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.