YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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Sir Charles Bagot. An incident in Canadian
Parliamentary History.
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BULLETIN OF THE DEPARTMENTS OF HISTORY AND
POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC -SCIENCE IN QUEEN'S
UNIVERSITY, KINGSTON, ONTARIO, faMMMfi

No. 4, JULY, 1912.

SIR CHARLES BAGOT:
AN INCIDENT IN CANADIAN PARLIA
MENTARY HISTORY

BY
J. L. MORISON. m

The Jackson Press, Kingston.

BULLETIN OF THE DEPARTMENTS OF HISTORY AND
POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SCIENCE IN QUEEN'S
UNIVERSITY, KINGSTON, ONTARIO, CANADA.

No. 1, The Colonial Policy of Chatham, by W. L. Grant.
1
No. 2, Canada and the Most Favored Nation Treaties, by
O. D. Skelton.
No. 3, The Status of Women in New England and New France,
by James Douglas.
No. 4, Sir Charles Bagot: An Incident in Canadian Parlia
mentary History, by J. L. Morison.

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SIR CHARLES BAGOT, G.C.B., 1781-1843.
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SIR CHARLES BAGOT: AN INCIDENT IN CANADIAN
PARLIAMENTARY HISTORY.

THERE are many characters and incidents in history crush
ed out of existence between the upper and nether mill
stones of the heroic and of the philosophic method ; for, unlike
literary criticism, history knows of no really complimentary
use of the word "minor" — as when we speak of a notable minor
poet. Yet, more particularly in politics, such minor actors have
had their share, and it must be my thesis that an inconspicuous
governor, in a forgotten crisis, in a provincial parliament, did
no mean work in the evolution of British colonial self-govern
ment. The whole episode lasted hardly a year — from the be
ginning of 1842 until March 29th, 1843, when Sir Charles
Bagot, the hero of the piece, wrote from what was to prove his
death-chamber : "The new governor-general is at this moment
arrived in the town. I am to see him at 4 o'clock." x Exag
geration is easy ; yet one is hardly wrong in ranking Bagot
along with Durham, Sydenham and Elgin, as one of the four
nineteenth century Englishmen who best served Canada in
politics before Confederation.
With Bagot's earlier work it is hardly my office to deal. He
was a man of the Regency, and of the period of Canning. Since
1814, not because of any transcendent parts, but because he
was one of "the set," he occupied positions, of varying, but
never of mean importance, in the diplomatic world. Apart
from special missions, he had been ambassador at Washington,
St. Petersburg and The Hague. In America he had known how

^agot Correspondence contained in the Canadian Archives at Ot
tawa: Bagot to Stanley, March 29th, 1843.

to conceal his lack of sympathy with American methods so
well, that Rush himself could allude to "the system of concilia
tion" 2 which he had inaugurated ; to the end, his American
friends remembered him with a certain affection, and he set
up for himself a diplomatic monument more lasting than those
iron arches which conquerors erect, in the Rush-Bagot treaty,
which guaranteed to the great lakes their neutralization. In
Europe, his work naturally lacked the note of obvious success ;
for these were the days when George Canning absorbed into
himself the energy and glory of British diplomacy, and ambas
sadors lay (or is it lied ?) abroad to preserve an appearance of
conventionality, certainly lacking in the views of the great
minister. It is part of the whimsey which we call imperial
history that Canning, for no obvious reason except his inti
macy with the man, invited Bagot to be governor-general in
India, and withdrew the invitation for the very obvious reason
that another member of the Bagot family had voted against
him on a vital division.
In the very charming correspondence which forms the
main part of Colonel Bagot's two volumes, Charles Bagot
stands out as an old-fashioned, worldly, cultured, delightful,
and unbusinesslike diplomatist, worthy perhaps of a prominent
and kindly portraiture by Thackeray ; for he dwelt in Vanity
Fair, and possessed most of its pleasing ways. Apart from his
friendships, his letters, and the actual results of his American
embassy, he might have passed through life, deserving nothing
more than some few references in the memoirs of the Regency
and the early Victorian era. But an ironic fate took this ami
able and minor figure, placed him in an actual situation, and,
since fate found him ironically equal to herself, established him
as one of the foremost figures in the development of Canadian
Parliamentary life. And so we come to Canada.
Without reverting to the Rebellion, it is necessary to re
member where Sydenham had left the work of governing Can
ada. He had come to complete the union of the Canadas ; to
introduce a new era of self-government ; to put public works on
a new basis, by persuading Britain to give some financial assist
ance ; to set in order the whole establishment, religious, politi-
2Bagot, George Canning and His Friends. Vol. II, 94.

cal, and social, which the Rebellion, and the events before the
Rebellion, had wrecked; and in material matters he had seen
his plans succeed before his untimely death in September, 1841.
But there were elements which lay beyond his inuflence, subtle
and far-reaching as that was; and his' theories had proved
hardly as successful as his practice. These furnished the diffi
culties which were to ruin or establish Bagot's reputation as
the successor of Sydenham.
The first problems lay in the constitutional theory accepted
by both Whigs and Tories in England, and consented to, at the
outset, by the new governor. The world is just a little weary
of talk about Responsible Government; yet, as the Bagot epi
sode depends upon that term for its significance, one must be
permitted a brief statement of the position, as held between
1840 and 1847. Lord John Russell's instructions to Lord Sy
denham give it succinctly: "The importance of maintaining
the utmost possible harmony between the policy of the legisla
ture, and of the executive government admits of no question,
and it will, of course, be your anxious endeavour to call to your
councils, and to employ in the public service, those persons who
by their position and character have obtained the general con
fidence and esteem of the inhabitants of the province." Yet,
since the colony was subordinate to the Empire and its legisla
ture to the Imperial Parliament, since its will was depart
mental and provincial, it must not possess such a control of the
executive "as would enable it virtually to supersede that legiti
mate action of the Royal Prerogative, guided by national will,
upon which the connection between the colony and the mother
country must mainly d^)end." 1 Never had text an abler ex
positor than these instructions found in Sydenham. He defined
the limits of local independence ; he erected in his own position
as governor a practical theory of colonial government, which
he defended, and, until near the end, successfully defended,
against all comers ; and by the cunning formation of a "govern
ment of all the Canadian talents" — supported, whispered his
enemies, by not a little influence to give it no harsher name —
he contrived to establish a temporary equilibrium between
Imperial supremacy and colonial autonomy. But, for reasons
instructions to C. Poulett Thomson, 7th Sept., 1839.

to be analysed later, the Sydenham system had shown signs of
collapse even before its creator died, and his one great parlia
mentary session had seen his ministry accept, with minor
changes, resolutions which claimed for Canada almost the full
powers of the British Parliament, and which, if Lord John Rus
sell were correct, would lead, at no distant date, to the dissolu
tion of the Empire.
Closely connected with this first difficulty — indeed a chief
constituent factor in it — was the second, the condition of poli
tics in Canada. The whole party system was in a tangle which
might have justified any restricting theory, if theories can ever
really be justified in politics. There were two sets of political
issues, constitutional and local. The local issues connected
themselves with petty jobs, and rather nauseous corruption —
the inheritance from days before municipal government, and
when Parliament performed the work of town, and parish, and
county councils. The constitutional questions embraced the
whole extent of the British constitution, and Tories and Radi
cals fought on their little provincial stages the battles of Pym,
and Hampton, and Cromwell, and Charles I. It had been Sy
denham's work to teach his parliament the limits and rules of
parliamentary government; and he and his successors might
be pardoned for remaining a little sceptical as to the success of
the lesson. Beneath the shams of British party names, Family
Compact men and Radicals fought out their trifling disputes,
and expressed their merely personal passions. In short, Cana
dian politics had yet to discover the place within them of party,
and, it might be, to lay aside, for a more developed stage in the
game, the rules and practices, which had cost Britain two cen
turies of hard experience, and which could not have been learn
ed in less.
Canadian leaders of the various sections, misunderstand
ing the limits of party operations, were equally to seek with
regard to the connection between executive and legislature.
Two positions seemed to stand out in clear contradistinction.
Robert Baldwin, as leader of the British Reformers, had given
practical expression to one extreme, when he had attempted to
break up Sydenham's cabinet in June, 1841, claiming that he
and his friends "represented the political views of the vast
majority of the people of the province," that the cabinet should

— 7—
represent those views, and that dissentients must go.1 The
Family Compact represented the other extreme, feeling, to use
the language of one of the party, "convinced of the incompati
bility (of Responsible Government) to our position as a colony,
particularly in a country where almost universal suffrage pre
vails, where the great mass of the people are uneducated and
where there is but little of that salutary influence, which here
ditary rank and great wealth exercise in Great Britain." 2 But
clearly defined dilemmas are always simpler than the facts they
claim to define. On the one hand, the Canadian politicians,
whether Tories or Reformers, were not yet learned sufficiently
in the science of Cabinet government, with its compromises and
willingness to spare the minority ; they could give too few guar
antees to British statesmen, that they would respect imperial
conventions ; and, after all, they were trying to play the great
party game, with very poor pretensions to a sense of party re
sponsibility. On the other hand, the old Tories allowed nothing
for the possibilities of political education, they scorned demo
cracy in a land where nothing else in politics had a stable poli
tical future, and their arguments had an unfortunate way of
proving all men sinners, and incapable sinners, but themselves.
The country naturally distrusted logicians whose conclusions
landed them in the sole possession of emoluments and place.
By a curious contradiction, the men who objected to the opera
tion of responsible, which ordinarily means party, govern
ment ,still claimed that the ministry should be composed of a
single party, their own. Bagot, as we shall see, was to provide
an opportunist's solution to the difficulty, by taking from each
party those fit to rule, by exercising a gentle controlling influ
ence, and by allowing the force of public opinion to dictate by
degrees his councillors to him — additions and rejections hap
pening gradually and by stages, until an approximation to
unity was at last achieved.
The last difficulty was the greatest, the racial question
raised by the French Canadians. And here Bagot may speak
for himself, for among his many able despatches none bears so
plainly on it the stamp of statesmanship as does that to Stanley
1Baldwin to Sydenham, June 12th, 1841.
2Bagot Correspondence : Cartwrighf to Bagot, May 16th, 1842.

— 8—

Of September 26th, 1842, and the substance of his opening
paragraphs has, as its keynote, French Canada. "On Lord
Sydenham's arrival, he found the Lower Province deprived of
a constitution, the legislative functions of the government be
ing administered by a special council, consisting of a small
number of members nominated by the Crown. A large portion
of the people, at least those of French origin, prostrate under
the effects of the Rebellion, overawed by the power of Great
Britain, and excluded from all share in the government, had
resigned themselves to a sullen and reluctant submission, or to
a perverse but passive resistance to the government. This
temper was not improved by the passing of the Act of Union.
In this measure, heedless of the generosity of the Imperial
government, in overlooking their recent disaffection, and giving
them a free and popular constitution . . . they apprehended
a new instrument of subjection, and accordingly prepared to
resist it. Lord Sydenham found them in this disposition, and
despairing, from its early manifestations, of the possibility of
overcoming or appeasing it, before the period at which it would
be necessary to put in force the Act of Union, he determined
upon evincing his indifference to it, and upon taking steps to
carry out his views in spite of the opposition of the French
party. . . . They have from that time until my arrival uni
formly declared and evinced their hostility to the Union . . .
and have maintained a consistent, united, and uncompromising
opposition to the government which was concerned in carrying
it into execution. I regret to add that a strong personal ani
mosity to Lord Sydenham . . . has greatly tended to increase
this feeling." 1 It was indeed an abnormal form of the national
and racial question. A proud, self-conscious, and defeated peo
ple had once again been defeated. On the morrow of their de
feat, they found themselves with limited but real powers in
government. Their party, over twenty in number, was the
most compact in the House of Assembly, and had the Lower
Province, outside the commercial population of Quebec and
Montreal, solidly behind them. In LaFontaine, Viger, Morin,
and others, it had leaders both skilful and fully trusted. Yet
the party of the British supremacy could quote Durham and
xBagot to Stanley, Sept. 26th, 1842.

Sydenham as supporters of a plan for the absorption of French
Canada in the British element ; and the same party could quote
with telling effect the past misdeeds, or at least the old suspi
cions, connected with the names of the French leaders. Misun
derstood, and yet half excusably misunderstood; self-govern
ing, and yet deprived of the legitimate consequences and fruits
of self-government ; without places or honours, and yet coher
ent, passionately French, and competently led, the French
party stood across the path of Canadian peace, menacing, but
with a racial, not a party threat.
This was the little world into which an elderly, valetudi
narian, aristocratic diplomatist made entry at the beginning of
1842. They speak of the luck of the British Empire, and never
was that luck more apparent than in this instance. When
Peel's colonial minister was called on to show reason why Sir
Charles Bagot should be selected, it was to his past services in
American diplomacy that Stanley pointed. Relations with the
United States do not concern us here, but it may be remember
ed that the situation which produced the Ashburton Treaty
seemed at times about to end in strife ; and to the mind of
Peel's government, Bagot might exercise now, as once before, a
conciliatory influence on the government of the United States.
But Bagot's work and services were to be connected with do
mestic, not international, diplomacy.
Three factors must be carefully studied in the year of poli
tical turmoil which followed — the Imperial government, the
Canadian political community, and the new governor-general.
During this and the following governor-generalship, the pre
dominant influence at the Colonial Office was Lord Stanley,
almost the most brilliant of the younger statesmen of the day.
No doubt Peel's judicial and scientific mind controlled those of
his subordinates ; but even Peel found it hard to check the bril
liant individualism of his colonial secretary; and this most in
teresting of all the great failures in English politics (for who
ever thinks of Derby as the maturer expression of Stanley?)
exercised an influence in Canadian politics, such as not even
Lord John Russell tried to do. Judged from his colonial letters
and despatches, Stanley seems to have found it very hard to
understand that there could be another side to any question on
which he had made up his mind. His party had consented to a

—10—
modification of the old oligarchic rule in Canada ; but, as was
its wont, it turned the new position, as defined by Russell, into
the next last ditch for the Tory party to defend. His instruc
tions to Bagot1 have an amiable rationality about them. Bagot
was to "know no distinctions of national origin or religious
creed," and was "to consult, in his legislative capacity, the hap
piness, and (so far as might be consistent with his duty to his
Sovereign, and his respect to Her Majesty's constitutional ad
visers) the wishes of the mass of the community." It said
something for the churchman who changed party rather than
consent to weaken his Church, that he realized "that the habits
and opinions of the people of Canada are, in the main, averse
from the absolute predominance of any single church." 2 But
the theory inspiring the instructions was one which denied any
but the most partial independence and cabinet responsibility to
the colonists. To him, the old fragments of Family Compact
Toryism still represented the best guarantee for the British
connexion. "Although I am far from wishing to re-establish
the old "Family Compact" of Upper Canada, if you come into
difficulties that is the class of men to fall back upon, rather
than the ultra-liberal party." 3 Confidence in political adven
turers, and the disaffected French seemed to him perilously
like madness. But in addition to a partizan attitude towards
the political divisions, Stanley held stiffly to every constitu
tional expedient which asserted the supremacy of the Imperial
government. The Union had, by fixing a Civil List, taken the
power of the purse, within certain limits, from Canadian hands,
and this Stanley regarded as quite essential to the maintenance
of British authority." 4 In fact, any discussion on the subject
seemed to him the "reopening of a chapter which has already
led to such serious consequences, and in the prosecution of
which I contemplate seriously the prospect of the dismember
ment of the Empire." 5 There are politicians to whom the
vision of a disrupted Empire spells the end of useful thought ;
Stanley to Bagot, October 8th, 1841.
2Ibid. 3Bagot Correspondence: Stanley to Bagot, May 17th, 1842.
"Stanley to Bagot, June 3rd, 1842.
"Ibid.

-11-
and even Stanley found it difficult to evade the consequences of
his night-mare. Holding views so resolute, he could not, like
Russell, trust his representative on the spot ; and when, in com
plicated and changing situations, Downing Street dictates to
its antipodes, the end is hardly peace. "I very much doubt,"
wrote Murdoch, Sydenham's former secretary, and a shrewd
critic, "how far Lord Stanley is really alive to the true state of
Canada, and to the necessity of governing through the assem
bly." x But Lord Stanley was not of that opinion, nor inclined
to stay his hand.
Local influences provide the second factor in the situation.
Briefly stated, the Canadian political community was demand
ing a change, and that change involved both responsible gov
ernment, and recognition of the French. Sydenham had ex
hibited the most wonderful skill in working an alien system of
government, and he had found himself on the brink of failure.
His Council "might be said to represent the Reform or popular
party of Upper Canada, and the moderate Conservatives of
both provinces, to the exclusion of the French and the ultra-
conservatives of both provinces";2 but the compromise repre
sented less a popular demand for moderation, than Syden
ham's own individual idea of what a Canadian Council should
be. There had been uneasiness in adjusting the opinions of
individual members ; there was a steady decline in the willing
ness of the Assembly, and the country, to support them ; and a
determined constitutional opposition found additional strength
through the support of the French party, whom the governor
had alienated racially as well as politically. In a sense, there
was no imminent danger, as there had been in 1837; for Sy
denham's sound administration had given the country peace
and prosperity. English money and immigrants were flowing
in; the woods were ringing with the axes of settlers too busy
in clearing the ground to trouble much with talking and poli
tics ; transit was becoming simpler ; civilization was increasing ;
and, thanks to Ashburton, the war-cloud to the south had van
ished over the horizon. Yet the politicians held the central
position — all else depended on them; and Bagot's troubles and
1Bagot Correspondence: Murdoch to Bagot, Oct. 18th, 1842.
2Bagot to Stanley, September 26th, 1842.

—12—
the crisis for Canada would arrive, in the first place when cer
tain positions in the Executive Council came to be filled, and
then, and with infinitely greater peril, when the Legislative
Assembly met. It is usually assumed that public opinion was
seriously divided on the question of the true policy, but only
through an over-estimate of the forces of reaction. The Fam
ily Compact men had fallen on evil days. Strachan with his
Church party, and Macnab with his "tail" of Tory irreconcila-
bles had really very little substantial backing; and honest Tory
gentlemen, like J. S. Cartwright of Kingston, were unlikely to
attract the crowd when they openly set aristocratic oligarchy
above democracy as an instrument of government.
Canadian popular opinion was really wonderfully steady
and even consistent ; and that opinion went directly contrary to
the views of Stanley and his supporters. Harrison had repre
sented the moderate reforming party in Sydenham's ministry ;
and for Harrison, not only was responsible government, veiled
or covert, an essential, but French nationalism must also re
ceive concessions.
Equally moderate, but conservative in his moderation, was
W. H. Draper, Sydenham's Attorney-General West; and while
Draper's views tended to oscillate now to this, now to that side,
their general direction was clear. He felt that the ideal condi
tion was one of union between the parties of Western Canada,
which would "render the position of the government safer in
its dealings with the French Canadians." 2 But no such union
was possible, and Draper with that honest opportunism which
best expressed his mind and capacity, assured Bagot that ac
tion in the very teeth of his Tory instructions was the only pos
sible course. "One thing I do not doubt at all," he wrote in
July, 1842, "and that is that, with the present House of Assem
bly, you cannot get on without the French, while it is necessary
for me at the same time to declare frankly that I cannot sit at
the council-board with Mr. Baldwin." 3 Here is a new note in
Canadian conservatism, the note of common sense, compromise,
and patriotism not British only but Canadian — for Macdonald
had forerunners, and Draper was the chief of these.

2Bagot Correspondence: Draper to Bagot, May 18th, 1842.
3Ibid: Draper to Bagot, July 16th, 1842.

-13-
After the politicians comes the bureaucrat, Murdoch,
ablest of Canadian private secretaries, Sydenham's right-
hand man, and, to my mind, the justest critic of the Canadian
politics of his time. I have already quoted his criticism of
Stanley. He was as confident, but in approval, when he spoke
of what Bagot had done and should do. "No half measures,"
he said, "can now be safely resorted to. After the Rebellion,
the government had the option either of crushing the French
and Anglifying the province, or of pardoning them and making
them friends. And as the later policy was adopted, it must be
carried out to its legitimate consequences." i
The situation in Canada in the spring and summer of 1842
stood thus. A governor, entirely new to the work of govern
ing, and to the province which had fallen to his lot, faced a
curious dilemma. A wild and complicated political tangle lay
before him ; and two sets of advisers tendered him contrary
advice. One party, headed by the British minister responsible
for the colonies and supported by all the British Cabinet, by
English tradition, and the party of local respectability, bade
him restrict, exclude, govern for but not by the people, French
and English under his charge. The other, without united voice,
hesitating, irresponsible, and at times violent and repulsive,
bade him trust, include, dare ; and warned him that only heroic
measures could meet the claims of nationality and constitu
tional liberty.
The entire career of Bagot occupies only a year of Cana
dian history, and the most important phase is concentrated
into the few months before and after the assembling of the
Second Union Parliament, September 8th, 1842. It was, how
ever, a year of experiment subordinate in importance to very
few equal periods in the political life of the Dominion. There
are, of course, lighter and kindlier phases of the Bagot regime,
shown especially in his interest in the promotion of education,
but the stern realities of Canadian politics left few leisure mo
ments for the lighter life. Certain grim considerations domi
nated the political future. The Union, based on the Imperial
interpretation of Canadian autonomy, in detail as well as in
general, had to be protected ; the vacant places in the executive
4Bagot Correspondence: Murdoch to Bagot, Sept. 3rd, 1842.

-14—
council had to be filled as nearly as possible in harmony with
the happiness and the wishes of the community ; and whatever
government he might construct, had to face the test of criti
cism from an Assembly, the views of which no one dare antici
pate. In his attempt to answer these various problems, Bagot
was probably at his worst in finance. He had not the requisite
business training, and could not begin to compare with Syden
ham for boldness and precision. In the correspondence over
the mode in which the province should dispose of the British
loan of £1,500,000, secured by Sydenham, Stanley's ideas had a
clearness and force which Bagot's lacked, and in the one really
unfortunate episode in the year, his absence of financial skill
drew on the governor's head the remonstrances of both Stanley
and the Treasury authorities. To escape financial difficulties
in Canada, he had anticipated the loan by drawing on British
funds for £100,000 ; and the Treasury did not spare him. "He
ought," wrote the Chancellor of the Exchequer, "to have con
sidered those (difficulties) which must arise here from the pre
sentation of large drafts at the Treasury, for which Parliament
had made no provision ; and for which, as Parliament was not
sitting, no regular provision could be made. The situation to
which the Treasury is reduced is this : either to protest the
bills for want of funds, or to accept the bills, and find within
thirty days the means of paying them." x Stanley's tone in
these money matters is that of an anxious parent, willing to
trust his young hopeful with his budget, but rather anxious
than hopeful.
In politics, the same note of distrust sounds generally
through the despatches, but with no justification, and Stanley
never learned how completely the governor for whom he trem
bled was his master in the art of governing a would-be autono
mous colony. Stanley's first principle was the maintenance of
the Union settlement ; and more especially of the Civil List by
which Britain and her representative in Canada was to be
saved from complete financial dependence on Canadian parlia
mentary opinion. As early as March, Bagot had begun to feel
the weakness of the British position. "I know well by what a
slender thread the adhesion of the colony will hang whenever
iGoulburn to Stanley, Sept. 16th, 1842.

—15—
we consent to leave the matter entirely in its own hands. . .
But the present supply is not sufficient for its purposes. We
must always be dependent on the Legislature for provision to
meet its excess ; and I cannot but think that the sooner the
Legislature succeeds, if they are to succeed, in carrying the
point, the more generous they may possibly be in the use of
their victory." 2 Bagot was already defining the policy which
was to be peculiarly his own. He had a singularly clear eye for
facts, especially uncomfortable facts ; and, being a man of the
world, that is an opportunist, he saw that in politics it was usu
ally preferable to make terms with the other side. Clear-cut
principles and oppositions satisfy the instincts of the political
metaphysician, at the expense of the comfort alike of governed
and governors. Stanley, on the other hand, with the cabinet
minister's principled omniscience, and eloquent certainty, had
nothing but regrets and disappointments in reserve for such
suggestions. A measure had been granted, generously, he
thought, on the part of Britain, and statesmanship lay in reso
lute defence of that measure. And, since there always seems
to be in such imperialists a sense of political pathos — the
lacrymae rerum politicarum—he hinted at disruptive possibili
ties. "I am very far from underrating the value to Great
Britain of her extensive and rapidly improving North Ameri
can possessions ; but I cannot conceal from myself the fact that
they are maintained to her at no light cost ; and at no trifling
risk. To all this she willingly submits, so long as the bonds of
union between herself and her colonies are strengthened by
mutual harmony, good will and confidence ; and it would be in
deed painful to me to contemplate the possibility that embar
rassments arising from uncalled for and unfounded jealousies
on the part of Canada, might lead the people of England to
entertain a doubt how far the balance of advantages prepon
derated in favour of the continuance of the present relation." 3
Happily Empire founds itself on a basis deeper than any ever
planned even in the Colonial Office. The Civil List raised the
fundamental question, but it was a simple issue and it lay still
far in the future. But the constitution of the ministry, and its
2Bagot Correspondence: Bagot to Stanley, March 26th, 1842.
Stanley to Bagot, 27th May, 1842.

—16—
relation to the coming parliament, could be neither evaded nor
delayed. Bagot's instructions — not, I fancy, with the conscious good
will of Lord Stanley — gave him a certain scope, for he was per
mitted to avail himself of the advice and services of the ablest
men, without reference to the distinction of local party. In so
availing himself, Bagot had to calculate chiefly on the chances
of finding a majority in the Lower House — happily he could
postpone their meeting till September. Of the probable tone of
that assembly the estimates varied, but Murdoch, who knew
the situation as well as any man, calculated that while the gov
ernment party would number thirty, the French, with their
British Radical friends, would be thirty-six strong, the old con
servatives eight, and some ten or so would "wait on providence
or rather on patronage." x In Sydenham's last days, the gov
ernment majority which he had so subtly, and by means so
machiavellian, got together had vanished. Reformers, not all of
them so scrupulous as Baldwin, were not unwilling to ruin a
government which kept from them their perfect triumph. Sir
Allan MacNab with his old die-hards, fulminating against all
enemies of the connection, was still willing to make an unholy
alliance with the French, if only he could checkmate a governor
who did not seem to appreciate his past services to Britain.
And the French themselves, alienated and insulted by Syden
ham, sat gloomily alone, restless over the Union, indignant at
their recent treatment, seemingly on the threshold of some
fresh racial conflict.2 Everything was uncertain, except the
coming government defeat.
At the very outset, Bagot had the question thrust on him,
for his council on his arrival advised the admission of the
French Canadians to power.3 He refused, for Stanley had a
very clearly defined position on the subject. The Colonial Sec
retary talked much about forgetting divisions and parties, but

1 Bagot Correspondence: Stanley to Bagot, recounting an interview
with Murdoch; Sept. 1st, 1842.
-See Bagot's admirable analyses of their condition in his public and
confidential despatches of Sept. 26th, 1842.
3Bagot to Stanley, confidential: Sept. 26th.

—17—
his own mind was distinctly partisan. He never could forget
that the French leaders had all of them — Lafontaine, Viger,
Girouard — been, in some fashion or other, involved in the
troubles of 1837. To him, there was a gloomy, rebellious,
French Canadian party, which no responsible British states
man could afford to recognize. They told him that it was use
less to attempt to detach individuals — les Vendus their com
patriots called them— from the party; he only answered that
he would like to multiply such Vendus. He hoped for a day
when the Anglicizing of the Lower Province should have been
completed ; and he would break all forces tending otherwise. He
was conscious of a repulsion equally strong, in his feelings to
wards Baldwin, and the Responsible government men. Whe
ther it came by French racial hate, or Upper Canada republic
anism (so he thought of it) the ruin of the Empire would
follow on concession to agitation. In his heart, he trusted only
to the old Tories, and not all his coldness towards MacNab's
interested advances could affect the feeling that only one party
cared for Britain — the quondam Family Compact men. When
he bade Bagot be eclectic in his ministry-making, he was un
consciously limiting Bagot's choice to a very limited circle, all
of them most unmistakably unpleasing to the populace, whose
wishes he professed to be willing to consult. He claimed to be
a man of principle — mistaking the clearness of doctrinaire ig
norance, for the certainty of honest knowledge.
Happily the governor of Canada was not in this sense a
principled statesman. He observed, took counsel, and began to
shape his own policy. He filled two vacant places — one with
the most brilliant of Reforming financiers, Francis Hincks,
whose merits he saw at once ; the other, after a priggish but
gentlemanly refusal from Cartwright, with Sherwood, a sound
but comparatively compromising Upper Canada Conservative.
In an illuminating letter to Stanley, at the beginning of sum
mer, he outlined his policy. In answer to a hint that the com
bination of white and black does not necessarily produce grey,
he said: "My hope is that, circumstanced as I am, I possibly
may be able to do this [take from all sides the best and fittest
men for the public service]. . . . The attempt to produce
such a grey, whether it succeed or not, must, I think, after all
that has passed, and at this particular crisis in which I find my-

—18—
self here, be the safest line." x Stanley limited his choice of
men, and when the crisis should come, was prepared to risk a
defeat and an alien ministry, on the chance of a loyalist upris
ing to defend the British connexion. Baldwin dreamed of a
consistently radical cabinet. MacNab, with his eyes shut to
the consequences, seems to have considered a leap in the dark
—a Conservative French Canadian coalition. Bagot, as oppor
tunist as the Tories, but opportunist for the sake of peace,
administration, and some kind of constitutional progress, laid
aside lofty ideals, and said, as his most faithful advisers also
said, that the future lay with judicious selection, no party be
ing barred except for present folly. It is difficult to name the
influences which operated on Bagot's susceptible imagination.
He corresponded largely and usefully with Draper, the sound
est of his conservative advisers. His own innate courtesy, lead
ing him to end the social ostracism of the French, taught him
their good qualities. Being quick withal, and an observer, his
political seven senses began almost unconsciously to force a
new programme for him. Before August he had conciliated
moderate reforming opinion through Hincks ; he had proved to
the French by legal appointments which met with a stiff and
forced acquiescence in Stanley, that at least he was not their
enemy. He had begun to question the certainty of Stanley's
wisdom on the Civil List, and various other topics. Then, be
tween July 28th and September 26th, the date of two sets of
despatches, which, if despatches ever deserve the term, must
be called works of genius, he completed his plan, brought it to
the test of practice, and challenged the home government to
acquiesce or show their displeasure by recall. With his minis
try constituted as it was in July, he had to face the certainty of
a vote of no confidence as soon as parliament met. Were he to
do nothing, some unholy alliance would fling his government
down, and establish, whether he and Stanley willed it or not,
responsible government in its most obnoxious form. He would
lose all hold over the French, and, since they had warned him
beforehand, he knew that his present cabinet, pledged in a
sense to constitutionalism by the resolutions of September,

1Bagot Correspondence: Bagot to Stanley, June 12th, 1842.

—19-

1841, would resign in a body.1 His choice of counsellors was
very limited. "Out of the 84 members of the House of Assem
bly, not above 30, as far as I can judge, are at all qualified for
office, by the common advantages of intelligence and education,
and of these, ten at least are not in a position to accept it." 2
He could afford neither to ignore classes of possible ministers,
nor yet to lose the moderate men under him at the time. He
found offers to individual Frenchmen useless, for he did not
gain the party, and he ruined the men whom he honoured. As
the eighth of September drew near, the excitement rose— it
was a crisis with many possibilities, both for England and for
Canada. As certainly as Stanley, with all the wisdom of Peel's great
cabinet and Downing Street behind him was wrong, and fatally
so, Bagot's actions on the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth
and fourteenth of September were accurate and heroically so.
There is an interesting correspondence preserved between Stan
ley and Peel, just before the battle closed, in which Stanley
seeks to get his great leader to take his view, and in which
even the genius of Peel proved how incompetent it is to settle
a problem of parliamentary government, three thousand miles
from the seat of government. For the wisdom of his letter3
lay, not in its suggestions, which were useless to Bagot, but in
its hint "that much must be left to the judgment and discre
tion of those who have to act at a great distance from the su
preme authority."
Stanley, from first to last, was for allowing Bagot to face
defeat, although he always thought it possible that ' stubborn
resistance to what he counted treason would rally a secure
majority to Bagot, Britain, and the Crown. Time and again,
after assuring Bagot that he and the ministry acquiesced,
which, to do them justice, they did like men, he would hark
back to the idea of allowing facts to demonstrate the helpless
ness of the government struggle before definitive surrender.
Long before Parliament met, the situation had been discussed
in all its bearings ; and the only problem which existed con-

aBagot to Stanley, Sept. 26th, 1842— confidential.
2Bagot to Stanley, Sept. 26th, 1842— confidential.
3Bagot Correspondence: Peel to Stanley, Aug. 28th, 1842.

—20—
cerned which out of the three or four foreshadowed catastro
phes would end the existence of the government. The minis
ters themselves had their negative programme ready; for,
having consented to the Responsible government resolutions of
September, 1841, they forewarned Bagot "that if they were
left in a minority, or in a very small majority, they should feel
themselves compelled to resign," and they added that if Bagot
did not "accept their recommendation of admitting the French
Canadians, they would insist upon his accepting their resigna
tion." 1 After the members had assembled, events moved very
rapidly. On the very day of the opening, Neilson brought for
ward the exciting question of Amnesty; and the air was filled
with rumours and schemes, of which the most ominous for gov
ernment was the project of coalition between Conservatives
and French Canadians. The time had come for action — if any
thing could really be done. To understand the boldness of
Bagot's tactics,2 one has to remember that they went "in the
teeth of an almost universal feeling at home . . . certainly in
opposition to Lord Durham's recorded sentiments, and as cer
tainly to Lord Sydenham's avowed practice" — to say nothing
of Stanley's own wishes. Lafontaine was definitively ap
proached on the tenth, and, seemingly, Bagot was not quite pre
pared for the greatness of his claims — four places in the Coun
cil, with the admission of Mr. Baldwin into it." 3 But he had
no choice, for on the 12th he received a plain statement from
his cabinet that, if he failed, they were not prepared to carry
on the government.* To his dismay, the surrender, if one may
so term it, which he signed next day, was not accepted since
Baldwin could not countenance the pensioning of the compul-
sorily retired ministers, Ogden and Davidson, and although
MacNab was at hand with the offer of 16 Conservative stal
warts, the plan was useless, and, in view of MacNab's general
conduct at this time, irritating. When Bagot wrote that night
to Stanley, it was as a despairing man, for the attack had
begun at 3 o'clock, Baldwin leading off with an address, as

1Bagot to Stanley — confidential: Sept. 26th, 1842.
2Bagot Correspondence : Bagot to Stanley, July 28th, 1842.
3Ibid.4Bagot Correspondence: Bagot to Stanley, Sept. 13th, 1842.

—21—
usual pledging the House to Responsible government, and there
was every chance of a victory for the opposition. At this point
Bagot took the strange and daring plan of allowing Draper to
read his letter to Laf ontaine in the House, that the Lower Can
adians might "learn how abundantly large an offer their lead
ers have rejected, and the honest spirit in which that offer was
made." B His unconventionality won the day. Successive ad
journments staved off the debate on the address ; and by the
sixteenth, terms had been settled. Lafontaine, Small, Aylwyn,
Baldwin, and Girouard if he cared to take office, were to enter,
Draper, Davidson, Ogden, and Sherwood passing out. Unfor
tunately, since neither Ogden nor Sherwood happened to be
present, Bagot had to accept their resignations, on his own
initiative, and not even that dexterous correspondent could
quite disguise the awkwardness of his position when he wrote
to tell both men that they had ceased to be his ministers.6 So
ended the crisis with a triumphant surrender. The address
was carried by fifty-five votes to five, the malcontents being
MacNab, foiled once more in his ambitions ; Moff att and Cart-
wright, representing the inflexible Toryism; Neilson, whose
position as a recognized opponent of the Union tied his hands,
and Johnstone, a disappointed place man. Peace ruled in the
Assembly, and the battle passed to the province, the news
papers, and most ominous of all for the governor, to the cabinet
and public in Britain. A storm of abuse, criticism, and regrets
broke over Bagot's devoted head. The opposition press called
him "a radical, a puppet, an old woman, an apostate, a rene
gade descendant of old Colonel Bagot who fell at Naseby fight
ing for his King." 1 MacNab, in the House, led a bitterly per
sonal opposition. At least one cabinet meeting in England was
called specially to consider the incident, and for some months
Stanley alternated caustic expressions of regret with assur
ances that he and the government would support their repre
sentative. The necessity of the change, he reiterated, had not
been fully proven. The French members and Baldwin were
doubtful characters. If the worst must be, then Bagot had bet
ter impress on the cabinet "their intention of standing by the
"Bagot Correspondence: Bagot to Stanley, Sept. 13th.
"Ibid, letters to Sherwood, Sept. 16th, and Ogden, Sept. 19th.
xBagot Correspondence: Bagot to Stanley, Oct. 28th, 1842.

—22—
provisions of the Act of Union, including the Civil List, and
every other debatable question." 2 And, fearing lest the citadel
itself of restricted popular government should be surrendered,
he set forth his theory of government in an elaborate letter
which revealed distinct distrust of his correspondent's power
of resistance. "Your position is different from that of the
Crown in England. The Crown acts avowedly and exclusively
on the advice of its ministers, and has no political opinions of
its own. You act in concert with your Executive Council, but
the ultimate decision rests with yourself, and you are recog
nized, not only as having an opinion, but as supreme and irre
sponsible, except to the Home government, for your acts in
your executive capacity. Practically you are (influenced) by
the advice you receive, and by motives of prudence, in not run
ning counter to the advice of those who command a majority
in the Legislature ; but you cannot throw on them the onus of
your actions in the same sense that the Crown can in this
country." 3
As for Bagot, so far as Canada was concerned, he had rea
son to feel satisfied. With half a dozen hostile combinations
possible, he had forestalled them all, and found the Assembly
filled with friends, not enemies. He had approached a sullen
French nation — and thereafter the French party formed as
solid an accession to Canadian political stability, as they had
once been dangerous to Imperial peace; and their union with
the moderate reformers in government, while it gave them all
they asked, created a restraint on possible future nationalistic
excesses. He had not, in actual fact, surrendered to any sweep
ing doctrine of responsible government. There was peace at
last; an assembly which passed over thirty acts, which reaf
firmed the rights of the royal prerogative ; and which separated
in the most amiable temper with themselves and their gover
nor. There is, however, a curious contradiction between the
surface consequences of the crisis, as described by Bagot, and
the necessary results discerned by his political instincts. On
the face of it, Bagot's opportunism had saved Stanley and his
party from a crushing defeat and a humiliating surrender to
ultra views. So far, he had assisted the cause of conservatism.
2Bagot Correspondence: Stanley to Bagot, Nov. 3rd, 1842.
3Bagot Correspondence: Stanley to Bagot, Dec. 3rd, 1842.

—23—
But the disaster and the humiliation would have come, not
from the grant of responsible government, but from the mis
use of it which the forced surrender might have involved, and
from the false position in which the Imperial government
would have stood, towards the men who had challenged im
perial authority and won. It is interesting to follow the pro
cess by which Bagot came to see all that lay in his action.
Yielding to Canadian autonomy, he went on to new surrenders.
He had already warned Stanley of Civil List difficulties ; to the
end he seems to have been considering the advisability of a
complete surrender there. When he wrote communicating to
the minister the assembly's acknowledgment of royal preroga
tive in the right of the Crown to name the capital, he pointed
out that, prerogative or no prerogative, the possessor of the
purse had the final voice. He checked his new minister, Bald
win, for tacking on question-begging constitutional phrases to
the legal opinion, but he told Stanley, quite frankly, that, "whe
ther the doctrine of responsible government is openly acknow
ledged or is only tacitly 'acquiesced in, virtually it exists." J
During the remainder of his tenure of office, partly because of
his own ill-health, but partly also, I think, from conviction, he
gave his ministers the most perfect freedom of action. And,
although he did not gain the point, he was willing to make
sweeping concessions in answer to the call for an amnesty for
the rebels of 1837. He recognized the force of trusting, in a
self-governing community, even those who had once striven
against the British rule with arms — the final proof in any man
that he has come to understand the secrets, at once of Empire
and of autonomy. Indeed, Bagot's capacity for yielding to the
successive stages of Canadian home rule is the most distin
guished feature in his character.
I have chosen to study Bagot in definite and limited rela
tion to a given situation, and to pass verdict on him mainly
from the political facts. It is very possible to carry the story
on to its physical end, in sickness and death. For the last
months of his life were spent in a struggle to overcome ex
treme bodily sickness in the interest of public duty. Stanley
himself, in the name of the Cabinet, expressed his admiration
1Bagot Correspondence : Bagot to Stanley, Oct. 28th, 1842.

—24—
for the gallantry of his stand, and he may be regarded as an
other martyr to duty, and to Canada. But there is something
— and it is not dispraise of the man to admit the fact — which
forbids the conventional heroic pose, and the sob of pathos at
the end. He belonged to a governing class, which, even where
it took its duties lightly, played the game; and the rules bade
the player to hold on till the end came, leaving no room for self-
conscious sacrifice. Besides, Bagot came from the not yet ex
hausted Eighteenth Century, and had its flippancy, its light
ness, its courtesy, and its courage. It was natural for him to
keep his epistolary quips and jests going to the end; this sense
of humour forbade him to magnify the splendour of his ser
vices. He thought he had done right ; he defended his work
before his masters ; he knew that his old friendships had been
unaffected by the political turmoil ; and if there was a note of
strain and earnestness, it was only when he trusted that
Stanley would see things in a reasonable light, and when he
bade his councillors defend his memory.2 He would have re
fused the title of hero, and he would have been right. For he
was only a courteous English gentleman, and, being a citizen
of the world, a shrewd opportunist ; who knew that good man
ners are often half the game, even in democratic politics, and
that, in the whirl and confusion of party government he wins
in the end who waits on events, provided he wait in the inter
ests of the people.
The whole incident is an illustration of political contrast ;
on the one hand, firm conservative imperialism, unbending, un
learning, but impregnably established on principle; on the
other, opportunism, yielding and less principled, but willing to
be educated by events, observing the phenomena of Canadian
self-government, and realizing that where Necessity must have
her way, it is well to be an ally of Necessity. Two great oppor
tunists have already received their laurels as founders of the
modern Canadian parliamentary system, Elgin and Macdonald.
I should like to add as a third Bagot, their forerunner, and, by
anticipation, their lieutenant. J. L. MORISON.
Queen's University.

2Hincks, Reminiscences of his public life, p. 89.

YALEy