62 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



extinct and that the simple habitant felt himself "in every respect 

 as independent as the Seigneur himself," If democracy is, as, on 

 the whole I believe it is, a good thing it was the French Canadian 

 who first revealed its startling first fruits in Canada. 



The Loyalist settlers who constituted the first important English- 

 speaking element to arrive after the Conquest were not, in theory 

 at least, friendly to democracy. They had suffered at its hands 

 and they came to believe that it was the source of most of their mis- 

 fortunes. The excesses of the early years of the French Revolution, 

 following rapidly upon their own sorrowful experiences, tended to 

 confirm their distrust of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. It is 

 not uninteresting to remember that the legislatures of Upper and 

 Lower Canada date from the year of the founding of the revolutionary 

 republic in France. To remote Upper Canada travelled as an exile 

 a noble victim of the Revolution — the Duke de la Rochefoucauld- 

 Liancourt. He consorted much with Governor Simcoe and Simcoe 

 and his Loyalist friends had his evidence as to the extravagant in- 

 competence of democracy. Simcoe avowed his aim to make the 

 elections in Canada "as little popular as possible", and he proposed 

 as one of the chief aims of government "to counteract and ultimately 



to destroy the spirit of democratic subversion." If Canada 



was to be happy there must be an aristocracy, a state church, a 

 control of the many by the few. It was not a good beginning for 

 the type of institutions which was alone possible amid the equality 

 of conditions in the new world. 



It is, I suppose, still debateable whether democracy is a desirable 

 type of government, but it is hardly open to debate that it was the 

 only possible government for Canada. It is impossible to create 

 an influential aristocracy where there is equality of conditions. Aristo- 

 cratic rule resolves itself, in the ultimate analysis, into the rule of 

 those who have over these who have not, that cleavage in society 

 which Aristotle said was the vital one in his time, and which has 

 remained such ever since. The arrogance of England towards the 

 American Colonies in 1775 was largely the arrogance of wealth towards 

 poverty, of a state, imposing in its visible power, towards immature 

 and supposedly poor colonies. From the first an aristocracy in 

 Canada was impossible. Yet, during half a century, the bitterest 

 struggle in Canadian history was the struggle to preserve or create 

 one. At a time when a great republic in America was creating a 

 democratic tradition which was to mean much for mankind, Canada, 

 its neighbour, was hesitating about the inevitable plunge and the 

 hesitancy was to keep the country politically backward for half a 

 century. We owe something to the Loyalist tradition. It has. 



