of Lord Sydenham, combined with practices that I would not use and your lordship would not recommend, in addition to the promise of the loan and the bribe of the public works, that Lord Sydenham managed to get through the session. Afterwards came the day of reckoning. The means and appliances being exhausted, the power that wielded them being broken (alas! how rudely), up sprung a crowd of malcontents. Those who were before opposed to the government took courage; those who were overawed by Lord Sydenham's boldness or firmness shook off their unwilling fealty; all who had, or fancied they had, to complain of disappointed hopes or broken pledges joined in the defection. . . . Lord Sydenham was in fact the sole government-he decided everything and did it himself—sometimes consulting his council, but generally following his own opinion, and seldom bringing them together and consulting them collectively. To effect this required all the energy, activity, and habits of business which he individually possessed, together with his extraordinary boldness and unscrupulosity in dealing with individuals.' 1

Sydenham's accomplishment must inevitably be judged in the light of the situation which Sir Charles Bagot found when he undertook office and in his estimate of those of Sydenham's actions which created that situation.

[AUTHORITIES.-The documents are in Egerton and Grant, Canadian Constitutional Development (Toronto, 1907); Kennedy, Documents of the Canadian Constitution, 1759–1915 (Oxford, 1918); G. P. Scrope, Memoir of the Life of the Right Hon. Charles, Lord Sydenham (London, 1844); Correspondence relative to the Affairs of Canada, 1840-1; Correspondence relative to the Reunion of Upper and Lower Canada, 1840; Journals of the Special Council of Lower Canada; Journals of the House of Assembly, Upper Canada; Journals of the House of Assembly, Canada; State Papers, Series G, vols. cviii-ex (Canadian Archives). Adam Shortt, Lord Sydenham (Toronto, 1908), is the standard life, written with a thorough knowledge of the material. The most brilliant study of Sydenham's government is in J. L. Morison, British Supremacy and Canadian Self-government, 1839-54, pp. 70 ff. (Glasgow, 1919) (cf. the same author in Queen's Quarterly, July-September 1910).]

1 Bagot to Stanley, September 26, 1842, Bagot Correspondence, M. 163, p. 211 (Canadian Archives).

P

CHAPTER XIV

THE TESTING OF SYDENHAM'S SYSTEM

SIR CHARLES BAGOT and his successor Sir Charles (afterwards Lord) Metcalfe are usually studied in contrasts. There is much to encourage this point of view. Bagot was an old-world, cultured tory, a Georgian figure. When he came to take part in affairs, he drifted almost naturally into diplomacy, and he might have drifted into practical obscurity had not he been sent to Canada, where in one crowded year he achieved a permanent place in the history of the empire. He was the intimate friend of Thomas Grenville, who sent him congratulations on his appointment and the cordial regrets of an old man losing one of his most intimate friends';1 of Lord Clarendon, who promised him fame in Canada and interested Lord John Russell on his behalf; 2 of Sir George Murray, who knew the Canadas and recommended to him the French-Canadians as the most anti-Yankee and also the most monarchical portion of the province'; and of the Marquis Wellesley, who foretold his advantageous colonial policy. His dispatches form perhaps the most human set of documents in Canadian history. They are full of playfulness and wit, they are enlivened with jeux d'esprit, and they display the charm of a letter-writer who belonged to a period and to a social circle when even diplomatic correspondence was a literary art. The perfect man of the world moves through them, allowing the glimmer of a charming personality to peep out here and there. They display a growing

6

1 Grenville to Bagot, August 9, 1841, Bagot Correspondence, M. 158, p. 33 (Canadian Archives).

2 Clarendon to Bagot, September 15, October 9, 1841, ibid., pp. 41, 170. 3 Murray to Bagot, October 7, 1841, ibid., p. 144.

Wellesley to Bagot, October 9, 1841, ibid., p. 174.

confidence, a gradually developing grasp of a situation, an increasing logical conviction, and a continuous sincerity of purpose which lend them almost the vitality and romantic interest of a novel, with a group of character studies worked up to a central and dramatic situation which gradually recedes before Bagot's lonely vigil with death. Were he to be estimated from these dispatches alone, he would appear as the selfrestrained, even-tempered associate of Canning, with plenty of adaptability and possessing a reserve of determined courage, which he held in check until he had explored with tact every loophole of an easier way, and affairs demanded boldness rather than the risk of a compromise. With all his delicate touch, with all his cultured ease, Bagot was no weak figurehead. He had once been candid to a czar of Russia, and he had once taught the prince of Orange and the court of the Netherlands lessons in the manners of diplomacy.

Sir Charles Metcalfe was an Anglo-Indian who had spent his life in the east and had administered the government of Jamaica. He described himself as against the corn laws and religious intolerance, and in favour of vote by ballot, extension of the suffrage, improvement of the poor law, and equality of civil rights, but · totally disqualified to be a demagogue'.1 He was trained from his youth up in the devious ways of devious governments and he had had experience with a popular assembly. He had unbounded love for the empire, for British institutions, and for law. He was a man of the highest virtue and the greatest public spirit. He was one of the most successful governors of his day, who had devoted himself to the service of the crown in creating and working out administrative systems. He lacked, however, Bagot's elasticity of mind, and that calm confidence in necessary change which comes from

1 Metcalfe to R. D. Mangles, January 13, 1843, J. W. Kaye, Life and Correspondence of Charles, Lord Metcalfe, vol. ii, pp. 454 ff. (2 vols., London, 1854).

varied contact with keen and studious minds. His dispatches stand in violent contrast with those of his predecessor. They are ponderous and stately, severely honest and wilfully wooden. For Metcalfe could not dream, if he would, of letting fancy or wit slip into an affair of state, or of allowing a human glow to touch the stern dignity of the queen's representative. There is no glad love for duty, no graceful yielding. They toe a line. They follow a course. They stand four-square. Metcalfe did not know the meaning of taking risks. The queen and empire made demands. They were his superiors, and it was not for him to temper the wind of commands to any shorn Canadian lamb. If he were as liberal as he professed to be, his liberalism was nullified by a rigidity of mind which had been cultivated and perfected in the unchanging east. He was a public servant who carried out the letter of his orders in unquestioning obedience. The régime of Bagot and of Metcalfe in Canada naturally reflected these different personalities.

On the other hand, it is possible to drive the contrast too far, for both contributed by different ways to the solution of a political problem. Both were sent to govern Canada in the terms of Lord John Russell's dispatches. Their faces were directed to the future. They were to maintain the union, to hold themselves free from any party connexions, and to govern the country according to the well-understood wishes and interests of the people. Bagot began his administration in all seriousness and practically in detachment-his suspicions of Baldwin and the colonial office's warning against the French he held in reserve. The union he would maintain, party he would abjure; the third command presented difficulties. He saw only one conclusion, government by an executive which was trusted by the majority in the assembly. Metcalfe too would maintain the union and abjure party; the third command was not difficult, for the colonial office would inform him at any time who 'the people' were. He soon learned that they were

not the majority, and he acted accordingly. In refusing, however, to accept the majority, and in following the colonial office's definition, he finally endangered the union which he had sworn to maintain, and became a party-leader, which he had declared was anathema to him.

Bagot and Metcalfe can, from this point of view, be studied together. Both started from the Russell-Sydenham pact of 1839. Bagot saw that in order to interpret his government in terms of the union and of the governor's disinterested impartiality, he must accept the logic of the Harrison-Sydenham resolutions of 1841 and follow it in order to save the new constitution and the administrator's new rôle. He could not find the wishes of the people either in space or in a vague general will. He could not seek them in the family compact' rump or in the colonial office. He could not turn back the clock. He could not divert the stream of development. He found the answer to the responsible government cry' in the affirmative of responsible government itself. Metcalfe started from the same points and found a similar answer by negative means. Trained in India, he was a man under authority. If the British government said that the clock must go back, that the stream must flow another way, Metcalfe bowed the head. To the colonial office all things were possible and even expedient, and he was prepared at all costs not merely to obey orders, but to obey any method of carrying them out. Bagot saw things in terms of an honest mind working with elastic adaptability and the power of balancing choices which the spirit of his instructions would bear. Metcalfe's mind was equally honest, but working in terms of an experience where the succession of time did not count, and where the diverting of streams was a regular occurrence. If the colonial office said, 'This is the way, walk in it', he did so. They had used union' and 'party' and 'people'; it was their duty to define and he would follow. In the issue, he proved Bagot's conclusions. By accepting the colonial