Chapter 21. The Modern Period

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_ CHAPTER XXI. THE MODERN PERIOD

The history of Quebec in the period succeeding the war of 1812 is a long record of internecine strife, due to certain conditions of the Canada Act of 1791, a measure halting midway between military rule and responsible government. The Act had been well intended, and it was, maybe, a necessary stage in constitutional development; but its immediate result was to organise opposing factions into formal assemblies, each bent on checking the policy of the other, and bringing the government of the country to a deadlock. On one side, the interests of the English were identified with the Legislative Council, a body appointed by the King for life, and owing no responsibility to the suffrages of the people; while, on the other, a French majority ruled in the popular assembly, whose authority, powerful in influence, impotent in administration, controlled neither the executive officers nor financial affairs. Accordingly, the dispute between the Assembly and the English ascendency, or "Family Compact," soon resolved itself into a struggle for and against responsible government.

An insoluble problem was now presented to successive governors--Sherbrooke, Richmond, Dalhousie, Kempt, Aylmer, Gosford. All in turn addressed themselves to the work of pacification, and all retired baffled by that racial egotism which granted favours with airs of patronage, or met continued concessions with ever increased demands. The English were naturally apprehensive of a French dominance, which might prove dangerous to the security of constitutional union; the French Canadians were too keenly alert for signs of tyranny, too suspicious of a power sullied by nepotism and greed of office. Of all the long series of viceroys, perplexed, discomfited, yet honourably bent on doing their duty to both races and to the constitution, one of the wisest was Sir John Cope Sherbrooke, to whom Prevost resigned the reins of government in 1815. He early saw the expediency of liberal measures, and his wise administration led moderate men to believe that a peaceful era of constitutional progress was forward. Unhappily, however, these hopes were dashed by the succession of the Duke of Richmond two years later--a chivalrous but uncompromising advocate of the extreme views of his party in England. The Duke, however, almost atoned for the political narrowness of his administration by the stimulus he brought to the social life of the capital and the sincerity of his belief that by personal influence he could harmonise contending factions. Under his magnificent patronage Chateau St. Louis became once more the scene of lavish hospitality. Dinners, dances, and theatricals were the order of the day; and fashionable officers, issuing from their quarters in the citadel, found distractions in St. Louis Street and the Grande Allee, due compensation for all they had left at home. For the exiled sportsman, too, there was the racecourse on the Plains of Abraham, riding to the hounds on the uplands of Lorette, snipe at Sillery Cove, and ducks on the St. Charles Flats.

With pomp and circumstance the Duke of Richmond made progress through his dominions, everywhere speaking, entertaining, endeavouring to conciliate. He travelled up the St. Lawrence by steamer and thence by canoes along the shore of Lake Ontario to Toronto and Niagara. Next, he undertook the more arduous journey in the course of which he was to meet a tragic end.

The little settlement of Richmond, named after the Governor himself, lay thirty miles from Perth, at some distance west from the Ottawa river. Here, following the trail through the woods, the Duke had penetrated in search of adventure. That night he and his small staff stayed at the village inn, and the next day they started in canoes on their way down to the junction with the Rideau river. Hardly had they commenced their journey, however, when the Duke's actions began to excite alarm. The attendants sought in vain to restrain his violence, and the boats drawing in to shore the party landed. Breaking loose from all control, the Duke plunged into the woods, and was found soon afterwards lying exhausted in a fit of hydrophobia, the result of a bite by a tame fox two months before at Sorel. He died the same night; and the body was presently carried back to Quebec, where for two days it lay in state at the Chateau. An impressive service was held in the English cathedral, and the body of one who had been Canada's most splendid governor since the days of De Tracy and Frontenac, was deposited in the cathedral vault. Minute guns boomed forth from the citadel, and Quebec was plunged from gaiety into mourning.

The social brilliance of the Duke of Richmond's rule, however, could not blind the popular party to the inadequacy of the policy for which he stood; and discontent soon began to take a bitter and dangerous form. The concessions grudgingly doled out by Dalhousie and Kempt, succeeding governors, did not touch the main issue of the question, and even when Lord Aylmer removed the last serious grievance, only withholding from the Assembly the right to vote upon the salaries of civil officers, it might have seemed that there was no further ground for agitation. But the essential grievance lay not so much in material disabilities as in the limitation of the abstract right to self-government; and Joseph Papineau, the eloquent and ardent leader of the movement, summed up his party's political creed in the new watchword--_La nation Canadienne._ Parry and thrust, the fight grew faster, and the temper of the combatants became heated. Papineau was elected to the speakership of the Assembly, a challenge the Governor answered by prorogation. Next, the Progressives demanded an elective council, and the Government replied that such a step would mean abandoning the province wholly to the French, who were yet unprepared to wield complete popular power, and would moreover endanger the interests of the English minority. The demand was formally rejected by Lord John Russell on the return of Lord Gosford's commission in 1835.

The fiery eloquence of Papineau now led the more ardent of his followers to the point of rebellion; and for a time it seemed as if Lower Canada would throw away the name for steadfast loyalty she had earned through so many years. The rebellion of 1837, however, met with no serious support throughout the Province of Canada; and, except as an original centre of agitation, Quebec did not figure in it at all. At the same time defensive measures were not omitted, the leading citizens, both French and English, forming themselves into a regiment at the disposal of the Governor-General. Parliament House was set apart for a drill-hall and guard-house, and garrison duty was performed here during the whole of an anxious winter. Montreal, however, suffered violence at the hands of a misguided mob; and in the country parishes the _habitants_ were harangued after Mass on Sunday by deputies of the _Fils de Liberte_. Yet, while they punctuated these fervent addresses with shouts of "_Vive Papineau_" and "_Point de despotisme!_" they neither knew nor cared what the struggle for responsible government really meant. In the parishes along the Richelieu, indeed, Papineau and his followers made a greater commotion; but, except in Bellechasse and L'Islet, the contented _habitants_ of the St. Lawrence forgot the seditious procession almost as soon as it passed. These ingenuous _enfants du sol_ had no political aspirations beyond the preservation of their religion, their language, and their ancient customs; and, in spite of the bitter prophecies of peripatetic agitators, they refused to believe that their peace and comfort and quiet life were in any real danger from English oppression. The Government easily coped with this factitious rising, which nowhere reached the importance of an organised revolt. But while the military problem was soon solved, important political results followed hard upon such palpable tokens of discontent. English ministers now turned most serious attention to the constitutional defects of the colony, and decided to make a full and authoritative inquiry. Gosford's successor, Sir John Colborne, was now recalled; and on April 24th, 1838, the Earl of Durham sailed for Canada as High Commissioner, and he proved to be the keenest statesman, save Frontenac, who had figured in the history of the country.

Lord Durham was at this time forty-six years of age, and into that comparatively short life he had already crowded a remarkable political record. At twenty-one he entered the House of Commons as member for the county of Durham, at once identifying himself with the party of parliamentary reform--indeed, he is even credited with the drafting of the first Reform Bill. An experience of five years in the cabinet with Grey and Palmerston, and of two years as ambassador at St. Petersburg, marked him out as a politician and diplomatist of the first rank. A certain stateliness and formality of character appears, however, to have made him many enemies in England, and they did not scruple to gratify their dislike or jealousy during his mission to Canada. Their enmity is echoed in a trivial paragraph in _The Times_, describing an incident which happened on the outward journey:--

"A letter from Portsmouth states that on the evening of
Lord Durham's arrival in Portsmouth, his lordship and
family dined at one table and his staff at another, in
the same room and at the same hour. We suppose we shall
soon hear of Lord Durham's reviving the old custom of
arranging his guests above and below the
salt-cellar."[46]

On the 27th of May, 1838, H. M. S. _Hastings_ and a squadron of gunboats and frigates dropped anchor in the harbour of Quebec. Flags were flying gaily from tower and bastion to welcome the High Commissioner, who was attended ashore by a retinue eclipsing in brilliance even that of the Duke of Richmond, and further guarded by two cavalry regiments, on their way to reinforce the regular forces in the country. As such a suite could not be accommodated in the old Chateau, Parliament House was fitted up as a residence; and here Lord Durham established himself with a magnificence suitable to a monarch, but unusual in a viceroy of Quebec. On his daily drives he was accompanied by three or four equerries in scarlet and gold, who galloped before his carriage to clear the road; and at his frequent entertainments guests received only the most stately hospitality. It is not unnatural that this large ceremony in a new and poor country impaired his influence, and at first increased the difficulties of his mission.

[Footnote 46: _The Times_, 3rd May, 1838.]

The situation was indeed one requiring the wisdom of a ripe diplomatist. Previous to the rebellion of 1837, government had become impossible owing to the antagonism of the racial elements existing together in the province; and on Lord Durham's arrival he found the constitution of the Colony suspended, supreme power being lodged in his own person as High Commissioner, whose slightest indiscretion might lose the vast territory to the Crown. That he was keenly alive to the delicacy of his task is shown by the chivalrous, almost romantic generosity with which he met the natural prejudices of the French, and tolerated their utmost bitterness against his own compatriots; and although this imaginative and liberal spirit met with disapproval from the ruling powers in England, and was finally the cause of his withdrawal, his conciliatory policy was amply justified by the event. Indeed, it is certain that the insular assurance--by no means absent from subsequent public life in England--which prompted Lord Gosford, the previous Governor, to declare that the ulterior object of the French Canadian politicians was "the separation of this country from England, and the establishment of a republican form of government," and who met the imaginary demand with a sharp and scornful negative, would soon have brought Canada to the verge of a revolutionary war.

The proclamation published immediately on Lord Durham's arrival in Canada gave promise of fair dealing to all parties. "I invite from you," he assures them, "the most free, unreserved communications. I beg you to consider me as a friend and arbitrator, ready at all times to listen to your wishes, complaints, and grievances. If you, on your side, will abjure all party and sectarian animosities, and unite with me in the blessed work of peace and harmony, I feel assured that I can lay the foundations of such a system of government as will protect the rights and interests of all classes....

"In one province the most deplorable events have rendered
the suspension of its representative constitution,
unhappily, a matter of necessity; and the supreme power
has devolved upon me. The great responsibility which is
thereby imposed on me, and the arduous nature of the
functions which I have to discharge, naturally make me
most anxious to hasten the arrival of that period when
the executive power shall again be surrounded by all the
constitutional checks of free, liberal, and British
institutions."[47]

The problem to be solved is stated and partly solved in the famous report on the affairs of Canada subsequently published by the High Commissioner--perhaps the most remarkable document in British colonial history. It showed the keenest insight into knotted complications, and at the same time it made practical and far-seeing suggestions, which reduced the problem to its simplest terms, and prepared the way for a legislative union upon a sovereign scale, and with a provincial autonomy having the happiest results.

"I expected," he declared, "to find a contest between a government and a people; I found two nations warring in the bosom of a single state."

[Footnote 47: _Quebec Gazette_, 29th May, 1838.]

Nor could any lasting reform be accomplished unless the hostile divisions of Lower Canada were first reconciled. As far as the French population were concerned, he found an explanation of their antagonism, not so much in their unjust exclusion from political power, as in the grudging and churlish patronage with which privileges were one by one conceded; while, on the other hand, the Loyalists were intolerant to a degree, regarding every favour shown to their rivals as a slight put upon themselves, and professing principles which were thus summed up by one of their leaders: "Lower Canada must be _English_ at the expense, if necessary, of not being _British_." Elsewhere Lord Durham confesses the overbearing character of Anglo-Saxon manners, especially offensive to a proud and sensitive people, who showed their resentment, not by active reprisal, but by a strange and silent reserve. The same confession might still be made concerning a section of English-speaking Canadians, who seem to consider it a personal grievance that French Canadians should speak the French language. Lord Durham would probably have reminded them that conquest does not mean that birthright, language, and custom, spirit and racial pride, are spoils and confiscations of the conqueror.

As for the grievances he came to remedy, Lord Durham dwells upon the circumstances which practically excluded French Canadians from political power, leaving all positions of trust and profit in the hands of the English minority; for although they numbered only one in four of the inhabitants, this privileged class claimed both political and social supremacy as though by inherent right. Owing no responsibility whatever to the legislature, they could afford to smile at the protestations of that superfluous body, and pursue their own wilful course.

Coming to practical counsel, the High Commissioner pointed out that there was no need for any change in the principles of government, or for any new constitutional theory to remedy the disordered state. The remedy already lay in the British constitution, whose principles, if consistently followed, would give a sound and efficient system of representative government. His first suggestion was the frank concession of a responsible executive. All the officers of state, with the single exception of the Governor and his secretary, should be made directly answerable to the representatives of the people; these officers, moreover, should be such as the people approved, and should therefore be appointed by the Assembly. He further advised that the Governor should be forbidden to employ the resources of the British Constitution in any quarrel between himself and the Legislature, resorting to imperial intervention only when imperial interests were at stake.

His second recommendation was to bring the Upper and Lower Provinces together by a legislative union. He met the threatened danger of a disaffected people endowed with political power by an appeal to arithmetic: "If the population of Upper Canada is rightly estimated at 400,000, the English inhabitants of Lower Canada at 150,000, and the French at 450,000, the union of the two provinces would not only give a clear English majority, but one which would be increased every year by the influence of English emigration....I certainly shall not like," he continues, "to subject the French Canadians to the rule of the identical English minority with which they have so long been contending; but from a majority emanating from so much more extended a source, I do not think that they would have any oppression or injustice to fear."

This plea for unity among all the elements of political life in Canada, premature as it was, marked, perhaps, the limitation of Lord Durham's scheme. But although he was mistaken in the degree of allowance to be made for the distinct individuality of the French province--a defect afterwards made good on Dominion Day--the work he did, the counsel he gave, made an epoch in the progress of Canadian nationality, and prepared the ground for the completer measures of the future.

The treatment of rebels was the most critical question with which Lord Durham had to deal, and it was ultimately the cause of his withdrawal, so timid and unchivalrous was the Government of the day in the face of political and journalistic criticism. While granting a general amnesty to the rank and file of the offenders, the High Commissioner offended constitutional pedants by deporting eight of the leading revolutionists without trial to Bermuda; and although this measure was taken advisedly, with the purpose, as it turned out, of saving the prisoners from the heavier penalty they would certainly have received from a regular court, the Viceroy's numerous enemies did not scruple to use this technical omission as a basis for attacks upon his policy. Moreover, when he was bitterly denounced in the House of Lords by Brougham and Lyndhurst, the ministry of Melbourne offered but a feeble defence of their representative; with the result that Durham, on hearing of this desertion by the Cabinet which had appointed him, sent in his resignation.

The departure of the High Commissioner was deeply regretted by those who were able to appreciate the wisdom and sincerity of his administration, though indeed it was otherwise regarded by the leaders of that social clique in Quebec whose family compact he had resolutely condemned. Yet he had builded better than England or Canada or himself then knew, and his tireless energy and imagination left behind him the material for a sound structure. Besides the masterly report of his commission, a visible, if less important, monument to his beneficent work for Canada still stands in the magnificent terrace at Quebec, known to-day under an improved form and by another name, yet in a larger measure his conception and his achievement. He sailed from Quebec on the 1st of November, 1838, the ceremony of his departure being hardly less imposing than that marking his arrival five months before. Troops lined the streets from the Governor's residence to the Queen's wharf, the bands playing "Auld Lang Syne" to express the regret felt at parting from a sincere and strong administrator, thus sacrificed to his enemies by a vacillating Ministry. At this last evidence of sympathy and appreciation the _hauteur_ of the Viceroy relaxed, and, as he passed on board the frigate _Inconstant_ homeward bound--as he himself records--his heart went out towards the people of Canada, by whom, at least, his motives were understood and honoured; and this feeling of gratitude to perhaps the most simple and sincere of all British peoples remained with him to the end.

By an act brought forward by Lord John Russell, the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada were formally united, and the first Parliament of the two Canadas was opened in the city of Kingston in June, 1841. This experiment partly meeting the needs of the country, and satisfying that high civic and national sense which make Britishers confident that they can govern themselves, opened up the way for that freer union which has since 1867 made a nation of a series of scattered territories.

The legislative union of the Upper and Lower Provinces had not been concluded without sharp opposition; for the citizens of Quebec foresaw that her influence must inevitably wane under the new conditions, and they set themselves strongly to defeat the measure. However, the ancient city lay too far east to remain the capital of the expanding territories, and with an almost exclusively French population it could not remain the political pivot of a British dependency. Opposition was overborne in due time, and the Act of Union shifted the national centre of gravity farther west.

Canada was now embarked upon a course of self-government, and was never again to feel the hand or obey the voice of England in her internal politics. So much the union had accomplished. The problems of the succeeding period concerned Canada alone, and she was now free to seek a better way to her national organisation. A responsible legislature had been conceded, yet with defects in constitution bearing hardly upon the character and traditions of the French element. Thus, although the population of the Lower Province numbered two hundred thousand more than that of her partner, the two provinces were allowed an equal number of representatives in the new house; the French language was cast aside; and the united assembly was saddled with the heavy debts previously contracted by the western province. It was not long before an agitation was started to readjust the relations between Upper and Lower Canada, and free the French from conditions which pressed heavily upon their material interests and racial sentiment. The new problem was, to find a way by which the principle of self-government recently conceded to Canada as a whole might be reconciled with the free action and growth of its component provinces; and for twenty-five years this question engaged the politicians of the country.

Time, however, brought a decided change in the attitude of the two opposing sections of the legislature, as one by one the grievances of the French were removed. In 1848 the restrictions placed upon the use of their language in the Parliament were done away; and by the surprising advance of the West, the hardship of disproportionate representation was taken over by Upper Canada. Twenty years after the Union, the Western Province had already a population greater by three hundred thousand than that of her rival. In the later period of the discussion, therefore, the position of parties was reversed, the French defending the existing order, the Upper Province calling out for reconstruction. But statesmen on both sides now began to aim at larger and more patriotic ends than the exclusive advantage of their own province; and in 1860 a scheme for a federal government was proposed by George Brown, a Liberal statesman, intended to bring the interests of the provinces into line with those of the country at large. The movement was premature; but four years later a convention met at Quebec to discuss the union of all the provinces of British North America, the chairman being Etienne Paschal Tache, who died before the work was consummated. There met the fathers of Confederation, John A. Macdonald, chief of them all--George Brown, George Etienne Cartier, Alexander Galt, Thomas D'Arcy M'Gee, William M'Dougall, Alexander Campbell, Hector Langevin, James Cockburn--together with Charles Tupper and other representatives of the Maritime Provinces. It was agreed that "the system of government best adapted under existing circumstances to protect the diversified interests of the several provinces, and secure harmony and permanency in the working of the Union, would be a general government charged with matters of common interest to the whole country; and local government for each of the Canadas, and for all the Provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, charged with the control of local matters in their respective sections."

These proposals were well received in London, and in 1866 the Canadian Legislature met for the last time under the old conditions. The British North America Act became law in March of the following year, the Earl of Carnarvon being Colonial Secretary; and on the 1st of July the new Dominion, under command of John A. Macdonald, was launched by Governor-General Viscount Monk on that prosperous course which still conducts the premier colony of England into an ever brighter future.

Valiant in asserting her predominance there was, however, a siege against which the fortress and bastions of Quebec were of no avail. Left behind in the march of progress, commercial and political, her prestige as a centre of national influence slowly declined, and Montreal and Toronto took over that pre-eminence which had been hers for centuries. Yet nothing could rob the city of her maternal grandeur. She saw no longer in the West the wild prospects and the fertile wastes, but a sturdy nation settling down to its destiny, and spreading out over half a continent; so realising her ancient prophecy, so fulfilling her laborious hopes, the reward of zealous toil and martyrdom. Colbert's dream was now come true, save for the flag which floated over the happy homesteads in the peaceful land. These homesteads of the West, in the region of the great lakes, were indeed to be centres of growth and progress and vast wealth; yet the venerable fortress on the tidal water ever was, and still remains, the noblest city of the American continent. There still works the antique spirit which cherishes culture and piety and domestic virtue as the crown of a nation's deeds and worth. There still the influence of a faithful priesthood, and a university in some respects more distinguished than any on the American continent, keep burning those fires of high tradition and a noble history which light the way to national grace of life, if not to a sensational prosperity. Apart from the hot winds of politics--civic, provincial, and national--which blow across the temperate plains of their daily existence, the people of the city and the province live as simply, and with as little greedy ambition as they did a hundred years ago.

The rumble of the caleches and the jingling of the carrioles in the old streets are now pierced by the strident clang of the street-car; and the electric light sharpens garishly the hard outlines of the stone mansions which sheltered Laval, Montcalm, and Murray; but modern industry and municipal emulation sink away into the larger picture of fortress life, of religious zeal, of Gallic mode, of changeless natural beauty. No ruined castles now crown the heights, but the grim walls still tell of

"Old, far-off, unhappy things,
And battles long ago."

The temper of the people is true. Song and sentiment are much with them, and in the woods and in the streams--down by St. Roch and up by Ville Marie--chansons of two hundred years ago mark the strokes of labour as of the evening hour when the professional village story-teller cries "_cric-crac_" and begins his tale of the _loup-garou_, or rouses the spirit of a pure patriotism by a crude epic of some valiant atavar; when the parish fiddler brings them to their feet with shining eyes by the strains of _O Carillon_. They are not less respectful to the British flag, nor less faithful in allegiance because they love that language and that land of their memories which they know full well is not the Republican France of to-day when their Church suffers at the hands of the State. If ever the genius of the Dominion is to take a high place in the fane of Art, the soul and impulse of the best achievement will come from Old Quebec, which has produced a sculptor of merit, Hebert; a renowned singer, Albani; a poet crowned by the French Academy, Louis Frechette; and has given to the public life of the country a distinction, an intellectual power, and an illuminating statesmanship in the persons of Etienne Tache, Sir George Cartier, and Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Enlarged understanding between the two peoples of the country will produce a national life marked by courage, energy, integrity, and imagination. Though Quebec has ceased to be an administrative centre of the nation, the influence of the people of her province grows no less, but is woven more and more into the web of the general progress. The Empire will do well to set an enduring value on that New France so hardly won from a great people, and English Canada will reap rich reward for every compromise of racial pride made in the interests of peace, equality, and justice. _

Read next: Appendix 1, Appendix 2, Appendix 3

Read previous: Chapter 20. The New Century

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