake Simcoe to the Bay of Quinté. The Onondagas repulsed the Canadian allies who returned to their settlements, where Champlain remained during the winter of 1616. It was during this expedition, which did much to weaken Champlain's prestige among the Indians, that Étienne Brulé an interpreter, was sent to the Andastes, who were then living about the headwaters of the Susquehanna, with the hope of bringing them to the support of the Canadian savages. He was not seen again until 1618, when he returned to Canada with a story, doubtless correct, of having found himself on the shores of a great lake where there were mines of copper, probably Lake Superior.
With the new era of peace that followed the coming of the Viceroy Tracy in 1665, and the establishment of a royal government, a fresh impulse was given to exploration and mission work in the west. Priests, fur-traders, gentlemen-adventurers, coureurs de bois, now appeared frequently on the lakes and rivers of the west, and gave in the course of years a vast region to the dominion of France. As early as 1665 Father Allouez established a mission at La Pointe, the modern Ashland, on the shores of Lake Superior. In 1668 one of the most interesting persons who ever appeared in early Canada, the missionary and explorer, Father Marquette, founded the mission of Sainte-Marie on the southern side of the Sault, which may be considered the oldest settlement of the north-west, as it alone has a continuous history to the present time.
In the record of those times we see strikingly displayed certain propensities of the Canadian people which seriously interfered with the settlement and industry of the country. The fur-trade had far more attractions for the young and adventurous than the regular and active life of farming on the seigniories. The French immigrant as well as the native Canadian adapted himself to the conditions of Indian life. Wherever the Indian tribes were camped in the forest or by the river, and the fur-trade could be prosecuted to the best advantage, we see the coureurs de bois, not the least picturesque figures of these grand woods, then in the primeval sublimity of their solitude and vastness. Despite the vices and weaknesses of a large proportion of this class, not a few were most useful in the work of exploration and exercised a great influence among the Indians of the West. But for these forest-rangers the Michigan region would have fallen into the possession of the English who were always intriguing with the Iroquois and endeavouring to obtain a share of the fur-trade of the west. Joliet, the companion of Marquette, in his ever-memorable voyage to the Mississippi, was a type of the best class of the Canadian fur-trader.
In 1671 Sieur St. Lusson took formal possession of the Sault and the adjacent country in the name of Louis XIV. In 1673 Fort Frontenac was built at Cataraqui, now Kingston, as a barrier to the aggressive movements of the Iroquois and an entrepôt for the fur-trade on Lake Ontario. In the same year Joliet and Marquette solved a part of the problem which had so long perplexed the explorers of the West. The trader and priest reached the Mississippi by the way of Green Bay, the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers. They went down the Mississippi as far as the Arkansas. Though they were still many hundreds of miles from the mouth of the river, they grasped the fact that it must reach, not the western ocean, but the southern gulf first discovered by the Spaniards. Marquette died not long afterwards, worn out by his labours in the wilderness, and was buried beneath the little chapel at St. Ignace. Joliet's name henceforth disappears from the annals of the West.
Réné Robert Cavelier, better known as the Sieur de la Salle, completed the work commenced by the trader and missionary. In 1666 he obtained a grant of land at the head of the rapids above Montreal by the side of that beautiful expanse of the St. Lawrence, still called Lachine, a name first given in derisive allusion to his hope of finding a short route to China. In 1679 he saw the Niagara Falls for the first time, and the earliest sketch is to be found in La Nouvelle Découverte written or compiled by that garrulous, vain, and often mendacious Recollet Friar, Louis Hennepin, who accompanied La Salle on this expedition. In the winter of 1681-82 this famous explorer reached the Mississippi, and for weeks followed its course through the novel and wondrous scenery of a southern land. On the 9th of April, 1682, at a point just above the mouth of the great river, La Salle took formal possession of the Mississippi valley in the name of Louis XIV, with the same imposing ceremonies that distinguished the claim asserted by St. Lusson at the Sault in the lake region. By the irony of fate, La Salle failed to discover the mouth of the river when he came direct from France to the Gulf of Mexico in 1685, but landed somewhere on Matagorda Bay on the Texan coast, where he built a fort for temporary protection. Finding his position untenable, he decided in 1687 to make an effort to reach the Illinois country, but when he had been a few days on this perilous journey he was treacherously murdered by some of his companions near the southern branch of Trinity River. His body was left to the beasts and birds of prey. Two of the murderers were themselves killed by their accomplices, none of whom appear ever to have been brought to justice for their participation in a crime by which France lost one of the bravest and ablest men who ever struggled for her dominion in North America.
Some years later the famous Canadians, Iberville and Bienville, founded a colony in the great valley, known by the name of Louisiana, which was first given to it by La Salle himself. By the possession of the Sault, Mackinac, and Detroit, the French were for many years supreme on the lakes, and had full control of Indian trade. The Iroquois and their English friends were effectively shut out of the west by the French posts and settlements which followed the explorations of Joliet, La Salle, Du Luth, and other adventurers. Plans continued to be formed for reaching the Western or Pacific ocean even in the middle of the eighteenth century. The Jesuit Charlevoix, the historian of New France, was sent out to Canada by the French government to enquire into the feasibility of a route which Frenchmen always hoped for. Nothing definite came out of this mission, but the Jesuit was soon followed by an enterprising native of Three Rivers, Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, generally called the Sieur de la Verendrye, who with his sons ventured into the region now known as the province of Manitoba and the north-west territory of Canada. He built several forts, including one on the site of the city of Winnipeg. Two of his sons are believed to have reached the Big Horn Range, an "outlying buttress" of the Rocky Mountains, in 1743, and to have taken possession of what is now territory of the United States. The youngest son, Chevalier de la Verendrye, who was the first to see the Rocky Mountains, subsequently discovered the Saskatchewan (Poskoiac) and even ascended it as far as the forks—the furthest western limits so far touched by a white man in America. A few years later, in 1751, M. de Niverville, under the orders of M. de St. Pierre, then acting in the interest of the infamous Intendant Bigot, who coveted the western fur-trade, reached the foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains and built a fort on the Saskatchewan not far from the present town of Calgary.
We have now followed the paths of French adventurers for nearly a century and a half, from the day Champlain landed on the rocks of Quebec until the Verendryes traversed the prairies and plains of the North-west. French explorers had discovered the three great waterways of this continent—the Mississippi, which pours its enormous volume of water, drawn from hundreds of tributaries, into a southern gulf; the St. Lawrence, which bears the tribute of the great lakes to the Atlantic Ocean; the Winnipeg, with its connecting rivers and lakes which stretch from the Rocky Mountains to the dreary Arctic sea. La Verendrye was the first Frenchman who stood on the height of land or elevated plateau of the continent, almost within sight of the sources of those great rivers which flow, after devious courses, north, south and east. It has been well said that if three men should ascend these three waterways to their farthest sources, they would find themselves in the heart of North America; and, so to speak, within a stone's throw of one another. Nearly all the vast territory, through which these great waterways flow, then belonged to France, so far as exploration, discovery and partial occupation gave her a right to exercise dominion. Only in the great North, where summer is a season of a very few weeks, where icebergs bar the way for many months, where the fur-trade and the whale-fishery alone offered an incentive to capital and enterprise, had England a right to an indefinite dominion. Here a "Company of Gentlemen-Adventurers trading into Hudson's Bay" occupied some fortified stations which, during the seventeenth century, had been seized by the daring French-Canadian corsair, Iberville, who ranks with the famous Englishman, Drake. On the Atlantic coast the prosperous English colonies occupied a narrow range of country bounded by the Atlantic Ocean and the Alleghanies. It was only in the middle of the eighteenth century—nearly three-quarters of a century after Joliet's and La Salle's explorations, and even later than the date at which Frenchmen had followed the Saskatchewan to the Rocky Mountains—that some enterprising Virginians and Pennsylvanians worked their way into the beautiful country watered by the affluents of the Ohio. New France may be said to have extended at that time from Cape Breton or Isle Royale west to the Rocky Mountains, and from the basin of the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.
SECTION 4.—End of French dominion in the valley of the St. Lawrence.
After the treaty of Utrecht, France recognized the mistake she had made in giving up Acadia, and devoted her attention to the island of Cape Breton, or Isle Royale, on whose southeastern coast soon rose the fortifications of Louisbourg. In the course of years this fortress became a menace to English interests in Acadia and New England. In 1745 the town was taken by a force of New England volunteers, led by General Pepperrell, a discreet and able colonist, and a small English squadron under the command of Commodore, afterwards Admiral, Warren, both of whom were rewarded by the British government for their distinguished services on this memorable occasion. France, however, appreciated the importance of Isle Royale, and obtained its restoration in exchange for Madras which at that time was the most important British settlement in the East Indies. England then decided to strengthen herself in Acadia, where France retained her hold of the French Acadian population through the secret influence of her emissaries, chiefly missionaries, and accordingly established a town on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, ever since known as Halifax, in honour of a prominent statesman of those times. The French settlers, who by the middle of the eighteenth century numbered 12,000, a thrifty, industrious and simple-minded people, easily influenced by French agents, called themselves "Neutrals," and could not be forced to take the unqualified oath of allegiance which was demanded of them by the authorities of Halifax. The English Government was now determined to act with firmness in a province where British interests had been so long neglected, and where the French inhabitants had in the course of forty years shown no disposition to consider themselves British subjects and discharge their obligations to the British Crown. France had raised the contention that the Acadia ceded to England by the treaty of Utrecht comprised only the present province of Nova Scotia, and indeed only a portion of that peninsula according to some French authorities. Commissioners were appointed by the two Powers to settle the question of boundaries—of the meaning of "Acadie, with its ancient boundaries"—but their negotiations came to naught and the issue was only settled by the arbitrament of war. The French built the forts of Beauséjour and Gaspereau—the latter a mere palisade—on the Isthmus of Chignecto, which became the rendezvous of the French Acadians, whom the former persuaded by promises or threats to join their fortunes. In 1755 a force of English and Colonial troops, under the command of Colonels Moncton, Winslow and Scott, captured these forts, and this success was followed by the banishment of the Acadian French. This cruel act of Governor Lawrence and the English authorities at Halifax was no doubt largely influenced by the sentiment of leading men in New England, who were apprehensive of the neighbourhood of so large a number of an alien people, who could not be induced to prove their loyalty to Great Britain, and might, in case of continued French successes in America, become open and dangerous foes. But while there are writers who defend this sad incident of American history on the ground of stern national necessity at a critical period in the affairs of the continent, all humanity that listens to the dictates of the heart and tender feeling will ever deplore the exile of those hapless people.
Previous to the expulsion of the Acadians from their pleasant homes on the meadows of Grand Pré and Minas, England sustained a severe defeat in the valley of the Ohio, which created much alarm throughout the English colonies, and probably had some influence on the fortunes of those people. France had formally taken possession of the Ohio country and established forts in 1753 on French Creek, at its junction with the Alleghany, and also at the forks of the Ohio. Adventurous British pioneers were at last commencing to cross the Alleghanies, and a company had been formed with the express intention of stimulating settlement in the valley. George Washington, at the head of a small Colonial force, was defeated in his attempt to drive the French from the Ohio; and the English Government was compelled to send out a large body of regular troops under the command of General Braddock, who met defeat and death on the banks of the Monongahela, General Johnson, on the other hand, defeated a force of French regulars, Canadian Militia and Indians, under General Dieskau, at the southern end of Lake George.
In 1756 war was publicly proclaimed between France and England, although, as we have just seen, it had already broken out many months previously in the forests of America. During the first two years of the war the English forces sustained several disasters through the incompetency of the English commanders on land and sea. The French in Canada were now led by the Marquis de Montcalm, distinguished both as a soldier of great ability and as a man of varied intellectual accomplishments. In the early part of the Canadian campaign he was most fortunate. Fort William Henry, at the foot of Lake George, and Fort Oswego, on the south side of Lake Ontario, were captured, but his signal victory at the former place was sullied by the massacre of defenceless men, women and children by his Indian allies, although it is now admitted by all impartial writers that he did his utmost to prevent so sad a sequel to his triumph. The English Commander-in-Chief, Lord Loudoun, assembled a large military force at Halifax in 1757 for the purpose of making a descent on Louisbourg; but he returned to New York without accomplishing anything, when he heard of the disastrous affair of William Henry, for which he was largely responsible on account of having failed to give sufficient support to the defenders of the fort. Admiral Holbourne sailed to Louisbourg, but he did not succeed in coming to an engagement with the French fleet then anchored in the harbour, and the only result of his expedition was the loss of several of his ships on the reefs of that foggy, rocky coast.
In 1758 Pitt determined to enter on a vigorous campaign against France in Europe and America. For America he chose Amherst, Boscawen, Howe, Forbes, Wolfe, Lawrence and Whitman. Abercromby was unfortunately allowed to remain in place of Loudoun, but it was expected by Pitt and others that Lord Howe, one of the best soldiers in the British army, would make up for the military weakness of that commander. Louisbourg, Fort Duquesne, and the forts on Lake George, were the immediate objects of attack. Abercromby at the head of a large force failed ignominiously in his assault on Ticonderoga, and Lord Howe was one of the first to fall in that unhappy and ill-managed battle. Amherst and Boscawen, on the other hand, took Louisbourg, where Wolfe displayed great energy and contributed largely to the success of the enterprise. Forbes was able to occupy the important fort at the forks of the Ohio, now Pittsburg, which gave to the English control of the beautiful country to the west of the Alleghanies. Fort Frontenac was taken by Bradstreet, and Prince Edward Island, then called Isle St. Jean, was occupied by an English force as the necessary consequence of the fall of the Cape Breton fortress. The nation felt that its confidence in Pitt was fully justified, and that the power of France in America was soon to be effectually broken.
In 1759 and 1760 Pitt's designs were crowned with signal success. Wolfe proved at Quebec that the statesman had not overestimated his value as a soldier and leader. Wolfe was supported by Brigadiers Moncton, Townshend, Murray, and Guy Carleton—the latter a distinguished figure in the later annals of Canada. The fleet was commanded by Admirals Saunders, Durell and Holmes, all of whom rendered most effective service. The English occupied the Island of Orleans and the heights of Lévis, from which they were able to keep up a most destructive fire on the capital. The whole effective force under Wolfe did not reach 9000 men, or 5000 less than the regular and Colonial army under Montcalm, whose lines extended behind batteries and earthworks from the St. Charles River, which washes the base of the rocky heights of the town, as far as the falls of Montmorency. The French held an impregnable position which their general decided to maintain at all hazards, despite the constant efforts of Wolfe for weeks to force him to the issue of battle. Above the city for many miles there were steep heights, believed to be unapproachable, and guarded at all important points by detachments of soldiery. Wolfe failed in an attempt which he made at Beauport to force Montcalm from his defences, and suffered a considerable loss through the rashness of his grenadiers. He then resolved on a bold stroke which succeeded by its very audacity in deceiving his opponent, and giving the victory to the English. A rugged and dangerous path was used at night up those very heights which, Montcalm confidently believed, "a hundred men could easily defend against the whole British army." On the morning of the 13th September, 1759, Wolfe marshalled an army of four thousand five hundred men on the Plains of Abraham where he was soon face to face with the French army. Montcalm had lost no time in accepting the challenge of the English, in the hope that his superior numbers would make up for their inferiority in discipline and equipment compared with the smaller English force. His expectations were never realized. In a few minutes the French fell in hundreds before the steady deadly fire of the English lines, and Montcalm was forced to retreat precipitately with the beaten remnant of his army. Wolfe received several wounds, and died on the battlefield, but not before he was conscious of his victory. "God be praised," were his dying words, "I now die in peace." His brave adversary was mortally wounded while seeking the protection of Quebec, and was buried in a cavity which a shell had made in the floor of the chapel of the Ursuline Convent. A few days later Quebec capitulated. Wolfe's body was taken to England, where it was received with all the honours due to his great achievement. General Murray was left in command at Quebec, and was defeated in the following spring by Lévis in the battle of St. Foye, which raised the hopes of the French until the appearance of English ships in the river relieved the beleaguered garrison and decided for ever the fate of Quebec. A few weeks later Montreal capitulated to Amherst, whose extreme caution throughout the campaign was in remarkable contrast with the dash and energy of the hero of Quebec. The war in Canada was now at an end, and in 1763 the treaty of Paris closed the interesting chapter of French dominion on the banks of the St. Lawrence and in the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi.
SECTION 5.—Political, economic and social conditions of Canada during French ride.
France and England entered on the struggle for dominion in America about the same time, but long before the conquest of Canada the communities founded by the latter had exhibited a vigour and vitality which were never shown in the development of the relatively poor and struggling colonies of Canada and Louisiana. The total population of New France in 1759—that is, of all the French possessions in North America—did not exceed 70,000 souls, of whom 60,000 were inhabitants of the country of the St. Lawrence, chiefly of the Montreal and Quebec districts. France had a few struggling villages and posts in the very "garden of the North-west," as the Illinois country has been aptly called; but the total population of New France from the great lakes to the Gulf of Mexico did not exceed 10,000 souls, the greater number of whom dwelt on the lower banks of the Mississippi. At this time the British colonies in America, pent up between the Atlantic Ocean and the Appalachian mountains, had a population twenty times larger than that of Canada and Louisiana combined, and there was not any comparison whatever between these French and British colonies with respect to trade, wealth or any of the essentials of prosperity.
Under the system of government established by Louis XIV, under the advice of Colbert, the governor and intendant of Canada were, to all intents and purposes in point of authority, the same officials who presided over the affairs of a province of France. In Canada, as in France, governors-general had only such powers as were expressly given them by the king, who, jealous of all authority in others, kept them rigidly in check. In those days the king was supreme; "I am the state," said Louis Quatorze in the arrogance of his power; and it is thus easy to understand that there could be no such free government or representative institutions in Canada as were enjoyed from the very commencement of their history by the old English colonies.
The governor had command of the militia and troops, and was nominally superior in authority to the intendant, but in the course of time the latter became virtually the most influential officer in the colony and even presided at the council-board. This official, who had the right to report directly to the king on colonial affairs, had large civil, commercial and maritime jurisdiction, and could issue ordinances which had full legal effect in the country. Associated with the governor and intendant was a council comprising in the first instance five, and eventually twelve, persons, chosen from the leading people of the colony. The change of name, from the "Supreme Council" to the "Superior Council," is of itself some evidence of the determination of the king to restrain the pretensions of all official bodies throughout the kingdom and its dependencies. This body exercised legislative and judicial powers. The bishop was one of its most important members, and the history of the colony is full of the quarrels that arose between him and the governor on points of official etiquette or with respect to more important matters affecting the government of the country.
Protestantism was unknown in Canada under French rule, and the enterprise of the Huguenots was consequently lost to a country always suffering from a want of population. Even the merchants of La Rochelle, who traded with the country, found themselves invariably subject to restrictions which placed them at an enormous disadvantage in their competition with their Roman Catholic rivals. The Roman Catholic Church was all powerful at the council-board as well as in the parish. In the past as in the present century, a large Roman Catholic church rose, the most prominent building in every town and village, illustrating its dominating influence in the homes of every community of the province. The parishes were established at an early date for ecclesiastical purposes, and their extent was defined wherever necessary by the council at Quebec. They were practically territorial divisions for the administration of local affairs, and were conterminous, whenever practicable, with the seigniory. The curé, the seignior, the militia captain (often identical with the seignior), were the important functionaries in every parish. Even at the present time, when a canonical parish has been once formed by the proper ecclesiastical authority, it may be erected into a municipal or civil division after certain legal formalities by the government of the province. Tithes were first imposed by Bishop Laval, who practically established the basis of ecclesiastical authority in the province. It was only in church matters that the people had the right to meet and express their opinions, and even then the intendant alone could give the power of assembling for such purposes.
The civil law of French Canada relating to "property," inheritance, marriage, and the personal or civil rights of the community generally, had its origin, like all similar systems, in the Roman law, on which were engrafted, in the course of centuries, those customs and usages which were adapted to the social conditions of France. The customary law of Paris became the fundamental law of French Canada, and despite the changes that it has necessarily undergone in the course of many years, its principles can still be traced throughout the present system as it has been modified under the influences of the British regime. The superior council of Canada gave judgment in civil and criminal cases according to the coutume de Paris, and below it there were inferior courts for the judicial districts of Quebec, Three Rivers and Montreal. The bishop had also special jurisdiction over ecclesiastical matters. The intendant had authority to deal with cases involving royal, or seigniorial, rights, and to call before him any case whatever for final review and judgment. In all cases appeals were allowable to the king himself, but the difficulty of communication with Europe in those days practically confined such references to a few special causes. The seigniors had also certain judicial or magisterial powers, but they never acted except in very trivial cases. Torture was sometimes applied to condemned felons as in France and other parts of the old world. On the whole justice appears to have been honestly and fairly administered.
Parkman, in a terse sentence, sums up the conditions which fettered all Canadian trade and industry, "A system of authority, monopoly and exclusion in which the government, and not the individual, acted always the foremost part." Whether it was a question of ship-building, of a brewery or a tannery, of iron works or a new fishery, appeals must be made in the first instance to the king for aid; and the people were never taught to depend exclusively on their individual or associated enterprise. At the time of the conquest, and in fact for many years previously, the principal products of the country were beaver skins, timber, agricultural products, fish, fish oil, ginseng (for some years only), beer, cider, rug carpets, homespun cloths—made chiefly by the inmates of the religious houses—soap, potash, leather, stoves, tools and other iron manufactures—made in the St. Maurice forges—never a profitable industry, whether carried on by companies or the government itself. All these industries were fostered by the state, but, despite all the encouragement they received, the total value of the exports, principally furs, seal and other oils, lumber, peas, grain and ginseng never exceeded 3,500,000 francs, or about one-tenth of the export trade of the English colonies to Great Britain. Two-thirds of this amount represented beaver skins, the profits on which were very fluctuating, on account of the unwise regulations by which, the trade was constantly crippled. This business was heavily taxed to meet the necessities of colonial government, which were always heavy, and could never have been met had it not been for the liberality of the king. In the year 1755 the amount of all exports did not reach 2,500,000 francs, while the imports were valued at 8,000,000 francs. These imports represented wines, brandies, hardware and various luxuries, but the bulk was made up of the supplies required for the use of the military and civil authorities. The whole trade of the country was carried in about thirty sea-going vessels, none of them of heavy tonnage. The royal government attempted to stimulate ship-building in the country, and a few war vessels were actually built in the course of many years, though it does not appear that this industry was ever conducted with energy or enterprise. During the last fifty years of French rule, in all probability, not a hundred sea-going vessels were launched in the valley of the St. Lawrence. Duties of import, before 1748, were only imposed on wines, brandies, and Brazilian tobacco; but after the commencement of the war with England, the king found it necessary to establish export and import duties: a special exception was however made in favour of the produce of the farm, forest and sea, which were allowed to enter or go out free. The whole amount of duties raised in ordinary years did not reach above 300,000 francs.
In the closing years of French dominion the total population of Quebec, Montreal and Three Rivers, the only towns in the province, did not exceed 13,000 souls—about the population of Boston. Quebec alone had 8000 inhabitants, Montreal 4000, and Three Rivers 1000. The architecture of these places was more remarkable for solidity than elegance or symmetry of proportions. The churches, religious and educational establishments, official buildings and residences—notably the intendant's palace at Quebec—were built of stone. The most pretentious edifice was the château of St. Louis—the residence of the governor-general—which was rebuilt by Count de Frontenac within the limits of the fort of St. Louis, first erected by Champlain on the historic height always associated with his name. The best buildings in the towns were generally of one story and constructed of stone. In the rural parishes, the villages, properly speaking, consisted of a church, presbytery, school, and tradesmen's houses, while the farms of the habitants stretched on either side. The size and shape of the farms were governed by the form of the seigniories throughout the province. M. Bourdon, the first Canadian surveyor-general, originally mapped out the seigniories in oblong shapes with very narrow frontage along the river—a frontage of two or three arpents against a depth of from forty to eighty arpents—and the same inconvenient oblong plan was followed in making sub-grants to the censitaire or habitant. The result was a disfigurement of a large portion of the country, as the civil law governing the succession of estates gradually cut up all the seigniories into a number of small farms, each in the form of the parallelogram originally given to the seigniorial grants. The houses of the habitants, then as now, were generally built of logs or sawn lumber, all whitewashed, with thatched or wooden roofs projecting over the front so as to form a sort of porch or verandah. The farm-houses were generally close together, especially in the best cultivated and most thickly settled districts between Quebec and Montreal. Travellers, just before the Seven Years' War, tell us that the farms in that district appeared to be well cultivated on the whole, and the homes of the habitants gave evidences of thrift and comfort. Some farmers had orchards from which cider was made, and patches of the coarse strong tobacco which they continue to use to this day, and which is now an important product of their province. Until the war the condition of the French Canadian habitant was one of rude comfort. He could never become rich, in a country where there was no enterprise or trade which encouraged him to strenuous efforts to make and save money. Gold and silver were to him curiosities, and paper promises to pay, paper or card money, were widely circulated from early times, and were never for the most part redeemed, though the British authorities after the peace of 1763 made every possible effort to induce the French government to discharge its obligations to the French Canadian people. The life of the habitants in peaceful times was far easier and happier than that of the peasants of old France. They had few direct taxes to bear, except the tithes required for the support of the church and such small contributions as were necessary for local purposes. They were, however, liable to be called out at any moment for military duties and were subject to corvées or forced labour for which they were never paid by the authorities.
The outbreak of the Seven Years' War was a serious blow to a people who had at last surmounted the greatest difficulties of pioneer life, and attained a moderate degree of comfort. The demands upon the people capable of bearing arms were necessarily fatal to steady farming occupations; indeed, in the towns of Quebec and Montreal there was more than once an insufficiency of food for the garrisons, and horse-flesh had to be served out, to the great disgust of the soldiers who at first refused to take it. Had it not been for the opportune arrival of a ship laden with provisions in the spring of 1759, the government would have been unable to feed the army or the inhabitants of Quebec. The gravity of the situation was aggravated for years by the jobbery and corruption of the men who had the fate of the country largely in their hands. A few French merchants, and monopolists in league with corrupt officials, controlled the markets and robbed a long-suffering and too patient people. The names of Bigot, Péan, and other officials of the last years of French administration, are justly execrated by French Canadians as robbers of the state and people in the days when the country was on the verge of war, and Montcalm, a brave, incorruptible man, was fighting against tremendous odds to save this unfortunate country to which he gave up his own life in vain.
So long as France governed Canada, education was entirely in the hands of the Roman Catholic Church. The Jesuits, Franciscans, and other religious orders, male and female, at an early date, commenced the establishment of those colleges and seminaries which have always had so important a share in the education of Lower Canada. The Jesuits founded a college at Quebec in 1635, or three years before the establishment of Harvard, and the Ursulines opened their convent in the same city four years later. Sister Bourgeoys of Troyes founded at Montreal in 1659 the Congrégation de Notre-Dame for the education of girls of humble rank; the commencement of an institution which has now its buildings in many parts of Canada. In the latter part of the seventeenth century Bishop Laval carried out a project for providing education for Canadian priests drawn from the people of the country. Consequently, in addition to the great seminary at Quebec, there was the lesser seminary where boys were taught in the hope that they would take orders. In the inception of education the French endeavoured in more than one of their institutions to combine industrial pursuits with the ordinary branches of an elementary education. But all accounts of the days of the French régime go to show that, despite the zealous efforts of the religious bodies to improve the education of the colonists, secular instruction was at a very low ebb and hardly reached the seigniories. One writer tells us that "even the children of officers and gentlemen scarcely knew how to read and write; they were ignorant of the first elements of geography and history." Still, dull and devoid of intellectual life as was the life of the Canadian, he had his place of worship where he received a moral training which elevated him immeasurably above the peasantry of England as well as of his old home. The clergy of Lower Canada confessedly did their best to relieve the ignorance of the people, but they were naturally unable to accomplish, by themselves, a task which properly devolved on the governing class. Under the French régime in Canada the civil authorities were as little anxious to enlighten the people by the establishment of public or common schools as they were to give them a voice in the government of the country.
Evidence of some culture and intellectual aspirations in social circles of the ancient capital attracted the surprise of travellers who visited the country before the close of the French dominion. "Science and the fine arts," wrote Charlevoix, in 1744, "have their turn and conversation does not fail. The Canadians breathe from their birth an air of liberty, which makes them very pleasant in the intercourse of life, and our language is nowhere more purely spoken." La Gallissonière, a highly cultured governor, spared no effort to encourage a sympathetic study of scientific pursuits. Dr. Michel Sarrasin, who was a practising physician in Quebec for nearly half a century, devoted himself most assiduously to the natural history of the colony, and made some valuable contributions to the French Academy. The Swedish botanist, Peter Kalm, was impressed with the liking for scientific study which he observed in the French colony. But such intellectual culture, as Kalm and Charlevoix mentioned, never showed itself beyond the walls of Quebec or Montreal. The province, as a whole, was in a state of mental sluggishness at the time of the conquest by England, under whose benign influence the French Canadian people were now to enter on a new career of political and intellectual development.
Pitt and Wolfe must take a high place among the makers of the Dominion of Canada. It was they who gave relief to French Canada from the absolutism of old France, and started her in a career of self-government and political liberty. When the great procession passed before the Queen of England on the day of the "Diamond Jubilee"—when delegates from all parts of a mighty, world-embracing empire gave her their loyal and heartfelt homage—Canada was represented by a Prime Minister who belonged to that race which has steadily gained in intellectual strength, political freedom, and material prosperity, since the memorable events of 1759 and 1760. In that imperial procession nearly half the American Continent was represented—Acadia and Canada first settled by France, the north-west prairies first traversed by French Canadian adventurers, the Pacific coast first seen by Cook and Vancouver. There, too, marched men from Bengal, Madras, Bombay, Jeypore, Haidarabad, Kashmir, Punjaub, from all sections of that great empire of India which was won for England by Clive and the men who, like Wolfe, became famous for their achievements in the days of Pitt. Perhaps there were in that imperial pageant some Canadians whose thoughts wandered from the Present to the Past, and recalled the memory of that illustrious statesman and of all he did for Canada and England, when they stood in Westminster Abbey, and looked on his expressive effigy, which, in the eloquent language of a great English historian, "seems still, with eagle face and outstretched arm, to bid England be of good cheer and to hurl defiance at her foes."
CHAPTER II.
BEGINNINGS OF BRITISH RULE. 1760-1774.
SECTION I.—From the Conquest until the Quebec Act.
For nearly four years after the surrender of Vaudreuil at Montreal, Canada was under a government of military men, whose headquarters were at Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal—the capitals of the old French districts of the same name. General Murray and the other commanders laboured to be just and considerate in all their relations with the new subjects of the Crown, who were permitted to prosecute their ordinary pursuits without the least interference on the part of the conquerors. The conditions of the capitulations of Quebec and Montreal, which allowed the free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion, were honourably kept. All that was required then, and for many years later, was that the priests and curés should confine themselves exclusively to their parochial duties, and not take part in public matters. It had been also stipulated at Montreal that the communities of nuns should not be disturbed in their convents; and while the same privileges were not granted by the articles of capitulation to the Jesuits, Recollets, and Sulpitians, they had every facility given to them to dispose of their property and remove to France. As a matter of fact there was practically no interference with any of the religious fraternities during the early years of British rule; and when in the course of time the Jesuits disappeared entirely from the country their estates passed by law into the possession of the government for the use of the people, while the Sulpitians were eventually allowed to continue their work and develope property which became of great value on the island of Montreal. (The French merchants and traders were allowed all the commercial and trading privileges that were enjoyed by the old subjects of the British Sovereign, not only in the valley of the St. Lawrence, but in the rich fur regions of the West and North-West.) The articles of capitulation did not give any guarantees or pledges for the continuance of the civil law under which French Canada had been governed for over a century, but while that was one of the questions dependent on the ultimate fate of Canada, the British military rulers took every possible care during the continuance of the military régime to respect so far as possible the old customs and laws by which the people had been previously governed. French writers of those days admit the generosity and justice of the administration of affairs during this military régime.
The treaty of Paris, signed on the 10th February, 1763, formally ceded to England Canada as well as Acadia, with all their dependencies. The French Canadians were allowed full liberty "to profess the worship of their religion according to the rites of the Romish Church, as far as the laws of Great Britain permit." The people had permission to retire from Canada with all their effects within eighteen months from the date of the ratification of the treaty. All the evidence before us goes to show that only a few officials and seigniors ever availed themselves of this permission to leave the country. At this time there was not a single French settlement beyond Vaudreuil until the traveller reached the banks of the Detroit between Lakes Erie and Huron. A chain of forts and posts connected Montreal with the basin of the great lakes and the country watered by the Ohio, Illinois, and other tributaries of the Mississippi. The forts on the Niagara, at Detroit, at Michillimackinac, at Great Bay, on the Maumee and Wabash, at Presqu' isle, at the junction of French Creek with the Alleghany, at the forks of the Ohio, and at less important localities in the West and South-West, were held by small English garrisons, while the French still occupied Vincennes on the Wabash and Chartres on the Mississippi, in the vicinity of the French settlements at Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and the present site of St. Louis.
Soon after the fall of Montreal, French traders from New Orleans and the French settlements on the Mississippi commenced to foment disaffection among the western Indians, who had strong sympathy with France, and were quite ready to believe the story that she would ere long regain Canada. The consequence was the rising of all the western tribes under the leadership of Pontiac, the principal chief of the Ottawas, whose warriors surrounded and besieged Detroit when he failed to capture it by a trick. Niagara was never attacked, and Detroit itself was successfully defended by Major Gladwin, a fearless soldier; but all the other forts and posts very soon fell into the hands of the Indians, who massacred the garrisons in several places. They also ravaged the border settlements of Pennsylvania and Virginia, and carried off a number of women and children to their wigwams. Fort Pitt at the confluence of the Alleghany and the Monongahela rivers—the site of the present city of Pittsburg—was in serious peril for a time, until Colonel Bouquet, a brave and skilful officer, won a signal victory over the Indians, who fled in dismay to their forest fastnesses. Pontiac failed to capture Detroit, and Bouquet followed up his first success by a direct march into the country of the Shawnees, Mingoes and Delawares, and forced them to agree to stern conditions of peace on the banks of the Muskingum. The power of the western Indians was broken for the time, and the British in 1765 took possession of the French forts of Chartres and Vincennes, when the fleur-de-lys disappeared for ever from the valley of the Mississippi. The French settlers on the Illinois and the Mississippi preferred to remain under British rule rather than cross the great river and become subjects of Spain, to whom Western Louisiana had been ceded by France. From this time forward France ceased to be an influential factor in the affairs of Canada or New France, and the Indian tribes recognized the fact that they could no longer expect any favour or aid from their old ally. They therefore transferred their friendship to England, whose power they had felt in the Ohio valley, and whose policy was now framed with a special regard to their just treatment.
This Indian war was still in progress when King George III issued his proclamation for the temporary government of his new dependencies in North America. As a matter of fact, though the proclamation was issued in England on the 7th October, 1763, it did not reach Canada and come into effect until the 10th August, 1764. The four governments of Quebec, Grenada, East Florida, and West Florida were established in the territories ceded by France and Spain. The eastern limit of the province of Quebec did not extend beyond St. John's River at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, nearly opposite to Anticosti, while that island itself and the Labrador country, east of the St. John's as far as the Straits of Hudson, were placed under the jurisdiction of Newfoundland. The islands of Cape Breton and St. John, now Prince Edward, became subject to the Government of Nova Scotia, which then included the present province of New Brunswick. The northern limit of the province did not extend beyond the territory known as Rupert's Land under the charter given to the Hudson's Bay Company in 1670, while the western boundary was drawn obliquely from Lake Nipissing as far as Lake St. Francis on the St. Lawrence; the southern boundary then followed line 45° across the upper part of Lake Champlain, whence it passed along the highlands which divide the rivers that empty themselves into the St. Lawrence from those that flow into the sea—an absurdly defined boundary since it gave to Canada as far as Cape Rosier on the Gaspé peninsula a territory only a few miles wide. No provision whatever was made in the proclamation for the government of the country west of the Appalachian range, which was claimed by Pennsylvania, Virginia, and other colonies under the indefinite terms of their original charters, which practically gave them no western limits. Consequently the proclamation was regarded with much disfavour by the English colonists on the Atlantic coast. No provision was even made for the great territory which extended beyond Nipissing as far as the Mississippi and included the basin of the great lakes. It is easy to form the conclusion that the intention of the British government was to restrain the ambition of the old English colonies east of the Appalachian range, and to divide the immense territory to their north-west at some future and convenient time into several distinct and independent governments. No doubt the British government also found it expedient for the time being to keep the control of the fur-trade so far as possible in its own hands, and in order to achieve this object it was necessary in the first place to conciliate the Indian tribes, and not allow them to come in any way under the jurisdiction of the chartered colonies. The proclamation itself, in fact, laid down entirely new, and certainly equitable, methods of dealing with the Indians within the limits of British sovereignty. The governors of the old colonies were expressly forbidden to grant authority to survey lands beyond the settled territorial limits of their respective governments. No person was allowed to purchase land directly from the Indians. The government itself thenceforth could alone give a legal title to Indian lands, which must, in the first place, be secured by treaty with the tribes that claimed to own them. This was the beginning of that honest policy which has distinguished the relations of England and Canada with the Indian nations for over a hundred years, and which has obtained for the present Dominion the confidence and friendship of the many thousand Indians, who roamed for many centuries in Rupert's Land and in the Indian Territories where the Hudson's Bay Company long enjoyed exclusive privileges of trade.
The language of the proclamation with respect to the government of the province of Quebec was extremely unsatisfactory. It was ordered that so soon as the state and circumstances of the colony admitted, the governor-general could with the advice and consent of the members of the council summon a general assembly, "in such manner and form as is used and directed in those colonies and provinces in America which are under our immediate government." Laws could be made by the governor, council, and representatives of the people for the good government of the colony, "as near as may be agreeable to the laws of England, and under such regulations and restrictions as are used in other colonies." Until such an assembly could be called, the governor could with the advice of his council constitute courts for the trial and determination of all civil and criminal cases, "according to law and equity, and as near as may be agreeable to the laws of England," with liberty to appeal, in all civil cases, to the privy council of England. General Murray, who had been in the province since the battle on the Plains of Abraham, was appointed to administer the government. Any persons elected to serve in an assembly were required, by his commission and instructions, before they could sit and vote, to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and subscribe a declaration against transubstantiation, the adoration of the Virgin, and the Sacrifice of the Mass.
This proclamation—in reality a mere temporary expedient to give time for considering the whole state of the colony—was calculated to do infinite harm, since its principal importance lay in the fact that it attempted to establish English civil as well as criminal law, and at the same time required oaths which effectively prevented the French Canadians from serving in the very assembly which it professed a desire on the part of the king to establish. The English-speaking or Protestant people in the colony did not number in 1764 more than three hundred persons, of little or no standing, and it was impossible to place all power in their hands and to ignore nearly seventy thousand French Canadian Roman Catholics. Happily the governor, General Murray, was not only an able soldier, as his defence of Quebec against Lévis had proved, but also a man of statesmanlike ideas, animated by a high sense of duty and a sincere desire to do justice to the foreign people committed to his care. He refused to lend himself to the designs of the insignificant British minority, chiefly from the New England colonies, or to be guided by their advice in carrying on his government. His difficulties were lessened by the fact that the French had no conception of representative institutions in the English sense, and were quite content with any system of government that left them their language, religion, and civil law without interference. The stipulations of the capitulations of 1759-1760, and of the treaty of Paris, with respect to the free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion, were always observed in a spirit of great fairness: and in 1766 Monseigneur Briand was chosen, with the governor's approval, Roman Catholic bishop of Quebec. He was consecrated at Paris after his election by the chapter of Quebec, and it does not appear that his recognition ever became the subject of parliamentary discussion. This policy did much to reconcile the French Canadians to their new rulers, and to make them believe that eventually they would receive full consideration in other essential respects.
For ten years the government of Canada was in a very unsatisfactory condition, while the British ministry was all the while worried with the condition of things in the old colonies, then in a revolutionary ferment. The Protestant minority continued to clamour for an assembly, and a mixed system of French and English law, in case it was not possible to establish the latter in its entirety. Attorney-General Masères, an able lawyer and constitutional writer, was in favour of a mixed system, but his views were notably influenced by his strong prejudices against Roman Catholics. The administration of the law was extremely confused until 1774, not only on account of the ignorance and incapacity of the men first sent out from England to preside over the courts, but also as a consequence of the steady determination of the majority of French Canadians to ignore laws to which they had naturally an insuperable objection. In fact, the condition of things became practically chaotic. It might have been much worse had not General Murray, at first, and Sir Guy Carleton, at a later time, endeavoured, so far as lay in their power, to mitigate the hardships to which the people were subject by being forced to observe laws of which they were entirely ignorant.
At this time the governor-general was advised by an executive council, composed of officials and some other persons chosen from the small Protestant minority of the province. Only one French Canadian appears to have been ever admitted to this executive body. The English residents ignored the French as far as possible, and made the most unwarrantable claims to rule the whole province.
A close study of official documents from 1764 until 1774 goes to show that all this while the British government was influenced by an anxious desire to show every justice to French Canada, and to adopt a system of government most conducive to its best interests In 1767 Lord Shelburne wrote to Sir Guy Carleton that "the improvement of the civil constitution of the province was under their most serious consideration." They were desirous of obtaining all information "which can tend to elucidate how far it is practicable and expedient to blend the English with the French laws, in order to form such a system as shall be at once equitable and convenient for His Majesty's old and new subjects." From time to time the points at issue were referred to the law officers of the crown for their opinion, so anxious was the government to come to a just conclusion. Attorney-General Yorke and Solicitor-General De Grey in 1766 severely condemned any system that would permanently "impose new, unnecessary and arbitrary rules (especially as to the titles of land, and the mode of descent, alienation and settlement), which would tend to confound and subvert rights instead of supporting them." In 1772 and 1773 Attorney-General Thurlow and Solicitor-General Wedderburne dwelt on the necessity of dealing on principles of justice with the province of Quebec. The French Canadians, said the former, "seem to have been strictly entitled by the jus gentium to their property, as they possessed it upon the capitulation and treaty of peace, together with all its qualities and incidents by tenure or otherwise." It seemed a necessary consequence that all those laws by which that property was created, defined, and secured, must be continued to them. The Advocate-General Marriott, in 1773, also made a number of valuable suggestions in the same spirit, and at the same time expressed the opinion that under the existent conditions of the country it was not possible or expedient to call an assembly. Before the imperial government came to a positive conclusion on the vexed questions before it, they had the advantage of the wise experience of Sir Guy Carleton, who visited England and remained there for some time. The result of the deliberation of years was the passage through the British parliament of the measure known as "The Quebec Act," which has always been considered the charter of the special privileges which the French Canadians have enjoyed ever since, and which, in the course of a century, made their province one of the most influential sections of British North America.
The preamble of the Quebec Act fixed new territorial limits for the province. It comprised not only the country affected by the proclamation of 1763, but also all the eastern territory which had been previously annexed to Newfoundland. In the west and south-west the province was extended to the Ohio and the Mississippi, and in fact embraced all the lands beyond the Alleghanies coveted and claimed by the old English colonies, now hemmed in between the Atlantic and the Appalachian range. It was now expressly enacted that the Roman Catholic inhabitants of Canada should thenceforth "enjoy the free exercise" of their religion, "subject to the king's supremacy declared and established" by law, and on condition of taking an oath of allegiance, set forth in the act. The Roman Catholic clergy were allowed "to hold, receive, and enjoy their accustomed dues and rights, with respect to such persons only as shall confess the said religion"—that is, one twenty-sixth part of the produce of the land, Protestants being specially exempted. The French Canadians were allowed to enjoy all their property, together with all customs and usages incident thereto, "in as large, ample and beneficial manner," as if the proclamation or other acts of the crown "had not been made", but the religious orders and communities were excepted in accordance with the terms of the capitulation of Montreal—the effect of which exception I have already briefly stated. In "all matters of controversy relative to property and civil rights," resort was to be had to the old civil law of French Canada "as the rule for the decision of the same", but the criminal law of England was extended to the province on the indisputable ground that its "certainty and lenity" were already "sensibly felt by the inhabitants from an experience of more than nine years." The government of the province was entrusted to a governor and a legislative council appointed by the crown, "inasmuch as it was inexpedient to call an assembly." The council was to be composed of not more than twenty-three residents of the province. At the same time the British parliament made special enactments for the imposition of certain customs duties "towards defraying the charges of the administration of justice and the support of the civil government of the province." All deficiencies in the revenues derived from these and other sources had to be supplied by the imperial treasury. During the passage of the act through parliament, it evoked the bitter hostility of Lord Chatham, who was then the self-constituted champion of the old colonies, who found the act most objectionable, not only because it established the Roman Catholic religion, but placed under the government of Quebec the rich territory west of the Alleghanies. Similar views were expressed by the Mayor and Council of London, but they had no effect. The king, in giving his assent, declared that the measure "was founded on the clearest principles of justice and humanity, and would have the best effect in quieting the minds and promoting the happiness of our Canadian subjects." In French Canada the act was received without any popular demonstration by the French Canadians, but the men to whom the great body of that people always looked for advice and guidance—the priests, curés, and seigniors—naturally regarded these concessions to their nationality as giving most unquestionable evidence of the considerate and liberal spirit in which the British government was determined to rule the province. They had had ever since the conquest satisfactory proof that their religion was secure from all interference, and now the British parliament itself came forward with legal guarantees, not only for the free exercise of that religion, with all its incidents and tithes, but also for the permanent establishment of the civil law to which they attached so much importance. The fact that no provision was made for a popular assembly could not possibly offend a people to whom local self-government in any form was entirely unknown. It was impossible to constitute an assembly from the few hundred Protestants who were living in Montreal and Quebec, and it was equally impossible, in view of the religious prejudices dominant in England and the English colonies, to give eighty thousand French Canadian Roman Catholics privileges which their co-religionists did not enjoy in Great Britain and to allow them to sit in an elected assembly. Lord North seemed to voice the general opinion of the British parliament on this difficult subject, when he closed the debate with an expression of "the earnest hope that the Canadians will, in the course of time, enjoy as much of our laws and as much of our constitution as may be beneficial to that country and safe for this", but "that time," he concluded, "had not yet come." It does not appear from the evidence before us that the British had any other motive in passing the Quebec Act than to do justice to the French Canadian people, now subjects of the crown of England. It was not a measure primarily intended to check the growth of popular institutions, but solely framed to meet the actual conditions of a people entirely unaccustomed to the working of representative or popular institutions. It was a preliminary step in the development of self-government.
On the other hand the act was received with loud expressions of dissatisfaction by the small English minority who had hoped to see themselves paramount in the government of the province. In Montreal, the headquarters of the disaffected, an attempt was made to set fire to the town, and the king's bust was set up in one of the public squares, daubed with black, and decorated with a necklace made of potatoes, and bearing the inscription Voilà le pape du Canada & le sot Anglais. The author of this outrage was never discovered, and all the influential French Canadian inhabitants of the community were deeply incensed that their language should have been used to insult a king whose only offence was his assent to a measure of justice to themselves.
Sir Guy Carleton, who had been absent in England for four years, returned to Canada on the 18th September, 1774, and was well received in Quebec. The first legislative council under the Quebec Act was not appointed until the beginning of August, 1775. Of the twenty-two members who composed it, eight were influential French Canadians bearing historic names. The council met on the 17th August, but was forced to adjourn on the 7th September, on account of the invasion of Canada by the troops of the Continental Congress, composed of representatives of the rebellious element of the Thirteen Colonies. In a later chapter I shall very shortly review the effects of the American revolution upon the people of Canada; but before I proceed to do so it is necessary to take my readers first to Nova Scotia on the eastern seaboard of British North America and give a brief summary of its political development from the beginning of British rule.
SECTION 2.—The foundation of Nova Scotia (1749—1783).
The foundation of Halifax practically put an end to the Acadian period of Nova Scotian settlement. Until that time the English occupation of the country was merely nominal. Owing largely to the representations of Governor Shirley, of Massachusetts—a statesman of considerable ability, who distinguished himself in American affairs during a most critical period of colonial history—the British government decided at last on a vigorous policy in the province, which seemed more than once on the point of passing out of their hands. Halifax was founded by the Honourable Edward Cornwallis on the slope of a hill, whose woods then dipped their branches into the very waters of the noble harbour long known as Chebuctou, and renamed in honour of a distinguished member of the Montague family, who had in those days full control of the administration of colonial affairs.
Colonel Cornwallis, a son of the Baron of that name—a man of firmness and discretion—entered the harbour, on the 21st of June, old style, or 2nd July present style, and soon afterwards assumed his, duties as governor of the province. The members of his first council were sworn in on board one of the transports in the harbour. Between 2000 and 3000 persons were brought at this time to settle the town and country. These people were chiefly made up of retired military and naval officers, soldiers and sailors, gentlemen, mechanics, farmers—far too few—and some Swiss, who were extremely industrious and useful. On the whole, they were not the best colonists to build up a prosperous industrial community. The government gave the settlers large inducements in the shape of free grants of land, and practically supported them for the first two or three years. It was not until the Acadian population were removed, and their lands were available, that the foundation of the agricultural prosperity of the peninsula was really laid. In the summer of 1753 a considerable number of Germans were placed in the present county of Lunenburg, where their descendants still prosper, and take a most active part in all the occupations of life.
With the disappearance of the French Acadian settlers Nova Scotia became a British colony in the full sense of the phrase. The settlement of 1749 was supplemented in 1760, and subsequent years, by a valuable and large addition of people who were induced to leave Massachusetts and other colonies of New England and settle in townships of the present counties of Annapolis, King's, Hants, Queen's, Yarmouth, Cumberland, and Colchester, especially in the beautiful townships of Cornwallis and Horton, where the Acadian meadows were the richest. A small number also settled at Maugerville and other places on the St. John River.
During the few years that had elapsed since the Acadians were driven from their lands, the sea had once more found its way through the ruined dykes, which had no longer the skilful attention of their old builders. The new owners of the Acadian lands had none of the special knowledge that the French had acquired, and were unable for years to keep back the ever-encroaching tides. Still there were some rich uplands and low-lying meadows, raised above the sea, which richly rewarded the industrious cultivator. The historian, Haliburton, describes the melancholy scene that met the eyes of the new settlers when they reached, in 1760, the old homes of the Acadians at Mines. They came across a few straggling families of Acadians who "had eaten no bread for years, and had subsisted on vegetables, fish, and the more hardy part of the cattle that had survived the severity of the first winter of their abandonment." They saw everywhere "ruins of the houses that had been burned by the Provincials, small gardens encircled by cherry-trees and currant-bushes, and clumps of apple-trees." In all parts of the country, where the new colonists established themselves, the Indians were unfriendly for years, and it was necessary to erect stockaded houses for the protection of the settlements.
No better class probably could have been selected to settle Nova Scotia than these American immigrants. The majority were descendants of the Puritans who settled in New England, and some were actually sprung from men and women who had landed from "The Mayflower" in 1620. Governor Lawrence recognized the necessity of having a sturdy class of settlers, accustomed to the climatic conditions and to agricultural labour in America, and it was through his strenuous efforts that these immigrants were brought into the province. They had, indeed, the choice of the best land of the province, and everything was made as pleasant as possible for them by a paternal government, only anxious to establish British authority on a sound basis of industrial development.
In 1767, according to an official return in the archives of Nova Scotia, the total population of what are now the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, reached 13,374 souls; of whom 6913 are given as Americans, 912 as English, 2165 as Irish, 1946 as Germans, and 1265 as Acadian French, the latter being probably a low estimate. Some of these Irish emigrated directly from the north of Ireland, and were Presbyterians. They were brought out by one Alexander McNutt, who did much for the work of early colonization; others came from New Hampshire, where they had been settled for some years. The name of Londonderry in New Hampshire is a memorial of this important class, just as the same name recalls them in the present county of Colchester, in Nova Scotia.
The Scottish immigration, which has exercised such an important influence on the eastern counties of Nova Scotia—and I include Cape Breton—commenced in 1772, when about thirty families arrived from Scotland and settled in the present county of Pictou, where a very few American colonists from Philadelphia had preceded them. In later years a steady tide of Scotch population flowed into eastern Nova Scotia and did not cease until 1820. Gaelic is still the dominant tongue in the eastern counties, where we find numerous names recalling the glens, lochs, and mountains of old Scotland. Sir William Alexander's dream of a new Scotland has been realised in a measure in the province where his ambition would have made him "lord paramount."
Until the foundation of Halifax the government of Nova Scotia was vested solely in a governor who had command of the garrison stationed at Annapolis. In 1719 a commission was issued to Governor Phillips, who was authorised to appoint a council of not less than twelve persons. This council had advisory and judicial functions, but its legislative authority was of a very limited scope. This provisional system of government lasted until 1749, when Halifax became the seat of the new administration of public affairs. The governor had a right to appoint a council of twelve persons—as we have already seen, he did so immediately—and to summon a general assembly "according to the usage of the rest of our colonies and plantations in America." He was, "with the advice and consent" of the council and assembly, "to make, constitute and ordain laws" for the good government of the province. During nine years the governor-in-council carried on the government without an assembly, and passed a number of ordinances, some of which imposed duties on trade for the purpose of raising revenue. The legality of their acts was questioned by Chief Justice Belcher, and he was sustained by the opinion of the English law officers, who called attention to the governor's commission, which limited the council's powers. The result of this decision was the establishment of a representative assembly, which met for the first time at Halifax on the 2nd October, 1758.
Governor Lawrence, whose name will be always unhappily associated with the merciless expatriation of the French Acadians, had the honour of opening the first legislative assembly of Nova Scotia in 1758. One Robert Sanderson, of whom we know nothing else, was chosen as the first speaker, but he held his office for only one session, and was succeeded by William Nesbitt, who presided over the house for many years. The first sittings of the legislature were held in the court house, and subsequently in the old grammar school at the corner of Barrington and Sackville Streets, for very many years one of the historic memorials of the Halifax of the eighteenth century.
At this time the present province of New Brunswick was for the most part comprised in a county known as Sunbury, with one representative in the assembly of Nova Scotia. The island of Cape Breton also formed a part of the province, and had the right to send two members to the assembly, but the only election held for that purpose was declared void on account of there not being any freeholders entitled by law to vote. The island of St. John, named Prince Edward in 1798, in honour of the Duke of Kent, who was commander-in-chief of the British forces for some years in North America, was also annexed to Nova Scotia in 1763, but it never sent representatives to its legislature. In the following year a survey was commenced of all the imperial dominions on the Atlantic. Various schemes for the cultivation and settlement of the island were proposed as soon as the surveys were in progress. The most notable suggestion was made by the Earl of Egmont, first lord of the admiralty; he proposed the division of the island into baronies, each with a castle or stronghold under a feudal lord, subject to himself as lord paramount, under the customs of the feudal system of Europe. The imperial authorities rejected this scheme, but at the same time they adopted one which was as unwise as that of the noble earl. The whole island, with the exception of certain small reservations and royalties, was given away by lottery in a single day to officers of the army and navy who had served in the preceding war, and to other persons who were ambitious to be great landowners, on the easy condition of paying certain quit-rents—a condition constantly broken. This ill-advised measure led to many troublesome complications for a hundred years, until at last they were removed by the terms of the arrangement which brought the island into the federal union of British North America in 1873. In 1769 the island was separated from Nova Scotia and granted a distinct government, although its total population at the time did not exceed one hundred and fifty families. An assembly of eighteen representatives was called so early as 1773, when the first governor, Captain Walter Paterson, still administered public affairs. The assembly was not allowed to meet with regularity during many years of the early history of the island. During one administration it was practically without parliamentary government for ten years. The land question always dominated public affairs in the island for a hundred years.
From the very beginning of a regular system of government in Nova Scotia the legislature appears to have practically controlled the administration of local affairs except so far as it gave, from time to time, powers to the courts of quarter sessions to regulate taxation and carry out certain small public works and improvements. In the first session of the legislature a joint committee of the council and assembly chose the town officers for Halifax. We have abundant evidence that at this time the authorities viewed with disfavour any attempt to establish a system of town government similar to that so long in operation in New England. The town meeting was considered the nursery of sedition in New England, and it is no wonder that the British authorities in Halifax frowned upon all attempts to reproduce it in their province.
Soon after his arrival in Nova Scotia, Governor Cornwallis established courts of law to try and determine civil and criminal cases in accordance with the laws of England. In 1774 there were in the province courts of general session, similar to the courts of the same name in England; courts of common pleas, formed on the practice of New England and the mother country, and a supreme court, court of assize and general gaol delivery, composed of a chief justice and two assistant judges. The governor-in-council constituted a court of error in certain cases, and from its decisions an appeal could be made to the king-in-council. Justices of peace were also appointed in the counties and townships, with jurisdiction over the collection of small debts.
We must now leave the province of Nova Scotia and follow the revolutionary movement, which commenced, soon after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, in the old British colonies on the Atlantic seaboard, and ended in the acknowledgement of their independence in 1783, and in the forced migration of a large body of loyal people who found their way to the British provinces.
CHAPTER III.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AND THE UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS (1763—1784).
SECTION I.—The successful Revolution of the Thirteen Colonies in America.
When Canada was formally ceded to Great Britain the Thirteen Colonies were relieved from the menace of the presence of France in the valleys of the St. Lawrence, the Ohio, and the Mississippi. Nowhere were there more rejoicings on account of this auspicious event than in the homes of the democratic Puritans. The names of Pitt and Wolfe were honoured above all others of their countrymen, and no one in England, certainly not among its statesmen, imagined that in the colonies, which stretched from the river Penobscot to the peninsula of Florida, there was latent a spirit of independence which might at any moment threaten the rule of Great Britain on the American continent. The great expenses of the Seven Years' War were now pressing heavily on the British taxpayer. British statesmen were forced to consider how best they could make the colonies themselves contribute towards their own protection in the future, and relieve Great Britain in some measure from the serious burden which their defence had heretofore imposed on her. In those days colonies were considered as so many possessions to be used for the commercial advantage of the parent state. Their commerce and industries had been fettered for many years by acts of parliament which were intended to give Great Britain a monopoly of their trade and at the same time prevent them from manufacturing any article that they could buy from the British factories. As a matter of fact, however, these restrictive measures of imperial protection had been for a long time practically dead-letters. The merchants and seamen of New England carried on smuggling with the French and Spanish Indies with impunity, and practically traded where they pleased.
The stamp act was only evidence of a vigorous colonial policy, which was to make the people of the colonies contribute directly to their own defence and security, and at the same time enforce the navigation laws and acts of trade and put an end to the general system of smuggling by which men, some of the best known merchants of Boston, had acquired a fortune. George Grenville, who was responsible for the rigid enforcement of the navigation laws and the stamp act, had none of that worldly wisdom which Sir Robert Walpole showed when, years before, it was proposed to him to tax the colonies. "No," said that astute politician, "I have old England set against me already, and do you think I will have New England likewise?" But Grenville and his successors, in attempting to carry out a new colonial policy, entirely misunderstood the conditions and feelings of the colonial communities affected and raised a storm of indignation which eventually led to independence. The stamp act was in itself an equitable measure, the proceeds of which were to be exclusively used for the benefit of the colonies themselves; but its enactment was most unfortunate at a time when the influential classes in New England were deeply irritated at the enforcement of a policy which was to stop the illicit trade from which they had so largely profited in the past. The popular indignation, however, vented itself against the stamp act, which imposed internal taxation, was declared to be in direct violation of the principles of political liberty and self-government long enjoyed by the colonists as British subjects, and was repealed as a result of the violent opposition it met in the colonies. Parliament contented itself with a statutory declaration of its supremacy in all matters over every part of the empire; but not long afterwards the determination of some English statesmen to bring the colonies as far as practicable directly under the dominion of British law in all matters of commerce and taxation, and to control their government as far as possible, found full expression in the Townshend acts of 1767 which imposed port duties on a few commodities, including tea, imported into those countries. At the same time provision was made for the due execution of existing laws relating to trade. The province of New York was punished for openly refusing to obey an act of parliament which required the authorities to furnish the British troops with the necessaries of life. Writs of assistance, which allowed officials to search everywhere for smuggled goods, were duly legalised. These writs were the logical sequence of a rigid enforcement of the laws of trade and navigation, and had been vehemently denounced by James Otis, so far back as 1761, as not only irreconcilable with the colonial charters, but as inconsistent with those natural rights which a people "derived from nature and the Author of nature"—an assertion which obtained great prominence for the speaker. This bold expression of opinion in Massachusetts should be studied by the historian of those times in connection with the equally emphatic revolutionary argument advanced by Patrick Henry of Virginia, two years later, against the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Anglican clergy and the right of the king to veto legislation of the colony. Though the prerogative of the crown was thus directly called into question in a Virginia court, the British government did not take a determined stand on the undoubted rights of the crown in the case. English statesmen and lawyers probably regarded such arguments, if they paid any attention to them at all in days when they neglected colonial opinion, as only temporary ebullitions of local feeling, though in reality they were so many evidences of the opposition that was sure to show itself whenever there was a direct interference with the privileges and rights of self-governing communities. Both Henry and Otis touched a key-note of the revolution, which was stimulated by the revenue and stamp acts and later measures affecting the colonies.
It is somewhat remarkable that it was in aristocratic Virginia, founded by Cavaliers, as well as in democratic Massachusetts, founded by Puritans, that the revolutionary element gained its principal strength during the controversy with the parent state. The makers of Massachusetts were independents in church government and democrats in political principle. The whole history of New England, in fact, from the first charters until the argument on the writs of assistance, is full of incidents which show the growth of republican ideas. The Anglican church had no strength in the northern colonies, and the great majority of their people were bitterly opposed to the pretensions of the English hierarchy to establish an episcopate in America. It is not therefore surprising that Massachusetts should have been the leader in the revolutionary agitation; on the other hand in Virginia the Anglican clergy belonged to what was essentially an established church, and the whole social fabric of the colony rested on an aristocratic basis. No doubt before the outbreak of the revolution there was a decided feeling against England on account of the restrictions on the sale of tobacco; and the quarrel, which I have just referred to, with respect to the stipends of the clergy, which were to be paid in this staple commodity according to its market value at the time of payment, had spread discontent among a large body of the people. But above all such causes of dissatisfaction was the growing belief that the political freedom of the people, and the very existence of the colony as a self-governing community, were jeopardised by the indiscreet acts of the imperial authorities after 1763. It is easy then to understand that the action of the British government in 1767 renewed the agitation, which had been allayed for the moment by the repeal of the stamp act and the general belief that there would be no rigid enforcement of old regulations which meant the ruin of the most profitable trade of New England. The measures of the ministry were violently assailed in parliament by Burke and other eminent men who availed themselves of so excellent an opportunity of exciting the public mind against a government which was doing so much to irritate the colonies and injure British trade. All the political conditions were unfavourable to a satisfactory adjustment of the colonial difficulty. Chatham had been one of the earnest opponents of the stamp act, but he was now buried in retirement—labouring under some mental trouble—and Charles Townshend, the chancellor of the exchequer in the cabinet of which Chatham was the real head, was responsible for measures which his chief would have repudiated as most impolitic and inexpedient in the existing temper of the colonies.
The action of the ministry was for years at once weak and irritating. One day they asserted the supremacy of the British parliament, and on the next yielded to the violent opposition of the colonies and the appeals of British merchants whose interests were at stake. Nothing remained eventually but the tea duty, and even that was so arranged that the colonists could buy their tea at a much cheaper rate than the British consumer. But by this time a strong anti-British party was in course of formation throughout the colonies. Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, Patrick Henry of Virginia, and a few other political managers of consummate ability, had learned their own power, and the weakness of English ministers. Samuel Adams, who had no love in his heart for England, was undoubtedly by this time insidiously working towards the independence of the colonies. Violence and outrage formed part of his secret policy. The tea in Boston harbour was destroyed by a mob disguised as Mohawk Indians, and was nowhere allowed to enter into domestic consumption. The patience of English ministers was now exhausted, and they determined to enter on a vigorous system of repression, which might have had some effect at an earlier stage of the revolutionary movement, when the large and influential loyal body of people in the colonies ought to have been vigorously supported, and not left exposed to the threats, insults, and even violence of a resolute minority, comprising many persons influenced by purely selfish reasons—the stoppage of illicit trade from which they had profited—as well as men who objected on principle to a policy which seemed to them irreconcilable with the rights of the people to the fullest possible measure of local self-government. As it was, however, the insults and injuries to British officials bound to obey the law, the shameless and continuous rioting, the destruction of private property, the defiant attitude of the opposition to England, had at last awakened the home authorities to the dangers latent in the rebellious spirit that reckless agitators had aroused in colonies for which England had sacrificed so much of her blood and treasure when their integrity and dearest interests were threatened by France. The port of Boston, where the agitators were most influential and the most discreditable acts of violence had taken place, was closed to trade; and important modifications were made in the charter granted to Massachusetts by William III in 1692. Another obnoxious act provided that persons "questioned for any acts in execution of the laws" should be tried in England—a measure intended to protect officials and soldiers in the discharge of their duty against the rancour of the colonial community where they might be at that time. These measures, undoubtedly unwise at this juncture, were calculated to evoke the hostility of the other colonies and to show them what was probably in store for themselves. But while the issue certainly proved this to be the case, the course pursued by the government under existing conditions had an appearance of justification. Even Professor Goldwin Smith, who will not be accused of any sympathy with the British cabinet of that day, or of antagonism to liberal principles, admits that "a government thus bearded and insulted had its choice between abdication and repression," and "that repression was the most natural" course to pursue under the circumstances. Lord North gave expression to what was then a largely prevailing sentiment in England when he said "to repeal the tea duty would stamp us with timidity," and that the destruction of the property of private individuals, such as took place at Boston, "was a fitting culmination of years of riot and lawlessness." Lord North, we all know now, was really desirous of bringing about a reconciliation between the colonies and the parent state, but he servilely yielded his convictions to the king, who was determined to govern all parts of his empire, and was in favour of coercive measures. It is quite evident that the British ministry and their supporters entirely underrated the strength of the colonial party that was opposing England. Even those persons who, when the war broke out, remained faithful to their allegiance to the crown, were of opinion that the British government was pursuing a policy unwise in the extreme, although they had no doubt of the abstract legal right of that government to pass the Grenville and Townshend acts for taxing the colonies. Chatham, Burke, Conway, and Barré were the most prominent public men who, in powerful language, showed the dangers of the unwise course pursued by the "king's friends" in parliament.
As we review the events of those miserable years we can see that every step taken by the British government, from the stamp act until the closing of the port of Boston and other coercive measures, had the effect of strengthening the hands of Samuel Adams and the other revolutionary agitators. Their measures to create a feeling against England exhibited great cunning and skill. The revolutionary movement was aided by the formation of "Sons of Liberty"—a phrase taken from one of Barré's speeches,—by circular letters and committees of correspondence between the colonies, by petitions to the king winch were framed in a tone of independence not calculated to conciliate that uncompromising sovereign, by clever ingenious appeals to public patriotism, by the assembling of a "continental congress," by acts of "association" which meant the stoppage of all commercial intercourse with Great Britain. New England was the head and front of the whole revolution, and Samuel Adams was its animating spirit. Even those famous committees of correspondence between the towns of Massachusetts, which gave expression to public opinion and stimulated united action when the legislative authority was prevented by the royal governor from working, were the inspiration of this astute political manager. Prominent Virginians saw the importance of carrying out this idea on a wider field of action, and Virginia accordingly inaugurated a system of intercolonial correspondence which led to the meeting of a continental congress, and was the first practical step towards political independence of the parent state. Adams's decision to work for independence was made, or confirmed, as early as 1767, when Charles Townshend succeeded in passing the measures which were so obnoxious to the colonists, and finally led to civil war.
At a most critical moment, when the feelings of a large body of people were aroused to a violent pitch, when ideas of independence were ripening in the minds of others besides Samuel Adams, General Gage, then in command of the British regular troops in Boston, sent a military force to make prisoners of Adams and Hancock at Lexington, and seize some stores at Concord. Then the "embattled farmers" fired the shot "which was heard around the world." Then followed the capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and the battle of Bunker's Hill, on the same day that Washington was appointed by congress to command the continental army. At this critical juncture, John Adams and other prominent colonists—not excepting Washington—were actually disavowing all desire to sever their relations with the parent state in the face of the warlike attitude of congress—an attitude justified by the declaration that it was intended to force a redress of grievances. Tom Paine, a mere adventurer, who had not been long in the country, now issued his pamphlet, "Common Sense," which was conceived in a spirit and written in a style admirably calculated to give strength and cohesion to the arguments of the people, who had been for some time coming to the conclusion that to aim at independence was the only consistent and logical course in the actual state of controversy between England and the colonies. On March 14th, 1776, the town of Boston, then the most important in America, was given up to the rebels; and British ships carried the first large body of unhappy and disappointed Loyalists to Halifax. On July the fourth of the same year the Declaration of Independence was passed, after much hesitation and discussion, and published to the world by the continental congress assembled at Philadelphia. The signal victory won by the continental army over Burgoyne at Saratoga in the autumn of the following year led to an alliance with France, without whose effective aid the eventual success of the revolutionists would have been very doubtful The revolutionists won their final triumph at Yorktown in the autumn of 1781, when a small army of regulars and Loyalists, led by Cornwallis, was obliged to surrender to the superior American and French forces, commanded by Washington and Rochambeau, and supported by a French fleet which effectively controlled the approaches to Chesapeake Bay.
The conduct of the war on the part of England was noted for the singular incapacity of her generals. Had there been one of any energy or ability at the head of her troops, when hostilities commenced, the undisciplined American army might easily have been beaten and annihilated Boston need never have been evacuated had Howe taken the most ordinary precautions to occupy the heights of Dorchester that commanded the town. Washington could never have organised an army had not Howe given him every possible opportunity for months to do so. The British probably had another grand opportunity of ending the war on their occupation of New York, when Washington and his relatively insignificant army were virtually in their power while in retreat. The history of the war is full of similar instances of lost opportunities to overwhelm the continental troops. All the efforts of the British generals appear to have been devoted to the occupation of the important towns in a country stretching for a thousand miles from north to south, instead of following and crushing the constantly retreating, diminishing, and discouraged forces of the revolutionists. The evacuation of Philadelphia at a critical moment of the war was another signal illustration of the absence of all military foresight and judgment, since it disheartened the Loyalists and gave up an important base of operation against the South. Even Cornwallis, who fought so bravely and successfully in the southern provinces, made a most serious mistake when he chose so weak a position as Yorktown, which was only defensible whilst the army of occupation had free access to the sea. Admiral Rodney, then at St. Eustatius, is open to censure for not having sent such naval reinforcements as would have enabled the British to command Chesapeake Bay, and his failure in this respect explains the inability of Clinton, an able general, to support Cornwallis in his hour of need. The moment the French fleet appeared in the Chesapeake, Cornwallis's position became perfectly untenable, and he was obliged to surrender to the allied armies, who were vastly superior in number and equipment to his small force, which had not even the advantage of fighting behind well-constructed and perfect defences. No doubt, from the beginning to the end of the war—notably in the case of Burgoyne—the British were seriously hampered by the dilatory and unsafe counsels of Lord George Germaine, who was allowed by the favour of the king to direct military operations, and who, we remember, had disgraced himself on the famous battlefield of Minden.
All the conditions in the country at large were favourable to the imperial troops had they been commanded by generals of ability. The Loyalists formed a large available force, rendered valueless time after time by the incapacity of the men who directed operations. At no time did the great body of the American people warmly respond to the demands made upon them by congress to support Washington. Had it not been for New England and Virginia the war must have more than once collapsed for want of men and supplies. It is impossible to exaggerate the absence of public spirit in the States during this critical period of their history. The English historian, Lecky, who has reviewed the annals of those times with great fairness, has truly said: "The nobility and beauty of the character of Washington can hardly be surpassed; several of the other leaders of the revolution were men of ability and public spirit, and few armies have ever shown a nobler self-devotion than that which remained with Washington through the dreary winter at Valley Forge. But the army that bore those sufferings was a very small one, and the general aspect of the American people during the contest was far from heroic or sublime." This opinion is fully borne out by those American historians who have reviewed the records of their national struggle in a spirit of dispassionate criticism. We know that in the spring of 1780 Washington himself wrote that his troops were "constantly on the point of starving for want of provisions and forage." He saw "in every line of the army the most serious features of mutiny and sedition." Indeed he had "almost ceased to hope," for he found the country in general "in such a state of insensibility and indifference to its interests" that he dare not flatter himself "with any change for the better." The war under such circumstances would have come to a sudden end had not France liberally responded to Washington's appeals and supported him with her money, her sailors and her soldiers. In the closing years of the war Great Britain had not only to fight France, Spain, Holland and her own colonies, but she was without a single ally in Europe. Her dominion was threatened in India, and the king prevented the intervention of the only statesman in the kingdom to whom the colonists at any time were likely to listen with respect. When Chatham died with a protest on his lips "against the dismemberment of this ancient monarchy," the last hope of bringing about a reconciliation between the revolutionists and the parent state disappeared for ever, and the Thirteen Colonies became independent at Yorktown.
SECTION 2.—Canada and Nova Scotia during the Revolution.
If Canada was saved to England during the American Revolution it was not on account of the energy and foresight shown by the king and his ministers in providing adequately for its defence, but mainly through the coolness and excellent judgment displayed by Governor Carleton. The Quebec act, for which he was largely responsible, was extremely unpopular in the Thirteen Colonies, on account of its having extended the boundaries of the province and the civil law to that western country beyond the Alleghanies, which the frontiersmen of Pennsylvania and Virginia regarded as specially their own domain. The fact that the Quebec act was passed by parliament simultaneously with the Boston port bill and other measures especially levelled against Massachusetts, gave additional fuel to the indignation of the people, who regarded this group of acts as part of a settled policy to crush the British-speaking colonies.
Under these circumstances, the invasion of Canada by Arnold in 1775, with the full approval of the continental congress, soon after the taking of Crown Point and Ticonderoga by the "Green Mountain boys" of Vermont, was a most popular movement which, it was hoped generally, would end in the easy conquest of a province, occupied by an alien people, and likely to be a menace in the future to the country south of the St. Lawrence. The capture of Chambly and St. John's—the keys of Canada, by way of Lake Champlain—was immediately followed by the surrender of Montreal, which was quite indefensible, and the flight of Carleton to Quebec, where he wisely decided to make a stand against the invaders. At this time there were not one thousand regular troops in the country, and Carleton's endeavour to obtain reinforcements from Boston had failed in consequence of the timidity of Admiral Graves, who expressed his opinion that it was not safe to send vessels up the St. Lawrence towards the end of the month of October. No dependence apparently could be placed at this critical juncture on a number of the French habitants, as soon as the districts of Richelieu, Montreal and Three Rivers were occupied by the continental troops. Many of them were quite ready to sell provisions to the invaders, provided they were paid in coin, and a few of them even joined Montgomery on his march to Quebec. Happily, however, the influence of the clergy and the seigneurs was sufficiently powerful to make the great mass of the people neutral during this struggle for supremacy in the province.
The bishop and the priests, from the outset, were quite alive to the gravity of the situation. They could not forget that the delegates to the continental congress, who were now appealing to French Canada to join the rebellious colonists, had only a few weeks before issued an address to the people of England in which they expressed their astonishment that the British parliament should have established in Canada "a religion that had deluged their land in blood and dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder, and rebellion through every part of the world." Almost simultaneously with the capture of the forts on Lake Champlain, Bishop Briand issued a mandement in which he dwelt with emphasis on the great benefits which the people of French Canada had already derived from the British connection and called upon them all to unite in the defence of their province. No doubt can exist that these opinions had much effect at a time when Carleton had reason to doubt even the loyalty of the English population, some of whom were notoriously in league with the rebels across the frontier, and gave material aid to the invaders as soon as they occupied Montreal. It was assuredly the influence of the French clergy that rendered entirely ineffectual the mission of Chase, Franklin, and the Carrolls of Maryland—one of whom became the first Roman Catholic archbishop of the United States—who were instructed by congress to offer every possible inducement to the Roman Catholic subjects of England in Canada to join the revolutionary movement.
Richard Montgomery, who had commanded the troops invading Canada, had served at Louisbourg and Quebec, and had subsequently become a resident of New York, where his political opinions on the outbreak of the revolution had been influenced by his connection, through marriage, with the Livingstones, bitter opponents of the British government. His merit as a soldier naturally brought him into prominence when the war began, and his own ambition gladly led him to obey the order to go to Canada, where he hoped to emulate the fame of Wolfe and become the captor of Quebec. He formed a junction, close to the ancient capital, with the force under Benedict Arnold, who was at a later time to sully a memorable career by an act of the most deliberate treachery to his compatriots. When Montgomery and Arnold united their forces before Quebec, the whole of Canada, from Lake Champlain to Montreal, and from that town to the walls of the old capital, was under the control of the continental troops. Despite the great disadvantages under which he laboured, Carleton was able to perfect his defences of the city, which he determined to hold until reinforcements should arrive in the spring from England. Montgomery had neither men nor artillery to storm the fortified city which he had hoped to surprise and easily occupy with the aid of secret friends within its walls. Carleton, however, rallied all loyal men to his support, and the traitors on whom the invaders had relied were powerless to carry out any treacherous design they may have formed. The American commanders at once recognised the folly of a regular investment of the fortress during a long and severe winter, and decided to attempt to surprise the garrison by a night assault. This plan was earned out in the early morning of the thirty-first of December, 1775, when the darkness was intensified by flurries of light blinding snow, but it failed before the assailants could force the barricades which barred the way to the upper town, where all the principal offices and buildings were grouped, just below the château and fort of St. Louis, which towers above the historic heights. Montgomery was killed, Arnold was wounded at the very outset, and a considerable number of their officers and men were killed or wounded.
Carleton saved Quebec at this critical hour and was able in the course of the same year, when General Burgoyne arrived with reinforcements largely composed of subsidised German regiments, to drive the continental troops in confusion from the province and destroy the fleet which congress had formed on Lake Champlain. Carleton took possession of Crown Point but found the season too late—it was now towards the end of autumn—to attempt an attack on Ticonderoga, which was occupied by a strong and well-equipped garrison. After a careful view of the situation he concluded to abandon Crown Point until the spring, when he could easily occupy it again, and attack Ticonderoga with every prospect of success. But Carleton, soon afterwards, was ordered to give up the command of the royal troops to Burgoyne, who was instructed by Germaine to proceed to the Hudson River, where Howe was to join him. Carleton naturally resented the insult that he received and resigned the governor-generalship, to which General Haldimand was appointed. Carleton certainly brought Canada securely through one of the most critical epochs of her history, and there is every reason to believe that he would have saved the honour of England and the reputation of her generals, had he rather than Burgoyne and Howe been entrusted with the direction of her armies in North America.
Carleton's administration of the civil government of the province was distinguished by a spirit of discretion and energy which deservedly places him among the ablest governors who ever presided over the public affairs of a colony. During the progress of the American war the legislative council was not able to meet until nearly two years after its abrupt adjournment in September, 1775. At this session, in 1777, ordinances were passed for the establishment of courts of King's bench, common pleas, and probate.
A critical perusal of the valuable documents, placed of late years in the archives of the Dominion, clearly proves that it was a fortunate day for Canada when so resolute a soldier and far-sighted administrator as General Haldimand was in charge of the civil and military government of the country after the departure of Carleton. His conduct appears to have been dictated by a desire to do justice to all classes, and it is most unfair to his memory to declare that he was antagonistic to French Canadians. During the critical time when he was entrusted with the public defence it is impossible to accuse him of an arrogant or unwarrantable exercise of authority, even when he was sorely beset by open and secret enemies of the British connection. The French Canadian habitant found himself treated with a generous consideration that he never obtained during the French régime, and wherever his services were required by the state, he was paid, not in worthless card money, but in British coin. During Haldimand's administration the country was in a perilous condition on account of the restlessness and uncertainty that prevailed while the French naval and military expeditions were in America, using every means of exciting a public sentiment hostile to England and favourable to France among the French Canadians. Admiral D'Estaing's proclamation in 1778 was a passionate appeal to the old national sentiment of the people, and was distributed in every part of the province. Dr. Kingsford believes that it had large influence in creating a powerful feeling which might have seriously threatened British dominion had the French been able to obtain permission from congress to send an army into the country. Whatever may have been the temper of the great majority of the French Canadians, it does not appear that many of them openly expressed their sympathy with France, for whom they would naturally still feel a deep love as their motherland. The assertion that many priests secretly hoped for the appearance of the French army is not justified by any substantial evidence except the fact that one La Valinière was arrested for his disloyalty, and sent a prisoner to England. It appears, however, that this course was taken with the approval of the bishop himself, who was a sincere friend of the English connection throughout the war. Haldimand arrested a number of persons who were believed to be engaged in treasonable practices against England, and effectively prevented any successful movement being made by the supporters of the revolutionists, or sympathisers with France, whose emissaries were secretly working in the parishes.
Haldimand's principal opponent during these troublous times was one Pierre du Calvet, an unscrupulous and able intriguer, whom he imprisoned on the strong suspicion of treasonable practices; but the evidence against Calvet at that time appears to have been inadequate, as he succeeded in obtaining damages against the governor-general in an English court. The imperial government, however, in view of all the circumstances brought to their notice, paid the cost of the defence of the suit. History now fully justifies the action of Haldimand, for the publication of Franklin's correspondence in these later times shows that Calvet—who was drowned at sea and never again appeared in Canada—was in direct correspondence with congress, and the recognised emissary of the revolutionists at the very time he was declaring himself devoted to the continuance of British rule in Canada.
Leaving the valley of the St. Lawrence, and reviewing the conditions of affairs in the maritime provinces, during the American revolution, we see that some of the settlers from New England sympathised with their rebellious countrymen. The people of Truro, Onslow, and Londonderry, with the exception of five persons, refused to take the oath of allegiance, and were not allowed for some time to be represented in the legislature. The assembly was always loyal to the crown, and refused to consider the appeals that were made to it by circular letters, and otherwise, to give active aid and sympathy to the rebellious colonies During the war armed cruisers pillaged the small settlements at Charlottetown, Annapolis, Lunenburg, and the entrance of the St. John River. One expedition fitted out at Machias, in the present state of Maine, under the command of a Colonel Eddy, who had been a resident of Cumberland, attempted to seize Fort Cumberland—known as Beauséjour in French Acadian days—at the mouth of the Missiquash. In this section of the country there were many sympathisers with the rebels, and Eddy expected to have an easy triumph. The military authorities were happily on the alert, and the only result was the arrest of a number of persons on the suspicion of treasonable designs. The inhabitants of the county of Yarmouth—a district especially exposed to attack—only escaped the frequent visits of privateers by secret negotiations with influential persons in Massachusetts. The settlers on the St. John River, at Maugerville, took measures to assist their fellow-countrymen in New England, but the defeat of the Cumberland expedition and the activity of the British authorities prevented the disaffected in Sunbury county—in which the original settlements of New Brunswick were then comprised—from rendering any practical aid to the revolutionists. The authorities at Halifax authorised the fitting out of privateers in retaliation for the damages inflicted on western ports by the same class of cruisers sailing from New England. The province was generally impoverished by the impossibility of carrying on the coasting trade and fisheries with security in these circumstances. The constant demand for men to fill the army and the fleet drained the country when labour was imperatively needed for necessary industrial pursuits, including the cultivation of the land. Some Halifax merchants and traders alone found profit in the constant arrival of troops and ships. Apart, however, from the signs of disaffection shown in the few localities I have mentioned, the people generally appear to have been loyal to England, and rallied, notably in the townships of Annapolis, Horton and Windsor, to the defence of the country, at the call of the authorities.
In 1783 the humiliated king of England consented to a peace with his old colonies, who owed their success not so much to the unselfishness and determination of the great body of the rebels as to the incapacity of British generals and to the patience, calmness, and resolution of the one great man of the revolution, George Washington. I shall in a later chapter refer to this treaty in which the boundaries between Canada and the new republic were so ignorantly and clumsily defined that it took half a century and longer to settle the vexed questions that arose in connection with territorial rights, and then the settlement was to the injury of Canada. So far as the treaty affected the Provinces its most important result was the forced migration of that large body of people who had remained faithful to the crown and empire during the revolution.
[Illustration: MAP SHOWING BOUNDARY BETWEEN CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES
BY TREATY OF 1783]
SECTION 3.—The United Empire Loyalists
John Adams and other authorities in the United States have admitted that when the first shot of the revolution was fired by "the embattled farmers" of Concord and Lexington, the Loyalists numbered one-third of the whole population of the colonies, or seven hundred thousand whites. Others believe that the number was larger, and that the revolutionary party was in a minority even after the declaration of independence. The greater number of the Loyalists were to be found in the present state of New York, where the capital was in possession of the British from September, 1776, until the evacuation in 1783. They were also the majority in Pennsylvania and the southern colonies of South Carolina and Georgia. In all the other states they represented a large minority of the best class of their respective communities. It is estimated that there were actually from thirty to thirty-five thousand, at one time or other, enrolled in regularly organised corps, without including the bodies which waged guerilla warfare in South Carolina and elsewhere.
It is only within a decade of years that some historical writers in the United States have had the courage and honesty to point out the false impressions long entertained by the majority of Americans with respect to the Loyalists, who were in their way as worthy of historical eulogy as the people whose efforts to win independence were crowned with success. Professor Tyler, of Cornell University, points out that these people comprised "in general a clear majority of those who, of whatever grade of culture or of wealth, would now be described as conservative people." A clear majority of the official class, of men representing large commercial interests and capital, of professional training and occupation, clergymen, physicians, lawyers and teachers, "seem to have been set against the ultimate measures of the revolution". He assumes with justice that, within this conservative class, one may "usually find at least a fair portion of the cultivation, of the moral thoughtfulness, of the personal purity and honour, existing in the community to which they happen to belong." He agrees with Dr. John Fiske, and other historical writers of eminence in the United States, in comparing the Loyalists of 1776 to the Unionists of the southern war of secession from 1861 until 1865. They were "the champions of national unity, as resting on the paramount authority of the general government." In other words they were the champions of a United British Empire in the eighteenth century.
"The old colonial system," says that thoughtful writer Sir J.R. Seeley, "was not at all tyrannous; and when the breach came the grievances of which the Americans complained, though perfectly real, were smaller than ever before or since led to such mighty consequences." The leaders among the Loyalists, excepting a few rash and angry officials probably, recognised that there were grievances which ought to be remedied. They looked on the policy of the party in power in Great Britain as injudicious in the extreme, but they believed that the relations between the colonies and the mother-state could be placed on a more satisfactory basis by a spirit of mutual compromise, and not by such methods as were insidiously followed by the agitators against England. The Loyalists generally contended for the legality of the action of parliament, and were supported by the opinion of all high legal authorities; but the causes of difficulty were not to be adjusted by mere lawyers, who adhered to the strict letter of the law, but by statesmen who recognised that the time had come for reconsidering the relations between the colonies and the parent state, and meeting the new conditions of their rapid development and political freedom. These relations were not to be placed on an equitable and satisfactory basis by mob-violence and revolution. All the questions at issue were of a constitutional character, to be settled by constitutional methods.
Unhappily, English statesmen of that day paid no attention to, and had no conception of, the aspirations, sentiments and conditions of the colonial peoples when the revolutionary war broke out. The king wished to govern in the colonies as well as in the British Isles, and unfortunately the unwise assertion of his arrogant will gave dangerous men like Samuel Adams, more than once, the opportunity they wanted to stimulate public irritation and indignation against England.
It is an interesting fact, that the relations between Great Britain and the Canadian Dominion are now regulated by just such principles as were urged in the interests of England and her colonies a hundred and twenty years ago by Governor Thomas Hutchinson, a great Loyalist, to whom justice is at last being done by impartial historians in the country where his motives and acts were so long misunderstood and misrepresented. "Whatever measures," he wrote to a correspondent in England, "you may take to maintain the authority of parliament, give me leave to pray they may be accompanied with a declaration that it is not the intention of parliament to deprive the colonies of their subordinate power of legislation, nor to exercise the supreme power except in such cases and upon such occasions as an equitable regard to the interests of the whole empire shall make necessary." But it took three-quarters of a century after the coming of the Loyalists to realise these statesmanlike conceptions of Hutchinson in the colonial dominions of England to the north of the dependencies which she lost in the latter part of the eighteenth century.
Similar opinions were entertained by Joseph Galloway, Jonathan Boucher, Jonathan Odell, Samuel Seabury, Chief Justice Smith, Judge Thomas Jones, Beverley Robinson and other men of weight and ability among the Loyalists, who recognised the short-sightedness and ignorance of the British authorities, and the existence of real grievances. Galloway, one of the ablest men on the constitutional side, and a member of the first continental congress, suggested a practical scheme of imperial federation, well worthy of earnest consideration at that crisis in imperial affairs. Eminent men in the congress of 1774 supported this statesmanlike mode of placing the relations of England and the colonies on a basis which would enable them to work harmoniously, and at the same time give full scope to the ambition and the liberties of the colonial communities thus closely united; but unhappily for the empire the revolutionary element carried the day. The people at large were never given an opportunity of considering this wise proposition, and the motion was erased from the records of congress. In its place, the people were asked to sign "articles of association" which bound them to cease all commercial relations with England. Had Galloway's idea been carried out to a successful issue, we might have now presented to the world the noble spectacle of an empire greater by half a continent and seventy-five millions of people.
But while Galloway and other Loyalists failed in their measures of adjusting existing difficulties and remedying grievances, history can still do full justice to their wise counsel and resolute loyalty, which refused to assist in tearing the empire to fragments. These men, who remained faithful to this ideal to the very bitter end, suffered many indignities at the hands of the professed lovers of liberty, even in those days when the questions at issue had not got beyond the stage of legitimate argument and agitation. The courts of law were closed and the judges prevented from fulfilling their judicial functions. No class of persons, not even women, were safe from the insults of intoxicated ruffians. The clergy of the Church of England were especially the object of contumely.
During the war the passions of both parties to the controversy were aroused to the highest pitch, and some allowance must be made for conditions which were different from those which existed when the questions at issue were still matters of argument. It is impossible in times of civil strife to cool the passions of men and prevent them from perpetrating cruelties and outrages which would be repugnant to their sense of humanity in moments of calmness and reflection. Both sides, more than once, displayed a hatred of each other that was worthy of the American Iroquois themselves. The legislative bodies were fully as vindictive as individuals in the persecution of the Loyalists. Confiscation of estate, imprisonment, disqualification for office, banishment, and even death in case of return from exile, were among the penalties to which these people were subject by the legislative acts of the revolutionary party.
If allowance can be made for the feelings of revenge and passion which animate persons under the abnormal conditions of civil war, no extenuating circumstances appear at that later period when peace was proclaimed and congress was called upon to fulfil the terms of the treaty and recommend to the several independent states the restoration of the confiscated property of Loyalists. Even persons who had taken up arms were to have an opportunity of receiving their estates back on condition of refunding the money which had been paid for them, and protection was to be afforded to those persons during twelve months while they were engaged in obtaining the restoration of their property. It was also solemnly agreed by the sixth article of the treaty that there should be no future confiscations or prosecutions, and that no person should "suffer any future loss or damage, either in his person, liberty or property," for the part he might have taken in the war. Now was the time for generous terms, such terms as were even shown by the triumphant North to the rebellious South at the close of the war of secession. The recommendations of congress were treated with contempt by the legislatures in all the states except in South Carolina, and even there the popular feeling was entirely opposed to any favour or justice being shown to the beaten party. The sixth article of the treaty, a solemn obligation, was violated with malice and premeditation. The Loyalists, many of whom had returned from Great Britain with the hope of receiving back their estates, or of being allowed to remain in the country, soon found they could expect no generous treatment from the successful republicans. The favourite Whig occupation of tarring and feathering was renewed. Loyalists were warned to leave the country as soon as possible, and in the south some were shot and hanged because they did not obey the warning. The Loyalists, for the most part, had no other course open to them than to leave the country they still loved and where they had hoped to die.
The British government endeavoured, so far as it was in its power, to compensate the Loyalists for the loss of their property by liberal grants of money and land, but despite all that was done for them the majority felt a deep bitterness in their hearts as they landed on new shores of which they had heard most depressing accounts. More than thirty-five thousand men, women and children, made their homes within the limits of the present Dominion. In addition to these actual American Loyalists, there were several thousands of negroes, fugitives from their owners, or servants of the exiles, who have been generally counted in the loose estimates made of the migration of 1783, and the greater number of whom were at a later time deported from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone. Of the exiles at least twenty-five thousand went to the maritime colonies, and built up the province of New Brunswick, where representative institutions were established in 1784. Of the ten thousand people who sought the valley of the St Lawrence, some settled in Montreal, at Chambly, and in parts of the present Eastern Townships, but the great majority accepted grants of land on the banks of the St. Lawrence—from River Beaudette, on Lake St. Francis, as far as the beautiful Bay of Quinté—in the Niagara District, and on the shores of Lake Erie. The coming of these people, subsequently known by the name of "U.E. Loyalists"—a name appropriately given to them in recognition of their fidelity to a United Empire—was a most auspicious event for the British-American provinces, the greater part of which was still a wilderness. As we have seen in the previous chapters, there was in the Acadian provinces, afterwards divided into New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, a British population of only some 14,000 souls, mostly confined to the peninsula. In the valley of the St. Lawrence there was a French population of probably 100,000 persons, dwelling chiefly on the banks of the St. Lawrence between Quebec and Montreal. The total British population of the province of Quebec did not exceed 2000, residing for the most part in the towns of Quebec and Montreal. No English people were found west of Lake St. Louis; and what is now the populous province of Ontario was a mere wilderness, except where loyal refugees had gathered about the English fort at Niagara, or a few French settlers had made homes for themselves on the banks of the Detroit River and Lake St. Clair. The migration of between 30,000 and 40,000 Loyalists to the maritime provinces and the valley of the St. Lawrence was the saving of British interests in the great region which England still happily retained in North America.
The refugees who arrived in Halifax in 1783 were so numerous that hundreds had to be placed in the churches or in cabooses taken from the transports and ranged along the streets. At Guysborough, in Nova Scotia—so named after Sir Guy Carleton—the first village, which was hastily built by the settlers, was destroyed by a bush fire, and many persons only saved their lives by rushing into the sea. At Shelburne, on the first arrival of the exiles, there were seen "lines of women sitting on the rocky shore and weeping at their altered condition." Towns and villages, however, were soon built for the accommodation of the people. At Shelburne, or Port Roseway—anglicised from the French Razoir—a town of fourteen thousand people, with wide streets, fine houses, some of them containing furniture and mantel-pieces brought from New York, arose in two or three years. The name of New Jerusalem had been given to the same locality some years before, but it seemed a mockery to the Loyalists when they found that the place they had chosen for their new home was quite unsuited for settlement. A beautiful harbour lay in front, and a rocky country unfit for farmers in the rear of their ambitious town, which at one time was the most populous in British North America. In the course of a few years the place was almost deserted, and sank for a time into insignificance. A pretty town now nestles by the side of the beautiful and spacious harbour which attracted the first too hopeful settlers; and its residents point out to the tourist the sites of the buildings of last century, one or two of which still stand, and can show many documents and relics of those early days.
Over twelve thousand Loyalists, largely drawn from the disbanded loyal regiments of the old colonies, settled in New Brunswick. The name of Parrtown was first given, in honour of the governor of Nova Scotia, to the infant settlement which became the city of St. John, in 1785, when it was incorporated. The first landing of the loyal pioneers took place on the 18th of May, 1783, at what is now the Market Slip of this interesting city. Previous to 1783, the total population of the province did not exceed seven hundred souls, chiefly at Maugerville and other places on the great river. The number of Loyalists who settled on the St. John River was at least ten thousand, of whom the greater proportion were established at the mouth of the river, which was the base of operations for the peopling of the new province. Some adventurous spirits took possession of the abandoned French settlements at Grimross and St. Anne's, where they repaired some ruined huts of the original Acadian occupants, or built temporary cabins. This was the beginning of the settlement of Fredericton, which four years later became the political capital on account of its central position, its greater security in time of war, and its location on the land route to Quebec. Many of the people spent their first winter in log-huts, bark camps, and tents covered with spruce, or rendered habitable only by the heavy banks of snow which were piled against them. A number of persons died through exposure, and "strong, proud men"—to quote the words of one who lived in those sorrowful days—"wept like children and lay down in their snow-bound tents to die."
A small number of loyal refugees had found their way to the valley of the St. Lawrence as early as 1778, and obtained employment in the regiments organised under Sir John Johnson and others. It was not until 1783 and 1784 that the large proportion of the exiles came to Western Canada. They settled chiefly on the northern banks of the St. Lawrence, in what are now the counties of Glengarry, Stormont, Dundas, Grenville, Leeds, Frontenac, Addington, Lennox, Hastings and Prince Edward, where their descendants have acquired wealth and positions of honour and trust. The first township laid out in Upper Canada, now Ontario, was Kingston. The beautiful Bay of Quinté is surrounded by a country full of the memories of this people, and the same is true of the picturesque district of Niagara.
Among the Loyalists of Canada must also be honourably mentioned Joseph Brant (Thayendanega), the astute and courageous chief of the Mohawks, the bravest nation of the Iroquois confederacy, who fought on the side of England during the war. At its close he and his people settled in Canada, where they received large grants from the government, some in a township by the Bay of Quinté, which still bears the Indian title of the great warrior, and the majority on the Grand River, where a beautiful city and county perpetuate the memory of this loyal subject of the British crown. The first Anglican church built in Upper Canada was that of the Mohawks, near Brantford, and here the church bell first broke the silence of the illimitable forest.
The difficulties which the Upper Canadian immigrants had to undergo before reaching their destination were much greater than was the case with the people who went direct in ships from American ports to Halifax and other places on the Atlantic coast. The former had to make toilsome journeys by land, or by bateaux and canoes up the St. Lawrence, the Richelieu, the Genesee, and other streams which gave access from the interior of the United States to the new Canadian land. The British government did its best to supply the wants of the population suddenly thrown upon its charitable care, but, despite all that could be done for them in the way of food and means of fighting the wilderness, they suffered naturally a great deal of hardship. The most influential immigration found its way to the maritime provinces, where many received congenial employment and adequate salaries in the new government of New Brunswick. Many others, with the wrecks of their fortunes or the pecuniary aid granted them by the British government, were able to make comfortable homes and cultivate estates in the valleys of the St. John and Annapolis, and in other fertile parts of the lower provinces. Of the large population that founded Shelburne a few returned to the United States, but the greater number scattered all over the provinces. The settlers in Upper Canada had to suffer many trials for years after their arrival, and especially in a year of famine, when large numbers had to depend on wild fruits and roots. Indeed, had it not been for the fish and game which were found in some, but not in all, places, starvation and death would have been the lot of many hundreds of helpless people.
Many of the refugees could trace their descent to the early immigration that founded the colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay. Some were connected with the Cavalier and Church families of Virginia. Others were of the blood of persecuted Huguenots and German Protestants from the Rhenish or Lower Palatinate. Not a few were Highland Scotchmen, who had been followers of the Stuarts, and yet fought for King George and the British connection during the American revolution. Among the number were notable Anglican clergymen, eminent judges and lawyers, and probably one hundred graduates of Harvard, Yale, King's, Pennsylvania, and William and Mary Colleges. In the records of industrial enterprise, of social and intellectual progress, of political development for a hundred years, we find the names of many eminent men, sprung from these people, to whom Canada owes a deep debt of gratitude for the services they rendered her in the most critical period of her chequered history.
CHAPTER IV.
DEVELOPMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE INSTITUTIONS (1784—1812).
SECTION I—Beginnings of the provinces of New Brunswick, Lower Canada and Upper Canada.
On the 16th August, 1784, as a consequence of the coming of over ten thousand Loyalists to the valley of the St. John River, a new province was formed out of that portion of the ancient limits of Acadia, which extended northward from the isthmus of Chignecto to the province of Quebec, and eastward from the uncertain boundary of the St. Croix to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It received its present name in honour of the Brunswick-Luneburg or Hanoverian line which had given a royal dynasty to England, and its first governor was Colonel Thomas Carleton, a brother of the distinguished governor-general, whose name is so intimately associated with the fortunes of Canada during a most critical period of its history. The first executive council, which was also the legislative council, comprised some of the most eminent men of the Loyalist migration. For instance, George Duncan Ludlow; who had been a judge of the supreme court of New York; Jonathan Odell, the famous satirist and divine; William Hazen, a merchant of high reputation, who had large interests on the St. John River from 1763, and had proved his fidelity to the crown at a time when his countrymen at Maugerville were disposed to join the revolutionary party; Gabriel G. Ludlow, previously a colonel in a royal regiment; Edward Winslow, Daniel Bliss and Isaac Allen, all of whom had borne arms in the royal service and had suffered the loss of valuable property, confiscated by the successful rebels.
The constitution of 1784 provided for an assembly of twenty-six members who were elected in 1785, and met for the first time on the 3rd of January, 1786, at the Mallard House, a plain two-storey building on the north side of King Street. The city of St. John ceased to be the seat of government in 1787, when the present capital, Fredericton, first known as St. Anne's, was chosen. Of the twenty-six members elected to this assembly, twenty-three were Loyalists, and the same class necessarily continued for many years to predominate in the legislature. The first speaker was Amos Botsford, the pioneer of the Loyalist migration to New Brunswick, whose grandson occupied the same position for a short time in the senate of the Dominion of Canada.
Coming to the province of Lower Canada we find it contained at this time a population of about a hundred thousand souls, of whom six thousand lived in Quebec and Montreal respectively. Only two thousand English-speaking persons resided in the province, almost entirely in the towns. Small as was the British minority, it continued that agitation for an assembly which had been commenced long before the passage of the Quebec act. A nominated council did not satisfy the political ambition of this class, who obtained little support from the French Canadian people. The objections of the latter arose from the working of the act itself. Difficulties had grown up in the administration of the law, chiefly in consequence of its being entrusted exclusively to men acquainted only with English jurisprudence, and not disposed to comply with the letter and intention of the imperial statute. As a matter of practice, French law was only followed as equity suggested; and the consequence was great legal confusion in the province. A question had also arisen as to the legality of the issue of writs of habeas corpus, and it was eventually necessary to pass an ordinance to remove all doubts on this important point.
The Loyalist settlers on the St. Lawrence and Niagara Rivers sent a petition in 1785 to the home government, praying for the establishment of a new district west of the River Beaudette "with the blessings of British laws and British government, and of exemption from French tenure of property." While such matters were under the consideration of the imperial authorities, Sir Guy Carleton, once more governor-general of Canada, and lately raised to the peerage as Lord Dorchester, established, in 1788, five new districts for the express object of providing for the temporary government of the territory where the Loyalists had settled. These districts were known as Luneburg, Mecklenburg, Nassau and Hesse, in the western country, and Gaspé in the extreme east of the province of Quebec, where a small number of the same class of people had also found new homes. Townships, ranging from eighty to forty thousand acres each, were also surveyed within these districts and parcelled out with great liberality among the Loyalists. Magistrates wore appointed to administer justice with the simplest possible machinery at a time when men trained in the law were not available.
The grants of land made to the Loyalists and their children were large, and in later years a considerable portion passed into the hands of speculators who bought them up at nominal sums. It was in connection with these grants that the name of "United Empire Loyalists" originated. An order-in-council was passed on the 9th of November, 1780, in accordance with the wish of Lord Dorchester "to put a mark of honour upon the families who had adhered to the unity of the empire and joined the royal standard in America before the treaty of separation in 1783." Accordingly the names of all persons falling under this designation were to be recorded as far as possible, in order that "their posterity may be discriminated from future settlers in the parish lists and rolls of militia of their respective districts, and other public remembrances of the province."
The British cabinet, of which Mr. Pitt, the famous son of the Earl of Chatham, was first minister, now decided to divide the province of Quebec into two districts, with separate legislatures and governments. Lord Grenville, while in charge of the department of colonial affairs, wrote in 1789 to Lord Dorchester that the "general object of the plan is to assimilate the constitution of the province to that of Great Britain as nearly as the differences arising from the names of the people and from the present situation of the province will admit." He also emphatically expressed the opinion that "a considerable degree of attention is due to the prejudices and habits of the French inhabitants, and every degree of caution should be used to continue to them the enjoyment of those civil and religious rights which were secured to them by the capitulation of the province, or have since been granted by the liberal and enlightened spirit of the British government." When the bill for the formation of the two provinces of Upper Canada and Lower Canada came before the house of commons, Mr. Adam Lymburner, an influential merchant of Quebec, appeared at the Bar and ably opposed the separation "as dangerous in every point of view to British interests in America, and to the safety, tranquillity and prosperity of the inhabitants of the province of Quebec" He pressed the repeal of the Quebec act in its entirety and the enactment of a perfectly new constitution "unclogged and unembarrassed with any laws prior to this period" He professed to represent the views "of the most intelligent and respectable of the French Canadians"; but their antagonism was not directed against the Quebec act in itself, but against the administration of the law, influenced as this was by the opposition of the British people to the French civil code. Nor does it appear, as Mr. Lymburner asserted, that the western Loyalists were hostile to the formation of two distinct provinces. He represented simply the views of the English-speaking inhabitants of Lower Canada, who believed that the proposed division would place them in a very small minority in the legislature and, as the issue finally proved, at the mercy of the great majority of the French Canadian representatives, while on the other hand the formation of one large province extending from Gaspé to the head of the great lakes would ensure an English representation sufficiently formidable to lessen the danger of French Canadian domination. However, the British government seems to have been actuated by a sincere desire to do justice to the French Canadians and the Loyalists of the upper province at one and the same time. When introducing the bill in the house of commons on the 7th March, 1791, Mr. Pitt expressed the hope that "the division would remove the differences of opinion which had arisen between the old and new inhabitants, since each province would have the right of enacting laws desired in its own house of assembly." He believed a division to be essential, as "otherwise he could not reconcile the clashing interests known to exist." Mr. Burke was of opinion that "to attempt to amalgamate two populations composed of races of men diverse in language, laws and customs, was a complete absurdity", and he consequently approved of the division. Mr. Fox, from whom Burke became alienated during this debate, looked at the question in an entirely different light and was strongly of opinion that "it was most desirable to see the French and English inhabitants coalesce into one body, and the different distinctions of people extinguished for ever."
The Constitutional act of 1791 established in each province a legislative council and assembly, with powers to make laws. The legislative council was to be appointed by the king for life, in Upper Canada it was to consist of not less than seven, and in Lower Canada of not less than fifteen members. The sovereign might, if he thought proper, annex hereditary titles of honour to the right of being summoned to the legislative council in either province—a provision which was never brought into operation. The whole number of members in the assembly of Upper Canada was not to be less than sixteen; in Lower Canada not less than fifty—to be chosen by a majority of votes in either case. The British parliament reserved to itself the right of levying and collecting customs-duties, for the regulation of navigation and commerce to be carried on between the two provinces, or between either of them and any other part of the British dominions or any foreign country. Parliament also reserved the power of directing the payment of these duties, but at the same time left the exclusive apportionment of all moneys levied in this way to the legislature, which could apply them to such public uses as it might deem expedient. The free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion was guaranteed permanently. The king was to have the right to set apart, for the use of the Protestant clergy in the colony, a seventh part of all uncleared crown lands. The governor might also be empowered to erect parsonages and endow them, and to present incumbents or ministers of the Church of England. The English criminal law was to obtain in both provinces.
In the absence of Lord Dorchester in England, the duty devolved on Major-General Alured Clarke, as lieutenant-governor, to bring the Lower Canadian constitution into force by a proclamation on the 18th February, 1791. On the 7th May, in the following year, the new province of Lower Canada was divided into fifty electoral districts, composed of twenty-one counties, the towns of Montreal and Quebec, and the boroughs of Three Rivers and William Henry (now Sorel). The elections to the assembly took place in June, and a legislative council of fifteen influential Canadians was appointed. The new legislature was convoked "for the despatch of business" on the 17th December, in the same year, in an old stone building known as the Bishop's Palace, which stood on a rocky eminence in the upper town of the old capital.
Chief Justice Smith took the chair of the legislative council under appointment by the crown, and the assembly elected as its speaker Mr. Joseph Antome Panet, an eminent advocate, who was able to speak the two languages. In the house there were only sixteen members of British origin—and in later parliaments there was even a still smaller representation—while the council was nearly divided between the two nationalities. When the house proceeded to business, one of its first acts was to order that all motions, bills and other proceedings should be put in the two languages. We find in the list of French Canadian members of the two houses representatives of the most ancient and distinguished families of the province. A descendant of Pierre Boucher, governor of Three Rivers in 1653, and the author of a rare history of Canada, sat in the council of 1792 just as a Boucherville sits now-a-days in the senate of the Dominion. A Lotbinière had been king's councillor in 1680. A Chaussegros de Lery had been an engineer in the royal colonial corps; a Lanaudière had been an officer in the Carignan regiment in 1652; a Salaberry was a captain in the royal navy, and his family won further honours on the field of Chateauguay in the war of 1812-15, when the soil of Lower Canada was invaded. A Taschereau had been a royal councillor in 1732. The names of Belestre, Valtric, Bonne, Rouville, St. Ours, and Duchesnay, are often met in the annals of the French régime, and show the high character of the representation in the first parliament of Lower Canada.
The village of Newark was chosen as the capital of Upper Canada by Colonel (afterwards Major-General) Simcoe, the first lieutenant-governor of the province. He had served with much distinction during the revolution as the commander of the Queen's Rangers, some of whom had settled in the Niagara district. He was remarkable for his decision of character and for his ardent desire to establish the principles of British government in the new province. He was a sincere friend of the Loyalists, whose attachment to the crown he had had many opportunities of appreciating during his career in the rebellious colonies, and, consequently, was an uncompromising opponent of the new republic and of the people who were labouring to make it a success on the other side of the border. The new parliament met in a wooden building nearly completed on the sloping bank of the river, at a spot subsequently covered by a rampart of Fort George, which was constructed by Governor Simcoe on the surrender of Fort Niagara. A large boulder has been placed on the top of the rampart to mark the site of the humble parliament house of Upper Canada, which had to be eventually demolished to make place for new fortifications. The sittings of the first legislature were not unfrequently held under a large tent set up in front of the house, and having an interesting history of its own, since it had been carried around the world by the famous navigator, Captain Cook.
As soon as Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe assumed the direction of the government, he issued a proclamation dividing the province of Upper Canada into nineteen counties, some of winch were again divided into ridings for the purpose of electing the sixteen representatives to which the province was entitled under the act of 1791. One of the first acts of the legislature was to change the names of the divisions, proclaimed in 1788, to Eastern, Midland, Home, and Western Districts, which received additions in the course of years until they were entirely superseded by the county organisations. These districts were originally intended for judicial and legal purposes.
The legislature met under these humble circumstances at Newark on the 17th September, 1792. Chief Justice Osgoode was the speaker of the council, and Colonel John Macdonell, of Aberchalder, who had gallantly served in the royal forces during the revolution, was chosen presiding officer of the assembly. Besides him, there were eleven Loyalists among the sixteen members of the lower house. In the council of nine members there were also several Loyalists, the most prominent being the Honourable Richard Cartwright, the grandfather of the minister of trade and commerce in the Dominion ministry of 1896-1900.
SECTION 2.—Twenty years of political development (1792-1812).
The political conditions of the two decades from 1792 until 1812, when war broke out between England and the United States, were for the greater part of the time quite free from political agitation, and the representatives of the people in both the provinces of Canada were mostly occupied with the consideration of measures of purely provincial and local import. Nevertheless a year or two before the close of this period we can see in the province of Lower Canada premonitions of that irrepressible conflict between the two houses—one elected by the people and the other nominated by and under the influence of the crown—which eventually clogged the machinery of legislation. We can also see the beginnings of that strife of races which ultimately led to bloodshed and the suspension of the constitution given to Lower Canada in 1791.
In 1806 Le Canadien, published in the special interest of "Nos institutions, notre langue, et nos lois," commenced that career of bitter hostility to the government which steadily inflamed the antagonism between the races. The arrogance of the principal officials, who had the ear of the governor, and practically engrossed all the influence in the management of public affairs, alienated the French Canadians, who came to believe that they were regarded by the British as an inferior race. As a matter of fact, many of the British inhabitants themselves had no very cordial feelings towards the officials, whose social exclusiveness offended all who did not belong to their special "set." In those days the principal officials were appointed by the colonial office and the governor-general, and had little or no respect for the assembly, on which they depended in no wise for their continuance in office or their salaries. The French Canadians eventually made few distinctions among the British but looked on them as, generally speaking, enemies to their institutions.
It was unfortunate, at a time when great discretion and good temper were so essential, that Sir James Craig should have been entrusted with the administration of the government of Lower Canada. The critical state of relations with the United States no doubt influenced his appointment, which, from a purely military point of view, was excellent. As it was, however, his qualities as a soldier were not called into requisition, while his want of political experience, his utter incapacity to understand the political conditions of the country, his supreme indifference to the wishes of the assembly, made his administration an egregious failure. Indeed it may he said that it was during his time that the seed was sown for the growth of that political and racial antagonism which led to the rebellion of 1837. It is not possible to exaggerate the importance of the consequences of his unjustifiable dismissal of Mr. Speaker Panet, and other prominent French Canadians, from the militia on the ground that they had an interest in the Canadien, or of his having followed up this very indiscreet act by the unwarrantable arrest of Mr. Bedard and some other persons, on the charge that they were the authors or publishers of what he declared to be treasonable writings. It is believed that the governor's action was largely influenced by the statements and advice of Chief Justice Sewell, the head of the legislative council and the official class. Several persons were released when they expressed regret for the expression of any opinions considered extreme by the governor and his advisers, but Mr. Bedard remained in prison for a year rather than directly or indirectly admit that the governor had any justification for his arbitrary act Sir James attempted to obtain the approval of the home government; but his agent, a Mr. Ryland, a man of ability and suavity, prominent always in the official life of the country, signally failed to obtain the endorsement of his master's action. He was unable to secure a promise that the constitution of 1791 should be repealed, and the legislative council of the Quebec act again given the supremacy in the province. Mr. Bedard was released just before the governor left the country, with the declaration that "his detention had been a matter of precaution and not of punishment"—by no means a manly or graceful withdrawal from what was assuredly a most untenable position from the very first moment Mr. Bedard was thrown into prison. Sir James Craig left the province a disappointed man, and died in England a few months after his return, from the effects of an incurable disease to which he had been a victim for many years. He was hospitable, generous and charitable, but the qualities of a soldier dominated all his acts of civil government.
In the other provinces, happily, there were no racial differences to divide the community and aggravate those political disputes that are sure to arise in the working of representative institutions in a British country. In Upper Canada for years the questions under discussion were chiefly connected with the disposal of the public lands, which in early times were too lavishly granted by Simcoe; and this led to the bringing in for a while of some undesirable immigrants from the United States —undesirable because they were imbued with republican and levelling ideas by no means favourable to the development and stability of English institutions of government. One of the first acts of the legislature was the establishment of courts of law and equity, in accordance with the practice and principles of English jurisprudence. Another very important measure was one for the legalisation of marriages which had been irregularly performed during early times in the absence of the clergy of the Anglican Church by justices of the peace, and even the officers in charge of military posts. Magistrates were still allowed to perform the marriage ceremony according to the ritual of the Church of England, when the services of a clergyman of that denomination were not available. Not until 1830 were more liberal provisions passed and the clergy of any recognised creed permitted to unite persons legally in wedlock.
It was in the second session of the first parliament of Upper Canada, where the Loyalists were in so huge a majority, that an act was passed "to prevent the further introduction of slaves and to limit the term of contract for servitude within this province." A considerable number of slave servants accompanied their Loyalist masters to the provinces at the end of the war, and we find for many years after in the newspapers advertisements relating to runaway servants of this class. The Loyalists in the maritime provinces, like the same class in Upper Canada, never gave their approval to the continuance of slavery. So early as 1800 some prominent persons brought before the supreme court of New Brunswick the case of one Nancy Morton, a slave, on a writ of habeas corpus; and her right to freedom was argued by Ward Chipmim, one of the Loyalist makers of New Brunswick. Although the argument in this case was not followed by a judicial conclusion—the four judges being divided in opinion—slavery thereafter practically ceased to exist, not only in New Brunswick, but in the other maritime provinces, leaving behind it a memory so faint, that the mere suggestion that there ever was a slave in either of these provinces is very generally received with surprise, if not with incredulity.
The early history of representative government in Prince Edward Island is chiefly a dull narrative of political conflict between the governors and the assemblies, and of difficulties and controversies arising out of the extraordinary concessions of lands to a few proprietors, who generally infringed the conditions of their grants and retarded the settlement of the island. In New Brunswick the legislature was entirely occupied with the consideration of measures for the administration of justice and local affairs in an entirely new country. Party government had not yet declared itself, and the Loyalists who had founded the province controlled the legislature for many years until a spirit of liberalism and reform found full expression and led to the enlargement of the public liberty.
In Nova Scotia the Loyalists gradually acquired considerable influence in the government of the province, as the imperial authorities felt it incumbent on them to provide official positions for those men who had sacrificed so much for the empire. Their power was increased after the arrival of Governor John Wentworth—afterwards made a baronet—who had been the royal governor of New Hampshire, and had naturally a strong antipathy to democratic principles in any form. In his time there grew up an official oligarchy, chiefly composed of members of the legislative council, then embodying within itself executive, legislative and judicial powers. A Liberal party soon arose in Nova Scotia, not only among the early New England settlers of the time of Governor Lawrence, but among the Loyalists themselves, for it is inevitable that wherever we find an English people, the spirit of popular liberty and the determination to enjoy self-government in a complete sense will sooner or later assert itself among all classes of men. The first prominent leader of the opposition to the Tory methods of the government was one William Cottnam Tonge, who was for some years in the employ of the naval department. Sir John Wentworth carried his hostility to the extent of dismissing him from his naval office and also of refusing to accept him as speaker of the assembly—the first example in colonial history of an extreme exercise of the royal prerogative by a governor. Mr. Tonge's only crime appears to have been his bold assertion from time to time of the privileges of the house of assembly, as the guardian of the revenues and expenditures, against the interference of the governor and council. We find in Nova Scotia, as in the other provinces, during the period in question, the elements of perpetual discord, which found more serious expression after the war of 1812-15, and led to important constitutional changes.
The governors of those times became, from the very nature of their position, so many provincial autocrats, brought constantly into conflict with the popular body, and unable to conceive any system of government possible that did not place the province directly under the control of the imperial authorities, to whom appeals must be made in the most trivial cases of doubt or difficulty. The representative of the crown brooked no interference on the part of the assembly with what he considered his prerogatives and rights, and as a rule threw himself into the arms of the council, composed of the official oligarchy. In the course of time, the whole effort of the Liberal or Reform party, which gathered strength after 1815, was directed against the power of the legislative council. We hear nothing in the assemblies or the literature of the period under review in advocacy of the system of parliamentary or responsible government which was then in existence in the parent state and which we now enjoy in British North America. In fact, it was not until the beginning of the fourth decade of the nineteenth century that the Liberal politicians of Nova Scotia, like those of Upper Canada, recognised that the real remedy for existing political grievances was to be found in the harmonious operation of the three branches of the legislature. Even then we look in vain for an enunciation of this essential principle of representative government in the speeches or writings of a single French Canadian from 1791 until 1838, when the constitution of Lower Canada was suspended as a result of rebellion.
During the twenty years of which I am writing the government of Canada had much reason for anxiety on account of the unsatisfactory state of the relations between Great Britain and the United States, and of the attempts of French emissaries after the outbreak of the revolution in France to stir up sedition in Lower Canada. One of the causes of the war of 1812-15 was undoubtedly the irritation that was caused by the retention of the western posts by Great Britain despite the stipulation in the definitive treaty of peace to give them up "with all convenient speed." This policy of delay was largely influenced by the fact that the new republic had failed to take effective measures for the restitution of the estates of the Loyalists or for the payment of debts due to British creditors; but in addition there was probably still, as in 1763 and 1774, a desire to control the fur-trade and the Indians of the west, who claimed that the lands between the Canadian frontier and the Ohio were exclusively their hunting-grounds, not properly included within the territory ceded to the United States. Jay's treaty, arranged in 1794, with the entire approval of Washington, who thereby incurred the hostility of the anti-British party, was a mere temporary expedient for tiding over the difficulties between England and the United States. Its most important result so far as it affected Canada was the giving up in 1797 of the western posts including Old Fort Niagara. It became then necessary to remove the seat of government from Niagara, as an insecure position, and York, which regained its original Indian name of Toronto in 1834, was chosen as the capital by Lord Dorchester in preference to a place suggested by Simcoe on the Tranche, now the Thames, near where London now stands. The second parliament of Upper Canada met in York on the first of June, 1797, when Mr. Russell, who had been secretary to Sir Henry Clinton during the American war, was administrator of the government after the departure of Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe from a province whose interests he had so deeply at heart.
After the declaration of war against England by the republican convention of France in 1793, French agents found their way into the French parishes of Lower Canada, and endeavoured to make the credulous and ignorant habitants believe that France would soon regain dominion in her old colony. During General Prescott's administration, one McLane, who was said to be not quite mentally responsible for his acts, was convicted at Quebec for complicity in the designs of French agents, and was executed near St. John's gate with all the revolting incidents of a traitor's death in those relentless times. His illiterate accomplice, Frechétte, was sentenced to imprisonment for life, but was soon released on the grounds of his ignorance of the serious crime he was committing. No doubt in these days some restlessness existed in the French Canadian districts, and the English authorities found it difficult for a time to enforce the provisions of the militia act. Happily for the peace and security of Canada, the influence of the Bishop and Roman Catholic clergy, who looked with horror on the murderous acts of the revolutionists of France, was successfully exerted for the support of British rule, whose justice and benignity their church had felt ever since the conquest. The name of Bishop Plessis must always be mentioned in terms of sincere praise by every English writer who reviews the history of those trying times, when British interests would have been more than once in jeopardy had it not been for the loyal conduct of this distinguished prelate and the priests under his direction.
I shall now proceed to narrate the events of the unfortunate war which broke out in 1812 between England and the United States, as a result of the unsettled relations of years, and made Canada a battle ground on which were given many illustrations of the patriotism and devotion of the Canadian people, whose conquest, the invaders thought, would be a very easy task.
CHAPTER V.
THE WAR OF 1812—15.
SECTION I.—Origin of the war between England and the United States.
The causes of the war of 1812-15 must be sought in the history of Europe and the relations between England and the United States for several decades before it actually broke out. Great Britain was engaged in a supreme struggle not only for national existence but even for the liberties of Europe, from the moment when Napoleon, in pursuance of his overweening ambition, led his armies over the continent on those victorious marches which only ended amid the ice and snow of Russia. Britain's battles were mainly to be fought on the sea where her great fleet made her supreme. The restriction of all commerce that was not British was a necessary element in the assertion of her naval superiority. If neutral nations were to be allowed freely to carry the produce of the colonies of Powers with whom Great Britain was at war, then they were practically acting as allies of her enemies, and were liable to search and seizure. For some time, however, Great Britain thought it expedient to concur in the practice that when a cargo was trans-shipped in the United States, and paid a duty there, it became to all intents and purposes American property and might be carried to a foreign country and there sold, as if it were the actual produce of the republic itself. This became a very profitable business to the merchants of the United States, as a neutral nation, during the years when Great Britain was at war with France, since they controlled a large proportion of all foreign commerce. Frauds constantly occurred during the continuance of this traffic, and at last British statesmen felt the injury to their commerce was so great that the practice was changed to one which made American vessels liable to be seized and condemned in British prize courts whenever it was clear that their cargoes were not American produce, but were actually purchased at the port of an enemy. Even provisions purchased from an enemy or its colonies were considered "contraband of war" on the ground that they afforded actual aid and encouragement to an enemy. The United States urged at first that only military stores could fall under this category, and eventually went so far as to assert the principle that under all circumstances "free ships make free goods," and that neutral ships had a right to carry any property, even that of a nation at war with another power, and to trade when and where they liked without fear of capture. England, however, would not admit in those days of trial principles which would practically make a neutral nation an ally of her foe. She persisted in restricting the commerce of the United States by all the force she had upon the sea.
This restrictive policy, which touched the American pocket and consequently the American heart so deeply, was complicated by another question of equal, if not greater, import. The forcible impressment of men to man the British fleet had been for many years a necessary evil in view of the national emergency, and of the increase in the mercantile marine which attracted large numbers to its service. Great abuses were perpetrated in the operation of this harsh method of maintaining an efficient naval force, and there was no part of the British Isles where the presence of a press gang did not bring dismay into many a home. Great Britain, then and for many years later, upheld to an extreme degree the doctrine of perpetual allegiance; she refused to recognise the right of any of her citizens to divest themselves of their national fealty and become by naturalisation the subject of a foreign power or a citizen of the United States Such a doctrine was necessarily most obnoxious to the government and people of a new republic like the United States, whose future development rested on the basis of a steady and large immigration, which lost much of its strength and usefulness as long as the men who came into the country were not recognised as American citizens at home and abroad. Great Britain claimed the right, as a corollary of this doctrine of indefeasible allegiance, to search the neutral ships of the United States during the war with France, to enquire into the nationality of the seaman on board of those vessels, to impress all those whom her officers had reason to consider British subjects by birth, and to pay no respect to the fact that they may have been naturalised in the country of their adoption. The assertion of the right to search a neutral vessel and to impress seamen who were British subjects has in these modern times been condemned as a breach of the sound principle, that a right of search can only be properly exercised in the case of a neutral's violation of his neutrality—that is to say, the giving of aid to one of the parties to the war The forcible abduction of a seaman under the circumstances stated was simply an unwarrantable attempt to enforce municipal law on board a neutral vessel, which was in effect foreign territory, to be regarded as sacred and inviolate except in a case where it was brought under the operation of a recognised doctrine of international law. Great Britain at that critical period of her national existence would not look beyond the fact that the acts of the United States as a neutral were most antagonistic to the energetic efforts she was making to maintain her naval supremacy during the European crisis created by Napoleon's ambitious designs.
The desertion of British seamen from British ships, for the purpose of finding refuge in the United States and then taking service in American vessels, caused great irritation in Great Britain and justified, in the opinion of some statesmen and publicists who only regarded national necessities, the harsh and arbitrary manner in which English officials stopped and searched American shipping on the high seas, seized men whom they claimed to be deserters, and impressed any whom they asserted to be still British subjects. In 1807 the British frigate "Leopard," acting directly under the orders of the admiral at Halifax, even ventured to fire a broadside into the United States cruiser "Chesapeake" a few miles from Chesapeake Bay, killed and wounded a number of her crew, and then carried off several sailors who were said to be, and no doubt were, deserters from the English service and who were the primary cause of the detention of this American man-of-war. For this unjustifiable act England subsequently made some reparation, but nevertheless it rankled for years in the minds of the party hostile to Great Britain and helped to swell the list of grievances which the American government in the course of years accumulated against the parent state as a reason for war.
The difficulties between England and the United States, which culminated in war before the present century was far advanced, were also intensified by disputes which commenced soon after the treaty of 1783. I have already shown that for some years the north-west posts were still retained by the English on the ground, it is understood, that the claims of English creditors, and especially those of the Loyalists, should be first settled before all the conditions of the treaty could be carried out. The subsequent treaty of 1794, negotiated by Chief Justice Jay, adjusted these and other questions, and led for some years to a better understanding with Great Britain, but at the same time led to a rupture of friendly relations with the French Directory, who demanded the repeal of that treaty as in conflict with the one made with France in 1778, and looked for some tangible evidence of sympathetic interest with the French revolution. The war that followed with the French republic was insignificant in its operations, and was immediately terminated by Napoleon when he overthrew the Directory, and seized the government for his own ambitious objects. Subsequently, the administration of the United States refused to renew the Jay Treaty when it duly expired, and as a consequence the relatively amicable relations that had existed between the Republic and England again became critical, since American commerce and shipping were exposed to all the irritating measures that England felt compelled under existing conditions to carry out in pursuance of the policy of restricting the trade of neutral vessels. Several attempts were made by the British government, between the expiry of the Jay Treaty and the actual rupture of friendly relations with the United States, to come to a better understanding with respect to some of the questions in dispute, but the differences between the two Powers were so radical that all negotiations came to naught. Difficulties were also complicated by the condition of political parties in the American republic and the ambition of American statesmen. When the democratic republicans or "Strict constructionists," as they have been happily named, with Jefferson at their head, obtained office, French ideas came into favour; while the federalists or "Broad constitutionalists," of whom Washington, Hamilton and Adams had been the first exponents, were anxious to keep the nation free from European complications and to settle international difficulties by treaty and not by war. But this party was in a hopeless minority, during the critical times when international difficulties were resolving themselves into war, and was unable to influence public opinion sufficiently to make negotiations for the maintenance of peace successful, despite the fact that it had a considerable weight in the states of New England.
The international difficulties of the United States entered upon a critical condition when Great Britain, in her assertion of naval supremacy and restricted commerce as absolutely essential to her national security, issued an order-in-council which declared a strict blockade of the European coast from Brest to the Elbe. Napoleon retaliated with the Berlin decree, which merely promulgated a paper blockade of the British Isles. Then followed the later British orders-in-council, which prevented the shipping of the United States from trading with any country where British vessels could not enter, and allowed them only to trade with other European ports where they made entries and paid duties in English custom-houses. Napoleon increased the duties of neutral commerce by the Milan decree of 1807, which ordered the seizure of all neutral vessels which might have been searched by English cruisers. These orders meant the ruin of American commerce, which had become so profitable; and the Washington government attempted to retaliate, first by forbidding the importation of manufactures from England and her colonies, and, when this effort was ineffective, by declaring an embargo in its own ports, which had only the result of still further crippling American commerce at home and abroad. Eventually, in place of this unwise measure, which, despite its systematic evasion, brought serious losses to the whole nation and seemed likely to result in civil war in the east, where the discontent was greatest, a system of non-intercourse with both England and France was adopted, to last so long as either should press its restrictive measures against the republic, but this new policy of retaliation hardly impeded American commerce, of which the profits were far greater than the risks. The leaders of the Democratic party were now anxious to conciliate France, and endeavoured to persuade the nation that Napoleon had practically freed the United States from the restrictions to which it so strongly objected. It is a matter beyond dispute that the French decrees were never exactly annulled; and the Emperor was pursuing an insidious policy which confiscated American vessels in French ports at the very moment he was professing friendship with the United States. His object was to force the government of that country into war with England, and, unfortunately for its interests, its statesmen lent themselves to his designs.
The Democratic leaders, determined to continue in power, fanned the flame against England, whose maritime superiority enabled her to inflict the greatest injury on American shipping and commerce. The governing party looked to the south and west for their principal support. In these sections the interests were exclusively agricultural, while in New England, where the Federalists were generally in the majority, the commercial and maritime elements predominated. In Kentucky, Ohio, and other states there was a strong feeling against England on account of the current belief that the English authorities in Canada had tampered with the Indian tribes and induced them to harass the settlers until Harrison, on the eve of the war of 1812, effectually cowed them. It is, however, now well established by the Canadian archives that Sir James Craig, when governor-general in 1807, actually warned the Washington government of the restlessness of the western Indians, and of the anxiety of the Canadian authorities to avoid an Indian war in the north-west, which might prejudicially operate against the western province. This fact was not, however, generally known, and the feeling against Canada and England was kept alive by the dominant party in the United States by the disclosure that one John Henry had been sent by the Canadian government in 1808 to ascertain the sentiment of the people of New England with respect to the relations between the two countries and the maintenance of peace. Henry's correspondence was really quite harmless, but when it had been purchased from him by Madison, on the refusal of the imperial government to buy his silence, it served the temporary purpose of making the people of the west believe that England was all the while intriguing against the national interests, and endeavouring to create a discontent which might end in civil strife. Under these circumstances the southern leaders, Clay of Kentucky, and Calhoun of South Carolina, who always showed an inveterate animosity against England, forced Madison, then anxious to be re-elected president, to send a warlike message to congress, which culminated in a formal declaration of hostilities on the 18th of June, 1812, only one day later than the repeal of the obnoxious order-in-council by England. When the repeal became known some weeks later in Canada and the United States, the province of Upper Canada had been actually invaded by Hull, and the government of the United States had no desire whatever to desist from warlike operations, which, they confidently believed, would end in the successful occupation of Canada at a time when England was unable, on account of her European responsibilities, to extend to its defenders effective assistance.
SECTION 2.—Canada during the war.
In 1812 there were five hundred thousand people living in the provinces of British North America. Of this number, the French people of Lower Canada made up at least one half. These people had some grievances, and political agitators, notably the writers of the Canadien, were creating jealousies and rivalries between the French and English races chiefly on the ground of the dominant influence of the British minority in the administration of public affairs. On the whole, however, the country was prosperous and the people generally contented with British rule, the freedom of which presented such striking contrast to the absolutism of the old French régime. The great majority of the eighty thousand inhabitants of Upper or Western Canada were Loyalists or descendants of Loyalists, who had become deeply attached to their new homes, whilst recalling with feelings of deep bitterness the sufferings and trials of the American revolution. This class was naturally attached to British rule and hostile to every innovation which had the least semblance of American republicanism. In the western part of the province of Upper Canada there was, however, an American element composed of people who had been brought into the country by the liberal grants of land made to settlers, and who were not animated by the high sentiments of the Loyalists of 1783 and succeeding years. These people, for some years previous to 1812, were misled by political demagogues like Wilcox and Marcle, both of whom deserted to the enemy soon after the outbreak of the war. Emissaries from the republic were busily engaged for months, we now know, in fomenting a feeling against England among these later immigrants, and in persuading them that the time was close at hand when Canada would be annexed to the federal republic. Some attempts were even made to create discontent among the French Canadians, but no success appears to have followed these efforts in a country where the bishop, priests and leading men of the rural communities perfectly appreciated the value of British connection.
The statesmen of the United States, who were responsible for the war, looked on the provinces as so many weak communities which could be easily invaded and conquered by the republican armies. Upper Canada, with its long and exposed frontier and its small and scattered population, was considered utterly indefensible and almost certain to be successfully occupied by the invading forces. There was not a town of one thousand souls in the whole of that province, and the only forts of any pretension were those on the Niagara frontier. Kingston was a fortified town of some importance in the eastern part of the province, but Toronto had no adequate means of defence. At the commencement of the war there were only fourteen hundred and fifty regular troops in the whole country west of Montreal, and these men were scattered at Kingston, York, Niagara, Chippewa, Erie, Amherstburg, and St. Joseph. The total available militia did not exceed four thousand men, the majority of whom had little or no knowledge of military discipline, and were not even in the possession of suitable arms and accoutrements, though, happily, all were animated by the loftiest sentiments of courage and patriotism. In the lower provinces of Eastern Canada and Nova Scotia there was a considerable military force, varying in the aggregate from four to five thousand men. The fortifications of Quebec were in a tolerable state of repair, but the citadel which dominates Halifax was in a dilapidated condition. The latter port was, however, the rendezvous of the English fleet, which always afforded adequate protection to British interests on the Atlantic coasts of British North America, despite the depredations of privateers and the successes attained during the first months of the war by the superior tonnage and equipment of the frigates of the republic. But the hopes that were entertained by the war party in the United States could be gathered from the speeches of Henry Clay of Kentucky, who believed that the issue would be favourable to their invading forces, who would even "negotiate terms of peace at Quebec or Halifax."
The United States had now a population of at least six millions and a half of whites. It was estimated that during the war the government had a militia force of between four and five hundred thousand men available for service, while the regular army amounted to thirty-four thousand officers and privates. The forces that invaded Canada by the way of Lake Champlain, Sackett's Harbour, the Niagara and Detroit Rivers, were vastly superior in numbers to the Canadian army of defence, except in the closing months of the war, when Prevost had under his command a large body of Peninsular veterans. One condition was always in favour of Canada, and that was the sullen apathy or antagonism felt by the people of New England with respect to the war. Had they been in a different spirit, Lower Canada would have been in far greater danger of successful invasion and occupation than was the case at any time during the progress of the conflict. The famous march of Arnold on Quebec by the Kennebec and Chaudière Rivers might have been repeated with more serious consequences while Prevost, and not Guy Carleton, was in supreme command in the French Canadian province.
I can attempt to limn only the events which stand out most plainly on the graphic pages of this momentous epoch in Canadian history, and to pay a humble tribute to the memory of men, whose achievements saved Canada for England in those days of trial. From the beginning to the end of the conflict, Upper Canada was the principal battle ground upon which the combatants fought for the supremacy in North America. Its frontiers were frequently crossed, its territory was invaded, and its towns and villages were destroyed by the ruthless hand of a foe who entered the province not only with the sword of the soldier but even with the torch of the incendiary. The plan of operations at the outset of the campaign was to invade the province across the Niagara and Detroit Rivers, neither of which offered any real obstacles to the passage of a determined and well-managed army in the absence of strong fortifications, or a superior defensive force, at every vulnerable point along the Canadian banks. Queenston was to be a base of operations for a large force, which would overrun the whole province and eventually co-operate with troops which could come up from Lake Champlain and march on Montreal. The forces of the United States in 1812 acted with considerable promptitude as soon as war was officially declared, and had they been led by able commanders the result might have been most unfortunate for Canada. The resources for defence were relatively insignificant, and indecision and weakness were shown by Sir George Prevost, then commander-in-chief and governor-general—a well meaning man but wanting in ability as a military leader, who was also hampered by the vacillating counsels of the Liverpool administration, which did not believe in war until the province was actually invaded. It was fortunate for Canada that she had then at the head of the government in the upper province General Brock, who possessed decision of character and the ability to comprehend the serious situation of affairs at a critical juncture, when his superiors both in England and Canada did not appear to understand its full significance.
The assembly of Upper Canada passed an address giving full expression to the patriotic sentiments which animated all classes of people when the perilous state of affairs and the necessity for energetic action became apparent to the dullest minds. The Loyalists and their descendants, as well as other loyal people, rallied at the moment of danger to the support of Brock; and the immediate result of his decided orders was the capture of the post of Michillimackinac, which had been, ever since the days of the French régime, a position of great importance on the upper lakes. Then followed the ignominious surrender of General Hull and his army to Brock, and the consequent occupation of Detroit and the present state of Michigan by the British troops. Later, on the Niagara frontier, an army of invaders was driven from Queenston Heights, but this victory cost the life of the great English general, whose promptitude at the commencement of hostilities had saved the province. Among other brave men who fell with Brock was the attorney-general of the province, Lieutenant-Colonel John Macdonell, who was one of the general's aides. General Sheaffe, the son of a Loyalist, took command and drove the enemy across the river, in whose rapid waters many were drowned while struggling to save themselves from the pursuing British soldiery, determined to avenge the death of their honoured chief. A later attempt by General Smyth to invade Canadian territory opposite Black Rock on the Niagara River, was also attended with the same failure that attended the futile attempts to cross the Detroit and to occupy the heights of Queenston. At the close of 1812 Upper Canada was entirely free from the army of the republic, the Union Jack floated above the fort at Detroit, and the ambitious plan of invading the French province and seizing Montreal was given up as a result of the disasters to the enemy in the west. The party of peace in New England gathered strength, and the promoters of the war had no consolation except the triumphs obtained at sea by some heavily armed and well manned frigates of the United States to the surprise of the government and people of England, who never anticipated that their maritime superiority could be in any way endangered by a nation whose naval strength was considered so insignificant. But these victories of the republic on the ocean during the first year of the war were soon effaced by the records of the two subsequent years when "The Chesapeake" was captured by "The Shannon" and other successes of the British ships restored the prestige of England on the sea.
During the second year of the war the United States won some military and naval successes in the upper province, although the final results of the campaign were largely in favour of the defenders of Canada. The war opened with the defeat of General Winchester at Frenchtown on the River Raisins in the present state of Michigan; but this success, which was won by General Procter, was soon forgotten in the taking of York, the capital of the province, and the destruction of its public buildings. This event forced General Sheaffe to retire to Kingston, while General Vincent retreated to Burlington Heights as soon as the invading army occupied Fort George and dominated the Niagara frontier. Sir George Prevost showed his military incapacity at Sackett's Harbour, where he had it in his power to capture a post which was an important base of operations against the province. On the other hand Colonel George Macdonell made a successful attack on Ogdensburg and fittingly avenged the raid that an American force had made a short time previously on Elizabethtown, which was called Brockville not long afterwards in honour of the noted general. An advance of the invading army against General Vincent was checked by the memorable success won at Stoney Creek by Colonel Harvey and the surrender at Beaver Dams of Colonel Boerstler to Lieutenant Fitzgibbon, whose clever strategy enabled him to capture a large force of the enemy while in command of a few soldiers and Indians. When September arrived, the small, though all-important, British fleet on Lake Erie, under the command of Captain Barclay, sustained a fatal defeat at Put-in-Bay, and the United States vessels under Commodore Perry held full control of Lake Erie. A few weeks later, General Procter lost the reputation which he had won in January by his defeat of Winchester, and was beaten, under circumstances which disgraced him in the opinion of his superiors, on the River Thames not far from the Indian village of Moraviantown. The American forces were led by General Harrison, who had won some reputation in the Indian campaign in the north-west and who subsequently became, as his son in later times, a president of the United States.
It was in this engagement that the Shawenese chief, Tecumseh, was killed, in him England lost a faithful and brave ally. English prospects in the west were consequently gloomy for some time, until the autumn of 1813, when the auspicious tidings spread from the lakes to the Atlantic that the forces of the republic, while on their march to Montreal by the way of Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence, had been successfully met and repulsed at Chateauguay and Chrysler's Farm, two of the most memorable engagements of the war, when we consider the insignificant forces that checked the invasion and saved Canada at a most critical time.
In the last month of the same year Fort George was evacuated by the American garrison, but not before General McLure had shamelessly burned the pretty town of Niagara, and driven helpless women and children into the ice and snow of a Canadian winter. General Drummond, who was in command of the western army, retaliated by the capture of Fort Niagara and the destruction of all the villages on the American side of the river as far as Buffalo, then a very insignificant place. When the new year dawned the only Canadian place in possession of the enemy was Amherstburg on the western frontier.
The third and last year of the war was distinguished by the capture of Oswego and Prairie-des-Chiens by British expeditions; the repulse of a large force of the invaders at Lacolle Mills in Lower Canada; the surrender of Fort Erie to the enemy, the defeat of General Riall at Street's or Usher's Creek in the Niagara district, the hotly contested battle won at Lundy's Lane by Drummond, and the ignominious retreat from Plattsburg of Sir George Prevost, in command of a splendid force of peninsular veterans, after the defeat of Commodore Downey's fleet on Lake Champlain. Before the year closed and peace was proclaimed, Fort Erie was evacuated, the stars and stripes were driven from Lake Ontario, and all Canadian territory except Amherstburg was free from the invader. The capital of the United States had been captured by the British and its public buildings burned as a severe retaliation for the conduct of the invading forces at York, Niagara, Moraviantown, St. David's and Port Dover. Both combatants were by this time heartily tired of the war, and terms of peace were arranged by the treaty of Ghent at the close of 1814; but before the news reached the south, General Jackson repulsed General Packenham with heavy losses at New Orleans, and won a reputation which made him president a few years later.
The maritime provinces never suffered from invasion, but on the contrary obtained some advantages from the presence of large numbers of British men-of-war in their seaports, and the expenditure on military and naval supplies during the three years of war. Following the example of the Canadas, the assemblies of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia voted large sums of money and embodied the militia for active service or general purposes of defence. The assembly of New Brunswick, essentially the province of the Loyalists, declared in 1813 that the people were "ready and determined to repel every aggression which the infatuated policy of the American government may induce it to commit on the soil of New Brunswick." But the war was so unpopular in the state of Maine and other parts of New England that the provinces by the sea were comparatively safe from aggression and conflict. Soon after the commencement of hostilities the governors of Maine and New Brunswick issued proclamations which prevented hostilities for two years along their respective borders. In Nova Scotia there was much activity during the war, and letters of marque were issued to privateers which made many captures, and offered some compensation for the losses inflicted on the coasting and fishing interests by the same class of American vessels. In 1814 it was decided by the imperial authorities to break the truce which had practically left Maine free from invasion, and Sir John Sherbrooke, then governor of Nova Scotia, and Rear-Admiral Griffith took possession of Machias, Eastport, Moose, and other islands in Passamaquoddy Bay.
The people of the United States generally welcomed the end of a war which brought them neither honour nor profit and seemed likely to break the union into fragments in consequence of the hostility that had existed in New England through the conflict from the very beginning. The news of Prevost's retreat from Plattsburg no doubt hastened the decision of the British government to enter into negotiations for peace, which was settled on terms by no means favourable to Canadian interests. The question of the New Brunswick boundary might have been then adjusted on conditions which would have prevented at a later day the sacrifice of a large tract of territory in Maine which would be now of great value to the Dominion. The only advantage which accrued to the Canadians was a later convention which gave the people of the provinces full control of fisheries, ignorantly sacrificed by the treaty of 1783.
No class of the people of Canada contributed more to the effectiveness of the militia and the successful defence of the country than the descendants of the Loyalists, who formed so large and influential a portion of the English population of British North America. All the loyal settlements on the banks of the St. Lawrence, on the Niagara frontier, and on the shores of Lake Erie, sent many men to fight by the side of the regular British forces. Even aged men, who had borne arms in the revolutionary war, came forward with an enthusiasm which showed that age had not impaired their courage or patriotism, and although they were exempted from active service, they were found most useful in stationary duties at a time when Canada demanded the experience of such veterans. "Their lessons and example," wrote General Sheaffe, "will have a happy influence on the youth of the militia ranks." When Hull invaded the province and issued his boastful and threatening proclamation he used language which must have seemed a mockery to the children of the Loyalists. They remembered too well the sufferings of their fathers and brothers during "the stormy period of the revolution," and it seemed derisive to tell them now that they were to be "emancipated from tyranny and oppression and restored to the dignified station of free men." The proclamation issued by Governor Brock touched the loyal hearts of a people whose family histories were full of examples of "oppression and tyranny," and of the kind consideration and justice of England in their new homes. "Where," asked Brock, with the confidence of truth, "is the Canadian subject who can truly affirm to himself that he has been injured by the government in his person, his property, or his liberty? Where is to be found, in any part of the world, a growth so rapid in prosperity and wealth as this colony exhibits?" These people, to whom this special appeal was made at this national crisis, responded with a heartiness which showed that gratitude and affection lay deep in their hearts. Even the women worked in the field that their husbands, brothers and sons might drive the invaders from Canadian soil. The 104th Regiment, which accomplished a remarkable march of thirteen days in the depth of winter, from Fredericton to Quebec—a distance of three hundred and fifty miles—and lost only one man by illness, was composed of descendants of the loyal founders of New Brunswick. This march was accomplished practically without loss, while more than three hundred men were lost by Benedict Arnold in his expedition of 1777 against Quebec by the way of Kennebec—a journey not more dangerous or arduous than that so successfully accomplished by the New Brunswick Loyalists. In 1814 considerable numbers of seamen for service in the upper lakes passed through New Brunswick to Quebec, and were soon followed by several companies of the 8th or King's Regiment. The patriotism of the Loyalists of New Brunswick was shown by grants of public money and every other means in their power, while these expeditions were on their way to the seat of war in the upper provinces.
Historians and poets have often dwelt on the heroism of Laura Secord, daughter and wife of Loyalists, who made a perilous journey in 1814 through the Niagara district, and succeeded in warning Lieutenant Fitzgibbon of the approach of the enemy, thus enabling him with a few soldiers and Indians to surprise Colonel Boerstler near Beaver Dams and force him by clever strategy to surrender with nearly 600 men and several cannon. Even boys fled from home and were found fighting in the field. The Prince Regent, at the close of the war, expressly thanked the Canadian militia, who had "mainly contributed to the immediate preservation of the province and its future security." The Loyalists, who could not save the old colonies to England, did their full share in maintaining her supremacy in the country she still owned in the valley of the St. Lawrence and on the shores of the Atlantic.
As Bishop Plessis stimulated a patriotic sentiment among the French Canadians, so Vicar-General Macdonell of Glengarry, subsequently the first Roman Catholic bishop of Upper Canada, performed good service by assisting in the formation of a Glengarry regiment, and otherwise taking an active part in the defence of the province, where his will always be an honoured name. Equally indefatigable in patriotic endeavour was Bishop Strachan, then rector of York, who established "The Loyal and Patriotic Society," which did incalculable good by relieving the necessities of women and children, when the men were serving in the battlefield, by providing clothing and food for the soldiery, and otherwise contributing towards the comfort and succour of all those who were taking part in the public defences. Of the engagements of the war there are two which, above all others, possess features on which the historian must always like to dwell. The battle which was fought against such tremendous odds on the banks of the Chateauguay by less than a thousand French Canadians, led by Salaberry and Macdonell, recalls in some respects the defeat of Braddock in 1755. The disaster to the British forces near the Monongahela was mainly the result of the strategy of the Indians, who were dispersed in the woods which reechoed to their wild yells and their ever fatal shots fired under cover of trees, rocks and stumps. The British were paralysed as they saw their ranks steadily decimated by the fire of an enemy whom they could never see, and who seemed multitudinous as their shrieks and shouts were heard far and wide in that Bedlam of the forest. The leaves that lay thick and deep on the ground were reddened with the blood of many victims helpless against the concealed, relentless savages. The woods of the Chateauguay did not present such a scene of carnage as was witnessed at the battle of the Monongahela, but nevertheless they seemed to the panic-stricken invaders, who numbered many thousands, alive with an enemy whose strength was enormously exaggerated as bugle sounds and Indian yells made a fearful din on every side. Believing themselves surrounded by forces far superior in numbers, the invaders became paralysed with fear and fled in disorder from an enemy whom they could not see, and who might close upon them at any moment. In this way Canadian pluck and strategy won a famous victory which saved the province of Lower Canada at a most critical moment of the war.
If we leave the woods of Chateauguay, where a monument has been raised in recognition of this brilliant episode of the war, and come to the country above which rises the mist of the cataract of Niagara, we see a little acclivity over which passes that famous thoroughfare called "Lundy's Lane." Here too rises a stately shaft in commemoration of another famous victory—in many respects the most notable of the war—won by a gallant Englishman, whose name still clings to the pretty town close by.
This battle was fought on a midsummer night, when less than three thousand British and Canadian troops fought six hours against a much superior force, led by the ablest officers who had taken part in the war. For three hours, from six to nine o'clock at night, less than two thousand held the height, which was the main object of attack from the beginning to the end of the conflict, and kept at bay the forces that were led against them with a stern determination to win the position. Sunlight gave way to the twilight of a July evening, and dense darkness at last covered the combatants, but still the fight went on. Columns of the enemy charged in such close and rapid succession that the British artillerymen were constantly assailed in the very act of sponging and loading their guns. The assailants once won the height, but only to find themselves repulsed the next instant by the resolute daring of the British. Happily at the most critical moment, when the defenders of the hill were almost exhausted by the heroic struggle, reinforcements arrived, and the battle was renewed with a supreme effort on both sides. For three hours longer, from nine o'clock to midnight, the battle was fought in the darkness, only relieved by the unceasing flashes from the guns, whose sharp reports mingled with the deep and monotonous roar of the great falls. It was a scene worthy of a painter whose imagination could grasp all the incidents of a situation essentially dramatic in its nature. The assailants of the Canadian position gave way at last and withdrew their wearied and disheartened forces. It was in all respects a victory for England and Canada, since the United States army did not attempt to renew the battle on the next day, but retired to Fort Erie, then in their possession. As Canadians look down "the corridors of time," they will always see those flashes from the musketry and cannon of Lundy's Lane, and hear the bugles which drove the invaders of their country from the woods of Chateauguay.
The war did much to solidify the various racial elements of British North America during its formative stage. Frenchmen, Englishmen, Scotsmen from the Lowlands and Highlands, Irishmen and Americans, united to support the British connection. The character of the people, especially in Upper Canada, was strengthened from a national point of view by the severe strain to which it was subjected. Men and women alike were elevated above the conditions of a mere colonial life and the struggle for purely material necessities, and became animated by that spirit of self-sacrifice and patriotic endeavour which tend to make a people truly great.
CHAPTER VI.
THE EVOLUTION OF RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT (1815—1839)
SECTION I.—The rebellion in Lower Canada.
Responsible government in Canada is the logical sequence of the political struggles, which commenced soon after the close of the war of 1812-15. As we review the history of Canada since the conquest we can recognise "one ever increasing purpose" through all political changes, and the ardent desire of men, entrusted at the outset with a very moderate degree of political responsibility, to win for themselves a larger measure of political liberty in the management of their own local affairs. Grave mistakes were often made by the advocates of reform in the government of the several provinces—notably, as I shall show, in Lower Canada, where the French Canadian majority were carried often beyond reason at the dictation of Papineau—but, whatever may have been the indiscretions of politicians, there were always at the bottom of their demands the germs of political development.
The political troubles that continued from 1817 until 1836 in Lower Canada eventually made the working of legislative institutions impracticable. The contest gradually became one between the governor-general representing the crown and the assembly controlled almost entirely by a French Canadian majority, with respect to the disposition of the public revenues and expenditures. Imperial statutes, passed as far back as 1774-1775, provided for the levying of duties, to be applied solely by the crown, primarily "towards defraying the expenses of the administration of justice and the support of the civil government of the province", and any sums that remained in the hands of the government were "for the future disposition of parliament." Then there were "the casual or territorial revenues," such as money arising from the Jesuits' estates, royal seigniorial dues, timber and land, all of which were also exclusively under the control of the government. The assembly had been given jurisdiction only over the amount of duties payable into the treasury under the authority of laws passed by the legislature itself. In case the royal revenues were not sufficient to meet the annual expenditure of the government, the deficiency was met until the war of 1812-15 by drawing on the military exchequer. As the expenses of the provincial administration increased the royal revenues became inadequate, while the provincial revenues gradually showed a considerable surplus over the expenditure voted by the legislature. In 1813 the cost of the war made it impossible for the government to use the military funds, and it resorted to the provincial moneys for the expenses of justice and civil government. In this way, by 1817, the government had incurred a debt of a hundred and twenty thousand pounds to the province without the direct authority of the legislature. The assembly of Lower Canada was not disposed to raise troublesome issues during the war, or in any way to embarrass the action of Sir George Prevost, who, whatever may have been his incompetency as a military chief, succeeded by his conciliatory and persuasive methods in winning the good opinions of the French Canadian majority and making himself an exceptionally popular civil governor. After closing the accounts of the war, the government felt it expedient to stop such irregular proceedings, to obtain from the legislature a general appropriation act, covering the amount of expenditures in the past, and to prevent the necessity of such a questionable application of provincial funds in the future. This may be considered the beginning of the financial controversies that were so constant, as years passed by, between the governors and the assemblies, and never ended until the rebellion broke out. The assembly, desirous of obtaining power in the management of public affairs, learned that it could best embarrass the government and force them to consider and adjust public grievances, as set forth by the majority in the house, by means of the appropriation bills required for the public service. The assembly not only determined to exercise sole control over its own funds but eventually demanded the disposal of the duties imposed and regulated by imperial statutes. The conflict was remarkable for the hot and uncompromising temper constantly exhibited by the majority on the discussion of the generally moderate and fair propositions submitted by the government for settling vexed questions. The assembly found a powerful argument in favour of their persistent contention for a complete control of the public revenues and expenditures in the defalcation of Mr. Caldwell, the receiver-general, who had been allowed for years to use the public funds in his business speculations, and whose property was entirely inadequate to cover the deficiency in his accounts.
The legislative council was always ready to resist what it often asserted to be unconstitutional acts on the part of the house and direct infringements of "the rights of the crown" sometimes a mere convenient phrase used in an emergency to justify resistance to the assembly. It often happened, however, that the upper chamber had law on its side, when the house became perfectly unreasonable and uncompromising in its attitude of hostility to the government. The council, on several occasions, rejected a supply bill because it contained provisions asserting the assembly's right to control the crown revenues and to vote the estimates, item by item, from the governor's salary down to that of the humblest official. Every part of the official and legislative machinery became clogged by the obstinacy of governor, councils, and assembly. To such an extent, indeed, did the assembly's assumption of power carry it in 1836, that the majority actually asserted its own right to amend the constitution of the council as defined in the imperial statute of 1791. Its indiscreet acts eventually alienated the sympathy and support of such English members as Mr. Neilson, a journalist and politician of repute, Mr. Andrew Stuart, a lawyer of ability, and others who believed in the necessity of constitutional reforms, but could not follow Mr. Papineau and his party in their reckless career of attack on the government, which they thought would probably in the end imperil British connection.
The government was in the habit of regularly submitting its accounts and estimates to the legislature, and expressed its desire eventually to grant that body the disposal of all the crown revenues, provided it would consent to vote a civil list for the king's life, or even for a fixed number of years, but the assembly was not willing to agree to any proposal which prevented it from annually taking up the expenditures for the civil government item by item, and making them matters of yearly vote. In this way every person in the public service would be subject to the caprice, or ill-feeling, of any single member of the legislature, and the whole administration of the public departments would probably be made ineffective. Under the plan suggested by the government in accordance with English constitutional forms, the assembly would have every opportunity of criticising all the public expenditures, and even reducing the gross sum in cases of extravagance. But the same contumacious spirit, which several times expelled Mr. Christie, member for Gaspé, on purely vexatious and frivolous charges, and constantly impeached judges without the least legal justification, simply to satisfy personal spite or political malice, would probably have been exhibited towards all officials had the majority in the assembly been given the right of voting each salary separately. The assembly never once showed a disposition to meet the wishes of the government even half-way. Whatever may have been the vacillation or blundering of officials in Downing Street, it must be admitted that the imperial government showed a conciliatory spirit throughout the whole financial controversy. Step by step it yielded to all the demands of the assembly on this point. In 1831, when Lord Grey was premier, the British parliament passed an act, making it lawful for the legislatures of Upper and Lower Canada to appropriate the duties raised by imperial statutes for the purpose of defraying the charges of the administration of justice and the support of civil government. The government consequently retained only the relatively small sum arising from casual and territorial dues. When Lord Aylmer, the governor-general, communicated this important concession to the legislature, he also sent a message setting forth the fact that it was the settled policy of the crown on no future occasion to nominate a judge either to the executive or the legislative council, the sole exception being the chief justice of Quebec. He also gave the consent of the government to the passage of an act declaring that judges of the supreme court should thereafter hold office "during good behaviour," on the essential condition that their salaries were made permanent by the legislature. The position of the judiciary had long been a source of great and even just complaint, and, in the time of Sir James Craig, judges were disqualified from sitting in the assembly on the demand of that body. They continued, however, to hold office "during the pleasure" of the crown, and to be called at its will to the executive and legislative councils. Under these circumstances they were, with some reason, believed to be more or less under the influence of the governor-general; and particular judges consequently fell at times under the ban of the assembly, and were attacked on the most frivolous grounds. The assembly passed a bill providing for the independence of the judiciary, but it had to be reserved because it was not in accordance with the conditions considered necessary by the crown for the protection of the bench.
The governor-general also in his message promised reforms of the judicial and legal systems, the disposal of the funds arising from the Jesuits' estates by the legislature, and, in fact, nearly all the reforms which had been demanded by the house for years. Yet when the government asked at the same time for a permanent civil list, the message was simply referred to a committee of the whole house which never reported. Until this time the efforts of the assembly to obtain complete control of the public revenues and expenditures had a justification in the fact that it is a recognised English principle that the elected house should impose the taxes and vote the supplies; but their action on this occasion, when the imperial government made most important concessions, giving them full control over the public funds, simply on condition that they should follow the English system of voting the salaries of the judiciary and civil list, showed that the majority were earned away by a purely factious spirit. During the progress of these controversies, Mr. Louis Joseph Papineau, a brilliant but an unsafe leader, had become the recognised chief of the French Canadian majority, who for years elected him speaker of the assembly. In the absence of responsible government, there was witnessed in those times the extraordinary spectacle—only now-a-days seen in the American congress—of the speaker, who should be above all political antagonisms, acting as the leader of an arrogant majority, and urging them to continue in their hostility to the government. It was Mr. Papineau who first brought the governor-general directly into the arena of political conflict by violent personal attacks; and indeed he went so far in the case of Lord Dalhousie, a fair-minded man anxious to act moderately within the limits of the constitution, that the latter felt compelled by a sense of dignity to refuse the confirmation of the great agitator as speaker in 1827. The majority in the assembly vehemently asserted their right to elect their speaker independently of the governor, whose confirmation was a mere matter of form, and not of statutory right; and the only course at last open to Lord Dalhousie was to prorogue the legislature. Mr. Papineau was re-elected speaker at the next session, when Lord Dalhousie had gone to England and Sir James Kempt was administrator.
After 1831, Mr. Papineau steadily evoked the opposition of the more conservative and thoughtful British Liberals who were not disposed to be carried into a questionable position, inimical to British connection and the peace of the country, Dr. Wolfred Nelson, and Dr. O'Callaghan, a journalist, were soon the only supporters of ability left him among the British and Irish, the great majority of whom rallied to the support of the government when a perilous crisis arrived in the affairs of the province. The British party dwindled away in every appeal to the people, and no French Canadian representative who presumed to differ from Mr. Papineau was ever again returned to the assembly. Mr. Papineau became not only a political despot but an "irreconcilable," whose vanity led him to believe that he would soon become supreme in French Canada, and the founder of La Nation Canadienne in the valley of the St. Lawrence. The ninety-two resolutions passed in 1834 may be considered the climax of the demands of his party, which for years had resisted immigration as certain to strengthen the British population, had opposed the establishment of registry offices as inconsistent with the French institutions of the province, and had thrown every possible opposition in the way of the progress of the Eastern Townships, which were attracting year by year an industrious and energetic British population from the British Isles and New England.
In these resolutions of 1834 there is not a single paragraph or even phrase which can be tortured into showing that the French Canadian agitator and his friends were in favour of responsible government. The key-note of the whole document is an elective legislative council, which would inevitably increase the power of the French Canadians and place the British in a hopeless minority. Mr. Roebuck, the paid agent of the assembly in England, is said to have suggested the idea of this elective body, and assuredly his writings and speeches were always calculated to do infinite harm, by helping to inflame discontent in Canada, and misrepresenting in England the true condition of affairs in the province. The resolutions are noteworthy for their verbosity and entire absence of moderate and wise suggestion. They were obviously written under the inspiration of Mr. Papineau with the object of irritating the British government, and preventing the settlement of political difficulties. They even eulogised the institutions of the neighbouring states which "commanded the affection of the people in a larger measure than those of any other country," and should be regarded "as models of government for Canada." They even went so far as "to remind parliament of the consequences of its efforts to overrule the wishes of the American colonies," in case they should make any "modification" in the constitution of the province "independently of the wishes of its people." Colonel Gugy, Mr. Andrew Stuart, Mr. Neilson and other prominent Englishmen opposed the passage of these resolutions, as calculated to do infinite harm, but they were carried by a very large French Canadian majority at the dictation of Mr. Papineau. Whatever may have been its effect for the moment, this wordy effusion has long since been assigned to the limbo where are buried other examples of the demagogism of those trying times.
In 1835 the imperial government decided to send three commissioners to examine into the various questions which had been so long matters of agitation in Lower Canada. Lord Aberdeen, then Colonial Secretary of State, emphatically stated that it was the intention of the government "to review and enquire into every alleged grievance and examine every cause of complaint, and apply a remedy to every abuse that may still be found to prevail."
The choice of the government as chief commissioner and governor-general was Lord Gosford, an amiable, inexperienced and weak man, who failed either to conciliate the French Canadian majority to whom he was even humble for a while, or to obtain the confidence of the British party to whose counsels and warnings he did not pay sufficient heed at the outset of the crisis which culminated during his administration. The majority in the assembly were determined not to abate one iota of their pretensions, which now included the control of the casual and territorial revenues; and no provision whatever was made for four years for the payment of the public service. The commissioners reported strongly against the establishment of an elected council, and in favour of a modified system of responsible government, not dependent on the vote of the house. They recommended also the surrender of the casual and territorial revenues on condition of proper provision for the payment of the civil service, and the administration of justice.
The imperial government immediately recognised that they had to face a very serious crisis in the affairs of Lower Canada. On the 6th March, 1836, Lord John Russell, then home secretary in Lord Melbourne's administration, introduced a series of ten resolutions, providing for the immediate payment of the arrears of £142,160. 14s. 6d., due to the public service, out of the moneys in the hands of the receiver-general. While it was admitted that measures should be taken to secure for the legislative council a greater degree of public confidence, the government deemed it inexpedient to make that body elective. The necessity of improving the position of the executive council was also acknowledged, but the suggestion of a ministry responsible to the assembly was not approved. This disapproval was quite in accordance with the policy adopted by Englishmen since 1822, when a measure had been introduced in parliament for the reunion of the two Canadas—the precursor of the measure of 1840. This measure originally provided that two members of the executive council should sit and speak in the assembly but not vote. Those parts of the bill of 1822 which provided for a union were not pressed on account of the objections raised in both the provinces, but certain other provisions became law under the title of "The Canadian Trade Acts," relieving Upper Canada from the capricious action of Lower Canada with respect to the duties from which the former obtained the principal part of her fund for carrying on her government. This share had been originally fixed at one-fifth of the proceeds of the customs duties collected by the province of Lower Canada, but when the population of the western section increased considerably and consumed a far greater quantity of dutiable goods, its government justly demanded a larger proportion of the revenues collected in the ports of the lower St. Lawrence. The legislature of Lower Canada paid no attention to this equitable demand, and eventually even refused to renew the legislation providing for the payment of one-fifth of the duties. Under these circumstances the imperial government found it necessary to intervene, and pass the "Trade Acts," making the past legislation of Lower Canada on the subject permanent, and preventing its legislature from imposing new duties on imports without the consent of the upper province. As this was a question of grave import, the resolutions of 1836 gave authority to the legislatures of Upper and Lower Canada to provide joint legislation "for determining and adjusting all questions respecting the trade and commerce of the provinces."
As soon as the passage of these resolutions became known throughout Lower Canada, Papineau and his supporters commenced an active campaign of denunciation against England, from whom, they declared, there was no redress whatever to be expected. Wherever the revolutionists were in the majority, they shouted, "Vive la liberté!" "Vive la Nation Canadienne!" "Vive Papineau!" "Point de despotisme!": while flags and placards were displayed with similar illustrations of popular frenzy. La Nation Canadienne was now launched on the turbulent waves of a little rebellion in which the phrases of the French revolution were glibly shouted by the habitants with very little conception of their real significance. The British or Constitutional party took active steps in support of British connection, but Lord Gosford, unhappily still governor-general, did not for some time awaken to the reality of the public danger. Happily for British interests, Sir John Culhorne, afterwards Lord Seaforth, a courageous and vigilant soldier, was in the country, and was able, when orders were given him by the reluctant governor, to deal determinedly with the rebels who had taken up arms in the Richelieu district. Dr. Wolfred Nelson made a brave stand at St. Denis, and repulsed Colonel Gore's small detachment of regulars. Papineau was present for a while at the scene of conflict, but he took no part in it and lost no time in making a hurried flight to the United States—an ignominious close to a successful career of rhetorical flashes which had kindled a conflagration that he took very good care should not even scorch him. Colonel Wetherall defeated another band of rebels at St. Charles, and their commander, Mr. Thomas Storrow Brown, a well-meaning but gullible man, fled across the border. Dr. Wolfred Nelson was captured, and a number of other rebels of less importance were equally unfortunate. Some of the refugees made a public demonstration from Vermont, but precipitately fled before a small force which met them. At St. Eustache, one Girod, a plausible, mendacious Swiss or Alsatian, who had become a leader in the rebellious movement, and Dr. Chenier, a rash but courageous man, collected a considerable body of rebels, chiefly from St. Benoit, despite the remonstrances of Mr. Paquin, the curé of the village, and defended the stone church and adjacent buildings against a large force, led by Sir John Colborne himself. Dr. Chenier and many others—at least seventy, it is said on good authority—were killed, and the former has in the course of time been elevated to the dignity of a national hero and a monument raised in his honour on a public square of the French Canadian quarters of Montreal. Mad recklessness rather than true heroism signalised his action in this unhappy affair, when he led so many of his credulous compatriots to certain death, but at least he gave up his life manfully to a lost cause rather than fly like Papineau who had beguiled him to this melancholy conclusion. Even Girod showed courage and ended his own life when he found that he could not evade the law. The rebellious element at St. Benoit was cowed by the results at St. Eustache; and the Abbé Chartier, who had taken an active part in urging the people to resistance, fled to the United States whence he never returned. The greater part of the village was destroyed by fire, probably in retaliation for the losses and injuries suffered by the volunteers at the hands of the rebels in different parts of the district of Montreal.
One of the most unfortunate and discreditable incidents of the rising in the Richelieu district was the murder of Lieutenant Weir, who had been taken prisoner while carrying despatches to Sorel, and was literally hacked to pieces, when he tried to escape from a calèche in which he was being conveyed to St. Charles. An equally unhappy incident was the cold-blooded execution, after a mock trial, of one Chartrand, a harmless non-combatant who was accused, without a tittle of evidence, of being a spy. The temper of the country can be gauged by the fact that when it was attempted, some time later, to convict the murderers on clear evidence, it was impossible to obtain a verdict. Jolbert, the alleged murderer of Weir, was never punished, but François Nicholas and Amable Daumais, who had aided in the trial and execution of Chartrand, were subsequently hanged for having taken an active part in the second insurrection of 1838.
The rebellion of 1837 never reached any large proportions, and very few French Canadians of social or political standing openly participated in the movement. Monseigneur Lartigue, Roman Catholic bishop of Montreal, issued a mandement severely censuring the misguided men who had joined in the rebellious movement and caused so much misery throughout the province. In England, strange to say, there were men found, even in parliament, ready to misrepresent the facts and glory in a rebellion the causes of which they did not understand. The animating motive with these persons was then—and there were similar examples during the American revolution—to assail the government of the day and make political capital against them, but, it must be admitted, in all fairness to the reform ministry of that day and even to preceding cabinets for some years, that the policy of all was to be just and conciliatory in their relations with the provincial agitators, though it is also evident that a more thorough knowledge of political conditions and a more resolute effort to a reach the bottom of grievances might have long before removed causes of irritation and saved the loss of property and life in 1837 and 1838.
In the presence of a grave emergency, the British government felt compelled to suspend the constitution of Lower Canada, and send out Lord Durham, a Liberal statesman of great ability, to act as governor-general and high commissioner "for the determining of certain important questions depending in the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada respecting the form and future government of the said provinces" Despite a certain haughtiness of manner which was apt to wound his inferiors and irritate his equals in position, he was possessed of a great fund of accurate political knowledge and a happy faculty of grasping all the essential facts of a difficult situation, and suggesting the best remedy to apply under all the circumstances. He endeavoured, to the utmost of his ability, to redeem the pledge with which he entered on his mission to Canada, in the first instance "to assert the supremacy of her majesty's government," in the next "to vindicate the honour and dignity of the law," and above all "to know nothing of a British, a French, or a Canadian party," but "to look on them all alike as her majesty's subjects." After he had appointed a special council he set to work energetically to secure the peace of the country. Humanity was the distinguishing feature of his too short career in Canada. A comprehensive amnesty was proclaimed to all those engaged in the rebellion with the exception of Dr. Wolfred Nelson, R.S.M. Bouchette, Bonaventure Viger, Dr. Masson, and four others of less importance, who were ordered by an ordinance to be transported to Bermuda during the queen's pleasure. These persons, as well as sixteen others, including Papineau, who had fled from justice, were declared to be subject to death should they venture to enter the province. Not a single rebel suffered death on the scaffold during Lord Durham's administration. Unfortunately the ordinance, transporting a number of persons without trial to an island where the governor-general had no jurisdiction, gave an opportunity to Lord Brougham, who hated the high commissioner, to attack him in the house of lords. Lord Melbourne, then premier, was forced to repeal the ordinance and to consent to the passage of a bill indemnifying all those who had acted under its provisions Lord Glenelg, colonial secretary, endeavoured to diminish the force of this parliamentary censure by writing to the high commissioner that "her majesty's government repeat their approbation of the spirit in which these measures were conceived and state their conviction that they have been dictated by a judicious and enlightened humanity"; but a statesman of Lord Durham's haughty character was not ready to submit to such a rebuke as he had sustained in parliament He therefore immediately placed his resignation in the hands of the government which had commissioned him with powers to give peace and justice to distracted Canada, and yet failed to sustain him at the crucial moment. Before leaving the country he issued a proclamation in defence of his public acts. His course in this particular offended the ministry who, according to Lord Glenelg, considered it a dangerous innovation, as it was practically an appeal by a public officer to the public against the measures of parliament. Lord Durham may be pardoned under all the circumstances for resenting at the earliest possible moment his desertion by the government, who were bound in honour to defend him, at all hazards, in his absence, and should not have given him over for the moment to his enemies, led by a spiteful Scotch lawyer. Lord Durham left Canada with the assurance that he had won the confidence of all loyal British subjects and proved to all French Canadians that there were English statesmen prepared to treat them with patience, humanity and justice.
Sir John Colborne became administrator on the departure of Lord Durham, and subsequently governor-general. Unhappily he was immediately called upon to crush another outbreak of the rebels, in November, 1838, in the counties watered by the Richelieu River, and in the district immediately south of Montreal. Dr. Robert Nelson and some other rebels, who had found refuge in the frontier towns and villages of Vermont and New York, organised this second insurrection, which had the support of a considerable number of habitants, though only a few actually took up arms. The rising, which began at Caughnawaga, was put down at Beauharnois, within a week from the day on which it commenced. The authorities now felt that the time had passed for such leniency as had been shown by Lord Durham; and Sir John Colborne accordingly established courts-martial for the trial of the prisoners taken during this second insurrection, as it was utterly impossible to obtain justice through the ordinary process of the courts. Only twelve persons, however, suffered the extreme penalty of the law; some were sent to New South Wales—where however they were detained only a short time; and the great majority were pardoned on giving security for good behaviour.
While these trials were in progress, and the government were anxious to give peace and security to the province, refugees in the border states were despatching hands of ruffians to attack and plunder the Loyalists in the Eastern Townships; but the government of the United States intervened and instructed its officers to take decisive measures for the repression of every movement in the territory of a friendly Power. Thus the mad insurrection incited by Papineau, but actually led by the Nelsons, Chenier and Brown, came at last to an end.
A new era of political development was now to dawn on the province, as a result of a more vigorous and remedial policy initiated by the imperial government, at last thoroughly awakened to an intelligent comprehension of the political conditions of the Canadas. But before I proceed to explain the details of measures fraught with such important consequences, I must give an historical summary of the events which led also to a rash uprising in Upper Canada, simultaneously with the one which ended so disastrously for its leaders in the French province.
SECTION 2.—The rebellion in Upper Canada.
The financial disputes between the executive and the assembly never attained such prominence in Upper Canada as in the lower province. In 1831 the assembly consented to make permanent provision for the civil list and the judiciary, on condition of the government's giving up to the legislature all the revenues previously at its own disposition. Three years later the legislature also passed an act to provide that the judges should hold their offices during good behaviour, and not at the pleasure of the crown—a measure rendered possible by the fact that the assembly had made the salaries of the bench permanent.
Nor did the differences between the assembly and the legislative council ever assume such serious proportions as they did in the French province. Still the leaders of the reform party of Upper Canada had strong objections to the constitution of the council; and a committee of grievances reported in 1835 in favour of an elected body as well as a responsible council, although it did not very clearly outline the methods of working out the system in a colony where the head of the executive was an imperial officer acting under royal instructions. The different lieutenant-governors, the executive and legislative councillors, and the whole body of officials, from the very moment responsible government was suggested in any form, threw every possible obstacle in the way of its concession by the imperial government.
It was largely the dominant influence of the official combination, long known in Canadian history as the "family compact," which prevented the concession of responsible government before the union of the Canadas. This phrase, as Lord Durham said in his report, was misleading inasmuch as there "was very little of family connection between the persons thus united." As a matter of fact the phrase represented a political and aristocratic combination, which grew up as a consequence of the social conditions of the province and eventually monopolised all offices and influence in government. This bureaucracy permeated all branches of government—the executive, the legislative council, and even the assembly where for years there sat several members holding offices of emolument under the crown. It practically controlled the banks and monetary circles. The Church of England was bound up in its interests. The judiciary was more or less under its influence while judges were appointed during pleasure and held seats in the councils. This governing class was largely composed of the descendants of the Loyalists of 1784, who had taken so important a part in the war with the United States and always asserted their claims to special consideration in the distribution of government favour. The old settlers—all those who had come into the country before the war—demanded and obtained greater consideration at the hands of the government than the later immigrants, who eventually found themselves shut out of office and influence. The result was the growth of a Liberal or Reform party, which, while generally composed of the later immigrants, comprised several persons of Loyalist extraction, who did not happen to belong to the favoured class or church, but recognised the necessity for a change in the methods of administration. Among these Loyalists must be specially mentioned Peter Perry, who was really the founder of the Reform party in 1834, and the Reverend Egerton Ryerson, a Methodist minister of great natural ability.
Unfortunately creed also became a powerful factor in the political controversies of Upper Canada. By the constitutional act of 1791 large tracts of land were set aside for the support of a "Protestant clergy", and the Church of England successfully claimed for years an exclusive right to these "clergy reserves" on the ground that it was the Protestant church recognised by the state. The clergy of the Church of Scotland in Canada, though very few in number for years, at a later time obtained a share of these grants as a national religious body; but all the dissentient denominations did not participate in the advantages of these reserves. The Methodists claimed in the course of years to be numerically equal to, if not more numerous than, the English Episcopalians, and were deeply irritated at the inferior position they long occupied in the province. So late as 1824 the legislative council, composed of members of the dominant church, rejected a bill allowing Methodist ministers to solemnise marriages, and it was not until 1831 that recognised ministers of all denominations were placed on an equality in this respect. Christian charity was not more a characteristic of those times than political liberality. Methodism was considered by the governing class as a sign of democracy and social inferiority. History repeated itself in Upper Canada. As the Puritans of New England feared the establishment of an Anglican episcopacy, and used it to stimulate a feeling against the parent state during the beginnings of the revolution, so in Upper Canada the dissenting religious bodies made political capital out of the favouritism shown to the Church of England in the distribution of the public lands and public patronage. The Roman Catholics and members of all Protestant sects eventually demanded the secularisation of the reserves for educational or other public purposes, or the application of the funds to the use of all religious creeds. The feeling against that church culminated in 1836, when Sir John Colborne, then lieutenant-governor, established forty-four rectories in accordance with a suggestion made by Lord Goderich some years previously. While the legality of Sir John Colborne's course was undoubted, it was calculated to create much indignant feeling among the dissenting bodies, who saw in the establishment of these rectories an evidence of the intention of the British government to create a state church so far as practicable by law within the province. This act, so impolitic at a critical time of political discussion, was an illustration of the potent influence exercised in the councils of the government by Archdeacon Strachan, who had come into the province from Scotland in 1799 as a schoolmaster. He had been brought up in the tenets of the Presbyterian Church, but some time after his arrival in Canada he became an ordained minister of the Church of England, in which he rose step by step to the episcopacy. He became a member of both the executive and legislative councils in 1816 and 1817, and exercised continuously until the union of 1841 a singular influence in the government of the province. He was endowed with that indomitable will, which distinguished his great countryman, John Knox. His unbending toryism was the natural outcome of his determination to sustain what he considered the just rights of his church against the liberalism of her opponents—chiefly dissenters—who wished to rob her of her clergy reserves and destroy her influence in education and public affairs generally. This very fidelity to his church became to some extent her weakness, since it evoked the bitter hostility of a large body of persons and created the impression that she was the church of the aristocratic and official class rather than that of the people—an impression which existed for many years after the fall of the "family compact."
The public grievances connected with the disposition of the public lands were clearly exposed by one Robert Gourlay, a somewhat meddlesome Scotchman, who had addressed a circular, soon after his arrival in Canada, to a number of townships with regard to the causes which retarded improvement and the best means of developing the resources of the province. An answer from Sandwich virtually set forth the feeling of the rural districts generally on these points. It stated that the reasons for the existing depression were the reserves of land for the crown and clergy, "which must for a long time keep the country a wilderness, a harbour for wolves, and a hindrance to compact and good neighbourhood; defects in the system of colonisation; too great a quantity of lands in the hands of individuals who do not reside in the province, and are not assessed for their property." Mr. Gourlay's questions were certainly asked in the public interest, but they excited the indignation of the official class who resented any interference with a state of things which favoured themselves and their friends, and were not desirous of an investigation into the management of public affairs. The subsequent treatment of Mr. Gourlay was shameful in the extreme. He was declared a most dangerous character when he followed up his circular by a pamphlet, attacking the methods by which public affairs generally were conducted, and contrasting them with the energetic and progressive system on the other side of the border. The indignation of the officials became a positive fever when he suggested the calling of public meetings to elect delegates to a provincial convention—a term which recalled the days of the American revolution, and was cleverly used by Gourlay's enemies to excite the ire and fear of the descendants of the Loyalists. Sir Peregrine Maitland succeeded in obtaining from the legislature an opinion against conventions as "repugnant to the constitution," and declaring the holding of such public meetings a misdemeanour, while admitting the constitutional right of the people to petition. These proceedings evoked a satirical reply from Gourlay, who was arrested for seditious libel, but the prosecutions failed. It was then decided to resort to the provisions of a practically obsolete statute passed in 1804, authorising the arrest of any person who had resided in the province for six months without taking the oath of allegiance, and was suspected to be a seditious character. Such a person could be ordered by the authorities to leave the province, or give security for good behaviour. This act had been originally passed to prevent the immigration of aliens unfavourable to England, especially of Irishmen who had taken part in the rebellion of 1798 and found refuge in the United States. Gourlay had been a resident of Upper Canada for nearly two years, and in no single instance had the law been construed to apply to an immigrant from the British Isles. Gourlay was imprisoned in the Niagara gaol, and when his friends attempted to bring him out on a writ of habeas corpus they failed simply because Chief Justice Powell, an able lawyer of a Loyalist family and head of the official party, refused to grant the writ on a mere technical plea, afterwards declared by the highest legal authorities in England to be entirely contrary to sound law. Gourlay consequently remained in prison for nearly eight months, and when he was brought again before the chief justice, his mental faculties were obviously impaired for the moment, but despite his wretched condition, which prevented him from conducting his defence, he was summarily convicted and ordered to leave the province within twenty-four hours, under penalty of death should he not obey the order or return to the country.
This unjust sentence created wide-spread indignation among all right-thinking people, especially as it followed a message of the lieutenant-governor to the legislature, that he did not feel justified in extending the grants of land, made to actors in the war of 1812-15, to "any of the inhabitants who composed the late convention of delegates, the proceedings of which were very properly subjected to your very severe animadversion" This undoubtedly illegal action of the lieutenant-governor only escaped the censure of the assembly by the casting vote of the speaker, but was naturally justified in the legislative council where Chief Justice Powell presided. Gourlay became a martyr in the opinion of a large body of people, and a Reform party began to grow up in the country. The man himself disappeared for years from Canadian history, and did not return to the province until 1856, after a chequered and unhappy career in Great Britain and the United States. The assembly of the United Canadas in 1842 declared his arrest to be "unjust and illegal," and his sentence "null and void," and he was offered a pension as some compensation for the injuries he had received; but he refused it unless it was accompanied by an official declaration of the illegality of the conviction and its elision from the records of the courts. The Canadian government thought he should be satisfied with the action of the assembly and the offer of the pension. Gourlay died abroad, and his daughters on his death received the money which he rejected with the obstinacy so characteristic of his life.
During these days of struggle we find most prominent among the official class Attorney-General Robinson, afterwards chief justice of Upper Canada for many years. He was the son of a Virginian Loyalist, and a Tory of extreme views, calm, polished, and judicial in his demeanour. But whatever his opinions on the questions of the day he was too discreet a politician and too honest a judge ever to have descended to such a travesty of justice as had been shown by his predecessor in the case of Gourlay. His influence, however was never in the direction of liberal measures. He opposed responsible government and the union of the two provinces, both when proposed unsuccessfully in 1822, and when carried in Upper Canada eighteen years later.
The elections of 1825 had a very important influence on the political conditions of the upper province, since they brought into the assembly Peter Perry, Dr. Rolph, and Marshall Spring Bidwell, who became leading actors in the Reform movement which culminated in the concession of responsible government. But the most conspicuous man from 1826 until 1837 was William Lyon Mackenzie, a Scotchman of fair education, who came to Canada in 1820, and eventually embraced journalism as the profession most suited to his controversial temperament. Deeply imbued with a spirit of liberalism in politics, courageous and even defiant in the expression of his opinions, sadly wanting in sound judgment and common sense when his feelings were excited, able to write with vigour, but more inclined to emphatic vituperation than well-reasoned argument, he made himself a force in the politics of the province. In the Colonial Advocate, which he established in 1824, he commenced a series of attacks on the government which naturally evoked the resentment of the official class, and culminated in the destruction of his printing office in 1826 by a number of young men, relatives of the principal officials—one of them actually the private secretary of the lieutenant-governor, Sir Peregrine Maitland. Mr. Mackenzie obtained large damages in the courts, and was consequently able to continue the publication of his paper at a time when he was financially embarrassed. The sympathy felt for Mr. Mackenzie brought him into the assembly as member for York during the session of 1829. So obnoxious did he become to the governing class that he was expelled four times from the assembly between 1831 and 1834, and prevented from taking his seat by the orders of the speaker in 1835—practically the fifth expulsion. In 1832 he went to England and presented largely signed petitions asking for a redress of grievances. He appears to have made some impression on English statesmen, and the colonial minister recommended a few reforms to the lieutenant-governor, but they were entirely ignored by the official party. Lord Glenelg also disapproved of the part taken by Attorney-General Boulton—Mr. Robinson being then chief justice—and Solicitor-General Hagerman in the expulsion of Mr. Mackenzie; but they treated the rebuke with contempt and were removed from office for again assisting in the expulsion of Mr. Mackenzie.
In 1834 he was elected first mayor of Toronto, then incorporated under its present name, as a consequence of the public sympathy aroused in his favour by his several expulsions. Previous to the election of 1835, in which he was returned to the assembly, he made one of the most serious blunders of his life, in the publication of a letter from Mr. Joseph Hume, the famous Radical, whose acquaintance he had made while in England. Mr. Hume emphatically stated his opinion that "a crisis was fast approaching in the affairs of Canada which would terminate in independence and freedom from the baneful domination of the mother country, and the tyrannical conduct of a small and despicable faction in the colony." The official class availed themselves of this egregious blunder to excite the indignation of the Loyalist population against Mr. Mackenzie and other Reformers, many of whom, like the Baldwins and Perrys, disavowed all sympathy with such language. Mr. Mackenzie's motive was really to insult Mr. Ryerson, with whom he had quarrelled. Mr. Ryerson in the Christian Guardian, organ of the Methodists, had attacked Mr. Hume as a person unfit to present petitions from the Liberals of Canada, since he had opposed the measure for the emancipation of slaves in the West Indies, and had consequently alienated the confidence and sympathy of the best part of the nation. Mr. Hume then wrote the letter in question, in which he also stated that he "never knew a more worthless hypocrite or so base a man as Mr. Ryerson proved himself to be." Mr. Mackenzie in this way incurred the wrath of a wily clergyman and religious journalist who exercised much influence over the Methodists, and at the same time fell under the ban of all people who were deeply attached to the British connection. Moderate Reformers now looked doubtfully on Mackenzie, whose principal supporters were Dr. Duncombe, Samuel Lount, Peter Matthews, and other men who took an active part in the insurrection of 1837.
In the session of 1835 a committee of grievances, appointed on the motion of Mr. Mackenzie himself, reported in favour of a system of responsible government, an elective legislative council, the appointment of civil governors, a diminution of the patronage exercised by the crown, the independence of the legislature, and other reforms declared to be in the interest of good government. The report was temperately expressed, and created some effect for a time in England, but the colonial minister could not yet be induced to move in the direction of positive reform in the restrictive system of colonial government.
Unhappily, at this juncture, when good judgment and discretion were so necessary in political affairs, all the circumstances combined to hasten a perilous crisis, and to give full scope to the passionate impulses of Mackenzie's nature. Sir John Colborne was replaced in the government of the province by one of the most incapable governors ever chosen by the colonial office, Sir Francis Bond Head. He had been chiefly known in England as a sprightly writer of travels, and had had no political experience except such as could be gathered in the discharge of the duties of a poor-law commissioner in Wales. His first official act was an indiscretion. He communicated to the legislature the full text of the instructions which he had received from the king, although he had been advised to give only their substance, as least calculated to hamper Lord Gosford, who was then attempting to conciliate the French Canadian majority in Lower Canada. These instructions, in express terms, disapproved of a responsible executive and particularly of an elected legislative council, to obtain which was the great object of Papineau and his friends. Mr. Bidwell, then speaker of the assembly, recognised the importance of this despatch, and forwarded it immediately to Mr. Papineau, at that time speaker of the Lower Canadian house, with whom he and other Reformers had correspondence from time to time. Lord Gosford was consequently forced to lay his own instructions in full before the legislature and to show the majority that the British government was opposed to such vital changes in the provincial constitution as they persistently demanded. The action of the Lower Canadian house on this matter was communicated to the assembly of Upper Canada by a letter of Mr. Papineau to Mr. Bidwell, who laid it before his house just before the prorogation in 1835. In this communication the policy of the imperial government was described as "the naked deformity of the colonial system," and the royal commissioners were styled "deceitful agents," while the methods of government in the neighbouring states were again eulogised as in the ninety-two resolutions of 1834. Sir Francis Bond Head seized the opportunity to create a feeling against the Reformers, to whom he was now hostile. Shortly after he sent his indiscreet message to the legislature he persuaded Dr. Rolph, Mr. Bidwell and Receiver-General Dunn to enter the executive council on the pretence that he wished to bring that body more into harmony with public opinion. The new councillors soon found that they were not to be consulted in public affairs, and when the whole council actually resigned Sir Francis told them plainly that he alone was responsible for his acts, and that he would only consult them when he deemed it expedient in the public interest. This action of the lieutenant-governor showed the Reformers that he was determined to initiate no changes which would disturb the official party, or give self-government to the people. The assembly, in which the Liberals were dominant, passed an address to the king, declaring the lieutenant-governor's conduct "derogatory to the honour of the king," and also a memorial to the British house of commons charging him with "misrepresentation, and a deviation from candour and truth."
Under these circumstances Sir Francis eagerly availed himself of Papineau's letter to show the country the dangerous tendencies of the opinions and acts of the Reformers in the two provinces. In an answer he made to an address from some inhabitants of the Home District, he warned the people that there were individuals in Lower Canada, who were inculcating the idea that "this province is to be disturbed by the interference of foreigners, whose powers and influence will prove invincible"—an allusion to the sympathy shown by Papineau and his friends for the institutions of the United States. Then Sir Francis closed his reply with this rhodomontade: "In the name of every regiment of militia in Upper Canada, I publicly promulgate 'Let them come if they dare'" He dissolved the legislature and went directly to the country on the issue that the British connection was endangered by the Reformers. "He succeeded, in fact," said Lord Durham in his report of 1839, "in putting the issue in such a light before the province, that a great portion of the people really imagined that they were called upon to decide the question of separation by their votes." These strong appeals to the loyalty of a province founded by the Loyalists of 1784, combined with the influence exercised by the "family compact," who had all offices and lands at their disposal, defeated Mackenzie, Bidwell, Perry and other Reformers of less note, and brought into the legislature a solid phalanx of forty-two supporters of the government against eighteen elected by the opposition. It was a triumph dearly paid for in the end. The unfair tactics of the lieutenant-governor rankled in the minds of a large body of people, and hastened the outbreak of the insurrection of 1837. The British government seems for a time to have been deceived by this victory of the lieutenant-governor and actually lauded his "foresight, energy and moral courage"; but ere long, after more mature consideration of the political conditions of the province, it dawned upon the dense mind of Lord Glenelg that the situation was not very satisfactory, and that it would be well to conciliate the moderate element among the Reformers. Sir Francis was accordingly instructed to appoint Mr. Bidwell to the Bench, but he stated emphatically that such an appointment would be a recognition on disloyalty. He preferred to resign rather than obey the instructions of the colonial department, and greatly to his surprise and chagrin his proffer of resignation was accepted without the least demur. The colonial office by this time recognised the mistake they had made in appointing Sir Francis to a position, for which he was utterly unfit, but unhappily for the province they awoke too late to a sense of their own folly.
Mackenzie became so embittered by his defeat in 1836, and the unscrupulous methods by which it was accomplished, that he made up his mind that reform in government was not to be obtained except by a resort to extreme measures. At meetings of Reformers, held at Lloydtown and other places during the summer of 1837, resolutions were carried that it was their duty to arm in defence of their rights and those of their countrymen. Mackenzie visited many parts of the province, in order to stimulate a revolutionary movement among the disaffected people, a system of training volunteers was organised; pikes were manufactured and old arms were put in order. It was decided that Dr. Rolph should be the executive chief of the provisional government, and Mackenzie in the meantime had charge of all the details of the movement. Mr. Bidwell appears to have steadily kept aloof from the disloyal party, but Dr. Rolph was secretly in communication with Mackenzie, Lount, Matthews, Lloyd, Morrison, Duncombe, and other actors in the rebellion. The plan was to march on Toronto, where it was notorious that no precautions for defence were being taken, to seize the lieutenant-governor, to proclaim a provisional government, and to declare the independence of the province unless Sir Francis should give a solemn promise to constitute a responsible council. It is quite certain that Mackenzie entirely misunderstood the sentiment of the country, and exaggerated the support that would be given to a disloyal movement. Lord Durham truly said that the insurrectionary movements which did take place were "indicative of no deep rooted disaffection," and that "almost the entire body of the Reformers of the province sought only by constitutional means to obtain those objects for which they had so long peacefully struggled before the unhappy troubles occasioned by the violence of a few unprincipled adventurers and heated enthusiasts."
Despite the warnings that he was constantly receiving of the seditious doings of Mackenzie and his lieutenants, Sir Francis Bond Head could not be persuaded an uprising was imminent. So complete was his fatuity that he allowed all the regular troops to be withdrawn to Lower Canada at the request of Sir John Colborne. Had he taken adequate measures for the defence of Toronto, and showed he was prepared for any contingency, the rising of Mackenzie's immediate followers would never have occurred. His apathy and negligence at this crisis actually incited an insurrection. The repulse of Gore at St. Denis on the 23rd November (p. 134) no doubt hastened the rebellious movement in Upper Canada, and it was decided to collect all available men and assemble at Montgomery's tavern, only four miles from Toronto by way of Yonge Street, the road connecting Toronto with Lake Simcoe. The subsequent news of the dispersion of the rebels at St. Charles was very discouraging to Mackenzie and Lount, but they felt that matters had proceeded too far for them to stop at that juncture. They still hoped to surprise Toronto and occupy it without much difficulty. A Colonel Moodie, who had taken part in the war of 1812-15, had heard of the march of the insurgents from Lake Simcoe, and was riding rapidly to Toronto to warn the lieutenant-governor, when he was suddenly shot down and died immediately. Sir Francis was unconscious of danger when he was aroused late at night by Alderman Powell, who had been taken prisoner by the rebels but succeeded in making his escape and finding his way to Government House. Sir Francis at last awoke from his lethargy and listened to the counsels of Colonel Fitzgibbon—the hero of Beaver Dams in 1813—and other residents of Toronto, who had constantly endeavoured to force him to take measures for the public security. The loyal people of the province rallied with great alacrity to put down the revolt. The men of the western district of Gore came up in force, and the first man to arrive on the scene was Allan MacNab, the son of a Loyalist and afterwards prime minister of Canada. A large and well equipped force was at once organised under the command of Colonel Fitzgibbon.
The insurrection was effectually quelled on the 7th December at Montgomery's tavern by the militia and volunteer forces under Colonel Fitzgibbon. The insurgents had at no time mustered more than eight hundred men, and in the engagement on the 7th there were only four hundred, badly armed and already disheartened. In twenty minutes, or less time, the fight was over and the insurgents fled with the loss of one man killed and several seriously wounded. The Loyalists, who did not lose a single man, took a number of prisoners, who were immediately released by the lieutenant-governor on condition of returning quietly to their homes. Mackenzie succeeded in escaping across the Niagara frontier, but Matthews was taken prisoner as he was leading a detachment across the Don into Toronto. Lount was identified at Chippewa while attempting to find his way to the United States and brought back to Toronto. Rolph, Gibson and Duncombe found a refuge in the republic, but Van Egmond, who had served under Napoleon, and commanded the insurgents, was arrested and died in prison of inflammatory rheumatism. Mr. Bidwell was induced to fly from the province by the insidious representations of the lieutenant-governor, who used the fact of his flight as an argument that he had been perfectly justified in not appointing him to the Bench. In later years, the Canadian government, recognising the injustice Mr. Bidwell had received, offered him a judgeship, but he never could be induced to return to Canada Mackenzie had definite grievances against Sir Francis and his party; and a British people, always ready to sympathise with men who resent injustice and assert principles of popular government, might have soon condoned the serious mistake he had made in exciting a rash revolt against his sovereign. But his apologists can find no extenuating circumstances for his mad conduct in stirring up bands of ruffians at Buffalo and other places on the frontier to invade the province. The base of operations for these raids was Navy Island, just above the Niagara Falls in British territory. A small steamer, "The Caroline," was purchased from some Americans, and used to bring munitions of war to the island. Colonel MacNab was sent to the frontier, and successfully organised an expedition of boats under the charge of Captain Drew—afterwards an Admiral—to seize the steamer at Fort Schlosser, an insignificant place on the American side. The capture was successfully accomplished and the steamer set on fire and sent down the river, where she soon sank before reaching the cataract. Only one man was killed—one Durfee, a citizen of the United States. This audacious act of the Canadians was deeply resented in the republic as a violation of its territorial rights, and was a subject of international controversy until 1842 when it was settled with other questions at issue between Great Britain and the United States. Mackenzie now disappeared for some years from Canadian history, as the United States authorities felt compelled to imprison him for a time. It was not until the end of 1838 that the people of the Canada were free from filibustering expeditions organised in the neighboring states. "Hunters' Lodges" were formed under the pledge "never to rest until all tyrants of Britain cease to have any dominion or footing whatever in North America." These marauding expeditions on the exposed parts of the western frontier—especially on the St. Clair and Detroit Rivers—were successfully resisted. At Prescott, a considerable body of persons, chiefly youths under age, under the leadership of Von Schoultz, a Pole, were beaten at the Old Stone Windmill, which they attempted to hold against a Loyalist force. At Sandwich, Colonel Prince, a conspicuous figure in Canadian political history of later years, routed a band of filibusters, four of whom he ordered to instant death. This resolute deed created some excitement in England, where it was condemned by some and justified by others. Canadians, who were in constant fear of such raids, naturally approved of summary justice in the case of persons who were really brigands, not entitled to any consideration under the laws of war.
In 1838 President Buren issued a proclamation calling upon all citizens of the United States to observe the neutrality laws; but the difficulty in those days was the indisposition of the federal government to interfere with the states where such expeditions were organised. The vigilance of the Canadian authorities and the loyalty of the people alone saved the country in these trying times. A great many of the raiders were taken prisoners and punished with the severity due to their unjustifiable acts. Von Schoultz and eight others were hanged, a good many were pardoned, while others were transported to Van Diemen's Land, whence they were soon allowed to return. The names of these filibusters are forgotten, but those of Lount and Matthews, who perished on the scaffold, have been inscribed on some Canadian hearts as patriots. Sir George Arthur, who succeeded Sir Francis Head, was a soldier, who had had experience as a governor among the convicts of Van Diemen's Land, and the negro population of Honduras, where he had crushed a revolt of slaves. Powerful appeals were made to him on behalf of Lount and Matthews, but not even the tears and prayers of Lount's distracted wife could reach his heart. Such clemency as was shown by Lord Durham would have been a bright incident in Sir George Arthur's career in Canada, but he looked only to the approval of the Loyalists, deeply incensed against the rebels of 1837. His action in these two cases was regarded with disapprobation in England, and the colonial minister expressed the hope that no further executions would occur—advice followed in the case of other actors of the revolt of 1837. Sir George Arthur's place in colonial annals is not one of high distinction. Like his predecessors, he became the resolute opponent of responsible government, which he declared in a despatch to be "Mackenzie's scheme for getting rid of what Mr. Hume called 'the baneful domination' of the mother country"; "and never" he added, "was any scheme better devised to bring about such an end speedily".
SECTION 3.—Social and economic conditions of the Provinces in 1838.
We have now reached a turning-point in the political development of the provinces of British North America, and may well pause for a moment to review the social and economic condition of their people. Since the beginning of the century there had been a large immigration into the provinces, except during the war of 1812. In the nine years preceding 1837, 263,089 British and Irish immigrants arrived at Quebec, and in one year alone there were over 50,000. By 1838 the population of the five provinces of Upper Canada, Lower Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island had reached about 1,400,000 souls. In Upper Canada, with the exception of a very few people of German or Dutch descent, and some French Canadians opposite Detroit and on the Ottawa River, there was an entirely British population of at least 400,000 souls. The population of Lower Canada was estimated at 600,000, of whom hardly one-quarter were of British origin, living chiefly in Montreal, the Townships, and Quebec. Nova Scotia had nearly 200,000 inhabitants, of whom probably 16,000 were French Acadians, resident in Cape Breton and in Western Nova Scotia. In New Brunswick there were at least 150,000 people, of whom some 15,000 were descendants of the original inhabitants of Acadie. The Island of Prince Edward had 30,000 people, of whom the French Acadians made up nearly one-sixth. The total trade of the country amounted, in round figures, to about £5,000,000 sterling in imports, and somewhat less in exports The imports were chiefly manufactures from Great Britain, and the exports were lumber, wheat and fish. Those were days when colonial trade was stimulated by differential duties in favour of colonial products, and the building of vessels was encouraged by the old navigation laws which shut out foreign commerce from the St. Lawrence and the Atlantic ports, and kept the carrying trade between Great Britain and the colonies in the hands of British and colonial merchants, by means of British registered ships. While colonists could not trade directly with foreign ports, they were given a monopoly for their timber, fish, and provisions in the profitable markets of the British West Indies.
The character of the immigration varied considerably, but on the whole the thrifty and industrious formed the larger proportion. In 1833 the immigrants deposited 300,000 sovereigns, or nearly a million and a half of dollars, in the Upper Canadian banks. An important influence in the settlement of Upper Canada was exercised by one Colonel Talbot, the founder of the county of Elgin. Mrs. Anna Jameson, the wife of a vice-chancellor of Upper Canada, describes in her Winter Studies and Summer Rambles, written in 1838, the home of this great proprietor, a Talbot of Malahide, one of the oldest families in the parent state. The château—as she calls it, perhaps sarcastically—was a "long wooden building, chiefly of rough logs, with a covered porch running along the south side." Such homes as Colonel Talbot's were common enough in the country. Some of the higher class of immigrants, however, made efforts to surround themselves with some of the luxuries of the old world. Mrs. Jameson tells us of an old Admiral, who had settled in the London district—now the most prosperous agricultural part of Ontario—and had the best of society in his neighbourhood; "several gentlemen of family, superior education, and large capital (among them the brother of an English and the son of an Irish peer, a colonel and a major in the army) whose estates were in a flourishing state." The common characteristic of the Canadian settlements was the humble log hut of the poor immigrant, struggling with axe and hoe amid the stumps to make a home for his family. Year by year the sunlight was let into the dense forests, and fertile meadows soon stretched far and wide in the once untrodden wilderness. Despite all the difficulties of a pioneer's life, industry reaped its adequate rewards in the fruitful lands of the west, bread was easily raised in abundance, and animals of all kinds thrived.
Unhappily the great bane of the province was the inordinate use of liquor. "The erection of a church or chapel," says Mrs. Jameson, "generally preceded that of a school-house in Upper Canada, but the mill and the tavern invariably preceded both." The roads were of the most wretched character and at some seasons actually prohibitory of all social intercourse. The towns were small and ill-built. Toronto, long known as "muddy little York," had a population of about 10,000, but with the exception of the new parliament house, it had no public buildings of architectural pretensions. The houses were generally of wood, a few of staring ugly red brick; the streets had not a single side-walk until 1834, and in 1838 this comfort for the pedestrian was still exceptional. Kingston, the ancient Cataraqui, was even a better built town than Toronto, and had in 1838 a population of perhaps 4500 persons. Hamilton and London were beginning to be places of importance. Bytown, now Ottawa, had its beginnings in 1826, when Colonel By of the Royal Engineers, commenced the construction of the Rideau Canal on the chain of lakes and rivers between the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence at Kingston. The ambition of the people of Upper Canada was always to obtain a continuous and secure system of water navigation from the lakes to Montreal. The Welland Canal between Lakes Erie and Ontario was commenced as early as 1824 through the enterprise of Mr. William Hamilton Merritt, but it was very badly managed; and the legislature, which had from year to year aided the undertaking, was obliged eventually to acquire it as a provincial work. The Cornwall Canal was also undertaken, but work was stopped when it was certain that Lower Canada would not respond to the aspirations of the West and improve that portion of the St. Lawrence within its direct control. Flat-bottomed bateaux and Durham boats were generally in use for the carriage of goods on the inland waters, and it was not until the completion of a canal system between the lakes and Montreal, after the Union, that steamers came into vogue.
The province of Upper Canada had in 1838 reached a crisis in its affairs. In the course of the seven years preceding the rebellion, probably eighty thousand or one half of the immigrants, who had come to the province, had crossed the frontier into the United States, where greater inducements were held out to capital and population. As Mrs. Jameson floated in a canoe, in the middle of the Detroit River, she saw on the one side "all the bustle of prosperity and commerce," and on the other "all the symptoms of apathy, indolence, mistrust, hopelessness." At the time such comparisons were made, Upper Canada was on the very verge of bankruptcy.
Turning to Lower Canada, we find that the financial position of the province was very different from that of Upper Canada. The public accounts showed an annual surplus, and the financial difficulties of the province were caused entirely by the disputes between the executive and the assembly which would not vote the necessary supplies. The timber trade had grown to large proportions and constituted the principal export to Great Britain from Quebec, which presented a scene of much activity in the summer. Montreal was already showing its great advantages as a headquarters of commerce on account of its natural relations to the West and the United States. Quebec and Montreal had each about 35,000 inhabitants. Travellers admitted that Montreal, on account of the solidity of its buildings, generally of stone, compared most favourably with many of the finest and oldest towns in the United States. The Parish Church of Notre Dame was the largest ecclesiastical edifice in America, and notable for its simple grandeur. With its ancient walls girdling the heights first seen by Jacques Cartier, with its numerous churches and convents, illustrating the power and wealth of the Romish religion, with its rugged, erratic streets creeping through hewn rock, with its picturesque crowd of red-coated soldiers of England mingling with priests and sisters in sombre attire, or with the habitants in étoffe du pays,—the old city of Quebec, whose history went back to the beginning of the seventeenth century, was certainly a piece of mediaevalism transported from northern France. The plain stone buildings of 1837 still remain in all their evidences of sombre antiquity. None of the religious or government edifices were distinguished for architectural beauty—except perhaps the English cathedral—but represented solidity and convenience, while harmonising with the rocks amid which they had risen.
The parliament of Lower Canada still met in the Bishop's Palace, which was in want of repair. The old Château St. Louis had been destroyed by fire in 1834, and a terrace bearing the name of Durham was in course of construction over its ruins. It now gives one of the most picturesque views in the world on a summer evening as the descending sun lights up the dark green of the western hills, or brightens the tin spires and roofs of the churches and convents, or lingers amid the masts of the ships moored in the river or in the coves, filled with great rafts of timber.