The Bishop's Pawn (4 page)

“Would you like a little gunpowder?”
Dougherty said.

“Well, then, Dick and I had better go on up
to the gallery,” Marc said, “before we get jostled to death.”

The foyer was rapidly filling with the cream
of local citizenry. Marc recognized many of the faces, and while he
nodded pleasantly to them, he was quite aware that his
transformation from war hero and defender of the Crown to radical
Reformer and Durhamite had left most of these former acquaintances
coldly courteous – at best. And the sight of the mountainous and
disgraced Yankee lawyer puffing obscenely at his side – with his
coat-lapels besmirched and malodorous – did not help matters. Marc
steered Dougherty to the stairway that led up to the spectator’s
gallery. With Dick gripping the handrail in all ten digits and Marc
heaving and pushing against various portions of the big man’s
anterior, they managed to reach the upper landing. Marc spotted a
space on the front bench, and they coasted down to it. Dougherty
collapsed there with a Falstaffian wheeze, and proceeded to pant
like a hound at the end of the day’s hunt. The gentleman next to
him rose quietly and found a seat elsewhere.

“Well, what do you think?” Marc said when
Dougherty’s breathing had settled down and a little colour had
returned to his cheeks.

“Impressive, I must admit,” he replied. “It
looks like the House of Commons I have always pictured in my mind
whenever I think of the English Parliament and that centuries-long
struggle against the tyranny of monarchs and their blue-blooded
henchmen.”

Marc smiled, knowing that when this chamber –
and its counterpart next door, where the Legislative Council or
Upper House met – was built in 1828, no expense had been spared in
making it a worthy extension of the Mother Parliament in London.
The thick-carpeted aisle, the Moroccan-leather chairs on either
side of it, the gleaming banisters and polished railings, the
raised and ornate speaker’s throne, the cathedral-like windows
gracing the tall walls – these were not merely lavish or
ostentatious: they were charged with historical meaning, with
tradition that stretched back to King John and Runnymede. Doubtful
Dick Dougherty might well boast of the boldest experiment in
democracy since the Athenians, of the inalienable logic of the
American Constitution, but he was also aware of exactly how much
his British forebears had contributed to the making of laws and the
institutions that buttressed them. Marc felt honoured to have met
this man, and to be seated here beside him.

The session was already in progress. A Tory
member was speaking to the question: the debate on the committee
report just received. The report contained the members’ response to
Lord Durham’s principal recommendations: a union of the two
Canadas, a unicameral or single legislature, and responsible
government. Marc had assumed that the Tory group would assign their
star performer the task of leading off the debate and setting the
tone for the rest of the evening. But not only was Mowbray McDowell
not on his feet dazzling the Assembly, he was not, as far as Marc
could see, anywhere in the chamber.

“And just where is this reincarnation of
Aaron Burr?” Dougherty rumbled, his tiny, pig-like eyes darting
about at the scene below him.

“I don’t see him anywhere. There’s an empty
chair down there next to Ignatius Maxwell, the Receiver-General. I
suspect that’s where he’ll be sitting.”

Dougherty suppressed a yawn. “Christ, I may
have had one or two glasses too many of Baldwin’s excellent port.”
Someone behind him tut-tutted, and a woman coughed into her
hand.

“I’m sure they won’t hold him back too much
longer,” Marc said. “This gallery is packed, and I’ve rarely seen
this many
members
present.”

“Well, they certainly didn’t come to hear the
fellow droning away down there. He’s an insomniac’s delight!”

“Shh!”

Dougherty swivelled around as far as his
corpulence would permit. “I am deeply sorry, ma’am, if I have
interrupted your slumber.”

This riposte earned him a full-throated
“harrumph!”

Fortunately the speaking member had finished
his oration, though it was a minute or more before anyone realized
it. Every head in the gallery now tilted forward in expectation.
Would Mowbray McDowell make a dramatic entrance, stride down the
aisle under the blazing candelabras, bow to the Speaker, and take
his rightful place in the front row?

He did not. A barely suppressed groan
shuddered through the gallery as a well-known Orangeman was
recognized, stood, and launched his jeremiad with the throttle wide
open. That anyone could reach such a pitch of umbrage so rapidly
seemed to startle the usually unflappable barrister from New
York.

“Jesus,” Dougherty whispered to Marc, “did
the fellow start warming up in the lobby?”

Rant and invective though it was, the
member’s speech was music to the ears of every Durhamite in the
chamber, for the Loyal Orange Lodge – the staunchest monarchists
and anti-republicans in the province – had abruptly switched their
tune. It seemed that there were some features of Lord Durham’s
report that ought to be considered, supported even. The suggestion
that this softened attitude was the result of Lieutenant-Governor
Arthur’s recent suggestion that the Loyal Orange Lodge should be
outlawed was indignantly denied. Indeed, the current spokesman
denied it yet again, amid the hoots and catcalls of men around him
who had once taken his support for granted. Three times the Speaker
had to call for order to silence the desk-thumping and shouts of
“shame” and “sit down.”

“Just like home,” Dougherty said, vastly
amused.

However, when the member did sit down –
unshamed – and the fellow next to him rose to address the House,
the gallery’s cheerful engagement quickly changed to sullen
resignation. It had become evident that the Tory strategy for the
evening was to have a number of members, from several camps, speak
to the pertinent issues, set them clearly in the minds of all those
present, and then have Mowbray McDowell make his entrance and have
the last – and devastatingly potent – word. Although disappointed,
Marc could see the sense in this plan. The Reform group in the
Assembly was a shadow of its former self. It had been dealt a near
death-blow in the 1836 election. Mackenzie’s abortive rebellion the
next year had further depleted their ranks and disillusioned many
of their moderate supporters in the countryside. Perry, Bidwell,
Rolph, Robert Baldwin, Mackenzie himself – all had been silenced,
some of them now in exile in the United States. Only the arrival of
Lord Durham last year and his subsequent
Report
had breathed
new life into the movement. But, alas, its most eloquent spokesmen
were not here in this chamber.

However, after two years of heavy-handed (but
not inefficient) rule by George Arthur and the Tory-controlled
Assembly, the conservative alliance itself had begun to show cracks
in its solidarity. The Orange Order was disaffected. Long-time Tory
stalwart, William Merritt, had begun making noises in support of
the union proposal. Many in the Family Compact, the ruling clique,
simply wanted no change of any kind, despite the fact that it was
the status quo that had prompted the rebellion. Others wanted to
cut the backward and Pope-ridden Quebecers adrift by annexing
Montreal and Anglicizing it. How anyone, whatever his rhetorical
prowess, could forge a consensus out of this political hodgepodge,
was beyond Marc.

One hour and six speeches later, with the
gallery glassy-eyed and sitting members slumped in their Moroccan
leather, the wunderkind, at some cue Marc did not detect, stepped
onto his stage. Mowbray McDowell, MLA, entered the chamber quietly
and walked demurely down the aisle towards the Speaker’s chair as
if he were just an ordinary member arriving somewhat late for an
ordinary evening of parliamentary palaver. He wasn’t halfway along,
however, before the restless and muttering gallery went silent.
People simply gawked.

Marc was expecting someone tall and imposing,
but McDowell was not much over five feet in height, and exceedingly
slim. His hair, slicked back and neatly brushed, was blond – and
further bleached in the dazzle of the chamber’s central
candelabrum. The skin of his face was correspondingly pale, the
eyes a remarkable blue, the features subtle, almost ascetic. But he
walked like a patrician, with the practiced ease of a Roman
senator. For a moment Marc thought that the Speaker might bow to
the new member, reversing the tradition.

Seconds later, McDowell stepped sprightly up
to the chair beside Ignatius Maxwell, shook hands with the
Receiver-General, tilted his head towards someone in the gallery,
and turned as the Speaker, by prearrangement, called on the Member
from Frontenac to deliver his maiden speech in Queen Victoria’s
colonial assembly.

Thus did he begin. Coming from such a small
man, the voice startled the spectators: it was deep, richly
modulated, authoritative. There was no rant in it, no bombast, no
manufactured dudgeon. Here was a man reasoning with men, laying out
the home truths that they, like him, must come to accept because
all the alternatives were worse. Far worse. In spite of himself,
Marc was enthralled – and very worried. McDowell’s approach was
masterful. He began by pointing out a few sad but incontrovertible
facts. Whatever the merits or demerits of Lord Durham’s
recommendations, the earl had been chosen for the job because his
own caucus had found him too radical and unreasonable to bear, and
hence he was safer off in North America than in England. The earl
had then selected several advisors whose own past was morally
suspect. Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who had undoubtedly penned much
of the
Report
, had once been imprisoned for kidnapping an
heiress. Moreover, the earl himself had spent less than a week in
Upper Canada, while devoting most of his time and effort to Quebec
– with his sights set on freeing the French rebels or ensuring that
those convicted were exiled to sunny Bermuda instead of Van
Diemen’s Land. This latter folly had broken the terms of his
commission, for which legal indiscretion he had been summarily
recalled. Back in England he had promptly fallen ill from some
mysterious ailment, letting his ill-starred advisors, and even his
wife, complete the
Report.
The Melbourne administration
balked at even tabling the document, but finally relented under
public pressure. It was clear to any objective eye that the Whig
government in London was in disarray, and due to collapse any day
now. Little wonder that the earl’s
Report
– whatever its
merits or demerits – was languishing in parliamentary limbo.

Now what did all of this mean for Upper
Canada? It meant that fractious debate, of the kind heard here this
evening and earlier in the week, had split both parties several
ways. Why should this be so? Because Lord Durham’s recommendations
were a mishmash of contradictory and self-cancelling proposals!
Why, then, should a fledgling provincial legislature be saddled
with the responsibility of making sense out of nonsense – nonsense
penned by men whose probity itself was dubious? Surely what
esteemed members of this Assembly must do is cease and desist from
bootless debate, especially those who valued tradition and
authority. Within months the Whig government in London must fall,
and be replaced by a sane and just and loyal administration under
the stewardship of the great Robert Peel. Let
that
gentleman
and
his
cabinet propose a sensible solution to Canada’s
problems, using whatever aspects of the infamous Durham
Report
they deemed practicable.

“Let each of us in this hallowed chamber
unite in our determination to wait upon developments in the mother
country, to wait upon proposals that are clear and unambiguous –
whether they be favourable to one side or the other. Then, and only
then, shall we be able to enter into a reasoned debate with any
hope of a just and durable outcome!”

My God, Marc thought, the fellow has done it!
He’s articulated a strategy to hold the warring factions of his
group together until the Whigs reject the
Report
out of
expediency or the British Tory party recovers the power it lost in
1835! Robert and his fellow Reformers were going to have a tough
row to hoe, as were those who had agreed to write broadsides for
them.

The roar of approval that cascaded down upon
the desk-thumping members from the gallery above made it clear that
Mowbray McDowell had struck the right chord. As McDowell stood up
to acknowledge the cheers, Marc suddenly remembered that he had met
this man! It had been more than three years ago, in June or July of
1835, just weeks after his arrival from England. He had been at a
soiree at Government House, where Sir John Colborne had taken him
around and introduced him to half a dozen debutantes and as many
gentlemen. One of them had been Mowbray McDowell, but the name –
like so many others in those first hectic months in a new and
strange country – had not stuck.

Marc now turned to Dougherty for the first
time since McDowell had entered the chamber and mesmerized all
within it. “Well, Dick, what do you make of that?”

Dougherty’s eyes popped open. The pouches
surrounding them were puffed and red. “Has the wretched fellow got
here yet?” he muttered between blinks.

“You slept through the whole thing!”

“I must have. Everybody seems to be leaving,
including the Speaker.”

Marc helped his sleepy friend to his feet.
“McDowell may not have been Daniel Webster or Lord Wellington,
Dick, but he was the next best thing.”

***

Marc guided Dougherty, still drowsy from his
forty-minute nap, up the four steps to the stairwell. Most of the
galleryites had preceded them, but one of them appeared to be
lingering near the stairs, awaiting their arrival. Marc recognized
the man as Everett Stoneham, postmaster-general in the current
Executive Council. The fellow was busy working himself into a
rage.