The following is a paper I wrote for a guided tour of St. JOhns ontario which was the scene of one of the engagements during the mackenzie-papineau rebellion of 1837-38
I am excited
to speak with young people about Canadian history. History is living. It has
often been written in the blood of patriots and tyrants. Many have defended
liberty so that you may enjoy the freedom you are enjoying today. Yet there are
forces at work today which seek to rob us of our liberties. Please allow me to explain.
“Every man
has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself.
The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly
his.” - John Locke, "The Second Treatise On Civil Government” It may
surprise you to know that Locke’s philosophy of having a property in and of
one’s own person resonated so deeply among the colonists of North America in
the late 18th and on into the 19th century. Yet Locke’s ideas were based upon
traditions founded many centuries prior to him. From Anglo-Saxon times parliaments
in England had placed limits upon kings and their governments to protect and
respect the rights of the individual. Absolute monarchy was unheard of until
the time of “Bad King John”. Because of King John’s excesses the English barons
forced him to give his assent to Magna Carta in June 1215 at Runnymede. Magna
Carta is the first legal document constituting of a fundamental guarantee of
rights and privileges. It took centuries for these legal rights to be extended
to the common man, however Magna Carta forms their basis.
Law must be
blind to race, creed, colour and sex for all to be deemed equal under it. Law
must also recognize that our rights as individuals are an extension of our
person, inherent to our very being. We are not free because governments afford
us rights, rather we are born free. Professor of History John Robson of the
University of Ottawa has often stated that this understanding of inherent
rights is unique to the Anglo-sphere. He refers to this as our “Shared Legacy
of Liberty”. It winds like a golden thread throughout all our history. Time and
again kings and governments exceeded their legal mandate to govern. Time and
again common people rebelled against tyranny to bring about more responsible
government.
How do these
ideas, noble as they are, affect us today? I will be direct, special interest
groups do not have rights. If the law is to recognize equality it must be
blind, without prejudice of respecting one person’s interests or group’s
interests above that of another. This is a significant challenge today when
special interest groups are given special treatment. This idea is fast
replacing an understanding that our rights are inherent. What do I mean by
this? Let me quote Edmund Burke on this topic; “The great inlet by which a
color for oppression has entered the world is by one man’s pretending to
determine concerning the happiness of another, and by claiming to use what
means he thinks proper in order to bring him to a sense of it. It is the
ordinary and trite sophism of oppression.”
Let these
great ideas frame our walking tour through St. Johns. Let your imagination
travel back to the late 1830’s when what was then Upper Canada was involved in
a mighty struggle to bring about suffrage and responsible limited government.
We will learn what challenges our ancestors faced and how some of these
challenges apply to us today. “In spring 1837, Lord John Russell, the British
Whig politician who was then Leader of the House of Commons (the prime minister
was then Viscount Melbourne), authored his "Ten Resolutions" on Upper
and Lower Canada. The Resolutions removed the few means that the Legislative
Assembly of Upper Canada had to control the Executive Council. The Ten
Resolutions were the final straw for William Lyon Mackenzie, and he now
advocated severing Upper Canada's link to Great Britain and recommended armed
resistance to the British oppression.”, (edited by David F. Hemmings for the
Niagara Historical Society, 2012). Government both at home and in Britain had again
exceeded its legal mandate to govern us be ignoring our rights. Folks from the
local populace who, like Samuel Chandler, had been born in the U.S. remembered
why the American Constitution had so clearly protected and defined those rights
while guaranteeing limited government under law. The rights of the individual
were to trump those of the state. Therefore, some were ready to take up arms
against our government of the day which they viewed as tyrannical. These
circumstances formed the backdrop for the MacKenzie-Papineau Rebellion of
1837-1838 and therefore the part of that rebellion that occurred right here in
St. Johns, Ontario where this incident is known as the “Short Hills Affair”.
Not all were
in favour of rebellion however. There were more sober and moderate voices who
were advocating for reform by renewing the vigour with which they petitioned
the government. Both the moderates and the rebels essentially wanted the same
thing, namely suffrage and an end to the tyrannical practices of the governing
“Family Compact”. However, the moderates and the radicals employed radically
different means to achieve this goal. In the end, the moderates won as the
MacKenzie-Papineau Rebellion failed to overthrow the government. However,
democratic reform came through parliamentary discourse and debate in the form
of the Baldwin Act of 1849 which finally brought limited suffrage to Upper
Canada. Despite the success of the moderates in advancing the democratic
process while placing limits on governmental overreach, it is also fair to say
that the threat posed to the government by the MacKenzie-Papineau Rebellion had
helped cement the outcome. The government could no longer continue to resist
the will of the people.
Throughout
the Anglo-sphere this story has often been repeated. When governments became a
law unto themselves the citizenry forced their governments to be recognize
their rights under the law. The American Revolution was one such instance which
was fought for perhaps the most British of all reasons, that is that no
government has the right to tax its citizens without representation. This is
the basis for the parliamentary system we have inherited. Our nation is founded
on these ideals; “Law above government, the individual before the collective
and fair play as opposed to raison d’état”. These underlying principles
continue to guide our ideals of limited government under law. We must guard
them jealously. There are powerful forces who would rob us of them.
At the end
of the tour I will provide you with a list of web-sites. In using them you may
research the many topics you may wish to research since my time with you today
is limited. I hope all of you will develop a passion for understanding how it
is that we have achieved a society renown for its tolerance, fairness and love
of liberty under law. I encourage you to learn more about the tyranny of the
“Family Compact”, the grievances suffered in Upper and Lower Canada during the
1830’s, discover more about the firebrand MacKenzie himself, his newspaper “The
Colonial Advocate”, his Lower Canadian colleague Papineau, as well
investigating more about Samuel Chandler and his fellow rebels. Their leader
Colonel James Morreau was the only one executed for the Short Hills Affair
while many others, like Chandler, were deported to Van Diemen’s Land, now known
as the state of Tasmania, Australia. Learn how Chandler escaped from that penal
colony to return to America undergoing many harrowing exploits of daring do.
Thank you for listening. Now let us walk down the valley to the former site of
Chandler’s home. There we will begin our tour.
