“I don’t know about your proposals, sir,” said the Reverend Finney, suddenly raising his voice as if he had begun his complaint in mid-paragraph, “but I wish to comment on the regrettable acts which you’ve already committed and which can’t be undone.”
“Of course. Such heartfelt comments may be valuable,” Durham replied diplomatically, “in assisting me to mend my ways in the future. What decisions are you referring to?”
“The surprisingly lenient treatment of the French rebels for one.”
“You mean the fact that I didn’t hang them one and all?”
“Hanging’s too good for them. They’re convicted murderers. They torched houses and barns. They bankrupted honest English citizens!”
“That is true.”
“Up here we did our duty, we strung up Matthews and Lount as soon as we decently could: an eye for an eye. And I’ll tell you, sir, the sight of them two blackguards dangling from a gibbet beside the Court House soon put a stop to any further shenanigans.”
“Let me try and explain, then.” Durham looked at the other Tories, who were bobbing their chins in support of Finney. Robert Baldwin sat expressionless, like the good barrister he was. “The first thing I felt obliged to do-”
“Was dismiss the duly appointed Executive Council!” broke in Patrick O’Driscoll. “Do you realize what sort of precedent that may have set?”
“I did, and I do, sir. But I believe I was responding to the previous point, which usually takes precedence.”
“I hope, Your Lordship, that you will not take umbrage at the strength of our expression here this morning, for we have been bottling up our opinions and views for some months. The tone may be somewhat vehement, but its tenor is notwithstanding solemn and important.” The voice of reason belonged to Alasdair Hepburn, banker.
“Vehemence and passion are not unwelcome here. I have been accused of those vices myself inside and outside of the Privy Council. So, to return to my original point. My first obligation in regard to the hundreds of rebels jailed without benefit of habeas corpus was to sort out the wheat from the chaff.”
“A murderer is a murderer!” Finney huffed.
“There was murder and arson on both sides. The situation demanded that I distinguish the political and military leaders of the revolt from those who were low-level participants in what was, after all, a civil strife, and from those who merely sympathized and hoped. This was done on the basis of forensic evidence and proper judicial procedure, which are, along with habeas corpus, the cornerstones of British freedom and social order.”
Baldwin nodded.
“Once I was certain that men like Papineau and Nelson were indeed the instigators and leaders of the uprising, I put them on trial and saw them properly convicted.”
“Then slapped their behinds and told them to be good little boys!” Finney blustered.
“I banished them for life, by special ordinance, and exiled them to Bermuda. The punishment, however it may be viewed, has proven to be as practicable as I had hoped. Moderates among the English faction and the new leaders emerging from the French community-like Louis LaFontaine-have supported my decision. It was clear and harsh enough to be seen as punitive and efficacious, and yet not so draconian as to be perceived as vindictive.”
“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” Baldwin murmured, and got several rude looks for his pains.
“With that legal issue resolved and the regular courts restored,” Durham continued, “I could then, and only then, proceed to political matters.”
“By sacking the entire legitimate council and appointing your own Special Council to rule as you liked!” O’Driscoll charged again.
“Under the terms of my commission,” Durham said quietly, “I can more or less rule as I like, without benefit of any council. However, that has not been the route I have taken, as your presence here this morning illustrates.”
Samuel Harris now spoke for the first time. “Let me congratulate Your Lordship on the speed with which you released the impounded monies back into circulation. It’s all very well to babble on about politics, but a country’s well-being is primarily dependent upon its economic health and its mercantile ingenuity.”
“Well said,” Hepburn added for good measure.
“That is true, sir, and as a lifelong Whig I am a proponent of open trade and low tariffs and a minimum of political supervision of the economy. But my reading of your troubles is that it is the political deadlock that has stultified economic growth: race against race in Quebec and Tory against Reformer here in Upper Canada.”
“But that’s where you’re wrong!” O’Driscoll cried, his black eyes burning. “For ten years now it’s been loyalist against traitor, monarchist against republican, men of means and respectability against upstarts and Yankee infiltrators and all those Papists we’ve let in to pollute our soil!”
Hepburn cleared his throat. “Please, Mr. O’Driscoll, remember that this is not about religion but about loyalties and probity.”
Harris, who had reddened, glared at O’Driscoll.
“I’m sorry, Sam, but I’m just so Goddamned angry-”
“And so are many hundreds of others,” Durham soothed. “I have been sent here to help assuage that anger, to provide some framework within which the native intelligence of all concerned citizens can be encouraged to flourish and henceforth produce local decisions by democratic means.”
“But even as we speak,” Harris said in his modest dry-goods voice, “members of the Hunters’ Lodges in New York and Ohio are denouncing us and gathering forces to invade and ‘liberate’ us. And as long as they do so, normal cross-border trade will remain at a standstill.”
“And thousands of farmers are fleeing to Iowa,” Baldwin countered, “honest men who have been branded traitors and hounded out of the province, selling their farms for a song-”
“And withdrawing their savings from my bank,” Hepburn added with a wry glance at Baldwin, as if to assure him that the banking community was not behind the exodus. Then he turned to Lord Durham. “But you already know all of this. We would be most interested in hearing what solutions you are contemplating in order to comment on them from our various perspectives.”
Marc thought that the bank business must have thrived heretofore, for Alasdair Hepburn had obviously spent much time at a well-stocked trencher with vintage wines and Portuguese sherry to wash it down. His face, once handsome, was bloated and shot through with tiny, throbbing veins. He thought also that Hepburn, like the others, was being somewhat disingenuous, for the outlines of Durham’s “solution” were widely rumoured and already being debated in the local press. Still, Durham himself had made no public pronouncements on the subject.
“I’d be pleased to,” Durham said. “But I must first emphasize in the strongest possible terms that I will not make any final decisions until I return to London early next year. On the other hand, if I don’t offer potential solutions for serious debate and considered response while I’m in situ, then I might as well have stayed at home.”
“We’re all ears,” O’Driscoll said.
“My view so far is that the conflict in Quebec is racially based. The political, religious, and social differences between French and English are wide enough to be insurmountable in the short term and problematic in the long term. In Upper Canada the conflict is political-pure and simple.”
“I wouldn’t call it simple!” Finney said. “Nor is it unrelated to religion. I suppose Strachan was in here last evening bending your ear about the Clergy Reserves and the divine right of the Church of England.”
“I can’t deny it,” Durham said with a rare smile. “But even the Clergy Reserves question is political. For example, if political power and will were not gridlocked between the governor with his appointed bodies and the elected assembly, then some compromise solution with the support of at least a decent majority of the populace would have been long ago worked out.”