Canada and the Canadian Question/Chapter 7

Lord Durham was a splendid specimen of the aristocratic man of the people, such as perhaps only the Whig houses, after being out of office for half a century, could have produced. From the hotel where His Excellency put up all other guests were cleared out, and not even the mails were allowed to be taken on board the steamer which bore his person. Invested with large powers, he exceeded them in playing the despot. He issued an ordinance banishing some of the rebels to Bermuda, under penalty of death if they should return. This delivered him into the hands of Brougham, who bore him a grudge, and at once set upon him in the House of Lords, pointing out that His Excellency's ordinance could not be carried into effect without committing murder. The Prime Minister was compelled to disallow the ordinance. Durham after thundering very irregularly against the ungrateful Government which had thrown him overboard, lung up his commission, folded his tragic robe round him, and went home. He had time, however, to produce, with the ​help of Charles Buller, who was his secretary, a very able and memorable Report (1839).

His diagnosis was to the effect that the disease in Lower Canada arose from a conflict of races, while in Upper Canada it was political. The remedy proposed was to unite the Provinces and give them both Responsible Government. In Lower Canada the two races, Durham held, would never get on harmoniously by themselves. The causes of estrangement were too deep and the antipathy was too strong. The British minority would never bear to be ruled by a French majority. Rather than this they would join the United States, and "that they might remain English, cease to be British." Of fusion, according to Lord Durham, there was no hope. Opposed to each other in religion, in language, in character, in ideas, in national sentiment, hardly ever intermarrying, their children never taking part in the same sports, meeting in the jury-box only to obstruct justice, the two races were "two nations warring in the bosom of a single State." The rebellion had divided them sharply into two camps. "No portion of the English population had been backward in taking arms in defence of the government; with a single exception no portion of the Canadian population was allowed to do so, even where it was asserted by some that their loyalty induced them thereto." There was nothing for it but a union of the Provinces, in which a British majority should permanently predominate, and which should place the British minority of the Lower Province under the broad ægis of British ascendency. Durham flattered himself that by the same measure French nationality with all the political difficulties, and all the obstacles to economical improvement which it carried with it, would be gradually suppressed. "A plan," he said, "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 doubt 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 no long period of time be predominant over the whole North American Continent. Without effecting the change so rapidly or so roughly as to shock the feelings and trample on the welfare of the existing generation, it must henceforth be the first and steady purpose of the British Government to establish an English population with English laws and language in this Province, and to trust its government to none but a decidedly English legislature." Steady purpose of the British Government! Steady purpose of a Government which itself was changed on an average about once in every five years, and which neither had nor could have any purpose in reference to its far-distant and little-known dependency but to get along from day to day with as little trouble and danger as it could! Did not Durham himself say, that in the case of Lower Canada the Imperial Government, "far removed from opportunities of personal observation, had shaped its policy so as to aggravate the disorder;" that it had sometimes conceded mischievous pretensions of nationality to evade popular claims, and sometimes pursued the opposite course; and that "a policy founded upon imperfect information and conducted by continually changing hands had exhibited to the colony a system of vacillation which was in fact no system at all?" Durham took it for granted that the British majority would act patriotically together against the French. Strange that he, ​fresh from the field of a furious faction fight, should have been so forgetful of the ways of faction! Sir Francis Bond Head saw in this case what Lord Durham and Charles Buller did not see. "So long," he said, "as Upper Canada remains by itself I feel confident that by mere moderate government her 'majority men' would find that prudence and principle unite to keep them on the same side; but if once we were to amalgamate this province with Lower Canada, we should instantly infuse into the House of General Assembly a powerful French party, whose implacable opposition would be a dead, or rather a living weight, always seeking to attach itself to any question whatsoever that would attract and decoy the 'majority men,' and I feel quite confident . . . that sooner or later the supporters of British institutions would find themselves overpowered, not by the good sense and wealth of the country (for they would, I believe, always be staunch to our flag), but by the votes of designing individuals, misrepresenting a well-meaning inoffensive people." Apart from the writer's Toryism, this passage was prophetic. The British were sure to be split into factions, and their factions were sure to deliver them into the hands of the French. The only way of operating with success on two discordant races is to set an impartial power above them both, as Pitt meant to do when by his Act of Union he brought Ireland under the Imperial Parliament, though he could not help impairing the integrity of the Imperial Parliament itself by introducing the Irish Catholic vote. Head's own proposal to annex Montreal to British Canada was more sensible than the plan of union, though it would have left the British of Quebec city and the Eastern Townships out in the cold.

The reunion of the two Provinces had been projected before: ​it was greatly desired by the British of the Lower Province; and in 1822 a bill for the purpose had actually been brought into the Imperial Parliament, but the French being bitterly opposed to it, the Bill had been dropped. The French were as much opposed to reunion as ever, clearly seeing, what the author of the policy had avowed, that the measure was directed against their nationality. But since the rebellion they were prostrate. Their Constitution had been superseded by a Provisional Council sitting under the protection of Imperial bayonets, and this Council consented to the union. The two Provinces were now placed under a Governor-General with a single legislature, consisting like the legislatures of the two Provinces before, of an Upper House nominated by the Crown and a Lower House elected by the people. Each Province was to have the same number of representatives, although the population of the French Province was at that time much larger than that of the British Province. The French language was proscribed in official proceedings. French nationality was thus sent, constitutionally, under the yoke. But to leave it its votes, necessary and right as that might be, was to leave it the only weapon which puts the weak on a level with the strong, and even gives them the advantage, since the weak are the most likely to hold together and to submit to the discipline of organised party.

On the subject of Responsible Government the decisive words of the Durham Report are these: "We are not now to consider the policy of establishing representative government in the North American colonies. That has been irrevocably done, and the experiment of depriving the people of their present constitutional power is not to be thought of. To conduct the government harmoniously in accordance with its established principles is now the business of its rulers; and I ​know not how it is possible to secure that harmony in any other way than by administering the government on those principles which have been found perfectly efficacious in Great Britain. I would not impair a single prerogative of the Crown; on the contrary, I believe that the interests of the people of these colonies require the protection of prerogatives which have not hitherto been exercised. But the Crown must on the other hand submit to the necessary consequence of representative institutions; and if it has to carry on the government in unison with a representative body it must consent to carry it on by means of those in whom that representative body has confidence." In plain words, the Crown must let the House of Commons choose the ministers, and through them determine the policy. What was to be left to the Crown? "Its prerogatives." What were they when it had surrendered supreme power? Canada would have seen perhaps if the imperious author of the Report had stayed to make the experiment of Responsible Government in his own person; and it is not unlikely that instead of the anticipated harmony, discord and perhaps collision would have ensued. Perfectly efficacious, Durham said, the system had been in Great Britain. But he forgot that it had not been really tried before the Reform Bill; that the Reform Bill had been only just passed; and that even in Great Britain the answer still remained to be given to the Duke of Wellington's question, how the Queen's Government was to be carried on.

In place of Durham, the experiment was made (1839–41) by Poulett Thomson, afterwards Lord Sydenham, a steady man of business and a prodigious worker, imperious only in his demands on official industry. He performed the function of capitulation on the part of the Crown with a good grace, and fairly smoothed the transition, though he did not escape ​abuse. His first ministry was formed of the men whom he found in office on his arrival, and who were Conservatives. But these men could not accommodate themselves to the new system. They fenced with the question of Responsible Government, and when they faintly affirmed the doctrine with their lips their hearts were evidently far from it. Nor could they fully take in the idea of a Cabinet, or understand the mutual responsibility of its members, the necessity for their agreement, and the duty incumbent on them of resigning when they differed vitally from their colleagues, or of going out of office with the rest. Mr. Dominic Daly, for instance, acted as if he deemed himself a fixture in office, whatever might be the fleeting policy of the hour. Mr. Draper, the Ajax of the Conservatives, being pressed on the vital point, enveloped himself in a cloud of words, and said "that he looked upon the Governor as having a mixed character; firstly, as being the representative of Royalty; and secondly, as being one of the Ministers of Her Majesty's Government and responsible to the mother country for the faithful discharge of the duties of his station, a responsibility which he cannot avoid by saying that he took the advice of this man or of that man." The Assembly, however, was not to be hoodwinked, nor was it to be appalled by the assertion, however unquestionably true, that by the acceptance of the new principle "the Governor would be reduced to a cipher, and that such a system would make the colony an independent state." It passed resolutions (1841) which affirmed plainly, though in Blackstonian phrase, that in all colonial affairs the Governor must be ruled by his advisers, that his advisers must be assigned him by the Assembly, and that the policy must be that of the majority. The men of the old dispensation had presently to retire and to make way for a ministry which had ​for its head Robert Baldwin the Reformer with whom was afterwards joined Lafontaine, a Frenchman who had been the political associate of Papineau though he himself just stopped short of rebellion. Even Dr. Rolph, the Upper Canadian rebel and exile, ultimately found a place in a Reform Government.

All however was not yet over. The advent of Peel to power in 1841 had placed the Colonial Office once more in Conservative hands. Sir Charles Bagot, the first Governor appointed by the Conservatives, was a life-long Tory, but a well-bred and placid gentleman, who accepted with grace his constitutional position of figurehead, dispensed hospitality to politicians of all parties, and turned his energies to the encouragement of practical improvements, such as making roads, and to the laying of first stones, now one of the chief functions of British Royalty. But his conduct did not give satisfaction to Tories either in the colony or at home. Lord Stanley, the Colonial Secretary in Peel's second Ministry, by no means acquiesced in the view that his representative should be a cipher and the colony an independent State. Stanley's appointment was Lord Metcalfe (1843–5), a man of the highest eminence in the East Indian service, who in Hindostan, and afterwards in Jamaica, had governed on the most liberal principles, but had governed. In Canada also he meant to govern on liberal principles, but in Canada also he meant to govern. The East Indian official, accustomed to administer in his own person, was shocked to find that he was "required to give himself up entirely to the council," "to submit absolutely to their dictation," "to have no judgment of his own," "to be a tool in the hands of his advisers," and "to tear up Her Majesty's Commission by publicly declaring his adhesion to conditions including the complete nullification ​of Her Majesty's Government." Accustomed in the Indian. Civil Service, the purest in the world, to appoint his subordinates by merit, he was shocked at being told that he must allow the patronage of the Government to be used for the purposes of the party in power and must proscribe all its opponents. He tried to make his own appointments, and brought on a storm. The Assembly carried a resolution affirming in effect that the prerogative of appointment, with all the rest, had passed entirely from the Crown to the Parliamentary Ministers, and the Ministry resigned.

The Governor, the Colonial Secretary approving his course, formed a makeshift Ministry of the men of the old school, and appealed from the majority to the country. The distinguished and high-minded civil servant now found himself, to his intense disgust, immersed in all the roguery, corruption, and ruffianism of a fiercely-contested election, forced to use government patronage as a bribery fund, and to pay for "Leonidas Letters" with appointments to public trusts. He and his Ministry came out of the fray with a small majority. His death cut the inextricable knot. With him expired Monarchical Government in Canada. Nothing but its ghost remained. Sir Edmund Head is said to have afterwards lingered wistfully in the Council Chamber and to have been shown the door by a Conservative minister.

Metcalfe was succeeded by Lord Cathcart, a soldier, sent out probably on account of the threatening aspect of the boundary dispute with the United States. Then came Lord Elgin (1849–54), in whom again we see the public servant of the Empire whose only rule has been administrative duty in contrast with the party leader and the demagogue. Elgin was a Conservative, and was sent out by a Conservative Government, but he was calm and wise. He accepted Responsible ​Government, and even flattered himself that under that system he exercised a moral influence such as would make up to the Crown for the loss of its patronage. This, with his personal gifts and graces, and while the system was still in the green wood, he may possibly have done. It is more certain that he gave an impulse to material improvements in the way of railways, canals, and steamboats, as well as to the advancement of education. In one case he accepted Responsible Government with a vengeance, for he gave his assent to the Rebellion Losses Bill. The bill was denounced by the Tories both in Canada and in the British House of Commons as a bill for rewarding rebels; a bill for indemnifying rebels it undeniably was. The Tories in Canada rose, pelted the Governor-General at Montreal with stones and rotten eggs, put his life in some danger, and raised a mob by which the Parliament House was burned down. Their opponents did not fail to taunt them with their failing loyalty; but it must be owned that they were sorely tried, and that the Rebellion Losses Bill was a humiliation. Such humiliations are the lot of an Imperial country retaining its nominal supremacy and its responsibility in a hemisphere where it has resigned or lost all power. The Ashburton Treaty, made some years before, cutting Maine out of Canada's side, seemed to Canadians an instance of similar weakness on the part of the Home Government. They made too little allowance for the distracting liabilities of an Empire exposed to peril in every quarter of the globe.

There was still, however, a field for which Elgin was well suited, and in which he could act without the danger of "falling," to use his own words, "on the one side into the néant of mock majesty, or on the other, into the dirt and confusion of local factions." By the adoption of Free Trade in ​1846 England had cut the commercial tie between herself and her colony, and deprived the colony of its advantage in the British market. Commercial depression in Canada ensued. Property in the towns fell fifty per cent in value. Three-fourths of the commercial men were bankrupt. The State was reduced to the necessity of paying all the officers, from the Governor-General downwards, in debentures which were not exchangeable at par. A feeling in favour of annexation to the United States spread widely among the commercial classes, and a manifesto in favour of it was signed not only by many leading merchants, but by magistrates, Queen's counsel, militia officers, and others holding commissions under the Crown. Elgin himself was astonished that the discontent did not produce an outbreak. There was, as he saw, but one way of restoring contentment and averting disturbance. This was" to put the colonists in as good a position commercially as the citizens of the United States, in order to which free navigation and reciprocal trade with the States were indispensable." To this view he gave effect by going to Washington and there displaying his diplomatic skill in negotiating the Reciprocity Treaty, which opened up for Canada a gainful trade, especially in her farm products, with the United States, and was to her, during the twelve years of its continuance, the source of a prosperity to which she still looks back with wistful eyes. The rush of prosperity at the time turned the head of the community, and caused over-speculation, which led to a crisis in 1857.

The grand revolution having been accomplished, the minor changes which were its corollaries followed in its train. After hesitation on the part of religious Reformers like Lafontaine, who cherished the idea of a provision for religion, the Clergy Reserves were secularised. The same stroke ​knocked off the fetters of the Church of England, gave her the election of her own officers, and set her free to win back the hearts which, as a domineering favourite of the State, she had estranged. Tithe in Lower Canada ought to have been abolished at the same time; but it was guaranteed, or was held to be guaranteed, by the Treaty of Cession, made with a most Christian dynasty which had ceased to reign and which has since been replaced by an Anti-Christian Republic. University tests were repealed, and the University of Toronto was thrown open whereupon, Bishop Strachan gave way to his resentment, and instead of sticking to the ship in which he had still the advantage of possession and of social primacy, went off in a cockboat and founded a new Anglican University. Other sectarian universities had been founded while that of Toronto was confined to Anglicanism, and the net result has been six or seven degree-giving bodies in a Province the resources of which were not more than equal to the support of one university worthy of the name. At length, happily for the advancement of high education, learning, and science in Ontario, university consolidation has begun.

The Upper House of the Legislature was made elective, with the same suffrage as that of the Lower House, but with larger constituencies, and a term of eight years. Municipal institutions on the elective principle were given to Upper Canada. In Lower Canada the seigniories, with all their vexatious incidents, were swept away, not however without compensation to the seigniors, theories of agrarian confiscation not having then come into vogue.

The French speedily verified the prediction of Sir Francis Bond Head, and belied the expectation of Durham and Buller. "They had the wisdom," as their manual of history before cited complacently observes, "to remain united among them​selves, and by that union were able to exercise a happy influence on the Legislature and the Government." Instead of being politically suppressed, they soon, thanks to their compactness as an interest and their docile obedience to their leaders, became politically dominant. The British factions at once began to bid against each other for their support, and were presently at their feet. Nothing could show this more clearly than the Rebellion Losses Bill. The statute proscribing the use of the French language in official proceedings was repealed, and the Canadian Legislature was made bilingual. The Premiership was divided between the English and the French leader, and the Ministries were designated by the double name—"the Lafontaine–Baldwin," or "the Macdonald–Taché." The French got their full share of seats in the Cabinet and of patronage; of public funds they got more than their full share, especially as being small consumers of imported goods they contributed far less than their quota to the public revenue. By their aid the Roman Catholics of the Upper Province obtained the privilege of Separate Schools in contravention of the principle of religious equality and severance of the Church from the State. In time it was recognised as a rule that a Ministry to retain power must have a majority from each section of the Province. This practically almost reduced the Union to a federation, under which French nationality was more securely entrenched than ever. Gradually the French and their clergy became, as they have ever since been, the basis of what styles itself a Conservative party, playing for French support by defending clerical privilege, by protecting French nationality, and, not least, by allowing the French Province to dip her hand deep in the common treasury. On the other hand, a secession of thorough-going Reformers from the ​Moderates who gloried in the name of Baldwin, gave birth to the party of the "Clear Grits," the leader of which was Mr. George Brown, a Scotch Presbyterian, and which having first insisted on the secularisation of the Clergy Reserves, became, when that question was out of the way, a party of general opposition to French and Roman Catholic influence. The population of Upper Canada having now outgrown that of Lower Canada, the Clear Grits demanded that the representation should be rectified in accordance with numbers. The French contended with truth that the apportionment had been irrespective of numbers, and that Upper Canada, while her population was the smaller, had reaped the advantage of that arrangement. Mortal issue was joined, and "Rep. by Pop." (Representation by Population) became the Reform cry. The war was waged with the utmost vehemence by Mr. Brown and his organ, the Globe, which became a power, and ultimately a tyrannical power, in Canadian politics. But the French, with the British faction which courted their vote, were too strong. A change had thus come over the character and relations of parties. French Canada, so lately the seat of disaffection, became the basis of the Conservative party. British Canada became the stronghold of the Liberals. But the old Tories of British Canada, true at least to their antipathies, combined with the French against the Liberals in the amalgam styled Conservative.

Irish influence, almost as sectional as the French, was now beginning to grow powerful. The famine of 1846 had thrown upon the shores of Canada thousands of miserable exiles, stricken with pestilence as well as with famine. At the moment when Canada lost her commercial privileges as a colony, she was called upon to perform the most onerous of colonial duties to the mother country, and the duty was ​nobly performed, the medical profession taking the lead in heroic philanthropy. Abortive insurrections in Ireland added some political exiles. Among the number was D'Arcy M'Gee, a Fenian leader who, in a happier political climate, doffed his Fenianism while he retained his enthusiasm and his eloquence, and for doffing his Fenianism was murdered by his quondam fellow-conspirators. There was now an Irish as well as a French vote to be played for. Had not the difference of race generally prevailed, as we have said, over the identity of religion, there might have been a coalition of the two Roman Catholic races, which would almost have reduced the other races to political servitude.

A struggle of principle is sure to leave some men of principle as well as mark upon the scene. Such were Robert Baldwin on one side, and Draper on the other. But when these have passed away faction, intrigue, cabal, and selfish ambition have their turn. What else can be expected with party government when the great issues are out of the way and nothing but the prizes of office remains? Already, in Lord Elgin's time, politics had entered on a phase of party without principle. He had pensively remarked that in a community "where there was little if anything of public principle to divide men, political parties would shape themselves under the influence of circumstances, and of a great variety of affections or antipathies—national, sectarian, and personal." "You will observe," he says, "when a Ministry is trying to recruit itself by coalition, that no question of principle or of public policy has been mooted by either party during the negotiation. The whole discussion has turned upon personal considerations. This is, I fancy, a pretty fair sample of Canadian politics. It is not even pretended that the divisions of party represent corresponding ​divisions of sentiment on subjects which occupy the public mind." He complains that his Ministers insist on appealing to low personal motives, as if they did not believe in the existence of anything higher, that unprincipled factiousness is taken for granted as the rule of conduct on all hands, and that he is himself in danger of being besmirched by its mire. A period of tricky combinations, perfidious alliances, and selfish intrigues now commenced, and a series of weak and ephemeral governments was its fruit. The Hincks–Morin, the MacNab–Morin, the Taché–Macdonald, the Brown–Dorion, the Cartier–Macdonald, the Sandfield Macdonald–Sicotte, the Sandfield Macdonald–Dorion, the Taché–Macdonald (second) administrations followed each other like the shifting scenes of a farce, their double headships indicating the necessity of compounding with the French, whose vote was the great card in the game. Unfortunately they left their traces. "A political warfare," said Senator Ferrier (a Montreal merchant) afterwards in the debate on Confederation, "has been waged in Canada for many years of a nature calculated to destroy all moral and political principle, both in the Legislature and out of it." In such a competition, unscrupulous craft, with a thorough knowledge of the baser side of human nature, is sure to prevail, and to mount to the highest place. It did prevail; it did mount to the highest place, and became the ideal of statesmanship to Canadian politicians.

It was in the course of this unimpressive history that the one remaining prerogative of the Crown was exercised by the Governor-General for the last time.^[2] In 1858, Mr. George Brown, the leader of the "Clear Grits" put the ​Conservative Ministry in a minority on the question of the choice of a site for the Capital, the Queen having given her decision in favour of Ottawa. Though the combination against the Government was fortuitous, and the question not one of principle, the Ministry resigned; it was surmised because they thought it politic to appear as martyrs to their loyal respect for the Sovereign's judgment. The Governor, Sir Edmund Head, sent for Mr. Brown but refused him a dissolution, on the ground that the Parliament was newly elected, that there was no reason for supposing that public opinion had changed, and therefore that there was no justification for throwing the country again into the turmoil of an election. Mr. Brown's fortuitous majority deserting him, his Ministry at once fell. The Governor was of course fiercely denounced by the Grits for partisanship; but supposing he still held the prerogative of dissolution, it would seem that he did right; he certainly did what was best for the country. A farcical sequel to this episode was the "Double Shuffle," a name applied to a piece of legerdemain by which the old Ministers, on resuming their places, contrived to bilk the constitutional rule which required them to go to their constituencies for re-election, Public, morality was outraged. The courts of law, by an extremely technical construction, sustained the trick. But nothing smarter was ever done by any Yankee politician.

At last there came a Ministry with a majority of two, which afterwards dwindled to one, so that the fate of the administration might hang upon the success of a page in hunting up a member before a division, and the dangerous opportunity was afforded to each individual politician of saving the country by his single vote. Dissolutions only made faction more factious. Finally there was a deadlock. ​The wheels of the political machine ceased to turn, and the most necessary legislation was at a stand. As a door of escape from the predicament into which their factiousness and selfishness had brought the country, the politicians bethought them of a confederation, including all the North American Colonies of Great Britain. In this the antagonism between British and French Canada, which was the immediate source of the dilemma, would be merged, and altogether there would be a fresh deal. The idea of such a confederation was not new. Lord Durham had recommended it in his Report: even before his day, Judge Haliburton had ventilated the idea in Sam Slick; while Mr. George Brown, finding that he could not carry his project of Representation by Population, had been proposing that the Union between Upper and Lower Canada should be reconstituted on a federal footing, so that they might be made independent of each other in their local affairs. The three Maritime Provinces—Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island—had, as has been already said, meditated a Legislative Union among themselves; and, though a difficulty about the choice of a capital had come in the way, it is likely that in time they would have carried the project into effect.

Another inducement to confederation at this juncture was the belief that it would bring to all the Provinces an increase of military strength and of security against invasion. On this head there was at the time some ground for alarm on account of the critical position into which Canada as a dependency of Great Britain had been drawn in relation to the United States. Before the American Civil War Canada had been, like the mother country, an enemy of the Slave Power; one of the first acts of her yeoman legislators in the ​Upper Province had been the abolition of slavery; and she had prided herself on being the refuge of the slave. At the opening of the conflict between Slavery and Freedom her heart had been where it was natural that it should be. But after the Trent affair she had been drawn, together with the aristocratic party in England, into an attitude of hostility to the North. Her citizens had taken to drilling, and she had sounded the trumpet of defiance. Her Government had strictly discharged their international obligations, but the Confederates had violated the neutrality of her territory in the case of the St. Alban's raid, and some of her own citizens who were hot sympathisers with the Slave Power had hardly kept their sentiment within the bounds of the Queen's proclamation. The Union was now triumphant and had a large and victorious army at its command. There was reason to fear that its ire, kindled by the conduct of Great Britain in the matter of the Alabama, and by the stinging language of the British Press, might find vent in an attack on the dependency. There had in fact been a Fenian raid encouraged by the laxity of the American Government, if not by its connivance, and somebody having blundered, a number of Canadians had in the disastrous affair of Ridgeway fallen in defence of the frontier. The second Fenian raid in 1870 was a mere imposture got up to make the money flow again from the pockets of Irish servant girls; but the first was rendered formidable by the presence among the raiders of Irishmen who had fought in the American Civil War. It was a natural impression, though some saw through the fallacy at the time, that the political union of the Provinces would greatly add to their force in war. The Home Authorities also applauded the project, in the hope that the colonies would become better able to defend themselves, ​lean thenceforth less heavily for protection on the arm of the overburdened mother country, and be less of an addition to her many perils. Some years before, Lord Beaconsfield, then Mr. Disraeli, Imperialist as he was, had written in confidence to the Minister for Foreign Affairs urging him to push the Fisheries question to a settlement while the influences at Washington were favourable, and remarking that "these wretched colonies will all be independent too in a few years and are a millstone round our necks."^[3] What Mr. Disraeli said in the ear was said on the housetop by the Edinburgh Review, which after averring that it would puzzle the wisest to put his finger on any advantage resulting to Great Britain from her dominions in North America, and glancing at the "special difficulties which beset her in that portion of her vast field of empire," pronounced it not surprising that "any project which may offer a prospect of escape from a political situation so undignified and unsatisfactory should be hailed with a cordial welcome by all parties concerned." If the same thing was not said by other statesmen it was present in a less distinct form to the minds of some of them at least they were very anxious that the millstone should be a millstone no more, but be able to provide for its own defence at need and perhaps to help the mother country. Colonial Reformers like the Duke of Newcastle, Mr. Adderley, and Mr. Godley who clung to the political connection, were just as desirous of relieving the mother country of the military burden and of training the colonies to self-reliance and virtual independence as were the men of the so-called Manchester School, who advocated complete independence. Cobden and Bright, it may be remarked by the way, though their ​opinion was avowed, never took a very active part in the discussion.

A third motive was the hope of calling into existence an intercolonial trade to make up for partial exclusion from that American market which Canada had been enjoying to her great advantage during the last twelve years. To the anger which the behaviour of a party in England had excited in America, Canada owes the loss of the Reciprocity Treaty, and the bitter proof which she has since had of Lord Elgin's saying that free navigation and reciprocal trade with the States are indispensable to put her people in as good a position as their neighbours. If Great Britain can with justice say that she has paid heavily for the defence of Canada, Canada can with equal justice reply that she has paid heavily, in the way of commercial sacrifice, for the policy of Great Britain.

Under the pressure of necessity the faction-fight was suspended, and a coalition government, after some haggling, was formed (1864) with Confederation as its object, the Grit leader, Mr. George Brown, and two of his friends entering it, with Sir John A. Macdonald and his Conservative colleagues, under the figure-headship first of Sir Etienne Taché and, on his death, of Sir Narcisse Belleau. The spectacle was seen, as a speaker at the time remarked, of men who for the last twelve years had been accusing each other of public robberies and of every sort of crime seated on the Ministerial benches side by side. Delegates, comprising the leading men of both parties, were appointed by the Governors of Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, at the instance of the several legislatures. They met and drew up a scheme which, having been submitted to the legislatures, was afterwards carried to London, there finally settled with ​the Colonial Office, and embodied by the Imperial Parliament in the British North America Act, which forms the instrument of Confederation. The consent of the Canadian Legislature was freely and fairly given by a large majority. That of the Legislature of New Brunswick was only obtained by heavy pressure, the Colonial Office assisting, and after strong resistance, an election having taken place at which every one of the delegates had been rejected by the people. That of the Legislature of Nova Scotia was drawn from it, in defiance of the declared wishes of the people and in breach of recent pledges, by vigorous use of personal influence with the members. Mr. Howe, the patriot leader of the Province, still held out and went to England threatening recourse to violence if his people were not set free from the bondage into which, by the perfidy of their representatives, they had been betrayed. But he was gained over by the promise of office, and those who in England had listened to his patriot thunders and had moved in response to his appeal, heard with surprise that the orator had taken his seat in a Federationist administration. Prince Edward Island bolted outright, though high terms were offered her by the delegates,^[4] and at the time could not be brought back, though she came in some years afterwards, mollified by the boon of a local railway for the construction of which the Dominion paid. In effect, Confederation was carried by the Canadian Parliament, led by the politicians of British and French Canada, whose first object was escape from their deadlock, with the help ​of the Home Government and of the Colonial Governors acting under its directions.

The debate in the Canadian Parliament fills a volume of one thousand and thirty-two pages. A good deal of it is mere assertion and counter-assertion as to the probable effects of the-measure, political, military, and commercial. One speaker gives a long essay on the history of federations, but without much historical discrimination. Almost the only speech which has interest for a student of political science is that of Mr. Dunkin, who, while he is an extreme and one-sided opponent of the measure, tries at all events to forecast the working of the projected constitution, and thus takes us to the heart of the question, whether his forecast be right or wrong. Those who will be at the trouble of toiling through the volume, however, will, it is believed, see plainly enough that whoever may lay claim to the parentage of Confederation—and upon this momentous question there has been much controversy—its real parent was Deadlock.

Legally, of course, Confederation was the act of the Imperial Parliament, which had full power to legislate for dependencies. But there was nothing morally to prevent the submission of the plan to the people any more than there was to prevent a vote of the Colonial Legislatures on the project. The framers can hardly have failed to see how much the Constitution would gain in sacredness by being the act of the whole community. They must have known what was the source of the veneration with which the American Constitution is regarded by the people of the United States. The natural inference is that the politicians were not sure that they had the people with them. They were sure that in some of the provinces they had it not. The desire of escaping from the political dilemma, however keenly felt by ​the leaders, would not be so keenly felt by the masses, and the dread of American invasion would scarcely be felt by them at all. There was no such pressure of danger from without as that which enforced union on the members of the Achæan League, on the Swiss Cantons, on the States of the Netherlands, on the American Colonies; while the British Colonies in North America were already for military purposes as well as for those of internal peace united under the Imperial Government, so that the main purpose of a federal union was already fulfilled. Without worship of universal suffrage or of the people, it may be said that the broader and deeper the foundation of institutions is laid the better, and that the sanctity once imparted by the fiat of a king can now be imparted only by the fiat of the whole nation. A compact invalid in its origin may, no doubt, be made valid by acquiescence; but the Constitution of the Canadian Confederation is valid by acquiescence alone. It is said that at general elections which followed, federation was practically ratified by the constituencies: but at a general election different issues are mixed together; various questions, local and personal as well as general, operate on the voter's mind; the legislative questions are confused with the question to whom shall belong the prizes of office; party feeling is aroused; a clear decision cannot be obtained. The only way of obtaining from the people a clear decision on a legislative question is the plebiscite. Unless the single issue is submitted a fair verdict will never be returned. If some day Canadians are called upon to make a great sacrifice of wealth and security in order that they may keep their own institutions, the reply perhaps will be that the institutions are not their own but were imposed upon them by a group of politicians struggling to escape from the desperate predica​ment into which their factiousness had drawn them, employing in some cases very questionable means to arrive at their end, and bringing to bear upon Canada the power of a distant government and Parliament, which, worthy as they might be of reverence, were those of the British, not those of the Canadian people.

So far as political affinity was concerned the Maritime Provinces were ready for Confederation. To each of them had been given the same Constitution as to the two Canadas. Each of them had a Governor, an Executive Council, an Upper House of Parliament nominated by the Crown, and a Lower House elected by the people. The political history of each of them had followed the same course. In each of them an official oligarchy had entrenched itself in the Executive Council and the Upper House. In each of them its entrenchments had been attacked and at last stormed by the popular party which predominated in the Elective House. In Prince Edward Island with the struggle for responsible government had been combined a war with an absentee proprietary of original grantees, which was at last settled under an Act of the Imperial Parliament, such as was in those times deemed a startling infringement of proprietary rights, though it was mild indeed compared with the Irish land legislation of the present day. Patriots in the Maritime Provinces had in fact acted in sympathy with patriots in Canada, and the leaders of either party in each battlefield had kept their eyes fixed upon the other. Sir Francis Head, for instance, watched anxiously the progress of the struggle in New Brunswick, and in the surrender of the Colonial Office and its representative there read the general doom. Everywhere the war had been waged on nearly the same issues, the chief being the control of the civil list, and ​everywhere its result had been the same. Responsible government had prevailed, and the Crown, under a thin veil of constitutional language, had given up its power to the people. About the time when in Canada Sir Charles Metcalfe was striving to recover power for the Crown a desperate attempt of the same kind had been made by Lord Falkland in Nova Scotia. But Lord Falkland, like Sir Charles Metcalfe, succumbed to destiny, whose Minister in his case was the great orator and patriot, Joseph Howe.