The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion - John Charles Dent (best historical biographies .TXT) 📗

he could to keep him out of the Speaker's Chair by influencing members in favour of John Willson. He had lost no opportunity of making himself personally offensive to Mr. Bidwell, whose abilities he envied, and whose character he was utterly incapable of appreciating. It will thus be seen that all the attendant circumstances combined to make Mr. Bidwell hate and contemn his adversary. If he failed to do so the explanation was to be found in his own gentle nature, and not in the lessons of humiliation which the Boultons had endeavoured to impose upon him.
It was a memorable scene when the Solicitor-General stood up, on the 20th of February, to receive the admonition which he had been adjudged to endure. He was in a state of tremor, for he was conscious of the disadvantage of his position, and he dreaded the power of the Speaker's tongue. His friends also felt much solicitude on his account, for they knew how little consideration he deserved at the hands of the man who now had him in his power. For some moments a solemn silence reigned supreme. Then the Speaker's voice was heard; low at first, but steadily rising into clear and impressive tones which made every word sink deep into the hearts of the listeners. And the words themselves: how different from what the expectant personage at the bar had looked for! Nothing of malice or revenge there. Nothing but quiet dignity and forbearance. No mere spectator could have told whether the offender was a personal friend or an enemy of the Speaker. The voice was full of feeling, but utterly devoid of passion or malevolence. The power of Parliament was fully vindicated, yet the transgressor escaped without any unnecessary laceration of his pride. "By every member of the community," proceeded Mr. Bidwell, "a ready and cheerful respect should be shown towards the House of Assembly, who represent the people of the Province, whom the constitution has entrusted with important privileges for the benefit of their constituents, and who are amenable to them for all that they do. But it might in a peculiar degree have been expected of you, whose duty it is to enforce submission to the laws and respect for the institutions of the country." Here Mr. Boulton bowed his head as if in mute assent. He was then informed that the House could not permit this formal and gratuitous denial of its authority to pass unnoticed. "It is important," continued the Speaker, "that by its proceedings against you a warning should be given, before others are led by the influence of your sentiments and conduct to dispute an authority which the House is bound to vindicate and enforce. It is necessary that it should go thus far; but it gives me great satisfaction to observe that its duty does not compel, nor its inclination induce it, in your case, to go any farther than is requisite to attain this object; and, finding from your answer that you are now disposed to treat its privileges with just and becoming respect, and to defer your own private opinion to the judgment of that body whose constitutional right it is to decide upon its own privileges, it is willing to dismiss you with no other punishment than this admonition from its Speaker. This moderation is a proof that these privileges have been safely lodged by the constitution in its hands, and that they will never be used in a wanton or oppressive manner. It is by the order and in the name of the House that I thus admonish you, and direct that the Sergeant-at-Arms do now discharge you from custody." He was discharged accordingly, and left the house profoundly affected by the magnanimity of the man whom he had so grievously injured. One who seems to have watched him as he took his departure has recorded that the Boulton crest never hung so low as at that hour.[146] Nothing could have more clearly proved the greatness of soul of Mr. Bidwell than this episode; nothing could have more effectually illustrated his capacity to rise superior to all merely personal considerations when entrusted with the discharge of a public duty. The London _Times_ published a full report of his admonition, which it pronounced to be the best paper of the kind on record.
During the following summer an event took place which removed Attorney-General Robinson from the atmosphere of the Assembly, and was the indirect means of introducing Robert Baldwin to public life. This was the appointment of Mr. Robinson to the place of Chief Justice of Upper Canada. The office had just become vacant through the retirement of Chief Justice Campbell, who had received the honour of knighthood during his absence in England. Mr. Robinson thus obtained the reward which he had long coveted, and which his devotion to successive Lieutenant-Governors had richly earned. There was some doubt as to the strict legality of his passing directly from the office of Attorney-General to that of Chief Justice. To remove the doubt he accepted the position of Registrar of the County of Kent, which he resigned after holding it a few days. His appointment to the Chief Justiceship was made on the 13th of July, but owing to the delay occasioned by his acceptance of the inferior office it was confirmed and re-dated on the 3rd of August following. He then took his seat on the bench, and was destined to remain there for more than thirty-three years. As Chief Justice he succeeded to the Presidency of the Executive Council, and at the opening of the session in the beginning of 1830 he was nominated Speaker of the Upper House. His removal from the Assembly therefore did not remove him from the political arena, and for years afterwards he continued, in conjunction with his friend and quondam tutor Dr. Strachan, to direct the policy of the Government as completely as he had done for some years previously. He was succeeded in the office of Attorney-General by Henry John Boulton. The temporary purpose for which Mr. Hagerman had been appointed to the bench, in place of Mr. Justice Willis, having been fully effected, that gentleman now threw off his official robes and succeeded his friend Boulton as Solicitor-General.
Mr. Robinson's elevation to the bench left a vacancy in the representation of the Town of York. This vacancy young Robert Baldwin successfully aspired to fill. At the last general election, in conjunction with J. E. Small, he had unsuccessfully contested the County of York with W. L. Mackenzie and Jesse Ketchum. He was now opposed in the town by the same individual who had so lately been his coadjutor in the county. Mr. Small was defeated, but, at his instance, the return was declared void, the writ for the election having inadvertently been issued by the Lieutenant-Governor instead of by the Speaker of the Assembly, as in strictness it should have been. A new writ was issued, and Mr. Baldwin again contested the seat, his opponent now being the Sheriff of the County, William Botsford Jarvis. The Sheriff naturally enjoyed many advantages in such a contest, but he was defeated by a considerable majority, and on the opening of the session in the following January, Robert Baldwin, then in his twenty-sixth year, took his seat in Parliament for the first time. He however did not make any conspicuous figure during the session. He had already fully imbibed the idea that a responsible Executive was the great want of Upper Canadian polity, and took comparatively little interest in the subordinate questions of the day. He could see no good purpose to be served by recording successive majorities against the Government, so long as the members of that Government could retain their offices, together with the favour of the Lieutenant-Governor, in spite of any vote which the Assembly might see fit to record. He made no remarkable speeches, and seemed rather disposed to remain in the background. It so happened that he did not again have an opportunity of winning honours in the Legislature for many years, as, in consequence of the death of the king, a dissolution of Parliament took place before the time had arrived for the meeting of another session, and Robert Baldwin was one of the many Reform candidates who were beaten at the general elections which ensued.
There are few facts worthy of record in connection with the session of 1830. In the Speech from the Throne the Lieutenant-Governor was able to announce that the revenue at the disposal of the Crown had been found sufficient to meet the requirements of the civil list, and that there still remained a considerable surplus in the Provincial Treasury. The Assembly's Address in Reply once more drew his Excellency's attention to the want of confidence felt in the advisers by whom he was surrounded. "We still feel unabated solicitude about the administration of public justice," it ran, "and entertain a settled conviction that the continuance about your Excellency of those advisers who from the unhappy policy they pursued have long deservedly lost the confidence of the country, is highly inexpedient, and calculated seriously to weaken the expectations of the people from the impartial and disinterested justice of His Majesty's Government." The response to this intimation is probably the briefest official deliverance of the kind on record. Divested of the formal commencement, it contained exactly six short words: "I thank you for your Address." The number of Bills passed by the Assembly and rejected by the Upper House during the session was twenty-seven. In addition to these there were several Bills which originated in the Assembly, but were afterwards rejected by that House by reason of amendments made to them by the Legislative Council.[147]
FOOTNOTES:
[130] It has not been thought desirable to incumber the text with footnotes except where they seemed to be needed for purposes of elucidation; but in every matter of real importance, where the reader of average information and intelligence may reasonably be supposed to be in doubt as to the source of the narrative, care has been taken to indicate the authority.
[131] _Ante_, p. 48.
[132] _Ante_, p. 140.
[133] See _Seventh Report of Grievance Committee_, p. xxxvii. The School Act referred to was 4 George IV. cap. 8, passed on the 19th of January, 1824. John Henry Dunn, Receiver-General of the Province, seems also to have protested against the measure, and to have consented, under pressure, to the erasure of his protest. See the evidence of the Hon. William Dickson and the Hon. Thomas Clark, referred to in the ensuing paragraph of the text.
[134] The royal assent to this Act was promulgated by a proclamation bearing date April 4th, 1825.
[135] _Ante_, p. 14.
[136] See _Report on Petitions against Wild Lands Assessment Law_, in Appendix to _Journals of Assembly_ for 1828, p. 107 _et seq._
[137] See _The Split in the Legislative Council_, by F. C. [? Francis Collins], p. 7.
[138] _Ib._, p. 8.
[139] _The Split in the Legislative Council_, ubi supra, p. 10.
[140] In 1849.
[141] Such, as far as I have been able to learn, was the conviction of all Mackenzie's contemporaries, even of those most favourably disposed, including those who were thrown into the most intimate relations with him, and were bound to him by close ties. One of the foremost of these, in a conversation with me a short time since, remarked: "Mackenzie generally meant well, but he was unpractical and unmanageable. I knew him intimately from his boyhood, and I am compelled to say that whenever he was in the least excited he acted like a spoiled child. He underwent no change in this respect, and was the same in youth, manhood and old age. A more unfit person to be entrusted with the management of any great enterprise, or with the control of his fellow-creatures, I can hardly conceive." I have abundant written