Family Compact
The Family Compact was a small closed group of men who exercised most of the political, economic and judicial power in Upper Canada from the 1810s to the 1840s. It was the Upper Canadian equivalent of the Château Clique in Lower Canada. It was noted for its conservatism and opposition to democracy.
The Family Compact emerged from the War of 1812 and collapsed in the aftermath of the Rebellions of 1837–1838. Its resistance to the political principle of responsible government contributed to its short life. At the end of its lifespan, the compact would be condemned by Lord Durham, a leading Whig, who summarised its grip on power:
Fortified by family connexion, and the common interest felt by all who held, and all who desired, subordinate offices, that party was thus erected into a solid and permanent power, controlled by no responsibility, subject to no serious change, exercising over the whole government of the Province an authority utterly independent of the people and its representatives, and possessing the only means of influencing either the Government at home, or the colonial representative of the Crown.
Etymology
Thomas Dalton described the ruling class in Kingston as "all one family compacted junto." The term Family Compact appeared in a letter written by Marshall Spring Bidwell to William Warren Baldwin in 1828. Family did not mean relations by marriage, but rather a close brotherhood. Lord Durham noted in 1839 "There is, in truth, very little of family connection among the persons thus united". The phrase was popularised by William Lyon Mackenzie in 1833 in its use to describe the elite in York."Gentlemanly capitalism" and British colonialism
The historians P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins have emphasized that the British Empire at "the mid-nineteenth century represented the extension abroad of the institutions and principles entrenched at home". Upper Canada, created in the very "image and transcript" of the British constitution is but one example. Like that of the United Kingdom, the constitution of Upper Canada was established on the mixed monarchy model. Mixed monarchy is a form of government that integrates elements of democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy. Upper Canada, however, had no aristocracy. The methods pursued to create one were similar to that used in Britain itself. The result was the Family Compact.Cain and Hopkins point out that "new money", the financiers rather than the industrial "barons", were gradually gentrified through the purchase of land, intermarriage and the acquisition of titles. In the United Kingdom, the control exercised by the aristocracy over the House of Commons remained undisturbed before 1832 and was only slowly eroded thereafter, while its dominance of the executive lasted well beyond 1850." Hopkins and Cain refer to this alliance of aristocracy and financiers as "gentlemanly capitalism": "a form of capitalism headed by improving aristocratic landlords in association with improving financiers who served as their junior partners." A similar pattern is seen in other colonial empires, such as the Dutch Empire.
This same process is seen in Upper Canada. The historian J. K. Johnson's analysis of the Upper Canadian elite between 1837 and 1840 measured influence according to overlapping leadership roles on the boards of the main social, political and economic institutions. For example, William Allan, one of the most powerful, "was an executive councillor, a legislative councillor, President of the Toronto and Lake Huron Railroad, Governor of the British American Fire and Life Assurance Company and President of the Board of Trade." Johnson's conclusion contests the common assertion that "none of the leading members of the Compact were business men, and... the system of values typical of the Compact accorded scant respect to business wealth as such." The overlapping social, political and economic leadership roles of the Family Compact demonstrates, he argues, that
they were not a political elite taking political decisions in a vacuum, but an overlapping elite whose political and economic activities cannot be entirely separated from each other. They might even be called 'entrepreneurs', most of whose political views may have been highly conservative but whose economic outlook was clearly 'developmental'.The Family Compact's role in the Welland Canal is one example.
Elite Upper Canadians sought "gentility" including the acquisition of landed estates, roles as Justices of the Peace, military service, the pursuit of "improved farming", grammar school education, ties to the Church of England – all in combination with the acquisition of wealth through the Bank of Upper Canada amongst others. It is through the pursuit of gentility that the Family Compact was born.
Constitutional context
Upper Canada did not have a hereditary nobility. In its place, senior members of Upper Canada bureaucracy, the Executive Council of Upper Canada and Legislative Council of Upper Canada, made up the elite of the compact. These men sought to solidify their personal positions into family dynasties and acquire all the marks of gentility. They used their government positions to extend their business and speculative interests.The origins of the Family Compact lay in overlapping appointments made to the Executive and Legislative councils of Upper Canada. The councils were intended to operate independently. Section 38 of the Constitutional Act of 1791 referred to the independence of the offices indirectly. While Sir Guy Carleton, Lieutenant Governor of Lower Canada, pointed out that the offices were intended to be separate, Lord Grenville set the wheels in motion with John Graves Simcoe, Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, by pointing out that there was no legal impediment to prevent cross-appointments. Simcoe used the vague statement in Section 38 to make the following appointments
The Family Compact exerted influence over the government through the Executive Council and Legislative Council, the advisers to the lieutenant governor, leaving the popularly elected Legislative Assembly with little real power. As became clear with Lieutenant Governor Sir Francis Bond Head, the influence of the Family Compact could be quite limited as well. Members ensured their conservative friends held the important administrative and judicial positions in the colony through political patronage.
Membership
The centre of the compact was York, the capital. Its most important member was Bishop John Strachan; many of the other members were his former students, or people who were related to him. The most prominent of Strachan's pupils was Sir John Beverley Robinson who was from 1829 the Chief Justice of Upper Canada for 34 years. The rest of the members were mostly descendants of United Empire Loyalists or recent upper-class British settlers such as the Boulton family, builders of the Grange.A triumvirate of lawyers, Levius Sherwood, Judge Jonas Jones, and Attorney General Henry John Boulton were linked by professional and business ties, and by marriage; both Sherwood and Boulton being married to Jones’ sisters. Collectively, their extended family comprise three quarters of the "Family Compact" listed by Mackenzie in 1833.
Loyalist ideology
The uniting factors amongst the compact were its loyalist tradition, hierarchical class structure and adherence to the established Anglican church. Leaders such as Sir John Robinson and John Strachan proclaimed it an ideal government, especially as contrasted with the rowdy democracy in the nearby United States.Not all views of the elite were universally shared, but a critical element was the idea of "loyalty". The original members of the Family Compact were United Empire Loyalists who had fled the United States immediately after the Revolutionary War. The War of 1812 led the British to suspect the loyalty of the so-called "Later Loyalists" – "Americans" who had emigrated after 1800 for land. The issue came to a head around 1828 in the "Alien Question". Following the war, the colonial government took active steps to prevent Americans from swearing allegiance, thereby making them ineligible to obtain land grants. Without land they could not vote or hold office.
The issue became a provincewide complaint in 1828 when Barnabas Bidwell was deprived of his seat in the Legislative Assembly. Educated at Yale, he practiced law in western Massachusetts and served as treasurer of Berkshire County. He served in the state legislature, and was the state attorney general from 1807 to 1810, when irregularities in the Berkshire County books prompted his flight to Upper Canada. There he won a seat in the provincial assembly, but was denied on account of his status as a fugitive from justice. A provincewide petitioning campaign by these numerically superior "aliens" led the British government to grant them citizenship retroactively. In the minds of the Family Compact, they remained politically suspect and barred from positions of power.
Levers of power
In the absence of a landed elite, these men believed that the law should be the basis of social preeminence. Bound by the ideals of public service and a spirit of loyalty to king, church and empire, solidified in the crucible of the War of 1812, they used the Law Society of Upper Canada as a means of regulating entry to elite positions of power.Government position
Executive and Legislative councils
The Executive Council was composed of local advisers who provided the colonially appointed lieutenant governor with advice on the daily workings of government, and especially with appointments to the administration. Members of the Executive Council were not necessarily members of the Legislative Assembly but were usually members of the Legislative Council. The longest serving members were James Baby, John Strachan, George Markland, and Peter Robinson.The Legislative Council of Upper Canada was the upper house governing the province of Upper Canada. It was modelled after the British House of Lords. Members were appointed, often for life. The longest serving members were Baby, Jacob Mountain, Anglican Bishop of Quebec, Strachan, Markland, Peter Robinson, Thomas Talbot, Thomas Clark, William Dickson, John Henry Dunn, and William Allan.