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Ontario History
Upper Canadian Thermidor The Family Compact & the Counter-revolutionary Atlantic Denis McKim
Volume 106, Number 2, Fall 2014 Article abstract This article challenges the notion that the Family Compact was a self-interested URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1050695ar clique who stunted Upper Canada’s political, social, and economic DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1050695ar development. It argues, instead, that members of the group articulated a dynamic vision for the colony premised on the “balanced” British constitution, See table of contents state-aided Anglicanism, and a vibrant agrarian economy led by a paternalistic elite. Of central importance to the Compact’s vision for Upper Canada was a longstanding conservative tradition that had its roots in Publisher(s) late-seventeenth-century England, and was reinforced a century later by a multifaceted counter-revolutionary phenomenon that manifested on both The Ontario Historical Society sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
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Cite this article McKim, D. (2014). Upper Canadian Thermidor: The Family Compact & the Counter-revolutionary Atlantic. Ontario History, 106(2), 235–262. https://doi.org/10.7202/1050695ar
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This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ immigrant women’s food narratives 235 Upper Canadian Thermidor: The Family Compact & the Counter- revolutionary Atlantic*
By Denis McKim
Introduction he notion that the Family Com- that members of the group “wormed pact was a corrupt clique who themselves into the more important of- manipulated patronage, dis- ces [of the government], directed the dainedT democracy, and stunted Upper Councils of the Sovereign’s representa- Canada’s economic growth is as old as tive, and, in a word, became the power English-Canadian historiography itself. behind the rone.” For Dent, the Com- John Charles Dent articulated the anti- pact was a formidable adversary that Compact sentiment that was well on its Upper Canadian society was forced to way to becoming a staple of English-Ca- grapple with and ultimately vanquish as nadian historical scholarship when he it advanced toward a state of “full and as- observed, in the late nineteenth century, sured liberty.”1
* My thanks to Jerry Bannister, Frances Beer, Donald Wright, Ontario History’s anonymous re- viewers and the participants in the “British North America’s Global Age” conference held at McMas- ter University in April of 2012. 1 John Charles Dent, e Story of the Upper Canadian Rebellion (Toronto: C. Blackett Robin- son, 1885), I:73-74; 94-95. Older critiques include Richard H. Bonnycastle, e Canadas in 1841 (London: Henry Colburn, 1841), I:169-70; and John McMullen, e History of Canada (Brockville: J. McMullen, 1855), 334. Contemporary observers have scarcely been more forgiving. For example, Andrew Bonthius, in discussing “the intransigent rule of the Family Compact,” described the group as a “hereditary [oligarchy that] held a monopoly on land, maintained a political choke-hold on legal and political institutions, sti ed religious liberty, [and] retarded the spread of public education.” Bonthius, “ e Patriot War of 1837-38: Locofocoism with a Gun?,” Labour/Le Travail 52 (Fall 2003), 9-10.
Ontario History / Volume CVI, No. 2 / Autumn 2014
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together by various factors, including Abstract ties of friendship is article challenges the notion that the Family Compact was and conservative a self-interested clique who stunted Upper Canada’s political, ideology, rose to social, and economic development. It argues, instead, that mem- prominence in Up- bers of the group articulated a dynamic vision for the colony premised on the “balanced” British constitution, state-aided An- per Canada. eir glicanism, and a vibrant agrarian economy led by a paternalis- detractors dubbed tic elite. Of central importance to the Compact’s vision for Upper them the “Family Canada was a longstanding conservative tradition that had its Compact,” a some- roots in late-seventeenth-century England, and was reinforced a century later by a multifaceted counter-revolutionary phe- what erroneous term nomenon that manifested on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. given that few of the group’s principal Résumé: Nous oulons remettre en question l’idée que le Fam- members were actu- ily Compact était une clique qui opérait uniquement dans son propre intérêt et qui entravait le plein développement politique, ally related to one social, et économique du Haut-Canada. Nous prétendons, au another. Members contraire, que les membres de ce groupe avaient une vision dy- of the Compact— namique pour la colonie, principalement centrée sur la consti- whose leading lights tution “équilibrée” britannique, une Église anglicane soutenue included John Stra- par l’État, et une économie agricole orissante dirigée par une élite paternaliste. Au fond, cette vision re était celle d’une chan, John Beverley longue tradition conservatrice dont les racines se trouvaient Robinson, Chris- au XVIIe siècle anglais et qui a été renforcée un siècle plus tard topher Hagerman, par le phénomène contre-révolutionnaire qui s’est manifesté des G.H. Markland, deux côtés de l’Atlantique. William Dummer Powell, D’Arcy and Henry Boulton, and Dent’s remarks were informed by a William Allan—served as Executive and potentially misleading understanding Legislative Councillors, members of the of the past that presupposed the inher- colonial judiciary and, to a lesser extent, ently progressive nature of history and, leaders of Upper Canada’s edgling busi- thus, the inevitable triumph of freedom ness community.3 eir virtual monopoly over tyranny.2 Yet they were by no means on an array of in uential posts prompted wholly inaccurate. In the early nineteenth one observer to describe the Compact as century a close-knit group of men bound “[a] quasi-aristocracy of bureaucrats and
2 M. Brook Taylor, Promoters, Patriots, and Partisans: Historiography in Nineteenth-Century English Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press: 1989), 250-53. 3 For Robert E. Saunders, these eight individuals were the most in uential members of a larger net- work, the Family Compact, whose in uence extended across Upper Canada. e reason? ey “were at the centre of everything”—government, law, banking, major infrastructure projects—meaning that their impact on the colony was as multifaceted as it was far-reaching. Saunders, “What was the Family Com- pact?,” Ontario History XLIX:4 (Autumn 1957), 169-78.
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professional men.”4 the oligarchic nucleus within the colo- e term “Family Compact” has re- nial government that dominated Upper ferred to various things—a diplomatic Canada’s political, social, and economic agreement, a clique, a governing re- a airs in the early nineteenth century.6 gime—over the course of its long, me- e Compact’s exact composition is andering history. It originated in 1730s notoriously dicult to ascertain, not least Europe, where it referred to an accord because of its members’ unwillingness to struck between branches of the House concede that such a body even existed.7 of Bourbon, and surfaced in late-eight- ( e closest members of the group came eenth-century Massachusetts, where it to acknowledging their involvement was deployed pejoratively by the Repub- with a powerful clique was by referring lican Congressman Barnabas Bidwell to themselves and their associates as the in reference to members of the Federal- Upper Canadian “gentry.”8) e criteria ist party. Bidwell, who took ight from determining entry into the Compact’s Massachusetts amid scandal in the early ranks have proven equally elusive. An nineteenth century, imported the term elite pedigree, for example, does not ap- to Upper Canada, where it was used as pear to have resulted in automatic admis- an epithet by members of the colony’s sion, as evidenced by the group’s hostility budding Reform movement in criticizing toward Charles Burton Wyatt, Upper what they saw as the incestuous coterie Canadian Surveyor General and scion “[who] surround the Lieutenant-Gov- of an august English family; and by the ernor, and mould him, like wax, to their fact that John Strachan, an educator and will”; or, alternatively, to the colonial clergyman whose father had been a Scots government itself, which was routinely quarryman, was probably the Compact’s denounced as a corrupt vehicle for ad- most in uential member. Perhaps the vancing the interests of a narrow elite.5 In most apt description of the group’s com- the following analysis “Family Compact” position, then, was made in the 1920s by will be used not as a term of opprobrium, W. Stewart Wallace, who described the but rather as a neutral descriptor for Compact as “a local oligarchy, composed
4 Saunders, “What was the Family Compact?,” 178. See also Anna Jameson, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (London: Saunders and Otley, 1838) I:98-99. 5 Graeme Patterson, “An Enduring Myth: Responsible Government and the Family Compact,” Jour- nal of Canadian Studies 12:2 (Spring 1977), 4-7; William L. Mackenzie, Sketches of Canada and the United States (London: E. Wilson, 1833), 409. 6 Saunders, “What was the Family Compact?,” 167; Aileen Dunham, Political Unrest in Upper Can- ada, 1815-1836 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1963; orig. 1927), 41-45; R.J. Burns, “God’s Chosen People: e Origins of Toronto Society, 1793-1818,” Canadian Historical Association Historical Papers 8:1 (1973), 213-28. 7 See John Beverley Robinson, Canada, and the Canada Bill; Being an Examination of the Pro- posed Measure for the Future Go ernment of Canada (London: J. Hatchard, 1840), 25-26. 8 Robert Lochiel Fraser, “Like Eden in Her Summer Dress: Gentry, Economy, and Society in Upper Canada, 1812-1840” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1979), 5.
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of men, some well-born, some ill-born, an Upper Canadian Reform movement some brilliant, some stupid, whom the and, eventually, the outbreak of rebel- caprice of a small provincial society, with lion. e group’s dominance on Execu- a code all its own, had pitchforked into tive and Legislative Councils was seen as power.” 9 thwarting the initiatives of the Legislative For all the uncertainty surrounding Assembly; their defence of the privileges its makeup, the group’s impact on Up- of the Church of England was viewed as per Canada was inarguably profound. an a ront to the colony’s non-Anglican In addition to occupying a plethora of majority; and their purportedly self-in- powerful positions in York/Toronto, terested support for certain banking and members of the Compact consolidated infrastructure projects was perceived their in uence beyond the colonial capi- as an impediment to the growth of Up- tal through their control over patronage, per Canada’s economy, which many felt which allowed them to install like-mind- would be better served by such alterna- ed individuals in government positions tive initiatives as a campaign to improve across Upper Canada.10 Moreover, while the pitiful state of the colony’s roads.12 the colony’s Lieutenant Governors tech- e idea that the Family Compact nically had the authority to check the was a source of popular disa ection Compact’s initiatives, they seldom did so found expression in Lord Durham’s Re- on account of the fact that they looked port on the A airs of British North Amer- to these representatives of the colonial ica. “Radical Jack” pointedly observed elite for advice, and oen shared much in that while clusters of well-connected in- common with them socially and politi- dividuals existed in all of Britain’s North cally. is was especially true during the American colonies, their in uence was tenure of Peregrine Maitland, whose stint nowhere more pronounced than in Up- as Lieutenant Governor (1818-1828) per Canada. e “family compact,” Dur- coincided with the period in which the ham elaborated, 11 group’s in uence peaked. possess almost all the highest public oces, Resentment toward the Family Com- by means of which, and of its in uence in pact contributed to the crystallization of the Executive Council, it wielded all the
9 W. Stewart Wallace, e Family Compact: A Chronicle of the Rebellion in Upper Canada ( To - ronto: Glasgow, Brook, 1922), 6. 10 While they were usually aligned with the Compact, these local elites were capable of exhibit- ing considerable autonomy. See Elva M. Richards, “ e Joneses of Brockville and the Family Com- pact,” Ontario History LX:4 (December 1968), 169-84. 11 Gerald M. Craig, Upper Canada: e Formative Years 1784-1841 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1963), 107-8; Patrick Brode, Sir John Beverley Robinson: Bone and Sinew of the Compact (Toronto: Osgoode Society/University of Toronto Press, 1984), 142-44. 12 Seventh Report om the Select Committee of the House of Assembly of Upper Canada on Griev- ances… (Toronto: M. Reynolds, 1835); Colonial Advocate, 7 May 1829, n.p.; J. David Wood, Mak- ing Ontario: Agricultural Colonization and Landscape Re-Creation Before the Railway (Montreal: McGill-ueen’s University Press, 2000), 55.
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powers of government; it maintained in u- Accordingly, this essay focuses on the ence in the legislature by means of its pre- attitudes of the Family Compact—one dominance in the Legislative Council; and it of several early Canadian groups who, disposed of the large numbers of petty posts in E.A. Heaman’s words, strove to “prop which are in the patronage of the Govern- ment all over the Province. up structures of power and authority throughout society”—and on the his- He then made plain the causal relation- torical context from which they sprang.15 ship between the in uence exerted by the It argues that the Compact ts snugly Compact and the outbreak of violence in within a conservative tradition that had 1837. “A monopoly of power so exten- its roots in late-seventeenth-century Eng- sive and so lasting,” Durham explained, land, and that was reinforced a century “could not fail, in process of time, to ex- later by a counter-revolutionary surge cite envy, create dissatisfaction, and ulti- that manifested on both sides of the At- mately provoke attack.”13 lantic Ocean.16 is article seeks neither to diminish Much like Upper Canada as a whole, the accomplishments of the Compact’s the Family Compact did not exist in a Reform-oriented rivals, nor to portray vacuum. Drawing on a transatlantic tra- Upper Canada as a Tory monolith that dition to which such gures as William was somehow impervious to anti-author- Blackstone, Edmund Burke, and Alexan- itarian movements afoot elsewhere in the der Hamilton had contributed, members world. Rather, it aims to complement re- of the group, as we shall see, articulated a cent work on liberty, democracy, and the vision for the colony that emphasized sta- emergence of a “public sphere” in early bility, piety, and prosperity. e impact Canada by exploring the comparatively of this tradition was occasionally made understudied conservative forces whose explicit, as re ected in the tendency of power Reformers struggled to curtail.14 Compact members to castigate their op-
13 Gerald M. Craig, ed., Lord Durham’s Report (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1963), 79-83. 14 On liberty see Michel Ducharme, Le concept de liberté au Canada à l’époque des Révolutions atlantiques, 1776-1838 (Montreal: McGill-ueen’s University Press, 2010); on democracy see Allan Greer, “Historical Roots of Canadian Democracy,” Journal of Canadian Studies 34:1 (Spring 1999), 7-26; and on the “public sphere” see Je rey L. McNairn, e Capacity to Judge: Public Opinion and Deliberative Democracy in Upper Canada, 1791-1854 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000). 15 E.A. Heaman, “Rights Talk and the Liberal Order Framework,” in Liberalism and Hegemony: Debating the Canadian Liberal Revolution, edited by Jean-François Constant and Michel Ducharme (Toronto: University of Toronto Press: 2009), 154-55. Comparable groups from other colonies in- clude Nova Scotia’s Council of Twelve and Lower Canada’s Chateau Clique. 16 Jerry Bannister has argued that British North America’s counter-revolution was a exible phe- nomenon that encompassed diverse peoples and ideological traditions, and was predicated on “[a] rejection of rebellion against the Crown as a justi able means of pursuing a political goal.” Yet while conservative groups like the Family Compact were not alone in opposing revolutionary republican- ism, they did constitute a key ingredient in Upper Canada’s counter-revolutionary stew. “Canada as Counter-Revolution: e Loyalist Order Framework in Canadian History, 1750-1840,” in Liberal- ism and Hegemony, 126.
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ponents as ideological descendants of which those attitudes owed one can see American revolutionaries or, simply, the Compact’s members not as obstacles “Jacobins.”17 More oen, though, it was to Upper Canada’s advancement, but in- implicit in a rhetorical emphasis—for in- stead as exponents of an alternative mod- stance, on the dangers inherent in hasty el of colonial development that attested constitutional change—that bespoke to the in uence of early modern English an intimate familiarity with powerful conservatism and a “Counter-revolu- currents in transatlantic conservative tionary Atlantic.”19 is model di ered thought.18 signi cantly from the vision put forth by e Compact’s vision was based on their Reform-oriented counterparts, a di- three pillars: the “balanced” British con- verse body whose most radical elements stitution, state-aided Anglicanism, and emphasized constitutional liberalization, the economic leadership of the colonial the eradication of state-sanctioned reli- elite—the Family Compact itself. To be gious hierarchy, and a colonial economy sure, the group’s members were by no geared toward the interests of yeoman means the only Upper Canadians to em- farmers.20 phasize such phenomena. Cumulatively, Compact conservatism was not however, they constituted the conceptu- borne out in reactionary absolutism; in- al foundations on which the Compact’s stead, it expressed itself in the relatively outlook rested. moderate ethos of “British constitution- By taking into account both the atti- alism,” which stressed the sacrosanct na- tudes that in uenced the group’s actions ture of private property and the freedom and the historical circumstances from of individuals to amass wealth.21 is
17 William Dummer Powell, Letters om an American Loyalist in Upper Canada to His Friend in England: On a Pamphlet Published by John Mills Jackson, Esquire…. (Halifax: n.p., 1810), 55-56; Terry Cook, “John Beverley Robinson and the Conservative Blueprint for the Upper Canadian Community,” Ontario History LXIV:2 (June 1972), 80-84; Saunders, “What was the Family Com- pact?,” 172. 18 Dunham, Political Unrest in Upper Canada, 45. 19 On this topic see Eliga H. Gould, “Revolution and Counter-revolution,” in e British Atlantic World, 1500-1800, Second Ed., edited by David Armitage and Michael J. Braddick (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 214-31. 20 S.J.R. Noel, Patrons, Clients, Brokers: Ontario Society and Politics, 1791-1896 (Toronto: Uni- versity of Toronto Press, 1990), 91-92; J.K. Johnson, Becoming Prominent: Regional Leadership in Upper Canada (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-ueen’s University Press, 1989), 143. S.F. Wise opened one of his best-known essays by alluding to the contributions to Upper Canadian political culture of such iconic metropolitan conservatives as Blackstone and Burke. However, in the follow- ing analysis he concentrates overwhelmingly on domestic issues, according scant attention to Upper Canadian conservatism’s transatlantic dimension. Wise, “Upper Canada and the Conservative Tradi- tion,” in God’s Peculiar Peoples: Essays on Political Culture in Nineteenth-Century Canada, edited by A.B. McKillop and Paul Romney (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1993), 169-84. 21 Michel Ducharme, “Canada in the Age of Revolutions: Rethinking Canadian Intellectual History in an Atlantic Perspective,” in Contesting Clio’s Cra: New Directions and Debates in Cana- dian History, edited by Christopher Dummitt and Michael Dawson (London: Institute for the Study
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orientation meshes with the characteris- Tories were fated to succumb to progres- tics of the “Court party” that dominated sive Reformers. eighteenth-century British politics and advocated a strong central government Early Modern Conservatism bolstered by an aristocratic elite; and it di ers from the “Country party” that & the Counter-revolutionary criticized the Court faction’s alleged cor- Atlantic ruption and decadence and advocated as he Family Compact’s views were antidotes such classical virtues as simplic- Tshaped by a durable conservative ity and frugality.22 tradition that originated in early modern Yet the fact that the Family Com- England. e arch-Toryism that circulat- pact’s outlook accorded with British ed in that country following the Resto- constitutionalism and the priorities of ration—as exhibited, for example, in the the Court community should not ob- writings of Robert Filmer, who espoused scure the unmistakably conservative such doctrines as absolute monarchical principles—hierarchy, deference, and authority—gave way aer the Glorious contempt for popular sovereignty—that Revolution to a comparatively moder- informed the group’s worldview. Indeed, ate form of conservatism. Tories reluc- the epistemological usefulness of such tant to embrace the Jacobite insurgency terms as “British constitutionalism” and had little choice but to abandon several “Court party” should not be overstated, bedrock convictions—including a belief for they are in exible categories that can in absolutism—as a result of the toppling potentially project a misleading sense of of James II and the ascendancy of Wil- conceptual tidiness backwards onto the liam and Mary, whose rise to power was past.23 accompanied by a permanent diminu- Ultimately, it is hoped that an explo- tion in arbitrary monarchical power. Yet ration of the mentalité of Upper Cana- it would be a mistake to conclude that da’s ruling elite will contribute to a fuller English conservatives simply jettisoned understanding of transatlantic conserva- their commitment to a hierarchical so- tism’s importance to the colony’s history. cial order and an authoritarian politi- To downplay its signi cance in Upper cal culture. On the contrary, numerous Canada is to o er a distorted account of Tories beginning in the late seventeenth Ontario’s past, one in which reactionary century opted to transfer their allegiance of the Americas, 2009), 169. 22 Carol Wilton, Popular Politics and Political Culture in Upper Canada, 1800-1850 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-ueen’s University Press, 2000), 9; Gordon T. Stewart, e Origins of Ca- nadian Politics: A Comparative Approach (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1986), 11-12; H.T. Dickinson, Liberty and Property: Political Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Britain (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1977), 125-54; 169-72. 23 Gordon S. Wood, “Ideology and the Origins of Liberal America,” William and Mary uar- terly, ird Series 44:3 (July 1987), 634.
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from the monarch to the balanced con- as “the true excellence of the English gov- stitution of King, Lords, and Commons ernment.”25 while retaining their essential conserva- Tories also looked to the nation’s tive convictions.24 Christian establishment, the Church of English conservatives, many of whom England, as a mechanism by which social were large landowners, increasingly ac- hierarchy and political authoritarianism cepted the argument that the nation’s could be perpetuated post-1688. As be- post-1688 “mixed” government included fore the Glorious Revolution, conserva- the best aspects of the three irreducible tives relied on Anglican clergymen to forms of political authority—the deci- instil in their parishioners’ minds the im- siveness of monarchy, the wisdom of ar- portance of deference to father and hus- istocracy, the liberty of democracy—and band, squire and monarch. e Church, excluded the negative traits that each of for its part, received from the state relia- these systems could potentially display ble nancial support and legal privileges, on their own—autocratic tyranny, oligar- bene ts that consolidated the mutually chic corruption, mob rule. Indeed, Tories bene cial aliation that had existed be- in ever-expanding numbers came to feel tween these two pillars of English society that the balanced constitution could do since the sixteenth century. So close was a better job of preserving social stabil- the relationship between the Church of ity and private property than unchecked England and the forces of early modern monarchy. e reason, the logic ran, was conservatism that Samuel Johnson, in that under the balanced constitution the his Dictionary of 1755, de ned the word in uence wielded by any one govern- “Tory” as “One who adheres to the an- mental component—including mon- cient constitution of the state, and the archy—could be o set by the authority apostolic hierarchy of the Church of of the other components, whereas under England.”26 conditions of absolutist rule Lords and Based as it was on the balanced con- Commons would have little meaningful stitution and the established English opportunity to modify the monarch’s Church, the governmental system that behaviour, however reckless it might be. took root in England in the late seven- us, William Blackstone, the in uen- teenth century proved durable. Indeed, tial conservative jurist, identi ed the bal- its fundamental characteristics—which anced constitution’s capacity for check- included a powerful aristocracy and ing the authority of its constituent parts a permanently endowed church—re-
24 Steve Pincus, 1688: e First Modern Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 476; Dickinson, Liberty and Property, 13-46. 25 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1765), I:150-51. 26 James J. Sack, From Jacobite to Conservative: Reaction and Orthodoxy in Britain, c. 1760-1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 35.
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Portrait of Edmund Burke, by Sir Joshua Reynolds. © National Portrait Gallery, London.
mained rmly intact until the early nineteenth century when, quite rapidly, it began to crumble as a result of such developments as the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828, which extended full civil liberties to Protestant Dissenters; and the Reform Act of 1832, which undermined the dominance of tra- ditional elites through the broadening of the British franchise. at Whig politi- cians occupied the commanding heights of the English (and, aer 1707, British) government for much of the eighteenth century should not disguise the fact that the post-1688 social and political order was predicated on a conservative desire to perpetuate hierarchy and render pri- tion’s outbreak, as evidenced by Edmund vate property secure.27 Burke’s scathing dismissal of the Rous- Bolstering the status quo in late-eight- seauist notion that human beings are eenth-century Britain was a multifaceted naturally equal as a “monstrous ction.”28 counter-revolutionary phenomenon, the e 1790s also saw the rise of what could emergence of which coincided with the fairly be described as a popular culture unfolding of the French Revolution. An of counter-revolutionary conservatism. early sense of optimism for the events of is culture manifested in the formation 1789 and the emancipating principles of organizations like the Association for for which they were thought to stand the Preservation of Liberty and Property was largely eclipsed in the 1790s by dis- against Republicans and Levellers, which enchantment regarding the chaos and played a pivotal role in propagating con- brutality associated with, inter alia, the servative writings across British society; blood-drenched Reign of Terror. Con- and in the activities of “church and king” servative intellectuals critiqued radical mobs that lashed out at allegedly disloyal theories that helped spark the Revolu- Protestant Dissenters.29
27 J.C.D. Clark, English Society 1660-1832: Religion, Ideology and Politics During the Ancien Ré- gime, Second Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 28 Edmund Burke, Re ections on the Revolution in France, edited by L.G. Mitchell (Oxford: Ox- ford University Press, 1993), 37. 29 Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad & Dangerous People? England, 1783-1846 (Oxford: Clarendon
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Counter-revolutionary sentiments found themselves divided over the radi- also circulated in the early American re- cal developments occurring in France, as public. Substantial anxiety existed among the enthusiasm that initially greeted prominent public gures in the 1780s events like the Storming of the Bastille over the United States’ rst constitution, was tempered by a burgeoning scepticism the Articles of Confederation, which was regarding the evermore-chaotic develop- denounced by conservatives for dispers- ments of the 1790s. Di erences of opin- ing authority across elective state leg- ion tended to mirror the nascent partisan islatures in which executive power was rivalry that lay at the heart of the early re- tightly constrained. Critics called for the public’s politics. Backers of the Republi- creation of a strong central government can Party, led by the radical Francophile capable of o setting, in Alexander Ham- omas Je erson, continued to support ilton’s words, “the amazing violence and the Revolution, while their rivals in the turbulence of the democratic spirit,” and Federalist Party, of which Hamilton was of implementing coherent national poli- a prominent member, were rather more cies on issues like international diploma- ambivalent about what they saw as an cy. Such sentiments featured prominent- anarchic assault on order, authority, and ly in the Constitutional Convention of tradition. American counter-revolution- 1787, which was responsible for creating aries gained the upper hand in this rival- a governmental mechanism that includ- ry as a result of such events as the con- ed a powerful executive and a system of troversy surrounding “Citizen” Edmond checks and balances expressly designed Charles Genet, a French ocial who to neutralize the “follies of democracy.”30 rued feathers in the United States as a Counter-revolutionary conservatism result of his attempts to elicit American was also on display in the early republic support for Revolutionary France’s mili- during the French Revolution. Americans tary campaigns.31
Press, 2006), 58-68; Dickinson, Liberty and Property, 272-302; Michael R. Watts, e Dissenters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), II: 353; Mark Philp, ed., e French Revolution and British Popular Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Upper Canada was no stranger to outbursts of popular conservatism. For example, in the early nineteenth century young members of the colonial elite destroyed William Lyon Mackenzie’s printing press, while colonists drawn from more modest backgrounds who shared the rioter’s conservatism (including members of the Orange Order) engaged in egy burnings and acts of electoral violence. e frequency of such unruly behaviour increased markedly in the 1820s and 1830s, due largely to the emergence of a Reform movement. See Paul Romney, “From the Types Riot to the Rebellion: Elite Ideology, Anti-legal Sentiment, Political Vio- lence, and the Rule of Law in Upper Canada,” Ontario History LXXIX:2 (June 1987), 113-44; Carol Wilton, “‘Lawless Law’: Conservative Political Violence in Upper Canada, 1818-1842,” Law and His- tory Review 13:1 (Spring 1995), 111-36; and Wilton, Popular Politics and Political Culture, 13. 30 Terry Bouton, Taming Democracy: ‘ e People,’ the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 176-80; Larry E. Tise, e Ameri- can Counter-revolution: A Retreat om Liberty, 1783-1800 (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 1998), 399-409. 31 Seth Cotlar, Tom Paine’s America: e Rise and Fall of Transatlantic Radicalism in the Early
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Alexander Hamilton. Collection of e New-York Historical Society, accession no. 1867.305.
in 1789 that the British gov- ernment’s objective “[was] to assimilate the Constitution of that Province to that of Great Britain, as nearly as the… situa- tion of the Province will admit.” Accordingly, he advocated the creation of an appointive “Up- per branch,” the Legislative Council, whose members, simi- lar to British Lords, would occu- py their posts for life and o set the democratic character of the colony’s Assembly. Such an ar- rangement, Grenville reasoned, would inoculate Upper Canada against the radical contagion e transatlantic counter-revolu- that had emerged in colonial America, tionary phenomenon was instrumental where the authority of the colonies’ up- to the development of Upper Canada. per houses had been curtailed. By vesting e Constitutional Act, which ushered in the Legislative Council “a greater de- the colony into existence in 1791, was gree of weight and consequence than was informed by a desire to establish a social possessed by the Councils in the old Co- and political order patterned on the con- lonial Governments,” the essence of the servative metropolitan model.32 William British constitution could be preserved Grenville, the British Colonial Secretary in British North America.33 responsible for craing the Act, stated Imperial policymakers also sought to
Republic (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2011), 82; Stanley Elkins and Eric McK- itrick, e Age of Federalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 309-57; Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 174-208. 32 Clark, English Society, 300-301. 33 Adam Shortt and Arthur G. Doughty, eds., Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1759-1791 (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1918), II:988-89. As Michel Ducharme has argued, the Constitutional Act cannot be seen as a reactionary document, since it established in the Cana- das democratic institutions—namely, elective assemblies—that had not existed in the old colony of uebec. Still, as Alan Taylor has argued, the Act can be seen as counter-revolutionary. For instance, it set aside substantial Crown lands whose revenues, it was hoped, would pay government ocials’
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equip the Anglican Church in post-revo- bene t of “a Protestant Clergy”—An- lutionary British North America with glicans insisted that “Protestant Clergy” government assistance, due chie y to the implicitly meant Church of England, belief that Dissenting Protestantism— while Dissenters maintained that the whose associations with religious disor- lands, which came to be known as Clergy der and political subversion date at least Reserves, should either be made available as far back as the English Civil War—had to other denominations or liquidated contributed to the outbreak of the Amer- and devoted to public education—a sub- ican Revolution.34 e outpouring of sequent clause within the Act demon- evangelical enthusiasm associated with strated that imperial authorities were de- events like the Great Awakening had termined to confer on Upper Canadian purportedly fomented in colonial Amer- Anglicans the bene ts of state support. icans a distressing tendency to challenge e clause, which called for the creation authorities, whether religious or civil. in every town of “One or more Parsonage British authorities, in response, looked or Rectory… according to the Establish- to that age-old conservative bulwark, the ment of the Church of England,” reveals Church of England, as a means by which imperial policymakers’ determination to deference and loyalty could be ingrained entrench in Upper Canada another com- in the consciousness of post-revolution- ponent of the conservative metropolitan ary British North Americans. Conse- order.36 quently, an alliance between the English Expressions of counter-revolutionary Church and the state came to be seen as conservatism were put forth by in uen- an instrument for “combatting and re- tial elements within Upper Canada fol- pressing the prevailing disposition of the lowing the colony’s creation. John Graves Colonies to republicanism, and exciting Simcoe, Upper Canada’s rst lieutenant in them an esteem for monarchy.”35 governor, denounced the “French Na- Such notions informed the Constitu- tion” for having “so unjustly” plunged tional Act. While it ambiguously called several states, including Great Britain, for Crown lands to be set aside for the into the maelstrom of war. Yet he also
salaries, thus ensuring their independence from elected representatives who had allegedly grown too powerful in the thirteen colonies as a result of their control over the “power of the purse.” is aspect of the Act attests to Grenville’s yearning to avoid in Upper Canada “those defects which hastened the independence of our antient possession in America.” Ducharme, “Canada in the Age of Revolutions,” 177-78; Taylor, “ e Late Loyalists: Northern Re ections of the Early American Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic 27:1 (Spring 2007), 12-15. 34 Judith Fingard, e Anglican Design in Loyalist No a Scotia, 1783-1816 (London: SPCK, 1972), 2-3. 35 William Knox, Extra Ocial State Papers: Addressed to e Right Hon. Lord Rawdon…. (Lon- don, 1789), 73-74. 36 Shortt and Doughty, eds., Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, II:1045; Curtis Fahey, In His Name: e Anglican Experience in Upper Canada, 1791-1854 (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1991), 4-9.
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expressed con dence that Britain, “the ist counterparts in neighbouring states. Protector of the Liberties of Mankind,” Many Upper Canadians (and, especially, would prevail in its struggle with Revo- members of the elite) looked favourably lutionary France, and repel “all modern on the Federalists’ critique of radicalism, aggressions upon those equitable princi- which demonstrates that the pro-Brit- ples… our ancestors so wisely contributed ish loyalism that ourished across the to establish.”37 colony was by no means incompatible Simcoe was also convinced that with sympathy for aspects of American state-aided Anglicanism could play a society.39 Strengthening bonds between role in combatting radical challenges to Upper Canadians and American Fed- the hierarchical society that imperial au- eralists were the pro-British sentiments thorities had striven to create in post-rev- espoused by the latter as the con ict be- olutionary British North America. us, tween Britain and France wore on. Such he informed British Secretary of State views, which cropped up repeatedly in Henry Dundas that, “I have always been Federalist newspapers, were reprinted extremely anxious… that the Church of by Upper Canadian publications for England should be essentially established British North American consumption. in Upper Canada.” Providing the Eng- Consider the following example, which lish Church with material assistance and initially appeared in the Gazette of the symbolic recognition, Simcoe explained, United States in the late 1790s, regarding would go a considerable distance in the righteousness of the British cause and countering the incursions into Upper the anities that fused Britain and the Canada “of every kind of Sectaries”—by United States. e article highlighted the which he meant such Dissenting denom- “glorious and successful stand that Great- inations as the Episcopal Methodists, an Britain” had made against “the ferocious evangelical group linked to the United and desolating tyranny of France,” and States—“many of whom are hostile… to expressed gratitude to the “great nation, the British Constitution.”38 from which we derive our natural and Contributing to Upper Canada’s political existence.”40 counter-revolutionary ethos was the close Upper Canadians continued to sym- relationship that developed between the pathize with the Federalists in the early colony’s inhabitants and their Federal- nineteenth century despite the party’s
37 Upper Canada Gazette, 6 June 1793, n.p. 38 E.A. Cruikshank, ed., e Correspondence of Lieut. Go ernor John Graves Simcoe (Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1923), I:251-52. 39 Jane Errington, e Lion, the Eagle, and Upper Canada: A Developing Colonial Ideology (Mon- treal and Kingston: McGill-ueen’s University Press, 1987), 7; Jane Errington and George Rawlyk, “ e Loyalist-Federalist Alliance in Upper Canada,” American Review of Canadian Studies XIV:2 (Summer 1984), 158-65. On “Britishness” and Canadian history see Phillip Buckner, “Whatever Happened to the British Empire?,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 4:1 (1993), 3-32. 40 Upper Canada Gazette, 18 May 1799, n.p. See also ibid., 7 February 1801, 2031.
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waning in uence in American society, a fundamental social change. trend that was re ected in the Republi- Gordon S. Wood has argued that, due cans’ victory in the election of 1800. One to the transformations that it wrought in observer, writing in the Kingston Gazette terms of social relationships, the violent in 1812, expressed “pity” at the plight of con ict that engendered the American “virtuous and well disposed” Federalists republic was “as radical and revolution- who were supposedly languishing “under ary as any in history.”42 His interpretation the unjust and unprincipled measures” of hinges on the notion that the Revolution Republican demagogues.41 eradicated the culture of deference that compelled ordinary Americans to accept An Alternative Model for their subordination to their supposed Colonial Development social betters—as re ected, for example, he Family Compact’s vision for in the automatic tendency of college stu- TUpper Canada—which featured dents to do their caps at increasingly political, religious, and economic di- large distances as they approached tu- mensions—cannot be accurately under- tors, professors, and college presidents. stood in isolation from the transatlantic Replacing this culture was an alternative conservative tradition from which it ethos that, while replete with double emerged, and by which it was repeat- standards in terms of race, class, and gen- edly replenished. Members of the group, der, embraced the idea of egalitarianism.43 who were deeply committed to the Brit- ( at such developments were thought ish Crown, objected to the revolutionary to be a factor in Upper Canada can be surge that traversed the Atlantic World seen in the remarks of Susanna Moodie, beginning in the late eighteenth century, who referred disdainfully to the “ultra- in part, because it threatened to sever the republican spirit” evinced by the colony’s connective constitutional tissues that “low-born Yankee[s]” and “Yankee ed linked Upper Canada to the metropoli- British peasantry.”44) One need not ac- tan state. Yet the Compact’s concerns cept Wood’s argument in its entirety to over radical republicanism were not lim- recognize that, as a result of its capacity ited to its capacity for e ecting funda- for toppling elites, revolutionary radical- mental political change. Much like their ism threatened hierarchical relationships conservative counterparts elsewhere in across the Atlantic World. the world, members of the group were Anxieties over radical threats to hier- equally (if not more) alarmed by revolu- archy featured prominently in the psyche tionary radicalism’s capacity for e ecting of the Family Compact. John Strachan,
41 Errington, e Lion, the Eagle, and Upper Canada, 44-46. 42 Gordon S. Wood, e Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1993), 5. 43 Ibid., 12-21; 234. 44 Moodie quoted in John urston, “‘ e Dust of Toryism’: Monarchism and Republicanism in Up- per Canadian Travel and Immigration Texts,” Journal of Canadian Studies 30:4 (Winter 1995-96), 79.
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writing in the early nineteenth century, while eschewing the negative attributes declared that, “ e rage for equality that each of these forms of political au- which the American and French revolu- thority were capable of exhibiting on tions have introduced,” has promoted their own. e result, they believed, was many “false and mischievous” notions. a “temperate medium between despot- Chief among them was the belief that ism and anarchy.”47 ordinary people were no longer obliged Yet signi cant though it may have to submit to elites. “Persons of high rank been, the Compact’s enthusiasm for the have not only been refused the respect British constitution was by no means and deference to which they were enti- con ned to this one issue. Rather, it tled,” Strachan observed in reference to was also meaningful for members of the the social upheaval unleashed on both group because it provided them with sides of the Atlantic, “but republican fe- an opportunity to di erentiate them- rocity [has] delighted to deprive them of selves from the ordinary Upper Canadi- [their] reputation and talents.”45 e im- ans—or, in Burkean terms, “the swinish portance of such concerns to the Com- multitude”—among whom they lived. In pact’s alternative model for colonial de- a colony that lacked large hereditary es- velopment can scarcely be overstated. tates and a vast tenantry, Compact con- Of central importance to the politi- servatives looked to the constitution’s cal dimension of the Compact’s vision appointive elements, including the Leg- for Upper Canada was their support for islative Council, as means by which they Britain’s balanced constitution, which could cement their authority and foster was celebrated as an unrivalled mecha- social order.48 nism for promoting hierarchy and safe- Additionally, members of the guarding property.46 Similar to other group—who tended either to be the chil- constituencies elsewhere in the Empire, dren of Loyalists (Hagerman, Robinson), Compact members boasted that the Brit- or to have immigrated to Upper Canada ish system on which the Constitutional from Britain around the turn of the nine- Act was based possessed the best traits of teenth century (Allan, Strachan)—iden- the three ancient forms of governance— ti ed Upper Canada’s constitution as an monarchy, aristocracy, democracy— indispensable link between the colony
45 John Strachan, Discourse on the Character of King George the ird (Montreal: Nahum Mower, 1810), 47-48. 46 See, for instance, John Macaulay’s letter in the Kingston Gazette, 28 June 1818, n.p.; and John Bev- erley Robinson, Charge, of the Honourable John Beverley Robinson, Chief Justice of Upper Canada, to the Grand Jury…. (Toronto: R. Stanton, 1838), 9. 47 Kingston Gazette, 23 October 1810, n.p.; Ibid., 29 January 1811, n.p. 48 Philip Girard, “Liberty, Order, and Pluralism: e Canadian Experience,” in Exclusionary Empire: English Liberty Overseas, 1600-1900, edited by Jack P. Greene (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 177; Cook, “John Beverley Robinson and the Conservative Blueprint for the Upper Canadian Community,” 84.
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and Great Britain itself. Given that Up- mirror the metropolitan state by granting per Canada was located on the doorstep substantial powers to the people’s elected of a potentially hostile American repub- representatives (as epitomized by the lic, and that many of the colony’s inhabit- campaign for responsible government). ants (especially before 1815) were North While it may have been technically con- American-born, the constitution was sistent with British practice, members of perceived as a vehicle by which to pre- the Compact maintained that the reali- serve a substantive connection between zation of the Reformers’ constitutional colonists and the metropolitan state.49 To vision would eliminate checks against alter the constitution by, say, rendering North American “mobocracy” and e ec- the Legislative Council elective would tively eradicate metropolitan in uence in thus be to sever arguably the most im- Upper Canada. us, the group tended portant bond uniting these components to emphasize a particular interpretation of the empire.50 of the spirit, rather than the letter, of the True, Compact conservatives were British constitution.52 by no means unique in exalting the Brit- e Family Compact’s views regard- ish constitution. On the contrary, their ing liberty and aristocracy bring into adversaries, the Reformers, frequently focus the pronounced extent to which celebrated the bundle of laws, institu- their political attitudes were moulded tions, and conventions by which Britons by transatlantic conservatism. John Stra- were governed.51 However, where the chan, in his Discourse on the Character of Compact’s interpretation of the British King George the ird (1810), asserted constitution advocated concentrating that, “ e word liberty has been so much substantial power in the hands of ap- prostituted that we are in danger of losing pointed ocials (oen at the expense of its true meaning.” Strachan denounced the legislative assembly), the Reformers’ the notion that adherence to laws for- interpretation called for the colony to mulated by civil authorities invariably 49 It should be noted that, in seeking to defend the British regime in Upper Canada, members of the Compact were capable of behaving in ways that arguably ran counter to Britain’s constitutional tradition—indeed, they occasionally elicited the disapproval of metropolitan ocials. For example, for his role in the repeated expulsions of William Lyon Mackenzie from the colonial legislature in the early and mid-1830s (which e ectively disenfranchised many of Mackenzie’s constituents), Chris- topher Hagerman was dismissed from his position as Solicitor General. Paul Romney, Mr. Attorney: e Attorney General for Ontario in Court, Cabinet, and Legislature 1791-1899 (Toronto: Osgoode Society/University of Toronto Press, 1986), 155; Robert L. Fraser, “Hagerman, Christopher Alexan- der,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, VII
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involved surrendering at least a modicum and the United States, were free simply of one’s “natural liberty.” His denuncia- because they had shed the supposed yoke tion owed from the belief that the laws of monarchy and issued new constitutions of the state, far from curtailing human proclaiming their liberty. For freedom to freedom, were in fact indispensable to be meaningful, he countered, a polity the attainment of genuine liberty. Laws, needed to demonstrate the capacity to Strachan explained, “protect… and en- withstand the tribulations of history. “Be- lighten us; they are continually destroy- fore a people can be called free,” Strachan ing or removing whatever is o ensive.” In explained, “their freedom must have been a “state of nature,” by contrast, “there is tried.” By “tried” he meant that they must no liberty, for there are no laws.”53 have been subjected to “the attacks of tyr- Strachan’s understanding of liberty anny… and of faction.” It went without di ered dramatically from radical theo- saying that Britain, which had endured rists, and was anchored in the belief that the rule of both tyrants and factions at true freedom cannot exist in a primitive di ering stages of its history, had emerged setting in which laws are non-existent from such daunting circumstances with a and property is insecure: “We do not balanced constitution that was the envy enjoy what another may take away—and of the world for its ability to promote lib- what is secure in a rude society?” For Stra- erty and stability simultaneously.55 chan, civil authority—“the sovereignty of Strachan, much like other mem- good laws, the restraints of sound princi- bers of the Compact, took pride in the ples, and the commands of duty”—was fact that Upper Canadians were heirs essential in order to shield one’s posses- of such a glorious heritage. Rather than sions from arbitrary expropriation. Great proclaiming their freedom and embrac- Britain, then, was the “freest nation on ing a constitution drawn up by a cadre earth” because its government had taken of ideologues, Upper Canadians were pains to safeguard its inhabitants’ prop- the bene ciaries of an ancient tradition erty, which in turn sti ed “the seed of that traced its origins backwards into the oppression.” rough such measures, he mists of time. “Our constitution,” Stra- reasoned, “life and liberty are rendered chan elaborated, sacred.” e contrast between the genu- ine liberty of Britain and the perpetual partakes of all the advantages which an insecurity of the state of nature (or, for experience of several centuries had accumu- lated. It is not, therefore, the work of a day; that matter, revolutionary republics) it rests upon old and tried foundations, the 54 could not have been starker. more durable, because visionary empiricks Strachan also objected to the notion have not been allowed to touch them. No that a people, including citizens of France ne spun theories of metaphysicians, which
53 Strachan, Discourse on the Character of King George the ird, 18-19. 54 Ibid., 19-21; Kingston Gazette, 29 January 1811, n.p. 55 Strachan, Discourse, 19-21.
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promise much and unchangeable con- end in misery, have viction”—in the shared in its forma- importance of the tion; such men may British constitu- destroy, but they can never build. All tion’s aristocratic the privileges which branch, the Upper Englishmen possess Canadian equiva- are ours.56 lent of which was us, at the heart the Legislative of Strachan’s appre- Council, a body ciation for the British on which mem- constitution lay a re- bers of the Fam- pudiation of the radi- ily Compact had cal political experi- traditionally been ments launched by xtures. “Without American and French an Aristocracy,” the revolutionaries. Church asserted, e Family Com- “the elements of pact’s views on aris- Sir John B. Robinson, C.J., courtesy of the Law permanence and tocracy provide fur- Society of Upper Canada Archives, Archives stability are, in any ther evidence of the Department collection, P103. government, want- profound impact that the transatlantic ing.” Happily, however, such was not the conservative tradition had on the group’s case in Britain, where “[an] enlightened political outlook. e Church, a conserv- nobility” wielded sucient power to ative Anglican publication whose views counteract the “madness of the people.” were usually congruent with those of the Aristocracy, the Church concluded, was Compact, weighed in on the bene ts of largely responsible for ensuring that Brit- the British constitution’s aristocratic ele- ish society did not deteriorate “into the ment in the era of the Upper Canadian degenerate anarchy of a mob.”57 Rebellion. While the radical uprising’s John Beverley Robinson, who served leaders, in the Church’s estimation, “pre- on both Legislative and Executive Coun- fer the institutions of republicanism… cils in addition to acting as Upper Cana- we prefer the monarchy under which for da’s Attorney General and Chief Justice centuries our father-land has ourished, over the course of his lengthy career, at- and grown into invincible greatness.” tested to the group’s belief in the bene ts Integral to the Church’s devotion to the of aristocratic authority following the British Crown was a rm belief—“an publication of Lord Durham’s in uen-
56 Ibid., 39-40. 57 Church, 6 January 1838, 118-19.
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tial—and decidedly reform-oriented— Such a change, for Robinson, repre- Report. Robinson’s chief objection per- sented an existential threat to the British tained to a recommendation that sought constitutional tradition, as it undermined to curtail the Legislative Council’s in u- the ability of Upper Canada’s aristocratic ence in Upper Canada by allowing the component to o set the initiatives of its body’s composition to be altered every monarchical and democratic counter- eight years. To institute such a change, parts. e possibility of altering the Leg- Robinson warned, would be to “aban- islative Council in this way was especially don” a vital component of the British distressing in view of the fact that the constitution.58 forces of democracy appeared to be gath- Robinson’s misgivings stemmed from ering momentum in both metropolitan his belief that lifetime appointments al- and colonial settings. “Certainly it can- lowed the colony’s Legislative Council- not be looked to as a probable advantage,” lors to function independently of both Robinson lamented, if changes to the the Lieutenant Governor, who repre- Legislative Council rendered its mem- sented the monarch, and the Assembly, bers “more inclined hereaer to yield to who represented the populace. Such se- popular movements, however dangerous curity permitted them to act in the best may be their tendency, and less able to re- interests of the colony, “independent sist the current which may be sweeping alike of the crown and of the people.” “If everything to destruction.”60 there has been an authority in the state State-supported Anglicanism was which could dare to do right,” Robin- another component of the Family Com- son declared, “unin uenced by the fear pact’s vision for Upper Canada. Mem- of o ending any power or party, it has bers of the Compact, virtually all of been the Legislative Council.” Allowing whom were Anglican, insisted that “the the body’s composition to be altered at powers and privileges of… an Established regular intervals would compromise the Church… [belong] only to the Protestant Councillors’ ability to act autonomously, Church of England.”61 is contention as they would surely be tempted to avoid derived principally from the belief that controversial decisions that could bring state-aided Anglicanism was enshrined about their dismissal.59 in the Elizabethan Act of Supremacy,
58 Robinson, Canada, and the Canada Bill…, 119-20. 59 Ibid., 120-40. 60 Ibid., 140. One detects in Robinson’s critique of Durham’s Report the sense of pessimism that crept into the Compact’s remarks in the later 1820s and 1830s as a result of the ascent of reform movements throughout the British World. Strachan struck a similar chord in the late 1820s when he criticized the Upper Canadian Reformers’ campaign to make public funds traditionally controlled by the Church of England available to several denominations. eir initiative, to his way of think- ing, smacked of the rising tide of “liberalism [that] is sweeping everything into disorder.” George W. Spragge, ed., e John Strachan Letter Book: 1812-1834 (Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1946), 222-23.
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mid-sixteenth-century legislation that es- land.” And to adherents of the Church tablished the English Church “through- of Scotland, a “respectable” Presbyterian out the dominions and countries then institution whose claim to co-establish- belonging to, or which aerwards should ment status in Upper Canada pivoted belong to… the kingdom of England.”62 on the fact that they enjoyed such status (Signi cantly, in addition to a common in Britain, Strachan argued that recog- set of “social and political assumptions,” nizing the Scottish Church in this way religion was a major factor binding to- would set a troubling precedent that gether members of the Compact and the could potentially be exploited by radical overwhelmingly Anglican “local oligar- evangelicals in the future.64 chies” that they sustained across Upper Yet there was more to the Family Canada via their controversial handling Compact’s emphasis on the importance of patronage.63) of state-aided Anglicanism than a materi- For members of the Compact it fol- alistic desire to monopolize the Reserves. lowed that the English Church was enti- Bound up with the group’s support for tled to such bene ts of establishment sta- Anglican establishmentarianism was a tus as control over the Clergy Reserves. hierarchical conception of the universe, Strachan, who served as the Church of which was seen as a magni cent provi- England’s most outspoken Upper Ca- dential arrangement in which everything nadian advocate, displayed considerable from the simplest inanimate object to dexterity in responding to critics of the God Himself was ranked in ascending or- Anglican Church’s establishmentarian der. Central to this outlook were notions claims. To Dissenting Protestants who of paternalism, through which the strong asserted that the Constitutional Act had assumed responsibility for protecting the in fact not made provisions for the crea- weak, and deference, through which the tion of a state church, he referred to the weak acquiesced to the divinely ordained clause within the document that made dominance of the strong.65 explicit mention of bene ts that were to e perpetuation of the universal be conferred by civil authorities on the hierarchy purportedly turned on the ex- “Establishment of the Church of Eng- istence of a mutually reinforcing church-
62 Speeches of Dr. John Rolph, and Christopher Hagerman, Esq. His Majesty’s Solicitor General, on the Bill for Appropriating the Proceeds of the Clergy Reserves to the Purposes of General Education ( To - ronto: M. Reynolds, 1837), 20-21. 63 Colin Read, “ e London District Oligarchy in the Rebellion Era,” Ontario History LXXII:4 (December 1980), 195-205. 64 Church, 13 January 1838, 123; Fahey, In His Name, 128-29; John S. Moir, “Loyalty and Re- spectability: e Campaign for Co-Establishment of the Church of Scotland in Canada,” in Early Presbyterianism in Canada: Essays by John S. Moir, edited by Paul Laverdure (Gravelbourg, SK: Gravelbooks, 2003), 89-94. 65 Fahey, In His Name, 113-22; G. Blaine Baker, “‘So Elegant a Web’: Providential Order and the Rule of Secular Law in Early Nineteenth-Century Upper Canada,” University of Toronto Law Journal 38:2 (Spring 1988), 196-200.
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state relationship. e church strength- that is great and good, in those happy ened the system by enjoining the strong Countries.” Among the most impor- to nurture and defend the weak, and by tant accomplishments of Britain’s state reminding the weak that their subordi- churches, Strachan declared, was their nation to the strong was providentially capacity for inculcating in the popular sanctioned. e church also bolstered consciousness a sense of “duty to God the universal order by informing its ad- and man, [which] is every moment herents that challenges to the status quo forcing itself into notice, and… [which] ran counter to God’s will. e state, for its condemns every species of wrong.” Brit- part, assisted the church by endowing its ain’s religious establishments, in view of clergy with nancial assistance and legal their salutary impact on the masses, had privileges, and by implementing laws that vaulted the nation to the heights of inter- discouraged popular irreligion. Members national greatness: the British nation, in of the Family Compact were convinced Strachan’s opinion, “is the most intellec- that the Church of England, which had tual, and moral in Europe…. the light of existed since its inception as a bulwark of freedom burns with the greatest radiance the metropolitan state, was ideally suited [among Britons], and the rights and lib- to reinforce the divinely ordained order erties of man are the best understood and in Upper Canada.66 most abundantly enjoyed.”67 Transatlantic conservatism in u- Strachan contrasted the bene cial enced the Family Compact’s religious impact of religious establishments on views, as evidenced by their staunch sup- British society with the religious apathy port for Christian establishments. Stra- that, in his view, proliferated in the Unit- chan, in a provocative mid-1820s sermon, ed States. With few exceptions—one stressed the bene ts bestowed on Britain of which was the American “Episcopal by its state churches. (His reluctance to Church”—religion in the American re- recognize the Church of Scotland as an public “is found to languish,” a phenom- established entity in Upper Canada did enon that was especially acute in sparsely not prevent Strachan from acknowledg- populated rural communities where ing—indeed, celebrating—the fact that formal ministrations were scarce.68 e the institution received civil assistance reason, for Strachan, was that American overseas.) “ e religious establishments governments had taken pains aer the of England and Scotland,” he observed, Revolution to enact stipulations prohib- “have… been the great promoters of all iting religious establishments. Conse-
66 William Westfall, Two Worlds: e Protestant Culture of Nineteenth-Century Ontario (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-ueen’s University Press, 1989), 22. 67 John Strachan, A Sermon, Preached at York, Upper Canada, ird of July, 1825, On the Death of the Late Lord Bishop of Quebec (Kingston: James MacFarlane, 1826), 16. 68 Strachan was disdainful of the Christianity that did exist in the United States, which he associated with the emotionally unbridled, politically subversive ethos of radical evangelicalism. Ibid., 26.
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quently, funds to support the e orts of the latter, Hagerman referred with patent a “standing Ministry” were oen insuf- dismay to a “public meeting” held in Ro- cient, particularly in remote settings. chester, New York in 1837 in which the Such developments prompted Strachan legal requirement that “one day in seven… to declare “that no country can be called be kept holy” had been castigated as “an Christian, which does not give public infringement of… [Americans’] constitu- support to Christianity.” To deprive a tional liberty.” Hagerman denounced the given state’s churches of reliable govern- United States for permitting its citizens ment aid, in other words, was to hobble to engage in such audacious displays of its ability to instil religious precepts—in- irreligion, which were predicated in his cluding the sacred nature of hierarchy— opinion on the scandalous belief that in its inhabitants’ minds. e eradication “man is not accountable to his Creator for of state-supported religion was thus one his conduct, and… is bound by no other of the American Revolution’s most de- rule… than such as his own vicious and plorable legacies.69 corrupt nature may suggest.”71 Implicit in Christopher Hagerman, a member his remarks was the belief that blasphe- of the Family Compact who served as mous behaviour would not be tolerated Solicitor General and “chief defender of in British-controlled Upper Canada, High Tory principles in the [Upper Ca- where the principle of state-aided Chris- nadian] Legislature,” echoed Strachan in tianity was enmeshed in the very fabric extolling the virtues of government-sup- of the colony. ported religion.70 He was adamant that Economics constituted the third it was “the duty of every government to component of the Family Compact’s vi- shew reverence and maintain respect for sion for Upper Canada. Members of the the holiest and highest duties imposed group, in seeking to stimulate the colo- on man by his Creator.” Hagerman was ny’s economy, advocated the exploitation equally adamant that governments were of its agricultural resources. ey also ad- duty-bound to enforce “laws for the pun- vocated canal-building as a crucial means ishment of blasphemy,” the absence of by which this objective could be realized. which would surely result in the popu- e Compact’s economic outlook was lace becoming mired in “moral and re- enunciated in response to a pervasive ligious degradation.” Such had allegedly anxiety over the state of the Upper Cana- occurred in France (albeit temporarily) dian economy that bubbled to the surface and the American republic. Focusing on in the late 1810s. is anxiety was trig-
69 Ibid., 17. 70 S.F. Wise, “ e Rise of Christopher Hagerman,” in God’s Peculiar Peoples, 61-62. 71 Speeches of Dr. John Rolph and Christopher Hagerman, Esq. …, 21. In seeking to portray the United States as intrinsically irreligious, Hagerman studiously ignored the fact that many American evangelicals shared his views on Sabbath observance. See James Hutson, Forgotten Features of the Founding: e Reco ery of Religious emes in the Early American Republic (New York: Lexington, 2003), 62.
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gered by such developments as the inten- plan in 1825. at the strategy contained si cation of an international economic the essence of the Compact’s vision for malaise following the Napoleonic Wars, Upper Canada’s economic development and from which the colony was by no is hardly surprising, since its members means immune; the construction of the played a pivotal role in determining its Erie Canal, a major American undertak- content. It focused on the importance ing that helped propel New York City to of exploiting the colony’s agricultural economic dominance in North America, resources, which re ects the Compact’s and that elicited frustration from Upper belief that providence had gied Upper Canadians regarding the absence within Canada with fertile soil and a temperate their own jurisdiction of similarly ambi- climate that “[smiled] like Eden in her tious projects; and the agitation foment- summer dress,” and laid the foundation ed by Robert Gourlay, whose activities for a prosperous colonial economy.74 brought to the fore popular disenchant- To take advantage of Upper Canada’s ment over the colony’s lack of economic natural endowments members of the progress.72 Compact championed infrastructure Responding to such developments, projects—notably the Welland Canal, a commission headed by John Macaulay, which opened in 1829—that would al- one of the Compact’s few merchants, was low agricultural commodities to be trans- charged with craing a long-term strate- ported eciently from farms to colonial gy for Upper Canada’s economy.73 A joint and metropolitan markets. Such projects, committee of the colonial Assembly and in Macaulay’s view, were of “in nite im- Legislative Council chaired by Strachan portance” to Upper Canada’s economic and Robinson approved the commission’s growth.75
72 Douglas McCalla, Planting the Pro ince: e Economic History of Upper Canada, 1784-1870 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 34-42; Robert Gourlay, Statistical Account of Upper Canada, edited by S.R. Mealing (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974), 28. 73 According to Hugh G. Aitken, “none of the leading members of the Compact were business men, and… the system of values typical of the Compact accorded scant respect to business wealth as such.” Moreover, according to Robert L. Fraser, even Macaulay “longed to cut his mercantile ties” and adopt a more genteel lifestyle. Aitken, “ e Family Compact and the Welland Canal Company,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 18:1 (February 1952), 76; Fraser, “Like Eden in Her Summer Dress,” 9-10. 74 Kingston Gazette, 28 June 1818, n.p. 75 John Macaulay, Address Delivered by John Macaulay, Esq. To the Public Meeting Con ened in Kingston to “Consider… the Practicality of Establishing Water Privileges at Kingston” (Kingston: Brit- ish Whig, 1834), 12. See also Kingston Chronicle, 26 February, 5 March, 19 March, 26 March, 16 April 1819, n.p.; Fraser, “Like Eden in Her Summer Dress,” 9-12. An “unapologetic elitist,” Macaulay attested to transatlantic conservatism’s impact on the Compact in the pages of the Chronicle aer assuming control of the publication (along with Alexander Pringle) in 1819. Speci cally, he invoked Blackstone in expressing astonishment at the fact that, while “the science of legislation [is] the no- blest and most dicult of any,” it was the only one for which “some method of instruction… [was] not looked upon as requisite.” Singling out the United States for criticism, he added that in that
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Integral to the Family Compact’s they saw as the vulgar materialism that economic outlook was their belief that spurred Upper Canada’s business class. an allegedly disinterested elite—them- e latter, who were far more likely to selves—should assume responsibility support manufacturing, were linked in for promoting Upper Canada’s agricul- the Compact’s consciousness to a desta- tural development, and their suspicion bilizing ethos of bourgeois ambition and of excessive nancial speculation, which social uidity that imperilled hierarchi- purportedly threatened hierarchy. Both cal order. at members of the Compact views reveal the impact of transatlantic also happened to be intimately involved conservatism on the Compact’s econom- in potentially lucrative economic ven- ic vision, which was informed by a deep- tures, including the Welland Canal and seated desire to counter outcroppings of Bank of Upper Canada, paradoxically “democratic anarchy” in post-revolution- did not undermine their belief that they ary British North America.76 were uniquely equipped to act as disin- Members of the Family Compact were terested stewards of the Upper Canadian emphatic that Upper Canada’s economic economy.77 development strategy, which essentially Indicative of this conviction are re- dismissed manufacturing, should be led marks made by Robinson in 1824 to by what they saw as the broad-minded William Hamilton Merritt, the Welland gentlemen who comprised the colonial Canal’s principal booster, who hoped to elite—the Compact itself. Members of secure support from the Compact for the group believed that, unlike Upper the large-scale undertaking with which Canada’s allegedly self-interested busi- he was associated. (Gaining the group’s nessmen, they possessed the requisite backing would prove a boon to the independence to nurture the colonial project, as their in uence in the colonial economy. is was so, they felt, because government resulted in the implemen- they were ensconced in government po- tation of measures that facilitated the sitions that shielded them from the vola- canal’s completion.) Robinson reacted tility of the market. ey were also con- sympathetically to Merritt’s overtures: vinced that, due to their exalted status as “it seemed your earnest wish to have the the colonial “gentry,” their behaviour was direction of the Company committed to animated by nobler priorities than what gentlemen whom you could not hope to
nation, “even the common street beggar thinks himself quali ed to give… opinions, on the science of legislation, though his abilities and judgment have been totally inadequate to the task of… keep- ing himself from rags and starvation.” Robert L. Fraser, “Macaulay, John,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, VIII
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bend to anything unworthy.”78 Robin- nies and served as President of the Bank son’s assertion attests to the Compact’s of Upper Canada in addition to acting as belief that, on account of its professional an Executive and Legislative Councillor. security and disinterested patriotism, it His scepticism toward speculation, which was ideally suited to assume responsibil- Allan saw as an unstable foundation for ity for guiding Upper Canada’s economic the colonial economy, throws into relief development.79 the Compact’s support for a hierarchi- Henry Boulton expressed compara- cal society led by a paternalistic elite.81 ble views the following year in a dispatch (It should be noted that the Compact in- to Wilmot Horton, British Under Sec- vested heavily in land—witness the fact retary of State for the Colonies, regard- that members of the group held at least ing the Bank of Upper Canada. Boulton one-tenth of all territory in Peel County boasted that, while banks in the United between 1820 and 1840 as absentee pro- States were controlled by businessmen prietors. is fact suggests that members interested in enriching themselves and of the group were comfortable with cer- their friends, the Bank of Upper Canada tain forms of speculative activity, includ- was guided by “government ocers”—in- ing ones that augmented their wealth, cluding Compact xtures—whose pri- provided they did not jeopardize their mary motivation was not material gain, vision of a strati ed agrarian order.82) but rather public service. Given their pro- Allan presided over the city of Toron- fessional security, Boulton implied, mem- to’s rst foray into railway promotion in bers of the group could be trusted to steer the late 1830s. e venture, which ended the colony’s economy responsibly.80 in failure, le him dismayed by what he For additional evidence of the ways saw as the irresponsible behaviour of sev- in which conservative beliefs in uenced eral individuals involved in the initiative. the Compact’s economic outlook one Particularly troubling was the fact that need look only to their attitudes toward subscribers to the venture, including peo- nancial speculation. William Allan, the ple “of large property and some consid- Compact’s “entrepreneurial leader,” sat eration in society,” had defaulted on their on the boards of several major compa- payments. For Allan, their behaviour laid
78 Aitken, “ e Family Compact and the Welland Canal Company,” 65. 79 e Compact’s economic attitudes comport with the characteristics of “gentlemanly capitalism,” which blended support for hierarchy with enthusiasm for enterprise. See P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, “Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Expansion Overseas I. e Old Colonial System, 1688-1850,” Eco- nomic History Review, 2nd ser. XXXIX:4 (1986), 501-25. 80 Carol Lawrie Vaughan, “ e Bank of Upper Canada in Politics, 1817–1840,” Ontario History 60:4 (December 1968), 188. 81 In Collaboration, “Allan, William,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, VIII
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bare the increasingly prevalent tendency ments in a mid-nineteenth-century of Upper Canadians to behave in a reck- pamphlet through which, among other less manner in hopes of attaining wealth things, he expressed scepticism toward easily. “Such conduct,” he stated, “cannot the United States’ supposed economic be too severely censured.”83 dynamism. While he did not deny that While Allan’s remarks were likely Americans were “energetic, active, and in uenced by a sense of disappointment enterprising”—traits, Robinson ob- in the venture’s failure, they also re ect served, they shared with their “racial” his concerns regarding dependence on counterparts in English-speaking Brit- speculation. Fuelling Allan’s suspicion ish North America—he insisted that in- of this type of economic activity was his habitants of the United States had yet to conviction that hard work was the only grasp “the secret of attaining real wealth.” legitimate means by which wealth could Instead, they had been altogether too re- be generated. Reliance on speculation, by liant on risky phenomena like nancial contrast, militated against virtuous be- speculation. Such behaviour had precipi- haviour by encouraging individuals to be- tated a sharp economic downturn in the lieve that wealth could be gained without United States in the late 1830s, which in concerted e ort. Moreover, speculation’s turn brought the nation’s progress to a capacity for creating dramatic uctua- screeching halt.85 tions in wealth—which could seemingly e stalling of the American econ- leave one auent one day, impoverished omy, from Robinson’s perspective, fur- the next—threatened to upset the hierar- nished Upper Canadians frustrated with chical design that Compact conservatives their colony’s sluggish economic growth had taken such paints to entrench.84 One with an invaluable lesson. Tumultuous could infer from Allan’s remarks that, for circumstances south of the border dem- this Compact member, speculation was onstrated that, “wealth must consist of acceptable when it supplemented wealth the gradual accumulation of labour.” based on hard work, unacceptable when To erect an economy on alternate foun- it became an economic focal point that dations, including speculation, would encouraged unscrupulous behaviour and ultimately prove “disastrous.” What is social uidity. more, Robinson maintained that what- Robinson conveyed similar senti- ever progress had occurred in the Ameri-
83 Peter A. Baskerville, “Entrepreneurship and the Family Compact: York-Toronto, 1822-55,” Urban History Review 9:3 (February 1981), 20. 84 Although they were skeptical of the Compact’s graded social vision, many Reformers (includ- ing radicals like William Lyon Mackenzie) shared the group’s belief in the importance of a vibrant agrarian economy. Additionally, it should be mentioned that several Compact members shed their apprehensions regarding such activities as railway speculation following the economic transforma- tions of the mid-nineteenth century. Greer, “Historical Roots of Canadian Democracy,” 18-19; Bask- erville, “Entrepreneurship and the Family Compact,” 20-28. 85 Robinson, Canada, and the Canada Bill…, 59-60.
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can republic prior to the downturn had such signi cant events as the American, not been based on wealth generated by French, and Haitian Revolutions.87 More American exertion. Instead, it had been recently, they have drawn attention to a based on revenue derived from the hard Counter-revolutionary Atlantic—a pat- work of Britons over many years, which tern of imperial recon guration and per- in turn allowed British nanciers to fund sistence that occurred in the aermath of ventures launched in the United States. the revolutionary era’s various uprisings.88 America’s economic growth, then, “was e counter-revolutionary phenomenon not the fruit of past labour in the United reinforced a durable conservative tra- States, but was the accumulated earnings dition that originated in England aer of a greater quantity of patient and en- the Glorious Revolution, and derived during industry in England.” “If a coun- much of its strength from an in uential try,” Robinson concluded, “desires to aristocracy and an established Anglican grow rich, she must expect to do so by the Church. patient labour of her people.” Alternative Such was the historical context from approaches to economic development, which the Family Compact’s principal including risky speculative schemes that values—including hierarchy, deference, threatened to undermine the divinely and disdain for unchecked democra- ordained order, would invariably end in cy—emerged. Seeking to sti e radical failure.86 republicanism, members of the group articulated a vision for Upper Canada’s Conclusion future that attested to the importance Historians have long been aware of the of transatlantic conservatism. Esteeming “Revolutionary Atlantic”—a sprawling stability, piety, and prosperity, this vision network of ideas, individuals, and institu- rested on three pillars: a particular inter- tions that propagated radical sentiments pretation of Britain’s constitution, Angli- on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean dur- can establishmentarianism, and an agrar- ing the eighteenth and nineteenth centu- ian economy led by a paternalistic elite. ries and contributed to the outbreak of e contrast between the Compact’s pri- 86 Ibid., 60-61; Cook, “John Beverley Robinson and the Conservative Blueprint for Upper Canada,” 84. 87 Rusty Bittermann, Sailor’s Hope: e Life and Times of William Cooper, Agrarian Radical in an Age of Revolutions (Montreal: McGill-ueen’s University Press, 2010); Michel Ducharme, “Clos- ing the Last Chapter of the Atlantic Revolution: e 1837-1838 Rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 116:2 (2006), 413-30; Eliga H. Gould and Peter S. Onuf, eds., Empire and Nation: e American Revolution in the Atlantic World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). 88 Nancy Christie, “‘He is the master of his house’: Families and Political Authority in Counter- revolutionary Montreal,” William and Mary uarterly 70:2 (April 2013), 341-70; Jonathan Den Hartog, “Trans-Atlantic Anti-Jacobinism: Reaction and Religion,” Early American Studies 11:1 (Winter 2013), 133-45; Jeremy Adelman, “An Age of Imperial Revolutions,” American Historical Review, 113:2 (April 2008), 319-40.
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orities and those of their Reform-orient- per Canada by the Family Compact. Yet ed critics—the most thoroughgoing of the fact that the group nally succumbed which advocated starkly opposed politi- to its Reform-oriented adversaries should cal, religious, and economic objectives— not obscure the tremendous power that it brings into focus the deep divisions that wielded for most of the colony’s history. lie at the heart of Ontario’s history. e Compact, in the nal analysis, were In much the same way that devel- not simply obstacles to Upper Canadian opments like the Repeal of the Test and progress. Rather, they advocated an al- Corporation Acts and the passing of the ternative model of colonial development Great Reform Bill eroded the founda- based on the legacy of post-1688 metro- tions of British conservatism, phenom- politan conservatism and the Counter- ena like the Union of the Canadas and revolutionary Atlantic. Only in hind- the granting of Responsible Government sight can the Reformers’ victory be seen diminished the authority exerted in Up- as inevitable.
Contributors Rebecca Beausaert completed her Ph.D. in History at York University in 2013. Her dis- sertation examined the intersections between gender, leisure, and class in three southwestern Ontario communities between the years 1870 and 1914. e research conducted for this article is part of a larger project about “bad girls” in turn-of-the-century rural and small-town Ontario. Jennifer Hough Evans is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. Her research interests include food, women and gender, memory and northern Ontario. Christopher Los is currently an upper-year student at Osgoode Hall Law School, York Uni- versity. He completed an MA in History at the University of Guelph, focusing on national identity and urban development in the province of Ontario in the 1960s. His research was funded by SSHRC and focused on the Centennial Grants Programme, which was imple- mented to celebrate the 1967 Centennial celebrations. e program resulted in the construc- tion of thousands of locally selected Centennial Projects across the country. He also holds undergraduate degrees in History and Political Science. Denis McKim Ph.D. (University of Toronto) is a faculty member in the Department of His- tory at Mount Allison University. Mark Sholdice is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Guelph where he is enrolled in the Tri-University Program in History. His article entitled “ e Social Gospel as the Religion of the Agrarian Revolt in Ontario?” was published in December 2013 in the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture.
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