Canada under British Rule by Sir John George Bourinot (story reading txt) 📖

on a summer evening as the descending sun lights up the dark green of the western hills, or brightens the tin spires and roofs of the churches and convents, or lingers amid the masts of the ships moored in the river or in the coves, filled with great rafts of timber.

As in the days of French rule, the environs of Quebec and Montreal, and the north side of the St. Lawrence between these two towns, presented French Canadian life in its most picturesque and favourable aspect. These settlements on the river formed one continuous village, with tinned spires rising every few miles amid poplars, maples and elms. While the homes of the seigniors and of a few professional men were more commodious and comfortable than in the days of French rule, while the churches and presbyteries illustrated the increasing prosperity of the dominant religion, the surroundings of the _habitants_ gave evidences of their want of energy and enterprise. But crime was rare in the rural districts and intemperance was not so prevalent as in parts of the west.

Nearly 150,000 people of British origin resided in Lower Canada--a British people animated for the most part by that spirit of energy natural to their race. What prosperity Montreal and Quebec enjoyed as commercial communities was largely due to the enterprise of British merchants. The timber trade was chiefly in their hands, and the bank of Montreal was founded by this class in 1817--seven years before the bank of Upper Canada was established in Toronto. As political strife increased in bitterness, the differences between the races became accentuated. Papineau alienated all the British by his determination to found a "_Nation Canadienne_" in which the British would occupy a very inferior place. "French and British," said Lord Durham, "combined for no public objects or improvements, and could not harmonise even in associations of charity." The French Canadians looked with jealousy and dislike on the increase and prosperity of what they regarded as a foreign and hostile race. It is quite intelligible, then, why trade languished, internal development ceased, landed property decreased in value, the revenue showed a diminution, roads and all classes of local improvements were neglected, agricultural industry was stagnant, wheat had to be imported for the consumption of the people, and immigration fell off from 52,000 in 1832 to less than 5000 in 1838.

In the maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, there were no racial antagonisms to affect internal development; and the political conflict never reached such proportions as to threaten the peace and security of the people. In New Brunswick the chief industry was the timber trade--deals especially--which received its first stimulus in 1809, when a heavy duty was placed on Baltic timber, while that from the colonies came free into the British Isles. Shipbuilding was also profitably followed in New Brunswick, and was beginning to be prosecuted in Nova Scotia, where, a few years later, it made that province one of the greatest ship-owning and ship-sailing communities of the world until iron steamers gradually drove wooden vessels from the carrying trade. The cod, mackerel, and herring fisheries--chiefly the first--were the staple industry of Nova Scotia, and kept up a large trade with the British West Indies, whence sugar, molasses and rum were imported. Prince Edward Island was chiefly an agricultural community, whose development was greatly retarded by the wholesale grant of lands in 1767 to absentee proprietors. Halifax and St. John had each a population of twenty thousand. The houses were mostly of wood, the only buildings of importance being the government house, finished in 1805, and the provincial or parliament house, considered in its day one of the handsomest structures in North America. In the beautiful valleys of Kings and Annapolis--now famous for their fruit--there was a prosperous farming population. Yarmouth illustrated the thrift and enterprise of the Puritan element that came into the province from New England at an early date in its development. The eastern counties, with the exception of Pictou, showed no sign of progress. The Scotch population of Cape Breton, drawn from a poor class of people in the north of Scotland, for years added nothing to the wealth of an island whose resources were long dormant from the absence of capital and enterprise.

Popular education in those days was at the lowest possible ebb. In 1837 there were in all the private and public schools of the provinces only one-fifteenth of the total population. In Lower Canada not one-tenth could write. The children of the _habitants_ repeated the Catechism by rote, and yet could not read as a rule. In Upper Canada things were no better. Dr. Thomas Rolph tells us that, so late as 1833, Americans or other anti-British adventurers carried on the greater proportion of the common schools, where the youth were taught sentiments "hostile to the parent state" from books used in the United States--a practice stopped by statute in 1846.

Adequate provision, however, was made for the higher education of youth in all the provinces. "I know of no people," wrote Lord Durham of Lower Canada, "among whom a larger provision exists for the higher kinds of elementary education." The piety and benevolence of the early possessors of the country founded seminaries and colleges, which gave an education resembling the kind given in the English public schools, though more varied. In Upper Canada, so early as 1807, grammar schools were established by the government. By 1837 Upper Canada College--an institution still flourishing--offered special advantages to youths whose parents had some money. In Nova Scotia King's College--the oldest university in Canada--had its beginning as an academy as early as 1788, and educated many eminent men during its palmy days. Pictou Academy was established by the Reverend Dr. McCulloch as a remonstrance against the sectarianism of King's; and the political history of the province was long disturbed by the struggle of its promoters against the narrowness of the Anglicans, who dominated the legislative council, and frequently rejected the grant made by the assembly. Dalhousie College was founded in 1820 by Lord Dalhousie, then governor of Nova Scotia, to afford that higher education to all denominations which old King's denied. Acadia College was founded by the Baptists at Wolfville, on a gently rising ground overlooking the fertile meadows of Grand Pré. The foundations of the University of New Brunswick were laid in 1800. McGill University, founded by one of those generous Montreal merchants who have always been its benefactors, received a charter in 1821, but it was not opened until 1829. The Methodists laid the foundation of Victoria College at Cobourg in 1834, but it did not commence its work until after the Union; and the same was the case with King's College, the beginning of the University of Toronto.

We need not linger on the literary output of those early times. Joseph Bouchette, surveyor-general, had made in the first part of the century a notable contribution to the geography and cartography of Lower Canada. Major Richardson, who had served in the war of 1812 and in the Spanish peninsula, wrote in 1833 "Wacousta or the Prophecy," a spirited romance of Indian life. In Nova Scotia the "Sayings and Doings of Sam Slick, of Slickville"--truly a remarkable original creation in humorous literature--first appeared in a Halifax paper. The author, Judge Haliburton, also published as early as 1829 an excellent work in two volumes on the history of his native province. Small libraries and book stores could only be seen in the cities.

In these early times of the provinces, when books and magazines were rarities, the newspaper press naturally exercised much influence on the social and intellectual conditions of the people at large. By 1838 there were no less than forty papers printed in the province of Upper Canada alone, some of them written with ability, though too often in a bitter, personal tone. In those days English papers did not circulate to any extent in a country where postage was exorbitant. People could hardly afford to pay postage rates on letters. The poor settler was often unable to pay the three or four shillings or even more, imposed on letters from their old homes across the sea; and it was not unusual to find in country post-offices a large accumulation of dead letters, refused or neglected on account of the expense. The management of the post-office by imperial officers was one of the grievances of the people of the provinces generally. It was carried on for the benefit of a few persons, and not for the convenience or solace of the many thousands who were anxious for news of their kin across the ocean.


CHAPTER VII.


A NEW ERA OF COLONIAL GOVERNMENT (1839--1867).

SECTION I.--The union of the Canadas and the establishment of responsible government.


Lord Durham's report on the affairs of British North America was presented to the British government on the 31st January, 1839, and attracted an extraordinary amount of interest in England, where the two rebellions had at last awakened statesmen to the absolute necessity of providing an effective remedy for difficulties which had been pressing upon their attention for years, but had never been thoroughly understood until the appearance of this famous state paper. A legislative union of the two Canadas and the concession of responsible government were the two radical changes which stood out prominently in the report among minor suggestions in the direction of stable government. On the question of responsible government Lord Durham expressed opinions of the deepest political wisdom. He found it impossible "to understand how any English statesman could have ever imagined that representative and irresponsible government could be successfully combined....To suppose that such a system would work well there, implied a belief that the French Canadians have enjoyed representative institutions for half a century, without acquiring any of the characteristics of a free people; that Englishmen renounce every political opinion and feeling when they enter a colony, or that the spirit of Anglo-Saxon freedom is utterly changed and weakened among those who are transplanted across the Atlantic[3]."


[3: For the full text of Lord Durham's report, which was laid before Parliament, 11 February, 1839, see _English Parliamentary Papers_ for 1839.]


In June, 1839, Lord John Russell introduced a bill to reunite the two provinces, but it was allowed, after its second reading, to lie over for that session of parliament, in order that the matter might be fully considered in Canada. Mr. Poulett Thomson was appointed governor-general with the avowed object of carrying out the policy of the imperial government. Immediately after his arrival in Canada, in the autumn of 1839, the special council of Lower Canada and the legislature of Upper Canada passed addresses in favour of a union of the two provinces. These necessary preliminaries having been made, Lord John Russell, in the session of 1840, again brought forward "An act to reunite the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, and for the government of Canada," which was assented to on the 23rd of July, but did not come into effect until the 10th of February in the following year.

The act provided for a legislative council of not less than twenty members, and for a legislative assembly in which each section of the united provinces would be represented by an equal number of members--that is to say, forty-two for each or eighty-four in all. The number of representatives allotted to each province could not be changed except with the concurrence of two-thirds of the members of each house. The members of the legislative council were appointed by the crown for life, and the members of the assembly were chosen by electors possessing a small property qualification. Members of both bodies were required to hold property to a certain amount. The assembly had a duration of four years, subject of course to