Canada as a British Colony

CANADA AS A BRITISH COLONY The American Revolution.—After the peace, Canada was governed under the authority of a royal proclamation until, in the Quebec Act was passed by the Imperial Parliament. The western territory which France had claimed, extending as far as the Mississippi and south to the Ohio, was included with Canada in what was called the province of Quebec. This vast territory was to be governed despotically from Quebec ; the Roman Catholic Church was given its old privileges in Canada; and the French civil law was established side by side with the English criminal law. The act linked the land-owning class in Canada and the Church by ties of self-interest to the British cause. The habitant, placed again under their authority, had less reason to be content.

In 1775 began the American revolution. Its leaders tried to make the revolt continental, and invaded Canada, hoping that the French would join them. They took Montreal and besieged Quebec during the winter of 1775-76; but the prudent leader ship of Sir Guy Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester, saved Que bec and in 1776 the revolutionary army withdrew unsuccessful from Canada. Since that time any prospect of Canada's union to the United States has been very remote.

The American revolution profoundly influenced the life of Canada. The country became the refuge of thousands of Ameri can loyalists who would not desert Great Britain. To Nova Scotia, to what are now New Brunswick and Ontario (qq.v.) they fled in numbers not easily estimated, but probably reaching about 40,00o. This meant bitter hostility on the part of these colonists to the United States, which refused in any way to com pensate the loyalists for their confiscated property. Great Britain did something; the loyalists received liberal grants of land and cash compensation amounting to nearly £4,000,000.

Rebellion in Canada.

A prevailingly French type of gov ernment was now no longer adequate in Canada, and in 1791 the Constitutional Act was passed by the British parliament, separat ing Canada at the Ottawa river into two parts, each with its own government; Lower Canada, chiefly French, retaining the old system of laws, with representative institutions now added, and Upper Canada, on the purely British model. (For Lower and Upper Canada, see also QUEBEC and ONTARIO.) Each province had special problems; the French in Lower Canada aimed at securing political power for their own race, while in Upper Canada there was no race problem, and the great struggle was for independence of official control and in all essential matters for government by the people. Before this issue matured war broke out between Great Britain and the United States in 1812 from causes due chiefly to Napoleon's continental policy. The war seemed to furnish a renewed opportunity to annex Canada to the American union, and Canada became the chief theatre of conflict. The struggle was most vigorous on the Niagara frontier. But, in the end, the American invasion failed and the treaty made at Ghent in 1814 left the previous position unaltered.

In 1837 a few French Canadians in Lower Canada, led by Louis Joseph Papineau (q.v.) took up arms with the wild idea of establishing a French republic on the St. Lawrence. In the same year William Lyon Mackenzie (q.v.) led a similar armed revolt in Upper Canada against the domination of the ruling officialdom, which was known locally as the "Family Compact." In 1838 the Earl of Durham (q.v.) was sent to govern Canada and report on the affairs of British North America. Clothed as he was with large powers, he undertook in the interests of leniency and reconciliation to banish, without trial, and so save from possible execution, some leaders of the rebellion in Lower Canada. For this reason he was censured at home and he promptly resigned, after spending only five months in the country. But his Report, published in the following year, is a masterly survey of the situation and included proposals that profoundly influenced the later history of Canada. He recommended the union of the two Canadian provinces at once, the ultimate union of all British North America, and the granting to this large state of full self government. The French element he thought a menace to Canada's future, and he desired all the provinces to unite so that the British element should be dominant.

The Union of Upper and Lower Canada.

To carry out Lord Durham's policy the British Government passed in 1840 an Act of Union joining Upper and Lower Canada, and sent as governor Charles Poulett-Thompson, who was made Baron Sydenham of Kent and Toronto. In the single Parliament each province was equally represented. By this time there were over a million people in Canada, and the country was becoming im portant. Lord Sydenham died in 1841, before his work was com pleted, and he left Canada still in a troubled condition. The French were suspicious of the union, aimed avowedly at checking their influence, and the complete self-government for which the "reformers" in English-speaking Canada had clamoured was not yet conceded by the colonial office. But rapidly it became obvi ous that the provinces united had become too important to be held in leading strings. The issue was finally settled in 1849 and Canada's right to control her own affairs was fully recognized when the earl of Elgin was governor. The Canadian legislature, sitting at Montreal, passed by a large majority the Rebellion Losses Bill, compensating citizens, some of them French, in Lower Canada, for losses incurred at the hands of the loyal party during the rebellion a decade earlier, and the cry was easily raised by the Conservative minority that this was to vote reward for rebellion. They appealed to London for intervention. The mob in Montreal burned the parliament buildings and stoned Lord Elgin himself because he gave the royal assent to the bill. He did so in the face of this fierce opposition, on the ground that, in Canadian domestic affairs, the Canadian parliament must be supreme.

The union of the two provinces did not work well. Each was jealous of the other and deadlocks frequently occurred. Com mercially, after 1849, Canada was prosperous. In 1854 Lord Elgin negotiated a reciprocity treaty with the United States which gave Canadian natural products free entrance to the American market. The outbreak of the Civil War in the United States in 1861 increased the demand for such products, and Canada enjoyed an extensive trade with her neighbour. But, owing largely to the unfriendly attitude of Great Britain to the northern side during the war, the United States cancelled the treaty, when its first term of ten years ended in 1865, and it has never been renewed.

The union of the two provinces, however, did not give political stability. The French and English were sufficiently equal in strength to make the task of government well nigh impossible. In 1864 came the opportunity for change, when New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island were considering a federal union. Canada suggested a wider plan to include herself, and in Oct. 1864 a conference was held at Quebec. The conference outlined a 'plan of federation which subsequently, with slight modifications, passed the imperial parliament as "The British North America Act."