The Patronage Effect: Civil Service Reforms, Job-Seeking, and State Formation in Victorian Canada

The Patronage Effect: Civil Service Reforms, Job-Seeking, and State Formation in Victorian Canada by David Banoub A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History with Specialization in Political Economy Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario © 2013 David Banoub Abstract Patronage, in the mid- and late-nineteenth century, was central to Canadian politics. This period also witnessed a series of debates concerning the civil service and a range of reforms that attempted to eliminate patronage. This dissertation argues that, more than debates about administration and appointments, these were also struggles over how to construct the ideal civil servant and civil service. These were highly political issues that were beset by processes of inclusion and exclusion, especially with respect to gender, class, and race. In short, these were debates about the many facets of liberal governmentality and state formation in early modern Canada. This dissertation also analyzes letters to federal politicians asking for appointments. Among other things, these documents expressed a range of opinions on how the bureaucracy should be managed, staffed and constructed. Letters asking for patronage also demonstrated how aspiring public servants understood and expected the appointment process to work. These letters reflected what type of people should have access to the civil service, and what type of people the applicants thought they were. As such, they informed and were themselves informed by broader political and administrative debates. These politics of Canadian patronage, I argue, were central to the everyday processes of state formation. ii Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the staff, faculty, and intellectual climate at Carleton’s Department of History and Institute of Political Economy. The opportunity to participate in a range of coursework, conferences, and discussions contributed to, changed, and sharpened my thinking about history, theory, and politics. The department’s administrative team – Dr. Dominique Marshall, Dr. Jennifer Evans, Dr. James Miller, Joan White, Regina Aulinskas, and Irene Sanna – and Donna Coghill at the Institute all deserve thanks for making Carleton’s bureaucracy always seem rational and never like an iron cage. Special thanks to my supervisor, John C. Walsh, whose friendship, mentorship, and advice have been invaluable in developing my work, thinking, and teaching. His guidance transformed what seemed like an impossible amount of work into a manageable task. His unflagging enthusiasm for this project was contagious and made even the difficult work of revising, improving and editing an exciting process. Most importantly, John always reminded me of why I wanted to be a historian. My examination committee, Professors Ian Radforth, Peter Hodgins, Bruce Curtis, and Dominique Marshall, provided generous thoughts, advice, and productive criticisms for how to improve this work. Drs. Marshall and Curtis were both kind enough to direct me in a reading course on state formation, as were Dr. Blair Rutherford and Dr. Cristina Rojas. The influence of these readings and meetings is demonstrated throughout this entire dissertation. It was also in one of these sessions that Dr. Curtis suggested this dissertation’s title. iii Funding for this project was generously provided Carleton’s Department of History, the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs. In addition to departmental funding, I was aided by the Carleton University Academic Staff Association Bill Jones Award, an Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and a Social Science and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Award. Research Assistantships for John Walsh and Bruce Curtis, and Teaching Assistantships also contributed to completing this project. One of the pleasures of graduate studies was the sense of friendship and debate with my colleagues in the History Graduate Students’ Association. I would especially like to thank David Tough, Jess Dunkin, Sara Spike, Brian Foster, and Susan Joudrey, all of whom were critical, thoughtful, and encouraging as the situation demanded. Sharing research and ideas with them in lectures and in living rooms, over coffees and beers, has been one of the best parts about my time at Carleton. Furthermore, teaching with Sara and Dave taught me lessons well beyond the scope of our courses. My family and friends have also been unwaveringly supportive throughout my graduate studies. My friends have been especially kind in listening to me think through obstacles, and in helping me sometimes forget the world of civil service reform and patronage. I would like to thank my parents, Joseph and Judy Banoub, both biochemists, for being understanding when I told them I wanted to study history, and for never making me question that decision. Part of their acceptance was likely a result of the unconditional support they, and I too have, received from my grandparents, Robert Miller, Shirley Miller, Irma Stiers, and Habib Banoub Daoud (1918-2012). My brother, Daniel, and my sister, Kathryn, share the strange experience of being arts and humanities students in a iv family of scientists. They have both always pushed me to make my thinking more ambitious and my writing more precise. Finally, my partner, Melanie Sturk, has lived with this dissertation as long as I have. For that whole time she has been thoughtful, understanding, and supportive. She never doubted me, or this work, and it is her confidence and partnership that has allowed me to complete this project. v Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Table of Contents vi List of Illustrations vii Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Part One: Debating, Constructing, and Regulating the Civil Service, 31 1867-1892 Chapter 2: ‘The greatest possible public as well as party service:’ Patronage, 32 Politics and Rhetorics of Reform, 1867-1882 Chapter 3: A Question of Public Import: Partisanship, Public Men, and the 78 Kingsford-Langevin Affair Chapter 4: ‘An immense waste of power:’ The 1891-92 Royal Commission and 106 the Civil Service’s Regulation and Management Part Two: Asking for Appointment: Patronage Letters, 1856-1896 150 Reading and Writing Patronage: A Social-Intellectual History 151 Chapter 5: Constructing Public Authority: Communities, the Public, and 156 Patronage Networks Chapter 6: The Bureaucratic Body 196 Chapter 7: Desiring a Position: Emotions and Patronage 227 Chapter 8: Conclusion 257 Bibliography 265 vi List of Illustrations 7.1 Handwriting Sample, R.S. Bennison to Samuel Leonard Tilley, 1859 230 7.2 Handwriting Sample, R.S. Bennison to Samuel Leonard Tilley, 1859 231 vii Chapter 1 Introduction “The bureaucracy is not a closed system; it is this that makes it a world instead of a thing.”1 David Foster Wallace, The Pale King, 2011 In 2011, Jason Kenney, the Conservative Citizen and Immigration Minister, responded to accusations of patronage appointments in his department by “producing a longer list of past Liberal patronage appointments.” An editorial in the National Post was critical of this approach, lamenting that while “[y]ounger readers may not remember, but it is true nonetheless, that Mr. Kenney’s partners in politics used to oppose patronage, full stop.”2 These accusations and evasions regarding patronage were not new tactics. The uses, defenses, and criticisms of patronage are long recurring themes in Canadian political debates. Given that this was a piece of contemporary political commentary, the Post editorial did not explore this long history. In 2008, the Public Service Commission of Canada (PSC) produced a history of its first one hundred years. It described its work as “based on a century-old tradition of protecting public service appointments from political interference and ensuring a professional, non-partisan public service.”3 The pamphlet includes a three-paragraph section on the nineteenth century, simply titled “Background.” These paragraphs describe the main changes that occurred from the 1857 Act for Improving the Organization and Increasing the Efficiency of the Civil Service of Canada, the 1868 Canada Civil Service Act, and the 1882 Civil Service Act. It treats these pieces of legislation as starting steps 1 David Foster Wallace, The Pale King (New York: Little Brown and Co., 2011), 86. 2 Chris Selley, “Scandal-plagued Tories become the New Liberals,” National Post, 7 December 2011. 3 Public Service Commission of Canada, The 100 Years of the Public Service Commission of Canada, 1908-2008 (Ottawa: Public Service Commission of Canada, 2008), 4. 1 towards the more successful reforms of the twentieth century. The section explains that “[t]oday’s Public Service Commission is the legitimate heir to the civil service reform th movement initiated in the 19 century to create an independent, professional public service in which patronage and its associated corruption had no place.”4 As the National Post editorial above suggests, this overstates the PSC’s success in eliminating the widespread use of patronage. More problematically, this accepts the terms ‘independent’ and ‘professional’ in the nineteenth-century legislation as self-evident. In fact, these were highly contested ideas throughout the era. This dissertation is a study of civil service reform, patronage, and job-seeking in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. During this time, the service expanded. Given the irregularities in departmental and colonial record-keeping prior to the reforms of the 1880s, it is difficult to know the precise number of employees in the service. Compiling from “detailed and not always consistent figures,” J.E. Hodgetts suggests that, in 1867, there 2,660 civil servants in across Canada, with 255 of them working in Ottawa.5 Ken Rasmussen provides a slightly different number, suggesting that at Confederation there were 264 employees in Ottawa, mostly doing clerical work.6 Despite a relatively sluggish economy in the decades after Confederation, the civil service continued to grow in this period. There were 551 civil servants in Ottawa in 1881, and 3,300 permanently 4 Ibid., 4.

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