TY - JOUR
AU - Turner, Michael J.
AB - Abstract This article re-examines the problem of radical disunity after 1832. The main focus is on radical attitudes towards the second Melbourne ministry (1835–41) and its handling of the Canadian rebellions of 1837. Even when the government's imperial difficulties created a suitable opportunity to rekindle their reform campaign, radical leaders failed to co-operate effectively and made little headway in mobilizing and harnessing popular support. This defeat can be profitably explored through the experiences of Thomas Perronet Thompson (1783–1869), who emerged as one of the most energetic and strident critics of British policy in Canada during and after the rebellions. Despite his best efforts, Thompson was unable to win over other radical leaders or to attract a large following, a failure that highlights the wider constraints faced by radicalism in this era. The purpose of this article is to extend our understanding of radical disunity in the years after the Great Reform Act by exploring the agitation inspired by the Canadian rebellions of 1837. In seeking to explain radical efforts, this article will also offer new insights into parliamentary and extra-parliamentary politics, the links between them, and the development of opinion on empire, reform, constitutional rights and the accountability of those in authority at home and in the colonies. The main lines of enquiry are provided by the ideas and conduct of Thomas Perronet Thompson, who began his radical career in the early eighteen-twenties as an associate of Jeremy Bentham and John Bowring. Thompson established himself as an influential political economist, platform speaker and writer for the reform press, and served as M.P. for Hull between 1835 and 1837. His outspokenness on Canada, and frustration at the lack of agreement and co-ordination among radical activists, laid bare the fragmented nature of early-Victorian radicalism. Presented with what appeared to be an excellent opportunity to boost commitment and morale, to demand reforms and to pressurize the government, radical leaders faltered. This article will begin with a brief account of Thompson's public career, the roots of his radicalism and his views about empire. It will move on to discuss the crisis in Canada. The government's response and resulting debates in parliament will be examined, as will the burgeoning radical agitation on Canada, with special attention paid to Thompson's role – for which hitherto he has not been given due recognition – and what it reveals about disagreements among prominent radical politicians. The discussion will also take in arguments about the political, economic and constitutional aspects of the Canada question, disagreements about the radicals' stance vis-à-vis the whig ministry, negative reactions to Thompson's activity, and the controversy surrounding Lord Durham's ‘Report on the Affairs of British North America’. Finally, there will be some account of continuing radical efforts to make an impression in parliament and on public opinion, and of Thompson's notion of the lessons that had to be learned in the light of the Canadian crisis. Born in Hull, the eldest son of a wealthy merchant and banker, Thompson joined the army in 1806 after graduating from Queens' College, Cambridge, of which he later became a fellow.1 He saw active service in South America, Europe, India and the Persian Gulf, and was stationed back in England in 1823. He had also been the first crown-appointed governor of Sierra Leone (1808–10). During the eighteen-twenties he made his name with authoritative writings on the currency, rent and the corn laws, and subsequently achieved renown as ‘the Bonaparte of free trade’.2 From 1823 he formed a close friendship with the merchant and man of letters John Bowring, with whom he shared a commitment to the cause of liberty abroad; they first co-operated in the London Greek Committee, formed to assist Greek patriots in the war of independence against Ottoman Turkey, and the Spanish Committee, which supported efforts in Spain to restore the liberal constitution of 1812. Bowring's mentor, Jeremy Bentham, invited Thompson into his circle of intimates, and Thompson went on to publish a robust defence of the Benthamites' greatest happiness principle.3 Although Thompson did not agree with all of Bentham's notions, there was no disagreement on fundamentals: the end of all government should be the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and this was for universal application, for foreign states – and colonies – as well as for Britain. So Thompson's goals included constitutional liberty, free trade, efficient administration, rational laws, the greater accountability of monarchs and parliaments, enlightened public opinion and international peace. Following his father's death in 1828, Thompson retired from full-time soldiering (as an unattached lieutenant-colonel on half pay) and purchased a fifty per cent interest in the Westminster Review, to which he was a prolific contributor until he sold his share in 1836.4 But his political outlook was not shaped solely by these intellectual pursuits. Personal experience also played a part. Thompson had been in Africa, India and the Middle East. There, and across Britain and Ireland, he had seen corruption and inequality in many forms. He knew that power – whether political, racial, social, economic, religious or cultural – could be employed malevolently unless checked. He also held a grudge, having been removed from the governorship of Sierra Leone in 1810 for trying to press ahead too quickly with reforms, and reprimanded in 1821 for taking military action in the Persian Gulf with insufficient forces. Thompson felt himself to be a victim, a sense that was reinforced during the eighteen-thirties when he suffered several defeats in seeking election to parliament. He and his friends attributed these to whig proscription. Then, during the eighteen-forties, he was denied the brevet promotions in the army to which he was entitled, apparently on account – once again – of his political opinions: the duke of Wellington, commander-in-chief of the army, objected to his involvement with the Anti-Corn Law League.5 The improper use of authority was therefore something to which Thompson was no stranger. He had personal as well as public reasons for making a stand against it. With regard to the empire, Thompson was not tied exclusively to any specific school of thought. He stressed his disagreement with other commentators on empire, or his willingness to co-operate with them in pursuit of common objectives, as time and circumstance allowed. This approach was a natural corollary of his consistent support for liberty abroad, his desire to form opinion at home and his belief that events at home and abroad could influence each other. Although he accepted that control over colonies and spheres of influence might be appropriate in some cases, and that Britain's global position ought to be maintained, he expected British influence to be employed constructively around the world and argued that the imperial relationship should not be one-sided. It had to rest on mutual benefits, not coercion and exploitation. Having lived and travelled abroad and been a colonial governor himself, and drawing on personal experience as well as political conviction in framing his view of empire, Thompson was concerned about the way in which subject peoples were treated and was ready to question the uses made of imperial power, both in the colonies and at home. Convinced that the imperial relationship should benefit colonists, and assist in their social, economic and political development, radicals were quick to look into any suggestion of misgovernment. They advocated free institutions and used the familiar vocabulary of rights and justice when discussing the empire; indeed, their domestic and imperial agendas were not dissimilar. According to Thompson, if colonists ever had reason to protest about abuses and oppression, it was the radical's duty to identify and agitate against the perpetrators. A striking example of his loyalty to this principle is offered by his campaign for liberty and justice in Canada. In 1791 Canada had been divided into upper and lower provinces. The inhabitants of Lower Canada were mainly Catholics of French extraction, while Upper Canada was Protestant and British. Representative forms of government had been introduced to satisfy the colonists' desire for a participatory role, but legislative and executive councils were nominated bodies and real authority rested with the provincial governors. French speakers complained about alien control, and inhabitants of Upper Canada objected to the customs duties levied on goods passing through the French province. Other grievances concerned external trade, land grants, the privileges of the Anglican church, immigration and the development of the interior, but the basic demand for responsible government made public finance the main point of contention. By 1837 militants had broken with moderate reformers to demand immediate constitutional change, and were willing to use violence to achieve it. In the upper province leadership was provided by a Scottish-born newspaper publisher and former mayor of Toronto, William Lyon Mackenzie, while French Canadian patriotes of the lower province were led by Louis Joseph Papineau, a seigneur and lawyer. To republicans and separatists like Papineau, subordinating the executive to the elected house of assembly in Lower Canada was a necessary first step.6 On 6 March 1837 the whig home secretary and leader of the house of commons, Lord John Russell, outlined a plan for ending the crisis in Lower Canada, where the assembly was refusing to grant a civil list. There was no desire to overturn the rights of the assembly, Russell explained, but the imperial parliament had a duty to ensure that official salaries were paid, commercial regulations observed and bank charters renewed. Special arrangements would therefore be made to bypass the assembly on these points. On other matters the British government would respect the assembly's wishes. There would be consultation on the land question, and the legislative and executive councils would be reconstructed. Russell insisted that there could be no responsible executive, however, for this would be incompatible with Britain's constitutional traditions and the dependent status of colonies, and he stressed that the imperial parliament had no choice but to permit the governor to appropriate revenue without local legislative sanction. Several radical M.P.s opposed Russell's resolutions, and the debate was continued on 8 March. Joseph Hume, M.P. for Middlesex, followed up his earlier presentation of Canadian grievances by advocating greater autonomy for Canada. J. A. Roebuck, the M.P. for Bath who had lived in Canada (1815–24) and was employed from 1835 as Lower Canada's agent in England, warned that, if the government provoked a rebellion, the United States of America would almost certainly intervene against Britain. J. T. Leader, M.P. for Bridgwater, proposed that the legislative council (the upper chamber in the Lower Canadian legislature) should be an elected body. Spokesmen for the ‘colonial reform’ movement, which advocated Edward Gibbon Wakefield's programme of ‘systematic colonization’ and colonial self-government, objected to the whig ministry's policy as a violation of Lower Canada's constitutional arrangements. William Molesworth, M.P. for East Cornwall, spoke against Russell in the Commons and the colonial reformers' press organs subsequently took up the issue outside parliament.7 Thompson sympathized with the stance taken by the assembly in Lower Canada and argued that the withholding of supply was the proper way to have grievances addressed. He had hoped that Melbourne's ministry would make a genuine effort to foster goodwill, but, dissatisfied with Russell's resolutions, he now became a vigorous and consistent critic of the Canadian policy. He told ministers that British public opinion would take the colonists' side if the dispute developed further, and called for the removal of commercial restrictions affecting Canada. In particular, he wanted Canadian corn and timber to be more freely available to British consumers. Canadian monopolies, he complained, meant that the many suffered losses for the sake of a few. Thompson also accused the government of degrading Canada to the status of a mere receptacle to which destitute people could be sent. The whigs' social and economic measures were so pernicious, indeed, that the government was effectively preventing people from living at home and obliging them to emigrate. Thompson maintained, for example, that the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 should have been accompanied by repeal of the corn laws. Important as they were, these considerations were secondary to the main question: Canada's desire for fundamental political change. Just as the influence of elected bodies ought to be extended in Britain, Thompson declared, the same was true of Canada, and constitutional reform was the only way to create a more workable and advantageous imperial connection. Thompson opposed Russell's resolutions and condemned whigs and tories alike for their apparent eagerness to force the assembly of Lower Canada to submit. But Leader's call for an elected legislative council was rejected by 318 votes to fifty-six. The government's resolution ‘that in the existing state of Lower Canada, it is inadvisable to make the legislative council of that province an elective body; but that it is expedient that measures be adopted for securing to that branch of the legislature a greater degree of public confidence’ was carried by 144 votes to sixteen.8 Various shades of radicalism were represented in the minority. As well as Thompson, Hume, Leader, Roebuck and Molesworth, the government's opponents included more moderate men like Joseph Brotherton (Salford), William Ewart (Liverpool), J. S. Buckingham (Sheffield) and Charles Hindley (Ashton-under-Lyne). The Irish radicals Daniel O'Connell (Kilkenny) and W. S. Crawford (Dundalk) also voted against the government, as did John Fielden (Oldham), George Grote (City of London), D. W. Harvey (Southwark), C. P. Villiers (Wolverhampton) and H. G. Ward (St. Albans). Thompson began to think that Canada would be the issue on which a new radical mobilization could be organized. Numbers might be lacking, but not principles or influence, and numbers would grow as these M.P.s took their case before the public. Thompson led the way by writing open letters to his Hull constituents and sending copies to friendly newspapers. He described Lower Canada's legislative council as an instrument of tyranny, insisted that the stoppage of supplies was justified and reminded his readers that attempts to exact funds without consent had led to bitter conflicts in the past (citing the English Civil War and American War of Independence as examples). While the whig ministry wanted to oppress Canada, argued Thompson, all friends of liberty were willing the Canadians to succeed, and the plain truth was becoming clearer every day: having risen to office by posing as the party of reform, the whigs had turned against popular rights. Now even the right of supply, vested in the people's representatives since the seventeenth century, was under threat. Senior whigs were no better than their warmongering tory counterparts. Intent on remaining in power, ‘they will put down the calf abroad, in order that they may not have to fight the bull at home. It is the battle against the people of England, begun upon the stage of Canada’. Thompson thereby linked the Canada question with the deep-seated commitment to constitutional liberty that, from the radical viewpoint, had inspired all of the major political developments in British history.9 On 14 April 1837, the Commons endorsed the government's refusal to subject the executive council to the assembly in Lower Canada by 269 votes to forty-six, and the remaining resolutions were carried over two further nights of debate. Russell had urged the Commons to support a ‘dignified’ policy. Thompson retorted: ‘In the American War everything was dignified except the ending. We are just now at the chrysalis or “dignity” condition; we shall see what kind of a bluebottle is evolved, when the creature arrives at its full maturity of buzz.’ The British government and Papineau's patriotes were on a collision course, and by passing the ministerial resolutions parliament had accelerated the polarization of opinion. The government's position was typified by Russell's dogmatic assumption that there could be no middle way between the maintenance of British rule and Canada's separation from Britain. Meanwhile, in Lower Canada the patriotes saw that to accept the resolutions would be to acknowledge the sovereignty of the imperial parliament, to which they were adamantly opposed.10 Tensions were certainly escalating. On 19 May, during a debate on capital punishment, Thompson asked if ministers intended to abolish the death penalty for political offences. He received no clear answer, and later suggested that ministers retained the ‘licence to execute’ because they were planning to use it in Canada.11 Efforts to neutralize some of Papineau's supporters in Lower Canada came to nothing, and regular troops were moved into the province from Upper Canada, where the situation was also deteriorating as Mackenzie and the reformers continued to demand concessions from the executive. The expected rebellion broke out in Lower Canada at the end of November 1837. It collapsed in mid December and Papineau fled to the United States. The rising in Upper Canada was less serious, and easily dealt with, although the rebels continued to engage in minor skirmishes along the Canadian-American border during 1838. Mackenzie also went into exile in the United States. In the imperial parliament ministers made clear their determination to resist radical pressure, and relied on tory leader Sir Robert Peel and his followers to assist them. Emergency measures were passed and the regular forces in British North America were quickly augmented. In January 1838 Lower Canada's constitution was suspended.12 In Canadian historiography, the causes and nature of the rebellions have long been intensely debated, and older social and economic explanations have been modified, and in some respects superseded, by political and constitutional considerations. In the nineteen-thirties Donald Creighton saw the rebellions as part of a broader conflict between commercial and agrarian interests, and Stanley Ryerson thought of the unrest as a manifestation of divergent ‘class’ interests. More recently, attention has focused on political ideas and motivations. In one important study, Allan Greer stresses the influence of republicanism and democratic principles in Lower Canadian rural society. The peasants had ‘a rich and complex community life of ritual, sociability and discipline’ that provided a basis for collective action. Disputes with the clergy and with seigneurs strengthened this sense of solidarity, and the addition of political ideas that corresponded with their everyday experiences meant that, when rebellion broke out in 1837, Lower Canada's peasants rose in large numbers to challenge the colonial authorities.13 The political threat was real, or perceived as such, even in Upper Canada where the violence was less serious. To the west of Toronto, for example, Colin Read points out that the authorities were ‘convinced by the existence of political unions that treason was widespread’.14 A strong argument against separating events in Upper Canada from those in Lower Canada has been presented by Greer, who shows that waves of publicity and organization in Upper Canada were directly inspired by the agitation in Lower Canada. There was a shared opposition to existing power structures. In Lower Canada there was confrontation between elected and appointed branches of the legislature; in Upper Canada there was apparent harmony between the executive and the assembly, but pressure was growing from reformers angered by electoral irregularities and the other means by which a conservative élite preserved its ascendancy.15 Reformers in Upper Canada sympathized with opponents of oligarchy, corruption and arbitrary rule in Lower Canada, and both were conscious of having similar political motives and goals. The Friends of Reform in Toronto issued a declaration in July 1837 in which they explicitly joined their own cause with that of protesters in the lower province, ‘whose successful coercion would doubtless be in time visited upon us’.16 All of this points to the primacy of the political, which is how Thompson and other British radicals saw the matter too. The fact that colonial grievances had developed into armed struggle prompted many radicals to condemn Melbourne's government for mismanaging the crisis. A stand could now be made on ministerial culpability, as well as on the Canadians' claim for political rights. But Thompson was no longer M.P. for Hull and could only attack the government from outside parliament. Having made enemies among the local whigs, and aware that without their support he might not be re-elected in Hull, he had opted to take the battle for reform into enemy territory at the general election of July 1837 and stood in Maidstone, where Benjamin Disraeli beat him into third place. He hoped to secure another seat in due course, but his immediate priority was to draw attention to events in Canada. Thompson soon realized that a radical campaign would not be easy to set in motion. He was dubious about the reliability of Roebuck and Hume, for example, and not without reason. Seeking to increase his own influence, Roebuck had encouraged Papineau's inflexibility. In so doing he had made an insurrection more likely, however much he blamed the government for failing to appease the patriotes, and his main concern subsequently was to obtain the salary that he was owed as agent for Lower Canada. Hume had also encouraged the Canadians to resist. He had been advising Mackenzie since the latter's visit to London in 1832, and although Hume eschewed violence it was his denunciations of the British government that most impressed the opposition in Upper Canada. Mackenzie's rising embarrassed Hume, whose reputation among moderates in Upper Canada declined. There were other problems for the radicals. They were divided on tactics and losing influence in the Commons. Some hated the whig government and cared nothing about keeping out the tories, while others – including Hume – wanted to keep the ministers in place and urged their colleagues not to add to the ministry's difficulties. Radical numbers in the Commons had fallen, meanwhile, after the general election; Roebuck was among the casualties, as was Thompson. Nevertheless, both in and outside parliament, there were still activists ready to give priority to the Canada question, to denounce the government for causing the rebellion and to rail against the coercive measures to which the imperial authorities had resorted.17 When radical leaders did come together for a decisive show of opposition to the government's Canadian policy, discord resulted. Thompson, Hume, Roebuck, Grote, Leader and Crawford all took the platform at a meeting in the Crown and Anchor (Strand, London), on 4 January 1838. The meeting was called to consider the propriety of petitioning parliament on the subject of Canada. Thompson had chaired the committee that drafted prospective resolutions, but in their final form they were not as firm or as censorious as he had expected. Hume took the chair, explained Canada's grievances and, eager to maintain good relations with the whigs, advised against the use of intemperate language. Leader then introduced the main resolution: That the meeting, while they deeply lament the disastrous disturbance now existing in the colony of Lower Canada, are of opinion that this deplorable occurrence is to be ascribed to the misconduct of the British ministry, in refusing timely redress to the repeated complaints of the Canadian people, and in attempting to sustain that refusal by measures of gross injustice and coercion. Thompson seconded the resolution, ‘not because he was altogether contented with it, but because he had been asked to do so’, and he disapproved of the manner in which the resolutions had been altered. Thompson was, however, glad that Leader had described Canada as the scene of ‘civil war’ and not merely a disturbance. To cheers, Thompson admitted that he was prepared to go further. He asserted that the attempt of Melbourne's government to seize the supplies in Lower Canada, against the wishes of the representative assembly, was an act of treason – in the seventeenth century Charles I had lost his head for the same offence. Thompson brushed aside Hume's warning against ‘hard words’, insisting ‘words were not hard when true’. He viewed the British government as the original aggressor and believed that the Canadians were within their constitutional rights to stop supplies. To execute rebel leaders, moreover, would be like murdering prisoners of war. ‘Oppression cancels allegiance’, Thompson declared. In fact, resistance was a duty when rulers broke with their subjects and ‘unsheathed the sword’. Finally, he hoped that the public would forgive the weak part of the resolutions, strengthen the sound part and press the government to change course.18 Many observers found Thompson's remarks objectionable. Edward Baines of the Leeds Mercury had warned, two days before the meeting, that confrontational language would do more harm than good.19 Hume, who took strong exception to Thompson's behaviour, pointed to newspaper reports that characterized the meeting as a gathering of extremists. Thompson replied that some of these were patently inaccurate and, in any case, he did not feel able to withdraw his comments. Hume, whose caution had grown as he reflected on the poor showing of many radical candidates at the general election of 1837, became even more uneasy following revelations about his links with Mackenzie and a letter that he had written four years earlier in which he appeared to advocate Canada's separation from Britain. He was also frustrated by his failure to persuade other radicals that they should try to co-operate with rather than harass Melbourne's government.20 Had Thompson been able to frame his own resolution for the Crown and Anchor meeting, it would have condemned ‘the attempt of the ministers of the crown to seize the supplies in Canada against the consent of the representative assembly’ as ‘an act of treason which the British people, if they are wise, will punish when they are able’. He pursued these themes in the following weeks, advocating freedom and progress for colonial peoples, demanding an improvement in imperial relationships and warning that oppression in the colonies posed a threat to liberty at home. Although he had harboured no reservations about the course that he intended to take at the Crown and Anchor, he was surprised at the response. Hume's complaints were predictable, but there were others. The Times denounced Thompson's speech and called upon Queen Victoria and the commander-in-chief, Lord Hill, to remove his name from the army list. In the Commons the tory M.P. for Evesham, Peter Borthwick, stated that Thompson's remark about Charles I was a personal threat to the monarch for which he ought to be prosecuted. These attacks spurred Thompson on (although he was not unworried about the possible impact on his search for a constituency that would return him to parliament). He addressed another meeting on Canada, at the Marylebone Mechanics' Institute on 20 February 1838, and repeated his argument that the government had committed treason. He also repudiated Borthwick's admonitions in print, claiming that his own attachment to Queen Victoria – as a ‘republican under compact’– was far more genuine ‘than any of the clap-trap loyalty with which interested servility endeavours to obtain its ends’. Thompson did, however, begin to qualify his remarks. In an open letter to the secretary of the Hull Working Men's Association, dated 3 February 1838, he stated that Lord John Russell should ‘one day stand in the place of Strafford and Laud’, but with consequences that suited the milder spirit of the age.21 If he softened his tone, Thompson did not alter his message. The letter to Hull of 3 February reinforced his other statements. In truth, he was not alarmed by comments about his public conduct. More important to him was the possibility that the government of the United States would involve itself in the affairs of Canada. Some Americans had joined forces with the Canadian rebels and there were clashes along the border. One of the most serious incidents concerned the Caroline, an American steamer that had carried men and supplies to the rebel camp on Navy Island, above Niagara Falls. On 29 December 1837 this vessel was captured, cleared of people, set on fire and cut adrift. Only one American was killed during the raid, but the incident was magnified – in one version the Caroline had been pushed over the falls with people on board. Anti-British sentiment grew rapidly in the United States, although in February 1838 the foreign secretary, Lord Palmerston, assured M.P.s that congress and the administration of President Martin Van Buren had promised to remain strictly neutral.22 In the Commons, ministers continued to try to limit radical influence. Peel assisted them in this and attempted to restrain the more truculent backbenchers on the tory side. Melbourne persuaded Lord Durham to go to Canada as governor-general and to report back on the situation there. This removed a possible threat to the survival of the government, since Durham was a disruptive figure and considered himself entitled to a place in the cabinet (he had been lord privy seal from 1830 to 1833). In addition, Durham's appointment further undermined the radicals because he was still reputed to be one of the more reform-minded of the senior whigs. Many radicals expected him to promote a settlement of which they and the Canadians could approve, and their attitude towards the government became less hostile as a result. As for the ministers, they were convinced that if they failed to re-establish imperial authority in Canada, problems would arise elsewhere, in Ireland for example, and that for reasons of prestige, trade, strategy and defence, British policy had to be firm. At the same time, Britain could hardly retain Canada without the colonists' goodwill, which meant that greater autonomy had to be conceded. So the government needed to find a means of satisfying Canada without appearing to give way on key points. There would be no retribution in Upper Canada, it was decided, and a return to representative institutions in Lower Canada would be implemented as soon as possible. If Durham's mission proved successful there could, in due course, be new measures to facilitate co-operation between the executive and elected bodies in Upper and Lower Canada. Ministers had little trouble in passing the Canada Government Bill – as well as suspending Lower Canada's constitution for four years, this measure granted special powers to Durham and his advisory council.23 Durham reached Canada in May 1838, but resigned his commission and left after only five months. His high-handed conduct, particularly the banishment of political offenders, led to accusations that he had exceeded his authority, and ministers did not defend him in parliament. Melbourne, initially glad to get Durham out of the way, had promised him the government's full backing, but the prime minister had since come to view the mission as a mistake. He was tired of all the controversy, blamed Durham for adding to the ministry's problems and could not adjudicate between hardliners in the cabinet and those colleagues (chiefly Lord Howick, the secretary at war) who wanted to placate Canada with reforms. Outside the government another disenchanted whig peer, Lord Brougham, who had previously opposed the resolutions of March 1837, questioned Durham's conduct and attacked the ministry's record on Canada. Russell complained about Melbourne's lack of resolve and urged him to replace the ineffective colonial secretary, Lord Glenelg. Russell had approved of Durham's appointment because he thought that any unpopular measures in Canada would cause less of a stir coming from a supposed reformer. Now, above all, he was worried that the government would lose Peel's assistance if it failed to provide a settlement. Russell would himself be appointed as colonial secretary in September 1839.24 Thompson wondered what the whigs' next move would be and, with others, speculated about Durham's likely successor.25 There was a growing expectation that Canada would be given a greater degree of self-government. Durham, although he had resigned, was intent on completing his report. His reputation was at stake and he still hoped to influence government policy. Constitutional changes in Canada were obviously on the agenda, but Edward Gibbon Wakefield was also among Durham's advisers, eager to push his ideas concerning land sales, assisted emigration and settlement of the interior. This alarmed French Canadians who wished to prevent further British penetration of Lower Canada.26 Only months before they had greeted Durham's arrival in the province enthusiastically. Pro-reform groups expected much and Durham was initially very popular, notably in the French Canadian press. But he had caused French Canadians to change their minds. He seemed to them not to care about ruling by consent, excluded them from all but the lowest appointments and sided increasingly with their enemies. This disappointment helps to explain the renewed violence of late 1838, when patriotes declared a republic and staged another rising in conjunction with an invasion from across the American border. The authorities were even more severe than before in their reaction, and bitter resentments continued to fester.27 Thompson's focus shifted to the harsh treatment to which Canadian rebels and their American allies had reportedly been subjected. He called for leniency. In October 1838, at a Chartist meeting in Hull, he described the punishment meted out to insurgents, their families and American sympathizers who had been captured in Canada as excessive and dishonourable.28 Thompson had always held that, for him and his fellow radicals, ‘physical force’ could not easily be justified, but Canada offered a notable exception to this rule. He wrote to the Morning Chronicle to attack the whigs and those radical leaders who were not trying to prevent executions in Canada. He noted that The Standard, the tories' leading metropolitan evening paper, and Albany Fonblanque of the radical Examiner (whose father had served as legal counsel against the legislation of 1791) had both endorsed the executions. Thompson would later tell the story of how he had crossed the street to avoid greeting a government minister during this period because he had not wished to come face to face with a murderer. He believed that the proceedings in Canada were sapping Britain's prestige and influence around the world. Once again he called for the removal of the Melbourne ministry and issued another of his earnest jeremiads: if this oppression in a distant colony went unchecked, Britons would no longer be a free people.29 Thompson's criticism of Fonblanque was symptomatic of continuing radical disunity. Fonblanque, who admired Durham and backed the government's Canadian policy, thought that a settlement could not be reached unless the colonists recognized their liability to trial and execution if they resisted the established authorities. Thompson's point was that authority itself must have a legal and moral basis. This also led him to engage in a public dispute with the M.P. for Sheffield, H. G. Ward, who maintained that the outbreak of violence had made it impossible to govern Canada by constitutional methods. Thompson stressed the Canadians' right to resist tyranny. Ward's argument, he thought, might easily be used to permit a British government to turn the army against people at home if they ever decided to stop the supplies in order to have grievances addressed. Thompson's correspondence with Ward was published in the Morning Chronicle and discussed in many other papers, including The Spectator, which suggested that civil and judicial bodies in Canada were trying to cover up the atrocities that had been committed against the rebels and their sympathizers.30 Radicals were still disagreeing about Durham's mission to Canada. Some spoke of bringing down the government; some backed Brougham, the leading whig critic of Durham. Brougham's real target was the ministry, for he resented his omission from Melbourne's cabinet in April 1835. In the event, few radical M.P.s were ready to endanger the ministry for the sake of the Canadian rebels. Thompson blamed radical disunity and lack of influence on the ‘desertion’ of Hume and O'Connell. In return for promises on Irish policy and other matters, he claimed, they had made ‘a separate peace’ with the whig leadership. They therefore withdrew from the battle to extend rights in Britain and to resist the invasion of rights in Canada. They had also slighted Thompson personally, having plotted to prevent his election for Marylebone in March 1838. In their view, however, it made sense to help the government. Their priorities and Thompson's were not the same. Hume agreed with Roebuck and Grote that the colonial system was élitist and expensive and should be dismantled, but if he had misgivings about the government's response to its Canadian troubles, he continued to give ministers the benefit of the doubt. O'Connell thought that the tories would not pass the Irish reforms he wanted, but that the whigs might, and although he sympathized with Papineau he considered it pointless directly to challenge British rule. Fonblanque had already warned that if the radicals brought down the government, they would deprive Ireland of reforms and obstruct the march of progress generally, so it was inadvisable to befriend the Canadians or to attack the ministry. Thompson considered this foolish. Ministers had no intention of committing themselves to substantial reforms and placed little value on radical co-operation. They needed Peel's help, not that of radical M.P.s, and Peel sided with the government – even while disliking aspects of its Canadian policy – whenever he thought that the radicals would succeed in embarrassing it.31 Perhaps the only way in which radical M.P.s could seriously threaten the government was by voting with the tories. Colonial policy was probably the most promising area for co-operation, yet ministers survived their Canadian difficulties, as well as the Jamaican crisis of 1839, when their decision to suspend the constitution of Jamaica, in response to the Jamaican assembly's refusal to implement desired reforms, was carried in the Commons by a margin of only five votes. Clearly, no radical-tory alliance could last. The radicals were themselves divided, with personalities, priorities and principles in conflict, and rather than sustain the radicals, Peel preferred to keep a declining whig ministry in place, to undermine it and to wait for the next general election. Thompson's mounting frustration with so-called ‘friends of reform’ who sat in the Commons had already been made clear in his published comments about the passing of the Canada Government Bill in February 1838. He had been shocked by the lack of spirit shown by M.P.s who declined actively to oppose the suspension of constitutional rights in Canada. Thompson continued to believe that the government's Canadian policy was part of a wider conspiracy. Ministers, fearful that pressure would soon build up for reforms as the public rejected whig ‘finality’, had to remove some of the weapons in the radicals' arsenal. Stopping the supplies was one such weapon, and this constitutional right would be destroyed first in Canada in order to establish a precedent.32 Thompson doubted that Brougham would lead the radicals to a position of influence, and he had no time at all for Durham. He suspected that Durham had really gone to Canada to protect the guilty. Instead of standing up to the ministry as a true reformer would, Durham would become its accomplice in a system of ‘gross and notorious misgovernment, equally hostile to the interests of the colony and of the mother country … It is of no use to say he did not exercise any voluntary cruelties of his own. He went there to hold the garments of those who were stoning the saints; and he did hold them’. The whigs were trying to use Durham's name to reassure the public; Thompson urged his readers not to be misled. The Durham mission was a worthless exercise and would not guarantee justice for Canada. Any measures that Durham was likely to propose would merely continue the familiar prescription of ‘ships, colonies and commerce’, which really amounted to selfish monopolies, rotten timber and the mistreatment of everybody who tried to exercise their rights.33 For all his activity on the Canada question, Thompson was forced to admit that many people, as one metropolitan radical told him, cared less about injustices abroad than about heavy taxes at home. During 1838 Hume found this to be true when he was heckled by audiences in London; they wanted their own needs and complaints attended to first, before they would agree to join in a protest on behalf of the Canadians. Ebenezer Elliott, the prominent Sheffield radical, complained to Thompson in October 1839 that the Canadian issue was not moving people as expected: ‘it is quite edifying to observe how cheerfully we can bear the wrongs of people three thousand miles off.’ Thompson's outspokenness on Canada lost him friends and supporters, and he knew it.34 His independence does not appear to have been very appealing at this time to the small electorates of the northern industrial towns (including Hull and Sheffield), for the Great Reform Act of 1832 had, to a large extent, satisfied the reformist urges of the propertied classes. Therefore it was no quick or easy task to galvanize support on popular and constitutional issues. Durham's ‘Report on the Affairs of British North America’ was issued in January 1839. Its premise was that Canada's problems stemmed from the French Canadians' failure to assimilate and their reluctance to accept British rule. But after a stay of only five months, including less than two weeks in Upper Canada, Durham was hardly in a position to form the judgments that he did. He exaggerated the friction between English and French speakers and paid insufficient attention to other difficulties, such as the rural-urban and agricultural-commercial divides. The Durham Report proposed the union of Upper and Lower Canada, to make the French a minority in one large province. The assumption (erroneous, as time would demonstrate) was that they could be anglicized – or at least that they would come to appreciate the benefits of British rule and become loyal subjects. Durham's other main recommendation was that there should be more self-government. In Canada there was a variety of responses to the Durham Report, not least because there was no straightforward division between French Canadians and the rest, as Durham assumed. In fact, there was what Allan Greer has called ‘ethnocultural polarization’ in both Upper and Lower Canada. In particular, long-established inhabitants disliked relative newcomers, and during the rebellions the two groups had sided against each other. In Upper Canada there was strong hostility between recent immigrants and those born in North America.35 Some in Upper Canada favoured a union because they expected it to reinforce the connection with Britain and to prevent the province's absorption into the U.S.A. French Canadians in Lower Canada talked of an alliance with reformers in the upper province: together they might be able finally to end oligarchic rule. For this reason the political élite in Lower Canada opposed union. French Canadian opinion was itself divided. Many were willing to accept the union and work within the new system, despite the threat of anglicization, because in return they expected to gain responsible government. Some assimilation was acceptable, they thought, and since Britain had in the past recognized and protected their culture, they saw no reason why it would not continue to do so if they were loyal and co-operative. But other French Canadians opposed union and assimilation, considered them punitive measures and doubted that responsible government would be granted, or, if it were, that it could work properly. This body of opinion favoured the system of 1791, with its guarantee of French Canadian rights. Later the arguments centred on the actual terms of the union: some liked the principle of union but not the details; others were against British policy in its entirety.36 The ideas on which the Durham Report was based were not original, and Durham did not concern himself with the long-term consequences of his report or with its practical implementation. Nor did ministers consider themselves bound to accept Durham's recommendations. But they had already decided that some such changes were necessary, and the basic proposals outlined in the Durham Report were soon adopted. Upper and Lower Canada were united in 1840 and, in his brief period as colonial secretary in 1839–41, Russell began the move towards more participatory institutions. Charles Poulett Thomson, a former president of the board of trade, was the first governor-general under the new system, and he helped to set a more conciliatory tone.37 Ministers ignored the section in the Durham Report on land policy and emigration, written by Wakefield, but colonial reformers remained enthusiastic about the prospect of Canadian self-government. Nevertheless, the measures introduced at this time were quite in keeping with the suspicious attitude towards French Canadians, and the belief in the superiority of British culture and institutions, that had informed recent discussions. Although Russell was willing to make concessions he did not advocate responsible government, and even Durham's concept of local autonomy was very limited.38 Thompson remained a keen observer of parliamentary proceedings on Canada during 1839 and 1840. Among the dwindling number of radicals in the Commons it was Hume (now M.P. for Kilkenny) and Leader (now M.P. for Westminster) who challenged government policy most persistently. As before, however, Russell was less concerned about the voting intentions of radical M.P.s than about those of Peel and his followers. Thompson considered the new system in Canada to be ‘a general recipe for oppression’. He complained that to restrict the franchise and preserve the privileges of property owners, particularly those of British stock, was to ensure that the old corrupt and oligarchic order would survive intact. He was amazed that nothing had been done about commercial monopolies and, as he habitually did, linked the situation in Canada with affairs at home. The whigs intended to keep Canada in bondage, it seemed, and with the tories' help they would do anything to prevent meaningful reform in Britain.39 For several years Thompson vilified those who had backed the government against the Canadian rebels, and lamented that an excellent opportunity to harry the opponents of reform had been wasted. Early in 1840 he condemned the whig Hull Advertiser for its stance, denouncing its editor, William Kennedy, as an ‘anti-Canadian advocate’. He brought Canada up again at the general election of July 1841, but his effort to regain a seat in Hull was unsuccessful. In the press and on the platform Thompson continued to attack the whigs for their Canadian policy, and often cited this as one of the reasons why radicals could no longer trust them. In November 1842 he addressed a meeting in London on the subject of trial by jury. Thompson insisted that the use of military violence in Canada, to deprive colonists of their rights, meant that no earnest and consistent reformer could ever follow whig leaders again. In letters published in the Leeds Times and the Statesman and Weekly True Sun he condemned the ‘Irish party’ for siding with the whigs on Canada and upheld the ‘sanctity’ of the power of supply. He also accused Russell of despotic tendencies. Hume had joined Thompson in rejecting the Durham proposals, on the ground that they did not offer Canada the necessary degree of self-government, and Hume and Roebuck went on demanding an amnesty for the Canadian rebels.40 In the Bolton Free Press Thompson accused tory publications of mendacious coverage of Canadian affairs, and described Britain's imperial relationship with Canada as ‘corrupt, degrading and disadvantageous’. Canada was akin to ‘a shop … where the trade carried on consists in cutting boots into shoes’. Canada supplied Britain with ‘bad timber at a dear rate, through the intervention of stopping the importation of better timber at a cheaper rate, for the benefit of certain individuals who by parliamentary influence can secure the privileges of engaging their capital in the process’. The corn laws, meanwhile, restrained industry in Britain and were partly based on the fiction that Canada existed to provide wheat, to take British products and to receive Britain's poor. But this could not possibly make up for the loss of trade inflicted by the corn laws, Thompson protested, and the truth was that Britain's economic dealings with Canada were unsustainable. As for the constitutional side of the relationship, it was plain that local autonomy must replace ‘the trumpery and absurdity passing under the name of parental government’. The Canadians' desire to look after their own affairs conflicted with the imperialist delusion of superiority: ‘The Canadians who want self-government are babies, and their papas who butcher them with hired soldiers are the proper judges of what is good for the nursery. Some people thought the American infants had solved that fallacy once for all.’41 During the spring of 1841 Thompson laid renewed stress on the attitude of the United States. The American people loved liberty, he wrote, and there were many in Britain who would welcome further American involvement in the struggle against misgovernment in Canada. As for those United States citizens who had previously crossed into Canada to assist the rebels, their intervention was ‘an act of friendship demanded from a bordering country by international law, an act which all nations are consequently bound to support and to approve’. Thompson learned that about 150 captured Americans had been convicted as felons. The American government and people would demand redress for such insults, he thought, which had serious implications at a time when Anglo-American relations were strained by disagreements concerning the Maine boundary and the status of Texas. The blame for all this rested with the ‘imbecile ministry … always plotting against the interests of the public’, and if the American government decided to challenge Britain it would have the backing of many other states, ‘all smarting under the consciousness of British oppression or dishonesty’. The destruction of the Caroline, for example, could not be excused. It was not enough for the whig ministry to apologize and accept responsibility for the incident. Thompson opined that the United States would be perfectly justified in declaring war, such was the enormity of the whigs' behaviour. He urged the British public not to abandon Canada to its fate. Those Americans who had joined the Canadian rebels had actually been fighting to defend the law and constitution of Great Britain, and it was high time for the British people to act on their own behalf.42 Thompson exaggerated American hostility for effect, partly in the hope of stimulating popular agitation at home and making sure that Canada would not be forgotten. American and British authorities, in fact, played down the Caroline incident and used diplomatic channels to address other problems of mutual concern. Thompson had already predicted that the whigs would sink to any level in order to cover up their misdeeds in Canada while avoiding a rupture with the United States. In the Leicestershire Mercury late in 1840, he noted that Palmerston had officially recognized the independence of Texas. Since the Texans practised slavery, which their former Mexican rulers had tried to abolish, and since Texas was hoping for incorporation into the United States, it seemed to Thompson that British recognition of Texas would help to tip the balance of influence within the United States in favour of the southern slave states. Objections to British rule in Canada were strongest in the northern states. Thompson concluded that the British government hoped to weaken the northern states and to strengthen the south, even if this meant approving of slavery. The recognition of Texas and oppression of Canada were therefore connected.43 Canadian grievances were considerably assuaged after 1840. Baron Sydenham's moderate regime was a good basis on which to build, and for all its shortcomings the Durham Report helped to establish a pattern for future policy. The union of Upper and Lower Canada was favoured by the British government in 1840 as an expedient stopgap that would alleviate the immediate problem of French Canadian resistance and give time to frame a more complete settlement.44 Further measures were certainly needed. The repeal of the corn laws in 1846 marked the ending of preferential treatment for Canadian agriculture, which increased political tensions in Canada, and it was left to Lord Elgin, governor-general from 1847 to 1854, to accelerate the shift to self-government. The British North America Act of 1867 created a federal and more autonomous Dominion of Canada.45 One of the most striking features of Canada's development in this period was the growth of state power. Sydenham's post-rebellion reforms were highly important (especially in the fields of local government, education and public works) because they laid the foundation for energetic executive action.46 There arose a centralized, bureaucratic state that could promote industry and communications, one that was devoted after the rebellions to maintaining order and to protecting property and investments. Elite privileges survived and economic modernization was fostered, all of which had a decisive impact on French Canada. A new generation of francophone politicians came to the fore, less confrontational than their predecessors and eager to benefit from the new order. Indeed, during the eighteen-forties French Canadian leaders successfully repositioned themselves in order to safeguard their identity and culture within the imperial framework.47 In this context, 1867 was really a rounding off exercise.48 Radical responses to the Canadian rebellions of 1837 have been unduly neglected by historians of British politics after the Great Reform Act, even by those most interested in the evolution of radicalism. This article has elucidated some of the arguments and activities to which the Canada question gave rise, has drawn attention to the ways in which events in Canada were used to highlight imperial injustices, and has explained how the Canada question was taken up in order to mobilize opinion against the British political establishment. Many leading radicals had already broken with the whig government; the crackdown in Canada confirmed them in their belief that the price of maintaining cordial whig-radical relations was too high. But Canada also raised questions about radical unity and the nature and appeal of radicalism. In addition, concern was expressed about the implications for parliamentary sovereignty and constitutional reform of competing claims about the status and interests of Britain's colonies in general, and Canada in particular. The assumed connection between measures implemented at home and in Canada deepened radical anxiety about perceived departures from the path of rational and liberal progress that governments had been expected to follow after 1832. In the radicals' view, a great deal was at stake, and the agitation on Canada reveals much about the politics of the early-Victorian period. Why did the radicals make so little headway? Clearly the answer relates to the wider problem of radical disunity after the apparent breakthrough of 1832, when the representative system was reformed and an unprecedented number of radical candidates were successful at the polls. During the eighteen-thirties the impact of radical press, assembly, organization and opinion was limited, and weakness and confusion were more evident than unity or influence, both in and outside parliament. Radical leaders were divided by personal rivalries and by honest disagreements on tactics. They argued about the appropriate attitude to adopt towards the whig government and about colonial affairs, as the Canada question made obvious. Thompson had direct experience of these conflicts – indeed, that he was partly responsible for them is demonstrated by his differences with Hume, Roebuck, O'Connell, Baines, Fonblanque and Ward, among others. On Canada he rather marginalized himself, both with his unequivocal stance on the constitutional and, to a lesser extent, the economic significance of the crisis, and especially with his zealous condemnation of the whigs. His use of the word ‘treason’ and his claim that Melbourne's government sought to crush liberty in Canada – and that Britain would be next – did not convince other radical spokesmen. Thompson was too extreme for many of those with whom he had hoped to combine on the Canada question, and this helps to explain why the type of mobilization that he wanted never materialized. Changing ideas about empire also played a part. Wakefield's inclusion on Durham's staff is important in this respect. Wakefield and his fellow ‘colonial reformers’ rejected the older radical idea that colonies were a burden to Britain, and instead viewed them as valuable outlets for settlers, investment, manufactures and civilizing values. The Benthamites had been sceptical about empire; Bentham himself had called for the emancipation of the colonies. Before his death in 1832, however, he was at least partly converted to Wakefield's proposals for ‘systematic colonization’. Bentham apparently decided that the colonies might contribute to the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and some of Bentham's friends became allies of Wakefield. Thompson and Bowring were not among them. The negative view of empire died hard, and before long Richard Cobden would emerge as its most prominent mouthpiece. Cobden regarded colonies as a drain on Britain's resources and feared that peaceful progress at home would become impossible as imperial commitments increased abroad. There was no place for colonies in his benign free trading and peaceful internationalism. With these various strands of thought jostling together in the radical mindset during the eighteen-thirties and eighteen-forties,49 it is not surprising that the Canadian rebellions failed to provide a basis for joint action. Public opinion proved difficult to rouse on this imperial issue. It is possible that a more positive view of empire, such as that advanced by the ‘colonial reformers’, might have been gaining a wider purchase at this time, but domestic concerns were more important, just as Ebenezer Elliott recognized. Trade was declining and unemployment increasing in many regions. The harvest of 1838 was deficient. Poor laws, the budget, factory reform, taxes, wages and prices: these mattered more to the radicals' likely recruits than the Canada question. It was easy, moreover, to dismiss the Canadians as rebels – especially Papineau's followers, since they were also French – and many observers did not question the need to restore order in Canada. Radical M.P.s may have opposed Russell's resolutions of March 1837, but as an attempt to deal with a political danger in British North America they gained all the support they needed at home. Thompson eventually had to accept that it was not possible to promote a popular campaign on the Canada question and that prominent radicals could not offer the united and confident leadership that such a mobilization required. Particularly disappointing to him personally was his apparent isolation. An unsuccessful parliamentary candidate in Marylebone in 1838, Manchester in 1839 and Hull in 1841, his forthright and independent style did not go down well with the limited borough electorates of the 1832 system. Although Thompson regularly wrote for influential reform newspapers in the industrial towns of Yorkshire, Lancashire and the Midlands, even here there was no sustained popular backing for his views on the whigs, the empire and the threat to constitutional rights. On Canada he was clearly in advance of mainstream reform opinion. His quarrels with other radical leaders did not help. Nor did the decline of radicalism as a parliamentary force. Most estimates put the number of radical M.P.s in the Commons at between forty and fifty following the general election of December 1832. In some divisions radical causes (notably the ballot and triennial parliaments) attracted more than double that number. But there were reverses at by-elections during the eighteen-thirties, and of course at the general elections of 1835 and 1837. The aspirations and expectations of 1832 soon had to be reassessed. Others may have considered Thompson to be unrealistic or too demanding, but there was reason and principle behind his concerns about Canada. He wanted constitutional rights to be extended and secured. Above all, he advocated a change in policies and attitudes. This necessitated holding the British government and its representatives in the colonies to account. Thompson ceaselessly scrutinized and commented upon imperial transactions, all the while arguing for greater degrees of liberty and self-government, for tolerance and respect, and for the abandonment of assumptions about the non-British peoples of the world. He found, inevitably, that radicals were not united on Canada. He regretted the divisions and expressed dissatisfaction when ‘friends of reform’ seemed not to be of sound mind. His own commitments stemmed from his belief that imperial relationships were not as they should be, and he made the connection between repression in the empire and conservatism at home. Thompson has been neglected in previous accounts of radical ideology and action on empire, but his activities – especially on the Canada question – cast new light on the causes and consequences of radical divisions. Radicals were well aware of the importance of the empire and the ways in which it determined the character of British institutions, identity and influence. Few, however, can have tried to explain these relationships more forcefully and explicitly than Thompson. Canada was a test: of radical unity and effectiveness; of whig leadership and reliability; of Britain's positive influence in the colonies; and of the likelihood of ongoing improvements in constitutional and political structures at home and throughout the empire. The immediate results of this test were not those for which radicals of Thompson's ilk had hoped. Footnotes 1 L. G. Johnson, General T. Perronet Thompson, 1783–1869: his Military, Literary and Political Campaigns (1957); J. R. Morrison, ‘Perronet Thompson, 1783–1869: a middle-class radical’ (unpublished University of York D.Phil. thesis, 1993). 2 ‘On the instrument of exchange’, Westminster Review, i (Jan. 1824), 171–205; Thomas Perronet Thompson, An Exposition of Fallacies on Rent, with a List of Fallacies and the Answers (1826); Thomas Perronet Thompson, A Catechism on the Corn Laws, Tithes, etc. (1827); Evening Sun, 31 July 1847. 3 ‘Edinburgh Review: Bentham's rationale of evidence’, Westminster Review, x (Apr. 1829), 367–93; ‘Edinburgh Review: article on Mill's Essays on Government & c’, Westminster Review, xi (July 1829), 254–68; ‘Edinburgh Review on the utilitarian theory of government and the greatest happiness principle’, Westminster Review, xii (Jan. 1830), 246–62; Thomas Perronet Thompson, Exercises, Political and Others (6 vols., 1842), i. 121–36, 180–90, 229–46. 4 M. J. Turner, ‘Radical opinion in an age of reform: Thomas Perronet Thompson and the Westminster Review’ , History , lxxxvi ( 2001 ), 18 – 40 . Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close 5 See correspondence and notes in University of Hull, Brynmor Jones Library, Thompson Papers (hereafter Brynmor Jones, Thompson Papers), DTH 1 and 4 passim, and DTH 3/15, 18; University of Manchester, John Rylands Library, English MS. 1180/116, 172, 177–85; University of Leeds, Brotherton Library, Thompson Papers, MS. 277/1/35. 6 P. A. Buckner, The Transition to Responsible Government: British Policy in British North America, 1815–50 (Westport, Conn., 1985), chs. 4–5; J. M. Ward, Colonial Self-Government: the British Experience, 1759–1856 (1976), chs. 2–3; J. Prest, Lord John Russell (1972), pp. 128–9; G. Martin, Britain and the Origins of Canadian Confederation, 1837–67 (Basingstoke, 1995), pp. 83–5; T. O. Lloyd, The British Empire, 1558–1995 (2nd edn., Oxford, 1996), pp. 142–3, 158–9; L. Woodward, The Age of Reform, 1815–70 (2nd edn., Oxford, 1962), pp. 377–80; P. Burroughs, The Canadian Crisis and British Colonial Policy, 1828–41 (1972), chs. 3–5; C. E. Fryer, ‘Lower Canada, 1815–37’, in Cambridge History of the British Empire, ed. J. H. Rose, A. P. Newton and E. A. Benians (8 vols. in 9, Cambridge, 1929–61), vi. 234–50; and J. L. Morison, ‘Upper Canada, 1815–37’, in Rose, Newton and Benians, vi. 251–70. 7 Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., xxxvi, cols. 1287–362 (1837); Hansard, 3, xxxvii, cols. 76–147 (1837); Buckner, pp. 218–23; V. Chancellor, The Political Life of Joseph Hume, 1777–1855: the Scot who was for 30 Years a Radical Leader in the British House of Commons (1986), pp. 80, 106–7; R. K. Huch and P. R. Ziegler, Joseph Hume: the People's M.P. (Philadelphia, Pa., 1985), pp. 63, 101–2; The Colonial Reformers and Canada, 1830–49: Selections from Documents and Publications of the Times, ed. P. Burroughs (Toronto, 1969), pp. 109–14; The Spectator, 11, 18 March 1837. 8 For Thompson's remarks, see Hansard, 3, xxxvi, cols. 1333–5 (1837); Hansard, 3, xxxvii, col. 144 (1837). 9 Brynmor Jones, Thompson Papers, DTH 5/23, Thompson's draft letters to constituents, 8, 11 March 1837; ‘To the secretary of the Hull Reform Association’, Hull Advertiser, 10, 17 March 1837; Thompson, Exercises, iv. 220–4. 10 Brynmor Jones, Thompson Papers, DTH 4/7, Thompson's draft letter to constituents, 14 Apr. 1837; Hansard, 3, xxxviii, cols. 1209–93 (1837); Thompson, Exercises, iv. 240–1; ‘To the secretary of the Hull Reform Association’, Hull Advertiser, 21 Apr. 1837; Burroughs, Canadian Crisis, pp. 86–93; Prest, p. 129; Buckner, pp. 223–5. 11 Brynmor Jones, Thompson Papers, DTH 5/23, Thompson's notes, dated May 1837; Hansard, 3, xxxviii, cols. 907–26 (1837); Thompson, Exercises, iv. 263–5, 335–40; ‘To the secretary of the Hull Reform Association’, Hull Advertiser, 26 May 1837; Morning Chronicle, 17 Dec. 1838; W. A. Munford, William Ewart, M.P., 1798–1869: Portrait of a Radical (1960), pp. 88–9. 12 Buckner, pp. 225–9, 235–9; Lloyd, p. 159; I. Newbould, Whiggery and Reform, 1830–41: the Politics of Government (1990), pp. 215–16. 13 D. G. Creighton, The Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence, 1760–1850 (Toronto, 1937); S. B. Ryerson, 1837: the Birth of Canadian Democracy (Toronto, 1937); A. Greer, The Patriots and the People: the Rebellion of 1837 in Rural Lower Canada (Toronto, 1993). 14 C. Read, The Rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada (Ottawa, 1988), p. 19. 15 A. Greer, ‘1837–38: rebellion reconsidered’ , Canadian Historical Rev. , lxxvi ( 1995 ), 1 – 18 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close , at pp. 7–18. 16 The Rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada: a Collection of Documents, ed. C. Read and R. J. Stagg (Toronto, 1985), p. 54. 17 Brynmor Jones, Thompson Papers, DTH 5/23, T. P. Thompson to John Bowring, 27 Dec. 1837; S. Maccoby, English Radicalism, 1832–52 (1935), pp. 354–6; Buckner, pp. 27–9, 239–40. 18 Thompson, Exercises, iv. 307–9; Brynmor Jones, Thompson Papers, DTH 4/8, hand-written account of Canada meeting, Crown and Anchor, Strand, dated 11 Jan. 1838; Brynmor Jones, Thompson Papers, DTH 5/24, narrative notes; Morning Chronicle, 5 Jan. 1838; Maccoby, pp. 356–7. The Times, 5 Jan. 1838, accused speakers of ‘absurdities, extravagances and calumnies’ and stigmatized the event as an ‘unprincipled and atrocious meeting, which, in so far as it tends to uphold the Canadians in their treason, assists in the shedding [of] every drop of human blood, whether English or Canadian, which may be spilt in the progress of this wanton and cruel strife’. 19 The Life and Letters of John Arthur Roebuck, ed. R. E. Leader (1897), p. 108. 20 Brynmor Jones, Thompson Papers, DTH 4/8, T. P. Thompson to Joseph Hume, 20 Jan. 1838; Chancellor, p. 146; Huch and Ziegler, pp. 100, 108, 109–10; Leader, ch. 11. 21 See notes in Brynmor Jones, Thompson Papers, DTH 5/24, and Thompson, Exercises, iv. 309–10, 312–16; The Times, 9 Jan. 1838; Hansard, 3, xl, cols. 115–16 (1838); Hull Saturday Journal, 10 Feb. 1838; British Library, Additional MS. 37949 fos. 383–4, T. P. Thompson to Francis Place, 19 Feb. 1838. Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford, and William Laud, archbishop of Canterbury, had both been advisers to Charles I and played leading roles in the political and religious struggles of the early 17th century. They were executed in 1641 and 1645 respectively. When Thompson called himself a ‘republican under compact’, he meant that he was willing to live loyally as the subject of a constitutional monarch, but believed that a republican system was superior in almost every respect. 22 Brynmor Jones, Thompson Papers, DTH 5/24, T. P. Thompson to Bowring, 2 Feb. 1838; Read, p. 20; Hansard, 3, xl, cols. 715–17 (1838); H. C. F. Bell, Lord Palmerston (2 vols., 1936), i. 245–9; K. Bourne, Britain and the Balance of Power in North America, 1815–1908 (1967), ch. 4; R. C. Stuart, United States Expansionism and British North America, 1775–1871 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1988), ch. 6; J. B. Brebner, North Atlantic Triangle: the Interplay of Canada, the United States and Great Britain (New Haven, Conn., 1945), pp. 141–5; R. Hyam, Britain's Imperial Century, 1815–1914: a Study of Empire and Expansion (Basingstoke, 1993), pp. 61–73; A. P. Newton, ‘The United States and colonial developments, 1815–46’, in Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy, 1783–1919, ed. A. W. Ward and G. P. Gooch (3 vols., New York, 1970), ii. 220–83. 23 Newbould, Whiggery and Reform, pp. 216–18; Woodward, p. 380; W. Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals: Nine Studies in Theory and Practice, 1817–41 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 338–54, 364–84; Maccoby, pp. 356–7; Buckner, pp. 6–8, 337–8; Burroughs, Colonial Reformers, pp. 114–28; Hansard, 3, xl, cols. 96–162, 254–352, 358–473, 476–542, 543–96, 616–43, 929 (1838). 24 Thomas, pp. 384–90, 392–400; L. Cooper, Radical Jack: the Life of John George Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham, Viscount Lambton, and Baron Durham (1959), pp. 219–75; Newbould, Whiggery and Reform, pp. 217, 222–3; I. Newbould, ‘Lord Durham, the whigs and Canada, 1838: the background to Durham's return’ , Albion , viii ( 1976 ), 351 – 74 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close ; J. L. Morison, ‘The mission of the earl of Durham’, in Rose, Newton and Benians, vi. 287–307; P. Ziegler, Melbourne: a Biography of William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (1976), pp. 281–6; L. G. Mitchell, Lord Melbourne, 1779–1848 (Oxford, 1997), pp. 197–200; Prest, pp. 130–3, 134–5, 136, 138–9. 25 Brynmor Jones, Thompson Papers, DTH 4/8, 5/24, T. P. Thompson to Nancy Thompson (his wife), 24 Oct. 1838. 26 Burroughs, Colonial Reformers, pp. 43–79; D. Winch, Classical Political Economy and Colonies (1965), ch. 8. 27 J. Monet, The Last Cannon Shot: a Study of French-Canadian Nationalism, 1837–50 (Toronto, 1969), pp. 17–23. 28 Thompson, Exercises, iv. 319–25; The Sun, 15 Oct. 1838. In fact, most of the prisoners taken along the American border were subsequently released. 29 The Sun, 15 Oct. 1838; Morning Chronicle, 17 Dec. 1838; Thompson, Exercises, iv. 335–40, vi. 55; and notes in Brynmor Jones, Thompson Papers, DTH 5/24. 30 The Life and Labours of Albany Fonblanque, ed. E. B. De Fonblanque (1874), pp. 80–2, 122–3, 146; Morning Chronicle, 17, 18, 22 Oct. 1838; Thompson, Exercises, iv. 325–9; The Spectator, 20 Oct. 1838. 31 Thompson, Exercises, iv. 321–2, 340; notes in Brynmor Jones, Thompson Papers, DTH 5/24; The Sun, 15 Oct. 1838; Morning Chronicle, 17 Dec. 1838; Thomas, pp. 354–63, 390–2; R. Stewart, Henry Brougham, 1778–1868: his Public Career (1986), pp. 330–4; A. Aspinall, Lord Brougham and the Whig Party (Manchester, 1927), ch. 11; Huch and Ziegler, pp. 112–13; O. MacDonagh, The Emancipist: Daniel O'Connell, 1830–47 (1989), ch. 7; Buckner, p. 225; The Examiner, 14 Jan. 1838; Newbould, Whiggery and Reform, pp. 218–22. 32 See notes in Brynmor Jones, Thompson Papers, DTH 5/24; Hull Saturday Journal, 10 Feb. 1838; Thompson, Exercises, iv. 313. 33 Morning Chronicle, 11, 17 Dec. 1838; Thompson, Exercises, iv. 332–5, 339–40. 34 Brynmor Jones, Thompson Papers, DTH 5/24, Ebenezer Elliott to T. P. Thompson, 2 Oct. 1839, and notes; Martin, Canadian Confederation, pp. 131–2. 35 Greer, ‘Rebellion reconsidered’, pp. 9–10. 36 Monet, chs. 2–3. 37 Thomson was raised to the peerage as Baron Sydenham in Aug. 1840. 38 G. Martin, The Durham Report and British Policy: a Critical Essay (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 29–30, 32, 33–4, 35, 38; Thomas, pp. 400–4; Ward, pp. 62–81; M. Taylor, ‘Imperium et Libertas? Rethinking the radical critique of imperialism during the 19th century’, Jour. Imperial and Commonwealth Hist., xix (1991), 1–23, at pp. 6–7; Buckner, pp. 5–6, 8–10, 333–8; Cooper, pp. 279–300; Burroughs, Colonial Reformers, pp. 128–38; Burroughs, Canadian Crisis, ch. 6; Prest, pp. 130–3, 134–5, 136, 138–9. 39 Hansard, 3, xlv, cols. 353–4, 506–7, 749–54, 919–20, 1312–18 (1839); xlvi, cols. 1222–3 (1839); xlvii, cols. 756, 765, 1022–4, 1254–90 (1839); xlviii, cols. 95–7, 206–12, 1007–9, 1195–1213 (1839); xlix, cols. 82–3, 147–217, 494–505, 1145–7 (1839); l, cols. 1–2, 452 (1839); lii, cols. 247–8, 1324–54 (1840); liii, cols. 230–2, 298–9, 428–30, 589–90, 1026–7, 1053–68 (1840); liv, cols. 701–8, 710–62, 813–14, 1115–55, 1175–203, 1263–8 (1840); lv, cols. 463–9, 733, 838–49, 1102–4 (1840). Thompson, Exercises, v. 71–4; Leeds Times, 25 July 1840. 40 Brynmor Jones, Thompson Papers, DTH 4/9, Thompson to Bowring, 11 Jan. 1840; Brynmor Jones, Thompson Papers, DTH 4/10, 11, T. P. Thompson to T. P. E. Thompson (his son), 7 July 1840, 29 June 1841; Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 43663 fos. 79–81, Thompson to Richard Cobden, 23 Nov. 1842; Thompson, Exercises, v. 27–9, vi. 240–2; Leeds Times, 16 May 1840; Statesman and Weekly True Sun, 28 March 1841; Chancellor, p. 146; Huch and Ziegler, p. 126; Leader, p. 115. 41 Thompson, Exercises, v. 154–5; Bolton Free Press, 10 Oct. 1840. 42 Thompson, Exercises, vi. 214–15, 217–18, 223–4; Leeds Times, 20 March 1841; Manchester and Salford Advertiser, 20 March 1841; Statesman and Weekly True Sun, 21 March 1841. 43 Stuart, ch. 6; Thompson, Exercises, v. 314–15; Leicestershire Mercury, 28 Nov. 1840. 44 Maccoby, pp. 357–8; P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688–2000 (Harlow, 2002), pp. 210–11; Martin, Canadian Confederation, pp. 85–7; Martin, Durham Report, pt. 5; G. Martin, ‘The influence of the Durham Report’, in R. Hyam and G. Martin, Reappraisals in British Imperial History (1975), ch. 4. 45 Buckner, chs. 7–8; Martin, Canadian Confederation, chs. 3–7; P. Burroughs, British Attitudes towards Canada, 1822–49 (Scarborough, Ont., 1971) pp. 38–70; Burroughs, Colonial Reformers, pp. 139–211; Woodward, pp. 381–4; Brebner, pp. 148–58; Lloyd, pp. 160–4, 169–70, 189–95; Ward, ch. 8. 46 I. Radforth, ‘Sydenham and utilitarian reform’, in Colonial Leviathan: State Formation in Mid-19th-Century Canada, ed. A. Greer and I. Radforth (Toronto, 1992), pp. 64–102. 47 B. Young, ‘Positive law, positive state: class realignment and the transformation of Lower Canada, 1815–66’, in Greer and Radforth, pp. 50–63; Monet, pts. 2, 3. 48 Nevertheless, it is also necessary to try to understand the rebellions without focusing excessively on what followed. Read, pp. 22–4 warns against teleological interpretations that place the events of 1837–8 in an identifiable sequence leading to responsible government, and Greer, ‘Rebellion reconsidered’, pp. 1–4 notes that other goals or ending-points are also used in this fashion (such as the preservation of French Canadian culture and the formation of the transcontinental commercial and political union). Greer suggests that the tendency to rely on broad themes and to fit the rebellions into this ‘flow of history’ approach gives an incomplete and misleading view of the events of 1837–8. 49 Taylor, pp. 3–9; B. Semmel, ‘The philosophic radicals and colonialism’ , Jour. Econ. Hist. , xxi ( 1961 ), 513 – 25 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close ; The Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. J. Bowring (11 vols., New York, 1962), ii. 545, 546–8; S. Conway, ‘Bentham on peace and war’ , Utilitas , i ( 1989 ), 82 – 101 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close , at pp. 92–3; Winch, pp. 25–38, 128–9, chs. 6–8; Select Documents on British Colonial Policy, 1830–60, ed. K. N. Ball and W. P. Morrell (Oxford, 1928), pt. 2; The British Empire, ed J. Samson (Oxford, 2001), pp. 139–61; Cain and Hopkins, ch. 8; M. Ceadel, The Origins of War Prevention: the British Peace Movement and International Relations, 1730–1854 (Oxford, 1996), pp. 114, 495–6, 505–6; J. L. Morison, ‘Problems of settlement, iii: emigration and land policy, 1815–73’, in Rose, Newton and Benians, ii. 438–72; A. Grenfell Price, ‘Experiments in colonization’, in Rose, Newton and Benians, vii, pt. 1, 207–42; P. McMichael, Settlers and the Agrarian Question: Foundations of Capitalism in Colonial Australia (Cambridge, 1984), chs. 4, 8; Brynmor Jones, Thompson Papers, DTH 4/5, 5/21, T. P. Thompson to Bowring, 2 Aug., 30 Oct. 1834; Thompson, Exercises, ii. 351–8, 409–14; ‘Colonel Torrens's letters on commercial policy’, Westminster Review, xviii (Jan. 1833), 168–76; ‘Colonel Torrens's additional letters on commercial policy’, Westminster Review, xviii (Apr. 1833), 421–7; ‘New South Australian colony’, Westminster Review, xxi (Oct. 1834), 441–76; ‘South Australian colony’, Westminster Review, xxiii (July 1835), 213–39; The Times, 3 Oct. 1834; The Courier, 28 Oct. 1834. © The Author(s) 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Institute of Historical Research. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model) © The Author(s) 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Institute of Historical Research. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com
TI - Radical agitation and the Canada question in British politics, 1837–41
JF - Historical Research
DO - 10.1111/j.1468-2281.2005.00253.x
DA - 2006-02-01
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SP - 90
EP - 114
VL - 79
IS - 203
DP - DeepDyve
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