# Report on the Affairs of British North America/Lower Canada

Lower Canada.
First Inquiries directed to Lower Canada.The prominent place which the dissensions of Lower Canada had, for some years, occupied in the eyes of the Imperial Legislature, the alarming state of disorder indicated or occasioned by the recent insurrection, and the paramount necessity of my applying my earliest efforts to the re-establishment of free and regular government in that particular Colony, in which it was then wholly suspended, necessarily directed my first inquiries to the Province of which the local government was vested in my hands. The suspension of the constitution gave me an essential advantage over my predecessors in the conduct of my inquiries; it not merely relieved me from the burthen of constant discussions with the legislative bodies, but it enabled me to turn my attention from the alleged, to the real grievances of the Province; to leave on one side those matters of temporary contest, which accident, or the interests and passions of parties, had elevated into undue importance; and, without reference to the representations of the disputants, to endeavour to make myself master of the real condition of the people, and the real causes of dissatisfaction or suffering. It was also a great advantage to me in one respect, that the ordinary business of the government of the Province was combined with the functions of my inquiry. The routine of every day's administrative business brought strongly and familiarly before me the working of the institutions on which I was called to judge. The condition of the people, the system by which they were governed, were thus rendered familiar to me, and I soon became satisfied that I must search in the very composition of society, and in the fundamental institutions of government, for the causes of the constant and extensive disorder which I witnessed.
Erroneous views entertained in England.The lengthened and various discussions which had for some years been carried on between the contending parties in the Colony, and the representations which had been circulated at home, had produced in mine, as in most minds in England, a very erroneous view of the parties at issue in Lower Canada. The quarrel which I was sent for the purpose of healing, had been a quarrel between the executive government and the popular branch of the legislature. The latter body had, apparently, been contending for popular rights and free government. The executive government had been defending the prerogative of the Crown, and the institutions which, in accordance with the principles of the British Constitution, had been established as checks on the unbridled exercise of popular power. Though, during the dispute, indications had been given of the existence of dissensions yet deeper and more formidable than any which arose from simply political causes, I had still, in common with most of my country-men, imagined that the original and constant source of the evil was to be found in the defects of the political institutions of the Provinces; that a reform of the constitution, or perhaps merely the introduction of a sounder practice into the administration of the government, would remove all causes of contest and complaint. This opinion was strengthened by the well-known fact, that the political dissensions which had produced their most formidable results in this Province, had assumed a similar, though milder, form in the neighbouring Colonies; and that the tranquillity of each of the North American Provinces was subject to constant disturbance from collision between the executive and the representatives of the people. The constitutions of these Colonies, the official characters and positions of the contending parties, the avowed subjects of dispute, and the general principles asserted on each side, were so similar, that I could not but concur in the very general opinion, that the common quarrel was the result of some common defect in the almost identical institutions of these Provinces. I looked on it as a dispute analogous to those with which history and experience have made us so familiar in Europe,—a dispute between a people demanding an extension of popular privileges, on the one hand, and an executive, on the other, defending the powers which it conceived necessary for the maintenance of order. I supposed that my principal business would be that of determining how far each party might be in the right, or which was in the wrong; of devising some means of removing the defects which had occasioned the collision; and of restoring such a balance of the constitutional powers as might secure the free and peaceful working of the machine of government.
The real struggle not one of principles, but of races.In a Dispatch which I addressed to Your Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies on the 9th of August last, I detailed with great minuteness, the impressions which had been produced on my mind by the state of things which existed in Lower Canada: I acknowledged that the experience derived from my residence in the Province had completely changed my view of the relative influence of the causes which had been assigned for the existing disorders. I had not, indeed, been brought to believe that the institutions of Lower Canada were less defective than I had originally presumed them to be. From the peculiar circumstances in which I was placed, I was enabled to make such effectual observations as convinced me that there had existed in the constitution of the Province, in the balance of political powers, in the spirit and practice of administration in every department of the Government, defects that were quite sufficient to account for a great degree of mismanagement and dissatisfaction. The same observation had also impressed on me the conviction, that, for the peculiar and disastrous dissensions of this Province, there existed a far deeper and far more efficient cause,—a cause which penetrated beneath its political institutions into its social state,—a cause which no reform of constitution or laws, that should leave the elements of society unaltered, could remove; but which must be removed, ere any success could be expected in any attempt to remedy the many evils of this unhappy Province. I expected to find a contest between a government and a people: I found two nations warring in the bosom of a single state: I found a struggle, not of principles, but of races; and I perceived that it would be idle to attempt any amelioration of laws or institutions until we could first succeed in terminating the deadly animosity that now separates the inhabitants of Lower Canada into the hostile divisions of French and English.
Animosities between the French and English.It would be vain for me to expect that any description I can give will impress on Your Majesty such a view of the animosity of these races as my personal experience in Lower Canada has forced on me. Our happy immunity from any feelings of national hostility, renders it difficult for us to comprehend the intensity of the hatred which the difference of language, of laws, and of manners, creates between those who inhabit the same village, and are citizens of the same state. We are ready to believe that the real motive of the quarrel is something else; and that the difference of race has slightly and occasionally aggravated dissensions, which we attribute to some more usual cause. Experience of a state of society, so unhappily divided as that of Lower Canada, leads to an exactly contrary opinion. The national feud forces itself on the very senses, irresistibly and palpably, as the origin or the essence of every dispute which divides the community; we discover that dissensions, which appear to have another origin, are but forms of this constant and all-pervading quarrel; and that every contest is one of French, and English in the outset, or becomes so ere it has, run its course.
Exasperation of the two sides against each other.The political discontents, for which the vicious system of government has given too much cause, have for a long time concealed or modified the influence of the national quarrel. It has been argued, that origin can have but little effect in dividing the country, inasmuch as individuals of each race have constantly been enlisted together on the side of Government, or been found united in leading the Assembly to assail its alleged abuses; that the names of some of the prominent leaders of the rebellion mark their English, while those of some of the most unpopular supporters of the Government denote their French, origin; and that the representatives, if not of an actual majority (as has occasionally been asserted), at any rate of a large proportion of the purely English population, have been found constantly voting with the majority of the Assembly against what is called the British party. Temporary and local causes have, no doubt, to a certain extent, produced such results. The national hostility has not assumed its permanent influence till of late years, nor has it exhibited itself everywhere at once. While it displayed itself long ago in the cities of Quebec and Montreal, where the leaders and masses of the rival races most speedily came into collision, the inhabitants of the eastern townships, who were removed from all personal contact with the French, and those of the district below Quebec, who experienced little interference from the English, continued to a very late period to entertain comparatively friendly feelings towards those of the opposite races. But this is a distinction which has unfortunately, year after year, been exhibiting itself more strongly, and diffusing itself more widely. One by one the ancient English leaders of the Assembly have fallen off from the majority, and attached themselves to the party which supported the British Government against it. Every election from the townships added to the English minority. On the other hand, year after year, in spite of the various influences which a government can exercise, and of which no people in the world are more susceptible than the French Canadians; in spite of the additional motives of prudence and patriotism which deter timid or calm men from acting with a party, obviously endangering the public tranquillity by the violence of its conduct, the number of French Canadians, on whom the Government could rely, has been narrowed by the influence of those associations which have drawn them into the ranks of their kindred. The insurrection of 1837 completed the division. Since the resort to arms the two races have been distinctly and completely arrayed against each other. No portion of the English population was backward in taking arms in defence of the Government; with a single exception, no portion of the Canadian population was allowed to do so, even where it was asserted by some that their loyalty inclined them thereto. The exasperation thus generated has extended over the whole of each race. The most just and sensible of the English, those whose politics had always been most liberal, those who had always advocated the most moderate policy in the provincial disputes, seem from that moment to have taken their part against the French as resolutely, if not as fiercely, as the rest of their countrymen, and to have joined in the determination never again to submit to a French majority. A few exceptions mark the existence, rather than militate against the truth of the general rule of national hostility. A few of the French, distinguished by moderate and enlarged views, still condemn the narrow national prejudices and ruinous violence of their countrymen, while they equally resist what they consider the violent and unjust pretensions of a minority, and endeavour to form a middle party between the two extremes. A large part of the Cathohc clergy, a few of the principal proprietors of the seignorial families, and some of those who are influenced by ancient connexions of party, support the Government against revolutionary violence. A very few persons of English origin (not more, perhaps, than fifty out of the whole number) still continue to act with the party which they originally espoused. Those who affect to form a middle party exercise no influence on the contending extremes; and those who side with the nation from which their birth distinguishes them, are regarded by their countrymen with aggravated hatred, as renegades from their race; while they obtain but little of the real affection, confidence or esteem of those whom they have joined.
Objects of the French Canadian not really democratic, nor of the English, conservative.The grounds of quarrel which are commonly alleged, appear, on investigation, to have little to do with its real cause; and the inquirer, who has imagined that the public demonstrations or professions of the parties have put him in possession of their real motives and designs, is surprised to find, upon nearer observation, how much he has been deceived by the false colours under which they have been in the habit of fighting. It is not, indeed, surprising, that each party should, in this instance, have practised more than the usual frauds of language, by which factions, in every country, seek to secure the sympathy of other communities. A quarrel based on the mere ground of national animosity, appears so revolting to the notions of good sense and charity prevalent in the civilized world, that the parties who feel such a passion the most strongly, and indulge it the most openly, are at great pains to class themselves under any denominations but those which would correctly designate their objects and feelings. The French Canadians have attempted to shroud their hostility to the influence of English emigration, and the introduction of British institutions, under the guise of warfare against the Government and its supporters, whom they represented to be a small knot of corrupt and insolent dependents; being a majority, they have invoked the principles of popular control and democracy, and appealed with no little effect to the sympathy of liberal politicians in every quarter of the world. The English, finding their opponents in collision with the Government, have raised the cry of loyalty and attachment to British connexion, and denounced the republican designs of the French, whom they designate, or rather used to designate, by the appellation of Radicals. Thus the French have been viewed as a democratic party, contending for reform; and the English as a conservative minority, protecting the menaced connexion with the British Crown, and the supreme authority of the Empire. There is truth in this notion in so far as respects the means by which each party sought to carry its own views of Government into effect. The French majority asserted the most democratic doctrines of the rights of a numerical majority. The English minority availed itself of the protection of the prerogative, and allied itself with all those of the colonial institutions which enabled the few to resist the will of the many. But when we look to the objects of each party, the analogy to our own politics seems to be lost, if not actually reversed; the French appear to have used their democratic arms for conservative purposes, rather than those of liberal and enlightened movement; and the sympathies of the friends of reform are naturally enlisted on the side of sound amelioration which the English minority in vain attempted to introduce into the antiquated laws of the Province.
Yet even on the questions which had been most recently the prominent matters of dispute between the two parties, it is difficult to believe that the hostility of the races was the effect, and not the cause, of the pertinacity with which the desired reforms were pressed or resisted.
Inconsistencies of both parties.The English complained of the Assembly's refusal to establish Registry Ofiices, and to commute the feudal tenures: and yet it was among the ablest and most influential leaders of the English that I found some of the opponents of both the proposed reforms. The leaders of the French were anxious to disclaim any hostility to these reforms themselves. Many of them represented the reluctance which the Assembly had exhibited to entertain these questions, as a result of the extraordinary influence which Mr. Papineau exercised over that body; his opposition was accounted for by some peculiar prejudices of education and professional practice, in which he was said to find little concurrence among his countrymen; it was stated that even his influence would not have prevented these questions from being very favourably entertained by the Assembly, had it ever met again; and I received assurances of a friendly disposition towards them, which I must say were very much at variance with the reluctance which the leading men of the party showed to any co-operation with me in the attempts which I subsequently made to carry these very objects into effect. At the same time while the leading men of the French party thus rendered themselves liable to the imputation of a timid or narrow-minded opposition to these improvements, the mass of the French population, who are immediate sufferers by the abuses of the seignorial system, exhibited, in every possible shape, their hostility to the state of things which their leaders had so obstinately maintained. There is every reason to believe that a great number of the peasants who fought at St. Denis and St. Charles, imagined that the principal result of success would be the overthrow of tithes and feudal burthens; and in the declaration of independence which Dr. Robert Nelson issued, two of the objects of the insurrection were stated to be the abolition of feudal tenures and the establishment of Registry Offices. When I observe these inconsistencies of conduct among the opponents and supporters of these reforms; when I consider that their attainment was prevented by means of the censitaires, the very persons most interested in their success, and that they were not more eagerly demanded by the wealthier of the English, than by the artisans and labourers of that race whose individual interests would hardly have derived much direct benefit from their success, I cannot but think that many, both of the supporters and of the opponents, cared less for the measures themselves, than for the handle which the agitation of them gave to their national hostility; that the Assembly resisted these changes chiefly because the English desired them; and that the eagerness with which many of the English urged them was stimulated by finding them opposed by the French.
Independent spirit of the English population.Nor did I find the spirit which animated each party at all more coincident with the representations current in this country, than their objects appeared, when tried by English, or rather European ideas of reforming legislation. An utterly uneducated and singularly inert population, implicitly obeying leaders who ruled them by the influence of a blind confidence and narrow national prejudices, accorded very little with the resemblance which had been discovered to that high-spirited democracy which effected the American Revolution. Still less could I discover in the English population those slavish tools of a narrow official clique, or a few purse-proud merchants, which their opponents had described them as being. I have found the main body of the English population, consisting of hardy farmers and humble mechanics, composing a very independent, not very manageable, and, sometimes a rather turbulent, democracy. Though constantly professing a somewhat extravagant loyalty and high prerogative doctrines, I found them very determined on maintaining in their own persons a great respect for popular rights, and singularly ready to enforce their wishes by the strongest means of constitutional pressure on the Government. Between them and the Canadians I found the strongest hostility; and that hostility was, as might be expected, most strongly developed among the humblest and rudest of the body. Between them and the small knot of officials, whose influence has been represented as so formidable, I found no sympathy whatever; and it must be said, in justice to this body of officials, who have been so much assailed as the enemies of the Canadian people, that however little I can excuse the injurious influence of that system of administration, which they were called upon to carry into execution, the members of the oldest and most powerful official families were, of all the English in the country, those in whom I generally found most sympathy with, and kindly feeling towards, the French population, I could not therefore believe that this animosity was only that subsisting between an official oligarchy and a people; and again, I was brought to a conviction that the contest, which had been represented as a contest of classes, was, in fact, a contest of races.
Dissimilarity of the races.However unwilling we may be to attribute the disorders of a country connected with us to a cause so fatal to its tranquillity, and one which it seems so difficult to remove, no very long or laboured consideration of the relative characters and position of these races is needed for convincing us of their invincible hostility towards each other. It is scarcely possible to conceive descendants of any of the great European nations more unlike each other in character and temperament, more totally separated from each other by language, laws, and modes of life, or placed in circumstances more calculated to produce mutual misunderstanding, jealousy and hatred. To conceive the incompatibility of the two races in Canada, it is not enough that we should picture to ourselves a community composed of equal proportions of French and English. We must bear in mind what kind of French and English they are that are brought in contact, and in what proportions they meet.
Characteristics of the French Canadians.The institutions of France, during the period of the colonization of Canada, were, perhaps, more than those of any other European nation, calculated to repress the intelligence and freedom of the great mass of the people. These institutions followed the Canadian colonist across the Atlantic. The same central, ill-organized, unimproving and repressive despotism extended over him. Not merely was he allowed no voice in the government of his Province, or the choice of his rulers, but he was not even permitted to associate with his neighbours for the regulation of those municipal affairs, which the central authority neglected under the pretext of managing. He obtained his land on a tenure singularly calculated to promote his immediate comfort, and to check his desire to better his condition; he was placed at once in a life of constant and unvarying labour, of great material comfort, and feudal dependence. The ecclesiastical authority to which he had been accustomed established its institutions around him, and the priest continued to exercise over him his ancient influence. No general provision was made for education; and, as its necessity was not appreciated, the colonist made no attempt to repair the negligence of his government. It need not surprise us that, under such circumstances, a race of men habituated to the incessant labour of a rude and unskilled agriculture, and habitually fond of social enjoyments, congregated together in rural communities, occupying portions of the wholly unappropriated soil, sufficient to provide each family with material comforts, far beyond their ancient means, or almost their conceptions; that they made little advance beyond the first progress in comfort, which the bounty of the soil absolutely forced upon them; that under the same institutions they remained the same uninstructed, inactive, unprogressive people. Along the alluvial banks of the St. Lawrence, and its tributaries, they have cleared two or three strips of land, cultivated them in the worst method of small farming, and established a series of continuous villages, which give the country of the seignories the appearance of a never-ending street. Besides the cities which were the seats of government, no towns were established; the rude manufactures of the country were, and still are, carried on in the cottage by the family of the habitant; and an insignificant proportion of the population derived their subsistence from the scarcely discernible commerce of the Province. Whatever energy existed among the population was employed in the fur trade, and the occupations of hunting, which they and their descendants have carried beyond the Rocky Mountains, and still, in great measure, monopolize in the whole valley of the Mississippi. The mass of the community exhibited in the New World the characteristics of the peasantry of Europe. Society was dense; and even the wants and the poverty which the pressure of population occasions in the Old World, became not to be wholly unknown. They clung to ancient prejudices, ancient customs and ancient laws, not from any strong sense of their beneficial effects, but with the unreasoning tenacity of an uneducated and unprogressive people. Nor were they wanting in the virtues of a simple and industrious life, or in those which common consent attributes to the nation from which they spring. The temptations which, in other states of society, lead to offences against property, and the passions which prompt to violence, were little known among them. They are mild and kindly, frugal, industrious and honest, very sociable, cheerful and hospitable, and distinguished for a courtesy and real politeness, which pervades every class of society. The conquest has changed them but little. The higher classes, and the inhabitants of the towns, have adopted some English customs and feelings; but the continued negligence of the British Government left the mass of the people without any of the institutions which would have elevated them in freedom and civilization. It has left them without the education and without the institutions of local self-government, that would have assimilated their character and habits, in the easiest and best way, to those of the Empire of which they became a part. They remain an old and stationary society, in a new and progressive world. In all essentials they are still French; but French in every respect dissimilar to those of France in the present day. They resemble rather the French of the provinces under the old regime.
Their peculiar social condition.I cannot pass over this subject without calling particular attention to a peculiarity in the social condition of this people, of which the important bearing on the troubles of Lower Canada has never, in my opinion, been properly estimated. The circumstances of a new and unsettled country, the operation of the French laws of inheritance, and the absence of any means of accumulation, by commerce or manufactures, have produced a remarkable equality of properties and conditions. A few seignorial families possess large, though not often very valuable properties; the class entirely dependent on wages is very small; the bulk of the population is composed of the hard-working yeomanry of the country districts, commonly called habitans, and their connexions engaged in other occupations. It is impossible to exaggerate the want of education among the habitans; no means of instruction have ever been provided for them, and they are almost universally destitute of the qualifications even of reading and writing. It came to my knowledge that out of a great number of boys and girls assembled at the schoolhouse door of St. Thomas, all but three admitted, on inquiry, that they could not read. Yet the children of this large parish attend school regularly, and actually make use of books. They hold the catechism book in their hand, as if they were reading, while they only repeat its contents, which they know by rote. The common assertion, however, that all classes of the Canadians are equally ignorant, is perfectly erroneous; for I know of no people among whom a larger provision exists for the higher kinds of elementary education, or among whom such education is really extended to a larger proportion of the population. The piety and benevolence of the early possessors of the country founded, in the seminaries that exist in different parts of the Province, institutions, of which the funds and activity have long been directed to the promotion of education. Seminaries and colleges have been, by these bodies, established in the cities, and in other central points. The education given in these establishments greatly resembles the kind given in the English public schools, though it is rather more varied. It is entirely in the hands of the Catholic clergy. The number of pupils in these establishments is estimated altogether at about a thousand; and they turn out every year, as far as I could ascertain, between two and three hundred young men thus educated. Almost all of these are members of the family of some habitant, whom the possession of greater quickness than his brothers has induced the father or the curate of the parish to select and send to the seminary. These young men possessing a degree of information immeasurably superior to that of their families, are naturally averse to what they regard as descending to the humble occupations of their parents. A few become priests; but as the military and naval professions are closed against the colonist, the greater part can only find a position suited to their notions of their own qualifications in the learned professions of advocate, notary and surgeon. As from this cause these professions are greatly overstocked, we find every village in Lower Canada filled with notaries and surgeons, with little practice to occupy their attention, and living among their own families, or at any rate among exactly the same class. Thus the persons of most education in every village belong to the same families, and the same original station in life, as the illiterate habitans whom I have described. They are connected with them by all the associations of early youth, and the ties of blood. The most perfect equality always marks their intercourse and the superior in education is separated by no barrier of manners, or pride, or distinct interests, from the singularly ignorant peasantry by which he is surrounded. He combines, therefore, the influences of superior knowledge and social equality, and wields a power over the mass, which I do not believe that the educated class of any other portion of the world possess. To this singular state of things I attribute the extraordinary influence of the Canadian demagogues. The most uninstructed population any where trusted with political power, is thus placed in the hands of a small body of instructed persons, in whom it reposes the confidence which nothing but such domestic connexion, and such community of interest could generate. Over the class of persons by whom the peasantry are thus led, the Government has not acquired, or ever laboured to acquire, influence; its members have been thrown into opposition by the system of exclusion, long prevalent in the colony; and it is by their agency that the leaders of the Assembly have been enabled hitherto to move as one mass, in whatever direction they thought proper, the simple and ductile population of the country. The entire neglect of education by the Government has thus, more than any other cause, contributed to render this people ungovernable, and to invest the agitator with the power, which he wields-against the laws and the public tranquillity.
Conduct of the English.Among this people, the progress of emigration has of late years introduced an English population, exhibiting the characteristics with which we are familiar, as those of the most enterprising of every class of our countrymen. The circumstances of the early colonial administration excluded the native Canadian from power, Of the officials.and vested all offices of trust and emolument in the hands of strangers of English origin. The highest posts in the law were confided to the same class of persons. The functionaries of the civil government, together with the officers of the army, composed a kind of privileged class, occupying the first place in the community, and excluding the higher class of the natives from society, as well as from the government of their own country. It was not till within a very few years, as was testified by persons who had seen much of the country, that this society of civil and military functionaries ceased to exhibit towards the higher order of Canadians an exclusiveness of demeanor, which was more revolting to a sensitive and polite people than the monopoly of power and profit; nor was this national favouritism discontinued, until after repeated complaints and an angry contest, which had excited passions that concession could not allay. The races had become enemies ere a tardy justice was extorted; and even then the Government discovered a mode of distributing its patronage among the Canadians, which was quite as offensive to that people as their previous exclusion.
Of English settlers.It was not long after the conquest, that another and larger class of English settlers began to enter the Province. English capital was attracted to Canada by the vast quantity and valuable nature of the exportable produce of the country, and the great facilities for commerce, presented by the natural means of internal intercourse. The ancient trade of the country was conducted on a much larger and more profitable scale; and new branches of industry were explored. The active and regular habits of the English capitalist drove out of all the more profitable kinds of industry their inert and careless competitors of the French race; but in respect of the greater part (almost the whole) of the commerce and manufactures of the country, the English cannot be said to have encroached on the French; for, in fact, they created employments and profits which had not previously existed. A few of the ancient race smarted under the loss occasioned by the success of English competition; but all felt yet more acutely the gradual increase of a class of strangers in whose hands the wealth of the country appeared to centre, and whose expenditure and influence eclipsed those of the class which had previously occupied the first position in the country. Nor was the intrusion of the English limited to commercial enterprizes. By degrees, large portions of land were occupied by them; nor did they confine themselves to the unsettled and distant country of the townships. The wealthy capitalist invested his money in the purchase of seigniorial properties; and it is estimated, that at the present moment full half of the more valuable seigniories are actually owned by English proprietors. The seigniorial tenure is one so little adapted to our notions of proprietary rights, that the new seignior, without any consciousness or intention of injustice, in many instances exercised his rights in a manner which would appear perfectly fair in this country, but which the Canadian settler reasonably regarded as oppressive. The English purchaser found an equally unexpected and just cause of complaint in that uncertainty of the laws, which rendered his possession of property precarious, and in those incidents of the tenure which rendered its alienation or improvement difficult. But an irritation, greater than that occasioned by the transfer of the large properties, was caused by the competition of the English with the French farmer. The English farmer carried with him the experience and habits of the most improved agriculture in the world. He settled himself in the townships bordering on the seigniories, and brought a fresh soil and improved cultivation to compete with the worn-out and slovenly farm of the habitant. He often took the very farm which the Canadian settler had abandoned, and, by superior management, made that a source of profit which had only impoverished his predecessor. The ascendancy which an unjust favouritism had contributed to give to the English race in the government and the legal profession, their own superior energy, skill and capital secured to them in every branch of industry. They have developed the resources of the country; they have constructed or improved its means of communication; they have created its internal and foreign commerce. The entire wholesale, and a large portion of the retail trade of the Province, with the most profitable and flourishing farms, are now in the hands of this numerical minority of the population.
Animosities of the working classes not the result of a collision of interests.In Lower Canada the mere working class which depends on wages, though proportionally large in comparison with that to be found in any other portion of the American continent, is, according to our ideas, very small. Competition between persons of different origin in this class, has not exhibited itself till very recently, and is, even now, almost confined to the cities. The large mass of the labouring population are French in the employ of English capitalists. The more skilled class of artisans are generally English; but in the general run of the more laborious employments, the French Canadians fully hold their ground against English rivalry. The emigration which took place a few years ago, brought in a class which entered into more direct competition with the French in some kinds of employment in the towns; but the individuals affected by this competition were not very many. I do not believe that the animosity which exists between the working classes of the two origins is the necessary result of a collision of interests, or of a jealousy of the superior success of English labour. But national prejudices naturally exercise the greatest influence over the most uneducated; the difference of language is less easily overcome; the differences of manners and customs less easily appreciated. The labourers, whom the emigration introduced, contained a number of very ignorant, turbulent and demoralized persons, whose conduct and manners alike revolted the well-ordered and courteous natives of the same class. The working men naturally ranged themselves on the side, of the educated and wealthy of their own countrymen. When once engaged in the conflict, their passions were less restrained by education and prudence; and the national hostility now rages most fiercely between those whose interests in reality bring them the least in collision.
Points of opposition between the races.The two races thus distinct have been brought into the same community, under circumstances which rendered their contact inevitably productive of collision. The difference of language from the first kept them asunder It is not any where a virtue of the English race to look with complacency on any manners, customs or laws which appear strange to them; accustomed to form a high estimate of their own superiority, they take no pains to conceal from others their contempt and intolerance of their usages. They found the French Canadians filled with an equal amount of national pride; a sensitive, but inactive pride, which disposes that people not to resent insult, but rather to keep aloof from those who would keep them under. The French could not but feel the superiority of English enterprize; they could not shut their eyes to their success in every undertaking in which they came into contact, and to the constant superiority which they were acquiring. They looked upon their rivals with alarm, with jealousy and finally with hatred. The English repaid them with a scorn, which soon also assumed the same form of hatred. The French complained of the arrogance and injustice of the English; the English accused the French of the vices of a weak and conquered people, and charged them with meanness and perfidy. The entire mistrust which the two races have thus learned to conceive of each other's intentions, induces them to put the worst construction on the most innocent conduct; to judge every word, every act, and every intention unfairly; to attribute the most odious designs, and reject every overture of kindness or fairness, as covering secret designs of treachery and malignity.
Religion formed no bond of intercourse and union. It is, indeed, an admirable feature of Canadian society, that it is entirely devoid of any religious dissensions. Sectarian intolerance is not merely not avowed, but it hardly seems to influence men's feelings. But though the prudence and liberality of both parties has prevented this fruitful source of animosity from embittering their quarrels, the difference of religion has in fact tended to keep them asunder. Their priests have been distinct; they have not met even in the same church.
Education separate.No common education has served to remove and soften the differences of origin and language. The associations of youth, the sports of childhood, and the studies by which the character of manhood is modified, are distinct and totally different. In Montreal and Quebec there are English schools and French schools; the children in these are accustomed to fight nation against nation, and the quarrels that arise among boys in the streets usually exhibit a division into English on one side, and French on the other.
Effects of difference of language.As they are taught apart, so are their studies different. The literature with which each is the most conversant, is that of the peculiar language of each; and all the ideas which men derive from books come, to each of them from perfectly different sources. The difference of language in this respect produces effects quite apart from those which it has on the mere intercourse of the two races. Those who have reflected on the powerful influence of language on thought, will perceive in how different a manner people who speak in different languages are apt to think; and those who are familiar with the literature of France, know that the same opinion will be expressed by an English and French writer of the present day, not merely in different words, but in a style so different as to mark utterly different habits of thought. This difference is very striking in Lower Canada; it exists not merely in the books of most influence and repute, which are of course those of the great writers of France and England, and by which the minds of the respective races are formed, but it is observable in the writings which now issue from the Colonial press. The articles in the newspapers of each race, are written in a style as widely different as those of France and England at present; and the arguments which convince the one, are calculated to appear utterly unintelligible to the other.
The difference of language produces misconceptions yet more fatal even than those which it occasions with respect to opinions; it aggravates the national animosities, by representing all the events of the day in utterly different lights. The political misrepresentation of facts is one of the incidents of a free press in every free country; but in nations in which all speak the same language, those who receive a misrepresentation from one side, have generally some means of learning the truth from the other. In Lower Canada, however, where the French and English papers represent adverse opinions, and where no large portion of the community can read both languages with ease, those who receive the misrepresentation are rarely able to avail themselves of the means of correction. It is difficult to conceive the perversity with which misrepresentations are habitually made, and the gross delusions which find currency among the people; they thus live in a world of misconceptions, in which each party is set against the other not only by diversity of feelings and opinions, but by an actual belief in an utterly different set of facts.
Absence of social intercourse between the races.The differences thus early occasioned by education and language, are in no wise softened by the intercourse of after-life; their business and occupations do not bring the two races into friendly contact and co-operation, but only present them to each other in occasional rivalry. A laudable emulation has of late induced the French to enter on the field previously occupied by the English, and to attempt to compete with them in commerce, but it is much to be lamented that this did not commence until the national animosities had arrived almost at the highest pitch; and that the competition has been carried on in such a manner as to widen the pre-existing differences. The establishment of the 'Banque du Peuple' by French capitalists, is an event which may be regarded as a satisfactory indication of an awakening commercial energy among the French, and it is therefore very much to be regretted that the success of the new enterprise was uniformly promoted by direct and illiberal appeals to the national feelings of the race. Some of the French have lately established steam-boats to compete with the monopoly which a combination of English capitalists had for some time enjoyed on the St. Lawrence, and small and somewhat uncomfortable as they were, they were regarded with favour on account of their superiority in the essential qualities of certainty and celerity. But this was not considered sufficient to insure their success; an appeal was constantly made to the national feelings of the French for an exclusive preference of the 'French' line, and I have known a French newspaper announce with satisfaction the fact, that on the previous day the French steamers to Quebec and La Prairie had arrived at Montreal with a great many passengers, and the English with very few. The English, on the other hand, appealed to exactly the same kind of feelings, and used to apply to the French steam-boats the epithets of 'Radical', 'Rebel' and 'Disloyal'. The introduction of this kind of national preference into this department of business, produced a particularly mischievous effect, inasmuch as it separated the two races on some of the few occasions on which they had previously been thrown into each other's society. They rarely meet at the inns in the cities; the principal hotels are almost exclusively filled with English and with foreign travellers; and the French are, for the most part, received at each other's houses, or in boarding houses, in which they meet with few English.
Instance of this.Nor do their amusements bring them more in contact. Social intercourse never existed between the two races in any but the higher classes, and it is now almost destroyed. I heard of but one house in Quebec in which both races met on pretty equal and amicable terms, and this was mentioned as a singular instance of good sense on the part of the gentleman to whom it belongs. At the commencement of Lord Aylmer's administration, an entertainment was given to his Lordship by Mr. Papineau, the Speaker of the House of Assembly. It was generally understood to be intended as a mark of confidence and good-will towards the Governor, and of a conciliatory disposition. It was given on a very large scale, a very great number of persons were present; and of that number I was informed by a gentleman, who was present, that he and one other were the only English, except the Governor and his suite. Indeed the difference of manners in the two races renders a general social intercourse almost impossible.
Instance of national incompatibility.A singular instance of national incompatibility was brought before my notice, in an attempt which I made to promote an undertaking, in which the French were said to take a great deal of interest. I accepted the office of President of the Agricultural Association of the District of Quebec, and attended the show previous to the distribution of the prizes. I then found that the French farmers would not compete even on this neutral ground with the English; distinct prizes were given, in almost every department, to the two races; the national ploughing matches were carried on in separate and even distant fields.
Intermarriages rare.While such is their social intercourse, it is not to be expected that the animosities of the two races can frequently be softened by the formation of domestic connexions. During the first period of the possession of the Colony by the English, intermarriages of the two races were by no means uncommon. But they are now very rare; and where such unions occur they are generally formed with members of the French families, which I have described as politically, and almost nationally, separated from the bulk of their own race.
Marked division of society.I could mention various slight features in the state of society, which show the all-pervading and marked division of the races; but nothing (though it will sound paradoxical) really proves their entire separation so much as the rarity, nay almost total absence, of personal encounters between the two races. Disputes of this kind are almost confined to the ruder order of people, and seldom proceed to acts of violence. As respects the other classes, social intercourse between the two races is so limited, that the more prominent or excitable antagonists never meet in the same room. It came to my knowledge that a gentleman who was for some years a most active and determined leader amongst the English population, had never once been under a private roof with French Canadians of his own rank in life, until he met some at table on the invitation of persons attached to my mission, who were in the habit of associating indifferently with French and English. There are therefore no political personal controversies. The ordinary occasions of collision never occur, and men must quarrel so publicly, or so deliberately, that prudence restrains them from commencing, individually, what would probably end in a general and bloody conflict of numbers. Their mutual fears restrain personal disputes and riots, even among the lower orders; the French know and dread the superior physical strength of the English in the cities; and the English in those places refrain from exhibiting their power, from fear of the revenge that might be taken on their countrymen, who are scattered over the rural parishes.
No combination for public objects.This feeling of mutual forbearance extends so far as to produce an apparent calm with respect to public matters, which is calculated to perplex a stranger who has heard much of the animosities of the Province. No trace of them appears in public meetings; and these take place in every direction, in the most excited periods, and go off without disturbance, and almost without dissent. The fact is, that both parties have come to a tacit understanding, not in any way to interfere with each other on these occasions; each party knowing that it would always be in the power of the other to prevent its meetings. The British party consequently have their meetings; the French theirs; and neither disturb the other. The complimentary addresses which I received on various occasions, marked the same entire separation, even in a matter in which it might be supposed that party feeling would not be felt, or would from mere prudence and propriety be concealed. I had from the same places, French and English addresses, and I never found the two races uniting, except in a few cases, where I met with the names of two or three isolated members of one origin, who happened to dwell in a community almost entirely composed of the other. The two parties combine for no public object; they cannot harmonize even in associations of charity. The only public occasion on which they ever meet, is in the jury-box; and they meet there only to the utter obstruction of justice.
Political strife the result of such social feelings.The hostility which thus pervades society, was some time growing before it became of prominent importance in the politics of the Province. It was inevitable that such social feelings must end in a deadly political strife, the French regarded with jealousy the influence in politics of a daily increasing body of the strangers, whom they so much disliked and dreaded; the wealthy English were offended at finding that their property gave them no influence over their French dependents, who were acting under the guidance of leaders of their own race; and the farmers and traders of the same race were not long before they began to bear with impatience their utter political nullity in the midst of the majority of a population, whose ignorance they contemned, and whose political views and conduct seemed utterly at variance with their own notions of the principles and practice of self-government. Superior practical intelligence of the English,The superior political and practical intelligence of the English cannot be, for a moment, disputed. The great mass of the Canadian population, who cannot read or write, and have found in few of the institutions of country, even the elements of political education, were obviously inferior to the English settlers, of whom a large proportion had received a considerable amount of education, and had been trained in their own country to take a part in public business of one kind or another. With respect to the more educated classes, the superiority is not so general or apparent; indeed from all the information that I could collect, although greater refinement may be found among the French.I incline to think that the amount of refinement, of speculative thought, and of the knowledge that books can give, is, with some brilliant among the exceptions, to be round among the French. But I have no hesitation in stating, even more decidedly, that the circumstances in which the English have been placed in Lower Canada, acting on their original political education, have endowed the leaders of that population with much of that practical sagacity, tact, and energy in politics, in which I must say, that the bad institutions of the Colony have, in my opinion, rendered the leaders of the French deplorably deficient. That a race which felt itself thus superior in political activity and intelligence, should submit with patience to the rule of a majority which it could not respect, was impossible. At what time and from what particular cause the hostility between such a majority and such a minority, which was sure sooner or later to break out, actually became of paramount importance, it is difficult to say. The hostility between the Assembly and the British Government had long given a tendency to attacks, on the part of the popular leaders, on the nation to which that government belonged. It is said that the appeals to the national pride and animosities of the French, became more direct and general on the occasion of the abortive attempt to re-unite Upper and Lower Canada in 1822, which the leaders of the Assembly viewed or represented as a blow aimed at the institutions of their Province. The anger of the English was excited by the denunciations of themselves, which, subsequently to this period, they were in the habit of hearing. They had possibly some little sympathy with the members of the provincial government of their own race; and their feelings were, probably, yet more strongly excited in favour of the connexion of the Colony with Great Britain, which the proceedings of the Assembly appeared to endanger. But the abuses existing under the provincial government, gave such inducements to remain in opposition to it, that the representatives of each race continued for a long time to act together against it. And as the bulk of the English population in the townships and on the Ottawa were brought into very little personal contact with the French, I am inclined to think that it might have been some time longer, ere the disputes of origin would have assumed an importance paramount to all others, had not the Assembly come into collision with the whole English population by its policy with respect to internal improvements, and to the old and defective laws, which operated as a bar to the alienation of land, and to the formation of associations for commercial purposes.
Views of the English settlers.The English population, an immigrant and enterprising population, looked on the American Provinces as a vast field for settlement and speculation, and in the common spirit of the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants of that continent, regarded it as the chief business of the Government, to promote, by all possible use of its legislative and administrative powers, the increase of population and the accumulation of property; they found the laws of real property exceedingly adverse to the easy alienation of land, which is, in a new country, absolutely essential to its settlement and improvement; they found the greatest deficiency in the internal communications of the country, and the utter want of local self-government rendered it necessary for them to apply to the Assembly for every road or bridge, or other public work that was needed; they wished to form themselves into companies for the establishment of banks, and the construction of railroads and canals, and to obtain the powers necessary for the completion of such works with funds of their own. And as the first requisite for the improvement of the country, they desired that a large proportion of the revenue should be applied to the completion of that great series of public works, by which it was proposed to render the Saint Lawrence and the Ottawa navigable throughout their whole extent.
Jealousy of the Assembly and dislike of improvements.Without going so far as to accuse the Assembly of a deliberate design to check the settlement and improvement of Lower Canada, it cannot be denied that they looked With considerable jealousy and dislike on the increase and prosperity of what they regarded as a foreign and hostile race; they looked on the Province as the patrimony of their own race; they viewed it not as a country to be settled, but as one already settled; and instead of legislating in the American spirit, and first providing for the future population of the Province, their primary care was, in the spirit of legislation which prevails in the old world, to guard the interests and feelings of the present race of inhabitants, to whom they considered the new comers as subordinate; they refused to increase the burthens of the country by imposing taxes to meet the expenditure required for improvement, and they also refused to direct to that object any of the funds previously devoted to other purposes. The improvement of the harbour of Montreal was suspended, from a political antipathy to a leading English merchant who had been the most active of the Commissioners, and by whom it had been conducted with the most admirable success. It is but just to say that some of the works which the assembly authorized and encouraged were undertaken on a scale of due moderation, and satisfactorily perfected and brought into operation. Others, especially the great communications which I have mentioned above, the Assembly showed a great reluctance to promote or even to permit. It is true that there was considerable foundation for their objections to the plan on which the Legislature of Upper Canada had commenced some of these works, and to the mode in which it had carried them on; but the English complained, that instead of profiting by the experience which they might have derived from this source, the Assembly seemed only to make its objections a pretext for doing nothing. The applications for banks, railroads and canals were laid on one side until some general measures could be adopted with regard to such undertakings; but the general measures thus promised were never passed, and the particular enterprizes in question were prevented. The adoption of a registry was refused on the alleged ground of its inconsistency with the French institutions of the Province, and no measure to attain this desirable end, in a less obnoxious mode, was prepared by the leaders of the Assembly. The feudal tenure was supported, as a mild and just provision for the settlement of a new country; a kind of assurance given by a Committee of the Assembly, that some steps should be taken to remove the most injurious incidents of the seignorial tenure, produced no practical results; and the enterprizes of the English were still thwarted by the obnoxious laws of the country. In all these decisions of the Assembly, in its discussions, and in the apparent motives of its conduct, the English population perceived traces of a desire to repress the influx and the success of their race. A measure for imposing a tax on emigrants, though recommended by the Home Government, and warranted by the policy of those neighbouring states, which give the greatest encouragement to immigration, was argued on such grounds in the Assembly, that it was not unjustly regarded as indicative of an intention to exclude any further accession to the English population; and the industry of the English was thus retarded by this conduct of the Assembly. Some districts, particularly that of the Eastern Townships, where the French race has no footing, were seriously injured by the refusal of necessary improvements; and the English inhabitants generally regarded the policy of the Assembly as a plan for preventing any further emigration to the Province, of stopping the growth of English wealth, and of rendering precarious the English property already invested or acquired in Lower Canada.
Collision between the Executive and the AssemblyThe Assembly of which they thus complained, and of which they entertained apprehensions so serious, was at the same time in collision with the Executive Government. The party in power, and which, by means of the Legislative Council, kept the Assembly in check, gladly availed itself of the discontents of this powerful and energetic minority, offered it its protection, and undertook the furtherance of its views; and thus was cemented the singular alliance between the English population and the Colonial officials, who combined from perfectly different motives, and with perfectly different objects, against a common enemy. The English desired reform and liberal measures from the Assembly, which refused them, while it was urging other reforms and demanding other liberal measures from the Executive Government. The Assembly complained of the oppressive use of the power of the Executive; the English complained that they, a minority, suffered under the oppressive use to which power was turned by the French majority. Thus a bold and intelligent democracy was impelled, by its impatience for liberal measures, joined to its national antipathies, to make common cause with a government which was at issue with the majority on the question of popular rights. The actual conflict commenced by a collision between the Executive and the French majority; and, as the English population rallied round the Government, supported its pretensions, and designated themselves by the appellation of 'loyal', the causes of the quarrel were naturally supposed to be much more simple than they really were; and the extent of the division which existed among the inhabitants of Lower Canada, the number and nature of the combatants arrayed on each side, and the irremediable nature of the dispute, were concealed from the public view.
Appeal to arms by the French.The treasonable attempt of the French party to carry its political objects into effect by an appeal to arms, brought these hostile races into general and armed collision. I will not dwell on the melancholy scenes exhibited in the progress of the contest, or the fierce passions which held an unchecked sway during the insurrection, or immediately after its suppression. It is not difficult to conceive how greatly the evils, which I have described as previously existing, have been aggravated by the war; how terror and revenge nourished, in each portion of the population, a bitter and irreconcileable hatred to each other, and to the institutions of the country. The French population, who had for some time exercised a great and increasing power through the medium of the House of Assembly, found their hopes unexpectedly prostrated in the dust. The physical force which they had vaunted was called into action, and proved to be utterly inefficient. The hope of recovering their previous ascendancy under a constitution, similar to that suspended, almost ceased to exist. Removed from all actual share in the government of their country, they brood in sullen silence over the memory of their fallen countrymen, of their burnt villages, of their ruined property, of their extinguished ascendancy, and of their humbled nationality. To the Government and the English they ascribe these wrongs, and nourish against both an indiscriminating and eternal animosity. Nor have the English inhabitants forgotten in their triumph the terror with which they suddenly saw themselves surrounded by an insurgent majority, and the incidents which alone appeared to save them from the unchecked domination of their antagonists. They find themselves still a minority in the midst of a hostile and organized people; apprehensions of secret conspiracies and sanguinary designs haunt them unceasingly, and their only hope of safety is supposed to rest on systematically terrifying and disabling the French, and in preventing a majority of that race from ever again being predominant in any portion of the legislature of the Province. I describe in strong terms the feelings which appear to me to animate each portion of the population; and the picture which I draw represents a state of things so little familiar to the personal experience of the peopleThe French will not loyally submit to the British Government, nor the English tolerate a French majority in the Assembly. of this country, that many will probably regard it as the work of mere imagination; but I feel confident that the accuracy and moderation of my description will be acknowledged by all who have seen the state of society in Lower Canada during the last year. Nor do I exaggerate the inevitable constancy any more than the intensity of this animosity. Never again will the present generation of French Canadians yield a loyal submission to a British Government; never again will the English population tolerate the authority of a House of Assembly, in which the French shall possess or even approximate to a majority.
Nor is it simply the working of representative government which is placed out of question by the present disposition of the two races; every institution which requires for its efficiency a confidence in the mass of the people, or co-operation between its classes, is practically in abeyance in Lower Canada. The militia, on which the main defence of the Province against external enemies, and the discharge of many of the functions of internal police have hitherto depended, is completely disorganized. A muster of that force would, in some districts, be the occasion for quarrels between the races, and in the greater part of the country the attempting to arm or employ it would be merely arming the enemies of the Government. The course of justice is entirely obstructed by the same cause;Obstruction of the course of justice. a just decision in any political case is not to be relied upon; even the judicial bench is, in the opinion of both races, divided into two hostile sections of French and English, from neither of whom is justice expected by the mass of th e hostile party. The partiality of grand and petty juries is a matter of certainty; each race relies on the vote of its countrymen to save it harmless from the law, and the mode of challenging allows of such an exclusion of the hostile party that the French offender may make sure of, and the English hope for a favourable jury, and a consequent acquittal. This state of things, and the consequent impunity of political offences, is distinctly admitted by both sides. The trial of the murderers of Chartrand has placed this disposition of the French jurors in a most glaring light:Acquittal of the murderers of Chartrand. the notes of the Chief Justice in this case were transmitted by me to the Secretary of State; and a perusal of them will satisfy every candid and well-ordered mind that a base and cruel assassination, committed without a single circumstance of provocation or palliation, was brought home by evidence which no man ever pretended to doubt, against the prisoners, whom the jury nevertheless acquitted. The duty of giving this dishonest verdict had been most assiduously and shamefully inculcated by the French press before the trial came on; the jurors are said to have been kept for some time previous in the hands of zealous partisans, whose business it was not only to influence their inclination, but to stimulate their courage; the array of the leaders of the party who were present at the trial was supposed to be collected for the same purpose: and it is notorious that the acquittal was celebrated at public entertainments, to which the jurors were invited in order that they might be thanked for their verdict.
Another example of obstruction of Justice.But the influence of this animosity does not obstruct the course of justice in political cases alone. An example of obstruction of ordinary criminal justice recently occurred at Quebec. A person had been, during a previous term, indicted and tried for some offence seriously affecting his moral character. The charge had been supported by a witness whom the jury considered perjured, and the accused had been acquitted. Having reason to believe that the witness had been instigated by a neighbour, the acquitted person indicted this neighbour for subornation of perjury, and brought the witness, who had formerly appeared against himself, to prove the falsehood of his previous evidence, and the fact of his subornation. The proof of subornation appears to have rested, in some particulars, too much on the unsupported evidence of this witness; the jury differed in opinion, one portion of them behaving the guilt of the accused to be on the whole satisfactorily established, the other refusing to believe that part of the case which depended solely on the evidence of a man who came into court to swear to the fact of his own previous perjury. This was a difference of opinion which might naturally divide a jury, but as all the parties were French, and as there is nothing in the circumstances which marks this as a case in which feelings of politics or origin could be supposed to operate, it will, I imagine, appear singular that the jury, being composed nearly equally of French and English, all the French were on one side, all the English on the other. After long discussion the jury came into court, and declared their inability to agree; and the foreman, on being told by the Judge that they must agree, answered that they were an equal number of French and English, and consequently never could agree. In the end they did not, and after being locked up for twelve hours, they were discharged without giving a verdict; so that even in a case in which no question of party or of race is concerned, the animosity of the races, nevertheless, appears to present an insurmountable barrier to the impartial administration of justice.
Evils to society from national animosities.In such a state of feelings the course of civil government is hopelessly suspended. No confidence can be felt in the stability of any existing institution, or the security of person and property. It cannot occasion surprise that this state of things should have destroyed the tranquillity and happiness of families; that it should have depreciated the value of property, and that it should have arrested the improvement and settlement of the country. The alarming decline of the value of landed property was attested to me by some of the principal proprietors of the Province. The continual and progressive decrease of the revenue, though in some degree attributable to other causes, indicates a diminution of the wealth of the country. The staple export trade of the Province, the timber trade, has not suffered; but instead of exporting grain, the Province is now obliged to import for its own consumption. The influx of emigrants, once so considerable, has very greatly diminished. In 1832 the number of emigrants who landed at the port of Quebec amounted to 52,000; in 1837 it had fallen to a few more than 22,000; and in 1838 it did not amount to 5,000. Insecurity begins to be so strongly felt by the loyal inhabitants of the seignories, that many of them are compelled, by fear or necessity, to quit their occupations, and seek refuge in the cities. If the present state of things continues, the most enterprising and wealthy capitalists of the Province will thus in a short time be driven from the seats of their present industry.
Hopelessness of putting an end to the animosities at present.Nor does there appear to be the slightest chance of putting an end to this animosity during the present generation. Passions inflamed during so long a period cannot speedily be calmed. The state of education which I have previously described as placing the peasantry entirely at the mercy of agitators, the total absence of any class of persons, or any organization of authority that could counteract this mischievous influence, and the serious decline in the district of Montreal of the influence of the clergy, concur in rendering it absolutely impossible for the Government to produce any better state of feeling among the French population. It is even impossible to impress on a people so circumstanced the salutary dread of the power of Great Britain, which the presence of a large military force in the Province might be expected to produce. I have been informed by witnesses so numerous and so trustworthy, that I cannot doubt the correctness of their statements, that the peasantry were generally ignorant of the large amount of force which was sent into their country last year. The newspapers that circulate among them had informed them that Great Britain had no troops to send out; that in order to produce an impression on the minds of the country people, the same regiments were marched backwards and forwards in different directions, and represented as additional arrivals from home. This explanation was promulgated among the people by the agitators of each village; and I have no doubt that the mass of the habitans really believed that the Government was endeavouring to impose on them by this species of fraud. It is a population with whom authority has no means of contact or explanation. It is difficult even to ascertain what amount of influence the ancient leaders of the French party continue to possess. The name of Mr. Papineau is still cherished by the people; and the idea is current that, at the appointed time, he will return, at the head of an immense army, and re-estabhsh 'La Nation Canadienne'. But there is great reason to doubt whether his name be not used as a mere watchword; whether the people are not in fact running entirely counter to his counsels and policy; and whether they are not really under the guidance of separate petty agitators, who have no plan but that of a senseless and reckless determination to show in every way their hostility to the British Government and English race. Their ultimate designs and hopes are equally unintelligible. Some vague expectation of absolute independence still seems to delude them. The national vanity, which is a remarkable ingredient in their character induces many to flatter themselves with the idea of a Canadian Republic; the sounder information of others has led them to perceive that a separation from Great Britain must be followed by a junction with the great Confederation on their southern frontier. But they seem apparently reckless of the consequences, provided they can wreak their vengeance on the English. There is no people against which early associations and every conceivable difference of manners and opinions, have implanted in the Canadian mind a more ancient and rooted national antipathy than that which they feel against the people of the United States. Their more discerning leaders feel that their chances of preserving their nationality would be greatly diminished by an incorporation with the United States; and recent symptoms of Anti-Catholic feeling in New England, well known to the Canadian population, have generated a very general belief that their religion, which even they do not accuse the British party of assailing, would find little favour or respect from their neighbours.The Canadians would revenge themselves on the English by any aid. Yet none even of these considerations weigh against their present all-absorbing hatred of the English; and I am persuaded that they would purchase vengeance and a momentary triumph, by the aid of any enemies, or submission to any yoke. This provisional but complete cessation of their ancient antipathy to the Americans, is now admitted even by those who most strongly denied it during the last spring, and who then asserted that an American war would as completely unite the whole population against the common enemy, as it did in 1813. My subsequent experience leaves no doubt in my mind that the views which were contained in my Dispatch of the 9th of August are perfectly correct; and that an invading American army might rely on the co-operation of almost the entire French population of Lower Canada.
The English population will never tolerate the French pretensions to nationality.In the Dispatch above referred to I also described the state of feeling among the English population, nor can I encourage a hope that that portion of the community is at all more inclined to any settlement of the present quarrel that would leave any share of power to the hostile race. Circumstances having thrown the English into the ranks of the Government, and the folly of their opponents having placed them, on the other hand, in a state of permanent collision with it, the former possess the advantage of having the force of Government, and the authority of the laws on their side in the present stage of the contest. Their exertions during the recent troubles have contributed to maintain the supremacy of the law, and the continuance of the connexion with Great Britain; but it would in my opinion be dangerous to rely on the continuance of such a state of feeling as now prevails among them, in the event of a different policy being adopted by the Imperial Government. Indeed the prevalent sentiment among them is one of anything but satisfaction with the course which has been long pursued, with reference to Lower Canada, by the British Legislature and Executive. The calmer view, which distant spectators are enabled to take of the conduct of the two parties, and the disposition which is evinced to make a fair adjustment of the contending claims, appear iniquitous and injurious in the eyes of men who think that they alone have any claim to the favour of that Government, by which they alone have stood fast. They complain loudly and bitterly of the whole course pursued by the Imperial Government, with respect to the quarrel of the two races, as having being founded on an utter ignorance or disregard of the real question at issue, as having fostered the mischievous pretensions of French nationality, and as having by the vacillation and inconsistency which marked it, discouraged loyalty and fomented rebellion. Every measure of clemency or even justice towards their opponents they regard with jealousy, as indicating a disposition towards that conciliatory policy which is the subject of their angry recollection;They complain of being the sport of parties at home. for they feel that being a minority, any return to the due course of constitutional government would again subject them to a French majority; and to this I am persuaded they would never peaceably submit. They do not hesitate to say that they will not tolerate much longer the being made the sport of parties at home, and that if the mother country forgets what is due to the loyal and enterprising men of her own race, they must protect themselves. In the significant language of one of their own ablest advocates, they assert that 'Lower Canada must be English, at the expense, if necessary, of not being British.'
Exasperation of the Loyalists against the Americans,I have, in Dispatches of a later date than that to which I have had occasion so frequently to refer, called the attention of the Home Government to the growth of this alarming state of feeling among the English population. The course of the late troubles, and the assistance which the French insurgents derived from some citizens of the United States, have caused a most intense exasperation among the Canadian loyalists against the American Government and people. Their papers have teemed with the most unmeasured denunciations of the good faith of the authorities, of the character and morality of the people, and of the political institutions of the United States. Yet, under this surface of hostility, it is easy to detect a strong under current of an exactly contrary feeling.but with a current of contrary feeling. As the general opinion of the American people became more apparent during the course of the last year, the English of Lower Canada were surprized to find how strong, in spite of the first burst of sympathy, with a people supposed to be struggling for independence, was the real sympathy of their republican neighbours with the great objects of the minority. Without abandoning their attachment to their mother country, they have begun, as men in a state of uncertainty are apt to do, to calculate the probable consequences of a separation, if it should unfortunately occur, and be followed by an incorporation with the United States. In spite of the shock which it would occasion their feelings, they undoubtedly think that they should find some compensation in the promotion of their interests; they believe that the influx of American emigration would speedily place the English race in a majority; they talk frequently and loudly of what has occurred in Louisiana, where, by means which they utterly misrepresent, the end nevertheless of securing an English predominance over a French population, has undoubtedly been attained; they assert very confidently that the Americans would make a very speedy and decisive settlement of the pretensions of the French; and they believe, that after the first shock of an entirely new political state had been got over, they and their posterity would share in that amazing progress, and that great material prosperity, which every day's experience shows them is the lot of the people of the United States. I do not beheve that such a feeling has yet sapped their strong allegiance to the British empire; but their allegiance is founded on their deep-rooted attachment to British as distinguished from French institutions. And if they find that that authority which they have maintained against its recent assailants, is to be exerted in such a manner as to subject them again to what they call a French dominion, I feel perfectly confident that they would attempt to avert the result, by courting, on any terms, an union with an Anglo-Saxon people.
Evils of conflict of races aggravated by the conduct of Government.Such is the lamentable and hazardous state of things produced by the conflict of races which has so long divided the Province of Lower Canada, and which has assumed the formidable and irreconcileable character which I have depicted. In describing the nature of this conflict,I have specified the causes in which it originated; and though I have mentioned the conduct and constitution of the Colonial Government as modifying the character of the struggle, I have not attributed to political causes a state of things which would, I believe, under any political institutions have resulted from the very composition of society. A jealousy between two races, so long habituated to regard each other with hereditary enmity, and so differing in habits, in language and in laws, would have been inevitable under any form of government. That liberal institutions and a prudent policy might have changed the character of the struggle I have no doubt; but they could not have prevented it; they could only have softened its character, and brought it more speedily a more decisive and peaceful conclusion. Unhappily, however, the system of government pursued in Lower Canada has been based on the policy of perpetuating that very separation of the races, and encouraging these very notions of conflicting nationalities which it ought to have been the first and chief care of Government to check and extinguish. From the period of the conquest to the present time, the conduct of the Government has aggravated the evil, and the origin of the present extreme disorder may be found in the institutions by which the character of the colony was determined.
Two modes of dealing with conquered territories.There are two modes by which a government may deal with a conquered territory. The first course open to it is that of respecting the rights and nationality of the actual occupants; of recognizing the existing laws, and preserving established institutions; of giving no encouragement to the influx of the conquering people, and, without attempting any change in the elements of the community, merely incorporating the Province under the general authority of the central Government. The second is that of treating the conquered territory as one open to the conquerors, of encouraging their influx, of regarding the conquered race as entirely subordinate, and of endeavouring as speedily and as rapidly as possible to assimilate the character and institutions of its new subjects to those of the great body of its empire. In the case of an old and long settled country, in which the land is appropriated, in which little room is left for colonization, and in which the race of the actual occupants must continue to constitute the bulk of the future population of the province, policy as well as humanity render the well-being of the conquered people the first care of a just government, and recommend the adoption of the first-mentioned system; but in a new and unsettled country, a provident legislator would regard as his first object the interests not of the few individuals who happen at the moment to inhabit a portion of the soil, but those of that comparatively vast population by which he may reasonably expect that it will be filled; he would form his plans with a view of attracting and nourishing that future population, and he would therefore establish those institutions which would be most acceptable to the race by which he hoped to colonize the country. The course which I have described as best suited to an old and settled country, would have been impossible in the American continent,The first why unadvisable in Lower Canada. unless the conquering state meant to renounce the immediate use of the unsettled lands of the Province; and in this case such a course would have been additionally unadvisable, unless the British Government were prepared to abandon to the scanty population of French whom it found in Lower Canada, not merely the possession of the vast extent of rich soil which that Province contains, but also the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and all the facilities for trade which the entrance of that great river commands.
Mistaken policy of the British Government.In the first regulations adopted by the British Government for the settlement of the Canadas, in the Proclamation of 1763, and the Commission of the Governor-in-Chief of the Province of Quebec, in the offers by which officers and soldiers of the British army, and settlers from the other North American Provinces, were tempted to accept grants of land in the Canadas, we perceive very clear indications of an intention of adopting the second and the wiser of the two systems. Unfortunately, however, the conquest of Canada was almost immediately followed by the commencement of those discontents which ended in the independence of the United Provinces. From that period, the colonial policy of this country appears to have undergone a complete change. To prevent the further dismemberment of the Empire became the primary object with our statesmen; and an especial anxiety was exhibited to adopt every expedient which appeared calculated to prevent the remaining North American Colonies from following the example of successful revolt. Unfortunately the distinct national character of the French inhabitants of Canada, and their ancient hostility to the people of New England, presented the easiest and most obvious line of demarcation. To isolate the inhabitants of the British from those of the revolted Colonies, became the policy of the Government; and the nationality of the French Canadians was therefore cultivated, as a means of perpetual and entire separation from their neighbours. It seems also to have been considered the policy of the British Government to govern its Colonies by means of division, and to break them down as much as possible into petty isolated communities, incapable of combination, and possessing no sufficient strength for individual resistance to the Empire. Indications of such designs are to be found in many of the acts of the British Government with respect to its North American Colonies. In 1775 instructions were sent from England, directing that all grants of land within the Province of Quebec, then comprising Upper and Lower Canada, were to be made in fief and seigniory; and even the grants to the refugee loyalists, and officers and privates of the colonial corps, promised in 1786, were ordered to be made on the same tenure. In no instance was it more singularly exhibited than in the condition annexed to the grants of land in Prince Edward's Island, by which it was stipulated that the Island was to be settled by 'foreign Protestants'; as if they were to be foreign in order to separate them from the people of New England, and Protestants in order to keep them apart from the Canadian and Acadian Catholics. It was part of the same policy to separate the French of Canada from the British emigrants, and to conciliate the former by the retention of their language, laws, and religious institutions. For this purpose Canada was afterwards divided into two Provinces, the settled portion being allotted to the French, and the unsettled being destined to become the seat of British colonization. Thus, instead of availing itself of the means which the extent and nature of the Province afforded for the gradual introduction of such an English population into its various parts as might have easily placed the French in a minority, the Government deliberately constituted the French into a majority, and recognized and strengthened their indistinct national character. Had the sounder policy of making the Province English, in all its institutions, been adopted from the first, and steadily persevered in, the French would probably have been speedily outnumbered, and the beneficial operation of the free institutions of England would never have been impeded by the animosities of origin.
Continued inconsistency of British Policy.Not only, however, did the Government adopt the unwise course of dividing Canada, and forming in one of its divisions a French community, speaking the French language, and retaining French institutions, but it did not even carry this consistently into effect; for at the same time provision was made for encouraging the emigration of English into the very Province which was said to be assigned to the French. Even the French institutions were not extended over the whole of Lower Canada. The civil law of France, as a whole, and the legal provision for the Catholic clergy were limited to the portion of the country then settled by the French, and comprised in the seigniories; though some provision was made for the formation of new seigniories, almost the whole of the then unsettled portion of the Province was formed into townships, in which the law of England was partially established, and the Protestant religion alone endowed. Thus two populations of hostile origin and different characters, were brought into juxtaposition under a common government, but under different institutions; each was taught to cherish its own language, laws and habits, and each, at the same time, if it moved beyond its original limits, was brought under different institutions, and associated with a different people. The unenterprising character of the French population, and, above all, its attachment to its church (for the enlargement of which, in proportion to the increase or diffusion of the Catholic population, very inadequate provision was made) have produced the effect of confining it within its ancient limits. But the English were attracted into the seigniories, and especially into the cities, by the facilities of commerce afforded by the great rivers. To have effectually given the policy of retaining French institutions and a French population in Lower Canada a fair chance of success, no other institutions should have been allowed, and no other race should have received any encouragement to settle therein. The Province should have been set apart to be wholly French, if it was not to be rendered completely English. The attempt to encourage English emigration into a community, of which the French character was still to be preserved, was an error which planted the seeds of a contest of races in the very constitution of the Colony; this was an error, I mean, even on the assumption that it was possible to exclude the English race from French Canada. But it was quite impossible to exclude the English race from any part of the North American continent. It will be acknowledged by every one who has observed the progress of Anglo-Saxon colonization in America, that sooner or later the English race was sure to predominate even numerically in Lower Canada, French nationality not preservable amidst Anglo-American states.as they predominate already, by their superior knowledge, energy, enterprise and wealth. The error, therefore, to which the present contest must be attributed, is the vain endeavour to preserve a French Canadian nationality in the midst of Anglo-American colonies and states.
The contest arose gradually.That contest has arisen by degrees. The scanty number of the English who settled in Lower Canada during the earlier period of our possession, put out of the question any ideas of rivalry between the races. Indeed, until the popular principles of English institutions were brought effectually into operation, the paramount authority of the Government left little room for dispute among any but the few who contended for its favours. It was not until the English had established a vast trade, and accumulated considerable wealth, until a great part of the landed property of the Province was vested in their hands, until a large Enghsh population was found in the cities, had scattered itself over large portions of the country, and had formed considerable communities in the townships, and not until the development of representative government had placed substantial power in the hands of the people, that that people divided itself into races, arrayed against each other in intense and enduring animosity.
Continued errors and vacillations of Government.The errors of the Government did not cease with that, to which I have attributed the origin of this animosity. The defects of the colonial constitution necessarily brought the executive Government into collision with the people; and the disputes of the Government and the people called into action the animosities of race; nor has the policy of the Government obviated the evils inherent in the constitution of the Colony, and the composition of society. It has done nothing to repair its original error, by making the Province English. Occupied in a continued conflict with the Assembly, successive Governors and their councils have overlooked, in great measure, the real importance of the feud of origin; and the Imperial Government, far removed from opportunities of personal observation of the peculiar state of society, has shaped its policy so as to aggravate the disorder. In some instances it has actually conceded the mischievous pretensions of nationality, in order to evade popular claims; as in attempting to divide the Legislative Council, and the patronage of Government, equally between the two races, in order to avoid the demands for an elective Council, and a responsible Executive: sometimes it has, for a while, pursued the opposite course. A policy founded on imperfect information, and conducted by continually changing hands, has exhibited to the Colony a system of vacillation which was in fact no system at all. The alternate concessions to the contending races have only irritated both, impaired the authority of Government, and, by keeping alive the hopes of a French Canadian nationality, counteracted the influences which might, ere this, have brought the quarrel to its natural and necessary termination. It is impossible to determine precisely the respective effects of the social and political causes. The struggle between the Government and the Assembly, has aggravated the animosities of race; and the animosities of race have rendered the political difference irreconcileable. No remedy can be efficient that does not operate upon both evils.Good government impracticable whilst conflict of races lasts. At the root of the disorders of Lower Canada, lies the conflict of the two races, which compose its population; until this is settled, no good government is practicable; for whether the political institutions be reformed or left unchanged, whether the powers of the Government be entrusted to the majority or the minority, we may rest assured, that while the hostility of the races continues, whichever of them is entrusted with power, will use it for partial purposes.
Collisions between the executive and representative body in all the North American Colonies.I have described the contest between the French and English races in Lower Canada with minuteness, because it was my wish to produce a complete and general conviction of the prominent importance of that struggle, when we are taking into consideration the causes of those disorders which have so grievously afflicted the Province. I have not, however, during the course of my preceding remarks, been able to avoid alluding to other causes, which have greatly contributed to occasion the existing state of things; and I have specified among these the defects of the constitution, and the errors arising out of the system of government. It is, indeed, impossible to believe that the assigned causes of the struggle between the Government and the majority have had no effect, even though we may believe that they have had much less than the contending parties imagined. It is impossible to observe the great similarity of the constitutions established in all our North American Provinces, and the striking tendency of all to terminate in pretty nearly the same result, without entertaining a belief that some defect in the form of government, and some erroneous principle of administration, have been common to all; the hostility of the races being palpably insufficient to account for all the evils which have affected Lower Canada, inasmuch as nearly the same results have been exhibited among the homogeneous population of the other provinces. It is but too evident that Lower Canada, or the two Canadas, have not alone exhibited repeated conflicts between the executive and the popular branches of the legislature. The representative body of Upper Canada was before the late election, hostile to the policy of the Government; the most serious discontents have only recently been calmed in Prince Edward's Island and New Brunswick; the Government is still, I believe, in a minority in the Lower House in Nova Scotia; and the dissensions of Newfoundland are hardly less violent than those of the Canadas. It may fairly be said, that the natural state of government in all these Colonies is that of collision between the executive and the representative body. In all of them the administration of public affairs is habitually confided to those who do not co-operate harmoniously with the popular branch of the legislature; and the Government is constantly proposing measures which the majority of the Assembly reject, and refusing its assent to bills which that body has passed.
Such collisions show a deviation from sound constitutional principles.A state of things, so different from the working of any successful experiment of representative government, appears to indicate a deviation from sound constitutional principles or practice. Though occasional collisions between the Crown and the House of Commons have occurred in this country since the establishment of our constitution at the Revolution of 1688, they have been rare and transient. A state of frequent and lasting collisions appears almost identical with one of convulsion and anarchy; and its occurrence in any country is calculated to perplex us as to the mode in which any government can be carried on therein, without an entire evasion of popular control. But, when we examine into the system of government in these colonies, it would almost seem as if the object of those by whom it was established had been the combining of apparently popular institutions with an utter absence of all efficient control of the people over their rulers. Representative assemblies were established on the basis of a very wide, and, in some cases, almost universal suffrage; the annual meeting of these bodies was secured by positive enactment, and their apparent attributes were locally nearly as extensive as those of the English House of Commons. At the same time the Crown almost entirely relied on its territorial resources, and on duties imposed by Imperial Acts, prior to the introduction of the representative system, for carrying on the government, without securing the assent of the representative body either to its policy or to the persons by whom that policy was to be administered.
Practical working of the Assembly in Lower Canada.It was not until some years after the commencement of the present century that the population of Lower Canada began to understand the representative system which had been extended to them, and that the Assembly evinced any inclination to make use of its powers. Immediately, however, upon its so doing, it found how limited those powers were, and entered upon a struggle to obtain the authority which analogy pointed out as inherent in a representative assembly. Its freedom of speech immediately brought it into collision with the Governor; and the practical working of the Assembly commenced by its principal leaders being thrown into prison. In course of time, however, the Government was induced, by its necessities, to accept the Assembly's offer to raise an additional revenue by fresh taxes; and the Assembly thus acquired a certain control over the levying and appropriation of a portion of the public revenue. From that time, until the final abandonment in 1832 of every portion of the reserved revenue, excepting the casual and territorial funds, an unceasing contest was carried on, in which the Assembly, making use of every power which it gained, for the purpose of gaining more, acquired, step by step, an entire control over the whole revenue of the country.
Administration remained free from its influence.I pass thus briefly over the events which have heretofore been considered the principal features of the Canadian controversy, because, as the contest has ended in the concession of the financial demands of the Assembly, and the admission by the Government of the impropriety of attempting to withhold any portion of the public revenues from its control, that contest can now be regarded as of no importance, except as accounting for the exasperation and suspicion which survived it. Nor am I inclined to think that the disputes which subsequently occurred are to be attributed entirely to the operation of mere angry feelings. A substantial cause of contest yet remained. The Assembly, after it had obtained entire control over the public revenues, still found itself deprived of all voice in the choice or even designation of the persons in whose administration of affairs it could feel confidence. All the administrative power of Government remained entirely free from its influence; and though Mr. Papineau appears by his own conduct to have deprived himself of that influence in the Government which he might have acquired, I must attribute the refusal of a civil list to the determination of the Assembly not to give up its only means of subjecting the functionaries of Government to any responsibility.
The public functionaries were independent of the Assembly.The powers for which the Assembly contended, appear in both instances to be such as it was perfectly justified in demanding. It is difficult to conceive what could have been their theory of government who imagined that in any colony of England a body invested with the name and character of a representative Assembly, could be deprived of any of those powers which, in the opinion of Englishmen, are inherent in a popular legislature. It was a vain delusion to imagine that by mere limitations in the Constitutional Act, or an exclusive system of government, a body, strong in the consciousness of wielding the public opinion of the majority, could regard certain portions of the provincial revenues as sacred from its control, could confine itself to the mere business of making laws, and look on as a passive or indifferent spectator, while those laws were carried into effect or evaded, and the whole business of the country was conducted by men, in whose intentions or capacity it had not the slightest confidence. Yet such was the limitation placed on the authority of the Assembly of Lower Canada; it might refuse or pass laws, vote or withhold supplies, but it could exercise no influence on the nomination of a single servant of the Crown. The Executive Council, the law officers, and whatever heads of departments are known to the administrative system of the Province, were placed in power, without any regard to the wishes of the people or their representatives; nor indeed are there wanting instances in which a mere hostility to the majority of the Assembly elevated the most incompetent persons to posts of honour and trust. However decidedly the Assembly might condemn the policy of the Government, the persons who had advised that policy, retained their offices and their power of giving bad advice. If a law was passed after repeated conflicts, it had to be carried into effect by those who had most strenuously opposed it. The wisdom of adopting the true principle of representative government and facilitating the management of public affairs, by entrusting it to the persons who have the confidence of the representative body, has never been recognized in the government of the North American Colonies. All the officers of government were independent of the Assembly; and that body which had nothing to say to their appointment, was left to get on as it best might, with a set of public functionaries, whose paramount feeling may not unfairly be said to have been one of hostility to itself.
Dependence of the Governor on the official party.A body of holders of office thus constituted, without reference to the people or their representatives, must in fact, from the very nature of colonial government, acquire the entire direction of the affairs of the Province. A Governor, arriving in a colony in which he almost invariably has had no previous acquaintance with the state of parties, or the character of individuals, is compelled to throw himself almost entirely upon those whom he finds placed in the position of his official advisers. His first acts must necessarily be performed, and his first appointments made, at their suggestion. And as these first acts and appointments give a character to his policy, he is generally brought thereby into immediate collision with the other parties in the country, and thrown into more complete dependence upon the official party and its friends. Thus, a Governor of Lower Canada has almost always been brought into collision with the Assembly, which his advisers regard as their enemy. In the course of the contest in which he was thus involved, the provocations which he received from the Assembly, and the light in which their conduct was represented by those who alone had any access to him, naturally imbued him with many of their antipathies; his position compelled him to seek the support of some party against the Assembly; and his feelings and his necessities thus combined to induce him to bestow his patronage and to shape his measures to promote the interests of the party on which he was obliged to lean. Thus, every successive year consolidated and enlarged the strength of the ruling party. Fortified by family connexion, and the common interest felt by all who held, and all who desired, subordinate offices, that party was thus erected into a solid and permanent power, controlled by no responsibility, subject to no serious change, exercising over the whole government of the Province an authority utterly independent of the people and its representatives, and possessing the only means of influencing either the Government at home, or the colonial representative of the Crown.
Impossibility of the working of the Colonial system of government.This entire separation of the legislative and executive powers of a State, is the natural error of governments desirous of being free from the check of representative institutions. Since the Revolution of 1688, the stability of the English constitution has been secured by that wise principle of our Government which has vested the direction of the national policy, and the distribution of patronage, in the leaders of the Parliamentary majority. However partial the Monarch might be to particular ministers, or however he might have personally committed himself to their policy, he has invariably been constrained to abandon both, as soon as the opinion of the people has been irrevocably pronounced against them through the medium of the House of Commons. The practice of carrying on a representative government on a different principle, seems to be the rock on which the continental imitations of the British Constitution have invariably split; and the French Revolution of 1830 was the necessary result of an attempt to uphold a ministry with which no Parliament could be got to act in concert. It is difficult to understand how any English statesmen could have imagined that representative and irresponsible government could be successfully combined. There seems, indeed, to be an idea, that the character of representative institutions ought to be thus modified in colonies; that it is an incident of colonial dependence that the officers of government should be nominated by the Crown, without any reference to the wishes of the community, whose interests are entrusted to their keeping. It has never been very clearly explained what are the imperial interests, which require this complete nullification of representative government. But if there be such a necessity, it is quite clear that a representative government in a colony must be a mockery, and a source of confusion. For those who support this system have never yet been able to devise, or to exhibit in the practical working of colonial government, any means for making so complete an abrogation of political influence palatable to the representative body. It is not difficult to apply the case to our own country. Let it be imagined that at a general election the opposition were to return 500 out of 658 members of the House of Commons, and that the whole policy of the ministry should be condemned, and every Bill introduced by it, rejected by this immense majority. Let it be supposed that the Crown should consider it a point of honour and duty to retain a ministry so condemned and so thwarted; that repeated dissolutions should in no way increase, but should even diminish, the ministerial minority, and that the only result which could be obtained by such a development of the force of the opposition, were not the slightest change in the policy of the ministry, not the removal of a single minister, but simply the election of a Speaker of the politics of the majority; and, I think, it will not be difficult to imagine the fate of such a system of government. Yet such was the system, such literally was the course of events in Lower Canada, and such in character, though not quite in degree, was the spectacle exhibited in Upper Canada, and, at one time or another, in every one of the North American Colonies. To suppose that such a system would work well there, implies a belief that the French Canadians have enjoyed representative institutions for half a century, without acquiring any of the characteristics of a free people; that Englishmen renounce every political opinion and feeling when they enter a colony, or that the spirit of Anglo-Saxon freedom is utterly changed and weakened among those who are transplanted across the Atlantic.
Opposition of the Assembly to the Government unavoidable.It appears, therefore, that the opposition of the Assembly to the Government was the unavoidable result of a system which stinted the popular branch of the legislature of the necessary privileges of a representative body, and produced thereby a long series of attempts on the part of that body to acquire control over the administration of the Province. I say all this without reference to the ultimate aim of the Assembly, which I have before described as being the maintenance of a Canadian nationality against the progressive intrusion of the English race. Having no responsible ministers to deal with, it entered upon that system of long inquiries by means of its committees, which brought the whole action of the executive immediately under its purview, and transgressed our notions of the proper limits of Parliamentary interference. Having no influence in the choice of any public functionary, no power to procure the removal of such as were obnoxious to it merely on political grounds, and seeing almost every office of the Colony filled by persons in whom it had no confidence, it entered on that vicious course of assailing its prominent opponents individually, and disqualifying them for the public service, by making them the subjects of inquiries and consequent impeachments, not always conducted with even the appearance of a due regard to justice; and when nothing else could attain its end of altering the policy or the composition of the colonial government, it had recourse to that ultima ratio of representative power to which the more prudent forbearance of the Crown has never driven the House of Commons in England, and endeavoured to disable the whole machine of Government by a general refusal of the supplies.
Popular leaders relieved of responsibility.It was an unhappy consequence of the system which I have been describing, that it relieved the popular leaders of all the responsibilities of opposition. A member of opposition in this country acts and speaks with the contingency of becoming a minister constantly before his eyes, and he feels, therefore, the necessity of proposing no course, and of asserting no principles, on which he would not be prepared to conduct the Government, if he were immediately offered it. But the colonial demagogue bids high for popularity without the fear of future exposure. Hopelessly excluded from power, he expresses the wildest opinions, and appeals to the most mischievous passions of the people, without any apprehension of having his sincerity or prudence hereafter tested, by being placed in a position to carry his views into effect; and thus the prominent places in the ranks of opposition are occupied for the most part by men of strong passions, and merely declamatory powers, who think but little of reforming the abuses which serve them as topics for exciting discontent.
Collision with the Legislative Council.The collision with the executive government necessarily brought on one with the Legislative Council. The composition of this body, which has been so much the subject of discussion both here and in the Colony, must certainly be admitted to have been such as could give it no weight with the people, or with the representative body, on which it was meant to be a check. The majority was always composed of members of the party which conducted the executive government; the clerks of each Council were members of the other; and, in fact, the Legislative Council was practically hardly any thing but a veto in the hands of public functionaries on all the acts of that popular branch of the legislature in which they were always in a minority. This veto they used without much scruple. I am far from concurring in the censure which the Assembly and its advocates have attempted to cast on the acts of the Legislative Council. I have no hesitation in saying that many of the Bills which it is most severely blamed for rejecting, were Bills which it could not have passed without a dereliction of its duty to the constitution, the connexion with Great Britain, and the whole English population of the Colony. If there is any censure to be passed on its general conduct, it is for having confined itself to the merely negative and defensive duties of a legislative body; for having too frequently contented itself with merely defeating objectionable methods of obtaining desirable ends, without completing its duty by proposing measures, which would have achieved the good in view without the mixture of evil. The national animosities which pervaded the legislation of the Assembly, and its thorough want of legislative skill or respect for constitutional principles, rendered almost all its Bills obnoxious to the objections made by the Legislative Council; and the serious evil which their enactment would have occasioned, convinces me that the Colony has reason to congratulate itself on the existence of an institution which possessed and used the power of stopping a course of legislation that, if successful, would have sacrificed every British interest, and overthrown every guarantee of order and national liberty. It is not difficult for us to judge thus calmly of the respective merits of these distant parties; but it must have been a great and deep-rooted respect for the constitution and composition of the Legislative Council, that could have induced the representatives of a great majority to submit with patience to the impediment thus placed in their way by a few individuals. But the Legislative Council was neither theoretically unobjectionable, nor personally esteemed by the Assembly; its opposition appeared to that body but another form of official hostility, and it was inevitable that the Assembly should, sooner or later, make those assaults on the constitution of the Legislative Council which, by the singular want of judgment and temper with which they were conducted, ended in the destruction of the Provincial Constitution.
Purposes of the Assembly.From the commencement, therefore, to the end of the disputes which mark the whole Parliamentary history of Lower Canada, I look on the conduct of the Assembly as a constant warfare with the executive, for the purpose of obtaining the powers inherent in a representative body by the very nature of representative government. It was to accomplish this purpose, that it used every means in its power; but it must be censured for having, in pursuit of this object, perverted its powers of legislation, and disturbed the whole working of the constitution. It made the business of legislation, and the practical improvement of the country, subordinate to its struggle for power; and, being denied its legitimate privileges, it endeavoured to extend its authority in modes totally incompatible with the principles of constitutional liberty.
Attempt to alter the Constitutional Act.One glaring attempt which was made directly and openly to subvert the constitution of the country, was, by passing a Bill for the formal repeal of those parts of the 31 Geo. 3, c. 31, commonly called the Constitutional Act, by which the constitution and powers of the Legislative Council were established. It can hardly be supposed that the framers of this Bill were unaware, or hoped to make any concealment of the obvious illegality of a measure, which, commencing, as all Canadian Acts do, by a recital of the 31 Geo. 3, as the foundation of the legislative authority of the Assembly, proceeded immediately to infringe some of the most important provisions of that very statute; nor can it be supposed that the Assembly hoped really to carry into effect this extraordinary assumption of power, inasmuch as the Bill could derive no legal effect from passing the Lower House, unless it should subsequently receive the assent of the very body which it purported to annihilate.
Claim of force of law for resolutions of the Assembly.A more dangerous, because, in some measure, more effectual device for assuming unconstitutional powers, was practised by the Assembly in its attempts to evade the necessity of obtaining the assent of the other branches of the legislature, by claiming for its own resolutions, and that, too, on points of the greatest importance, the force of laws. A remarkable instance of this was exhibited in the Resolution which the Assembly passed on the rejection of a Bill for vacating the seats of Members on the acceptance of offices under the Crown; and which, in fact, and undisguisedly, purported, by its own single authority, to give effect to the provisions of the rejected Bill. This Resolution brought the Assembly into a long dispute with Lord Aylmer, in consequence of his refusing to issue a writ for the election of a Member in place of Mr. Mondelet, whose seat was declared vacant in consequence of his having accepted the office of executive councillor. The instance in which the Assembly thus attempted to enforce this principle of disqualification, happened to be one to which it could not be considered applicable, either from analogy to the law of England, or from the apparent intent of the Resolution itself; for the office which Mr. Mondelet accepted, though one of high importance and influence, was one to which no salary or emolument of any kind was attached.
Systematic abuses of constitutional formsBut the evils resulting from such open attempts to dispense with the constitution were small, in comparison with the disturbance of the regular course of legislation by systematic abuse of constitutional forms, for the purpose of depriving the other branches of the legislature of all real legislative authority. The custom of passing the most important laws in a temporary form, has been an ancient and extensive defect of the legislation of the North American Colonies, partially authorized by royal instructions to the Governors, but never sanctioned by the Imperial Legislature, until it was established in Lower Canada by the 1st Vict. c. 9. It remained, however, for the Assembly of Lower Canada to reduce the practice to a regular system, in order that it might have the most important institutions of the Province periodically at its mercy, and use the necessities of the Government and the community for the purpose of extorting the concession of whatever demands it might choose to make. Objectionable in itself, on account of the uncertainty and continual changes which it tended to introduce into legislation, this system of temporary laws derived its worst character from the facilities which it afforded to the practice of 'tacking' together various legislative measures; a practice not unknown to the British constitution, and which has sometimes been found useful, because the prudence of the House of Commons has induced that body rarely to have recourse to it, but which the legislators of Lower Canada converted into the ordinary mode of legislation. By the abuse of this practice, any branch of the legislature had, during every session, the power, if it had the inclination, to make the renewal of expiring laws the means of dictating its own terms to the others; and to this end it was systematically converted by the Assembly. It adopted the custom of renewing all expiring laws, however heterogeneous in their character, in one and the same Bill. Having the first choice to exercise, it renewed, of course, only those Acts of which it approved, and left to the Legislative Council and the Governors only the alternative of rejecting such as had proved to be beneficial, or of passing such as, in their opinion, had proved to be mischievous. A singular instance of this occurred in 1836 with respect to the renewal of the Jury Law, to which the Assembly attached great importance, and to which the Legislative Council felt a strong repugnance, on account of its having in effect placed the juries entirely in the hands of the French portion of the population. In order to secure the renewal of this law, the Assembly coupled it in the same Bill, by which it renewed the tolls of the Lachine Canal, calculating on the Council not venturing to defeat a measure of so much importance to the revenue as the latter, by resisting the former. The Council, however, rejected the Bill; and thus the Canal remained toll-free for a whole season, because the two Houses differed about a jury law.
Nor was this custom of 'tacking' confined to the case of the renewal of expiring laws. A Bill for the independence of the Judges was coupled with the establishment of a new tribunal for trying impeachments, and with other provisions, to which it was known that the Crown was decidedly hostile; and thus, in the attempt to extort an objectionable concession, a most desirable guarantee for the pure administration of justice was sacrificed.
The system thus framed, was completed by the regulations with respect to a quorum, and the use which the majority made of them. A quorum of nearly half the whole House was required for the transaction of business. Towards the end of every recent session, the majority used to break up the quorum, and disperse to their respective homes, without waiting to be prorogued, immediately after sending up a number of Bills to the Council, thus leaving no means of considering or adopting any amendments which that body might make, and leaving it no option but that of rejecting or confirming by wholesale the measures of the Assembly.
Parliamentary grants for local works.But in describing the means by which the Assembly obtained, and attempted to consolidate, its power, I must not omit to direct particular attention to that which, after all, was the most effectual, and which originated in a defect common to the system of government in all the North American Colonies; it is, the practice of making Parliamentary grants for local works,—a system so vicious, and so productive of evil, that I believe that until it is entirely eradicated, representative government will be incapable of working well and smoothly in those Colonies.
Importance of public works in American legislation.I know, indeed, of no difference in the machinery of government in the old and new world that strikes an European more forcibly than the apparently undue importance which the business of constructing public works appears to occupy in American legislation. In speaking of the character of a government, its merits appear to be estimated by the public works which it has carried into effect. If an individual is asked how his own legislature has acted, he will generally say what roads or bridges it has made, or neglected to make, in his own district; and if he is consulted about changes in a constitution, he seems to try their soundness by calculating whether his neighbourhood would get more and better roads and bridges under the existing, or the proposed system. On examining the proceedings of a legislature, we find that a great proportion of its discussions turns on such questions; and if we look to the budget, we find that a still greater proportion of the public money is applied to these purposes. Those who reflect on the circumstances of the New World, will not find it very difficult to account for the attention there paid to what is, necessarily, the first business of society, and is naturally made the first care of every responsible government. The provision which in Europe, the State makes for the protection of its citizens against foreign enemies, is in America required for what a French writer has beautifully and accurately called, the 'war with the wilderness' The defence of an important fortress, or the maintenance of a sufficient army or navy in exposed spots, is not more a matter of common concern to the European, than is the construction of the great communications to the American settler; and the State, very naturally, takes on itself the making of the works, which are matters of concern to all alike.
Height to which abuse of grants has been carried.Even the municipal institutions of the northern States of the American Union have not entirely superseded the necessity of some interference on the part of their legislatures in aid of local improvements; though the main efforts of those States have been directed to those vast undertakings which are the common concern and the common glory of their citizens. In the southern States, where municipal institutions are less complete, the legislatures are in the habit of taking part more constantly and extensively in works which are properly of mere local interest; and great complaints are made of consequent corruption and mismanagement. But in the British Colonies, in none of which is there any effectual system of municipal government, the evil has been carried to the greatest height, and exercises the most noxious influence, The great business of the assemblies is, literally, parish business; the making parish roads and parish bridges. There are in none of these Provinces any local bodies possessing authority to impose local assessments, for the management of local affairs. To do these things is the business of the Assembly; and to induce the Assembly to attend to the particular interests of each county, is the especial business of its county member. The surplus revenue of the Province is swelled to as large an amount as possible, by cutting down the payment of public services to as low a scale as possible; and the real duties of government are, sometimes, insufficiently provided for, in order that more may be left to be divided among the constituent bodies. 'When we want a bridge, we take a judge to build it,' was the quaint and forcible way in which a member of a provincial legislature described the tendency to retrench, in the most necessary departments of the public service, in order to satisfy the demands for local works. This fund is voted by the Assembly on the motion of its members; the necessity of obtaining the previous consent of the Crown to money votes never having been adopted by the Colonial Legislatures from the practice of the British House of Commons. There is a perfect scramble among the whole body to get as much as possible of this fund for their respective constituents; cabals are formed, by which the different members mutually play into each other's hands; general politics are made to bear on private business, and private business on general politics; and at the close of the parliament, the member who has succeeded in securing the largest portion of the prize for his constituents, renders an easy account of his stewardship, with confident assurance of re-election.
Funds dispensed by Commisioners named by the Legislature.The Provincial Assemblies being, as I have previously stated, in a state of permanent collision with the Government, have never been in the habit of entrusting the executive with any control over these funds; and they have been wholly dispensed by commissioners named by the legislature. The Assemblies do not appear to have been at all insensible to the possibility of turning this patronage to their own account. An electioneering hand-bill, which was circulated by the friends of Government at the last dissolution in Upper Canada, exhibited, in a very strong light, the expense of the commissioners of the Assembly, contrasted with those of the officers of the executive government; but the Province of Nova Scotia has carried this abuse to an extent which appears almost inconceivable. According to a report presented to me by Major Head, an assistant commissioner of inquiry whom I sent to that Colony, a sum of 10,000l, was, during the last session, appropriated to local improvements; this sum was divided into 830 portions, and as many commissioners were appointed to expend it, giving, on an average, a commissioner for rather more than every 12l., with a salary of 5s. a day, and a further remuneration of two and a half per cent. on the money expended, to be deducted out of each share.
Abuse of this patronage.Not only did the leaders of the Lower Canadian Assembly avail themselves of the patronage thus afforded, by the large surplus revenue of the Province, but they turned this system to much greater account, by using it to obtain influence over the constituencies. In a furious political struggle, like that which subsisted in Lower Canada, it was natural that a body, wielding, with hardly any responsibility, this direct power of promoting the immediate interests of each constituency, should show some favour to that which concurred in its political views, and should exhibit its displeasure towards that which obstinately resisted the majority. But the majority of the Assembly of Lower Canada is accused by its opponents of having, in the most systematic and persevering manner employed this means of corrupting the electoral bodies. The adherents of Mr. Papineau are said to have been lavish in their promises of the benefits which they could obtain from the Assembly for the county whose suffrages they solicited. By such representations, the return of members of opposition politics is asserted, in many instances, to have been secured; and obstinate counties are alleged to have been sometimes starved into submission, by an entire withdrawal of grants, until they returned members favourable to the majority. Some of the English members who voted with Mr. Papineau, excused themselves to their countrymen by alleging, that they were compelled to do so, in order to get a road or a bridge, which their constituents desired. Whether it be true or false that the abuse was ever carried to such a pitch, it is obviously one, which might have been easily and safely perpetrated by a person possessing Mr. Papineau's influence in the Assembly.
Grants for education.But the most bold and extensive attempt for erecting a system of patronage, wholly independent of the Government, was that which was, for some time, carried into effect by the grants for education made by the Assembly, and regulated by the Act, which the Legislative Council has been most bitterly reproached with refusing to renew. It has been stated, as a proof of the deliberate ntention of the Legislative Council to crush every attempt to civilize and elevate the great mass of the people, that it thus stopped at once the working of about 1,000 schools, and deprived of education no less than 40,000 scholars, who were actually profiting by the means of instruction thus placed within their reach. But the reasons which induced, or rather compelled, the Legislative Council to stop this system, are clearly stated in the Report of that body, which contains the most unanswerable justification of the course which it pursued. By that it appears, that the whole superintendence and patronage of these schools had, by the expired law, been vested in the hands of the county Members; and that they had been allowed to manage the funds, without even the semblance of sufficient accountability. The Members of the Assembly had thus a patronage, in this single department, of about 25,000l. per annum, an amount equal to half of the whole ordinary civil expenditure of the Province. They were not slow in profiting by the occasion thus placed in their hands; and as there existed in the Province no sufficient supply of competent schoolmasters and mistresses, they nevertheless immediately filled up the appointments with persons who were utterly and obviously incompetent. A great proportion of the teachers could neither read nor write. The gentleman whom I directed to inquire into the state of education in the Province, showed me a petition from certain schoolmasters, which had come into his hands; and the majority of the signatures were those of marksmen. These ignorant teachers could convey no useful instruction to their pupils; the utmost amount which they taught them was to say the Catechism by rote. Even within seven miles of Montreal, there was a schoolmistress thus unqualified. These appointments were, as might have been expected, jobbed by the members among their political partisans; nor were the funds very honestly managed. In many cases the members were suspected, or accused, of misapplying them to their own use; and in the case of Beauharnois, where the seigneur, Mr. Ellice, has, in the same spirit of judicious liberality by which his whole management of that extensive property has been marked, contributed most largely towards the education of his tenants, the school funds were proved to have been misappropriated by the county member. The whole system was a gross political abuse; and however laudable we must hold the exertions of those who really laboured to relieve their country from the reproach of being the least furnished with the means of education of any on the North American continent, the more severely must we condemn those who sacrificed this noble end, and perverted ample means to serve the purposes of party.
Grants for relief from failure of harvests.I know not whether to ascribe the system which was adopted for the relief of the distress periodically in certain districts to the same policy of extending the influence of the Assembly by local grants, or merely to the antiquated prejudices which seem to have pervaded many parts of the Assembly's legislation, which dictated laws against hucksters and the maintenance of foundling hospitals. No general system for the relief of destitution, no poor-law of any kind was established, and the wants of the country hardly demanded it. But when I arrived at Quebec, I received a number of petitions from parishes situated on the lower part of the St. Lawrence, praying for relief, in consequence of the failure of the harvest. I found, on inquiry, that relief had been granted to these districts for several successive years. The cause of the calamity was obvious; it was the unsuitableness of wheat crops under the wretched system of Canadian small farming, to the severe climate of that portion of the Province. By the side of the distressed parishes were large districts, in which a better system of farming, and, above all, the employment of the land for pasture and green crops, had diffused the most general comfort among the agricultural population, and completely obviated the occurrence of failure or distress. There were, in the vicinity of the distressed parishes, large tracts of rich and unsettled land, available for the permanent amelioration of the condition of this suffering people; and there were valuable and extensive fisheries in the neighbourhood, which might have supported it in comfort; yet no persevering attempt had been made to provide permanent relief by encouraging the population which was thus thrown on the legislature for support, either to adopt a better system of agriculture, or to settle on other portions of the country, or to avail itself of the fisheries. The Assembly met the evil by relieving the distress in such a way as to stave off its immediate results, and ensure its recurrence. It gave food for the season of scarcity, and seed to sow a crop even of wheat as late as the 20th of June, which was of course to fail in its turn; for it had thus relieved the same kind of distress, in precisely the same places, for several successive years; and its policy seemed to be to pension a portion of the people to sow wheat where it would not ripen.
Lost opportunities for good legislation.It is melancholy to think of the opportunities of good legislation which were sacrificed in this mere contest for power. No country in the world ever demanded from a paternal government, or patriotic representatives, more unceasing and vigorous reforms, both of its laws and its administrative system. Lower Canada had, when we received it at the conquest, two institutions, which alone preserved the semblance of order and civilization in the community,—the Catholic church and the militia, which was so constituted and used, as partially to supply the want of better civil institutions. The beneficial influence of the Catholic church has been cramped and weakened; the militia is now annihilated, and years must elapse ere it can be revived and used to any good purpose. Lower Canada remains without municipal institutions of local self-government, which are the foundations of Anglo-Saxon freedom and civilization; nor is their absence compensated by any thing like the centralization of France. The most defective judicial institutions remain unreformed. Alone, among the nations that have sprung from the French, Lower Canada remains under the unchanged civil laws of ancient France. Alone, among the nations of the American Continent, it is without a public system of education. Nor has it, in other respects, caught the spirit of American progress. While the Assembly was wasting the surplus revenues of the Province in jobs for the increase of patronage, and in petty peddling in parochial business, it left untouched those vast and easy means of communication which deserved, and would have repaid the application of the provincial revenues. The state of New York made its own St. Lawrence from Lake Erie to the Hudson, while the Government of Lower Canada could not achieve, or even attempt, the few miles of canal and dredging which would have rendered its mighty rivers navigable almost I to their sources. The time which should have been devoted to wise legislation, was spent in a contest for power between the executive and the people, which a wise executive would have stopped at the outset, by submitting to a legitimate responsibility, and which a wise people would have ceased to press when it had virtually attained its end. This collision, and the defective constitution were, in conjunction with the quarrel of the races, the causes of the mischiefs which I have detailed. It will be a ground, I trust, of permanent congratulation, that the contest terminated in the destruction of the impracticable constitution, which caused the strife; nor can I conceive any course of conduct which could so effectually have destroyed the previous system of mismanagement, and cleared the ground for future improvement, as that continued stoppage of supplies which the Assembly in its intemperance effected. It broke down at once the whole of that vicious appropriation of public funds, which was the great bane of provincial legislation, and has left the abuses of the Colony so long unfed, that a reforming Government may hereafter work upon an unencumbered soil.
Through disorganization of Institutions.The inevitable result of the animosities of race, and of constant collision of the different powers of the State, which I have described, was a thorough disorganization of the institutions and administrative system of the country. I do not think that I necessarily cast any stigma on my predecessors in Lower Canada, or on the uniform good intentions which the Imperial Government has clearly evinced towards every class, and every race in the Colony, when I assert, that a country which has been agitated by these social and political dissensions, has suffered under great misgovernment. The blame rests not on individuals, but on the vicious system, which has generated the manifold and deep-rooted abuses that pervade every department of the public service, and constitute the real grievances of the Colony. These grievances are common to the whole people of Lower Canada; and it is not one race, or one party only, that suffers by their existence; they have hindered the prosperity, and endangered the security of all; though, unquestionably, the interests which have most materially been retarded by misgovernment, are the English. From the highest to the lowest officers of the executive government, no important department is so organized as to act vigorously and completely, throughout the Province; and every duty which a government owes to its subjects is imperfectly discharged.
Want of vigorous administation of Royal Prerogative.The defective system of administration in Lower Canada, commences at the very source of power; and the efficiency of the public service is impaired throughout, by the entire want in the Colony of any vigorous administration of the prerogative of the Crown. The fact is, that, according to the present system, there is no real representative of the Crown in the Province; there is in it, literally, no power which originates and conducts the executive government. The Governor, it is true, is said to represent the Sovereign, and the authority of the Crown is, to a certain extent, delegated to him; but he is, in fact, a mere subordinate officer, receiving his orders from the Secretary of State, responsible to him for his conduct, and guided by his instructions. Instead of selecting a Governor, with an entire confidence in his ability to use his local knowledge of the real state of affairs in the Colony in the manner which local observation and practical experience best prescribe to him, it has been the policy of the Colonial Department, not only at the outset, to instruct a Governor as to the general policy which he was to carry into effect, but to direct him, from time to time, by instructions, sometimes very precise, as to the course which he was to pursue, in every important particular of his administration. Theoretically irresponsible to the Colonial Legislature, the Governor was, in effect, the only officer in the Colony who was at all responsible; inasmuch as the Assembly, by centring their attacks on him, and making him appear the sole cause of the difficulties of the Government, could occasion him so much vexation, and represent him in so unfavourable a light at home, that it frequently succeeded in imposing on him the necessity of resigning, or on the Colonial Minister, that of recalling him. In order to shelter himself from this responsibility, it has inevitably, and I must say very justifiably, been the policy of Governors to take care that the double responsibility shall be as light as possible; to endeavour to throw it, as much as possible, on the home Government, and to do as little as possible without previously consulting the Colonial Minister at home, and receiving his instructions. It has, therefore, been the tendency of the local government to settle every thing by reference to the Colonial Department in Downing-street. Almost every question on which it was possible to avoid, even with great inconvenience, an immediate decision, has been habitually the subject of reference; and this applies not merely to those questions on which the local executive and legislative bodies happened to differ, wherein the reference might be taken as a kind of appeal, but to questions of a strictly local nature, on which it was next to impossible for the Colonial Office to have any sufficient information. It had become the habit of the Colonial Office to originate these questions, to entertain applications from individuals, to refer these applications to the Governor, and, on his answer, to make a decision. The Governor has been enabled by this system to shift responsibility on the Colonial Office, inasmuch as in every important case he was, in reality, carrying into effect the order of the authority to which he was responsible. But the real vigour of the executive has been essentially impaired; distance and delay have weakened the force of its decisions; and the Colony has, in every crisis of danger, and almost every detail of local management, felt the mischief of having its executive authority exercised on the other side of the Atlantic.
Evils of committing details of Government to Colonial Department.Nor has any thing been gained, either in effectual responsibility or sound information, by thus transferring the details of executive government to the Colonial Department at home. The complete and unavoidable ignorance in which the British public, and even the great body of its legislators, are with respect to the real interests of distant communities, so entirely different from their own, produces a general indifference, which nothing but some great colonial crisis ever dispels; and responsibility to Parliament, or to the public opinion of Great Britain, would, except on these great and rare occasions, be positively mischievous, if it were not impossible. The repeated changes caused by political events at home having no connexion with colonial affairs, have left, to most of the various representatives of the Colonial Department in Parliament, too little time to acquire even an elementary knowledge of the condition of those numerous and heterogeneous communities for which they have had both to administer and legislate. The persons with whom the real management of these affairs has or ought to have rested, have been the permanent but utterly irresponsible members of the office. Thus the real government of the Colony has been entirely dissevered from the slight nominal responsibility which exists. Apart even from this great and primary evil of the system, the pressure of multifarious business thus thrown on the Colonial office, and the repeated changes of its ostensible directors, have produced disorders in the management of public business which have occasioned serious mischief, and very great irritation. This is not my own opinion merely; Report from House of Assembly, Upper Canada.for I do but repeat that of a Select Committee of the present House of Assembly in Upper Canada, who, in a Report dated February 8, 1838, say, 'it appears to Canada, your Committee, that one of the chief causes of dissatisfaction with the administration of colonial affairs arises from the frequent changes in the office of Secretary of State, to whom the Colonial department is intrusted. Since the time the late Lord Bathurst retired from that charge, in 1827, your Committee believe there has not been less than eight Colonial Ministers, and that the policy of each successive statesman has been more or less marked by a difference from that of his predecessor. This frequency of change in itself almost necessarily entails two evils; first, an imperfect knowledge of the affairs of the Colonies on the part of the Chief Secretary, and the consequent necessity of submitting important details to the subordinate officers of the department; and, second, the want of stability and firmness in the general policy of the Government, and which, of course, creates much uneasiness on the part of the Governors, and other officers of the Colonies, as to what measures may be approved.
'But undoubtedly' (continues the Report) 'by far the greatest objection to the system is, the impossibility it occasions of any Colonial Minister, unaided by persons possessing local knowledge, becoming acquainted with the wants, wishes, feelings and prejudices of the inhabitants of the Colonies, during his temporary continuance in office, and of deciding satisfactorily upon the conflicting statements and claims that are brought before him. A firm, unflinching resolution to adhere to the principles of the constitution, and to maintain the just and necessary powers of the Crown, would do much towards supplying the want of local information. But it would be performing more than can be reasonably expected from human sagacity, if any man, or set of men, should always decide in an unexceptionable manner on subjects that have their origin thousands of miles from the seat of the Imperial Government, where they reside, and of which they have no personal knowledge whatever; and therefore wrong may be often done to individuals, or a false view taken of some important political question, that in the end may throw a whole community into difficulty and dissension, not from the absence of the most anxious desire to do right, but from an imperfect knowledge of facts upon which to form an opinion.
'To these objections' (adds the Report) 'it may be answered, that although the Chief Secretary of State retires with a change of ministers, the Under Secretaries (or at least one of them) and the other subordinate officers of the department, remain and hold their offices permanently, and therefore information upon all subjects can be readily imparted to the superior by the gentlemen who are thus retained; and it may be admitted that the knowledge of this fact ought to lessen the force of the objections that rest on other grounds; but it cannot be disguised that there is a growing impatience and uwillingness on the part of the Colonists, especially in these extensive Provinces, to have the measures of Government, whether connected with their general system of government, legislation, or patronage, controlled by persons who are utter strangers to them, not responsible in any way to themselves or the British Parliament, and who perhaps, being advanced to their office from length of service, or other like cause, are not regarded as competent (perhaps unjustly) to manage and direct measures which they (the Colonists) deem of vital importance. Much of this feeling may be traced to pride; but it is a pride that springs from an honourable and laudable feeling, and always accompanies self-respect, true patriotism, and love of country, and it therefore ought not to be disregarded, nor should any attempt be made to lessen or control it, if it were possible to do so. But the imperfection that exists in the system of colonial government that prevails in England, is rendered more apparent by the want of that confidence that ought to be reposed in the distinguished officers, who from time to time are commissioned as Governors to different Colonies, than by any other fact that can be distinctly pointed out.'
Instance of these evils.I will now only point out one instance of these evils, and I select it because it is an instance occurring in relation to the most important function of the executive; namely, its exercise of the legislative prerogative of the Crown, and because its existence has been admitted by the present Secretary of State for the Colonies, in his instructions to my predecessor. Lord Gosford,—I mean the reservation of Bills for the Royal Assent. The 'too frequent reservation of Bills' is a 'grievance,' says his Lordship, 'of which my inquiries lead me to believe the reality.' And in a subsequent part of the same Despatch, his Lordship admits, that, owing to this cause, great mischief has been done, by the wholly unintentional delay in giving the Royal Assent to some perfectly unobjectionable Bills, having for their object the endowment of colleges by benevolent persons. This delay his Lordship describes as 'chiefly attributable to political events, and the consequent changes of the Colonial Administration at home.' I know not to what cause is to be attributed a delay, which produced, with respect to another Bill, the still more serious effect of a doubt of its legality, after it had been considered and acted on as law. This Bill was reserved; and the Royal Assent was so long delayed, through mere inadvertence, that, when it was sent out to the Colony as an Act, the question was raised whether the Royal Assent had been delayed beyond the two years allowed by law, and whether, having been so delayed, it was valid.
Ignorance of the people as to the proceedings of their Government.One of the greatest of all the evils arising from this system of irresponsible government, was the mystery in which the motives and actual purposes of their rulers were hid from the colonists themselves. The most important business of Government was carried on, notin open discussions or public acts, but in a secret correspondence between the Governor and the Secretary of State. Whenever this mystery was dispelled, it was long after the worst effects had been produced by doubt and misapprehension; and the Colonies have been frequently the last to learn the things that most concerned them, by the publication of papers on the order of the British Houses of Parliament.
Want of responsibility in other departments of the Government.The Governor, thus slightly responsible, and invested with functions so ill-defined, found himself at the head of a system, in which all his advisers and subordinates had still less responsibility, and duties still less defined. Disqualified at first by want of local information, and very often, subsequently, by an entire absence of all acquaintance with the business of civil government, the Governor, on his arrival in the Colony, found himself under the necessity of being, in many respects, guided by the persons whom he found in office. In no country, therefore, could there be a greater necessity for a proper demarcation of the business of each public officer, and of a greater responsibility resting on each. Now, I do not at all exaggerate the real state of the case when I assert, that there is no head of any of the most important departments of public business in the Colony. The limited powers of the local government in a Colony necessarily obviate the necessity of any provision for some of the most important departments which elsewhere require a superintending mind. But the mere ordinary administration of justice, police, education, pubUc works and internal communications, of finance and of trade, would require the superintendence of persons competent to advise the Governor, on their own responsibility, as to the measures which should be adopted; and the additional labours which fall on the heads of such departments in other countries, in devising improvements of the system and the laws relating to each, would certainly afford additional occupation, growing out of the peculiarly defective legislation and administration of Lower Canada. Yet, of no one of these departments is there any responsible head, by whose advice the Governor may safely be guided. There are some subordinate and very capable officers in each department, from whom he is, in fact, compelled to get information from time to time. But there is no one to whom he, or the public, can look for the correct management and sound decision on the poHcy of each of these important departments.
Constitution of the Executive Council.The real advisers of the Governor have, in fact, been the Executive Council; and an institution more singularly calculated for preventing the responsibility of the acts of Government resting on any body, can hardly be imagined. It is a body, of which the constitution somewhat resembles that of the Privy Council; it is bound by a similar oath of secresy; it discharges in the same manner certain anomalous judicial functions; and its 'consent and advice' are required in some cases in which the observance of that form has been thought a requisite check on the exercise of particular prerogatives of the Crown. But in other respects it bears a greater resemblance to a Cabinet, the Governor being in the habit of taking its advice on most of the important questions of his policy. But as there is no division into departments in the council, there is no individual responsibility, and no individual superintendence. Each member of the Council takes an equal part in all the business brought before it. The power of removing members being very rarely exercised, the Council is, in fact, for the most part composed of persons placed in it long ago; and the Governor is obliged either to take the advice of persons in whom he has no confidence, or to consult only a portion of the Council. The secresy of the proceedings adds to the irresponsibility of the body; and when the Governor takes an important step, it is not known, or not authentically known, whether he has taken the advice of this Council or not, what members he has consulted, or by the advice of which of the body he has been finally guided. The responsibility of the Executive Council has been constantly demanded by the reformers of Upper Canada, and occasionally by those of the Lower Province. But it is really difficult to conceive how a desirable responsibility could be attained, except by altering the working of this cumberous machine, and placing the business of the various departments of Government in the hands of competent public officers.
Civil Secretary's office.In the ordinary course of public business in the Colony, almost all matters come, in fact, before the Governor, or his immediate assistant, the Civil Secretary of the Province. The Civil Secretary's office is, in fact, the one general public office in which almost every species of business originates, or through which it passes in some stage or other. The applications which every day reach this office show the singular want of proper organization in the Province, and the great confusion of ideas respecting the functions of Government, generated in the minds of the people. A very considerable proportion consist of requests to the Governor to interfere with the course of civil justice. Every decision of subordinate officers is made matter of appeal; and no reference to the proper department satisfies the applicants, who imagine that they have a right to claim a personal investigation of every case by the Governor or the Civil Secretary. The appeals from the past are equally numerous; and it appears to be expected that every new Governor should sit in judgment on every decision of any or all of his predecessors, which happens to have dissatisfied the applicant.
No regular administration in the rural districts.But if such is the bad organization and imperfection of the system at the seat of Government, it may be easily believed that the remainder of the Province enjoyed no very vigorous or complete administration. In fact, beyond the walls of Quebec, all regular administration of the country appeared to cease; and there literally was hardly a single public officer of the civil government, except in Montreal and Three Rivers, to whom any order could be directed. The Solicitor General commonly resides at Montreal; and in each of the districts there is a Sheriff. In the rest of the Province there is no Sheriff, no Mayor, no constable, no superior administrative officer of any kind. There are no county, no municipal, no parochial officers, either named by the Crown, or elected by the people. There is a body of unpaid Justices of the Peace, whom I will describe more particularly hereafter. The officers of the militia used to be employed for purposes of police, as far as regarded the service of criminal warrants; but their services were voluntary, and not very assiduous; and the whole body is now completely disorganized. In every case in which any information was required by the Government, or any service was to be performed in a remote part of the Province, it was necessary either to send some one to the spot, or to find out, by inquiry at the seat of Government, the name of some resident there whom it was advisable and safe to consult on the subject, or direct to do the act required. In the state of parties in the country, such a step could hardly ever be taken, without trusting to very suspicious information, or delegating power to persons who would be, or be suspected of being, likely to abuse it.
French population incapable of aiding central authority.The utter want of any machinery of executive government in the Province is not, perhaps, more striking than might be observed in some of the most flourishing portions of the American continent. But in the greater part of the States to which I refer, the want of means at the disposal of the central executive is amply supplied by the efficiency of the municipal institutions; and even where these are wanting, or imperfect, the energy and self-governing habits of an Anglo-Saxon population enable it to combine whenever a necessity arises. But the French population of Lower Canada possesses neither such institutions, nor such a character. Accustomed to rely entirely on the Government, it has no power of doing any thing for itself, much less of aiding the central authority.
Want of municiple institutions.The utter want of municipal institutions giving the people any control over their local affairs, may indeed be considered as one of the main causes of the failure of representative government, and of the bad administration of the country. If the wise example of those countries in which a free representative government has alone worked well, had been in all respects followed in Lower Canada, care would have been taken that, at the same time that a Parliamentary system, based on a very extended suffrage, was introduced into the country, the people should have been entrusted with a complete control over their own local affairs, and been trained for taking their part in the concerns of the Province, by their experience in the management of that local business which was most interesting and most easily intelligible to them. But the inhabitants of Lower Canada were unhappily initiated into self-government at exactly the wrong end, and those who were not trusted with the management of a parish, were enabled, by their votes, to influence the destinies of a State. During my stay in the Province, I appointed a commission to inquire into its municipal institutions, and the practicability of introducing an effective and free system for the management of local affairs. The gentlemen entrusted with this inquiry had, when they were interrupted in their labours, made considerable progress towards preparing a report, which will, I hope, develope, in a full and satisfactory manner, the extent of the existing evil, and the nature of the practicable remedies.
No French institutions for administrative purposes.There never has been, in fact, any institution in Lower Canada, in which any portion ot the French population have been brought together for any administrative purpose, nor is there among the divisions of the country any one which has been constituted with a view to such an end. The larger divisions, called 'districts', are purely judicial divisions. The counties may be called merely Parliamentary divisions; for I know of no purpose for which they appear to have been constituted, except for the election of members for the House of Assembly; and during the present suspension of representative government, they are merely arbitrary and useless geographical divisions. There are no hundreds, or corresponding sub-divisions of counties. The parishes are purely ecclesiastical divisions, and may be altered by the Catholic Bishops. The only institution in the nature of local management, in which the people have any voice, is the fabrique, by which provision is made for the repairs of the Catholic churches.
System of townships.The townships are inhabited entirely by a population of British and American origin; and may be said to be divisions established for surveying, rather than any other purposes. The eastern townships present a lamentable contrast in the management of all local matters to the bordering state of Vermont, in which the municipal institutions are the most complete, it is said, of any part even of New England. In any new settled district of New England, a small number of families settling within a certain distance of each other, are immediately empowered by law to assess themselves for local purposes, and to elect local officers. The settlers in the eastern townships, many of whom are natives of New England, and all of whom can contrast the state of things on their own with that which is to be seen on the other side of the line, have a serious and general cause of discontent in the very inferior management of all their own local concerns. The Government appears even to have discouraged the American settlers from introducing their own municipal institutions by common assent. 'I understood,' says Mr. Richards, in a Report to the Secretary of State of the Colonies, ordered by the House of Commons to be printed in March 1832, 'that the Vermonters had crossed the line, and partially occupied several townships, bringing with them their own municipal customs; and that when the impropriety of electing their own officers was pointed out to them, they had quickly given them up, and promised to conform to those of Canada.'
Want of municiple institutions in Quebec and Montreal.But the want of municipal institutions has been and is most glaringly remarkable in Quebec and Montreal. These cities were incorporated a few years ago by a temporary provincial Act, of which the renewal was rejected in 1836. Since that time these cities have been without any municipal government; and the disgraceful state of the streets, and the utter absence of lighting, are consequences which arrest the attention of all, and seriously affect the comfort and security of the inhabitants.
Inefficient administration of justice.The worst effects of this most faulty system of general administration will be developed in the view which I shall hereafter give of the practices adopted with respect to the public lands, and the settlement of the Province, but which I postpone for the present, because I purpose considering this subject with reference to all the North American Provinces. But I must here notice the mischievous results prominently exhibited in the provision which the government of Lower Canada makes for the first want of a people, the efficient administration of justice.
The law of the Province and the administration of justice are, in fact, a patch-work of the results of the interference at different times of different legislative powers, each proceeding on utterly different and generally incomplete views, and each utterly regardless of the other. The law itself is a mass of incoherent and conflicting laws, part French, part English, and with the line between each very confusedly drawn. Thus the criminal law is the criminal law of England as it was introduced in 1774, with such modifications as have since been made by the provincial legislature, it being now disputed whether the provincial legislature had any power to make any change whatever in that law, and it not being at all clear what is the extent of the phrase 'criminal law'. Civil law.The civil law is the ancient civil law, also modified in some, but unfortunately very few, respects; and these modifications have been almost exclusively effected by Acts of the British Parliament and by ordinances of the Governor and Council constituted under the Quebec Act. The French law of evidence prevails in all civil matters, with a special exception of 'commercial' cases, in which it is provided that the English law is to be adopted; but no two lawyers agree in their definition of 'commercial'.
Judicial divisions.For judicial purposes, the Province is divided into four superior districts, having unlimited and supreme original jurisdiction, and one inferior, with limited jurisdiction. The four superior are those of Quebec and Montreal, Three Rivers and St. Francis; the inferior, that of Gaspé.
District of GaspéThe district of Gaspé is subordinate to that of Quebec, with some special provisions for the administration of justice within it under a particular Provincial Act, which expires next May. I could obtain no very satisfactory information respecting this district, except that every body appeared to be of opinion that, from its distance and scanty population, it had always met with very little attention from either the legislature or the executive government. About the administration of justice therein, I could hardly obtain any information; indeed, on one occasion, it being necessary, for some particular purpose, to ascertain the fact, inquiry was made at all the public offices in Quebec, whether or not there was any coroner for Gaspé. It was a long time before any information could be got on this point, and it was at last in some measure cleared up, by the Accountant General discovering an estimate for the salary of such an officer. The only positive information, therefore, that I can give respecting the present administration of justice in Gaspé is, that I received a petition from the inhabitants, praying that the Act by which it is regulated, might not be renewed.
Judges.Each of the courts of Quebec and Montreal has a chief justice and three puisne judges; there is but one judge in each of the districts of Three Rivers and St. Francis. During term time judges from other districts make up the bench in these two.
Jurisdiction.In all civil cases these courts have original jurisdiction to an unlimited amount; and in spite of the immense extent of all, but particularly of the two greater districts, the parties are in almost all cases brought up to the chief towns for the trial of their causes.
Attempt at circuits.An attempt, but of a very trifling and abortive character, has been made to introduce the English system of circuits. The judges of these districts make circuits once a year, in order to try causes in which the disputed value is not more than £.10. sterling. The limitation of the value, the introduction of small-debt courts, and the consequent failure of attendance on the part of a bar during their progress, and the very insufficient time allotted for the stay at each place, have, I am informed, rendered these circuits almost useless; and even the suits which might be tried at the circuits are generally in preference carried up for trial to the chief places of these districts.
Expensiveness of justice.There are some complaints that excessive fees are taken in the courts of Montreal and Quebec. The distribution of legal patronage is a matter of great, it is not easy to say, of how just complaint; but the substantial evil of the administration of civil justice consists in the practical denial of it caused by the utter inefficiency of the circuit system, and enormous expense and delay of carrying every suit, where the value in dispute is more than £.10. sterling, from the extremities of the three large and settled districts of the Province to the three district towns; in the vicious constitution of the inferior tribunals by which it has been attempted to supply the want of an effective system, either of circuits or local courts; and in the very faulty nature of the supreme appellate jurisdiction of the Province.
Commissioners of small causes.The minor litigation of the country is, in fact, carried on throughout these three districts in the courts of the Commissioners of Small Causes. These courts are established in the different parishes by the Governor, on an application made by a certain number of the parishioners, according to forms prescribed by the provincial statute, in which this institution takes its rise, and have jurisdiction over all debts not exceeding 25 dollars, equal to 6l. 5s. currency. The Commissioners are appointed by the Governor, upon the recommendation of the petitioners; these are residents in the parish, and almost wholly unversed in law. The constitution of these courts is, in fact, nothing else in substance, but an elective judiciary, elected under the most irregular, fraudulent and absurd electoral system that could possibly be devised. I cannot better illustrate this description, than by narrating simply the mode in which the appointment is, in fact, made. It is, and has for a long time been, left almost entirely in the hands of a subordinate assistant in the Civil Secretary's office. This gentleman stated that he took no steps, and indeed by law he could not, until he received a petition, with the requisite number of names attached. His impression was, that these signatures were generally obtained by assiduous canvassing in the parish, generally on the part of some person who wanted the appointment of clerk, which is paid, and who took this trouble, in order to secure the nomination of commissioners, from whom he expected to get the appointment. After some inquiry from any person whom this assistant secretary thought proper to consult respecting the characters of the persons proposed, they were, almost as a matter of course, appointed. After a short time, if some other person in the district happened to acquire more popularity, and to covet the office, a petition was got up containing charges against the occupant of the office, and praying for his removal, and the substitution of his rival. Upon most of the appointments also, there arose long controversies respecting the politics, qualification and character of the candidate for office; and a removal or new appointment was always attributed to some political causes by the newspapers of each party or race. The inquiry into the qualification of persons proposed, the investigation of the charges made, the defence urged in reply, and the distant and unsatisfactory evidence adduced in support of each, formed a large proportion of the business of the Civil Secretary's office. Whatever appointment was made, the Government was sure to create dissatisfaction; and the administration of justice was left in the hands of incompetent men, whose appointment had been made in such a manner, as even, sometimes, to render their integrity suspicious, in the eyes, not only of those who had opposed, but also of those who had supported their nomination. I shall only add, that some time previous to my leaving the Province, I was very warmly and forcibly urged, by the highest legal authorities in the country, to abolish all these tribunals at once, on the ground that a great many of them, being composed entirely of disaffected French Canadians, were busily occupied in harassing loyal subjects, by entertaining actions against them, on account of the part they had taken in the late insurrection. There is no appeal from their decision; and it was stated that they had in the most barefaced manner given damages against loyal persons for acts done in the discharge of their duty, and judgments by default against persons who were absent, as volunteers in the service of the Queen, and enforced their judgment by levying distresses on their property.
Court of Appeal.I must now turn from the lowest to the highest civil tribunal of the Province. In a country in which the administration of justice is so imperfect in all the inferior stages, and in which two different and often conflicting systems of law are administered by judges whose professional education and origin necessarily cause different leanings in favour of the respective systems in which each is more particularly versed, the existence of a good and available appellate jurisdiction, which may keep the law uniform and certain, is matter of much greater importance than in those countries in which the law is homogeneous, and its administration by the subordinate tribunals is satisfactory. But the appellate jurisdiction of Lower Canada is vested in the Executive Council, a body established simply for political purposes, and composed of persons in great part having no legal qualifications whatsoever. The Executive Council sits as a court of appeal, four times in the year, and for the space of ten days during each session; on these occasions the two Chief Justices of Quebec and Montreal were, ex officio, presidents, and each in turn presided when appeals from the other's district were heard. The laymen who were present to make up the necessary quorum of five, as a matter of course, left the whole matter to the presiding Chief Justice, except in some instances, in which party feelings or pecuniary interests are asserted to have induced the unprofessional members to attend in unusual numbers, to disregard the authority of the Chief Justice, and to pervert the law. In the general run of cases, therefore, the decision was left to the President alone, and each Chief Justice became, in consequence, the real Judge of appeal from the whole court of the other district. It is a matter of perfect and undisputed notoriety, that this system has produced the results which ought to have been foreseen as inevitable; and that, for some time before I arrived in the Province, the two Chief Justices had constantly differed in opinion upon some most important points, and had been in the habit of generally reversing each other's judgments. Not only, therefore, was the law uncertain and different in the two districts, but, owing to the ultimate power of the Court of Appeal, that which was the real law of each district, was that which was held not to be law by the Judges of that district. This is not merely an inference of my own; it is very clear that it was the general opinion of the profession and the public. The Court of Appeal, as re-modelled by me, at the only sitting which it held, reversed all but one of the judgments brought before it. This induced a member of the court to remark to one of the Chief Justices, that so general a reversal of the law of a very competent court below, by a tribunal so competent as the Court of Appeals then was, appeared to him utterly inexplicable, inasmuch as it could in nowise be attributed, as it was before, to the influence of a single Judge. The reply of the Chief Justice was, that the matter was easily accounted for; that the system previously adopted in the Court of Appeals had rendered the decision of the court below so complete a nullity, that the parties and counsel below often would not take the trouble to enter into the real merits of their case, and that the real bearing and law of the case were, generally, most fully stated before the Court of Appeals.
Reorganization of Court of Appeals.As the business of the Court of Appeals was thus of great extent and importance, it became necessary that, having, from political considerations, altered the composition of the Executive Council, I should re-organize the Court of Appeals. I determined to do this upon the best principle that I could carry into effect, under the circumstances of the case; for, as the constitution of the Court of Appeals is prescribed by the Constitutional Act, I could not vest the appellate jurisdiction in any other body than the Executive Council. I called, therefore, to the Executive Council the Chief Justice and one Puisne Judge from each of the two districts of Quebec and Montreal, and by summoning also the Judge of Three Rivers, I gave the members of the two conflicting tribunals an impartial arbiter in the person of M. Vallière de St. Real, admitted by universal consent to be the ablest French lawyer in the Province. But the regulations of the Executive Council, which it was supposed I could not alter in this case, required the presence of a quorum of five; and as no Judge could sit on an appeal from his own court, I had now only provided three for every appeal from the two greater districts. In order to make up the quorum, the court was therefore attended by two other executive councillors, one of whom, by his thorough knowledge of commercial law, and his general legal experience, was commonly admitted to have rendered essential service. I believe I may confidently say that the decisions of this court carried far greater weight than those of any previous court of appeals.
Appeals to Privy Council.The further appeal to the Privy Council allowed in cases where the value was above £.500, is, from the great delay and great expense attendant on it, hardly ever resorted to. The establishment of a good appellate jurisdiction for the whole of the North American Colonies is therefore greatly desired by every Province; and a competent tribunal for this purpose would spare the cost and delay of a resort to the Privy Council, and answer all the purposes proposed to be attained by the present double system of appeal.
Faulty jurisdictional divisions for purposes of criminal justice.The evils of the system of criminal justice are not so various; but, from the faulty judicial division and administrative system of the Province, the defects which exist in the constitution of the courts of justice are even more severely felt in this department. For, except at the principal towns of the five districts, there is not the slightest provision for criminal justice; and to these places all prisoners must be brought for trial from the most remote parts, subject to their jurisdiction. Thus from the extreme settlements on the Ottawa, where is now the great seat of the lumber trade, and of the large and wild population which it brings together, all prisoners have to be carried a distance of 200 miles, by bad and uncertain means of conveyance, to Montreal for trial. On the left bank of the Ottawa the law has, according to a high legal authority, no power. It was but lately that a violent mob, called Shiners, for a long time set the law at defiance, and had entirely at their mercy the large properties invested in that part of the country.
Sheriffs, &c.Besides those in the five places above mentioned, there are only three county gaols, one of which is in the district of Gaspé. There are no sessions held in any other than those places. At the Quebec, Montreal and Three Rivers quarter sessions there were, some years ago, professional and salaried chairmen, but the Assembly discontinued them. There are sheriffs only in the districts, and not in each county. They are named by the Crown for life, and are removable at pleasure. The offices are very lucrative, and are said to have been frequently disposed of from personal or political favouritism. It is also matter of complaint, that insufficient security has been taken from those appointed to them; and many individuals have consequently sustained very serious loss from the defalcation of sheriffs.
Perversion of juries.But the most serious mischief in the administration of criminal justice, arises from the entire perversion of the institution of juries, by the political and national prejudices of the people. The trial by jury was introduced with the rest of the English criminal law. For a long time the composition of both grand and petit juries was settled by the Governor, and they were at first taken from the cities, which were the chefs lieux of the district. Complaints were made that this gave an undue preponderance to the British in those cities; though, from the proportions of the population, it is not very obvious how they could thereby obtain more than an equal share. In consequence, however, of these complaints, an order was issued under the government of Sir James Kempt, directing the sheriffs to take the juries not only from the cities, but from the adjacent country, for fifteen leagues in every direction. An Act was subsequently passed, commonly called 'Mr. Viger's Jury Act', extending these limits to those of the district. The principle of taking the jury from the whole district, to which the jurisdiction of the court extended, is undoubtedly in conformity with the principles of English law; and Mr. Viger's Act, adopting the other regulations of the English jury law, provided a fair selection of juries. But if we consider the hostility and proportions of the two races, the practical effect of this law was to give the French an entire preponderance in the juries. This Act was one of the temporary Acts of the Assembly, and, having expired in 1836, the Legislative Council refused to renew it. Since that period, there has been no jury law whatever. The composition of juries has been altogether in the hands of the Government: Private instructions, however, have been given to the sheriff to act in conformity with Sir James Kempt's ordinance; but though he has always done so, the public have had no security for any fairness in the selection of the juries. There was no visible check on the sheriff; the public knew that he could pack a jury wherever he pleased, and supposed, as a matter of course, that an officer, holding a lucrative appointment at the pleasure of Government, would be ready to carry into effect those unfair designs which they were always ready to attribute to the Government. When I arrived in the Province, the public was expecting the trials of the persons accused of participation in the late insurrection. I was, on the one hand, informed by the law officers of the Crown and the highest judicial authorities, that not the slightest chance existed under any fair system of getting a jury that would convict any of these men, however clear the evidence of their guilt might be; and on the other side, I was given to understand, that the prisoners and their friends supposed that, as a matter of course, they would be tried by packed juries, and that even the most clearly innocent of them would be convicted.
The people have not confidence in criminal justice.It is, indeed, a lamentable fact, which must not be concealed, that there does not exist in the minds of the people of this Province the slightest confidence in the administration of criminal justice; nor were the complaints, or the apparent grounds for them, confined to one party.
Complaint of French against tampering with juries.The French complain that the institution of both grand and petit juries have been repeatedly tampered with against them. They complain that when it has suited the interests of the Government to protect persons guilty of gross offences against the French party, they have attained their end by packing the grand jury. Great excitement has long existed among the French party, in consequence of a riot which took place at the election for the West Ward of Montreal, in May 1832, on which occasion the troops were called out, fired on the people, and killed three of them. An indictment was preferred against the magistrates and officers who ordered the troops to fire. It was urged by the French that the grand jury was composed almost entirely of Englishmen; that 12 out of the 23 were taken from the parish of Lachine, the smallest in the whole island; a selection which, they said, could hardly be attributed to mere chance, and that they were not in the usual station in life of grand jurymen. The opposite party, it must be observed, however, argued that this apparent selection of a majority of the grand jury from a single parish was a necessary result of some ill-contrived provision of Mr. Viger's Jury Act. The bill was thrown out, and all judicial investigation into the circumstances consequently quashed. I am merely mentioning the complaints of parties. I know not whether the preceding allegations were well founded, but there can be no doubt that such was the impression produced among the French Canadians by these proceedings, which, in their mines, completely destroyed all confidence in the administration of justice.
The French Canadians further complain that the favourable decision of a grand jury was of no avail to those who had fallen under the displeasure of the Government. There are several instances in the recent history of Lower Canada, in which an attorney-general, being dissatisfied with the conduct of the grand jury in ignoring a bill, either repeatedly preferred indictments for the same offence, until he obtained a grand jury which would find them, or filed ex-officio informations.
Complaints of English against juries.Nor are the complaints of the English population of a less serious nature. They assert, unhappily on too indisputable grounds, that the Canadian grand and petit juries have invariably used their power to insure impunity to such of their countrymen as had been guilty of political offences. The case of Chartrand is not the only one in which it is generally believed that this has been done. The murderers of an Irish private soldier of the 24th regiment, of the name of Hands, are asserted to have been saved by an equally gross violation of their oaths on the part of the jury. A respectable and intelligent member of the grand jury, which sat at Montreal in October 1837, informed the Government that nothing could be more proper than the behaviour of a great majority of the jurymen, who were French Canadians, while they were occupied with cases not connected with politics. They attended patiently to the evidence, and showed themselves well disposed to follow the opinion of the foreman, who was a magistrate of great competence; but it was added that the instant they came to a political case, all regard for even the appearance of impartiality vanished, and they threw out the bills by acclamation, without listening to the remonstrances of the foreman.
Trial by jury at present bad.The trial by jury is therefore, at the present moment, not only productive in Lower Canada of no confidence in the honest administration of the laws, but also provides impunity for every political offence.
The Magistracy.I cannot close this account of the system of criminal justice, without making some remarks with respect to the body by which it is administered in its primary stages and minor details to the great mass of the people of the Province. I mean the magistracy; and I cannot but express my regret, that among the few institutions for the administration of justice throughout the country, which have been adopted in Lower Canada from those of England, should be that of unpaid Justices of the Peace. I do not mean in any way to disparage the character, or depreciate the usefulness, of that most respectable body in this country. But the warmest admirer of that institution must admit that its benefits result entirely from the peculiar character of the class from which our magistracy is selected; and that without the general education, the moral responsibility imposed by their high station in the eyes of their countrymen, the check exercised by the opinion of their own class, and of an intelligent and vigilant public, and the habits of public business, which almost every Englishman, more or less, acquires, even the country gentlemen of England could not wield their legally irresponsible power as Justices of the Peace to the satisfaction of their countrymen. What, then, must be conceived of the working of this institution in a colony, by a class over whom none of these checks exist, and whose station in life and education would alone almost universally exclude them from a similar office at home? When we transplant the institutions of England into our colonies, we ought at least to take care beforehand that the social state of the colony should possess those peculiar materials on which alone the excellence of those institutions depends in the mother country. The body of Justices of the Peace scattered over the whole of Lower Canada, are named by the Governor, on no very accurate local information, there being no lieutenants or similar officers of counties in this, as in the Upper Province. The real property qualification required for the magistracy is so low, that in the country parts almost every one possesses it; and it only excludes some of the most respectable persons in the cities. In the rural districts the magistrates have no clerks. The institution has become impopular among the Canadians, owing to their general belief that the appointments have been made with a party and national bias. It cannot be denied that many most respectable Canadians were long left out of the commission of the peace, without any adequate cause; and it is still more undeniable, that most disreputable persons of both races have found their way into it, and still continue to abuse the power thus vested in them. Instances of indiscretion, of ignorance, and of party feeling, and accusations of venality, have been often adduced by each party. Whether these representations be exaggerated or not, or whether they apply to a small or to a large portion of the magistracy, it is undeniable that the greatest want of confidence in the practical working of the institution exists; and I am therefore of opinion, that whilst this state of society continues, and, above all, in the present exasperation of parties, a small stipendiary magistracy would be much better suited to both Upper and Lower Canada.
Police of Quebec.The police of the Province has always been lamentably defective. No city, from the lawless and vicious character of a great part of its population, requires a more vigilant police than Quebec. Until May 1836, the police of this city was regulated by an Act which then expired, and was not renewed, and it consisted of 48 watchmen, of whom half served every night for the whole town. The day police consisted of six constables, who were under no efficient control. On the expiration of this Act there was no night police at all; and murders occurring in the streets, the inhabitants formed a voluntary patrol for the upper town. Lord Gosford, in December 1837, appointed Mr. Young inspector of police, with eight policemen under him; a serjeant and eight men of the Volunteer Seamen's Company were placed under his order; and another magistrate had a corporal and twelve men of the same company for the police of the lower town. Finding their force wholly insufficient, receiving daily complaints, and witnessing daily instances of disorder and neglect, and, above all, being much pressed to increase the police by the owners of vessels who had no power of restraining the desertion of their crews, I ordered a regular police of 32 men to be organized on the plan of the London police in June last. This body was further augmented in October to 75; and this number is represented to me by the inspector as by no means more than sufficient.
Of Montreal.In Montreal, where no approach to a general system of police had been made, I directed Mr. Leclerc, who had been appointed a stipendiary magistrate by Lord Gosford, to organize a force similar to that of Quebec. The number of this is now carried, I think, as high as 100.
No rural police.Throughout the rest of the Province, where the functions of a police used to be discharged by the militia, that body being now disorganized, there is, in fact, no police at all. In the course of the autumn, I was informed by Mr. Young, that at St. Catharine's, 46 miles from Quebec, a man, after notoriously committing an assault with intent to murder, was still at large a fortnight after the act; and that no means had been found of executing a warrant issued against him by a county magistrate. As the only means of enforcing the law, Mr. Young was authorized to send policemen sworn in as special constables, the place being out of his jurisdiction; and by them the arrest was effected. When Theller and Dodge escaped from the citadel, and were supposed to have taken the direction of the Kennebec road, no means existed of stopping their flight, except by sending the police of Quebec to the very frontier of the United States.
As there was no rural police, the same step had been taken in the case of a deserter.
Defective means of education.In the course of the preceding account, I have already incidentally given a good many of the most important details of the provision for education made in Lower Canada. I have described the general ignorance of the people, and the abortive attempt which was made, or rather which was professed to be made, for the purpose of establishing a general system of public instruction; I have described the singular abundance of a somewhat defective education which exists for the higher classes, and which is solely in the hands of the Catholic priesthood. It only remains that I should add, that though the adults who have come from the Old Country are generally more or less educated, the English are hardly better off than the French for the means of education for their children, and indeed possess scarcely any, except in the cities.
No colleges for Protestants.There exists at present no means of college education for Protestants in the Province; and the desire of obtaining general, and still more, professional instruction, yearly draws a great many young men into the United States.
Inquiries of Commissioner.I can indeed add little to the general information possessed by the Government respecting the great deficiency of instruction, and of the means of education in this Province. The commissioner whom I appointed to inquire into the state of education in the Province, endeavoured very properly to make inquiries so minute and ample, that the real state of things should be laid fully open; and with this view, he had with great labour prepared a series of questions, which he had transmitted to various persons in every parish. At the time when his labours were brought to a close, together with mine, he had received very few answers; but as it was desirable that the information which he had thus prepared the means of obtaining, should not be lost, a competent person has been engaged to receive and digest the returns. Complete information respecting the state of education, and of the result of past attempts to instruct the people, will thus, before long, be laid before the Government.
Population would submit to assessment for purposes of education.The inquiries of the commissioner were calculated to inspire but slender hopes of the immediate practicability of any attempt to establish a general and sound system of education for the Province. Not that the people themselves are indifferent or opposed to such a scheme, I was rejoiced to find that there existed among the French population a very general and deep sense of their own deficiencies in this respect, and a great desire to provide means for giving their children those advantages which had been denied to themselves. Among the English the same desire was equally felt; and I believe that the population of either origin would be willing to submit to local assessments for this purpose.
Provision in the United States.The inhabitants of the North American Continent, possessing an amount of material comfort, unknown to the peasantry of any other part of the world, are generally very sensible to the importance of education. And the noble provision which every one of the northern States of the Union has gloried in establishing for the education of its youth, has excited a general spirit of emulation amongst the neighbouring Provinces, and a desire, which will probably produce some active efforts, to improve their own educational institutions.
Obstacles to general system.It is therefore much to be regretted, that there appear to exist obstacles to the establishment of such a general system of instruction as would supply the wants, and, I believe, meet the wishes of the entire population. The Catholic Clergy, to whose exertions the French and Irish population of Lower Canada are indebted for whatever means of education they have ever possessed, appear to be very unwilling that the State should in any way take the instruction of youth out of their hands. Nor do the clergy of some other denominations exhibit generally a less desire to give to education a sectarian character, which would be peculiarly mischievous in this Province, inasmuch as its inevitable effect would be to aggravate and perpetuate the existing distinctions of origin. But as the laity of every denomination appear to be opposed to these narrow views, I feel confident that the establishment of a strong popular government in this Province would very soon lead to the introduction of a liberal and general system of public education.
Nothing done by Government.I am grieved to be obliged to remark, that the British Government has, since its possession of this Province, done, or even attempted, nothing for the promotion of general education. Indeed the only matter in which it has appeared in connexion with the subject, is one by no means creditable to it. For it has applied the Jesuits' estates, part of the property destined for purposes of education, to supply a species of fund for secret service; and for a number of years it has maintained an obstinate struggle with the Assembly in order to continue this misappropriation.
State of Hospitals, Prisons, etc.Under the head of the Hospitals, Prisons and Charitable Institutions of Lower Canada, I beg to refer to some valuable information collected, by my direction, by Sir John Doratt, during the exercise of his office of Inspector-general of Hospitals and Charitable and Literary Institutions, which will be found in a separate part of the Appendix to this Report. I regret that the pressure of more urgent duties did not allow me time to institute into these subjects so searching and comprehensive an inquiry as I should have desired to make in other circumstances. But there are some points brought under my notice by Sir John Doratt, to which I think it important that the attention of Your Majesty's Government should be directed without delay. I advert to the existing want of any public establishment for the reception of insane persons either in Lower or Upper Canada; to the bad state of the prisons in general, and especially the disgraceful condition of the gaol of the city of Quebec; to the defects of the quarantine station at Grosse Isle; to the low and ignorant state of the medical profession throughout the rural districts; and to the necessity of a change in the system of providing for the insane, the invalid poor, and foundlings, by payments of public monies to convents for that purpose. It is evident that considerable abuses exist in the management of several philanthropic institutions. I have adverted, in another part of my Report, to the subject of pauperism, as connected with emigration; and the evidence there cited is in some respects confirmed by the information communicated by Sir John Doratt.
Religion in Lower Canada.It is a subject of very just congratulation, that religious differences have hardly operated as an additional cause of dissension in Lower Canada; and that a degree of practical toleration, known in very few communities, has existed in this Colony from the period of the conquest down to the present time.
The Catholic Church.The French Canadians are exclusively Catholics, and their church has been left in possession of the endowments which it had at the conquest. The right to tithe is enjoyed by their priests; but as it is limited by law to lands of which the proprietor is a Catholic, the priest loses his tithe the moment that an estate passes, by sale or otherwise, into the hands of a Protestant. This enactment, which is at variance with the true spirit of national endowments for religious purposes, has a natural tendency to render the clergy averse to the settlement of Protestants in the seigniories. Virtues of the clergy;But the Catholic priesthood of this province have, to a very remarkable degree, conciliated the good-will of persons of all creeds; and I know of no parochial clergy in the world whose practice of all the Christian virtues, and zealous discharge of their clerical duties, is more universally admitted, and has been productive of more beneficial consequences. Possessed of incomes sufficient, and even large, according to the notions entertained in the country, and enjoying the advantage of education, they have lived on terms of equality and kindness with the humblest and least instructed inhabitants of the rural districts. Intimately acquainted with the wants and characters of their neighbours, they have been the promoters and dispensers of charity, and the effectual guardians of the morals of the people; and in the general absence of any permanent institutions of civil government, the Catholic church has presented almost the only semblance of stability and organization, and furnished the only effectual support for civilization and order. recognition of their services.The Catholic clergy of Lower Canada are entitled to this expression of my esteem, not only because it is founded on truth, but because a grateful recognition of their eminent services, in resisting the arts of the disaffected, is especially due to them from one who has administered the government of the Province in these troubled times.
Want of extension of Catholic services.The Constitutional Act, while limiting the application of the clergy reserves in the townships to a Protestant clergy, made no provision for the extension of the Catholic clerical institution, in the event of the French population settling beyond the limits of the seigniories. Though I believe that some power exists, and has been in a few cases used, for the creation of new Catholic parishes, I am convinced that this absence of the means of religious instruction has been the main cause of the indisposition of the French population to seek new settlements, as the increase of their numbers pressed upon their resources. It has been rightly observed, that the religious observances of the French Canadians are so intermingled with all their business, and all their amusements, that the priests and the church are with them, more than with any other people, the centres of their little communities. In order to encourage them to spread their population, and to seek for comfort and prosperity in new settlements, a wise government would have taken care to aid, in every possible way, the diffusion of their means of religiousinstruction.
Clergy reserves. Meaning of 'Protestant clergy'.The Protestant population of Lower Canada have been of late somewhat agitated by the question of the clergy reserves. The meaning of the ambiguous phrase 'Protestant clergy' has been discussed with great ardour in various quarters; and each disputant has displayed his ingenuity in finding reasons for a definition in accordance with his own inclination, either to the aggrandizement of his own sect, or the establishment of religious equality. Owing to the small numbers of the British population, to the endowment of the Catholic church in most of the peopled and important districts of the Colony, and, above all, to the much more formidable and extensive causes of dissension existing in the Province, the dispute of the various Protestant denominations for the funds reserved for a 'Protestant clergy', has not assumed the importance which it has acquired in Upper Canada. In my account of that Province I shall give a more detailed explanation of the present position of this much-disputed question. I have reason to know, that the apprehension of measures tending to establish the predominance of a particular creed and clergy, has produced an irritation in this Province which has very nearly deprived the Crown of the support of some portions of the British population, in a period of very imminent danger. I must therefore most strongly recommend, that any plan by which the question of clergy reserves shall be set at rest in Upper Canada, should also be extended to the Lower Province. The endowments of the Catholic church, and the services of its numerous and zealous parochial clergy, have been of the greatest benefit to the large body of Catholic emigrants from Ireland, who have relied much on the charitable as well as religious aid which they have received from the priesthood. The priests have an almost unlimited influence over the lower classes of Irish; and this influence is said to have been very vigorously exerted last winter, when it was much needed, to secure the loyalty of a portion of the Irish during the troubles. Importance of consideration for the Catholic clergy and people.The general loyalty exhibited by the Irish settlers in the Canadas, during the winter, and the importance of maintaining it unimpaired in future times of difficulty, render it of the utmost moment that the feelings and interests of the Catholic clergy and population should invariably meet with due consideration from the Government.
Financial system should be settled by local government.Setting on one side the management of the Crown Lands, and the revenue derived therefrom, which will be treated of fully in another part, it is not necessary that I should, on the present occasion, enter into any detailed account of the financial system of Lower Canada, my object being merely to point out the working of the general system of Government, as operating to produce the present condition of the Province. I need not inquire whether its fiscal, monetary or commercial arrangements have been in accordance with the best principles of public economy. But I have reason to believe that improvements may be made in the mode of raising and expending the Provincial revenue. During my stay in Canada, the evils of the banking and monetary systems of the Province forced themselves on my attention. I am not inclined, however, to regard these evils as having been in anywise influential in causing the late disorders. I cannot regard them as indicative of any more mismanagement or error than are observable in the measures of the best governments with respect to questions of so much difficulty; and though the importance of finding some sufficient remedy for some of these disorders has, as I shall hereafter explain, very materially influenced my views of the general plan to be adopted for the government of this and the other North American Colonies, I regard the better regulation of the financial and monetary systems of the Province as a matter to be settled by the local Government, when established on a permanent basis.
Sources of public review.With the exception of the small amount now derived from the casual and territorial funds, the public revenue of Lower Canada is derived from duties imposed, partly by imperial and partly by provincial statutes. These duties are, in great proportion, levied upon articles imported into the Colony from Great Britain and foreign countries; they are collected at the principal ports by officers of the Imperial Customs.
The amount of the revenue has within the last four years diminished from about £150,000, to little more than £100,000 per annum. This diminution is ascribed principally to the decreased consumption of spirituous liquors, and some other articles of foreign import, in consequence of the growth of native manufactures of such articles. Nevertheless, as the permanent expenditure of the civil government only amounts to about £60,000 a year, there remains still a considerable surplus to be disposed of for local purposes, in the mischievous manner which I have described in the preceding pages. A vigorous and efficient government would find the whole revenue hardly adequate to its necessities; but in the present state of things, I consider the existence and application of this surplus revenue as so prejudicial, that I should, as the less of two evils, recommend a reduction of the duties levied, were it possible to do this without an equal diminution of the revenue of Upper Canada, which can by no means afford it.
Financial disputes between two Provinces.The financial relations between these two Provinces are a source of great and increasing disputes. The greater part, almost the whole of the imports of Upper Canada entering at the ports of Lower Canada, the Upper Province has urged and established its claim to a proportion of the duties levied on them. This proportion is settled, from time to time, by Commissioners appointed from each Province. Lower Canada now receives about three, and Upper Canada about two fifths of the whole amount: nor is this the greatest cause of dissension and dissatisfaction. The present revenue of Upper Canada being utterly inadequate to its expenditure, the only means that that Province will have of paying the interest of its debt, will be by increasing its Customs' duties. But as these are almost all levied in Lower Canada, this cannot be done without raising the taxation also of the Lower Canadians, who have, as it is, a large surplus revenue. It was for the better settlement of these points of difference, that the union of the two Canadas was proposed in 1822; and the same feeling produces a great part of the anxiety now manifested for that measure by a portion of the people of Upper Canada.
Post Office.A considerable revenue is raised from all these Provinces by the Post-office establishment common to all of them, and subordinate to the General Post-office in England. The surplus revenue, which appears from a Report to the House of Assembly to amount to no less than £10,000 per annum, is transmitted to England. The Assembly made it a matter of great complaint that an important internal public institution of the Provinces should be entirely regulated and administered by the rulers and servants of an English public office, and that so large an amount of revenue, raised entirely without the consent of the Colonies, in a manner not at all free from objections, should be transmitted to the mother country. I cannot but say that there is great justice in these complaints, and I am decidedly of opinion that if any plan of an united government of these Provinces should be adopted, the control and revenue of the post-office should be given up to the Colony.
Little direct taxation in Lower Canada.For the reasons I have before explained, there is hardly the semblance of direct taxation in Lower Canada for general and local purposes. This immunity from taxation has been sometimes spoken of as a great privilege of the people of Lower Canada, and a great proof of the justice and benevolence of their government. The description which I have given of the singularly defective provision made for the discharge of the most important duties of both the general and the local government will, I think, make it appear that this apparent saving of the pockets of the people has been caused by their privation of many of the institutions which every civilized community ought to possess. A people can hardly be congratulated on having had at little cost a rude and imperfect administration of justice, hardly the semblance of police, no public provision for education, no lighting, and bad pavements in its cities, and means of communication so imperfect, that the loss of time, and wear and tear caused in taking any article to market, may probably be estimated at ten times the expense of good roads. If the Lower Canadians had been subjected, or rather had been taught to subject themselves to a much greater amount of taxation, they would probably at this time have been a much wealthier, a much better governed, a much more civilized, and a much more contented people.