These developments paralleled and in some measure influenced the movement of events in the British North American provinces.But this movement had a color of its own.The growth of self-government in an independent country was one thing; in a colony owing allegiance to a supreme Parliament overseas, it was quite another.The task of the provinces--not solved in this period, it is true, but squarely faced--was to reconcile democracy and empire.
The people of the Canadas in 1791, and of the provinces by the sea a little earlier, had been given the right to elect one house of the legislature.More than this instalment of self-government the authorities were not prepared to grant.The people, or rather the property holders among them, might be entrusted to vote taxes and appropriations, to present grievances, and to take a share in legislation.They could not, however, be permitted to control the Government, because, to state an obvious fact, they could not govern themselves as well as their betters could rule them.
Besides, if the people of a colony did govern themselves, what would become of the rights and interests of the mother country?
What would become of the Empire itself?
What was the use and object of the Empire? In brief, according to the theory and practice then in force, the end of empire was the profit which comes from trade; the means was the political subordination of the colonies to prevent interference with this profit; and the debit entry set against this profit was the cost of the diplomacy, the armaments, and the wars required to hold the overseas possessions against other powers.The policy was still that which had been set forth in the preamble of the Navigation Act of 1663, ensuring the mother country the sole right to sell European wares in its colonies: "the maintaining a greater correspondence and kindness between them [the subjects at home and those in the plantations] and keeping them in a firmer dependence upon it [the mother country], and rendering them yet more beneficial and advantageous unto it in the further Imployment and Encrease of English Shipping and Seamen, and vent of English Woollen and other Manufactures and Commodities rendering the Navigation to and from the same more safe and cheape, and makeing this Kingdom a Staple not only of the Commodities of those Plantations but also of the Commodities of other countries and places for the supplying of them, and it being the usage of other Nations to keep their [plantation] Trade to themselves." Adam Smith had raised a doubt as to the wisdom of the end.The American Revolution had raised a doubt as to the wisdom of the means.Yet, with significant changes, the old colonial system lasted for full two generations after 1776.
In the second British Empire, which rose after the loss of the first in 1783, the means to the old end were altered.To secure control and to prevent disaffection and democratic folly, the authorities relied not merely on their own powers but on the cooperation of friendly classes and interests in the colonies themselves.Their direct control was exercised in many ways.In last reserve there was the supreme authority of King and Parliament to bind the colonies by treaty and by law and the right to veto any colonial enactment.This was as before the Revolution.One change lay in the renunciation in 1778 of the intention to use the supreme legislative power to levy taxes, though the right to control the fiscal system of the colonies in conformity with imperial policy was still claimed and practised.
In fact, far from seeking to secure a direct revenue, the British Government was more than content to pay part of the piper's fee for the sake of being able to call the tune."It is considered by the Well wishers of Government," wrote Milnes, Lieutenant Governor of Lower Canada, in 1800, "as a fortunate Circumstance that the Revenue is not at present equal to the Expenditure." Afurther change came in the minute control exercised by the Colonial Office, or rather by the permanent clerks who, in Charles Buller's phrase, were really "Mr.Mother Country." The Governor was the local agent of the Colonial Office.He acted on its instructions and was responsible to it, and to it alone, for the exercise of the wide administrative powers entrusted to him.
But all these powers, it was believed, would fail in their purpose if democracy were allowed to grow unchecked in the colonies themselves.It was an essential part of the colonial policy of the time to build up conservative social forces among the people and to give a controlling voice in the local administration to a nominated and official class.It has been seen that the statesmen of 1791 looked to a nominated executive and legislative council, an hereditary aristocracy, and an established church, to keep the colony in hand.British legislation fostered and supported a ruling class in the colonies, and in turn this class was to support British connection and British control.How this policy, half avowed and half unconscious, worked out in each of the provinces must now be recorded.
In Upper Canada party struggles did not take shape until well after the War of 1812.At the founding of the colony the people had been very much of one temper and one condition.In time, however, divergences appeared and gradually hardened into political divisions.A governing class, or rather clique, was the first to become differentiated.Its emergence was slower than in New Brunswick, for instance, since Upper Canada had received few of the Loyalists who were distinguished by social position or political experience.In time a group was formed by the accident of occupation, early settlement, residence in the little town of York, the capital after 1794, the holding of office, or by some advantage in wealth or education or capacity which in time became cumulative.The group came to be known as the Family Compact.
