THE UNION: GENERAL OUTLINES T 1840-1867 HE period 1840-67 saw the working out of responsible government and full liberty given to Canada to commit her own mistakes. In this period was laid the foundation of a new system of colonial policy to which federation added the superstructure. In Lord Durham's great Report were combined both elements of the eventual solution, responsible government and federation, for it must not be forgotten that responsible government alone proved inadequate, and worked in its fulness only when to it federation was added. The history of United Canada begins with Sydenham and ends with Macdonald, between whom there is a strong resemblance; each a mixture, in what proportions we must agree to differ, of parliamentary strategist and statesman. The London of the Regency and of George IV differed widely from the rough pioneer life of the Bay of Quinte and the whiskified gaieties of early Kingston; but the men who formed and worked the first cabinets after the Union and after Confederation are essentially the same: both, veiling the autocracy behind a smile and a jest; constructive opportunists, who did not worry overmuch about principles, but carried on Her Majesty's government, and slowly developed a little state into a great one. Neither was squeamish; Sydenham gerrymandered Montreal, and Macdonald gerrymandered Ontario; if an opponent had his price and was worth buying, bought he was; if the one had 'a dangling after an old London harridan,' all Canada knew of the early amours of the other. But in a time of doubt and uncertainty and faintness of heart they never despaired of Canada or of the Empire; their follies and their weak 8 nesses are buried with them; their nobler part lives. The difference between them, to Canadians all-important, is that Sydenham was an Englishman, Macdonald a Canadian; at the beginning Canada was still under tutors and governors, at the end she had developed an 'old parliamentary hand' of her own. This development is traced in this volume by Professor Morison in a chapter at once original and sane. Professor Morison has strong views, and expresses them with a clearness which does not stop to regard established reputations. In his desire to avoid the falsehood of extremes he does not spare those two very typical Scots, George Brown and Bishop Strachan, and probably more than one lance will be broken in their defence. Strachan's multifarious and, on the whole, beneficent activities as teacher and churchman are treated elsewhere,1 and Professor Morison would be the first to acknowledge that his portrait of the Aberdeen bull-dog needs to be supplemented. Of one of his criticisms of Brown a word must be said later on. But that the general development is rightly and wisely sketched, few will deny. Our period opens with Lord Sydenham. Under him Canadian parties begin to assume coherence; gradually an administration, with separate heads of departments, takes the place of the chaotic council of pre-Rebellion days. But a cabinet must consist not merely of heads of departments, but of heads of departments working together in unity, carrying out a systematic policy. 'It doesn't matter a damn what we think, gentlemen,' said Lord Melbourne on a famous occasion, but we must all say the same thing.' A cabinet requires a leader, and alike in Canada and in Great Britain history proves the necessity of a prime minister. To give this keystone to the arch, Sydenham was forced to become his own prime minister, and we thus have the paradox that the governor who introduced responsible government is also the governor whose personal interference was most marked, whose personal predominance was most absolute. Sydenham was followed by Bagot, who had the absence 1 See 'History of Secondary and Higher Education' in section Ix. of strong convictions natural to a diplomat, and whose admission into the cabinet of the reform leaders paved the way for a Canadian prime minister; for although the cabinet was a coalition, Baldwin and La Fontaine were its strongest members, and the illness of Bagot threw power more and more into their hands. Then came the famous quarrel with Lord Metcalfe, in which the very worth of the tory leader made the downfall, when it came, the more complete. If Canada could not be trusted to look after herself, she could have found no better guides than Metcalfe and his chief Canadian adviser, William Draper, afterwards the muchloved Chief Justice of Upper Canada. When the system broke down under such men, it was useless for blunderers like Sir Allan MacNab to try to work it. It is significant of the distance travelled from the days of Dalhousie and Bond Head that Metcalfe acknowledged himself bound by the resolutions of September 3, 1841, which the reformers had won from Sydenham. But Canada would not remain in a half-way house; the governor's personal triumph in the elections of 1844 brightened his death-bed, but did not retard for more than a year or two the triumph of Canadian autonomy. Under Durham's son-in-law, Lord Elgin, the more obvious half of the views of the master are worked out to their logical conclusion. When Elgin gave When Elgin gave the royal assent to the Rebellion Losses Bill, on the ground that it was supported by a majority of the representatives from both parts of the united province, the battle of responsible government was won. Confederation was for the time in abeyance, and necessarily remained so till the carrying out of the policy of material development begun under Elgin. From this point of view transportation1 has great constitutional importance, for the history of the Confederation movement in Canada cannot be understood save in connection with that of railway development. Constitutional changes are conditioned by mechanical advances. Just as the building of good roads made possible the real union of England and Scotland; just as the lack of roads in Wales 1 See 'National Highways Overland 'in section v. |