The Father of British Canada: a Chronicle of Carleton

nxious to fill any position of civil or military trust, even if it had been pressed upon him. And he had said farewell to America for good and all when he had left New York. Though as

eeing of his little estate occupied his time very pleasantly indeed. Like most healthy Englishmen

ived it. Needless to say this peerage had nothing whatever to do with his acceptance of another self-sacrificing duty. It was not given till several months after he had promised to return to Canada; and he would certainly have refused it if it had been held out to him as an inducement to go there. He became Baron Dorchester and was granted the not very extravagant addition to his income of a thousand pounds a year payable during four lives, his own, his wife's, and those of his two eldest sons. His elevation to the House of Lords met with the almost unanimous approval of hi

hemselves he was in reality towards both red man and white. Stern, when the occasion forced him to be stern, just in all his dealings between man and man, dignified and courteous in all his ways, a soldier through every inch of his stalwart six feet, he was a ruler with whom no one ever dreamt of taking liberties. But neither did any deser

e French-Canadian race. Carleton, as we have seen, had faced its problem for the first four years. Haldimand had carried on the government under its provisions for the following six. Hamilton and Hope, successive lieutenant-governors, had bridged the two years between Haldimand's retirement and Carleton's second appointment. Now Carleton was to pick up the threads and make what he could of the tangled skein for the next five years. Haldimand had not been popular with either of the two chief parties into which the leading French Canadians were divided. The seigneurs had nothing like the same regard for a Swiss soldier of fortune that they had for aristocratic British commanders like Murray and Carleton. The clergy also preferred th

itish still held the Western forts pending the settlement of the frontier and the execution of the treaty of peace in full. This naturally annoyed the American government and gave Carleton endless trouble. But more serious still was the ceaseless western march of the American backwoodsmen, who were everywhere in conflict with the Indians. The Indians, in their turn, were confused between the British and Americans under the new conditions. They and their ever-receding rights and territories had not been mentioned in the treaty. But, seeing that they would be better off under British than under American rule, they were inclined to take sides accordingly. There were now no openly hostile sides to take. But, for all that, the British posts in the hinterland looked like weak little islands which might

rleton's children, was a most enlightened cleric. So too was Charles Inglis, the Anglican bishop of Nova Scotia, appointed in 1787. He was the first Canadian bishop of the Anglican communion and his diocese comprised the whole of British North America. William Smith, the new chief justice, was as different from Carleton's last chief justice, Livius, as angels are from devils. Smith had been an excellent chief justice of his native New York in the old colonial days, and, like Inglis, was a very ardent Loyalist. He respected all reasonable French-Canadian

sume. But Bailly very neatly pointed out that his respected superior's real opinions could not be those attributed to him over his own signature because they were at variance with the facts. Hubert had said that the cures were spreading education with most commendable zeal, had repudiated the base insinuation that only three or four people in each parish could read and write, and had wound up by thinking that while there was so much land to clear the farmers would do better to keep their sons at home than send them to a university, where they would be under professors so 'unprejudiced' as to have no definite views on religion. Bailly argued that the bishop could not mean what these words seemed to imply, as t

ns were even ready for a change of allegiance if the terms were only good enough. Vermont wanted a 'free trade' outlet to the St Lawrence by way of the Richelieu. The rapids between St Johns and Chambly lay in British territory. But Vermont was ready to join in building a canal and would even become British to make sure. The old Green Mountain Boys had changed their tune. Ethan Allen himself had buried the hatchet and, like his brother, become Carleton's friendly correspondent. He frankly explained that what Vermonters really wanted was 'property not liberty' and added that they would stand no coercion from the American government. About the same time Kentucky was bent on getting an equally 'free trade' outlet to the Gulf of Mexico by way of the Mississippi. The fact that France Spain, the British Empire, and the United States might all be involved in war over it did not trouble the

as making headway in the South. As if this was not enough to engage whatever attention Carleton had to spare from the internal affairs of Canada, he suddenly heard that the Spaniards had been seizing British vessels trading to a British pos

hing but free and common socage. French farms were measured by the arpent and were staked out in long and narrow oblongs. British farms were measured by the acre and staked out 'on the square.' Language, laws, religion, manners and customs, ways of life, were also different. So there was hardly any intermixture of settlements. The French Canadians remained where they were. Most of the new Anglo-Canadians settled in the Maritime Provinces or moved

nadian history. But the root of their good or evil was planted in the time of Carleton. The postal service was surrounded by enormous difficulties-the vast extent of wild country, the few towns, the long winters, the poverty of the people. The question of the winter port was even then a live one between St John and Halifax. Each of these towns asserted its advantages and promised twelve trips a year and connection with Quebec overland by means of walking postmen till a bush road should be cut from Quebec to the sea. In Prince Edward Island the old lieutenant-governor, Walter Patte

Henry, afterwards King William IV, was the first member of the Royal Family to set foot in the New World when he arrived in H.M.S. Pegasus in 1787. He was the proverbial jolly Jack Tar, extremely affable to everybody; and he quickly won golden opinions from all who met him, except perhaps from Lady Dorchester and sundry would-be partners for his duty dances. Philippe Aubert de Gaspe and other privileged chroniclers record with slightly sh

e Duke of Kent would have gladly returned to Quebec as governor-general, and the people would have gladly welcomed him. But he was not a favourite with the government at home, and so he never came. There was no doubt about his being a popular favourite in Quebec during the three years he s

ng, high-spirited, and loved adventure, as was proved by his subsequent gallantry at Martinique. He was also fond of driving round incognito, a habit which on at least one occasion obliged him to put his skill at boxing to good use. This was at Charlesbourg, a village near Quebec, where he was watching the fun at the first election ever held. Perhaps, from a meticulously constitutional point of view, the scene of a hotly contested election was not qui

main standing till she had made her royal progress through the room. She was a living anachronism for many years before her death, with her high-heeled, gold-buttoned, scarlet-coloured shoes, her Marie-Antoinette coiffure raised high above her head and interlaced with ribbons, her elaborately gorgeous dress, her intricate array of ornaments, and her long, jet-black, official-looking cane. But she was no anachronism to herself; for she still lived in the light of other days, in the fondly remembered times when, as the vice-reine of the Chateau St Louis, she helped her consort to settle nice points of etiquette and maintain a dignity befitting His Majesty's chosen representative. How did

e themselves heard at every stage of the proceedings. Most French Canadians would have preferred to be left without the suspected blessings of a parliament. The clergy and seigneurs wished for a continuance of the Quebec Act, and the habitants wanted they knew not what, provided it would enable them to get more and give less. The English-speaking people, on the other hand, were all for a parliament. But they differed widely as to what kind of parliament would s

rleton forwarded the suggestion to the home government; but he nowhere committed himself to any very definite scheme. His own preference was for keeping the existing province of Quebec a little longer, then dividing it, and afterwards drawing in the other provinces. The chief justice preferred to make a constitution. The governor preferred to let it grow. The home government's preference could not be stated better than in Grenville's dispatch to Carleton of the 20th of October 1789: 'The general object is to assimilate the constitution to that of Great Britain as nearly as the difference arising

inst the division of the province. All the English-speaking minority in the prospective province of Lower Canada were afraid of being swamped by the French-Canadian vote, and so of being hampered in liberty and trade. The London merchants naturally backed Lymburner. Fox opposed the bill as not being liberal enough. Burke flared up int

erchants. The franchise was the same in both provinces: in the country parts a forty-shilling freehold or its equivalent, and in the towns either a five-pound annual ownership value or twice that for a tenant. The Crown gave up all taxation except commercial duties, which were to be applied solely for the benefit of the provinces. Lands outside the seigneuries were to be in free and common socage, while seigneurial tenure itself could be converted into freehold on petition. One-seventh of

s, however, was owing to simple force of circumstances and not to any desire of abridging the liberties of the people. The fact is that at this time eighty per cent of the total civil expenditure had to be paid by the home government. It is frequently ignore

e year Carleton began his second term. But assemblies still had all the charm of novelty in 'Canada proper.' Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that Upper Canada experienced more charm than novelty while Lower Canada experienced more novelty than charm. The Anglo-Canadians in all five provinces were used to parliaments in America. Their ancestors had been used to them for centuries in England. So the littl

easury, and as Canada was five parts and no whole from her own parliamentary point of view, the legislation required for a grand total of two hundred and fifty thousand people could not be of

e throne stood many officers in their red and gold, conspicuous among them the Duke of Kent. In front sat the Executive and Legislative Councillors, corresponding to the modern cabinet ministers and senators. Their roll, as well as the Assembly's, bore many names that recalled the glories of the old regime-St Ours, Longueuil, de Lanaudiere, Boucherville, de Salaberry, de Lotbiniere, and many more. The Council chamber was crowded in every part long before the governor arrived. 'The Ladies introduced into the House' were 'without Hat, Cloak, or Bonnet,' the 'Doorkeeper of His Majesty's Council' having taken good care to see them 'leave the same in the Great Committee Room previous to their Introduction.' 'The Ladies attached to His Excellency's Suite' were admitted 'within the railing or body of the House' and 'accommodated with the seats of the members as far as possible.' Outwardly it was al

, saying, 'It's time you came to shepherd your own flock.' Mountain was statesman and churchman in one. He had been chosen by the elder Pitt to be the younger's tutor and then chosen by the younger to be his private secretary. The fact that the Anglican bishop of Quebec was then and for many years afterwards a sort of Canadian chaplain-general to the Imperial troops and that most of the leading officials and leading Loyalists belonged to the Church of England made him a personage of great importance. It was fortunate that, as in the case of Inglis down in Halifax, the choice could not have fallen o

understood the West and its problems, was a devoted Loyalist all through the Revolution, when he raised the King's Royal Regiment of New York, and would have been second only to Carleton himself in the eyes of all Canadians, old and new. But the government thought his private interests too great for his public duty-an excellent general principle, though misapplied in this particular case. At any rate, Simcoe came instead, and the friction began at once. Simcoe's commission clearly made him subordinate to Carleton. Yet Simcoe made appointments without consulting his superior and argued the point after he had been brought to book. He communicated directly with the home government over his superior's head and was not rebuked by the minister to whom he wrote-Henry Dundas, afterwards first Viscount Melville. Dundas, indeed, was half inclined to snub Carleton. Simcoe desired to est

further lessened (1796) by the transfer of the Western Posts to the United States and by the presidential election which gave the Federal party a new lease of power, though no longer under Washington. Had Carleton remained in

riendly party under Washington, Hamilton, and Jay. The Republicans, progenitors of the present Democrats, formed the unfriendly party under Jefferson, Madison, and Randolph. The Federals were in power, the Republicans in opposition. When the Republicans got into power in 1801 under Jefferson they pursued their anti-British policy till they finally brought on the War of 1812 under the presidency of Madison. The strength of the peace party lay in the North; that of the war party lay in the South. The peaceful Federals, now that Independence had been gained, were in favour of meeting the ami

ally because he was a cabinet minister, was even more injudicious when he adopted a tone of reproof towards Carleton, whose great services, past and present, entitled him to unusual respect and confidence. The negotiations for Jay's Treaty were then in progress in London, and Jefferson saw his chance of injuring both the American and British governments by magnifying Carleton's speech into an 'unwarrantable outrage.' He also hoped that an Indian war would upset the treaty and bring on a British war as well. And the prospect did look encouragingly black in the West, where the American general Wayne was ready waiting south of Lake Erie, while the trade in scalps was unusually brisk. Forty dollars was the regular market price for an o

and England were going to war and that was enough. Genet was one of those 'impossibles' whom revolutions throw into ridiculous power. When he began his campaign the Republican South was at his feet. Planters and legislators donned caps of liberty and danced themselves so crazy over the rights of abstract man that they had no enthusiasm left for such concrete instances as Loyalists, Eng

at fever heat for over three years and only cooled down when a British man-of-war captured the incongruously named Olive Branch, in which Ira Allen was trying to run the blockade from Ostend with twenty thousand muskets and other arms which he represented as being solely for the annual drill of the Vermont militia. Thus Carleton had to watch the raging South, the dangerous West, and bellicose Vermont, all together, besides taking whatever measures he could against the swarms of secret enemies within the gates. The American immi

tutions, and much more to the same effect, universal revolutionary brotherhood included. But when Frenchmen came promising fleets and armies, when these emissaries were backed by French Canadians who had left home for good reasons after the troubles of 1775, and when the habitants were positively assured by all these credible witnesses that France and the United States were going to drive the British out of Canada and make

o he naturally thought it best to be on the side of the prospective winners, especially when they persuaded him that he would get back everything taken from him by 'the infamous Quebec Act.' There really was no way whatever of getting him to see the truth under these circumstances. The mere fact that his condition had improved so much under British rule made him all the readier to cry for the Franco-American moon. Things presently went from bad to worse. A glowing, bombastic address from 'The Free French to their Canadian Brothers' (who of course were 'slaves') was even read out at more than one church door. Then the Quebec Assembly unanimously passed an Alien Act in May 1794, and suspected characters began to find th

lly left Quebec on the 9th of July. This was the second occasion on which he had been forced to resign by unfair treatment at the hands of those who should have been his best support. It was infinitely worse the first time, when he was stabbed in the back by that shameless political assassin, Lord George Germain. But the second was also inexcusable because there could be