Minor Corruption (29 page)

“I wonder if this present storm has made the
township roads impassable?” the Receiver-General mused, nodding
towards the windows on the south wall of the large room, upon which
the snow was beating with pale, padded fists.

“Or even the Kingston Road,” Michaels added,
referring to the main overland link between Kingston and
Toronto.

“It might well delay the arrival of His
Excellency,” James said. Governor Poulett Thomson was expected to
pay a visit to the capital of Upper Canada sometime in the next few
weeks.

“Possibly,” the Bishop said. “In the least it
may serve to disrupt the impious gathering of Reform leaders that
my agents tell me is planned for later this month, probably out at
Spadina House.”

“Assuming God is still in our camp,” Maxwell
said.

“Let them meet and chatter like monkeys all
they want,” James said bravely. “We have little to fear from that
rabble once the Union Bill is passed and a new parliament is
elected.”

“I’m not sure we should be
that
confident, Carson,” Maxwell said. “After all, we did oppose the
Union Act last fall for good reason. No-one with a shred of decency
wanted Upper Canadians to be yoked with French rebels and
seditionists, or the populace that blindly supported their pathetic
uprising. But I still think we were right in accepting the
inevitable – and then making sure the new proposals worked in our
favour.”

“What do you think, Bishop?” James said. “Can
our British values and our way of life prevail?”

Strachan put down his sherry. “I don’t see
why not. We’ve managed, haven’t we, to get a single legislative
assembly in which we have as many seats as Quebec with a third less
population? And Lower Canada will assume our share of the huge
public debt.”

“And English will be the language of record
in that Assembly,” Maxwell beamed.

“And I would expect that the twenty members
of the upper body, the Legislative Council, will be appointed
judiciously from our midst by the Crown, as they are now,” said
Winthrop, who had never disguised his desire to be one of the
chosen himself. “With that body to check the excesses and
shenanigans of the Assembly, and a British governor to select and
ride herd on his Executive Council, it’s hard to see how we cannot
carry on as we always have.”

“Of course, there will have to be some
Councillors appointed from Quebec,” Maxwell conceded, “and two or
three cabinet posts as well. But surely we’ll elect sufficient
English-speaking members from Montreal and elsewhere to supply a
quorum of like-minded souls from that province.”

“My contacts in Quebec,” Winthrop said, “have
informed me that some creative gerrymandering is already proposed
for the Montreal area, and that our man in London, Robert Peel, has
even suggested these ridings each be represented by
two
members to ensure an English presence from Quebec.”

“What do you hear about the capital?” James
said to Winthrop.

“It will not be Quebec City or Toronto,”
Winthrop said. “It’s almost certainly Montreal or Kingston.”

“With Kingston the most likely site,” the
Bishop added, with a nod that left little doubt about the
reliability of his information, “despite the fact that there are no
parliamentary facilities and not a single habitable hotel in that
fortress of stone.”

Ivor Winthrop smiled, something he normally
did only when all other responses failed him. “That is so, sir. I
have spent much time in that grim town in recent months pursuing
the fur business, and been appalled at the condition of some of its
roads and buildings. But from the point of view of any businessman
with an entrepreneurial spirit, it is a potential lodestone.”

“How so?” Michaels inquired.

“If no facilities now exist there to house a
legislature of a hundred and four members and provide them with
suitable living quarters and commercial shops appropriate to their
needs and station, then such facilities will have to be
constructed, furnished and serviced, will they not?”

The thought of such unbounded mercantile
possibility left the gathering without speech for some moments.

“I hesitate to toss a fly into the ointment,”
James said after a while, “but I would be remiss if I did not
relate to you the substance of a rumour making the rounds in our
circle.”

“About Hincks and some of the French rebels?”
Maxwell said.

James’s face fell, then he looked merely
relieved. “You mean there’s nothing to it?” he said hopefully.

“Oh, there’s something to it all right,”
Maxwell said. The others sat forward in their chairs, except for
the Bishop who, it seemed, knew exactly what was coming. “We know
that Hincks and Louis LaFontaine have been corresponding for
several months.”

Francis Hincks was a leading Reformer and
editor of the radical newspaper, the
Examiner.
Louis
LaFontaine had been a prominent MLA and a rebel supporter during
the revolt in Quebec in 1837. Since his release from prison by Lord
Durham following the failed uprising, he had become the leading
spokesman for the malcontents among the French populace.

“But Hincks and LaFontaine have little in
common,” James pointed out. “They may claim to be reformers, but
the reforms the French want are not those of the English. Are
they?”

The Bishop harrumphed. “Both the French
Rouge
party and our Reformers will do anything to embarrass
and disenfranchise established authority of any kind. That is their
raison d’être
. On many issues, should they ever agree to
cooperate in the new joint parliament, they could form a single
block and cause some disruption there. But from what we know so
far, they are a long way from any sort of
détente
.”

Receiver-General Maxwell took up the argument
from that point. “Remember, the French still feel victimized and
utterly defeated. The Union Bill itself is seen as a travesty by
them. They have no tradition of parliamentary procedure and
political negotiation. They have a religion to protect. And so
on.”

“So there is little chance that any coalition
of
Rouge
and Reform could result in their influencing the
direction in which the united provinces must develop?” Winthrop
said.

“Even with the remote possibility of their
controlling the Assembly at some distant time in the future,”
Maxwell said, “the appointed Council and the cabinet, along with
the governor’s prerogative, should act to keep matters in
perspective.”

“Still,” James said, “Poulett Thomson has
shown a predilection for choosing his Executive Councillors from
amongst the elected members of the current Assembly.”

“And there’s a possibility he’s coming to
Toronto to offer Robert Baldwin, the arch-Reformer, a cabinet
post,” Michaels said, alluding to yet another rumour circulating in
the capital.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Maxwell said, “calm
down. You’re beginning to talk as if the Governor favours
responsible government, but he has assured us over and over again
that he has no intention of having his cabinet answer directly to
the majority party in the Assembly. And that is that.”

Carson James went suddenly pale. “I - I’m not
so sure about that,” he said.

The Bishop glared at him, his eyebrows
alarmingly rigid. “Explain yourself, sir.”

Trembling at the Bishop’s response or the
implications of what he had to say to him, James replied: “My
wife’s niece is a maid out at Spadina, where Governor Thomson and
the Baldwins met in secret during the debate over the Union Bill
last fall. One day, she told me, she overheard Thomson tell Robert
Baldwin that he could not guarantee him responsible government in
the new order, but that he felt certain it would come about –
naturally and inevitably.”

“The blackguard!” Michaels cried, spilling
his third sherry.

Maxwell chuckled softly. “But he said that
merely to get Reform support for his bill, the wily old
bastard.”

Much relief followed upon this compelling
insight.

Hesitantly, James said, “But what if the
Governor was being wily with us as well? After all, he’s a Whig,
not a Tory.”

After the merest pause, Maxwell said, “True.
But he’s also a governor, a vice-regent with near-absolute power.
And I’ve never seen any gentleman – Whig, Tory or otherwise –
relinquish such power voluntarily. And certainly not to a polyglot
crew such as is likely to compose the new Assembly in Kingston or
wherever.”

The murmurs of enthusiastic assent were
stilled by Bishop Strachan raising his hand as if he were bidding
his congregation to prayer. “I believe you are right, Ignatius. On
the other hand, we have no more guarantees offered us than the
rabble do. I fear we must scotch the serpent in its nest, not wait
for it to grow into some hydra-headed beast of the Apocalypse.
Should Monsieur LaFontaine and Mr. Baldwin-Hincks find enough
common ground to dominate the new Legislative Assembly, it may well
prove to be a most unholy alliance.”

“What are you suggesting, John?” Maxwell
said.

“I am proposing that we become acutely
vigilant, and that we do everything in our power to see that such a
perverse and obscene coalition never sees the light of day.”

Maxwell stared at the storm pummelling the
windows even more fiercely than it had been doing earlier in the
evening. “Then let us pray for more snow,” he said.

***************************