Vol. 68, No. 4 — July/August 1987 —
The Great
Co-operators
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Meet the Member for Rimouski, Robert
Baldwin. And the Member for North York, Louis Lafontaine.
Together they achieved home rule for Canadians. If you don't
know their names, that's because they did it the Canadian
way...
Here and there you may find things that bear their names:
a school, a park, a tunnel, an electoral riding. People familiar
with these places are unlikely to have more than a vague idea
of who Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine were.
If they had accomplished what they did in another country,
whole cities might be named after them. But this is Canada,
and the reason they are almost forgotten is that they arrived
at their accomplishment in typically Canadian style.
Like the liberators whose statues grace the capitals of
the post-colonial world, Baldwin and Lafontaine gained self-government
for their people. Unlike those liberators, they did so without
costing the people a gunshot wound or a widow's tear. They
waged a gruelling struggle against powerful and stubborn forces,
but they never gave a thought to violence. Not the least of
their legacy to future generations of Canadians was to establish
a national tradition of resolving constitutional disputes
by peaceful means.
They were men of moderation personally as well as politically.
Baldwin was a fine-featured, soft-spoken lawyer from an affluent
Toronto family; Lafontaine, also a lawyer, was the handsome
son of a politically prominent farmer in Quebec. In the days
of their great struggle when they were in their thirties,
both were widowers who immersed themselves in the hard work
of political leadership. Neither had much individual ambition.
Both believed in selfless co-operation, which is why their
names are inseparably linked.
The few personal details about them to be found in the history
books make up a picture of everything that is admirable in
the Canadian character - admirable and unexciting. Baldwin
is described as serious, thoughtful, kind and modest; Lafontaine
as sober, steady, determined and reserved. Even the great
cause for which they stood was presented in a drab understatement.
Elsewhere in the world, it might have been couched in a ringing
slogan like "power to the people!" Baldwin and Lafontaine
called it "responsible government."
It is unfair but natural that history should place these
subdued personalities in the shadows of two more spectacular
characters who failed where they succeeded. In 1837, William
Lyon Mackenzie and Louis-Joseph Papineau led armed rebellions
against the governors and ruling cliques of Upper and Lower
Canada respectively. Though Baldwin and Lafontaine shared
the rebel leaders' desire for self-government, they could
not go along with their republican and revolutionary views.
The Lower Canadian revolt proved a special act of folly.
Papineau and his Patriots started it to give French
Canadians more political power. It ended in the loss of what
little power they had, with civil rights suspended in the
primarily French-speaking colony. Sent by the British cabinet
to inquire into the trouble, Lord Durham concluded that the
only solution to the racial problem at its roots was to assimilate
the French into the English Canadian culture. He recommended
that Lower Canada be forcibly merged with its English-speaking
counterpart. The Act of Union passed by the Imperial parliament
to create the combined Province of Canada in 1840 sought to
hurry this process along by grossly diluting French Canadian
strength at the polls.
At the time of the merger, Lower Canada had a population
of 630,000 to Upper Canada's 470,000. Yet the number of seats
in the joint assembly of the new Province were apportioned
equally. The capital was placed in English-speaking Kingston,
and English was declared the sole language of legislative
business. When the Province's first governor general, Lord
Sydenham, appointed his eight-man Executive Council, not a
single French Canadian was granted a portfolio.
Lord Sydenham believed that French Canadians were viscerally
and uniformly disloyal to the British Crown and incapable
of self-government. He wrote that "despotism would be far
the best thing for Lower Canada," then set about exercising
a despotism over the entire Province by ignoring the principle
of majority rule.
Canadians today are so accustomed to living with that principle
that many assume it has always been followed in this country.
It implicitly decrees that the governor general represents
the sovereign in a largely ceremonial capacity. The governor
general is bound to consent to the policies of the cabinet.
The cabinet must answer to the majority of Members of Parliament.
If a cabinet cannot command a majority in Parliament, it must
resign to make way for one that can.
This system had fundamentally been in effect in Great Britain
since 1688, when the English people deposed a despotic king
and replaced him with another who would heed the wishes of
Parliament. But the British government would never admit that
it could be applied to a colony, which is the main reason
Britain lost its American colonies in 1776.
Sydenham's only concession to the lessons of the past was
to replace the former aristocratic cliques with a coalition-style
Executive Council whose membership spanned the political spectrum.
Since they could be expected always to be at one another's
throats, it was an ideal arrangement for a governor who intended
to divide and rule.
Among the councillors was Robert Baldwin, who had emerged
as the leading theorist of responsible government. Baldwin
disputed that it was impossible to have a British-type constitutional
monarchy in a colony. Essentially all it would take was an
understanding that the governor general, like the Queen he
represented, would "reign but not rule."
The great fear among British statesmen and Canadian loyalists
was that responsible government would lead to a republican
system and thence to independence from Britain - and thence,
some said, to absorption into the American republic. Baldwin
argued that, on the contrary, internal self-government was
the only way of keeping the British connection intact in the
long run.
The link with Britain was important to the colonists. The
government in London provided subsidies for public works such
as roads and canals. Britain maintained a sizeable army in
Canada as a deterrent to American invasion. Britain was by
far the largest export market for Canadian produce, which
entered at preferential tariff rates.
Beyond these practical considerations, many English Canadians
were passionately loyal to the Crown. Both Upper Canada and
the English areas of Lower Canada contained a high proportion
of recent British immigrants and people of United Empire Loyalist
stock. To them, any departure from the established system
of British rule was tantamount to treason. They feared and
despised the French Canadians who were in the majority.
Saving the country from the fate of
Gandhi's India
They found their champion in Sydenham, who was resolved
that no such "disaster" would occur. When Baldwin accosted
him on the subject of ministerial government, he said that
it was simply out of the question. He pointed out that the
Provincial assembly held at least five different factions,
none of which qualified as a proper political party. The two-party
system in Britain meant that the cabinet could speak for the
elected majority. In Canada, none of the factions had a majority,
and they were so far apart in their thinking that any coalition
among them would be unlikely to last for long.
Baldwin replied that at least, the largest group in the
House should be represented on the Executive Council. These
were the French Canadian nationalists under the absentee leadership
of Louis Lafontaine. Lafontaine had been defeated in an election
in April, 1841, which the governor general had shamelessly
rigged to minimize the number of French Canadian members.
Sydenham's attempt to prevent the growth of a strong opposition
to his autocratic rule backfired ironically. For in June,
1841, Baldwin resigned from the Council to join forces with
Lafontaine.
The latter had fiercely denounced the Provincial Union as
a scheme to destroy the French Canadian nationality. Had he
been of the temper of Papineau, he might have sown the seeds
of civil war. But Baldwin - who, incidentally, was to become
Lafontaine's best friend - convinced him that the place to
fight for the restoration of French rights was within the
system. The first step would be to combine Lafontaine's Lower
Canadian Reformers and Baldwin's like-minded followers in
a party that could wield a majority capable of unequivocally
expressing the popular will.
Lafontaine's decision to enter into this alliance was, according
to historian W.L. Morton, "one of the most crucial in Canadian
history. He might have led the French members in a boycott
of the Union; he might have led them in a permanent opposition
bloc in the House. His decision to work with the English Reformers
saved Canada from the fate of Gratton's Ireland and Gandhi's
India, and made a plural and liberal society possible in British
North America."
If the merger was to work, however, Lafontaine had to have
a seat in the House. Following the accepted custom of the
day, Baldwin had run in two ridings in the recent election
and won in both of them. He resigned his "spare" seat in North
York in favour of Lafontaine, who was elected in September,
1841, by a healthy majority - "a vivid illustration of how
political principle had been put before racial sentiment,"
as Morton wrote.
The new party pressed hard for ministerial rule, but Sydenham
adroitly held it off until his sudden death that September.
His successor, Sir Charles Bagot, immediately asked the obvious
question of how you could run a government without a risk
of civil strife if the majority of the people, the French
Canadians, had no voice in its executive branch. He invited
Lafontaine and two of his lieutenants to join the Council,
but Lafontaine refused to serve without Baldwin. After much
manoeuvring, Lafontaine and Baldwin formed an administration
along ministerial lines in January, 1842.
It was not technically a responsible government, but it
was the first time a governor had agreed to follow the advice
of a "cabinet" drawn mainly from the majority party. Certainly
it was close enough to majority rule to arouse furious opposition
among the loyalist politicians and press. Bagot was excoriated
not only in Canada, but in Britain. The storm was still raging
when he died in May, 1843.
In the meantime, outraged Tories had relieved Baldwin of
his seat in a riotous by-election. A Lower Canadian member
resigned his seat in Rimouski, and - despite the fact that
he always had a struggle speaking French - Baldwin ran in
it and won. It was a curious situation - the Catholic, French-speaking
leader of one section of the province representing a Protestant,
English-speaking constituency in the other section, and vice-versa.
The electors of North York and Rimouski alike had decided
that there were bigger issues in the country than religion
or race.
Bagot was replaced by Sir Charles Metcalfe, who had held
governorships in India and Jamaica. With the support of his
superiors in London, Metcalfe did all in his power to turn
back the clock. He withheld Royal assent to bills passed by
the assembly by referring them to the British cabinet. He
made his own appointments to public offices without consulting
the Executive Council. When Metcalfe rejected their protests,
Lafontaine and Baldwin led the Councillors out of office in
November, 1843.
The resignation precipitated the deepest political crisis
short of rebellion yet seen in the Canadas. It was hotly debated
on both sides of the Atlantic. Stripped of its subtleties,
the issue was the old one of whether a governor could run
the country in defiance of the elected majority. From the
vantage point of today, it is surprising how many people thought
that he could - and should. An influential minority believed
in the God-given existence of a natural ruling class whose
members knew better than the people what was good for them.
The old line Tories who clustered around the governor thought
that they had a right and even a duty to correct the errors
of the democratic rabble.
Metcalfe tried for some months to manage the province's
affairs with the aid of appointees, but such was the unrest
that he was forced to call an election. The governor's supporters
captured most of the Upper Canadian seats. The moderate Conservative
William Draper formed a coalition government which represented
a majority in the assembly but was riddled with internal differences
among its constituent factions. When Metcalfe, dying of cancer,
retired in November, 1845, he left behind an impotent government
shorn of its popularity.
The Oregon Boundary dispute had raised the threat of war
with the United States, so the next governor general, Lord
Cathcart, was an apolitical professional soldier sent to strengthen
Canada's defences. When the danger receded, Cathcart was replaced
by Lord Elgin, a young, bright, well-connected Scottish peer.
Though a Conservative, Elgin was appointed by the new Liberal
Government in Britain. Its Colonial Secretary, Earl Grey,
favoured letting the British North American colonies conduct
their own internal affairs.
A controversial bill puts home rule
to its acid test
The capital had been moved to Montreal. Elgin arrived there
in January, 1847, to find Draper's house of cards about to
topple. The inevitable end of this misalliance came in April
that year. Draper's administration was replaced by a Tory-dominated
makeshift ministry which included only one French Canadian.
Elgin put a merciful end to it by calling an election for
January, 1848.
The Reformers won a decisive majority in both sections of
the province. Lafontaine and Baldwin in effect became joint
premiers of the Union, each in charge of policy for his own
section. They installed a cabinet composed solely of members
of the majority party. The governor general confirmed that
he would bind himself by their advice.
Home rule had come to Canada at last - or had it? After
passing a flood of overdue and much-needed legislation, the
ministry introduced a bill to compensate claimants in Lower
Canada for property losses suffered in the rebellion. A similar
bill covering such losses in Upper Canada had been passed
in 1846 by a Conservative administration, but now the Tories
objected that there was a possibility that French-speaking
property owners who had been rebels themselves would be "rewarded
for their treason." The bill was nonetheless passed by a large
majority, and responsible government came in for its acid
test.
The Tories appealed to the governor general to disallow
the act. Elgin himself believed the legislation to be "inopportune,"
but he refused to roll it back because it had been approved
by a parliamentary majority. When he gave it Royal assent
on April 25, 1849, his carriage was pelted with eggs and stones
by a mob of English-speaking Montrealers. The mob went on
to burn down the legislative buildings.
The Rebellion Losses Act could still be disallowed by the
British cabinet. A mission of high Tories went to London to
lobby against it, but Earl Grey and his colleagues refused
to interfere. The significance of the episode was that all
the tactics that had previously prevailed against responsible
government now failed - loyalist rhetoric, appeals to the
governor and to Britain, even violence. In their last frenzy,
the privileged cliques were conclusively defeated. Canada
had become a land "where one man's vote was as good as another's,
and where the will of the majority was the ultimate sanction,"
as historian Arthur Lower wrote.
The self-effacing authors of this historic turn of events,
Lafontaine and Baldwin, retired from politics two years later.
Their great work was complete. Though Nova Scotia achieved
responsible government a few months before the Province of
Canada, it was according to the formula worked out by Baldwin
as early as 1836.
That formula was later applied around the world to provide
a comfortable half-way house for former British colonies on
the road to nationhood. Neither Baldwin nor Lafontaine wanted
full independence, but they opened the way to a peaceful evolution
towards that historical inevitability.
It was the Canadian way, reasonable and cautious, and the
men who found it exemplified these native characteristics.
Unfortunately, it is also the Canadian way to take little
interest in our national heroes. If people like Lafontaine
and Baldwin were given the recognition they deserve, we might
find less need to agonize over our national identity today.
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