Part 7

While still William Lamb he had hated what he called the creeping palsy of misgiving, tried hard to resist it, and developed into one of those not afraid to advance with the age. He had no “extreme faith in religion, politics, or love.” Accordingly, to him patriotism and wisdom were not confined to the Whigs alone. The oh-oh’s and ironical cheers from what he knew to be a powerful majority moved him not; he was as easy, comfortable, good-humoured, as ever. Quaintness, originality of a manner fitful, abrupt, full of irony, at times of a tenderness almost feminine, distinguished him, together with an insuperable aversion to “platitudes, palaverings,”--and bishops. In an age when swearing was as common in drawing-rooms as in the field, England’s Prime Minister was an acknowledged past-master in the art, and by inflections gave a dozen changes to the small familiar four-lettered British adjective in most common use. In ordinary transactions he loved a chirpy oath; but in his dealings with the bishops was forced to coin a “superdamnable.” The Order of the Garter was a great favourite with him, “because there was no damned merit about it.” Utilitarian levelling like Bentham’s he regarded as nonsense; state parsimony like Hume’s, a “pettifogging blunder;” radicalism after the manner of Cobbett and others he called mere ragamuffinism; but he told his peers plainly that the time had gone by when any set of men could put themselves up as a check against national opinion, that antique usages could not prevail against reason and argument--truths spoken with the voice of the Commons in that place where such a voice was almost unknown, seldom heard. Yet rancour was foreign to his nature: “The great fault of the present time (1835) is that men hate each other so damnably; for my part, I love them all.” And all with the air of a good-tempered, jovial gentleman.

“If something of his amiable spirit could be caught by others,” said a friend, “and grafted on Lord Wellesley’s counsel to ‘_demolish these people_,’ matters would not be difficult.”

Called upon frantically by friend and foe at a time of crisis “_to do_ something,” the responsibility of the times thrown on him, he sat tight and calmly answered, “Whenever you are in doubt what should be done--do nothing.”

This all sounds like the man for the Canadas. Nine hundred or so of his peers gnashed their teeth at him,--if peers ever so use their molars; and in Canada they wrote of “the prolific source of political evil, the profligate course of imbecile rulers.”

William the Fourth had called him “a great gentleman,” although he and his government had been “kicked out” by that obstinate, morbid, prejudiced and somewhat imaginative monarch. Naturally, Melbourne refused an earldom and a garter; but in his final advice to the sovereign he was as tactful as ever in making the latter partially modify the note of dismissal, thereby averting a storm of popular feeling and individual resentment of ministers. “Mind what you are about in Canada,” said the King when final instructions were given to Lord Gosford before he left England, and Melbourne and Glenelg--the Sleeping Beauty--found the monarch as hard to manage as the colony itself. “By ---- I will never consent to alienate the Crown Lands nor to make the Council elective. Mind me, my lord, the cabinet is not my cabinet; they had better take care, or by ---- I will have them impeached. You are a gentleman, I believe, I have no fear of you; but take care what you do.”

Posing as a man of pleasure, in reality a capable man of business, Melbourne lounged through his duties in a way to exasperate friend and foe. But as he lounged, he learned men and manners, determined to _see into_ things, and even in Ireland, when Chief Secretary, said, “If agitation would not go to bed he would like to have a chat with it.” He was ever pleading for concession to the demands of the people, dreading the consequences of refusal. “Everything about him seems to betoken careless desolation; anyone would suppose from his manner that he was playing at chuck-farthing with human happiness, that he was always on the heels of fortune, that he would giggle away the great Charter.... But I accuse our Minister,” said his critic, “of honesty and diligence; I deny that he is careless and rude; he is nothing more than a man of good understanding and good principle, disguised in the eternal and somewhat wearisome affectation of a political _roué_.” Perfectly courteous to others, it was impossible for others to be discourteous to him, always excepting Brougham. But even before Brougham he did not quail, and always could give tit for tat, much to the delight of the audience of peers who, like schoolboys, exulted whenever their terror, the bully of the class, got a drubbing. The tongue which Brougham sarcastically spoke of as attuned to courtly airs, made to gloze and flatter, flayed him so completely with its quiet polish that he winced under its lash and betrayed, by his own increased violence of invective, the weight of the punishment. Soon after the accession the press said Lord Melbourne was about to publish a work on chess--the best method of playing the Queen, of getting possession of the castle, an entire disregard of the old system as to bishops, being points in the book. This genial, indolent statesman, who fearlessly told the truth irrespective of party, was rubicund, with the aquiline nose of the aristocrat; his large blue eyes sometimes flashed with fire, but oftener brimmed with merriment. The noble head, sturdy plainly clad and careless-looking figure, consorted well with the _laisser aller_ expression of face. Strange to say, he, like Lord John Russell, usually stuttered out his speeches, thumping the table or desk before him as if to work out the sentences that would not get themselves delivered. The Reform Bill made him specially energetic. Sitting next to him was a very noble earl who wore his hat well over his brows, weighing the _pros_ and _cons_ of too much liberty--for other people. Melbourne in his heat took his own white hat in his right hand, beat the air with it in inarticulate struggle, and brought the white to bear, crown to crown, upon the black one. The blow was fair, the arm muscular; the very noble earl looked like the ancient White Knight, with head apparently wedged between his shoulders. He sat speechless for a moment, and then nimbly springing to his feet, amid roars of laughter, twisted his head free and regained his vision. And when the roar subsided, the Duke of Buckingham thought that the great statesman so suddenly beclouded could scarcely see his way out of the difficulty, and the laughter was renewed. To see a way out of the Canadian difficulty was to find a clue in a maze.

Canadian Tories were triumphant over the fall of the Ministry on the Jamaica question. “We cannot guess,” says one editor, “into what hands Her Majesty may be pleased to commit the trust which Lord Melbourne has declared his unfitness to administer.” The incoming man, Peel, quoted the state of Canada as among the trying questions which made the office of premiership the most arduous, the most important that any human being could be called upon to perform ... the greatest trust, almost without exception, in the whole civilized world, that could fall on any individual. A few moments later he had to confess that there was one question worse than the Canadian one, greater than colonial politics, a “_question de jupons_.” So the Government, after forty-eight hours’ attempt at change, reverted to its former holders; Canadian Tories were as glum as ever, and said Melbourne was again the governor of the petticoatocracy.

The St. Lawrence alone made the colony worth keeping; also, Canada by its confines came in contact with Russia; it was the seat of the most valuable fur trade in the world, and England would not be out of possession of it for two months before a French fleet would be anchored in the Gulf. These were thoughts impossible to think with calmness, worse even than annexation to the United States. The least calm of these men who debated upon what we were worth, and just what should become of us, was Brougham. Like most who love to torment, he himself was easily tormented. How does this champion of liberty look as he rises to condemn the policy on the Canadian question as “vacillating, imbecile, and indolent;” as he puts his awkward questions to those whom he calls his “noble friends” or “the noble lords,” all looking marvellously uncomfortable when their names are in that merciless mouth. We hear of him as absent from his place, ill in Paris through having swallowed a needle; yet after his return, one could imagine, in spite of his pointed replies, that his gastronomic feat had been to swallow a flail. “The foolish fellow with the curls has absolutely touched him,” says a contemporary writer.... “Make way, good people, the bull is coming--chained or loose, right or wrong, he can stand it no longer; with one lashing bound he clears every obstacle--there he is, with tail erect and head depressed, snorting in the middle of the arena.” The eyes flash, the brows gather, the dark iron grey hair stands up rigid, his arm is raised, his voice high; he is well out of the lush pastures of rhodomontade and diffuseness. The display of his power and the fertility of his mind amazes friend and foe; for the genius of his fervent intellect includes French cookery, Italian poetry, bees and cell building, and a host of subjects seemingly far removed from law and politics. This must have been knowledge gained at the cost of his profession, for an epigram has it that he knew a little of everything, even of law. “Brougham, though a Whig, is not a goose,” says the _Noctes_. Certainly “the whipster peer” who was so lately defiant does not look as if he thought so, as his late pretty bits of rhetoric rattle about his own ears. Sarcasm on his tongue, bile in his heart, Brougham talks pure vitriol, and everywhere a word falls a scar remains.

His foes accused him of being “one of those juggling fiends”

“Who never spoke before, But cried, ‘I warned you,’ when the event is o’er.”

He contended that his conduct on the Canadian question had been “impudently, falsely and foully aspersed.” So far from being a juggling fiend who did not warn until the event was o’er, instead of standing by and not giving a timely warning, he had, not less than ten months before, standing in that place, denounced the policy of the Government. More, he had entered his protests on the journals, warning, distinctly warning, the Government that their proceedings would lead to insurrection; and to mark the falseness of the quotation, more marvellous still, he had never twitted them when the event was o’er by saying he had warned them.

There were, however, occasions and combinations which dismayed even Brougham. He, Ellis, Hume, Papineau and Bedard, happened to meet in Paris. Much to the satirical disgust of some Canadian papers, Lord Brougham declined a dinner invitation and remained in bed in order to be quite incapacitated, as he had good reason to fear that his seat at table would be opposite Papineau.

But there is a grave in the Benchers’ Plot at Lincoln’s Inn which tells the tale of the one vulnerable spot, the wound which would not heal, in this extraordinary, audacious, eloquent man, this free lance, the critic of administrations, so prone to wound others. There he laid his only remaining child, a girl of seventeen, his application to have her so buried listened to by the Benchers because he too wished to be laid there in the same grave with her.

The third in this trio who faithfully laboured to abolish or mitigate “toil, taxes, tears and blood,”--who all for their pains were burned in effigy in Quebec and other places--was Lord Glenelg. The following is a travesty on what were supposed to be the instructions given by him, when debates as to what would prevent rebellion were followed by debates on what would cure it, Lord Durham chosen the Physician Extraordinary for colonial ills. The document was intended to regulate the Canadian Government, and showed the zeal and watchfulness of Lord Glenelg:

“First of all, endeavour to discover of what rebellion consists; it is not exactly murder or manslaughter, or precisely highway robbery or burglary; but it may, in a measure, consist of all.” The witty gentleman who wrote thus far was quite right, but his words were two-edged. Lount’s death has more than once been called murder, and rebellion losses discovered some pretty kinds of robbery. “I have looked into all the dictionaries, and I find that the definitions given are pretty much alike; but I would not be quite certain that they are right.” Lord Glenelg had personally written Sir F. B. Head on his appointment a year or so before, “You have been selected for this office at an era of more difficulty and importance than any which has hitherto occurred in the history of that part of His Majesty’s dominions. The expression of confidence in your discretion and ability which the choice implies would only be weakened by any mere formal assurance which I could convey to you.” Now any man who could ascribe discretion and ability to Sir Francis Bond Head had need of recourse to dictionaries.

The bogus Lord Glenelg then continues his theorizing, on the basis that a mascot is a mascot. “A rebel is undoubtedly a person who rebels, and rebellion is unquestionably the act of a rebel; you will therefore ascertain whether there is a rebel, whether that rebel rebels, and if he does rebel whether it be rebellion. Having decided the point, you will then consider what is to be done. I am strongly of opinion that as long as rebellion lasts it will continue. Now, it would be requisite to learn the probable duration of the rebellion, which, I should think, would depend in some measure on the causes which excited it. Your object will be, therefore, to make its continuance as short as possible; and if you cannot suppress it all at once, you will do it as soon as you can. Then, as to the method of suppressing. I know of no way so efficacious as that of putting it down. I would advise neither severity nor conciliation, but only measures which will deter the bad or win them over. I would neither hang, pardon nor fine a single rebel, but let the law take its course, tempered with mercy.” The last Sir George Arthur did.

“By following these general instructions you will most assuredly set the Canadian question at rest, and I comfort myself with the idea that my rest will not be broken up again while I hold the colonial seat. Should any difficulty occur, I beg of you to send to me for further instructions; but I place such confidence in the advice I have already given that I shall not anticipate any application to disturb my slumbers.”

At the date of this ironical issue there were questions, seriously enough put, as to why Lord Gosford should be decorated with the Order of the Bath, the inference from the wording being that, unlike the Garter, it had some “merit” in it; merit which this Tory sheet failed to discover: “Given in a mad spirit of democratical arrogance to make rank and honours mere butts for public derision ... they generate a swarm of obscure baronets”--poor Sir Francis! “Last, and worst, they bestow that distinction, which was intended for the highest military and civil merit, on Lord Gosford, who found a colony in peace(!) and left it in rebellion.” The colony did not think so: il était un excellent homme. L. O. David says that only where he found it impossible to work out his mission of pacification he took vigorous measures, which were forced upon him. He left behind him, says the legend, le trop-célèbre Colborne.

I have laboured with all my wits, my pains and strong endeavours, said each debater; and Canada, Shakespearian in turn, replied, “Pray you, let us not be the laughingstocks of other men’s humours.”

There were many winter nights of ’37 made anxious to the colonies, when “Goderich, amiable but timid, ... Lord Glenelg, sleepy, ... Howick, mischievous, ... and the _real Judas_, Mr. Stephen, debated leisurely, and Mr. Disraeli began his romance of politics.”

“Well, Mr. Disraeli,” said Lord Melbourne, “what is your idea in entering Parliament?” “To be Prime Minister, my Lord,” was the daring answer; not quite as, in their minor world of politics, Papineau and Mackenzie dreamt of presidency in new republics.

On the night of Gallows Hill, December 7, ’37, while Toronto was in a flutter of excited wonder and self-congratulation, while Mackenzie was speeding one way, Rolph another, and Papineau had already crossed the lines, the British House of Commons echoed to the sonorous brogue of the Celtic Thunderer and to Mr. Disraeli’s famous failure of a maiden speech. “A failure is nothing,” said the man destined to be great; “it may be deserved or it may be remedied. In the first instance, it brings self-knowledge; in the second, it develops a new combination which may be triumphant.” Words as prophetic for the failure in Canada as for his own.

If, with Henry VI., we can say of Mackenzie, a bedlam and ambitious humour makes him oppose himself against his king, so might these Lords and Commons, Governors and Commanders, have taken pains with the habitant to “attend him carefully and feed his humours kindly as we may.” The French were such very children. “Oh mon Dieu,” cried one from the bottom of a boat while he and his companions looked momentarily for destruction, “if you mean to do anything, do it quickly! Once we are at the bottom it will be too late. Allons mon Dieu! just one little puff of wind, and we shall escape!”

Far back as the times of the beloved Murray, when they had at his recall petitioned the King to send him back to them--for he and his military council “were upright officers, who, without prejudice and without emolument,” did their best--and received as answer the arrival of Carleton in his stead, they were satisfied. For Carleton “was chosen by your Majesty.” Even the Duke of Richmond, in his short and stormy encounter with the Houses of Assembly, was beloved; why? They hailed the prestige of his exalted rank, for he was not only Duke of Richmond but Duc d’Aubigny, direct from the Duchess of that title, who had been invested with it by _Louis Quatorze_, their own Grand Monarque, as his other ancestors had been by Charles. Why did not some quick wit in the year ’37 follow the Scotch plan of providing a monarch for England instead of allowing that that place provided rulers for Scotland, and draw a parallel between James, who was Sixth of Scotland before he added England to his domain, and the young Queen whose claim to anything and everything came straight down from France? “The Norman-French of Quebec may well feel proud when they remember that they can claim what no other portion of the Empire can assert--that they are governed by a monarch of their own race, who holds her sceptre as the heir of Rollo, the Norman sea-king, who first led their ancestors forth from the forests of the north to the plains of Normandy.”

A Call to Umbrellas.

“_We must have bloody noses, and cracked crowns, and pass them current, too._”

In 1837 people did not do things by halves. _De mortuis nil nisi bonum_ doubled its meaning from the fervour of the abuse and obloquy cast upon the subject of it during life. William IV. found even his Queen--to whom, by the way, though she was jostled on the edge of accession by Mrs. Jordan and others, he seems to have been devoted--satirized, lampooned, vilified, by press and tongues alike. No sooner is he himself dead than his demise becomes “mournful intelligence,” “melancholy event,” “affecting news,” “distressing circumstance of the death of our beloved monarch.”

Out of the chaos left behind him steps a girlish figure, not unlike, in her bare feet and streaming hair, to some picture of early Italy, a Stella Matutina.

Her head and hands are touched with the holy Chrism; Melbourne redeems the sword of state with a hundred shillings; two archbishops and some peers lift the tiny figure into the throne; no champion throws the glove; the acclamations of thousands proclaim her crowned, peers and peeresses put on their coronets; trumpets blare above the boom of cannon; the heads of a nation are bowed in the silence of prayer; “Stand firm and hold fast,” adjures His Grace; the old do homage and become her liege men of life and limb and of earthly worship, and of faith and truth which they will bear unto her, to live and die against all manner of folk. All the romance of the Middle Ages seems crowded round that small figure in St. Edward’s chair, and Stella Matutina becomes Queen Regnant.

When she opened her first Parliament the Repeal Cry and disturbed Canada were vexing elements in discussion; but the young sovereign placed her trust “upon the love and affection of my people;” and that trust, as we see, was not misplaced.

The Far West was long in hearing of her accession. “There was a deep slumberous calm all around, as if Nature had not yet awoke from her night’s rest; then the atmosphere began to kindle with gradual light; it grew brighter and brighter; towards the east the sky and water intermingled in radiance and flowed and glowed together in a bath of fire. Against it rose the black hull of a large vessel, with masts and spars rising against the sky. One man stood in the bows, with an immense oar which he slowly pulled, walking backwards and forwards; but vain seemed all his toil with the heavy black craft, for it was much against both wind and current and it lay like a black log and moved not. We rowed up to the side and hailed him, ‘What news?’ What news indeed, to these people weeks away from civilization, newspapers and letters. ‘William Fourth was dead, and Queen Victoria reigned in his stead.’”

“Canada will never cost English ministers another thought or care if they will but leave her entirely alone, to govern herself as she thinks fit.” Then came the division of opinion as to what was fit, to be followed later by the opinions of Lords Durham and Sydenham upon the dominant party, to be in the meantime fought for by all. Some held it wisdom to say that a despotic government was the best safeguard of the poorer classes. A certain gentleman aired this idea in Canada, saying a governor and council was the only thing for that country. His Canadian listener looked at him fixedly for a moment, asking again if that were really his opinion,--“Then, sir, I pity your intellects.”

There was an ominous smoke from the fire in Canadian hearts over this question of class prejudices. Those were the days when a barrister would not shake hands with a solicitor, nor would a “dissenting” minister be allowed within the pale of society. Governor Maitland had been particularly hard upon this latter so-called shady lot of people. A store-keeping militia officer refused a challenge because the second who brought it was a saddler. The honourable profession of teaching was looked at so askance that to become a teacher was an avowal of poverty and hopelessness. Yet joined to this Old World nonsense, transplanted to a world so new that the crops sprung out of untilled ground, was the fact that many of the noblesse, indigenous as the burdock and thistle, drew their rent rolls from the village stores, and with the rearing of the head of what was called “the hydra-headed democracy,” Froissart’s fear was shared “that all gentility was about to perish.”