John Charles Dent

“ Nay, he had advised the sending of commissioners to England to entreat Imperial attention to colonial grievances. He had been the one man in Upper Canada possessed of sufficient courage to do and to dare: to lift the thin and flimsy veil which only half concealed the corruption whereby a score of greedy vampires were rapidly enriching themselves at the public cost. He had dared to hold up to general inspection the baneful effects of an irresponsible Executive, and of a dominating clique whose one hope lay in preserving the existing order of things undisturbed. ”

“ The Reformers of the Province felt that the man who had been placed at the helm of State—the man who had been sent over by an ostensibly Liberal Government to redress the accumulated wrongs of the past—was in some respects far more dangerous than any of his predecessors had been. Carlyle had not then delivered his celebrated discourse on fools, but the idea that a fool may sometimes be far more dread-inspiring than a wise man is sufficiently obvious, and had presented itself in vivid shape before the minds of a good many of the Reformers of Upper Canada. ”

“ We can still point to him with the admiration due to a man who, during a time of the grossest political corruption, took a foremost part in our public affairs, and who yet preserved his integrity untarnished. We can point to him as the man who, if not the actual author of Responsible Government in Canada, yet spent the best years of his life in contending for it, and who contributed more than any other person to make that project an accomplished fact. ”

“ The way towards reform was however paved by the debates. Never before had the Government of Upper Canada been subjected to the incessant criticism of a watchful and vigorous phalanx of censors within the walls of Parliament. They were not wise enough to read the signs of the times, and would yield nothing to the demands of their opponents. They still believed in the efficacy of repression, and the next few years were marked by a series of high-handed persecutions which did more to speed the progress of reform than all the eloquence of Rolph and Bidwell could have effected in half a century. ”

“ The contest was very unequal, for the Government could frequently command a majority of votes in the Assembly. The minority in that House smarted under a sense of tyranny and injustice, and felt that they were of no weight in the body politic. That sense of dignity which is imparted by a consciousness of contributing to the formation of public policy and opinion was wanting. Not only were the benefits arising from a proper organization of labour altogether lost, but the antagonism between the two factors in political life was so great that they to a large extent neutralized each other. ”

“ That a man, no matter what his crimes, should have his nervous system thus cruelly undermined; that his physical and mental faculties should be slowly but surely filched from him in this deliberate fashion, is an idea not to be borne with composure by anyone whose breast is susceptible to human impulses. But Robert Gourlay was no great criminal. He had engaged in no plot to blow up King, Lords and Commons. He had been guilty of no treason or felony. He had threatened no man's life, and taken no man's purse upon the highway. ”

“ The sires had originated a bold and determined policy, and had from first to last pursued it with consistent vigour. The sons had neither brains to conceive nor discretion to carry out the conceptions of others. The sires had been persons whom it had been possible for the commonalty to respect. The sons were persons whom it was impossible not to despise. Surely a more superlatively commonplace and contemptible race of human beings has seldom been seen on the earth than four-fifths of the second generation of this bastard aristocracy of Upper Canada. ”

“ This family compact surround the Lieutenant-Governor, and mould him, like wax, to their will; they fill every office with their relatives, dependants, and partisans; by them justices of the peace and officers of the militia are made and unmade; they have increased the number of the Legislative Council by recommending, through the Governor, half a dozen of nobodies and a few placemen, pensioners, and individuals of well-known narrow and bigoted principle; the whole of the revenues of Upper Canada are in reality at their mercy;—they are Paymasters, Receivers, Auditors, King, Lords, and Commons! ”

“ He was no less a personage than Marshall Spring Bidwell, who, with perhaps the single exception of John Rolph, was the most eloquent and powerful speaker in the Province. When moved to righteous anger, he was capable of administering a scorching reproof, and if a man is ever justified in taking his antagonist at a disadvantage, ample justification was to be found in the present instance. Mr. Bidwell had reason to hate the very name of Boulton, and might well be expected to avail himself of such an opportunity of darting the hot iron into his enemy's soul. ”

“ Corruption, indeed, has reached such a height in this Province that it is thought no other part of the British Empire witnesses the like, and it is vain to look for improvement until a radical change is effected. It matters not what characters fill situations of public trust at present—all sink beneath the dignity of men—become vitiated and weak, as soon as they are placed within the vortex of destruction. ”

“ No one has ever pretended to claim for him any special intellectual greatness of any kind. He was a plain man, of abilities not much above the average, who possessed strong convictions, and whose high principles, sterling honesty and disinterestedness of purpose were unimpeachable. Had he been a member of the British House of Commons during Sir Robert Walpole's régime, the proverbial dictum of that high priest of corruption would never have been uttered, for certainly no man would ever have dreamed of offering a bribe to Robert Baldwin. ”

“ He longed to feel the tide of human life ebbing and flowing around him, and to feel that he himself was not a mere drone in the hive. During the progress of the trial, though he was oblivious of most that was going on in the court-room, memory and fancy were keenly alert, and he rapidly lived over again many episodes of his past life. The dead and gone years rose up before him like the scenes of a rapidly-shifting panorama, even as the past is said to arise before the mental vision of those lying on beds of pain, just before the great mystery of the grave is unfolded to their view. ”

“ Upper Canada was precisely such a colony. No part of Britain was more British in sentiment. In no part of the world would an expatriated Englishman find himself more entirely in harmony with his environment, from a purely patriotic point of view. What wonder, then, that Upper Canada was regarded by place-hunting emigrants from England [Pg 73] with wistful eyes? What wonder that an appointment to a public office in Upper Canada should have been regarded by such persons as a thing greatly to be coveted? Such aspirants were regarded with but little favour by Governor Simcoe. ”

“ They saw the Government in the hands of persons who were not only devoid of sympathy with progressive ideas, but who seemed to have no regard for the principles of plain right and wrong. They found themselves of no account in the commonwealth. Their cherished principles were held up to public scorn, and their chosen candidates for Parliament were beaten by fraudulent means. They were utterly without weight in public affairs. After a long and hard fight with the Family Compact, they saw that clique more strongly entrenched in power than ever before. ”

“ It was clear that life, for Canadian Reformers, would very soon be not worth living. They despaired of the future, which, to their depressed vision, seemed to be overhung by a sky of unrelieved blackness. Their despair was accompanied by a smarting sense of defeat and injustice proportionate to the circumstances. Such feelings were not confined to defeated candidates and their immediate friends, but were participated in by Reformers generally. Some of them began to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of removal from the Province. ”

“ Of real, constitutional responsibility to the people there was not so much as a pretence. "All the powers of the Government," says Mr. Lindsey, "were centralized in Downing Street, and all the colonial officers, from the highest to the lowest, were puppets in the hands of the Secretary of State for the Colonies. At the same time, the outward trappings of a constitutional system, intended to amuse the colonists, served no other end than to irritate and exasperate men who had penetration enough to detect the mockery, and whose self-respect made them abhor the sham." ”

“ Not only professed Tories, but most of the moderate-minded of the population, rallied to the side of the Lieutenant-Governor, to uphold British connection, and to oppose the encroachment of republican and revolutionary ideas. Loyalty was rampant, and patriotic fervour was aroused to a height which it had not reached in Upper Canada since the War of 1812. "Down with democracy!" "Down with republicanism!" "Hurrah for Sir Francis Head and British connection!" Such were the legends inscribed on the dead-walls in the principal towns of the Province. ”

“ In seizing upon all the official and other spoils within their reach, and in trampling upon the liberties of the people, the magnates of Upper Canada were merely treading in the footsteps of the Tite Barnacles of Great Britain. The period was one of transition, all over the civilized world. Popular rights were but imperfectly understood, and the idea that good government is best served by the extension of justice and equal rights to all classes was only beginning to [Pg 95] dawn upon the minds of public men, even in old and long-established communities. ”

“ Macaulay allowed himself to be lashed. He prepared and published a pamphlet, in which he gave vent to such scurrility as it seems incredible that any man of education, or even of decent social training, could ever have descended to write. Truly, no man is ever so effectually written down as when he himself holds the pen. Those readers who wish to be better acquainted with the depths to which an angry man can lower himself, and who have not access to Mr. Macaulay's pamphlet, can obtain some inkling of the truth by reference to Mr. Lindsey's "Life and Times of William Lyon Mackenzie." ”

“ There had been Upper Canadian Reformers from the very foundation of the Province, but no Reform Party can strictly be said to have had an existence prior to the latter part of the year 1824.
No man was more conspicuous in contributing to the founding of the Reform Party than was William Lyon Mackenzie, whose personality yet remains to be considered. Owing in some measure to the force of circumstances, but chiefly to his own energy, impulsiveness and love of notoriety, Mr. Mackenzie's name and achievements have become more widely known than have those of many abler and wiser men. ”

“ To His Majesty and to Parliament the Governor of Upper Canada is at all times most fully responsible for his official acts. That this responsibility is not merely nominal, but that His Majesty feels the most lively interest in the welfare of his Canadian subjects, and is ever anxious to devote a patient and laborious attention to any representations which they may address to him, either through their representatives or as individuals, is proved not only by the whole tenor of the correspondence of my predecessors in this office, but by the despatch which I am now addressing to you. ”

“ Such were the sentiments of Robert Baldwin and hundreds of other persons the sincerity of whose Reform principles were equally free from doubt. Dr. Baldwin felt and expressed less moderation than his son, though he was not the man to venture upon what he could not have regarded otherwise than as a hare-brained scheme of rebellion, more especially when his chief allies would be composed of the Mackenzie element of Radicals. Rolph and Bidwell were precisely of the same opinion as Dr. Baldwin. They were sick and weary of all that they saw around them. ”

“ The feeling of veneration with which the English commonalty have for centuries regarded the House of Lords is easy enough to understand. That feeling seems to be rapidly passing away, if, indeed, it has not already departed. But it would not have endured from the time of the Plantagenets to the time of Queen Victoria if it had not had some substantial foundation to rest upon. The House of Lords has always contained a number of men of high integrity and ability. Take it for all and all, it is probably the most just-minded and intellectual aristocratic assembly the world has ever seen. ”

“ It was remembered that he had declined to take any official cognizance of so serious an offence against the public peace as the type-riot, which had been committed by his own friends and protégés. Yet he had here gone out of his way to prosecute to his ruin a poor wretch who, certainly not without great provocation, had merely accused him of falsehood and native malignancy. A man who accommodated his conduct to his inclinations in this way might perhaps be much beloved by his friends, but he certainly had no claim to be considered either good or great. ”

“ The Upper House had no weight with the people; the Lower House had no weight with the Crown.
One of the greatest drawbacks to the country's prosperity was the method of granting public lands. It had been the policy of Governor Simcoe to encourage immigration from the United States, as well as from Great Britain and continental Europe. He had offered great inducements, in the shape of free grants of wild lands, to persons settling in Upper Canada, and his offer had produced the expected results in the shape of a full tide of immigrants. ”

“ His military career was not yet quite at an end, for he was destined to play an important part in the putting-down of the Upper Canadian Rebellion; a circumstance which furnishes a sufficient justification for a somewhat more extended reference to him in this place than his mere connection with the press riot would have rendered necessary. He was an Irishman of humble origin, who had enlisted as a private soldier at the age of seventeen, and who, by sheer force of energy, bravery and aptitude for his profession, had fought his way to military rank and honour. ”

“ It appealed to the Legislature to address the Governor on the subject, with a request to dismiss from office the whole of the Boulton race, root and branch. "If a Government emanating from England," wrote Mr. Mackenzie, "can cherish such a corrupt, such a Star Chamber crew, then the days of the infamous Scroggs and Jeffries are returned upon us; and we may lament for ourselves, for our wives and for our children, that the British Constitution is, in Canada, a phantom to delude to destruction, instead of being the day-star of our dearest liberties." ”

“ Such was the astounding scheme propounded by Mackenzie. His small audience could hardly credit the evidence of their senses. When he had proceeded thus far, Dr. Morrison could restrain himself no longer, but burst forth with an impetuosity and indignation which had but seldom been observed in him. He asked if it was possible that Mackenzie could be serious in unfolding so foolhardy a design. "This," said he, "is treason; and if you think to entrap me into any such mad scheme, you will find I am not your man!" ”

“ Such a man would have made due allowance for jealousies which, under the circumstances, were almost inevitable. Such a man would have adopted a policy of friendly conciliation. Such a man would have refrained from making himself specially conspicuous, at least until he had been some time settled in his new career, and had become accustomed to the novel atmosphere. Judge Willis's conduct was the very reverse of all this. In his intercourse with his brother judges—one of whom, it must be remembered, was Chief Justice—he adopted a tone of superiority, and even, to some extent, of dictation. ”

“ Persons who had never recorded a Reform vote before now came forward to support candidates who were known to be strong Reformers. It was not so much that these persons sympathized with Mackenzie, who was by many of them held in detestation and abhorrence; but they felt that gross injustice had been done, against which it behooved them to record their formal protest. The result was that the sanguine calculations of the Tories were altogether falsified, and that a majority of Reform candidates were returned to the first Council of the City of Toronto. ”

“ We can point to him as one who, though a politician by predilection and by profession, never stooped to disreputable practices, either to win votes or to maintain himself in office. Robert Baldwin was a man who was not only incapable of falsehood or meanness to gain his ends, but who was to the last degree intolerant of such practices on the part of his warmest supporters. If intellectual greatness cannot be claimed for him, moral greatness was most indisputably his. ”

“ All the most pressing grievances were dealt with in greater or less detail, but special prominence was given to the necessity for a responsible Government—a Government responsible to public opinion, which must cease to exist when it ceases to command popular confidence. The wished-for settlement of this important question would necessarily comprehend and include the removal of many of the most glaring abuses to which the people of the Province had long been subject and the Reform party were keenly alive to the importance of obtaining the concession. ”