Elections in Oxford County, 1837-1875: A Case Study of Democracy in Canada West and Early Ontario 9781442699090

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ELECTIONS IN OXFORD COUNTY, 1837–1875 A Case Study of Democracy in Canada West and Early Ontario

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GEORGE EMERY

Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875 A Case Study of Democracy in Canada West and Early Ontario

U N I V E R S I T Y O F TO RO NTO P RESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press 2012 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978-1-4426-4404-5

Printed on acid-free 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Emery, George Neil, 1941– Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875 : a case study of democracy in Canada West and early Ontario / George Emery. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4426-4404-5 1. Elections – Ontario – Oxford (County) – History – 19th century. 2. Elections – Ontario – Oxford (County) – Case studies. 3. Ontario – Politics and government – 19th century. 4. Representative government and representation – Ontario – History – 19th century. I. Title. JL193.E45 2012

324.9713′4602

C2012-901173-8

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing activities. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications

Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research council of Canada.

Contents

Maps and Tables vii Acknowledgments ix Prologue 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

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The Oxford Ridings and Structures for Their Elections 3 Ethnicity, Social Class, and Orangemen in Oxford County 26 Elections in Oxford County, 1838–1848 44 The General Election in Oxford County, 1851 (with J.C. Herbert Emery) 62 Elections in the Ridings of North Oxford and South Oxford, 1854–1858 85 Elections in the Ridings of North Oxford and South Oxford, 1860–1866 110 Provincial and Dominion Elections in the Oxfords, 1867–1875 136 Democracy in Oxford County Elections, 1837–1875 162

Appendix A List of Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875 Appendix B List of Statutes Referred to or Consulted Notes

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References 221 Index

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Maps and Tables

Maps 1.1 The Oxford County Study Area 4 1.2 Change in Oxford County Territory in 1852

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Tables 4.1 Probit Estimates, 1851 General Election, Reduced Model 6.1 Probit Estimates, 1861 General Elections 127 7.1 Probit Estimates, 1871 and 1874 General Elections 151

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Acknowledgments

This book is a team effort. I thank Len Husband, editor of the University of Toronto Press, for his outstanding management of my file through the vetting process, and Frances Mundy for overseeing the production process. I am grateful to two expert readers for their superb reports on two drafts of the manuscript. My appreciation also goes to Kate Baltais for her masterful job of copyediting; and to Patricia Connor Reid for her splendid drawing of the maps. J.C. Herbert Emery, an economist at the University of Calgary, is my co-author for Chapter 4 and the Probit analyses in Chapters 6 and 7. Herb, my son, is my mentor for quantitative methods and is an exceptional source of probing questions. Don DeBats of Flinders University, Australia, and I share each other’s research interest in voice-vote elections. Don’s pioneering application of GIS technology to the analysis of Dereham Township voters in 1871, and his enthusiasm and engaging personality, inspired me to undertake this book-length study. Elaine Balpataky, my sister, gave me her usual clinic on the use of the English language when reviewing early drafts of the manuscript. Brian Dawe, now a litigation lawyer in Toronto, is author of Old Oxford Is Wide Awake (1980), a pioneering work on the early history of Oxford County and a gold mine of archival information. His voter-plot map for the 1851 Oxford general election is a must-see masterpiece for scholars of voice-vote elections. Tory Tronrud, editor of Ontario History, kindly granted permission to publish, as Chapter 4, a revised version of my article (with J.C. Herbert Emery), ‘Francis Hincks, John G. Vansittart, and Voters in the Oxford General Election of 1851,’ Ontario History 100/2 (2008), 178–204.

x Acknowledgments

For access to Oxford County records, I thank the following: John Lutman and the staff of the Archives and Regional Collections Centre, University of Western Ontario; Bonnie Holmes Mott of the Ingersoll and District Historical Society; the Woodstock Public Library and the Oxford County Library, Ingersoll; Shirley Lovell of the Ingersoll Cheese and Agricultural Museum; Patty Phelps of Annandale National Historic Site, Tillsonburg; Mary Gladwin, County of Oxford Archives, Beachville; Chris Packman and the executive of the Oxford Historical Society, Woodstock; Court Noxon of Prince Edward County, a descendant of James Noxon, a candidate in an 1867 Oxford election; and Glenna Oliver Jamieson of Langley, B.C., a descendant of Adam Oliver, a member of the provincial parliament for South Oxford, 1867–75.

Prologue

This book explores Canadian democracy in the mid-nineteenth century through a case study of thirty-eight Oxford County elections. Its objective begs the questions of what democracy is and why it matters in Canada’s present, and what it was and how it mattered a century and a half ago. Democracy means government by ‘the people’ – the whole population in a given jurisdiction. A maximally developed parliamentary democracy has citizens, not subjects. ‘The people’ govern themselves through their elected representatives; their elected representatives possess executive powers; the electorate comprises the adult population; an elector can vote once only in a given riding in the same election; any elector can be a candidate for election; elections are held at regular intervals; elections are competitive; the electoral process is fair (the meaning of which is contested and historical); representation by population provides equality among ridings; trials of controverted elections are independent of the ministry or the legislature; and the majority rules (the majority makes decisions that are binding on ‘the people’). Direct democracy limits the elected representative’s role by granting an assembly of electors the rights of initiative, referendum, and recall. Democracy is a complex, multidimensional continuum. Elections at the riding level are one aspect of democracy; proceedings of the legislature, judicial system, and civil administration are others. Present-day Canadians are apt to view democracy as a virtue, albeit one with imperfections. Democratic elections, the argument goes, give non-leaders (the electors) a regularized check on leaders, provide government with the consent of the governed, and furnish ‘a creative solution to the age-old problem of transferring authority without violence.’1

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For Canadians today, democracy in Canada West (1840–67) is part of us, an evolutionary precursor of what our democracy has become. As one of two sections in the Province of Canada, Canada West had representative government – an elective Legislative Assembly, the Lower House in a bicameral legislature – from its inception in 1840. By imperial statute, the Assembly was required to meet at least once every twelve months, and the maximum life of a parliament was four years. In 1849 Canada’s elected representatives acquired executive power over Crown patronage and a limited, but growing list of domestic matters. During the 1840s, provincial statutes extended the elective-representative principle to local government. Increases in the number of ridings (in 1853 and 1867) and the number of polls in ridings (in 1842 and 1866) diminished territorial disenfranchisement – a term referring to electors who were too distant from a poll to vote. In 1855 government extended the franchise for townships to include tenants and occupiers of real property as well as owners. In 1858 government replaced the forty-shilling freehold franchise with an assessment franchise and judicially certified electors’ lists: a more regularized, transparent, and fairer method of identifying electors. In 1854, with its secularization of revenues from the Clergy Reserves, government largely abolished establishment religion. Government also enacted stiff laws to ensure an orderly, fair electoral process. In 1869 government abolished the property qualification for candidates for Ontario provincial elections. During the early 1870s, government introduced an independent judicial process for trying controverted elections – a judge in open court without a jury. Yet, in comparison with our times, democracy in mid-nineteenthcentury Canada was less accepted, less developed, and different in form and practice. The American and French revolutions were within the living memory of some Canadians, and Canada’s 1837 rebellions were within the memory of most. In this context, Canadians commonly viewed democracy as risky and experimental, with mob violence, disorder, corruption, and disloyalty to the Crown its possible outcomes. Voice-vote, not the secret ballot, was their method of election. Male sex and property qualifications defined the electorate, and a stiff £500 property qualification barred most electors from becoming candidates. Gross partisan interference decided trials for controverted elections. Political parties were works in progress and competed with factions and ‘loose fish’ in the ridings. Thus, this book explores the extent, forms, practices, and issues of democracy in a Canada rather different from our own. Elections in coun-

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try ridings are its window on Canada’s democratic past. The case study is its research strategy. The Case Study Strategy The Oxford County case study is long on time but short on space. Its thirty-eight-year period of study ranges from the failed western rebellion of 1837 to the first secret-ballot elections in 1875. Yet its findings are specific to Oxford County ridings: one of forty-two in Canada West through to 1853, two of sixty-five through to Confederation, and two of eighty-two (or more) through to 1875. Nevertheless, the Oxford case study is directed at a scholarly readership. Thus, it generalizes beyond its geographically specific findings to offer useful knowledge for readers who have no particular interest in local history of the Oxford County area. To this end, it captures features of elections that applied to all ridings: for example, the statutory requirements for the electoral process. Similarly, it describes electoral practices in Oxford that appear to have been general, such as the treating of electors with food and drinks. To identify idiosyncratic features of the Oxford ridings, the book compares them with other ridings and contrasts them with ridings as depicted in S.J.R. Noel’s general model.2 The attraction of the Oxford ridings for prominent Toronto political candidates, for example, was unique for country ridings in Canada West. Conversely, an observed increase in the extent of the franchise in the riding of South Oxford between the 1861 and 1871 general elections also obtained for all of the province’s contested ridings in those elections. Some contrasts between the Oxford and other ridings were differences of timing as well as of substance. At the endpoint for the book’s period of study, for example, working-class movements mattered in Brant South but not in the Oxford ridings; during the 1880s, however, the Knights of Labor were active in both Brant South and the Oxford ridings. The contrast between the Oxford and Brant South ridings in 1874, in other words, was partly a difference of timing in the province-wide diffusion of working-class politics. The Book’s Contribution to the Literature Canada’s nineteenth-century political history was at the centre of research interest during the 1950’s and 1960s, but has been somewhat

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Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

neglected since that time. The book returns to the old turf for years of Upper Canada (1837–40), the United Province of Canada (1840–67) and early Ontario (1867–75). Its research strategy, a case study of thirty-eight elections in one locale, is unique in the field. It breaks new ground with its detailed treatment of the Province’s voice-vote method of election, which ended with the adoption of the secret-ballot method in 1874. With its multifaceted definition of democracy, it enriches our understanding of democracy’s forms, extent, practices, and issues in Canada’s nineteenth-century colonial setting. Apart from raising new issues, the case breaks new ground on old issues that are established in the literature. Political parties, for example, have been studied through the analysis of divisions in the Legislative Assembly, described in Noel’s general model for the province, and enriched by Philip Buckner’s theory for distinguishing between faction and party.3 Nevertheless, parties developed in the Assembly before reaching into the province’s country ridings. Thus, the literature requires ridinglevel studies to deepen our understanding of the timing, characteristics, and development of political parties during the 1837–1875 period of study. The Oxford case study is the first such contribution. Imperial and Provincial Structures for Elections in the Ridings Inasmuch as the Province of Canada was a colony of Britain, the imperial authority imposed constraints on Canada’s governance and democracy. An 1840 imperial Act to Re-Unite the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada created the United Province of Canada with two sections, Canada West and Canada East, with equal sectional representation in the Legislative Assembly; thus, another imperial statute, the 1867 British North America Act, was required to revise the constitutional arrangement of 1840. The imperial authority resisted responsible self-government during the 1840s, but granted it on a party basis in 1849. An 1840 imperial Act to Provide for the Sale of the Clergy Reserves in the Province of Canada regulated the distribution of revenues from the Clergy Reserves; hence, imperial enabling legislation in 1853 was a necessary preliminary to any made-in-Canada change. The imperial authority shaped the electoral agenda: the issues through to 1854 were responsible self-government and church-state relations. The 1840 imperial Act of Union provided start-up arrangements for elections – the ridings and their territories and election law – but

Prologue

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enabled the province to change them. Thus, provincial statutes structured democracy in riding-level elections. For example, provincial statutes elaborated the protocol for voice-vote elections in 1842 and 1849, but then simplified the protocol in 1866. An 1853 statute increased the number of ridings and changed the boundaries of some existing ridings. Statutes broadened the adult male franchise in 1855, but narrowed it in 1866. Statutes disenfranchised women for provincial elections in 1849 and municipal elections in 1866. The net amount of democracy in the election in Oxford County increased little during the years of study, in no small part because Canadian electoral practice drew on British traditions, not American ones. Whereas many American states had adopted universal white male suffrage by 1837,4 Canadian politicians held to a property qualification, a British practice. Government’s transformation of the Upper House, the Legislative Council, into an elective body evolved from experience in Lower Canada and Upper Canada, not American influence. Although the province’s sole pro-democratic political formation, the Clear Grits, cited American experience for examples of democracy, its ideology drew primarily from British radical traditions, and a majority of its activists were immigrant Britons. Like England, Canada adopted the secret ballot years before American states did. Support for democratic reforms varied among Canada West politicians. ‘The word, reform,’ suggests R.S. Longley, ‘indicated a path rather than a goal. As soon as a political leader arrived at the end of a path and refused to advance further, he ceased to be a Reformer and became a Conservative. Thus the Reform party had constantly changing personnel.’5 Radical democrats of the day supported voluntaryism6 – an end to establishment religion – but many supporters of voluntaryism opposed radical democracy. ‘During my political career,’ pronounced Ebenezer Bodwell, a candidate for election in South Oxford in 1857, ‘I have uniformly advocated the introduction of the elective principle into the Upper House; secularization of the Clergy Reserves; [and] extension of the Franchise … Still I am not a Reformer in the sense of wishing to see the people, unprepared, overwhelmed at once with Vote by Ballot – Universal Suffrage – Elective Magistrates, Registrars, Sheriffs, and Judges.’7 In nearby Wellington County, the radical democrat, Charles Clarke of Elora, expected Canada’s attainment of responsible self-government to accelerate the pace of democratic reform;8 George Brown, in contrast, viewed responsible government and the separation of church and state as endpoints for democracy.

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Democracy in Oxford’s Elections One or more aspects of democracy were at issue in every Oxford general election before Confederation. Examples were responsible government on a party basis to 1849; the separation of church and state in 1851 and 1854; and partyism9 and Canada West sectionalism10 after 1854. In 1850 and 1851 radical Reformers in Oxford pressed their member, Francis Hincks, to place in their hands his signed resignation, to be accepted if they judged that he had strayed from their agenda; this was something like recall, a feature of direct democracy. The failed western rebellion of 1837 polarized Oxford’s electorate and undermined democracy in the county’s first elections; during the 1840s, for example, numbers of Oxford’s American-born electors had their votes refused by high-handed High Tory returning officers. The statutory protocol for voice-voting furnished the forms for participation in the electoral process in Oxford County. The 1849 act required the returning officer to hold the election ‘in the open air at such place as that all the electors may have free access thereto.’ He administered the election from the hustings: an elevated platform from which he and the candidates addressed the electors assembled before them. He opened the election with a call for nominations (the hustings nominations), followed by a show of hands to determine which nominee had a majority of the electors present. The show of hands did not necessarily end the election; rather, the decision came from a poll, to follow after a week’s interval if a losing candidate demanded one. After two days of polling and his tally of the votes from the polls, the returning officer revisited the hustings to close the election with a declaration of the winner (the hustings declaration). Both nomination day and declaration day were occasions for colourful processions to and from the hustings and entertainment for the general public. Close-fought contests, of course, attracted more public interest and participation than one-sided ones; elections held in stormy weather or during harvest season had belowaverage attendance. In 1866 government abolished the show of hands and the hustings declaration, in the process making elections more orderly but less colourful. Government’s abolition of voice-voting (for Dominion and Ontario elections) and the hustings nominations (for Dominion elections) followed in 1874. Most candidates in Oxford’s elections were party men, not ‘loose fish.’ Over time the elections gave rise to seven political formations. Of these, five rated as parties (Baldwinite, 1841–51; Hincksite, 1851–54;

Prologue

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Conservative, 1849–54; Hincksite-Conservative coalition, 1854–74; and Brownite, 1857–74) and two rated as factions (High Tory, 1841–48, and Clear Grit, 1849–54). A striking feature of parties in Oxford County was their inability to unite behind one candidate. Baldwinites were the county’s dominant political formation through to 1851, followed by Hincksites to 1857 and Brownites through to 1874. The dominated formations were the High Tories to 1848, the Clear Grits and the Conservatives to 1857, and then the Hincksite-Conservative coalition. ‘Loose fish’ men won two elections, one in 1844 (a High Tory) and the other in 1854 (an Independent Reformer). Yet both ‘loose fish’ campaigned on provincial issues; neither fit the model of the self-seeking local magnate. Prominent non-resident men won seventeen of Oxford’s twentythree Lower House elections through to 1864, after which local men prevailed. Two non-resident winners of Oxford elections – Francis Hincks and George Brown – served as premier, and two others – William McDougall and Skeffington Connor – served as cabinet ministers. Conversely, just one outsider, Ontario Premier Oliver Mowat in 1872, prevailed in the county’s fourteen Lower House voice-vote elections after 1864. During the Canada West years, the Oxford ridings were unique in their attraction for prominent outsiders as candidates, a feature that vanished at Confederation. The statutory extent of the franchise in Oxford – a county with towns and villages but no cities – changed little during the period of study. Government broadened the franchise for townships in 1855, but raised it for villages and towns in 1866. Nevertheless, a rising percentage of Oxford’s adult males met the requirement. Economic development was a general explanation. Oxford’s elections were never wholly fair. They included partisan ‘dirty tricks’ at nominations, bribery of electors, partisan misconduct by election officials and scrutineers, and a pre-election riot. Partisan government interference made a farce of the Legislative Assembly’s trial for Oxford’s 1844 controverted election. Ethno-religious differences were the chief influence on voters’ party preferences throughout the period of study. Anglicans were the bedrock of Conservative party strength. Change in the allegiance of Scottish Presbyterians underlay the rise of the Brownites as Oxford’s dominant party. A disproportionate number of the fifteen winning candidates in Oxford’s Lower House elections were Scottish Presbyterians. Orangemen were unimportant in determining election outcomes. Woodstock’s

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half-pay officer community – a social class in the sense of hierarchy – buttressed High Tory fortunes during the 1840s; otherwise social class did not influence election outcomes during the period of study. In some respects the Oxford ridings were anomalies. ‘In the constituencies,’ writes Noel, ‘the old pattern of clientele-based politics, with its intensely local activities, still flourished. Members of parliament were typically local magnates, or the nominees of local magnates, with their own independent bases of support and their own patron-client obligations to consider; they were not merely grist to some party mill.’11 In Oxford County ridings, however, prominent outsiders, not local notables, won most of the elections. The candidates were party men. Even their few ‘loose fish’ put principle before considerations of patron-client relations. The elections turned on provincial issues, not local ones. Arguably, the Oxfords had a precocious formation of political parties, arising from the unusual prominence of metropolitan politicians in the county’s elections. Clearly, the Oxford ridings differed from their near neighbours. Norfolk and West Elgin, for example, returned local notables, not worthies from Toronto, and they elected Conservatives, whose party was shut out in Oxford after 1844. Orange violence and workingclass militancy mattered in Brant West but not in the Oxfords. During the thirty-eight-year period of study the forms for electoral expression changed as Oxford’s political formations evolved, the election issues changed, and government modified the protocol for voice-vote elections. But the extent of democracy, in all its dimensions, evidenced setbacks and inertia as well as advances; by and large, that suited the electors and candidates as well as the times. The Book’s Organization by Chapters Chapter 1 introduces Oxford County and its ridings and describes the structural and regulatory framework for its elections. Chapter 2 discusses the influence of ethnic, religious, and social class formations and Orangemen on Oxford’s electors. Chapters 3 to 7 deal with democracy in groups of elections: 1838–48, 1851, 1854–58, 1861–66, and 1867–75. Chapter 8 closes with a summary and interpretation of the case study findings for democracy in Canada West and early Ontario.

ELECTIONS IN OXFORD COUNTY, 1837–1875 A Case Study of Democracy in Canada West and Early Ontario

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1 The Oxford Ridings and Structures for Their Elections

This chapter outlines the setting for elections in Oxford County. It introduces the county and its ridings; describes the statutory framework for Oxford’s electorate, candidates, and electoral administration; discusses developments in local government and the civil service that had relevance for provincial elections; and surveys the evolution of the voicevote method of election. Oxford County and Its Ridings Oxford County is located in the heart of Ontario’s southwestern peninsula (see Figure 1.1). ‘The land of the County,’ noted the 1852 Oxford Gazetteer, ‘is neither too flat nor too hilly, but beautifully rolling, and although it is an inland County with neither ports nor harbours, it is splendidly and abundantly supplied with mill streams, rivers, and creeks ... and where there may not be living running streams, as convenient as wished for ... a most abundant supply can be obtained in most any place, by digging for it ... the whole County in every respect is remarkably well adapted for Cultivation and Agricultural purposes.’1 Unbeknownst to the Gazetteer’s author, the end of the ‘little ice age’ – the slow rise of global temperatures after 1850 – also boosted Oxford’s resources for agricultural settlement.2 Population The years 1791–1874 saw a massive European settlement of lands that had been the domain of Aboriginals.3 Although Oxford’s first settlers were post-Loyalist Americans, British immigrants predominated by the

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Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

Map 1.1 The Oxford County Study Area.

The Oxford Ridings and Structures

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early 1830s. British half-pay officers and their families founded Woodstock, and Gaelic-speaking Scottish Highlanders settled Zorra Township. The county’s European population doubled every ten years into the mid-1850s, from 15,621 in 1841 to 32,638 in 1852 and 46,226 in 1861; and then grew slowly, to 48,237 in 1871 and 50,093 in 1881 – the maximum for the nineteenth century. The creation of family farms was the mainstay of the increase. By the mid-1850s the good lands were occupied, the resources for new farms had diminished, and the growth of population slowed to a standstill. In 1852 the county had reached 65 per cent of its maximum population (1881); the percentages for 1861 and 1871 were 92 and 96. Oxford County had no incorporated urban places in 1841 but subsequently acquired some. Woodstock, the county seat, was proclaimed a town in 1850; its population was 2,112 in 1852 and 3,982 in 1871. Ingersoll was proclaimed a village in 1852 and a town in 1865; its population was 1,190 in 1852 and 4,022 in 1871. Tillsonburg, a police village in 1865, was proclaimed a town in 1872, when its population was about 1,600. Census statistics for Oxford County (1852, 1861, and 1871) reported a young, heavily Protestant, ethnically diverse, largely English-speaking population. In 1861 and 1871, 55 per cent of its population were under twenty-one years of age. Roman Catholics, mostly Irish, were a stable 7 per cent of the population. In 1852 the place of birth was Scotland for 13 per cent of the population; England and Wales for 11 per cent; Ireland, 8 per cent; and the United States, 8 per cent. By 1871 the percentages were 8 for Scotland as place of birth; 10 for England and Wales; 4 for Ireland; and 4 for the United States. Conversely, a growing percentage of Oxford’s population were native born: 56 in 1852, 62 in 1861, and 71 in 1871. Of the population by origin (first reported in 1871), 39 per cent were English; 27 per cent, Scottish; and 17 per cent, Irish. The Gaelicspeaking Highlanders of West Zorra were a tight-knit group within the ethnic Scottish category. Immigrants were a larger proportion of the county’s adult males – the pool for electors – than of the general population. In 1861, for example, they were 69 per cent of Oxford’s 10,267 adult males, compared with 38 per cent of the county’s population.4 Within the immigrant group, 33 per cent were born in England; 30 per cent, Scotland; 16 per cent, Ireland; 15 per cent, the United States; and 6 per cent, Germany. Of the men born in Ireland, 58 per cent were Protestant, and 42 per cent were Roman Catholic.

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Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

The Economy Economic growth in Oxford was extensive until mid-century and increasingly intensive thereafter. That is, the economy initially grew by adding new farms to its existing stock and bringing more occupied lands under cultivation; this not only meant more farmers, but also more artisans and professionals to provide them with services. After the mid-1850s, the county’s economic growth became increasingly intensive; that is, the economy grew not by adding to the existing stock of farms, but rather through urbanization, industrialization, and increases in per capita productivity. Old industries, engaged in the processing of primary materials (sawmills, oat- and grist-mills), were joined by secondary industries in iron and steel, food, and clothing. In a major spatial transformation of the countryside, persons with non-farm occupations increasingly moved to hamlets and villages; these were urban places – that is, nodal clusters of persons with non-farm occupations. Census statistics mark Oxford County’s extensive economic growth to mid-century and its slowing thereafter. The 1891 census was to record the county’s maximums for acreage occupied and improved acreage. Oxford had reached 69 per cent of its maximum for acreage occupied by 1852; the statistics were 84 per cent in 1861 and 93 per cent in 1871. In 1852 the county had reached 33 per cent of its maximum for improved acreage; the statistics were 56 per cent in 1861 and 74 per cent in 1871. Increasingly, farm occupiers were owners; whereas 39 per cent of the occupiers had been tenants in 1848, the percentage was 18 in 1871.5 In 1871 the economy of Oxford County was still largely rural and pre-industrial. The county held two towns and some forty-five hamlets and villages. Woodstock, the county seat, was Oxford’s administrative centre, but Ingersoll was the principal industrial centre, home to all four of the county’s industries that had fifty or more hands. Noxon Brothers and the Eastwood Foundry, both manufacturers of agricultural implements, employed 103 and 70 hands respectively. Nevertheless, small-scale producers predominated overall; the 1871 census for Oxford reported 650 businesses with 2,618 persons employed: a mean of 4.0.6 Males over sixteen years of age comprised 86 per cent of the workforce; 8 per cent were women, and 6 per cent were boys. Farmers produced first for their own consumption, second for the local non-farm population, and lastly for British and American export markets. To these ends, they practised mixed farming, producing grain

The Oxford Ridings and Structures

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crops, root crops, hay, wool, dairy products, and livestock meats. Wheat was the traditional cash crop, and dairying was an emergent one.7 The 1871 census reported the following details. Farmers devoted 67 per cent of the county’s improved acreage to crops, 30 per cent to pasture, and 3 per cent to gardens and orchards. The major grain crops, measured by production in bushels, were oats (41%), spring and fall wheat (21%), peas (16%), and barley (15%). The principal root crops were turnips (59%) and potatoes (27%). The county reported 18,364 working animals (mostly horses with a few oxen) and 138,729 livestock (sheep, 36%; swine, 23%; milch cows, 21%; and horned cattle, 19%). Livestock killed or sold were equal to 43 per cent of horned cattle, 73 per cent of sheep, and 97 per cent of swine; sheep also yielded 214,840 pounds of wool. The county’s 1,866 beehives yielded 18,176 pounds of honey. The census gave no statistics for poultry. Eighteen per cent of the county’s 5,489 landholdings were from one to ten acres: too small to rate as farms. Of the 4,525 bona fide farms, the size was 10–50 acres for 30 per cent; 50–100 acres, 45 per cent; 100–200 acres, 21 per cent; and 200 acres or more, 5 per cent.8 Manuscript census data provide an occupational profile for Oxford’s 10,267 males of voting age in 1861. Forty-four per cent of the men with a reported occupation were farmers; 24 per cent, labourers; 18 per cent, artisans; 4 per cent, businessmen; 3 per cent, professional men; and 3 per cent, white-collar men such as clerks and officials. One must interpret these data with caution. Oxford County’s fortyone enumerators did not report an occupation for 969 adult males – 9 per cent of the 10,267 cases. A second problem arises from government’s instructions to the enumerators.9 The latter were to report dependant sons of farmers as labourers, but dependant sons of tradesmen as the father’s trade. The instruction obliterates the common ground of dependant sons; obscures the distinction between rural labourers and urban labourers; and skews the counts for labourers and tradesmen. Moreover, Oxford’s enumerators varied in their compliance with the instructions. Three reported the dependant sons of farmers as ‘farmers’ (East Oxford Districts 1 and 2 and West Oxford District 3). Others left the column blank or entered ‘labourer’ for the eldest dependant son, but not younger dependant sons. One enumerator (Dereham District 3) reported the dependant son’s occupation as ‘son.’ Where the household head was a widow, the oldest son was reported as a ‘farmer’ in some cases and not given an occupation in others.

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Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

The Oxford Ridings in the Era of Voice-Vote Elections Voice-vote elections in Oxford County dated from 1800 and ended in 1874. The county had thirteen elections in the Province of Upper Canada (1791–1840), twenty-three elections in Canada West (1840–67), and thirteen voice-vote elections in the Province of Ontario (1867–74). Oxford was part of a three-county riding for its first two elections (1800 and 1805) and a two-county riding for the next three (1808, 1812, and 1817). It became a single-member county riding in 1820 and a two-member county riding for 1824 and later elections of the Upper Canadian years. In Canada West (1840–67) Oxford County was a single-member county riding to 1853 and thereafter two single-member ridings: North Oxford and South Oxford. The North riding comprised ‘the Townships of East Nissouri, East Zorra, West Zorra, Blandford, Blenheim, and the Town of Woodstock,’ and the South riding comprised ‘the Townships of North Oxford, West Oxford, East Oxford, Norwich, and Dereham.’10 After Confederation in 1867, each riding held elections at the Dominion and Ontario provincial levels. Oxford’s county boundaries and township divisions changed dramatically on 1 January 1852. Hitherto its territory of 950 square miles (2,461 square kilometres) had been divided into twelve townships. Effective 1 January 1852, government reduced Oxford’s territory by 2.5 townships and 20 per cent of its area (see Figure 1.2).11 The townships of Oakland and Burford went to the newly created County of Brant; and Nissouri was divided into the two townships of East Nissouri and West Nissouri, with West Nissouri going to Middlesex County.12 An 1856 statute provided for the transformation of the province’s Upper House, the Legislative Council, from an appointed body into an elective one. Oxford electors participated in two Upper House elections – one for the Gore Division (1858), which included the North Oxford and South Waterloo ridings; and the other for the Thames Division (1862), which comprised the South Oxford and Norfolk ridings. The adoption of the secret ballot in 1874 ended the voice-vote system in both Dominion and Ontario provincial elections. The Dominion Elections Act took effect on 26 May, and the Ontario Ballot Act took effect in December. Thus, the South Oxford Dominion by-election of 14 May 1874 was the county’s last voice-vote election. The case study begins with the 1838 by-election, the last election of the pre-Union period, and closes with the 1875 Ontario provincial South

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Map 1.2 Change in Oxford County Territory in 1852.

Oxford general election, the riding’s first contest under the secret-ballot system. It also includes the two Upper House divisional elections that involved an Oxford County riding. Locally held copies of Oxford’s Poll Books are largely complete for the years 1851–74, but not for earlier elections (1800–1848).13 The availability of the locally held copies dates from a provision in Canada’s 1849 Elections Act. Henceforth, before sending original Poll Books on to the provincial authority, the returning officer was to ‘make or cause to be made’ exact copies for deposit in Woodstock, at the county office of the registrar of deeds and titles. These copies were to be open to inspection by any person on demand, for a one-shilling fee. In this fashion, a man’s vote was a matter of public record.14 The Electorate Over time the franchise varied by municipal status: townships, villages, towns, towns that were ridings (Niagara and Cornwall), and cities.

10

Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

Oxford had no cities or towns that were ridings, and so my discussion excludes them. Under the 1840 Act of Union and the 1842 and 1849 Elections Acts, Oxford retained the forty-shilling freehold franchise of Upper Canada. To vote one had to be a British subject by birth or naturalization, have attained age twenty-one, and meet a property qualification. The 1842 act authorized each poll’s deputy returning officer to administer the oath of allegiance to any man on request, thereby furnishing the man with on-the-spot naturalization – subject, however, to meeting a residence requirement.15 Whereas the 1842 act did not require the election officials to administer the oath on request – a loophole that mattered in Oxford’s 1844 controverted election – the 1849 act did require them to do so. The policing of the naturalization requirement applied primarily to immigrants from the United States. The property qualification required the ownership of lands having the yearly value (yearly revenue) of forty shillings (£2). The method of property valuation was mechanical and not reflective of market value; that is, all forms of property regardless of location received a fixed valuation prescribed by statute in 1818.16 Under the fixed valuations, two cultivable acres or ten acres of bush land sufficed for the sum. In 1850 the franchise differed between townships and Woodstock, which had become a town. Under the 1849 Elections Act, the town franchise was limited to owners of property with the yearly value of £5 and tenants of property with the yearly value of £10.17 A minimumduration-of-ownership requirement for proprietors and a residence requirement for town tenants stiffened the property qualification. The 1849 act required a proprietor to have ‘uninterrupted possession [of the property] ... or in the receipt of the rents aforesaid, for his own use and benefit during at least six calendar months’ before the date of the election writ – a reduction from twelve months under the 1791 Constitutional Act. Given that residence on the property was not required, a proprietor could qualify as an elector in more than one municipality. This was not so for a town tenant, whose qualification required twelve months’ continuous actual residence. The property qualification took hold over time.18 An abundance of free land permitted near-universal manhood suffrage during the early years of settlement. Then, as the supply of free land diminished, the property qualification created a sizable class of non-freeholders. Each immigration season made the freehold franchise more restrictive, with the effect of favouring native-born men over immigrants. The transi-

The Oxford Ridings and Structures

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tion accelerated during the 1840s when heavy immigration doubled the population of Canada West. The population of Oxford County quadrupled and its acreage of occupied land rose by 113 per cent.19 By 1848, 39 per cent of the county’s farm occupiers were tenants, hence, ineligible to vote. The 1855 Elective Franchise Extension Act introduced a qualification for tenants and occupants in the townships (‘every male person having been for six months or more ... the legal and bona fide tenant or occupant of real property of the actual value of £50 or the annual value of £5,’ conditional on holding a lease ‘for a term of not less than one year’).20 This extension of the franchise first applied in the county’s 1857 general elections. It came when the tenancy rate for Oxford County, as noted above, was declining. Certain features of the 1855 act warrant additional comment. First, the act gave tenants and occupants of property in towns (Woodstock) the same amount of property qualification as owners (an annual value of £5), rather than the higher one for tenants (£10) under the 1849 act. Second, for tenants in townships and the town, the duration-of-lease requirement replaced the residence requirement for town tenants under the 1849 act; thus a tenant as well as an owner could qualify as an elector in more than one poll. Third, whether in townships or the town, an occupant of property required the intent to become owner of the property, conditional on ‘the performance of certain conditions.’ This provision, one imagines, was primarily for settler-occupants on Crown land, a category of diminishing importance in Oxford County. Of 4,558 Oxford voters in the 1861 general election, 83 per cent were owners, 16 per cent, tenants; and 1 per cent, occupants. Of the 775 tenants, 35 per cent were in the two towns, and 65 per cent were in the townships. In 1858 government replaced the forty-shilling freehold franchise with an assessment franchise and judicially certified electors’ lists. Henceforth, electors were adult male British subjects who were listed on their municipality’s last assessment roll as the owners, tenants, or occupants of real property with an assessed value of $200 or an assessed yearly value of $20. ‘By the first day of October in each year,’ the municipal clerk was to prepare an alphabetical list of electors, with a description of the property for their qualification. ‘No person’ was to be ‘admitted to vote … unless his name shall appear on the list then last made and certified’ by oath or affirmation before a judge of the county court. The Oxford ridings first used the assessment franchise in 1861.

12

Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

The assessment franchise for townships remained constant at $200. In 1866, however, the province increased the qualification for owners and occupants to $300 for incorporated villages (Embro) and $400 for towns (Woodstock and Ingersoll).21 In 1868 the newly created Province of Ontario reduced the qualification to $200 for incorporated villages and $300 for towns.22 Inasmuch as the qualification for urban places now differed between Ontario provincial and Dominion elections, the clerks needed to prepare two electors’ lists, one for each jurisdiction. The 1874 Dominion Elections Act removed the problem for secret-ballot elections by declaring that each province’s franchise and electors’ lists were to be used for Dominion elections. Government disenfranchised certain individuals, such as paid agents of a candidate (1842); clerks of peace, registrars, sheriffs, deputy sheriffs, deputy clerks of the Crown, agents for Crown lands, and government contractors (1857); and returning officers, election clerks, deputy returning officers, and poll clerks (1858). The Reform ministry’s 1849 Consolidated Elections Act declared that ‘no woman is or shall be entitled to vote at any Election.’ An 1866 act disenfranchised female ratepayers in municipal elections.23 Ontario’s 1869 Elections Act reaffirmed ‘that no woman … shall be entitled to vote at any election.’24 As John Garner explains, Canada’s statutory male sex requirement was uncontroversial. In Britain and its colonies, the franchise rested on the assumption that each family had unity of interest; hence, a franchise for all male heads of families would achieve universality. In this mental climate, women had long been disenfranchised by convention and common law. The function of a statutory barrier was to shore up the common law where, in the opinion of legislators, the need arose.25 The extent of the franchise is unknowable before the 1861 general election, the first in which electors’ lists were used.26 Henceforth, government published the number of electors for ridings with contested general elections, but never for ridings with acclamation outcomes and not for all general elections. For all contested ridings in Canada West, electors were 58 per cent of their adult male population in 1861, rising to 66 per cent in 1871. The statistics for Oxford are 65 per cent for 1861 (both ridings) and 67 per cent for 1871 (South riding only). The rising trend occurred despite statutory increases in the qualifications for electors in villages, towns, and cities in 1866.27 The division of Oxford County into two ridings and increases in the number of polls within the ridings diminished territorial disenfran-

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chisement – a term referring to electors who were too distant from a poll to vote. In 1841 there had been but a single hustings poll for the entire county riding, an area of 950 square miles. The 1842 Freedom of Elections Act, however, provided for multiple polls – one for each township and one for each ward of a town or city. An 1866 amendment to the Elections Act regularized the creation of additional polls; it allowed a municipality to create polling ‘subdivisions, two of them if the number of voters is 600–999; three of them if the number is 1,000– 1,399, and so on, adding one subdivision for every four hundred additional electors to be found on such lists.’ Thus, polls in the Oxford ridings numbered ten in 1851, eighteen in 1861, and forty-nine in 1871; the mean numbers of square miles per poll were respectively ninetysix, fifty, and fifteen.28 The 1842 and 1849 Elections Acts directed the elector to vote in a poll in which he held the property for his qualification, which sometimes differed from his municipality of residence. An elector could vote only once in a given riding in the same election, regardless of whether he qualified as an elector in more than one poll. This restriction captured the democratic principle of equality of electors (one man, one vote). The 1849 Elections Act specified a penalty (£10) for a man who voted more than once.29 Candidates for Election and Members of Parliament The 1840 Act of Union introduced a £500 property qualification for candidates. The property was to be in the form of ‘lands’ and ‘tenements’ located ‘within the Province of Canada’ and ‘of the value of five hundred pounds sterling money of Great Britain over and above all Rents, Charges, Mortgages, and Encumbrances.’ Non-land forms of property, such as livestock, were ineligible for consideration. ‘If required by any other candidate, or by any Elector, or by the Returning Officer,’ the candidate was to submit to the returning officer ‘a detailed declaration in writing and under oath of the property by [him] held.’ An 1841 act prescribed the form for such declaration. It also recognized that a candidate might from ‘illness or other unavoidable cause be prevented from attending at the election.’ In such an eventuality, it allowed the candidate, on election day, to ‘deliver or cause to be delivered to the Returning Officer’ his signed declaration, ‘made before a Justice of the Peace.’30 This seemingly innocuous provision was to play a key role in Oxford in the general election of 1847–48.

14

Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

As John Garner notes, the earlier Upper Canadian qualification of £80 (1818–40) was achieved easily.31 Government’s method of property valuation was mechanical and not reflective of market value; that is, all forms of property, regardless of location, received a fixed valuation prescribed by statute. Arable and pasture lands were rated at twenty shillings (£1) per acre and uncultivated lands at four shillings per acre; loghouses, frame houses, gristmills, sawmills, shops, and warehouses each had a stated valuation. Thus, eighty acres of cultivated land or four hundred acres of uncultivated land sufficed for the requirement. The £500 qualification of 1840 was another matter. Assuming that the fixed valuations of 1818 were still in play, it required the equivalent of five hundred cultivated acres or 2,500 acres of bush land. Introduced in the aftermath of the 1837 rebellions, the higher qualification was intended to cripple radical and republican forces; it was also calculated to reduce the number of French Canadian candidates in Canada East, which never had had a property qualification for members.32 The qualification for candidates vanished after Confederation: in 1869 for Ontario provincial elections and in 1874 for Dominion elections. A candidate could accept nomination in more than one riding, but could represent only one in the event of his ‘double return.’ In 1851 Francis Hincks won Niagara but chose Oxford, which also had elected him; in 1854 Hincks won South Oxford but chose Renfrew; and in 1857 George Brown won North Oxford but opted for Toronto. In each case, the member-elect resigned from the riding not chosen, and a by-election was held to replace him. Under the 1842 Vacating the Seats of Members Act, a member of the provincial parliament (MPP) who accepted a cabinet post automatically vacated his seat and stood for re-election in a by-election.33 Four men accepted a ministerial appointment while representing an Oxford riding: Francis Hincks (county riding) was twice named inspector general (1842 and 1848); Skeffington Connor (South Oxford) was appointed solicitor general for Canada West in 1858; William McDougall (North Oxford) was named commissioner of Crown lands in 1862; and George Brown (South Oxford) became president of councils in 1864. An MPP’s workload comprised constituency business, attendance at parliamentary sessions, and service on parliamentary committees. As an example of constituency business, the mayor of Ingersoll travelled to Quebec to seek out George Brown, the member for South Oxford and a minister, in 1865. His mission was to request a private member’s bill

The Oxford Ridings and Structures

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that would allow the town to issue debentures to the amount of $40,000 to consolidate its debt; he also wanted government to restore Ingersoll’s standing – taken away in 1862 – as a customs outport of London.34 Attendance at parliamentary sessions required the MPP’s time for part(s) of the year. In 1865, for example, the parliament was in session from January to March and again from August to September. Members were entitled to an indemnity and a travel allowance to attend each parliamentary session. In 1841 the indemnity was £65 and the travel allowance was ten shillings for every twenty miles of travel from his place of residence to and from the seat of government. In 1859 the member was paid $6 for each day of attendance to a maximum of $600, plus a travel allowance of ten cents per mile.35 The Administration of Elections The Cost of Holding Elections: A Crown Responsibility The Crown footed the riding’s bill for holding an election – the expenses for erecting the hustings and polling booths, the rental of buildings, and the fees for election officials. This provision was positive for the democratic principle of competitive elections. In England the candidates footed the bill for a contested election, with the result that over half of its country ridings, on average, chose their representatives by acclamation.36 The 1842 and 1849 Elections Acts each included a schedule of the expenses covered.37 The 1849 schedule, for example, provided as follows: returning officer, £4; election clerk, £2; five constables, £1; commissions, 2s.6d; postings of proclamations, 2s.6d; warrants, 2s.6d; indentures, 5s per indenture; travel, 6d per mile; Poll Books, 5s each; copy of Poll Book, 3d per folio of 100 words; provision of hustings, ‘actual reasonable expense’; each deputy returning officer, £2; each poll clerk, 20s; communications, 6d per mile; two constables, 20s for each poll; justice of the peace, 6d per mile; provision of each polling place, ‘actual reasonable expense.’ The official costs increased over time, largely because statutes increased each riding’s number of polls. Thus, acclamations were increasingly a bargain for the Crown, having no poll-related costs and only half the fees for the returning officer and his election clerk.38 As its detailed financial statements show, government gave every returning officer’s bill an item-by-item scrutiny.

16

Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

The Governor’s Discretionary Powers The 1840 Act of Union gave the governor discretionary influence in the ridings. He could lawfully nominate the returning officer and locate the riding’s single poll where it was inconvenient for opposition supporters. He could use Crown patronage to recruit friends or punish enemies.39 The 1842 Freedom of Elections Act and the 1849 Consolidated Elections Act diminished the governor’s influence. The 1842 act provided for a poll in each township and fixed its location ‘at the place where the last Town Meeting for the Election of Township Officers shall have been held.’40 It dropped the declaration that the governor could lawfully nominate returning officers; the text stated only that the returning officer was to be a ‘freeholder’ having twelve months of residence in the riding for which he was appointed. Under the 1849 act, election officials were to be the holders of designated offices. Henceforth, Oxford’s returning officer was to be its sheriff (James Carroll) or, if he was unavailable, then its registrar of deeds (James Ingersoll); a deputy returning officer was to be the town clerk or, if he was unavailable, the assessor or the collector. Meanwhile, with Canada’s attainment of responsible government on a party basis in 1849, the governor lost control of the timing of elections and Crown patronage. Conversely, control of patronage passed to the majority party in the Legislative Assembly and, in particular, to cabinet ministers. In Oxford this meant Francis Hincks, the Reform incumbent, a minister since 1848, and the province’s newly minted premier in September 1851. Statutory Provisions for Fairness in Elections Provincial statutes defined corruption, prescribed fines for it, and furnished oaths for electors and election officials to discourage it. The 1842 Freedom of Elections Act proscribed the giving or receiving of a bribe for the elector’s vote or his agreement not to vote, on penalty of a fine of from £5 to £100. A candidate’s conviction of bribery voided his election and rendered him ineligible to be a candidate during the life of that parliament. The act gave extensive definition to bribery: ‘any person who shall give, or cause to be given or loan of any sum of money, or give any office, place or employment, gratuity or reward, or any bond, bill, or note, or conveyance of land or other property, or promise the

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same to any Elector … or as a compensation to any Elector for his loss of time or expenses for going to, or returning from voting, or by any other pretence whatsoever.’ The vote of a person convicted of bribery was to be stricken from the Poll Book. Under the 1842 act each deputy returning officer and poll clerk swore two oaths before a justice of the peace, the first before the poll was opened (a pledge to perform his duties faithfully and impartially and a declaration that he had not been bribed to make a false record), and the second at the closing of the poll (a declaration that the Poll Book was a true record of the votes taken). An elector was to swear an elector’s oath (that ‘he hath not voted before at such Election, either at the polling place where he [tendered] such vote, or at any other polling place’) and a voter’s oath (that he had not taken a bribe), but in each case only if requested by the deputy returning officer, a candidate or his agent, or any two electors. Under the 1842 act, the election officials were conservators of the peace who were vested with the power to apprehend and commit for trial. An official could command as many persons as were present to assist in keeping order. He was empowered to swear in special constables and was so required on the written request of a candidate, his agent, or any two electors. The act banned candidates’ party flags, party ribbons, and favours within a fortnight before and after nomination day. It forbade candidates from ‘treating’ or furnishing entertainment for electors, other than at ‘his usual place of residence,’ at his own expense. It banished armed persons – individuals with weapons such as firearms, swords, staves, or bludgeons – from within two miles of a poll, on pain of a fine up to £25 and imprisonment up to three months. Offenders against any of the bans were ‘deemed guilty of a misdemeanour [criminal act], punishable by fine not exceeding fifty pounds, and imprisonment not exceeding six calendar months, or by both, in the discretion of the Court.’ Officials had detailed instructions about what to enter into the Poll Book. For example, the poll clerk was to enter ‘sworn’ if an oath was required of the elector; ‘refused’ and ‘no vote’ if the elector refused to swear the oath when requested to do so; and ‘objected to’ if a candidate or his agent objected to the vote.41 If required by a candidate or his agent, the elector was to give a verbal description of the property for his qualification, with the information to be entered into the Poll Book. The 1849 act replaced the single oath with nine oaths (nos. 10–18) to cover the electors’ different relationships with property. It also increased the

18

Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

content of oaths to establish that the voter met the age, residence, and property qualifications for the franchise and had not already voted. A separate oath (no. 19) affirmed that the voter was a British subject. The 1849 protocol underwent minor changes through to Confederation. An 1854 Act Further to Provide for Freedom of Elections, which took effect on 1 January 1856, increased penalties for voting without the requisite qualifications or by way of fraudulent conveyance (a bogus transfer of property to enfranchise an individual). Henceforth, such actions were misdemeanours punishable by three to six months’ imprisonment, or a fine of £25–£50, or both. Lastly, the act required the deputy returning officers to certify the correctness of ‘each page under his signature [and] to deliver the poll-book personally to the Returning Officer’ under pain of £100, or up to six months’ imprisonment, or both fine and imprisonment. The 1855 Elective Franchise Extension Act introduced five oaths (nos. 1–5) to cover the new categories of voters. For example, oath no. 4, designed for tenants or occupants in townships, affirmed that the elector’s lease was for a term not less than one year, had not been obtained collusively for purposes of obtaining the vote, and that the property was valued at £50 or more. It also affirmed that the elector was of the full age of twenty-one years, had not already voted, and had not received a bribe for his vote. In 1860 government judged that ‘the laws at present in force were ineffective against corrupt and demoralizing practices … frequently resorted to at elections by candidates, their agents and others.’42 Accordingly, it passed a Corrupt Practices Prevention Act to give a fuller description of actions that constituted bribery and corruption. It set the penalty for the briber and the bribed at $200 ‘together with the full costs of suit’; this flat-rate dollar amount was the same as the former maximum (£50).43 Furthermore, the act made illegal ‘the hiring of teams and vehicles to convey electors to and from the Polls, and the paying of Railway Fares and other expenses of voters.’ Persons using violence or intimidation at elections were deemed to have committed the offence of undue influence, a misdemeanour with the same penalty as bribery. Lastly, it declared that ‘contracts arising out of elections’ were void in law. An 1869 Ontario Elections Act broadened the description of corruption (with the $200 fine) to include any person who ‘knowingly personates and falsely assumes to vote in the name of another person’ or received ‘a fraudulent conveyance of property for the purpose of

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meeting the qualification.’ For good measure, the act declared that such fraudulent conveyance was valid, ‘notwithstanding any agreement to annul and revoke the same.’ The act also provided $100 fines for persons who provided entertainment to electors, carried arms when the poll was open, or sported party ensigns, flags or badges. Furthermore, the act required the closing of hotels and taverns and a moratorium on the sale of ‘spirituous or fermented liquors or drinks’ on election day, ‘under a penalty of $100 in every such case.’44 Trials of Controverted Elections An election became controverted when a losing candidate petitioned the Legislative Assembly to void or overturn its outcome due to alleged violations of the Elections Act. During the Union years, the Assembly named an eleven-member Select Committee to try a disputed election. The Select Committee then appointed one or more commissioners to gather evidence and submit a report for the Select Committee’s deliberations. As Garner shows, the trial process worked poorly. Due to rampant partisanship, the select committees upheld on fraudulent grounds elections that candidates had won through fraudulent means. Some statutory requirements were never policed. The treating of electors with food and liquor was widespread because electors expected it, candidates thought it was necessary to win, and select committees of the Assembly refused to void elections because of it. Although bribery was often alleged in controverted elections, not a single election was voided on that ground.45 Ontario’s Controverted Elections Act of 1871 and the Dominion Controverted Elections Acts of 1873 and 1874 jettisoned the Union-era mechanism. Henceforth, a judge ‘sitting in open court without a jury’ was to try the election, render the final decision about whether the election was void, and allocate costs between the contending parties. He, in addition, was to advise the Speaker of the House whether corrupt practice had been committed with the knowledge and consent of the elected candidate, state names of persons guilty of corrupt practice, and whether corrupt practices had extensively prevailed at the election. Under Ontario’s 1871 Controverted Elections Act, a candidate or an elector found guilty of corruption was to be stripped of his political rights (voting, holding office) for eight years. Oxford had two controverted voice-vote elections (1844 and 1857).

20

Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

A third trial, for South Oxford’s 1875 Ontario provincial controverted election, came immediately after government’s adoption of the secret ballot (1874) and used the 1871 trial process (a judge ‘sitting in open court without a jury’). The evidence and judgment issuing from the 1875 trial reflected favourably on the 1871 trial process. It also indicated that treating and bribery were no strangers to Oxford’s electors. Local Government, the Civil Service, and Elections in Oxford In 1841 Governor Sydenham introduced ministerial responsibility for the civil service and, with the Legislative Assembly, elective bodies for local government. The province’s further development of these initiatives touched on Oxford’s provincial elections in several ways. First, it removed ‘parish-pump’ matters from the business of the Legislative Assembly, and hence, as election issues. Second, democratic practices in local government presaged initiatives in provincial elections, such as the introduction of a qualification for tenants and occupants in townships (1855) and an assessment franchise with electors’ lists (1858). Third, a rapid expansion of the civil service deepened the wellspring for patronage appointments. Patronage, in turn, furnished ministry candidates with carrots for recruiting friends and sticks for disciplining apostates and opponents. Elective Local Government (1841–1874) Local government in Upper Canada (1791–1840) was so inefficient that purely local matters, such as the raising of funds for roads and bridges, consumed the sessions of the Legislative Assembly. Justices of the peace meeting in District Courts of Quarter Sessions nominally dealt with local government in addition to their judicial responsibilities. In practice, the colony had too few competent magistrates to meet the need. The quarter session courts also had an abysmal record for collecting taxes, notably from absentee landowners.46 Effective local government began with an 1841 act that created elective district councils (the Brock District Council for Oxford) and mandated them to make by-laws for local needs such as the construction of roads and bridges, the erection of public buildings, the establishment of and support for schools, the administration of justice, the payment of salaries to district and township officials, and the raising of taxes. The District Council comprised the councillors of the townships with-

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in the district’s boundaries and three officials who were appointed by the governor: a warden to chair its quarterly meetings, a clerk, and a treasurer. The elective principle applied at the township level. At its annual meeting, each township elected one councillor (two if it had more than 300 ratepayers). The electors comprised all freeholders and householders (tenants) on the township’s assessment roll (without reference to the ratepayer’s age, sex, or naturalization); the collector was to furnish the town clerk with a certified list of freeholders and householders entered on the last assessment roll – effectively, a municipal electors’ list. A candidate or any three electors present could demand a poll; if this happened, then the poll followed immediately on nominations, ‘to be kept open to an hour and not later than three in the afternoon.’ The town clerk, acting as returning officer, recorded and tallied the votes, closed the election with a declaration of the person(s) elected, and delivered a voters’ list (effectively, a Poll Book) to the district’s clerk of the peace. A councillor-elect had to meet a £300 property qualification and was subject to a fine if he refused to serve. The township’s sole function was its annual meeting; it had neither power nor responsibility for local government.47 An 1846 act directed the district councillors to elect one of their own to the position of warden. Similarly, the council, not the governor, was to appoint the clerk and treasurer. Councillors were to receive an indemnity of 6s.3d per day for attending meetings, which henceforth were held bi-annually rather than quarterly. The 1849 ‘Baldwin Act’ made major changes to provide what proved to be a permanent structure for local government. First, it abolished the districts and assigned local government to county councils (hitherto the county had been the unit for representation in the Legislative Assembly and organization of the militia). The County Council comprised reeves and deputy reeves from the constituent townships; the reeves elected one of their own as warden and council appointed the clerk and treasurer. The territorial change was nominal for Oxford because the boundaries of the county and the defunct Brock District coincided. Second, the 1849 act made the township the base unit for local government. At its annual meeting in January, the township was to elect a council of five. The councillors, in turn, elected one of their own to the position of reeve; they also elected a deputy reeve if the township had more than five hundred ratepayers. The reeve presided over the Township Council meetings and, with the deputy reeve if there was one, rep-

22

Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

resented the township on the County Council. Township councillors, and by extension county councillors, had a property qualification of £100, down from £300 under the 1841 act. As before, the electors comprised all freeholders and householders (tenants) on the township’s assessment roll, but in addition had to be resident in the township. The township councils were empowered to levy taxes, borrow money, and make by-laws to meet a growing range of local needs, such as the construction of drains, the suppression of weeds, the regulation of inns and taverns, and the taking of stock or the lending of money to incorporated bridge or road companies. They also appointed a growing number of officials, including three assessors and a collector, a pound keeper, a fence viewer, and an overseer of roads. Democratic practice in township local government – with voice-voting and a property qualification for electors and councillors – anticipated provisions for provincial elections. A municipal franchise for tenants and occupiers (‘householders’) and a de facto municipal electors’ list dated from 1841: fourteen years before the province’s enactment of a qualification for tenants and occupiers in townships, and seventeen years before its provision for electors’ lists. An 1850 act changed the municipal assessment of property from fixed value (mechanical) to real value and required municipalities to prepare annually assessment rolls and collector’s rolls; this, with the de facto electors’ lists (1841), was an assessment franchise, eleven years before the province enacted such for provincial elections.48 An 1866 Municipal Act narrowed the franchise to male freeholders, resident or not, and male householders (tenants) who were resident in the municipality one month before the election, British subjects, and ‘of the full age of 21 years.’ In addition, electors were to be rated at $100 in townships and police villages (Tillsonburg); $300 in incorporated villages (Embro); and $400 in towns (Woodstock and Ingersoll). The qualification for councillors was now $400 freehold or $800 leasehold in townships, $600 freehold or $1,200 leasehold in villages, and $800 freehold or $1,600 leasehold in towns.49 The Public Service (1841–1867) The Canada West years saw the public service evolve from ‘a disheartening scene of administrative incompetence’ into ‘an administrative machine which, with few fundamental changes,’ remained intact after Confederation.50 In 1841 Governor Sydenham made cabinet min-

The Oxford Ridings and Structures

23

isters responsible for particular departments. Unity of command was vested in the governor until 1849 and then in the cabinet. Permanent deputy ministers gave stability to departments, given the turnover of their political heads. The number of civil servants for the Province of Canada rose from 437 in 1842 to 2,660 in 1867; headquarters staff (the ‘inside service’) were 21 per cent of the 1842 total and 13 per cent of the 1867 total, with the balance being field staff (the ‘outside service’). These numbers excluded ‘the large judicial staff and the employees of the legislative branch,’ as well as the staff of post offices.51 Civil service positions were primarily patronage appointments. Although a change of ministry did not bring about wholesale dismissals, as in the United States, ministries did fill positions as they became vacant, with partisan interests in mind. The public service was a key mechanism for governance at the local level. The state regulated, taxed, and delivered services through an army of local agents on commission. For every public servant at headquarters, three were in the field. The postal service exemplified the outreach of the public service into rural communities. In 1842 Canada had some 450 post offices, each staffed by a postmaster who was paid by fees; the province had 840 post offices by 1852 and 2,300 by 1867.52 In 1862 the Toronto Globe likened the postmaster to a ‘country storekeeper [who], for the accommodation of his neighbours, takes charge of their letters and papers, receiving therefore the “paltry” amounts of £5 or £10 per year’ ($20 to $40).53 The commissions for town post offices were more substantial; for a nine-month period ending in June 1864, they were $877 for Woodstock and $826 for Ingersoll. Mail delivery contracts were a second arm of the postal service. In 1865 the postmaster general let 1,100 delivery contracts at a cost of $130,000 to reach communities that were not on a railway line. In 1864 his office paid $974 to Edwin Doty for operating a mail stage out of Ingersoll, daily to Port Burwell and tri-weekly to Lakeside.54 Finally, the postmaster general was a patron of local newspapers. In 1861 he purchased subscriptions to fifty-six local journals in which he advertised local schedules for dispatching and receiving mail, as well as lists of unclaimed letters; his payments to three Oxford County newspapers totalled $51.95. Patronage was deployed as a stick as well as a carrot. On 10 December 1858, for example, the postmaster general fired the Ingersoll postmaster, Charles E. Chadwick, for making disparaging remarks about the governor general for his acceptance of John A. Macdonald’s ‘double shuffle’ ministry of the previous August. Whereas Chadwick was a

24

Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

Brownite, the four local petitioners for his removal, like the postmaster general, were Conservatives. The Voice-Vote Method of Election Under the voice-vote method, an elector gave his suffrage by appearing before the returning officer and verbally declaring his name, the location of the property that entitled him to vote, his legal addition (occupation), and the candidate for whom he voted. The poll clerk recorded his declarations in the Poll Book. Voice voting in Canada dated from Britain’s introduction of elected representative assemblies for Upper Canada and Lower Canada in 1791. It ended in 1874, when government adopted voting by secret ballot for Dominion, Ontario provincial, and Ontario municipal elections. The protocol for voice-vote elections became increasingly elaborate through to 1849 but was simplified after 1866. It started in 1840 with a single hustings poll and six polling days that began immediately after the hustings nominations. The 1842 and 1849 Elections Acts required a poll in each township; reduced polling days from six to two, as well as separating them from nominations (by six to ten days in 1849); and provided for an official hustings declaration of the member-elect (within ten days of the opening of the polls in 1849). Where more than one candidate accepted nomination, the acts provided for a show of hands to determine which candidate had a majority; if no losing candidate demanded a poll, then the show of hands decided the election. Such was the voice-vote system in full bloom. Then government began to dismantle it on the eve of Confederation. An 1866 act eliminated the show of hands and the hustings declaration. Government reduced polling from two days to one, for Ontario provincial elections in 1869 and for Dominion elections in 1871.55 Finally, provincial and Dominion statutes in 1874 abolished the voice-vote system. The 1874 Dominion statute also abolished the hustings nominations. Thus, only in provincial elections did the hustings retain its original meaning: an elevated platform at the place of election from which the returning officer, candidates, and nominators of candidates addressed an assemblage of electors before them.56 Voice-voting suited local societies based on hierarchy and deference, such as obtained in Oxford localities with important patron-client relationships and the half-pay-officer settlement in Woodstock. In such societies voice-voting was legitimate, useful to patron and client alike,

The Oxford Ridings and Structures

25

and a ‘manly’ act. Conversely, British and colonial regimes resisted the secret ballot because of its association with radical democracy, in Britain following the Great Reform Bill of 1832, and in Canada West following the introduction of responsible government on a party basis in 1849. In Canada, as in Britain, a waning popularity of democratic reforms during the 1850s made possible the adoption of the secret ballot in the early 1870s. The former development stripped the secret ballot of its radical connotations, thereby making it palatable to anti-democratic politicians. The adoption of the secret ballot was a sudden, unanticipated development in the mother country,57 but in Canada it was a culmination of government initiatives, dating from 1842, to make elections more orderly. The change itself did not imply a collapse of hierarchy and deference; indeed, in the mother country, the erosion of deference followed the adoption of the secret ballot. In Oxford and neighbouring ridings, the secret ballot was enacted with little public interest or demand.

2 Ethnicity, Social Class, and Orangemen in Oxford County

Voters’ choices of candidate in Oxford elections were clustered by social groups, some of which mattered more than others. These clustered differences, in turn, affected the electoral tallies for democratic issues such as the governor’s prerogatives, the disposition of revenue from the Clergy Reserves, and the status of publicly funded sectarian schools. This chapter opens with discussion of ethnicity and social class as historically grounded concepts. It then gives examples of social groups in the Oxfords to lay groundwork for the book’s findings about social influences on electors. As demonstrated through quantitative analysis in Chapters 4, 6, and 7, ethno-religious differences powerfully influenced voters’ choices in Oxford County throughout the period of study; the influence was stable for some groups, such as American immigrants and English-born Anglicans, but changed decisively in the case of Scottish Presbyterians. As shown in this chapter, social class formations on the hierarchical model mattered in Oxford elections of the 1840s, but not in later elections; social class formations on the three-class and industrial two-class models were unimportant in Oxford’s elections through to 1874; and Orange votes and violence played a marginal role in Oxford elections through the years of study. The chapter closes with discussion of how the social influences on voters differed somewhat between the Oxfords and nearby ridings. Ethnicity and Social Class as Concepts Ethnicity as a Dynamic Historical Entity Ethnic (and ethno-religious) identity is dynamic, historical, and specific to place. Old World ethnic formations, for example, were more local-

Ethnicity, Social Class, and Structures

27

ized and variegated than broad categories such as ‘English’ imply. Early nineteenth-century Britain, writes Cole Harris, was ‘a patchwork of regional cultures and identities.’ If immigrants ‘very generally … identified themselves as British, or Scots, or Irish, [then] more tangibly they were Highlanders from the Isle of Lewis, or Yorkshire men and women who, at close range, came from a particular vale.’ With the exception of Gaelic-speakers in the Highlands, ‘English was their predominant but by no means only language, and English dialects were often barely mutually comprehensible. Accents, house types, tools, songs, and stories were, for the most part, vernacular and local. Local worlds were intensely known, horizons close by, and the world beyond somewhat threatening.’ Immigration to British North America uprooted them from their local worlds and thrust them into a new world of ethnic differences. In time this experience eased local identities into larger ones.1 Ethnicity in Canada, insists Brian Clarke, is ‘a new social form rather than an Old World survival ... Ethnicity is not a fixed identity that is merely inherited. Rather ethnicity is constantly in the process of being remade and reformulated by people. Culture, including customs and tradition, is mobilized to achieve specific goals in response to a particular social situation and is itself redefined in the process of ethnic formation.’2 In Clarke’s study, Irish Catholic ethnicity in Toronto developed from scratch after 1850. Two influences were the rise of ultramontanism (Roman Catholic renewal with top-down clerical authority) and the rise of Irish nationalism, with its goal of separating the homeland from Britain. Clarke downplays the role of exogenous shocks, such as Orange Protestant provocations. Conversely, he highlights endogenous influences: lay activism in voluntary associations, some under Church control, and others not, such as the nationalist Hibernian Society, which stressed Catholicism but was independent of clerical control. Sarah Gibson captures the complexity of Scottish Canadian ethnic formation in Montreal. After acknowledging the influence of outward forms (the St Andrew’s Society) and public discourses (Presbyterian Calvinism, a psychology of improvement), she emphasizes the subjective component in the process, showing how letters to and from relatives in the homeland constructed an identity that was neither Scottish nor Canadian, but Scottish Canadian.3 Social Class as a Concept: Three Models The literature offers guidelines for understanding social class as a descriptor of social inequality. First, the ambiguous language of social

28

Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

class fits three overlapping idealized models of social description: a providentially mandated hierarchy (individuals in a gradation of ranks and gradations within ranks), a three-class model (upper, middle, lower), and a Marxist two-class model (employers and wage-workers).4 Second, social class is two-dimensional, comprising a shared objective circumstance, such as a relationship to the means of production, and a subjective component, wherein individuals are conscious of and guided by their objective class location. Third, class in its subjective sense develops through experience in variegated local contexts. Fourth, class boundaries may be permeable; in David Burley’s Brantford, individuals enter, exit, and in some cases re-enter his target group of self-employed men. Fifth, a self-conscious social class may develop with or without a relationship of conflict with another class. Sixth, class is an important tool for social description, but not the only one; ‘there is more to life and living,’ insists David Cannadine, ‘than work and working.’5 Ethnic and Ethno-Religious Formation in Oxford County Zorra’s Highland-Scottish Presbyterians Highland-Scottish Presbyterians in Zorra Township were an early ethnic formation in Oxford.6 Four Highlanders started the settlement in 1820, a year after the township’s survey. Group migrations followed in 1829, 1832, and 1849–50. The first settlers were largely from Sutherland-Shire; as clan names evidenced, later arrivals came from other Highland shires and even some Lowland shires. The Highlanders were Gaelic-speakers. ‘Hardly one of the hundreds that arrived in Hamilton last summer,’ reported the Hamilton Gazette in 1852, ‘could speak a word in English, and they had to make their wants known by signs.’7 Clan ties provided additional social cement. In 1852 the Oxford Gazetteer identified West Zorra’s ‘Highland Scotch’ by their clan names; the two enumerators for the township’s agricultural census had returned ‘64 McKays; 25 Murrays; 24 Rosses; 19 Sutherlands; 15 McLeods; and 13 McDonalds.’ Zorra’s Highlanders were solidly Presbyterian; their homogeneity contrasted with the Highlanders of Glengarry County, Canada West, whose clansmen were a mix of Presbyterians and Roman Catholics.8 The division of Zorra into two townships in 1845 left the main body of Highlanders in West Zorra. Nevertheless, the 1861 census located clansmen in neighbouring townships: East Zorra had clusters of McKays, Murrays, Rosses, and Sutherlands; and East Nissouri had numbers of

Ethnicity, Social Class, and Structures

29

McDonalds, McKays, Mackenzies, McLeods, Rosses, and Sutherlands. Conversely, a minority in West Zorra were non-Highlanders. The 1871 census reported 63 per cent of the township’s population as Scottish, leaving 37 per cent who were not. The Highlanders had emigrated from an Old Country society in turmoil. At the centre of change were the Highland Clearances, a process in which landlords ‘cleared’ lands of peasant small farmers and replaced them with sheep. As Eric Richards writes, ‘The Highland Clearances caused the displacement and dispersion of many thousands of common people ... [They] were also connected with the parallel decline of Gaelic culture and with an enduring sense of loss, grievance and desolation. The experience is widely regarded as a great historical “tragedy” and it has generated a long debate about who or what was to be blamed ... The Clearances created a permanent sense of injustice against the Highland landlords and their managers.’9 The SutherlandShire clearances occurred in stages during the years 1811–21, precisely when Sutherland-Shire men founded the Zorra settlement.10 The million-acre estate of the Duchess of Sutherland, writes Richards, had ‘the most extensive and the most sensational of all the clearances ... [they] were rugged, coerced removals, and were executed in the teeth of sullen withdrawal of cooperation by the people.’11 In his 1899 memoir, Pioneer Life in Zorra, the Rev. W.A. Mackay (1842–1905) remembered that his Zorra forebears ‘left their native land, not as a matter of choice, but from necessity forced upon them by the covetousness of Highland landlords.’ Yet in his introduction to Mackay’s book, George W. Ross stressed that most Scots emigrated by choice to become landowners in a land without lairds: ‘this one fact was a silver lining to the darkest cloud that hung over them.’12 In this regard J.M. Bumsted argues that the emigrants demonized the lairds – ‘we left because we had no choice’ – to expiate their guilt over having abandoned those left behind.13 In the event, the immigrants’ myth of the Clearances was one influence on Highlander- and Scottish-ethnic formations in Oxford County. The mythology of the Clearances might have inclined the Zorra Highlanders towards democracy. Perhaps it did, in certain ways. Emigration itself expressed resistance against anti-emigration landlords, who wished to retain and redeploy the labour of their peasants. Church matters in the Old Country provided a second expression of anti-landlordism. In 1843, opposition in Scotland’s state church, the Kirk of Scotland, to the laird’s right to choose a congregation’s new minister produced a breakaway Free Church of Scotland. On the surface, the ‘Great Disrup-

30

Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

tion’ was irrelevant in Canada, a land with no lairds. Even so, in 1845 the congregations in Zorra, Woodstock, and Ingersoll overwhelmingly voted to join the Free Church when required to choose between the Free Church and the Kirk.14 Arguably, their preference expressed residual anti-landlordism. Conversely, the congregation’s right to ‘call’ a new minister – the founding principle of the Free Church – represented an increase of democracy in church matters. Such democracy came at a cost: by leaving the Kirk, Canada’s Free Church pastors and congregations forfeited their claim to state financial support, such as a share of the revenues from the Clergy Reserves. Nevertheless, the Zorra Highlanders made conservative political choices through to 1851. In 1837 some two hundred of them rallied to militia colours in Embro to march against William Lyon Mackenzie’s rebel army. In 1844 the electors of Zorra voted decisively for the High Tory candidate, Robert Riddell, who campaigned on defence of the Crown’s prerogatives. In the 1851 Oxford general election, which was a de facto plebiscite on establishment religion, they gave a majority of their suffrages to the Conservative candidate, who opposed the secularization of revenues from the Clergy Reserves. Three explanations come to mind for these conservative choices. First, Highland tradition included service in Britain’s Highland regiments. In fact, English recruiters regarded clansmen as their best soldiers, being relatively free of levelling influences. The Highlanders’ service against the American Revolutionary Army assisted their emigration to North America, while leaving them in bad odour in the United States. Simply put, rallying to the Crown against rebellion was what Highlanders did. Second, Zorra’s Highlanders were, or expected to become, landowners in a settler society that disparaged tenancy; the franchise of Canada West, based on the ownership of property, was attractive from this perspective.15 Third, as Bumsted argues, the Highlanders viewed the liberty of North America as freedom from certain disadvantages, rather than as freedom to do something new and different. However, Marianne McLean counters that the Highlanders engaged change and emigrated because of disappointing outcomes of change in the Highlands (the lairds’ redeployment of labour after the clearances), not change per se.16 ‘Scottish’ Ethnicity in Oxford County Oxford’s Gaelic-speaking Highlanders and English-speaking Low-

Ethnicity, Social Class, and Structures

31

landers gradually merged into a Scottish Canadian ethnic formation. This happened in part because a construction of pan-Scotland identity was underway in the Old Country. An ‘invented tradition,’ writes Eric Richards, ‘transmogrified the Highlander from an object of distrust and antipathy into a romantic figure. For this Dr Johnson and Sir Walter Scott take most responsibility. The Highlanders became fully assimilated into the Scottish national identity, a tartanised image towards which most Lowlanders and émigrés happily cleaved.’17 A second influence, on both sides of the Atlantic, was the inroad of the English language among Gaelic-speakers, who found English useful for getting on in the world. The Presbyterian Church in the village of Embro monitored the change in Zorra; it held Sunday morning services in Gaelic and afternoon services in English until 1873, but then reversed the order. Presbyterian religion gave Highlanders and Lowlanders additional common ground for a merged Scottish identity. Among 1,537 Scotland-born adult males in the North riding in 1861, 86 per cent were Presbyterian (Free Church, Kirk of Scotland or United Presbyterian). The appearance of Highland Games marked the transition from the Highland-Scottish identity to a Lowlander-led pan-Scotland one. As John Gibson argues in Traditional Gaelic Bagpiping, ‘Annually repeated, formal music and dance competitions’ were an alien concept in traditional Gaelic culture.18 The Highland Games originated in Englishspeaking towns along the Lowlands border in the 1850s and spread north into the Gaelic-speaking lands. Horse races, a Highland tradition, were eliminated. Organized sports, foot races, tossing the caber, and stone throwing were new. The ‘best-dressed Highlander’ competition was wholly contrived. If the Sword Dance was an authentic tradition, then the Highland Fling was an imagined one. Initially, there were few competitors because few local Gaels knew the dances. The spread of literacy changed bagpiping from spontaneous, informal, ear-learned music to written ‘marches to which the soldier does not march.’ Oxford County’s Scots mimicked the pan-Scotland ethnic formation in the Old Country. In 1848 they organized a Highland Society of Woodstock and Brock District ‘to perpetuate in the land of their adoption the manly sports and exercises of their fatherland.’ Thus began an annual field event, the Highland Games. The society offered prizes, paid for by competitors’ entry fees, for Highland dress, playing of the bagpipes, dances (Highland Fling and Sword Dance), and athletic events (hammer throw, putting the stone, throwing the bar, running leap, two hops and a leap, and foot race). All competitors were to wear the ‘Highland

32

Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

garb, or at least a Plaid Bonnet and Trews.’19 At the society’s inaugural event on Friday, 6 October 1848, members of the society assembled at Stevenson’s Hotel and marched to the competition ground, where the spectators – the largest assemblage ever in Woodstock – numbered in the thousands and came from all nationalities; the venue for bagpipe playing and highland dancing, ‘a large room of the Albert House,’ was ‘filled to overflowing and hundreds had to remain outside.’ These developments came later among the Highland Scots of West Zorra. In 1856 the Highland Society of Embro received its charter from a parent organization, the Highland Society of Hamilton and Canada West.20 Old Country National Societies in Oxford County National societies expressed and developed ethnic identities in ‘manly’ terms. Named after national patron saints, they gave discretionary relief to deserving indigent nationals and held public dinners on their national days: 17 March for St Patrick’s Societies (initially for all Sons of Ireland, but later for Roman Catholics only); 23 April, St George’s Societies (Sons of England); and 30 November, St Andrew’s Societies (Sons of Scotland). Fittingly, four of Woodstock’s five wards were named for national patron saints: St George’s, St Andrew’s, St Patrick’s, and St David’s (Wales). National societies took root in Woodstock during the 1840s.21 In 1843 the St George’s Society served ‘Englishmen, Welshmen, and descendants of the same.’ Beginning in 1844, members of the St George’s and St Andrew’s societies dined together to celebrate each other’s national day ‘without any of the national discords so common in this place on such occasions.’ Only one disturbance, much regretted by his own nationals, occurred when an Englishman took exception to the singing of the Scottish national song, Kail Brose of Auld Scotland, at the St Andrew’s Society dinner in 1845.22 In 1844 a Sutherland in Highland costume bore the banner of St Andrew’s, an example of how the Highland and Scottish identities were merging. In April 1848, as noted above, the newly founded Highland Society of Woodstock and Brock District organized the town’s first Highland Games. In 1849 the Woodstock British American advertised that ‘Irishmen and the sons of Irishmen’ were to celebrate the anniversary of St Patrick at Stephenson’s Royal Oak Hotel; whether or not a St Patrick’s Society existed went unmentioned. National societies appeared a decade or so later in Ingersoll. A St George’s Society was founded in 1858. In the absence of a St Patrick’s

Ethnicity, Social Class, and Structures

33

Society, the Roman Catholic Church hosted an entertainment to celebrate Ireland’s national day in 1861 and 1862; in 1863 it moved festivities to the Town Hall, where it held an afternoon bazaar and an evening ‘Grand Concert’ with music, a drama ‘Ireland as It Is,’ and a farce, ‘Box and Cox.’23 The 100th birthday of the Scottish bard, ‘Rabbie’ Burns (1759–1796) was on 25 January 1859; in what became an annual event, an Ingersoll Burn’s Club honoured the occasion with a public dinner.24 Although Ingersoll Scots held a public dinner on their national day in 1862, they did not organize a St Andrew’s Society until 1870.25 Nativity and Religion in Oxford County Oxford’s ethnic formations developed from variable mixes of nativity and religious affiliation. This was evidenced in the county’s 1861 manuscript census returns for 10,267 adult males. In terms of nativity, 91 per cent of the Scots were Presbyterian. Fifty per cent of the English and 47 per cent of the Irish Protestants were Anglican, but only 5 per cent of the Americans were. The Americans reported high proportions with nonconformist religions (42% Methodist, 26% Baptist) or no religion (7%). Eighty per cent of the county’s foreign-born Roman Catholics were Irish.26 Ethnicity and religious affiliation interacted in different ways. The key divide for the Irish-born was Roman Catholic versus Protestant – the denominational composition of Protestant was a lesser matter. The religious difference between the American-born and British-born, on the other hand, lay in their different denominational compositions within the Protestant group. After mid-century a growing proportion of the Oxford population was native-born: 56 per cent in 1852, 62 per cent, 1861, and 71 per cent, 1871.27 This raises the issue of how transference to the next generation modified ethnic identities. Nevertheless, immigrants were a larger proportion of the adult male population – the pool for electors – than of the general population. In 1861 they were 69 per cent the county’s adult males, compared with 38 per cent of all persons. Census Proxy Data for Measuring Ethnicity The 1852, 1861, and 1871 enumerations report the individual’s nativity and religion, but origin, classed by father’s place of birth for the Canadian-born, is reported in 1871 only. Nativity (place of birth) alone,

34

Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

origin alone, or either in combination with religion, are proxy statistics for ethnic and ethno-religious identity. The statistics can mislead for individuals. For example, John Barwick, a candidate in the 1863 North Oxford general election and a Scot, was born in France (nativity), where his Scottish father was an officer in the British Army of occupation. Many manuscript census entries for origin evidence uncertainty on the part of respondents, particularly in families of mixed origin.28 Religion and nativity (also religion and origin) are distinct but overlapping indicators of ethnic formations (e.g., Irish Catholic, Scottish Presbyterian). Thus, later chapters of the book use Probit, a type of regression analysis, to identify the independent statistical influences of religion and nativity on voters’ choices of candidate in five elections. Social Class in Oxford County Class as Hierarchy: Woodstock’s Half-Pay Officer Community, 1830–1855 The imperial authority intended Upper Canada (1791–1840) to develop a hierarchical society, headed by a natural governing class and an established Church, and preserving the governor’s prerogative from encroachments by the Legislative Assembly. Sir John Colborne, governor of Upper Canada (1828–36), envisaged a network of communities of ‘right-thinking men’ to counter democratic sentiment in counties such as Oxford. In response to his invitation, numbers of half-pay officers and their families emigrated from Britain to Blandford and nearby townships, where they laid out estates and founded the town of Woodstock.29 Their motivation was straightforward. Once commissioned, an officer was on the active list for life: that is, he never was retired, as in Canada’s twenty-first-century armed forces. With the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, however, Britain suddenly had more officers than active-service employments for them. Those without employment received half-pay as a retaining fee. Emigration appealed to those who had given up on employment. Oxford’s half-pay officer community included Vice-Admiral Henry Vansittart, Captain Philip Graham, Captain Andrew Drew, Col. Edmund Deedes, Major James Barwick, and the Rev. William Bettridge, an army lieutenant and rector of St Paul’s Anglican Church in Woodstock. Peter Boyle de Blaquière, arriving in 1837, was a younger son of an Irish peer; a former Royal Navy midshipman, who had served under Captain William Bligh of Bounty fame; and a legislative councillor in Canada’s

Ethnicity, Social Class, and Structures

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Upper House. William Lapenotière was a son of a post captain at Trafalgar. Robert Riddell, a Scot who married a daughter of Vice-Admiral Vansittart, was retired from service with the East India Company. Riddell’s cousin, Roger Rollo Hunter, had served as a lieutenant in the Company’s East Indian Bengal Artillery. ‘The early days of this new settlement,’ recalled an Anglican pastor, the Rev. Arthur Sweatman, were: a sort of Utopia. It was an experiment in transporting to, or reproducing in this new and free land of promise, the social customs and style of living of the old English county gentry. Everything was essentially English – the society, the church, even the names of the localities, Oxford, Blandford, Blenheim, Norwich, Woodstock; there was good family, even a certain degree of rank, a large number of retired officers of both services; wealth and university culture were represented by such as the Vansittarts, the De Blaquières, the three Farmer brothers and many others. And so we are told that the Woodstock of those halcyon days presented all the marks of English fashionable life; handsome equipages with liveried servants rolling along the street; fine houses in spacious and beautifully laid out grounds rising up throughout the neighbourhood; gay entertainments and notably the cricket club to keep alive the noblest and best loved of English sports.

This self-conscious community flourished during the 1830s and 1840s, but then slipped into obscurity. As Sweatman reminisced in 1901, ‘All this has passed away like a dream surviving only in some still honoured names and in a memory that lingers round the place with a pleasant old-time fragrance.’30 Loosely allied with the Woodstock elite were old-settler Tories, American-born or with American-born parents. Examples were James Carroll (1791–1870), the county sheriff (1840–62) and a major in the First Regiment Oxford of the militia; and Peter Carroll (1806–1876), a nephew of Sheriff Carroll and a native of Oxford, who became wealthy as a land surveyor and protégé of Mahlon Burwell. Another was James Ingersoll (1801–1886), a native of Oxford, a defeated candidate in the 1836 election, and the county registrar (1834–86). During the 1820s, his businesses – sawmill, hotel, gristmill, store, distillery, and ashery – had established the hamlet of Ingersoll (an incorporated village in 1852 and a town in 1865). He was a son of Thomas Ingersoll, after whom the community was named, and a brother to Laura Ingersoll Secord (1775– 1868), heroine of the Battle of Beaver Dams in the War of 1812–14. James Ingersoll’s late brother Charles (1791–1832), elected for Oxford in 1824

36

Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

and 1830, had been married to a sister of William Hamilton Merritt, the Niagara merchant, promoter, and politician. In 1848 James’s position as county registrar forced his removal from Ingersoll to Woodstock. To summarize, social class mattered in Oxford County’s politics during the early years of Union. Woodstock, the county seat, had a hierarchical class society, headed by a High Tory elite group. Military pensions, appointments to offices in local government, income from estates, as well as business ventures, sustained the elite group’s social location and culture. But the group was in decline by the 1850s. The introduction of elected local government and responsible government on a party basis during the 1840s fatally weakened the group’s grip on patronage and sounded the death knell to its vision of society. Its support was weak outside of Woodstock, and Oxford’s abundance of land for new settlers exerted a levelling influence. Oxford’s elections monitored the waxing and waning of the elite community’s influence. The community produced two elected members during the early years of this study: Roger Rollo Hunter in 1838–41 and Robert Riddell in 1844–47. John George Vansittart, son of Admiral Vansittart, carried its colours in a losing cause in 1851. John Barwick, son of a half-pay officer in Blandford and defeated as a Conservative candidate in 1863, was its most prominent politician during the last years of the Union. Persistent support for the Hincksite-Conservative coalition in four of Woodstock’s five wards evidenced the strength of its fading legacy; not until 1874 did a Brownite candidate poll a majority of the votes from Woodstock. Meanwhile, the old-settler stream of Oxford Toryism produced James Carroll and James Ingersoll, the returning officers for Oxford elections, but no winning candidate. Peter Carroll, a contestant in seven elections, was seven times defeated. Social Class on the Two- and Three-Class Models: Unimportant in Oxford’s Elections When, and to what extent, then, did class on the two-class or threeclass models acquire purchase as a descriptor of social inequalities in the Oxfords? The literature offers possibilities for a rural underclass, a rural middle class, two versions of an urban middle class, and a wageearning working class. None of these possibilities convincingly fitted Oxford County before 1875, the end year for this study. In their analysis of manuscript census data for rural Ontario in 1871, Gordon Darroch and Lee Soltow reject the notion that rural Ontario

Ethnicity, Social Class, and Structures

37

developed a proletarian underclass.31 Although they demonstrate persistent structures of inequality – a sharp divide between owners and non-owners, and between those who owned much and those who owned little or nothing – they also show that land ownership increased sharply with age and the great majority eventually gained a foothold. Effectively, the structures of inequality reflected an orderly pattern of life-course acquisition by individuals. Immigrants accurately saw Ontario as a land of opportunity for acquiring small property. Access to land was more open than in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland and similar to that of northern American states. The province’s abundant supply of land, the authors speculate, kept urban labour costs relatively high and attenuated working-class consciousness. A complimentary finding, by Catherine Wilson, is that the percentage of land occupiers who were tenants dropped from 43 in 1848 to 15 in 1871 (from 39 to 18 in Oxford).32 Darroch’s argument for the emergence of a middle class of ‘betteroff farmers’ between 1861 and 1871 is less convincing.33 Certain of his evidence – empirical indicators of behaviours judged to be middle class – works against his finding. In 1861 just 4.3 per cent of medium-sized farm households had a servant – ‘an essential part of any middle class household’ – and the percentage followed a declining trend; although the ‘middle class’ led a drop in marital fertility, the mean number of children on medium-sized farms was above average and rising between 1861 and 1871. Urban class formation developed in variegated local contexts. Thus, findings in the literature vary according to the urban place(s) that are selected for study. Donald Akenson judges that Gananoque was not a community with social classes until the 1880s – a finding that squares with the literature about Ontario labour history.34 In Andrew Holman’s study of Galt and Goderich, a middle class with commercial, professional, and white-collar components developed during the ‘half century after 1850’; however, his evidence is not specific for the mid-1870s (the issue for this study), and his theory and evidence are not wholly satisfying for his findings.35 David Burley’s study of class formation in Brantford is another matter. His methodology is sophisticated, his evidence is wide-ranging and solid, and his time frame fits that of this study. What matters, then, is that his findings for class formation and politics in Brantford differ from those in this study for Oxford County. In Brantford, a town in the Brant West riding,36 unions, strikes, and a labour movement dated from

38

Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

the 1860s. In January 1872 Brantford had a public meeting, chaired by the mayor to discuss the Nine-Hour Movement, after which was organized the Brantford Nine Hour Workingman’s League.37 Working-class militancy was missing in Oxford. The Ingersoll Chronicle, like the town, ignored the Nine-Hour Movement and the associated printers’ strike in Toronto, save to blame Nine-Hour meetings on ‘Yankee agitators’ and to doubt ‘the propriety of having trade unions at all in this country ... Competent artisans can always secure employment at good wages. The talk of employees being oppressed by their employers in this country is the greatest absurdity.’38 In Oxford, a labour movement awaited the Knights of Labor in the 1880s.39 To extend the two-county comparison, Orangemen engaged in electoral violence in Brant County, but not in Oxford County. In Brantford, municipal politics became interlocked with provincial and Dominion politics and acquired partisan alignments, but this did not happen in Oxford. In Brantford, outside provincial and national forces were becoming more relevant to the town’s economic fortunes than local booster projects. Oxford also experienced this, but with a time lag; for example, municipal bonuses for proposed branch-line railways – a classic type of booster project – was an issue in Brant during the 1860s, but not in Oxford until the early 1870s. Effectively, the contiguous counties, Brant and Oxford, differed substantially from each other. The Brant town of Brantford resembled Hamilton and Toronto more than the Oxford towns of Woodstock and Ingersoll. In 1871 its population (8,107) was equal to the combined populations of the two Oxford towns (8,004). It had more large-scale industries and, hence, a larger wage-earning class. In 1871, for example, the Grand Trunk car shops employed three hundred men, and the C.H. Waterous Co. foundry employed 118. By contrast, Woodstock was more an administrative than an industrial centre: its four largest enterprises employing between twenty-five and thirty men. Ingersoll, on the other hand, was an industrial centre, with four enterprises employing fifty or more men. Yet, even the town’s largest business, Noxon Brothers, a manufacturer of farm implements with 103 employees, had neither union nor strike in its six-decade history, even in 1879 when it imposed a 10 per cent pay cut on its men.40 Meanwhile, Oxford’s trunk railway, the Great Western, had only tracks and nine stations in the county; its car shops were in Hamilton. To summarize, the towns in Oxford County lagged behind Brantford in urban-industrial development; their social class formation process

Ethnicity, Social Class, and Structures

39

was less advanced, and class issues were invisible in Oxford elections. The main issues in elections during the Union period were responsible government, establishment religion, and Canada West sectionalism. On all counts, ethnic and ethno-religious differences, not industrial social class differences, were the prime determinants of the electorate’s response. The Orange Order and Politics The Order in Canada West The Orange Order was a political-religious fraternal society, founded in Ireland in 1795 and introduced to Upper Canada by Irish Protestant immigrants during the 1820s. Its political principles, derived from Irish conditions, were loyalty to the monarchy and mother country; the defence of Protestantism against international Roman Catholicism; and a tradition of violence in support of those goals. Two developments provoked Canadian Orangemen during the Union period. The first was the rise of an authoritarian, cleric-centred ultramontanism within the Catholic Church, both in Canada and internationally; the second was the growing strength of Irish Catholic nationalism and its militant Fenian movement in the United States and Canada. Irish Protestant immigrants were the Canadian Order’s natural constituency. The Order followed Irish Protestant immigrants into Canada, and its growth followed closely the geography of Irish Protestant settlement. The sheer number of Irish Protestant immigrants gave the Order a high profile in the province, notably in the provincial capital, Toronto. The Irish were Canada’s largest European immigrant group, and Akenson estimates that two-thirds of them were Protestant. Nevertheless, the Order attracted non-Irish Protestants. Thus, while the Orange Order was founded in Ireland, it was a Protestant society, not an Irish national one.41 The number of Orange lodges increased rapidly after 1830, peaked during the 1850s when 550 lodges were organized, and then followed a flat trend. This pattern reflected the province’s high net immigration and vigorous population growth through to the mid-1850s and the prevalence of net emigration and slow population growth thereafter. Active members numbered in the thousands by the early 1850s, and thousands more had been members at one time.42 Nevertheless, Orange memberships were unstable. Lodges commonly lost members

40

Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

who moved away or let their dues lapse, and many lodges were shortlived. In ethnic, religious, and social composition, the lodge memberships tended to reflect the social composition of their communities.43 Over time, immigrants became a minority in an increasingly Canadian organization. From the 1830s into the 1850s, Orange politics included violence at public meetings and polls, bloc voting for Conservatives, and betweenelection demonstrations of strength: Orange processions on the 12th of July (anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne) and 5th of November (Guy Fawkes Day).44 Numerous street battles between the Orange and the Green erupted in Toronto, the ‘most Irish city in Canada,’ where Orangemen in alliance with Tory politicians controlled the city’s government, fire department, and, until 1858, police force.45 Yet Toronto was not the province. In Leeds and Lansdowne Township, east of Kingston, Orangemen railed against international Roman Catholicism, but left in peace their Roman Catholic neighbours.46 Orange violence provoked Reform party leaders to attempt a statutory remedy. In the early 1840s Robert Baldwin and his deputy, Francis Hincks, both Irish Protestants, sponsored three bills to curb Orangeprovoked disorder, although none of their bills mentioned the Order by name.47 The 1842 Freedom of Elections Act changed the electoral process to make intimidation difficult. The 1843 Bill for the Discouragement of Secret Societies, had it not been disallowed, would have barred members of secret societies (excepting Freemasons) from Crown appointments and innkeepers from hosting secret-society meetings. The 1843 Act to Restrain Party Processions in Certain Cases barred processions; this act proved to be unenforceable, and the Reform administration repealed it in 1851. The formation of the MacNab-Morin coalition ministry in 1854 strained the bond between the Orange Order and Conservatives, who were henceforth in alliance with francophone Roman Catholics from Canada East. In reaction to the coalition ministry, moreover, a rapidly growing Brownite party championed Canada West sectionalism and Protestantism.48 In this context, the Orange Order divided into two factions, the one under Ogle Gowan, who favoured the Conservatives, and the other under George Benjamin, who leaned towards the Brownites. Orangemen in Oxford County The Orange Order had a low profile in Oxford, in part because Irish Protestants comprised a smaller part of population in the county than

Ethnicity, Social Class, and Structures

41

in the province. Although the Irish were the largest European immigrant group in Canada West, the English and Scottish were each twice as numerous as the Irish in Oxford County. Of Oxford’s 7,024 foreignborn adult males in 1861, 16 per cent were natives of Ireland; 33 per cent, England; 30 per cent, Scotland; and 15 per cent, United States. Just 58 per cent of the Ireland-born were Protestants: a notably smaller proportion than Akenson’s estimate of two-thirds for the province.49 In Oxford, as elsewhere, non-Irish Protestants bolstered lodge memberships. Thirty of the forty-seven members of Woodstock’s L.O.L. No. 93 matched names in the 1852 manuscript census, and twenty-six were foreign-born; of these, eighteen had English or Scottish nativity and only six, Irish. Of thirty-nine representatives of lodges in the Order’s District Lodge No. 22 (South Oxford) for the years 1857–59, twentyeight matched names in the 1861 manuscript census, and twenty-five were foreign-born; of these, fourteen were Irish, and nine were natives of England or Scotland.50 The number of Orange lodges in Oxford County increased rapidly until the 1860s and then entered a sharp declining trend. The twentyfour warrants issued for county lodges before 1874 included five for the 1840s and sixteen for the 1850s, but just three thereafter. By 1866, eleven of fifteen Oxford lodges were dormant.51 During the 1840s Oxford’s Orangemen rarely marched in procession on the 12th of July; more commonly they dined together at their lodges. In 1843, with Woodstock’s LOL No. 2004 ‘being yet in its teens,’ its members thought it ‘advisable to dispense with public display. [Nevertheless] the hostile attitude of the Irish Catholics and in some instances the actual commission of violence … would justify an open and fearless display of our strength.’52 In 1848, reported the Woodstock Monarch, ‘the Orange Lodges of [Oxford] … did not walk in procession on the recent anniversary of the glorious Battle of the Boyne. So far they have acted differently from their brethren in Toronto, London, etc.’53 A quest for respectability tempered violence among Orangemen in Oxford. In 1849 and 1850, the LOL No. 93 fined three brothers for being drunk and using violent language (one case), and expelled a fourth brother for disorderly conduct and using profane language.54 The Ingersoll Chronicle reported 12th of July processions in Ingersoll (in 1857 and 1862); and Culloden, Dereham, and Embro (in 1859). ‘At 10 a.m.’ of the 12th in Ingersoll in 1857, members from Woodstock, Otterville, Norwich, Burgessville, Dereham, Eastwood, Dorchester, and Culloden lodges arrived with bands of music.

42

Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875 After assembling at ‘Maple Grove’ on King Street, they formed in procession and walked through the principal streets. Then they returned to the Grove, where the Rev. Mr Wallace of the Free Presbyterian Church addressed the estimated 3,000 persons present ... At this point, Mr William McAndrew of Woodstock, the [Order’s] County Secretary, ascended the platform and said that he had a very painful announcement which he felt it his duty to make. It was in substance as follows: ‘As a member of the Orange Association, in Toronto on Sunday last, was leaving the church where his child had just been baptized, the infant was wrested from him by a number of Roman Catholics, one of whom had hold of the child by the feet, and raising it, dashed it on the stone pavement, strewing its mangled corpse in every direction. While endeavouring to arrest the murderer, several men had been shot. This is what has been told me by a gentleman who has just arrived from Toronto. At the announcement [which the Chronicle declared to be false] the audience became much excited.55

In 1859 ‘not less than three thousand people’ and bands from Ingersoll and Tillsonburg attended the Orange gathering at Culloden; in the evening ‘a number of the members returned to Ingersoll and paraded our principal streets, preceded by the fife and drum.’ On a less public note, Orangemen celebrated the 5th of November (Guy Fawkes Day) with a lodge dinner, in Dereham in 1858, Ingersoll and Thamesford in 1859, and Culloden in 1861. In December 1859 Orangemen packed the Ingersoll Town Hall to receive an address from Ogle Gowan, the Provincial Order’s past grand master.56 Yet the sole reported instance of violence in Oxford County involving the Order was directed against Orangemen. On the 12th of July 1848 in Norwich – an ‘ultra-radical hole, which was the headquarters of Duncombe’s “army”’ – local rowdies tried but failed to disrupt a lodge dinner put on by local Orangemen for visitors from a Woodstock lodge.57 Oxford’s Orangemen favoured Conservative candidates, but their votes were few. In Oxford’s 1851 Oxford general election, Woodstock’s L.O.L. No. 93 resolved ‘that this Lodge 93 will support John G. Vansittart, Esq.,’ the Conservative candidate. Yet of the lodge’s forty-seven members (in 1849), only twelve voted, and two of their votes went to Francis Hincks, the Reform candidate and no friend of Orangemen.58 In South Oxford’s 1861 general election, eight of the eleven electors who had ‘brought out’ Stephen Richards, the Hincksite-Conservative candidate, were Orangemen.59 Yet just nineteen of the thirty-nine representa-

Ethnicity, Social Class, and Structures

43

tives of lodges in the Order’s District No. 22 (for the years 1857–59) voted in 1861, fifteen of them for Richards.60 Although unimportant in Oxford County, Orange votes and violence mattered in the neighbouring riding of Brant West. Population differences between their towns may party explain their contrasting experiences with Orangemen. In 1861, compared with Woodstock and Ingersoll in Oxford, the Brant West town of Brantford had more Roman Catholics (19% vs. 11%); more Irish in its immigrant population (33% vs. 16%); and more Roman Catholics in its Irish-born adult male population (50% vs. 44%).61 It also had a larger, more militant working class, with which Orangemen may have interacted. Conclusion Ethnic identities were dynamic and historical, not fixed entities that passed directly from the Old World to the new. Religion and nativity intermixed in the process of ethnic formation. Irish natives divided into Roman Catholics and Protestants. Nearly all Roman Catholics were Irish natives and their progeny. Scots in Oxford were Presbyterian, and nearly all Presbyterians were Scots. Natives of the United States were linked closely to nonconformist religions. The founding of national societies expressed and contributed to ethnic formations in Oxford. These societies proliferated in Woodstock during the 1840s and Ingersoll a decade or so later. Social class differences on the hierarchical model influenced voters’ choices in Oxford during the 1840s, but social class differences on the industrial two-class and three-class models did not matter in Oxford elections during the period of study. Orange lodges played a modest role in local politics, in part because Oxford’s population was less Irish than the larger provincial population or the population in Toronto. Orangemen gave a majority of their votes to Conservative candidates, but the number of their votes polled was small. Lastly, the social influences on voters’ choices in Oxford County differed from those in neighbouring Brant County. Labour movements and Orange violence mattered in the Brant town of Brantford, but not in the Oxford towns of Woodstock and Ingersoll. Differences in economic structure and population composition underlay their contrasting political cultures.

3 Elections in Oxford County, 1838–1848

Two fundamentals of democracy are that ‘the people’ govern themselves through their elected representatives and that their elected representatives possess executive powers. The Province of Canada had the first of these tenets, an elective Legislative Assembly dating from 1791, but the second, control of executive powers, was a fiercely contested, unresolved issue during the 1840s. Control of executive powers was the overriding issue in Oxford County elections held during the years 1838 to 1848. Oxford’s High Tories wanted democracy stalled. They defended a ‘squire-and-parson’ hierarchical model of society, with establishment churches and the governor’s prerogatives and control of patronage. The county’s Reformers, on the other hand, pushed for colonial self-government, the separation of church and state, and the passage of executive powers and patronage to the Legislative Assembly. Democratic reform was in bad odour in Oxford County in the aftermath of the failed 1837 western rebellion, but was rehabilitated and in the ascendancy during the 1840s. Local Reformers recruited Francis Hincks of Toronto to their colours and, in the process, imported the rudiments of a Baldwinite political party. Hincks contested five elections and won four of them. In reaction, High Tories disparaged parties, put up ‘loose fish’ candidates, and won two elections. The elections were less than fair. Election officials assisted High Tory candidates by disqualifying numbers of American-born electors. In 1844 a High Tory ministry turned the trial of Oxford’s 1844 controverted general election, lost by Hincks, into a partisan-contaminated farce. Oxford held elections under the voice-vote method. The 1838, 1841, and 1842 elections followed an Upper Canada protocol: a single hus-

1838–1848

45

tings poll for the county and six days of polling immediately following the hustings nominations. The 1844 and 1847–48 general elections, as well as the 1848 by-election, used the revised protocol of the 1842 Freedom of Elections Act: a poll in each municipality and two polling days, a week after the hustings nominations. In the Wake of Rebellion: Oxford’s 1838 By-election Oxford Reformers were successful in Upper-Canadian elections before the 1837 rebellion. The county, then a two-member riding, returned Charles Duncombe, the future leader of the western rebellion, in 1830 and 1834. When Oxford’s other member, the High Tory Charles Ingersoll, died from cholera in 1832, a Reformer, Thomas Horner, was acclaimed in a by-election to replace him. After Horner himself died from cholera in 1834, the Reformer Robert Alway was elected as Oxford’s second member. In the 1836 general election, Duncombe and Alway bested two High Tory candidates. The failure of the western rebellion in December 1837 ended the political careers of Duncombe and Alway and left Oxford’s Reformers discredited and dispirited. Duncombe fled into exile in the United States and was expelled from the Legislative Assembly. Robert Alway voluntarily joined Duncombe in exile, but he technically retained his seat, inasmuch as he had not taken up arms and was not expelled from the Assembly. When Oxford held a by-election to replace the expelled Duncombe in mid-February 1838, local Reformers did not put up a candidate. Thus, the by-election was fought between two High Tories, Peter Carroll (1806–1876) and Roger Rollo Hunter (1809–1876), from different streams of supporters. Peter Carroll, Esq., a native and resident of West Oxford Township, was an old-settler Tory from a large, well-known family. His New Jersey–born grandparents had been among the county’s first settlers. His father, Isaac Carroll, was one of eleven children and a brother of James Carroll, who was soon to be sheriff of Brock District. His grandfather, John Carroll, had served in the rebel Continental Army during the American War of Independence. However, two of John Carroll’s sons, uncles to Peter, had died in battle on the British side during the War of 1812–14.1 Peter Carroll was a protégé of Mahlon Burwell: a provincial surveyor, the right-hand man of Col. Thomas Talbot, and a past member of the Provincial Assembly for the riding of Oxford and Middlesex (1812–20)

46

Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

and the riding of Middlesex (1820–24 and 1830–34). Carroll had qualified as a deputy provincial surveyor in 1828 and had surveyed several townships in Upper Canada’s southwestern peninsula. Surveying, observes John Clarke, was ‘a business where fortunes could be made.’ On Burwell’s recommendation, Carroll had been named a London District magistrate in 1833.2 In the same year a touring British gentleman had observed that Carroll’s neighbours, ‘perhaps from envy, [perceived him] as aiming at becoming the great man among them … [he] certainly seemed to affect a distant manner with his equals.’3 In 1834 he had been an unsuccessful applicant for the post of Oxford country registrar (James Ingersoll getting the position). He was appointed captain of the cavalry in the Oxford Militia in 1838 and a magistrate in 1840.4 Roger Rollo Hunter, Esq., a favourite of Woodstock’s half-pay officer community, was a younger son of a gentleman and grandson of a peer on his mother’s side (the 7th Lord Rollo). He had emigrated from the Scottish Lowlands to ‘aristocratic Blandford’ in Oxford County in 1834. Like his grandfather, he had served with the East India Company’s army in India.5 He had been appointed a magistrate of the London District (1835), a magistrate of Brock District (1840), president of the Oxford County Agricultural Society (1838), and a lieutenant-colonel in the Oxford Militia (1838). Hunter gave merchant as his occupation on a New York City passenger list in 1837. In his 1899 memoir, Pioneer Life in Zorra, the Rev. W.A. MacKay recounted details of the 1838 election: There was but one voting place for the whole county. This was at a hotel called ‘Martin’s old stand,’ near Beachville. It was open voting; the election lasted for five days and feeling ran high. During the election, free meals and liquor were supplied by each candidate to his friends. Barrels of whiskey were placed near the polling booth; pails, dippers, and little tin cups were supplied in abundance … [Each day an Embro hotelier, Mr Ayers] drove a four-horse sleigh, loaded with voters … to the place of voting. There was always a piper on board, who skirled away the music that never fails to inspire the Highland heart … When the sleigh reached Embro on the return journey, with bunting flying, pipes screaming, and twenty free and independent electors shouting … every man, woman, and child turned out, and long and loud was the cheering when it was announced that Hunter (Embro’s favourite) was ahead. But next night the news came that Carroll was ahead. The third night Hunter’s majority was seventy, and he kept the lead to the end, much to the satisfaction of the Zorra men.6

1838–1848

47

Hunter prevailed by forty-one votes. The failed 1837 western rebellion had mattered in this particular election: Oxford’s dispirited Reformers had not put up a candidate. Canada West and ‘Responsible Government’ The 1840 Act of Union turned the provinces of Upper Canada and Lower Canada into Canada West and Canada East sections of the Province of Canada. It also changed Oxford County from a two-member riding to a single-member one. Responsible government was the overriding issue in the riding’s first five elections. Initially the term, responsible government, lacked a common, understood meaning.7 Baldwinite Reformers wanted responsible government on a party basis, whereby the governor was to appoint his advisers (executive councillors) from the majority party in the Legislative Assembly and take the advice of his advisers. The Executive Council was to function as a cabinet of ministers, each responsible for an administrative department and to the Assembly. The majority party in the Assembly, not the governor, was to control Crown patronage. Elected municipal bodies, not magistrates appointed by the central government, were to administer local government. The Assembly, not imperial statutes, was to settle major domestic concerns such as the disposition of revenue from the Clergy Reserves. In the High Tory understanding of responsible government, it sufficed that the governor maintained harmony with the Legislative Assembly. While the governor was to retain the confidence of the Assembly in domestic matters, his responsibility was to the Colonial Office. The governor was to retain his prerogatives, such as the right to disallow colonial legislation or reserve it for the pleasure of the Colonial Office. He was to keep control of patronage and, indeed, use it to maintain the confidence of the Assembly. He was not to select his advisers on a party basis. Indeed, parties led to selfish behaviour and corruption and were detrimental to the public good; ideally, therefore, the governor’s advisers would be anti-party men. High Tories linked the constitutional issue to loyalty. In their view, colonial self-government in domestic affairs was a form of separatism that would wreck Canada’s imperial connection. Social order derived from a hierarchical model of society, whereby authority flowed downward from the Colonial Office and through its appointed officials, not upwards from elected bodies. One democratic reform would lead to others, such as republicanism.

48

Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

Nonetheless, what was radical during the early 1840s became normative by the late 1840s. Britain came to view responsible government as ‘a device for retaining Imperial control over the colonies, a means of securing the collaboration of the colonial elites in the perpetuation of Imperial rule … to retain as much influence over the colonies as possible with a minimum expenditure of Imperial resources.’8 Oxford’s 1841 General Election: Hincks versus Carroll The governor, Lord Sydenham, aimed to achieve harmony with the Assembly without surrender of the governor’s prerogatives. To this end, he constructed a ministry of moderates from both partisan camps and aggressively intervened in the 1841 general election to secure its return. Meanwhile, Oxford’s Reformers gradually recovered from their post-rebellion disarray. With their former members, Duncombe and Alway, in exile, they looked outside the riding to find a suitable moderate Reformer as their candidate. They settled on Francis Hincks, son of an Irish Presbyterian minister, Canadian resident since 1832, former banker, and the proprietor and editor of the province’s official Reform journal, the Toronto Examiner. As Hincks later recalled, ‘I was known to the electors of Oxford solely through my editorial articles in the Examiner, on the strength of which I was invited to visit the County and to become a candidate for the suffrages of the freeholders.’9 He passed muster with an address that supported responsible government (as recommended ‘in the able Report of the Earl of Durham’), the secularization of revenue from the Clergy Reserves, and local self-government through the creation of municipal institutions. Hincks, a moderate Reformer, might have qualified as a governor’s candidate, except that Sydenham, in a visit to Oxford County in the fall of 1840, had pronounced Hincks’s views as extreme. Perforce, Hincks stood as an opponent of the government candidate. Surprisingly, his opponent was not Roger Rollo Hunter, the High Tory incumbent, but rather Peter Carroll, the old-settler Tory and loser to Hunter in the 1838 by-election. Carroll became the government candidate against Hincks because Hunter did not run, apparently due to a local dispute over church establishment. In 1840 ‘the Dissenters in the neighbourhood of Woodstock, including the Presbyterians,’ reportedly ‘were very unfriendly to the Church; the most active proselytizing efforts were being made.’ In this context, Hunter, Oxford’s member of the Assembly and a Scot-

1838–1848

49

tish Presbyterian, applied to the Rev. William Bettridge, rector of the Woodstock parish, for financial assistance and a portion of the glebe in Woodstock for the erection of a Presbyterian Church. In reply, Bettridge asserted ‘in no equivocal terms the Divine Commission and Apostolic authority of the Church’ and firmly refused ‘to assist in the propagation of ... heresy and schism.’10 Effectively the Woodstock elite were torn between the exclusive claims of the Church of England and the model of dual establishment (Church of England, Kirk of Scotland). The returning officer, appointed by governor’s nomination, was James Ingersoll, Esq., the county’s registrar of deeds, a founder and a resident of the hamlet of Ingersoll, and a defeated High Tory candidate in the 1836 Oxford general election.11 On receiving the writ of election and giving ‘not less than eight days’ notice,’ Ingersoll set 15 July for the election, to be held ‘at the house of James Murray, blacksmith, Woodstock.’ After opening the election, he called for nominations and received two, Hincks and Carroll, and immediately opened a poll at the blacksmith’s house for six days of voting. The polling, recalled Hincks, ‘was done by members of one party going to a window and giving so many votes; then the Returning Officer would cross to the other side of the building and receive as many votes from the other party. By this policy the majority was against me, the Reform candidate, until the afternoon of the sixth day, when [our] opponents were exhausted and resigned.’ In the High Tory returning officer’s presence, American-born electors ‘were compelled to produce evidence that they had taken the oath of allegiance,’ although nothing in the statutes required this.12 At the close of six consecutive days of polling, the returning officer tallied the votes, calculated a slim thirtyone-vote majority for Hincks (598 votes to 567 for Carroll), and declared Hincks elected. The 1842 By-Election: Hincks versus Armstrong In June 1842 Hincks entered Governor Sir Charles Bagot’s ministry as inspector general (finance minister). Inasmuch as this made him a paid minister of the Crown, his seat was vacated, and he was compelled to seek re-election in a mid-July by-election. John Armstrong, Esq., ‘an old Toronto Reformer who had recently moved to Zorra,’ opposed Hincks – now the government candidate – arguing that Hincks, by accepting the ministry post, had deserted the Reform party.13 Hincks won eas-

50

Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

ily. Armstrong ‘closed the poll on the third day, noon,’ at which time Hincks led by 348 to 130. In September 1842, Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine joined Bagot’s ministry. This reunited Hincks with his Reform colleagues. In his mind, Hincks had never ceased to be a Reformer, and in November 1843 he joined with them in resigning from the ministry, now under Bagot’s successor, Sir Charles Metcalfe. This precipitated a general election in 1844, with Hincks as Oxford’s Reform candidate. The 1844 General Election: Hincks versus Riddell The 1842 Freedom of Elections Act changed the election process. Henceforth if the returning officer received more than one nomination at the hustings nominations, he called for a show of hands to determine a provisional winner.14 ‘In the event of a poll being demanded,’ the returning officer was to declare one. Whereas Oxford’s three earlier elections had one poll for the entire county, the 1842 act required a separate poll in each of Oxford’s eleven township municipalities. Just as the election had a returning officer and an election clerk, so each poll was to have a deputy returning officer and a poll clerk. Moreover, the act reduced the number of consecutive polling days from six to two and separated polling from nominations by four to eight days (the first adjournment of the election). On the closing of the polls, the returning officer was to declare a second adjournment of up to four days, at the end of which came his hustings declaration of the winner. The Brock District Constitutional Association, 1842–1843 The organization of the Brock District Constitutional Association on 11 October 1842 portended a High Tory resurgence in Oxford. The association’s raison d’être was to defend the governor’s prerogative against the claims of radicals to make the governor responsible to the Legislative Assembly. The association denounced Lord Durham’s report and governors Sydenham and Bagot for ‘soft’ policies which undermined the British connection and gave comfort to ‘renegades, rebels, traitors, or, all in one, Responsible Government men.’ To empower the Assembly was to empower the public, much of which was ‘without education, without religion, without honour, without morality, and without courage, patriotism, humanity, and any other virtue.’15 Vice-Admiral Henry Vansittart was president of the association until his death in 1843; his successor, Edmund Deedes (1812–1892), was a

1838–1848

51

son of an English magistrate and member of Parliament; an alumnus of Jesus College, Cambridge, and a former college classmate of Edmund Head, a future governor of Canada (1854–61); a founder of the Woodstock Cricket Club; and a future sheriff of Norfolk County.16 In 1843 the association claimed to have twelve hundred members: a number equal to one-quarter of the district’s male population over sixteen years of age. The names of its sixty-six vice-presidents, printed in the Woodstock Monarch, included twenty-five esquires and twelve men with military rank. In December 1843, President Deedes observed with pleasure that the new governor, Sir Charles Metcalfe, was asserting the royal prerogative more aggressively than had his predecessor, Sir Charles Bagot. Accordingly, he dissolved the association, judging that the need for it had passed.17 The Candidates After his brief stint as a government minister, the incumbent Hincks had returned to the fold of Reform. Shortly before the 1844 general election, Hincks had removed from Toronto to Montreal and become the proprietor and editor of the Montreal Pilot, the successor to the Toronto Examiner as the official party-funded Reform organ. Hincks’s opponent was Robert Riddell (1804–1864), a High Tory with connection to the Woodstock elite. In 1834 Riddell had emigrated from Scotland to Oxford in the company of Roger Rollo Hunter – the incumbent who had declined to run in 1841. Riddell probably was Hunter’s older cousin; his mother was one Janet Hunter, and Roger Rollo was to live with Riddell and his family when the two returned to Scotland.18 For two years the bachelor cousins lived together with a third Scot and a manservant in ‘aristocratic’ Blandford.19 Both had served in India with the East India Company before coming to Canada. In 1836 Riddell had married Elizabeth, a daughter of Rear-Admiral Henry Vansittart, and set up as a merchant on Glen-Riddell, his newly purchased estate in Zorra.20 He had been a magistrate (1840), auditor for the Brock District Council (1842), president of the County Agricultural Society (1839), and lieutenant-colonel and commander of the 3rd Battalion, Oxford Militia (1846). Henry Vansittart, his brother-in-law, was the battalion’s major.21 Riddell launched his campaign before an election had been called. In early December 1843, Edmund Deedes of Woodstock delivered to Riddell a requisition, signed by thirty-five freeholders, including Roger Rollo Hunter, Vice-Admiral Vansittart (his father-in-law), and John George Vansittart (his brother-in-law). On 9 December 1843, Riddell ac-

52

Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

cepted the requisition and announced his platform. Hincks responded in January 1844 with an eleven-stop, two-week tour of the county to rebut Riddell’s allegation that he, Hincks, had not kept his election promises.22 Election writs were issued in October 1844, and Riddell elaborated his platform at the hustings nominations in Woodstock.23 His top priority was defence of the governor’s prerogative against ‘extreme party opinions.’ Although the governor ought to possess the confidence of the Assembly, he was responsible to the imperial authority. Governor Charles Metcalfe had, and should have, the right to disallow or reserve colonial bills. Government must be administered by party, but not for party. He disagreed with Hincks’s positions on the removal of the seat of government from Kingston, a new Assessment Act, and a Game Bill. Hincks won the show of hands, but Riddell demanded a poll. When Riddell won by twenty votes, 742 to 722, his supporters celebrated in a truly English manner. An ox was roasted, tables erected in front of the Court House, a wagon load of barrels of beer, heaps of bread, etc. were provided. After the demolition of the beef some 50 or 60 teams, preceded by a carriage drawn by a dozen young men, wearing Kilmarnock caps, in which were Mr Riddell, the Returning Officer, and two other gentlemen, proceeded to Love’s (Woodstock) Hotel, followed by an immense number of horsemen … at 6 o’clock a party amounting to 80 or 90 persons sat down to a dinner … Captain Graham, RN, in the Chair and Messrs. Perley and White croupiers. The evening passed off merrily – the usual toasts were given in the most hearty manner … the evening’s rejoicings indoors were enlivened with many excellent and appropriate songs, the soul-stirring strain of the Gaelic pipes and occasional performances of the Woodstock band; while on the green in front of the Court House a huge bonfire blazed, and fireworks were exhibited to the no small amusement of the juvenile portion of the community.24

Hincks pondered the sources of his defeat. He had polled strongly in the Reform bastions of Oakland and Norwich, but electors in Zorra and North Oxford had voted strongly against him. In his journal, the Montreal Pilot, Hincks attributed his defeat to the defection en masse of Zorra’s Highlander-Presbyterian voters; this had come about, he believed, because ‘of his vote on a clause in Col. Prince’s Game bill, which was represented as having sanctioned the desecration of the Sabbath.’25

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The Trial of the Hincks-Riddell Controverted Election But Hincks also attributed his defeat to misconduct by election officials. Thus, he petitioned the Legislative Assembly to overturn Riddell’s election. As provided by law, the Assembly named an eleven-member Select Committee to try the petition. The Select Committee met, appointed commissioners to gather evidence about the dispute, and adjourned until the commissioners reported back. The trial, when the committee reconvened, was a farce.26 ‘Of the votes objected to by me,’ recalled Hincks, all but three were on the ground either that the voters had no freeholds at all, or freeholds not of the value of 40 shillings, which was the qualification at the time. The majority against me at the election was 20, and I succeeded in striking off 28, thus placing myself in a majority. [On the other hand] my voters were objected to solely on the ground of their being aliens, and it was held by the Conservative members of the [Select] Committee that, unless there was proof that an alien voter had taken the Oath of Allegiance, he was disqualified. The Deputy-Returning Officer of the Township of Norwich, a partisan of Mr. Riddell, acting on the advice of Mr Riddell’s agent ... and with the concurrence of the Returning Officer, Mr Merigold, another partisan of Mr Riddell, refused the votes of persons born in the United States, who had been in the province prior to 1820, and who offered to take the Oath of Allegiance, which, by election law, the Deputy-Returning Officer was specially directed to administer.

At this point, Hincks’s account requires comment. Contrary to the opinion of the Conservative members on the Select Committee, the election officials, and apparently Hincks, the oath of allegiance was unnecessary for American-born men who had come into the province before 1820: the 1828 Upper Canadian act, to which Hincks referred, had naturalized them.27 Contrary to Hincks’s view, the 1842 Elections Act did not ‘require’ the deputy returning officer to administer the oath to any person on request, although it ‘authorized and empowered’ him to do so.28 In the event, more serious skulduggery was in the works. When the Select Committee re-met, continued Hincks, five of its ten members were my political opponents, and five, including the Chairman, my political friends ... it soon became known that the fate of the election depended

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Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875 on Mr J.P. Roblin, member for the County of Prince Edward, who, although elected as a Reformer, and professing to be one, was what was generally known at the time as a ‘loose fish’ … Twenty-six of my votes were investigated by the committee, 14 of which were declared good by the casting vote of the Chairman, Mr Roblin voting with the Liberal members, while 12 were struck off, owing to Mr Roblin’s joining the five Conservatives. During all this time Mr Roblin spoke freely of his own heavy responsibility, having virtually the casting-vote. At last the secret was disclosed. It became known one morning that Mr Roblin had left town suddenly, having obtained three offices for which he had been negotiating while holding the balance of power on the committee.

Under the 1842 Vacating the Seats of Members Act, Roblin’s acceptance of paid Crown offices vacated his seat in Prince Edward County and therefore his membership on the Select Committee.29 Without Roblin, concluded Hincks, ‘it was useless for me to continue the scrutiny.’ Riddell’s Retirement from Politics Riddell was not a candidate in the 1847–48 general election. At first glance this is puzzling, given that he spoke at length at the hustings nominations and again at the hustings declaration. That is, he participated in the election, yet was not a candidate. The Woodstock Herald, a Reform organ, noted this curiosity a week before the election: Riddell, the Resident candidate, who was expected to do so much for his own County, who resided amongst us and who knew our wants (and how to value the Clergy Reserves) is not so much mentioned as a candidate of the opposite Party. With respect to him the Tory paper, the Brantford Courier, of yesterday says, ‘we have undoubted authority for stating that Riddell is far from being popular with the electors and would be left in a large minority.’ The contrast to his manner of attending to the business of the County, in his place in Parliament, and that of the late member [Hincks] was too striking perhaps to make his own supporters very desirous to continue him in his seat longer. (Original emphasis)30

Riddell’s defence of his record gave clues to the sources of his unpopularity.31 He admitted to a natural aversion to public speaking – an aversion, which in the opinion

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of his friends, it might have been desirable occasionally in the ‘collective wisdom’ to have overcome; for himself he thought it would be a blessing to the Province, in saving time and money … He believed that most of the speeches in our Parliament were designed, not to convince or convert the M.P.P.s (for the mind of everyone is made up before the fight ‘comes off’) but to please the various constituencies and gull them into the supposition that their member is a smart man, above his fellows. He (Mr R.) had no ambitions that way; he had been anxious to do his duty, and if it could be discharged in the legitimate private influence and conference, the public weal was secured and the object of meeting Parliament was gained. This was the principle he had acted on, and this was the cause of his silence, and if the electors of Oxford did not confide in his integrity as their representative (not their delegate), he was sorry, not on his own, but on their account. (Original emphasis)

On appearing before a Crown Committee on Clergy Reserves sales, he had given evidence for just three townships, the only ones for which he had ‘personal knowledge and observation’ (Blandford, where he formerly had resided; Zorra, where he currently resided; and the neighbouring Township of Nissouri). He would not do otherwise to please ‘the whole constituency of Oxford.’ For the three townships, he had called for higher prices; he had ‘been struck at the very low rate given, as he himself had sold land at 8 dollars an acre, in the immediate locality of those valued at 4 dollars per acre.’32 Riddell had opposed the 1846 Amendment to the District Councils Act, which had allowed the councils, rather than the governor, to appoint the warden, treasurer, clerk of the council, and superintendent of common schools. He regretted that Brock District (Oxford) had appointed an ‘unqualified mechanic’ to the latter post – an unfortunate choice of words that some of those present took as a lack of respect for mechanics; Riddell hastened to explain that he meant only unqualified persons not mechanics as a group. Finally, he had sometimes voted against his own ministry’s measures. This expressed his belief in government by party, but not for party. Thus, his independent judgment prevailed over pressures for party discipline. The 1847–48 General Election: Hincks versus Carroll The election was held on 21 December 1847, but the two polling days extended into the New Year (Saturday, 30 December, and Monday, 1

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January) – whence the reference to the ‘1847–48’ general election. It was a three-way contest – between the Tory perennial, Peter Carroll; Francis Hincks, a Baldwinite Reformer and former member (1841–44); and Robert Campbell (1817–1888) of Zorra, a ‘loose fish’ Reformer. The contest had unusual features. The non-candidacy of a highly visible incumbent, Robert Riddell, was one of them. A second puzzle was why Robert Campbell, a nephew of Riddell with impeccable High Tory credentials, ran as a ‘loose fish’ Reformer. A third was why Hincks chose to campaign in absentia. A fourth was the returning officer’s declaration-day disqualification of Hincks and declaration of Peter Carroll, who had fewer votes, as the member-elect for Oxford. In the end, the Legislative Assembly overturned the decision and disciplined the returning officer, John George Vansittart, the late admiral’s eldest son.33 However, the Assembly’s action was partisan and controversial and was to provoke Vansittart’s candidacy in the 1851 general election. Hincks’s Opponents The Tory prospects looked poor with the incumbent, Riddell, a disappointment and not a candidate. In the circumstances, Tories had met in Love’s Hotel in Woodstock and settled for Peter Carroll, a four-time loser of elections in Oxford, as their nominee. By this time Carroll had removed from West Oxford to Hamilton, where he was on the first Board of Directors of the Great Western Railroad (chartered in 1845), a director of the Gore Bank (founded in Hamilton in 1836), and a director the Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge Company (chartered 1846; the bridge opened in 1848).34 With his High Tory pedigree, Robert Campbell’s candidacy was indeed a curious one. On 28 November 1842, he had been a founding member of the Brock District Constitutional Society (1842–43), whose purpose had been to uphold the governor’s prerogatives.’35 He had been the district councillor for East Zorra (1846–48) and a lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion, Oxford Militia. Moreover, he was a nephew of Robert Riddell, who was also his commanding officer. To the dismay of his uncle, Campbell contested the 1847–48 election ‘as a loose fish … and gloried in the title’ and a Reformer. On the hustings, Robert Riddell denounced his nephew’s candidacy as a cat’s paw for the Reformers; that is, given Campbell’s High Tory background, no Reform voters were likely to choose him, but he might steal votes from the Tory candidate, Peter Carroll.36

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Hincks’s Campaign in Absentia The 1840 Act of Union set a stiff £500 property qualification for candidates. ‘If required by any other candidate, or by any Elector, or by the Returning Officer,’ the candidate was to submit to the returning officer ‘a detailed declaration in writing and under oath of the property by him held.’ An 1841 statute recognized that a candidate might from ‘illness or other unavoidable cause be prevented from attending at the election.’ To allow for such an eventuality, it allowed the candidate, on election day, to ‘deliver or cause to be delivered to the Returning Officer’ his signed declaration, ‘made before a Justice of the Peace.’37 This seemingly innocuous provision was convenient for Hincks, who left for Ireland before an election had been called. In anticipation of an election being called during his absence, he left his signed declaration with his agent, Thomas Shenston. As a precaution against the returning officer refusing Hincks’s qualification, Shenston held the signed declarations of two other Reformers. As discussed below, these safeguards failed in their purpose. Meanwhile, Premier Robert Baldwin asked George Brown, his designated organizer for the constituencies of Middlesex and Kent, to campaign in Oxford for the absent Hincks. Brown’s specific task was to stump the Highland-Scottish settlement of Zorra, whose votes had defeated Hincks in the previous general election (1844); Thomas Shenston, Hincks’s agent, handled the rest of the county. Brown’s Presbyterian religion and Scottish ethnicity were assets in Zorra. Although Brown, like his father, was a Lowland Scot from the Glasgow area, his mother was a Highlander, a Mackenzie from the Isle of Lewis. Brown’s assignment made things interesting for Hincks. Just as Oxford electors had come to know Hincks through the Examiner, so George Brown was becoming known through his Reform party organ, the Toronto Globe, founded in 1844.38 In 1845 Brown had toured the western peninsula in search of subscribers, and this brought him into competition with Hincks, whose journal – now the Montreal Pilot – was subsidized by party funds and cheaper – two dollars per annum versus five dollars for the Globe. ‘I have been much disgusted at recent information from Oxford,’ a worried Hincks wrote to Robert Baldwin, the party leader, complaining that ‘George Brown has been through exerting himself not only against the Pilot but against me personally. His object is to unseat me for that County and as my friends think to substitute himself’ (original emphasis).39 To heat up the rivalry, Brown had es-

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tablished a satellite weekly for the western counties, the Western Globe (1845–51), which was printed in Toronto but published in London. At a time when there were no local Reform journals, the Western Globe combined local news for the western counties with Toronto editorial content.40 Brown was an asset for Hincks in the election campaign, but not for Hincks’s newspaper business. Apart from stumping Zorra on Hincks’s behalf, the Globe disseminated party propaganda throughout Canada West, with some twenty thousand Globe extras distributed at Brown’s expense. In recompense, Baldwin’s new Reform ministry was to make the Globe the official party organ for Canada West – replacing Hincks’s Pilot. Although Hincks had been in Ireland when the election was called, he was back at his home in Montreal before the election was held. Ostensibly personal business kept him in Montreal, but in fact, as he advised his agent, Thomas Shenston, he calculated that it was to his best advantage to not visit the riding.41 In the event, Hincks was nominated without incident at the hustings nominations, and the polls opened nine days later. When the polls closed, Hincks had more votes (889) than his two opponents combined (533 for Carroll and 131 for Campbell). The Returning Officer’s Declaration The returning officer, Vansittart, had not objected to Hincks’s candidacy at the hustings nominations – which made unnecessary the qualifications for the two alternative Reform nominees. However, after consulting Crown officials, he rejected Hincks’s qualification after the poll, at the hustings declaration. As Vansittart reasoned, the result of the poll gave ‘a large majority for Mr Hincks; but as that gentleman did not attend the day of nomination to make a declaration of qualification as demanded, and no unavoidable cause was shown for his absence, and as the qualification handed to me by his agent was dated long previous to the Writ for the Election, I deemed it my duty to declare that he was ineligible, and votes recorded him thrown away, and therefore declared Mr Carroll, having the next largest number of votes, duly elected.’ In a quaint ceremony, Carroll was ‘invested with the sword as Knight of the Shire’; after having ‘girt the sword around Mr Carroll, Mr Vansittart begged for him a patient hearing.’42 However, Reformers in the crowd were in an uproar; George Brown, speaking on behalf of the absent Hincks, ‘had no words sufficient to express his strong indigna-

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tion, scorn, and contempt at the disgraceful proceedings which have just taken place.’43 Nevertheless, the general election across the province delivered a Reform majority. Thus, in a partisan vote, the Assembly overturned the returning officer’s decision, expelled Carroll, declared Hincks elected and, by way of censure, dismissed Vansittart from one of his government posts, that of inspector of licences for Brock District. The Tory take on the affair was that the Legislative Assembly had punished Vansittart for following the law. In reaction, they feted their man with public dinners in Montreal, Hamilton, Woodstock, and London. On his return from Toronto (where he had been summoned to the bar of the Assembly) ‘an immense concourse of people’ met him at the county border and ‘escorted him to his home.’44 The outpouring of public sympathy gave Vansittart the self-confidence to become a candidate. Thus, in September 1849, he accepted a requisition from 333 Oxford electors to contest the next election (which was to come two years later).45 Meanwhile Hincks criticized Vansittart, not for ruling on his qualification, but rather for not having done so before the poll was taken, thereby preventing Reformers from nominating another candidate. The 1848 By-election: Hincks Acclaimed Hincks’s appointment as inspector general in the newly elected Baldwin-LaFontaine administration vacated his seat and required him to stand for re-election in a by-election. On 25 April, an immense cortege of carriages escorted Hincks from the West Oxford hamlet of Beachville to the hustings nominations in the courthouse yard in Woodstock. With some fifteen hundred present, Hincks was acclaimed. In the evening, Ingersoll and Beachville Reformers feted Hincks at dinner in Hill’s Hotel in Woodstock. ‘Many speeches were delivered, and the evening passed off nicely.’46 Summary and Interpretation The failed 1837 western rebellion had a polarizing effect on the electorate and made the 1838 by-election an all–High Tory affair. A lingering influence, notable in the 1841 and 1844 general elections, was the returning officer’s zealous, extra-legal scrutiny of the qualifications of American-born electors. In the meantime, the Reform cause recovered its respectability, in no small part by recruiting Francis Hincks, a promi-

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nent moderate from Toronto, as their candidate. Hincks won four of Oxford’s first five elections of the Union era. The overriding issue in the elections, central to democracy, was responsible government. However, an important local issue in the 1847– 48 general election was the dubious competence of the sitting member, Robert Riddell, who wisely decided against seeking re-election. This left the demoralized High Tories with Peter Carroll, an unpopular fourtime loser, to carry their colours. Francis Hincks was the beneficiary. Partisan rivalry between High Tories and Baldwinite Reformers governed elections in Oxford County. Only the Reformers rated the designation of party. A Reform party was developing in the Legislative Assembly under Robert Baldwin. When Oxford’s Reformers recruited Hincks, Baldwin’s right-hand man, they acquired an emerging party organization with him. When Hincks campaigned in absentia in the 1847–48 Oxford general election, Baldwin sent in George Brown, his organizer in the west, to stump Zorra on behalf of Hincks; Hincks’s agent, Thomas Shenston, managed the campaign in the other townships. The High Tories were more a faction than party. They organized a Constitutional Association in 1842–43, but dissolved it when the temporary need for it had passed. Establishment religion divided them; with the refusal of Woodstock’s Anglican rector to share state revenues with local Presbyterians, the incumbent Robert Rollo Hunter was not a candidate in the 1842 general election. Hunter and Carroll represented different streams of supporters, respectively Woodstock’s tony half-pay officer community and old-settler High Tories from the Ingersoll area. The High Tories elected Robert Riddell in 1844, but he turned out to be a ‘loose fish’ High Tory, not a party man. Three candidates showed characteristics of ‘loose fish.’ In 1842 Francis Hincks deserted his Reform colleagues to accept a ministry post and faced opposition from a Reformer in the ensuing by-election; thereafter, of course, he was a party man. Robert Riddell, the High Tory elected in 1844, believed in government by party but not for party. He did not always support the High Tory side in votes in the Legislative Assembly. He was indifferent to popular opinion in his riding; he had been elected, in his view, to exercise his independent judgment. 47 Robert Campbell, a losing candidate in the 1847–48 election, gloried in the label, ‘loose fish.’ Partisanship compromised fairness in Oxford’s elections. In the 1841 and 1844 contests, High Tory election officials unjustly rejected the bona fides of American-born electors. In 1844 partisan government interference hijacked the trial for Oxford’s controverted election. In the

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1847–48 election the High Tory returning officer, John G. Vansittart, disallowed Hincks’s qualification after polling and awarded the election to a High Tory candidate who had polled fewer votes. Equally partisan was Vansittart’s punishment from the Legislative Assembly, with its newly elected Reform majority.

4 The General Election in Oxford County, 1851 (with J.C. Herbert Emery)

Oxford’s 1851 general election turned on key aspects of democracy: the separation of church and state, the franchise, and the elective principle. The major issue was a proposal to secularize revenue from the Clergy Reserves. Opposition to publicly funded denominational schools was an associated issue, although not a prominent one in this election. Other issues, proposed by an ascendant Clear Grit movement, were democratic reforms such as an extension of the franchise, the adoption of the secret ballot, the transformation of the Upper House into an elective body, and the election rather than appointment of county officials. The election captured notable aspects of political formation in Oxford County. Through the personage of John George Vansittart, it showed the transition of Oxford’s High Tory faction into a Conservative party. Through the personage of a new premier, Francis Hincks, it evidenced the transformation of the Baldwinite party into a Hincksite party to deal with the emerging issues of radical democracy and denominational voluntaryism.1 A third change, brought about by Hincks’s elevation to the premiership and his brokerage skills, was the premier’s capture of Oxford’s nascent Clear Grit movement. The 1851 general election was the Oxfords’ first to apply the voicevote electoral process in full bloom, as provided under the 1849 Elections Act. It was striking for the hurly-burly of its rival campaigns: their organizations, ‘dirty tricks,’ tactics, and resources deployed. It attracted a province-wide interest, arising from Francis Hincks’s elevation to the premiership immediately before the election. It showed how Hincks’s consummate skills as a broker at the provincial level were transferred to constituency politics in his home riding. Using cliometric methods and evidence from the Poll Books and

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the 1852 census manuscript, we demonstrate that place of birth and religion had statistically significant influences on voters’ choices in the 1851 general election. This finding follows nicely from the discussion of ethnicity and religion in Chapter 2 and provides a base for the analysis of voters’ choices in four subsequent elections. The Contest In December 1851 the Hon. Francis Hincks defeated his Conservative opponent, John George Vansittart, by eighty-six votes out of exactly 2,500 votes cast. The Rev. W.A. MacKay, in his 1899 memoir, Pioneer Life in Zorra, recalled the election as ‘one of the most exciting contests ever witnessed in the county.2 The Oxford riding also held interest provincially and received extensive coverage in the non-local press.3 The Oxford contest unfolded during a fundamental realignment of political formations following Canada’s attainment of responsible government on a party basis in 1849 and the resignation of its BaldwinLaFontaine ministry in 1851. On the radical Reform left, an ascendant Clear Grit movement pushed for an extension of the franchise, elective institutions, vote by secret ballot, and voluntaryism in place of establishment religion. Also in the radical Reform camp was a one-man force, George Brown, proprietor of the Toronto Globe, who championed voluntaryism but opposed Clear Grit democracy. On the right, High Toryism gave way to a moderate Conservatism, which took a middle-ground position on establishment religion and a pragmatic approach to politics. The Hincks-Morin ministry, successor to the Baldwin-LaFontaine ministry, represented the Reform middle ground. Although nominally committed to Reform party principles, it used pragmatism and compromise to keep the divergent elements of its coalition together. What placed Oxford at the centre of things was that its Reform candidate was none other than the Hon. Francis Hincks, Baldwin’s successor as co-premier and the architect of a ministry that was organized expressly to deal with explosive new issues and the realignment of parties. This chapter revisits the 1851 Oxford general election. It opens with the setting – the electoral process, the electorate, the voter turnout, the candidates, and the local issues: railway politics, radical democracy, and establishment religion. Then, through an analysis of voters, it investigates why Hincks – the incumbent, the province’s co-premier in the Hincks-Morin administration (1851–54), but also a non-resident – prevailed over Vansittart – the eldest son of the late Vice-Admiral

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Henry Vansittart (1777–1843), a founder of Woodstock and sometime leader of the ‘Woodstock aristocracy.’ Our central finding is that establishment religion, and in particular the disposition of revenue from the Clergy Reserves, was the decisive issue in Oxford County, with Vansittart and Hincks offering alternative middle-ground positions between the High Tory and radical Reform extremes; and that the contrasting religious and ethnic traditions of the riding’s 2,500 voters gave Hincks a narrow win. The Electoral Process Oxford’s general election unfolded in a month-long process, as provided under Canada’s 1849 Elections Act. The returning officer was the county’s sheriff, James Carroll, an old-settler Tory and uncle to the perennial Tory candidate, Peter Carroll. On receiving the governor’s writ of election (issued from Quebec on 6 November 1851), Sheriff Carroll scheduled Oxford’s election at half-past twelve o’clock on 24 November 1851, on the square in front of the County Court House in Woodstock. There he located the hustings, an elevated platform from which the returning officer, the candidates, and their nominators addressed the assembled electors. The qualification for candidates was the possession of real estate in Canada to the actual value of £500 above encumbrances. As a preliminary to nomination, each candidate, or his agent, gave the returning officer his declaration of qualification, which closed with a correct description of the property for his qualification. From the hustings, Sheriff Carroll commanded silence from the several hundred electors present while reading the writ. Then he ‘required the electors ... to name the person or persons whom they wished to choose at the Election to represent them.’ In a ‘brief but handsome manner,’ Col. Benjamin Van Norman, Esq., of Dereham nominated the Hon. Francis Hincks ‘as a fit and proper person to represent the County.’ Eliakim Malcolm, Esq., of Oakland seconded the nomination. John Jackson, Esq., of Blenheim then nominated John George Vansittart, with Captain Robert Cameron, Esq., of Nissouri seconding the nomination. John Scatcherd, the reeve of Nissouri and warden of the county, then was nominated, ‘but such was the rush on the Hustings that [the London Free Press reporter] failed to learn the names of the gentlemen who moved and seconded the nomination.’

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Then the nominees spoke. In a brief address, Scatcherd declined his nomination. Despite having campaigned for two weeks on a platform of ‘Hincks, the Traitor to Reform Principles,’ he judged that he could not win and withdrew to avoid splitting the Reform vote. Vansittart, the next up, let loose a bombshell – an announcement of letters printed in the Woodstock British American and on widely circulated handbills to the effect that Hincks in 1843 had obstructed justice to avoid a charge of criminal libel.4 Hincks ‘next came forward and was received with mingled cheers and hisses. Several minutes elapsed ere quiet could be restored.’ At length, he denounced the letters as ‘gross forgeries, and he defied any man to show in his own hand-writing aught to implicate him.’ Unfortunately for Hincks, ‘Mr Finkle held up [a purported copy of] one of the original letters from Mr Hincks … and another gentleman held up [purported copies of] two cheques, for £40 and £25 each, and payable to Mr H. A great deal of confusion prevailed, and it was difficult to catch what was said.’5 John Douglass, publisher of the Woodstock British American –Vansittart’s organ – held the original letters and banknotes and faced Hincks’s threats of criminal prosecution for having published them.6 Having more than one candidate, Sheriff Carroll called for a show of hands and, as he ‘was doubtful on which side a majority lay, the people were requested to divide, the supporters of Mr Hincks taking the western side of the area, and those of Mr Vansittart the eastern; then the Returning Officer decided that the majority was in favour of Mr Vansittart and pronounced accordingly.’ Hincks or his agent then demanded a poll, as a candidate or any elector was entitled to do under the Elections Act.7 Accordingly, the returning officer gave notice of a poll on 2 and 3 December. By statute, each of Oxford’s twelve townships received a polling place, which a deputy returning officer and a poll clerk administered. The statute required these officials to open their poll at 9 a.m. of the first day and close it at 5 p.m. of the second day. The dates for the election and the polling days varied from one riding to another. The polls in other provincial ridings opened as early as 2 December and as late as 17 December. An elector voted by appearing at the poll and stating verbally his name, legal addition (something like occupation), the location of his property, and the candidate for whom he voted. Before voting, if required by a candidate or his agent, the elector was to swear an oath

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(‘so help you God’) attesting to his property qualification, not having voted before, and not having received a bribe for his vote. The poll clerk recorded the elector’s declarations in the Poll Book. The candidates and their agents campaigned in the week-long interval between nominations and polling. As viewed from the Hincks camp, the Tories deployed ‘immense sums of money,’ concocted ‘the most infamous lies,’ and circulated these ‘in handbills by the thousands over the County. Special riders were employed to start every morning from Woodstock, the headquarters of the gang, charged with the duties of disseminating the diabolical production of their press … Hired agents and teams were in every part of every township, taking out the votes of Mr Vansittart.’8 As viewed by Tories, Hincks came ‘fortified by all the clerical and lay assistance he could muster – ready to promise anything and everything in the event of being returned. Offices with him were as plenty as blackbirds in autumn, and government patronage was fully and freely made use of … Officials were tampered with and threatened with loss of office … and every species of chicanery and electioneering fraud was resorted to for the purpose of securing his election.’9 Vansittart led by 137 votes after the first polling day, but lost in the end, Vansittart surmised, because his supporters became overconfident and insufficiently vigorous in getting out the vote. At the hustings declaration (5 December), Sheriff Carroll, ‘in the presence of the electors assembled ... openly proclaimed’ Hincks as duly elected to represent the riding. The occasion witnessed ‘a grand turn-out of the Reformers from all parts of the County’ and ‘several four-horse teams,’ one with ‘a highland piper with bagpipes … in the procession,’ which accompanied Mr Hincks through Woodstock. In victory, Hincks thanked his supporters, defended his conduct and policies, and tried to explain his narrow eighty-six-vote margin of victory.10 Vansittart completed the proceedings with a dignified concession speech. Electors in Oxford County The 1849 Elections Act enfranchised male British subjects of twenty-one years of age who met a property qualification. In 1851 Oxford voters were distinctive in the county population. None of the farmers were tenants (39% of Oxford’s farm occupiers and disenfranchised). Thus, farm owners were 77 per cent of the voters listed in the Poll Books but only 39 per cent of census-enumerated persons with occupations. For

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labourers (rural and urban) the percentages were 3, Poll Books; and 40, census. Roman Catholics were 7 per cent of the population but only 3 per cent of voters. Voters over-represented British-born and Americanborn residents and under-represented the Canadian-born – an effect of the younger age profile of the Canadian-born population. The extent of enfranchisement in Oxford in 1851 is unknowable because the electoral process then did not provide for the creation and maintenance of electors’ lists. The evidence does show that Oxford’s 2,500 voters were equal to 27 per cent of the county’s 9,437 adult males reported in the 1852 census. In every election, some eligible voters did not vote.11 What is unknown is how the 6,937 non-voters divided between stay-at-home electors and the disenfranchised. In the circumstances, we used votes cast as a percentage of the population of adult males as an indicator of poll variation in voter turnout. By this crude measure, four northern, pro-Vansittart polls – Oxford North, Blandford, Blenheim, and Nissouri – were below the county average. Bad roads may have been a factor in three of these townships. Blandford, Blenheim, and the western half of Nissouri were uniquely lacking in toll roads, and their ordinary roads were in scattered patches.12 Given that farm tenants were disenfranchised, township variations in rates of tenancy also may have influenced the proxy statistics for variations in turnout. But, clearly, politics may have dampened turnout among Reformers. Following John Scatcherd’s vicious pre-election campaign against him, Hincks speculated that ‘many Reformers stayed at home, while others, especially in Nissouri, voted for Mr Vansittart’; Nissouri, of course, was Scatcherd’s home township.13 Another possible source of Reformer non-voting was the Conservative nomination day allegation that Hincks had obstructed justice to escape a charge of libel. The Candidates Francis Hincks (1807–1885), the Reform party standard-bearer and the incumbent, presented himself as a moderate Reformer who championed responsible government, government assistance for railway construction, and the secularization of revenue from the Clergy Reserves. Like most Canadians of the day, he preferred the freehold propertybased franchise and the British parliamentary system to American-style democracy with its universal white manhood suffrage, elected officials, and a written constitution.

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Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

But Hincks styled himself as a realist who worked with compromise. For example, he adopted a go-slow approach to secularization of the Clergy Reserves revenue to placate francophone colleagues, who opposed the separation of church and state in either section of the province. Conversely, in 1851 Hincks agreed, against his personal inclinations, to extend the franchise to obtain Clear Grit support for his Hincks-Morin ministry. Historically, Hincks had voted against bills that he professed to support in principle (one to secularize the Clergy Reserves revenue, one to give nonconformist clergy the right to perform marriages); and for bills that he professed to oppose (one to legalize ecclesiastical corporations, one to allow sectarian common schools).14 Certainly, he had not always voted with his Reform colleagues and had served briefly in Governor Sir Charles Bagot’s non-party ministry (1842–43). To many Reformers, Hincks was simply an office-seeking opportunist. George Brown of the Toronto Globe, a champion of voluntaryism regardless of its political cost in Canada East, flatly refused to serve under Hincks and bolted the Reform party in July 1851. Locally, a hastily convened Oxford Reform Convention manoeuvred to deny the incumbent ‘Hincks, the Traitor to Reform Principles,’ the Oxford Reform nomination. Indeed, opposition from within his own party prompted the premier to run in both Oxford and Niagara in 1851 to ensure that he won a seat.15 The Conservative candidate, John George Vansittart (1813–1869), was the eldest son of Vice-Admiral Henry Vansittart, thirty-eight years of age in 1851, an Irish-born Anglican, and a resident of Oxford County since 1834.16 After having briefly studied law in Toronto, poor health had led him to settle on a farm near his father’s estate in East Oxford where, about 1837, he suffered a permanent paralysis of one side of his body. On the creation of Brock District in 1839, he had received appointment to the offices of district court clerk, surrogate court registrar, and magistrate. On the death of his father in 1843, he had inherited 4,104 acres. A year after being made returning officer for the Oxford general election of 1847–48, he had removed to property near Woodstock. He was a lay delegate to the Anglican Synod, a Blandford Township councillor (1851–52), and a proprietor-founder of the British American, the sole local newspaper in Woodstock until 14 November 1851, when a Reform journal, the Western Progress, appeared. By 1851 Vansittart was a Conservative, not a High Tory.17 That is, while retaining his High Tory attachment to religious establishment and social hierarchy, he accepted responsible government on a party basis, the primacy of economic de-

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velopment, and pragmatism in politics. Vansittart’s actions as returning officer in Oxford’s 1847–48 general election (his disqualification of Hincks) had been controversial and remained so in 1851. Each nominator was a local notable whose endorsement carried weight for his candidate. Hincks’s first nominator, Benjamin Van Norman, Esq., (1800–1869), was a magistrate, lieutenant-colonel in the militia, past Brock District councillor (1842–44 and 1848–49), past reeve of Dereham, and past warden of Oxford County (1850), and son-in-law to George Tillson, the American-born founder of the village of Tillsonburg. Hincks’s second nominator, Eliakim Malcolm, Esq. (1801–1874) of Oakland, had been a leader in the western rebellion of 1837 and was a public land surveyor, a magistrate, reeve of Oakland (1850–51), future warden of Brant County (1853–56), champion of the Buffalo and Brantford Railway Co. (organized in 1850), and one of eight Oakland Malcolms who voted for Hincks. Vansittart’s first nominator, John Jackson, Esq. (1794–?) of Blenheim, was a magistrate and reeve of Blenheim (1851–52). His second nominator, Robert Cameron, Esq. (1799–1875) of Nissouri, was a magistrate and a captain in the militia. Hincks’s non-resident status was no handicap. Indeed, dissident Reformers only put up John Scatcherd against Hincks after failing to secure a prominent outsider for their nominee.18 Vansittart as a local man was the exception, not the rule, and, of course, he lost the election. The Issues Under Lord Durham’s revisioning of colonial politics in 1841, responsible self-government and economic growth were to replace landed aristocracy and church establishment as the basis for social order. In 1849 Britain conceded responsible government on a party basis, but gave it limited scope. An imperial act of 1840, for example, had imposed a Clergy Reserves settlement on Canada; hence, imperial enabling legislation was a necessary preliminary to any made-in-Canada change. In this context, three issues had come to the fore in Canada West by 1851: railways and economic development (Durham’s new basis for social order), radical democracy (post-Durham), and the dismantling of church establishment (the pre-Durham basis for social order). The resignation of the Baldwin-LaFontaine ministry and its replacement by the Hincks-Morin ministry on 28 October 1851 marked the Reform party’s transition to the emerging issues. It remained to be seen how those issues were to play out in Oxford County.

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Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

Railways in Oxford Politics During the 1850s Canada West was in the grip of railway mania, and Oxford, ‘an inland County with neither ports nor harbours,’ was no exception. Railway projects, however, were controversial. In December 1850, despite opposition from ‘a large portion of the County, and several large meetings held in Woodstock [at which] resolutions were unanimously passed voting want of confidence in the G.W.R.R. Company,’ the county subscribed £25,000 for shares in the Great Western Railway Co., whose projected Niagara-Hamilton-London route to Sarnia and Detroit passed through the townships of Blenheim, East Oxford, and North Oxford. In the same year, to protect its monopoly position, the Great Western stifled efforts of rivals to have government revive an expired charter for the Niagara and Detroit Rivers Railway, whose proposed southern east-west route ran from Buffalo to the Windsor area by way of St Thomas and bypassed Oxford County. In the meantime, other rival promoters had been seeking charters for short-distance roads, which they envisaged as eventual segments of a comprehensive southern line. One such project, chartered in 1848, was the Woodstock and Lake Erie Railway and Harbour Co., whose projected route ran south from Woodstock through the townships of East Oxford and Norwich; John George Vansittart was a founding Director. A second southernsegment project, one organized but without charter in 1851, was the Buffalo and Brantford Railway, whose proposed route passed near Oxford’s Oakland Township; one of its champions was Eliakim Malcolm, a prominent Oakland Reformer and second nominator for the candidacy of Francis Hincks. Francis Hincks, inspector general in the Baldwin-Lafontaine ministry, member of the Provincial Railway Committee, and father of the province’s railway legislation,19 was in the thick of these developments. In June 1850 he introduced a bill to revive the charter of the Great Western’s southern competitor, the Niagara and Detroit Rivers Railway. As he explained to Sir Allan MacNab, chair of the Railway Committee and a director of the Great Western, he ‘had opposed the bill last session because a very large majority of his constituents in Oxford [then] were in favour of the Great Western Railway, but now the same majority were in favour of the Niagara and Detroit Rivers Railway.’20 Then Hincks changed sides after his southern initiative failed. In December 1850 he and the Great Western directors paid a surprise visit to Oxford and persuaded the previously opposed County Council to purchase company

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stock. According to his agent, Thomas Shenston, Hincks was instrumental in ‘obtaining a vote of the inhabitants at the public meetings’ in support of the county’s subscription.21 While Hincks aligned himself with the Great Western, Vansittart’s position was unclear. As noted above, he was a director in one of the southern-segment projects, the Woodstock and Lake Erie Railway and Harbour Co., whose backers were straight from Woodstock’s social register.22 In April 1849 his party organ, the Woodstock British American, endorsed the resolutions of a County Railway Committee appointed at a public meeting in Woodstock. As a condition of the county purchasing railway stock, the committee insisted on an amalgamation of the Great Western and Niagara and Detroit Rivers companies and the retention of the already-surveyed Great Western line west from Woodstock. To the east of Woodstock, however, the amalgamated line would pass through Brantford to Buffalo, with Hamilton reduced to a branchline connection.23 Even so, Vansittart’s manoeuvres for a southern route were in the past by 1851. Quite possibly, like Hincks, he had moved on. Meanwhile, railway projects fractured public opinion in different ways. In nearby Middlesex, that county’s purchase of Great Western stock pitted ‘northerners’ against ‘southerners’ in bitter division. The city of London and the northern townships were on the surveyed route of the Great Western and favoured the purchase, which was financed by a railway surtax on all county property. St Thomas and the southern townships were off the surveyed route of the Great Western, but on the route of the proposed Niagara and Detroit Rivers southern line. Thus, southern ratepayers resented the surtax, which promised them no benefit and, indeed, reduced public money available for the improvement of concession roads, bridges, and swamplands in the southern townships. On losing the battle, the southerners took steps to secede from Middlesex, with the object of forming Elgin County with St Thomas as its county town.24 Such geographical division was less pronounced in Oxford County. In his nomination-day speech, Hincks recalled how ‘friends in Norwich and Oakland, who had been dissatisfied with … the service he had rendered … the Great Western Railway, had now ceased their opposition … while in the town of Woodstock and the village of Ingersoll … he met with the most unreasonable opposition, although he could safely say that had it not been for his personal exertions, there would not be a single man engaged in the work.’25 Our sources do not mention what reconciled Hincks with Norwich

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Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

and Oakland townships, which were bypassed by the Great Western. A particular puzzle is why Eliakim Malcolm, a champion of one of the southern-segment projects, the Buffalo and Brantford Railway, made peace with Hincks. Perhaps the imminent removal of the townships of Oakland and Burford to the newly created Brant County in 1852 softened Malcolm’s opposition; at a minimum, this meant that Oakland and Burford ratepayers escaped the tax liability to pay for Oxford County’s purchase of Great Western stock. Possibly Malcolm received private assurance that Hincks, as a member of the Provincial Railway Committee and now premier, could befriend more than one railway if Malcolm delivered the vote. A tradition of Reform in Oakland’s large Malcolm clan was another influence; Eliakim and eleven other Malcolms had been rebels in 1837.26 In the event, with peace on the railway front, Hincks recruited Eliakim Malcolm for his second nominator, and Oakland became his strongest poll. Meanwhile Vansittart’s interest in the other southern-segment projects, the Woodstock and Lake Erie Railway and Harbour Co., failed to draw votes from Norwich, which was on its proposed route. The explanation in part was that the company was without capital and on the verge of collapse in 1851;27 Hincks, the perennial railway fixer, was to become its president in 1852. A different source of opposition to the Great Western, in townships along its surveyed route, was impatience with delays in its construction. Impatience, in turn, bred want of confidence in the Great Western’s capacity to deliver a railway through Oxford County, and hence public opposition to the county’s purchase of Great Western stock.28 In line with these sentiments in 1850, Hincks had supported the revival of the charter for an alternative to the Great Western: the Niagara and Detroit Rivers Railway. By election time, however, everything had changed. Efforts to revive the charter of the Niagara and Detroit Rivers Co. had failed and were moribund in 1851. Oxford County was now a shareholder in the Great Western and committed to its fortunes. What is more important, construction on the Great Western was finally underway. As the company announced in June 1851, it had engaged three thousand men for the section from Hamilton to Woodstock, while the Woodstock-to-London section of the route was staked out and ready for work, and contractors notified to start the grading.29 The documentary evidence runs entirely against the notion that railway politics decided the outcome of the Oxford general election. None of the ten points in the platform of the renegade Oxford Reform Convention was about railways.30 Moreover, Hincks, the Great Western’s

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friend, lost the polls along the Great Western’s right-of-way – Blenheim, East Oxford, and North Oxford – but prevailed in the Burford, Dereham, Norwich, and Oakland polls, all of which were bypassed by the Great Western route. Similarly, 131 Oxford electors within one concession of the Great Western route favoured Vansittart by a margin of two to one.31 A final piece of evidence concerns the 1850 County Council, which initially opposed the county’s purchase of Great Western stock, but changed its mind. Whereas Hincks contributed to the turnaround by promoting the stock subscription at public meetings, John Barwick, reeve of Blandford and chair of the County’s Railway Committee, led the Great Western cause within council.32 In 1851, however, Barwick voted for Vansittart, his Anglican co-religionist, not Hincks, his ally in railway matters. Radical Democracy in Oxford County Politics In Canada West a Clear Grit movement within the Reform Party, launched in February 1851, pressed for radical democratic reforms such as an extension of the franchise, adoption of the secret-ballot method of election, and broadening the elective principle to include all branches of government.33 Clear Grits also supported denominational voluntaryism (discussed separately below). On both issues, they professed to put principle before party solidarity and political convenience. In May 1851 radical Reformers in West Oxford resolved that Hincks had ‘forfeited the confidence reposed in him by his constituents.’34 On 15 October 1851 an Oxford Reform Convention in Woodstock issued a ten-point program that focused, first on voluntaryism, then on radical democracy – like the Clear Grit platform of radical democracy and voluntaryism but with the priorities reversed.35 On the issue of radical democracy, the convention demanded the ‘simplification and codification of the laws; extension of the elective franchise; an equitable increase of representation based on population; no appropriation of the country’s funds without legislation; election of all county officers by the people, and the vote by ballot.’ After calling for nominations and receiving two, Hincks and John Scatcherd, the convention conditionally picked Hincks as its nominee by a vote of twenty-five to sixteen. Further motions required Hincks to subscribe in writing to the Oxford Reform platform and to resign his seat if two-thirds of the convention members expressed want of confi-

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Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

dence in him. Failing Hincks’s compliance with its demands, the convention would meet again to nominate another. On 29 October, from his office in the capital, Quebec, Hincks flatly refused to commit himself to the Oxford convention’s program. As a minister of the Crown, he was responsible for the welfare of the province, not just for his riding or a segment of the Reform party.36 Given that the support of French Canadian members from Canada East was essential to the preservation of the Union, he was forced to respect their antipathy for voluntaryism and democracy, notwithstanding his personally held liberal views. How convenient an argument for being ‘economical of promises,’ muttered the Toronto British Colonist, a Tory organ. Hincks’s stance reflected his ascendancy to the premiership the day before. On 28 October, Hincks had formed a ministry that included two Clear Grits, Dr John Rolph and Malcolm Cameron. The price of Clear Grit support was his ministry’s commitment to voluntaryism and democratic electoral reforms – an elected Upper House, an extension of the franchise, and assessment-based electors’ lists. In return, the Clear Grits accepted a postponement of their full program, and their newspaper, William McDougall’s Toronto North American, became a ministerial organ.37 In early November, a twenty-six-man self-styled ‘majority’ of the Oxford Reform Convention delegates met. They noted that since their earlier meeting Hincks had formed a ministry that all Reformers should support, and they invited Hincks to announce himself as the Reform candidate ‘without reference to the political platform submitted to you for approval.’38 When Hincks accepted, the still-disaffected convention delegates put up Scatcherd as a nominee. John Scatcherd (1799–1858) was a local notable and a formidable opponent for Hincks. He was a Methodist from Wyton, Yorkshire, who settled in Wyton, Nissouri Township, in 1821. He opened a hardware store in London in 1831; was named a magistrate in 1834; and unsuccessfully opposed the Tory, Mahlon Burwell, in the 1836 London general election. He returned to his Nissouri Township farm about 1840 and was named a magistrate for Oxford County in 1840; returning officer for the 1842 Oxford by-election; lieutenant-colonel of the 8th Battalion, Oxford Militia, in 1848; and postmaster for Wyton in 1853. He was elected to the Brock District Council in 1848, appointed superintendent of education for Nissouri (1846–46), and elected reeve of Nissouri and warden of Oxford County in 1851. After West Nissouri was removed from Oxford County to Middlesex County in 1852, he was elected for the riding of Middlesex West in the 1854 general election.

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In the end, Scatcherd declined nomination in Oxford’s 1851 general election to avoid splitting the Reform vote.39 Each of the candidates felt that Scatcherd had damaged his chances. For Hincks, Scatcherd’s nomination day withdrawal came too late for him to reverse the damage to his cause among back-country farmers. For Vansittart, campaigning against a divided Reform party enemy, the primary strategy had been, not to articulate Conservative principles, but rather to feature Scatcherd’s assaults on Hincks. With Scatcherd’s late withdrawal, Vansittart had but one week to train his guns on a single opponent. Establishment Religion in Oxford County Politics The Church of England and Ireland was literally part of the Canadian state and one of its instruments for maintaining the province’s social hierarchy and imperial tie.40 As such the Church received state monies to establish and maintain rectories (ecclesiastical livings) and educational institutions. In Canada West much of the state revenue for rectories came from leases and sales of Crown lands that were designated as Clergy Reserves. When Anglican hopes for a monopoly of establishment floundered in Canadian multidenominational conditions, an imperial act of 1840 legislated what one might characterize as plural establishment in theory and dual establishment in practice.41 In the imperial government’s intended ‘final solution’ to the Clergy Reserves endowment, revenue from ‘old sales’ and half the revenue from ‘new sales’ went to the Church of England and the Kirk of Scotland in a ratio of two to one; the remaining half of revenue from ‘new sales’ was to go to other denominations on their application for support. For some years, the Clergy Reserves had produced little revenue. In January 1848, however, government announced a surplus from a revival of sales to the amount of £1,800 and, with real money at stake, support for the imperial settlement of 1840 began to unravel in the face of two influences. The first was denominational jealousy – demands by certain denominations for an equitable allocation of state revenue to religious bodies in place of the current system, which favoured Anglicans and the Kirk. The second was voluntaryism – the principle that churches should derive their revenue entirely from the voluntary contributions of their laity. Thus, churches should be separate from the state, not part of it, and revenue from the Clergy Reserves should be secularized – that is, it should be redirected from churches to the support of non-denominational public education.

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In this regard, an ancillary issue on church-state relations was Hincks’s successful piloting of an 1850 Common Schools Act for Canada West, whose nineteenth clause required municipalities to erect separate schools where twelve Roman Catholic heads of families so requested one in an area where the common-school teacher was a Protestant. Hitherto such allocation had been left to the discretion of municipal authorities. To critics, the act opened the door to separate schools for other denominations and the disintegration of a non-denominational system.42 Denominational alignments on the issue of establishment religion are tricky to discern. Concerning Methodists, the Wesleyans applied for and received state monies for the support of their educational institutions, while other Methodist denominations were in the camp of voluntaryism. Concerning Presbyterians, the secession of Free Church Presbyterians from the Kirk of Scotland in 1843 had weakened the Kirk’s legitimacy as an establishment church. Although the Free Church initially accepted establishment religion in principle, its secession had entailed the loss of state financial support that had come through the Kirk. Conversely, the Kirk had benefited financially from secession in that its fixed statutory share of Clergy Reserve revenue henceforth went to drastically diminished numbers of clergy and church members. Effectively, the Free Church had voluntaryism in practice, regardless of its support for establishment religion in principle. In 1848, although still not committed to voluntaryism, the Free Church’s provincial synod had vetoed further applications for Clergy Reserves grants because of the divisive effect of such applications on the church. Then, in June 1851, six months before the general election, its synod committed to voluntaryism.43 Meanwhile, a second but smaller secessionist denomination, the United Presbyterian Church, had endorsed voluntaryism from its inception.44 The statistics for membership of the various Presbyterian and Methodist denominations leave much to guesswork. In each case the published census statistics include a large ‘other’ category for persons for whom the enumerator did not report a specific Presbyterian or Methodist denomination.45 At the hustings nominations, Hincks presented the Clergy Reserves as the great question of the day. Nevertheless, sceptical Reformers questioned whether he would deliver. His track record in the legislature had often been at variance with his professed support for voluntaryism, in part because he was a minister of the Crown who believed that workable solutions had to pass muster with francophone colleagues from

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Canada East. As critics of Hincks gleefully pointed out, his francophone ministers were as hostile to voluntaryism in Canada West as his Clear Grit ministers were for it. Effectively, his ministry was an unworkable combination, and the need for enabling legislation from the imperial Parliament gave him ample pretext for delay. Circumstantial evidence points to Vansittart’s precise position on the issues of the Clergy Reserves and establishment religion. One indicator is the 1851 Election Manifesto in the Church Union, the official journal of the Anglican Church.46 Effectively, the manifesto proposed a new final solution in place of the imperial government’s discredited final solution of 1840. Given ‘the very mixed constitution of’ the Canada West population in 1851, it accepted ‘that no one religious denomination can consistently with the contentment of the people possess peculiar privileges denied to others.’ Thus, it proposed that so far as the lands [already] appropriated, vested interests should be respected; but so far as unsold lands, they should be divided amongst the various religious Christian denominations according to their numbers. The [companion] plan is to make up from other sources the deficiency or inequality, if any, in the shares of the other religious denominations, so that their state aid should be equivalent in value in proportion to their number with that of the Church of England; and as a further consequence of either of these plans, that each religious denomination should receive a transfer of their shares, and have full power to hold them inalienably to religious or educational uses, as they think proper.

The Election Manifesto, in other words, would let the church keep what it had of state resources, while raising other denominations, on the basis of membership size, up to equality with Anglicans and with each other. This liberal-sounding solution would seem to have been Vansittart’s position. As the independent Reform journal, the London Free Press, observed on hearing Vansittart’s nomination day speech, it was ‘amusing to hear how liberal a High Church Tory can be when his object is to win over a few Reformers.’ Summary of Background Information To summarize, for the 1851 general election, Oxford County featured a Reform-Conservative battle for the middle ground on the principal issues, the Clergy Reserves and establishment religion. Both Hincks and

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Vansittart accepted that the status quo (Anglican and Kirk primacy) was untenable. At this point they differed. Vansittart’s solution was to retain establishment religion, but in a form that provided equality among the various denominations. Hincks proposed a ministerial Reform middle ground, one which would replace establishment religion with voluntaryism, but only when conditions permitted. This meant the securing of prior enabling legislation from the imperial government and, implicitly, compromising on other issues to gain the support of francophone Canada East supporters of his ministry. Given the caveats and Hincks’s reputation as an opportunist, the issue for radical Reformers was whether Hincks would deliver on the issue of Clergy Reserves. Hincks’s platform, moreover, mentioned only part of the radical Reform agenda to secularize the state. Whereas he was committed to action on the Clergy Reserves question, he was silent on allied issues such as the abolition of rectories and the removal of sectarian privilege from the common-school system. By including two Clear Grits in his coalition ministry in late October 1851, Hincks appeared to have co-opted Oxford County’s radical Reformers, most of whom rallied behind Hincks rather than putting forward their own candidate. Even so, John Scatcherd’s nomination day capitulation came too late to prevent damage to Hincks’s prospects. With establishment religion and the Clergy Reserves question as the general election issues, the religious affiliations of voters were the key to their political choices. Anglican and Kirk of Scotland electors, whose churches benefited from the status quo, were likely to choose Vansittart (a liberalization of the status quo in order to preserve it). Baptist, Congregationalist, and Quaker electors, whose churches were committed in principle to voluntaryism, were equally likely to choose Hincks. In the middle were electors from the Methodist and Presbyterian groups of denominations. Those committed to voluntaryism in principle would choose Hincks. Those motivated by jealousy of Anglican primacy might prefer Vansittart. A Cliometric Analysis of Voters’ Choices in Oxford County The Data for Quantitative Analysis The documentary sources comprise the Poll Books, manuscript census, and published census statistics. The Poll Book reports the elector’s poll (where he voted), name, legal addition (occupation), the location of his

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property, and his municipality of residence (if a non-resident), but not his age, place of birth, religion, or marital status – information that the manuscript census does report. Published census tables report township totals for age by sex and marital status, religious affiliation, and place of birth. Whereas the December 1851 Oxford election polls corresponded exactly with county townships in 1851, they differed from subdivisions of the census taken in January 1852. A reorganization of Canada West counties on 1 January 1852 separated the town of Woodstock from the townships of Blandford and East Oxford; separated the village of Ingersoll from West Oxford Township; removed the townships of Oakland and Burford to the newly created Brant County; removed the western half of Nissouri Township to Middlesex County (leaving East Nissouri Township in Oxford); and annexed a thirty-six-lot parcel from North Dorchester Township, Middlesex, to North Oxford Township, Oxford. Thus, one needs census statistics for three counties to match up with Oxford County in 1851. We constructed two electronic data files for analysis of the election outcome. The first, the ‘Oxford Poll Book file,’ records the location of the poll, name, legal addition, municipality of residence, and vote for each of the 2,500 voters. The second, the ‘Oxford Linked Cases file,’ was generated by linking individuals in the Poll Books (2–3 December 1851) to the same individuals in the personal census (11 January 1852) to obtain each voter’s age, religious affiliation, and birthplace.47 Our linkage decision was positive for 1,664 of the 2,500 voters (67%).48 Although the Oxford riding did not have a poll for Woodstock, we constructed one for all voters for whom the Poll Books reported Woodstock as their place of residence. Religion, Ethnicity, and Voting With establishment religion, and in particular the disposition of revenue from the Clergy Reserves, as the major issue, denominational differences influenced electors’ choices at the poll. As cross-tabulation of the data revealed, Hincks polled well among Episcopal Methodist, Baptist, Congregationalist, United Presbyterian, and Quaker electors, whose churches favoured voluntaryism. Conversely, Vansittart did well among Anglican and Kirk of Scotland electors, whose churches were established. However, place of birth modified voters’ choices by religious affiliation. The Anglican preference for Vansittart was strong-

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er among British-born electors (90%) than among American-born ones (56%). The Methodist preference for Hincks was stronger among American-born electors (82%) than among the English-born (38%). Given that the birthplace and religious influences overlap, we use multivariate analysis to sort out their relative importance. A Probit model serves for the purpose. Like a standard-regression framework, a Probit model estimates the effect of one variable (e.g., Anglican religion) on the probability of voting for Hincks by holding constant the effects of other variables (e.g., birthplace, occupation, age, and poll). The Probit estimation technique requires that the dependent variable, voting for Hincks, is binary (0 or 1). Its estimated coefficients show whether the probability of the defined outcome (voting for Hincks) increases or decreases with change in an independent variable (e.g., whether the voter is Methodist or non-Methodist). Since the binary dependent variable (0 or 1) has no meaningful scale (e.g., as with age), the estimated coefficients have no meaningful interpretation as to the magnitude of effects on the dependent variable. Thus, the Probit technique uses the estimated coefficients to generate the marginal effects of the independent variables – the percentage change in the predicted probability of observing the defined outcome (voting for Hincks) due to a change in a given independent variable (whether the voter is Methodist or non-Methodist). To develop our Probit model, we transformed each categorical variable into a set of binary dummy variables (e.g., Religion dummies: Anglican = 1, Non-Anglican = 0; Methodist = 1, Non-Methodist = 0). Then for each set of dummy variables, we excluded one dummy (e.g., Presbyterian for the Religion set). The omitted dummies became the constant term in the model – its reference for comparison. Our data held four categorical variables (Religion, Birthplace, Poll, Occupational Group); for our constant term we selected Presbyterian, Scotland-born, Blandford, and labourer. Hence, comparison with this constant term determined the likelihood that a voter with particular characteristics voted for Hincks. The marginal effect of Anglican religion, for example, was – 0.221, which means that an Anglican voter was 22.1 per cent less likely to vote for Hincks than a Presbyterian voter; similarly, an English-born voter (marginal effect = –0.199) had a probability of voting for Hincks 19.9 per cent lower than a voter born in Scotland. To reiterate, one interprets the marginal effects relative to our arbitrarily selected constant term – Presbyterian, Scotland-born, Blandford, and labourer. The marginal effect is statistically insignificant at the 0.05 level for all

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Table 4.1 Probit Estimates, 1851 General Election in Oxford County, Reduced Model

Variable Category

Marginal Effect

% of File

Net Influence

Difference in Votes for Hincks out of 2,500 cast

0.207 0.284 0.154 0.027 0.017 0.019

–0.047 0.049 0.049 0.012 0.003 0.006

–118 124 123 29 6 15

0.249 0.204 0.112 0.193 0.037 0.007

0.021 –0.041 –0.028 0.043 –0.001 –0.001

54 –101 –70 108 –4 –2

Relative to Presbyterian (45% for Hincks) Anglican* Methodist* Baptist* Roman Catholic* No Religion* Other Religions

–0.221 0.163 0.284 0.425 0.150 0.313

BP Relative to Scotland (49% for Hincks) Canada West England* Ireland* USA* BNA excl. CW Other

0.086 –0.199 –0.249 0.223 –0.038 –0.110

Relative to Polls Other than Oakland and Blenheim (53% for Hincks) Blenheim* Oakland* Blenheim BP Scotland* Blenheim Other BPs*

–0.181 0.408 0.420 –0.374

0.096 0.025 0.019 0.013

–0.010 –0.010 0.008 –0.005

–43.2 25.5 20 –12

BNA = British North America; BP = birthplace; CW = Canada West. Dependent Variable: Vote for Hincks = 1; Linked N = 1,664. *Statistically significant at the 0.05 level.

occupational categories, the ratio variable age, and all polls but Oakland and Blenheim. Accordingly, to simplify the presentation, Table 4.1 shows a reduced model that excludes occupation, age, and all polls except Blenheim and Oakland. For the variable poll the constant term becomes all excluded categories (i.e., all polls except Blenheim and Oakland, not just Blandford, the constant in the full model). The findings show how the 1851 general election turned on the religious and birthplace attributes of the electors. Relative to Presbyterians (45% for Hincks) Anglicans, as expected, showed markedly lower support for Hincks, whereas Methodists, Baptists, and Roman Catholics

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showed stronger support. Relative to Scotland-born electors (49% for Hincks), American-born and Canada West–born electors more strongly favoured Hincks, whereas the opposite obtained for electors born in England and Ireland. Although Roman Catholic voters strongly preferred Hincks, they were less than 3 per cent of the 1,664 linked cases. Thus, to complete the calculation of the relative importance of a given dummy (e.g., Roman Catholic religion), one multiplies its marginal effect statistic by its percentage of the linked cases sample (N = 1,664); and multiplies this net effect statistic by the number of actual voters (2,500). Relative to the Presbyterian voters’ choices, as shown in Table 4.1, the Roman Catholic preference for Hincks made a difference of +29 votes, while the Anglican, Methodist, and Baptist voters’ preferences made differences of –118, +124, and +123 votes respectively. The Probit model works well for the county, with its prediction that Hincks would poll 53 per cent of the linked cases votes for all townships outside of Oakland and Blenheim, compared with his actual polling of 52 per cent. It works poorly, however, for the Blenheim poll. Given the birthplace and denominational attributes of Blenheim voters, it predicts that Hincks would win 51 per cent of the linked cases votes, more than his actual support, 37 per cent. Effectively, Oxford’s 1851 general election requires two models to explain support for Hincks, one for Blenheim and the other for the rest of the county.49 Compared with the rest of Oxford County excluding Oakland, and independent of the voter’s birthplace and religion, mere residence in Blenheim reduced the probability of voting for Hincks by -0.181. What underlay the effect of residence in Blenheim was a polarization between those born in Scotland, who rallied to Hincks, and voters from other birthplaces, who uniformly rejected Hincks. Our sources do not show why this ethnic divide obtained in Blenheim but not in neighbouring polls. Summary and Interpretation Oxford’s 1851 general election exemplified the voice-vote electoral process in full bloom. As provided by Canada’s 1849 Consolidated Elections Act, Oxford’s election unfolded in three stages: the hustings nominations and show of hands followed by a six-day adjournment; two days of multiple-poll voting followed by a brief adjournment; and then a hustings declaration of the winner. The full three-stage process

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obtained in 1851 because the nominations produced more than one candidate, and the loser of the show of hands, Hincks, demanded a poll (thereby invoking the latter two stages). The 1851 election also showcased a refinement of the show of hands: inasmuch as the returning officer could not decide which candidate had the majority, he ordered a division of the electors – a physical separation of the two sides – to help him settle the matter. The election fell short of perfect fairness. Both sides employed ‘dirty tricks.’ Bribery and the treating of voters with food and drink are likely to have been widespread, although with both sides complicit, neither complained about the other. The show of hands was a flawed mechanism in that the returning officer could not ensure that all of those present actually were electors. Given that polling happened over two days, the candidates obtained an interim count of the votes at the end of the first day (in this case, Vansittart was ahead). Knowledge of the interim count could influence polling on the second day. Thus, one or both candidates could redouble their efforts to get out the vote. In the case at hand, Vansittart, the leader after the first day, faulted his side for complacency on the second day. The decisive issues in the election were about key features of democracy – the dismantling of establishment religion (by secularizing revenue from the Clergy Reserves) and the implementation of radical democratic reforms. A third issue, concerning a county subsidy for the Great Western Railway, was hotly debated in 1849–50 but without influence on the 1851 general election. The election marked a realignment of party formations in Oxford County. As exemplified by Vansittart’s middle-ground position on establishment religion and well-organized campaign, a moderate, pragmatic Conservative party had replaced the internally divided High Tory faction of the 1840s. The Baldwinite-Reform party had given way to a moderate Hincksite-Reform party, led by the premier. A Clear Grit Reform splinter group was in the ascendancy with its 1851 Oxford Reform Convention, but it waned with Hincks ascending to the premiership and co-opting the conventioneers and their would-be radical candidate, John Scatcherd. The suppression of the radicals left the field to two moderate candidates – a harbinger of the Hincksite-Conservative coalition party after 1854. Differences in place of birth and denominational affiliation were a statistically significant influence on voters’ choices of candidate. With establishment religion as the primary issue, Scottish Presbyterians

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showed a slight preference for Vansittart. Anglicans, English-born, and Irish-born voters were strongly for the Conservatives. American-born and nonconformist Protestant voters rallied to Hincks. Social class differences on the hierarchical model played a role. In particular, the Anglo-Scottish half-pay officer community in Woodstock was a bastion of Conservative support. Epilogue Hincks won the Oxford riding and his ministry won the provincial election. To appease the Clear Grits, the premier had committed his ministry to two advances in democracy: an extension of the franchise and the secularization of the revenue from the Clergy Reserves. Hincks failed to deliver on both counts, while his successor ministry, a ConservativeHincksite coalition of 1854, delivered on the Clergy Reserves revenue in 1854 and an extension of the franchise in 1885.

5 Elections in the Ridings of North Oxford and South Oxford, 1854–1858

The years 1852 to 1858 brought momentous changes to elections in Oxford. First, the county was smaller, having been shorn of 2.5 townships of territory (Burford, Oakland, and West Nissouri). Second, the county riding was gone; in its place were two ridings, North Oxford and South Oxford. Third, the 1857 general elections1 and the 1858 by-elections introduced an extension of the franchise: a qualification for tenants and occupants of property in townships; hitherto the township franchise had required ownership of property. Fourth, the county had its first Upper House election, for the Gore Division, in 1858. Fifth, a major realignment of party formations took place in Oxford. Immediately after the 1854 general election, the Hincks (Reform) ministry fell, and a Conservative-Hincksite coalition ministry, headed by a Conservative premier (Sir Allan MacNab), replaced it. In Oxford County, the coalition forces faltered in the 1857 general elections, when the Brownites, an offshoot of the old Reform party that supported George Brown’s political agenda, surged into the county and won both ridings. In response to the Brownite invasion, the Conservatives and Hincksites coalesced into a local coalition party in Oxford’s two 1858 by-elections. Partyism was the issue on which Hincksite and Brownite Reformers split; whereas the Hincksites were open to supporting coalition ministries, Brownites insisted on single-party ministries, believing that coalition administrations were intrinsically corrupt and irresponsible. Supporters of each group styled themselves as true ‘Reformers’ – the legitimate and only heirs of the old Baldwinite party – while casting the other as ‘turn coats’ and ‘dividers’ (of ‘the Reform party’). In actual fact, they were separate parties, not divided fragments of an old one.

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The 1854 Elections in the Oxford Ridings Oxford’s 1854 general elections were held in July while Hincks was premier, but South Oxford’s 1854 by-election was held in October, after the coalition ministry had taken office and a Conservative, Sir Allan MacNab, had replaced Hincks as premier. The 1854 General Election in North Oxford: Matheson Acclaimed Francis Hincks, the incumbent for the defunct county riding, could not represent both Oxford ridings, so he chose the South riding, whose electors had given him 57 per cent of their votes in the 1851 general election, not the North riding, whose electors had given him 43 per cent. This left the North riding open, and Donald Matheson (1808–84) of Embro, West Zorra, was acclaimed. The member-elect was a Presbyterian Highlander and West Zorra’s leading notable. ‘To sketch adequately the life of Donald Matheson,’ read his death notice in 1884, ‘would be to write the history of West Zorra and Embro.’ He had emigrated from Sutherland-Shire, Scotland, in 1832 to set up as a merchant on the site of the future village of Embro. He had been appointed postmaster in 1841, a magistrate in 1849, and clerk of the Division Court for the Zorras in 1850. He was an eight-time reeve for West Zorra (1850–57) and a five-time warden of Oxford County (1852–56). He ‘was known to everybody in the township, and nearly everybody had, at some time or other, done business with him.’2 By 1854 he was a wealthy man. His fine brick mansion was the biggest house in Embro.3 Matheson was a Clear Grit who campaigned as an ‘Independent Reformer.’ As he pronounced on the hustings, ‘I will support measures and not men … I will not have my political faith pinned to the sleeves or skirts of either Mr Hincks or Mr Brown. If Mr Hincks and Mr Brown should both come up to the mark on the Clergy Reserves question … then both of them shall have my support. [Otherwise] I will support the one that is right, whoever he should be.’4 Matheson was as good as his word. When the Hincks-Morin ministry collapsed after the election, its replacement, the Conservative-Hincksite coalition ministry, pledged to carry out the platform of the previous administration. The coalition ministry promptly delivered reforms that had eluded Hincks: the secularization of the revenues from the Clergy Reserves (1854), an extension of the franchise (1855), and an act to turn the Upper House (the Legislative Council) into an elective body (1856).

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Matheson responded by supporting the coalition ministry. He had become a Hincksite, and his West Zorra Highlanders were behind him. The 1854 General Election in South Oxford: Hincks versus Miller and Carroll The South Oxford general election matched Premier Hincks against two Conservatives: Daniel G. Miller, Esq. (1825–1869) and Peter Carroll. Miller, a Woodstock barrister, a native of Canada West, and an Anglican, had been a founding proprietor of the Woodstock British American (1848–53), a Vansittart organ.5 Miller also had ties to Woodstock’s half-pay officer community. In 1866 he was to marry Louise Augusta Graham, a daughter of the Philip Graham, RN (1810–1849), a past pillar of the Woodstock elite. Carroll, the old-settler Tory, was in his seventh and final bid for office. From the hustings Col. Benjamin Van Norman, Hincks’s second nominator, scorned Carroll as an ‘old fool,’ though Carroll was just forty-nine years old. Surprisingly, the returning officer, James Ingersoll, did not locate the hustings in the village of Ingersoll, the riding’s principal urban place, of which he was a founder. Rather, he picked a hamlet in Dereham as the ‘public place the most central and the most convenient for the great body of electors.’ The election, reported the Toronto British Canadian, was held at ‘Harris’s Tavern, Dereham Heights, lately dignified as Mount Elgin, though containing just the tavern and the sheds belonging to it.’ The hustings was located ‘in the grateful shade of an adjoining bush, into which three or four wagons were drawn and a temporary platform erected by them, from which the Prime Minister of Canada’ held forth. Some 950 were present, a small turnout owing to it being harvest time.6 Miller and Carroll each demanded a poll after losing the show of hands, but Hincks won by a landslide, with 68 per cent of the votes. Miller trailed with 30 per cent, while Carroll mustered a measly 2 per cent. Patronage had much to do with the outcome in South Oxford, claimed the Toronto Globe: Hincks had ‘a very large number of personal supporters, men whom he has attached to himself by benefits ... A great many of the influential men of Oxford are office-holders or the relatives of such and a still greater number are expectants ... they are bought by office or the hope of office.’ Hincks, in his nomination speech, acknowledged that one Finlay Malcomson had promised him ‘fifty votes’ from Norwichville and Otterville.7 Even John G. Vansittart,

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Hincks’s Conservative opponent in the previous election, voted for Hincks, rather than for either of the Conservative candidates.8 Possibly railway matters influenced him. In 1852 Hincks had been named president of the struggling Woodstock and Lake Erie Railway and Harbour Co. in which Vansittart was a founding partner. In the event, Hincks resigned from South Oxford to sit for Renfrew, which he had also won. This necessitated a by-election to replace him. The 1854 South Oxford By-election: Cook versus Van Norman and Dartnell Francis Hincks chose Renfrew ‘with the view of securing the return of my colleague, the Hon. Malcolm Cameron, for South Oxford’ in the byelection. Cameron (1808–1876), a Sarnia businessman and postmaster general in the Hincks-Morin ministry, had been defeated in the general election and needed a seat to remain in Hincks’s cabinet.9 Thus, as the Toronto Globe learned from a correspondent in Oxford, Cameron was ‘secretly canvassing this Riding through the tools of Mr Hincks. Elisha Hall was today busy at work in Ingersoll trying to get pledges for Cameron.’ With the collapse of the Hincks-Morin ministry in September, however, Cameron, as Hincks put it, came to ‘the decision that he will entirely abandon public life for the present.’10 By the time of the by-election, Sir Allan MacNab’s ConservativeHincksite coalition ministry had, with Hincks’s blessing, replaced the Hincks ministry. Thus, a possible issue for South Oxford Reformers was whether or not to support a coalition ministry headed by a Conservative premier (i.e., to become Hincksites rather than supporters of partyism). A second issue, carried forward from the general election, was the secularization of revenue from the Clergy Reserves, which the coalition ministry was pledged to achieve. The issue of partyism did not emerge. The election, held at Mount Elgin, produced three nominees, two of them Clear Grit Hincksites (Dr Ephraim Cook of Norwich and Col. Benjamin Van Norman of Dereham) and the third a Conservative (Edward Taylor Dartnell of Toronto). Dr Ephraim Cook (1805–1881) was a native of Massachusetts and an American-trained physician, who had set up practice in Norwich in 1831. In 1837 he was ‘said to be a surgeon of the rebel army,’ convicted of treason, and sentenced to hang; on the scaffold his sentence was qualified, and he was banished from the province in 1838. In 1839 he returned to Norwich, with the authorities turning a blind eye. Over

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his forty-year career in the village, he became a wealthy man.11 He was the postmaster (1833–55), manager of a local bank, and a director of the Port Dover and Lake Huron Railway. Like Reformers of all stripes, Cook called for the secularization of revenues from the Clergy Reserves. To this he added two democratic planks – an elected Upper House and the election of all county officers. Lastly, he wanted a more extended system of free trade with the United States and a prohibitory liquor law. Col. Benjamin Van Norman (1800–1869), a native of New Jersey, had married the late Harriet Tillson, a daughter of George Tillson, with whom he had been a partner in the founding of the village of Tillsonburg. Under Tillson’s tutelage, Van Norman had become a London District councillor and then a Brock District councillor (1842–44, 1848–49); a Brock District magistrate; a lieutenant-colonel in the Oxford Militia and the commander of its 6th Battalion Dereham (from 1848); Oxford County’s first warden (1850); and postmaster for Tillsonburg (1841–54). He had been a delegate at the radical 1851 Oxford Reform Convention. He was variously a lumberman, manufacturer of axes; manufacturer of windows, doors, and sashes; grist miller; and a brick maker. He was to die of a heart attack shortly after ‘wheeling home a sack of flour’ on 21 August 1869.12 Edward Taylor Dartnell (1808–1892) was a prominent Orangeman in Toronto, a native of Ireland, an Anglican, and editor of an Orange Conservative organ, the Toronto British Canadian – whence that paper’s coverage of the earlier general election in Mount Elgin. He presented himself as a ‘Progressive Conservative.’13 He supported the secularization of the Clergy Reserves, with the proceeds going to educational objects or strictly missionary purposes of Protestantism in outlying areas; representation by population; retrenchment; responsible government; and an extension of the franchise. Although not a resident, he claimed a long association with Oxford County. In September 1854 the riding’s Reformers had met in convention in a bid to unite behind one nominee before the hustings nominations. Although the delegates had divided evenly between Cook and Van Norman, they chose Cook. Nevertheless, Van Norman accepted nomination against Cook at the hustings nominations, two weeks later. As he explained, ‘The proceedings of the convention had not been conducted satisfactorily … At least four of the delegates of the convention that nominated Dr Cook had voted contrary to the opinion they had expressed in private, through which Dr Cook owed his nomination.’14

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Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

With three nominations in hand, the returning officer called for a show of hands to decide who had a majority of the electors in attendance. Cook won by a majority of five to one. For the first and last time in Oxford’s electoral history, the show of hands decided the election: neither Van Norman nor Dartnell demanded a poll. Having made his point, Van Norman retired in favour of Cook, not wishing to ‘cut up’ the party. Dartnell withdrew because ‘the late hour he entered the field would not warrant his going to the polls with a fair promise of success, as it required time to canvass the Riding and give a more full expression of his views to the electors, but [he] might appear before them on another occasion as a candidate for their suffrages.’ As Oxford’s turbulent year of 1854 drew to a close, the realignment of parties had yet to gel, and the Clear Grit agenda still had life. In November 1854, both Oxford members voted for a bill to let the people of the counties elect county officers – sheriffs, clerks of the peace, and registrars of the counties – thereby removing from the administration ‘the corrupting influence of these appointments.’15 In the event, their own coalition ministry opposed the bill and defeated it. The 1857 General Elections and the 1858 By-elections The 1857 general elections were the first to apply the 1855 Elective Franchise Extension Act, which had introduced a qualification for tenants and occupants in townships. Hitherto the township franchise had required the ownership of property. The change came when tenancy rates were declining among occupiers of property. In the 1861 general elections, tenants were to be 12 per cent of the electors who voted in the two Oxford ridings; occupants were 1 per cent. A Realignment of Parties The 1857 general elections and two 1858 by-elections changed the alignment of parties in the Oxford ridings. First, these contests marked a transition from Hincksite to Brownite hegemony. The Brownites, a new party in the Oxfords, won both ridings in the general election and the 1858 by-elections, in each case against a Hincksite opponent. Second, in opposition to the Brownite invasion in the general election, the Hincksites and Conservatives came together in coalition for the 1858 by-elections. Thus was completed a new alignment – Brownite versus

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Hincksite-Conservative coalition – in place of the Hincksite-Conservative rivalry of old. This development at the local level mimicked developments at the provincial level, where the Conservative-Hincksite coalition ministry had taken office in 1854, with the Brownites gradually emerging as the principal opposition. Third, the general election and by-elections began a decade of dominance in the Oxford ridings by political heavy-weights from Toronto, at the expense of local men. The Brownite victors, George Brown, Skeffington Connor, and William McDougall, hailed from the provincial metropolis, as did the coalition party losers in the by-elections, Stephen Richards and the Hon. Joseph Curran Morrison. Election Issues The elections were awash in issues. Brownites, a new party in Oxford’s elections, provoked the major ones: partyism versus coalition, the abolition of public funds for sectarian schools, ‘Upper Canada Rights,’ and representation by population on a sectional basis. Other issues were repeal of the usury laws and annexation of the Hudson’s Bay Territories in the far west.16 An important local issue in the South riding was financial support for a proposed Great Southern Railway. George Brown’s character was an issue for Hincksites; ‘the bigoted leader of the Opposition,’ snorted the Ingersoll Chronicle, ‘has striven all his life to array one section of the people against the other, on religious grounds [and] is again attempting to kindle strife by insane and insensate appeals to the worst passions of his adherents. He tells us that intelligence, wealth, industry, progress, equal rights, and Protestant liberty, are arrayed against ignorance, indolence, poverty, retrogression, monopoly, exclusive privileges, and Popish intolerance.’17 The Brownite issues were intertwined. Partyism and distrust of coalition ministries harkened back to Robert Baldwin’s achievement of responsible government on a party basis in 1849. But Brownites were particularly distrustful of Canada’s Conservative-Hincksite coalition ministry, which in their eyes favoured francophone Roman Catholics in Canada East and oppressed Protestants in Canada West. Proof of the pudding was an 1856 Schools Act that strengthened provisions for publicly funded Roman Catholic schools in Canada West, yet was passed largely by francophone members from Canada East. Partyism led Oxford Brownites to their second issue, the abolition

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of sectarian schools in Canada West and the development of a uniform ‘national’ school system. Effectively, Brownites wished to complete the separation of church and state, a process begun with the secularization of revenue from the Clergy Reserves in 1854 – ironically, by the coalition ministry. The sectarian schools question led Brownites to their third issue: ‘Upper Canada rights.’ The 1840 Act of Union gave Canada West and Canada East equal representation in the Legislative Assembly, but the western section was beginning to have the larger population. Representation by population on a sectional basis was a remedy. It would end the francophone Roman Catholic meddling in the affairs of Canada West and weaken the coalition ministry. Frank Ball campaigned in the South Oxford riding on a local issue: support for the completion of the Great Southern Railway. The completion of this second trunk route would lower freight rates by providing the Great Western Railway with competition. Moreover, the route of the Great Southern would pass through or near the county’s southern townships, thereby improving their access to outside markets. In response to Ball’s initiative, Skeffington Connor proposed that three million dollars coming due from a loan to the Great Western be lent to the Great Southern. Ebenezer Bodwell was cagey, being against the Great Western monopoly but also against building more railways than the country could sustain. The 1857 General Election in North Oxford: Brown versus Matheson and Miller The 1857general election in the riding of North Oxford had three candidates: Donald Matheson, the Zorra magnate and Hincksite incumbent; George Brown (1818–1880), the founder of the Brownite party, owner of the Toronto Globe, and leader of the provincial Opposition; and Daniel G. Miller, Esq., the Woodstock barrister and a Conservative, who had opposed Hincks in South Oxford in the 1854 general election. Skeffington Connor initially was a candidate but, as discussed below, withdrew to run in the South riding. Brown entered the field after deciding not to stand for re-election in Lambton. As his biographer tells it, he desired a smaller constituency that would make fewer demands on his time. Although he had received offers of nomination from other ridings, ‘that from North Oxford’ – a

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requisition from 370 electors – ‘seemed the best to take. This would be a smaller, less exacting constituency, and above all a secure one, which would leave him time for the Reform campaign in general. Besides, Oxford had really been the seat of his very first election success, when he had worked to carry it in 1847 for the absent Francis Hincks. The Scots of Zorra were as heartily willing to support George Brown as they had been ten years before.’ Brown also had family in the riding. His younger sister, Marianne (‘Phasie’), was married to the Rev. William S. Ball, the Free Church minister in Woodstock.18 But the biographer’s account is incomplete and somewhat misleading. First, it fails to convince us of the reasons for Brown quitting his old riding. In Lambton he already had a safe riding – the sole strategic consideration mentioned for his choice of North Oxford; his prospective opponent there was Malcolm ‘Coon’ Cameron, whom he had twice defeated. Moreover, Lambton was close to his extensive business interests in Bothwell, a Kent County community that he had founded.19 Second, it is not clear why he ran in North Oxford. The Zorra Scots of North Oxford backed their fellow Highlander, Donald Matheson, not Brown. Moreover, Brown accepted a requisition from 370 North Oxford electors when the riding already had a Brownite in the field. This was Dr Skeffington Connor, a Toronto lawyer and one of four financial backers of the Globe at its founding in 1844. Indeed, Connor and Brown had locked horns in North Oxford a year earlier when an election had been expected but did not happen.20 Lastly, Brown remained in the field against Connor after accepting a requisition from Toronto electors to contest their riding.21 At the election, a week later, Connor was to decline his nomination ‘to avoid dividing the Reform vote’ and with the intention of contesting the South riding. Whatever Brown’s reasoning, his action marked him as a ‘bull in a china shop’: a poor strategist, who put personal advantage before the interests of party. In this regard, Brown’s change of ridings handed victory to Malcolm ‘Coon’ Cameron in Lambton. In the event, Brown set up committee rooms in Woodstock’s Royal Alexandra Hotel to coordinate the work of some two hundred volunteers from all parts of the riding. On 9 December Brown held a ‘densely crowded’ meeting in the Woodstock Town Hall, where ‘he occupied between two and three hours breathing out bitter complaints about the late administration in general and Donald Matheson, Esq., in particular.’ Nevertheless, Matheson appeared to be unbeatable on his home ground of Zorra. When Brown visited Embro, ‘he was escorted out of

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the village by three pairs of bagpipes and an immense crowd to the tune of the Rogue’s March [a military tune played to shame disgraced soldiers, commonly ending with a well-placed kick to the disgraced man’s backside]. He did not dare to hold the meeting that he had advertised.’22 The Toronto riding was Brown’s primary interest. He skimped on his personal canvass in North Oxford, and his younger brother, John G. Brown, represented him at the hustings nominations, George having been ‘detained in Toronto because of nominations there.’ On 15 December Sheriff James Carroll presided at the hustings nominations on the Court House Square in Woodstock, with some thousand to twelve hundred persons present. The proceedings were generally orderly. When Brown’s nominators tried to speak, however, the effect was marred ‘by the sweet voices of a lot of rowdies collected by Mr Miller, who kept up continuous hooting whenever it suited their leader’s purpose.’23 The show of hands, reported Brown’s Toronto Globe, showed Brown with more votes than Matheson and Miller combined. Nevertheless, Matheson and Miller demanded a poll. With the close of the polls a week later, Brown was returned with 53 per cent of the votes; Miller, 31 per cent; and Matheson, 15 per cent. Brown lost Woodstock to Miller and West Zorra to Matheson, but swept the other polls. Brown promptly resigned his North Oxford seat, having chosen to sit for Toronto, which he also had won. This necessitated a by-election to fill the vacancy, and Brown recommended a convention to choose his successor as the party’s candidate at the hustings nominations. The 1858 North Oxford By-election: McDougall versus Morrison Bad feeling developed at the Brownite convention, which met in April. The delegates chose William McDougall of Toronto over three local men and Gordon Brown, George’s brother. ‘The result,’ hissed the Ingersoll Chronicle, ‘was brought about by a good deal of “double dealing,” “chiselling,” &c., on the part of some of the delegates, and the probability is that there will be a split in the ranks ere the election comes off.’ Robert McLean, one of the defeated local men, denied in the Toronto Globe that he would oppose the convention’s choice, but allowed that he ‘might have future comment on the convention as finally organized and the behaviour of one or two members.’24 The ensuing by-election was a battle between Toronto lawyers: William McDougall (1822–1905), the choice of the Brownite convention, and the Hon. Joseph Curran Morrison (1816–1885), a Hincksite. Also

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in the field, briefly, was Mr Wesley Howell, a Blenheim farmer.25 As the Ingersoll Chronicle reported, ‘Mr Howell came forward but as it was expected that he would resign, very little manifestation was shown in his favour. He spoke pointedly but briefly, expressing the opinion that if he had entered the field sooner, his prospects would have been better. He thought it wrong that North Oxford should import candidates from Toronto; they had local candidates, if they chose to bring them out. Mr Howell, after thanking the electors, said he would fall into the rear and permit the other two candidates to fight out the battle between them. This was, of course, understood as being tantamount to a resignation.’ The absence of a Conservative candidate was a boost for Morrison and marked the start of a local Hincksite-Conservative coalition party in the riding of North Oxford. William McDougall, a Toronto native, ethnic Scot, and Free Church Presbyterian, had been proprietor and editor of Toronto North American before selling out to George Brown in 1855. Later known as ‘Wandering Willie’ for his shifting partisan loyalties, McDougall had been a Clear Grit until 1851, then a Hincksite until 1855, when he became a Brownite. He was a political writer for the Toronto Globe (1855–60) and had been the secretary at George Brown’s 1857 Provincial Reform Convention in Toronto. In 1859 he was to be secretary of Brown’s second Provincial Reform Convention and its offshoot, the Provincial Reform Association. Joseph Curran Morrison, a Toronto lawyer, Presbyterian, and resident of Canada since 1830, was born to Scottish parents while they were sojourning in Ireland. He modelled his career on Francis Hincks, with a mix of politics and railways. He had been the parliamentary agent for the Great Western Railway in 1853, and in 1857 he was briefly president of the Woodstock and Lake Erie Railway and Harbour Co. Morrison had been solicitor general in the Hincks-Morin administration (1853– 54). In 1856 he became receiver general in the Conservative-Hincksite coalition government, but resigned after failing to gain election in either of two constituencies, Peel and Ontario South, in the 1857 general election. His candidacy in the North Oxford by-election came two months later. The by-election was hard-fought. The candidates’ speeches were an exchange of personal attacks, not expositions of principle. The large attendance at the hustings nominations in May 1858 allegedly included ‘hundreds of persons not voters – including a large number of boys – who were imported for the occasion to hold up their hands for Mr

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McDougall.’26 When Morrison spoke at the hustings nominations, ‘a noisy fellow in the crowd, who appeared to be under the influence of liquor, began to interrupt, which he kept up as long as Mr Morrison continued.’27 During the polling in West Zorra and Blenheim, Morrison’s scrutineers played the blocking game. Anticipating that these polls would go against their candidate, they swore every voter (required them to take the elector’s oath) with a view to shrinking the vote. Up to three hundred electors were backed up at the poll, waiting to vote as fast as the poll would let them.28 McDougall polled 54 per cent of the votes. Morrison won in traditional Conservative territory: the five Woodstock polls (74% of the votes) and Blandford. In West Zorra, with Matheson not in the field, McDougall polled 71 per cent of the votes. The Highlanders’ newfound preference for Brownites was to endure. The 1857 General Election in South Oxford: Connor versus Ball and Four Others The returning officer, James Ingersoll, held the election alongside Stephenson’s Inn in the North Norwich hamlet of Stevenson’s Corners, a change from the Mount Elgin location of the riding’s first two elections. The inn was to be the riding’s venue for the next five elections, the 1867 Dominion and provincial elections, and provincial elections thereafter, albeit with changes of name: Hillman’s Inn, Hillman’s Corners in 1861, and Holbrook in 1871. The South riding had a wild contest with six candidates: two Hincksites, three Brownites, and an Independent. The incumbent, Dr Ephraim (Rebel) Cook, was a Hincksite. As he stated during his re-election campaign, he ‘had voted as his judgment and conscience dictated. He had gone to Parliament pledged to support the administration then in power; that government having failed, he had supported the succeeding one … Coalition governments sometimes were necessary and expedient. If elected, he would not go to Parliament as a party man: he would support good measures come from where they might.’29 One of Cook’s challengers, Francis Ramsay Ball (1828–1913), was a Hincksite who campaigned on a local issue: the completion of a Canada Southern Railway.30 Ball, a Presbyterian of German-Loyalist stock, was a native of the Niagara region and had practised law in Woodstock since 1850. Ebenezer Vining Bodwell (1827–1889), a Brownite candidate, was a Dereham Township farmer, a native of Oxford’s Nissouri Township,

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a son of American-immigrant parents, and a Baptist. George Skeffington Connor of Toronto, a second Brownite candidate, was a native of Ireland, an Anglican, a resident of Canada since 1842, and the solicitor for the University of Toronto. He also held an Honorary LLD from the University of Dublin (1849) – whence his street title, ‘the Doctor.’ Charles Mason (1814–1888), a third Brownite candidate, was a native of England, a Presbyterian, and a miller in Beachville, West Oxford. The ‘loose fish’ candidate was Robert Fleming Gourlay (1778–1863), a Presbyterian from the Scottish Lowlands, a famous radical in Upper Canada, and the author of a Statistical Account of Upper Canada (1822); he had been a farmer in Dereham for the previous two years, was eighty years old, and was newly married to his twenty-eight-year-old housekeeper. ‘I am attached to no party ... I disapprove of Canvassing and especially of giving pledge,’ stated his letter to the electors. His issue was personal: to gain a parliamentary hearing to grieve his trumped-up banishment from the province in 1819. He was to poll one vote.31 Connor’s candidacy was hotly disputed.32 He had started as a candidate in the North riding, but had been pushed out by George Brown’s late entry into the field. Simultaneously, he had crossed over to the South riding, following negotiations with some fifty ‘leading’ Ingersoll men. At a public meeting in Ingersoll, friends of Connor showed up at 7 p.m. sharp so as to approve a report endorsing him before opposition forces arrived. But the ploy failed, the meeting was packed, and there was doubt about the report being accepted. After discussion of the report, the question was put by the chair – John Galliford, Esq., reeve of Ingersoll – who declared it carried. Amid loud cries of ‘lost,’ ‘lost,’ ‘carried,’ ‘carried,’ Galliford rose and said that ‘he knew who were voters and who were not.’ Mr Bodwell and others suggested that the better way would be to take the vote again, by dividing the house, which the chair declined to do. Frank Ball and Ebenezer Bodwell were incensed that Connor had not been properly ‘brought out’ and had been ‘thrust upon’ the electors. Indeed, John Galliford, the high-handed chair of the public meeting, had helped to ‘bring out’ Bodwell, and there he was, heading the requisition to Connor. Payback came during the polling. At the end of the first day of polling, Connor led with 33 per cent of the votes, compared with 32 per cent for Ball. Bodwell, with 8 per cent of the votes, judged that he could not win and withdrew in favour of Ball. Consequently Ball led the second day’s poll with 41 per cent of the votes, compared with 39 per cent for Connor.

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But it was not enough. Connor won by three votes, polling 80 per cent of the votes in Ingersoll and two-thirds of the votes in North Oxford and West Oxford. Frank Ball, the champion of the Great Southern Railway, polled strongly in townships that were near the line’s proposed route: 96 per cent of the votes in South Norwich and 70 per cent in Dereham. Rebel Cook polled strongly in his home township, winning 83 per cent of the votes in North Norwich. Notwithstanding Connor’s narrow win over Frank Ball, Brownites rejoiced more about his defeat of the incumbent, Dr Ephraim Cook. Although a ‘Reformer,’ Cook’s support for the coalition ministry made him a ‘turn coat’ – like Donald Matheson in the North riding.33 Supporters of the coalition ministry, pronounced Connor, ‘loudly tell us that the distinctions of party have ceased to exist in Canada and are no longer necessary for our good government. I most earnestly protest against this doctrine. It is subversive of all freedom; it opens the door to all corruption – it relieves the minister from every check upon his fidelity – and in effect changes him from a responsible agent to an irresponsible despot … A coalition government may in an extraordinary crisis become an unavoidable evil; but that it is an evil and only to be borne while unavoidable … I am an unflinching advocate of Party government.’34 The Trial for South Oxford’s 1857 Controverted Election Friends of Ball placed a petition against Connor’s election in the hands of the returning officer, and the trial process for controverted elections began, with His Honour, David S. McQueen, the county judge for Oxford, acting as the commissioner to gather evidence. By 10 March 1858 McQueen had completed his work for three of the riding’s seven polls. As the Ingersoll Chronicle reported, ‘The legality of the votes challenged by the contesting parties in the municipalities of Ingersoll, Dereham, and West Oxford have all been tried, and the result shows most distinctly that Mr Ball is on the losing side. On Wednesday, His Honour, Judge McQueen, by the consent of both parties adjourned the investigation until the 30th inst. It is probable, however, that the matter will rest where it is – Mr Ball being satisfied that, to proceed further, would bring unnecessary waste and time.’ As predicted, Ball withdrew his petition. The 1858 South Oxford By-election: Connor versus Richards In 1858 Connor became solicitor general in the short-lived (two-day)

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Brown-Dorion ministry, thereby vacating his seat and necessitating a by-election. This time around, he faced Stephen Richards (1820–1894), an Anglican, a native of Brockville, a Hincksite and, like Connor, a lawyer from Toronto. Richards presented himself as a friend of Robert Baldwin and Francis Hincks. His older brother, William Buell Richards, had been attorney general in the Hincks-Morin ministry in 1851, and Robert Baldwin was godfather to one of William’s children. Connor’s chickens came home to roost in the by-election. Ephraim Cook and Frank Ball, the defeated Hincksite candidates in the general election, were Richards’s first and second nominators. The absence of a Conservative candidate marked the beginning of a Hincksite-Conservative coalition party in South Oxford elections. The hard-fought contest featured a pre-election riot, an incident at the hustings nominations, a scrutineer’s obstruction of polling, a missing Poll Book, a mocking of the returning officer at the hustings declaration, and a huge torchlight procession of the victorious Brownites. The Ingersoll Chronicle crossed over to the Brownite camp for the byelection and regaled its readers with accounts of Hincksite skulduggery. Two days before the by-election there occurred a disgraceful row … at Dr Connor’s meeting in Tillsonburg … resulting in the death of a Mr Hopkins, a carpenter ... and in the injuring of at least twenty others. The meeting was called by Connor, but that gentleman did not address the meeting – The Hon. M.H. Foley addressed the electors at considerable length when the celebrated Barney French and others of the Richards party entered the Temperance Hall, walked up to the platform, and ordered Mr Foley to desist. This, of course, Mr Foley refused doing, and continued his remarks. He had not proceeded many minutes before an egg was hurled at him, which hit him in the breast; shortly after which French approached him and demanded to be heard. Mr Francis R. Ball then suggested to the rowdies around him to remove Mr Foley and take the stand by force. The rowdies then made immediately for the platform – taking with them many of Dr Connor’s friends, when that portion of the floor – about twelve feet by twenty-four – gave way, precipitating thirty or fifty persons to the ground floor below, a distance of twenty-four feet.35

Richards, alleged the Chronicle, brought non-electors to the hustings nominations in a bid to steal the show of hands: Shortly before the nomination took place, we were surprised by the ar-

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rival of vehicles filled with inhabitants of Woodstock. We were still more surprised, however, when we heard them cheering for Richards. We then became aware, for the first time, of the desperate efforts – no matter how mean or disgraceful – of the Richards party to carry the nomination. From subsequent inquiries which we made, we learned that the whole livery of the Town of Woodstock had been engaged for the purpose of conveying to the place persons who were favourable to the election of Mr Richards. There were several arrivals, however, in private vehicles … who were known to be legal voters of the South Riding.

At this point, the returning officer, Sheriff James Carroll ordered two reeves and a past mayor of Woodstock off the hustings, believing them to be engaged in a disruptive private conversation while the Hon. Mr Foley was speaking. When victims of the sheriff’s purge – whom the Chronicle described as ‘attentive listeners’ – pressed for an explanation, Carroll responded with ‘Be off, Sir. Be off. Won’t have you here,’ to John Galliford, the reeve of Ingersoll and a Brownite; and, ‘You are the greatest scoundrel living, Sir. Be Off,’ to Col. W.S. Light, the reeve of West Oxford and a Conservative.36 With nominations for Connor and Richards received and speeches from the candidates and their nominators completed, the sheriff stepped forward and demanded a show of hands for the candidates. Being unable to decide, a division took place – Dr Connor’s friends going to the West, and the friends of Mr Richards to the East. At this time the greatest excitement and confusion prevailed. Several notorious characters from Woodstock, non-voters, and evidently paid agents of the Richards party, set up a yelling and howling most unearthly, and attempted to force into their ranks peaceably disposed persons on the Connor side. This confusion kept up for some time until friends of the candidates again mingled together. Another division was demanded, when there appeared, and in the opinion of any unprejudiced person, a majority in favour of Dr Connor of at least one hundred and fifty. The Returning Officer [Sheriff Carroll] declared his inability to decide which candidate had the majority.

Connor’s friends, reported the Chronicle, ‘justly’ claimed the majority, and Frank Ball demanded a poll on behalf of Richards. The polling was not without incident. Richard’s scrutineer at the Ingersoll poll, Mr Horton of London, played the blocking game. ‘Not con-

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tent with brow-beating and swearing almost everyone of Dr Connor’s voters on the first day,’ reported the Chronicle, Horton persisted in asking the most outrageous questions – his sole object being to consume time and prevent the whole of Dr Connor’s votes from being polled. What will the people say when they hear of questions like the following were asked to voters? To a coloured man, this Mr Horton asked – ‘are you an Irishman or a Dutchman?’ ‘What would you fetch in New Orleans?’ Similar insolent questions were repeatedly asked, and frequently fifteen or twenty minutes would be consumed in polling a vote. This state of things continued for some hours, when Mr Horton was threatened, by some persons outside, with violence if he persisted in his course. This had the desired effect, and on the second day Mr Horton acted more the part of a gentleman than a rowdy.37

Connor won 55 per cent of the votes. His large majorities at the Ingersoll, West Oxford, and North Oxford polls (75% or more) made the difference. Richards, the Hincksite, won 78 per cent of the votes at the South Norwich poll and a majority of the votes at the Dereham and East Oxford polls. Sheriff Carroll received a comeuppance for his purge on the hustings when the Poll Book for North Norwich went missing at the declaration. After considerable delay Sheriff Carroll obtained a certified statement from the deputy returning officer as to the contents of the Poll Book. On proclaiming Connor the winner, he endured a mock ‘three cheers for the Returning Officer.’38 Then followed a procession of Dr Connor’s friends – to the number of between 1,000 and 1,200 ... led by Mr Thomas Brown of Ingersoll, in a buggy, carrying a Union Jack, followed by Dr Connor and Mr W.A. Rumsey of Ingersoll, then the Beachville band in a wagon drawn by four horses, followed by a large six-horse vehicle which, with its load of human beings, looked like a moving mountain. These were followed by wagons and carriages driven by four and two horses, and double and single buggies to the number of about 150, in the midst of which was placed the Tillsonburg Band. The six-horse team of Mr Charles Banbury of Dereham made a splendid appearance. Several of the wagons carried flags, which gave the procession a fine appearance as it wound down the road, now turning a corner, then up a hill, then down again. The slight inconvenience arising from the dust,

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now and then, was well re-paid by the view of the procession winding along the face of a hill with the band playing, the banners flying, and the people hurrahing. Altogether it formed a turn out which is not often seen at political demonstrations.

On Connor’s arrival in Ingersoll, some fifteen hundred people marched through the principal streets in a torchlight procession: ‘The Marshall, Mr Nicholas Taylor, headed it, followed by the Doctor [Connor] and John McDonald, Esq., in a carriage surrounded by torches carried by a few of the citizens; then came the Brass Band from Beachville, playing suitable airs, having torches diffused among them. Then came companies Nos. 1 and 2 of Ingersoll firemen, headed by their respective officers, each bearing a lighted torch. Then the Tillsonburg Band, the citizens to a number of several hundred, with torches.’39 The Upper House General Election: Gore Division, 1858 The 1856 Legislative Council Act provided for staggered divisional elections to transform the Upper House into an elective body. Members were elected for eight-year fixed terms. The franchise was the same as for Lower House elections, but legislative councillors had a higher qualification: £2,000 compared with £500. The Gore Division, up for election in 1858, comprised the ridings of South Waterloo and North Oxford. The candidates were George Alexander (1814–1903) of the riding of North Oxford and James Cowan (1803–1900) of the riding of South Waterloo. Alexander, a Blandford Township farmer, was a Scottish Lowlander from Banff-Shire and an Anglican, who had immigrated to the Woodstock area as a young man. Cowan, a farmer near Galt, was a native of Peeble-Shire in the Scottish lowlands; a Presbyterian, a resident of Canada since 1834, a founder of the Provincial Agricultural Association and Board of Agriculture for Canada West, a shareholder in an agricultural implements manufactory, and a booster of civic enterprises in Galt (a Mechanics Institute, Galt’s first railway).40 Cowan was a Brownite; Alexander pretended to be one. Although Alexander masqueraded as an opponent of the coalition ministry, his Conservative party pedigree lurked beneath the surface. With John G. Vansittart and Daniel G. Miller, he had been a founding proprietor of the Woodstock British American (1848–53), a Conservative organ, and had voted for Vansittart in 1851. In 1847 he had married a

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daughter of Lt. Col. A.W. Light, a pillar of Woodstock’s half-pay officer community, and in 1879 his youngest daughter was to marry John Pennefather Vansittart, son of the late John G. Vansittart and grandson of the late vice-admiral. Alexander was to sit as a Conservative in the Canadian Senate from 1873 to 1891.41 In 1858, however, he successfully concealed his partisan ties. In November 1857, opined the Ingersoll Chronicle, Alexander had ‘never to this day taken any part in politics … [he is] unpledged and uninfluenced by any party … an Independent candidate – a gentleman opposed to jobbery and Clear-Gritism particularly and republicanism generally.’42 Nevertheless, the Toronto Globe was doubtful about Alexander’s politics and favoured Cowan as ‘the more reliable man.’43 The ‘largely attended’ hustings nominations was held in the Blenheim hamlet of Drumbo, North Oxford riding. Cowan arrived with ‘two bands of music and troops of friends,’ but Alexander ‘made a very poor show.’ Cowan’s nominators were W.H. Horsman, East Nissouri (party preference unknown), and Isaac Clemens, warden of Waterloo County and a Brownite. Alexander’s nominators were Absalom Shade of Galt, a Tory legislative councillor (member of the Upper House) by Crown appointment in 1831, and George Perry, a Blenheim Brownite. The American-born Shade (1793–1862) was the founder of Galt (first called Shade’s Mills) and James Cowan’s colleague in an unsuccessful campaign to have Galt proclaimed the seat of the newly created Waterloo County in 1852.44 After both candidates attacked the coalition ministry, Cowan won the show of hands by a large majority – ‘some say seven to one and others nine to one’ – and led after the first day of polling. But Alexander won the election, polling 51 per cent of the 4,367 votes and a seventy-nine-vote majority. Each candidate obtained a majority in his home riding: Alexander polled 57 per cent of the votes in North Oxford, and Cowan polled 58 per cent in South Waterloo. Alexander won, in part, because his home riding had 56 per cent of the electors and produced 57 per cent of the votes. Nevertheless, there was more to the outcome. Alexander of North Oxford won large majorities in three of South Waterloo’s six municipalities (69%, 71%, and 87%), while Cowan of South Waterloo won majorities in two of North Oxford’s six municipalities. Alexander polled 81 per cent of the votes in Tory-leaning Woodstock, which indicated his attraction for Conservative voters. Cowan captured 60 per cent of the votes in West Zorra, North Oxford’s Highland Presbyterian poll; ap-

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parently, Cowan’s Lowlander Scottish Presbyterian pedigree trumped Alexander’s Lowlander Scottish Anglican one. Despite Alexander’s endorsement from Absalom Shade, the founder of Galt, Cowan, also from the Galt area, polled majorities in Galt (63%) and its immediate hinterland, Dumphries Township (87%). Campaigns in the 1850s Unwritten protocol required the candidate to show reticence about coming forward for election and to be brought out by friends – the term for supporters – rather than thrusting himself on the electors. A requisition was one tool for the purpose, the other being selection by party convention.45 Bringing Out the Candidate by Requisition A requisition was a formal request to an individual to stand for election. It consisted of a preamble, stating the request, followed by signatures of the petitioners. The signatures were assembled on printed sheets that friends had circulated across the riding. Commonly, the requisition was bundled with the candidate’s favourable reply and reproduced as an advertisement in local newspapers. Examples of the requisition method were many. As the 1857 general election approached, Frank Ball acceded to a requisition from seven principals ‘and 302 others.’ Meanwhile, requisitions to Dr Cook, Benjamin Van Norman, and E.V. Bodwell were in circulation. At a meeting in Ingersoll, Charles Mason, Esq., of Beachville and W.S. Light, Esq., of Woodstock ‘were repeatedly called upon to address the meeting, but declined to do so, on the grounds that, although requisitions were in circulation asking them to come forward, they had not yet consented to do so, and therefore did not consider themselves candidates.’46 The requisition to Skeffington Connor, a candidate in South Oxford’s 1858 by-election, carried the names of ‘Henry Crotty, John Galliford, John McDonald, David Paine, J.M. Chapman, John Buchanan and 100 others.’ In South Oxford’s December 1857 general election, a spat between Ebenezer Bodwell and John Galliford, a master shoemaker and reeve of Ingersoll, offered insight into the informal process of organizing a requisition; Galliford had been ‘the means’ of bringing out Bodwell in Ingersoll, but then had deserted him to head Dr Connor’s requisition.47

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Bringing Out the Candidate by Delegated Party Convention The delegated party convention was a second mechanism for bringing out a candidate. The Oxford ridings had two conventions during the 1850s: the first a Hincksite affair preceding the 1854 South Oxford byelection, and the other a Brownite gathering preceding the 1858 North Oxford by-election. In each case, the protocol for the convention began with an announcement by party notables of a public meeting to select a candidate. On deciding to hold a convention, the attendees struck a committee to arrange for the election of delegates from the riding’s constituent municipalities; set a date for the election of delegates; and set a date, time, and place for the convention. Once assembled in convention, the delegates elected a chair and secretary, resolved to abide by the convention’s choice of nominee, and called for nominations. The delegates then voted on the nominees, with the winning candidate requiring an absolute majority. On identifying the winner, the delegates made their selection unanimous and struck a committee to secure his election at the polls. The object of a convention was to unite the party concerned behind a single candidate before nomination day. Conversely, it aimed to avoid splitting the party’s vote between two candidates, thereby allowing the opposition to steal the election. It was also a mechanism for harnessing local rivalries within the party. Oxford County’s two conventions produced mixed outcomes. The Hincksite convention of 1854 chose Ephraim Cook as its nominee, but the loser, Benjamin Van Norman, accepted nomination at the hustings nominations on the grounds that the convention’s proceedings had been unfair. The 1858 Brownite convention successfully united party forces behind its nominee, William McDougall. The Canvass Campaigns were one-month affairs, lasting from the issuance of the election writ to declaration day. Typically the candidate held public meetings in various hamlets of the riding, occasionally with an opponent attending. Such meetings could backfire. At William McDougall’s meeting at Princeton in the riding of North Oxford in April 1858, the attendees called for the election of a local resident rather than McDougall, a Toronto lawyer. The Oxford ridings also held all-candidates public meetings that en-

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tertained motions to endorse one or more of the speakers. A meeting in Ingersoll in December 1857 resolved that Ebenezer Bodwell and Robert F. Gourlay were ‘fit and proper candidates for election,’ but that Dr Ephraim Cook (the incumbent) and Col. Benjamin Van Norman were not. It defeated a motion ‘that it is the opinion of this meeting that there is no candidate at present in the field on whom Reformers of the South Riding can unite. Therefore, this meeting is of the opinion that a committee should be appointed to confer with the several municipalities in choosing a candidate.’48 The Candidate’s Campaign Bill Major campaigns involved expenses for printing and circulating requisitions and handbills, paid agents, canvassing, hall rentals for public meetings, team rentals for processions, subsidies to party newspapers, newspaper advertisements, travel, and accommodation. In some cases they expended monies for bribes, treating, entertainments, and furnishing voters with rides to the poll. If a campaign manager, for purposes of planning strategy, required copies of Poll Books from the previous election, then these were available from a county office ‘at three pence per folio of a hundred words.’49 The temporal increase in the number of polls and numbers of voters added to such an expense. Some campaigns enjoyed economies; for example, George Brown and William McDougall got a financial ‘free ride’ from Brown’s ownership of the Toronto Globe. Costs were high in elections in which the candidates were lawyers from Toronto with access to resources from outside the riding. According to the Toronto Globe, party funds furnished £2,400 on behalf of J.C. Morrison, the ministerial candidate in the 1858 North Oxford by-election.50 Paid agents had ‘been traversing the County for weeks, hiring teams and taverns, circulating lying handbills and still more, false stories by word of mouth. Every purchasable man was secured, and every weak man was seduced. A daily newspaper was started in Woodstock to advocate Morrison’s cause, and scattered through every corner.’ Meanwhile in the South riding, according to the Ingersoll Chronicle, supporters of the ministerial candidate, Stephen Richards, had ‘engaged the whole livery of the Town of Woodstock for the purpose of conveying to the [hustings nominations] persons who were favourable to the election of Mr Richards.’51 Once elected, the member had routine expenses to hold his support

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until the next election. Thus, in 1860 Dr Connor, member of the provincial parliament, offered two prizes, to be adjudicated by the South Riding of Oxford Agricultural Society, of ‘$20 for the best acre of Swedish turnips and $10 for the 2nd best.’52 The Politics of the Ingersoll Chronicle Oxford County had three local newspapers during elections of the 1850s. No archival runs survive for two papers in the North riding, the Woodstock Sentinel (1854–78) and the Woodstock Times (1855–1902). Microfilm runs are nearly complete for the Ingersoll Chronicle (1853– 1919) in the South riding. The politics of the Ingersoll Chronicle was a bellwether for the Oxford ridings. Its proprietor and editor, John Sawyers Gurnett (1831–1876), was a native of Ancaster whose family had removed to Woodstock about 1841. In August 1854, at the age of twenty-three, he purchased the Chronicle, a Reform journal that had been founded a year earlier by Josiah Blackburn, the publisher of the London Free Press. His first editorials were those of a Hincksite, even though his family were Conservatives. His father, Gabriel Gurnett (1798–1882), a saddler turned tax collector, had voted for Vansittart, the Conservative candidate, in 1851. His uncle and his father’s older brother, George Gurnett (1792–1861), was Toronto’s police magistrate and a Conservative.53 When the MacNab-Morin Conservative-Hincksite coalition took office in September 1854, Gurnett supported the ministry, albeit uneasily. ‘Our view of the present alliance,’ he wrote at the time, ‘is … that if Sir Allan MacNab is sincere in his purpose of secularizing the Reserves, of promoting reciprocal trade with the United States, and of introducing the elective principle into the Legislative Council, he is deserving [of] the confidence of the people.’ Conversely, Gurnett had condemned ‘Mr George Brown’s endeavours to divide the Reform Party.’54 Gurnett’s Hincksite politics held through the May 1858 North Oxford by-election. In the September 1858 South Oxford by-election, however, Gurnett sided with Skeffington Connor, the Brownite incumbent, not with Stephen Richards, the Hincksite challenger. This change was probably a business decision, an adaptation to the changing politics of the Ingersoll business community. Ingersoll men had brought Connor into South Oxford and given him victory in the 1857–58 general election; although polling just 36 per cent of the votes overall, Connor received 80 per cent of the suffrages cast in Ingersoll and two-thirds of the votes

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in the North Oxford and West Oxford polls. The same three polls were Connor’s strongholds in the 1858 by-election. Summary and Interpretation The extent of democracy in Oxford County’s elections increased during the 1850s. The 1855 Franchise Extension Act came into force for Oxford’s 1857 general elections, thereby extending a qualification for tenants and occupants in the townships. Territorial disenfranchisement was diminished by the shrinking of the county’s area in 1852, the division of the county riding into North Oxford and South Oxford ridings in 1853, the creation of separate polls for the town of Woodstock and the village of Ingersoll in the 1857 general election, and the creation of five ward polls for Woodstock in the 1858 North Oxford by-election. In 1858 the electors of the North Oxford riding voted in the county’s first Upper House election, that for the Gore Division. Issues pertaining to democracy – the secularization of revenue from the Clergy Reserves, Canada West sectionalism, and partyism – predominated in the elections. Nevertheless, Frank Ball, the runner-up in the 1857 South Oxford general election, campaigned on a local issue, the completion of a Canada Southern Railway. The Oxford ridings underwent a realignment of their political formations. The Brownites invaded the Oxfords in 1857 and became the dominant party. In reaction, the Hincksites and Conservatives came together in coalition, beginning with the 1858 by-elections. These changes mimicked developments at the provincial level, where a ConservativeHincksite coalition ministry had taken office in 1854, and Brownites had subsequently emerged as the principal party of opposition. In November 1854 both Oxford members, Cook and Matheson, voted for a bill that was straight from the Clear Grit platform (to let the people of the counties elect sheriffs, clerks of the peace, and registrars of the counties) and against the coalition ministry. That was the last gasp of a Clear Grit presence in Oxford. Parties sometimes had more than one candidate in the field. The 1854 South Oxford general election had two Conservative candidates: Daniel G. Miller, with close ties to Woodstock’s half-pay officer elite, and Peter Carroll from the old-settler Tory stream of supporters. The 1854 South Oxford by-election had two Hincksite candidates, Ephraim Cook and Benjamin Van Norman. The 1857 South Oxford general election had two Hincksite and three Brownite candidates.

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On two occasions a party organized a delegated convention in a bid to unite its supporters behind one candidate before the hustings nominations. The South riding’s Hincksite convention of 1854 failed of its purpose, but the North riding’s Brownite convention was successful. In both cases, some delegates grumbled about the unfairness of the convention’s proceedings. The Oxford ridings elected local magnates in 1854, but returned prominent Torontonians in the 1857 general election and their 1858 byelections. Even the losing candidates in the by-elections were prominent Toronto men. The pre-eminence of prominent outsiders was unique to the Oxfords and was to continue into the 1860s. Against the trend, a local magnate, George Alexander, was returned in the 1858 Upper House election for the Gore Division. Localism in the ridings helped and hindered resident candidates. In Oxford’s 1857 general election, the Gaelic-speaking Highland Scottish electors of West Zorra stuck with Donald Matheson, one of their own, but that poll was Matheson’s only victory. Localism helped Frank Ball in South Norwich, the poll that stood to benefit from his support for completion of a Canada Southern Railway. Ephraim Cook captured his home poll, North Norwich, but no other. The elections of the 1850s showed several features of the voice-vote process in action. The show of hands settled the 1854 South Oxford byelection, Oxford`s only contested election in which a losing candidate did not demand a poll. In the 1857 South Oxford general election, Ebenezer Bodwell withdrew at the end of the first day of polling and threw his support to Frank Ball; this was to be the sole occasion in which a candidate exploited the flexibility of multiple polling days. The same election featured hard-ball tactics in the transfer of Connor’s candidacy from the North riding to the South riding. The 1858 South Oxford by-election featured a pre-election riot in Tillsonburg; the returning officer’s rough handling of dignitaries on the hustings; the Hincksite party’s attempt to steal the show of hands by packing the election with non-electors; scrutineers’ use of ‘the blocking game’ to obstruct polling; a missing Poll Book and tarnished public declaration; and colourful partisan processions and entertainment for the public.

6 Elections in the Ridings of North and South Oxford, 1860–1866

This chapter extends the book’s exploration of the extent, forms, practices, and issues of democracy into nine elections of the early 1860s. The major change for democracy, a positive one, was the introduction of the assessment franchise with judicially certified electors’ lists in the 1861 general elections. Otherwise, the elections of the 1860s carried forward and in some cases developed further, electoral features from the late 1850s. Once again the candidates in these elections were prominent Toronto politicians, to an extent unique in Canada West. With one exception (Isaac Buchanan in 1861), they were party men, whose political parties were increasingly organized. Delegated conventions continued to have mixed success in uniting a party’s supporters behind one candidate. ‘Dirty tricks’ and partisan election officials worked against fairness in the elections. Brownites won every election. Canada West sectionalism was the overriding electoral issue. The 1861 census enumerated 284,535 more souls in Canada West than in Canada East, yet the 1840 imperial Act of Union provided for equal representation between the two sections. To Brownites this was the arithmetic for French Catholic domination of Anglo-Protestants in Canada West. Initially, they proposed representation by population on a sectional basis as a remedy. Of course, any constitutional change required imperial legislation. Support for the Union status quo – equal representation between the two sections – steadily weakened in Canada West and the Oxford ridings. The 1861 census was taken in mid-January, and its results were known in May, two months before the general election. By election time, representation by population on a sectional basis had the endorse-

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ment of several Conservative members of parliament, including John Carling (London) and Maurice Berkeley Portman (Middlesex East). In divisions of the Legislative Assembly in 1862 and 1863, thirteen Conservatives and five Hincksites voted for representation by population on a sectional basis. In the circumstances, Conservative Premier John A. Macdonald, and his successor, John Sandfield Macdonald, an antiBrownite Reformer, agreed to treat the issue as an open question: an issue on which members could vote independently, without respect to their party affiliation.1 The 1861 Elections The 1861 General Election in North Oxford: McDougall versus Buchanan The 1861 general election matched William McDougall of Toronto, the Brownite incumbent, against Isaac Buchanan (1810–1883), a Hamilton merchant and the incumbent in Hamilton (which returned him). Buchanan was a ‘loose fish.’ As he stated to the electors of North Oxford, ‘I have never seen the administration I could exactly agree with.’ He championed the interests of Hamilton and the Great Western Railway and in 1856 briefly controlled the Woodstock and Lake Erie Railway and Harbour Co. He was a loyalist militia officer during the rebellion of 1837. Both candidates were ethnic Scots and Free Church Presbyterians; neither was a Highlander, which mattered in Zorra. McDougall’s issue was ‘Upper Canada rights.’ Indeed, in his parliamentary speech of 17 April 1861, he infamously suggested that Canadians might ‘look to Washington’ for relief if representation by population on a sectional basis could not be obtained within the British constitutional framework.2 McDougall’s ‘Look to Washington’ speech was a red flag to Isaac Buchanan, who was passionate about loyalty to the mother country. Buchanan lacked respect for an intellect ‘that could have proposed to Canada to appeal to Washington, and more especially after the American government had become the sad spectacle in the world that it now is’ (with its Civil War in progress). Thus, his question to the electors was, ‘Am I for or against annexation?’ He would have preferred that a local man confront McDougall. However, there had been ‘no time to get such a man’ and so, assisted by contacts in Zorra, Buchanan accepted a requisition to stand.3 McDougall denied that his threat implied disloyalty: ‘I did not speak of it as a good to be desired, but as an evil to be avoided.’ With this

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rationalization, argued the Ingersoll Chronicle, a Brownite organ, McDougall ‘turned the tables on the loyalty howlers.’4 The Conservative organ in Ingersoll, the Oxford Herald, would have none of this: ‘Every Grit journal in the Province has attempted to extenuate or explain away this reckless and insolent expression, but to no purpose. It is well known that when a man is in a passion, he often allows his secret desires and prejudices to escape him … as when in wine the truth will come out, so when goaded into a passion, the innermost heart of a man is often seen.’ McDougall himself was ‘Half-sneak, half bully – even sinister, ever malignant – sour as vinegar, and repellent as asafoetida’ (an herb with a pungent, unpleasant smell, known as ‘devil’s dung’ or ‘stinking gum’). More generally Globe-led extremism ‘has driven the great bulk of the Catholic Party from its ranks, has disgusted the Orangemen as a class, has alienated Lower Canadians as a race, [and] has isolated the Central Canada section.’5 The Embro Review in West Zorra, a Brownite organ, found a middle-ground position. While blasting the coalition ministry for its ‘sectional legislation and mal-administration of responsible government,’ it considered George Brown to be unacceptable as leader of the Brownites and a barrier to a reunification of the ‘old reform party.’6 At the hustings nominations, with fifteen hundred in attendance, Isaac Buchanan was nominated by a Conservative, John Barwick, Esq., of Blandford, and a Hincksite, John Harrington, Esq., of East Zorra. George Perry, Esq., a Blenheim Brownite, and John Parker, Esq., a gentleman from Woodstock’s Brownite-friendly St Andrew’s Ward, nominated William McDougall. The show of hands went three to one for McDougall, but Buchanan’s supporters demanded a poll. McDougall won 65 per cent of the votes. He crushed Buchanan in the townships. West Zorra gave him 84 per cent of its votes – more than any other poll. Only Tory Woodstock responded to the loyalty cry, with four of its five wards giving Buchanan a majority. The exception, St Andrew’s Ward, gave 59 per cent of its votes to McDougall, compared with 12 to 47 per cent in the other wards. The ethnic and religious composition of its population underlay its Brownite leanings. Compared with the other wards, St Andrew’s had proportionately more Scottish Presbyterians, fewer Anglicans, and fewer Englishmen.7 At first glance, Buchanan was the victim of a low turnout of electors in Woodstock, where he was popular. As calculated from published statistics, 72 per cent of electors in the townships and 99 per cent of electors in St Andrew’s Ward went to the polls, compared with 41 per cent in Woodstock’s four Tory-leaning wards. As discussed below, however,

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the elector turnout statistics for Woodstock are tricky to interpret, given that the number of electors surpassed the town’s enumerated adult male population. The 1862 North Oxford By-election: McDougall Acclaimed In May 1862 McDougall became commissioner of Crown lands in the John Sandfield Macdonald ministry. This vacated his North Oxford seat, and compelled him to stand for re-election in a June by-election. ‘Scarcely over a hundred persons’ were present at the nominations, although late arrivals added 300 or so more. Rain fell steadily on the hustings, which were located ‘in the open air’ by statutory requirement, and McDougall for one spoke ‘from under an umbrella.’ After calling for nominations and receiving one, for McDougall, Sheriff Carroll, the returning officer, asked the electors, ‘Have you got any other to propose? A voice – one’s enough. The Sheriff having waited two or three more minutes, and no other nominations being made, declared the Hon. William McDougall elected.’8 Nevertheless, McDougall’s acceptance of a post in this particular ministry compromised his Brownite bona fides and his advocacy of ‘Upper Canada rights.’9 The new premier, John Sandfield Macdonald, was an anti-Brownite Reformer who deplored George Brown’s antiCatholic extremism and Canada West sectionalism; conversely, he supported the Union status quo and opposed constitutional change that might place the Union at risk.10 McDougall acknowledged that his entry into Sandfield Macdonald’s anti-sectionalist ministry exposed himself to ‘odium’ and ‘disapprobation among those he valued as his best friends.’ This doubtless explains why McDougall did not stand for re-election in North Oxford in the 1863 general election, a year later, and contested Ontario North, a riding east of Toronto that was more congenial for a Brownite backslider. The 1861 General Election in South Oxford: Connor versus Richards The 1861 South Oxford general election reprised the 1858 by-election battle between Skeffington Connor, the Brownite incumbent, and Stephen Richards, his Hincksite challenger. The contest was a hardfought one, replete with huge partisan processions, ‘dirty tricks,’ and unprecedented levels of party organization. Seventy-nine per cent of the electors voted: the highest turnout ever recorded for an election in Oxford.

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As in the North Oxford riding, the election was about sectionalism and the proposed remedy of representation by population on a sectional basis, but without the North riding’s masking issue of McDougall’s loyalty. In an April parliamentary debate about representation by population, Skeffington Connor argued the Brownite case for sectionalism; as an Upper Canadian, he objected to the evils ... suffered under the present system … when night after night, and session after session, on many Upper Canadian questions of the smallest importance, the Lower Canada majority had backed the Government in legislating for Upper Canada against the will of the majority of her representatives. [Within the western section he objected that] men who were in the minority, men who were chased from the polls in election after election in Upper Canada, men who were disliked, distrusted, and detested through Upper Canada – that men like them should dispense the whole patronage of the Crown … in every corner of the Province … There would be an end to emigration … if once the idea spread to the old country that we in Upper Canada were not a free people, but were under the feet of the French, (Hear, Hear) ... The question was now, is this to be a French province or a British one?

The 1840 Act of Union was not ‘a solemn compact between the two Provinces.’ Rather, it was ‘carried entirely on the dictation of England’ against the wishes of the people in both of them. Nevertheless, in the current state of affairs, Connor claimed for himself the right and duty to vote on any measure, in either section, which he deemed to be right or wrong; thus, he had voted against a bill to incorporate a nunnery in Canada East.11 By contrast, Stephen Richards spoke ‘in favour of Canada and knew no Upper Canada – no Lower Canada (cheers). He could not utter or endorse such “clap trap” as Dr Connor had presented to them regarding the oppression of Upper Canada by the French. He, Mr Richards, looked upon every man in this country as a brother and a citizen (loud cheers) and he was anxious that all should enjoy equal rights and privileges. He would never admit that Upper Canada was ruled by Lower Canada – that it was possible for forty Frenchmen to deprive eighty English-speaking members of their rights in Parliament and dominate over us (cheers).’12 Richards and the Oxford Herald, a Conservative organ, conceded that the time was ripe for representation by population on a sectional basis. Nevertheless, the Herald lambasted the Brownites for having pressed

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for the change prematurely during the 1850s and in racist language. Treat the French members with dignity and respect, urged the Herald, and ‘they will do right by us.’13 As for Mr ‘Look to Washington’ in the North riding, William McDougall was a ‘revolutionary demagogue who would hand our beautiful country over to the American government without one scruple of conscience.’14 Some interesting political manoeuvring by the coalition forces preceded the election. As the contest approached, but before Richards had entered the field, Harry Fargo Martin called a public meeting in Beachville, at which he objected to the representation of country ridings by Toronto lawyers and urged Ebenezer Bodwell, a Dereham farmer and a Brownite candidate in the previous election, to run. Martin was a Conservative, and Bodwell did not bite, sensing a coalition party plot to divide the Brownites and let a Hincksite, such as Richards, slip in. The Ingersoll Chronicle agreed that Martin could be ‘a cat’s paw – to feel the way for Stephen Richards.’15 Indeed, within two weeks, Richards was in the field. Of eleven freeholders who organized his requisition, eight were Orangemen and two were Irish Roman Catholics. One of the Catholics, Dennis Fogarty, was appointed surveyor of customs at Ingersoll – his reward, claimed the Chronicle, for supporting Richards. Two backers of Richards, W.E. Nesbit of Dereham and Henry Taylor of Ingersoll, were municipal clerks; as such, under law, they were deputy returning officers for their respective polls, and therefore disenfranchised and ostensibly non-partisan. The campaigns were highly organized and the contest hard-fought. The Brownites, at a public meeting in Mount Elgin, delegated three or more men from each township to organize local committees to get out the vote. Thus, Ingersoll, for example, had five delegates who, in turn, organized a fifty-four-man local committee for the village. The Richards forces countered with an Ingersoll committee of fifty-one men.16 A boisterous crowd of twelve to fifteen hundred attended the hustings nominations at Hillman’s Corners. ‘About 10 o’clock a.m.,’ reported the Oxford Herald, ‘the friends of Mr Richards, in carriages, headed by the Firemen’s Brass Band, left Ingersoll for the place of nomination. On reaching Hillman’s we found an immense crowd assembled – all parts of the Riding being well represented.’ Meanwhile, Connor partisans left Ingersoll ‘in about 20 carriages, and accompanied by the Ingersoll Band, with flags, etc. … Their numbers were constantly augmented until the procession was one of the largest ever witnessed in this county. On arriving within a mile of the Hustings, the procession was met by friends from the South who fell into line under the marshalling of

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Mr Garry Delong [an ex-rebel], of North Norwich. They then numbered over seventy-five carriages, many of them drawn by four horses. Dr Connor, on arriving was greeted by long and prolonged cheers from the multitude.’17 About one o’clock the returning officer, James Ingersoll, called upon the electors to nominate their candidates.18 Four men were put forward, but two declined, leaving Connor and Richards in the field. John Smith, Esq., reeve of Dereham and warden of the county, nominated Richards, seconded by Dr Ephraim (ex-rebel) Cook of Norwich. Thomas Brown, Esq., a wealthy, American-born tanner and manufacturer in Ingersoll, nominated Dr Connor, seconded by John McKee, Esq., an Americanborn farmer from Norwich. Ingersoll’s rival journals gave contrasting accounts of what happened next. In the Oxford Herald’s pro-coalition account, the returning officer ‘called for a show of hands for Dr Connor, when about one third of the large crowd held up their hands. When a show was demanded for Mr Richards, a perfect forest of hands [went] up. Dr Connor’s supporters then demanded a division – and three times was a division made before the Returning Officer could decide as to who had a majority. He then said that the parties were so nearly equal that he could hardly decide, but he thought Dr Connor had the largest number. This was immediately protested against by Mr Richards’s friends, and Mr Ingersoll afterwards declared that if put on his oath he could not swear on which side the majority was’ (original emphasis).19 In the Ingersoll Chronicle’s pro-Brownite account, ‘the Returning Officer called for a show of hands in favour of Dr Connor, which was promptly responded to by a forest of hands being raised. Those in favour of Mr Richards were called for and a large number were raised. The Returning Officer then called upon them to divide, which after great difficulty was accomplished. Here [Richards’s friends] resorted to a cunning trick to swell their numbers. Orders were given to the band, which they had taken from Ingersoll, to strike up a tune, and immediately all the little boys on the ground and many of the big boys rushed over to Richards’s side.’ In the end, and after several recounts, the returning officer declared Connor the winner with a majority of about a hundred, but his majority ‘would have been 300 larger than Richards had non-voters and roughs been absent.’ 20 In the event, Connor was awarded the decision, and so the Richards side reluctantly demanded a poll. The Chronicle was scathing of Henry Taylor, who by virtue of his position as municipal clerk was the deputy returning officer for the Ingersoll poll. Although Taylor’s position should have kept ‘him aloof

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from either party,’ he had canvassed for Richards after he had taken the oath for deputy returning officers.21 During the polling Taylor disenfranchised ‘several of Dr Connor’s supporters’ on dubious grounds. For example, ‘several gentlemen were entered on the voters’ list with wrong initials, or their names spelled wrong by the omission or addition of a letter.’ The list registered George J. Shrapnell as George H. Shrapnell and James F. Morey as James F. Morley. Their votes were refused even though the gentlemen swore that they were the persons intended and were assessed for the properties described opposite their names. In other cases, the list registered the name of a firm – ‘McDonald and Brother, John Christopher and Bros., J. and S. Noxon, and Balmer & Fairgrieve’ but not the names of the owners with their Christian names. When these gentlemen tendered their votes, they were refused. Taylor had no such scruples with Hincksite electors. The electors’ list registered W.J. Allison as W.G. Allison, yet his vote for Richards was taken. ‘Shortly after the close of the poll on Wednesday evening,’ continued the Chronicle, ‘the people became so exasperated and indignant at the conduct of Mr Taylor, that it was with difficulty that they were restrained from doing him bodily harm; and were it not for the interference of some gentlemen whom Mr Taylor is pleased to regard as his enemies, another broken hat, a ducking in the millpond, or something worse would certainly have followed.’ With 79 per cent of the electors voting, Connor won 51 per cent of the 2,496 votes polled. Richards captured four of the seven polls, but Connor took the Ingersoll, West Oxford, and North Oxford polls by larger margins. Thus, ‘at one o’clock James Ingersoll, Esq., read the returns and declared Dr Connor duly elected … (Loud and enthusiastic cheers).’ The victorious side gave ‘three cheers for the Queen, Connor, McDougall [the member-elect for North Oxford], and the Returning Officer. Dr Connor called for three cheers for his opponent, Mr Richards, and the proceedings terminated. [Connor’s] procession was then reformed and started for home ... the procession numbered over fifty-five carriages, many of them carrying over a dozen persons ... The procession reached [Ingersoll] about half past six, and after passing through the principal streets, drew up in front of the Royal, where cheers were again given to the Dr and the company dispersed.’22 The Legislative Council Election: Thames Division, 1862 Campaigns for the Thames divisional election began months in advance of its known date (fixed by statute between 1 September and the first

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Tuesday in November). In November 1861 South Oxford Brownites cooperated with their Norfolk counterparts to organize a divisional convention to unite the party behind a single nominee.23 At a meeting in Mount Elgin, with Norfolk representatives present, they drafted a constitution and by-laws for a divisional branch Reform association and appointed committees to call ‘meetings in the several municipalities of the riding to elect delegates to a convention.’ The election of delegates took place ‘on the third Monday in December,’ and the convention met in Otterville, South Norwich, on the ‘second Monday in January.’ With less than full attendance – twelve from each riding rather than the sixteen who had been elected (four arrived too late to vote) – the convention evidenced inter-riding rivalry among the delegates. The South Oxford favourite, Charles E. Chadwick of Ingersoll, a wealthy Ingersoll banker and Dereham landowner, was not a delegate but attended to decline his nomination for business reasons, and Ebenezer Bodwell of Dereham, who was not present, was nominated in his stead. On a vote by ballot, the delegates chose Oliver Blake (1802–1873) of Norfolk over the absent Ebenezer Bodwell by a vote of thirteen to eleven and made Blake’s selection unanimous. Blake was a native of New Hampshire, but had come to Upper Canada at a young age. He was a businessman, a former township reeve, and the vice-president of the Norfolk Branch Reform Association. In February 1862 the ‘Constitutional Reformers’ (the coalitionists) met in convention in Norfolk.24 The South Oxford delegates put up John Smith, Esq., of Dereham (1824–?), a general-store merchant and sawmill owner with extensive landholdings near Tillsonburg.25 Smith lost by one vote to Nathan C. Ford, Esq., (1812–1897) of Norfolk, an American-born, Anglican distiller, whom the Chronicle regarded as having been ‘cradled and educated in Toryism.’ Harry Fargo Martin of West Oxford was disillusioned with the ‘first delegated Political Convention I ever attended.’ As chair of the Oxford Temperance Association, whose members were committed to ‘dry’ candidates, he was distressed at the convention’s choice of Ford, a distiller. ‘Local jealousy was the rock on which we split,’ stated Martin, and it was easy to see, before we went into Convention that antagonism had sprung up in this Riding. The Convention called at twelve did not convene until after three o’clock, and a resolution was passed that we should proceed to vote without any discussion, and as many of us were far from home, and threatened with bad roads to return upon, as it was then raining and had been nearly all day, this vote was easily carried. You

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are quite correct in saying that I ‘opposed the resolution pledging the delegates to support the Nominee of the Convention.’ I look upon Mr Ford’s nomination as accidental, and as affording no proof of his popularity in either riding. The convention was premature and the delegates sent had not as an average a dozen votes each to appoint them, so little interest did the people take in advance of the time.

Martin urged Ford to call a ‘re-convention’ in June to develop his support and allow the delegates time for deliberation. When Ford did not act on this advice, Martin opposed him on temperance grounds.26 Sheriff James Carroll held the hustings nominations in Otterville, North Norwich, with four thousand in attendance, ‘the largest number we have seen on any similar occasion,’ including ‘John A. Macdonald – the veritable John A.’ – and several other members of parliament.27 Dr Ephraim Cook of Norwich, the former Hincksite MPP, and Aquila Walsh, Esq., the Conservative MPP for Norfolk, nominated Nathan Ford. Charles E. Chadwick, Esq., of Ingersoll, and H.J. Kilmaster, Esq., of Norfolk, nominated Oliver Blake. After the show of hands and then a division, ‘Mr Ford’s supporters going to the North, and those of Mr Blake going to the South,’ the sheriff declared that Ford had the majority. As the Ingersoll Chronicle noted sourly, ‘All the rowdies and whiskey hangers on from Simcoe and neighbourhood were present to swell Mr Ford’s vote.’ In the event, Blake demanded a poll, and ‘the numerous assemblage, headed by bands of music, then moved off – the friends of Mr Blake to the front of Cleveland’s Hotel and the friends of Mr Ford to Matheson’s Hotel.’ Dr Connor and others gave speeches from the balcony of Cleveland’s Hotel while from the balcony of the other hotel ‘John A. Macdonald held forth for an hour or more, followed by several minor lights in the Tory firmament.’ Blake, the Norfolk Brownite, defeated Ford, the Norfolk Conservative. Although Norfolk held 55 per cent of the division’s electors and polled 64 per cent of its votes, the South Oxford electors determined the outcome. Blake polled 50 per cent of the votes in Norfolk, 67 per cent in South Oxford, and 57 per cent overall. The 1863 Elections The March 1863 South Oxford By-election: Brown versus Bodwell George Brown contested a March 1863 by-election to replace Skeffington Connor, who had resigned his seat to accept a judicial appointment.

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Brown then was without a seat, having been defeated in his bid for reelection in Toronto. In a bizarre match-up, his opponent was Ebenezer Vining Bodwell – the choice of a South Oxford Brownite convention!28 Bodwell had been a losing candidate in the 1857 general election and one of Oxford’s delegates to Brown’s 1859 Provincial Reform Convention in Toronto. He had served Dereham variously as clerk and treasurer, councillor, deputy reeve, and reeve. When the by-election was called, he was warden of Oxford County. He was a native of Nissouri Township, a son of American immigrants, a Baptist, and a temperance man. Brown, states his biographer, was a reluctant candidate in South Oxford, a riding that he did not know well. Newly married and wealthy (with a $120,000 dowry from his wife, as well as his holdings at Bothwell and the Globe), yet with less energy, he was ‘no longer the urgent, authoritarian commander of other years’; rather, he envisaged himself as a ‘semi-independent backbencher,’ working ‘through others for what the country wants.’29 When Luther Holton reported ‘a movement at Quebec to secure him an immediate nomination in South Oxford’ and leading Brownites in the riding wrote, urging him to run, he declined. While Brown’s supporters worked behind the scenes, local Brownites organized to find a candidate. As of February, reported the Ingersoll Chronicle, ‘no candidate has yet been decided on, although a number of names have been mentioned. The feeling among Reformers in all parts of the Riding … is strongly in favour of a local man, and under the present circumstances an “outsider” would receive anything but a welcome. Those who have been named as probable candidates are Chas. E. Chadwick, Esq., of Ingersoll, E.V. Bodwell, Esq., [the warden] of Dereham, A. Oliver, Esq., and John McDonald, Esq., of Ingersoll. The four gentlemen are quite willing to submit their respective claims to a convention, and be guided by the result – a correct course, and one which will secure unity of action.’ On 19 February local Brownites elected delegates to a convention to be held at Hillman’s Corners. When Chadwick withdrew, Bodwell was unopposed and the unanimous choice of the convention. What prompted Chadwick’s withdrawal was George Brown’s entry into the field in response to a requisition signed by more than a thousand South Oxford electors.30 In vain a Brownite meeting in South Norwich protested Brown’s attempt to ‘force himself’ upon the electors of a riding that has ‘too long been represented by non-residents.’ At the

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hustings nominations, Brown stated that ‘he had no personal feeling towards Mr Bodwell, but there were great questions before the country which required an able head to handle, and Bodwell’s inexperience disqualified him for the task.’ In reply, Bodwell reproached Brown for coming into the riding against the choice of the local convention: Had Brown said that Bodwell was not sound on the great questions of the day? No! He tells you that I am a mere schoolboy, sitting at his feet … Mr Brown, then, finds no fault with my principles, but he says, ‘Bodwell is down there – I am up here.’ Keep Bodwell at home (laughter). The circumstances of the case are against Mr Brown. He was the very father of the convention system of Canada. The great Toronto Convention was a scheme of his, and it was at a branch of that association, properly constituted in Oxford, that I was nominated in the interests of the Reform [Brownite] party. Mr Brown all along denied that he was a candidate, and now he comes up here and thinks that the mere prestige of his name will carry him in and put me out. We have been long enough been represented by ... Toronto men.

The returning officer, Sheriff Carroll, declined to rule who had a majority in the show of hands, and both sides demanded a poll. Brown won 56 per cent of the votes in a light turnout: the number of votes cast was down 20 per cent from the 1861 general election. Just seven hundred attended the hustings declaration when ‘the day was cold, the speeches were short, and everyone seemed pleased that the contest was over.’ Brown and Bodwell parted amicably. Finally, ‘a procession was formed of carriages, sleighs, &c, headed by the Tillsonburg brass band to chair Mr Brown [an English tradition]31 from the Hustings to Ingersoll, where a public dinner was given him at the Royal Hotel in the evening, in honour of his election.’32 The 1863 General Election in South Oxford: Brown versus Cook Scarcely had Brown been returned in March when a general election was held in June. Brown arrived in Woodstock by afternoon train and drove over to Ingersoll in the evening to address three or four hundred constituents in the Town Hall. Those present unanimously requested him to stand for re-election. Bodwell was approached by friends and a deputation of Conservatives to run against Brown, but he declined, to avoid dividing the party.

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The hustings nominations at Hillman’s Corners attracted five hundred persons, a low number. Three prospective candidates, Daniel G. Miller of Woodstock, Dr Ephraim Cook of Norwichville, and Brown arrived led by brass bands. Miller, a Woodstock lawyer, was a twicedefeated candidate (in 1854 in South Oxford, and in 1858 in North Oxford), and Cook was a past member (1854–57). The mischievous Conservative, Harvey Fargo Martin, tried to turn the election into a reprise between Brown, the outsider, and Bodwell, a local man. When Bodwell refused this role, Martin settled for Cook. Miller, a Conservative, declined his nomination in favour of Cook, a Hincksite and his fellow coalitionist, leaving Cook and Brown in the field.33 Brown won 86 per cent of the votes in a light turnout of electors. Just 1,282 votes were polled – 39 per cent of the number in the 1861 general election and half of the number polled in the by-election two months earlier. The 1863 General Election in North Oxford: Mackenzie versus Barwick As discussed above, William McDougall, the incumbent and minister in John Sandfield Macdonald’s administration, declined to stand for re-election in North Oxford. Accordingly, North Oxford Brownites met in convention at Woodstock’s North American Hotel to choose McDougall’s successor. The delegates pledged themselves to abide by the convention’s choice and put up five men for consideration: two nonresidents (George Brown of Toronto and Hope Mackenzie of Port Sarnia) and three local men (Thomas Oliver of Woodstock, George Perry of Blenheim, and Robert McLean of Blandford). Brown, the incumbent in the South riding, was nominated pro forma so that he could introduce Mackenzie. Scottish Presbyterians were by far the largest ethnoreligious formation in the North Oxford riding, and profiles of the four actual candidates reflected this. All were Presbyterian, and all but the English-born Perry were Scots. Two of the Scots were Highlanders: Thomas Oliver from Sutherland-Shire and Hope Mackenzie from Perth-Shire. Robert McLean was a Lowlander from Aberdeen. George Brown had a history with Hope Mackenzie and his brother, Alexander, a future prime minister of Canada (1873–78). Alexander had been Brown’s agent in Brown’s former ridings of Kent and Lambton. Hope was Brown’s successor as the party’s candidate in Lambton, but for personal reasons (never explained) he did not seek re-election in 1863, and Alexander was nominated in his stead.

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Such were the circumstances in which Brown presented Hope to the North Oxford delegates and urged his selection if they were unable to unite behind a local man. The convention unanimously chose Hope Mackenzie (1820–1866) because the delegates were unable to unite behind any of the local men, each of whom had ‘warm friends.’34After the hustings nominations in the South riding, Brown stumped the North riding on Hope’s behalf, in addition to running his own campaign.35 The coalitionists put up John Barwick (1818–1899) to oppose Mackenzie. Barwick was Anglican, Conservative, and son of a Scottish Lowlander half-pay officer. He was born in France where his father, a major in the 79th Highlanders Regiment, was serving in an army of occupation.36 About 1830 his family had settled in ‘aristocratic’ Blandford, where the major died. John Barwick remained a bachelor on the family farm, living with his widowed mother and siblings. Barwick was an Oxford notable. As chair of the County Railway Committee in 1850, he had played a key role in the county’s purchase of stock in the Great Western Railway. He was a past Brock District councillor (1846–49), reeve for Blandford Township (1850–57), warden of Oxford County (1857–58), and a captain in the 2nd Battalion, Oxford Militia (from 1847). He had been mooted as a candidate to oppose William McDougall in 1861, but had declined to stand. His death notice in 1899 was to describe him as ‘a gentlemanly looking and indeed handsome man of a strong personality.’37 Although the hustings nominations, as usual, were held in Toryfriendly Woodstock, Mackenzie, the Brownite, won the show of hands, and then, a week later, he polled 56 per cent of the votes. The vote by polls was similar to that of 1861. Barwick, the Conservative, carried Woodstock’s four Tory-leaning wards. Mackenzie, the Brownite, won massively in West Zorra (82% of the votes) and a majority in Woodstock’s St Andrew’s Ward (52%). As noted for the 1861 election, Scottish Presbyterians were an anchor of Brownite support. Thus Mackenzie’s Highland-Scottish Presbyterian profile helped him in West Zorra against Barwick, a Lowland-Scottish Anglican. Oxford By-elections during the ‘Great Coalition’ The 1864 South Oxford By-election: Brown Acclaimed In July 1864 George Brown, John A. Macdonald, and George-Etienne Cartier formed a ‘Great-Coalition’ ministry to negotiate a constitutional

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solution to sectional deadlock. By accepting a ministerial post Brown vacated his South Oxford seat and necessitated a by-election. Meeting in Ingersoll at the Daly House, the Hincksite-Conservative South Oxford Constitutional Association resolved unanimously that it would not oppose Brown at the election, to be held in Ingersoll on 11 July.38 It could hardly have done otherwise inasmuch as Brown was now part of its own coalition ministry. Whereas James Ingersoll had held elections in Hillman’s Corners, the returning officer for this by-election, Sheriff Alexander Ross (successor to James Carroll in 1863), located the hustings in Ingersoll ‘on a vacant lot of ground near the English Church.’ On this occasion, at least, reported the grateful Ingersoll Chronicle, the ‘great body of electors’ would not be ‘dragged ... to a place where not even shelter for a horse can be found.’ As the Chronicle reported, ‘about 500 people were present from all parts of the Riding, and the utmost harmony prevailed throughout the proceedings. The Ingersoll and Otterville brass bands [performed] a number of lively pieces before and after the Election. Mr Brown was accompanied to the Hustings by many of the leading men of both the North and South Ridings.’39 William Peers, Esq., of East Oxford, the county warden and a Brownite, nominated Brown. In the spirit of the Great Coalition, a Hincksite, John Smith, Esq., of Dereham, was his second nominator. Ebenezer Bodwell, Brown’s opponent in the riding’s 1863 by-election, warmly endorsed him this time round; for although Bodwell opposed coalitions in principle, he supported the Great Coalition which Brown had made possible and which promised to resolve the problem of sectional deadlock and the suppression of Canada West.40 Needless to say, Brown was acclaimed. The 1866 North Oxford By-election: Clark versus Oliver Hope Mackenzie’s death from cancer at his home in Sarnia on 27 May 1866 occasioned a North Oxford by-election in July. A Brownite convention chose Dr Daniel Clark, a Blenheim Township physician, as its nominee. However, Thomas Oliver, also a Brownite and the county warden, had announced beforehand that he was a candidate regardless of the convention’s choice. The Conservative-Hincksite coalition did not bring out a candidate, perhaps in the spirit of the Great Coalition, leaving the two Brownites in the field. Both were local men with col-

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ourful backgrounds, Highland Scots, Free Church Presbyterians, and supporters of the Great Coalition. Thomas Oliver (1821–1880), a shepherd’s son, was born in Sutherland-Shire, Scotland, the home shire of the first Zorra Highland settlers. In 1840, following a parish school education and private study, he immigrated to West Zorra to teach school. In 1844 he removed to Woodstock, where for the next twelve years he sold goods for a general dealer. About 1856 he started his own dry goods business, which he sold after eight years (in 1864). ‘Since that time,’ reports his biographical sketch, ‘he has speculated a little now and then, but being in comfortable circumstances, is inclined to moderation in his labours.’41 Meanwhile, he had held the offices of school trustee, councilman, and reeve for Woodstock, and in 1866 he was warden of Oxford County. In 1860 he had been elected treasurer of the newly formed Brownite Branch Riding Association. He had been a losing candidate at the 1863 North Oxford Brownite convention, which had chosen Hope Mackenzie. Daniel Clark (1830–1912) was born in Inverness-Shire in the Scottish Highlands. In 1841 his family moved to Port Dover, Canada West, where Daniel’s education was self-taught. In 1849 he set out for the California goldfields, where he saved enough to pay his passage home in 1851. He attended a grammar school in Simcoe during the next three years – his first schooling. He graduated in medicine from the University of Toronto in 1858 and set up a private practice in Princeton, Blenheim Township, where he married a local girl of English background. In 1864 he served the Union Army as a volunteer surgeon on the Virginia battlefields at Richmond and Petersburg. On returning to Princeton, he and a brother-in-law founded the Princeton Review, which he managed for three years.42 Both candidates remarked on the absence of partyism under the Great-Coalition ministry. ‘On the great questions of the day,’ observed Thomas Oliver, ‘there is happily little material difference of opinion. The Confederation of the British North American Provinces is a measure well calculated to promote the interests of all, politically, commercially, and financially, and this shall receive my hearty support.’ ‘Happily at the present time,’ agreed Daniel Clark, ‘party measures and party strife are not the order of the day.’43 Although partyism was at low ebb, both men believed that a Brownite should represent the riding. Clark, for example, opposed any proposed ‘basis of union which does not give to Upper Canada – as the

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chief among these provinces – its just and equitable rights. The local legislature of Upper Canada, its powers and functions, will under the new arrangement require careful consideration. I believe the more simple governmental machinery is the less expensive is it in its operations. Our municipal system is well adapted to superintend township and county local affairs, leaving little to be done by a provincial legislature except to have supervision over … the general matters of the country.’44 Thomas Oliver won every poll and 71 per cent of the votes, including 82 per cent in West Zorra and 89 per cent in St Andrew’s Ward. Yet just 1,685 votes were polled, compared with 2,556 in the 1863 general election. As the Chronicle reported, ‘not one half the votes in the Riding, it is said, were polled,’ and few attended the declaration.45 Probit Estimates for the 1861 General Elections Table 6.1 reports Probit estimates for the 1861 general elections in the two Oxford ridings. The Probit model estimates the effect of one variable, such as the voter’s religion, on the probability of voting for the Brownite candidate relative to the value for the constant term (Presbyterian). Thus, in the riding of North Oxford, Anglican electors were 45 per cent (– 0.445) less likely than Presbyterian electors to vote Brownite. The constant term is Scotland-born, Presbyterian, labourer, and Woodstock (for the North riding) and Ingersoll (for the South riding). The Probit data identify Scottish Presbyterian electors as the bedrock of Brownite support. Relative to Presbyterian electors, Anglican, Roman Catholic, Methodist, and Baptist electors were less likely to vote Brownite in the North riding; and Anglican and Roman Catholic electors were less likely to vote Brownite in the South riding. Relative to electors with Scottish nativity, only American-born electors were as likely to vote Brownite in the North riding; and only American-Born and Canadian-born electors were as likely to vote Brownite in the South riding. The location of the municipal poll mattered in some cases. Relative to electors in Woodstock, electors in West Zorra and Blenheim were more likely to vote Brownite. Relative to voters in Ingersoll (the control term for the South riding) voters in all polls except West Oxford were less likely to vote Brownite. The estimates for location of poll, it bears emphasizing, are independent of birthplace and religion; thus, for example, an Anglican elector in Dereham was 28 per cent (– 0.277) less likely than an Anglican elector in Ingersoll to vote Brownite.

Table 6.1 Probit Estimates, 1861 General Elections in Oxford County NORTH OXFORD RIDING* Marginal Effect BP Scotland Canada West England USA Ireland Other BNA Presbyterian Anglican Roman Catholic Methodist Baptist Woodstock Blenheim Zorra West Ingersoll Oxford East Oxford North Dereham Norwich

% File

SOUTH OXFORD RIDING** Difference in Votes

–0.135 0.17 –54 –0.217 0.23 –118 Not Significantly Different from BP Scotland –56 –0.395 0.06 –0.355 0.03 –25 –0.445 –0.157 –0.143 –0.057 0.167 0.167

0.17 0.02 0.18 0.11 CONSTANT 0.22 0.20

–126 –5 –43 –10

Marginal Effect

% File

Difference in Votes

CONSTANT Not Significantly Different from BP Scotland –0.182 0.23 –104 Not Significantly Different from BP Scotland –0.300 0.15 –112 –0.180 0.04 –18 CONSTANT –0.223 0.20 –104 –0.218 0.07 –38 Not Significantly Different from Presbyterian Not Significantly Different from Presbyterian

37 33

BNA = British North America; BP = birthplace. *Dependent Variable: Vote for McDougall = 1; Voters = 2,372; Linked N = 1,671. **Dependent Variable: Vote for Connor = 1; Voters = 2,496; Linked N = 1,876.

–0.317 –0.215 –0.277 –0.429

CONSTANT 0.14 0.08 0.22 0.30

–83 –32 –114 –241

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Campaigns of the 1860s ‘Bringing Out’ the Candidate As during the 1850s, requisition was the normal method for bringing out a candidate. When Thomas Hardy, Esq., of Dereham and J.S. Gurnett nominated Ebenezer Bodwell in 1861, Bodwell declined: ‘as he had received no invitation from the electors to become a candidate, it would be a presumption for him to contest the Riding on the invitation of those two gentlemen.’46 Again, as during the 1850s, nomination by a delegated party convention was the alternative method of bringing out the candidate. The goal of a convention was to unite the party behind a single candidate and, conversely, to harness local rivalries within the party. Two conventions succeeded: the 1863 North Oxford Brownite convention and the 1862 Brownite Thames divisional convention. And three failed: the 1862 Hincksite-Tory divisional convention, the March 1863 South-Oxford Brownite convention, and the 1866 North Oxford Brownite convention. When South Oxford Brownites organized a branch riding association in 1860, the association replaced the public meeting as the party’s authority for holding a convention. The change helped Skeffington Connor to retain his South riding seat in the 1861 general election. A Conservative (Harry Fargo Martin) and two fellow coalitionists (Silas Cook and Abraham Carroll, an uncle of Peter Carroll) were scheming to lure the Brownite, Ebenezer Bodwell, into the field, with the goal of bringing out their own candidate, once two Brownites were committed.47 Bodwell would have ‘gone along’ with a convention, if one had been called, but he would not go against Connor without a convention’s imprimatur.48 Thus, the sole mechanism for unseating Connor was a convention. In the event, Connor declined to submit to a convention, and the branch riding association refused several requests to call one.49 The Canvass As during the 1850s, campaigns were one-month affairs, lasting from the issuance of the election writ to declaration day. Typically, the candidate held public meetings in various hamlets of the riding, occasionally with a rival also attending. As noted above for the riding of South Oxford in 1861, committees of volunteers assisted candidates in their can-

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vasses. In the 1861 general election, in South riding Skeffington Connor addressed the electors at public meetings in Tillsonburg, Culloden, Mount Elgin, Springfield, Norwichville, Otterville, and East Oxford. In June 1861 a meeting called by North riding ‘ministerialists’ endorsed McDougall, the Brownite candidate and their political enemy.50 Branch Riding Associations In November 1859 a Brownite Provincial Reform Convention founded the Constitutional Reform Association of Upper Canada, with provision for the organization of branch riding associations: ‘these were to be ‘managed by a president, as many vice-presidents as there are municipalities in the division, a secretary, a treasurer, and a local committee of not fewer than five persons.’51 On Monday 5 March 1860, the fifteen South Oxford riding delegates to the provincial convention founded the South Oxford Reform Branch Constitutional Association; subsequently, North Norwich, Ingersoll, and Dereham Brownites established municipal sub-committees of the branch association.52 On Friday, 6 April, the twelve North Oxford riding delegates to the provincial convention met at the North American Hotel in Woodstock to found a branch riding association. The organizers had expected five delegates from each municipality, but the attendance was far larger. The meeting struck four-man committees to organize municipal sub-committees for East Nissouri, the two Zorras, and Blandford – Blenheim being already organized.53 In November and December 1861 the South Oxford and Norfolk branch associations combined to form a Thames divisional branch association to select a nominee for the second Upper House election that involved an Oxford riding.54 The Chronicle, now a Brownite organ, did not report a comparable organization for the coalition party. But there was one. In July 1864, reported the Tillsonburg Observer, members of the South Oxford Constitutional Association met in Daly House, Ingersoll.55 Oxford County Newspapers and Party Alignments Oxford’s country weeklies during the 1860s included four in the North riding – the Woodstock Sentinel (Conservative, 1854–78),56 the Woodstock Times (1855–1902), the Embro Review (Brownite, 1859–98), and the Princeton Review (Brownite, 1865–68); and five in the South riding – the Ingersoll Chronicle (Hincksite to 1857, then Brownite), the Oxford Herald in Ingersoll (Conservative, 1859–62), the Tillsonburg Observer (Hincksite,

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1863–1919), the Ingersoll Enquirer (from 1863), and the Ingersoll News (from 1867).57 Extant issues are continuous for three of the South riding journals; just a single issue survives for each of the Ingersoll News and Ingersoll Enquirer. No issues are extant for the two Woodstock newspapers and the Princeton Review. Four issues of the Embro Review survive. The Ingersoll Chronicle became a Brownite organ in September 1858, and a new weekly, the Oxford Herald of Ingersoll, replaced the Chronicle as the coalition organ in September 1859. The Herald’s publisher was Thomas A. McNamara (1824–?), a native of Lower Canada and a Methodist. In July 1862, the Herald ceased publication. ‘The causes which have led to this conclusion,’ explained McNamara, ‘are various … In the first place, the businessmen of Ingersoll, are almost to a man, Reformers; and, although favourably disposed towards the Herald and its editor, they could not be expected to support a Conservative journal as warmly as they would one which supported their own political views. And this state of affairs has forced the unwelcome conclusion upon us, that there is only room in Ingersoll for one paper, that the necessities of the place do not require, and that its local trade and population cannot properly support more than one.’58 On 30 July 1863 the Tillsonburg Observer (1863–1919) commenced publication.59 Its prospectus announced that in politics it would ‘occupy an independent position, advocating energetically such Reforms as appear likely to advance the interests and add to the prosperity of the country, and the conserving of all that is good and useful from those noble institutions which we have received from the glorious old land. In short, our policy will be, Measures, not men’ (original emphasis). Nevertheless, in its absence of partyism, the Observer’s publisher, William S. Law, was effectively a Hincksite. Prominent Outsiders as Candidates in Oxford County’s Elections Three Toronto men (Brown, McDougall, and Connor) won six Oxford elections during the years 1861–66, and Hope Mackenzie of Sarnia won another. Four elections were straight contests between outsiders. Some contemporaries viewed the phenomenon as part of a larger pattern. ‘It had been said on the floor of the House by the Postmaster General,’ reported Harry Fargo Martin of Beachville in 1861, ‘that the cities of Montreal, Toronto, and Quebec furnished fifty representatives to Parliament. If we did not take some action now, the Toronto lawyers would come upon us and take us by surprise.’60 The Embro Review called on

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the North riding’s agriculturalists to elect one of their own rather than ‘lawyers or persons more interested in the progress of Toronto than in the County of Oxford.’61 Perhaps, then, the Oxfords were two of many country ridings that attracted ambitious city men, not a special case. George Brown contested elections in Haldimand, Kent, Lambton, and Ontario South as well as North Oxford and South Oxford; William McDougall was a candidate in Wentworth North, Waterloo, Ontario North, and Lanark North as well as North Oxford; and Joseph Curran Morrison fought elections in York West, Niagara, Peel, Ontario South, and Grey as well as North Oxford. Although Francis Hincks won elections in Oxford, he also won in Niagara in 1851 and Renfrew in 1854. In actual fact, the metropolitan presence in country ridings was a modest one, and the Toronto men who fought elections in several ridings were exceptions. Of the sixty-five Canada West ridings in the 1861 general election, fifty-eight returned a local man (89%). Conversely, just six Toronto men (10%) won ridings outside the city of Toronto and York County. Simply put, the Oxford ridings were unusual. Outsiders contested these ridings with uncommon frequency. When a Toronto man offered, his election was certain, unless his opponent was also from the provincial metropolis. The explanation lay partly in the Toronto man’s superior name recognition in country ridings and partly in personal connections among the non-resident candidates in Oxford. George Brown was known in Oxford through his proprietorship of the Toronto Globe.62 According to the Globe’s advertisement in the Ingersoll Chronicle in 1855, the Daily Globe ($6 per annum) was published every day in time for the morning mails and reached its subscribers in the towns at an early hour; it was for ‘merchants and others in the smaller towns and villages who had discovered their need for a daily newspaper from the metropolis.’ The Semi-Weekly Globe ($4 per annum), published on Monday and Thursday mornings, was ‘a large sheet containing the same reading material as the daily.’ The Weekly Globe ($2 per annum) was ‘published every Friday for the country. Being expressly suited for the farming community, this edition penetrates to every village, hamlet, concession, and side-road.’63 Brown also was known through his Provincial Reform Conventions of January 1857 and November 1859. Through tight control of committee arrangements, Brown used the conventions to assert his authority and bind the delegates to his platform. As noted above, the 1859 con-

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vention founded a Constitutional Reform Association of Upper Canada and directed its delegates to establish ‘Branch Reform Associations’ in their ridings. William McDougall, Skeffington Connor, the Hon. J.C. Morrison, and Hope Mackenzie each had a personal connection to Brown. In 1855 McDougall had sold his newspaper, the Toronto North American, to Brown, and had begun a five-year stint as a political writer for the Globe; he acted as secretary at Brown’s 1857 and 1859 Provincial Reform Conventions. Although John Curran Morrison was a Hincksite, he and Skeffington Connor had been partners in a Toronto law firm, and both men had put up money for the Globe’s founding in 1844. Hope Mackenzie was a protégé of Brown and brother to Alexander, Brown’s agent in his former ridings of Kent and Lambton. The Extent of the Franchise The electors’ lists for the 1861 general elections in the Oxfords reported 6,703 names, a number equal to 65 per cent of the county’s census-enumerated adult male population (66% for the North riding and 64% for the South riding). An unexpected finding was that Woodstock electors were equal to 104 per cent of the town’s adult male population. This surpassed the statistics for the rest of the riding (60%) and nearby county towns: Brantford (88%), Simcoe (72%), and St Thomas (83%). The unusual statistic for Woodstock was an enduring one. The number of Woodstock electors in 1874 was equal to 98 per cent of the town’s 1871 adult male census population, whereas the statistics for the other North riding polls ranged from 57 to 76 per cent. One must reject the notion that the Town Clerk, John Greig, Esq., in cahoots with the magistrate, the Hon. D.S. McQueen, packed the electors’ lists with Tory partisans who failed to vote; Greig himself voted for William McDougall, the Brownite candidate, in the 1861 general election. Extant electors’ lists for the mid-1850s – never used in elections – hold the seeds of three general explanations for Woodstock’s unusual statistics for electors in 1861.64 First, inasmuch as each municipality prepared its own electors’ list, a man could be an elector in every municipality in which he owned or leased the requisite amount of property (residence on the property was not required). The electors’ lists for all polls, in other words, held multiple mentions for some individuals. John George Vansittart, for example, was on the lists of three polls – Woodstock, Blandford, and East Oxford – although he was entitled to vote just once; by

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contrast, the census enumeration gave Vansittart, at best, one mention, for his municipality of residence (as it happened, Vansittart got no mention, the enumerator having missed him). Second, for the riding’s 1858 by-election and later elections, Woodstock had five polls, one for each of five wards, and hence five electors’ lists; thus, through ownership of property in more than one ward, certain men could have appeared on two or more of the town’s five electors’ lists. Third, Woodstock, a community founded by British half-pay officers with connections and careers throughout the Empire, may have had an unusually high number of absentee landowners through inheritance from the original settlers. Edward Westby Vansittart, for example, had inherited property in East Oxford from his father, the late vice-admiral, and was an elector, although he was serving on the China Station with the British Navy and had never lived in Canada. Summary and Interpretation The introduction of an assessment franchise with judicially certified electors’ lists was the major change for democracy in elections of the early 1860s. Otherwise the elections carried forward and developed features of democracy that dated from elections of the late 1850s. The Brownite dominance in Oxford elections strengthened during elections of the 1860s. George Brown himself led the Brownite charge. After winning North Oxford in 1858 and turning the riding over to his protégé, William McDougall, he orchestrated Hope Mackenzie’s election as McDougall’s replacement in 1863. He was himself returned for South Oxford in three consecutive elections. His most difficult opponent, and chief victim, was not a Hincksite but Ebenezer Bodwell, one of his followers and the choice of a South Oxford Brownite convention. Canada West sectionalism, and the remedy of representation by population on a sectional basis, dominated Oxford’s elections, and its momentum favoured the Brownites. Coalition partisans decried the strident anti-French, anti-Roman Catholic rhetoric of the Brownites. Nevertheless, when the results of the 1861 census enumeration became known, even they accepted representation by population on a sectional basis in principle. Ironically, the convergence of the two parties on the major issue, sectionalism, put Brownite partyism at risk in Oxford. The province’s unresolved problem was how to achieve any constitutional remedy within the existing Union. In 1864 George Brown, the great anti-coali-

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tionist and the member for South Oxford, entered into the ‘Great Coalition’ with John A. Macdonald to seek a break in the log jam of sectional deadlock. The work of the Great Coalition, in turn, led to convergence on a new dominant issue: support for the Confederation agreement. A local effect was that the Hincksite-Conservative forces did not put up a candidate in two by-elections (in 1864 in South Oxford, and in 1866 in North Oxford). In the North Oxford by-election, both candidates judged that party strife was at low ebb. Nevertheless, the embers of partyism smouldered on. In 1865 George Brown quit the Great Coalition ministry, judging that its work was done; then in 1867, on the eve of Confederation, the member for South Oxford organized his third Provincial Reform Convention, this one to resuscitate Brownite partyism. A striking feature of elections in Oxford County was the predominance of Toronto men as candidates. Beginning with the 1857 general elections, a non-resident was returned in five consecutive elections in North Oxford and in six consecutive elections in South Oxford. In four cases, two in each riding, the defeated candidate was a non-resident. The Oxford ridings were unusual in their attraction for candidates from the provincial metropolis. George Brown’s aggressive interventions and personal connections among candidates from Toronto offer a partial explanation for their clustering in the Oxfords. The fortunes of newspapers marked the rise in Brownite fortunes. The Ingersoll Chronicle, a Hincksite organ since 1854, supported the Brownites after 1858. In 1861 the Oxford Herald, a Conservative paper in Ingersoll, took up the cudgels for the coalition, but then failed for want of support, two years later. The Woodstock Sentinel probably fared better as a coalition organ in the Tory bastion of Woodstock, but one cannot be certain of this, as only scattered issues of the Sentinel and its Brownite rival, the Woodstock Times, survive. The Tillsonburg Observer, a coalition-leaning journal, commenced publication in 1863. Just one issue is extant for the Embro Review, a Brownite organ with doubts about George Brown’s leadership. No issues are extant for Daniel Clark’s Brownite organ, the Princeton Review. Candidates’ committees and branch riding associations strengthened party organization. In five instances an Oxford party organized a delegated convention to unite its followers behind a single candidate, with mixed results. On two occasions – South Oxford in 1863 and North Oxford in 1866 – the mechanism failed to prevent a contest between candidates of its own party; in the February 1863 South Oxford by-election,

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George Brown himself opposed Ebenezer Bodwell, the choice of his own party’s local convention. In 1866 Thomas Oliver refused to commit himself to the convention’s choice and then defeated its nominee. Elections in the Oxfords continued to offer colourful spectacles with processions, brass bands, ‘dirty tricks’ at the show of hands, and illegal partisan behaviour by an election official, Henry Taylor, the deputy returning officer for the Ingersoll poll in 1861. The 1861 elections were the first Oxford elections to use electors’ lists. Hence they were the first elections for which one may calculate the extent of the franchise in Oxford. In 1861 the number of electors was equal to 65 per cent of Oxford’s adult males (as enumerated), but surpassed the number of adult males in the five Woodstock polls. Differences in the reportage of individuals between electors’ lists and census enumerations offer a partial explanation for Woodstock. In 1861 as in 1851, place of birth and religion were key influences on voters’ choices. However, Presbyterian and Scottish electors (two control groups) now favoured Brownites, not Conservatives. This changed the relative position of the other groups. American-born voters were now similar to Scotland-born voters. English and Anglican electors were more conservative than ever, relative to Scottish and Presbyterian electors. Whereas their preferences had not changed, those of the control groups had.

7 Provincial and Dominion Elections in the Oxfords, 1867–1875

The Oxford ridings held thirteen voice-vote elections after Confederation: seven for the Dominion House of Commons and six for the Ontario Legislative Assembly (colloquially known as the ‘local parliament’). The results for democracy were mixed. On the positive side of the ledger, government increased the number of polls, thereby diminishing territorial disenfranchisement, and introduced an independent judicial process for trying controverted elections. In a striking departure from the elections of Canada West, after Confederation the electors returned local men; indeed, Toronto politicians were seldom on offer. On the negative side, competitive elections were lacking: acclamations, one-sided contests, and low voter turnouts were the order of the day. Brownites won handily in all but two elections; only five elections had a Hincksite or Conservative candidate. The franchise for villages and towns was more restrictive than it had been. As ever, patronage greased the electoral wheels, and treating and bribery checked fairness in elections. Election issues in the Oxford ridings were few. Partyism was an overriding issue, one that shaped how democracy functioned. Brownites wanted to revive it, whereas Conservatives, Hincksites, and Brownite apostates wanted to continue with the ‘Great Coalition.’ Railroad projects caused uproar in the riding of South Oxford, but mattered not in its elections. Local squabbles made party unity difficult for the Brownites: their one delegated convention was a fiasco. The protocol for voice-vote elections changed at Confederation. Gone were the show of hands and the hustings declaration, both abolished in 1866. Another change was the reduction of polling from two days to one, beginning with North Oxford’s 1872 Ontario provincial by-elec-

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tion.1 South Oxford’s 1874 Dominion by-election was the county’s final contest under the voice-vote system. Oxford’s 1875 provincial elections were its first to use the secret-ballot method. The Revival of Partyism in the Oxford Ridings The fortunes of the Great Coalition waxed and waned after its formation in 1864. The 1867 general elections produced Great Coalition ministries at both the Dominion and Ontario provincial levels. John Sandfield Macdonald’s provincial ministry held office through to 1871. John A. Macdonald’s Dominion ministry lasted until 1874. In each case, the Great Coalition ministry fell to the Brownites. Edward Blake became Ontario’s first Brownite premier in 1871, to be succeeded by Oliver Mowat in 1872. Alexander Mackenzie became the Dominion’s first Brownite prime minister in 1874. The popularity of the Great Coalition at Confederation had a dampening effect on partisan warfare in Oxford County. Charles E. Chadwick, Esq., for example, was a Brownite-turned-Hincksite in the wake of the Great Coalition, and his conversion was lasting.2 The well-off banker and prominent Ingersoller had been ‘strongly opposed to the coalition at first, but when it was found to be necessary he withdrew his opposition. He was a party man, but when Confederation was brought about, parties came to an end, and he held to the principle of accepting the Government then in power and testing them upon their merits.’3 But George Brown, the member for South Oxford, worked to revive Brownite partyism. He had quit the Great Coalition ministry in December 1865, judging that a Confederation agreement was in place. Then, in June 1867, two months before Canada’s first general elections, his Reform Association of Upper Canada issued a call for delegates to a Provincial Reform Convention in Toronto. His purpose was to put Brownite partyism back into politics. Brown’s project initially met with resistance in his own riding. At a meeting of thirty to forty Ingersoll Brownites, Daniel Phelan, Esq., a party stalwart of long standing and one of three Ingersoll delegates to Brown’s 1859 Provincial Reform Convention, opposed the sending of delegates to this convention, whose purpose was to destroy the Great Coalition ministry. ‘George Brown was the prime mover in this convention business,’ said Phelan, and he ‘was not going to be dragged through the mud and mire by George Brown or any man of his stamp.’ Doubtless alluding to Brown’s tight control over proceedings at the

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1859 convention, Phelan denounced it as ‘one of the greatest humbugs ever got up.’ Phelan won the day: the gathering’s amendment to send delegates failed.4 But not the war: the losing side promptly held a second meeting that did select delegates. Brownite gatherings in North Oxford and West Oxford townships and Woodstock followed suit. The 1867 General Elections The Oxford ridings held Ontario provincial and Dominion general elections jointly, each riding with one hustings and one set of election officers for its two elections. Sheriff Alexander Ross was the returning officer for the North riding’s elections, held on the Court House Square, in Woodstock, on 26 August. The returning officer for South Oxford, James Kintrea, the county treasurer, held the elections at their usual location, Hillman’s Corners, on 27 August. Some fourteen months later, Kintrea was to be exposed as ‘a defaulter to the County of a very large amount, about $20,000 ... the deficiency in the County accounts occurred some years ago.’ On 28 May 1869 he fled Woodstock, never to be heard from again.5 Ontario Provincial Elections Provincial Elections in the Riding of North Oxford: 1867, 1871, and 1872 In the 1867 Ontario provincial general election in the riding of North Oxford, George Perry was matched against Dr Daniel Clark, loser to Thomas Oliver in the riding’s 1866 by-election. Both candidates were Brownites and residents of Blenheim. Perry (1818–1891) was an England-born farmer, a Presbyterian (United Presbyterian, not Free Church), and reeve of Blenheim Township. He had been first nominator for William McDougall in North Oxford in the 1861 general election; he had been a losing candidate at two Brownite delegated conventions (1863 and 1866). George Perry prevailed. Clark, a Highlander Presbyterian, took the West Zorra and Embro polls. Perry won a large majority in Blenheim, the home township for both candidates, and recorded a majority of 236 overall. Clark had entered the contest at the eleventh hour; that, opined the Chronicle, is what caused his defeat.6 Perry was acclaimed in the 1871 Ontario general election, but resigned in 1872 to make room for Oliver Mowat of Toronto. In October

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Mowat had stepped down as a judge to become premier of the province and, needing a seat, had chosen North Oxford. The Premier’s Highland-Scottish Presbyterian profile suited the riding: although Mowat was born in Kingston, his parents were Highlanders from CaithnessShire. In the event, Perry obligingly resigned, with the support of his friends, and Mowat was acclaimed in a by-election held on 29 November 1872. Perry’s reward came three months later, when he ascended to the Oxford shrievalty following the death of Sheriff Andrew Ross in February 1873.7 The 1867 Ontario Election in South Oxford: Oliver versus Noxon The 1867 provincial election matched Adam Oliver against James Noxon, both of Ingersoll. Both men had been Brownites. In this election, however, Noxon supported John Sandfield Macdonald’s newly formed Great Coalition ministry. His choice, it would appear, expressed pragmatism – a strategy to defeat Oliver – rather than principle.8 In the event, he was to return to Brownite colours immediately after the 1867 election. James Noxon (1833–1906) was a native of Prince Edward County, a Quaker turned Anglican in religion, and a manufacturer of farm implements. In 1855 he and an older brother, Samuel, had moved to Ingersoll to start up what was becoming a large family business. Noxon was also a founding member of the Canadian Dairymen’s Association, which was organized in Ingersoll in 1867, and he had served several terms on the Ingersoll Council.9 Adam Oliver (1823–1882) was a lumberman, mill owner, contractor, and builder. He was a native of New Brunswick, a Scottish Lowlander by ethnicity, and a Presbyterian. In 1836 his family had moved from New Brunswick to the Pond Mills settlement, Westminster Township, Middlesex County. Oliver had apprenticed as a carpenter in 1841 and set up business in Ingersoll in 1850. He had been reeve of Ingersoll (1859–62), warden of Oxford County (1862), and the first mayor of Ingersoll (1865–66) following the village’s incorporation as a town.10 Oliver and Noxon had been antagonists on the Ingersoll Council. In 1860 Noxon had supported Ingersoll’s incorporation as a town, which Oliver in his capacity as the village’s reeve, had prevented by refusing to sign the paperwork. In January 1861 Noxon manoeuvred unsuccessfully to prevent the village’s five councillors-elect from choosing Oliver to be reeve of the new council. Shortly thereafter, during a dispute

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over the tendering of printing contracts, Oliver denounced Noxon as a ‘greenhorn with an oily tongue’ who sought to be the big man on council.11 Oliver won the 1867 provincial election, polling 55 per cent of the votes and sweeping all of the polls except for the two in Dereham. Celebrations followed with ‘large bonfires built in various parts of the town. The Royal Hotel, Dr Fleak’s Drug Store, Baker’s Photograph Gallery, the Chronicle office, &c. were beautifully illuminated and the greatest enthusiasm prevailed. Shortly after 9 o’clock, Mr Oliver, the member elect, arrived at the Royal, in front of which nearly 800 people had congregated. As Mr Oliver alighted from his carriage, cheer after cheer greeted him, when he was escorted to the balcony of the Hotel ... accompanied by prominent Reformers.’12 But the Oliver-Noxon feud was far from over. The 1871 Ontario Election in South Oxford: Oliver versus Richards Stephen Richards, the incumbent in Niagara, opposed Adam Oliver in South Oxford in the 1871 provincial election. The Toronto lawyer and Hincksite had lost two previous elections in South Oxford (in 1858 and 1861), but he had come close to winning in 1861, with 49 per cent of the votes, and unlike Oliver, he was currently a minister: the commissioner of Crown lands in John Sandfield Macdonald’s coalition administration. In 1871 he decided against standing for re-election in Niagara and took his chances in South Oxford. Richards came, alleged Oliver, at the invitation of ‘an aristocratic ring’ in Ingersoll, led by Daniel Phelan, South Oxford’s census commissioner, who, ‘with all his subs in every municipality considered the wires all nicely laid, and that all was required was to pull them, and up would pop the votes.’13 In this regard, and as discussed above, Phelan was an ex-Brownite who cleaved to the Great Coalition ministries, and census officials were Dominion patronage appointments. The Brownites held a well-attended general meeting at Mount Elgin and then a second meeting on nomination day ‘to effect a thorough organization of the party.’ Peter J. Brown, an Ingersoll lawyer and Oliver’s business partner, chaired Oliver’s ‘central committee.’ When Stephen Richards held coalitionist meetings at Beachville and Norwichville, Ebenezer Bodwell, the riding’s Brownite MP, and Adam Oliver, the incumbent MPP, attended to confront him. James Noxon, now returned to the Brownite fold, ‘buried the hatchet’ with Oliver for this election.

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He regretted his personal attacks on Oliver, made ‘in the heat of debate’ during the 1867 election when he had been Oliver’s opponent, and Oliver had ‘met him half way, and expressed the same feelings.’ Oliver won 60 per cent of the votes with a majority in every municipality except Dereham. But storm clouds were on the horizon for Adam Oliver, and his feud with Noxon lingered. The 1874 Provincial By-election in South Oxford: Oliver Acclaimed after Disqualification By 1874 Adam Oliver was more than a local figure in Ingersoll.14 In 1868 he had established a second enterprise – a saw and planing mill business in Orillia. In 1872 he sold out in Orillia and set up a range of business activities in the Thunder Bay District, Northwest Territories. Meanwhile, his party had come to power at both levels of government. Brownites governed in Toronto under Edward Blake (1871–72) and Oliver Mowat (1872–96), and in Ottawa under Alexander Mackenzie (1873–78). These developments boosted Adam’s business prospects in northwestern Ontario. His business partner and protégé, Hugh Sutherland, became Alexander Mackenzie’s superintendent of public works for the Northwest Territories; Adam’s son, John Grieve Oliver, worked as a foreman for Sutherland; and his brother, Walter Oliver, became superintendent of public works for projects at Thunder Bay. Yet Oliver’s contacts got him into trouble. In January 1874 he resigned his South Oxford seat because of his ‘inadvertent’ violation of the 1857 Independence of Parliament Act, which disqualified ‘contractors with Government’ from being members of Parliament. Without his knowledge, claimed Oliver, his Thunder Bay business, Oliver, Davidson & Co., had sold $2,000 worth of timber to a provincial government buyer. To remedy matters, he had given his share of the profit, $166, to his business partners and resigned his seat. On 5 January he held a public meeting in the Ingersoll Town Hall to explain his position and declare his intention to stand for re-election, contingent on his endorsement by the annual meeting of the South Oxford Reform Association, two days later. After vigorous discussion and one adjournment, the association endorsed his nomination by a vote of fifty-eight to two with six abstentions, and he was acclaimed in the by-election, all in the same month as his resignation. Noxon mocked Oliver’s explanation as these events unfolded. Given Oliver, Davidson & Co.’s controversial purchase of Crown lands in

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Thunder Bay earlier in the year, Noxon acidly commented that, first ‘he buys land from the government and now sells them lumber. It was all bosh about inadvertence’ (original emphasis). Elected representatives, insisted Noxon, should not enjoy ‘casual advantages’ from their elected position. At the riding association’s annual meeting, however, Noxon declined to be a candidate ‘at the present time.’ Oliver had defeated him in a previous election (1867), and he ‘accepted the situation.’15 The 1875 Provincial Ballot Election Controverted in South Oxford: Oliver Unseated The results of the 1875 Ontario provincial election were controverted and overturned in the riding of South Oxford. The incumbent, Adam Oliver, had polled an eighty-nine-vote plurality over three other candidates. However, a defeated Conservative candidate, Benjamin Hopkins, had petitioned the Court of Queen’s Bench to void the election on grounds of corrupt practices and to strip Oliver and Peter J. Brown, Oliver’s campaign manager and business partner, of their political rights for eight years, as provided by Ontario’s 1871 Controverted Elections Act. The trial of the petition was Oxford’s first under an independent judicial process: a judge sitting in open court without a jury – the mechanism introduced by the 1871 act. The election itself was Oxford’s first under the secret-ballot system. For the first time, Oliver was unable to learn whether his mill hands had voted for him. For the first time, a fixer did not know whether men whose votes he had purchased had stayed bought. Effectively, Oliver’s three-day trial showcased a collision between corrupt habits from the voice-vote era and the new circumstance of the secret-ballot election. The evidence presented indicated corrupt practices by Oliver’s campaign manager and certain of Oliver’s agents.16 Allan J. Matheson, a clerk at the Merchants’ Bank, testified that Peter J. Brown ‘had an account with the bank [and] drew $100 on that day; it was in $2 bills; there were fifty $2 bills; he said he wanted it for office purposes; he said he wanted small bills.’ John Hartley, an Ingersoll labourer aged twentysix, testified that his vote was solicited by P.J. Brown for Oliver on the day of polling, 18 January at Cavanaugh’s in Ingersoll; my brother was present; Mr Brown and [James] Badden came into a shed where I was working; Brown asked me to go and vote for Oliver; I refused; he then said my word ought to be worth something, I will leave an envelope in the P.O. tomorrow for you;

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I told him that would be of no use; he then said that if he gave me the money direct they might swear me at the poll and my vote would be of no use; he then said, I will leave $2 with him – pointing to my brother George; Mr Badden then opened the door of the bake shop and asked Mr Brown to go in there; Mr Badden then left; Mr Brown took my brother to the other end of the shed … Mr Brown returned to me and said he could take me to the poll in five minutes, and that he had done what was right with my brother. I told him that I would not be dragged to the poll by him or anyone else, that when I chose to go I would go without anyone taking me; I went to the poll that afternoon and voted; I received $2 from my brother that afternoon; he said it was the $2 Brown had given him; I voted for Hopkins; I kept the $2.

Christopher Gorey of Ingersoll testified that Brown gave Patrick Delaney $3 for his vote, saying, I will give you $3, but mind I don’t give you this $3 for your vote, if I give you the money you will give it back to me, I am only lending it to you; Delaney replied, ‘Yes sir, I often get money from you’; this was at McMurray’s hotel; Delaney said it was a dry election; Brown treated; I drank with them; this was on polling day between 3 and 4 p.m.; Mr Brown served the liquor; there was no bar tender present; the liquor was not locked up; there was no one present, only us three; Brown in passing me dropped $1 in my pocket.

Under cross-examination, Gorey allowed that McMurray, the hotel proprietor, had treated them. In the event, the bribe went for naught; Gorey took Delaney to Dereham where they each voted for Hopkins. Much other testimony followed. According to John Henry King of Dereham, Rudolph Wessinger offered him a ride home from Culloden, a day’s wages, and a ride to the poll to vote for Oliver; King ‘went and voted … for Hopkins; I saw Wessinger again on Monday, polling day, at the polling booth.’ Mrs William Douglas, wife of an Ingersoll hotel keeper, denied receiving $50 from John Stuart for her husband’s vote; rather, she borrowed $50 from Stuart to make payments on a mortgage held by P.J. Brown; she frequently borrowed money from Stuart with no security and at no interest and had often lent him money; she had already repaid this particular loan. When Henry Lee was in Otterville, Thomas Moore gave him $2 and lent him a horse to travel to Ingersoll to vote; Moore claimed that he owed Lee money and had not paid it to get Lee to vote. Richard Cairns, an Ingersoll hotel keeper, paid $4 to

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Joseph Adair because he knew Adair needed the money, not for Adair’s vote; Adair, on his part, did not know what the money was for. The trial ended abruptly when the opposing sides secured the judge’s assent to a deal. Oliver’s side conceded one count of corrupt practice: namely, that William McMurray, the hotel keeper, had treated during voting hours on election day. Thus, Oliver abandoned his claim to the seat, and the judge voided the election on ‘grounds of corrupt practices, in treating during voting hours on Election Day.’ The outcome was a tribute to the province’s recently adopted independent judicial process: trial by a judge ‘sitting in open court without a jury,’ the mechanism introduced by the province’s 1871 Controverted Elections Act. Treating and bribery had gone unpunished under the old system, trial by a Select Committee of the Legislative Assembly, yet those were precisely the grounds on which Oliver lost his seat in 1875.17 South Oxford’s election trial was part of a general pattern under the independent judicial process. In Ontario’s 1875 general election, thirtytwo of the eighty-eight ridings (36%) had controverted elections. Nine members-elect were unseated, four of them on grounds of bribery and three on grounds of treating electors at local hotels during the election.18 Under the discredited Select Committee method of trying petitions, in contrast, just one election had been voided on grounds of treating and none had been voided on grounds of bribery.19 Dominion Elections The Oxford Ridings in the 1867 and 1872 Elections: Acclamations in Both Thomas Oliver of Woodstock and Zorra, winner of the 1866 North Oxford by-election, was acclaimed in the Dominion general elections of 1867 and 1872. In 1866 he had supported John A. Macdonald’s Great Coalition ministry. In August 1867, however, he ‘made a telling speech during which he reviewed the political history of the country for the past twenty years and spoke strongly in favour of party governments, stating that he would go to the House an opponent of the coalition.’20 Ebenezer Bodwell was acclaimed in the South riding in 1867. Bodwell was the designated heir of George Brown. At a ‘Grand Political Demonstration’ in Tillsonburg in March 1867, Brown advised his constituents that he would not stand for re-election, but urged them to elect an ‘upright’ man such as Bodwell.21 Bodwell was already in the field, having accepted a requisition from six hundred electors, organized by the county’s reeves acting in their capacity as electors. The coalitionists

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met at Hillman’s Corners but disbanded without putting up a candidate. Bodwell’s election, said the Tillsonburg Observer, rewarded ‘years of slavish subservience to his party.’22 Bodwell was acclaimed again in the 1872 Dominion election. During his first term of office, stated Bodwell, he had supported good measures from John A. Macdonald’s coalition government, but after a fair trial, the coalition government had failed. It was milking Ontario to pay for the acquisition of British Columbia and pay off Joseph Howe’s demand for better terms; the Pacific Railway, filled with ministry supporters, was an undeserving recipient of its largess. Bodwell now believed that a party ministry was needed to bring integrity to government. South Oxford in the 1874 Election: A de facto Acclamation In the 1874 Dominion election Ebenezer Bodwell faced Dr John Hamilton Thrall (1832–1888), a Hincksite physician in Burgessville, North Norwich. Thrall was an American-born, ethnic-German Presbyterian and a member of the Independent Order of Good Templars (a fraternal temperance society for teetotallers). In 1872 he had been nominated to oppose Bodwell, whom he had accused of factious partyism against John A. Macdonald’s coalition ministry. He had declined his nomination, but not before stating his principles: he opposed ‘too much’ party discipline or party domination and believed, in common with many others, that ‘Reformers’ were obliged to support and sustain the coalition ministry.23 In 1874 professional duties kept Thrall from the hustings nominations for South Oxford; in his absence, two West Oxford Conservatives (Harvey Fargo Martin and Captain George Chambers, Esq., a half-pay officer of the 34th Regiment) nominated Thrall and demanded a poll on his behalf. ‘When the Dr discovered that he was a candidate, nolens volens, in the eye of the law,’ reported the Woodstock Weekly Review, ‘he at once informed the electors that he had been pressed upon them against his wishes.’ Thus, the election was a costly farce and effectively a de facto acclamation for Bodwell.24 Thrall polled 19 per cent of the votes cast in a low voter turnout, 28 per cent. South Oxford’s 1874 By-election: Skinner versus Edgar Bodwell resigned his seat to become superintendent of the Welland Canal in May 1874, whereupon his party held a convention at Mount Elgin to select his successor for the by-election. Factional warfare between Adam Oliver and James Noxon rocked the convention at a preliminary

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meeting, held to receive signatories to a protest, signed by Adam Oliver and fifteen others against permitting the delegates from Ingersoll taking part. Conservatives were in attendance at the meeting to select the Ingersoll delegates, alleged the petitioners, and workmen from ‘a large manufactory’ (Noxon Brothers) had been ordered to attend and had been issued ‘slips with the names of parties thereon for whom they were to vote.’ James Brady, the branch association’s vice-president for Ingersoll, replied that the meeting had been properly constituted, with no more than half a dozen Conservatives present.25 James Noxon denied having packed the meeting with his factory hands. After discussion, the protest was denied and the business of the convention got underway.26 Each delegate presented his credentials and a certificate that stated the number of electors in his municipality and, hence, the number of delegates to which his municipality was entitled. As a preliminary measure, the delegates pledged themselves to support the convention’s choice of nominee. Ten candidates then were nominated, including James Noxon, Peter Johnston Brown, and an outsider, James David Edgar. Brown was Adam Oliver’s man, his proxy at the convention; the Ingersoll lawyer was Oliver’s business partner in Thunder Bay District and had been Oliver’s campaign manager in the 1871 provincial election.27 Edgar (1841–1899), a Toronto lawyer and protégé of George Brown, was a key party organizer and the party’s chief whip in the House of Commons until losing his Niagara Peninsula seat of Monck in the 1874 general election; quite possibly Bodwell’s patronage appointment had been intended to create a vacancy for Edgar, who needed a seat to remain in the cabinet.28 However, Edgar could not attend the convention, as he then was in British Columbia to negotiate an extension of the ten-year time limit for the completion of a railway to the Pacific, a condition of British Columbia’s entry into Confederation. Noxon and Brown, at first through intermediaries and then directly, offered to have their names withdrawn, if the convention thought that best. The convention, unwisely as it turned out, did not take them up on their offer. Each candidate then was asked to state his willingness to abide by the decision of the convention. One of them, Col. John Aitchison Skinner of West Oxford, refused, ‘having made up his mind to go to the people.’29 Thus, the convention withdrew Skinner’s name at the request of his nominators. Two other nominees withdrew, leaving seven in the field. The convention voted by ballot in a complex procedure: on each ballot it dropped the lowest candidate, after which it matched the highest candidate against the others individually, allowing each to test his

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strength against the leader. The leader through seven ballots was James Noxon, with P.J. Brown in second place. However, Noxon lost the eighth and final ballot by a vote of twenty-three to nineteen to the thirdplace man, James David Edgar, the outsider from Toronto. Edgar won because the bad feeling between the Ingersoll men, Noxon and Brown, was insurmountable; had either been selected, the other’s supporters would have bolted the convention, despite having pledged not to do so. Thus, two Brownites, Skinner and Edgar, fought the by-election to replace Bodwell. John Aitchison Skinner (1826–1894), a Ross-Shire Highlander and Free-Church Presbyterian, had become a merchant and military personage in Hamilton before settling in Oxford County.30 On his immigration to Hamilton in 1843, at age 17, he had entered the employ of a Hamilton dry-goods firm. In 1845 he had attended the founding of the Highland Society of Hamilton and Canada West. Then in 1850 he and a younger brother had founded James A. Skinner & Co., importers and wholesalers of earthenware. In 1855 he had joined a volunteer militia company as a private. On the occasion of the Trent Affair in 1861, he had raised a new company of 65 men, clothed it in Highland dress at his own expense, and been gazetted captain. The firm, James A. Skinner & Co., prospered, and in 1862, at age 36, Skinner left his brother to manage the business and retired to the life of a country gentleman in Oxford. There he purchased a former residence of John G. Vansittart, ‘a beautiful spot on the south bank of the Thames, three miles west of Woodstock, which he named Dunelg.’ In 1871 his household comprised his Scottish wife, Agnes, five Canadianborn sons, and two farm servants. Meanwhile, his military interests continued. In 1866 Skinner saw action against the Fenians, after which he was gazetted Lieutenant Colonel. In 1868 he attended the founding meeting of the Ontario Rifle Association; in 1870, at the association’s request, he recruited the first colonial team ever for the British National Rifle Association’s annual prize competition at Wimbledon, England (later removed to Bisley). In 1874 Colonel Skinner was an independently wealthy gentleman, who anchored his campaign in South Oxford on his character and social standing. James Noxon loyally supported Edgar, the convention’s choice, and questioned Skinner’s credentials as a local man; although Skinner claimed twelve years of residence in the riding, there was no evidence that he had ever involved himself in local affairs. ‘To all intents and purposes he is simply a Hamilton merchant who has a country residence near Beachville where he spends the greater portion of his

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time.’31 Few electors knew him, said Noxon. The Chronicle supported Edgar, the convention’s nominee. The Conservatives, meeting at Mount Elgin, unanimously chose James McCaughey, Esq., of Ingersoll as their nominee, but McCaughey declined for personal reasons and endorsed Skinner. Just three hundred attended the hustings nominations in Holbrook, at which Sheriff George Perry presided. Edgar, then in British Columbia, was nominated in absentia, but the feeling was strongly in his favour, reported the Toronto Globe. James Noxon and the Ingersoll Chronicle endorsed him. ‘Not one prominent Reformer in the Riding was present for Mr Skinner,’ wrote the Globe, while ‘three or four Tory candidates proposed retired in his favour.’ Simply put, Edgar was expected to win.32 When Skinner won easily with 60 per cent of the votes, area newspapers scrambled to explain Edgar’s unexpected defeat.33 The factionalism that had produced Edgar’s nomination, argued the Woodstock Sentinel, also brought him down. The Ingersoll Chronicle noted the voters’ apathy – just 49 per cent of the electors went to the polls; Brownite electors, its editor suggested, stayed home, while Conservatives to a man voted for Skinner. The electors lost interest, suggested the Woodstock Weekly Review, when the contest turned into a faction fight between Reformers. To the Tillsonburg Observer, Edgar’s selection and Skinner’s win expressed a rural revolt against party autocrats from Ingersoll, the riding’s principal centre; Ingersoll Brownites, it gloated, had set the rules and died by them, with their two leading candidates thoroughly beaten. Of course, Edgar had been unable to undertake a personal canvass of the electors, being away in British Columbia on party business. As a final indignity, Edgar was burned in effigy in Ingersoll. As the Woodstock Weekly Review snorted, ‘Poor Edgar, the Government nominee and rotten choice of a rotten convention, was last evening cremated in a rousing bonfire. This morning the ashes were carefully gathered and placed in a wagon. The town crier, draped in flowing black crepe, carrying a partially muffled bell, followed the hearse through the principal street, finally depositing the remains in the Thames, from whence there shall be no resurrection.’34 The 1874 Dominion Election in North Oxford: Oliver versus Wood In the 1874 Dominion general election, in the riding of North Oxford, held in early January 1874, a Conservative, James Henry Wood (1828–

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?), opposed Thomas Oliver, the Brownite incumbent. Wood, a native of Ireland and a Wesleyan Methodist, was the choice of the riding’s Liberal-Conservative Association, which had met in Woodstock on 13 January 1874. Although Wood was a resident of Woodstock, the Woodstock Weekly Review opined that he was ‘but a newcomer to the county, is but little known in town, and in the townships has been scarcely heard of … Previous to coming to Woodstock he resided at Sarnia, and was for some time connected with the Canadian newspaper of that town. He once had the honour of contesting Lambton with the present Prime Minister [Alexander Mackenzie], if we are not misinformed.’35 His son was a post office clerk in Woodstock. Wood’s letter to the electors of North Oxford outlined an aggressive platform for an election held in the shadow of the ‘Pacific Scandal.’ The Liberals had dissolved Parliament without consulting it and without setting policy on which electors could judge them. Canada’s western expansion was urgent economically and politically, at any cost; by disavowing rapid western expansion, the Mackenzie ministry had broken faith with British Columbia and dishonoured the Empire by reneging on the government’s promise of a railway to the Pacific within ten years.36 The returning officer, Sheriff George Perry, opened the election from the hustings, located on the court house square. However, the outdoor location, required by statute, was unpleasant for all concerned in frigid rainy weather. Thus immediately after nominations, the electors adjourned to the Court House, indoors, to hear addresses from the candidates, their nominators, and notables. There a ‘hissing, jeering, stamping’ brigade did its best to deny Oliver’s speakers a hearing.37 But Oliver won in a landslide with 71 per cent of the votes, including 93 per cent of the votes in West Zorra Township (exclusive of Embro), and 58 per cent of the votes in Woodstock (75% in the ever-reliable St Andrew’s Ward). The hapless Wood – a Conservative in the wake of the Pacific Scandal, a recent arrival in the county, and a candidate opposed by a Zorra Highlander (Thomas Oliver) – became the first coalition candidate ever to lose Woodstock. Probit Estimates for Two General Elections Table 7.1 reports Probit estimates for South Oxford in the provincial general election of 1871 and for North Oxford in the Dominion general election of 1874. The results show, as in 1861 and 1851, that differences in place of birth (nativity) and religion were important influences

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on voters’ choices of candidate. As in 1861, Scottish and Presbyterian electors were the bedrock of Brownite support. In the riding of Oxford North, voters who were Presbyterian, or who were born in Scotland or the United States, were more likely than others to choose Thomas Oliver. In the South riding, voters who were born in Scotland or the United States were more likely than others to choose Adam Oliver. The estimates for origin accord with the estimates for nativity. In both ridings, Scottish electors were more likely than English and Irish electors to vote Brownite. In the riding of South Oxford, electors in Dereham, North Norwich, and South Norwich were less likely than Ingersoll voters to vote for Adam Oliver. The location of the poll made no difference in the North riding where, for the first time in the riding’s history, a Brownite candidate polled an overall majority in Woodstock. Occupational categories – labourers, tradesmen, merchants, professionals, gentlemen, and clerks – made no difference to voters’ preferences in either riding. The Franchise in the Oxford Ridings The statutory franchise became less democratic for the 1867 general elections than for all earlier elections. Hitherto, Oxford’s owners or occupants of real property had to meet a $200 qualification. Henceforth their qualification was $400 in towns (Woodstock and Ingersoll) and $300 in incorporated villages (Embro).38 Effective in 1871, for provincial elections only, the qualification was lowered to $300 for towns and restored to $200 for villages. In the 1874 Dominion election, that qualification doubled to $400 in Tillsonburg due to its elevation to town from police village status two year earlier. Despite the rise in the statutory requirements, the franchise was increasingly more democratic in application. In the riding of South Oxford, electors comprised 67 per cent of the adult male population in 1871, up from 64 per cent in 1861. Despite the rise in the qualification for town electors, these percentages for Ingersoll rose from 72 to 77.39 The franchise showed some difference between owners and tenants of real property. In the South riding in 1871, tenants were 14 per cent of the voters in the South riding, exclusive of Ingersoll, a proportion somewhat below the 18 per cent tenancy rate for farm occupiers in the county.40 Meanwhile, a rise in the number of polls diminished territorial disenfranchisement. The two Oxford ridings had fifty-three polls in 1874, up from eighteen in 1861.

Table 7.1 Probit Estimates, 1871 and 1874 General Elections in Oxford County NORTH OXFORD RIDING 1874* Marginal Effect BP Scotland Canada West England USA Ireland Other BNA Presbyterian Anglican Roman Catholic Methodist Baptist Woodstock Zorra West Ingersoll Oxford North Dereham

% File

SOUTH OXFORD RIDING 1871** Difference in Votes

–0.156 0.26 –63 –0.239 0.23 –86 Not Significantly Different from BP Scotland –0.424 0.08 –53 –0.367 0.05 –29 –0.520 –0.260 –0.192 –0.121 0.097

0.17 0.03 0.21 0.13 CONSTANT 0.12

–137 –12 –63 –24

Marginal Effect

% File

Difference in Votes

CONSTANT –0.183 0.40 –181 –0.273 0.22 –148 Not Significantly Different from BP Scotland –0.324 0.14 –110 Not Significantly different from BP Scotland CONSTANT –0.223 0.19 –107 Not Significantly Different from Presbyterian Not Significantly Different from Presbyterian +0.164 0.13 +54

20

BNA = British North America; BP = birthplace. *Dependent Variable: Vote for Thomas Oliver = 1; Voters = 2,520; Linked N = 1,559. **Dependent Variable: Vote for Adam Oliver = 1; Voters = 2,475; Linked N = 1,953.

+0.123 –0.194

CONSTANT 0.08 0.24

+26 –117

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Economic development and a rising trend for real property values underlay the rising trend for the franchise. Improved acreage was 68 per cent of county lands in 1871, up from 57 per cent in 1861. Farm occupiers in Oxford increasingly were owners. The proportion of farm occupiers who were tenants fell from 39 per cent in 1848 to 17 per cent in 1871. As well, the Oxford population was increasingly urban. Ingersoll and Woodstock held 17 per cent of the county population in 1871, up from 13 per cent a decade earlier. The Surge of Local Men in Oxford County’s Elections The myth of predatory metropolitan politicians in country ridings persisted through to the end of voice-vote elections. ‘In the rural constituencies of Ontario,’ opined the Woodstock Weekly Review in 1874, ‘the feeling is gaining ground that Toronto has already a sufficient number of representatives in the House. There is an impression abroad in the counties that Toronto is selfish … year by year it is becoming more difficult to elect Toronto men for rural constituencies.’ Toronto, noted Tillsonburg Observer in 1874, ‘has already twenty-nine or thirty representatives in the House – all lawyers of course – which is very good for Toronto, as her interests are well looked after, but very bad for the rest of the country, whenever the public interests conflict with the private interests of Toronto.’41 In actual fact, this myth was accurate for the Oxford ridings before Confederation, but not after, and never for the province.42 Just three of the county’s thirteen post-Confederation elections had a metropolitan candidate, and just one Toronto man was returned: Ontario Premier, Oliver Mowat, in 1872. A partial explanation was that the Confederation agreement increased the number of parliamentary members from 65 to 164 (82 in the Dominion parliament and 82 members in the provincial parliament): a huge increase in the supply of seats for Toronto lawyers in search of a riding. Simply put, more parliamentary jobs meant less competition for them. Similarly, a rise in the number of acclamations after Confederation reflected the drop in supply in relation to demand. Branch Riding Associations The Brownite branch riding associations apparently did not survive the surge of non-partisanship during the years of the Great Coalition (1864–

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67). Thus, in September 1871 an ‘influential and enthusiastic meeting of Reformers of the South Riding [met] in the town hall at Mount Elgin for the purpose of forming a Branch Reform Association in connection with the Provincial Association and, if thought advisable, to nominate a candidate for the representation of the Riding in the House of Commons.’43 Then, in a lightly attended meeting, Brownites in the North riding organized a branch association just before the riding’s nominations for the 1874 Dominion general election.44 Coalition forces also had riding associations, although extant newspapers seldom mentioned them. In February and March 1867 Dereham Conservatives called upon the Conservative Association of the South Riding of Oxford to reorganize the party for the approaching Confederation-year general elections. To this end, they named two organizers for each of the riding’s twenty-four township school districts and picked a delegation of twelve to attend the meeting of the riding association.45 In 1874 a North riding Liberal-Conservative Association invited James Henry Wood to become its candidate. Patronage and Influence in Dereham, 1871 Edward Delevan (E.D.) Tillson (1825–1902), notes Don DeBats, fit ‘almost precisely S.J.R. Noel’s definition of a local patron.’46 His father was George Tillson, the American-born entrepreneur after whom the village of Tillsonburg was named. The 1871 census of manufactories reported him with a planing mill and door factory, a gristmill, and a blacksmith shop. The three enterprises employed fourteen men and had an aggregate value of $20,800. His estate also included twentythree hundred acres of farmland in Dereham Township and nearby Houghton Township, Norfolk County, as well as a hundred lots and forty-six houses in Tillsonburg.47 In 1871 E.D. was the wealthiest man in Dereham Township. He initiated Tillsonburg’s incorporation as a town in 1872 and was its first mayor. In January 1871, E.D. Tillson offered his political support to Sir Francis Hincks, the Dominion government’s finance minister, and Aquila Walsh, the Conservative MP for Norfolk, in exchange for their help towards awarding him the postmastership for Tillsonburg. His own MP, Ebenezer Bodwell, a Brownite, was in Tillson’s judgment, without influence on the coalitionist postmaster general.48 Tillson had voted for Brownites, George Brown and Adam Oliver, in 1863 and 1867, but for a Hincksite, Stephen Richards, in 1858 and 1861.

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E.D.’s goal in 1871 was to keep the postmastership in his extended family. Benjamin Van Norman, the postmaster at the time of his death in 1869, was E.D.’s brother-in-law and uncle to E.D.’s wife. On Benjamin’s death, the postmastership passed to Benjamin’s twenty-three-year-old son, George Tillson Van Norman, but in January 1871 George married and took a position with his father-in-law’s company in London. In the circumstances, as E.D. explained to Hincks, he wanted the postmastership to assist in the support of Hannah Van Norman, the relict of Benjamin and mother to George.49 Hannah and her twenty-one-year-old daughter would ‘attend the office and have all the proceeds’ while he would be the person responsible.50 Unfortunately for E.D., William E. Nesbit, the Dereham Township clerk and a Hincksite, wanted the position and had gotten up a petition in his favour from leading inhabitants of Middleton Township, Norfolk County, which was situated on the southern boundary of Tillsonburg and was part of Aquila Walsh’s riding. Accordingly, E.D. sought the assistance of Hincks and Walsh in blocking Nesbit’s candidacy. Tillson’s correspondence laid bare his quid pro quo. To Edwin Doty in Ingersoll he wrote: ‘I have fully decided to support the Government party both in Oxford and Norfolk at the next election. I can use more influence in getting out voters than any other man in this neighbourhood.’ E.D.’s letter to Hincks was personal: I am glad to learn from you that my prospects [for the postmastership] are so good and have no doubt but what it would be all right. The electors in this part of the county are very desirous that you should be their next representative [at the next Dominion election], and I have no doubt but if you would allow yourself to be nominated … you would be elected by a very large majority as I hear you well spoken of all over the county by the Conservatives and by the old Reform party [the Hincksites]. Our present member is becoming rather unpopular in fact many of his best friends have deserted him. The people here think that [they would] rather have a man of more weight and influence to represent them so that if they want any favors they will stand some chance of getting them. Neither of the men that we have now [is] of the right stripe. We want a change and are in hopes to get it.

Hincks, in return for his ‘favour,’ requested E.D.’s influence on behalf of the Sandfield Macdonald ministry’s candidates in Oxford and Norfolk (Stephen Richards and a Mr Willson) in the provincial election of

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March 1871. As it happened, both men lost, and the Brownite party toppled the ministry. Nevertheless, wrote E.D. to Hincks, ‘I am happy to inform you that Tillsonburg has done their duty … Of eighty-one votes in Tillsonburg we gave sixty-five to Richards nine for Oliver, two sick and nine would not vote. In the polling places comprising the south half of Dereham we gave Mr Richards a majority of one hundred and twenty-five.’ To test for Tillson’s influence, Don DeBats turns to a new tool for historians – GIS (geographic information systems) with its kernel-density measure. As DeBats explains, in a community culture rather than a deference-to-patron culture, voters rarely change partisan choice; hence, shifts in partisan choice occur gradually and, in spatial terms, they occur evenly and are widely distributed. Conversely, in a deference-topatron culture, such shifts can occur suddenly and are concentrated geographically, precisely because the patron’s influence is local. With the GIS analytical tool, DeBats shows that an unusually high percentage of Dereham’s repeat voters in two consecutive elections (1867 and 1871) changed their partisan choice; those who changed were densely clustered in the Tillsonburg area; and the direction of change was primarily from Brownite to Hincksite, the side championed by Tillson (20 of the 23 Tillsonburg men who changed party, Tillson included, voted for Richards). Simply put, E.D.’s influence mattered in the Tillsonburg area in one particular election.51 Having converted to the coalition side, Postmaster Tillson stayed converted. On 17 July 1872, three days after the Dominion parliament was dissolved, Sir Francis Hincks, reported to be in trouble in North Renfrew, tested the waters in South Oxford with a demonstration in Ingersoll. On 25 July 1872 Tillson issued a ‘circular calling on the friends of “Constitutional Government” to send delegates to a meeting in Burgessville [on the 26th] for the purpose of nominating a candidate to oppose Mr Bodwell.’52 Nothing came of Tillson’s initiative. Hincks met with chilly reception in South Oxford and opted to contest the neighbouring riding of Brant South. Bodwell was acclaimed for South Oxford. Railways and Elections in the Riding of South Oxford During the 1870s Oxford residents blamed the Great Western Railway’s monopoly (1853–74) for higher freight rates than obtained in London, Middlesex County, and Paris, Brant County. Without competition, the

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Great Western charged what the traffic would bear. To achieve lower rates, Oxford needed a second line.53 ‘No market in the County of Oxford at the present time,’ elaborated the Ingersoll Chronicle, is touched by competing lines of Railway. At Tavistock, Bright, Drumbo, Richwood, Princeton, Woodstock, Beachville and Ingersoll, there is only one line, and, therefore all the produce purchased at these places must necessarily be shipped by one road. What does this involve? Simply this. That particular Railway may charge, and does charge, just what rates for freight the necessities or avarice of the company may dictate. Here are one or two examples. From Paris to Detroit, the rate charged per 100 lbs. on barley is 16 cents, while from Woodstock the charge is 19 cents, and from London 13 cents. The reason for such a difference in favour of Paris – which is further distant than Woodstock from Detroit – and London, is that at each of these places there is another line of Railway competing for freight with the Great Western, while at Woodstock there is not.

Competition was the remedy but it came at a cost: the new railways required bonuses from municipalities along their proposed routes, and bonuses meant rises in municipal tax rates. A general issue was whether the benefits of a new railway would justify the rise in taxes. Another issue was whether all ratepayers should finance the bonus or just the ratepayers in municipalities, or parts of municipalities, that stood to reap the benefit. In this context, the cost of the bonuses divided the ratepayers between different townships and between sections of the same township. Four east-west trunk routes and one north-south branch line were in play. The status quo was the Great Western Railway, whose route passed through Woodstock, Ingersoll, and the centre of Oxford County. To the south, two trunk roads were under construction in 1870 and opened in 1874: the Canada Southern Railway and the Canada Air Line.54 The route of the Canada Southern, a Buffalo-to-Windsor road, passed through South Norwich, Dereham, and Tillsonburg. The Air Line was the Great Western’s counter to the building of the Canada Southern; its route ran from Fort Erie on the Niagara River, traversed Norfolk County adjacent to its Oxford County line and Tillsonburg, and ended at its junction with the Great Western main line at Glencoe, Middlesex County. Thus, in 1874 Tillsonburg and the southern townships acquired their first rail links to the outside world and, in the process, railway competition. In 1873, the Brantford, Norfolk, and Port Burwell Railway

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Co. proposed a branch line through North Norwich, South Norwich, Dereham, and Tillsonburg. The line opened from downtown Brantford to a junction with the Canada Air Line Railway at Tillsonburg in 1876.55 These improvements cost municipal debt to finance bonuses given to certain of the railways. In 1870 the southern townships issued bonuses to the Canada Southern Railway but not the Air Line. Inasmuch as the Air Line was owned by the Great Western, it would not compete with the Great Western, whereas the Canada Southern would. Moreover, the Great Western would not build the Air Line unless it had to counter competition from the Great Southern. The way to get the Air Line, in other words, was to get the Great Southern built; a bonus for the Air Line would achieve nothing. With such reasoning, Dereham and South Norwich each passed by-laws, approved by their ratepayers in elections, to give a $15,000 bonus to the Great Southern. As noted above, their strategy was rewarded: both lines began operations in 1874. Meanwhile, in 1873 the county’s southern townships issued bonuses to the proposed Brantford, Norfolk, and Port Burwell Railroad. The amounts of the bonuses were $30,000 from North Norwich; $5,000 from the west half of South Norwich; $8,000 from Tillsonburg, now a town separated from Dereham Township (in 1872); and $2,000 from E.D. Tillson. Dereham, which no longer included Tillsonburg, did not bonus the branchline road. In the county’s centre, Woodstock and Ingersoll looked to the Credit Valley Railway for salvation. Its proposed route ran west from Toronto to Galt (completed in 1879) and, in 1873, was extended to Woodstock, Ingersoll, and St Thomas (completed in 1881).56 This would give competition to the Great Western’s main line from two sources: the Credit Valley line and the Great Southern, which connected with the Credit Valley line at St Thomas. The major controversy over bonuses concerned the Credit Valley line in 1873. First, the Credit Valley Railway required a $200,000 bonus to lay forty miles of track across Oxford County. Second, the towns of Woodstock and Ingersoll were to give land for the right-of-way and stations, and also building materials for free warehouses in each municipality between the two towns. Third, the company requested a ‘sectional’ bonus to avoid canvassing each municipality separately. Under its provincial act of incorporation (1871), ‘any portion of any municipality … or County municipality’ (original emphasis) could assist the company with loans, guarantees, or bonuses by passing by-laws for the purpose. Accordingly, the $200,000 bonus was to come from a section

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of the county, comprising those municipalities, or sections thereof, that expected to benefit from the line. A petition signed by twenty or more qualified voters sufficed to include a township (or part thereof) in the by-law group. The bonus was payable over twenty years, with each municipality’s share to be based on its proportion of the total assessment for municipalities in the group. The proposed by-law included nine of the county’s fifteen municipalities, and it had the status of a public by-law (proposed by the petitioners) rather than a county one: thus, the County Council could act on it but could not alter its content. In June petitions asking for the by-law were circulating in the targeted municipalities. In early July the county gave the by-law its first and second readings and then submitted it to the ratepayers for approval. In a special election held on 31 July, the by-law received 60 per cent of the 3,100 votes cast, whereupon the County Council ratified the by-law by a vote of nineteen to six. The two towns decided the election: they gave 99 per cent of their votes to the affirmative – enough to overcome the negative majorities in Dereham, East Oxford, Blenheim, and East Zorra. The Credit Valley Railway by-law caused uproar in Dereham, notably in its southern concessions. First, the sectional by-law method was coercive. Ostensibly, it protected against a free ride by townships that would benefit from the road but preferred to let others pay to get it. That being said, it allowed towns and the Credit Valley Railway to extract a bonus from unwilling townships. Second, the by-law could have included only a part of the township – the northern part, which was close to the Credit Valley route. As applied, however, thirty-five petitioners from Dereham’s northernmost concessions had imposed the by-law coverage on the entire township.57 Third, Dereham ratepayers were unlikely to support a bonus to any new line. With the Canada Southern under construction, the township had trunk lines to its north and to its south.58 In July a public meeting in Dereham Centre, attended by 250, resolved against the by-law; only then was James Noxon allowed to present the case for the other side. Dereham gave 94 per cent of its votes to the negative; its thirty-one affirmative votes were less than the thirty-five men who had signed the petition; and its reeve and deputy reeve were among the six ‘nays’ in the County Council’s vote of ratification. Potentially this dust-up could have influenced the results for South Oxford in the Dominion general election and the provincial by-election, both held six months later, in January 1874. Ingersoll voters, who strongly favoured the by-law, might have punished Bodwell, the sit-

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ting Dominion member, for having spoken against it at the Dereham Centre public meeting the previous July.59 In an editorial entitled, ‘Mr Bodwell’s Position,’ the Ingersoll Chronicle regretted that Mr Bodwell ‘declines taking part in the scheme … He should come out fairly and squarely in support of the scheme as Mr [Thomas] Oliver, the member for the North Riding, is doing.’ Similarly, Dereham voters might have punished Adam Oliver, the sitting provincial member, for having championed the by-law. Neither possibility happened: both Bodwell and Oliver were acclaimed. In summary, railroad schemes mattered in local politics but not in the results of the Dominion or the provincial elections in Oxford’s ridings. A possible explanation was that railway disputes crossed partisan lines, with Brownites and coalitionists together on either side of the question. Or, as Bodwell opined, the electorate was united on the desirability of public improvements to develop the country and was able to put differences behind them.60 Summary and Interpretation If democracy thrives on competitive, contested elections, then the high number of acclamations in Oxford – in seven of thirteen elections – was a negative for democracy. So, too, was the scarcity of competitive elections: just two elections were close contests between parties. Brownites won every election. Only five of the elections had a Conservative or Hincksite candidate, including John Thrall who was nominated in absentia, against his will, and did not campaign. Electoral turnouts were low by pre-Confederation standards. Partyism was the overriding issue. The Confederation agreement was the product of the ‘Great Coalition,’ and both the Dominion and Ontario provincial general elections in 1867 returned coalition ministries. However, George Brown had quit the Great Coalition in 1865, and his 1867 Provincial Reform Convention called for a resurrection of the opposition party. His appeal worked in the Oxfords. With the exception of James Noxon in the 1867 provincial election, Brownite candidates ran under Brownite colours, not coalition ones. In a striking departure from elections in the Union era, as of Confederation the candidates in Oxford’s elections were largely local men. A Toronto man was on offer in just three elections, and Oliver Mowat was the only one to win. A partial explanation was that the Confederation agreement increased the number of parliamentary members from 65 to

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164 (82 in the Dominion parliament and 82 members in the provincial parliament): a huge increase for Toronto lawyers in search of a riding. With so many acclamations and two contests between Brownites, other election issues are tricky to discern. Railroad projects were important local issues in South Oxford, but did not influence elections; Ebenezer Bodwell was acclaimed in the 1874 Dominion election, despite being on the minority side of a plebiscite on railway bonuses. Patronage greased the electoral wheels in one case: in 1871, E.D. Tillson traded his influence in Tillsonburg for a postmastership. Intra-party feuding between the Ingersoll manufacturers, James Noxon and Adam Oliver, affected two provincial elections (1867 and 1874) and a Dominion election (1874) in the South riding. The result was positive for democracy in 1867: a competitive election on a party basis. In 1874 Noxon failed to prevent Oliver’s acclamation in a byelection caused by Oliver’s ethically dubious conduct. In 1874 Oliver took his revenge by blocking Noxon’s candidacy in the riding’s Dominion by-election. Compared with Union-era elections, post-Confederation elections had a more restrictive franchise for incorporated villages (Embro) and towns (Woodstock and Ingersoll) in Dominion elections and the 1867 provincial elections, and for towns in the 1871 and later provincial elections. Tillsonburg acquired the restrictive town franchise in 1872. Despite the rise in the statutory requirements, a growing proportion of the males in Oxford County became electors. Economic development allowed this to happen. The trial of South Oxford’s contested 1875 provincial election exposed systematic bribery and treating by Adam Oliver’s campaign manager and supporters. It also showed that the province’s independent judicial process, adopted in 1871, worked fairly and efficiently. The guilty were brought to account; in fact, the severity of the statutory penalties induced Oliver to accept a plea bargain. Moreover, the judge voided the election on the grounds of treating, an electoral abuse that was widespread in the province but never previously mentioned in a litigant’s petition. Probit estimates for the 1874 Dominion general election and the 1871 provincial general election carried forward the findings for earlier elections. As in 1851 and 1861, differences of nativity and religion were key influences on voters’ choice of candidate. As in 1861, electors who were born in Scotland or in the United States were the bedrock of Brownite support; the bedrock in the North riding also included Presbyterian re-

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ligion. In territorial terms, electors in West Zorra were more likely than Woodstock electors to vote Brownite: no surprise there. In the South riding, North Oxford township electors were more likely than Ingersoll electors to vote Brownite; the opposite was the case for Dereham electors. Differences among occupational categories – labourers, tradesmen, merchants, professionals, gentlemen, and clerks – had no impact on voting preferences in either of the Oxford ridings.

8 Democracy in Oxford County Elections, 1837–1875

Democracy, government by ‘the people,’ is the research question for this study of elections in Oxford County in the years from 1837 to 1875. The book’s explanatory model is a maximally developed parliamentary democracy in which ‘the people’ govern themselves through their elected representatives; their elected representatives possess executive powers; the electorate approximates the ‘adult’ population; an elector can vote once only in a given riding in the same election; any elector can be a candidate for election; elections are competitive; elections are held at regular intervals; the electoral process is fair; representation by population provides equality among ridings; controverted elections are tried through an independent, judicial process; and the majority rule (the majority make decisions that are binding on ‘the people’). The model allows for direct democracy, whereby an assembly of electors can limit the elected representatives’ role through rights such as initiative, referendum, and recall. The book explores the extent, forms, practices, and issues of democracy in a Canadian society that was less democratic than our own is today and less inclined to view democracy as a virtue. The case study is its instrument for exploration. Its purpose is to unveil local findings that can be generalized to the larger society of Canada West and early Ontario. Chapters 3 to 7 examine temporal clusters of elections (1838–48, 1851, 1854–58, 1861–66, and 1867–75). This chapter summarizes the book’s findings about democracy and elaborates certain of them.

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The Framework for Elections The Imperial Authority The imperial authority set boundaries for democracy and in the process shaped the issues, regulations, and electoral procedures for elections. Its 1791 Constitutional Act created the provinces of Upper Canada and Lower Canada; gave each province a bi-cameral legislature with an elective Lower House, the Legislative Assembly; required the Legislative Assembly to meet at least once every twelve months; and set the maximum life of a Lower House parliament at four years. The 1840 imperial Act to Re-Unite the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada created a province with two sections (Canada West and Canada East) and gave the sections equal representation in the Legislative Assembly. As well it provided start-up arrangements for the method of election, franchise, qualifications for candidates, administration of elections, and ridings. The 1840 imperial Act to Provide for the Sale of the Clergy Reserves in the Province of Canada imposed a plural religious establishment on the province through to 1853, when imperial enabling legislation allowed Canada to end the settlement. The imperial authority withheld responsible self-government until 1849, and then conceded it on a party basis. The imperial 1867 British North America Act turned Canada West and Canada East into separate provinces, Ontario and Quebec, and provided for Dominion and provincial levels of election in the ridings. Provincial Regulations for Elections Within the boundaries set by the imperial authority, Canada’s provincial government enacted the statutory framework for elections. Its provision that an elector could vote once only in the same election, was positive for democracy. Other statutory positives were numerical increases in ridings and polling places within ridings (1842, 1853, 1866); an extension of the franchise (1855); the adoption of an assessment franchise with judicially certified electors’ lists (1858); the introduction of an independent judicial process for trials of controverted elections (Ontario provincial, 1871; Dominion, 1873); a provision for an elective Upper House (1856); and the abolition of the property qualification for candidates (Ontario provincial, 1869; Dominion, 1874). On the negative side of the ledger, the province retained its property-based franchise;

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adopted a male sex requirement for the franchise in 1849; raised the qualifications for the franchise in towns and villages in 1866; and abolished the elective Upper House that it had created during the years 1858–64. The Voice-Vote Method of Election Oxford County’s voice-vote elections dated from 1800 and ended with a Dominion by-election in 1874; thereafter, the secret-ballot method of election applied. Elections took place at the hustings: an elevated platform located ‘in the open air,’ from which the returning officer and the candidates addressed the electors assembled before them. The Province of Canada (1840–67) elaborated its protocol for voicevote elections through to 1849, but then simplified its procedure after 1866. Thus, in Oxford County the first two Union elections (1841, 1842) used the Upper Canada protocol, with nominations at the hustings (the hustings nominations), followed immediately by six days of polling at a single polling place (the hustings). Oxford’s 1844 and later elections before Confederation had a show of hands immediately after nominations to determine if polling was necessary; a poll in each township; two polling days separated from nominations, normally by one week; and a hustings declaration of the member-elect, a day or two after the polls had closed. Oxford’s 1867 and later voice-vote elections were held without the show of hands and the hustings declaration. Beginning in 1872 both the Dominion and the Ontario provincial elections had single-day polling in Oxford County. Beginning in 1875 the secret ballot replaced voice-voting for both Dominion and Ontario elections; the hustings nominations was abolished for Dominion elections, but continued for Ontario provincial elections until 19261 – the last vestige of the voice-vote system. Throughout the Union period, Conservative, Hincksite, and Brownite politicians opposed the secret ballot precisely because they associated it with democratic planks in the Clear Grit program. In 1857 Ebenezer Bodwell, a South Oxford Brownite, for example, had ‘no wish to see the people, unprepared, overwhelmed at once with Vote by Ballot – Universal Suffrage – Elective Magistrates, Registrars, Sheriffs, and Judges.’ As the Clear Grit movement faded into oblivion, however, the secret ballot became decoupled from radical democracy. And that is when government adopted it. From another perspective, government’s adoption of the secret ballot

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in 1874 was a culmination of its initiatives to make elections more orderly. Canada’s 1842 and 1849 election laws, opined the Dominion minister of justice, had been intended to simplify the electoral process, reduce excitement, and prevent outsiders from interfering, all with a view to enhancing the elector’s freedom and liberty to exercise his franchise. In 1866 the province had abolished the show of hands, which ‘had been found to bring together a great many people, often from other counties … to give an apparent majority to one or other of the candidates’; and the hustings declaration, which had resulted ‘merely in collecting the electors after the election for jollification – eating, drinking, and parading through the county.’ As for the hustings nominations, abolished for Dominion elections in 1874, it was a ‘useless and dangerous formality ... which led to treating, bribery, and violence.’2 The ballot question evoked sparse comment from newspapers in the Oxford area. In August 1871, J.S. Gurnett of the Ingersoll Chronicle confessed ‘to a preference for the open system of voting. It is the bold, manly way, and the way contemplated by our constitution.’ Yet three years later the Chronicle was strongly for the secret ballot at all levels (Dominion, provincial, and municipal); the ballot, Gurnett now opined, would free workers from intimidation by their employers, without which the gift of the franchise was a mockery. In March 1874, the Woodstock Weekly Review judged that the ballot system was worthy of a trial: the ballot would help to prevent ‘manufacturers and other employers’ from intimidating ‘workmen in their service’; and would protect voters’ persons in Quebec, although not in Ontario where ‘nowadays it is a rare occurrence indeed for a polling place to be disturbed by bands of lawless roughs.’ In April 1874, the Woodstock Sentinel regretted the loss of the hustings nominations in Dominion elections, but had no comment on the abolition of the voice-vote method of election. The ballot, opined the Tillsonburg Observer, advanced the ‘purity of elections.’ The London Free Press editorialized that the ballot was not controversial, the issue having been thoroughly discussed.3 A retrospective puzzle is whether or not the secret ballot was positive for democracy in the sense of protecting the elector from intimidation by his patron, employer, or creditor. The answer is contextual and, for early Ontario, negative. Voice-voting suited societies that were organized around patron-client relationships of deference. An elector in a client relationship commonly desired that his vote be known to his patron in return for benefits received and favours expected. If relationships of deference were waning in Canada West during the period of study,

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then the adoption of the secret ballot would have been a democratic adjustment to social change. However, it is dubious that the populations in Ontario’s country ridings were undergoing a collapse of patron-client relationships by 1874.4 Moreover, government’s adoption of the secret ballot did not require or imply a decline in patron-client relationships of deference in society; in country ridings of the mother country such decline came after Britain’s adoption of the secret ballot in 1872. If the secret ballot was positive for democracy, then it was primarily because of an undiscussed consequence: the taming of bribery as a tool for winning elections. With the secret ballot in place, as Adam Oliver’s 1875 election trial revealed, a candidate’s agents could no longer know whether a bought voter had stayed bought. Moreover, with government’s provision of an independent judicial authority for election trials (Ontario, 1871; Dominion, 1873), bribery, for the first time ever, became successful as petitioners’ grounds for overturning elections. Simply put, the secret ballot and the independent judicial authority made bribery less effective as an election tool and at greater risk of legal exposure. Elections in the Oxford Ridings The Candidates A stiff property qualification barred most electors from standing for election. The qualification was £500 for Lower House elections and £2,000 for Oxford’s two Upper House elections (1858, 1862). The property qualification was abolished for the county’s 1871 Ontario provincial elections, but continued for its Dominion elections. Fifteen different individuals won elections in Oxford County during the voice-vote era (1838–74). Relative to population, they were disproportionately Scottish, Presbyterian, and foreign-born. Thirteen were Presbyterian (87%), twelve were foreign-born (80%), and eight of the twelve foreign-born were Scots (67%). The comparable percentages for Oxford County’s adult males in 1861 were markedly lower: Presbyterian, 26; foreign-born, 68; and Scots among the foreign-born, 30. Just 52 per cent of Canada West’s members of the provincial parliament in 1861 were foreign-born, and only 32 per cent of these men were Scots. Four of the fifteen fitted the profile of local magnate: Donald Matheson, a prominent businessman in West Zorra (elected 1854); Dr Ephraim Cook, a wealthy physician in North Norwich (elected 1854); Thomas

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Oliver, an independently wealthy ex-businessman from West Zorra and Woodstock (first elected in 1866); and Adam Oliver, a prominent Ingersoll sawmill owner, lumberman, and manufacturer (first elected in 1867). Five of the fifteen were prominent politicians from outside the county, all but one of them from Toronto. During the Union era (1840–67) these outsiders won seventeen of twenty-one elections: a predominance that was unique in Canada West. Francis Hincks of Toronto and Montreal won five; George Brown of Toronto and William McDougall of Toronto each won four; Skeffington Connor of Toronto won three; and Hope Mackenzie of Sarnia prevailed in one. While representing an Oxford riding, Hincks became premier, and Brown, Connor, and McDougall each became ministers. Prominent losing outsiders included a former minister, the Hon. Joseph Curran Morrison, and the brother of a former minister, Stephen Richards; both men were Toronto lawyers. The Toronto men had advantages over local men as, while local candidates struggled for acceptance beyond their home townships, metropolitan candidates came to Oxford County with strong name recognition and deep pockets. Three of them – Francis Hincks, George Brown, and William McDougall – were proprietors of metropolitan newspapers with subscribers in the western counties. Extra-parliamentary organization boosted George Brown’s profile; he was the organizer of three Provincial Reform Conventions (1857, 1859, and 1867), the second of which founded a Provincial Reform Association with branch riding associations in Oxford. A network of personal connections underlay Oxford’s attraction for outsiders. William McDougall, Skeffington Connor, and Hope Mackenzie had close personal ties with Brown; so, too, did the Hon. J.C. Morrison of Toronto, a defeated Hincksite candidate in 1863. The success of these well-heeled city men influenced the way democracy functioned in Oxford County. It accelerated the local development of political parties, boosted provincial issues in elections, inflated campaign expenses, and frustrated the ambitions of local men. At Confederation the practice of fielding outsiders as candidates largely vanished. In 1867 George Brown did not stand for re-election in the riding of South Oxford, and a local man, Ebenezer Bodwell, succeeded him. In the North riding a local man, Thomas Oliver, succeeded Hope Mackenzie of Sarnia, who had died in office. During the years 1866–74, just three of the county’s fourteen elections had a candidate from Toronto, and Oliver Mowat, the Ontario premier, was the only

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Toronto man to be elected. Simply put, local men won the elections in Oxford County, often by acclamation. An increase in the number of ridings at Confederation contributed to this change. During the years 1853–66, Canada West had sixty-five members of Parliament, hence, sixty-five jobs for politicians. With Confederation Ontario had eighty-two members in the Dominion House of Commons and eighty-two members in the local (provincial) parliament, a total of 164 jobs: 2.5 times the pre-Confederation number. With elections at two levels, the Oxford ridings had four jobs, up from two. Simply put, more parliamentary jobs meant less competition for them and fewer outsiders in Oxford County.5 The Electors The suffrage in Oxford County was far from universal. It had age, male sex, and British-naturalization requirements, as well as a property qualification (the 40-shilling freehold through to 1858). The suffrage in townships required the ownership of property until the 1857 general election, which introduced qualifications for tenants and occupants. The 1861 general election introduced the assessment franchise with a judicially certified electors’ list for each poll; the assessment franchise was neither more nor less restrictive than the forty-shilling-freehold suffrage, but it identified electors more fairly and transparently. Beginning with the 1867 general elections (Dominion and provincial), the qualification was higher for electors in towns (Woodstock and Ingersoll) and incorporated villages (Embro) than in the townships; for the 1871 and later provincial elections, it was higher for town electors (including Tillsonburg after 1872), but no longer for village electors. Like the forty-shilling-freehold franchise, the assessment franchise subscribed to the principle of one man, one vote; thus, a man could vote once only in a given riding in the same election, regardless of whether or not he was on two or more municipal electors’ lists. Despite the rise in the property qualification for town electors, the percentage of adult males in the riding of South Oxford who qualified as electors increased from sixty-four in 1861 to sixty-seven in 1871.6 The increase noted for South Oxford, was general in Canada West. The number of electors for all ridings with contested elections was equal to 66 per cent of their adult male population in 1871, up from 58 per cent in 1861.7 Economic development and a rise in the assessed value of real property underlay the change in Oxford County. Improved acreage

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was 68 per cent of Oxford County lands in 1871, up from 57 per cent in 1861. Farm occupiers in Oxford increasingly were owners (the tenancy rate dropped from 39% in 1848 to 17% in 1871). A growing proportion of the county’s population was urban; Ingersoll and Woodstock held 17 per cent of its population in 1871, up from 13 per cent a decade earlier. Acclamations and low turnouts of electors are negative for democracy, which benefits from competitive elections and voting as a democratic exercise. From this standpoint, the Oxford ridings became less democratic after Confederation. Whereas 19 per cent of Oxford’s Union-era elections were acclamations, the percentage for its post-Confederation elections to 1875 was 54.8 Oxford’s dramatic rise in acclamations followed a provincial trend. In 1861 elections were decided by acclamation in 9 per cent of the Canada West ridings; the percentages ranged from 17 to 19 for the first three Dominion general elections and the 1871 Ontario provincial general election. Voter turnout statistics are available for six Oxford elections.9 In three cases, the turnouts were robust: 79 per cent of South Oxford’s electors and 67 per cent of North Oxford’s electors voted in the 1861 general election, as did 66 per cent of South Oxford’s electors in the 1871 Ontario general election. In the other cases, the turnouts were low: 49 per cent in the 1874 South Oxford Dominion by-election, 44 per cent in the 1874 North Oxford Dominion general election, and 28 per cent in the 1874 South Oxford Dominion general election (a de facto acclamation). By comparison, the turnouts for all provincial ridings with contested elections in four general elections ranged from 63 to 74 per cent.10 In summary, post-Confederation elections in Oxford County evidenced an abundance of acclamations and elections with low turnouts of electors. The scarcity of close contests arose in part from the sheer dominance of the Brownites. Just four of the Oxfords’ thirteen postConfederation elections had a Conservative or Hincksite candidate, one of them a Hincksite who was nominated in absentia and against his will. An enduring anomaly for Woodstock was its high number of electors in relation to its enumerated adult male population. In 1861 the town’s number of electors was equal to 104 per cent of its census-enumerated adult male population. This surpassed the statistics for the rest of the riding (60%) and nearby county towns: Brantford (88%), Simcoe (72%), and St Thomas (83%). The only other North riding election for which we have counts of electors was the 1874 Dominion election, and there again the number of electors in Woodstock was notably high – 98 per

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cent of the town’s 1871-enumerated adult male population, compared with 67 per cent for the rest of the riding. Two possible explanations are that the electors’ lists for Woodstock’s five wards included unusually high numbers of non-resident owners and tenants and that unusually high numbers of men rated inclusion on more than one electors’ list. The Fairness of Elections To boost fairness in elections, the province proscribed bribery, fraud, intimidation, and the treating of electors with food and drinks; required judicially certified oaths from election officials; enabled election officials to administer oaths to electors; and gave election officials police powers to keep the peace. The statutory descriptions of bribery and fraud became increasingly detailed and the penalties for their commission increasingly severe. Treating and bribery were undoubtedly widespread in voice-vote elections in Oxford County, although they were never mentioned in local newspapers. Both transgressions were documented for South Oxford’s 1875 Ontario general election, held under the secret-ballot method. Given the richly detailed evidence, it is difficult to believe that these offences happened de novo in Oxford in 1875. Clearly, the offences were commonplace in the province. In 1860 government enacted a Corrupt Practices Prevention Act because ‘the laws at present in force [were] ineffective against corrupt and demoralizing practices … frequently resorted to at elections by candidates, their agents and others.’11 Although bribery was often alleged in controverted elections of the Union years, writes Garner, ‘not a single election was voided on that ground.’ Similarly, ‘the treating of electors with food and liquor remained widespread because electors expected it, candidates thought it was necessary to win, and Select Committees of the Assembly refused to void elections because of it.’ A loophole in the 1849 Elections Act and retained in Ontario’s 1871 Elections Act was that any person could provide entertainment for electors at his usual place of residence and at his own expense. Thus, ‘many were the private citizens who in theory unstintingly dipped into their own pockets to turn their homes into a dispensary of liquor and victuals for the benefit of a candidate.’12 Only one election in Canada West was voided on grounds of treating.13 ‘Dirty tricks’ compromised fairness in some Oxford County elections. Heckling at the hustings nominations was one of them. When George

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Brown’s nominators tried to speak at the 1857 North Oxford general election, the effect was marred ‘by the sweet voices of a lot of rowdies collected by Mr Miller, who kept up continuous hooting whenever it suited their leader’s purpose.’ When the Hon. J.C. Morrison spoke in the riding’s 1858 by-election, ‘a noisy fellow in the crowd, who appeared to be under the influence of liquor, began to interrupt, which he kept up as long as Mr Morrison continued.’ In the 1874 North Oxford Dominion general election, the Conservative candidate’s ‘hissing, jeering, stamping’ brigade did its best to deny Brownite speakers a hearing. In two instances, candidates’ agents, acting as scrutineers, played the ‘blocking game.’ In 1858 Stephen Richards’s agent at the Ingersoll poll ‘persisted in asking the most outrageous questions – his sole object being to consume time and prevent the whole of Dr Connor’s votes from being polled’; and the Hon. J.C. Morrison’s scrutineers at the West Zorra and Blenheim polls swore almost every voter with a view to shrinking the vote. Up to three hundred electors were backed up at the poll, waiting to vote as fast as the poll would let them. A common ‘dirty trick’ was to pack the hustings nominations with non-electors to steal the show of hands. The 1858 hustings nominations in North Oxford reportedly included ‘hundreds of persons not voters – including a large number of boys – who were imported for the occasion to hold up their hands for Mr McDougall’; meanwhile in South Oxford, Stephen Richards packed the hustings nominations with supporters from Woodstock, which was in the North riding. In South Oxford partisan behaviour by election officials blemished the 1861 general election. Although Henry Taylor and W.E. Nesbit were deputy returning officers by virtue of their positions as municipal clerks, they helped to organize the requisition to the Hincksite candidate, Stephen Richards. After taking the returning officer’s oath, Taylor solicited votes for Richards and refused the votes of known Brownites on trivial technicalities, such as their names being ‘entered on the voters’ list with wrong initials, or their names spelled wrong by the omission or addition of a letter.’ By-elections: Democracy with a Vengeance The purpose of a by-election was to replace a member who had vacated his riding. Vacancies in the Oxfords occurred for various reasons, such as the following: the sitting member’s expulsion from the Legislative Assembly (1838), acceptance of a judicial appointment (1863), death (1866), resignation to provide a vacancy for the provincial pre-

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mier (1872), disqualification (1874), and acceptance of a public works appointment (1874). However, seven of the thirteen voice-vote by-elections derived from two practices peculiar to the period of study. In five instances, the vacancy resulted from the member’s acceptance of a ministerial post. In two instances (1854, 1858), the vacancy resulted from the member’s ‘double return’: that is, election in two ridings and choosing to represent the non-Oxford riding. The upshot, by later Canadian standards, was democracy with a vengeance: 36 per cent of Lower House elections in the Oxford ridings were by-elections. Although the phenomenon of the ‘double return’ vanished with Confederation, the 1842 statutory provision for newly appointed ministers persisted in Ontario provincial elections until 1926 and in Dominion elections until 1931.14 Non-electors and the Elections in Oxford County In Hanoverian England (1714–1837) non-electors engaged the electoral process in several ways: marching in processions (before and after the hustings nominations and before and after the hustings declaration); sporting party colours; attending the hustings nominations and participating (illicitly) in the show of hands; cheering and heckling candidates at the hustings nominations and campaign rallies in community halls; and attending candidates’ public entertainments (for all supporters, including women and children, to avoid the legal pitfall of giving electors special treatment). Simply put, elections were festive community events, and a voice for non-electors was an integral part of conveying the consent of the governed to the rulers. Nevertheless, community participation in elections followed a declining trend in England after 1830 and was minimal in American states at mid-century.15 Compared with pre-1830 England, Oxford’s non-electors had a marginal role in elections during the period of study (1837–75). The 1842 and later elections acts certainly discouraged it. The statutory provisions for the hustings nominations, the show of hands, and the hustings declaration were specifically for electors. To keep the electoral temperature down, the acts proscribed treating and the sporting of party banners, colours, ribbons, and favours. The 1866 act abolished the show of hands and the hustings declaration, thereby diminishing elections as entertainment for the larger community. A nearly complete emasculation of the electoral process followed. The 1874 Dominion Elections Act

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abolished the hustings nominations and voice-voting, and two 1874 Ontario statutes abolished voice-voting in provincial and municipal elections. The Ingersoll Chronicle spotted non-electors (boys and men from Woodstock, outside the riding) in the show of hands (and the returning officer’s divisions of electors) in two South Oxford elections (1858 and 1861). Otherwise, newspaper coverage of elections made scant mention of non-electors and no mention of women. Nevertheless, some electoral events were occasions for possible community involvement. Examples were Robert Riddell’s victory feast in 1844 (‘An ox was roasted, tables erected in front of the Court House, a wagon load of barrels of beer, heaps of bread, etc. were provided ... in front of the Court House a huge bonfire blazed, and fireworks were exhibited to the no small amusement of the juvenile portion of the community’); George Brown’s expulsion from Zorra in 1857 (‘escorted out of the village by three pairs of bagpipes and an immense crowd to the tune of the Rogue’s March’); a victory procession in 1858 (‘On Connor’s arrival in Ingersoll, some 1,500 people marched through the principal streets in a torchlight procession’); a victory procession in 1861 (‘the procession numbered over fifty-five carriages, many of them carrying over a dozen persons ... The procession reached [Ingersoll] town about half past six, and after passing through the principal streets, drew up in front of the Royal’); the ‘hands-uppers’ at the show of hands for the 1862 Thames divisional election (‘all the rowdies and whiskey hangers on from Simcoe and neighbourhood were present to swell Mr Ford’s vote’); the chairing of George Brown in 1863 (‘a procession was formed of carriages, sleighs, &c, headed by the Tillsonburg brass band to chair Mr. Brown from the Hustings to Ingersoll’); and the burning in effigy of a losing candidate in 1874 (‘Poor Edgar, the Government nominee and rotten choice of a rotten convention, was last evening cremated in a rousing bonfire. This morning the ashes were carefully gathered and placed in a wagon. The town crier, draped in flowing black crepe, carrying a partially muffled bell, followed the hearse through the principal street, finally depositing the remains in the Thames, from whence there shall be no resurrection’). Trials of Controverted Elections Select Committees of the Legislative Assembly, each assisted by a factgathering commissioner, tried two petitions, one from Francis Hincks in 1844 and the other from Frank Ball in 1858. Both petitions spoke to

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the qualifications of voters ‘objected to’ by one or other of the litigants. The Select Committee mechanism was antithetical to fairness. Partisan decision making by its members and the ministry’s interference made a farce of the 1844 trial. In 1858, however, the commissioner’s preliminary findings persuaded Frank Ball to withdraw his petition, thereby obviating judgment by the Select Committee. An independent judicial authority, a judge sitting in open court without a jury, tried Benjamin Hopkins’s petition in South Oxford’s 1875 provincial general election. The evidence exposed bribery and the treating of electors (at a local hotel during the election) by Adam Oliver’s campaign manager and agents, resulting in the voiding of Adam Oliver’s election for South Oxford. Compared with the discredited Select Committee process, trial by a judge advanced democracy in Oxford County’s elections and, more generally, in Ontario. Parties, Factions, and ‘Loose Fish’ Oxford developed seven political formations during the period of study. High Tories and Baldwinite Reformers were protagonists during the constitutional wars of the 1840s. Conservatives and Hincksites replaced them in 1851 and joined in a Hincksite-Conservative coalition in 1858. Brownites invaded Oxford County in 1857 and won every election through to the end of voice-voting in 1874. The Clear Grits flourished briefly during the early 1850s, but then faded. High Tories and Clear Grits existed as factions – entities that were too weakly organized to qualify as parties – whereas Baldwinites, Conservatives, Hincksites, Hincksite-Conservative coalitionists, and Brownites evolved from faction into party.16 A Baldwinite party, for example, developed in the Legislative Assembly during the 1840s. Francis Hincks became Robert Baldwin’s right-hand man and the proprietor of the party’s official organs: the Toronto Examiner (1838–42) and the Montreal Pilot (1844–48). When Oxford’s Reformers recruited Hincks as their candidate in the 1841 general election, they acquired an emerging party organization in the process. This was apparent in Oxford’s 1847– 48 general election. With Hincks campaigning in absentia, Baldwin dispatched George Brown, his organizer in the west, to stump Zorra on Hincks’s behalf, while Hincks’s agent, Thomas Shenston, managed the campaign in the other townships. High Tories, in contrast, were less than a party in an operational sense; indeed, their views on the governor’s prerogatives made them anti-

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party men. They elected Roger Rollo Hunter in an 1838 by-election, but Hunter declined to stand for re-election, following Tory infighting over establishment religion. They organized a Constitutional Association in 1842 but dissolved it when the temporary need for it had passed. In 1844 they elected Robert Riddell, a ‘loose fish’ High Tory, not a party man. Few of Oxford’s thirty-five different candidates in thirty-seven voicevote elections were ‘loose fish.’ Robert Riddell (1844) was one. Although High Tory in principle and in favour of ‘government by party,’ he was against ‘government for party.’ Thus, he voted as he saw fit in the Assembly and felt no partisan obligation to those who had promoted his election. Donald Matheson, the Independent Reform member for North Oxford (1854), stood for ‘measures, not men’; given a choice between Francis Hincks and George Brown, he would side with whichever one brought home the secularization of revenue from the Clergy Reserves. Isaac Buchanan (1861) was an Independent who ran on a loyalty platform. Robert H. Campbell (1847–48) stood as a Reformer, but specifically gloried in the label, ‘loose fish.’ In each case, the ‘loose fish’ campaigned on issues, not patronage for himself or his clients. Thus, for the most part, parties fought elections in Oxford Country during the Union years. That is, five of their seven political groups had enough attributes of a ‘modern’ complex-society party to rate designation as something more than factions. Nevertheless, partyism per se waxed and waned in Oxford’s elections. It was at low ebb following the formation of the province’s first coalition ministry (1854–57) and again following the province’s formation of a ‘Great Coalition’ ministry (1864–67). Compared with their present-day counterparts, parties in Oxford County in the years 1837 to 1875 were loosely organized and less disciplined.17 Despite concerns of partisans to avoid splitting their party’s votes, eight Oxford elections had two or more same-party candidates. In ten instances, an Oxford party held a delegated party convention to unite its supporters behind a single candidate at the hustings nominations, but failed to achieve this in six of the ten cases. The convention mechanism’s most spectacular failure occurred in a March 1863 South Oxford by-election in which George Brown, the Brownite party leader and a champion of the convention system, defeated Ebenezer Bodwell, the unanimous choice of the riding’s Brownite convention! Similarly, Thomas Oliver in 1866, and Col. J.A. Skinner in 1874, each refused to submit to the convention’s choice, accepted nomination at the election, and defeated the convention’s nominee.

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Patronage and Democracy With the introduction of responsible government on a party basis in 1849, the majority party in the Legislative Assembly acquired control of patronage. In Oxford County the immediate beneficiary was Francis Hincks, inspector general in the Baldwinite ministry (1848–51), and then premier (1851–54). According to the Woodstock British American, a Conservative organ, Hincks’s use of patronage demolished fairness in the 1851 general election: ‘Offices with him were as plenty as blackbirds in autumn, and government patronage was fully and freely made use of … Officials were tampered with and threatened with loss of office … and every species of chicanery and electioneering fraud was resorted to for the purpose of securing his election.’ Twenty years later Hincks served up more of the same: a postmastership secured E.D. Tillson’s support for Hincks’s party in the 1871 South Oxford and Norfolk provincial general elections. But with Hincks, matters were never simple. As S.J.R. Noel reminds us, Hincks ‘was a consummate broker, admitting no obstacle to be final, sifting tiny points of consensus out of mounds of disagreement, omnivorously digesting every new scrap of information, explaining away misunderstandings, smoothing ruffled feathers, soothing wounded pride, flattering, cajoling, urging upon both sides his persuasive version of political reality.’18 Thus, Hincks included political enemies on Oxford County’s 1849 commission of magistrates; one of them being John George Vansittart, the Tory returning officer who had disqualified him in the 1847–48 election.19 In general, patronage greased party wheels. In 1872, for example, George Perry resigned his North Oxford seat to accommodate Oliver Mowat, who had stepped down as a judge to become premier of Ontario and needed a seat; three months later Perry was appointed to the newly vacant post of county sheriff. In 1874 Ebenezer Bodwell resigned his Dominion South Oxford seat to become superintendent of the Welland Canal; conveniently for Canada’s Brownite ministry, this created a vacancy for James Edgar, the party’s chief whip, who had been defeated in the riding of Monck in the 1874 Dominion general election. Democracy as an Election Issue Every election in Oxford County raised some aspect of democracy. The governor’s prerogatives and establishment religion were under fire

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through to 1854; in 1857 and later elections, partyism and sectionalism were in play. The most aggressive formulations of democracy happened during the early 1850s, with the flowering of the Clear Grit movement and the meeting of Oxford’s 1851 Reform convention in Woodstock. At the top of the convention’s agenda was the separation of church and state, to be attained through the secularization of the revenue from the Clergy Reserves; an end to rectory grants and ecclesiastical corporations; and the abolition of sectarian clauses in the common schools bill. Other planks in its platform were the ‘simplification and codification of the laws; extension of the elective franchise; an equitable increase of representation based on population; no appropriation of the country’s funds without legislation; election of all county officers by the people; and the vote by ballot.’20 Much of the Oxford convention’s platform was in the mainstream of provincial politics, as represented by ministries of the 1850s. Indeed, the Conservative-Hincksite coalition ministry enacted much of the convention’s program: the secularization of revenues from the Clergy Reserves (1854); an extension of the franchise (1855); and provision for an elective Upper House (1856). In this regard, the convention’s call for an extension of the franchise fell short of universal white manhood suffrage, which was widespread in U.S. state franchises by the 1830s. The sole radical plank in the convention’s program called for the election of all county officials. This proposal, an Americanism, was a sharp departure from the British tradition wherein officials such as magistrates and sheriffs were ministerial appointments. In November 1854, the coalition ministry defeated a bill, which both Oxford members supported, for the election of all county officials. Finally, the convention’s most radical expression of democracy was not in its platform, but in its attempt to bind Hincks to the principle of recall: a feature of direct democracy. Working Up Elections Unwritten protocol required the candidate to show reticence about coming forward for election; similarly, he was to be brought out by friends rather than thrusting himself on the electors. One tool for the purpose was the requisition: a petition to an individual to stand for election. It consisted of a preamble, stating the request, followed by signatures of the petitioners. The signatures were assembled on printed sheets that friends had circulated across the riding. Commonly, the requisition was bundled with the candidate’s favourable reply as an advertisement in

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local newspapers. The alternative mechanism for bringing out a candidate was a delegated party convention. The convention’s objective was to unite its sponsoring party behind one candidate before the hustings nominations. As discussed above, the convention mechanism failed of its purpose as often as it succeeded. Once in the field, the candidate canvassed the electors at Town Hall meetings with the assistance of paid agents and committees of volunteers. Hard-fought campaigns, such as the several contests between well-heeled Toronto men, incurred expenses for printing and circulation of requisitions and handbills, paid agents, canvassing, hall rentals for public meetings, the rental of teams for processions, newspaper advertisements, subsidies for local party organs, and travel and accommodation. Illegal expenses went for bribes, treating, and furnishing electors with rides to the poll. If an election manager, for purposes of canvassing, required copies of Poll Books from the previous election, these were available from a county office ‘at three pence per folio of a hundred words.’ The statutory increases in the number of polls and voters added to the bill. Despite statutory bans on party flags, party ribbons, and favours, close-fought elections were occasions for spectacle. Candidates arrived at the hustings nominations with brass bands and processions of carriages filled with supporters. The returning officer formally opened the election from the hustings: an elevated platform from which to address the electors assembled below. Next came the nominations, speeches from the candidates and their nominators, the colourful show of hands, and demands for a poll; then the processions reformed and made their way along concession roads to the candidates’ respective headquarters. Bribes and treating enlivened the week-long interval between the election and the polling. After the closing of the polls, the winning candidate returned to the hustings with brass band and procession for the declaration. The triumphant side then repaired to a hotel and a mass sit-down dinner, with bonfires and treats for those outside the building. Yet the election was a quiet affair if held in harvest season or harsh winter weather or if the contest was one-sided. Just seven hundred attended the declaration for the South Oxford by-election of March 1863 when ‘the day was cold, the speeches were short, and everyone seemed pleased that the contest was over.’ Ostensibly, the show of hands determined which of the candidates had a majority of the electors who were assembled at the hustings; in

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fact, the ‘hands-uppers’ included non-electors in some elections. In one instance – the 1854 South Oxford by-election – the show of hands decided the election. On all other occasions, a losing candidate or his agent demanded a poll. Thus, in practice the poll, not the show of hands, decided an election. The show of hands was an occasion for spectacle, partisan demonstrations of strength, and public entertainment. Party Organ Newspapers in Oxford Elections Oxford County’s newspapers were party organs that praised their candidates and scorned their opponents. They announced and reported on political meetings and gave partisan coverage to provincial and local political events. They accepted paid advertisements from candidates, including opponents. They were job printers for handbills, posters, and requisition forms. Two categories of newspaper influenced politics in Oxford: metropolitan newspapers with local subscribers and local weeklies. In the first category were subsidized, official organs of the Baldwinite-Reform party: the Toronto Examiner (1838–42), the Montreal Pilot (1842–48), and the Toronto Globe (1848–51). The Globe became a Brownite organ in 1851 when its owner, George Brown, quit the Hincks-led Reform party. In 1855 the Globe issued daily, bi-weekly, and weekly editions. Its daily edition reached ‘merchants and others in the smaller towns and villages who had discovered their need for a daily newspaper from the metropolis’; and its weekly edition, ‘being expressly suited for the farming community, penetrated to every village, hamlet, concession, and side-road.’21 In the second category were Oxford country weeklies. These included the Woodstock Herald and Brock General Advertiser (Baldwinite, 1840– 48); Woodstock Monarch (High Tory, 1842–48); Oxford Star and Woodstock Advertiser (Temperance, 1848–49); Woodstock British American (Conservative, 1848–53); Woodstock Western Progress (1851–53); Woodstock Sentinel (Conservative, 1854–78); Woodstock Times (1855–1902); Woodstock Weekly Review (Brownite, 1871–78); Ingersoll Chronicle (Hincksite, then Brownite, 1853–1919); the Oxford Herald in Ingersoll (Conservative, 1859–62); Ingersoll Enquirer (1863–?); Embro Review (Brownite, 1859– 98); Embro Planet (Brownite, from 1869–?); Princeton Review (Brownite, 1865–68); Ingersoll News (Brownite, 1865–69); and the Tillsonburg Observer (Hincksite, 1863–1919).22

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Influences on Voters’ Choices in Elections in Oxford County Short-Lived Legacy of the Failed 1837 Western Rebellion The failed 1837 western rebellion had a short-lived legacy in the Oxford ridings. In the 1838 by-election the Reformers were too disheartened to bring out a candidate; during elections of the 1840s, High Tory election officials applied high-handed, zealous scrutiny to American-born electors. Nevertheless, by recruiting Francis Hincks as their candidate in 1841, local Reformers restored their cause to respectability. The rehabilitation of former rebels was a sign of respectability regained. Eliakim Malcolm, who had been self-exiled to the United States in 1838 and pardoned in 1843, was elected Oakland Township’s reeve in 1850 and was Francis Hincks’s second nominator in the 1851 general election. Dr Ephraim Cook of Norwich, convicted of high treason, banished from the province in 1838 and never pardoned, was allowed to return to his home in 1839; he was elected for South Oxford in the 1854 general election. Railway Proposals: A Marginal Influence Proposed railway lines, with attendant pressures for local-municipal financial assistance, caused turmoil in Oxford County during the 1850s and 1870s, but seldom in its elections. Controversy over the proposed Great Western Railway was not a factor in Oxford’s 1851 general election. A hullabaloo over the Credit Valley Railway bonus by-law did not prevent Ebenezer Bodwell’s acclamation in South Oxford’s 1874 Dominion general election. A railway issue did matter in the 1857 general election, in which Frank Ball made a Canada Southern line his principal issue and lost by a mere three votes in a six-man contest. Orangemen: A Major Political Force in Some Ridings but not in Oxford County Oxford’s Orange lodges attracted Protestants from both Irish and nonIrish backgrounds. Nevertheless, Irish Protestants were the mainstay of the Order, and Oxford County had fewer of them than elsewhere in the province. Thus, Orangemen played a modest role in local politics. The lodges commonly celebrated the glorious 12th of July with a private dinner rather than a multi-lodge public procession. They supported

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Conservatives and Hincksite coalitionists with votes but not electoral violence, and the number of their votes polled was small. The sole instance of fighting involving Orangemen – in Norwich in 1848 – was provoked by Reformers, with Orangemen playing a reactive role. Woodstock’s Gentry Class: A Force for High Toryism during the 1840s English- and Scottish-gentry families in ‘aristocratic’ Blandford Township, East Oxford Township, and the town of Woodstock were a social class formation on a hierarchical model. They were a bastion of support for High Tories during the 1840s, but then gradually vanished as a recognizable social formation. The legislature’s attainment of responsible government and control of patronage on a party basis, as well as the introduction of elective bodies for local government, diminished the appointed officialdom from which the old families derived power and influence. With Oxford County’s economic development, merchants, professionals, and manufacturers eclipsed the gentry as leaders. The old families produced two elected members during the 1840s: Roger Rollo Hunter in 1838–41 and Robert Riddell in 1844–47. John George Vansittart, eldest son of Admiral Vansittart, carried their colours in a losing cause in 1851. Thereafter, John Barwick, son of a half-pay officer and a defeated Conservative candidate in 1863, was their most prominent politician. Support for the Hincksite-Conservative coalition in four of Woodstock’s five wards evidenced strength in their fading legacy. Class on the Two- and Three-Class Models: Unimportant in Oxford County’s Elections Social class formation on the two-class or three-class models was not a factor in Oxford County’s elections through to the abolition of voicevoting in 1874. The county’s economy was still largely rural and preindustrial. Ingersoll and Woodstock, towns with populations of 4,000, were the sole urban places of any size. Although Ingersoll had four enterprises that had between 50 and 103 employees, Woodstock had no manufactories on this scale, and small-scale producers predominated in the county overall. As of 1874, the county had never had a union or a strike; it had no engagement with the Nine-Hour Movement in 1872; and its elections were devoid of working-class issues. Although the rural population had enduring structures of inequality, an orderly pattern of life-course acquisition of land by individuals blunted rural working-

182

Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

class formation. Simply put, Oxford County had social inequalities, but was without overt class issues in its elections. Ethnic and Ethno-Religious Influences on Oxford County’s Electors Ethnic and ethno-religious formations evolved in the local context of Oxford County. Irish natives divided into Roman Catholics and Protestants. Nearly all Roman Catholics were Irish natives and their progeny. Scots were Presbyterian, and nearly all Presbyterians were Scots. The Scots included Gaelic-speaking Highlanders and English-speaking Lowlanders. The two groups gradually merged to forge a pan-Scottish identity that embraced the national bard, ‘Rabbie’ Burns, and a newly created entity, the Highland Games. Ethnic-national societies (St Andrew’s, St George’s, St Patrick’s) and a Robert Burns Club expressed and contributed to ethnic formation; Woodstock organized national societies during the 1840s, and Ingersoll organized them a decade or so later. As shown by Probit estimates from census proxies (place of birth, religion), ethnic and religious differences were statistically significant influences on voters’ choices in five Oxford general elections (1851, county riding; 1861, North Oxford and South Oxford ridings; 1871 provincial, South Oxford riding; and 1874 Dominion, North Oxford riding). Relative to Presbyterian voters in 1851, for example, Anglican voters showed lower support for the Reform candidate, Francis Hincks, whereas Methodist, Baptist, and Roman Catholic voters showed stronger support. Relative to Scotland-born voters, English- and Irish-born voters showed less support for Hincks, whereas the American- and Canada-born voters showed stronger support. English-born, Irish-born, and Anglican voters favoured Conservative or Hincksite candidates in the five elections. A major change was that Presbyterian and Scottish electors, who had favoured the Conservative candidate in 1851, became the core of Reform support after 1854. This changed the relative position of the other groups. American-born voters were now similar to Scotland-born voters. English and Anglican electors were more conservative than ever relative to Scottish and Presbyterian electors. The preferences of English-born, American-born, and Anglican electors were stable; the change lay with electors in control groups (Presbyterian, Scotland-born), who had jumped the Tory ship. This change mattered more in the riding of North Oxford, whose Scottish Presbyterians were 36 per cent of the adult male immigrant

Democracy in Oxford County Elections

183

population, than in the South riding, in which their representation was 13 per cent. The West Zorra Highlanders, a Gaelic-speaking sub-group of the Scottish Presbyterian population, had a side feature: they rallied to one of their own regardless of his party ties. They favoured the High Tory, Robert Riddell, in 1844; the Independent Reformer turned Hincksite, Donald Matheson, in 1854 and 1857; and the Brownite, Thomas Oliver, in 1866 and later North riding elections. In the 1867 provincial election, the contest in North Oxford between two Blenheim Brownites returned George Perry, an English-ethnic Presbyterian; however, the losing candidate, Dr Daniel Clark, a Presbyterian Highlander, received 73 per cent of the 339 suffrages cast in West Zorra Township.23 The Oxford Ridings and the Province To summarize, elections in Oxford County were those of a partially democratic system, one in which democracy registered setbacks and flaws as well as advances. Although the forms and electoral issues of democracy evolved, the net amount of democracy remained stable over time. Many features of elections in Oxford County applied across the province. Examples are statutory provisions for the franchise, the protocol for voice-vote elections, and trials of controverted elections. Other features in the Oxfords, such as the protocol for bringing out a candidate, ‘dirty tricks,’ the treating of electors with food and drink, and bribery, are likely to have been widespread. As always with a case study, some features of elections in Oxford County were idiosyncratic. ‘In the constituencies,’ writes S.J.R. Noel, ‘the old pattern of clientele-based politics, with its intensely local activities, still flourished. Members of parliament were typically local magnates, or the nominees of local magnates, with their own independent bases of support and their own patron-client obligations to consider; they were not merely grist to some party mill.’24 The ridings in Oxford County were an exception to Noel’s model for Canada West. Prominent outsiders, not local notables, won most of their elections. Their candidates were mostly party men. Even their few ‘loose fish’ put principle before considerations of patron-client relations. Their campaigns turned on provincial issues, not local ones. The Oxford ridings, in turn, differed from their near neighbours. Norfolk and West Elgin, for example, returned local notables, not wor-

184

Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875

thies from Toronto, and they elected Conservatives, a party that was shut out in Oxford County after 1844. Orange violence and workingclass movements mattered in Brant County ridings, but not in Oxford. With respect to democracy, the ridings of Canada West and early Ontario held similarities, but also evolving local differences, as this study of elections in Oxford County shows.

Appendix A List of Elections in Oxford County, 1837–1875 Year

Jurisdiction

Riding

Type

Elected

1838 1841 1842 1844 1847–48 1848 1851 1854 1854 1854 1857 1857 1858 1858 1858 1861 1861 1862 1862 1863 1863 1863 1864 1866 1867 1867 1867 1867 1871 1871 1872 1872 1872 1874 1874 1874 1874 1875

Upper Canada Canada West Canada West Canada West Canada West Canada West Canada West Canada West Canada West Canada West Canada West Canada West Canada West Canada West Canada West Canada West Canada West Canada West Canada West Canada West Canada West Canada West Canada West Canada West Canada Canada Ontario Ontario Ontario Ontario Canada Canada Ontario Ontario Canada Canada Canada Ontario

Oxford Oxford Oxford Oxford Oxford Oxford Oxford North Oxford South Oxford South Oxford North Oxford South Oxford North Oxford South Oxford Gore Division North Oxford South Oxford North Oxford Thames Division South Oxford North Oxford South Oxford South Oxford North Oxford North Oxford South Oxford North Oxford South Oxford North Oxford South Oxford North Oxford South Oxford North Oxford South Oxford North Oxford South Oxford South Oxford South Oxford

By-election General By-election General General By-election General General General By-election General General By-election By-election Upper House General General By-election Upper House By-election General General General By-election General General General General General General General General By-election By-election General General By-election General

Hunter Hincks Hincks Riddell Hincks Hincks Hincks Matheson Hincks Cook Brown Connor McDougall Connor Alexander McDougall Connor McDougall Blake Brown Mackenzie Brown Brown T. Oliver T. Oliver Bodwell Perry A. Oliver Perry A. Oliver T. Oliver Bodwell Mowat A. Oliver T. Oliver Bodwell Skinner A. Oliver

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Appendix B List of Statutes Referred to or Consulted 1707 United Kingdom. Succession to the Crown Act (date not known) 1791 United Kingdom. Constitutional Act (date not stated) 1828 Upper Canada. Act to Secure and Confer upon Certain Inhabitants of this Province the Civil and Political Rights of Natural Born British Subjects (7 May) 1840 United Kingdom. Act to Re-Unite the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada (23 July) Act to Provide for the Sale of the Clergy Reserves in the Province of Canada (7 Aug.) 1841 Canada. Act to Enable Members of the Legislative Assembly from Canada West to Vacate Their Seats in Certain Circumstances (17 Aug.) Act to Compel Candidates to Make a Detailed Declaration of Property under which They Qualify (18 Sept.) Act to Provide for the Payment of Wages of Members (18 Sept.) District Councils Act (27 Aug.) 1842 Canada. Freedom of Elections Act (12 Oct.) Act Vacating a Member’s Seat when He accepts a Crown Office (12 Oct.) 1843 Canada. Act to Restrain Party Processions in Certain Cases (9 Dec., repealed 1851) Act to Provide for the Calling and Orderly Holding of Public Meetings (9 Dec.) Bill for the Discouragement of Secret Societies. Reserved and disallowed. (From Toronto Mirror, 20 Oct.) 1844 Canada. Act to Better Secure the Independence of the Legislative Assembly (25 May) 1845 Canada. Act to Restore the Franchise to Members of the Clergy (17 March)

188 Appendix B

1846 Canada. Amendment to the District Councils Act (9 June) 1849 Canada. Consolidated Elections Act (30 May) Municipal Corporations Act (‘Baldwin Act,’ 30 May) 1850 Canada. Act to Establish a More Equal and Just System of Assessment (10 Aug.) 1851 Canada. Act to Reorganize Territorial Divisions for Counties (2 Aug., to take effect 1 Jan. 1852) Controverted Elections Act (2 Aug.) 1853 Canada. Act to Enlarge the Representation of the People of This Province (14 June) Act to Extend the Franchise (14 June) Amendment to the Act to Better Secure the Independence of the Legislative Assembly (14 June) 1853 United Kingdom. Act to Authorize the Legislature of the Province of Canada to Make Provision for the Clergy Reserves in the Province, and the Proceedings Thereof (9 May) 1854 Canada. Amendment to Naturalization Laws (18 Dec.) Act to Extend the Franchise (18 Dec.) Act Further to Provide for the Freedom of Elections (18 Dec.) 1855 Canada. Act to Extend the Franchise (30 May) Amendment to Act Granting a Civil List (compensation for ministers, 30 May) 1856 Canada. Act to Render the Legislative Council Elective (14 July) 1857 Canada. Act Further to Secure the Independence of Parliament (10 June) Act to Improve the Mode of Obtaining Evidence in Cases of Controverted Elections (10 June) 1858 Canada. Act to Define the Elective Franchise and Provide for the Registration of Voters (16 Aug.) 1859 Canada. Amendment to Act to Extend Franchise and Provide for the Registration of Voters (4 May)

Appendix B

189

Act Respecting Governor, Civil List, and Salaries of Certain Public Officers (date not stated) Act for Indemnifying Members for Their Expenses in Attending Sessions (4 May) 1860 Canada. Act for the More Effectual Prevention of Corrupt Practices (19 May) 1866 Canada. Amendment to Elections Act (15 Aug.) ‘Parliamentary Electors.’ Act Respecting Municipal Institutions of Upper Canada (15 Aug.) Act to Amend the Municipal Act (15 Aug.) 1867 United Kingdom. British North America Act (29 March) 1868 Dominion of Canada. Act to Further Secure the Independence of Parliament (22 May) 1868 Ontario. Municipal Act (4 March) 1869 Ontario. Elections Act (23 Jan.) Act to Abolish the Property Qualification for Members (24 Dec.) 1871 Dominion of Canada. Amendment to Act to Further Secure the Independence of Parliament (14 April) Act to Make Temporary Provision for the Election of Members to the House of Commons (14 April) 1871 Ontario. Amendment to Corrupt Practices Act (15 Feb.) 1872 Dominion of Canada. Act to Re-adjust the Representation in the House of Commons (14 June) 1872 Ontario. Act for the Prevention of Corrupt Practices at Municipal Elections (2 March) 1873 Dominion of Canada. Act to Abolish Dual Representation (3 May) Act to Make Better Provision for Controverted Elections (23 May) Act to Make Temporary Provision for the Election of Members to the House of Commons (23 May)

190 Appendix B

1873 Ontario. Act Respecting Municipal Institutions in the Province of Ontario (23 March) 1874 Dominion of Canada. Dominion Elections Act (26 May) Act to Make Better Provision for Controverted Elections (26 May) 1874 Ontario. Act to Extend the Elective Franchise (24 March) Act Respecting Voters’ Lists (24 March) Ballot Act (24 March) Act Regarding Controverted Elections (21 Dec.) Act to Provide the Ballot for Municipal Elections (21 Dec.)

Notes

Prologue 1 Angus Campbell et al., The American Voter (New York: Wiley, 1960), 4. See also Ron Wintrobe, ‘Dictatorship: Analytic Approaches,’ in Carles Boix and Susan B. Stokes, eds., Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 363–94. 2 S.J.R. Noel, Patrons, Clients, Brokers: Ontario Society and Politics, 1791–1896 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990). 3 Paul G. Cornell, The Alignment of Political Groups in Canada, 1841–1867 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962); Noel, Patrons, Clients, Brokers; Phillip A. Buckner, The Transition to Responsible Government: British Policy in British North America, 1815-1850 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985), 73–6. 4 With the admission of Michigan to statehood in 1837, the United States had 26 states; of these, 20 (77%) had no property qualification for the franchise; of the 20, however, 12 had a taxpayer requirement. Calculated from data in Appendix A.2, in Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York: Basic Books, 2000). 5 Ronald Stewart Longley, Sir Francis Hincks: A Study of Canadian Politics, Railways, and Finance in the Nineteenth Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1943), 275. 6 Voluntaryism was the principle that a religious denomination should be supported entirely by the voluntary contributions of its congregation; conversely, that no religious denomination should receive financial assistance and legal advantages from the state, as in establishment religion. 7 Ingersoll Chronicle, 11 Dec. 1857. Bodwell’s address is dated 5 Dec. 8 Kenneth C. Dewar, Charles Clarke: Pen and Ink Warrior (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002); ‘Charles Clarke’s “Reforma-

192

Notes to pages xv–8

tor”: Early Victorian Radicalism in Upper Canada,’ Ontario History 78/3 (1986): 233–52. 9 Partyism was the principle that ministries should be constructed on a party basis (the party holding a majority in the Legislative Assembly); conversely, that coalition ministries and no-party ministries were undesirable. 10 Canada West sectionalism was the principle that the interests of the Canada West section of the province took precedence over the interests of the United Province with its two sections, Canada East and Canada West. 11 Noel, Patrons, Clients, Brokers, 89–90, 218, 275–7. 1 The Oxford Ridings and Structures for Their Elections 1 Thomas S. Shenston, The Oxford Gazetteer, 1852 (Hamilton: Chatterton and Helliwell, 1852), 50. 2 Brian Fagan, The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300–1850 (New York: Basic Books, 2000). The large-scale felling of trees after 1850 contributed to global warming by releasing rising amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. 3 Oxford’s population and economic growth follow the provincial trends as depicted in Douglas McCalla, Planting the Province: The Economic History of Upper Canada, 1784–1870 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993). 4 The adult male statistic is calculated from manuscript census data. 5 Catharine Anne Wilson, Tenants in Time: Family Strategies, Land, and Liberalism in Upper Canada, 1799–1871 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009), 23–44; 232, Table 3.3. 6 The 1881 census registered an incremental change: 533 industries, 3,014 persons employed, and a mean of 5.7. Woodstock had become the county’s largest urban place. 7 The county had 85 cheese factories in 1871. 8 The census categories are not mutually exclusive; a 100-acre farm, e.g., fits two categories (50–100 acres and 100–200 acres). 9 David Gagan, ‘Enumerators’ Instructions for the Census of Canada, 1852 and 1861,’ Social History / Histoire sociale 7 (1974): 355–65. 10 Canada, Statutes, 1853, Cap. CLII, Act to Enlarge the Representation of the People of This Province. The two ridings, with their 1853 territories, survived until 1882 in Dominion elections and 1933 in provincial elections. 11 Part of North Dorchester Township, Middlesex County, was annexed to North Oxford Township, Oxford County. This parcel contained 36 lots: Concessions I to VI (north to south) and lots 19 to 24 (west to east). The annexed parcel was 29% of the township’s reconstituted territory and

Notes to pages 8–12

12

13 14 15

16 17

18 19 20

21

22

193

included part of the hamlet of Thamesford. Data for the calculations: lot maps in Historical Atlas of Oxford County (N.P.: Walker and Miles, 1875) and information in Canada, Statutes, 1851, Cap. 5, Act to Reorganize Territorial Divisions for Counties, schedules A, E. Two other changes for townships were the division of Zorra into East Zorra and West Zorra townships in 1845; and the division of Norwich into North Norwich and South Norwich townships in 1855. The Poll Books for North Oxford’s 1867 Ontario provincial general election are missing. The 1842 act required the returning officer to make copies but did not specify their purpose or place of deposit. Under an 1842 retrospective act, seven years of continuous residence was required for all those resident in the province by the proclamation of the Union (10 Feb. 1841); this was reduced to five years in 1845. An 1849 retrospective act naturalized all aliens who were resident by the proclamation of the Union; those arriving subsequent to the proclamation of the Union required seven years of residence, which was reduced to five years in 1854 and three years in 1858. John Garner, The Franchise and Politics in British North America, 1855–1867 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), 174. Garner, Franchise and Politics, 108. The actual value of real property was its value for taxation purposes. The yearly value stated the amount of revenue that the property could be expected to generate, such as 20s (£1) for one cultivable acre on the 1818 fixed-valuation scale. A yearly value of £5 equated to an actual value of £50. Garner, Franchise and Politics, 105–9. Calculated from data for 1840 and 1852 in Shenston, Oxford Gazetteer, 33. Statutes in 1853 and 1854 provided for an extension of the franchise, but each remained a dead letter. The reason was that the acts also provided for an assessment franchise, which remained inoperative due to the failure of many municipal clerks to prepare electors’ lists. In 1855, for example, the North Oxford riding was missing lists for two municipalities, and the South Oxford riding was missing lists for three. See 1850s Voters’ Lists for Oxford County, transcription, Ontario Genealogical Society, Oxford County Branch, held in Oxford County Archives, Beachville. Canada, Statutes, 1866, Cap. LI, Act Respecting Municipal Institutions of Upper Canada, s. 81 (re. Parliamentary Electors); Ontario, Statutes, 1869, Cap. XXI, Elections Act. Ontario, Statutes, 1866, Cap. 30, Municipal Act, s. 12. Incorporated villages did not include police villages, such as Tillsonburg (1865–71).

194

Notes to pages 12–14

23 Canada, Statutes, Cap. 27, 1849, s. XLVI; 1866, Cap. LI, Act Respecting Municipal Institutions of Upper Canada, s. 75; 1866, Cap. LII, Act to Amend the Municipal Act, revised s. 75. 24 Ontario, Statutes, 1869, Cap. XXI, Elections Act, s. 4. 25 Garner, Franchise and Politics, 154–60. 26 The only extant electors’ lists for Oxford are for 11 polls during the mid1850s. For the years concerned, however, certain of the county’s municipalities failed to prepare lists, for which reason the extant lists were not used in elections. 27 Statistics for electors are unavailable for the North riding; its 1871 provincial election and 1872 Dominion election had acclamations, hence no published statistics for electors. The qualification for South Oxford’s electors was $200 in townships for both elections, but $300 for Ingersoll in 1871. The statistics for Ingersoll were 72%, 1861; and 77%, 1871. 28 The ridings were unequal in population during the Union years. At the one extreme, the riding of Niagara had 739 electors in 1861, compared with 13,062 for the riding of Huron and Bruce, and a mean of 3,052 for all ridings. 29 Or who voted ‘knowing at the time’ that he was not qualified. Canada, Statutes, 1842, Cap. 1, s. VIII; 1849, Cap. 27, s. XLIV, and Elector’s Oaths 10–18. The Elector’s Oath dated from the imperial government’s 1791 Constitutional Act (s. XXIV). 30 Canada, Statutes, 1841, Cap. 52. 31 Ibid., 1849, Cap. 27, s. XXXI ff, XLII, XLVI; Garner, Franchise and Politics, 87, 108. 32 Garner, Franchise and Politics, 93. 33 The 1842 act gave Canada West the 1833 Canada East law (Lower Canada, Statutes, 4 William IV, Cap. 33) in order to make such law ‘uniform throughout the Province.’ Upper Canada (1791–1840) did not have such a statute. In 1842, however, three newly appointed ministers from Canada West observed the requirement before 12 October, when the 1842 statute took effect (Francis Hincks in June, and Robert Baldwin and James Edward Small in September). Thus, the practice probably existed previously as a British parliamentary convention, derived from Britain’s Succession to the Crown Act of 1707; the British statute aimed to check the Crown’s ability to influence Parliament through the presence in the House of Commons of placemen (individuals who were in receipt of remuneration from a Crown appointment). In Canada such logic weakened in 1849 with the introduction of responsible government. Nevertheless, the 1842 statutory requirement lasted until 1926 in Ontario provincial elections and until 1931 in Dominion elections.

Notes to pages 14–21

34 35 36

37

38 39

40 41 42 43 44 45 46

47

195

The 1842 statutory text referred to the acceptance of ‘any office of profit from the Crown … or any appointment from the Crown whereby he shall [become] accountable for any public money.’ Whereas backbenchers were unpaid for their work, ministers were handsomely compensated. In 1855 the president of councils, the attorney general for Canada West, commissioner of Crown lands, commissioner of public works, postmaster general, provincial secretary, and inspector general (minister of finance) received £1,250 per annum; the solicitor general for Canada West received £750. In 1859 the amounts were $5,000 for ministers and $3,000 for the solicitor general. See Canada, Statutes, 1855, Cap. XXXIX; 1859, Cap. X. Ingersoll Chronicle, 3 Feb. and 10 Feb. 1865. Canada, Statutes, 1841, Cap. LV; 1859, Cap. XII; 1860, Cap. XVI. Bruce L. Kinzer, The Ballot Question in Nineteenth-Century English Politics (New York: Garland, 1982), 120–1; David Cresap, The Politics of Deference: A Study of the Mid-Nineteenth-Century English Political System (Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1976), 181, 282, 292. Canada, Statutes, 1842 Cap. 1, s. XXIV; 1849 Cap. 27, s. LXVI; 1874 Cap. 9, s. 126. Currency Conversions: 12d (pence) equalled one shilling; 20s (shillings) equalled £1. The symbol for pence, ‘d,’ derived from the French unit of currency, the denier. The symbol ‘p’ replaced it in 1971 when the United Kingdom decimalized its currency. Canada, Sessional Papers, 1868, no. 41; 1873, no. 60. Governors varied in their exercise of influence. See Mark Francis, Governors and Settlers: Images of Authority in the British Colonies, 1820–60 (London: Macmillan, 1991), Chaps. 6, 9, and 11. In 1861 the North Oxford Township polling place was the house of James Henderson. Ingersoll Chronicle, 5 July 1861. ‘Objected to’ votes were the basis for a recount in a controverted election. Canada, Statutes, 1860, Cap. XVII, Corrupt Practices Prevention Act, preamble. See D.C. Masters, ‘The Establishment of Decimal Currency in Canada,’ Canadian Historical Review 33/2 (1952): 129–49. See the statute, ss. 46–8, 61–6. As in the 1849 act, a man could treat electors at his ‘usual place of residence’ and his own expense (s. 61). Garner, Franchise and Politics, 210–13. J.H. Aitchison, ‘The Municipal Corporations Act of 1849,’ Canadian Historical Review 30/2 (1949): 107–22; Canada, Statutes, 1841, Cap. X; 1846, Cap. XL; 1849, Cap. LXXXI. After the first elections, one third of the councillors were to retire each year, followed by elections to replace them; the selection of retirees over

196

48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

57

Notes to pages 21–8 the three years was determined by lot, with the retirees eligible for reelection. Canada, Statutes, 1850, Cap. 67, Act to Establish a More Equal and Just System of Assessment. Canada, Statutes, 1866, Cap. 51, Act Respecting Municipal Institutions of Upper Canada, ss. 70, 75–6. J.E. Hodgetts, Pioneer Public Service: An Administrative History of the United Canadas, 1841–1867 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1955). Ibid., 36. Ibid.; Canada, Report of the Postmaster-General, Sessional Paper 3, 1865. Ingersoll Chronicle, 22 Aug. 1862. Canada, Report of the Postmaster-General, Sessional Paper 3, 1865. Ontario’s 1869 act also enacted same-day nominations and same-day polling for all ridings. Ontario replaced public nominations with written nominations in 1926. Ontario, Statutes, 1926, Chap. 4, s. 58. In modern usage, the hustings refers to (all) places from which campaign speeches are made during the interval between the writ of election and polling day. It roughly equates to ‘on the campaign trail.’ It was John Bright’s price for entering William Gladstone’s cabinet.

2 Ethnicity, Social Class, and Orangemen in Oxford County 1 Cole Harris, The Reluctant Land: Society, Space, and Environment in Canada before Confederation (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008), 314–15, 353. 2 Brian Clarke, Piety and Nationalism: Lay Voluntary Associations and the Creation of an Irish-Catholic Community in Toronto, 1850–1895 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993), 3–12. 3 Sarah Katherine Gibson, ‘Self-Reflection in the Consolidation of Scottish Identity: A Case Study in Family Correspondence,’ in Philip Buckner and R. Douglas Francis, eds., Canada and the British World: Culture, Migration, and Identity (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006), 29–44. 4 David Cannadine, The Rise and Fall of Class in Britain (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 1–23. 5 Cannadine, Rise and Fall of Class in Britain, 10. 6 Graham Leslie Brown, ‘The Scottish Settlement in West Zorra Township, Oxford County,’ M.A. thesis, University of Western Ontario, 1970. 7 Hamilton Gazette, 12 Jan. 1852. These Highlanders settled near Hamilton. 8 The 1852 census enumerated 414 natives of Scotland in Lancaster, one of four Glengarry townships; 47% were Roman Catholics and 53% were Pres-

Notes to pages 28–33

9 10

11 12 13

14 15 16

17

18 19 20 21

22 23 24 25 26

197

byterians. The 1861 census enumerated 477 Scotland-born adult males in West Zorra; 464 (97%) were Presbyterians; none was Roman Catholic. Eric Richards, Debating the Highland Clearances (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 3. The Clearances spread gradually and unevenly across the Highlands between 1780 and 1855. The laird’s plan in Sutherland-Shire, a large-scale project in social engineering, was to relocate the peasantry from inland areas to fishing villages on the coast. See Richards, Debating the Highland Clearances; Eric Richards, A History of the Highland Clearances: Agrarian Transformation and the Evictions, 1746–1886 (London: Croom Helm, 1982), 284. Richards, History of the Highland Clearances, 102, 284. W.A. Mackay, Pioneer Life in Zorra (Toronto: William Briggs, 1899), 8–9, 22–3. Ross, a son of Highlanders, became premier in 1899. J.M. Bumsted, The People’s Clearance: Highland Emigration to British North America, 1770–1815 (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1982), 220–1. Woodstock Herald, 31 June 1845 (Zorra); 14 March 1845 (Woodstock Presbytery); 14 Nov. 1845 (Ingersoll Presbytery). Wilson, Tenants in Time, 23–44; 232, Table 3.3. The tenancy rate for Oxford County was 39% in 1848 and 17% in 1871. Bumsted, People’s Clearance, 70; Marianne McLean, The People of Glengarry: Highlanders in Transition, 1745–1820 (Montreal and Kingston: Mc-GillQueen’s University Press, 1991), 78–97. Richards, Debating the Highland Clearances, 84. See also Robert Crawford, The Bard: Robert Burns: A Biography (London: Pimlico, 2009); Stuart Kelly, Scott-land: The Man Who Invented a Nation (Edinburgh: Polygon, 2010). John G. Gibson, Traditional Gaelic Bagpiping, 1745–1845 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 2000). Trews were close-fitting trousers of tartan cloth. W.A. Ross, History of Zorra and Embro (Embro: Embro Courier Office, 1909), 70. Woodstock Monarch, 18 April 1843, 30 April 1844, 29 Nov. 1844, 6 Dec. 1844; Woodstock Herald, 29 April 44, 5 Dec. 1845, 24 April 1846, 1 Dec. 1846; Woodstock, British American, 10 March 1849. Kail Brose was a cabbage and oatmeal porridge. Ingersoll Chronicle, 13 March 1863. Ibid., 14 Jan. 1859, 13 Jan. 1860. Ibid., 29 April 1859, 27 April 1860, 5 Dec. 1862, 4 Dec. 1863, 10 Nov. 1870. The German-born were Lutheran (52%), Evangelical (13%), Roman Catholic (11%), Methodist (9%), and Mennonite (4%).

198

Notes to pages 33–8

27 The 1871 statistic refers to natives of Ontario and Quebec. 28 In the manuscript census for Oxford, for example, it is common to see two or three corrections to the initial entry. The entry, ‘unknown,’ was common for families of mixed origin. See Canada, Census of 1870–81, vol. VI, ‘Introduction,’ Section VI. 29 See John Ireland, ‘Andrew Drew: The Man Who Burned the Caroline,’ Ontario History 49/3 (1967): 140. 30 The Right Rev. Arthur Sweatman, A Sketch of the History of the Parish of Woodstock (Woodstock, 1901), 7. Vice-Admiral Henry Vansittart set the tone of the community by establishing a 1,000-acre estate, laid out as English park and paddock, in which he built his residence and which he named Eastwood Park after his sister, Mrs East. Nancy B. Bouchier captures wonderfully the class character of the Woodstock elite in For the Love of the Game: Amateur Sport in Small-Town Ontario, 1838–1895 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 2003), 90–1. 31 Gordon Darroch and Lee Soltow, Property and Inequality in Victorian Ontario: Structural Patterns and Cultural Communities in the 1871 Census (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994). 32 Wilson, Tenants in Time. 33 Gordon Darroch, ‘Scanty Fortunes and Rural Middle-Class Formation in Nineteenth-Century Central Ontario,’ Canadian Historical Review 79/4 (1998): 629–59. 34 Donald Harmon Akenson, The Irish in Ontario: a Study in Rural History (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1984), 310; Bryan D. Palmer, Working-Class Experience: The Rise and Reconstitution of Canadian Labour, 1800–1980 (Toronto: Butterworth, 1983); Gregory S. Kealey and Bryan D. Palmer, Dreaming of What Might Be: the Knights of Labor in Ontario, 1880–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 35 Andrew Carl Holman, A Sense of Their Duty: Middle-Class Formation in Victorian Ontario Towns (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000). 36 Brant West became Brant South at Confederation. 37 David G. Burley, A Particular Condition in Life: Self-Employment and Social Mobility in Mid-Victorian Brantford, Ontario (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994), 54–5. 38 Ingersoll Chronicle, 28 March, 4 April 1872. 39 Jonathan Garlock, Guide to the Local Assemblies of the Knights of Labor (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press 1982), 564–5; Kealey and Palmer, Dreaming of What Might Be. The Knights had local assemblies in Ingersoll (1882–87); Woodstock (1884–88); Tillsonburg (1885–88), and Norwich (1886–87). The peak membership was 56 in Ingersoll and 113 in Woodstock.

Notes to pages 38–40

199

40 Ingersoll Chronicle, 27 March 1879; George Emery, Noxons of Ingersoll, 1856– 1918: The Family and the Firm in Canada’s Agricultural Implements Industry (Ingersoll: Ingersoll Historical Society, 2001), 18. In March 1879, Noxon Brothers, the county’s largest employer, cut wages by 10% in response to the Dominion government’s high-tariff National Policy, which raised duties on the company’s imports of coal and pig iron by $6,000. As James Noxon reasoned, the whole season’s production was based on contracts at 1878 prices, so labour had to absorb the increase in production costs; meanwhile the company continued to pay a high 12% dividend through the decade 1872–82. 41 Cecil J. Houston and William J. Smyth, The Sash Canada Wore: A Historical Geography of the Orange Order in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980), 36–7, 91–5; Akenson, Irish in Ontario, 26–7, 277; Clarke, Piety and Nationalism; Gregory S. Kealey, ‘Orangemen and the Corporation: The Politics of Class during the Union of the Canadas,’ in Victor L. Russell, ed., Forging a Consensus: Historical Essays on Toronto (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 41–86. 42 Reliable membership data are lacking for the years 1838–90. 43 Houston, Sash Canada Wore, Chap. 4, 84–111. Kealey (‘Orangemen and the Corporation,’ 41–86) emphasizes the working-class element in the Toronto lodges. Houston and Smythe counter that this merely reflected the city’s occupational structure; they refute Kealey’s notion that Toronto Orange politics were class driven or elite controlled. 44 For Orange electoral violence, see Patterson, ‘Studies in Elections and Public Opinion in Upper Canada,’ doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto 1969, 207ff; Michael S. Cross and Robert Lochiel Fraser, ‘Baldwin, Robert,’ DCB 8 (1851–1860); Hereward Senior, Orangeism: The Canadian Phase (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1972), 43; David G. Burley, Particular Condition in Life, 214–16, 220. In 1605 Guy Fawkes led an infamous, foiled, Roman Catholic ‘Gunpowder Plot’ to blow up the Houses of Parliament in England. 45 See Kealey, ‘Orangemen and the Corporation.’ 46 Akenson, Irish in Ontario, 277 ff. 47 Toronto Mirror, Oct. and Nov. 1843, 22 Aug. 1851. An 1843 Act to Provide for the Calling and Orderly Holding of Public Meetings also was calculated to reduce public violence. None of the acts specifically named the Orange Order, but only the Orangemen matched the descriptions of the proscribed behaviours. The Societies Act did not make secret societies illegal, as claimed by Kealey (‘Orangemen and the Corporation,’ 52) and J.M.S. Careless, in The Union of the Canadas: The Growth of Canadian Institutions, 1841–1857 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1967), 82.

200

Notes to pages 40–2

48 Paul Romney, Mr Attorney: The Attorney General for Ontario in Court, Cabinet, and Legislature 1791–1899 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 234. 49 Data: 10,267 adult males from the 1861 manuscript census for Oxford. Houston and Smythe accepted Akenson’s estimate of two-thirds. The proportion was 62% for Irish-ethnic households in Darroch and Ornstein’s 10,000-case Ontario households sample for 1871. See Houston, Sash Canada Wore, 40, 185–6nn 25, 27; Akenson, Irish in Ontario, 277; A. Gordon Darroch and Michael D. Ornstein, ‘Ethnicity and Occupational Structure in Canada in 1871: The Vertical Mosaic in Historical Perspective,’ Canadian Historical Review 61/3 (1980): 311. 50 Minutes, Woodstock L.O.L. No. 93, 1849–71; Minutes, South Oxford District Lodge No. 22 1857–68. The census data for place of birth do not show ethnicity for linked members who were born in British North America, the United States, and Malta. One of the American-born district representatives was reported as German in the 1871 census, the first to collect information about ‘origin.’ 51 Leslie H. Sanders, The Story of Orangeism (Toronto: Grand Orange Lodge of Ontario West, 1941), 31 (includes a ‘Directory of all Lodges that Originated in or Existed in Ontario West since 1830’). 52 Woodstock Monarch, 18 July 1843. 53 Ibid. 54 Minutes, Woodstock LOL 93, 4 May 1849 to 12 May 1850. 55 On this note, the members reformed, marched a short distance, and dispersed. Ingersoll Chronicle, 17 July 1857. The 1861 census enumerated William McAndrew, a 30-year-old, Scotland-born, Anglican schoolteacher in North Norwich Township. In 1851 Woodstock’s L.O.L. No. 93 communicated to the Grand Lodge its opposition to the Pope’s appointment of a Roman Catholic Archbishop for England. Minutes, LOL 93, 9 Dec. 1850, 13 Jan. 1851. 56 Ingersoll Chronicle, 19 Nov. 1858, 11 Nov. and 9 Dec. 1859; Oxford Herald, 14 Nov. 1861. 57 Woodstock Monarch, 18 July 1848. The Monarch was a High Tory organ. The Chronicle reported ‘no news of disturbances’ in 1859, and in 1862 ‘the twelfth passed off very quietly. Nothing was done that we could learn to mar the good feeling that exists among her Majesty’s subjects in this part of Canada.’ Ingersoll Chronicle, 15 July 1859, 17 July 1862. 58 Minutes, Woodstock LOL No. 93, 25 June 1849, 13 Oct. and 5 and 10 Nov. 1851. 59 Ingersoll Chronicle, 28 June 1861. Seven of the eight Orangemen had Irish nativity; one of them was William McAndrew, who had recounted a story

Notes to pages 42–8

201

of Roman Catholic atrocity at the 1857 celebrations of the 12th of July in Ingersoll. 60 Minutes, District Lodge No. 22, 1857–61. District Lodge No. 22 included lodges 111 (Springford), 254 (Tillsonburg), 505 (Ingersoll), 508 (Burgessville), 648(Culloden), 849 (Dereham), 947 (Tillsonburg), and 1088 (Ingersoll). 61 Calculated from manuscript census data. 3 Elections in Oxford County, 1838–1848 1 See Ingersoll Chronicle, 23 Feb. 1855, death notice of John Carroll, and http://genforum.genealogy.com/vanalstine/messages/45.html. 2 John Clarke, Land, Power, and Economics on the Frontier of Upper Canada (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001), 413, 493; C.M. Johnston, The Head of the Lake: A History of Wentworth County (Hamilton: Wentworth County Council, 1958), 187. 3 E.A. Horsman and Lillian Rea Benson, eds., The Canadian Journal of Alfred Domet, Being an Extract of a Journal from a Tour in Canada, the United States, and Jamaica, 1833–35 (London: University of Western Ontario, 1955), 42. Brian Dawe drew my attention to this source and introduced me to the term, ‘old-settler Tory,’ in Old Oxford Is Wide Awake! Pioneer Settlers and Politicians in Oxford County, 1793–1853 (Self-Published 1980). 4 Dawe, Old Oxford, 52n28; Shenston, Oxford Gazetteer, 107, 187. 5 Hunter, a lieutenant in the East India Company’s East Bengal Army, was the sixth son of Patrick Hunter and the Hon. Jean Rollo, a daughter of the 7th Lord Rollo, who had served with distinction with the army in India. In 1831 the eldest son, Lieut.-Col. James Hunter, purchased the Barony of Auchterarder (Perth-Shire), which had been in the family for 500 years until sold to an outsider in 1797. Roger Rollo Hunter was enrolled as an ‘Esq.’ on the 1833 electoral roll for the parish of Auchterarder. See Sir John Bernard Burke, Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland (London: Harrison Pall Mall, 1858), 601; Dawe, Old Oxford, 62–89. 6 MacKay, Pioneer Life in Zorra, 140–5. 7 Graeme H. Patterson, ‘An Enduring Canadian Myth: Responsible Government and the Family Compact,’ Journal of Canadian Studies 12 (1977): 3–16. 8 Buckner, Transition to Responsible Government, 6; Francis, Governors and Settlers, chap. 11. 9 Sir Francis Hincks, Reminiscences of His Public Life (Montreal: William Drysdale, 1884), 43–5.

202

Notes to pages 49–51

10 Dawe, Old Oxford, 71–2; Sweatman, Parish of Woodstock, 11; J.L.H. Henderson, ‘Bettridge (Betteridge), William Craddock,’ DCB 10 (1871–1880). 11 James Ingersoll, ‘History of Settlement in Oxford,’ Woodstock SentinelReview, 31 Jan. 1879; death notice, Ingersoll Chronicle, 12 Aug. 1886; Dawe, Old Oxford, 12n30. 12 Ingersoll Chronicle, 19 Aug. 1869, public dinner for Hincks; Shenston, Oxford Gazetteer, 94. 13 Hincks, Reminiscences, 81. 14 The 1842 act did not specify a ‘show of hands,’ but its provisions in s. X implied one and the returning officer for Oxford’s 1844 general election called for one. 15 Woodstock Monarch, 18 Oct. 1842. 16 Bouchier, For the Love of the Game, 15, 90–1. The 1852 census enumerated Deedes in Simcoe, where he was sheriff of Norfolk County. 17 Woodstock Monarch, 13 Oct. 1842 to 19 Dec. 1843. 18 In 1836–37 Hunter travelled with Riddell, his wife, and infant daughter, Mary, on a visit to Scotland. In 1861 Hunter resided with Robert Riddell and his family in Dunbar, East Lothian, Scotland. See New York City, Passenger List for the Orpheus, arrived from Liverpool, 13 June 1837; Scotland, Census, 1861. 19 Dawe, Old Oxford, 62. 20 Located east of Embro on Lot 8 Concession 15 and Lot 6 Concession 16. See Horsman and Benson, Alfred Domet, 36n. Vansittart was promoted from Rear-Admiral to Vice-Admiral in 1841. 21 Riddell had a distinguished lineage. His homestead in Zorra took its name from his family’s ancestral estate – Glen-Riddell in Dumphries-Shire, Scotland. In 1788 the then-head of family, also named Robert Riddell (1755–1794), had become a literary patron and friend of Robbie Burns, the Scottish national bard, Riddell’s neighbour, and future author of the celebrated ‘Sonnet on the Death of Robert Riddell.’ Robert Riddell had sold Glen-Riddell itself, but lived in Friar’s Carse, a residence on the estate (and since 1938 a hotel). Thus, when Robert died without issue, the representation of the Glen-Riddell family, but not the estate, passed to his grandfather’s younger brother John – the grandfather of Zorra’s Robert Riddell. Robert of Zorra was a younger son, not the inheriting son. However, in 1844, following the death of his older brother, Michael, a general in the East India Company’s army, the representation of the Glen-Riddell family passed to him in Zorra. By 1874 Robert Riddell of Zorra was deceased; his son, Robert Vansittart-Riddell, serving in India with the Bengal Engineers,

Notes to pages 51–8

22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39

40

41

203

represented the families of Glen-Riddell and the Grange (an estate inherited from Robert Riddell’s grandfather). See Gideon Tibbetts Ridlon, History of the Ancient Ryedales (Manchester, N.H.: Self-published, 1884) 83–5; James A.Mackay, ‘Riddell, Robert, of Glen-Riddell (bap. 1755, d. 1794),’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Crawford, The Bard. Woodstock Times, 13 Jan. 1844. Woodstock Monarch, 9 Jan., 21 March, 1 and 22 Oct. 1844. Ibid., 29 Oct. 1844. Ibid., 22 Oct. 1844, 9 Nov. 1844, 8 Jan. 1848. Hincks, Reminiscences, 135–47; Garner, Franchise and Politics, 205–6. Garner, Franchise and Politics, 170; the 1828 statute was entitled, Act to Secure and Confer upon Certain Inhabitants of this Province the Civil and Political Rights of Natural Born British Subjects. Canada, Statutes, 1842, Cap. I, s. XXI. Roblin received the posts of collector of customs at Picton, registrar of the County of Prince Edward, and agent for Crown lands of the county. Woodstock Herald, 10 Dec. 1847. Woodstock Monarch, 8 Jan. 1848. Ibid. Where neither the county sheriff nor the county’s registrar of deeds was able to act as returning officer, this official could be any qualified elector who had been resident in the riding for 12 continuous months immediately preceding his appointment. Clarke, Land, Power, and Economics, 413, 493; Johnston, Head of the Lake, 187. Woodstock Monarch, 18 Oct. 1842, 5 Jan. 1843. Ibid., 8 Jan. 1848. Canada, Statutes, 1841, Cap. 52, Act to Compel All Candidates to Make and Subscribe Detailed Declarations. J.M.S. Careless, Brown of the Globe, vol. 1, The Voice of Upper Canada, 1818– 1859 (Toronto: Macmillan, 1959), 63–5, 72–7. Hincks was right to worry. In his initial correspondence with Baldwin, Brown had suggested himself as a stand-in candidate who would step aside when Hincks returned. The completion of the Toronto-Hamilton plank road speeded communications into the peninsula. A man could set out from London Monday night, be in Toronto for printing on Tuesday, and return to London Thursday to distribute copies. Dawe, Old Oxford, 79–80; Shenston, Oxford Gazetteer, 96.

204

Notes to pages 58–68

42 Woodstock Monarch, 8 Jan. 1848; Woodstock Herald, 7 Jan. 1848. 43 Woodstock Herald, 4 Jan. 1848. 44 Henry J. Morgan, Sketches of Celebrated Canadians (Quebec: Hunter Rose, 1862), 427–8. 45 Woodstock British American, 29 Sept. 1849. 46 Toronto Globe, 29 April 1848. 47 Although ‘the election of 1844 returned to the Assembly a majority sympathetic to the Governor,’ writes Philip Buckner, ‘they were not members of a party but a collection of independents, placemen, and loosely organized factions who for varying purposes had united behind the Governor.’ Riddell fits this description in Buckner, Transition to Responsible Government, 270. 4 The General Election in Oxford County, 1851 1 Voluntaryism was the principle that churches should derive their revenue entirely from the voluntary contributions of their laity. 2 Mackay, Pioneer Life in Zorra, 150. 3 See the London Free Press and the Toronto Globe (both Reform), the Toronto British Colonist (Tory), and the Toronto North American (Clear Grit until 31 Oct., then Hincksite). 4 For details of Vansittart’s allegations, see Toronto British Colonist, 28 Nov. 1851. The alleged victim of Hincks’s libel was ‘a thoroughly unpleasant piece of work.’ See Alan Cameron and Julian Gwyn, ‘McNab, Archibald, 17th Chief of Clan MacNab,’ DCB 8 (1851–1860). 5 Toronto North American, 28 Nov. 1851; Toronto British Colonist, 28 Nov. 1851. 6 Woodstock British American, 6 Dec. 1851. 7 London Free Press, 27 Nov. 1851. 8 Toronto North American, 5 and 12 Dec. 1851. 9 Woodstock British American, 6 Dec. 1851. 10 Ibid.; Toronto North American, 12 Dec. 1851. 11 Gail G. Campbell, ‘Voters and Non-voters: Voter Turnout in the Nineteenth Century – Southwestern Ontario as a Case Study,’ Social Science History 11/2 (1987): 187–210. 12 See Dawe, Old Oxford, Map 11; Shenston, Oxford Gazetteer, 65–75, 84–6. 13 Toronto North American, 12 Dec. 1851; Woodstock British American, 6 Dec. 1851. 14 Toronto Globe, 4 Nov. 1851.

Notes to pages 68–73

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15 He was acclaimed in Niagara but chose to represent Oxford. 16 Data sources: Blandford Township, 1852 and 1861 manuscript censuses; Morgan, Sketches of Celebrated Canadians, 423–9; Vansittart Collection, Woodstock; and Dawe, Old Oxford, chap. 4. Vansittart’s father was promoted from rear-admiral to vice-admiral in 1841. 17 London Free Press, 22 Nov. 1851, 25 Dec. 1851 (item from the Toronto Globe that lists moderate Conservative candidates in the general election). 18 Dawe, Old Oxford, 85. They had in mind George Brown or one of the Clear Grits, John Rolph or Malcolm Cameron. 19 Hincks was author of the 1849 Railway Guarantee Act, which guaranteed up to 6% interest on railway company bonds for roads with greater than 75 miles of length and having achieved 50% completion; effectively, it gave railway companies a return on capital before the route was completed. See Careless, Union of the Canadas, Chap. 8. 20 Toronto Globe, 15 June 1850. 21 Shenston, Oxford Gazetteer, 82; Dawe, Old Oxford, 86. 22 Canada, Statutes, 1847, Chap. 117. 23 Woodstock British American, 14 April 1849. 24 London Free Press, 31 Oct. 1850, 3 and 31 Jan. 1851, 10 April 1851. 25 Toronto North American, 28 Nov. 1851. 26 C.M. Johnston, ‘Malcolm, Eliakim,’ DCB 10 (1871–1880); Colin Read, The Rising in Western Upper Canada, 1837–8: the Duncombe Revolt and After (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1982). 27 Walter Neutel, ‘From Southern Concept to Canada Southern Railway, 1835–1873,’ M.A. thesis, University of Western Ontario 1969, 30–48. 28 Woodstock British American, 14 April 1849; Toronto Globe, 15 June 1850; Shenston, Oxford Gazetteer, 82–84. 29 London Free Press, 12 June 1851, report of the Great Western directors. 30 Ibid., 23 Oct. 1851. The final plank in the platform did call for retrenchment in government expenditures, where Hincks, father of the Railway Guarantee Act, was committed to public financial support for private railway ventures. 31 Calculated from data in Dawe, Old Oxford, Map 10. 32 Shenston, Oxford Gazetteer, 82–3. 33 See Suzanne Zeller, ‘McDougall, William,’ DCB 13 (1901–1910), 633; Kenneth C. Dewar, ‘Clarke, Charles,’ DCB 13 (1901–1910); Dewar, Charles Clarke; Noel, Patrons, Clients, Brokers, 178–81. 34 Dawe, Old Oxford, 84–5; Toronto Globe, 4 Nov. 1851. 35 London Free Press, 23 Oct. 1851. On voluntaryism, the dissident Reformers

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40

41

42

43 44 45

46 47

48

Notes to pages 74–9 called for the secularization of revenue from the Clergy Reserves, an end to rectory grants, no ecclesiastical corporations, and the abolition of sectarian clauses in the common schools bill. Toronto British Colonist, 7 Nov. 1851. Zeller, ‘McDougall, William,’ 632–6. London Free Press, 20 Nov. 1851. For Scatcherd’s speech, see London Free Press, 27 Nov. 1851. Scatcherd died in office in 1858. His son Thomas Scatcherd (1823–1876) represented West Middlesex from 1861 until his death in 1876. Another son, Robert Colin Scatcherd (1835–1879), represented Middlesex North from 1876 to 1878. William Westfall, Two Worlds: The Protestant Culture of Nineteenth-Century Ontario (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 1990), chap. 4; S.F. Wise, ‘Sermon Literature and Canadian Intellectual History,’ The Bulletin (United Church Archives, 1965). Careless, Union of the Canadas, 174; J.S. Moir, Church and State in Canada West (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1959), 50–1; Alan Wilson, The Clergy Reserves of Upper Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968). Careless, Union of the Canadas, 176. In his 1899 memoir, the Rev. W.A. MacKay recalled how in Zorra ‘the “Clergy Reserve” question and the “Separate School question” were up, and a great deal of religious feeling was aroused.’ See MacKay, Pioneer Life in Zorra, 147. Moir, Church and State, 49; London Free Press, 26 June 1851. Westfall, Two Worlds, 117–8; Moir, Church and State, 7–8; London Free Press, 12 June 1851. Inferred from comparison between the published totals for Oxford with detailed information in the manuscript census. See also Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada 1854–55, App C.17. Excerpt from the Canadian Anglican journal, Church Union, printed in the Toronto North American, 18 Nov. 1851. Forty days elapsed between the closing of the polls (3 Dec. 1851) and census day (11 Jan. 1852); however, the census enumeration took place ‘between Monday the 12th day of January and 15th day of February.’ Shenston, Oxford Gazetteer, 33. The 1852 personal census for North Oxford Township is not extant, but the Ingersoll returns included some North Oxford voters; for other linkages, the authors used the 1861 personal census. Linkage was tricky for West Zorra Township whose Scottish populations included clusters of men with the same name (e.g., Sutherland, Ross, McKay).

Notes to pages 82–90

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49 A likelihood ratio test rejects the null hypothesis that the Blenheim model is statistically equivalent to that for the rest of Oxford County. 5 Elections in the Ridings of North Oxford and South Oxford, 1854–1858 1 The province held an 1857–58 general election, given that the elections in some ridings extended into January 1858. One such riding was South Oxford, whose polls closed on 31 December, but whose declaration was on 2 January. For convenience, I treat both Oxford ridings as holding 1857 general elections. 2 Woodstock Sentinel-Review, 27 June 1884. 3 Brown, ‘Scottish Settlement in West Zorra Township,’ 79. 4 Toronto Globe, 31 July 1854; copied from the Woodstock Sentinel. 5 George Alexander and John G. Vansittart were his partners. 6 Toronto Globe, 24 July 1854. 7 Toronto Globe, 24 and 31 July 1854. Hincks probably referred to Finlay Malcolm (1799–1862), a native of the United States, an Oakland Township tavern keeper, a brother of Eliakim Malcolm, and a former member of the provincial parliament for Oxford (1828–32). 8 Poll Book, East Oxford Township. 9 Margaret Coleman, ‘Cameron, Malcolm,’ DCB 10 (1871–1880). 10 Toronto Globe, 10 Aug. 1854; Ingersoll Chronicle, 23 Sept. 1854, Francis Hincks to the Liberal Electors of the County of Oxford; Coleman, ‘Cameron, Malcolm.’ Cameron had been named postmaster general in the Hincks-Morin ministry in August, but lacked a seat, having been defeated in both South Lanark and Lambton in the July 1854 general election. 11 Read, Rising in Western Upper Canada, several mentions. 12 Tillsonburg Observer, 17 March 1864, death notice for George Tillson; 26 Aug. 1869, death notice for Benjamin Van Norman. 13 Ingersoll Chronicle, 30 Sept., 7 and 14 Oct. 1854. For Dartnell’s Orange connection, see Greg Kealey, Workers and Canadian History (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995), 186. The Toronto British Canadian and Canada West Commercial and General Advertiser was probably owned by John Hillyard Cameron. Founded in Sept. 1852, it published twice a week for the first year. From 20 Sept. 1853, it published three times a week, with a weekly edition as well, called the Protestant Guardian, or Weekly British Canadian. 14 Ingersoll Chronicle, 14 Oct. 1854. 15 Ibid., 25 Nov. 1854. Although the bill was a Clear Grit measure, the Oxford

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17 18 19 20 21

22

23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30

31 32

Notes to pages 91–7 members were Hincksites, rather than Clear Grits, in their openness to supporting the coalition ministry. In their letters to electors, five candidates supported representation by population on a sectional basis, four opposed sectarian schools, and four supported the annexation of the Hudson’s Bay Territories. Ingersoll Chronicle, 4 Dec. 1857, from the Hamilton Spectator. Careless, Brown of the Globe, vol. 1, 100, 243–6. Ibid., 245; J.M.S. Careless, Brown of the Globe, vol. 2, Statesman of Confederation, 1860–1880 (Toronto: Macmillan, 1963), 187. Ingersoll Chronicle, 19 Sept. and 17 Oct. 1856, 11 Dec. 1857, Connor to the electors of the North riding. The requisition, said Brown, was ‘entirely voluntary on your part – unsolicited and unexpected on mine.’ Toronto Globe, 8 Dec. The Globe also printed the requisition from 370 North Oxford electors and Brown’s acceptance. Toronto Leader, 8 Dec. 1857; see also the issues for 10 and 12 Dec. For military applications of the Rogue’s March, see Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York: Knopf, 2010), 348, 353. Toronto Globe, 15 Dec. 1857. Ingersoll Chronicle, 2 Dec. 1858; Toronto Globe, 14 April 1858, Robert McLean, Richwood, North Oxford riding, to Globe editor, 12 April 1858. Toronto Globe, 14 and 21 April 1858. The Globe regarded Howell, although ‘a professed Reformer,’ as a Conservative; he had voted for the Conservative candidate, D.G. Miller, in the Dec. 1857 general election. His first nominator, Capt. Robert Cameron, Esq., of Nissouri, had been the second nominator for the Conservative candidate, John G. Vansittart, in the 1851 general election. Ingersoll Chronicle, 7 May 1858. Toronto Globe, 7 May 1858. Ibid., 13 May 1858. Ingersoll Chronicle, 23 Dec. 1857. Ball is classed as a Hincksite based on his support for the Hincksite candidate, Stephen Richards, in the 1858 South Oxford by-election. Ball clearly was not a Conservative. The Ingersoll Chronicle (27 Nov. 1857) alluded to his ‘grittish propensities.’ His election platform included representation by population, repeal of the usury laws and the Militia Act, and annexation of the Hudson’s Bay Territories. Gourlay himself did not vote. His sole supporter was a West Oxford elector. Ingersoll Chronicle, 17 and 23 Dec. 1857.

Notes to pages 98–111 33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40

41

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

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London Free Press, 4 Jan. 1858. Ingersoll Chronicle, 11 Dec. 1857. Ibid., 3 and 10 Sept. 1858. Ibid., 3 Sept. 1858. William Grey was a past mayor of Woodstock (1855) and the proprietor of the town’s Royal Pavilion Hotel. In the 1861 general election he was to vote for Isaac Buchanan, the Independent, and against William McDougall, the Brownite. Ingersoll Chronicle, 10 Sept. 1858. The missing Poll Book turned up, and the returns are as Moses Mott certified them to be. Ingersoll Chronicle, 10 Sept. 1858. James Young, Reminiscences of the Early History of Galt and the Settlement of Dumfries, in the Province of Ontario (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1880); City of Cambridge Hall of Fame, ‘James Cowan.’ Possibly pursuant to his election in 1858, Alexander served a term as president of the Agricultural Association of Upper Canada and was a director of the Bank of Upper Canada (which collapsed in 1866). In 1869 until his Senate appointment in 1873, he held the lucrative postmastership for Woodstock, replacing John G. Vansittart, deceased. Ingersoll Chronicle, 27 Nov. 1857. Toronto Globe, 6–14 Oct. 1858; Ingersoll Chronicle, 10 Sept. and 4 and 11 Oct. 1858. Toronto Globe, 6 Oct. 1858; Leo A. Johnson, ‘Shade, Absalom,’ DCB 9 (1861– 1870). Ingersoll Chronicle, 23 Dec. 1857, Peter Smith to editor. Ingersoll Chronicle, 11 Dec. 1857. See their letters to the editor in the Ingersoll Chronicle, 18 and 24 Dec. 1857. Ingersoll Chronicle, 11 Dec. 1857, 21 June 1861. In Britain job printers commonly published the Poll Books. Moore, Politics of Deference, 2. Toronto Globe, 13 May 1858. Ingersoll Chronicle, 3 Sept. 1858. Ibid., 16 Nov. 1860. Frederick H. Armstrong, ‘Gurnett, George,’ DCB 9 (1861–1870). Ingersoll Chronicle, 23 Sept. 1854; for Gurnett’s criticism of Brown, see also 26 Oct. 1855, 6 Feb. 1857. For Gurnett’s tribute to Hincks, see 21 Sept. 1855.

6 Elections in the Ridings of North and South Oxford, 1860–1866 1 Cornell, Alignment of Political Groups, 48–9; Peter Baskerville, ‘MacNab, Sir Allan Napier’; J.K. Johnson and P.B. Waite, ‘Macdonald, Sir John Alexan-

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6 7

8 9 10

11

12 13

Notes to pages 111–15 der,’ DCB 12 (1891–1900); Bruce W. Hodgins, ‘Macdonald, John Sandfield,’ DCB 10 (1871–1880); Peter E. Paul Dembski, ‘Carling, Sir John,’ DCB 14 (1911–1920); Portman’s address to his electors, London Free Press, 11 June 1861. Portman, son of a British peer, had married into London’s prominent Harris family. Ingersoll Chronicle, 17 May and 5 July 1861; Oxford Herald, 4 July 1861; for McDougall’s speech, see London Free Press, 1 July 1861. Oxford Herald, 13 June 1861; Ingersoll Chronicle, 5 July 1861. John Barwick, Esq., a highly regarded Blandford Conservative, had declined to run. Ingersoll Chronicle, 31 May 1861, ‘The Loyalty “Howl.”’ McDougall’s biographer reports that ‘his doubly offensive threat to “look to Washington” to rescue Upper Canada from “the control of a foreign race, and of a religion which is not the religion of the Empire,” had to be withdrawn before he could win re-election a few months later.’ See Zeller, ‘McDougall, William.’ If McDougall did recant, then the Ingersoll Chronicle did not report it. Oxford Herald, 4 July 1861. The Herald quoted approvingly George Sheppard’s unflattering description of McDougall in the Toronto British Colonist, 11 May 1858. Embro Review, 1 May 1860, microfilm, Oxford County Archives, Beachville. Data: 236 voters who could be linked to the manuscript census. Of 50 electors in St Andrew’s Ward, 56% were Presbyterian and 52% were natives of Scotland. In the four other wards the percentage for Presbyterians ranged from 14 to 41, and the percentage for Scottish birth ranged from 7 to 33. Toronto Globe, 17 June 1862. Ibid; Ingersoll Chronicle, 20 June 1862. Sandfield Macdonald’s convictions arose from his eastern location in Canada West. From his base in Cornwall he was, like John A. Macdonald in Kingston, a regional chief for ‘Central Canada’ – an area comprising the Ottawa valley and eastern Upper Canada to Belleville whose economy was tied to the St Lawrence transportation system. Sandfield Macdonald’s ‘Central Canada’ extended into Canada East to include Montreal and the Eastern Townships. W.L. Morton, The Critical Years: The Union of British North America 1857–1873 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1964), 94. Ingersoll Chronicle, 24 May 1861. Connor also supported representation by population within Canada West, alluding to ‘the evil of leaving a County such as Huron and Bruce, with a population of 80,000 or 90,000 inhabitants represented by only one member, whilst the little borough of Niagara had the same representation.’ Ingersoll Chronicle, 5 July 1861. Oxford Herald, 22 Aug. 1861.

Notes to pages 115–23 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26

27 28 29 30

31

32 33 34 35

211

Ibid., 4 July 1861. Ingersoll Chronicle, 31 May and 7 June 1861. Ibid., 21 June 1861; Oxford Herald, 4 July 1861. Ingersoll Chronicle, 19 July 1861. Oxford Herald, 29 June 1861. Ibid., 4 July 1861. Ingersoll Chronicle, 19 July 1861. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 29 Nov. 1861. Ibid., 14 Feb. 1862. Oxford Herald, 9 Jan 1862. Smith, a Free-Church Presbyterian and a native of Scotland, was in business with his brother, Malcolm. He possibly was a Highlander, his mother being a native of Argyle-Shire; his Anglican wife, Phoebe, was a daughter of Lt.-Col. Charles Strange Perley, a prominent Burford-Township Tory. See Ingersoll Chronicle, 25 Jan. 1858; Major R. Cuthbertson Muir, The Early Political and Military History of Burford (Quebec: 1913), 92–4. Ibid., 15 May 1862, H.F. Martin, Beachville, to editor; Ingersoll Chronicle, 12 Sept. 1862, H.F. Martin, Beachville, to editor. See also 7 June 1861, for coverage of the Oxford County Temperance Convention, held in Norwichville. Ingersoll Chronicle, Oct. 3 1862. For an interpretation sympathetic to Brown, see Careless, Brown of the Globe, vol. 2, 86. Ibid., 82–5. Ingersoll Chronicle, 13, 20, and 27 Feb. 1863. Brown hesitated to contest South Oxford; although he knew Ingersoll from stumping for Hincks in 1847, he was less familiar with the rest of the riding than with any county west of Belleville. See Careless, Brown of the Globe, vol. 2, 84. Chairing meant, literally, transporting the winning candidate on a chair, in this case from the hustings declaration (Hillman’s Corners, North Norwich) to Ingersoll, several miles distant (see Fig. 1.1). The practice was waning in England by mid-century. See Frank O’Gorman, ‘Campaign Rituals and Ceremonies: The Social Meaning of Elections in England, 1780–1860,’ Past and Present 135 (May 1992): 79–115. Ingersoll Chronicle, 13 March 1863. Ibid., 12 June 1863. Ibid., 5 June 1863. Careless, Brown of the Globe, vol. 1, 187, and vol. 2, 96; Ben Forster, ‘Mackenzie, Alexander.’

212

Notes to pages 123–30

36 His death notice in the Woodstock Sentinel-Review reports his birth in Dublin, Ireland; the 1861 census reports his birth country as France, and the 1852 census reports it as Scotland. Scottish vital records report the births of two brothers, Hugh Crauford (10 May 1816) and James Stratton (13 Nov. 1820), both in Greenock East, Renfrew, Scotland, but no birth record exists for John. 37 Interestingly his brother, Hugh Crauford Barwick, the Oxford County treasurer until his removal to St Catharines in 1853, had voted for the Reform candidate, Hincks, in the 1851 general election. 38 Tillsonburg Observer, 21 July 1864. The Ingersoll Chronicle, a Brownite organ, made no mention of the meeting. Harry Fargo Martin, Esq., a Conservative, was president of the association. 39 Ingersoll Chronicle, 4 15 July 1864. 40 Tillsonburg Observer, 14 July 1864. 41 The Canadian Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery of Eminent and Self-Made Men, Ontario volume (Chicago: American Biographical Pub. Co. 1880), 633–4. 42 He was elected to the Ontario Medical Council in 1872 and served as its president in 1876–77. In 1875 he was appointed superintendent of the Toronto Insane Asylum. 43 Ingersoll Chronicle, 22 June 1866. 44 Ibid., Clark to the Electors of North Oxford; Oliver to the Electors of North Oxford. 45 Ibid., 13 and 20 July 1866. 46 Ibid., 5 July 1861. 47 Ibid., 31 May 1861. 48 Ibid. 49 Oxford Herald (Ingersoll), 13 June 1861. 50 Toronto Globe, 9 April 1858. 51 Ingersoll Chronicle, 18 Nov. 1859. 52 Ibid., 9, 30 March and 5 April 1860. 53 Toronto Globe, 7 April 1860. 54 Ingersoll Chronicle, 29 Nov. and 6 Dec. 1861. 55 Tillsonburg Observer, 21 July 1864. Harry Fargo Martin, Esq., a Conservative, was president of the association. 56 For references to the Woodstock Sentinel as a ministerial organ, see Ingersoll Chronicle, 31 May and 5 July 1861; Oxford Herald, 29 June 1861. Alexander McCleneghan, publisher of the Woodstock Times, voted for William McDougall, the Brownite candidate, in 1861. 57 Sumner, ‘Newspaper Press in Oxford County.

Notes to pages 130–9 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

213

Ingersoll Chronicle, 18 July 1862. Extant copies start with its second issue. Ingersoll Chronicle, 31 May 1861. Embro Review, 1 May 1860. Careless, Brown of the Globe, vol. 1, 63–5, 72–7. Ingersoll Chronicle, 23 Feb. and 2 March 1855. Eleven electors’ lists for Oxford are extant, all of them for the mid-1850s. See Oxford County Voters’ Lists; for use of the old 40s franchise in the 1857– 58 elections, see ‘Voters’ Guide’ in Ingersoll Chronicle, 11 Dec. 1857.

7 Provincial and Dominion Elections in the Oxfords, 1867–1875 1 Ontario enacted one day of polling in 1869; the Dominion followed suit in 1871. The Ontario act, but not the Dominion act, also provided for sameday nominations and same-day polling for all ridings. 2 On 18 August 1869 Chadwick chaired a public dinner in Ingersoll for Hincks, with Ontario Premier John Sandfield Macdonald and Stephen Richards at the head table. In the riding of South Oxford in the 1871 provincial election, Chadwick was first nominator for Stephen Richards, the Hincksite candidate. In 1872 Chadwick chaired a partisan rally in Ingersoll for Frances Hincks held at ‘Maple Grove, the residence of Mr Edward Robinson, where a platform had been erected and other provisions made for the speaker.’ Ingersoll Chronicle, 19 Aug. 1869, 18 July 1872. 3 Ingersoll Chronicle, 16 March 1871. For Chadwick, see Emery and Jamieson, Adam Oliver, 29–32. 4 Ingersoll Chronicle, 27 June 1867. Daniel Phelan (1820–1891) was an Irishborn Roman Catholic, a resident of Canada since 1831, a merchant in Woodstock and Ingersoll (1837–52), and Ingersoll’s postmaster (1847–52); acquiring a competency in 1852, he was an independently wealthy gentleman. 5 Ingersoll Chronicle, 3 June 1869. 6 Ibid., 5 Sept. 1867. The Poll Books for this election are not extant; newspapers give partial information about the votes polled. 7 ‘The position, we understand, was unsolicited by Mr Perry,’ stated the Ingersoll Chronicle, 27 Feb. and 6 March 1873. 8 Ingersoll Chronicle 27 June and 4 July 1867. Oliver accepted a requisition from 928 electors, whose names appeared in the May 23 issue of the Chronicle. Noxon accepted a request from “a large number of influential electors.” 9 Emery, Noxons of Ingersoll.

214 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18

19

20 21

22 23 24

Notes to pages 139–45 Emery and Jamieson, Adam Oliver. Ingersoll Chronicle, 8 Feb. 1861. Ibid., 5 Sept. 1867. Ibid., 7 and 9 March 1871. Emery and Jamieson, Adam Oliver, 75–94. Ingersoll Chronicle, 8 Jan. 1874; Woodstock Weekly Review, 16 Jan. 1874. Ingersoll Chronicle, 15 July 1875; Emery and Jamieson, Adam Oliver, 71–3. Although the successful plea bargain saved the defendants from the full force of the law – eight years of disqualification as a candidate and a voter – Oliver declined to contest the subsequent by-election due to ‘business of a personal nature.’ Local Brownites gamely (or shamelessly) played the victim in the by-election. The Ingersoll Chronicle regretted that Oliver was not a candidate, inasmuch as no personal corruption had been proved against him; P.J. Brown, his campaign manager, remained respected in the community, despite having been ‘singled out for all the abuse that language could command.’ ‘After a most searching examination at the trial, of all the witnesses called by the prosecution to prove personal bribery,’ resolved the South-Oxford Brownite Association, ‘not a particle of evidence could be found to provide their malicious charges.’ Ingersoll Chronicle 22 July and 5 Aug. 1875. Ontario, Sessional Papers, 1875–6, no. 48. The nine overturned elections were for Cornwall (grounds unknown); Elgin West (scrutiny and recount of the votes); Halton, Peterborough West, Victoria North, and Wellington West (bribery); and Oxford South, Wentworth North, and Grey North (treating). Garner, Franchise and Politics, 213; Toronto Globe, 15 July 1858. Treating was the Select Comittee’s grounds for overturning the 1858 North Wellington election. Ingersoll Chronicle, 29 Aug. 1867. Tillsonburg Observer, 7 March 1867; Ingersoll Chronicle, 21 Feb. and 7 March 1867. The two papers covered a flap arising from rumours, ultimately disproven, that Bodwell had been improperly ‘brought out’ by members of the County Council. Subsequently, George Brown ran and lost in the riding of Ontario South. His defeat marked the end of his parliamentary career. Tillsonburg Observer, 16 Jan. 1874. Ingersoll Chronicle, 29 Aug. 1872. Woodstock Weekly Review, 9 and 30 Jan. 1874. Bodwell was the unanimous choice of a Brownite convention; that convention attracted little interest because its choice was a foregone conclusion.

Notes to pages 146–52

215

25 James Brady (1832–1911), an Ingersoll hotel keeper (Brady House), was formerly a carpenter and builder, then an auctioneer. During the early 1850s he worked for Adam Oliver on the construction of station buildings for the Great Western Railway. He was at the London station on 17 Dec. 1853 when the first train came in. 26 Woodstock Weekly Review, 8 May 1874; Ingersoll Chronicle, 7 May 1874; Tillsonburg Observer, 8 May 1874. 27 Emery and Jamieson, Adam Oliver, 65, 85. 28 Paul Stevens, ‘Edgar, Sir James David,’ DCB 12 (1891–1900). 29 Woodstock Weekly Review, 1 May 1874; Ingersoll Chronicle, 7 May 1874, Minutes of the Reform Convention at Mount Elgin, 1 May 1874. 30 George Maclean Rose, A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography, Series I (Toronto: Rose Publishing Co. 1886), 618. 31 Woodstock Sentinel, 15 May 1874. 32 Ingersoll Chronicle, 7, 15, and 21 May 1874; Toronto Globe, 15 and 22 May 1874. 33 Woodstock Weekly Review, 29 May 1874; Ingersoll Chronicle, 21 May 1874; Woodstock Sentinel, 29 May 1874; Tillsonburg Observer, 8 May 1874. 34 Woodstock Weekly Review, 29 May 1874. 35 Ibid., 16 Jan. 1874. 36 Woodstock Weekly Review, 23 Jan. 1874 37 Ibid.; Woodstock Sentinel, 23 Jan. 1874. 38 Canada, Statutes, 1866, Act Respecting Municipal Institutions of Upper Canada, Cap. LI, s. 81; Ontario, Statutes, 1869, Elections Act, Cap. XXI. Ontario’s 1874 Franchise-Extension Act introduced an income franchise (an income of $400 from some trade, subject to a residence requirement); it first applied in the Province’s 1875 secret-ballot general election. 39 Published statistics for the electors in the riding of North Oxford are available for 1861 but not 1871, when the general election ended in acclamation. 40 Wilson, Tenants in Time, 23–44; 232, Table 3.3. Of 2,005 township voters, 80 per cent were owners, 14 per cent were tenants, and 5 per cent were occupants. In the 1871 provincial election, percentages of votes given to Oliver, the Brownite candidate, were 58 for owners; 63, tenants; and 66, occupants. 41 Woodstock Weekly Review, 29 May 1874; Tillsonburg Observer, 8 May 1874. 42 For example, Toronto men won just 12% of the Ontario seats (10 of the 85) in the 1872 Dominion general elections, down from 15% (10 of 65 seats) in Canada’s 1861 general election. Six of the ten seats in 1872 and five of the ten in 1861 were in Toronto and York County.

216 43 44 45 46

47

48

49

50

51 52 53 54

55

Notes to pages 153–7 Ingersoll Chronicle, 14 Sept. 1871. Woodstock Sentinel, 22 Jan. 1874; Ingersoll Chronicle, 30 Jan. 1874. Tillsonburg Observer, 7, 14 Feb. and 21 March 1867. Don DeBats, ‘Using GIS and Individual-Level Data for Whole Communities: A Path toward the Reconciliation of Political and Social History,’ Social Science Computer Review (Feb. 2009): 8. Don DeBats, ‘Deference vs. Community: An Exploration of Mass Political Engagement in the Nineteenth Century Worlds of “British” and American Politics,’ paper presented at the Social Science History Association annual meeting, Portland, Oregon, Nov. (?) 2005, 15; Bruce Richard, ‘Tillson, Edwin Delevan,’ DCB 13 (1901–1910); John Irwin Cooper, ‘Tillson, George,’ DCB 9 (1861–1870); Norman R. Ball, ‘Van Norman, Joseph,’ DCB 11 (1881–1890); William Cochrane, ed., ‘Edwin D. Tillson,’ Men of Canada, vol. 1 (Brantford: 1891), 110. E.D. Tillson Papers, Annandale House Archives, Tillsonburg, Tillson to Sir Francis Hincks, 14, 23, 26, 30 Jan. and 25 March 1871; Tillson to Edwin Doty, Ingersoll, 28 Jan. 1871; Tillson to Aquila Walsh, Esq., MP for Norfolk, 30 Jan. 1871; Tillson to Stephen Richards, Toronto, 29 April 1871. Hannah was Benjamin’s second wife. Benjamin’s first wife and E.D.’s sister, Harriet Tillson, had died in 1841. George Tillson, E.D.’s father and Joseph Van Norman’s business partner, was father-in-law to Benjamin. E.D. married a cousin, Mary Ann Van Norman, a daughter to Joseph Van Norman, Benjamin’s brother. The Tillsonburg postmaster received $171.06 in commissions over a ninemonth period in 1863–64 and $206.22 over twelve months in 1869–70. Canada, Reports of the Postmaster-General, Sessional Papers, no. 3, 1865, and no. 2, 1872. DeBats, ‘Using GIS and Individual-Level Data,’ 8–10. Ingersoll Chronicle, 25 July 1872. Tillsonburg Observer, 1870–73 and Ingersoll Chronicle, 1870–73. An Air Line road followed a relatively flat and straight short route rather than a more easily constructed but longer route. Thus, for example, it used a bridge with high trestles to pass directly across a broad valley. Pat Scrimgeour, ‘Historical Outlines of Railways in Southwestern Ontario,’ Upper Canada Railway Society Newsletter (July 1990). Public meetings in Ingersoll considered a line from Port Ryerse (Norfolk County) to Ingersoll (Dec. 1871) and then an Ingersoll-Tillsonburg-Port Burwell line (Feb. 1872), before settling on the Credit Valley Railway. Tillsonburg entrepreneurs organized the Tillsonburg, Lake Erie Pacific Railway in 1890; the road was completed from Port Burwell to the Air Line in Tillsonburg in 1896, and

Notes to pages 157–68

56

57

58

59 60

217

completed to the Credit Valley Railway line in Ingersoll in 1902. By then the Air Line was a Grand Trunk road and the Credit Valley Railway was part of the Canadian Pacific Railroad system. Initially at issue, to squeeze bonus money out of Ingersoll, was whether the Credit Valley Railway would reach London through Ingersoll or through Embro and Zorra, bypassing Ingersoll to the north. The names of the petitioners are reported in the Tillsonburg Observer, 26 June 1873. An 1876 atlas map of Dereham Township reports the owners’ names of lots; see Topographical and Historical Atlas of the County of Oxford, Ontario (Toronto: Walker and Miles, 1876), 39. Even the mooted Ingersoll-Tillsonburg-Port Burwell line, whose proposed route ran north-south through the township, held little attraction in Dereham, opined Bodwell at the first meeting of this short-lived railway company, four months before the by-law plebiscite. Despite his negative appraisal of opinion in Dereham, Bodwell, the MP for the riding of South Oxford, became a provisional director of the short-lived company. The MPP for the riding, Adam Oliver, also was a provisional director. See Woodstock Sentinel-Review, 28 March 1872. Ingersoll Chronicle, 12 and 17 July 1873. Ibid., 31 July 1873, editorial on the Credit Valley Railway bonus election; 4 Dec. 1873, Bodwell’s address at a St Andrew’s Day dinner.

8 Democracy in Oxford County Elections, 1838–1875 1 Ontario, Statutes, 1926, Chap. 4, s. 58. 2 Woodstock Sentinel, 1 May 1874, Report of Antoine-Aimé Dorion’s parliamentary speech to move the second reading of the 1874 Dominion Elections Bill. In the 1874 Dominion election , four men were nominated in the riding of North Oxford simply to allow them to address the electors. See Woodstock Weekly Review, 23 Jan. 1874. 3 Ingersoll Chronicle, 23 Jan. and 17 April 1873; 5 Feb. 1874; Woodstock Sentinel, 24 April 1874; Woodstock Weekly Review, 13 March 1874; Tillsonburg Observer, 3 April 1874; London Free Press, 24 April 1874. 4 Noel, Patrons, Clients, Brokers, 89–90, 218, 275–7. 5 The demise of Toronto lawyers in the Oxford elections was temporary. As noted above, Premier Oliver Mowat won North Oxford in 1872 and held the riding through 1896. A second Toronto lawyer, Adam Crooks, a defeated minister in the Mowat administration, won the 1875 South Oxford by-election to replace Adam Oliver and held the riding through to 1883.

218

Notes to pages 168–75

6 Comparable statistics are unavailable for the North riding, which did not have a contested election in 1871. 7 For the number of electors in contested ridings, see Canada, Sessional Papers, 1862, no. 24, General Election Returns; and Ontario, Sessional Papers, 1872–73, no. 39. The denominator in each calculation is an estimate; it assumes that the percentage of adult males in the population of the contested riding was the same as for the whole population. 8 The calculations are for 21 Union-era elections and 13 post-Confederation elections. 9 In her study of electors in three Oxford municipalities (Dereham, Ingersoll, and East Nissouri), Gail Campbell judged that a minority of eligible electors voted in every election and 5% were consistent non-voters. See Campbell, ‘Voters and Non-voters.’ 10 The percentage of Canada West electors who voted was 73 in 1861, 75 in the 1867 Dominion general election, 63 in the 1871 provincial election, and 74 in the 1874 Dominion general election. 11 Canada, Statutes, 1860, Cap. XVII, preamble. 12 Garner, Franchise and Politics, 210–13. 13 Wellington North, 1858. See Toronto Globe, 15 July 1858. 14 The Oxfords were unaffected by ‘dual representation,’ which allowed an individual to sit simultaneously in the Dominion and provincial parliaments during the years 1867–73. 15 For England, see O’Gorman, ‘Campaign Rituals and Ceremonies’; Jon Lawrence, Electing Our Masters: The Hustings in British Politics from Hogarth to Blair (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Although American parties organized spectacular mass demonstrations in elections, these acted primarily to mobilize electors, not the larger public. See Michael E. McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865–1928 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Keyssar, Right to Vote. 16 An alternative to the book’s model of many groups is a two-group model in which a Tory group evolved (from High Tory to moderate Conservative) and a Reform group splintered (into Hincksite, Clear Grit, Brownite, and Sandfield-Macdonald fragments). Indeed, that is how some contemporaries viewed it: Brownites and Hincksites accused each other of dividing ‘the party.’ 17 The present-day Canada Elections Act ensures that each major party has just one candidate in a given riding. The statute provides for voluntary registration of the party, the name of its leader, and the address of its home office. A registered party may endorse candidates, but with no more than one endorsement per riding. An endorsed candidate may have his or her

Notes to pages 175–84

18 19 20 21 22

23

24

219

party affiliation stated on the ballot forms, conditional on filing with the returning officer a signed, written statement of endorsement from the party’s leader. See Canada, Revised Statutes, 1985, c.14, Canada Elections Act, ss. 24.1, 81.1, and 82.1. Noel, Patrons, Clients, Brokers, 142. Dawe, Old Oxford, 83. Of 54 magistrates who voted in 1851, 15 declared for Vansittart. London Free Press, 23 Oct. 1851. Globe advertisement in the Ingersoll Chronicle, 23 Feb. and 2 March 1855. Sumner, ‘Newspaper Press in Oxford County.’ Microfilm copies of newspapers have a huge gap in coverage for Woodstock, the county seat. They include a strong coverage by several newspapers for the 1840s, but then nothing until the mid-1870s. The run of the Ingersoll Chronicle is largely complete from 1854 through to 1919. A complete run of the Tillsonburg Observer starts in 1863. The location of polls mattered statistically in some cases. Four of Woodstock’s five wards consistently favoured Conservative and Hincksite candidates; Ingersoll was a Brownite stronghold. Noel, Patrons, Clients, Brokers, 89–90, 218, 275–7.

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Index

1837 western rebellion, influence on elections, xvi, 44–5, 47, 49, 53, 59–61, 180 Alexander, George, 102–4, 109, 185 Alway, Robert, 45 Armstrong, John, 49–50 Bagot, Sir Charles, 49–51, 68 Baldwin, Robert, 21, 40, 50, 57–60, 63, 69–70, 91, 99, 174 Baldwinite party, 57–60, 63 Ball, Francis Ramsay, 92, 96–100, 104, 108–9, 173–4, 180 Barwick, John, 34, 36, 73, 112, 122–3, 181, 210n3 Benjamin, George, 40 Bettridge, Rev. William, 34, 49 Blake, Edward, 137, 141 Blake, Oliver, 118–19, 185 blocking game, 96, 100, 109, 171 Bodwell, Ebenezer Vining, xv, 92, 96–7, 104, 106, 109, 115, 118–22, 124, 128, 133, 135, 140, 144–6, 153, 155, 158–60, 164, 167, 175–6, 180, 185 book’s purpose and contribution to the literature, xiii–xiv, 162

Brant County and Brantford, xiii, xviii, 8, 28, 37–8, 43, 54, 69–72, 79, 132, 155–7, 169, 184, 198n36 Brock District, 20–1, 31–2, 45–6, 55–6, 59, 68–9, 74, 89, 123; Constitutional Association, 50–1 Brown, George, xv, xvii, 14, 57–60, 63, 68, 86, 91, 92–5, 97, 106–8, 119– 24, 130–5, 137, 144, 146, 153, 159, 167, 170, 173–5, 179, 185 Brown, Peter Johnston, 140, 142–3, 146–7, 214n17 Brownite party, 85, 92–4 Buchanan, Isaac, 110–12, 175 Burwell, Mahlon, 35, 45–6, 74 by-elections, 14, 171–2, 185 Cameron, John Hillyard, 93 Cameron, Malcolm ‘Coon,’ 74, 88 Campbell, Robert H., 56, 58, 60, 175 candidates: campaign expenses, 106–7; Legislative Assembly qualifications, 13–14, 57, 64; Legislative Council qualifications, 102, 166; methods of bringing out, 104–5, 128, 177–9; non-resident, xvii, 95, 120–1, 130–1, 152, 159–60, 167–8

232

Index

Carroll, James (Sherriff), 16, 35–6, 64–6, 94, 100–1, 113, 119, 121, 124 Carroll, Peter, 35–6, 48–9, 55–6, 58–60, 87, 108 case study, purpose and limitations, xiii–xiv, xviii, 37–9, 43, 183–4 census data for occupation, reliability, 7 Chadwick, Charles E., 23, 118–20, 137, 213n2 chairing a candidate, 121 Clark, Charles, xv Clark, Dr Daniel, 124–5, 134, 138–9 Clear Grits, 63, 65, 68, 73–5, 86, 88–90, 108, 177 Clergy Reserves, 64, 75–8, 83–4 Connor, George Skeffington, xvii, 14, 91–3, 96–102, 104, 107–9, 113–17, 119, 128–30, 132, 167, 171, 173, 185 Conservative party, 62–3, 68–9, 83, 88–90 conventions, delegated party, 89, 104–5, 118–21, 124, 128, 134–6, 145–8, 175 Cook, Dr Ephraim, 88–90, 96, 98–9, 104–6, 108–9, 116, 119, 121–2, 166, 180, 185 Cowan, James, 102–4 Dartnell, Edward Taylor, 88–90, 207n13 Deedes, Edmund, 34, 50–1 democracy, xi–xiii: as anathema, xii; British vs. American traditions, xv; as an election issue, 176–7; in Oxford County elections, xv–xvi, xviii, 108; parliamentary, definition, xi, 162 disenfranchisement: territorial, xii,

12–13; of women and certain others, 12 Duncombe, Dr Charles, 42, 45, 48 Edgar, James David, 145–8, 173, 176 elections: Crown administration of, 15; controverted, 19–20, 53–4, 60, 98, 136, 142–4, 163, 170, 173–4, 183; corrupt practices, xvii, 142–4, 170–1; imperial and provincial structures for, xiv–xv, 163–4; Legislative Council, 85, 102–4, 117–19; and non-electors, 172–3; statutory provisions to curb corrupt practices 16–19. See also by-elections electorate, 5, 9, 66–7, 168–9 Elgin West riding, xviii, 184 establishment religion. See Clergy Reserves ethnic and ethno-religious identity as concepts, 25–7 ethnic formation in Oxford, nativity and religion, 33–4 ethno-religious influence on voters, xvii–xviii, 64, 78–82, 126–7, 135, 182–3 Ford, Nathan C., 118–19 franchise: 40-shilling-freehold, 10–11; age, sex, naturalization, and property requirements, 9, 11; assessment, 11–12, 110; extent of, xvii, 12, 132–3 Galliford, John, 97, 100, 104 Gourlay, Robert Fleming, 97, 106 governor’s discretionary powers, 16 Gowan, Ogle, 40, 42 Great Coalition, 123–4, 137 Gurnett, John Sawyers, 107, 128, 165

Index High Tory faction, 34–6, 48–52, 54–5, 60, 68–9, 77–8 Highland Games in Oxford, 31–2 Hincks, Francis, xvi–xvii, 14, 16, 40, 42, 44, 48–88, 131, 153–5, 167, 173–7, 180, 185 Hincksite party, 62–3, 73–5, 95 Hincksite-Conservative coalition party, 85–6, 91 Hunter, Roger Rollo, 35–6, 45–8, 51, 60, 175, 181, 185 hustings, definition, xvi, 24, 87, 196n56 Ingersoll, Charles, 35–6, 45 Ingersoll Chronicle, politics of, 107–8 Ingersoll, James, 16, 35–6, 46, 49, 87, 96, 116–17, 124 Ingersoll municipality, 5–6, 35, 38, 79 Kintrea, James, 138 Legislative Council: and the elective principle, 8; electoral divisions that included an Oxford riding, 8 local government, elective, 20–2 Macdonald, Sir John A., 23, 111, 119, 123, 134, 137, 144–5 Macdonald, John Sandfield, 111, 113, 122, 137, 139–40, 154 Mackenzie, Alexander, 122, 137, 141, 149 Mackenzie, Hope, 122–5, 130, 132–3, 167, 185 Malcolm, Eliakim, 64, 69–70, 72, 180 Martin, Harry Fargo, 115, 118–19, 122, 128, 130, 145 Mason, Charles, 97, 104

233

Matheson, Donald, 86–7, 92–4, 96, 98, 108–9, 166, 175, 183, 185 MacNab, Sir Allan, 40, 70, 85–6, 88, 107 McDougall, William, xvii, 14, 74, 91, 94–6, 105–6, 111–15, 122, 129–32, 167, 171, 185 members of provincial parliament (MPPs) , workload and indemnity, 14–15 Metcalfe, Sir Charles, 50–2 Miller, Daniel G., 87, 92, 94, 102, 122, 171 Morrison, Joseph Curran, 91, 94–6, 106, 131–2, 167, 171 Mowat, Oliver, xvii, 137–8, 141, 152, 159, 167, 174, 176 Nesbitt, William E., 115, 154, 171 Newspapers: metropolitan, 57–8, 130–1, 179; Oxford County, 129–30, 134, 179 Norfolk county riding, xviii, 8, 51, 118–19, 129, 153–4, 176, 184 Noxon, James, 6, 38, 117, 139–42, 145, 146–8, 158–60 old-country national societies in Oxford, 32–3 old-settler Tories, 35–6 Oliver, Adam, 120, 139–42, 145–6, 153, 155, 159–60, 166–7, 185 Oliver, Thomas, 122, 124–6, 135, 138, 144, 148–9, 159, 166–7, 175, 183, 185 one man, one vote, 13 Orange order, 39–40, 180–1, 184 Orangemen in Oxford, xvii–xviii, 18, 26, 39–43, 89, 115, 180–1, 184 Oxford County: location, population,

234

Index

economy, 3–7, 85; Poll Books, 9; ridings and their territories, 8; ridings in provincial context, 183–4 Oxford Herald, Ingersoll, politics of, 130 partyism, xvi, 85, 88, 90–2, 98, 108, 125, 133–4, 136–7, 145, 159, 175, 177, 192n9 patronage, 20, 23, 66, 87–8, 153–5, 176 Perry, George, 103, 112, 122, 138–9, 148–9, 176, 183, 185 Phelan, Daniel, 137–8, 140, 213n4 political party, definition, 191n3 political formations in Oxford: factions, parties, and loose fish, xvi– xvii, 60, 83, 97, 174–5 probit estimates of social influences on voters, 34, 78–82, 126–7, 149–51, 160–1, 182 processions and celebrations, 66, 99, 101–2, 115–17, 121, 140 public service, Canada West, 22–4 radical democracy. See Clear Grits railway politics, 69–73, 92, 96, 109, 155–9, 180 responsible government, 44–8, 50–1, 60 representation by population on a sectional basis, 110–11 returning officer, Vansittart’s disqualification of Hincks, 56–9 Richards, Stephen, 42–3, 91, 98–101, 106–7, 113–17, 140–1, 153–5, 167, 171 Riddell, Robert, 30, 35–6, 50–6, 60, 173, 175, 181, 183, 185, 202–3n21 riding associations, 129, 134, 152–3

Rogue’s March, 94, 173, 208n22 Ross, Alexander (Sherriff), 124, 138–9 Scatcherd, John, 64–5, 67, 69, 73–5, 78, 83, 206n39 Scottish ethnic formation in Oxford, 30–2 secret-ballot method of election, 8, 24–5, 165–6 sectionalism, Canada West, xvi, 39– 40, 110–12, 114–15, 133, 177, 192n10 Shade, Absalom, 103–4 Shenston, Thomas, 57–8, 60, 71, 174 Skinner, John Aitchison, 145–8, 175, 185 Smith, John, Esq., 116, 118, 124 social class: in Oxford, three models, 34–9, 181–2; three models, xviii, 27–8 Sydenham, Lord, 20, 22, 48, 50 Taylor, Henry, 115–17, 135, 171 Thrall, Dr John Hamilton, 145, 159 Tillson, Edward Develan, 153–5, 157, 160, 176 Tillsonburg, 5, 89, 193n22 Tillsonburg Observer, politics, 130 Van Norman, Benjamin, 64, 69, 87– 90, 104–6, 109, 154 Vansittart, John George, 36, 42, 56, 58–9, 61–84, 87–8, 103, 132–3, 147, 176, 181, 204n4 Vansittart, Vice-Admiral, 34–5, 50–1, 198n30, 205n16 voice-vote method of election, xvi, 24–5, 44–5, 50, 64–7, 82–3, 136–7, 164–6

Index voluntaryism, definition, xv, 76, 191n6 Wood, James Henry, 148–9, 153 Woodstock: half-pay officer community, xviii, 5, 34–5, 84, 181; munici-

235

pality, 5–6, 38; statistics for electors and voter turnout, 112–13, 132–3, 169–70 Zorra Highlanders in Oxford, 5, 28–32