Chapter V (2)

Now here I confess I cannot go along with you, and the difference
between us is a very material one; for if the monarch be not an
indispensable element in our constitutional mechanism, and if we can
secure all the advantages of that mechanism without him, I have drawn
the wrong moral from the facts. You say that the system the Red
Republicans would have established in France would have been the
nearest possible approach to our own. It is possible, I think, that we
may be tending towards the like issues. It is possible, perhaps
probable, that as the House of Commons becomes more democratic in its
composition, and consequently more arrogant in its bearing, it may
cast off the shackles which the other powers of the State impose on
its self-will, and even utterly abolish them; but I venture to believe
that those who last till that day comes, will find that they are
living under a very different constitution from that which we now
enjoy; that they have traversed the interval which separates a
temperate and cautious administration of public affairs resting on the
balance of powers and interests, from a reckless and overbearing
tyranny based on the caprices and passions of an absolute and
irresponsible body. You talk somewhat lightly of the check of the
Crown, although you acknowledge its utility. But is it indeed so light
a matter, even as our constitution now works? Is it a light matter
that the Crown should have the power of dissolving Parliament; in
other words, of deposing the tyrant at will? Is it a light matter that
for several months in each year the House of Commons should be in
abeyance, during which period the nation looks on Ministers not as
slaves of Parliament but servants of the Crown? Is it a light matter
that there should still be such respect for the monarchical principle,
that the servants of that visible entity yclept the Crown are enabled
to carry on much of the details of internal and foreign administration
without consulting Parliament, and even without its cognisance? Or do
you suppose that the Red Republicans, when they advocated the
nomination of a Ministry of the House of Assembly with a revocable
_mandat_, intended to create a Frankenstein endowed with powers
in some cases paramount to, and in others running parallel with, the
authority of the omnipotent body to which it owed its existence? My
own impression is, that they meant a set of delegates to be appointed,
who should exercise certain functions of legislative initiation and
executive patronage so long as they reflected clearly, in the former
the passions, and in the latter the interests of the majority for the
time being, and no longer.

It appears to me, I must confess, that if you have a republican form
of government in a great country, with complicated internal and
external relations, you must either separate the executive and
legislative departments, as in the United States, or submit to a
tyranny of the majority, not the more tolerable because it is
capricious and wielded by a tyrant with many heads. Of the two evils I
prefer the former.

Consider, for a moment, how much more violent the proceedings of
majorities in the American Legislatures would be, how much more
reckless the appeals to popular passion, how much more frequently the
permanent interests of the nation and the rights of individuals and
classes would be sacrificed to the object of raising political capital
for present uses, if debates or discussions affected the tenure of
office. I have no idea that the executive and legislative departments
of the State can be made to work together with a sufficient degree of
harmony to give the maximum of strength and of mutual independence to
secure freedom and the rights of minorities, except under the
presidency of Monarchy, the moral influence of which, so long as a
nation is monarchical in its sentiments, cannot, of course, be
measured merely by its recognised power.

[Sidenote: Influence of a Governor, under responsible Government.]

Those who are most ready to concur in these views of Colonial Government, and to admire the vigour with which they were defended, and the consistency with which they were carried out, may still be inclined to ask whether the maintenance of them did not involve a species of official suicide: whether the theory of the responsibility of provincial Ministers to the provincial Parliament, and of the consequent duty of the Governor to remain absolutely neutral in the strife of political parties, had not a necessary tendency to degrade his office into that of a mere _Roi fainéant_. He had in 1849, as Sir C. Adderley expresses it, 'maintained the principle of responsible Government at the risk of his life.' Was the result of his hard-won victory only to empty himself of all but the mere outward show of power and authority?

Such questions he was always ready to meet with an uncompromising negative. 'I have tried,' he said, both systems. In Jamaica there was no responsible Government: but I had not half the power I have here with my constitutional and changing Cabinet.' Even on the Vice-regal throne of India, he missed, at first, at least, something of the authority and influence which had been his, as Constitutional Governor, in Canada.[5] He was fully conscious, however, of the difficult nature of the position, and that it was only tenable on condition of being penetrated, or _possessed_, as he said, with the idea of its tenability. In this strain he wrote to his intimate friend. Mr. Cumming Bruce, in September 1852, with reference to a report that he was to be recalled by the Ministry which had recently come into power.

As respects the _matter_ of the report, I am disposed to believe
that, viewing the question with reference to personal interests
exclusively, my removal from hence would not be any disadvantage to
me. But, as to my work here--there is the rub. Is it to be all undone?
On this point I must speak frankly. I have been possessed (I use the
word advisedly, for I fear that most persons in England still consider
it a case of _possession_) with the idea that it is possible to
maintain on this soil of North America, and in the face of Republican
America, British connection and British institutions, if you give the
latter freely and trustingly. Faith, when it is sincere, is always
catching; and I have imparted this faith, more or less thoroughly, to
all Canadian statesmen with whom I have been in official relationship
since 1848, and to all intelligent Englishmen with whom I have come in
contact since 1850--as witness Lord Wharncliffe, Waldegrave,
Tremenheere, &c. &c. Now if the Governor ceases to possess this faith,
or to have the faculty of imparting it, I confess I fear that, ere
long, it will become extinct in other breasts likewise. I believe that
it is equally an error to imagine with one old-fashioned party, that
you can govern such dependencies as this on the antiquated
bureaucratic principle, by means of rescripts from Downing Street, in
defiance of the popular legislatures, and on the hypothesis that one
local faction monopolises all the loyalty of the Colony; and to
suppose with the Radicals that all is done when you have simply told
the colonists 'to go to the devil their own way.' I believe, on the
contrary, that there is more room for the exercise of influence on the
part of the Governor under my system than under any that ever was
before devised; an influence, however, wholly moral--an influence of
suasion, sympathy, and moderation, which softens the temper while it
elevates the aims of local polities. It is true that on certain
questions of public policy, especially with regard to Church matters,
views are propounded by my ministers which do not exactly square with
my pre-conceived opinions, and which I acquiesce in, so long as they
do not contravene the fundamental principles of morality, from a
conviction that they are in accordance with the general sentiments of
the community.

It is true that I do not seek the commendation bestowed on Sir F. Head
for bringing men into his councils from the liberal party, and telling
them that they should enjoy only a partial confidence; thereby
allowing them to retain their position as tribunes of the people in
conjunction with the _prestige_ of advisers of the Crown by
enabling them to shirk responsibility for any acts of government which
are unpopular. It is true that I have always said to my advisers,
'while you continue my advisers you shall enjoy nay unreserved
confidence; and _en revanche_ you shall be responsible for all
acts of government.'

But it is no less certain that there is not one of them who does not
know that no inducement on earth would prevail with me to bring me to
acquiesce in any measures which seemed to me repugnant to public
morals, or Imperial interests; and I must say that, far from finding
in my advisers a desire to entrap me into proceedings of which 1 might
disapprove, I find a tendency constantly increasing to attach the
utmost value to my opinion on all questions, local or generals that
arise.

The deep sense which he entertained of the importance of a correct understanding on this point is shown by his devoting to it the closing words of the last official despatch which he wrote from Quebec, on December 18, 1854.

I readily admit that the maintenance of the position and due influence
of the Governor is one of the most critical problems that have to be
solved in the adaptation of Parliamentary Government to the Colonial
system; and that it is difficult to over-estimate the importance which
attaches to its satisfactory solution. As the Imperial Government and
Parliament gradually withdraw from legislative interference, and from
the exercise of patronage in Colonial affairs, the office of Governor
tends to become, in the most emphatic sense of the term, the link
which connects the Mother-country and the Colony, and his influence
the means by which harmony of action between the local and imperial
authorities is to be preserved. It is not, however, in my humble
judgment, by evincing an anxious desire to stretch to the utmost
constitutional principles in his favour, but, on the contrary, by the
frank acceptance of the conditions of the Parliamentary system, that
this influence can be most surely extended and confirmed. Placed by
his position above the strife of parties--holding office by a tenure
less precarious than the ministers who surround him--having no
political interests to serve but that of the community whose affairs
he is appointed to administer--his opinion cannot fail, when all cause
for suspicion and jealousy is removed, to have great weight in the
Colonial Councils, while he is set at liberty to constitute himself in
an especial manner the patron of those larger and higher interests--
such interests, for example, as those of education, and of moral and
material progress in all its branches--which, unlike the contests of
party, unite instead of dividing the members of the body politic. The
mention of such influences as an appreciable force in the
administration of public affairs may provoke a sneer on the part of
persons who have no faith in any appeal which is not addressed to the
lowest motives of human conduct; but those who have juster views of
our common nature, and who have seen influences that are purely moral
wielded with judgment, will not be disposed to deny to them a high
degree of efficacy.

[Sidenote: Defence of the colony,]

Closely akin to the question of the maintenance of the connection between the Colony and Great Britain, especially when viewed as affected by the commercial and financial condition of the former, was the question of throwing upon it the expense of defending itself; a problem which was then only beginning to attract the attention of liberal statesmen. For though it may be true that the practice of defending the Colonies with the troops and at the cost of the mother-country was an innovation upon the earlier Colonial system, introduced at the time of the great war, it is not the less certain that to the generation of colonists that had grown up since that time the abandonment of it had all the effect of novelty. It was a question on which, as affecting Canada, Lord Elgin was in a peculiar degree 'between two fires;' exposed to pressure at once from the Government at home and from his own Ministers, and seeing much to agree with in the views of both.

[Sidenote: against internal disorder;]

In the first place, as regards the preservation of order within the province, he thought it clear that, as a general rule, the cost of this should fall on the Colony itself wherever it enjoyed self-government; but there were peculiar circumstances in Canada which made him hesitate to apply the doctrine unreservedly there. Owing to the contiguity of the United States, the abettors of any mischief in the Colony might count on help constantly at hand, not indeed from the Government of the Union, which never acted disloyally,[6] but from the Unruly spirits that were apt to infest the borders; and it seemed to him at least doubtful, whether both justice and policy did not require that Great Britain should afford to the supporters of order some material aid to counterbalance this. Again, the peculiar social and political state of Lower Canada, arising mainly from the conditions under which it had passed into the hands of England, and from the manner in which England had fulfilled those conditions, created special difficulties as to the maintenance of internal quiet. On the one hand England's respect for treaty obligations had induced her to resist all attempts to break down by fraud or violence those rights and usages of the French population, which had tended to keep alive among them feelings of distinctive nationality; while on the other hand the effect of the working of the old system of colonial administration had been to confer upon British or American settlers a disproportionate share in the government of the province. It followed that the French-Canadian majority and the Anglo- Saxon minority were dwelling side by side in that section of the Colony without, to any sensible extent, intermingling, and under conditions of equilibrium which could never have been established but for the presence on the same scene of a directing and overruling power. In this state of things, while confidently hoping that an impartial adherence to the principles of constitutional government would by degrees obliterate all national distinctions, he saw reason to fear that the sudden withdrawal of Britain's moderating control, whether as the result of separation or of a change of Imperial policy, would be followed at no distant period by a serious collision between the races.

[Sidenote: against foreign attack.]

Similarly, as regards defence against foreign attack, while agreeing that a self-governing colony should be self-dependent, Lord Elgin felt that the peculiar position of Canada, having no foreign attack to apprehend except hi quarrels of England's making, made her case somewhat exceptional. And any wholesale withdrawal of British troops he strongly deprecated, as likely to imperil her connection with the mother-country, if it took place suddenly, before the old notion--the 'axiom affirmed again and again by Secretaries of State and Governors, that England was bound to pay all expenses connected with the defence of the Colony'--had lost its hold on men's minds, and a feeling of the responsibilities attaching to self- government had had time to grow up.

His first letter on the subject is to Lord Grey, written so early as April 26,1848:--

The question which you raise in your last letter respecting the
military defence of Canada is a large one, and, before irrevocable
steps be taken, it may be well to look at it on all sides.

The first consideration which offers itself in connection with this
subject is this, 'Why does Canada require to be defended, and against
whom?' A very large number of persons in this community believe that
there is only one power from which they have anything to dread, and
that this power would be converted into the fastest friend, bone of
their bone, and flesh of their flesh, if the connection with Great
Britain were abandoned.

In this respect the position of Canada is peculiar. When you say to
any other colony 'England declines to be longer at the expense of
protecting you,' you at once reveal to it the extent of its dependence
and the value of Imperial support. But it is not so here. Withdraw
your protection from Canada, and she has it in her power to obtain the
security against aggression enjoyed by Michigan or Maine: about as
good security, I must allow, as any which is to be obtained at the
present time.

But you may observe in reply to this, 'You cannot get the security
which Michigan and Maine enjoy for nothing; you must purchase it by
the surrender of your custom houses and public lands, the proceeds of
which will be diverted from their present uses and applied to others,
at the discretion of a body in which you will have comparatively
little to say.' The argument is a powerful one, so long as England
consents to bear the cost of the defence of the Colony, but its force
is much lessened when the inhabitants are told that they must look to
their own safety, because the mother-country can no longer afford to
take care of them.

On the other hand very weighty reasons may be adduced in favour of the
policy of requiring the province to bear some portion at least of the
charge of its own protection. The adoption of free-trade, although its
advocates must believe that it tends to make the Colonies in point of
fact less chargeable than heretofore, will doubtless render the
English people more than ever jealous of expenditure incurred on their
behalf. I am, moreover, of opinion, that the system of relieving the
colonists altogether from the duty of self-defence is attended with
injurious effects upon themselves. It checks the growth of national
and manly morals. Men seldom think anything worth preserving for which
they are never asked to make a sacrifice.

My view, therefore, would be that it is desirable that a movement in
the direction which you Lave indicated should take place, but that it
ought to be made with much caution.

The present is not a favourable moment for experiments. British
statesmen, even Secretaries of State, have got into the habit lately
of talking of the maintenance of the connection between Great Britain
and Canada with so much indifference, that a change of system in
respect of military defence incautiously carried out, might be
presumed by many to argue, on the part of the mother-country, a
disposition to prepare the way for separation. Add to this, that you
effected, only a few years ago, a union between the Upper and Lower
Provinces by arbitrary means, and for objects the avowal of which has
profoundly irritated the French population; that still more recently
you have deprived Canada of her principal advantages in the British
markets; that France and Ireland are in flames, and that nearly half
of the population of this Colony are French, nearly half of the
remainder Irish.

That Canada felt no need of bulwarks except against England's foes was a point on which he constantly insisted. On one occasion he wrote:--

Only one absurdity can be greater, pardon me for saying so, than the
absurdity of supposing that the British Parliament will pay £200,000
for Canadian fortifications; it is the absurdity of supposing that
Canadians will pay it themselves.

£200,000 for defences! and against whom? against the Americans. And
who are the Americans? Your own kindred, a flourishing swaggering
people, who are ready to make room for you at their own table, to give
you a share of all they possess, of all their prosperity, and to
guarantee you in all time to come against the risk of invasion, or the
need of defences, if you will but speak the word!

[Sidenote: Recommends gradual reduction of forces.]

On the whole he was of opinion that the Government should quietly, and _sans phrase_, remove their troops altogether from some points, reduce them in others, and 'aim at the eventual substitution of a Major-General's command for that of a Lieutenant-General in Canada; but that nothing should be done hastily or _per saltum_, so as to alarm the Colonists with the idea that some new and strange principle was going to be applied to them.'

You may if you please (he wrote) largely reduce the staff, and more
moderately the men, leaving the remainder in the best barracks. I
think you may do this without, in any material degree, increasing the
tendency towards annexation; provided always that you make no noise
about it.... But, I repeat it, you must not, unless you wish to drive
the Colony away from you, impose new burdens upon the Colonists at
this time.[7]

The course thus sketched out he himself steadily pursued; and his last letters on the subject, written early in 1853 to the Duke of Newcastle, who had recently become Secretary for the Colonies, were occupied in recommending a continuance of the same quietly progressive policy:

When I came here we had a Commander-in-Chief and two Major-Generals.
We have now only one General on the Station, and the staff has
undergone proportional diminution. If further reductions are to be
made, let them be effected in the same quiet way without parade or the
ostentatious adoption of new principles as applicable to the defence
of colonies which are exposed, as Canada is by reason of their
connection with Great Britain, to the hazard of assaults from
organised powers.

Continue then, if you will pardon me for so freely tendering advice,
to apply in the administration of our local affairs the principles of
Constitutional Government frankly and fairly. Do not ask England to
make unreasonable sacrifices for the Colonists, but such sacrifices as
are reasonable, on the hypothesis that the Colony is an exposed part
of the empire. Induce her if you can to make them generously and
without appearing to grudge them. Let it be inferred from your
language that there is in your opinion nothing in the nature of things
to prevent the tie which connects the Mother-country and the Colony
from being as enduring as that which unites the different States of
the Union, and nothing in the nature of our very elastic institutions
to prevent them from expanding so as to permit the free and healthy
development of social, political, and national life in these young
communities. By administering colonial affaire in this spirit you will
find, I believe, even when you least profess to seek it, the true
secret of the cheap defence of nations. If these communities are only
truly attached to the connection and satisfied of its permanence (and,
as respects the latter point, opinions here will be much influenced by
the tone of statesmen at home), elements of self-defence, not moral
elements only but material elements likewise, will spring up within
them spontaneously as the product of movements from within, not of
pressure from without. Two millions of people, in a northern latitude,
can do a good deal in the way of helping themselves when their hearts
are in the right place.

[1] Colonial Policy, i. 232.

[2] 'United Empire Loyalists,' i.e. descendants of the original Loyalists
of the American War.

[3] Despatch of the Earl of Elgin, Dec. 18, 1854.

[4] Compare _Junius_:--'Unfortunately for his country, Mr. Grenville
was at any rate to be distressed, because he was Minister: and Mr.
Pitt and Lord Camden were to be the patrons of America, because they
were in opposition. Their declaration gave spirit and argument to the
Colonies; and while, perhaps, they meant no more than the ruin of a
Minister, they in effect divided one half of the empire from the
other.'

[5] 'Perhaps I may see reason after a little more experience here to modify
my opinion on these points. If I were to tell you what I now think of
the relative amount of influence which I exercised over the march, of
affairs in Canada, where I governed on strictly constitutional
principles, and with a free Parliament, as compared with that which
the Governor-General wields in India _when at peace_, you would
accuse me of paradox.'--_Letter to Sir C. Wood, December 9,1862._

[6] Vide infra, p. 159.

[7] In entire accordance with this view, Be recommended that Great Britain
should take upon herself the payment of the Governor's salary, 'with a
view to future contingencies, and to calls which at a period more or
less remote we may have to make on the loyalty and patriotism of
Canadians.'