CHAPTER 10

The Paralysis of the Political System (Part Three)

The Defence of the Imperial System

Despite its internal crises over leadership, the patriote party appeared to be constantly on the initiative and to be moving triumphantly from victory to victory. None of the governors succeeded, as Craig had done, in breaking its strength through divisive tactics. The patriotes had the power to paralyse the political system and also to force their adversaries to commit blunders, or at the very least to endure the odium of obstruction. Their electoral successes allowed them to proclaim their representativeness at every opportunity and point with derision at their opponents’ lack of it. Said Papineau in 1831, “We see here in this House property immovable and movable, trade, manufacturing, in a word all social interests represented. The Legislative Council represents what other interests? None but self-interest, the greed of people in power.”¹ He and his lieutenants, who were often accused of being mere errand boys of a social minority pretending to represent an entire ethnic group, identified the “bureaucratic party,” as they termed it, with a minority spawned by political patronage, the ooze, so to speak, of the imperial system, a minority with no roots whatever in the local society. With such a caricature of the enemy, so useful as the image of evil in diverting popular attention, they saw cohesion and total identity of interests where the reality of situations was often more fluid and complex, and underestimated the enemy’s resilience to both political and economic pressure. The patriote leaders’ principal error was indeed their persistence in seeing economic power as a pure emanation of political power.

Frederick Elliott’s analysis seems more realistic.² He discerned two factions within the English party. One, comprised of senior government functionaries, appears to have been approaching the terminal phase of decline:

The Official–or as the French term it–Bureaucratic party is composed of a few old men, holding the highest offices. They seem to be fond of privilege, jealous of interference, and ready to take offence at any inquiry into the popular allegations. Most of them are dull, and those who are the reverse, are said to be interested. It is of very little consequence what they are. Whatever influence they may have formerly exercised, through the instrumentality of weak Governors, they are now destitute of any of the real elements of power, having neither connections at home, nor weight in the Province.

In the merchant arm of the party Elliott saw no such decline:

Very different from this feeble Corps, is the real “English party.” It is composed of almost all the Merchants, with an admixture of considerable Landholders, and of some of the younger and more intelligent Civil Officers. It possesses much intelligence, much wealth and still more credit, and in addition to these, it has all that mutual confidence, and that precision and unity of purpose, which to do our countrymen justice, they know better than any other people how to confer on political associations.

Far from considering the English party as a coalition of interests conciliable in all matters, Elliott had distinct doubts about the solidarity of the ties uniting the merchants to the government and the empire; it was their economic interests, he conceived, which conditioned their loyalty, and he was not optimistic for the future.

Yet I do not like the English party. It is fully as ambitious of dominion as the French party, and, in my opinion, prepared to seek it by more unscrupulous means. Whenever either of the two, at the present moment, speaks of separation, I look upon it as mere bombast, or artifice to bend the course of Government, but depend upon it that if ever these heats in Lower Canada should go so far as to hazard the connection with the Mother Country, the English will be the foremost to cut the tie. They, of the two parties, are the best disposed to sympathize with Republican principles; and, I must add, the most capable to wield Republican Institutions. They are the most rancorous, for they remember the power they have lost, and hate their rivals as a sort of usurpers.

There is no doubt that the party was first and foremost an English-speaking party, and drew its support from the English-speaking population. Yet its social composition as described by Elliott had an appeal for certain of the French Canadians. And in 1835, after its crippling electoral defeat of the year before, it was still fighting doggedly to recover the political power it had lost twenty years earlier.

By 1815, the party had become the tool of social groups which, by virtue of their interests and values, were firmly attached to the imperial system and held conservative views regarding the operation of political institutions in the colonial milieu. The civil servants, most of them English-speaking and many of them English expatriates, felt genuinely threatened by increasing French-Canadian claims to government employment, and most of all by the growing strength of the Canadian party with its political theories envisaging the ultimate conquest of power and control of patronage. Many were clever and competent, but, with an increasing number of others aspiring to join their ranks, they were both envied and distrusted for their arbitrary behaviour, particularly concerning their self-perpetuation. Along with the military “establishment,” they were the hard core of political conservatism, the most susceptible to ethnic and religious prejudice, the most inclined to look down on the local population, the most committed to monarchy, aristocracy, and Anglican Church privileges. For those French Canadians dedicated to authority, monarchy, and aristocracy, their conservative attitudes exerted a strong appeal.

English merchant conservatism was of different source. In the difficult context following the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, this group’s preoccupation was economic development based on Lower Canada’s forest resources and cultivation of new farmland in the townships and in Upper Canada. This would require large-scale immigration, infusion of considerable capital, road construction, and above all a St Lawrence canal system. Easing prices and intense American competition, particularly with the completion of the Erie Canal, emphasized the urgency of economic development in an east-west direction, if Upper Canada were not to turn toward the United States. For such development a continuing British market, with preferential tariffs on timber and grain, was essential, as was a banking system; major obstacles were seen in the seigneurial régime, old French customary law, and the absence of land registry offices. As long as capitalist interests failed to gain strength in the legislative assembly, realization of such development, and the defence of preferential tariffs which were then under attack in England, appeared impossible. With its dependence on the colonial system, the English-speaking business community simply could not subscribe to political theories designed to change the colony’s relationship with the mother country. Perhaps most stimulating to this group’s conservatism and British loyalty was its impotence in an elected assembly dominated by a party hostile to its vision of economic development.

In 1815 only 20 per cent of the assembly were English-speaking and only 25 per cent were English party members; only in the cities, in the two minor urban areas, and in certain seigneurial ridings was the party able to elect members. Through the Taschereaus and Caldwell it was strong in Dorchester, and in Trois-Rivières through the Bell and Hart families; in Sorel and Bedford the Joneses were still in control, as were the seigneurs Cuthbert and Dumont in Warwick and York. Thus, the party that was committed to the balance of powers theory was virtually bound to seek intimacy with the executive and with the legislative council.

Craig and Prevost, with their emphasis on the balance of powers, had undoubtedly been seeking that balance in their appointments to the legislative and executive councils. In 1811 there were ten English and only four French executive councillors; the French were all seigneurs and the English were senior civil servants, judges, important merchants, and the Anglican bishop. Prevost’s seven appointments did not change the ethnic ratio. Some of the executive councillors were also members of the legislative council, which comprised six French-Canadian seigneurs and aristocrats and seven English senior civil servants and judges.³ Prevost’s appointments increased the aristocratic character of the body. Clearly, even the governors who were considered liberal and sympathetic to the French were preoccupied with neutralizing the popular tendencies of the Canadian party, the majority in the assembly, though the community of interests linking the English party leaders, the legislative council, and the governors was neither automatic nor complete. That conjugation of powers, however, was insufficient to force the hand of the majority in the assembly; in fact, each of the two power blocs could only stall the initiatives of the other, for the system reposed on compromise and conciliation.

Since the English party could not rely on wide distribution of electoral support, even among the English-speaking, its quest for power was always precariously based, and the legitimacy of that power open to question. When Governor Sir Gordon Drummond dissolved the assembly in 1816 on instructions from London, the English party was in fact the loser, for the English electorate was even less cohesive than before and though the new assembly differed little from its predecessor in composition, its tone was more radical. Drummond’s successor, Sir John Sherbrooke, wrote, “I cannot avoid submitting to Your Lordship my humble opinion that, in this country, where there is no room for the exertion of Salutary government influence such as exists in England, the strong measure of a dissolution must in almost all possible circumstances of the country produce rather evil than advantage….”⁴

Sherbrooke would use neither dissolution nor the legislative council against the Canadian party. For him, diplomacy was by far the more effective measure. Like Prevost, he saw a moderating influence in the clergy and appointed Bishop Plessis to an enlarged legislative council, hoping to profit by the prelate’s influence both there and with the assembly, and to restore the council’s respectability in the eyes of the French Canadians. Turning to the Canadian party, he encouraged Papineau’s rise to leadership, for he considered James Stuart to be the principal fomenter of current political problems. In his eyes, Papineau was sincere, malleable, and moderate; he even proposed his appointment to the executive council. Having analysed the financial situation, he recognized that the colonial government could not function normally without the co-operation of the party in control of the assembly, and in 1818 proposed a compromise involving the civil list. In fact, so concerned was he for conciliation that he missed the real significance of the struggle for political power and played straight into the Canadian party’s hands. Papineau’s amenability proved to be only skin-deep and short-lived.

Sherbrooke was forced by illness to withdraw. His successor, the Duke of Richmond, in whom the English party had cause to have greater confidence, had powerful connections and a pressing need to repair the state of his coffers. He held himself and his prestige as the king’s representative in high esteem, but was all too susceptible to pressure from his entourage. He espoused the cause of the English party entirely, arrogantly, and perhaps without forethought. Against the Canadian party he used the traditional weapons of recourse to the legislative council to block dangerous bills and dissolution of the assembly to obtain modification of its composition. The two elections he provoked, however, did nothing to improve the popularity of the English party, even among English and Irish voters. And when Lord Dalhousie became governor in 1820 the climate of confrontation worsened even further, with both sides making reprisals.

Dalhousie had been administrator of the peaceful province of Nova Scotia. Of Lower Canada he said, “I find it a country most sadly distressed by party spirit, national jealousies, political speculators and general poverty in all classes and conditions of people.” He was a Presbyterian Scot, serious and intelligent, and a man of good intentions but cold exterior. He perceived many abuses and at first hoped earnestly to correct them with complete impartiality. He determined to take control of the distribution of local patronage away from London and assure its equal distribution between the ethnic groups. He envisioned reform of the executive council, to which Papineau was appointed, in order to gain the population’s confidence in it and make it work. He expected to obtain like results with all government institutions. In a situation free of conflict he might have done well, but he was not prepared to compromise where he encountered antagonism. The slightest opposition or even hesitation would throw him into a towering rage. He took too many things personally, as demonstrated when he discovered Receiver-General Henry Caldwell’s prevarication over accounts. He and Papineau regarded each other with mutual dislike. The balance of powers was once again the governor’s preoccupation;⁵ he expected each individual to fulfil the role which he, Dalhousie, would assign, and if peace and harmony did not ensure, ambition and ill-will were responsible. He was due for bitter disappointment, of course.

Dalhousie’s hatred of opponents of any ilk took on a strong ethnic tone as opposition came regularly from the Canadian party leaders. Soon he realized that the quarrel over money votes was part of the political power struggle. He was horrified by the pretensions of the Canadian party, which he considered a rabble of illiterate and ignorant peasants led by the nose by a handful of ambitious, dishonourable, and dishonest advocates. All very French, thought he, and completely foreign to British respectability. His hostility toward Papineau, whose native intelligence he recognized, became particularly intense. Failing to perceive the weaknesses in the enemy’s ranks, he came to view the French-Canadian society as a virtually monolithic bloc, with the clergy united firmly with the Canadian party agitators. In a great many intrigues he even suspected Monseigneur Plessis’s hand at work. Nevertheless, he negotiated at length with the prelate, particularly over the Royal Institution, but without observing or profiting from the many points of common interest between the clergy and the government. By now practically a party faction leader himself, he suspected the curés of intervening in elections and attributed many defeats to them. Monseigneur Lartigue, in his eyes, besides being cousin to his two bêtes noires, Papineau and Viger, was especially hateful, a religious and political agitator busily sowing discord in a society already over-endowed with demagogues. In fact, Lartigue, Papineau, and Dalhousie had much in common psychologically.

Despite Dalhousie’s initial intention to remain impartial, the supply question drew him to the English party camp, and even there he found enemies. His sympathy lay mostly with the Scottish merchants of Montreal.⁶ In the circumstances, he was obliged to seek support from the two councils, and his appointments to them increased their partisan and English character. Papineau attended a few executive council meetings and then withdrew, partly perhaps because he did not want to live permanently in Quebec. Charles De Léry was Dalhousie’s only other French-Canadian appointee to the body.

New members were appointed to the legislative council in the same ethnic proportion, contrary to tradition; only Toussaint Pothier and J.-T. Taschereau found favour with the governor. To Dalhousie’s annoyance, he found the French and even some of the English legislative councillors lacking in appropriate docility; a number of them were distressed and alarmed both by the governor’s attitude and the extremism of their “bureaucratic” colleagues. The legislative council therefore divided into two factions, whose positions hardened during the crisis of 1822, and the division was to remain. The individuals who had the governor’s full confidence were all strongly partisan. C.R. Ogden was one of these; he controlled the town of Trois-Rivières electorally and had powerful connections in business and government circles. It was he who drew up a long list of accusations against Judge Pierre Bédard, probably in reprisal for Canadian party accusations against Judges Monk, Sewell, and Foucher. Patronage came more readily than ever before through association with the English party; Vallières de Saint-Réal, for instance, had to show himself to be the very model of moderation before being made a judge shortly after Dalhousie’s departure.

It would not appear that Dalhousie had any substantial part in the preparation of the union plan of 1822, or even its arrival in London, but he was certainly in agreement with its purpose. The idea of political union was not new; frustration among the English-speaking had already brought it to the surface on occasion. Economic depression and political imbroglio in 1822 led many to attribute virtually all the post-war economic and social problems of Lower Canada to the Canadian party. The unionists condemned the 1791 constitution for permitting control of the political system to fall to an anti-commercial, French, and procedure-bound majority. The legislature of the province, they said, had been so embroiled in dissention and procedure that commerce, agriculture, education, and other matters had been neglected; there was no law for registration of property and mortgages, or to deal with insolvent debtors, or for representation of the townships, and the petitioners had little hope of obtaining these and many other measures.⁷ Further, they blamed the majority in the assembly for blocking east-west development, and deplored the power of the assembly over import duties (which effectively taxed both provinces), its inflexibility over division of these revenues, and its reluctance to accept the massive investments necessary to improve transportation, thus retarding the economic expansion of the two provinces.

It [the division into two provinces] has also, from the control which the geographical situation of the Lower Province enables it to exercise over the trade of the Canadas placed the export trade of the Upper Province at its mercy being subject to such regulations and restrictions at the Shipping Port, as its Legislature may chose [sic] to impose. From this circumstance, and from the feeble attempts made to improve the grand natural channel of the Canadas strikingly contrasted with the enterprise and energy evinced by the neighbouring State of New York in the rapid formation of Canals, together with the indifference manifested on this subject by the Legislature of the Lower Province; Your petitioners have just reason for alarm that if a similar system be persisted in, it may tend in a most injurious degree to increase the Commercial Intercourse of the Upper Province with the United States and divert the enterprise and trade of its inhabitants into a foreign channel and from these causes Your Petitioners not only apprehend the immediate loss of beneficial Trade, but that the gradual effect would be to interweave the interests of Upper Canadians with those of the neighbouring States, thereby alienating their minds from Your Majesty’s Government, notwithstanding their present known and tried loyalty.⁸

The importance of economic considerations to the unionists is clear. A petition from the inhabitants of the Eastern Townships expressed the local frustrations over the lack of roads, registry offices, local courts, electoral ridings, and their necessary submission to French law, which, they complained, deprived them of the instruments of development and the possibility of political action. The purpose of the dominant party in the assembly, they maintained, was to prevent development of the townships, block canalling of the St Lawrence, and force the immigrants to assimilate.

The present crisis therefore offers this alternative to Great Britain, either by uniting the Provinces to hold out inducements to the French to become English, or by continuing the separation to hold out inducements to the English in Lower Canada to become French, and the question is not whether a country already peopled is to renounce its national feelings and characteristics as the French Canadians may endeavour to represent, but whether a country for the most part waste, and to be hereafter chiefly peopled by a British race is to assume the character, language and manners of a foreign nation.⁹

The townships petitioners clearly anticipated that union of the provinces would lead to assimilation of the French Canadians by the larger group of British origin.

For all categories of unionists, whatever their particular objectives, the purpose of union was to break the Canadian party’s stranglehold on the legislative assembly. The proposed bill, in its clauses on representation, shows this without a shadow of doubt. The Roman Catholic religion was to be allowed full freedom, on condition that clerical appointments have royal approval, which provision would allow stricter control over the bishops. English would be the sole official written language and eventually the sole language of debate. The old social régime was to be preserved, except that future legislators would be empowered to change it.

The English-speaking population does not seem to have been won over by the plan. Many in Lower Canada disliked the secrecy of its preparation, its punitive nature, and, for a variety of reasons, its objectives. The results of the 1824 elections suggest sharp division among English-speaking electors. The English membership in the assembly dropped from eleven to nine, six of them Canadian party members or moderates. The number of “bureaucratic party” English members was reduced from nine to three. The English-speaking vote in Quebec’s Upper Town, with a large proportion of the English professionals and businessmen supporting Canadian party rather than English-speaking candidates, tends to confirm the impression (see Table 76).

Since 1815, the English-speaking population had lost much of its cohesion. The authoritarian governors Drummond, Richmond, and Dalhousie had undoubtedly helped separate the liberals from the staunch conservatives. The union plan had all too clearly shown the hand of functionaries and wealthy businessmen. Not even the majority of Upper Canadians were enthusiastic; only the businessmen of Kingston were in favour, because of their connections with the merchants of Montreal. The rest seemed to prefer to keep their political autonomy, fearing domination by the Montreal merchants and increased political dependency on Lower Canada. The British authorities knew that the French Canadians were opposed, but not that the opinion among the English-speaking was so divided.

The bill met with unexpected opposition in the British House of Commons and was set aside “for the moment,” as Bathurst wrote to Dalhousie. The government considered it suitable and wise in theory, but inopportune in view of the lack of support hoped for and in the light of ensuing events.¹⁰ What killed it was vigorous opposition in both the Canadas and from a few members of the British House.

The unionists turned to Dalhousie. In 1824 a group of Montreal inhabitants petitioned the governor to preserve at all costs the rights and prerogatives of the crown, declaring their conviction that these had safeguarded the English character of the province, and were essentail to good government and even more so to the petitioners as their principal refuge in case of danger, their protection against the French Canadians, and their sole hope of averting anarchy and chaos.¹¹

The governor hardly needed urging. In his eyes the future of monarchist and aristocratic institutions depended on the outcome of the struggle for control of the public purse. He departed for England to bolster support there, leaving the diplomatic and conciliating Sir Francis Burton in charge, who, during his absence, manoeuvred a bill almost exactly corresponding to the Canadian party’s demands through both the assembly and the legislative council. James Richardson announced the news to Dalhousie, stressing the powerful role played in the operation by Bishop Plessis:

The Canadian Bishop mustered a phalanx to support the Bill whatever it might be, and to rescind my resolutions, as they are generally called. He succeeded in the former but failed in the latter, it being alleged that the Bill did not touch upon them…. He brought down Messrs Cuthbert and De Bartzch, got up Mr. Turgeon from below and old De Salaberry and Colonel Taschereau were brought from the brink of the grave to be present–neither having attended at any part of the sessions….¹²

Dalhousie felt he had been betrayed by his entourage and by the Catholic and French-Canadian legislative councillors. On his return, which some had thought unlikely, he mobilized his forces, had Burton censured and repudiated, performed a few other imperious acts to impress the élite and the electorate in general, and prorogued the legislature, which of course meant a general election. Control of supplies, the election issue, by now clearly symbolized the defence of rights and interests–French-Canadian and nationalistic on the one side and English and bureaucratic on the other. In the election of 1827 the Dalhousie forces suffered a humiliating defeat: Simpson and the Seigneur Dumont were beaten in York; Morrison in Warwick; Hart in St-Maurice; Davidson, James Stuart, McCallum, and Després in Dorchester, Sorel, and Devon; in the three Montreal ridings, Molson, McGill, Grant, and Delisle. Outside Quebec and Montreal, the only survivors were R. Christie in Gaspé, Ogden in Trois-Rivières, and the moderates Mousseau and Cannon. In Quebec riding, Ryland was defeated by the patriotes Neilson and Clouet, obtaining only 10 per cent of the French vote and 49 per cent of the English, which suggests that almost all the English electors gave him their first vote and divided their second between Neilson (31 per cent) and Clouet (20 per cent) (see Table 77). Quebec’s Lower Town elected one patriote and one English party candidate. In the Upper Town, Andrew Stuart, former patriote and now a moderate “bureaucrat,” was the only English-speaking candidate; he and Vallières de Saint-Réal were the victors (see Table 76). The ideological positions of the candidates were unclear, but the English liberals and Irish Catholics were beginning to lean toward the English party. Stuart received only 12 per cent of the French vote and Berthelot only 6 per cent of the English; Vanfelson received 63 per cent of his vote from the English. In this riding, 99 English electors were military, civil servants, Protestant clergy, gentlemen, and merchants; they had a right to 198 votes and yet they cast only 150, 87 for Stuart, 37 for Saint-Réal (considered a “bureaucrat”), 24 for Vanfelson (judged to be reassuring) and only 2 for Berthelot (viewed as a dangerous patriote). The Quebec Mercury pronounced:

Never have we witnessed more devotion on the part of a committee than that shown by the gentlemen who supported Mr. Stuart. The cause is obvious, independent of the esteem in which he is personally held, and the approbation due to the principle on which he grounds his public conduct, the electors of the Upper Town were indignant at the attempt made to deprive them of the power of returning one member to represent the British portion of the city….¹³

The English party emerged from the election in disarray and quite incapable of exerting any influence in the assembly. If Dalhousie had been less personally involved, he might even have felt contrary winds blowing from England. As early as July, 1827, Lord Goderich wrote him to point out that in the United Kingdom the civil list was granted for the life of the king, and the arrangement would be reasonable also in Lower Canada. He proposed that Dalhousie announce to the assembly that His Majesty did not wish the question to be a cause of discord and that Parliament would be asked to give the assembly control of all currently collected crown revenues in the province which were not already under its control.¹⁴

But Dalhousie seems at this point to have lost all capacity to appreciate the evolution of the political situation. He refused to accept Papineau as speaker of the House, declaring him unfit as the leader of a party with violent propensities. Papineau, considering it degrading to have a governor become de facto a party leader, resolved thereupon to have Dalhousie’s head. Reorientation of colonial policy and further blunders by Dalhousie resulted in his recall in the spring of 1828, when he described Lower Canada as a country divided against itself, torn by racial hatred and jealousies of every sort.

His successor, Sir James Kempt, was a conciliator and compromiser and as such could not identify with the English party. Its leadership of necessity fell to a collegium, John Richardson being a member of both councils and not free to function fully as leader. The report of the British Commons committee of 1828 agreed almost entirely with the Canadian party’s view on control of supply and suggested a reform of the two councils, which provided additional consternation for the English party. In conjunction with reformist thinking in England, there loomed the spectre of a total overhaul of the existing colonial system on which the hopes of the civil servants and merchants of Lower Canada were pinned.

But at least one sure source of support remained, and that was the legislative council left by Dalhousie, a body of twenty-seven of whom twenty-one were English-speaking (judges, civil servants, merchants, and the Anglican bishop) and the rest French-Canadian seigneurs and aristocrats. Its support was indeed vital to the English party during the transition period of 1828-32, when the party’s influence was at a low ebb in Canada and in England, and when the majority party, now known as the parti patriote, was bent on disqualifying judges from both the councils. But its efficacy in obstruction and counterbalancing had been undermined by parti patriote strategy, for the party had shown a conciliatory attitude to some of the business community’s objectives and had won a measure of sympathy from English electors. Now there were banks, the Lachine Canal had been financed, and some funds had even been voted for the Welland Canal. Between 1828 and 1831, the patriote party further mollified its critics by giving representation to the townships and voting considerable sums for roads and education. The projects launched, however, gave the assembly an executive function and also its own source of patronage. And the legislative council could hardly obstruct projects of such clear advantage to the business milieu.

Governor Aylmer came to Quebec in 1830 imbued with optimism and the spirit of reform and complete impartiality. “The country itself far surpasses my expectations,” he wrote. “Its resources are every day unfolding themselves, with such rapidity and to such extent that it is impossible for the imagination to prescribe limits to them.”¹⁵ To Goderich he wrote, “My first and principal object has been to produce in the minds of the Canadians whatever of French or English extraction, a conviction that I am determined to act upon the principle of strict impartiality and to remain a watchful spectator of…those party views which have caused so much strife and bad feeling in the colony.”¹⁶ He also showed great indulgence toward the old French-Canadian institutions which the English-speaking were so determined to abolish or reform. But his lack of experience and eccentricities were perplexing to many.

In his first year he tackled the complex and difficult task of reforming the two councils. He appointed Philippe Panet to the executive council and then attempted to lure Papineau to it. Having been rebuffed, he wrote to Goderich:

It is quite impossible to go further, than I do, in condemning the Public conduct, and language of that gentleman in the House of Assembly and he must himself be well aware of this, for I have expressed myself without reserve on the subject to some of his most intimate friends, and altho as an individual I live on good (I may say cordial) terms with Mr. Papineau, whose private character I must esteem, I studiously avoid all conversation with him on the conduct of the public affairs of the Province. My recommendation of him therefore to be a member of the Executive Council, could not have proceeded from any favourable disposition towards him, as a public character, but I felt desirous, I confess, to shew Mr. Papineau, and all those who participate in his political sentiments, that the administration of the Province was free of all party connections.¹⁷

Papineau charged all his supporters to follow his example and resist the governor’s attempts to corrupt them. Neilson obeyed, but Dominique Mondelet accepted the invitation, partly because of pressure from clerical circles, and earned himself scorn and rejection from the hard-core patriotes. He was followed shortly by H. Heney, another disenchanted patriote, to whom Aylmer wrote, “I have nothing more at heart in my administration of this government than to surround myself with every thing that is respectable and talented in the country de toutes les couleurs.”¹⁸

Aylmer also tried to change and improve the legislative council. In 1831 D.-B. Viger and Louis Guy were appointed to it along with two English merchants. Two years later, eleven new members were named, eight French Canadians, all seigneurs and aristocrats, and three English merchants, and the following year François Quirouet and Joseph Masson, both merchants, were named. Papineau promptly pronounced that the new council was worse than the old. On revenues, Aylmer met with obstinate silence from Papineau, who declared that their control was no longer a priority.

Aylmer was not unaware that his attempts at reform were failing because the patriote movement was steadily assuming a more radical stance; in 1831 he attributed its leaders’ behaviour “to a latent desire to dissolve the existing connection with Great Britain.”¹⁹ Two years later when their ideology and purpose had become more clearly defined, he wrote to Glenelg:

It is very evident that Mr. Papineau and his party have taken up new ground, for they no longer confine themselves to false or exaggerated statement of abuses in the administration of the existing government; their avowed object is now to alter the whole frame of the Constitution and Government of the colony; to render the former purely democratic and the latter purely elective…. Mr. Papineau indeed goes a step beyond his coadjutor the Hon. Mr. Debartzch for, according to him, the office of governor like every other office in the colony should be elected.²⁰

In 1834 he wrote to Spring-Rice: “It is now evident that His Majesty’s Government will have to encounter fresh opposition from the House of Assembly, which I cannot refrain from repeating, is not to be satisfied with any concessions on the part of the Mother Country, short of the total abandonment of the Government into the hands of Mr. Papineau and Company.”²¹ In November he wrote bluntly that the 1834 elections had “assumed a feature of nationality unknown on former similar occasions,”²² and a month later he saw a crisis fast approaching: “I believe the line of separation between the contending parties here has never been so thoroughly marked as at the present time….”²³

Though Aylmer had grasped the nature and characteristics of the power struggle, he failed to appreciate the extent of the patriote party’s hold over the population, assuming that it depended only on the leaders’ ability to delude the lower classes. His arrival had coincided with the party’s period of revision of ideology and strategy, and the internal party tensions had registered with him as being of great significance. He was convinced that the deceit which bound the people to the party’s oligarchy was about to be revealed for what it was. As early as 1831 he was predicting disintegration of the party, writing to Kempt: “Circumstances which occurred during the Session just terminated had very much lowered the party who hitherto has been paramount in the House of Assembly…. Certainly the House of Assembly has taken up a new character and I am much mistaken if the members will suffer themselves any longer to be led by the nose as they have hitherto been by a few individuals.”²⁴ In June, 1832, he wrote to Goderich in the same vein:

Upon a careful review of passing events I am much disposed to entertain favourable anticipation in regard to the tranquillity of the Province. The Ultra Liberal party (or as it is termed here the Papineau party) are going to great lengths and will probably in the end disgust, or estrange from them many who have hitherto acted with them. They are discountenanced by the clergy and as they seek to draw a line between the British inhabitants and the Canadians of French extraction, the former will unite and rally around the Government.²⁵

In the autumn of the same year he was foreseeing the possibility of a third, more moderate party:

…there is good ground to hope that a third and most powerful party may be created. One that shall combine all that is respectable and talented amongst the French Canadians and the British established in the colony; and which if once declared would soon extinguish the influence of the Ultra’s on either side. It is to be observed however that in endeavouring to accomplish this desirable object the prejudices and feelings of the French Canadians require to be treated with great delicacy.²⁶

The increasingly radical stance of the patriote party, Aylmer was convinced, was merely revealing desperate efforts by the party leaders to keep their organization alive and moving. In late November, 1832, he told Goderich, “The fact is, that Mr. Papineau and his party felt that they are daily losing ground in Public estimation; and their only chance of recovering it is to provoke a prorogation….”²⁷ This interpretation was held by many in England until late 1834 and even after. Wrote James Stephen, Under-Secretary of the Colonial Office, in September:

It is, I apprehend, to this circumstance, and to the consequent apprehension that their Power was in danger, that the more recent proceedings of Mr. Papineau and his associates are to be ascribed. They perceived not only their stock of grievances but the number, the weight of their adherents, rapidly diminishing, and it became necessary to find means of fomenting a quarrel, which might otherwise have been extinguished to the entire overthrow of their own importance.²⁸

Aylmer held to his interpretation throughout his term of office, and remained unperturbed by increasing calls to arms and talk of revolution in 1835. He was sure that the people were loyal to Great Britain and had nothing in common with the Americans, and that the agitators lacked the strength to undertake a revolution. Inevitably, since he opposed the patriote ideology, he was drawn into party politics and in his appointments gave serious consideration to political affiliation. His appointment of Samuel Gale to the bench was approved by the British authorities, who felt it necessary however to remark: “…that when any future occasion may arise for recommending an appointment of this kind, your Lordship will weigh [scrupulously] the claims of those who may be considered as the fitting candidates, and that you will not allow any circumstances to interfere with the fair pretensions of the French Canadian portion of the Bar whenever they can be satisfactorily supported.”²⁹

Two weeks later, Aberdeen asked Aylmer to withhold the announcement of Gale’s appointment until he could announce a French Canadian as successor to Judge Kerr: “This just and equal distribution of office will afford a practical proof of your impartiality….”³⁰ The governor had in fact, despite his original intent, become too politically involved. As Stephen remarked,“…when, as in Canada, the distinctions of national character and descent coincide with those of parties in the State, the observance of [certain] maxims assumes the semblance and incurs the reproach of national antipathy and prejudice.”³¹

As the patriote movement became more and more radical, it was inevitable that the English party, the legislative council, and the governor would renew their alliance. Individuals in favour of preservation of the monarchy and aristocracy and opposed to the idea of independence, however acquired, were bound to rally round the government and the party which supported it. The “bureaucrat” leaders quickly grasped the real implications of patriote party strategy; behind talk of abstract principles there was, as always, thought of other things. Thus, John Richardson opposed the incorporation of Montreal, which he might have welcomed as a normal development, because, he said, whereas he admired all the constitutional branches when they worked together, in the province there seemed to be a disposition and determination to gather all the power of the country to the popular branch.³² In other words, he was alarmed at the thought of the administration of Montreal and all the local institutions falling into the hands of the patriote party. It was not the peasants and working classes but the French-Canadian middle classes which the English milieu dreaded finding in control of all the real political power. This is reflected in the results of the by-election in Quebec’s Upper Town in 1829, and also in the Lower Town vote in 1832 (see Tables 78 and 79).

When the patriote party began openly to show its partiality for republicanism and to demand election of the legislative council, political debate became even more violent than ever. B.C. Gugy, the member for Sherbrooke, a moderate who voted occasionally with the patriote party and one of the few assembly members who could stand up to Papineau, replied vigorously to the attacks on the council, as reported in La Minerve:

Men, when gathered in a body, cannot invariably have the same sentiments, and though the idea might here appear heretical, it lent support to his argument…. That the king should create peers was an integral part of the English constitution. But the king was only the regulator between the two other principles comprised in a limited monarchy: democracy which was represented by the commons and the aristocracy by the lords, and these elements had been so well placed that, for over a century, the veto had never been exercised by the royal authority…. Experience in all countries proved that an intermediary body was necessary, but if this body becomes elective, it will be under the control of the people and thus the balance will be broken. It has been said that the people had the influence [ultimate power]: yes, undoubtedly, but that influence must have limits. In a word, the democratic branch must be held in check by the wealthy and educated class which always has an interest in the prosperity of the entire State.³³

With his traditional view of representative institutions, Gugy accused the patriotes of cultivating ideas which would lead inevitably to armed revolution:

When they laud their republican institutions to us, I prefer this [our] paternal and protective government which does not produce disorder and anarchy. Republics cannot survive for long. Excessive liberty gives rise to riots, defiance in the populace, and soon there come revolutions, butchery, and anarchy. The United States already gives a thousand examples that their system cannot be a durable one and is inadequate.³⁴

Neither the seigneur Gugy nor the merchant Richardson were political theorists, but neither entertained any illusions regarding the patriote leaders’ intentions. “Thirst for position has made this warfare,” Gugy said bluntly.³⁵ He accused Papineau of wanting power for himself, for the leaders of his party, and for French Canadians to the exclusion of all others. Replying to the patriote leader on the Ninety-two Resolutions, he said in the House:

Passion sometimes dominates public men; [and it] makes them say: move over so I can take that place, I want to rule, I want to dominate, I want to occupy the rank of that miserable, lily-livered, despicable English faction…. Is there any more convincing proof of our liberty than the venomous and insulting terms he [feels free to use] against what he calls an English faction, when it curbs his plans of aggrandizement…[?] I say that the passions of a man who believes that everything is made for him, that the sun and the moon shine only for him are dangerous and deadly.³⁶

Gugy, who proclaimed himself a Canadien of English origin, assumed the role of spokesman for the English-speaking, both native-born and immigrant: “They say those of English origin are few. Those of French origin are not the only Canadians, though. I grant that they are virtuous; I allow them what is theirs; I am ready to come to their defence on occasion; but I do not consider that I should be the object of persecution if I venture to believe that those who do not think as the hon. speaker have rights as inhabitants of this country.”³⁷ On the patriotes’ insistence on election of the legislative council he said:

…I would be convinced that the elective council would have disadvantages. In a country where we see the speaker of one of the branches of the legislature appeal so often to passions and where the majority of inhabitants are of French origin, if the council were elective, who would represent our fellow subjects who come from England, who have the same rights as we and are Canadians like us[?] There would be a council and a house which would [both] be motivated by the same sentiments, sentiments like those already stated, when it has been made a crime for a very respectable public servant to have an English name and he has been dismissed for that reason.³⁸

The idea of an elective legislative council was regarded with great alarm by the English-speaking. “The Canadians of British origin,” wrote James Stephen, “have been…accustomed to look to the Legislative Council for defence against the partiality which they ascribe to the members of the House of Assembly….”³⁹

From 1832 on, the English party made concerted efforts to obtain unanimity in the vote of the English-speaking and any others concerned for the rights of minorities. During the 1834 election campaign in Quebec’s Upper Town, Andrew Stuart made undisguised appeals for such unanimity.

The questions were, first, if those of British origin (and he had not yet learned to be ashamed of such a name) should have any share in the representation? The second was, whether the circumstance of his vote against the 92 resolutions (It is only because you have an English name? [question from an elector]) was alone sufficient to deprive him of his election? If such were the case a man must go to the House and move like an automaton…. He would say that it was a great national effort of the Canadians to deprive the English portion of society of their moderate share of the representation….⁴⁰

Significantly, English-speaking voters each cast only an average of 1.3 votes of the possible 2.0 (the first undoubtedly for Stuart), whereas the French-speaking cast 1.9. The other two candidates were both French-Canadian patriotes: Caron, former mayor of Quebec, who had earned much gratitude for his efforts during the cholera epidemic, obtained roughly a third of the second English-speaking vote, and Berthelot, the radical patriote, only 5 per cent. It would seem that there was still some confusion among the Irish working class over the issues at stake (see Table 78).

The 1834 general election was disastrous for the English party, for not a single one of its members was returned to the assembly from the cities or the seigneuries. Its only members were returned by the townships, and most of those were moderates. On the other hand, a relatively large number of English-speaking candidates were elected under the patriote banner. The royal commissioners sent to Lower Canada in August, 1835, to try to resolve the constant troubles observed that the French-Canadian-dominated assembly had been defending popular rights and liberal institutions, while the predominantly English legislative council seemed to have been upholding arbitrary power and outmoded political doctrines; this, they were convinced, was why most former Americans had been siding with the French rather than with the English. The members for Stanstead and Missisquoi had been sent to the assembly not to defend the feudal system, protect the French language, or oppose land registry, but to aid the defenders of popular rights and oppose a government which found American emigrants irksome and had neglected them.⁴¹

Since it could no longer even pretend to speak for urban interests, the English party could hope for a measure of credibility only in identifying with the defence of English-speaking interests in general. The wind was in fact beginning to blow in the direction of stronger ethnic polarization; English-speaking liberals and Irish Catholics appear to have been returning to the English party fold. In the 1836 by-election in Quebec’s Upper Town, for example, 96 per cent of the English-speaking electors voted for Stuart and 92 per cent of the French voted for Painchaud. In the autumn of 1834, James Stephen, who tended to overemphasize the ethnic factor, analysed the political situation:

Parties in Canada have followed to a great extent the original division of the inhabitants into the French and English races. Some few of the leading opponents of the Provincial Government were indeed Englishmen by birth, and, on the other hand, some French names were to be found in the list of its adherents; but the opposition which, under other circumstances, Lord Dalhousie’s measures would have incurred from English settlers, was silenced by the deeper motives which separated the two races from each other. The electoral divisions of the country had thrown into the hands of the French almost the whole representation, while the English held a large proportion of all the places of honour and emolument. The one were all powerful in the Assembly and the other in the Legislative Council. The French held, as seigneuries, all the finer parts of the province, while the English settlers formed a distinct community in that region which is called the townships. The French were in possession of all collegiate and ecclesiastical endowments, while the English had seized upon every lucrative branch of foreign commerce…. The feelings of repugnance were probably at first confined very much to agitators on either side, who, however, of course drew the mass of population after them.⁴²

At least the crippled English party could count on support from the governor and the legislative council. In retaliation for the assembly’s refusal of money supplies and threats of strikes, the council could block the assembly’s bills and did so, for instance, in refusing renewal of the Assembly Schools Act. But in the meantime, civil servants were not getting paid and the economy was going from bad to worse. Neilson and Stuart set to work founding constitutional associations in as many localities as possible with a view to promoting a new political party. In 1835 Neilson went to England. H. Heney, ex-patriote and now executive councillor, wrote to him:

I know that you will ask nothing that is not reasonable. You consider, as we considered in 1828, that there are abuses, that there are abuses in all man’s institutions; that by the very fact that [institutions] are human it is legitimate to correct and do away with abuses by all decent and honest means, without recourse to sedition and revolt; that we must repair the House [we live in] and not demolish it; that young men are not the best counsellors on serious matters; that the elective principle, though good in itself, will be very injurious when exploited for purposes of national hatreds, religious disputes or other interested motivations.⁴³

Neilson’s mission was to convince the British authorities that the plight of Lower Canada was a result of the policies of the parti patriote, to urge continuance of the preferential tariffs and particularly to plead for a solution to the impasse over control of revenues along the lines suggested by the British Commons committee in 1828. He was also to recommend an executive council composed of government department heads, which should be representative and yet independent of the assembly, and a legislative council whose control would not be allowed to fall into the hands of the major landowners and which would act primarily as the voice of commercial interests. His instructions from the Quebec constitutional association stated in part:

The members of the Constitutional Association claim no privileges over their fellow subjects of another origin; but the experience of the late years has shewn a determination on the part of the majority of the Assembly of that origin to make of the power which this repeal has vested them with, an instrument for controlling the me tropolitan government, and for reducing their fellow subjects of British and Irish origin to a condition of inferiority without regard to the public utility or the principle of equal justice…. In considering the public affairs of this country it can never be lost sight with any safety that the population is not homogeneous, and those rules which may be pursued with safety in a country whose population is homogeneous will lead to dangerous consequences in a country whose population is composed of two large and unequal and hetero geneous masses of people.⁴⁴

Besides the constitutional associations, there appeared clubs founded by hotheads, which contributed to political tensions. A “British Rifle Corps” of ultra-loyalist young men sowed great alarm in the population and was promptly dissolved by Gosford; it was succeeded by the Doric Club, of slightly less bellicose mien. French and English newspapers engaged in virulent verbal warfare inciting violence.

The political paralysis had reached such a state in 1835 that the British government recalled Aylmer and replaced him with Lord Gosford. Gosford came both as governor and as chairman of a royal commission of inquiry, whose other members were Sir Charles Grey and Sir George Gipps. The new executive head’s role was to conciliate, temporize, and inform the authorities on administrative matters yet to be decided. The British government had a fairly clear picture of the situation, and though not disposed to go as far as to allow an independent French-Canadian republic, made it known that it would accept all reforms possible, providing they were within the framework of British institutions and compatible with the maintenance of the colonial tie. In short, it would stand by the reformist policy adopted after 1828. The patriote movement’s radical turn, however, had changed the complexion of the situation.

The commissioners’ reports were faithful to the reformist outlook. Their observations in situ confirmed their prior conviction that the Lower-Canadian conflict was basically of nationalist cause. Gipps, in his comment on the second report, noted that the majority leaders in the assembly had to a point succeeded in making the quarrel look like a contest between aristocratic and democratic principles rather than one of nationality, for among members from the townships, where there were many residents of American origin and none of French origin, almost as many voted with the French party as against it; adding the English representatives of French ridings to those elected by American or democratic interests, of the twenty-two with English names or of English origin, thirteen voted generally with the French party and nine against it.⁴⁵

This simply reflected the view of most other observers, and bore decisively on the commissioners’ examination of the grievances of the patriotes. While recognizing that the principles they invoked were equally applicable to Upper Canada, they kept in mind the ethnic reality of Lower Canada. The conception of responsible government, the notion of an elective legislative council, the absolute control of revenues and land grants: all pointed toward the impending establishment of a French-Canadian republic independent of the mother country.

Since they identified ministerial responsibility with national independence, the commissioners judged unacceptable the request for responsible government in the colonial milieu. Application of the principle, they considered, would destroy all dependent relationship with the mother country because it would remove real power from the governor and place it in the hands of a ministry responsible to and chosen by the legislative assembly. “The progress of affairs,” they said, “would depend exclusively on the parties succeeding one another in the province. All union with the empire through the channel of the executive head would cease; the country would shortly be virtually independent.”⁴⁶ They followed the same line of thought in their final report:

There are other demands, too, which we believe to be so incompatible with the unity of the Empire as to be almost equally inadmissible. One of them is the demand, that the whole local affairs of the Province shall be conducted by a Ministry responsible to, or, in other words, removable at the pleasure of the House of Assembly. They do not indeed ask that the Governor should be made directly and professedly responsible to them, but they require that he shall be supposed to be always acting under the advice of his Ministers; by which means it is sufficiently plain, that though shielded from responsibility to the Assembly, neither could he remain responsible to the King and the Imperial Parliament. We trust that we have, in our separate Report on the Executive Council, sufficiently exposed the impossibility of granting this request, and maintaining, at the same time, the dependence of the Province on Great Britain. There might continue to exist a sort of federative union between them with some degree of duty annexed to it from the weaker to the stronger power; but the relation of dependence one on the other, would, in our opinion, be destroyed.⁴⁷

They therefore proposed retention of the traditional political régime in which the governor, as the king’s representative and executive head, was responsible to London. They suggested, however, that the executive council “be composed in such manner as to merit the confidence of the people as much as possible.” Their position on revenues followed logically from their constitutional postulates. The surrender of all revenues of the province to the assembly was to have its quid pro quo in the grant of a civil list guaranteeing the independence of both the “executive government” and the judiciary. As for the granting of crown lands, the assembly might pass laws and lay down rules but it could not take over a managerial role, for that belonged to the executive.

The election of the members of the legislative council, the patriote leaders’ principal demand, appears to have been a question of far greater importance to the commissioners, for whom the notion was antithetical to the fundamental principles of the British Constitution. They realized that the aristocracy was not as strongly rooted in North America as in Europe; their objections were based less on political theory than on the local context. The second report observed that with an assembly and council both elective Lower Canada would be rather similar to the neighbouring independent states, and that its administration would be concentrated slightly more within the province than it already was. The commissioners were not prepared to say to what degree such a state of affairs would be either incompatible with good government or prejudicial to continuance of the union with the mother country, even for a colony inhabited by a homogeneous and undivided people, which, in Lower Canada, was unfortunately not the condition of the populace.⁴⁸

In discussing the implications of ministerial responsibility, the commissioners curiously did not attempt to examine the motives and reactions of the opposing groups; perhaps they felt that the population did not really understand responsible government. Not so in the case of the election of legislative councillors. Far from inferring that those demanding this reform would like to free the province of dependence on the mother country, they declared it more natural to suppose that the French Canadians’ desire was to continue to benefit by Great Britain’s protection in order to develop their resources and ensure their national existence–and to do so more effectively than would be possible through immediate independence or annexation to another state. But possession of the totality of real power in the country by one group was out of the question, and this would be the certain result of the measure under consideration, for no equitable and impartial manner of popular election could be devised to allow the majority in the council to be other than of the dominant party in the assembly.⁴⁹

The commissioners had grasped exactly what was really at stake in Lower Canada’s political and constitutional tussles, whether over ministerial responsibility or the election of legislative councillors. Opponents of an elective legislative council, they noted, that is to say, almost all the merchant class and the great majority of persons of direct British descent, feared that if the powers of the assembly were increased and consolidated by a council drawn from the same source, they would be exposed to every kind of injustice and oppression. While loath to speak of the profound distrust reigning in the province between the different populations, the commissioners felt bound to express the opinion that the English portion of the inhabitants, particularly the merchant classes, would never agree without resistance to the establishment of what they regarded as a kind of French republic in Canada.⁵⁰

The commissioners criticized the role played in the past by the legislative council and recommended changes in its composition. Gipps suggested that it should be, not an organism of more or less aristocratic pretensions, but one comprised of representatives of intermediary bodies: former mayors of Quebec and Montreal, the rector of the university, representatives of the bar and chambers of commerce, and farmers from the three districts, some to be elected and others to be appointed by the governor, and with a seven-year term of office.

While the commissioners pursued their inquiry, Gosford kept working to persuade the patriote party leaders to accept his policy of compromise and conciliation. In the Quebec region he met with some success. Defections among Quebec patriote leaders who were urging moderation suggest that weak spots were appearing in the party, and that Papineau’s hold over it was not as strong as it had been. But the untimely disclosure of the commissioners’ instructions forbidding an elective legislative council infuriated most of the militant patriotes, who took this as further irrefutable proof of the British government’s duplicity. The patriote leaders thereupon issued an ultimatum to London, and to demonstrate their determination called a strike of assembly members until such time as the election of legislative councillors should be recognized as a matter of principle. Gipps wrote of this impasse that without the unfortunate disclosure, and if supply had been obtained, there might have been a good chance of having an agreeably disposed majority in the next session of the House. Circumstances having changed radically, however, in his opinion the only hope for any measure of acceptable reform, short of suspension of the constitution, lay in its imposition on the assembly by a unanimous or insignificantly opposed vote of the British House of Commons.⁵¹

So grave had the situation in Lower Canada become that the British government asked Parliament to intervene. The royal commissioners’ full report was placed before the Commons on March 2, 1837. On March 6 the firm and official response to the Ninety-two Resolutions was submitted to the House in Lord Russell’s Ten Resolutions, which were adopted after three days of debate. Suspension of Lower Canada’s constitution was clearly in the wind. The Ten Resolutions not only rejected the patriotes’ principal demands, but authorized the governor to take whatever funds were necessary to pay arrears in civil service salaries, without the assembly’s consent. In short, the British government was more disposed to risk a revolt by the French Canadians than one led by the English-speaking minority; besides, they were convinced that the people were still loyal and would refuse to follow their leaders into a revolution. But the Ten Resolutions, far from resolving the crisis and forcing the patriotes into the approved process of reform, touched off an explosion of nationalist reaction. In September, 1837, Gosford wrote despairingly:

The violent and unjustifiable attacks which have been made by the ultra-Tories against the French Canadians in general have created an animosity of which M. Papineau has not failed to take advantage, and I attribute to this cause much of his influence on a great many members of the house. M. Papineau has emissaries in all directions, and although I do not know that there is cause to take alarm, there is need of much precaution and vigilance to prevent and check the disorders which might take place, as a result of the efforts made to excite discontent among the people by the most abominable representations.⁵²

Of the patriote party he wrote:

It is evident that Papineau’s party will not be satisfied with any concession which will not put it in a more favourable position to realize its ultimate intentions, that is to say, the separation of this country from England and the establishment of a republican government. M. Papineau has gone so far that he must persevere, or submit to a defeat which would destroy all his influence; the plan that he follows shows that he has decided to risk everything to reach his goal.⁵³

Gosford terminated his dispatch with a warning that the constitution might have to be suspended and that his government needed to be invested with the fullest power.

Ever since 1815, the English party had become more and more disorganized, for it never really had achieved a suitably diversified structure, nor had it devised adequate strategy or adapted its ideology to its society’s moods and colour. Thirty years of successive electoral defeats had undermined its energies and capacity for resistance, and with each election its credibility as defender of urban interests had faded. The party was not even very credible as the defender of English-speaking interests, since many patriote candidates and party supporters, even some of the patriote leaders, were English-speaking. The English party’s representativeness of the English-speaking in general began to revive only after 1830. Its real strength lay in its ties with the holders of economic power, and this was the reason it received the support and protection of the British authorities. If the English-speaking of Lower Canada had been as anaemic economically as they were politically, Britain’s attitude to the patriotes and their demands might have been very different.