The other aim of the Patriotes, as the Opposition styled themselves, was to conquer the Legislative Council by making it elective.Papineau, in spite of his early prejudices, was drawn more and more into sympathy with the form of democracy worked out in the United States.In fact, he not only looked to it as a model but, as the thirties wore on, he came to hope that moral, if not physical, support might be found there for his campaign against the English Government.After 1830 the demand for an elective Legislative Council became more and more insistent.
The struggle soon reached a deadlock.Governor followed Governor:
Lord Dalhousie, Sir James Kempt, Lord Aylmer, all in turn failed to allay the storm.The Assembly raised its claims each session and fulminated against all the opposing powers in windy resolutions.Papineau, embittered by continued opposition, carried away by his own eloquence, and steadied by no responsibility of office, became more implacable in his demands.
Many of his moderate supporters--Neilson, Andrew Stuart, Quesnel, Cuvillier--fell away, only to be overwhelmed in the first election at a wave of the great tribune's hand.Business was blocked, supplies were not voted, and civil servants made shift without salary as best they could.
The British Government awoke, or half awoke, to the seriousness of the situation.In 1835 a Royal Commission of three, with the new Governor General, Lord Gosford, as chairman, was appointed to make inquiries and to recommend a policy.Gosford, a genial Irishman, showed himself most conciliatory in both private intercourse and public discourse.Unfortunately the rash act of the new Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, Sir Francis Bond Head, in publishing the instructions of the Colonial Office, showed that the policy of Downing Street was the futile one of conciliation without concession.The Assembly once more refused to grant supplies without redress of grievances.The Commissioners made their report opposing any substantial change.
In March, 1837, Lord John Russell, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Melbourne Ministry, opposed only by a handful of Radical and Irish members, carried through the British Parliament a series of resolutions authorizing the Governor to take from the Treasury without the consent of the Assembly the funds needed for civil administration, offering control of all revenues in return for a permanent civil list, and rejecting absolutely the demands alike for a responsible Executive and for an elective Council.
British statesmanship was bankrupt.Its final answer to the demands for redress was to stand pat.Papineau, without seeing what the end would be, held to his course.Younger men, carried away by the passions he had aroused, pushed on still more recklessly.If reform could not be obtained within the British Empire, it must be sought by setting up an independent republic on the St.Lawrence or by annexation to the United States.
In Upper Canada, at the same time, matters had come to the verge of rebellion.Sir John Colborne had, just before retiring as Lieutenant Governor in 1836, added fuel to the flames by creating and endowing some forty-four rectories, thus strengthening the grip of the Anglican Church on the province.His successor, Sir Francis Bond Head, was a man of such rash and unbalanced judgment as to lend support to the tradition that he was appointed by mistake for his cousin, Edmund Head, who was made Governor of United Canada twenty years later.He appointed to his Executive Council three Reformers, Baldwin, Rolph, and Dunn, only to make clear by his refusal to consult them his inability to understand their demand for responsible government.All the members of the Executive Council thereupon resigned, and the Assembly refused supplies.Head dissolved the House and appealed to the people.
The weight of executive patronage, the insistence of the Governor that British connection was at stake, the alarms caused by some injudicious statements of Mackenzie and his Radical ally in England, Joseph Hume, and the defection of the Methodists, whose leader, Egerton Ryerson, had quarreled with Mackenzie, resulted in the overwhelming defeat of the Reformers.The sting of defeat, the failure of the Family Compact to carry out their eleventh hour promises of reform, and the passing of Lord John Russell's reactionary resolutions convinced a section of the Reform party, in Upper Canada as well as in Lower Canada, that an appeal to force was the only way out.
