French Canadians

“ Truly there is something delightful and affecting in the simple, harmless, contented life of these French Canadians, in their clinging to old customs—their very costume is that of the first settlers—and to old superstitions, in their unaffected piety and gentle courtesy. ”

“ In the sixties the general idea was to kill refractory old French ways with a double dose of new British liberty and kindness, so that Canada might gradually become the loyal fourteenth colony of the Empire in America. But the fates were against this benevolent scheme. The French Canadians were firmly wedded to their old ways of life, except in so far as the new liberty enabled them to throw off irksome duties and restraints, while the new English-speaking 'colonists' were so few, and mostly so bad, that they became the cause of endless discord where harmony was essential. ”

“ No hint was thrown out that Canada would be more prosperous under the American, than under the English dominion. It was not even insinuated that Canada should be wholly governed by Canadians. All that was claimed for French Canadians was a fair share in the official spoils of the land they lived in, freedom of speech, and liberty of conscience. Governor Craig asked the inhabitants of St. Denis or any of the other inhabitants of the province to remind him of any one act of oppression or of arbitrary imprisonment. And at that very moment the printer of the Canadien was in prison. ”

“ Discriminating Canadians tell you that the French-Canadian makes the best type of citizen. He is industrious, go-ahead, sane, practical; he is law-abiding and he is loyal. His history shows that he is loyal; indeed, Canada as it stands today owes not a little to French-Canadian loyalty and willingness to take up arms in support of British institutions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But it must always be a subject of keen, if unavailing, regret that the French Canadians were not guaranteed their own way of life, within the limits of the modern province of Quebec, immediately after the capitulation of Montreal in 1760. They would then have entered the British Empire, as a whole people, on terms which they must all have understood to be exceedingly generous from any conquering power, and which they would have soon found out to be far better than anything they had experienced under the government of France. ”

“ Perhaps the causes lie in the wonderful fecundity of the race, the contentment with narrow fortunes which keeps so many of them at home, and the indulgent policy toward them by Great Britain—that empire which, having lost its best group of colonies by harsh treatment, seems determined in Canada to retain the allegiance of a conquered race by a noble magnanimity.
The volume before us manifests the influence which the classical and literary education of French Canadians has had on their scientific culture. ”

“ French Canadians not in sympathy with the French Revolution.
But, as a matter of fact, neither were the Canadians inclined to return to their French allegiance nor were the people of the United States in the least likely to [301] permit France to regain Canada. The Canadians had known forty years of British rule, clean and just in comparison with what had gone before, and the France which would reclaim them was widely different from the France to which they had once belonged. The King was gone; religion was at a discount ”

“ The Canadians of to-day affect to be French, more because they speak a French at which Paris laughs, than from any real sympathy founded on mutual interests or present history between France and Canada. I was assured by one earnest Canadian, that France had never forgiven the Bourbons for the fault of Louis XV., in ceding Canada to Great Britain. He had more reason probably for asserting that, but for the establishment of our supremacy in 1765, the rebellion of the thirteen colonies of North America would not have occurred when it did. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In return for such unexampled generosity they might have become convinced defenders of the only flag in the world under which they could possibly live as French Canadians. Their relations to each other, to the rest of a changing Canada, and to the Empire would have followed the natural course of political evolution, with the burning questions of language, laws, and religion safely removed from general controversy in after years. ”

“ They have become semitropicalized here; — they have felt the enchantment of a climate of perennial mildness, and have lived for generations under very different conditions to those which have hardened and invigorated the French people of Canada. It must be remembered also that the French Canadians have had to resist the strongest absorbing influences possible — those of the English, Scotch, and Irish elements in all their purity and force. ”

“ They feel that if the British Government intends to maintain its hold of the Canadas, it can rely on the English population alone; that if it abandons its colonial possessions, they must become a portion of that great Union which will speedily send forth its swarms of settlers, and, by force of numbers and activity, quickly master every other race. The French Canadians, on the other hand, are but the remains of an ancient colonisation, and are and ever must be isolated in the midst of an Anglo-Saxon world. ”

“ We are suffering it to be filled with men of the lowest order of society; with the peasant, the small dealer, the fugitive, and the pauper. Those men no sooner acquire personal independence, than they aim at political. But who ever hears of a title of honour among even the ablest, the most gallant, or the most attached of the Canadian colonists? The French acted more rationally. Their Canadians have a noblesse, and that noblesse to this moment keep their station, and keep up the interest of France in Canada. ”

“ Lower Canada was inhabited chiefly by French Canadians, speaking the French language, retaining their ancient laws, manners, and religion, wedded to old customs in agriculture, and stationary in their habits. Of its population, amounting to 890,000 in 1852, nearly three-fourths were of French origin, the remainder being composed of emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland and other countries, while in Upper Canada the number of French was under 27,000. ”

“ Their governors, Murray and Carleton, had transparently shown their sympathies with the French Canadian race, its traditions, and even its prejudices. Amid many inconveniences, and with some solid grounds for discontent, the Canadians had none the less tasted British freedom since the cession of Canada; and they had not yet imbibed it to such an extent as to overcome their traditional animosity to, and their inveterate suspicion of, the militant Protestants of the old colonies who were rising against the King. ”

“ The peasantry found old rules relaxed and unaccustomed freedom. Strength was nowhere in evidence in Canada. The forts were falling into ruin; the English soldiers were few; there was the King’s Government without the backing of the King’s men; the old subjects were a small number of men, of whom a large proportion were noisy, disloyal, adventurers; the new subjects were not held in submission, but not admitted to confidence. On the other hand, the French Canadians had recent and undeniable evidence of the goodwill of the British Government in the passing of the Quebec Act. ”

“ To French intervention the United States largely owed their independence. Having parted with their monarchy, the French were more attractive than before to the citizens of the American republic; and in the days of the American revolutionary war Congress had pledged itself to defend for ever the French possessions in America. The bulk of the Canadians, French in race, tradition, language and religion, might well be expected to be French in sympathies. How great then might have seemed the probability that England in war with France would lose Canada? ”

“ Canadian sympathies, at any rate in the earlier years of the revolutionary wars, were rather with Royalist emigrés than with the national armies who went on from victory to victory. Above all antipathy to the United States, without whose abetting or connivance, no French projects for regaining Canada could have effect, tended to keep the Canadians firm in their British allegiance. ”

“ The remainder, the French Canadians, he represented as, in the main, wholly alienated from the British section of the community, French in religion, laws, language and manners, and becoming more attracted to France and more alienated from Great Britain, in proportion as the power of France in Europe became more consolidated. [311] The large mass of the people were, so he wrote, wholly uneducated, following unscrupulous men, their leaders in the country and in the House of Assembly. The Roman Catholic priests were anti-English on grounds of race and religion ”

“ By their rejection of the proposals of the revolted colonies, the northern half of this continent was preserved to Great Britain. The debt which the empire owes to the French Canadians is immeasurably greater than we at [Pg 66] present realize. Let us examine the characteristics of the small and isolated people which was to exercise such a deep influence on the future of this continent.
The whole population of Canada when she came under the British flag was about sixty thousand. This hardy handful was gathered chiefly at Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal. ”

“ The spokes of the wheel running out from Quebec extend to the Gulf of Mexico on the south, to the Rockies on the west, to Hudson Bay on the north. And the population of New France does not yet number 60,000 people. Is it any wonder French Canadians look back on these days as the Golden Age? ”

“ The relative influence and numbers of the French element in Canada will never be greater than they are at present, but rather less, partly owing, as I have said, to the formation of new provinces, but even more to the hesitation of French Canadians to follow the advice of their wiser leaders like Mr. ”

“ This measure of self-government still further assured the French-descended Canadians of the protection of their liberties, so that when the English-descended colonists of the thirteen English state colonies to the south of them revolted from their British allegiance in 1775, French Canada stood firm by the British crown. The descendants of the Normans in Canada were true to the government which their forefathers had helped to create in England. ”

“ The cession of Canada was, perhaps, a blessing in disguise; for the horrors of '93 failed to touch this fortunate colony which was protected by the flag of Britain. We have gathered new laurels, fighting beneath the banner of England; and twice has the colony been saved to169 England by the courage of her new subjects. In Parliament, at the bar, upon the field of battle, everywhere in his small sphere, the French Canadian has proved himself inferior to none. For a century have you struggled, O my countrymen, to preserve your nationality, and you behold it yet intact. ”

“ No men of good English type cheered and supported him at home, the patriotism which inspired his life was unknown alike to the ministers who preceded William Pitt and to an Opposition which, as embodied in Fox, lost all sense of proportion, and almost all sense of duty, or principle. Yet he held Quebec and saved Canada. Men turned to him to gather up the fragments after the War of Independence; and he reconciled French Canada to British rule and held the balance even between conflicting races and creeds. ”

“ 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." ”