Confederation of Canada

“ Great Britain may be too far off. She may be too much engaged to be able to aid Canada efficiently and fully. But on the borders of Canada there are provinces with great resources and a great future, which have hitherto been prevented by various considerations from welding themselves into a Confederation. The time has come now in the white heat of American strife for the adoption of the process. The Confederation of States with divers interests under a weak executive has fallen to pieces. All the more reason for a Confederation of States with common interests and with one governing principle. ”

“ At the time of confederation such eminent Imperial statesmen as Gladstone and Labouchère seriously considered whether it would not be better to cut Canada adrift, if she wanted to be cut adrift. The difference between the Canadian provinces and the isolated Latin republics of South America illustrates best what the bond of confederation did for the Dominion. The why and how of confederation is easy to understand, but what tie binds Canada to the Mother Country? That is a point almost impossible for an outsider to understand. ”

“ Two results grew out of this contest: the establishment of a new and powerful nationality, and the settlement of a vast country subject to the British Crown, to the north, then an unbroken wilderness, now the Dominion of Canada, [Footnote: This has been changed. When the paper was written, the Confederation of the Provinces, if it had been thought of, had not assumed any definite shape. It followed eight years after, in 1867.] whose rapid strides in wealth and power bid fair to rival even those of the great Republic. ”

“ If the same development {vi} follows Confederation in Canada as followed the Civil War in the United States, the twentieth century will witness the birth and growth of a world power.
To no one has the future opening before Canada come as a greater surprise than to Canadians themselves. A few years ago such a claim as the Premier's would have been regarded as the effusions of the after-dinner speaker. While Canadian politicians were hoping for the honor of being accorded colonial place in the English Parliament, they suddenly awakened to find themselves a nation. ”

“ Before glancing at the development and condition of Canada in confederation we will complete the official outline by a reference to the civil service and to the militia. The British Government has withdrawn all the imperial troops from Canada except a small garrison at Halifax, and a naval establishment there and at Victoria. The Queen is commander-in-chief of all the military and naval forces in Canada, but the control of the same is in the Dominion Parliament. The general of the military force is a British officer. ”

“ Organization of the Dominion of Canada
The Riel Revolts
In time the confederation which existed between the two larger provinces of Canada became too narrow to serve the purposes of the entire colony. The maritime provinces began to discuss the question of local federation, and it was finally proposed to unite all British North America into one general union. This was done in 1867, the British Parliament passing an act which created the “Dominion of Canada.” The new confederation included Ontario (Upper Canada) , Quebec (Lower Canada) , New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. ”

“ It is a striking fact that since Canada attained to a united voice on public questions, since confederation imposed upon her the necessity of dealing with internal difficulties and forming a large judgment on common affairs, not only has no serious difficulty arisen with the Colonial Office, but the deliberately expressed opinion of the Canadian Government has, as a rule, given a general direction to British policy in dealing with external matters which concerned Canada. ”

“ Under the inspiring influence of responsible government Canada has developed in 1902, not into an independent nation, as predicted by Lord John Russell and other British statesmen after him, but into a confederation of five millions and a half of people, in which a French Canadian prime minister gives expression to the dominant idea not only of his own race but of all nationalities within the Dominion, that the true interest lies not in the severance but in the continuance of the ties that have so long bound them to the imperial state. ”

“ There the outline of what is known as the British North America Act was drafted,—in the main but an amplification of Durham's scheme, made broad enough to receive all {436} the provinces whenever they might decide to come into Confederation. The delegates then go back to be indorsed by their provinces. By some provinces the scheme is rejected. Newfoundland is not yet part of Canada, but by 1867 Confederation is an accomplished fact. ”

“ Undeniably the confederation, which seems to me rather a creation than a growth, works very well, and under it Canada has steadily risen in the consideration of the world and in the development of the sentiment of nationality. But there are many points unadjusted in the federal and provincial relations; more power is desired on one side, more local autonomy on the other. The federal right of disallowance of local legislation is resisted. ”

“ The parliament of Canada assembled on January 19th, 1865, to consider the resolutions of the Quebec conference. The first presentation of the reasons for confederation was made in the Upper Chamber by the premier, Sir E. P. Taché. He described the measure as essential to British connection, to the preservation of "our institutions, our laws, and even our remembrances of the past." If the opportunity were allowed to pass by unimproved, Canada would be forced into the American union by violence ”

“ The thoughts of all of us travel back along the line of those fifty years since Confederation swept away all divisions and made the people of what is now Canada one in name, that they might become one in purpose, ideal, and spirit. ”

“ If the creation of a Liberal-Conservative party {305} was a direct result of the grant of autonomy, so also was the policy which led to Confederation. It is no part of the present volume to trace the growth of the idea of Confederation, or to determine who the actual fathers of Confederation were. The connection between Autonomy and Confederation in the province of Canada was that the former made the latter inevitable. ”

“ SECTION 4.—Political and social conditions of Canada under confederation. At the present time, a population of probably five million four hundred thousand souls inhabit a Dominion of seven regularly organised provinces, and of an immense fertile territory stretching from Manitoba to British Columbia. This Dominion embraces an area of 3,519,000 square miles, including its water surface, or very little less than the area of the United States with Alaska, and measures 3500 miles from east to west ”

“ But the notion that Canada must avoid the dangers of State sovereignty is continually cropping up in the literature of confederation. Friends and [Pg 164] opponents of the new constitution made much of these mysterious residuary powers, and the Lower Canadian Liberals feared that they were being drawn into a union that would destroy the liberties and imperil the cherished institutions of the French-Canadian people. ”

“ Any corporation of the kind with exclusive privileges and rights was bound to make enemies; but no single province of Canada could have undertaken the administration or development of the country before confederation, and neither men nor money were available locally to permit of its blossoming out separately as a Colony or as a series of provinces. Whatever may have been the faults of the Company, history will record that its work was for the advantage of the Empire. ”

“ In the point of population, Canada begins the twentieth century where the United States began the nineteenth. The race is ours to run. Wise the nation, as is the individual, who can learn his lesson from a page torn out of his neighbour's book, learn what to follow and what to avoid. Our fore-elders who laid the foundations for us laid them four-square. As Canadians, we owe a debt to the Fathers of Confederation and their successors. In the West, our particular thanks are due to the Hudson's Bay Company, the R.N.W.M.P., and all those factors which established British law "in the beginning." ”

“ Without reference to the Far West, or the Far North-West,—without regard to the Red River and Assiniboia or to British Columbia, there is before us the great fact, that out of the Canadas, and the British North American Provinces and dependencies, can be created a powerful Confederation attached to this country, and capable of the grandest development in spite of climatic influences. ”

“ Art. 11. Canada, acceding to this Confederation, and joining in the measures of the United States, shall be admitted into, and entitled to, all the advantages of this union; but no other colony shall be admitted into the same unless such admission be agreed to by nine states. ”

“ The explanations of Canada's hard times from Confederation to 1898—say from 1871, when all the provinces had really gone into Confederation, to 1897, when the Yukon boom poured gold into the country—can be figured out. Of a population of 3,000,000, four fifths need not be counted as taxpayers, as they include women, children, clerks, farmers' help, domestic help,—classes who pay no taxes but the indirect duty on clothes they wear and food they eat. ”

“ Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 1882 and 1883. Montreal: Dawson Brothers.
The Dominion to the north of us is constantly evidencing more and more of national life. Since 1867, when the British provinces became a confederation, Canada has shown an energy and enterprise which would have been impossible to a series of separate colonies having no bond of political unity. ”

“ From the days of Champlain to the establishment of the confederation, Canada has had the services of men as eminent in their respective spheres, and as successful in the attainment of popular rights, in moulding the educational and political institutions of the country, and in laying broad and deep the foundations of a new nationality across half a continent, as those great Virginians to whom the world is4 ever ready to pay its meed of respect. ”

“ Give the people back their old laws and customs in civil matters, let them feel thereby secure in their property, take a few Canadians into the service of the Crown, enlist in the King’s forces ‘a few companies of Canadian foot, judiciously officered’, ‘hold up hopes to the gentlemen, that their children, without being bred up in France, or in the French service, might support their families in the service of the King their master,’ and, at any rate, some proportion of the French Canadians would be found loyally attached to the British Government. ”

“ The Canadians were politically children. They had never known even the semblance of representative institutions. They had from all time been born and bred under authority—under the King, under the Church, under the seigniors. They had learnt unquestioning obedience, and could not at once be re-cast in a democratic [77] mould. The printing press, the Assembly for law-making and debate, the standing quarrels with governors, the withholding of supplies, the aggressive freedom in every form which characterized the English communities in North America, all were alien to the French Canadian. ”

“ The Governor-General of Canada, as also the governors in the other self-governed colonies, does not, as so many of the people of the United States imagine, govern the country, acting with absolute power under the direction of the Government of Great Britain; for in every way, except for the purposes of imperial advice and the declaration of war, Canada is practically an Independent Dominion, as sings the empire poet, [167]
"Daughter am I in my mother's home, But mistress in my own." ”

“ In the seventies the idea was to restore the old French-Canadian life so as not only to make Canada proof against the disaffection of the Thirteen Colonies but also to make her a safe base of operations against rebellious Americans. In the eighties the great concern of the government was to make a harmonious whole out of two very widely differing parts—the long-settled French Canadians and the newly arrived United Empire Loyalists. ”

“ A plan by which it is proposed to ensure the tranquil government of Lower Canada, must include in itself the means of putting an end to the agitation of national disputes in the legislature, by settling, at once and for ever, the national character of the Province. I entertain no doubts as to the national character which must be given to Lower Canada; it must be that of the British Empire; that of the majority of the population of British America; that of the great race which must, in the lapse of no long period of time, be predominant over the whole North American Continent. ”

“ Because, when war came, the Canadians as a whole stood aloof in a quarrel which was no concern of theirs, and some of them joined the revolting colonies, it was argued in the English Parliament that the Act had not conciliated them, and therefore stood condemned; but history has proved that this view was not true. No one measure or series of measures can at once obliterate differences of race, language, and creed ”

“ But, it is said, a Colony, being part of a great Empire, must be governed by different principles from the Metropolitan State. That, unless it be handed over to the minority, it cannot be governed at all. That the majority, when they have things their own way, will be discontented and disloyal.... Let us fancy that this reasoning were applied to Glasgow or Aberdeen or to any other town in Britain which you allow to govern itself. And what else is a Province like Nova Scotia than a small community, too feeble to interfere with the general commercial and military arrangements of the government ”