Battle Royal

by David Johnson

  It is one thing to have a plan, but quite another to successfully implement it. While the British scheme for governing and changing the nature of Quebec may have looked eminently reasonable to senior officials in London, it fell to British governors in Quebec City to make this plan a reality; and it was there, in Quebec City, that these governors, first James Murray and then Guy Carleton, came to recognize the futility and dangerous consequences of seeking to assimilate French Canada. While both of these men came to their governorship firmly intent on fulfilling London’s wishes, they both came to sense the impracticality of most of these direct­ives in light of how the political, legal, social, and economic life of the colony of Quebec actually played out in the real world. Following the end of the Seven Years’ War, around one thousand British subjects moved from the southern colonies to Quebec. Mainly settling in Montreal, they took control of the fur trade. These new British Protestant Quebeckers were soon demanding that the governor establish the legislative assembly, which had been promised them in the royal proclamation. In a clear violation of the proclamation and his official instructions from London, Murray refused. As Murray expressed in letters back to his superiors in London, he believed it would be contrary to the long-term interests of successful and harmonious British rule in Quebec to have an assembly established that would only be representative of less than one thousand British colonials. Murray was convinced that his fellow countrymen wanted nothing less than to mirror the destruction and deportation of the French in Nova Scotia by expelling the French from Quebec. Murray was appalled by these ideas, though his vehement opposition to them may have been more political than humanitarian. He believed that such an action would enrage French-Canadian opinion against British rule and would, if sought to be implemented, result in prolonged war and economic devastation for the colony.[12]

  In similar fashion, Murray quickly came to exercise wise discretion in the legal reforms he would introduce to Quebec. While he promptly established a system of courts imposing English criminal law in the colony, he accepted the continuation of French civil law as the best means of protecting and promoting civil property, including land ownership and contract and commercial rights. Murray also allowed French Roman Catholics to practise law, to sit on juries, and to be engaged as local public servants. As the governor informed his superiors, a consequence of failing to permit these actions would have been the disintegration of the whole system of law and order in the colony, to the disadvantage of British rule.[13]

  Governor Murray also reached accommodation with the Roman Catholic Church. Rather than imposing the Church of England upon the new French-Canadian subjects of the Crown, the governor sought expediency and governability over religious dogma. Stable and effective British rule in Quebec, to Murray, required that the vast majority of French Canadians at least accept and tolerate — not resist — British authorities in the colony. The enmity of French Canadians would be guaranteed if the British Crown in Quebec was perceived to be attacking the Roman Catholic Church. If British officials simply accepted and tolerated the Roman Catholic faith in Quebec, the British Crown could gain the allegiance of the church hierarchy, its priests and bishop, to preach in favour of obedience to established and acceptable British rule in Quebec.

  All Murray’s efforts to reconcile the majority French population in Quebec to British rule served only to infuriate the small British population in the colony, leading them to petition to London for Murray’s removal as governor. They got their wish in 1766 when Murray was stripped of his position and replaced by Sir Guy Carleton. Although Carleton came to Quebec City fully intent on implementing all stated British policies regarding Quebec, once in the colony, and coming to appreciate its social and political realities, he too came to embrace Murray’s pragmatism. The interests of the French-Canadian majority were supported, and the demands of the tiny minority of British-American merchants in Montreal were increasingly disregarded. By the early 1770s, and conscious of growing civil unrest in the thirteen American colonies to the south, Carleton began to encourage the British government to enshrine into law all the compromises sanctioned by both Murray and himself during their tenures as governors of Quebec. His rationale was that such an action would ensure French-Canadian loyalty to the Crown in the event of greater political upheavals in the south.

  In 1774, swayed by Carleton’s advice and fearful of the deteriorating political situation in the lower Thirteen Colonies, George III gave royal assent to the Quebec Act, one of the leading constitutional reforms in Canadian pre-Confederation history. Through this statute, the British government legalized the existing constitutional status quo in Quebec: the establishment of a legislative assembly would be postponed until such time as its creation would be “expedient.” While English criminal law would apply throughout the colony, the French and their heritage were recognized in other ways: all civil, property, and commercial rights and duties would be based upon the French civil law system; the seigneurial system of land ownership would be affirmed; the Roman Catholic Church would be free to practise its faith; and all prohibitions on Roman Catholics holding public offices were lifted, meaning that French Canadians would be allowed to serve in any future executive or legislative councils appointed by a governor of Quebec to assist him in the administration of his rule over the colony.[14]

  The Quebec Act marks the beginning of the historic constitutional compromises that would have to be made to ensure that French Canada could and would live, if not enthusiastically at least civilly and generally tranquilly, under the authority of the British Crown. The dynamic of compromise witnessed here also foreshadows the art of conciliation and mediation that would become an enduring hallmark of Canadian constitutional relations between French and English Canadian political leaders.

  The American Revolution, the Crown, and the Loyalists

  Besides its importance to Canada, the Quebec Act also became a key feature in American history. The act helped tip the scales toward outright revolution in the Thirteen Colonies, more and more terming themselves “American.” There, many of the increasingly disloyal subjects of the king viewed the Quebec Act as one of the “intolerable acts,” forcefully extending the boundaries of Quebec to include the lands surrounding the Great Lakes and the Ohio River valley — lands that were to be excluded from “American” westward settlement. The subsequent American Revolution of 1775–83 is most important to our narrative due to the demographic, political, and social consequences of the American victory for the British colonies existing to the north of the new United States.

  With the end of this war in 1783, some eighty thousand “loyalists” were now forced to flee their former homelands. These people were the British subjects who had lived in the thirteen American colonies and had fought for, or at the very least supported, the British cause during the revolution. While the wealthiest of these loyalists, about two thousand, returned to England and some thousands of others settled in the West Indies, the vast majority headed north, either by foot to Quebec or by ship to Nova Scotia. Approximately fifty thousand went to Nova Scotia, and between fifteen thousand and twenty thousand found their way to Quebec. All these loyalists represented a major influx of population to these colonies, especially so to Nova Scotia. In 1784 the British government divided the colony of Nova Scotia into two parts, with the region on the western side of the Bay of Fundy becoming the colony of New Brunswick, which was appointed its own governor and executive council and had its own legislative assembly. While the new population in Quebec in no way came close to matching the now roughly seventy thousand French Canadians, the newcomers were all anglophones and overwhelmingly Protestant. Most of these people were given land to settle along the upper reaches of the St. Lawrence River and along the north shore of Lake Ontario, land that would eventually come to be called Ontario. Everywhere they went, the loyalists brought with them a sense of loyalty to the British Crown but also the expectation that they would live under British institutions, including
elected legislative assemblies representative of “commoners” like themselves. Such assemblies had already existed in Nova Scotia since 1758 and Prince Edward Island since 1773. New Brunswick was granted its legislative assembly in 1784. The question now became what would happen in Quebec.

  Governors Murray and Carleton had always resisted the establishment of such an assembly in Quebec. They reasoned that since Roman Catholics possessed neither the right to vote for, nor to sit in, a legislative assembly, any such assembly in Quebec would be dominated by the British Protestant minority, with ruinous consequences for the colony. The Quebec Act affirmed this policy until such time as the establishment of an elected assembly would be “expedient.” But public attitudes began to change with the arrival of significant numbers of loyalists to Quebec. As early as 1785, new settlers in Quebec petitioned George III, requesting him to order the establishment of a legislative assembly in Quebec. Carleton advised the British government to deny this petition out of fear for the democratic tendencies that such assemblies can engender in commoners, tendencies recently witnessed in the Thirteen Colonies to the south. In this case, however, the authorities in London rejected Carleton’s advice. A more liberal-minded William Grenville, secretary of state for the colonies, believed that the timing was now “expedient” for an assembly in Quebec, or rather, two assemblies. He drafted the Constitutional Act, 1791, designed to grant all colonists in Quebec, both English and French, the right to elect members to a representative legislative assembly while also partitioning Quebec into two separate colonies, thereby largely separating the French and English from each other so as to reduce “tensions and animosities” between these two groups. With the passage of this law, Quebec was divided into Lower Canada (now Quebec) and Upper Canada (now Ontario), with each new colony being granted a lieutenant governor appointed by London, executive and legislative councils to be appointed by the lieutenant governor, and legislative assemblies to be elected by, and to be representative of, the common people of each colony. Overseeing these joint colonies would remain a governor for “Canada” appointed by the British government, with responsibility for the overall administration of both colonies.[15]

  The stage was now set for the dramatic struggle for responsible government, pitting loyalist defenders of the traditional Crown against reformist advocates for a more democratic order under a more progressive Crown.

  Chapter 2

  from the few to the many: responsible government, the progressive crown, and confederation

  “We feel it to be our humble duty to submit to your Excellency, that it is essential to the satisfactory result of our deliberations [that your government] should possess the confidence of this House and of the country — and we respectfully represent to your Excellency that that confidence is not reposed in the present Advisers of your Excellency.”

  — Robert Baldwin, speaking in the Legislative Assembly of the Colony of Canada, March 6, 1848.

  “I shall take measures without delay for forming a new Executive Council.”

  — James Bruce, Earl of Elgin, governor of the colony of Canada, in a message to its Legislative Assembly, March 7, 1848.

  Governor Elgin confronted a dilemma in April 1849. The Legislative Assembly of the Colony of Canada had recently passed a bill proposed by the newly elected Reform (Liberal) government led by Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin. This Rebellion Losses Bill would provide state-funded fiscal compensation for people, mainly living in what is now Quebec, for property damage they had suffered during the rebellions against the British Crown that had shocked the colonies of Upper and Lower Canada in 1837–38.

  The governor knew that this bill was widely popular in French Canada. He also knew, from first-hand conversations, that it provoked outrage among most English Canadian Tories, who claimed that many of the recipients of compensation would be those who had been rebels a decade earlier, persons who had engaged in violent treason against the Crown. Elgin sympathized with this viewpoint, and Tory members of the assembly urged him to use his Crown powers to veto the bill by refusing to give it royal assent. But these requests gave the governor pause for concern. When he had been appointed to his post in 1848, Elgin had been instructed by the Colonial Office in London to exercise his powers in accordance with the principles of responsible government. The party winning the most seats in colonial elections was to be entitled to form a government, and the leader of that party was to be named premier; the governor was then to follow the premier’s advice on how the colony should be governed. In 1848 the Reform Party had won the election, and Elgin had appointed LaFontaine and Baldwin as co-premiers. This Reform government then settled down to running the colony, and its first major legislative accomplishment was the Rebellion Losses Bill.

  So what should Elgin do now? His premiers expected him to give the bill royal assent. The Tory opposition expected him to veto it. He personally disagreed with the substance of the bill, but he recognized that the Reform government was popularly elected and that the principles of responsible government directed him to sign the bill into law. He also knew that if he vetoed the bill, the Reform government would resign. But the Tories, with only a minority of seats in the legislative assembly, could not sustain a government. With LaFontaine and Baldwin gone, Elgin would have to call a new election. The campaign would likely witness bitter hostilities and violence pitting French against English, Tories against Reformers. Given the political divisions of the time, such an election would probably result in the re-election of the LaFontaine-Baldwin coalition and the start of the whole sorry drama once again. What’s a governor to do?

  Governor Elgin knew his duty. On April 25, 1849, he proceeded to a crowded parliament building in downtown Montreal, and he made history. The legislative assembly was surrounded by throngs of loud and angry Tory protestors, and the governor needed a military escort into the building. Here, he duly gave royal assent to the Rebellion Losses Bill.

  This action sparked a riot. Some 1,500 Tories, who could not believe that the Queen’s representative had rewarded treason, stormed Parliament. Elgin was chased from the assembly, pelted with stones and rotten eggs, and, by one account, almost killed.[1] Rioters vandalized the building, setting it on fire, and then prevented firefighters from reaching the blaze. The seat of government in Canada was razed to the ground, destroying a twenty-thousand-volume parliamentary library and irreplaceable documents of Canada’s constitutional history. Days of chaos ensued in Montreal. LaFontaine and Baldwin were threatened with assassination, and Elgin was forced into hiding. Homes and buildings were looted, and individuals assaulted and murdered. But through this, Elgin kept his cool and, fearing an escalation in violence, refused to declare martial law and call out the army.

  After a few days, the rioting subsided, local authorities restored peace and order, life began to return to normal, and the Rebellion Losses Act began to be implemented. Responsible government had come to the colony of Canada.

  Forgotten Heritage

  In 1867, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, and Ontario united together, marking the birth of modern Canada. This union, or confederation, was authorized by a document passed by the British Parliament originally called the British North America Act, 1867, and it became legally effective on July 1 of that year.

  As we’re all told now during Canada Day celebrations, Confederation in 1867 was the greatest political event in the history of Canada in the nineteenth century.

  But that’s not true.

  Not to besmirch Canada Day, but greater constitutional developments were occurring in British North America a quarter century before 1867. These developments trumped Confederation for their intimate connections to the working of the Crown and their great significance to the development of Canada as a free and democratic country. The 1840s witnessed the culmination of a decades-long and often bitter struggle by ordinary British North Americans for the establishment of responsible government in these colonies
. While Confederation in 1867 inaugurated Canada as a federal state, the granting of responsible government by the British government to her North American colonies in 1848 laid the foundation for the steady development of Canada as a modern liberal and parliamentary democracy. In the grand scheme of things, democracy is more important than federalism.

  The Crown and Colonial Governance: The Old Order

  At the dawning of the nineteenth century, all the colonies of British North America possessed a common and well-established system of top-down, command and control colonial governance. To fully appreciate the magnitude of the attainment of responsible government in the 1840s, it is vital to understand how colonial governments worked before 1848.

  At the apex of power in each colony stood the governor, an appointee of the British government. He (and it was always he) represented the Crown and possessed full executive authority in the colony. Governors tended to be senior military officers or officials from the British Colonial Office whose tasks were to oversee and direct all aspects of the political, economic, and social life of their colonies. Despite their massive power in their own colony, governors were nevertheless subordinate to imperial control. Every governor was subject to instructions, advice, and orders from the imperial government in London, where their policy and administrative decisions could be reviewed and, if need be, revised or revoked.