The wise leadership of Baldwin and Lafontaine and the patience and firmness of the Reformers are attested by their conduct in very trying circumstances. Finding their demand for constitutional reform opposed not only by the Canadian Tories, but by the governor-general and the imperial government and parliament, they might have become discouraged, or have been tempted into some act of violence. Their patience must have been sorely tried by the persistent malice or obstinate prejudice which stigmatized a strictly constitutional movement as treason. They had also to endure the trial of a temporary defeat at the polls, and an apparent rejection of their policy by the very people for whose liberties they were contending.
In the autumn of 1844 the legislature was dissolved and a fierce contest ensued. Governor Metcalfe's attitude is indicated by his biographer.[1] "The contest," he says, "was between loyalty on the one side and disaffection to Her Majesty's government on the other. That there was a strong anti-British feeling abroad, in both divisions of the province [Upper and Lower Canada] Metcalfe clearly and painfully perceived. The conviction served to brace and stimulate him to new exertions. He felt that he was fighting for his sovereign against a rebellious people." The appeal was successful; Upper Canada was swept by the loyalty cry, and in various polling places votes were actually cast or offered for the governor-general. The _Globe_ described a conversation that occurred in a polling place in York: "Whom do you vote for?" "I vote for the governor-general." "There is no such candidate. Say George Duggan, you blockhead." "Oh, yes, George Duggan; it's all the same thing." There were candidates who described themselves as "governor-general's men"; there were candidates whose royalist enthusiasm was expressed in the name "Cavaliers." In the Montreal election petition it was charged that during two days of polling the electors were exposed to danger from the attacks of bands of fighting men hired by the government candidates or their agents, and paid, fed, and armed with "bludgeons, bowie-knives, and pistols and other murderous weapons" for the purpose of intimidating the Liberal electors and preventing them from gaining access to the polls; that Liberals were driven from the polls by these fighting men, and by cavalry and infantry acting under the orders of partisan magistrates. The polls, it was stated, were surrounded by soldiers, field-pieces were placed in several public squares, and the city was virtually in a state of siege. The charges were not investigated, the petition being rejected for irregularity; but violence and intimidation were then common accompaniments of elections.