Riendeau A Roger E. Brief History of Canada

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

150

America, but he realized that this larger union would have to await the

further development of transportation and communication links

between Canada and the Maritime colonies.

Finding Durham’s recommendation for a union of the Canadas to be

compelling, the British Parliament passed the Act of Union in 1840.

The United Province of Canada, which ofﬁ cially came into being in

1841, was to be governed in accordance with the basic provisions of the

Constitutional Act of 1791: a governor-general advised by an Executive

Council would preside over an appointed Legislative Council and an

elected Legislative Assembly. Deviating from Durham’s original intent

to merge the two cultures into a single English-dominated community

to facilitate the assimilation of the French, the Act of Union stipulated

that representation in the legislature was to be distributed equally

between two distinct sections to be known as Canada West and Canada

East, corresponding with the former provinces of Upper and Lower

Canada, respectively. Assigning the same number of legislative repre-

sentatives to each section even though the population of Canada East

outnumbered that of Canada West by nearly 200,000 was a deliberate

but short-sighted effort to reinforce English political dominance over

the French. The initial French outrage over this underrepresentation,

in addition to the Act of Union’s provision for ofﬁ cial English unilin-

gualism, would ironically give way to a comparable English response

slightly more than a decade later when the continuing inﬂ ux of British

immigration would propel the population of Canada West past that of

Canada East.

The Evolution of Responsible Government

While immediately accepting the union of the Canadas, the British

government did not respond as favorably to the other major recom-

mendations of Durham’s Report. Based chieﬂ y on his consultation with

Robert Baldwin, Durham concluded that the primary cause of political

discontent in Upper Canada was a defective constitution that encour-

aged the monopolization of power by “a petty, corrupt, insolent Tory

clique.” To combat the irresponsible power of the Family Compact,

Durham recommended a form of “responsible government” in which

the governor would “secure the cooperation of the assembly in his

policy, by entrusting its administration to such men as could command

a majority.” As the leading colonial advocate of this reform, Baldwin

wanted the doctrine of responsible government based on the British

cabinet system, whereby the governor merely accepted policies put

151

forward by his advisors in the Executive Council who were collectively

responsible to the majority in the Assembly. Instead, Durham proposed

that the governor initiate policy to be administered by executive coun-

cillors with majority support in the Assembly. Nevertheless, the clear

intent of this recommendation was to place effective control over colo-

nial affairs in the hands of the elected representatives (Buckner 1985).

To strengthen colonial self-government, Durham further recom-

mended the separation of local and imperial affairs. He pointed out that

regular interference in colonial affairs in the past had tended to make

the British government a party to local squabbles that could jeopardize

or detract from more important imperial interests. Accordingly, inter-

vention in colonial affairs should be conﬁ ned to a relatively few matters

of real imperial concern such as constitutional change, international

relations, foreign trade, and the management of public lands. Durham

was supremely conﬁ dent that local self-government based on the prin-

ciple of executive responsibility to the people would lead to greater

loyalty to, rather than secession from, the empire.

While Lord Durham’s Report effectively legitimized the doctrine of

responsible government as an integral part of a reformed British consti-

tution, rather than an instrument of American republicanism, the impe-

rial authority remained reluctant to incorporate the principle into

colonial administration. Imperialism dictated that a colonial governor

could not serve two masters—that is, follow the instructions of the

colonial secretary in Britain while acting on the advice of executive

councillors responsible to a local assembly. But imperial authorities

were conﬁ dent that colonial government could be made more respon-

sive in practice without becoming fully responsible in principle.

When he succeeded Lord Durham in 1839, Charles Poulett Thomp-

son, who became Lord Sydenham, was confronted with the challenge

of exercising power with the majority support of the elected colonial

representatives without yielding his independent authority as governor.

In the hope of silencing demands for responsible government, Syden-

ham deliberately set out to eliminate remaining vestiges of oligarchic

rule by establishing much of the pattern of British ministerial govern-

ment in Canada. He organized a group of government departments,

each headed by member of the Executive Council, who was also

required to hold a seat in the Legislative Assembly. With the replace-

ment of the old lifetime appointees by elected members, the Executive

Council was becoming a veritable cabinet of ministers under the leader-

ship of the governor, who was virtually his own prime minister. These

ministers were not collectively responsible to the Assembly but rather

FROM OLIGARCHIC RULE TO RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

152

individually to the governor who regarded his council only as a body of

advisors and department heads to consult. Still, by adopting the prac-

tice of choosing ministers acceptable to the Assembly, Lord Sydenham

had effectively advanced a step closer to the principle of responsible

government (Careless 1967).

To ensure a favorable majority in the Assembly, Lord Sydenham

actively campaigned against French candidates in Canada East and

Reformers in Canada West during the ﬁ rst provincial election of the

United Province of Canada in 1841. A shrewd and unscrupulous polit-

ical tactician, Sydenham gerrymandered riding boundaries, manipu-

lated poll results, and intimidated voters in the open voting to secure

victory for English-speaking candidates, particularly Tories who were

opposed to responsible government out of fear that it would weaken

imperial ties and their inﬂ uence in the legislature. Consequently, he

was able to form an Executive Council that excluded French Canadians

and yet enjoyed majority support of the Assembly. Furthermore,

Sydenham maintained his control over the newly elected legislature by

adeptly exploiting the division within the French ranks. The radicals,

on the one hand, wanted to repeal the union of the Canadas and saw

responsible government as a means of perpetuating it. The moderate

reformers, on the other hand, supported responsible government as a

way of changing the assimilationist features of the union.

However, Sydenham’s political manipulations were unintentionally

encouraging the Reformers of Canada West, led by Baldwin and Francis

Hincks, to join forces with the moderate French Reformers, led by

Louis Lafontaine and Augustin-Norbert Morin, to achieve their com-

mon goal of responsible government. In September 1841, Sydenham

died before he had to face the difﬁ cult political problem of maintaining

majority support for the governor’s policies in the wake of the growth

of formal party lines in the Assembly. His successor, Sir Charles Bagot,

realized during the legislative session of 1842 that an effective majority

in the Assembly could only be achieved by cultivating political support

on a group rather than on an individual basis. Accordingly, he departed

from the imperial policy of excluding French elected representatives

from the Executive Council by attempting to recruit Lafontaine, who

led the largest single political grouping in the Assembly. Lafontaine

agreed to join the Executive Council only if Baldwin was included in

the new ministry. By including Baldwin and Lafontaine along with

three other Reformers in the Executive Council, Bagot retained his

independent authority as governor and averted formal recognition of

responsible government. But by bestowing a measure of political power

153

upon the emerging Reform coalition, he gave impetus to the modern

Canadian party system, which in itself advanced the cause of respon-

sible government.

The next step on the road to responsible government resulted from

yet another governor’s attempt to resist acceptance of the principle. In

1844 Sir Charles Metcalfe, who had succeeded Bagot as governor in the

previous year, clashed with the Executive Council over the right of a

responsible ministry to approve all ofﬁ cial appointments. When the

governor refused to surrender what he considered to be a prerogative

of the Crown, the ministry resigned, supported by the Assembly in a

vote of conﬁ dence. Metcalfe dissolved the Assembly, called an election,

and campaigned against the disloyalty and patronage-mongering of the

Reformers. While Metcalfe was successful in engineering the defeat of

Baldwin and the Reformers in Canada West, Lafontaine remained

ﬁ rmly entrenched in Canada East. To form a government, Metcalfe

called upon William Henry Draper, leader of the moderate Tory major-

ity in Canada West. For the next three years, the rudiments of the

future Conservative Party struggled to maintain a precarious majority

support in the Assembly. The Executive Council functioned practically

On the left, Robert Baldwin (1804–58), reform leader of Upper Canada, and on the right,

Louis Lafontaine (1807–64), reform leader of Lower Canada, photographed by Albert Ferland.

The architects of responsible government established the ﬁ rst of many French-English political

alliances that would lead Canada toward nationhood and sustain it thereafter.

(Archives of

Ontario S 2071 and Library and Archives Canada C-005961)

FROM OLIGARCHIC RULE TO RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

154

as a cabinet with Draper as virtual prime minister whose advice the

governor had to accept or else turn to the only viable alternative, a

Reform alliance led by Lafontaine, which would insist on the complete

submission of the governor to majority party rule.

The struggle for responsible government was ﬁ nally determined by

the course of events in Britain rather than in the colonies. The repeal of

the Corn Laws in 1846 and the Navigation Laws in 1849 heralded the

end of the old colonial system and ushered in the era of free trade in

Britain. Now that colonial economic activity was no longer subject to

imperial control, there seemed little reason to control political life,

either.

The political consequences of free trade for the British North Ameri-

can colonies were ﬁ rst manifested in Nova Scotia, where Joseph Howe

was leading a ﬁ ght for responsible government that was less turbulent

but no less persistent than in the Canadas. In November 1846, Colonial

Secretary Lord Grey sent a dispatch to Governor John Harvey stating

“that it is neither possible nor desirable to carry on the government of

any of the provinces of British North America in opposition to the opin-

ion of the inhabitants.” Another dispatch in March 1847 speciﬁ ed that

there was now no obstacle to the full and immediate adoption of the

British cabinet system in the colonies. When Howe led the Reformers

to electoral victory later that autumn and followed up with a motion of

nonconﬁ dence in the existing ministry in January 1848, the governor

had no recourse but to summon him and his party to form the next

government. Thus, Nova Scotia had the distinction of inaugurating the

new order of responsible government in the British colonies (Careless

1967; Buckner 1985).

Two months later, the principle was extended to the Province of

Canada, although in reality responsible government may have arrived a

little earlier. When Lord Elgin assumed the post of governor in January

1847, he placed himself at the disposal of the precarious Conservative

majority in the Assembly, which was opposed to responsible govern-

ment. In effect responsible government prevailed, since the governor

was willing to abide by the wishes of the Executive Council without

question. When the Reformers were swept back into power in the elec-

tion of January 1848, the stage was set for the formation of the ﬁ rst

uniﬁ ed one-party ministry under Baldwin and Lafontaine two months

later. The ﬁ rst test of responsible government came with the passing of

the Rebellion Losses Bill to compensate various Lower Canadians who

had suffered ﬁ nancially as a result of the Rebellion of 1837. Lord Elgin’s

routine approval of the bill in April 1849, in accordance with the prin-

155

ciples of responsible government, unleashed the fury of the Montreal

Tories who regarded the measure as a ﬂ agrant endorsement of treason.

Interpreting recent British policy in terms of economic and political

abandonment as well as submission to French domination, several

prominent and avowedly loyal English-speaking members of the Mon-

treal business community not only participated in riots resulting in the

burning of the House of Parliament but also signed the Annexation

Manifesto of 1849 supporting union with the United States. This

expression of despair proved to be futile as responsible government was

extended to all North American colonies of the British Empire, includ-

ing Prince Edward Island in 1851, New Brunswick in 1854, and New-

foundland in 1855.

The achievement of responsible government, in effect political inde-

pendence from Britain, highlighted an essential difference between the

two nations that would ultimately share the North American continent.

Whereas the thirteen colonies had to liberate themselves from Britain

through revolution, the British North American colonies gained their

freedom through evolution. Unlike the United States, which emerged

out of a bloody struggle against imperialism, the future nation of Can-

ada was nudged, if not pushed, toward independence by the same

imperial power that had attempted to block American liberty less than

a century before. The union of the Canadas and the achievement of

responsible government represented the ﬁ rst steps on the road to

nationhood for the British North American colonies. The ﬁ nal and most

formidable step would be unity of political will between the Canadian

and Maritime Provinces.

FROM OLIGARCHIC RULE TO RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT

156

THE ROAD TO

CONFEDERATION

(1850–1867)

y the middle of the 19th century, the United Province of Canada

and the Maritime colonies remained separated by hundreds of

miles of wilderness and had little in the way of communication and

commercial relations with one another. Even more isolated and remote

were the vast domains of the rugged Canadian Shield and the frigid

Arctic to the north as well as the prairie wilderness and towering coastal

mountain region to the west, all of which were sparsely populated

by Native peoples and fur traders. Yet within a span of two decades,

the far-ﬂ ung British North American colonies came to the realization

that their continued growth, indeed their survival in the shadow of a

powerful and ambitious neighbor, would depend on the breakdown

of isolation and a convergence of their diverse interests. The coming

of the railway age made transcontinental transportation and commu-

nication linkage feasible. The British withdrawal as an imperial force

in the upper half of the continent and the apparent willingness of the

United States to take its place rendered intercolonial unity more urgent.

The political breakdown of the union of the Canadas and the rise of a

Maritime union movement offered the occasion for the reconstitution

of the British North American colonies into a new nation to be known

as the Dominion of Canada.

Reciprocity and Railways

The advent of British free trade conspired with the onset of economic

depression throughout the Western world to reduce exports via the St.

Lawrence by about one-third in the late 1840s. This downturn in eco-

nomic fortunes, coinciding with the granting of responsible govern-

157

ment, no doubt accounted for the panic among the Montreal merchants

who signed the Annexation Manifesto of 1849. But with the revival of

the world economy in the following year, thoughts of ﬁ nding new mar-

kets and prosperity through political union with the United States had

all but disappeared in the Province of Canada.

In fact, closer economic integration of the Canadian and Maritime

colonies with the United States was becoming possible without sacriﬁ c-

ing recently gained political autonomy. Much of the decline in British

demand for grain and timber by 1850 was being offset by the emer-

gence of new markets, particularly for wheat, dairy products, and sawn

lumber, in the rapidly growing cities of the American Midwest and the

Atlantic seaboard. While this continental trade was not about to

develop on the same scale as transatlantic commerce, which had

returned to normal levels by the mid-1850s, it offered Canada and the

Maritimes an alternative strategy for economic development beyond

mere dependence on the imperial market. Commercial reciprocity with

the United States, therefore, became a major priority of the Canadian

government, and the idea was endorsed by the British government as a

means of reducing colonial dependence (Masters 1963).

Although the American border regions were more favorable to reci-

procity and the midwestern states were interested in free access to the

St. Lawrence route, on the whole, strong protectionist sentiment still

had to be overcome, particularly in the northern states. Another imped-

iment was the growing sectional conﬂ ict over slavery. As supporters of

slavery, the southern states were apprehensive in the wake of northern

assertions that reciprocity was a prelude to annexation, which in turn

would lead to a preponderance of free states in the union. Eventually,

British envoy Lord Elgin was able to assuage southern concerns by

arguing that a Canada made prosperous by free trade was less likely to

accept annexation to the United States. The interest of the United States

in reciprocity was increased in 1852 by the threat of a naval clash with

Britain over the extent of American rights to the inshore ﬁ sheries of the

Maritime Provinces. The American desire to resolve the long-standing

ﬁ sheries dispute combined with the Canadian demand for freer trade

culminated in the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854.

The treaty, concluded for an initial period of 10 years, provided for

the free exchange of natural (as opposed to manufactured) products

between the United States and the British North American colonies,

free navigation of the American-controlled Lake Michigan and the

Canadian-controlled St. Lawrence River, and joint access to all coastal

ﬁ sheries north of the 36th parallel. Over the next decade, trade between

THE ROAD TO CONFEDERATION

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

158

the two partners to this agreement trebled in value, and henceforth, a

regional commerce of convenience, involving the midwestern and

northern border states with the St. Lawrence– Great Lakes region, New

England with the Maritimes, and eventually the American western

states bordering the 49th parallel with their Canadian counterparts,

characterized a growing continental economic integration. Although

more than half of Canada’s trade and almost two-thirds of Maritime

commerce was still conducted with Britain, these colonies were enhanc-

ing their future economic options by maintaining a foothold in each of

the imperial and continental markets.

Competitiveness in either the imperial or the continental market

after 1850 depended on continued transportation improvement, as

exempliﬁ ed by the completion of the St. Lawrence canal system.

Although more economical and efﬁ cient to use than the Hudson-Erie

route to New York, the St. Lawrence route through Montreal was

closed by ice for nearly half the year. Moreover, during the 1840s, every

major American port on the Atlantic seaboard, including New York,

Philadelphia, Boston, and Baltimore, was connected to the interior by

railroads. By contrast to over 9,000 miles of railway in the United

States, little more than 60 miles of track had been laid in all of British

North America by mid-century; but within a decade there would be

over 2,000 miles of railways, mostly in the Province of Canada.

To gain access to an ice-free Atlantic port, a group of Montreal busi-

nessmen collaborated with railway promoters from Portland, Maine, in

1850 to build the St. Lawrence and Atlantic line. When completed in

1853, the St. Lawrence and Atlantic had the distinction of being the

world’s ﬁ rst international railway. The following year, the Great West-

ern Railway, promoted by Allan MacNab, opened its main line from

Hamilton to Windsor with the intention of extending westward to

Detroit in order to link up with the Michigan Central system and east-

ward to Buffalo in order to connect with the New York railway net-

work. Accordingly, the Great Western could channel a share of the

American midwestern trade through Canada West by serving as a por-

tage route from Chicago to New York. By 1855 the Northern Railway

was completed from Toronto to Collingwood on Georgian Bay. By link-

ing Lakes Ontario and Huron, the Northern line serviced the agrarian

hinterland north of Toronto and opened up the prospect of a combined

water and rail route to the upper Great Lakes and beyond (Careless

1967).

Railway-building fever was also prevalent in the Maritimes, albeit to

a lesser extent. With provincial government assistance, lines were built

159

linking Halifax to Truro in Nova Scotia and Saint John to Shediac in

New Brunswick by the late 1850s. These lines reﬂ ected the hope of

Halifax and Saint John merchants to link their ice-free ports with the

St. Lawrence transport system and thus tap into the trafﬁ c between the

American Midwest and Europe. However, to build and operate railways

in the Maritimes was more expensive than in Canada because of the

greater distances from larger urban centers and the lack of a populated

hinterland to generate local revenue from shipment and passenger traf-

ﬁ c. For such reasons, Joseph Howe’s proposal for an intercolonial link

with Canada fell through in 1852.

The most ambitious scheme was the Montreal-based Grand Trunk

Railway. Initiated in 1853, the Grand Trunk was a transprovincial line

extending from Sarnia at the southwestern end of Canada West to

Quebec City in Canada East. The failure to negotiate the intercolonial

extension to Halifax prompted the Grand Trunk to purchase the St.

Lawrence and Atlantic Railway, which offered access to the ice-free

Atlantic port of Portland, Maine. When completed in 1859, the Grand

Trunk was the longest railway line in the world—a continuous stretch

of 1,100 miles, which was later extended westward to reach Chicago.

Not surprisingly, this extraordinary enterprise was constantly plagued

by ﬁ nancial difﬁ culties, despite a considerable infusion of private

capital from British investors and the generous support of the Cana-

dian government. As construction progressed, the Grand Trunk Rail-

way Company repeatedly appealed for more aid from the provincial

government, which, in turn, had to borrow heavily to satisfy this

urgent need.

The government felt obliged to bail out the struggling railway not

only because the line was considered vital to future economic develop-

ment but also because six of the Grand Trunk’s 12 directors were mem-

bers of the Canadian cabinet. Such conﬂ icts of interest were commonplace

in mid-19th-century politics. Sir Francis Hincks, who fought for

responsible government alongside Robert Baldwin, was intimately

involved with the Grand Trunk while he was serving as prime minister.

Likewise, George-Étienne Cartier was a paid solicitor for the Grand

Trunk before becoming prime minister. Alexander Galt, as president of

the St. Lawrence and Atlantic, arranged the absorption of the railway

by the Grand Trunk and went on to become a minister of ﬁ nance. Sir

Allan MacNab, a leading promoter of the Great Western Railway and a

prime minister from 1854 to 1856, summed up the spirit of the age

when he frankly admitted: “All my politics are railroads.” Indeed, gov-

ernment support for railways tended to be a contentious political issue

THE ROAD TO CONFEDERATION