THE year 1864 must
always be memorable in Canadian history. It marks the point where
the old system of governing the united provinces of Upper and Lower
Canada broke down, and some new political departure became a
necessity. After the defeat of the Tache-Macdonald ministry the
outlook seemed practically hopeless, since there was no reason to
expect that a further appeal to the electors would produce a
different result. The union formed twenty-three years before had
proved unworkable.
Only under strong
protest had Macdonald taken part in this last ministry—his desire to
withdraw from public life was openly expressed and, in all
probability, sincerely felt. The difficulties of governing two
provinces, in which racial and religious differences had been fanned
into flame for party ends, were enough to deter the most courageous
from carrying on the thankless task. But, as on more than one
previous occasion, he recognized that the queen's government must be
carried on; and so, nominally as attorney-general for Upper Canada,
but really as the leader of the administration, he took office. We
can now see that the complications, which seemed to render
constitutional government in Canada well-nigh impossible, were in
reality preparing the ground for a system adapted to the changing
needs of the country, and capable of vast development. It seems
unlikely that anything but a deadlock in the machinery of the
legislature would have induced the leaders of the two great parties
to drop for a time their animosities and unite in an effort to solve
the complicated problems of Canadian politics. But the deadlock had
now come. Two general elections and the defeat of four ministries
within three years had done nothing to improve the situation.
Ministry and Opposition sat facing each other on the floors of the
legislature with nearly equal numbers; intrigue had done its utmost
to incline the balance of advantage to either side; in the country
one phalanx of irreconcilables resolutely faced another equally
determined and equally strong. Fortunately beneath the surface heat
of party passion there still glowed the steady fires of genuine
Canadian patriotism. The vision of a greater union arose to make men
forget, for a time at least, their personal animosities and
differences and unite in a work of consolidation.
On the day that the
Tache-Macdonald government was defeated, the proposal of a coalition
framed to extricate the country from its difficulties was made, to
his unending honour, by Macdonald's vehement opponent, George Brown.
For a time at least the ardent party leader was transformed into the
self-sacrificing patriot, and in this spirit he made the offer of
assistance from himself and his friends to enable the defeated
government to carry on the business of the country while preparing a
scheme of federal union. The first suggestion was that this
federation should embrace only Upper and Lower Canada; but the
larger scheme for uniting all British North America had already
seized upon the public imagination, and it was soon found that
nothing less than this would furnish a sufficient rallying-point for
party groups.
Many circumstances
conspired to turn men's minds at this time towards the great
national ideal of a union of the whole of British North America. The
idea was not new. Political dreamers had suggested it early in the
century—inspired, no doubt, by the example of the United States.
-Lord Durham had outlined the vision it 1839. He found the public
mind already in a measure prepared for its realization. In his
report he says: "I discussed a general measure for the government of
the colonies with the deputations from the Lower Provinces, and with
various leading individuals and public bodies in both the Canadas .
. . and I was gratified by finding the leading minds of the various
colonies strongly and generally inclined to a scheme that would
elevate their countries into something like a national existence."
While the exigencies of the situation in Quebec led him to thrust
aside the scheme of a general union as for the moment impracticable,
he returns to the ideal with the foresight of a great statesman: "I
am inclined to go further, and inquire whether all these objects
would not more surely be obtained by extending this legislative
union over all the British provinces in North America; and whether
the advantages which I anticipate for two of them, might not, and
should not in justice, be extended over all. Such a union would at
once decisively settle the question of races; it would enable all
the provinces to cooperate for all common purposes; and, above all,
it would form a great and powerful people, possessing the means of
securing good and responsible government for itself, and which,
under the protection of the British empire, might in some measure
counterbalance the preponderant and increasing influence of the
United States on the American continent." He continues: "I do not
anticipate that a colonial legislature thus strong and thus
self-governing, would desire to abandon the connection with Great
Britain. On the contrary, I believe that the practical relief from
undue interference, which would be the result of such a change,
would strengthen the present bonds of feeling and interests; and
that the connection would only become more durable and advantageous
by having more of equality, of freedom, and of local independence.
But at any rate, our first duty is to secure the well-being of our
colonial countrymen; and if in the hidden decrees of that wisdom by
which this world is ruled, it is written that these countries are
not forever to remain portions of the empire, we owe it to our
honour to take good care, that, when they separate from us, they
should not be the only countries on the American continent in which
the Anglo-Saxon race shall be found unfit to govern itself."
The British American
League, founded in 1849, largely under Macdonald's inspiration, as
an offset to the annexation manifesto which followed Lord Elgin's
assent to the Rebellion Losses Bill and the burning of the
Parliament House at Montreal, adopted the confederation of all the
provinces as one of its main objects, and embodied its convictions
in a series of resolutions which united that aim with the creation
of a national commercial policy and the fundamental principle of
inviolable connection with the mother country.
The first formal
adoption of the idea by a legislative body was in the province of
Nova Scotia, where the assembly, in 1854, unanimously passed a
resolution that, "the union or confederation of the British
provinces, while calculated to perpetuate their connection with the
parent state, will promote their advancement and prosperity,
increase their strength and influence, and elevate their position."
The occasion was
marked by a speech of remarkable power by .Joseph Howe, the leader
of the Liberal party and one of the most brilliant orators that
Canada has ever produced.
In Howe's mind a
united British North America was the true stepping-stone to a firmly
united empire, while both were essential to the highest political
development of the nation. Howe's friend Haliburton (Sam Slick), the
Canadian father of the American school of humour, had lent his keen
wit and vigorous political intelligence to the same advocacy. In the
year 1858, under the premiership of Sir Georges Cartier, an official
stamp was given to the consideration of the question in the Canadian
legislature by the following paragraph embodied in the speech from
the throne:-
"I propose in the
course of the recess to communicate with Her Majesty's government
and with the governments of sister colonies on another matter of
great importance. I am desirous of inviting them to discuss with us
the principles upon which a bond of a federal character, uniting the
provinces of North America, may perhaps hereafter be practicable."
In the debate which
ensued Sir Alexander Galt had taken a prominent part, and in an able
speech had demonstrated the possibility of working out such a
scheme. Following up the discussion which then took place, Cartier,
Galt and another colleague, Rose, proceeded, soon after the close of
the session, to England to secure the approval of the British
government and to get authority to consult the Maritime Provinces.
Meanwhile the impulse
towards union was strengthened by various practical considerations.
The age of railway development was fairly begun and there was now,
among all interested in the growth of trade and commerce, a strong
de-N' sire for free communication between the provinces. The customs
barriers erected in every province checked the free interchange of
products, and hence also the full development of industry. Postal
and telegraph systems managed independently by each provincial
government were seen to be inadequate to the public need; varying
systems of law, civil and criminal, hampered the administration of
justice and the operations of commerce. In a hundred directions it
was felt that to confine within provincial bounds the currents of
political life meant industrial and commercial atrophy. To these
internal conditions external circumstances of great significance
added their pressure, and made an enlarged and invigorated system of
government more necessary than ever before. The American war of
secession had broken out in 1861. The seizure by an American
man-of-war of two Confederate commissioners, who were being carried
to Europe on a British merchant ship, (the Trent) brought the two
nations to the brink of conflict. Canada seemed threatened with
invasion; troops poured across the Atlantic, and the militia were
called out to defend the country. In the end the captured
commissioners were surrendered and war was averted, but American
animosity had been aroused and invasion was still possible. The
tension was increased, on the one side by the exploits of the
Southern privateer Alabama, which had escaped from a British port
and was destroying American commerce, and on the other side by raids
of Fenian filibusters upon the Canadian frontiers. The capacity of
Canada to defend itself became an urgent question, not only among
Canadians themselves but with the imperial government. The point of
radical weakness evidently rested in the lack of any common policy
or the means of joint action among the scattered and independent
provinces.
To fears of armed
invasion was added the threat of commercial war. The need of a more
extensive home market was brought home to - Canadian statesmen by
the manifest intention of the American government to denounce the
treaty of reciprocity negotiated by Lord Elgin in 1854. This treaty
had been of great advantage to both nations; while, during the war,
the balance of trade had been in favour of Canada, the United States
enjoyed the still greater boon of ability to obtain cheap and
plentiful supplies at a time of great national peril. But some
Canadian expressions of sympathy for the South aroused great anger,
though such verbal aid to their enemies might have been considered
as offset by the presence of forty thousand soldiers of Canadian
blood in the armies of the North. Nor can it be doubted that the
abrogation of the treaty was regarded by many American politicians
as the first step in the process of starving Canada into union. At a
great convention of business men held in Detroit early in 1865, a
speech by Joseph Howe won a unanimous vote in favour of the renewal
of the treaty, but later in the year it was denounced by the
American government, and came to an end in March, 1866. Threatened
in 1864 with this impending blow, and also with the abrogation of
the bonding privilege, by which goods from foreign countries might
be brought into Canada through American territory without breaking
bulk or paying duty at the American port of entry, the need for a
more extensive home market and for independent lines of connection
with the sea was obvious.
But while the older
generation of Canadians may have thought of Confederation chiefly as
a means of escape from the political tangles of past years, or as a
means of defence, to the younger men of the country it appealed
mainly as a national inspiration. There had never seemed any
sufficient reason why the Canadian provinces should move so slowly
as they did while development, vast and rapid, was going on beyond
the boundary line to the South. It was irritating to find that those
who sought a larger field for enterprise or industry gradually
drifted away from Canadian farms and villages to find scope for
themselves in an alien country. Provincial narrowness of view,
hostile interprovincial tariffs, lack of easy communication between
the old Canadian provinces and those of the Atlantic seaboard, an
absence of that national spirit which springs from the sense of
united strength and a great future, were the reasons which naturally
suggested themselves to every thinking man when he began to weigh
the reasons for Canadian inferiority on the American continent. The
outside world inclined to attribute the situation to that severity
of climate which appeared to terrify the emigrants who poured in
thousands into regions further south, or to some lack of natural
resources. But those who were better acquainted with the facts and
who knew the country's wealth of forest, fisheries, mine, and .
productive soil, knew also that the cause of comparative failure in
the rate of progress must be sought in other circumstances, and they
seemed to find it in the dispersion of force inseparable from the
existing political conditions.
Yet, although since
1849 federation had been Macdonald's ideal, constantly held, and
frequently expressed, he by no means leaped at this opportunity of
realizing it with the quick impulsiveness of George Brown. No man
knew so well the difficulties and dangers to be faced, especially in
the province of Quebec; difficulties not only in the execution of
the scheme, but in its subsequent operation. During the last days of
the Macdonald Dorion ministry, a committee of the leading members of
both sides of the House had been appointed, at the instance of
George Brown, "to enquire and report on the important subjects
embraced in" the memorandum submitted in February, 1859, by Messrs.
Cartier, Galt and Ross to the imperial government, "and the best
means of remedying the evils therein set forth." This committee,
which sat with closed doors, brought in a report in favour of "a
federative system, applied either to Canada alone, or to the whole
British North American provinces." Of the three members of the
committee who opposed the adoption of the report, Macdonald was one.
When later Brown made his historic offer, long conferences with
Cartier, Galt and his other chief supporters from Lower Canada,
preceded Macdonald's acceptance. But, when finally convinced that
the hour had come, he rose at once to the height of his great
opportunity, and, during the next three years of negotiations with
recalcitrant supporters, with hesitating sister provinces, and with
the mother country, displayed a skill that, by comparison, dwarfs
the efforts of any of his colleagues. Much ink has been wasted to
decide the paternity of Confederation. The question would be
simplified if the disputants remembered that men and circumstances
must concur to bring great natural movements to the birth.
Confederation had many fathers; to one man alone is it mainly due
that the child took a vigorous hold of life.
Brown had at first
been anxious to give to the ministry only an outside support, but
Macdonald was inflexible in the demand that Brown should take all
the responsibilities of cabinet position in working out the scheme,
and the patriotism of the latter finally overcame his personal and
party prejudices. At the cost of a rupture with Holton, Dorion and
the Rouges, he entered with two colleagues the ministry of Sir
Etienne Tache. Though for years no word had passed between Macdonald
and himself, both men now honourably sank their differences. In
Macdonald's words, "We acted together, dined at public places
together, played euchre in crossing the Atlantic, and went into
society in England together. And yet on the day after he resigned we
resumed our old positions and ceased to speak."
Brown's first
proposition had been for a federal union of the two provinces, and
his enthusiasm for the larger scheme was probably due to the freedom
which it promised to Ontario from "French domination." Macdonald's
eye was turned rather to the possibility of building up what he
described as "a nation, a subordinate, but still a powerful, people
to stand by Britain in North America, in peace or in war," and, in
describing the opportunities for growth which lay before the new
nation, he showed what was for him an unusual warmth of enthusiasm.
II When this union takes place, we shall be at the outset no
inconsiderable people. And a rapidly increasing population—for I am
satisfied that under this union our population will increase in a
still greater ratio than ever before —with increased credit—with a
higher position in the eyes of Europe—with the increased security we
can offer to emigrants, who would naturally prefer to seek a new
home in what is known to them as a great country, than in any one
little colony or another—with all this I am satisfied that, great as
has been our progress in the last twenty-five years since the union
between Upper and Lower Canada, our future progress, during the next
quarter of a century, will be vastly greater. And when, by means of
this rapid increase, we become a nation of eight or nine millions of
inhabitants, our alliance will be worthy of being sought by the
great nations of the earth."
To build up this new
nation, harbours open throughout the year were indispensable, and
could be obtained only by union with the Maritime Provinces. An
opportunity for negotiation soon presented itself. Under the
guidance of Dr. (afterwards Sir Charles) Tupper, the energetic
premier of Nova Scotia, a conference to discuss the union of Nova
Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, had been arranged at
Charlottetown. The Canadian ministry obtained permission to send
delegates to set before this meeting the wider prospect. Early in
September the conference met, and so great was the impression made
by the Canadian proposals, that it was resolved to discuss them at a
more formal gathering at Quebec. Before returning home the Canadian
delegates made a short tour through the Maritime Provinces, and
attended a banquet at Halifax, at which impressive speeches were
made by Brown and Macdonald.
On October 10th the
conference met in Quebec. The place that had witnessed the decisive
conflict between Frenchmen and Englishmen for supremacy in America
was now to see French and English met together in a peaceful
consultation aiming at the political organization of half the
continent. Appropriate and historically significant was the fact
that with universal approval the French-Canadian premier of Canada,
Sir Etienne Tach6, was selected as chairman. The leadership lost in
arms in 1759 had thus been regained in the council room in 1864, a
circumstance noted at the time as testifying no less to the genius
of the defeated race than to the perfect equality of political
opportunity accorded by the victors.
The conference at
Quebec proclaimed the fact that within the British empire evolution
had taken the place of revolution as the path of political
development.
Eighty-eight years
before, another conference of British colonists had met at
Philadelphia to establish new political relations based upon revolt,
and later to be established by prolonged conflict in arms. A great
nation was founded, but at the price of animosities which a century
of history has barely effaced. But at Quebec the conference met with
the full approval of the people and parliament of the motherland.
They were the free representatives of a free people, charged with
the peaceful task of framing a political system adapted to the needs
of a country which had before it an almost limitless horizon of
expansion. They had the experience of both England and the
neighbouring republic to draw upon—they had the model which each
afforded to copy or refuse.
It was decided that
the convention should conduct its deliberations with closed doors.
The arguments for this course were strong. A new set of political
problems was to be discussed—views would be modified as
consideration proceeded—and delegates should not be prejudiced in
forming final judgments by early expressions of opinion.
The ablest men of all
sides of politics had met, not to fight old party battles or use old
party cries, but to find how, by mutual concession, divergent
interests could be harmonized for a great national end. In such a
gathering appeals to the gallery would be singularly out of place.
The utmost freedom of debate was thus assured, while publicity—that
greatest of political safeguards—was guaranteed ultimately by the
fact that the conclusions of the conference, matured in unrestrained
debate, would be fully discussed by the press, on the platform, and
in the legislatures before they could have constitutional effect.
The conference sat
from October 10th till October 28th. Though towards the last its
deliberations were hurried, and though several changes were
eventually made in its proposals, the seventy-two resolutions which
it passed embody the main lines on which Confederation was finally
accomplished, and are a work of great political wisdom and sagacity.
A mass of notes preserved by Sir John Macdonald still remains
unedited in the hands of Mr. Pope, but from material that has been
published the general trend of the negotiations can be followed. The
war raging in the United States seemed to Canadian statesmen to show
that the great vice of the American constitution was the vagueness
which had enabled the seceding states to claim that they were
independent and sovereign bodies, with full right to resume the
powers which they had temporarily delegated to a central authority.
Hence, from the first, it was determined to subordinate the
provincial legislatures to the federal. "In framing the constitution
" said Macdonald at the opening session, "care should be taken to
avoid the mistakes and weaknesses of the United States' system, the
primary error of which was the reservation to the different states
of all powers not delegated to the general government. We must
reverse this process by establishing a strong central government, to
which shall belong all powers not specially conferred on the
provinces. Canada, in my opinion, is better off as she stands than
she would be as a member of a confederacy composed of five sovereign
states, which would be the result if the powers of the local
governments were not defined."
"Those who were at
Charlottetown will remember," said Dr. Tupper on October 24th, "that
it was finally specified there that all the powers not given to
local, should be reserved to the federal, government. This was
stated as being a prominent feature of the Canadian scheme, and it
was said then that it was desirable to have a plan contrary to that
adopted by the United States. It was a fundamental principle laid
down by Canada and the basis of our negotiations." Macdonald indeed
was strongly in favour of a legislative union, but the strong local
patriotism of the Maritime Provinces, and still more that of Lower
Canada, rendered such an idea impossible.
"I have again and
again stated in the House," he said in the next year, "that, if
practicable, I thought a legislative union would be preferable. I
have always contended that if we could agree to have one government
and one parliament legislating for the whole of these peoples, it
would be the best, the cheapest, the most vigorous, and the
strongest system of government that we could adopt. But, on looking
at the subject at the conference, and discussing the matter, as we
did, most unreservedly, with a desire to arrive at a satisfactory
conclusion, we found that such a system was impracticable. In the
first place, it would not meet the assent of the people of Lower
Canada, because they felt that, in their peculiar position,—being in
a minority, with a different language, nationality, and religion
from the majority,—in case of a junction with the other provinces,
their institutions and their laws might be assailed, and their
ancestral associations on which they prided themselves attacked and
prejudiced; it was found that any proposition which involved the
absorption of the individuality of Lower Canada,—if I may use the
expression,—would not be received with favour by her people. We
found too, that though their people speak the same language and
enjoy the same system of law as Upper Canada, a system founded on
the common law of England, there was as great a disinclination on
the part of the people of the Maritime Provinces to lose their
individuality as separate political organizations as we observed in
the case of Lower Canada itself. Therefore we were forced to the
conclusion that we must either abandon the idea of union altogether,
or devise a system of union in which the separate provincial
organizations would in some degree be preserved. So that those who
were, like myself, in favour of a legislative union, were obliged to
modify their views, and accept the project of a federal union as the
only scheme practicable even for the Maritime Provinces."
Mr. DeCelles in his
life of Cartier, in this series, produces some evidence for a
remarkable story that, during the subsequent negotiations in London,
Macdonald tried to force a legislative union upon his colleagues,
hoping that the dissatisfaction in the recalcitrant provinces would
die down when they were confronted with the fait accompli, and that
he was only foiled by the refusal of Cartier. Though the idea may
have crossed his mind, he must have known too well its impossibility
to make such a proposal in any other spirit than that of whimsical
jest. But it is evident that the great majority of the delegates at
Quebec wished to make the central authority as powerful as was
consistent with the federal principle, and that in this respect the
Canadian constitution stands at the opposite pole from that of the
United States. The long struggle for provincial rights to be
described in Chapter IX, prevented the complete fulfilment of
Macdonald's ideal, but the autonomy of the Canadian provinces is far
more extensively curtailed than that of the American or Australian
states.
The financial
relations between the various provinces and the central authority
proved a problem which taxed all the skill of Galt, Tilley, and the
other financial experts among the delegates to whom this part of the
negotiations was chiefly entrusted. The equitable distribution of
the public debts of the various provinces, which were to be assumed
by the Dominion, presented considerable difficulty. The commercial
policy of the Maritime Provinces tended towards free trade, that of
the Canadas to protection; the Canadas had a municipal system which,
in the Upper Province especially, had attained to a high degree of
perfection, and which controlled numerous local matters, the
expenses of which in the Maritime Provinces were paid from the
provincial treasury. Though the solution reached has proved, in the
main, satisfactory, it has been found necessary more than once to
make amendments, and the agitation of Nova Scotia for 11 better
terms " did much to embitter the early years of the Dominion.
The constitution of
the Upper House absorbed a larger amount of time and anxious thought
than its subsequent influence in the government of the country has
justified. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick had nominative upper
chambers, while in the Canadas the legislative council had, since
1856, been elective. In practice this addition to the already large
number of elections had not proved a success; men of age and
experience would not endure the trouble and uncertainty of an
election, while the young and ambitious made the popular chamber
their goal. Hence both Brown and Macdonald concurred in advocating a
nominative upper chamber. To this they were also led by their wish
to imitate as far as possible the British Constitution, Macdonald
comparing the senators to so many life peers. Besides, such a
chamber was an indispensable portion of the federal scheme, since
the smaller provincial units of the Dominion would not have
consented to federation unless the inequality of representation by
population in the Commons had been balanced by the equal
representation of Upper Canada, Lower Canada, and the Maritime
Provinces taken as a group in the senate. In actual fact the
Canadian senate has not, save in a very few exceptional instances,
wielded any power at all corresponding to that of the House of Lords
in England, or that of the senate in the United States. For this
failure to realize the expectations of those who framed its
constitution, Macdonald himself must be held largely responsible. An
Upper House gets its weight either from ancient tradition and
lineage, from being the choice of the electors, or from personal and
collective ability, combined with impartiality, in its members. From
the first two of these sources of prestige a nominated body like the
senate is cut off. When Macdonald established the system of using
his power of nomination to the senate only as an instrument to
strengthen his party—to reward defeated candidates or faithful
supporters, without much reference to ability—he struck at the very
root of what makes an Upper House powerful in the confidence of the
country. The original nominations to the senate included an equal
proportion of Conservatives and Liberals, and it then furnished the
germ for a very influential legislative body, but during his long
subsequent tenure of office only a single Liberal senator was
appointed by Macdonald. His example has been strictly followed by
the Liberal party when in power. Had Macdonald used the same
discretion in strengthening the senate that he did in strengthening
the judiciary of the Dominion, the history of that chamber might
have been one of increasing, rather than diminishing, usefulness and
influence. His excuse, and that of other premiers, for the course
actually followed, lies in the tyranny of party feeling. A more
enlightened public opinion can alone supply the remedy.
The vexed question of
representation by population was solved in a manner justly styled by
Macdonald "equally ingenious and simple" since it granted this much
desired boon without joining thereto his bugbear of manhood
suffrage. "By adopting the representation of Lower Canada as a fixed
standard," he said, "as the pivot on which the whole would turn—that
province being the best suited for the purpose, on account of the
comparatively permanent character of its population, and from its
having neither the largest nor the least number of inhabitants, we
have been enabled to overcome the difficulty I have mentioned. We
have introduced the system of representation by population without
the danger of an inconvenient increase in the number of
representatives on the recurrence of each decennial period. The
whole thing is worked by a simple Rule of Three. For instance, we
have in Upper Canada 1,400,000 of a population; in Lower Canada
1,100,000. Now, the proposition is simply this, if Lower Canada with
its population of 1,100,000 has a right to sixty-five members, how
many members should Upper Canada have, with its larger population of
1,400,000? The same rule applies to the other provinces, the
proportion is always observed and the principle of representation by
population carried out. If an increase is made, Lower Canada is
still to remain the pivot on which the whole calculation will turn."
George Brown was
satisfied with this solution of the question which had so long
provided the chief motive power of his politics. The great
principles of federation having been settled, unanimity on minor
points was reached without much difficulty. For once the foremost
leaders of party politics had nobly responded to the demand for
higher aims and larger statesmanship. |