Editing Family Compact (section)

=="Gentlemanly capitalism" and British colonialism==
{{see also|Landed gentry}}

The historians P.&nbsp;J. Cain and A.&nbsp;G. Hopkins have emphasized that the British Empire at "the mid-nineteenth century represented the extension abroad of the institutions and principles entrenched at home".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Cain |first1=P.&nbsp;J. |last2=Hopkins |first2=A.&nbsp;G. |title=British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion 1688–1914 |publisher=Longman |location=London |pages=13}}</ref> Upper Canada, created in the very "image and transcript" of the British constitution is but one example. Like that of the United Kingdom, the constitution of Upper Canada was established on the [[mixed monarchy]] model. Mixed monarchy is a form of government that integrates elements of [[democracy]], [[aristocracy]], and [[monarchy]].<ref>{{cite book |last=McNairn|first=Jeffrey L.|title=The Capacity to Judge: Public Opinion and Deliberative Democracy in Upper Canada 1791–1854|year=2000|publisher=University of Toronto Press|location=Toronto|pages=25–43}}</ref>  Upper Canada, however, had no aristocracy. The methods pursued to create one were similar to that used in Britain itself.<ref>{{cite book |last=Smith |first=Andrew |title=British Businessmen and Canadian Confederation: Constitution Making in an Era of Anglo-Globalization |year=2008 |publisher=McGill-Queen's University Press |location=Montreal-Kingston}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Schrauwers |first=Albert |title=Union is Strength: W.L. Mackenzie, the Children of Peace, and the emergence of Joint Stock Democracy in Upper Canada |year=2009 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |location=Toronto}}</ref>  The result was the Family Compact.

Cain and Hopkins point out that "new money", the financiers rather than the industrial "barons", were gradually gentrified through the purchase of land, intermarriage and the acquisition of titles. In the United Kingdom, the control exercised by the aristocracy over the House of Commons remained undisturbed before 1832 and was only slowly eroded thereafter, while its dominance of the executive lasted well beyond 1850."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Cain |first1=P.&nbsp;J. |last2=Hopkins |first2=A.&nbsp;G. |title=British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion 1688–1914 |publisher=Longman |location=London |pages=58–9}}</ref>  Hopkins and Cain refer to this alliance of aristocracy and financiers as "[[gentlemanly capitalism]]": "a form of capitalism headed by improving aristocratic landlords in association with improving financiers who served as their junior partners."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Cain |first1=P.&nbsp;J. |last2=Hopkins |first2=A.&nbsp;G. |title=British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion 1688–1914 |publisher=Longman |location=London |page=9}}</ref> A similar pattern is seen in other colonial empires, such as the Dutch Empire.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Schrauwers |first=Albert |title="Regenten" (Gentlemanly) Capitalism: Saint-Simonian Technocracy and the Emergence of the "Industrialist Great Club" |journal=Enterprise & Society |year=2011 |volume=11 |issue=4|pages=755–785 |doi=10.1093/es/khq064}}</ref>

This same process is seen in Upper Canada. The historian J.&nbsp;K. Johnson's analysis of the Upper Canadian elite between 1837 and 1840 measured influence according to overlapping leadership roles on the boards of the main social, political and economic institutions. For example, [[William Allan (banker)|William Allan]], one of the most powerful, "was an executive councillor, a legislative councillor, President of the Toronto and Lake Huron Railroad, Governor of the British American Fire and Life Assurance Company and President of the Board of Trade."<ref>{{cite journal |last=Aitken |first=H.&nbsp;G.&nbsp;J. |title=The Family Compact and the Welland Canal Company |journal=Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science |year=1952 |volume=17 |pages=76}}</ref> Johnson's conclusion contests the common assertion that "none of the leading members of the Compact were business men, and ... the system of values typical of the Compact accorded scant respect to business wealth as such." The overlapping social, political and economic leadership roles of the Family Compact demonstrates, he argues, that <blockquote>they were not a political elite taking political decisions in a vacuum, but an overlapping elite whose political and economic activities cannot be entirely separated from each other. They might even be called 'entrepreneurs', most of whose political views may have been highly conservative but whose economic outlook was clearly {{nowrap begin}}'developmental'.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Johnson |first=J.&nbsp;K. |title=The U.C. Club and the Upper Canadian Elite, 1837–1840 |journal=Ontario History |year=1977 |volume=69 |pages=162}}</ref>{{nowrap end}}</blockquote> The Family Compact's role in the [[Welland Canal]] is one example.

Elite Upper Canadians sought "gentility" including the acquisition of landed estates, roles as Justices of the Peace, military service, the pursuit of "improved farming", grammar school education, ties to the Church of England – all in combination with the acquisition of wealth through the Bank of Upper Canada amongst others.<ref>{{cite book |last=Schrauwers |first=Albert |title=Union is Strength: W.L. Mackenzie, the Children of Peace, and the emergence of Joint Stock Democracy in Upper Canada |year=2009 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |location=Toronto |pages=247–254}}</ref> It is through the pursuit of gentility that the Family Compact was born.

===Constitutional context===
Upper Canada did not have a hereditary nobility. In its place, senior members of Upper Canada bureaucracy, the [[Executive Council of Upper Canada]] and [[Legislative Council of Upper Canada]], made up the elite of the compact.<ref name="Wallace">[https://archive.org/details/familycompactchr24walluoft <!-- quote=The family compact a chronicle of the rebellion in Upper Canada by W. Stewart Wallace. --> W.S. Wallace, ''The Family Compact''], Toronto 1915.</ref> These men sought to solidify their personal positions into family dynasties and acquire all the marks of gentility. They used their government positions to extend their business and speculative interests.

The origins of the Family Compact lay in overlapping appointments made to the Executive and Legislative councils of Upper Canada. The councils were intended to operate independently. Section 38 of the [[Constitutional Act of 1791]] referred to the independence of the offices indirectly. While [[Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester|Sir Guy Carleton]], Lieutenant Governor of Lower Canada, pointed out that the offices were intended to be separate, Lord Grenville set the wheels in motion with [[John Graves Simcoe]], Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, by pointing out that there was no legal impediment to prevent cross-appointments. Simcoe used the vague statement in Section 38 to make the following appointments<ref name="Narratives">{{cite web |url=http://www.uppercanadahistory.ca/pp/pp4.html |title=Historical Narratives of Early Canada |author=W.R. Wilson |access-date=March 21, 2011}}</ref>
{| class="wikitable"
! colspan=2 | Family Compact political appointments circa 1794
|- style="font-size:88%"
! scope=row | Executive Council of Upper Canada
| {{flatlist}}
* [[William Osgoode]]
* [[William Robertson (Western Quebec and Upper Canada)|William Robertson]]
* [[Alexander Grant (Upper Canada politician)|Alexander Grant]]
* [[Peter Russell (politician)|Peter Russell]]
* [[James Baby]]
{{endflatlist}}
|- style="font-size:88%"
! scope=row | Legislative Council of Upper Canada
| {{flatlist}}
* [[William Osgoode]]
* [[William Robertson (Western Quebec and Upper Canada)|William Robertson]]
* [[Alexander Grant (Upper Canada politician)|Alexander Grant]]
* [[Peter Russell (politician)|Peter Russell]]
* [[Richard Duncan (Upper Canada politician)|Richard Duncan]]
* [[Robert Hamilton (judge)|Robert Hamilton]]
* [[Richard Cartwright (born 1759)|Richard Cartwright]]
* [[John Munro (loyalist)|John Munro]]
{{endflatlist}}
|}
The Family Compact exerted influence over the government through the Executive Council and Legislative Council, the advisers to the [[Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada|lieutenant governor]], leaving the popularly elected [[Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada|Legislative Assembly]] with little real power. As became clear with Lieutenant Governor Sir Francis Bond Head, the influence of the Family Compact could be quite limited as well. Members ensured their conservative friends held the important administrative and judicial positions in the colony through political patronage.

===Membership===
The centre of the compact was [[York, Upper Canada|York]] (later renamed [[Old Toronto|Toronto]]), the capital. Its most important member was Bishop [[John Strachan]]; many of the other members were his former students, or people who were related to him. The most prominent of Strachan's pupils was [[Sir John Robinson, 1st Baronet, of Toronto|Sir John Beverley Robinson]] who was from 1829 the Chief Justice of [[Upper Canada]] for 34 years. The rest of the members were mostly descendants of [[United Empire Loyalists]] or recent upper-class British settlers such as the Boulton family, builders of the [[The Grange (Toronto)|Grange]].

A triumvirate of lawyers, [[Levius Peters Sherwood|Levius Sherwood]] (speaker of the Legislative Council, judge in the Court of King's Bench), Judge [[Jonas Jones]], and Attorney General [[Henry John Boulton]] were linked by professional and business ties, and by marriage; both Sherwood and Boulton being married to Jones’ sisters. Collectively, their extended family (if we include the Robinsons, and James B. Macaulay, Boulton's former clerk) comprise three quarters of the "Family Compact" listed by Mackenzie in 1833.

{{Members of the Family Compact}}

{{Gallery
| title  = Elite Members
| width  = 120
| height = 100
|File:Sir_John_Beverley_Robinson.jpg|alt1=Sir John Beverley Robinson|John Robinson. Acknowledged leader of the Family Compact. Member of the Legislative Assembly and later the Legislative Council.
|File:Johnstrachan1865.jpg|alt2=Bishop John Strachan|Bishop Strachan. Acknowledged Anglican leader in the Family Compact.
|File:William Osgoode.png|alt3=William Osgoode|William Osgoode. 1st Chief Justice of Upper Canada notable for allowing non-Anglican priests to solemnize marriages.
|File:Jonas Jones.png|alt4=Jonas Jones|Jonas Jones, lawyer, banker
|Image:Neas Shaw.jpg|alt5=Æneas Shaw|Æneas Shaw. Early member of the compact. Appointed to the Executive Council and Legislative Council of Upper Canada in 1794.
|File:James FitzGibbon - Project Gutenberg eText 18025.png|alt6=James FitzGibbon|Col. James FitzGibbon, militia commander
|File:William Henry Boulton.png|alt7=William Henry Boulton|William Henry Boulton 8th Mayor of Toronto and member of the Legislative Assembly
|File:ANMacNab.jpg|alt8=ANMacNab|Sir Allan Napier MacNab, 1st Baronet Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada
|File:Henry Sherwood.png|alt9=Henry Sherwood|Henry Sherwood, 13th Parliament of Upper Canada representing Brockville
|File:James Buchanan Macaulay (black and white, portrait).jpg|Sir James Buchanan Macaulay, [[Order of the Bath|CB]]
}}

===Loyalist ideology===
{{Toryism |expanded=general}}
The uniting factors amongst the compact were its loyalist tradition, hierarchical class structure and adherence to the established Anglican church.  Leaders such as [[Sir John Robinson, 1st Baronet, of Toronto|Sir John Robinson]] and [[John Strachan]] proclaimed it an ideal government, especially as contrasted with the rowdy democracy in the nearby United States.<ref name="Canadian Encyclopedia" />

Not all views of the elite were universally shared, but a critical element was the idea of "loyalty".<ref name="Mills">David Mills, ''Idea of Loyalty in Upper Canada, 1784–1850'', 1988 {{ISBN|0-7735-0660-8}}.</ref> The original members of the Family Compact were [[United Empire Loyalist]]s who had fled the United States immediately after the Revolutionary War. The War of 1812 led the British to suspect the loyalty of the so-called "Later Loyalists" – "Americans" who had emigrated after 1800 for land. The issue came to a head around 1828 in the "[[Upper Canada Rebellion#The Alien Question|Alien Question]]". Following the war, the colonial government took active steps to prevent Americans from swearing allegiance, thereby making them ineligible to obtain land grants. Without land they could not vote or hold office.

The issue became a provincewide complaint in 1828 when [[Barnabas Bidwell]] was deprived of his seat in the Legislative Assembly. Educated at [[Yale College|Yale]], he practiced law in western Massachusetts and served as treasurer of [[Berkshire County, Massachusetts|Berkshire County]].  He served in the [[Massachusetts General Court|state legislature]], and was the [[Massachusetts Attorney General|state attorney general]] from 1807 to 1810, when irregularities in the Berkshire County books prompted his flight to Upper Canada.  There he won a seat in the provincial assembly, but was denied on account of his status as a fugitive from justice. A provincewide petitioning campaign by these numerically superior "aliens" led the British government to grant them citizenship retroactively. In the minds of the Family Compact, they remained politically suspect and barred from positions of power.<ref>{{cite book |last=Errington |first=Jane |title=The Lion, the Eagle, and Upper Canada: A developing colonial ideology |year=1987 |publisher=McGill-Queens University Press |location=Montreal-Kingston |pages=168–81}}</ref>