Privilege at the Polls: Culture, Citizenship, and the Electoral Franchise in Mid-Nineteenth-Century British North America Colin Grittner A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2015 Department of History and Classical Studies Faculty of Arts McGill University Montreal, Quebec © Colin Grittner 2015 ii Lorsqu’un peuple commence à toucher au cens électoral, on peut prévoir qu’il arrivera, dans un délai plus ou moins long, à le faire disparaître complètement. Alexis de Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique (1835) Go to England – with her qualification to Republican America or despotic France where Universal Suffrage has been in operation and see if Nova Scotia does not favourably contrast with all or any of them. Joseph Howe, to Nova Scotia’s House of Assembly (1854) iii Abstract This dissertation explores electoral enfranchisement in mid-nineteenth-century British North America from a cultural perspective. It argues that colonists across the Province of Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island used electoral franchise legislation as a crucial means to negotiate what citizenship should entail, and whom it should encompass, within their local colonial contexts. Aside from the formal exclusion of women, British North Americans agreed upon very little when it came to their electoral franchises. With the advent of responsible government in the 1840s, a spate of provincial and municipal franchise reforms swept across the provinces. Constant disagreements – which sometimes turned violent – resulted in repeated franchise amendments as British North Americans tried to account for competing cultural and electoral ideals. In the process, British North American legislatures found ways to emasculate inhabitants politically on the bases of gender, race, class, ethnicity, religion, and age. As the provinces altered their franchises, British North Americans simultaneously had to navigate conflicting legislation at different levels of government. By means of franchise law, this dissertation examines the ways in which British North Americans – both in discourse and in practice – challenged and codified shared cultural ideals of citizenship. Cultural categories mattered enormously to British North Americans: so much so that they built them into their formal structures of political participation. iv Résumé Cette thèse étudie l’octroi du suffrage en Amérique du Nord britannique au milieu du XIXe siècle dans une perspective d’histoire culturelle. Elle montre que, dans le cadre de contextes coloniaux différents, les colons se sont servis des lois sur la qualification électorale comme principal outil afin de négocier les modalités de la citoyenneté et déterminer qui pourrait y accéder tant dans la Province du Canada, au Nouveau-Brunswick, en Nouvelle-Écosse ainsi qu’à l’Île-du-Prince-Édouard. Les qualifications électorales faisaient l’objet de bien peu de consensus au sein des habitants de l’Amérique du Nord britannique, exception faite de l’exclusion officielle des femmes. Dans le sillage de l’avènement du gouvernement responsable dans les années 1840, une vague de réformes des lois électorales municipales et provinciales déferla sur les provinces. D’incessants différends, s’exprimant parfois violemment, se traduisirent par de nombreux amendements législatifs, les habitants de l’Amérique du Nord britannique défendant des idéaux culturels et électoraux concurrents. Au cours de ce processus, les entités législatives d’Amérique du Nord britannique trouvèrent des façons d’émasculer politiquement des individus sur la base du genre, de la race, de l’ethnicité, de la classe, de l’appartenance religieuse et de l’âge. De surcroît, au fur et à mesure que les provinces modifièrent leurs qualifications électorales, les colons devaient s’y retrouver parmi plusieurs lois sur l’octroi du vote en vigueur à un même moment, celles-ci différant selon le palier de gouvernement. Par le biais de l’analyse des transformations législatives de l’admission au suffrage, cette thèse examine les façons dont, tant dans les discours que dans la pratique, les habitants de l’Amérique du Nord britannique contestèrent et codifièrent les idéaux culturels en matière de citoyenneté. Les catégories culturelles étaient extrêmement importantes aux yeux de ces colons, au point où ils les intégrèrent aux structures officielles de la participation politique. v Table of Contents Page Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iii Résumé ........................................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents .............................................................................................................................v Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ vi Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Propertied Enfranchisement in the Province of Canada 34 and New Brunswick Part I: Propertied Enfranchisement before Responsible Government 35 Part II: Propertied Enfranchisement in the Province of Canada 51 Part III: Propertied Enfranchisement in the Province of New Brunswick 89 Part IV: Conclusion 110 Chapter 2 Gender, Race, and Industry: Nova Scotia’s Electoral 113 Franchises, 1851-1863 Chapter 3 Statute Labour, Manliness, and the Electoral Franchise 178 on Victorian Prince Edward Island Chapter 4 Elections and Electoral Participation in Mid-Nineteenth- 208 Century Montreal: A Local Study in British North American Municipal Enfranchisement Chapter 5 Elective Legislative Councils, Council Franchises, 259 and the Forlorn Hope of Conservatism Conclusion The Elective Privilege in British North America 323 Appendix Legislation and Ordinances 334 Bibliography 340 vi Acknowledgements Whatever I write here can never fully express my gratitude to those who’ve helped me during my years at McGill. Elsbeth Heaman took me on as a doctoral student after I found her at the archives. Since then, she has shown me when, where, and how to jump. If I’ve managed to jump anywhere near high enough, I have her to thank most. Michèle Dagenais, Kate Desbarats, Michel Ducharme, Max Hamon, Ed MacDonald, Suzanne Morton, Jason Opal, Jarrett Rudy, and Daniel Simeone have all read chapters, shared ideas, or both. The time they so generously offered made this work better. Jeffrey McNairn also gave the whole dissertation a serious and thorough critique. The considerable time, effort, and thought he put into his response and suggestions went above and beyond anything I could have hoped. Any remaining lapses are of course my own. I also have to thank Michel Ducharme for looking over future projects so keenly. I love Montreal, but I’m looking forward to Vancouver too! Marie-Luise Ermisch, François Gauthier, Colin Gilmour, Carolynn McNally, Amanda Ricci, Sonya Roy, Rachel Sandwell, and Catherine Ulmer made office work fun. They’re the best. Jody Anderson, Mitali Das, Erin Henson, Sylvia Markhauser-Crawford, and Colleen Parish helped steer me through the university’s bureaucracy. Their efforts keep the gears turning. Grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Peter Cundill Fellowship in History, the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, and McGill’s Department of History and Classical Studies made this dissertation viable financially. Archivists aux Archives de la Ville de Montréal, the Archives of Ontario, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec à Montréal, Library and Archives Canada, Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management, the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, and the Public Archives and Records Office of Prince Edward Island accepted my many requests with a smile, and dug up the many boxes upon which this vii work is based. An earlier version of Chapter 3 has appeared in the Journal of the Canadian Historical Association (2012). I thank its editors for permission to reprint it here. Family and friends gave me the best reasons to get out of the city, if only for a few days at a time. Stéphanie O’Neill listened to confused ideas, read over (too many) drafts, translated my words, took on extra chores, looked after the cats, and gave me her love no matter how grumpy I got. This dissertation arrives as much through her efforts as my own. I can’t ever thank her enough. Mes beaux-parents, Diane and François, ensured that I wanted for nothing as this dissertation neared its completion, whether for food in my belly, a roof over my head, or kindness more generally. I can’t ever thank them enough either. Merci. Above all, I have to thank my parents, Margie and Jim. I started my university career over a decade ago now. From the beginning, they’ve cheered me on as my biggest fans and supported me in every way possible. I dedicate this work to them. Thanks Mom and Dad! 1 Introduction This dissertation examines how British North Americans envisioned electoral enfranchisement across four eastern British North American colonies during the mid-nineteenth- century. Nominally, the electoral franchise refers to the various laws that govern who may vote at a given election. For those who inhabited the united Canadas, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, the franchise meant so much more than this narrow definition suggests. Most colonists viewed the franchise not as a right, but