In Profile: Robert Baldwin

The two previous weekly installments of In Profile were delayed due to time constraints.  A more regular posting rate will be sought after, if not guaranteed, in the future. - Publius

Born at York (Toronto) on May 12th, 1804 Robert Baldwin was the son of William Warren Baldwin, one of the leading lawyers in Upper Canada at the time.  The elder Baldwin was to spend most of his political career fighting for responsible government.  At the time the government of the province was entrusted to a governor appointed by London who in turn appointed a cabinet to manage the day to day affairs of state.  The selection of ministers for the provincial cabinet was entirely at the discretion of the governor.  Most bills passed by the elected Legislative Assembly could be reserved by the governor, a sort of temporary veto, and passed on to London to receive final approval or rejection.  However, any tax increases and most budgetary measures required, in keeping with British Parliamentary tradition, the approval of the Legislative Assembly.  In effect the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada were governed in much the same way as the mother country had been about a century prior.

What the younger and elder Baldwin sought to accomplish was to make the executive, the cabinet and the governor, responsible to the elected assembly; to change the political structure to more closely reflect how Britain itself was being governed by the early decades of the nineteenth century.  Members of cabinet, envisioned the Baldwins, would be selected from members of the leading party in the assembly and remain in office so long as they maintained the confidence of the house.  So strongly and consistently would the younger Baldwin advocate for responsible government that he became known as the "man of one idea."

Called to the Bar in 1825, and first elected to the Upper Canadian Legislative Assembly in 1829, Robert Baldwin was soon after defeated and spent much of the 1830s out of elected politics.  Briefly called upon to serve on the Executive Council (Cabinet) in 1836 he resigned after his proposals for reform were repeatedly blocked by the appointed Lieutenant-Governor of the province, Sir Francis Bond Head.  Bond Head, who had been chosen by London in an attempt to assuage reformers in the colony, only further antagonized them with his refusals to consider any significant measures toward responsible government.  He further complicated the political situation in Upper Canada when he dissolved the Legislative Assembly after it refused to vote the government supply (pass the budget) for the following year.  During the subsequent election Bond Head campaigned against the reformers, which was in spirit at least contrary to the British Constitution.  The Tories, who he supported, won the election handily and within a year some of the more radical elements within the reform party, led by William Lyon Mackenzie, had taken up arms.  The December 1837 Rebellion in Upper Canada, unlike its counterpart uprisings in Lower Canada, was something of farce, ending after less than an hour of fighting along Yonge Street near what is today Maple Leaf Gardens.  Its impact however was to be enormous for the young country.

The chain of events which followed are fairly well known, or at least were when Canadian history was seriously taught in the schools.  To recap, the rebellion provoked the British government to recall Bond Head and replace him with the far more tactful Sir George Arthur.  Arthur in turn was quickly replaced by Lord Sydenham with whom Baldwin was to have a less than pacific relationship.  While these changes in the administration of the province were taking place the Colonial Office dispatched the high flying radical aristocrat Lord Durham.  Durham's famous report of 1839 outlined two key elements in solving the political crisis in the Canadas.  First, accede to the demands of the reformers and grant responsible government.  Second, unite the two Canadas into one province with one legislature in hopes of gradually assimilating French culture.

While the Imperial government quickly agreed to the unification of the two Canadas it resisted, in practice if less so in rhetoric, responsible government.  Lord Syndenham, when he was dispatched in 1839, was given explicit orders to co-operate with reformers but to concede little real power.  Despite the Durham Report's widespread acceptance in government circles on theoretical grounds Britain's trade policies still functioned on a mercantilist basis.  If the colonies were to be granted responsible government the Colonial Office would lose its ability to block changes in trade policy that might undermind the mercantilist system.  It had been largely for this reason that the British government had refused to compromise with the American rebels in the 1760s and 1770s.  Had Westminster then agreed with the American patriots to implement the principal of "no taxation without representation" it would have meant in practice something moving toward responsible government.  To many observers, and participants, in the political struggles over parliamentary reform on both sides of the Atlantic the period from the early 1830s until the late 1840s bore disturbing parallels to the lead up to the American War of Independence.

What prevented the crisis in the Canadas from following the route taken by the Americans more than six decades earlier were the actions of two men on opposite sides of the Atlantic: Sir Robert Peel and Robert Baldwin.  Peel would serve as British Prime Minister for half of the turbulent 1840s, from 1841-1846, and his final act in office was to repeal the last legal vestige of the mercantilist system, the Corn Laws.  The repeal destroyed the Conservative Party which Peel had lead for more than a decade and effectively ended his political career.  However, with the mercantilist system in ruins, and most of the remaining restrains on international trade to be lifted over the following decade, the principal barrier to responsible government had been destroyed.

In the Canadas Robert Baldwin maintained a balancing act.  On one hand he checked those voices in the reform movement calling for violent revolution and annexation to the United States, while on the other maintaining the pressure on the Tories and the government to grant responsible government.  In 1841 the Governor-General Lord Sydenham appointed Baldwin to the Executive Council, only for him to resign a few weeks later when it became clear that that Sydenham intended to block any substantive attempts at reform.  The following year he was able to enter cabinet for a somewhat longer duration, and despite courting the approbation of both the Governor-General as well as many in Upper Canada, Baldwin fought for French-Canadian representation in cabinet.  These were the beginnings of Baldwin's legendary alliance with Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine. 

Both men believed in the idea of responsible government and both understood that the only alternative to it was violence or annexation.  Baldwin, as always a man of deep and emotional conviction, regarded the bi-cultural alliance as something far more than political.  He insisted his children be educated in French, including lengthy stays in Canada East (Quebec) to acquire a personal understanding of the language.  He also famously arranged for LaFontaine's election for the riding of 4th York near Toronto.  This was necessary as the French Canadian Reform leader was defeated in his own Canada East riding due to physical intimidation at the polls by English speaking roughs.  LaFontaine was to return the favour a few years laters when Baldwin was defeated by an English speaking electorate that became disenchanted with what was seen as his strong pro-French stance.

The 1842-1843 Baldwin-LaFontaine government was to fall, not surprisingly, on the issue of responsible government when the new Governor-General Sir Charles Metcalfe refusing to completely turn over patronage powers to the ministry.  Given the practical political need in nineteenth century Canadian politics for a government to reward its allies, particularly at a local level, control of patronage was seen as vital in accomplishing responsible government.  A succession of Tory ministries with some Reform support held power until 1847.  The newly appointed Governor-General Lord Elgin came with instruction from the recently elected Whig government at Westminster to completely allow for responsible government.  While having deep misgivings on the issue Elgin summoned Baldwin and LaFontaine to form a government, though he initially attempted to exclude LaFontaine, after the two had engineered the fall of previous Tory ministry.

At first Baldwin and LaFontaine moved cautiously trying to demonstrate that a Reform government could behave in a moderate and business like fashion.  After this initial period Baldwin started negotiations for a reciprocity agreement with the United States, effectively a limited form of free trade.  While far from a convinced free trader he did believe in the necessity of securing American markets for Canadian business, as well as being aware that such an agreement was popular among the commercial classes.  Sir Francis Hincks, the Inspector General (Minister of Finance) for the Reform government, was a strong advocate for the agreement, and he was widely seen as a representative of the capitalist and trade interests in the united province.  A year later Baldwin and Hincks also ensured the passage of a motion, ultimately successful, calling upon Britain to abandon the last vestiges of the mercantilist system and scrap the Navigation Acts. 

A series of legal reforms followed but all of this was merely a warm up to the center piece of what historians once called "The Great Ministry."  The Rebellion Loses Bill sought to compensate those who lost property during the Rebellions of 1837-8, including those who had suffered losses fighting for the rebels.  Naturally the Tories opposed the bill and it inflamed English and French tensions.  This was to culminate in the burning of the provincial legislature at Montreal, forcing its removal to Toronto.  Lord Elgin, again with deep misgivings over both the goal and content of the bill, opposed the the Losses Bill and relented only when Baldwin and LaFontaine threatened to resign.  Given Elgin's orders he had no choice but to sign.  Riots immediately broke out in which Baldwin's hotel was attacked, though he escaped unharmed, and Elgin was himself physically assaulted.

Despite the violence Baldwin and LaFontaine had successfully established as precedent the idea and practice of responsible government.  With their power consolidated the two reformers turned their focus toward more fundamental change in the Canadas.  LaFontaine introduced, and passed, a series of measures to abolish the seigneurial system and ended the remnants of the feudal system in British North America.  Baldwin, for his part, focused on local government and education in Canada West.  Understanding that Tory power in the English speaking half of the province rested with the Tory Oligarchs' control over both local government and higher education he sought to reform both these institutions.  The Municipal Corporations Act of 1849 streamlined the complex and overly bureaucratic system of local government in Canada West, while the same time granting municipalities a far greater degree of autonomy.  The provincial government, however, maintained the right to appoint certain key local officials, such as the sheriff, the controller and the coroner.  Baldwin felt this was in keeping with British Parliamentary tradition and the principle of a constitutional monarchy.

Later in the pivotal year of 1849 Baldwin set his sights on what many saw as the very symbol of the Tory oligarchy or Family Compact, King's College at Toronto.  Founded by the first Anglican Bishop of Toronto, John Strachan, the college was effectively controlled by the Anglican Church and banned non-Anglican from matriculating.  Despite this exclusionary attitude the college still received government funds and some legal protection from competition.  Baldwin removed the college from Anglican control and placed it under the control of the provincial government, albeit in theory at arms length (the extent of the independence of the new institution might be questioned given numerous incidents in the 1850s in which qualified applications for professorships, including that of Thomas Huxley, one of the co-discoverers of evolution, were turned down in favour of relatives of provincial cabinet ministers).  The new institution was called the University of Toronto and was to be structured along the lines of the federated universities of Oxford and Cambridge. 

Attempts at reforming the common school system in Canada West, as well as reforms to the Court of Chancery, were denounced by more radical reformers as too timid.  After Baldwin's triumphs in 1849 he soon found himself out of step with the times.  A new and younger group of reformers wanted more democratic government, removing the few hierarchical mechanism left untouched by Balwin's earlier reforms, and a greater degree of economic freedom.  Baldwin, who was agrarian in economic orientation and openly pined for the society of the landed gentry in the mother country, opposed, if mostly in spirit, the commerical and capitalist tenor of Canadian society [Yes, this was a long time. - Publius].  Finding himself isolated on more and more issues, particularly by members of his own party, he resigned from office in 1851.

In the final years of his life Baldwin, who was always a physically weak and emotionally troubled man, descended into a kind of reclusive madness.  Among his dying wishes, some of which were frankly bizarre, was that his coffin be chained to that of his beloved wife, who had died in 1836.  Baldwin would never fully recover from the death of his wife, Eliza, and her memory often crippled his ability to act on a day to day basis.

Robert Baldwin died on December 9th, 1858, aged only 54 years; a relatively young age for a man of his class. 

This biography was compiled with reference to both Wikipedia and the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.  The below are a selection of quotes taken from the DCB's entry on Baldwin. 

“I am left to pursue the remainder of my pilgrimage alone – and in the waste that lies before me I can expect to find joy only in the reflected happiness of our darling children, and in looking forward, in humble hope, to that blessed hour which by God’s permission shall forever reunite me to my Eliza.”

"Baldwin lived the rhetoric of his times: he was a gentleman, morally courageous, utterly genuine in his willingness to sacrifice his interests to those of the institutions he revered – the constitution, the law, the church, property, and the family. His political opinions were essentially Whiggish, which meant a commitment to popular government and individual rights, and an adherence to the values of a landholding class and a social structure rooted in the family and traditional forms of mutual obligation."

"Baldwin combined British passion for liberty with insistence upon justice for French Canada, although he thereby endangered his popularity in Upper Canada. The most practical expression of concern was his arranging for the election in 4th York of the French party’s leader, Louis-Hippolyte La Fontaine*. The least practical was pushing biculturalism to an absolute balance. In August he opposed a popular bill to provide municipal government for Upper Canada because it did not create parallel institutions in Lower Canada. However, Baldwin’s contribution to French-English cooperation was one of his most important legacies to Canadian politics. It was characteristic that he sent all his children to francophone schools in Lower Canada and that he felt acute embarrassment over his own unilingualism."

"During his first term as attorney general west, (September 1842-November 1843), Baldwin showed his strengths and weaknesses. He was liberal in his leniency towards all but the most hardened criminals and his support of individual rights against arbitrary exercise of police and judicial power."

"His affection for things British took second place to his Canadian nationalism. In March 1846, during a debate on the militia, he insisted it was capable of defending the province without British help: “We want no foreign bayonets here. . . . He loved the Mother Country, but he loved the soil on which he lived better.”

"By his own standards he was a failure. Compelled into politics by a profound sense of Christian duty, he had striven to preserve the rule of gentlemen and all it entailed. By the time he was driven out of politics, what he stood for had been eclipsed by the march of progress and the rise of the men of capital and machines. His accomplishments, none the less, were legion, most important among them the genius of responsible government and the centrally important heritage of a bicultural nation. That he did so much, at such personal cost, was the real measure of the man. It was fortunate that Robert Baldwin had his Eliza, in life and in death, the one immutable element in a world of puzzling change."