The Capacity To Judge: Public Opinion and Deliberative Democracy in Upper Canada,1791-1854

481 Pages·2000·24.927 MB·English

by  Jeffrey L. McNairn

THE CAPACITY TO JUDGE:
PUBLIC OPINION AND DELIBERATIVE
DEMOCRACY IN UPPER CANADA,
1791-1854
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JEFFREY L. McNAIRN
The Capacity to Judge
Public Opinion and Deliberative
Democracy in Upper Canada,
1791-1854
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2000
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
ISBN 08020-4360-7 (cloth)
Printed on acid-free paper
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
McNairn, Jeffrey L., 1967-
The capacity to judge : public opinion and deliberative democracy
in Upper Canada, 1791-1854
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8020-4360-7
1. Representative government and representation - Ontario -
History- 19th century. 2. Constitutional history- Ontario.
3. Ontario - Politics and government - 19th century. 4. Public opinion -
3
)litical aspects - Ontario - History - 19th century. I. Title.
FC3071.2.M36 2000 971.3'02 coo-930420-7
F1058.M36 2000
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its
publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario
Arts Council.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities
and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its
publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book
Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
Revolutions do not arise from what men suffer, but from what they think.
William Lyon Mackenzie, 1837
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Contents
PREFACE ix
Introduction 3
Part One: Creating a Public
1 'The very image and transcript': Transplanting the Ancient
Constitution 23
2 Experiments in Democratic Sociability: The Political Significance of
Voluntary Associations 63
3 'The most powerful engine of the human mind': The Press and Its
Readers 116
4 A united public opinion that must be obeyed': The Politics of Public
Opinion 176
Part Two: Debating the Alternatives
5 'We are become in every thing but name, a Republic': The Metcalfe
Crisis and the Demise of Mixed Monarchy 237
6 Publius of the North: Tory Republicanism and the American
Constitution 272
7 Mistaking 'the shadow for the substance': Laying the Foundations of
Parliamentary Government 304
viii Contents
8 'Its success ... must depend on the force of public opinion'
Primogeniture and the Necessity of Debate 360
Conclusions and Speculative Questions 411
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PRINTED PRIMARY SOURCES 439
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS 449
INDEX 451
Illustrations follow page 220
Preface
It has become increasingly common, even fashionable, to lament the
poverty of public debate in Canada and to complain about the seeming
inability or unwillingness of our political institutions and leaders to
respond to public opinion. Such comments betray a number of assump-
tions: that widespread public debate is a vital sign of national health;
that a sizeable number of Canadians are able and willing to engage in
reasoned and informed debate; that such debate contributes to resolv-
ing political and social conflict; and that, once such debate has taken
place, constitutional, legal, and political structures ought to reflect its
conclusions. Whatever the current practice, such assumptions remain at
the core of our democratic beliefs. They are, however, of relatively
recent origin. What we are prone to take for granted as obvious and
widely shared assumptions were once highly contested propositions; dis-
missed as risible or denounced as revolutionary.
Understanding how these assumptions developed is vital to assessing
their continued relevance and reminds us why they were once thought
so important. Focusing on the colony that became Ontario, this book
asks what made widespread public debate possible; why it came to be
seen as desirable, even essential; and how it was integrated into the prov-
ince's constitutional and social identity. Despite fits of forgetfulness, we
remain heirs of this story.
In the text that follows, I have tried to let contemporaries speak for
themselves. Aware of the processes they participated in, they cared pas-
sionately about politics. As a result, I have used direct quotations exten-
sively. Faithful to their meaning, I have not always retained their
punctuation or littered my transcriptions with square brackets and the