Family Compact
Map of Upper Canada (orange) within British North America (pink)
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| Motto |
Nemo me impune lacessit English: No one provokes me with impunity |
|---|---|
| Extinction | 1848 |
| Legal status | Colonial elite |
| Purpose | Informal political clique |
| Location | |
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Region served
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Upper Canada |
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Official language
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English |
| Leader | Sir John Beverley Robinson, 1st Baronet CB, (26 July 1791 –31 January 1863) |
Nemo me impune lacessit
The Family Compact is the epithet applied by their opponents to a small closed group of men who exercised most of the political, economic and judicial power in Upper Canada (modern Ontario) from the 1810s to the 1840s. It was the Upper Canadian equivalent of the Château Clique in Lower Canada. It was noted for its conservatism and opposition to democracy.
The term Family Compact first appeared in a letter written by Marshall Spring Bidwell to William Warren Baldwin in 1828. "Family" did not mean relations by marriage, but rather a close brotherhood. Lord Durham noted in 1839 "There is, in truth, very little of family connection among the persons thus united".
The Family Compact emerged from the War of 1812 and collapsed in the aftermath of the Rebellions of 1837. Their resistance to the political principle of responsible government contributed to its short life. At the end of its lifespan, the Compact would be condemned by Lord Durham as "a petty corrupt insolent Tory clique".
Historians P.J. Cain and A. 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.” Upper Canada, created in the very “image and transcript” of the British Constitution is but one example. Like 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, , and monarchy. Upper Canada, however, had no aristocracy. The methods pursued to create one were similar to that used in the United Kingdom itself. 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.” 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." A similar pattern is seen in other colonial empires, such as the Dutch Empire.
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