Dorchester Governor of Upper Canada, Colonel John Graves Simcoe. and Simcoe. Simcoe had done good service in the American War. He was a capable administrator, very zealous in the interests of his province; but he had aspired to an independent command, and was not well suited to the position of a subordinate. His habit of sending voluminous dispatches direct to the home authorities angered the GovernorGeneral. Simcoe had many of the good qualities of the officials of ancient Rome, and his work in road-making caused his memory to be cherished as one of the chief builders of Upper Canada; but he was unable to realize that his province was only one of the British interests in North America. Hence his elaborate schemes for the defence of Upper Canada were unworkable in practice. There were no troops to spare for the defence of that province, and Simcoe's favourite plan of forming the nucleus of settlements by means of soldiers, as in the Roman Empire, did not commend itself to Dorchester. The work of colonization, he pointed out, had gone on successfully in the past without extraordinary expenses being incurred or troops being employed for civil purposes. Simcoe, who had independent means, and only cared for place so long as he could effect his purposes, applied for leave in the December of 1795, asking, if leave were impossible, that his resignation should be accepted. We may not agree with the theory that the quartering of troops in the embryo of a town was the best foundation for future prosperity; but we must admire the honesty and energy which has caused Simcoe's name to be held in lasting honour in the province, over the beginnings of which he watched so jealously. Question of Dorchester himself proffered his resignation in 1794. fees. There was much in the situation of affairs to disgust him. No man of his time had a more unsullied record with regard to money matters, since his first accession to power, when he had refused to avail himself of the usual fees taken system. by Governors. The fees for liquor licences he considered Dorchester should be increased, not diminished; but the money should on jobbing be appropriated to the public benefit. Haldimand had also recognized that the fees were in general far too high, and more than the people could bear. Dorchester found himself powerless to check a vicious system. In reporting, in 1795, on the faulty mode employed by the collector of customs, he added the significant words: The loss is not the only evil; the power of discriminating between right and wrong becomes weakened by custom, and perquisites are seized with avidity by influential servants of the Crown and extended in every direction, affording materials to leaders of sedition.' This dishonest system he elsewhere said had been coeval with the British colonies and the cause of their destruction. In the same gloomy spirit Dorchester wrote, in August, 1795, that he trusted his successor would arrive with sufficient authority to restore order. The Governor had been thwarted by his Council, and bitterly recommended the recall either of the two Chief Justices, or of himself, or of all three. By these means the political undercurrent which had formerly destroyed the foundation of government in the American Colonies might be traced to its source. Again, in July, 1796, Dorchester wrote: 'The great ends of government cannot be attained if the local administration be warped or made subservient to fees, profits, perquisites, and all their dirty train; the splendour of the Crown is sullied and the national interests sacrificed . . practices are introduced which, besides enervating the King's authority, must infallibly alienate the affections of the people from the British Government.' The subject of dead jobs is an unsavoury one, around which the historian has been reluctant to linger. Nevertheless the state of things revealed, or half-revealed, in the official papers should be noted as one cause, and a most active cause, of that dissatisfaction which afterwards culminated in a demand for a revolution in the government. System of independent government. Dorches ter's forebodings. Although, for the time, Dorchester did not persist in his resignation, his grounds of objection to the policy of the home Government were by no means removed. The affairs of Upper Canada, as we have seen, were not enough within his individual control. He resented the terms of a letter, written by the Secretary of State, Dundas, in 1795, which seemed to recognize Nova Scotia as a wholly independent command. In November of the same year he urged the Duke of Portland that order could only be restored by the arrival of a successor; and again in the following May he lamented 'this natural disorder of a political constitution, which alienates every servant of the Crown from whoever administers the King's government, leaving only an alternative, still more dangerous, that of offending the mass of the people'. Of course, in all this there was a note of exaggeration. Dorchester was essentially a soldier, and, like many strong men, was doubtless somewhat of an autocrat. As old age was approaching, he became very quick to take offence. Nevertheless, had the home Government taken to heart his warnings, the future relations of Great Britain and Canada might have been much earlier placed on a sound basis. For it was precisely the weakness of the Central Executive, and the consequent strengthening of the sinister influences of self-interest and jobbery among the surrounding officials, which did, in time, 'offend the mass of the people', and thereby brought about a state of things which threatened to end, in failure and shame, the remnants of the British Empire in America. It is too generally taken for granted that all along there were but two alternative methods of colonial government, that which prevailed under the old system, and the full responsible government which finally developed. But responsible government was beyond the ken of the Canadians in the beginning of the nineteenth century; a more primitive system, loyally worked, would for many years have contented them. Ordinary men care little for abstract rights, and it is the sense of practical grievance which gives strength to movements towards democracy. If it be true that the lords of song Are cradled into poetry by wrong, it is even yet more actually true that the demagogue of to-morrow is the man with the grievance of to-day. It was because those who spoke in the name of Great Britain forgot the meaning of the words noblesse oblige that the Canadian people entered blindly on the thorny track of sullen obstruction which threatened to land all government in a squalid and inglorious impasse. Further chapters will afford matter for this text; it remains here to form an imperfect estimate of the great Governor whose rule ended in 1796. The friend Character and comrade of Wolfe, who chose him for his executor, Dorchester. of Carleton's name is indissolubly associated with the first years of British Canada. He was Lieutenant-Governor or Governor of Quebec from 1766 to 1778; and again Governor, first of Quebec, and then of British North America, from 1786 to 1796. It is true that he was in England in the years 1770 to 1774, and again from 1791 to 1793; but during the first period he was busily engaged over Canadian business, and even when absent his influence dominated the Canadian stage. No Englishman was ever more respected by the French-Canadian people. When, in the full frenzy of antiBritish prejudice, the names of the counties were afterwards abolished, the name of Dorchester was alone preserved, and in the indignant indictment of British government which the brilliant historian, F. X. Garneau, drew up, writing under the sting of the union of the Canadas, the note of hostility is hushed before the honoured name of Carleton. Although assuredly no democrat, Carleton from the first recognized that it would be impossible permanently to retain Canada. without the cordial goodwill of its inhabitants. Such measures as were at the time possible, the selection of French Canadians to be members of the Council, the raising ness. His great of a Canadian corps to be officered by their own countrymen, the full recognition of the legitimate rights of the Roman Catholic Church-these he advocated with all his strength. Above all, he set the example of keeping the scutcheon of British honour unsullied, and of waging relentless war against anything in the nature of a job. Almost alone amongst his contemporaries, his reputation emerged undiminished and increased from the American War of Independence. In the bidding-prayer of the British Empire the name of Carleton must always be remembered. Although after his death his private correspondence was destroyed, enough is known of him from his public acts and dispatches for us to recognizeThis was the noblest Roman of them all, the elements Prescott's dispute with Council. So mixed in him that nature might stand up The significance of Dorchester's complaints comes nome to us when we consider the case of his successor, General Prescott. Almost from the first he became embroiled with his Executive over the question of the disposal of the public lands. It is unnecessary now to enter upon this dead controversy. The contention of the Council was that the Governor would have admitted undesirable settlers, that of the Governor that the members of the Council were themselves dealing with the land to their own profit. It is at least significant that Christie, the historian of Lower Canada, who was a boy at the time, and had afterwards excellent means of forming a just opinion, wrote that it was generally believed that the members of the Executive Council were not altogether disinterested.1 Prescott, according to him, ' was universally deemed an upright and honourable man, much respected by all classes, and popular as a Governor.' Whoever was right in the controversy, it is clear that the Secretary of State was in the wrong. His decision was to hush the whole matter up, 1 Christie, op. cit. vol. i, pp. 202-3. |