Dominick Daly
Sir Dominick Daly was a British colonial public servant and administrator during the 19th century, who held positions in British North America, Tobago and South Australia.
Born in Ireland to a well-connected family, he obtained the position of private secretary to the Lieutenant Governor of Lower Canada in 1822. He eventually became the provincial secretary of Lower Canada, a member of the Special Council which governed Lower Canada following the Lower Canada Rebellion, and a member of the Legislative Assembly and provincial secretary of the Province of Canada. For a brief time in 1843, he was the sole member of the Executive Council of the Province of Canada. He then became part of a three-man council, advising the Governor General, Sir Charles Metcalfe. His decision to remain in office angered the Reform members of the Assembly, leading to him fighting a duel with one Reform member. He was dismissed from office when the Reformers were returned to power under Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine and Robert Baldwin in 1848.
After losing office in Canada in 1848, Daly served on a royal commission in England concerning the New Forest and Waltham Forest. He then served as the Governor of Tobago from 1851 to 1852, followed by appointment as Governor of Prince Edward Island from 1854 to 1859. In 1862 he was appointed Governor of South Australia, an office he held until his sudden death on 19 February 1868 in Adelaide, South Australia.
Daly combined an aptitude for public affairs and diligence in his work, along with personal charm and affability. In Canada, he acquired the nickname of "the perpetual secretary", in light of his holding various administrative offices for twenty-five years.
Early life and family
Daly was born in Ardfry, County Galway, Ireland in 1798, the son of Dominic Daly senior and Joanna Harriet Blake. His mother was the sister of Joseph Blake, 1st Baron Wallscourt, and had previously been married to Richard Burke of Glinsk, who was a member of the family of Burke baronets. She had two sons from her first marriage, John Burke and Joseph Burke. Both of Daly's half-brothers inherited the baronetcy in turn. The Dalys were Roman Catholics and Dominick studied at St Mary's College, Oscott in Birmingham.While in Lower Canada, Daly married Caroline Maria Gore, second daughter of Colonel Ralph Gore of Barrowmount, Goresbridge, County Kilkenny, Ireland, who was on service in Lower Canada. The marriage was conducted in the Anglican Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, Quebec City. They had five children, including the artist Caroline Louisa Daly, whose paintings have only recently been recognized as her own work. One of their sons, Malachy Bowes Daly, became a lawyer in Nova Scotia. He entered federal politics and was a Cabinet minister in Sir John A. Macdonald's ministry, and later was appointed the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia.
Canada (1823–1849)
Lower Canada (1823–1841)
After finishing his schooling, Daly spent some time with an uncle in Paris who was involved in banking, but came back to Ireland. He then acquired the position of private secretary to Sir Francis Nathaniel Burton, Lieutenant Governor of Lower Canada, who was from an Irish family with political connections. In 1823, Daly came to Lower Canada with Burton. Daly was a diligent worker and earned Burton's approval, to the point that Burton ensured Daly's appointment as provincial secretary for Lower Canada in 1827, even though Burton by then had left Lower Canada on indefinite leave. However, Daly was required to remit the salary for the post, £500 a year, to the former absentee office-holder, Thomas Amyot in England. Instead, Daly received the lucrative fees associated with the position. The arrangement was kept secret so the elected members of the Legislative Assembly would not know that the money was still going to the former absentee provincial secretary.Daly continued in the position of provincial secretary during and after the Lower Canada Rebellion of 1837–1838. He was active in civil life, participating on various civil committees. Aided by his Catholic background, he followed Burton's example of building good personal relations with the French Canadian elites, and acquired a reputation for diligence and integrity, coupled with affability and gallantry. He expressed some sympathies for the concerns of the nationalists, but never took any formal position on the constitutional and political issues which underlay the Rebellion. Individuals and groups on both sides of the debate appear to have considered him to be sympathetic to their position.
Following the Rebellion, the British Parliament passed a law to suspend the 1791 constitution of Lower Canada. The law gave the governor the power to appoint the members of the Special Council of Lower Canada to advise him on matters relating to Lower Canada. The governor and the Special Council together had the power to legislate for the province.
The British government appointed Lord Durham the Governor General of all of British North America, with a mandate to investigate the causes of the Rebellion in Lower Canada, and the related Upper Canada Rebellion of the same year. When Durham arrived, Daly was one of the few public servants in Lower Canada whom Lord Durham kept on in office, including appointing him to the Executive Council of Lower Canada in June, 1838. Daly worked closely with Lord Durham's advisors, particularly Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who was involved in the drafting of Lord Durham's Report. The Report recommended that Lower Canada and Upper Canada be joined into a single province.
Lord Durham completed his report and then resigned in 1839. He was succeeded as Governor General by Charles Thomson, later Lord Sydenham. In 1840, Sydenham appointed Daly to the Special Council of Lower Canada, a post he held until the union of the Canadas came into force in 1841.
Province of Canada (1841–1849)
Election to the Legislative Assembly, 1841
In response to the rebellions in Lower Canada and Upper Canada, the British government decided to merge the two provinces into a single province, as recommended by Lord Durham in his Report. The Union Act, 1840, passed by the British Parliament, abolished the two provinces and their separate parliaments, and created the Province of Canada, with a single parliament for the entire province, composed of an elected Legislative Assembly and an appointed Legislative Council. The Governor General retained a strong position in the government.In the government of Lower Canada, the position of provincial secretary had been regarded as a non-partisan public service position. However, in the new government of the Province of Canada, Lord Sydenham considered that the provincial secretary should be a member of the Legislative Assembly and the Executive Council. In the general election of 1841, Sydenham persuaded Daly to stand for election in the riding of Megantick in Canada East. Daly was elected without opposition as a supporter of the union, and Sydenham then appointed Daly as appointed provincial secretary of Canada East and a member of the Executive Council of the Province of Canada.
For the first two years of the union, the different groups in the Assembly and the Executive Council found Daly an acceptable colleague. In the first session, he voted in favour of the union, and thereafter was a consistent supporter of the governor. Sydenham's first ministry in 1841 was composed of Compact Tories, Reformers, and general supporters of the governor, while the new ministry formed in 1842 was dominated by Reformers. Daly got along well with all. He applied himself with his normal diligence and considered that his role was to give advice in Council based on his long experience in government. He did not speak frequently in the Assembly. Although he was an excellent conversationalist in individual settings, he was not a good public speaker. His tenacity in holding office earned him the nickname "the perpetual secretary", but he was nonetheless a popular and convivial character.
Ministerial crisis, 1843–1844
The situation changed when there was a political crisis in 1843. The new Governor General, Sir Charles Theophilus Metcalfe, was determined to retain the prerogatives of the Crown, particularly in the area of appointments to government offices, to ensure the government was based on Crown supporters. The Reformers, led by Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine from Canada East and Robert Baldwin from Canada West, were equally determined to implement the system of responsible government, where the governor would follow the advice of the Executive Council, drawn from the group which had the support of a majority in the elected Legislative Assembly. At first, there were manoeuverings behind the scenes. When it started to appear to some Reformers that Daly would likely side with the governor in a dispute, the Assembly held an inquiry into some of Daly's activities as provincial secretary, including the old arrangement where he remitted his salary to the previous absentee secretary. He was defended in the Assembly by Wakefield, who increasingly was moving from the French-Canadian Group to the group of supporters of the governor. The Assembly committee exonerated Daly, but the proceedings hinted that there was a rift within the Executive Council.The dispute came to a head when Metcalfe made appointments without following the Council's advice. LaFontaine, Baldwin, and the other members of the Executive Council resigned en masse in November 1843, with the exception of Daly. As the sole member of the Council, Daly was the acting head of government for several weeks. In December 1843, Governor General Metcalfe was able to persuade two others members of the Assembly to join the Council: William Draper from Canada West, and Denis-Benjamin Viger from Canada East. The Council, composed of Daly, Draper and Viger, ran the government of the province for several months, under the direction of Metcalfe. The three councillors did not have to account to the Assembly for their conduct of the government, because Metcalfe prorogued the Assembly. It did not meet again prior to dissolution and the general election of 1844. Metcalfe appointed Daly as Provincial Secretary of the Province of Canada, effective January 1, 1844.
The Reformers viewed Daly's decision to stay in office as a betrayal. However, it appears that for the first time in his long career, Daly had been forced to assess his own political views. For the previous twenty years, he had served the governors appointed by the Crown, as a member of the public service. The transition to a political office, as required by Sydenham, did not change his fundamental outlook, namely to support the governor who represented the Crown. He considered himself to be a non-political public servant. The Reformers disagreed, taking the position that a non-political public servant could not be a member of the Council.