Chapter V: Lord Dorchester and the Canada Act of 1791 (3)

Before his arrival in 1796, and at the time, Adet the French minister in the United States, was making mischief like his predecessor Genet, intriguing against Washington’s policy of strict neutrality as between France and Great Britain, and almost openly inciting the French Canadians to revolt. He over-reached himself, however, by supporting Jefferson’s candidature for the Presidency of the United States in succession to Washington, with the result that he was recalled. Jefferson’s opponent, John Adams, was elected President; and the feeling between France and the United States became strained to the verge of war between the two nations. The French designs on Canada came to nothing. A man named Maclane, said to have been of weak intellect, was executed for high treason at Quebec, and a vessel was seized containing arms, ostensibly for the state of Vermont, but, as the evidence seemed to show, designed for use in a raid from Vermont on Canada. There was no actual danger, but there was anxiety and unrest. England was at war with France; Lower Canada was the child of France; the United States contained a strong and very bitter anti-English party; and the armed forces in Canada were almost a negligible quantity. At this same critical time Prescott became involved in a quarrel with his Executive Council over the land question.

[Sidenote: The land question in Canada. Prescott quarrels with his Executive Council.]

A proclamation advertising Crown lands for settlement in Canada, which was issued in 1792, had called forth a large number of applications. Surveys had not kept pace with the demand for allotments, and the result had been that many applicants whose petitions had been entertained had not actually taken up any land, while others had settled and occupied land without having any legal title. As is usual in such cases, land-jobbing was prevalent; and Prescott, according to his own account, was at pains at once to frustrate ‘great schemes for accumulating land on principles of monopoly and speculation’, and to raise the fund which the Imperial Government had hoped to derive from this source for defraying in part the cost of civil administration. Prescott’s view, it would seem, was that those who had actually become occupiers and begun the work of settlement, should be confirmed in their lands in full; that, where applications had been recorded but no work done, the allotments should only be confirmed in part; that purchasers of claims should be dealt with on their merits, and that, the outstanding claims having been disposed of, the lands, with the exception of reserves for the Crown and the clergy, should be put up for sale at public auction. His Council strongly opposed him, on the ground that he was giving preference to those who had occupied land without having been granted any legal title, and that public sale would bring in a crowd of interlopers from the United States who would take up the land to the exclusion of Loyalists who had the first claim on the British Government. Prescott formed the view, rightly or wrongly, that various members of the Council were concerned in land-jobbing, and he held that public sale was the only real preventive of speculation. ‘Industrious farmers,’ he wrote, ‘who would wish to obtain a grant for the purpose of actual settlement, but who cannot spend their time in tedious solicitation, stand little chance of obtaining it, compared with speculators who can devote their time to the attainment of this object. By disposing of the land at public sale, industrious farmers would have an equal chance with any other competitor.’

[Sidenote: Benedict Arnold’s claims.]

[Sidenote: Prescott recalled.]

[Sidenote: Milnes and Hunter appointed Lieutenant-Governors of Lower and Upper Canada respectively.]

The case of Benedict Arnold, though it did not apparently enter into the controversy, as he was in England at the time, illustrates the extravagant claims which were put forward to land grants in Canada. At the beginning of 1797 he wrote to the Duke of Portland, calling attention to the sacrifices which he had made for the British Government, and asking for a reward in the shape of a grant of lands in Canada. A year later he defined his demand. He stated that the usual grant was 5,000 acres to each field officer and 1,200 acres for every member of his family; in his own case, therefore, as his family consisted of a wife, six sons and a daughter, the total would amount to 14,600 acres; but, as he had raised and commanded what he called a legion of cavalry and infantry, he considered that he himself was entitled to 10,000 acres instead of 5,000, making up the total to 19,600 acres. Even this amount he had amplified in a previous petition to the King, and he wished to be allowed to select the land where he pleased and not to be compelled to reside upon it personally.

If Arnold’s claims were at all typical of others, it is not to be wondered at that Prescott took a strong line on the land question, with a view to putting a stop to speculation. The controversy which arose between himself and his Council was embittered by the course which he adopted of making public their proceedings. Chief Justice Osgoode and other members of the Council ranged themselves in opposition to him; and the state of feeling was well summed up in the words of a correspondent, writing from Quebec in August, 1798, that the Council must either get a new governor or the governor a new Council. The Duke of Portland, Secretary of State, preferred the former alternative. On the 10th of April, 1799, he ordered Prescott home. Robert Shore Milnes was sent out as Lieutenant-Governor of Lower Canada, and General Hunter as Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada. They reached Quebec on the 13th of June, and on the 29th of July Prescott sailed for England, having received before he left addresses of confidence from all classes, British and French residents combining to pay honour to him, as a man, who, whatever his faults may have been, had won the respect and esteem of the people. By the evil custom of those days, though recalled from Canada, he was allowed to retain for years in England the office of Governor-General and to receive the pay.

[Sidenote: Close of the eighteenth century.]

Thus the eighteenth century came to an end, that memorable century, in all parts of the world fruitful alike for good and for evil to the British Empire, but nowhere so fruitful as in North America. It had seen New France severed from its motherland. It had seen the rival British colonies severed from Great Britain. It had seen the beginnings of an English province in Canada side by side with the French, and the grant of the first instalment of political privileges to Canadians of either race. The maritime provinces, when the century closed, were four in number, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, which owed its separate existence to the incoming of the Loyalists, Cape Breton, which was later to be incorporated with Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. The North-West was beginning to be a factor in Canadian history, and the exclusive power of the Hudson’s Bay Company in these regions was challenged by the formation of the North-West Company. Canada was still the land of the St. Lawrence and the great lakes, but light was breaking into the limitless area beyond, and as men’s visions widened, there came more movement and more unrest.

[Sidenote: Milnes’ views as to strengthening the Executive.]

[Sidenote: Independence of the Canadian habitants.]

[Sidenote: Decay of the Canadian aristocracy.]

We have no regular census of the two Canadas between the year 1790, when there was an imperfect enumeration of the inhabitants of the then undivided province, and the years 1824-5; but in 1800 the Lieutenant-Governor estimated the population of Lower Canada at 160,000, while in 1806 an estimate of 250,000 is given from another source, the population of Upper Canada in the same year being estimated at 70,000. That at the end of the century Lower Canada was politically and socially in a state of transition is shown by an interesting dispatch from Milnes written on the 1st of November, 1800,[212] in which, like his predecessors, he laid stress on the necessity for taking steps to strengthen the Executive Government. He pointed out causes which in his opinion united ‘in daily lessening the power and influence of the Aristocratical Body in Lower Canada’; and, curiously enough, he considered the first and most important of these to be the manner in which the province was originally settled, and the independent tenure by which the cultivators or habitants held their lands. The feudal system had been introduced with a view to keeping the colonists in leading strings, and reproducing in the New World a form of society based upon the fundamental principle of a landed aristocracy. Yet this English governor wrote of the habitants at the end of the eighteenth century, that ‘there cannot be a more independent race of people, nor do I believe there is in any part of the world a country in which equality of situation is so nearly established’. The land had passed into the hands of the peasants from those of the seigniors, who retained only the old-time privileges of a trifling rent, taking a fourteenth of the corn which the habitants were still bound to grind at the seigniors’ mills, and a twelfth of the purchase-money when lands were transferred. The seigniors, the dispatch stated, showed no disposition to enter into trade; their position had in many instances sunk below that of their vassals; and, taken as a whole, the Canadian gentry had nearly become extinct.

[Sidenote: Independence of the Roman Catholic Church.]

The second cause to which Milnes attributed the weakness of the government was ‘the prevalence of the Roman Catholic religion and the independence of the priesthood’. The Royal Instructions were that no one should be admitted to Holy Orders or have the Cure of Souls without first obtaining a licence from the governor; but the instructions had not been enforced, and the whole patronage of the Roman Catholic Church had passed into the hands of the bishops, with the result that the power of the priests over the people was entirely independent of the government. This evil Milnes proposed to remedy by increasing the emoluments which the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Canada received from government funds, on condition that the rule requiring the governor’s licences for the parish priests was strictly observed in future.

[Sidenote: Disuse of the militia.]

The third cause which was mentioned as tending to lessen the influence of the government, was the practical disembodiment of the militia since Canada had passed under British rule. Under the old French dominion the government had made itself felt in the various parishes through the captains of militia and the parish priests, and the captains of militia had been employed to issue and enforce the public ordinances. They were, Milnes wrote, chosen from among the most respectable of the habitants; and though the militia had not been called out for years past and he did not propose to call it out, the captains of militia were still in existence and the government availed itself of their honorary services on public occasions. He suggested that they should be given some salary or distinction so that they might consider themselves to be ‘the immediate officers of the Crown’; and thus he hoped to keep up the spirit of loyalty among the Canadian people, which ‘for want of an immediate class to whom they can look up, and from their having no immediate connexion with the Executive power, is in danger of becoming extinct’.[213] By attaching to the government the parish priests and the captains of militia, it might be possible to ensure a government majority in the House of Assembly and to secure the election of educated and businesslike representatives, whereas the main body of the Canadian habitants were, ‘from their want of education and extreme simplicity, liable to be misled by designing and artful men’.

[Sidenote: The Crown Lands.]

These proposals the Lieutenant-Governor regarded as temporary remedies. For the future, he looked to increasing the influence of the Crown by means of the revenue from waste lands, and the settlement of those lands by ‘a body of people of the Protestant religion that will naturally feel themselves more immediately connected with the English Government’. In the mind of Milnes, as in that of Dorchester, there was a fixed conviction that matters were tending to democracy, as democracy had shown itself in the adjoining republic; that such democracy meant disintegration; that the influence of the Crown and of the Executive Government was declining and would continue to decline, unless measures were taken to counteract the evil. He held to the doctrine that well-wishers of the government should think it matter for congratulation that there was an annual deficit on the budget of Lower Canada,[214] which made the province dependent upon the Imperial Government.

[Sidenote: The close of the eighteenth century was for Canada a time of transition and division.]

The records of the time show that in every respect the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century was for Canada a time of division and a time of change, though not yet of dangerous bitterness. There were two provinces instead of one. There were two Lieutenant-Governors, independent of each other, while the Governor-in-Chief, recalled to England, was still holding his post and drawing his pay. There were elected Assemblies, to which the Executive was not responsible, and the new century opened in Upper Canada with a complaint that the Lieutenant-Governor had spent money raised from the taxes without previously obtaining a vote of the Legislature. There was a suggestion of difficulties arising from the fact that military and civil authority for the time was divided. An interesting anonymous letter written from Quebec on the 28th of July, 1806, and signed ‘Mercator’, called attention to this point, alleging that, since Prescott’s recall in 1799, Lower Canada had languished owing to the fact that civil and military powers were not in the same hands. The result, in the writer’s opinion, was jealousy between the civil and military departments, weakening of the energy of government and loss of dignity. ‘The Canadians’ he wrote, ‘a military people and always accustomed to a military government, hold not in sufficient estimation a person placed at the head of affairs who does not at the same time command the troops.’[215]

There was again undoubted division between the Judicial and the Executive power. Chief Justice Osgoode in Lower Canada was not at one with either Dorchester, Prescott, or Milnes; while in Upper Canada, in the years 1806-7, a judge of the name of Thorpe became a member of the elected Assembly and was so outrageous in his opposition to the government that he was by Lord Castlereagh’s instructions suspended from his office. The Church of England bishop found cause to deplore the overshadowing pretensions of the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic dignitaries, on the other hand, asked for formal recognition of their position by the civil government. There was a movement, strongly advocated by the Church of England bishop, for more and better education, both primary and secondary, so that the French Canadian children might learn English, and the children of the upper classes might be educated without being sent to Europe or to the United States. The Secretary of State authorized free schools on the express condition that English should be taught in them, and directed that part of the Crown Lands revenues should be set aside for the purpose. There was also a strong feeling that the Jesuit estates, which long ago had been granted by the King to Lord Amherst but had never been handed over to him, should be applied to education. But no general system of state education was established--probably owing to Roman Catholic feeling; and, as against the proposal to teach English to the coming generation, there came into being in 1806 a French Canadian newspaper, _Le Canadien_, with the motto, ‘Nos institutions, notre langue et nos lois.’ Nothing in short was settled in Canada. Once more it was to be shown that pressure from without was necessary to produce full co-operation within; and, badly equipped as the two provinces were with means of defence, war was yet to be to them a blessing in disguise, as bringing them a step further on the path of national development.

FOOTNOTES:

[189] In the interval the government was administered (i) from the date of Haldimand’s departure till November 2, 1785, by Henry Hamilton; (ii) from the latter date till Dorchester’s arrival, by Colonel Hope. The command of the troops was at first separated from the acting governorship, and placed in the hands of St. Leger. Hamilton, who during the war had come into notice as having been in command of the expedition to the Illinois posts in 1779, when he was taken prisoner by George Rogers Clark, subsequently proved to be unfit to act as governor, and was summarily recalled.

[190] The Commission given to Carleton as Governor-in-Chief of Nova Scotia constituted him also Governor-in-Chief of the islands of St. John (now Prince Edward Island) and Cape Breton; but, though the terms of the Commission are not very clear, those two islands were at the time separate both from Nova Scotia and from each other.

[191] See the _Parliamentary History_, vol. xxvi, pp. 190-5.

[192] See the _Censuses of Canada_ 1665-1871, given in the fourth volume of the _Census of Canada_, 1870-1, published in 1876. Introduction pp. xxxviii-xliii, and p. 74. On p. 74 is the following note: ‘The number of settlers of British origin then in Lower Canada was estimated at 15,000 souls. The United Empire Loyalists settled in Canada West, not enumerated in this census, were estimated at 10,000 souls.’ On p. xxxviii, under the year 1784, it is stated:

‘There were at that time (1784) in Upper Canada about 10,000 United Empire Loyalists, according to a memorandum contained in the Appendices of the _House of Assembly of Upper Canada_ for 1823. These 10,000 are not included in the preceding census.

‘1784 British population of Nova Scotia, including Cape Breton and the mainland, estimated at 32,000 souls, having been increased by the arrival of about 20,000 United Empire Loyalists (Haliburton, _Nova Scotia_, vol. ii, p. 275). This estimate of the population of Nova Scotia, which still included New Brunswick and Cape Breton, cannot include the Acadians, who then numbered in all about 11,000.’

For the numbers of the United Empire Loyalists, see last chapter. The figures relating to this time are, in most cases, probably little more than guesswork.

[193] When the office of Secretary of State for the American Department was abolished by Burke’s Act of 1782, colonial matters were placed under the Secretary of State for the Home Department. This office was in 1787 held by Lord Sydney, who was succeeded by W. W. Grenville, youngest son of George Grenville, and afterwards Lord Grenville. When Grenville was raised to the peerage and became Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, he was succeeded in the Home and Colonies Department by Dundas, afterwards Lord Melville, and Dundas was succeeded by the Duke of Portland.

[194] See above, pp. 105-6.

[195] See above, pp. 88 (note) and 193.

[196] For these petitions see Mr. Brymner’s _Introductory Report on Canadian Archives_, 1890, pp. xxi-ii and pp. 146, 150, 157 of the Calendar, and see Shortt and Doughty, _Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada_, pp. 502-5, 524-7.

[197] See Shortt and Doughty, pp. 520-4 and notes; and Debrett’s _Parliamentary Debates_, vol. xx (1786), pp. 132-49. The statement that two years had passed since the petition was presented was not strictly correct, as the petition was dated November 24, 1784.

[198] See Shortt and Doughty, p. 652, note, and Debrett’s _Parliamentary Debates_, vol. xxiii (1787-8), pp. 684-707.

[199] In 1789, Hugh Finlay, Postmaster-General of the province and member of council, wrote suggesting that ‘We might make the people entirely English by introducing the English language. This is to be done by free schools, and by ordaining that all suits in our courts shall be carried on in English after a certain number of years’. See Shortt and Doughty, p. 657. He anticipated to some extent Lord Durham’s views.

[200] The correspondence is given in full in Mr. Brymner’s _Report on Canadian Archives_ for 1890, Note B, p. 10. See also Shortt and Doughty, _Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada_, 1759-91, and Egerton and Grant, _Canadian Constitutional Developments_.

[201] Compare the very similar language used by Carleton in a private memorandum written in 1786 and quoted in note 3, p. 551, Shortt and Doughty.

[202] No. 46 in ‘Papers relative to the province of Quebec ordered to be printed April 21, 1791’. The Order in Council is referred to in Lord Dorchester’s Commission as having been made on August 19, 1791; but that was the date on which the report was made upon which the Order was based. The boundary line sketched out in the Parliamentary Paper, and adopted almost word for word in the Order in Council, was again adopted by Sec. 6 of the British North America Act of 1867, when the Dominion was formed and the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, i.e. Upper and Lower Canada, were, after having been re-united by the Act of 1840, again separated from each other.

[203] 18 Geo. III, cap. 12: ‘An Act for removing all doubts and apprehensions concerning taxation by the Parliament of Great Britain in any of the colonies, provinces, and plantations in North America and the West Indies, &c.’ The preamble ran as follows: ‘Whereas taxation by the Parliament of Great Britain, for the purpose of raising a revenue in H.M.’s colonies, provinces and plantations in North America, has been found by experience to occasion great uneasiness and disorders among H.M.’s faithful subjects, who may nevertheless be disposed to acknowledge the justice of contributing to the common defence of the Empire, provided such contribution should be raised under the authority of the general court or general assembly of each respective colony.’

[204] The above statement represents the general effect and intent of the Act, but a long and complicated controversy arose subsequently as to the disposal of the taxes raised under the Imperial Act of 1774 (14 Geo. III, cap. 88), ‘to establish a fund towards further defraying the charges of the Administration of Justice and support of the Civil Government within the Province of Quebec in America.’ It was contended that the effect of the Declaratory Act of 1778, together with the Constitution Act of 1791, was to hand over the proceeds of these taxes to be disposed of by the provincial legislatures. The contention had no real basis, and the Law officers of the Crown reported it to be unfounded, but eventually, by an Act of 1831 (1 and 2 Will. IV, cap. 23), the legislatures of the two Canadas were empowered to appropriate the revenues in question.

[205] _Report on Canadian Archives_, 1891; _State Papers, Upper Canada_, p. 16.

[206] The monument is in the North Choir aisle. The inscription runs as follows:

‘Sacred to the memory of John Graves Simcoe, Lieutenant-General in the army and Colonel of the 22nd regiment of Foot, who died on the 26th day of October, 1806, aged 54, in whose life and character the virtues of the Hero, the Patriot, and the Christian were so eminently conspicuous that it may be justly said he served his King and his country with a zeal exceeded only by his piety towards his God.

‘During the erection of this monument, his eldest son, Francis Gwillim Simcoe, lieutenant of the 27th regiment of Foot, born at Wolford Lodge in this county, June 6, 1791, fell in the breach at the siege of Badajoz, April 6, 1812, in the 21st year of his age.’

[207] See vol. v, part 1, of the _Historical Geography of the British Colonies_, p. 196 and note.

[208] Bouchette wrote of York or Toronto in 1815: ‘In the year 1793, the spot on which it stands presented only one solitary Indian wigwam; in the ensuing spring the ground for the future metropolis of Upper Canada was fixed upon, and the buildings commenced under the immediate superintendence of the late General Simcoe, then Lieutenant-Governor.’ _A Topographical description of the Province of Lower Canada, with remarks upon Upper Canada, &c._, by Joseph Bouchette, Surveyor-General of Lower Canada (1st ed.), London, 1815, pp. 607-8.

According to this account, therefore, the building did not begin till 1794.

[209] The name of the Thames had been previously for a short time given to another Canadian river, the Gananoque. See Shortt and Doughty, p. 651 and note.

[210] Writing in February, 1796, Simcoe stated that the Legislature would meet at Niagara (Newark) on May 7, but that he proposed to dissolve the House of Assembly before the fort was evacuated.

[211] Similarly Sir George Prevost was very popular in St. Lucia when he was commandant and governor in that island, 1798-1802.

[212] This dispatch is printed on pp. 111-21 of _Canadian Constitutional Development_ (Grant and Egerton).

[213] Cp. the similar views expressed by Carleton at an earlier date. See pp. 91-4 above.

[214] The average annual revenue of Lower Canada for the five years 1795-9 inclusive was calculated at £13,000, p. a., of which only £1,500 was derived from Crown Lands, and the average annual expenditure at £25,000, leaving an annual deficit of £12,000.

[215] Brymner’s _Report on Canadian Archives_ for 1892, Calendar and Introduction, p. vi. Cp. Murray’s views as given on p. 67 above, note.