^m IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) y ^ / O / 4^s V * f/i "'^ ^ 1.0 ■'•- 11^ III 2.5 ^^ IIIIM I.I 2.. .|li40 125 - 6' 2.0 Hill— U i 1.6 p>^ <^ V S! /}. A^. w^ F ^^'.^>- '> "^ ^ ^ V ^^Jh' / M %. Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.y. 14S80 (716) 873-4503 €^ i>,«i' -^•v ;\ \ # CIHM/ICMH Microfiche Series. CIHM/ICMH Collection de microfiches. Canadian Instttuft) for Historical Microreproductions Institut Canadian de microreproductions hintoriques 1980 m Technical and Bibliographic Notes/Notes techniques et bibliographiques The Institute has attempted to obtain the best original copy available for filming. Features of this copy which may be bibliographically unique, which may alter any of the images in the reproduction, or which may significantly change Xhe usual method of filming, are checked below. D Coloured covers/ Couvjrture de couleur I I Covers damaged/ Couverture endommagde □ Covers restored and/or laminated/ Couverture restaur6e et/ou pellicul6e □ Cover title missing/ Le titre de couverture manque D D D D D D D Coloured maps/ Cartes gdographiques en couleur Coloured ink (i.e. other than blue or black)/ Encre de couleur (i.e. autre que bleue ou noire) Coloured plates and/or illustrations/ Planches et/ou illustrations en couleur Bound with other material/ Re\\6 avec C'autres documents Tight binding may cause shadows or distortion along interior margin/ La reiiure serr^c- peut causer de t'ombre ou de la distortion le long de la marge intdrieure Blank leaves added during restoration may appear within the text. Whenever possible, these have been omitted from filming/ II se peut que certaines pages blanches ajout^es lors d'une restauration ^pparaissent dans le texte, mais, lorsque cela 6tait possible, ces pages n'ont pas 6t6 filmdes. Additional comments:/ Commentaires suppldmentaites; L'InstStut a microfilm^ le meilleur exemplaire qu'il lui a 6t6 possible de se procurer. Les details de cet exemplaire qui sont peut-6tre uniques du point de vue bibliographique, qui peuvent modifier une image reproduite, ou qui peuvent exiger une modification dans la mdthode normale de filmage sont indiquds ci-dessous. I I Coloured pages/ Pages de couleur Pages damaged/ Pages endommagdes Pages restored and/oi Pages restaurdes et/ou pelliculdes Pages discoloured, stained or foxe Pages d^colordes, tachet6es ou piqu^es Pages detached/ Pages d6tach6es Showthroughy Transparence Quality of prir Qualit^ indgale de ('impression Includes supplementary materit Comprend du materiel supplementaire Only edition available/ Seule Edition disponible I I Pages damaged/ I I Pages restored and/or laminated/ I I Pages discoloured, stained or foxed/ I I Pages detached/ I I Showthrough/ I I Quality of print varies, r~~| Includes supplementary material/ I — I Only edition available/ D Pages wholly or partially obscured by err?^^.ta slips, tissues, etc., have been refilmed to ensure the best possible image/ Les pages totalement ou partiellement obscurcies par un fnuillet d'errata, une pelure, etc., ont 6t6 film^es d nouveau de fapon d obtenir la moilleure image possible. y 10X This item is filmed at the reduction ratio checked bolow/ Ce document est filmd au taux de reduction indiqu6 ci-dessoui 14X 18X 22X 1. 26X 30X v/ / 12X 16X 20X 24X 28X 32X The copy filmed here has been reproduced thanks to the generosity of: National Library of Canada L'exemplaire film6 fut reproduit grdce d la g6n6rosit6 de: Bibliothdque nationale du Canada The images appearing here are the best quality possible considering the condition and legibility of the original copy and in keeping with the filming contract specifications. Les images suivantes ont 6t6 reproduites avec le plus grand soin, compte tenu de la condition et de la nettet6 de l'exemplaire filmd, et en conformity avec les conditions du contrat de filmage. Original copies in printed paper covers are filmed beginning vMh the front cover and ending on the last page with a printed or illustrated impres- sion, or the back cover when appropriate. All other original copies are filmed beginning on the first page with a printed or illustrated intpres- sion, and ending on the last page with a printed or illustrated impression. Les exemplaires originaux dont la couverture en papier est imprimde sont film(§s en commenpant par le premier plat et en terminant soit par la dernidre page qui comporte une empreinte d'impression ou d'illustration, soit par le second plat, selon le cas. Tous les autres exemplaires origin?"^ ■*ont filmds en commenpant par la premiA.. 09.1" ;ui comporte une empreinte d'impression j^ d'illustration et en terminant par la dernidre page qui comporte une telle empreinte. The last recorded frame on each mir^rofiche shall contain the symbol -^ (meaning "CON- riNUED"), or the symbol V (meaning END"), whichever applies. Un des symboles suivants apparaitra sur la dernidre image de chaque microfiche, seion le cas: le symbole — »>signifie "A SUIVRE", le symbole V signifie "FIN". Maps, plates, charts, etc., may be filmed at different reduction ratios. Those too large to be entirely included in one exposure are filmed beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustrate the method: Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre filmds d des taux de reduction diff^rents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour §tre reproduit en un seul clichd, il est film6 d partir de Tangle sup6rieur gauche, de gauche d droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images n6cessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mdthode. 1 2 3 4 5 6 HER MAJESTY QUEEN VICTORIA. Prodre$$ of Canada in the nineteentb Century GIVING AN ACCOUNT OF THE EARI 4 PROGRESS IN TRANSPORTATION AND TARIFFS. Completion of the Intercolonial and Improved Position of the Grand Trunk. — History of Canadian Pacific Railway Construction.-- Statistics of Railway Progress.— Pioneers of the Continental Route. — George Stephen, D. A. Smith, R. B. Angaa, W. C. Van Home,— Difficulties, Dangers, and a Great Triumph. — Value of the C. P. R. to Canada. — Development of Smaller Railway Lines. — Canal Deepening and Enlargement. — Steamship Prog- ress and Canadian Traffic on the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence, and the Oceans of the World. — Tariff History and the Evolution of Protection. — The National Policy. — ^The General Fiscal Issue and Dominion Party Poli- tics. — ^The Question of Monopoly. — Free Trade in Princi- ple and Practice. — Conditions in a New Country. — American Competition. — The Situation and the Lf^aders. — Mackenzie, Cartwi'ight, Tilley, Tupper, Blake, and Laurier. — Unrestricted Reciprocity and Commercial Union. — An Important Movement. — The Elections of 1891 and 1896.— Settlement of the Issue 447 CHAPTER XVIII. THE EXTERNAL RELATIONS OF THK DOMirUON. Confederation and its Effect upon Imperial Relations. — British Connection and Canadian Development.— The Colonial Office and Canada. — Mistakes in Diplomacy and Statecraft. — Treaties and Territory .—The Manches- ter School and the Colonies. — Basic Principles of Can- adian Loyalty. — The Washington Treaty. — Canada and the Treaty-Making Power. — Relations with the United States. — Influence of American Contiguity and Condi- tions upon Canadian Development. — The Press and Lit- $i k\ CONTENTS. XXI PAGB erature of the Two Countries. —Canadian View of British Public Life. — Independence and Annexation. — The Un- restricted Reciprocity Movement. — Trade with the United Kingdom and the United States.— Tendencies and Changes.— The Imperial Federation Idea. — Prefer- ential Duties and Political Parties.— Closer Imperial Unity , 469 CHAPTER XIX. THE PEOPLE AND THE COUNTRY AT THE END OP THE CENTURY. Popular Progress.- Homes and Habits of the People.— Prohibition, Divorce, and General Morals.— Immigra- tion, the Census, and Emigration.— Lights and Shadows of Education.— liritish and American Characteristics in Canada. — Denominations, Missions, and Religious Views.— Public Revenues and Expenditures.— Progress in Ranching, Farming, and Mining.— Industrial Devel- opment.— Journalism and Literature.— Art and Music in a New Country, —The Militia and Militar/ Sentiment. —Varied Influences Connected with Canadian Growth and History 493 ■PM^l I I \ '■ V !!i / i^ m i u ILLUSTRATIONS. FAaa Her Majesty Queon Victoria Frontispiece J. Costoll Hopkins, F.S.S Ix Samuel do Cliaiu plain xxiv Jac(]ncs Cartior xxiv Major-Goneral James Wolfe 1 Tiie Marquis de Montcalm 1 Guy Carloton (Lord Doi-chester) 16 Miy or-Genoral Sir Isiiac Broclc 17 H. R. H. Prince Rupert, Duke of Cumberland S3 Major-General Sir Joiin Harvey 32 Ciiarles Poulett Tliouipson, Ist Lord Sydenham 33 Sir George Simpson 33 A View of NiaRara Falls from Canadian Side 18 Scene on the Grand River, Ontario 49 Tecumseh 61 Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea) 6S The Town of Sudbury, Ontario 80 Rossland, British Columbia, in 1898 - 81 Among the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence 113 A View of the Citadel and City of Quebec ,. 113 Old Fort Garry, near the City of Winnipeg, Manitoba 128 Ranching Scene near Qu'Appelle, Assiniboia 129 The Rev. Professor A. H. Newman, D.D 141 The Rev. Charles Tupper, D.D 141 The Rev. Dr. Robert Burns 146 The Hon. and Rt. Rev. Alexander Macdonnell 145 The Very Rev. George Monro Grant, LL.D 162 The Rev. John Cook, D.D., LL.D 153 The Rev. Dr. W. Morley Punshon 160 The Rev. Dr. James Richardson 160 The Rev. Dr. George Douglas 161 The Rev. William Case 161 The Rev. Egcrton Ryerson, D.D 192 The Hon. and Rt. Rev. Dr. John Strachan 193 Mount Lef'oy, in the Canadian Rockies 232 Shipping Coal at Cape Breton, N.S .' 233 Sir John Beverley Robinson 256 Joseph Howe 257 Sir Daniel Wilson, LL.D., F.R.S.C 264 The Rt. Rev. A. T. Dunn, D.D 265 The University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, N.B 280 McGill University, Montreal 281 The Hon. Sir Mackenzie Bowell, K.C.M.G 288 Sir John Colborne, 1st Lord Seaton 288 The Hon. Louis Joseph Papineau 289 The Hon. Louis Hypollte Lafontaine, Bart 304 The Hon. Robert Baldwin, CB 305 The Hon. Alexander Mackenzie 312 The Hon. George Brown 313 Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario 320 victoria University, Toronto 321 xxiii u s XXIV ILLUSTRATIONS. PAOB MoMaator University, Toronto 328 Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia 329 Sir Alexander Tilloch Gait 336 Sir WiUiam Pearce Howland, C.B., K.O.M.G 337 The University of Toronto, Toronto 344 The Parliament 13iiildinKs, Ottawa 345 James Bruce, Earl of Elnn and Kincardine 352 The Earl of Durham, G.C.B 353 The Most Rev. Archbishop Tach6 368 The Rev. Robert Alexander Fyfe, P.D 3fi9 The Rt. Hon. Sir John A. Macdonald, G.C.B 376 The Rt. Hon. Sir Wilfiid Laurier, G.C.M.G 377 Scene on the Rideau River, Ontario 384 Jarvis Street, Toronto 385 Sultana Island Gold Mine, Lake of the Woods, Ontario 392 Asbestos Mine in the Eastern Townships, Quebec 393 Scene on the Little Saguenay River, Quebec 4fMj A Scene in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia 401 Red Sucker Point, Lake Superior 404 Mirror Lake, in the Canadian Rockies 405 The Rt Hou. Sir Henry Strong, P.C 408 The Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, K.P 408 William Lyon Mackciizie 409 The Hon. Sir George E. Cartier, Bart 409 The Most Rev. Archbishop B6gin, D.D 416 His Eminence Cardinal Tasohereau 416 Laval University, Montreal 417 Laval University, Quebec 417 Shadow River, I :uskoka, Ontario 424 A View in Rosodale, near Toronto 425 Sir J. J. C. Abbott, K.C.M.G 440 The Rt. Hon. Sir J. S. D. Thompson, K.C.M.G 440 The Hon. Sir A. G. Archibald, K.C.M.G 441 The Hon. Edward Blake, M.P 441 The Hon. Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley 448 The Hon. Sir Richard J. Cartwri,5 Gilbert Parker, D.C.L., M.P 472 Sir James MacPherson Le Moine 473 Tlie Hon. Thomas Chase-Casgrain, Q.C., LL.D 476 The Hon. tllifford Sifton, Q.C. 477 Sir Hugh Allan 480 The Hon. William Tcmplemar. 481 Sir Alexander MackenJiie 488 The Hon. Sir Francis Hincks, K.C.M.G 489 The Hon. Sir Thomas Gait 41l« The Hon. Sir John Alexander Boyd 497 Sir John Christian Schultz, K.C.M.G 6(U Madame Albani-Gye 5('5 The Hon. George W. Ross, LL.D., M.P.P 612 The Hon. Sir Oliver Mowat, Q.C, LL.D 613 The Hon. Simon Napoleon Parent 618 Lieut-Col. the Hon. Felix Gabriel Marchnnd, Q.C 517 Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, G.C.M.G 620 The Hon. Sir Charles Tupper, Bart, G.C.M.G,, C,B 621 > cl « o > > o to A v> n > w w o w n > r i: w o tn a a < ►J < W z w o t o < l] i fl I-} < o H o Of W K o a sed to have been used by the Indians when they first met Cartier. 2. From the Iroquois word "Canatha" meaning a collection of huts and applied by the Algonquins to their chief town. 3. From the Spanish word " Acanada " meaning " There is nothing there" and referring to the ab- sence of gold on the coast of the St. Lawrence Gulf. 4. From the Portuguese word "Canada " meaning '• narrow passage " and referring to the sudden and striking naiTowing of the waters at Cape Diamond. 5. Cordeiro's claim that the word is Basque for '♦ Canal " or narrow passage. The second sug- gestion is the popular one, but the fourth is the most prob- able. It embodies a fact quickly visible to explorers and sailors as well as to Indians and is a word common to both the Spanish and Portuguese languages, while it is said to have the same meaning as the Indian word " Kebec," or Quebec — now applied to the Province through which the great river runs. ill |i! 4 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. termed Mount Royal, and from which he gazed over a vast ixnknown region already flaming with the exquisitf colours of autumn and preparing for the terrors of a winter which he and his men were soon to encounter in such measure as to prevent many of them from ever again seeing the shores of sunny France. It is little wonder indeed that Europeans long had a horror of the climate of Canada, or that Louis the Fourteenth should have spurned it in a moment of disgust as " nothing more than a few arpents of snow and ice." Through all the narratives of early exploration and settlement; in the three voyages of Cartier and during the prolonged efforts of Cham- plain to colonise and conquer; throughout the tragic experiences of De Monts upon the Nova Scotian coast, De Roberval on the shores of the St. Lawrence, De la Roque in bleak and barren Sable Island, or Poutrincourt and Pontgrave on the coasts of Acadie ; there runs the common tale of intense suffering from the cold, of entire ignorance of winter conditions, and of an almost complete absence of warm clothing or medicines with which to meet the requirements of a new and strange climate. Lessons seem never to have been learned, and the experience of one set- tler or explorer appears to have been practically use- less to his successors. Despite these natural diffi- culties, however, Champlain founded Quebec in 1608 in the shadoM' of a towering rock, and endeavoured to evolve for France an empire in the New World. THREE CENTURIES OF PRECEDING HISTORY. 5 And, until his death in 1633, the "father" of French Canada fought a battle of the most extra- ordinary kind with almost every obstacle which na- ture and man could place in his path. He carried his little colony through all the difficulties of local rivalries, fur-trade abuses, national indifference, of- ficial intrigue and the blood-darkened shadow of sav- age life ; while at the same time exploring the interior and discovering Lakes Huron, Ontario and Nipissing. But, while Champlain's policy and explorations brought the existence of a continent into the practical knowledge of the world and his settlements laid the foundation of IsTew France, he also was reluctantly and unavoidably embroiled in a conflict with the Iro- quois which resulted in over a hundred years of the most barbaric and at the same time picturesque warfare recorded in all history. The origin of the North American Indian * is shrouded in impenetrable gloom. His personality looms out from a lurid background of tortured whites, flame-lit settlements and battling pioneers. His character comes to us, imbedded in the literature of a hostile and conquering race, as being the em- bodiment of cruelty and savagery. Yet that mys- terious figure was in many respects a noble one. Cold and hard in character, passionate and revenge- ful in temper, ignorant and superstitious in belief. * So called by Columbus in 1492 from the belief that the island natives whom he first saw in the Bahamas were living near the shores of Asia. : « ■ ' [\ \i i M 6 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. keen and quick in thought, the Indian was never, in the days prior to his period of decadence, guilty of the effeminate and meaner vices which have destroyed peoples such as the Roman and the Moor. Love of liberty in its wilder forms and contempt for all arbi- trary rule or personal control he carried to an extreme greater than can be anyvvhere paralleled. Sleepless suspicion of others was a natural part of his sur- roundings of war and treachery. Like the Italian he preferred to send a secret blow, or despatch the shaft of an ambushed arrow, to open fighting or pub- lic revenge. Like the Spaniard he was dark and sinister in his punishments and retaliations. Like nearly all savage races his warfare was one of sud- den and secret surprise, ruthless and unhesitating slaughter. Nature had cast the Indian in a noble mould and given him a vast and splendid environment. That he was ignorant of his opportunities and subservient to the passions of pride and cruelty were perhaps misfortunes more than they were faults. Com- pared with the greater knowledge, the gentler faith, the more cultured surroundings, the kindlier home- life of the white man, his chances were very slight and his sins not so lurid as their flaming background might imply. The curious federal system of the Iroquois, and the characters of Pontiac, Tecumseh and Thayendenagea indicate his individual capabili- ties under favourable circumstances, or when raised by the white man's sympathy and support instead of THREE CENTURIES OF PRECEDING HISTORY. f degraded by the use of his fire-water and the prac- tice of his immoralities. The Indian was the prod- uct of nature, the outcome of wilderness conditions, the result of long and continuous struggle with the forces of extreme heat ana cold and of contact with the wild, free vagaries of a wandering forest life. Somewhat like the Tartar of Central Asia he was as a rule tall and slender and agile in form, with face bronzed by sun and rain and winds. His ex- pression was stern and sombre, seldom or never marked by a smile. His head had high cheek-bones, small, sunken and keenly flashing eyes, narrow fore- head, thick lips, a somewhat flat nose and coarse hair. The senses of sight and sound and feeling were developed into a sort of forest instinct which seemed almost supernatural to the early white set- tlers. The Iroquois, with whom Champlain first came ffice to face in the inauguration of a drama which had a continent for its stage and a century for its enactment, were at once the best and the Avorst of all the Indian nations. Their pride was intense and over-mastering, their lust of conquest was individ- ually as strong as that of Alexander or Napoleon, their savage passions and cruelties were vented in an indescribable degree upon their enemies. Yet in courage, constancy and concentrated energy it would be difiicult to find their equal as a people. And where they inflicted pain they were equally ready to endure it. They included tlie Mohawks, Oneidas, ^1 Tf^ PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. i V i iill Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas, and afterwards the Tuscaroras, in what was practically a loose federa- tion of nations stretching across the wide lake region and through what was destined to become the State of New York and the Provinces of Ontario and Quebec. In their day of greatest power the Iro- quois warriors never numbered more than four thou- sand men, though they became a thought of terror to all the tribes from the rolling waters of the St. Lawrence to the sunny slopes of Carolina and from the far West to the Atlantic shores. The kindred races of the Neutrals, the Andastes, the Eries and the Hurons had all by 1680 been practically wiped out of existence by this organisation of savage strength. To the French Colonists they also became a veritable scourge of Satan, a source of untold suf- fering and sorrow. So in a lesser degree with tribes further south and west and the English Colonists of the seaboard. Yet with all the vivid tokens of Indian life and character which are stamped across the pages of Canadian and continental history it is probable that the vast wastes of North America never saw more than 200,000 savages at any one period. Their wandering and harsh mode of life and their contin- uous wars prevented the otherwise natural increase in numbers. It would require many volumes to de- scribe their struggles with the encroaching and over-mastering white man. At first his friend and savage admirer, the Indian might have been readily I '^ THREE CENTURIES OF PRECEDING HISTORY. 9 brought under the influence of genuine Christianity and honest civilisation. But from the initial de- ception of Cartier in kidnapping the Chief Donna- cona, through all the painful scenes of brandy poison- ing by unscrupulous fur-traders, until step by step the one-time Colonists of the east had taken posses- sion of his territory through the heart and west of the continent and given him in return a few barren Reserves and scanty rations, the Indian was the victim of commercial greed where he was not the tool of one or the other of two great rival nations in a world-encircling struggle for supremacy. Little wonder that, in moments of unreasoning and pas- sionate rage, massacres and raids should make the horizon blaze with the light of burning homes, fill the air with the cries of dying and tortured set- tlers, turn the hearts of French soldiers into water behind the fortifications of Montreal and Que- bec and make even populous centres in the Province of New York realise the feeling of fear. It was not the fault of the mysterious Order of Jesus if the Indians of North America were un- redeemed from savagery. So far as Canada was concerned the Jesuits were the pioneers of religion, the pathfinders of territorial power. Over all the vast countries from the confines of Hudson's Bay to the heart of the Mississippi Valley they carried with alternate failure and success the banner of the Cross. To these black-robed missionaries of a great Order and of a dominating and indomitable E9t2 10 PBOGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. Church no self-sacrifice was too great, no suflFering too painful, no hardship too severe, if but one sav- age child were baptised into the faith, or the pas- sions of a solitary Indian modified by the influence of persuasion and the power of Christian hope. Especially in the country between Georgian Bay and Lake Siracoe — now a rich agricultural region of the Province of Ontario — the gloomy forests of the mid- dle of the seventeenth century echoed with the prayers of wandering priests and often blazed with the martyr-fires of their execution by the merciless Iroquois or vacillating Huron. Often, too, those lonely aisles of nature's primeval church witnessed scenes of torture such as the pen must fail to ade- quately describe and even imagination to fully understand. Daniel, Brebeuf, Lalemant, Gamier, Garreux, Buteaux, Ohabanet, thus wrote their names across the pages of early Canadian history in letters illumined by the light of a great sacrifice. The only immediate result was the nominal con- version of the Huron nation — a people wiped al- most out of existence by subsequent Iroquois raids. The ultimate result was some amelioration of the savage character in respect to tortures practised in time of war. That the marvellous work performed by these Jesuit priests was not more successful is due chiefly to the barbarism of the Christian rivals who were for a hundred years afterwards struggling for the possession of the continent. The labours of the missionary, the teachings of Christianity, all the ■'4 I THREE CENTURIES OF PRECEDING HISTORY. H stately trappings of solemn ceremonial, were of little avail in comparison with the practice of an inter- national hate which dictated the use of the uncivil- ised Indian as a weapon of warfare against another, and a civilised, foe. If, however, the labours of the Order of Jesus were fruitful of little amongst the savages of what is now Ontario but personal sac- rifice and a prolonged tale of heroic sorrow, they were more effective amidst the scattered settlements of French civilisation in the Maritime Provinces. Throughout historic Acadie priests such as Fathers Biard and Masse worked long and earnpstly amongst the settlers and the Indians. In centres such as Montreal and Quebec also stately buildings of stone grew up emblematic of the ambitious policy of this and other religious Orders, while, early in the his- tory of New 'France, women of sacrificial soul such as Madame de la Pcltrie, Ma lie de I'Incarnation, Mdlle. Mance and Marguerite Bourgeois helped in founding institutions of religion, charity and educa- tion. Thus it was that the policy of Richelieu — the establishment of a powerful French and Catholic st"^'^ iipon the American continent — was com- menced; and it would probably have been consum- mated had statesmen such as the great Cardinal and the gifted Colbert continued to rule in France. But this vast though fluctuating scheme of French dominion — embracing thousands of miles of lake and river, pathless prairies and trackless forests, and reaching from Hudson's Bay to the Gulf of Mexico 12 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN TIF' CENTURY. \^ n -Ji M and from the far unknown wastes of the West to the Alleghanies — was destined to be checked by ihe on- ward sweep of the little English Colonies upon the Atlantic and crushed by the march of English con- quest through the heart of the continent and the guns of English soldiers upon the ramparts of Louis- bourg and the Heights of Quebec. The struggle was a peculiar one. Kindling with fierce heat amidst the forests of America at the firbt signal of war in Europe; often blazing into local conflicts spread over a vast area while their respective nations were nominally at peace; sharing the passions of Euro- pean pride and rivalry with the added impulse of Provincial boundary disputes, commercial conflicts and Indian blood-stained surprises; the struggles of these alien races stationed respectively upon the shores of the St. Lawrence and the coasts of the At- lantic were of a character vitally different from the better known conflicts of personal ambitions, relig- ious principles, or dynastic claims, which have so reddened the pages of European history. Battles in North America from the beginning of the seventeenth to the end of the eighteenth centuries did not resemble military conflicts elsewhere. No such splendid natural setting for the contest between France and England which belted the world and in- cluded in its scope the victories of Clive, the career of Frederick the Great, the triumph of Wolfe and the rise of Washington, was anywhere else provided. During much of the period when the respective « THREE CENTURIES OF PRECEDING HISTORY. 13 Mother Countries were at war * — and frequently when they were resting and recuperating during an interval of apparent peace — the broad aisles of a primeval forest, the stormy waters of immense in- land seas, the untrodden mazes of an illimitable wilderness, constituted the environment of a de- termined struggle. The history of the founding of Port Royal (now Annapolis in Xova Scotia) b} the gallant De Monts ; the establishment of Montreal by De Maisonneuve (1642); the prolonged battle for existence by Quebec ; the strife of Charnisey and De la Tour in Acadie ; the gallant dash of Iberville Le Moyne upon the northern regions around Hud- son's Bay and his destruction of English forts and ships; the expeditions against the English of New York organised by the brilliant mind and determined energy of Frontenac; the Acadian invasion by iSir William Phipps of Massachusetts; the sieges ot Louisbourg and Queb(?c and the oft-repeated strug- gles around Forts Niagara, Ticonderoga and Du- quesne; present some of the most tragic and dra- matic scenes ever described by pen or brush. Around and about the opposing forces echoed the war-whoop of the savage. Over the head of the beaten white man — French or English — rested the * The dates of these wars, so far as Europe was concerned, were as follows : From 1689 to the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 ; from 1703 to the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 ; from 1744 to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 ; from 1756 to the Treaty of Paris in 1763. I 14 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. shadow of the scalping-knife. The tramp of armed men and the roar of European guns were often preceded by the axe of the woodman and by a path cut through the depths of the forest, so that the flag of England and the flag of France might " wave in war's alternate chance " over regions known only to the wandering Indian, the adventurous voyageur, or the occasional hunter and trapper. It was in fact a battle of giants in an area so vast and varied as to defy the knowledge or the imagination of the con- testants themselves. Yet even when the armies of Amherst had completed the victory- of Wolfe upon the Heights of Quebec in 1759 and forced the sur- render of Montreal, the French population of Canada did not exceed 80,000, as opposed to the Xew Enj;- land Colonies with three millions of people backed by the might of England. For over 150 years Xew France had maintained a desperate struggle against frightful odds, and at the last the strange blending of martial spirit, aristocratic courage and religious enthusiasm which had held half a continent for the Church and Crown of France was conquered as much by the miserable corruption of Bigot and other mercenary rulers as it was by the skill and vigour of the English. Still, the result was inevitable sooner or later. Despite the unscrupulous gallantry of Frontenac, the far-reaching schemes of Penon- villo, the careful administration of the first Vau- dreuil, of Talon and of De Courcelles, the untiring energy of Montcalm and the spirited struggle of De 4 THREE CENTURIES OF PRECEDING HISTORY. 15 »] Levis, the military power of Xew France was never in a position to really cope with the organised forces of Old and Xew England. This was shown by the capture of Louisbourg in 1745. And, despite the undaunted courage and constancy of the French set- tlers who in a few hundreds, and then in a few thou- sands, bordered the pathless woods with civilised homes and made the wilderness echo with Christian hymns and prayers, it could never be a serious ques- tion as to who would win in the end. Daulac des Ormeaux might, in 1G60, take his sixteen youthful comrades down to the rapids of the Longue Sault, on the Ottawa, and hold, for eight days and at the sacrifice of their lives, the passage to Montreal against a thousand Iroquois warriors. Frontenac might for a time in the next century hold both the Indians and the English in cheek. Montcalm might defeat his foes at Oswego, at Fort William Henry and at Ticonderoga. But the one only illus- trated French heroism as the others did French military skill and bravery. They could not really compete with the slow, irresistible movement of Eng- lish colonising strength or the irrepressible force of the English commercial instinct. Up the valleys of the ^tohawk and the Ohio advanced the pioneers of a coming host, and the eastern slope of the Al- leghanies heard the axe of the EnglisJi settler even while Celeron de Bienville was burying plates of lead down through the heart of the continent and marking what he fondly hoped would prove the boundaries of a vast French empire. ,:( 16 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. During this period the French had, however, won a crown of honour as pioneer explorers. Following Ohamplain's discoveries of Lakes Huron, Nipissing and Ontario, the River Ottawa and the lake which bears his name, Lake Michigan had been first seen by Jean Brebeuf in 1034, Lake Erie by Chaumonot and Brebeuf in 1640, and Lake Superior by some unknown Coureurs-des-bois in 1659. The upper waters of the Mississippi were first sighted by Father Marquette and M. Joliette on June 17th, 1673, while a little later La Salle made his prolonged and gallant efforts to explore the great region watered by that river or its affluents. In 1678 Father Hen- nepin stood upon the shores of the roaring cataract at Niagara, as Father Albanal in 1671 had been the first European to discover from land the stoi'my and sombre waters of the far northern sea in which Henry Hudson over a century before had met his death. In 1731, De la Verendrye explored the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, and eleven years later his son was the first European to see from tlie prairies the mighty summits of the Rockies. Meanwhile the spirit of English discovery and maritime enterprise which Crfbot first embodied, so far as the American continent was concerned, did not remain long dor- mant. Sir ^[artin Frobishor in 1576 landed for a hasty moment on the bleak shores of Labrador. Sir Francis Drake in the succeeding year caught a glimpse of the lofty snow-clad warders of the coast of British Columbia — which in 1778 was explored GUY CARI.IvTOX (I.OUn DORCHESTER). h ii i MAJOR-GENERAL SIR ISAAC BROCK. 4 id THREE CENTURIES OF PRECEDING HISTORY. 17 by Captain Cook. Sir Humphrey Gilbert visited Newfoundland in 1583. In the far North-West, towards the close of the next century, Samuel Hearne explored the great rivers and lakes between Hudson's Bay and the Arctic Ocean, while Sir Alexander Mac- kenzie discovered the noble river which bears his name and was the first white man to penetrate the Rocky Mountains and reach the Pacific Coast. Towards the close of the continental struggle be- tween the French and Englisli races occurred an in- cident which Longfellow has crowned with a halo of romance and history has marked as one of pe- culiar character and interest. The Acadians of 1755 were a people of many virtues — thovigh these have been greatly exaggerated. They were indus- trious, moral, and as a rule peaceable. But they were essentially French in patriotism and policy despite the forty years, and more, during which they had lived and multiplied in numbers, and pros- pered in position, under the British Crown. From the acquisition of Acadie (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and part of Maine) in 1713 until the founding of Halifax in 1749 (at a cost to the Im- perial Government of £400,000 in five years) these French subjects had been treated with all generosity and forbearance. They were even permitted a special oath of allegiance which did not compel them to bear arms against the French of Quebec. But none the less were all their sympathies with the latter. In many this feeling was passive; in 2 I, t f' N i 18 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. probably a majority it was active. And the most of them refused to take the modified oath. When, therefore, Fort Beausejour — a frontier post — was captured from a mixed force of French and Acadians in 1755 and an invasion of the Province was threat- ened from Quebec, with the probable support of many thousands of people Avithin his own borders. Governor Lawrence took alarm and decided upon the determined measure which has made him, rather unjustly, one of the best-hated characters in Canadian history. First, however, he called together deputies from the chief Acadian settlements at Minas, Grand Pre and Annapolis and warned them that their people must either take an unconditional oath of allegiance or be exiled. They declined to do so and rested for a brief period in the ever-present hope that their fellow-countrymen would succour them in the end. And then the order went forth. From far and near the hopeless and helpless families were brought to the sea-coast and placed, with their movable pos- sessions, upon vessels which bore them away to be scattered amidst the population of the Thirteen Colonies. From Pennsylvania to Georgia, and even in England and the West Indies, they could be found beginning life anew with every opportunity to mourn over the folly which had made them forget the stern necessities of a bitter and protracted in- ternational conflict. Every care was taken to prevent the breaking up of families, but it was inevitable THREE CENTURIES OF PRECEDING HISTORY. 19 that in the enforced exile of upwards of 6,000 people many incidents of extreme suffering should occur and that scenes of pathetic separation should be witnessed. Hundreds wandered back again only to find their homes destroyed or in the possession of aliens. But with a passionate love for their native soil they founded other homes within the bounds of historic Acadie, and, in conjunction with those who had been willing originally to take the part of loyal citizens, became the root of a future population of one hundred thousand contented and prosperous British subjects. By this step, heartless as it has been deemed, Lawrence cleared his skirts of a hostile population which hemmed in the British settlements and hampered, where it did not paralyse, British policy and action in Nova Scotia. Eight years later the long struggle of which this was merely an in- cident came to its official end by the Treaty of 1763 — though the captures of Quebec in 1769 and Mont- real in 1760 might be considered its practical termination. Wolfe's famous victory did more than win the greater part of the continent for Great Britain. It made the United States possible. Had the leader who toiled up the Heights on that eventful night with his gallant army been able to look but a few years into the future it is probable that much of the fire of victory would have gone out of his heart, and much of the happiness of his last moments been marred. No sooner was French power removed 20 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. I from the continent than Colonial pride and aggres- siveness of sentiment visibly increased. It was not, in too many cases, the independence which might have sad to Great Britain as Canada does to-day: " I can stand beside you as an equal." It was rather the independence which declares that " I can stand without you and in defiance of you." The shadow of centuries had been removed, and the Colonists came in time to hate the British soldiers who had once been their powerful allies in war and their guardians in so-called periods of peace. Wolfe had indeed won a continent for the Crown, but it remained for some unprincipled agitators in the Colonies, combined with ignorant or nerveless leaders at home, to within a few years destroy much of the value of his victory so far as Br.'tish power was concerned. To blame the King for it all is a travesty upon history, a complete perversion of fact. Equally so is the assertion made in so many American works, and the belief entertained by many who are not Americans, that the British masses were at the back of the insurgent Colonists. Still more so is the in- ference drawn by the popular writers of to-day from the historical literature of that period that, of neces- sity, the adherents of revolution were patriots and the adherents of the Crown traitors. Even more absurd is the widespread belief that Chatham fa- voured complete separation and tliat Fox was a great patriot struggling solely for liberty and inspired only by a passionate desire for its extension. ♦ 1 THREE CENTURIES OF PRECEDING HISTORY. 21 During the years immediately following Wolfe's victory upon the Heights of Abraham, and the bon- fires which blazed for the last time on the hills of New England in honour of a British success, the history of the Thirteen Colonies is a medley of mis- understandings, mistakes and misgovernment. Eng- land had poured out blood and treasure like water for her Colonies, and she naturally thought that they should make some return. The English peas- ant was being taxed to defend his fellow-subjects in America against foreign enemies and because of Indian forays often brought on by local inability to deal justly and honestly with the untutored red man. The American Colonist, on the other hand, was without representation at home, though not with- out the powerful sympathy of Chatham and Burke and ultimately Fox. He was the victim of unjust commercial laws which restricted his progress and hampered his prosperity. He was, especially in New England, the product of a migration which made each man believe in personal liberty as something equal in sacredness to his religion and his Bible. The feeling in England resulted in the Stamp Act — afterwards repealed; in legislation enforcing the collection of revenues from customs duties which then formed part of the established law of the realm, and which at first the Colonists did not dispute in principle though they disliked them in practice; in taxes upon products such as tea and molasses and in active efforts to prevent the wholesale smuggling 22 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. I, . i I which was going on. It is easy now to see that all this English interference with the internal affairs of the Colonies was a mistake, but it is equally clear that in principle it was not wrong. There were then no precedents to go upon in the govern- ment of distant dependencies, nor was there any pronounced comprehension at home as to what the Colonists really wanted. Self-government was •hardly as much a fact in the England of that day as it was in the Provinces of New York or Georgia. George the Third believed that the Colonies should do something, no matter how little, in return for all that England had done for them. Theoretically many did not dispute this, practically they repudi- ated all obligation when it came to the test. No doubt the wrong method was adopted; equally be- yond doubt the hostility aroused and the disloyalty displayed by a section of the population from 1765 to 1776 was far beyond the causes alleged. Had a feeling of sympathy, or even friendship upon gen- eral grounds^ existed in the minds of the aggressive Colonial minority towards England in those years, the rebellion need never have occurred. It did exist among the majority, and might have been enor- mously developed by wisdom in government and by an earlier enforcement of King George's belief that in the interest t)f England and the Empire the union must be preserved. Under such circumstances the unjust commercial laws and the unwise schemes of taxation would not have sufficed to light the flames of revolution. i i THREE CENTURIES OF PRECEDING HISTORY. 23 But the King was badly advised and weakly sup- ported. He had Ministers at home such as Lord George Gerinaiuc, the Colonial Secretary — perhaps the most criminally incapable man who ever wielded great power at a critical juncture — and the intense opix>s:tion to his Government of men like Burke and Fox and others, who appeared entirely indifferent to the roiontion of the Colonies if they could make a point against the sometimes arbitrary and personal rule of the Sovereign in England. Hence the mis- taken popular idea that the question at issue in America involved the progress of liberty at home. And every word of indirect support that the lawless element in the Colonies received from the eloquent exponents of theories in England weakened the hands of the King and of his administrators abroad, until mobs in New York and Boston and other American centres assumed practically the control of govern- ment, and the Royal represen itives could neither en- force the laws, use their troop^ nor command respect. Out of such conditions revolut n naturally grew. There is indeed little to be proud of on either side during the miserable years which preceded the Declaration of Independence. If there was ir- resolution and ignorance at home, and blundering in the Roval administration of the Colonies, there was much of demagoguery and interested falsehood in the statements and agitations prevalent in Amer- ica. The British regulations regarding the Indians were wise and honourable, but to the American Colo- I : 24 PROGRESS OF CANiVDA IN THE CENTURY. i 1. i 1 » ti \ 1 'l 1 \ nists, who neither then nor since have been able to treat the red men with the impartiality of justice, they caused intense dissatisfaction. This fact is il- lustrated in the almost unanimous adhesion of the Indians to England when the war came. Enforce- ment of the laws against smuggling cannot fairly be denounced. The law might be bad, but while it remained on the statute book it should be observed. And there were two sides even to the question of commercial regulations. When Canada lost a modi- fied form of them in 1846 the result was almost bankruptcy. For twenty years after the Revolution and the obtaining of complete liberty of trade, the United States was also in a deplorable commercial condition. But, however that may be, all the in- dignation and hostility caused by this and other items in account were given full vtnt in the final denunciation of the Stamp Act. The latter was a simple enough means of taxation, and surely, had moderate counsels prevailed, some compromised method of contributing to the Imperial exchequer might easily have been reached. The better men, such as Washington, were willing, but those of the type of Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry would admit of no arrangement. When the latter as a slaveholder, who until the day of his death owned and bought and sold slaves, denounced the tyranny of the King — who in all this question of Colonial taxation embodied the wishes of a parliamentary and popular majority at I '4 on THREE CENTURIES 0¥ PRECEDING HISTORY. 25 home — and asked whether life was so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be " purchased at the price of chains and slavery," he voiced the feeling of those who wanted separation upon any pretext whatever. And when he declaimed his famous words, " Give me liberty or give me death," he simply represented the class of demagogues who were striving to develop difficulties into cause for a hopeless and permanent division of the race and to pave the way for the war and devastation of ten years later. When Thomas Paine, the storm centre of so much international lawlessness, crime and misery, issued his famous pamphlet entitled Common Sense — which stirred up all the bad blood and ignorant prejudices of a scat- tered people — he did an injury to the peace and Christian growth of the world which his personal hatred of Christianity could not have effected in a thousand years of direct denunciation. It is said that separation was inevitable, No greater mistake or misstatement was ever made. Upon this belief was afterwards founded the Man- cliester School theory that Colonies are like ripe fruit and must eventually drop from the parent stem. (^anuda and other great countries have proved the idea to be false, and had the principles of popular government advanced as far and as quick- ly in England as they had in America in 1775, all the discontent of factions and the demagogism of in- dividuals could not hj've brought on the war. But, unfortunately, English public opinion was still a k 2«; PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. h I \ . i! 1 \ i \ ■ W 1 i 1 i k' halting power, and though Chatham at one time might have saved the union, he was never given the chance, and Burke and Fox were often more intent on party advantage than national good. There were periods during the war itself when vigour in the field and wisdom in council would have averted disasters, conciliated public sentiment, rallied the Loyalists, and depressed the battling Colonists to the point of military submission, but ultimate con- stitutional victorv. Speculation of this kind is of little avail now, but history has its lessons, and this period was a very important one for Canada as woW as the rest of the continent. Certainly the better class of the Ameri- can leaders did not want separation, and it is an extraordinary fact, admitted by American writers like Sabine, that up to the day when the sound of the guns at Lexington " echoed around the world '' the idea of independence was kept so much in the background as to be practically out of sight in the popular discussions. Franklin himself declared a few days after that opening shot in the Revolution that he had more than once travelled almost from one end of the continent to the other and kept a variety of company, eating, drinking and convers- ing freely with every one, and " never had heard in any conversation from any person, drunk or sober, the least expression of a wish for separation or a hint that such a thing would be advantageous to America." Thomas Jefferson stated that, before the THREE CENTURIES OF PRECEDING HISTORY. 27 commencement of hostilities, " I never heard a wliisper of a disposition to separate from Great Britain; and often tliat its possibility Avas contem- plated with afHiotion by all." Washington and Jay have made similar statements, whilst James Madi- son, in 1776, declared that "• a re-establishment of the colonial relations to the parent conntry, as they were previous to the controversy, was the real ob- ject of every class of the people " at the beginning of the war. These utterances indicate that the better class of +he leaders were deceived by the demagogues with whom they were associated into action which made retreat impossible and attempted separation certain — or else that they were themselves deceiving the public. They prove the strong, logical and patriotic position of the Loyalists, who fought against what even their opponents declared to be undesirable until ,the war had begun. They reveal the shocking in- justice p.nd cruelty of the treatment accorded to the " Tories " for opposing what Washington re- ferred to in October, 1774, when he said, " I am well satisfied that no such thing as independence is desired by any thinking man in all North Amer- ica." It is the fashion nowadays to pervert history and facts by unstinted laudation of every one con- nected with the victorious side of this contest and equally unstinted condemnation of all who opposed the movements which resulted in the Revolution. Yet George the Third was no more the tyrant which 28 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. m i he is described as heing in the Declaration of in- dependence and in Fourth of July orations of a suc- ceeding century than Abraham Lincoln was the char- acter which Southerners in later days painted him. If the King wanted to retain some control over his Colonies in times when the modern form of consti- tutional government was only in its preliminary stages of little understood evolution — and when, in England itself, he had more or less complete control over his Ministers — he cannot be properly called a tyrant. Nor can he fairly be denounced for a desire to retain his Empire unbroken. When he wrote to Lord North on June 13th, 1781, that " we have the greatest objects to make us zealous in our pursuit, for we are contending for our whole consequence, whether we are to rank amongst the great Powers or be reduced to one of the least con- siderable," he had surely as patriotic a lutsis for action as any ruler in history- Throughout his long struggle with incompetent Ministers, periods of per- sonal mental aberration, politicians who cared more for partisanship than for empire, foreign enemies who soon included France and Spain and Holland as well as the revolted Colonies, relations such as his eldest son, who tried to make his Court a pan- demonium, he yet held to his faith and hope as truly as did Lincoln in his long after struggle for national unity. Writing to Lord North on November 3d, 1781, the King again declared that " I feel the justice of our cause; I ])ut the greatest confidence THREE CENTURIES OF PRECEDING HISTORY. 29 in the valour of both army and navy, and, above all, in the assistance of Divine Providence." But his hopes of Empire were not to be realised except in another age and under very different con- ditions. Let it be repeated, however, as it should be remembered, that the faults of George the Third were those of the age in which he lived ; that his virtues and patriotism were purely his own and stand out brightly amid most gloomy surround- ings; that his mistakes of administration in the Colonies were due in the main to inefficient officials there or at home; that the pages of English history do not show him a tyrant in any form but merely a strong-willed ruler of the day with certain un- fortunate personal prejudices which had nothing to f^o directly with the American Colonies. He cer- tainly held the respect of his people in the British Isles, and no amount of misfortune or the vitupera- tion of American literature has ever lost him this. Even John Wesley at that time lectured the Colo- nists on the wickedness of their insurrection and de- clared that " our sins shall never be removed until we fear God and honour the King." Yet the founder of Methodism has never been denounced for thus giving support to " a tyrant." The fact is that the King represented his country and Parliament throughout this struggle, and can therefore in no sense be truthfully called by that name — or if so, only in the way in which the same phrase might be applied to Lincoln. One, however, failed, and the other succeeded. ' ; I 1 ;|i m II 30 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. So much for the environment of the Revolution. It may be summed up in a sentence or two. A well- intentioned King in conflict with the Whigs and Radicals at home. A Tory Ministry composed of men who could not understand the fact that they had to do with a people in America who by the very circumstances of their migration and birth were advanced Radicals in their views and intensely jealous of their liberties. A Colonial population divided into an aristocratic class of office-holders, large landowners and gentry, a second and larger class of merchants and traders, a third class of farm- ers and mechanics. The first was strongly British, the second gradually became anti-British, the third was divided even to the end of the war, with a tend- ency at first amongst the farmers, of the southern Provinces especially, to remain loyal. They had not suffered like the commercial classes from the taxing and anti-smuggling laws. But the war came, and the mask of seeking a redress of grievances — which they increased by in- flammatory appeals to prejudice and passion — was removed from the faces of many a strutting patriot. Others, of sincerity and honour, entered upon the struggle with regret but with a pluck and determina- tion which laughed at difficulties. Lexington and Bunker's Hill were followed by the invasion of Canada and the defeat of Arnold and Montgomery before Quebec on the last day of the year 1775. The determined energy and incessant resourcefulness THREE CENTURIES OF PRECEDING HISTORY. 31 of Sir Guy Carleton (Lord Dorchester) saved Canada to the Crown and would have probably pre- served the Thirteen Colonies had he been placed in command at New York. Sir William Johnson and the Iroquois distinguished themselves on the side of the King, while everywhe^'e throughout the area of revolt large bands of Loyalists struggled to main- tain their cause in the teeth of neglect and dis- couragement and desspite the criminal incompetence of Sir William Howe, the British Commander-iu' Chief. Then came the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga, the declaration of war against Great Britain by France and Spain and Holland, the ca- pitulation of Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781 and the Peace of V^ersailles in 1783. By this Treaty, England in a moment of gener- osity — combined with ignorance of the value of the territory — made a present to the new Republic of all the great fertile region stretching down through the Ohio Valley, and hitherto forming a part of Canada. This friendliness was carried so far as to diplomatically aid the United States in obtaining Louisiana from France in 1803. A little later Florida was bought from Spain. Thus rounded out in territorial power the Thirteen Colonies started upon their career of independent nationality with practically no competitors upon the continent ex- cept a hundred thousand French-Canadians strung along the banks of the St. Lawrence, or settled in the wilds of Nova Scotia, and less than half that 32 PR<^GRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. [\ * 1 t 1 1 i ;) ( ■ 1 1 \ r i •( !i ! number of emigrant Loyalists scattered through the forests of Upper Canada or circling the coasts of the New Brunswick of the future. Meanwhile, in Canada, the French population had been placated by the Quebec Act of 1775 — which at the same time had so bitterly annoyed the revolting Atlantic Colonies by its liberal treatment of the Roman Catholic Church and its annexation of the Ohio Valley to Canadian territory. In 1791 this measure was repealed and the close of the century saw the British Province — already denuded of the Ohio region by the Treaty of 1783 — divided into Lower and Upper Canada, with free scope for the develop- ment of each along the diverse lines of French and Loyalist growth. In one sense France had triumphed over England in the prolonged struggle for American dominion. Upon the Heights of Abraham she had apparently lost the whole continent. In so materially aiding the capture of the army of Cornwallis at Yorktown she avenged the victory of Wolfe in some meas- ure by helping the revolted Colonies to the immedi- ate possession of fully one-fourth of ^N^ortli America. By the subsequent purchase of the vast regions of Louisiana from the nerveless grasp of Spain, and their eventual sale to the United States, she paved the way for the possession by the Republic of an- other fourth of the continent. The eighteenth cen- tury closed therefore with the two Powers of the future facing each other at the Great Lakes — as ■» ■»-• ■5! O to o O •a o o M to f > O I o M « JO > r o > ' < Z w a > ft o J- M o o w w 13 o &«■ CO u < X \ o w W o w o ei Ok ,- ,? ■ . ~ • -''■.■-a+-~ **' < w Q > en Q Bi O ►4 f-t w o o w {-• f: w o 04- p-r o CO » CO W o w o THREE CENTURIES OF PRECEDING HISTORY. 33 under varying national conditions they had done for centuries past. But one was now a compact, ag- gressive nation of over 5,000,000 of people: the other a loose congeries of scattered settlements with little of common aim or unity and numbering less than 200,000 persons. At the close of the nine- teenth century the one is a great republic of 70,000,- 000 people; the other a sturdy British nation of some 6,000,000; and both have mixed races to rule and varied problems to face. The story of Canadian progress towards its present position is less known than it should be and is infinitely more interesting than is usually supposed. That the country is British to-day is one of the miracles of history. That it has faced and overcome the natural difficul- ties of its position is remarkable. That it has lat- terly been a pioneer of Empire in constitutional matters, as it had long been in a geographical sense, is still more so. It possesses, in fact, a record which should win the appreciation of all who admire pluck and energy and loyalty in a community as they do similar qualities in an individual. 8 CO \ m 34 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. CHAPTEK II. PIONEER WORK AND SETTLE' 'ENT. In the opening days of the nineteenth century British America, with its three million square miles of territory, possessed in the main only a fringe of settlements and isolated pioneer homes scattered along the shores of Lakes Erie and Ontario, the banks of the St. Lawrence and Richelieu and the coasts of the Atlantic. Only here and there through the interior forests of Upper Canada might the axe of the wood- man be heard and the primitive implements of farm life be occasionally seen in operation. Only here and there in the vast wilds of the North- West would some adventurous traveller or explorer come across a Hudson's Bay Company fort, or perhaps meet n wandering trapper or voyageur hunting the spoils of fortune amid scenes of privation and the loneli- ness of immense areas empty of all save wild ani- mals and untamed Indians. In Lower Canada alone was there a population which could be considered of numerical importance. Since the days of the Conquest it had been increasing with a speed which has ever since been characteristic of the French- Canadians, and now more than two hundred thousaad m PIONEER WORK AND SETTLEMENT. 35 people lined the short^s of the great river upon whose historic bosom had been carried under the Frencli regime such a brilliant and changing procession of saintly women and profligate soldiers, devoted priests and adroit courtiers, aristocratic adventurers and peasant settlers, Chris'tian Ilurons and savage Iro- quois. But these phantoms of history had come and gone, and now the little fenced-in strips of soil which indicated the existence of habitant farms, the church spire which revealed the presence of a priest in the midst of some growing parish, the little village nest- ling within the precincts of some sacred edifice served to jn'ove the opening of a new era, as well as the progress of a new country. Agriculture was still, liowever, greatly neglected by the French-Canadian, and the implements used were of the humblest and rudest kind. There was, it is true, much less of Govermcntal exaction in the way of taxes or for purposes of defence than there had ever been before, while Seigneurial powers were greatly restricted. The position of the peasant was widely different in these lespects from what had been the case under French rule, and, above all, the war- cry of the Iroquois 'vas no longer heard in the land. But the character of the habitant remained the same and has so continue! during the greater part of the present century. I Easily contented by nature, gay and light-hearted ii. character, adventurous at times but rarely ambitious, simple in tastes, moral in life, religious by habit and disposition, ignorant through wmmmmmmmm ■ : m \ 1 N 36 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. environment and because of class distinction, the French-Canadian habitant pursued the even tenour of a not unpleasant \\v^y and at this period served as a sort of useful background to the more active and important life of the towns. Many of the noblesse and Seigneurs of the Colony had returned to France after 1763, but enough remained to form, in conjunction with the higher clergy and a few wealthy tiuders, a society whic}i was modelled after that of France. Its only connecting link with the peasants and mechanics of the Province was the ])riest whose office made him the equal and th'^ friend of all. Amongst the mass of the French population were a good many British soldiers — chiefly Scotch — who had settled in the Province and by inter-mar- riage become merged with the dominant nationality. This fact is curiously illustrated to-day by the Cam- erons, Frasers, etc., who cannot sjieak a word of English and are part and parcel of their French environment. Quebec, Montreal and Three Rivers were still the only centres of population and in- fluence. In the shadow of the great ciiff, crowned by the Citadel of Quebec, there rested the homes of some ten thousand people. Xarrow old-fashioned streets, then as now, ciianged suddenly into flights of stairs as they climbed in devious ways up toward the ancient walls which overlooked or surrounded their course. Montreal, with a nearly similar popu- lation, was the centre of the wealth derived from that North-West fur trade which makes this period pos- PIONEER WORK AND SETTLEMENT. 87 sess such a fascinating interest to the lover of ad- venture and the student of history. A long succes- sion of daring and ofttimes unscrupulous traders had for many years been laying the spoils of vast, mysterious regions at the feet of Mount Royal, and the result was a town which in commercial and financial importance was the metropolis of all the scattered Colonics. St. Jolins, L'Assomption, Ber- ihier, Sorel and other places were only tiny villages. Throughout the forests and along the interior lakes and rivers of Lower Canada there was still if varied origin and char- acter. Bertie, Willoughby, Stamford and Grant- ham Townships in the Xiagara IV'uinsula Avere mainly settled by the disbanded soldiers of l^utler's famous Rangers, ^fany of the settlements in the Eastern Townships of Lower Canada were founded by Loyalists of German origin from the Hudson River and bv disban'^od soldiers of the 84th Roval PIONEER WORK AND SETTLEJ.ENT. 41 New York Rogiment, or " Royal Ga-eens " — also largely German in origin. Portions of the same body, together with a number of civilians, settled in the County of i'rontenac under the leadership of Sir John tTohnson and Colonels Macdonald and Rogers. A large party from N^ew York, led by Major Van Alstine and composed of some of the very best of the Loyalist stock, settled in a tlistrict which became known as Adolphustown, in the same region. Down in Xova Scotia extensive settlements had been made at Shelburne and in the xVnnapolis Valley, while Guysborough, Stormont, Preston, Aylesford and Rawdon marked other points of colon- isation by Loyalists. In Xew Brunswick the 8th, 98th, and lO-ith Regiments, the !Ncw Jersey Volun- teers and the Queen's liangers found liomes for themselves and their fan\ilies. With them came a notable number of highly cultured men who had sacrificed position and eminence, as well as wealth, for the Royal cause — Ludlow, Putnam, Odell, Up- hara, Allen, Winslow, Robinson, Saunders and many others. Another type of settler followed. !Ma jor-Goneral John Graves Simcoe, Lieutenant-Governor of U])per Canada from 1701 to iTOTi, -was instrumental iu obtaining a large accession of what were tormod " late Lovalists " from the United States — so-called in order to differentiate them from the original Loyalists. In most cases their opinions and char- acters were the same, altliongh there was probably wmmam 42 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. H some difference in degree. And, they had not been so prominently identified with what the earlier pioneers deemed the sacred cause of loyalty to the King, while some, no doubt, had been more or less lukewarm. It was natural, therefore, that a cer- tain amount of jealousy, or suspicion, should exist and opposition to their sharing on equal terms in the land grants and privileges of the new country be shown. General Simcoe, however, encouraged all alike, only demanding allegiance to the King and qualities which, according to his Proclama- tion of 1792, would seem to promise " useful settlers." Amongst tlie incidents of this period also was the coming of a number of German settlers from New York in 1794, who settled in the Township of Markham, near the site of the future Toronto. To Norfolk County afc the same time came Captain Samuel Ryerse — the founder of the afterwards well known Ilyerson family — with a large contingent of Loyalists. In and about the present Town of Whitby there settled a number of English emigrants from Devonshire, through special representations made by the Governor to some of his friends. As a result of this policy of Simcoe's, from 1791 to the end of the century, a steady stream of Colonists came across the Niagara frontier, by way of Oswego and up the Lakes and the St. Lawrence, into Upper Canada. The emigrant's covered waggon, contain- ing his family and household effects, and preceding hi^ little herd of cattle and other domestic animals, i L^;.., PIONEER WORK AND SETTLEMENT. 43 became a frequent spectacle along the routes re- ferred to, and soon brought into the wilderness the greater comforts which a larger population makes possible. Still, the seventy thousand people spread through the forests and wastes of the great l^'rovince, in 1806, touched only the fringe of its losources and were scattered in far wider measure than could be the case amongst a gregarious people such as the French-Canadian. The migration into the Mari- time Provinces was not equally marked after the first influx of Loyalists, although to many of thoso who had come in 1783 there were condicions of greater possible comfort there than was the case in Upper Canada. Halifax was a centre of defence and society and government. Communication with the outside world was comparatively easy by means of His Majesty's ships, the interior of the coiimtry was better known, the settlements of the Acac'ians had already made an impression -upon its fertility and powers of production, and the climate was not quite so rigorous. No special effort was made to attract emigration from the United States. In 1791, there commenced a movement of Roman Catho- lic Highlanders into Cape Breton and from there to the mainland, which continued in a more or less steady stream from Scotland for a number of years. To many of these settlers the log hut in the forest was infinitely superior to the turf cabin of his Scottish home. Through the 270,000 square miles which consti- ,f V 44 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. tilted the land area of the Provinces of Upper Canada and Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Pri^^ce Edward Island, there were many curious in- cidents of settlement and i^ioneer life durinjT the years immediately surrounding the birth of the cen- tury. Highlanders not only settled Cape Bi'eton Island and tho Nova Scotian Counties of Pictou and Antigonish, but also Prince Edward Island under the auspices of the Earl of Selkirk. Under the leadership of Alexander Macdonell, afterwards the Iloman Catholic Bishop in Upper Canada, set- tlers of the same hardy type swarmed up the St. Lawrence and colonised the County of Glengarry. The eight hundred soldiers who formed the nucleus of this settlement, in 1804, became the source of much British strength in the War of 1812. Colonel Talbot, an eccentric but honest and able Irishman, who first came out with Governor Simcoe, obtained large grants of land on Lake Erie, and during many years of active labour superintended the settlement of some twenty-eight townships — now containing more than 200,000 people Lord Selkirk, not sat- isfied with his efforts on Prince Edward Island, secured a hundred thousand acres near the mouth of the Thames and there made a not very successful attempt at settlement and road-making. Lat.er lie acquired 30,800 acres at the mouth of the Grand River which had been originally Indian lands, and for which he paid £3,850. A few years afterwards he commenced, in 1812, his famous settlement on. PIONEER WORK AND SETTLEMENT. 45 the Red River within an area of 116,000 square miles, which he had purchased from the Hudson's Bay Company and which afterwards constituted the Province of Manitoba. Amongst tho immigrants who came into Upper Canada in, or about, the year 1800 were the Quakers of Whitchurch and a large number of Dutch or German Mennonites from the United States. At the same period also came a number of German settlers from Pennsylvania, followed by a contingent of Mennonites who together formed the basis of the present large German i)opulation of Waterloo County. To Oak-Ridges, not far from York, there came in the days of the French Revolution, a band of French settlers of high rank, or good position, led by the C^omte do Puisaye, the Comte de Chalus and others. The settlement was somewhat ephem- eral in character, but it introduced an element of French culture and romance into the social life of the moment, although the emigres, themselves, soon lost their liking for '" a lodge in some vast wilder- ness." Into the Provinces by the sea a number of negroes had come during the years between 1783 and 1792. Ihey were not very satisfactory set- tlers, and 1,200 were shipped at one time, and at a cost of £14,000, to Sierra Leone by the British Gov- ernment. In 1790, the same Government settled some five hundred Maroons from Jamaica in Nova Scotia ; but after everv effort to make them useful citizens Governor Wentworth found it necessary in 46 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. the opening year of the century to deport them also to Sierra Leone. Meanwhile, the Indians of Upper Canada had received large accessions from the United States — chiefly Iroquois from New York who, under the influence of Sir John Johnson and Thayendanegea ^Joseph Br«int), and witli a very clear recollection of the just policy of the British Government towards its Indian neighbours of the Thirteen Colonies, had remained faithful during the Revolution. By the Treat'; of 1783 the ancient country and home of ihe Si:-: Xations was given to the Americans, Of these tribe? the Mohawks and the Senecas had been particularly active in their loyalty to Britain, and promises had been made by both Carleton and Ilaldimand, on behalf of the Crown, which it then became necessar\- to carry out. Large grants of land were accordingly made to the In- dians at the mouth of the Grand Biver — one of the most beautiful and fertile spots in the Province. Here, and on the Bay of Quinte, many of them settled, and here thousands are now to be found, contented and in the main honestly civilised. By the beginning of the century, unfortunately, much of this territory had been voluntarily alienated by Brant, on behalf of his followers and despite pro- tests from the Imperial Government. Enough, however, was preserved to maintain the tribes in reasonable comfort — though Avhat they lost before the Provincial Government woke up to the condi- tion of affairs in 1803 Avould have made them after- wards wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. PIONEER WORK AND SETTLEMENT. 47 By the year 1800 this migration of Loyalists into Canada and the Atlantic Provinces had left its impress — deep and permanent — upon the mate- rial development^ political position and social char- acter of the country. The initial difficulties of set- tlement on vast Avastes of unknown soil and amid little understood climatic and agricultural conditions had been overcome. The patriotism which caused the sacrifice of home and country and possessions for sentiment and loyalty had been transmuted into a new and hearty love for the land of their adop- tion. The physical qualities of men who had been accustomed to the dignified pursuit of a professional career, the pleasant ease of a gentleman's position amid surroundings typical of Old England rather than the I^ew, or the busy and comfortable life of a city man, had been hardened by time and painful ex- perience into those better fitted for the labours of the forest and the pioneer farm. Despite the money granted by the British Government, and the primi- tive implements and even coarse garments and shoes which came from the same source, those earlier years of colonisation had been bitter bej^ond all ex- pectation. As was perhaps natural the first attempts at cultivating the unbroken soil of the wilderness were largely failures. More than in many other things to which man may turn his hand experience is necessary in farming, and in these cases it had to be gained by means of much privation and suf- fering. Famine had come in 1788, and the settlers in Upper Canada had to eat millet seed, wheat-bran, 48 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. y ■ 4 if ( , Indian cabbage, ground nuts, and even the roots of wild plants. There were, of course, as yet no villages, no news- papers, no shops, no posts, no roads, no churches, no schools, and none of the varied conveniences and necessities of civilised life. Delicately nur- tured women laboured in the preparation of coarse food and clothing amid domestic arrangements which included a minimum of comfort with a maximum of hardship. The log cabins were furnished as a rule bv articles made in the roughest manner out of split wood, and the suffering from cold and changeable seasons was at times intense. Yet there was much of happiness in these scattered homesteads. TJeef and mutton and tea might be unknown for years, the luxuries of varied diet and comfortable surroundings might be entirely absent, but they were at least free men and women, and many felt, no doubt, that they were laying the foundation of a great ]3ritish State amid these scenes of forest and waste. As the evening strain of '" God Save the King " rang out during manv a vear from what were sseminglv mere iso- lated huts in a boundless wilderness it embodied a sentiment which went far 1o iiiake the lonely and painful life endurable. And lie who laughs to-day at loyalty of this nature might as well sneer also at the honour which makes the civilised home a pos- sibility or at the spirit of charity which lies at the root of Christian success. of A VIEW OV NIAGARA I-AULS IKOM CANADIAN SIDE. f o a! < H 25 O at > Q 'A < -J w o w •/; w o i' PIONEER WORK AND SETTLEMENT. id As time passed on, hoAv^ver, their first and bitter difficulties gave way before the determined labours of the settlers. Emigrants continued to come from the United States and homes grew up in closer vicinity to one a lother. Gradually greater comforts surrounded the pioneer and the capabilities of in- dividual Loyalists found scope in the work of their old-time callings. At first it Avas imperative for nearly every one to toil at the production of food, the reclamation of the wilderness, the clearing of the forest. Except amid the somewhat easier con- ditions which prevailed on the Atlantic coast men who had boon lawyers, gentlemen of means, planters, farmers, soldiers, officers, merchants, yeomen and mechanics had all alike to labour at the primeval occupation of cultivating the soil. But as soon as settlers became more numerous and the bare neces- saries of life more plentiful men began to return in some measure to their diverse callings. Carpenters devoted themselves to building new houses, of ma- terial other than logs, and improving the comfort of old ones. Here and there at great distances apart saw and grist mills were establishiKl. In larger settlements shops began to appear and the ex- change of farm products such as wheat, hides, and wool for articles of clothing oi little luxuries of food occasionally took place. Blacksmiths, weavers, waggon-makers, shoemakers, commenced to ply their trades at accessible jwints. Log schoolhouses were erected here and there, and occasionally a rude and 50 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. N Ji primitive church would bo fouud in some more popu- lous section of the wilderness. And, as their cir- cumstances improved, many a Loyalist of gentle extraction began to hark back to memories of his early home and to make the luxurious dwelling of the past a model for some new structure in the new land. Once more as time passed on the pretty little cottages, the large and roomy farmhouses, and even the occasional stately mansion of old colonial days arose amid the forests of Canada and presented fresh pictures of " the orchard, the meadow, the deep- tangled woodland " which the pioneer had lost but never forgotten. This development took time, how- ever, and at the beginning of the century there were still very few of such evidences of ])rogress and prosperity — though after that date they appeared with comparative fre(|uency. At this period the only places of any importance in Tapper Canada were Kingston and Niagara. The former was a mere village, having a stone fort in which some Dritish trooj)s were usually maintained, a harl)our which during the season slit'ltered a num- Ix'r of hnienux and a few larger lake vessels, and ji couple of dockyards — one royal, tiie other private. Tt was the seat of some substantial merchant houses with partners in Quebec and NFontreal. Niagara, or Newark, had l)een for some years the capital of the Proviiice, and in 1705 it Mnitained about seventy houses, a courthouse, gaol and certain government buildings and oftlciai residences. Toronto, after- PIONEER WORK AND SETTLEMENT. 51 igara, :al of vonty !if tor- wards a Provincial capital with a population of 200,000, was still the site of dense and trackless forests lining the margin of the lake or borderuig the marshes to the east. Governor Sinicoe only de- cided in the later years of his Administration to make it the location of a future town and the seat of Provincial Government. In 1803 York — as it was called for some forty years — had 456 people within its bounds and in 1812 was still onl, a vil- lage. The London of to-day was not yet in existence, although Sirncoe had a liking for the central location of the spot and is reported to have stood upon the banks of the Thames in the midst of a dense forest and to have said : " This will be the chief military depot of the West and the seat of a District." The cities of Hamilton, Brantford, St. Thomas, Strat- ford, Windsor, Peterborough and Guelph did not commence their existence for many years after 1800. The site of Ottawa, the future capital of a Dominion stretchii.g from the Atlantic to the Pacific, lay shrouded in the gloom of the forest as it was when Champlain first came within sound of the roar of Chauui-'ire Falls. The means of communication constituted a most vital question to the isolated settlers of this time and for many years afterwards. The lack of roads Tuade social intercourse difficult if not impossible, interchange of pri^ductions or trade of any kiml an arduous matter, the ministration of the preacher, or teacher, or physician a rare and exceptional privi- 52 PKOGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. lege. Sinicoe did everything that one man could do in a limited time. From where London afterwards stood, away through the forests to Dundas, near Lake Ontario, he established a post-road which is still l;nown as Dundas Street, while from Toronto to Lake Simooe on the direct route of the great fur trade of the upper Lake region he carried the famous pathway ever since called Yonge Street — in accord- ance with his desire to commemorate the name of the then Secretary of State for War. The end of the century, in the beginning of which these highways were chopped and cleared through the environing forest, sees them running between a continuous suc- cession of prosperous villages and farmhouses. Their appearance of smiling peace and plenty af- fords little evidence of what now appears as the condition of primeval gloom under wliich the whole land then rested within the shadow of savage life. Such was the general position of the people in British America about the ycfr 1800. Sweeping across tiie continent Avith the eye of imagination one sees the surprising contrast presented by the coun- try of that time and the united Dominion at the end of the succeeding hvmdred years. Four large towns dotted the vast Landscape from the shores of the Atlantic to the unknown regions around Lake Superior — Halifax, St. John, Quebec and Moiitreal — each with a popi.lation of some ten thousand souls. Upon the banks of the St. Lawrence and scattered in tiny, picturesque villages throughout a portion of :i- PIONEER WORK AND SETTLEMENT. 53 Lower Canada were 200,000 French-Canadians liv- ing under French laws, speaking the French lan- guage, and garbed in the dress of Old France; though with some additions characteristic of the soil. In the Eastern Townships of the same Prov- ince were several thousand American Loyalists, while here and there in Upper Canada — on the borders of Lakes Erie and Ontario, along the Gov- ernment Roads and in isolated parts of the great forest area — were some 50,000 Loyalists or those who had come from the United States after the first migratioii. There were also scattered settle- ments of English, Scotch and French emigrant n Small bands of Indians still roamed the wilderr.s^^ and on the Bay of Quinte and the Grind River were large Reserves of loyal Iroquois. Down in the Provinces by the Atlantic the pioneers, i, umbering about a hundred thousand, were developirg the agri- cultural resources and fishing wealth of their terri- tory amid difficulties not unlike in character, though differing in degree, from those of their fellow- Colonists elsewhere. But if ameliorated by certain local conditions these difficulties were also in- creased by the hostility of the Indians — a peculiar tribe who preserved that feeling after it had been largely subdued or eradicated in the Canada^. In none of the Provinces, however, was there even yet absolute safety to individual settlers from attack or trouble at the hands of savage marauders. The situation was only relieved by the force of com- parison with what had been. [ 54 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. Through the heart of the vast and distant West there roamed the fur-trader and untamed tribes of hunting Indians Avho ministered to the demands of the great rivals — the Hudson's Bay Company, the Xorth-West Company and the X. Y. Company. British Columbia was unknown save for the venture- some exploit of Alexander Mackenzie and the pass- ing glimpses of early Paciiic navigators. Over and through these immense regions the means of travel- ling and communication were unique. The snow-shoe and sleigh of the settler might be seen throughout Lower Canada and elsewhere in more limited meas- ure. Down all the grest streams of the country there still glided the bark canoe of the savage, fol- lowed in the lake and river region of the Canadas hv the French bateaux, or small boats fitted for being carried over the innumerable portages which had to be crossed from one waterwav to another and from different parts of some shalloAV or turbu- lent stream. From the voyageurs of the Lower Prov- ince and upon numerous highways of occasional river traffic rose the sound of the merry boat-song with which the careless habitant wiled the time away as he floated or rowed between the sombre forests which loomed up on either side. To help the growing trade by these waterways, between the two Provinces, a couple of small canals had been constructed on the St. Lawrence, and by 1.801 the Xorth-West Company had also comjileted one at Sault Ste. Marie. Ships had been built at Quebec PIONEER WORK AND SETTLEMENT. 55 as far back as 166G, and twelve years later La Salle had floated a wonderful vessel on Lake Erie whose white wings carried consternation to the Indian heart on shore. But not till 1809 was the first steamer — The Acconnnodation — launclied by John Molson on the bosom of the St. Lawrence. In other elements of modern civilisation Lower Canada was of course in advance < the rest of the country — Halifax perhai)s excepted. Schools had existed for over a centurv at Tadousac, Three llivers and Quebec. Stone structures at Montreal and Quebec marked the existence of convents, seminaries, hospitals, nunneries and religious colleges of the dominant faith. In L^^pper Canada schools had been established at Kingston, Xewark, Port llowan, and in 1804, the Ilev. John Strachan organised the his- toric institution at Cornwall which Avas destined to exercise so great an influence on the youths who afterwards ruled the Province. Two years eai'lier the pioneer University of all C-anada had been formed out of King's College in Xova Scotia — first established in 1788. Xewspapers of a ])rimitive type existed in Halifax, Quebec, ^fontreal, Char- lottetown, Xiagara and (1802) York. Here and there in different parts of the vastness of British North America, outside of the few towns or villages, there swung the axe of the settler or floated up in the summer air the smoke from clearing fires, from the camps of newly arrived pioneers, or from the temporary location of some passing hunter, trapper f 50 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. or Indian. In a detached and isolated way civilisa- tion strnggled with savagery and with the wild waste of nature's wilderness. It was slowly and surely making its way, and in another quarter of a century the energy, pluck and perseverance of the British race was to carve out of the new land homes and institutions resembling in some measure at least those from which many of them had been driven at a time when all that was best in the Thirteen Colonies was based upon the precedents and prac- tices, customs and constitution of the Mother-land This was the growing time of infancy in a new British country. ELEMENTS IN THE MAKING OF A NATION. 57 ilisa- wild and of a ■ the omes least riven rteen prac- •land new -■■% CHAPTER III. ELEMENTS IN THE MAKING OF A NATION. As a result of nearly two centuries of settlement and strugffle the French-Canadians by the year 1800 had established themselves with growing and perma- nent strength upon the banks of the St. Lawrence. As a result of their recent migration the American Loyalists in Upper Canada and the Maritime Prov- inces had laid the foundation of not only a large future population but of principles which were in some measure to control the whole future govern- ment and policy of British North America. It remained during the following three or four decades for a fresh influx of immigrants to take place which was to have the effect of building new and not always harmonious bricks into the edifice whose curiously complex foundations had been laid in such far- severed periods by the French-Canadian and the American Loyalist. The causes which control the history of the nineteenth century, so far us Canada is concerned, were laid in these diverse settlements, and too much stress cannot be laid upon their im- portance. Historians of early ages in Europe have been wont to build their records around the careers of successive Sovereigns, as those of later times have 58 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. t w ' f been apt to centre their attention upon the complica- tions of political controversy. In British America the real pivot of modern history has been neither the personality of its leaders — potent as that in- lluencc has been at times — nor the stirrings of party strife; but rather in the character of the three colo- nising periods referred to. With the consolidation of French-Canadian poj)ulatiou and influence along the St. Lawrence came the 'whole range of those ques- tions connected with race and religion and language, which first threatened British rule and connection and then helped to create Confederation. With the Loyalist settlements came the foundation principles of British connection — loyalty to the Crown and to monarchical ideals — which in time leavened the whole mass of public opinion and secured Canada to the Empire. Incidentally came other principles of old-fashioned Toryism and of the ;niion of State and Church, which formed the continuous subject of controversy during many years. With the suc- ceeding migration, which must now be considered, came a maze of conflicting opinion — Republicanism from over the border, Radicalism from Scotland, Liberalism from England. Out of these varied views there naturally evolved most of the political and semi-religious conflicts of the following half- century. The military settlers of 1784 from the United States were followed in 1816 by a colony of soldiers established in the neighbourhood of the Ottawa i ELEMENTS IN THE MAKING OF A NATION. 59 River under tlie auspices of Lord Bathurst, Secre- tary of State for the Colonies. Other emigrants joined the settlement in time, and eventually the Town of Perth and several populous counties resulted from this migration of soldiers; of Paisley weavers and minor manufacturers and artisans driven away by the hard times; or of persons from Glasgow and Lanarkshire influenced by similar considerations. A portion of these settlers also went to the Eastern Townships of Lower Canada and established them- selves along the St. Francis Jlivcr. To them the Imperial Government had given a free passage, a grant of land to each family, tools for clearing and cultivating the soil, and rations to last until the first harvest. In the case of any settlements assum- ing the size of villages of importance provision was pledged for the support of a church and school. Further up the Ottawa, on the shores of the Lac des Chats, there settled about the same time a colony of clannish and vigorous Highlanders under their Chief McXab. He sought, in the building of a pic- turesque residence on the bold and rocky shore of the lake, and by the maintenance of Scottish customs and inculcation of reverence for Scottish traditions, to introduce amid the forests of a new countrv the elements which liad done so much to nuike the his- tory of the old land ujartial and attractive. The effort lent a bit of brilliant colouring to the sombre shadows of pioneer life, and although unsuccessful in any permanent sense, the occasional appearance s IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) // ^j m^^ #. .< «./. "''/, 1.0 I.I 11.25 ^' liM mil 2.2 I; 36 2.0 IIIIW 1-4 ill 1.6 V] e o % e-1 rf /*> ^W r> /n^^/, W Photographic Sciences Corporation 33 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER,: I. Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 ■V M^ £•. rrr 60 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTXJRY. of the Chief on the streets of York clad in bonnet and feather, tartan and sporran, was an interesting result and a precursor of the day when, three- quarters of a century later, a regiment of sturdy Canadian " Highlanders " should march through the same streets for purposes of peaceful drill or the exhibition of volunteer excellence. In 1806 Hull was laid out upon the banks of the Ottawa by Phile- mon Wright, an enterprising American of ample means who came from Boston with a colony of his countrymen, and did much to establish the after- wards famous lumber industry of the Ottawa region. Twenty years later Bytown — now Ottawa — ^waa founded on the opposite aide of the ri^er from Hull. It was the product of the building of the Eideau Canal by the Imperial Government for purposes of military communication via the Ottawa and Eideau Rivers, from Montreal to Kingston, and was named after Colonel By who commanded the detachment of Eoyal Engineers in charge of construction. A number of the soldiers, with their families, remained at Bytown after the canal was finished. Along the Grand Eiver, in what had been part of the Iroquois Reserve, many small settlements were begun in 1833 and following years. The village of Fergus and the Townships of Garafraxa, Eramosa and Erin were notable results of a large migration of farmers from Aberdeenshire and Midlothian. Wilmot Township, in the same region, was settled by Mennouites from Bavaria. In 1832 some eight wm ELEMENTS IN THE MAKING OF A NATION. 61 hundred English emigrants by the advice and aid of the Earl of Egremont were sent out from Suf- folk, and to the number of nearly eight hundred settled in the neighbourhood of the future City of London — then a rich hunting region known princi- pally for its bears, wolves, deer and other wild animals. In 1826 its site had been surveyed by Colonel Mahlon Burwell and town lots been granted, under the authority of the Provincial Government, by the pioneer of all thflt western region, the im- perious, honourable and eccentric Colonel Talbot. During the same year the first house, or rather log- shanty, had been erected upon the soil of the future city. Throughout the surrounding country settle- ment had been going on slowly and surely under the direction of Colonel Talbot, but after 1832 it be- came much more rapid — a notable Scotch colony be- ing that of the Township of Zorra in the future County of Oxford. As far back as 1816 the Hon. William Dickson, a Member of the Legislative Coun- cil, had bought the Township of Dumfries at about one dollar an acre and founded what afterwards became the well-known industrial centre of Water- loo County — the town of Gait. Through an active campaign in the Scottish press he also obtained a large emigration from Roxburgh and Selkirkshire between the years 1820 and 1835. Following these and many minor movements of population came a considerable Irish migration in 1823. The various Scotch settlements in Cape ;^j^.. 62 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. : i Breton,Prince Edward Island, Glengarry and on the far-away Ked River had been caused mainly by long-continued discontent in the Highlands, resulting from the attempt to destroy the clan system, and, later on, from the increase of population within an area of restricted resources where the sturdy and restless inhabitants were subject to the unaccus- tomed maintenance of internal peace. The Irish emigration was due to more complex causes. The increase in the number of British operatives and the man}' new us>?s of machinery, together with other industrial factors, affected the north of Ireland, while not uncommon conditions of local discontent and persistent poverty facilitated a result in the southern part of the country which the British Gov- ernment was quite willing to aid. In the year men- tioned 580 Irish settlers were sent out at a cost of £12,500 to the Government and established in a number of townships lying between the Perth set- tlement and the Ottawa Biver. Two years later a similar contingent arrived in what afterwards be- came the County of Peterborough, established the toAvn of that name and soon became a flourishing community of two or three thousand people. To each family a hundi'ed acres of land was granted, together with a cow, tools for farming, a supply of seed, and rations for eighteen months. This little Colony cost the Imperial Government upwards of £43,000. In 1831 several hundred Irish families settled south of Quebec City in what afterwards ELEMENTS IN THE MAKING OF A NATION. 63 became the County of Megantic. A thousand more persons of the same extraction took up land in the immediate neighbourhood of Quebec, while some fifteen hundred others found homes in the Eastern Townships, and fully 5,000 s-jttled in the vicinity of Montreal. During this year 34,000 Irish emi- grants actually reached Quebec, though, despite the settlements recorded above, a majority were at- tracted over the border by the superior fascinations of a large population and progressive cities — to say nothing of the unpleasant evidences of political agi- tation and turmoil which they found around them in the Canadas and which must have prevented many a would-be Colonist from staying in the coun- try. During the succeeding year several hundred Irish officers and soldiers settled in the London Dis- trict — receiving from one to four hundred acres each in proportion to rank, and setting to work with vigour at the arduous task of hewing hemes for tliemsclvcs out of the wilderness. A pen picture of the period shows one " logging-bee," lield for the pui'posc of bringing together the isolated settlers in a general union of strength for the cutting down of trees, the chopping of logs and the pulling of stumps, at which laboured with axe, or handspike, or saw a future Chief Justice of Upper Canada, a fonner Colonel in the British nrmy^ a County Judge and an Anglican Kector of the days to come. The actual Rector of the settlement drove the oxen. The Canada Company was formed and incorpo- I I II I G4 PROGRESS OF CANDIDA IN THE CENTURY. rated in London in 1826, chiefly through the efforts of John Gait, and with ideas based upon the great opportunities and commercial successes of the Hud- son's Bay Company, though with i different policy and method of procedure. The necessities of the one made it dislike immigration, while the desire of the other was to promote it in every way possible in order to increase the value of the lands which it had for sale. For a sum amounting to nearly one and a Iialf million dollars, payable in sixteen years, the Company obtained altogether 2,484,413 acres * — a million acres of which was in the so-called Huron Tract. This regi'.n, stretching from the shores of Lake Huron inland almost to the shores of Lake Ontario, and including a vast territory of fruitful soil, became in a few years the seat of towns like Goderich, Stratford and Guelph. Large sums were spent in exploring lands, opening roads and erecting buildings throughout the wilderness, to say nothing of heavy expenses incurred in making the country known in the British Isles. People gradually came into the region, and under the en- ergetic direction of the Company's versatile and tal- ented manager considerable progress in settlement and organisation Avas effected. Gait was, in fact, not only a brilliant man of letters but a true Empire- builder. His mental and physical resources seemed to be illimitable. He had the ear of the educated * Report by Charles Duller, foxming Appendix "B" to Lord Durham's Report. efforts 3 great e Hud- , policy of the esiro of isible in vhich it arly one ;n years, J acres* so-called from the tie shores •ritory of p seat of L Large ing roads lernesa, to n making People er the en- le and tal- eettlement ^9^ in fact, ue Empire- rces seemed le educated TECUMSKH. idix "B" to ,.yMJi... Jf^iShaJltili&t-J- : JOSEPH BRANT (THAYENDANEGEA). ELEMENTS m TH13 MAKING OF A NATION. 65 classes at home and brought out many most desir- able emigrants — in whom he preferred quality to numbers. His labours were Prota?an in variety and scope — " now bent on the discovery of an indelible ink, now on the damming of a river, now on the construction of a bridge, now on the draining of a swamp, now on the invcaition of a hydraulic machine, now on the endowment of an hospital, now on, the formation of a company and now on the founding of a city." * Genei*ous and unsuspicious, sincere and unselfish, he was somewhat hasty in decision and perhaps visionary in project, and, like so many other men of genius who have proved benefactors to our race, he v/as destined to meet the ingratitude of those whom he temporarily and nominally served, and after a few years was recalled to London. But he had done a work which the opinion of Directors could not affect or their censure cancel. Around him also in this pioneer period had gathered many men Avho made their mark in different directions — Major Strickland, Captain Bayfield, Colonel Anthony Van Egmond, Dr. William Dunlop and others. In the Huron Tract, as time passed on, it be- came a case of being " Canada Company or noth- ing," and, as was natural, such a situation early aroused dissatisfaction. Controversies began, politi- cal issues developed and rivalries increased. Around Goderich and near the shores of Lake Huron a • In the Days of the Canada Company, by R. and K. M, Lizars. 66 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURV, colony of Scotch gentlemen was fcunded in 1835 which stood by Sir John Colborne in cortain ques- tions at issue between His Excellen<;y and che Com- pany, and around it there soon gatiered an opposi- tion to the latter which made matters very lively for years to come. The general lands of the Com- pany were sold rapidly to incoming immigrants, but the JIuron Tract being the most reraote was thr last to be settled. In 1835, however, there were somo 3,000 souls living in the region and much of the laud was in the possession of outsiders — a natural and prolific cause of complaint. In ]841 its popula- tion had grown to 5,600, and from tluit tim<; on the increase was exceedingly rapid. During these earlier years the progress of tlie s(!ttlement, as di re2ted and pressed by Gait and oibers, seems to have been greatly hampered by holders of vacant landti who retained their properties in a wild condition for purely speculative purposes, or in some cases perhaps from ignorance of their possibly increased value through the growth of settlement. Another Company formed in 1834 — The British American Land Company — had an Important pnrt in the se*^ tlement and politics of Lower Canada. Lender the original agreement with the Crown tlie pric'^ it paid for surveyed lands was seventy-five cents per acre and for unsurveyed fifty cents per acre. Sales to settlers were made in the earlier years at fioni one to three dollars an acre. The Comp.iny at one time owned 767,000 acres in the Eastern Townships an4 l«IIJ:IJHi.l I 1835 1 quea- e Cora- opposi- r lively le Com- nts, Ivat tlir last re somo the laud irfll and popula- U:', on the ag these it, as di 1- s to lavo iut lands. Gonditiou )jue cases increased Another Amevican ,n the se^ Jnder the ic' it paid per acre Sales to fioni one t onf time nships and ELEMENTS IN THE MAKING OF A NATION. 67 did yeoman service in sprt^ading information regard- ing the country through at E'arope. Special emi- gration gents were employed in the British Isles, and on une occasion, Mr. K. W. Heneker — after- wards C'ommissioiit^r of thf Company — himself vis- ited Sv/eden and Xorway i:i the interests of colonisa- tio:.. The ("om^jany sold land to all comers v/ithout ref ; 'nee to "■a;;e, religion or language, and several Frf "ch s in the region owe their orlglu to this liberality of view. ^i^feanwhile a peculiar element in the Upper Canada population lipd been introduced. The xVmerican Loyiilists during many years had had their innings — and if ever settlers deserved to obtain the fullest privileges of power in a new country they did. But in Iheir train had come otuer groups of American eruigrants. Part of them were the carefully selected settlers of Simcoe's regime; part of them Lave been described by a Canadian historian * as tlie sutlers and camp followers of the movement and as " il- literate in the extreme, immoral, untrustworth'' and scandalously lazy." These men, as the Province be- came more populous, were scattered in thousands along the main highways of the country., and the Avayside taverns on Dundas Street, the (rovernor's Road, Talbot Street, Yonge Street, Kingston Road, etc., naturally fell into their hands. Others took to " squatting " on wild lauds, but did little except * The Rev. George Bryce, LL.D., ia A Short History of the Cana the the men i of war anything nisation. aall, and an edu- it, were int Amer- 796 and and laws to obtain ry where ow of In- ise Loyal- ation had le passing years had fused into their convictions more or less of American ideas of government, and from the regions in which they settled to this day there can be traced over the map of Ontario a measure of sup- port given by themselves or their descendants to any-' thing partaking of the spirit and sentiments of the land they had left. This fact can be illustratcv. in various directions, from records of the disloyal militia of Sandwich and the London and Newcastle Districts in 18l2, to the disaffected elements in Norfolk and Oxford and North York in 1812 and 1837. In the five years preceding 1837. however, the flood of emigrants from Great Britain to British Jxa^ri'fia reached 125,000 souls and naturally over- whelmed influences of this nature, while also con- trolling and intensifying local political conditions with AA intermixture of external principles and ex- perient :s. During the Rebellion of 1837 and im- mediately succeeding years, this swollen stream of immigration sank to a few thousands, only to de- velop after the union of Upper and Lower Canada in 1841, into a far greater mass of incoming popula- tion. But this migration belonged to a new period and one which came after the real creation of Canada — in pioneer work, formative principles and political institutions. During these forty years the principal British emigration had been to Upper and Lower Canada — from which a great many settlers had drifted into the United States. Including those who left the country, or merely passed through its 70 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. ports, as well as those who stayed within its bounds, this total passage of population from the United Kingdom to British America had risen from .2,480 souls in 1800 to 54,711 in 1832.* In the Maritime Provinces colonising movements had not been very extensive during this period. The population of Nova Scotia by 1838 had only inceased, from its scattered group of 05,000 pioneers in 1806, to 202,- 000 souls. Tliat of Xew Brunswick had only risen from 35,000 in the same year to 156,000 in 1840, while in Prince Edward Island there were 47,000 persons in 1841 as against about 10,000 in 1806. In the year 1841 the total population of Upper Canada was estimated at 625,000 and that of Lower Canada was declared by the Census to be 455,688. At the end, +herefoi'e, of this all-important forma- tive stage of Canadian development the total popula- tion of its vast areas and scattered Provinces was about one and a half millions — excluding Indians. The cause of the slow growth in the Maritime Povinces during tliis period has not been consid- ered historically as much as it might have been. There were not, of course, the same large areas of rich soil available, but on the other hand the Provinces were near the sea, and in days of difficult inland travel, by foot over unknown regions, by boat upon streams having long and laborious por^agres to cross, or by stage and emigrant waggon over roads of the most varied and the rudest character, it would have seemed * McGregor's (1833) British America, vol. 1, p. 697. ELEMENTS IN THE MAKING OF A NATION. 71 natural for incoming settlers to choose, in many eases, the councry nearest in a geographical sense to the old land from which they had come. But in these Alaritime regions there seems to have been a distinct indilference to colonisation. There was no '' Canada (\)mpany " to make the country known to would-be British emigrants and to stop the stream of settlers from going up the St. Lawrence in search of new lands bordered by the vast inland seas of which they nad heard. The Xew Brunswick and ^oi^a Scotia Land Company did not succeed in making itself a factor in the matter, although a Colonisation Company of Philadelphia, m pre-revo- hition days, had succeeded in setiliug a number of people in Pietou Cour^ty, Xova Scotia. Tlien^ Avas no General Simcoe in the earlier years to make liberal land laws and to take steps for bringing the resoiirci a of the Provinces before the people of the IJnu ,d States. Governor Lawrence, away back in 1T;)0, had undertaken something of the kind in a small way and against the policy of the Imperial Government — which wished the vacant lands occu- pied as far as possible by disbanded soldiers — ami bad settled some (SOO American colonists from Mas- ?acliusetts and Eliode Island in the neighbourhood of Maugerville, Xova Scotia. But these settlers were found to possess very questionable loyalty in the days of revolution and war and the experiment was n.'. vepeated. With ths exception of Lord Selkirk's prelJr nary colonisation canter in Prince Edward ! r 72 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTUBY. Island and Sir William Alexander's seventeenth century efforts in Nova Scotia, there were no pro- nounced personalities, such as Talbot, Gait or Sel- kirk himself, inspired with the idea of founding great communities in a new land. The original settlers, also, seem to have been pretty well satisfied in this respect. The Acadians, who were slowly building themselves into the life of the Provinces, cared nothing for the promotion of further alien settlements, while the Loyalists held securely the cherished institutions for which tliey had struggled so hard and were now slowly creating comfortable homes and valuable properties for themselves out of the wilderness. They had what they wanted — apart from the inevitable priva- tions of their life — and perhaps were not sorry to see emigration passing them by. There was, of course, the steady stream of Scotchmen which poured into Cape Breton Island, and from thence in many cases to the mainland, from 1802 up to 1828, and which is estimated to have numbered at least 25,000. But this was an exceptional migration and a very slow and gradual one. ?fot until 1834 did the At- lantic Provinces as a whole share in the real movement of population from Britain and then, during the six years following, the increase of popu- lation in Mew Brunswick alone was 35,000. In Prince Edward Island, whose soil from 1767 had been mainly in the hands of absentee proprietors, the increase of population was slow and fluctuating ELEMENTS IN THE MAKING OF A NATION. 73 — the most marked period being that between 1834 and 1841. As in the Canadas, the majority of these emigrants were naturally of a class which had griev- ances of one kind or another in the Old Land, or which held views strongly antagonistic to ''crtain in- stitutions dear to the hearts and convictions of the Loyalist pioneers and their descendants. Naturally, therefore, friction arose and party spirit developed, though not to the same extent or with the same vio- lence as was elsewhere seen. The Loyalist leaven was too pronounced in the Maritime Provinces, and the American element too small, to permit of such stormy results. Meanwhile the original masters of the soil in all these newly developed regions were being slowly trained into a position of comparative stability. The wandering spirit was gradually subdued and settle- ments of Indians were soon to be found, in varied degrees of civilisation and contentment, dotted over the territory from the Atlantic to Lake Huron and through all the region watered by the St. Lawrence and its affluents. They were, as a whole, treated honestly and honourably by ti;o Imperial Govern- ment — under whose nominal control they remained for nearly half of the century. Their Reserves and personal interests were guarded to an extent which maintained complete peace between them and the white settlers and in a way which makes: the Cana- dian record a blaze of light when compared with thnt on the other side of the international line. But % 74 PROGP* F CANADA IN THE CENTURY. the policy \v > never absolute perfection and the powers necessarily given the Provincial Government of Upper Canada were certainly mis-directed, by some one, in connection A'-ith the Six Nations, or Iroquois, during the first years of the century. The vast tract granted to these loyal Indians along the whole length of the Grand River, in 1784, Avas naturally an object of desire to those who understood its fertility and value, and in the latter vears of ♦ho eighteenth century the Imperial Government was in- duced, with difficult^A and grave doubt, to permit the ?nle of part of the lands in order to procure a possible annuity for the tribes. The avowed object was good, but at this point the Provincial Govern- ment seems to have shown serious indifference as to the result of its policy. Joseph Brant (Thayen- danegea), who had the unbounded confiilencc of the Indians whom he had so gallantly led during the Eevolution, was given full authority by their chiefs and warriors to act for them, and, so far as his per- sonal probity and high honour are concerned, there cannot be a shadow of suspicion. But he seems to have lacked business foresight and skill — as might have been expected. Within a short time 352,707 acres were sold in six blocks for the total sum of £44,8G7.* But even this amount, small as it was, did not reach the pockets of the Indians, and, in * Canada : Past, Present and Future, by W. H. Smith, Toronto, 1850, vol. 1, p. 170. ELEMENTS IN THE MAKING OF A NATION. 75 Smith, 1803, when Governor Hunter awoke to the position of affairs and ordered an investigation, it was found three vears later tliat the total monev available for investment on behalf of the tribes was a little over £5,600. It is difficult to know where the blame lies. Certainly not with the Imperial Government which, in addition to objections raised at the time, had even offered to purchase the lands from the Indians at the price for whicV they were willing to sell them to individuals. Xor is it likely that Peter Russell, Administrator of the Government during the chief portion of the period, or his successor, Lieutenant- Governor Hunter, were anything more than careless in the matter. The fact is that such confidence was felt in Brant, as a man of education and ex- perience, that he was practically left in control of the business — with the result of certain disaster when he came into contact with the keener wits of the white men around him. However this may be, tiie consequences reflect nothing but discredit upon those in charge of affairs and fully merit the declaration of Mr. Charles Bnllcr, when reporting to Lord Durham in 1838, that " the Government would seem (in this matter) to ha^'o neglected or violated its implied trust." To the Iroquois 187,000 acres re- mained of their original grant, and the carelessness referred to does not seem to have been repeated. Only about a fourth of this land belongs to the In- dians at the end of the century, but they now draw a substantial annuity through investments made for II i I i . h [ t 70 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. them by the Imperial and Canadian Governments as the result of sales extending over many years. Up to 1850 a great region, as large as England and lying north of Lakes Superior and Huron, remained in practical possession of some 3,000 Ojibbiway In- dian'^, It was then purchased from them by the Canadian Government for $16,640 and a perpetual annuity of $4-,400. At different periods similar lands have been bought from various other Indian tribes at an estimated cost of a million dollai's, while, prior to 1841, the Imperial Government gave the Indians of the Canadas presents in the snape of clothing, blankets, etc., of large yearly value — amounting in 1836 to £12,500. In the Maritime Provinces the Micmacs, who constituted the Indian population of that region, were never numerous, although in the earlier days of settlement and under encouragement from French, or Acadians, or Amer- icans in turn, they were often hostile and trouble- some. But they probably did not number more than a few thousands within any part of the nineteenth century. It is impossible to give anything more than an estimated view of the wandering tribes in ihe North-West and British Columbia during the forty years of settlement under consideration. Like the bulk of the white population of that vast region they were so scattered and isolated that exact figures are unattainable. But, judging from their present numbers and bearing in mind that the advance of civilisation tends to lessen rather than increase the ELEMENTS IN THE MAKING OF A NATION. 77 Indian race, it is prol-able that at least a hundred thousand members of different tribes were then roaming over the prairies, hunting buffalo, living in the great unknown realms to the far north by fishing and shooting, or making a not very varied livelihood along the banks of the Fraser and other rivers of the Pacific coast or Rocky Mountains. Everywhere, however, they were able to do something by bringing in furs for purchase by the Hudson's Bay Company or its early rivals. Of the Hudson's Bay Company and Lord Selkirk's famous settlement on the Red River, during these years much might be written. Prior to 1811 the Company had devoted itself mainly to the procuring and distribution of furs, the building of forts, and the governing necessities of a position which made them more or less supreme throughout a territory ranging from Lake Superior to the Arctic Seas and from the same region to tLo Pacific — over the moun- tains of British Columbia, down into the future State of Oregon and even up into the wilds of Rus- sian Alaska. They naturally did not care much in those days for colonisation, Vvhile they did care very much for those spoils of the spear and the shot-gun which the advance of civilisation would inevitably diminish and in time destroy. But in 1811 the Earl of Selkirk, after testing his powers as a colo- niser in the little island on the Atlantic and in the wilds of Upper Canada, obtained a controlling in- terest in the Hudson's Bay Company, bought a vast FTT 78 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. 11 ^ ill tract of 116,000 square miles in the basin of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers and decided to build upon thr sweeping verge of the prairies a new home for Scotchmen, and a colony which he believed would ex- ceed in its progress and prosperity anything which had gone before in the history of British America. In 1812 a large party of Highlanders arrived, and others joined them in 1815. But the energetic pro- motor and the hardy settlers alike failed to ap- preciate the rigours of the climate, the immense dis- tances between themselves and civilisation, the hard- ships of pion(!er life in such a country, and the bitter hostilities which were to be aroused amongst the followers of the Xorth-West Company by the claims of Lord Selkirk and the Hudson's Bay Com- pany to this particular region. They were met, from the time of their first ar- rival, by the strongest opposition from a concern which had for many years deemed this territory its own and which already possessed a fort (Gibraltar) not far from the Fort Douglas which Selkirk pro- ceeded to erect about a miio below the con- fluence of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers. After spending their first winter at Pembina, just south of the international frontier, the Colo- nists returned in the ensuing spring, built their log-houses and sowed some wheat, only to be com- pelled by failure in the crop to again retire to Pem- bina on the approach of the cold season. Reinforced from Scotland, the indomitable Colonists, however, ELE^IENTS IN THE MAKING OF A NATION. 79 as soon a? the season again permitted, made another effort to establish their settlement and for a time lived on fish, roots, wild berries and even nettles until in 18 IG they were attacked in force by a con- tingent of Nor'-Westers and twenty-one persons killed — including Robert Semple, the acting Gov- ernor of the little Colony. But Lord Selkirk was now at New York and, with the blood of the Doug- lases fired in his veins by the continued antagon- ism and even active hostility of his rivals, he swept along the northern shores of Lakes Huron and Su- perior to Fort William, dragging with him two small cannon through the wilderness. After taking pos- session of the Fort, he captured the guilty parties and, under an Upper Canada commission which he held as Justice of the Peace, sent them to York for trial — where they were afterwards acquitted for want of evidence — and then went to visit his almost ruined settlement. He reorganised the colony with the addition of some new settlers and with supplies of implements, seed-grain and stock. But the suf- ferings of the pioneers were not yet over. A poor harvest compelled them to again flee to Pembina for the winter, after being reduced to almost the last extremity. In the ensuing spring and summer magnificent crops came only to be destroyed by a cloud of grasshoppers which settled upon the soil and left behind a wilderness ; and for the next season a myriad larvie which filled the air and fields, ex- tinguished even the fires, and polluted everything. |i !. !' l' fl lU 80 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. Once more, however, their unquenchable energy and courage asserted itself, and this little advance- guard of civilisation returned to the struggle when the plague had finally left them. At a cost of thou- sands of dollars, and from 1,200 miles away, Lord Selkirk brought them seed-wheat, and this time the crop was successful. The tiny settlement now struck its roots deep into the soil, and despite passing periods of floods and cold and starvation the pioneers persisted with all the obstinate pluck of determined Scotchmen. In schemes of enterprising, but un- successful, character for the advancement of his Colony Lord Selkirk in these years sank half a million of dollars. He brought fifteen thousand sheep from Kentucky — over two thousand miles away — but only a few survived the journey and these for but a brief period. He tried flax culture and tal- low exportation with only failure as a result, while similar consequences followed an effort made by others to manufacture cloth out of buffaloes' wool. In 1818, the hero of this determined and historic effort at colonisation left for England, and in his death two years later at Pan, under the shadow of the Pyrenees, there passed away one more of those singular men whom Sir Walter Scott once described as having " doffed the world aside and bid it pass." Selkirk defied everybody and everything in his day and in some senses of the word was himself a fail- ure. But it is questionable if success of the most showy kind would have presented such a splendid i ' i Y. energy (Ivance- ie when of thou- y, Lord ime the V struck passing pioneers ermined but un- of his half a housand d miles nd these and tal- t, while lade by s' wool, historic [ in his adow of of those cscri^)ed it pass." his day f a faii- the most splendid H a w O o •n V c; O c < O \> li I II 00 On 00 o o 5 (4 Q < ►J M O ELEMENTS IN THE MAKING OF A NATION. 81 ^P^'i 00 >'v, , •:■■•« 00 rH ^ *ff r^MMm (-< / S^R*-'' n ' ' * ji r^ y. j?rv?;j D l-J ) W^ o ! • • M u ' v'i'-^CS '. 3tS X ^^K\ )■ w ■^ » ■ Ut' .' -^W i^ >• «.« <■• ■ '1 2 K ^ « d ;? '-'; .' < - , * J ' l' . ; M ' ,r ■'^ ■ to O f^''i' Pi picture as is exhibited in tlie record of his Red River Settlement and its sombre background of struggle and sorrow. Sixteen years after the death of its founder the lands of this territory were bought back from the heirs of Lord Selkirk by the Hud- son's Bay Company and from 1836 onward the region was blessed with comparative peace. In 1858 the settlement had about eight thousand of a population. Such M'as the general position of British America, as regarded population, at the end of what I have termed the formative period of its history. Masses of people were to come in the future, and in far greater number than had yet been the case, but they only merged into the population as a whole and in- creased the divisions already in existence. No new classes were created b}' this succeeding immigration, nor were the pivotal issues of later times greatly affected by it, although minor matters were no doubt influenced in some measure. The tendencies of the people in all the Provinces had in the earlier years been planted and developed. Those of the French- Canadians went through a period of trial and trouble and into the melting-pot of a rebellion before they were fixed. Elsewhere the Loyalists laid the founda- tion of a solid, stable and lasting Tory party. The later American settlers, of the respectable and sturdy type, brilt into the edifice an element of moderate view which in earlier vears took a some- what neutral ground and in a subsequent period bitr 6 ; 82 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE t^JlNTURY. ! terly opposed the Tory party and administration. The disreputable class of American settlers in the last years of the closing century and first years of the opening one formed a party of permanent discontent — a nucleus for traitors in the War of 1812, and of possible rebels at a later period. The mass of emi- grants from Great Britain and Ireland divided much upon the party lines of the Old Land and be- came in time Canadian Tories, or Liberals, or Radicals, as they had been at home. Unfortunate- ly, however, for the settled government of the Prov- inces and for the peace of the dominant party, a fairly large proportion had left the British Isles on account of local discontents or individual poverty, and seem to have held views which led them to nat- urally join the rising tide of opposition to the local Administrations, and to help in promoting agitations which led up to and created the situation in 1S37 out of which the Canadian institutions and principles of the present time have gradually evolved — as good is said to sometimes arise out of evil. THE WAR OF 1812-15. 83 CHAPTER IV. THE WAR OF 1812-15. The war by which the United States in the early years of the century strove to express in active form the hostility towards England which had been smouldering since the days of the Revolution, and t) complete its continental ambitions by the triumphant capture of Canada, had a more important effect upon the development and history of British North America than is gencally supposed. It meant more than the mere details of skirmishes, battles and the rout of invading armies. It involved considera- tions greater than may be seen in the ordinary record of campaigns in which the Canadian militia and British regulars were able to hold British territory intact upon this continent during a period of over two and a half years of struggle. That a population of 500,000 people, scattered over Avidely-sundered areas, should be able almost unaided to thus success- fully oppose tlie aggressive action of an organised Republic of six millions was an extraordinary mili- tary performance, and it is only natural, and indeed inevitable, that in considering the result it should have been regarded from the military standpoint chiefly. I 84 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. But in the upbuilding of Canada this struggle holds a place similar in its national import to that of the Revolution in American history. It consoli- dated the British sentiment of the whole population from the shores of Lake Huron to the coasts of the Atlantic. It eliminated much of the disloyal ele- ment which was beginning to eat into the vitals of Provincial life in Upper Canada, and modified in some measure the force of the American spirit which remained in the hearts of some sections of the set- tlers. It checked the growth of republicanism amongst the French of Lower Canada and prevented the Rebellion of 1837 in that Province from being the rising of a whole people united in political sym- pathies with the great population to the south. It made the authorities of the Roman Catholic Church in the same part of the country feel once more, as they did when the Continental Congress of 1775 at- tacked the Quebec Act, that the only visible danger to what they considered the sacred rights and privi- leges of their faith came from the other side of the international line. It, for a time, brought Cana- dians of French and English and American extrac- tion together in defence of their hearths and homes end laid in this way an almost invisible foundation for that seemingly vain vision — the permanent fed- eral union of British America for purposes of com- mon interest, defence and government. It affected religious organisations which were becoming de- pendent on American pulpits, supplies and polity. THE WAR OF 1812-15. 85 It affected social life and customs by drawing a more distinct line against innovations from the other side of the border. Finally, it greatly affected po- litical development and assured the ultimate suc- cess of those who strove lionestly, though often un- successfully and mistakenly in detail, to preserve and promote the permanent acceptance of British, as opposed to American principles of government upon the northern half of the continent. It was an unjust, unnecessary and, to both the United States and Great Britain, an luisatisfactory war. To the British settlements and French colo- nists of tlie present Dominion it proved, however, a blessing in disguise and produced a page of glorious history which few would noAV like to see eliminated and which nearly all Canadians treasure as one of their dearest national possessions. The nominal causes of the struggle were simple and yet world- wide in their environment. During many years England had been facing the perils of Xapoleon's stormy progress over Europe. One great Power after another had been shattered by his marvellous military genius and always before the eyes of his towering ambition was the recognised and steady policy of ultimately subjugating the British Isles. England had fought him on the ocean from the earliest days of his sweeping career and with a suc- cess which his proud spirit found it hard to brook. She had subsidised hia opponents with enormous sums of money and on the sands of Egypt, the plains 86 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. k 5 i 3 s i > * 5 of Hindostan and the fields of the Iberian Penin- sula had presented her thin red line of armed men as the great preservative of European liberty. On November 1st, 1806, Napoleon had isssued from Berlin, where he was newly installed as the victor of Jena and Austerlitz, the " Decree " by which he de- clared the British Isles to be in a state of blockade and merchandise from England to be a prize of wai\ He, at the same time, arrogantly commanded the cessation of all intercourse with Great Britain by neutral nations. England naturally retaliated, and early in the following year her Orders-in-Council proclaimed a blockade of the coast of Europe from Brest to the Elbe and declared all traiRc with France in neutral vessels as coptrabrand and the vessels and cargoes liable to seizure. These proceedings affected greatly the large and growing carrying trade of the United States, and, as Great Britain practically controlled the seas, it was from her privateers and men-of-war that the Ameri- can shipping interests suffered the most. Hence the " Non-Intercourse Act " of Congress, in 1808, by which all commerce with either Power was pro- hibited until the obnoxious regulations were re- pealed. Another point in dispute was the claim made by Great Britain to search ships upon the high seas suspected of having deserters from the Brit- ish Navy amongst their crews and of removing such as might be found. It was a claim which had for centuries been enforced as a right. Its assertion |i THE War of 1«12-15. 87 was now rendered necessary not only by the enor- mous expansion in the number of British ships bii;t also bv the fact that in 1805 it was estimated that at least 2,500 deserters of this kind — chiefly from mei'chant vessels — were in the American service. The practice was naturally unpleasant to a high- strung nation like the people of the United States, but had there been anv real desire to obviate diffi- culties forced upon England by her strenuous struggle with France a means of returning these men to their legitimate service might easily have been found. A minor cause of trouble was the pub- lication of some unimportant correspondence between Sir James Craig, Governor-General of British America, and an advent\irer named Henry who had been sent by him, rather unwisely though not un- reasonably, to ascertain the condition of public feel- ing in the States. Henry reported a disposition on the part of Xew England to secede from the Union and then — finding himself unable to force money from the authorities at Quebec — had sold the letters for $50,000 to the American Government. These were the nominal causes of the war. They sufficed to inflame the smouldering embers of pre- revolutionary dislike and distrust and enabled President ^Madison, when an opportune moment of apparent British weakness arose, to accept the dic- tum of the war party in the Republic and to re- ceive the Democratic nomination for a second Presi- dential term upon the pledge that a conflict should 88 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. h 4 I » ! be precipitated." That the New England States were avei-se to the policy; that a Convention held at Albany, N.Y., in September, 1812, composed of delegates from various counties in the State, de- nounced the action of the Administration in this respect ; that the best element in the general popula- tion was opposed to it; that the British Orders-in- Council were revoked five davs before the declara- tion of war — did not affect the carrying out of the hostile policy or -Madison's triumphant re-election to the supreme place in the national councils. That such was the case is due to the avowed reasons for the war not having been the real ones. The truth is that despite the lack of consideration shown to the United States in many directions by Napoleon, and despite his creation of an arbitrary system of government which was absolutely the antipodes of de- mocracy, there had been during all these years a feeling of s;ympathy towards France in the minds of the mass of the American people which arose, perhaps naturally, from cherished memories of Lafayette and of French assistance at the most critical junc- ture of their war for independence. Added to this was an admiration for tho military achievements of the Emperor which in later days has resulted in a sort of literary deification of his career. Still more to the point was a feeling of continuous irrita- tion against England arising out of internal discon- Jl Kingsford. History of Canada, vol. 8, p. 171. THE WAR OF 1812-15. 89 tent and the lack of material progress ; increased by the dominating influence of British manufactures and goods in the local markets and consequent de- pression in local industries; inflamed by the voices of demagogues who exaggerated every issue and inci- dent into handles for personal popularity and politi- cal power. Back of all, and influencing all, was the partially concealed but none the less strong desire of the leaders of the day to round off the Republic by the possession of northern America. When war was declared by the American Presi- dent on the 18th of June, 1812, the action afforded an exultant moment of anticipation to the American Republic, an added depression to greatly-burdened England, and proffered many tragic possibilities to the little British population scattered along the 1,800 miles of frontier. Xever in her prolonged struggle with Napoleon had public opinion in Great Britain been so depressed. She stood absolutely alone in Europe. The French Emperor was the practically acknowledged master of Prussia and the minor States of Germany as well as of Switzerland, Italy, Austria and Spain; and with an immense army had begun a march into Russia which prom- ised to be a final triumph before the realisation of his intention to combine the forces of the conquered continent in a supreme attack upon British power. No wonder if thoughtful men in the British Isles drew their breath in doubt when the announcement came that the United States had thrown its weight 90 PROGP^SS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. into the scale aj&ainst their country; and wondered how long the titanic struggle could be maintained by their population of eighteen millions. Little wonder also if Americans thought that their time had come, as well as that of the French, for the complete subjugation of a continent. As to Canada it was not believed that she could offer anything but a nominal resistance. Jefferson de- clared the expulsion of England from the conti- nent to be " a mere matter of marching." Eustis, Secretary of War, announced that " we can take Canada without soldiers." Henry Clay thought the Canadas " as much under our command as she (Great Britain) has the ocean." Part of this impression had no doubt been created by the false reports of American settlers in Upper Canada as to the existence of internal disloyalty ; part by the fact that there were only 4,450 regular troops in the whole country; part by the tremendous disparity in population and strength between the Republic and the Provinces ; part by the belief that France would practically keep England out of the struggle. But two factors were overlooked. One was the indomitable spirit of a people fighting in a just cause for their homes, their institutions and their country. The other was the presence in their midst of a soldier possessed of magnetic personal qualities combined with a real, though unknown, genius for war. Major-General Sir Isaac Brock was forty-three years old when the struggle began — he had been THE WAR OF 18ia-15. 91 born in the same year as Wellington and Napoleon — and had served in Holland and at Copenhagen before he came to Canada with the 49th Regiment in 1802. lie had held command of the troops in Upper Canada since 180rvev was almost invincible. His In- dians would do anything for him — even, refrain from massacre or cruelty — and the fear of him felt by the Americans was shown in the unfortunate indigni- ties offered to his corpse. The next two months saw some events of brighter import, and attention must now be transferred to THE WAR OF 1812-13. 103 ke n- I Lower Canada. The French-Canadians earnestly and enthusiastically showed their love for the land of their birth and home by turning out in large numbers and in fighting bravely on the field of Chateauguay. By October an army of 8,000 men had been collected at Sackett's Harbour, X.Y., under Generals Wilkinson and Boyd for a descent upon Montreal by way of the St. Lawrence. As these forces descondod the river they Avere followed by a small and compact body of British troops under Colonels Pearson, Harvey, Morrison and Plender- leath, accompanied by eight gunboats and three field- pieces which did much damage to the enemy. On N^ovember 11th Wilkinson and his main army were with the flotilla near Prescott and on the way to effect a junction with an army under General Hamp- ton which was to meet them at the mouth of the Chateauguay. General Boyd with 2,500 men was marching along the shore followed by 800 British troops under Colonel Moriison, who had resolved to attack the enemy at a place called Chrystler's Farm. The result was one of the most complete victories of the war — the Americans leaving many prisoners be- sides 830 officers and men killed or wounded. The British loss was 181. Boyd immediately retired to his boats and joined Wilkinson. They then pro- ceeded to the place at which the junction with Hamp- ton was to be made and from whence they were to advance upon Montreal. Meanwhile Hampton iiad marched from Lake n n i'i ■{ l ■! i. I ill! 104 PROGRESS Of CANADA IN THE CENTURY. Champlain with 7,000 men toward the mouth of the Chateauguay. At this poiiit and amidst the natural difficulties of forest surro^Kidings, he was met on the night of October 25th by Colonel de Salaberry in command of 300 French-Canadian militia and a few Indians, supported by Colonel McDonell with another French-Canadian contingent of 600 men — who had made the most rapid forced march in Canadian history and had reached Chateauguay the dav before the battle. The Americans advanced upon the first line with 4,000 men, but, on driving it back, they met the second line under Colonel McDonell and here encountered the stratagem of buglers placed at great distances from each other and sounding their instruments so as to give the impression of large numbers, while at the same time the bewildering yells and war-cries of some fifty scattered Indians greatly increased the tumult. The immediate result was the defeat of the Amer- ican forces, their retreat on the next day and con- sequent failure to meet Wilkinson. The later result was the collapse of the attempted invasion of Lower Canada — the defeat of an elaborate cam- paign made by some 15,000 men through the timely gallantry and clever leadership of less than 2,000. One of the curious incidents of the Battle of Cha- teauguay was when Colonel de Salaberry, his first line of troops being forced back by overwhelming numbers, held his own ground in the darkness, with a bugler boy whom he caused to sound the advance THE WAR OF 1812-15. 105 for McDonell — thus giving the latter an opportunity to put into effect the stratagem which led the Amer- ican General to think he was opposed by seven or eight thousand men. A less pleasing incident was the mean and even untruthful manner »in which Prevost endeavoured in his despatches to take the whole credit of this victory to himself.* Despite this the facts became known in some measure, and at the end of the war McDonell and De Salaberry were each decorated with a C.B. In Upper Canada during this period there had been another glaring evidence of Prevost's incapac- ity. Frightened by the apparent results of Procters defeat near Moraviantown he had ordered the Brit- ish Commander at Burlington and York (General Vincent) to abandon all his posts and retire upon Kingston. Had this been done the Upper Province would have been practically in American hands. Instead of doing so, however, Vincent maintained his ground and Colonel Murray, with some 378 regulars and a few volunteers and Indians, was given permission some weeks later to advance upon the enemy who, with 2,700 men under General McClure, was holding Fort George. On December 10th the latter evacuated the Fort, but before doing so wantonly and cruelly burned to the ground the neighbouring village of Xowark (now Niagara). It was a cold winter's night and the beautiful little village contained chiefly women and children — as the * T'otably that of 31st October, 1813. ^r '; 5 li i :' '■1 5-; 106 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. men were either away at the front or had been sent as prisoners across the river. The unfortunate inhabitants were turned out into the snow with- out shelter and in many cases very scantily clothed. British retribution was swift. The American Fort Niagara, just across the river, was prompt!} stormed and held till the end of the war, and the noigld)our- ing villages of Lewiston, Youngstown, Manchester and Tuscarora were burned. Fort Schlosser was destroyed and Buffalo captured and burned. These events closed the campaign of 1813, at the end of which the Americans only held possession of Am- herstburg on the frontier of Upper Canada, and be- sides losing all the benefits of Harrison's success against the incapable Procter, had also lost Fort Xiagara on the American side and with it the con- trol of the frontier in that direction. General Sir Gordon Drummond, a brave and able officer, had meanwhile become Administrator and Commander in Upper Canada, and this fact had much to do with the succeeding struggle of 1814. The next campaign commenced with another advance from Lake Champlain by 4,000 men under General Wilkinson. It was checked and event /.ally repulsed on March 30th by a gallant handful of some three hundred men commanded by Major Ixandcock, at Lacolle's Mill — a small stone building on the La- colle River, and about a third of the way between Plattsburg and Montreal. Wilkinson retired again to the former place. A little later Michilimackinac f ^•4 ■ THE WAR OF 1812-15. 107 was relieved by Colonel McDonell, and in May Sir Gordon Drummond and Sir James Yeo, the naval commander, captured Fort Oswego on the New York side of Lake Ontario, together with some valu- able naval stores. Meantime some minor defeats had been encountered by British detachments, and early in July Major-General Brown with 5,000 troops, backed by 4,000 New York militia which had been ordered out and autiiorised for the war, invaded Upper Canada from Buffalo. To meet this attack Drummond had about 4,000 effective regulars, depleted, however, by the necessity of garrisoning a number of important posts. His difficulties in meeting this invasion had been increased by the seeming impossibility of mak- ing Prevost understand the situation and tho need of reinforcements. The latter could only see the menace offered to Lower Canada by the massed forces at Lake Champlain. Fort Erie surrendered to the Americans on July 3d and Gen- eral Riall was defeated at Chippewa two days later with the loss of 511 men killed and wounded. The victorious American advance was checked, however, at Lundy's Lane, where Sir Gordon Drummond, who had come up from Kingston with some 800 men, assumed command and fought on July 25th, within sound of the roar of Niagara Falls and in the most beautiful part of a fertile region, the fiercest battle of the whole war, and one which continued during the greater part of a dark night. The victory is vari- I I ■ 1 ^ ! || 1()8 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. ously claimed, but the bare facts are that, after trying for six hours with 5,000 men to force a Brit- ish position held by half that number. Brown had to retire to Chippewa with a loss of 930 men, as against Drummond's loss of 870. On the 26th he retreated to Fcrt Erie and was there shortly a attacked unsuccessfully by the British with a iv,o8 to the latter of 500 men. Here, until September, he was blockaded within the walls of the Fort. Meanwhile the struggle with Napoleon in Europe being temporarily over, 16,000 trained and experi- enced British soldiers had landed at Quebec. Pre- vost advanced with a force of 12,000 of these troops to Plattsburg, where he was to meet and co-operate with the British fleet on Lake Champlain. The latter was defeated, however, and the British Gen- eral, with an army which under Brock might h ve threatened Xew York City itself, ignominious] treated in the face of two or three thousand ^. - erican soldiers. So far as the Canadas were con- cerned territorially this practically ended the war. Despite Prevost's disgrace at Plattsburg * the cam- paign for the year terminated with the British in control of Lake Ontario — although the Americans were masters of Lake Erie — and with their pos- session of several forts on American soil, to say nothing of the border portion of the State of Maine. * He .vas recalled and only escaped a court-martial by his death. ■I" - 99 THE WAR OF 1812-15. 109 In the Maritime Provinces the struggle had not been severely felt. Major-General Sir John Cope Sher- brooke was Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia and, through the vicinity of the British fleet at Halifax and the presence of a sufficient number of regulars, >vas able in 1814 to make a series of attacks upon the coast of Maine until the whole region from the Penobscot to the St. Croix was in British hands. At the same time Sherbrooke had kept sending troops up to Canada whenever possible, and the march of the l()4th Regiment in February, 1813, through hundreds of miles of frozen wilderness, was of special interest as well as importance. Else- where on sea and land the war had been equally varied. A number of naval victories had been won by the United States as well as by Great Britain, but, excluding the actions fought in Cana- dian waters, th* re seems in nearly every case of American succes- to have been a great superiority in men, guns, n '^al and tonnage.* The purely British part of the ampaign of 1814 included the capture <>f the City of Washington and the burning of its public buildings in revenge for the previous harrying of the Niagara frontier and the burnings at York and Newark. An unsuccessful attempt was also made upon Baltimore. Early in 1815 General Pakcnham Avas defeated in an attempt to capture New Orleans. The terrible bloodshed of * An elaborate comparative statement is given by Dr. Kingsford, History of Canada, vol. 8, p. 428. ; i. H 110 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. this last struggle of the war — over 2,000 British troops were reported killed, wounded or missing — was the result of ignorance of the fact that on De- cember 24th, 1814, a treaty of peace had been signed at Ghent. The ultimate results of this war upon the desti- nies of Canada have been briefly indicated. Its immediate effects upon the various conntries cor- cerned were more clear. The Americans obtained not a foot of British territory and not a solitary sentimental advantage by the struggle. Their sea- board was insulted and injured, their capital city partially destroyed, and three thousand of their ves- st ,s captured. The immense gain to their carrying tradt which had accrued to them as a result of Eng- land's conflict with Xapolco > was neutralised, while their annual exports were reduced to almost nothing r.ud their commercial classes nearly ruined. A ^ast war-tax was incurred and New England ren- dered disaffected for many years to come. The twin questions of right of search and the position of neutrals in time of war, which had been the nominal causes of the conflict, were not even men- tioned in the Treaty of Ghent. Some military and naval glory was won, but the odds were in favour of the United States throughout the struggle, and, when England's hands were finally freed by Wel- lington's march upon Paris the war ceased. In many of these conflicts, however, bctli on sea and land — notably in the famous duel of the Chesapeake ' ipi THE WAR OF 1812-15. Ill and the Shannon when Sir Provo Wallis, of ISTova Scotian birth, laid the foundation of fame and for- tune — United States soldiers and seamen showed all the courage and skill of the race from which they had sprung. To Great Britain the war was only one more military and naval burden. It added to her difficulties in fighting France, subsidising Europe and holding the seas against the sweeping ambitions of ^N^apoleon. But her struggle for life and death had been so prolonged in this connection, and the shadow of its wings so dark and menacing, that the conflict in Canada did not then, and has not since, attracted the attention it deserved. While this was natural enough at that period the time has now come when the position should be changed and the memories of Brock and De Sala- berry, Morrison and McDonell, Harvey and Drum- mond, be given their place in the historic pantheon of empire. Canadian difficulties in this struggle should be understood, tlise courage of its peopled comprehended, the results of the conflict appreci- ated. Out of their tiny population over five thou- sand militiamen in Upper Canada and twenty-three thousand in Lower Canada were under arms during some portion of the period, and to these Provinces many and many a vacant seat at the fireside, many a ruined home and shattered fortune, many a broken life and constitution remained after peace had been long piDclaimed. Few had hoped for success in the struggle; still fewer had expected to gain by it. : I 112 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. Through the influx of money from Britain, and by tlio good fortune of holding the greater part of the coun- try free from conquest, there was a degree of prosper- ity prevalent during the last two years of the war. But it was the fleeting result of partial successes and with the termination of the conflict came reaction and a realisation of the stern bed-rock of misery which all invasions must cause the population of the country attacked. And that suffering was sufli- cient to finally build into Canadian life and Cana- dian institutions a sentiment which has made in- dependence of the United States absolute and has helped to make unity with Great Britain the great factor in the history of Canada at the end of the century. \ i : I o o o c! CO > w D M c ■•< W CO r o ^ ll w w D u« o > o < w Q < W O < i a: h; SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN BRITISH AMERICA. 113 CHAPTER V. EAKLY SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN BRITISH AMERICA. 0> w n w D Of o > o z < Q < w O w > The first and part of the second quarter of the century saw the foundations of the Canadian social structure laid. It was then that the character and customs of the people were irrevocably fixed. In Upper Canada and the Maritime Provinces this de- velopment involved the upbuilding of a nation in the backwoods — the evolution of civilised and cultured life out of surroundings of poverty, labour and hardship. In Lower Canada it was the adaptation, in some measure, of old-time French customs and institutions to life under a new flag, accompanied 1 •' strange extraneous principles of government. The cities of Quebec and Montreal illustrated the latter conditions. Society was strictly divided upon national lines and the political crisis, as it steadily developed up to the Rebellion of 1837, affected, as it was affected by, the social relationship of the races. During the respecHve Administrations of Sir John Sherbrooke, Lord Dalhousie, Lord Aylnier, and Lord Gosford there were varying degrees of brilliance in social entertainment and of limited intercourse betwcijn French and English. But upon the whole the English element in the Lower 114 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. MiNiii Province was an official, commercial and military class, and in a social sense was formed around the person of the Governor-General or Lieutenant-Gov- ernor as a sort of central star. It was not usually the fault of the incumbents of those high offices that such was the case. Over and over again efforts were made to bring the leaders of the two races into harmonious social intercourse, but it was found that political bitterness and racial rivalry were too ex- treme for even such a modification of conditions. It was an unfortunate situation, because the separa- tion increased a certain arrogance in the manner and bearing of the English elements while it added to the political hostility of the French — and left each class ignorant of the real virtues of the other. There was much of culture and travelled experi- ence in the one branch of Lower Canada Society during these years; much of French coui'tesy and characteristic brilliancy in the other. Chief-Justice Sewell, who has been described as a good dramatist, a fair musician, a critical student of poetry and a very facile writer of verse, may be said to have il- lustrated the better portion of English life at this time as M. Pierre Bedard, with his love of knowl- edge, simplicity of manners and moderation of view did the French element. There was, of course, a pronounced air of military life about Montreal and Quebec. One or more British regiments were always stationed in the principal towns of the dif- ferent Provinces. In 1839 there were three in 1 iil SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN BRITISH. AMERICA. 115 Montreal and six others scattered through Lower Canada, at Quebec, L'Acadie, Sorel, etc., while Hali- fax had three, Kingston two, and Fredericton, Lou- don and Toronto one each. Of course this was a special period following the eiicitement of the Re- bellion and tb^re v/ere then more than twenty such regimerts stationed in British America. Naturally their presence lent gaiety to the social life of the cities and towns, and, naturally also, they tended to further separate the French and English classes in Lower Canada. The French-Canadian gentry in the first half of the century were more numerous than in later days and were a body of men whom any country or Province might be proud to possess. Descendants in many cases of the old French noblesse; Seigneurs established upon their estates and dispensing an hospitality as generous as their manners were urbane and their conversation correct in terms and charming in style; they gave a tone to society in the country districts and small centres which it sometimes did not possess in the larger towns and amongst the English themselves. Amuse- ments were not very different in the early years of the century from what they are at the end of that period. The blending of an Italian summer with a Russian winter gave to outside pleasures the same varied colour. Water excursions, picnic parties, fishing, shooting, and occasional races on the Plains of Abraham were the recreations of the hot season, while balls, assemblies, skating parties and sleigh- 116 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. .W driving were the pleasures of the time when ice bound up the St. Lawrence and snow was piled high upon the roads and streets. In some measure this description applies to all classes in Lower Canada. The habitant entertained as well as the Seigneur. His dances and festivities were less formal and perhaps more joyous. His sleigh-bells could be heard on all the passable roads of the Province during winter, and he rejoiced in the picturesque toboggan as well as in an occasional skate. During summer also he took life fairly easy, and his comparatively small strips of soil were kept in cultivation without the tremendous labour which the large farms of the other Provinces entailed upon the smaller households of the settlers. His family might be larger but his wants were less and his contentment greater, while, if the Church took from him a good deal in tithes, it gave him back much in the form of encouragement to that brighter side of life which so often means happiness to a Frenchman and makes even his religion and his politics a pleasure. The church door was the centre of much of the social life of the habitant in these years as in a lesser sense it still is. There the peasants gathered from many miles away, discussed the news of the day, made appointments and ar- ranged amusements for the week, and there, un- fortunately, when politics grew bitter and disaf- fection rife a good deal of plotting was done against the powers of the day. The habitant was nothing I ) r SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN BRITISH AMERICA. 117 if not picturesque. Men and maidens alike were passionately fond of colours, although their cloth- ing was too rough and simple to permit of much variety in texture and style. But belts, sashes and kerchiefs gave them a chance to show this fancy, and amongst the upper classes coloured leggings, belts and embroidered moccasins could still be seen. In Montreal and Quebec an infinite variety of people might be observed on the streets. Athletic and jolly Highlanders, tall and talkative Amer- icans, groups of Indians — tawdry looking and fallen from their high estate — black-robed priests and nuns, army officers in brilliant uniform, soldiers of constantly changing regiments, students in aca- demical garb, I^orth-West merchants and voyageurs and adventurers in every form of varied and pictur- esque attire, Englishmen in the dress of Piccadilly, and natives in an infinite variety of backwoods' garb. Up to the middle of the century there was in both of these cities a curious commingling of the appearance and customs of a frontier town and a European capital, Halifax, the centre of social life in the Maritime Province, was unlike any other place upon the con- tinent. Here came at intervals British Governors going to, or coming from, the other Provinces, with all the accompaniment of brilliant balls and recep- tions. Here was not only the seat of Government of Nova Scotia but the official abode of the Admiral commanding the Atlantic squadron. Here resided, 118 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. for a number of years, H.R.II. the Duke of Kent, and to this station Prince William Henry, after- wards Duke of Clarence and King William Fourth, paid sundry visits. Here in the early years of the century stayed at times such well-known naval men as Sir John Borlase Warren, Sir Andrew Mitchell, Sir Alexander Cochrane, Sir David Milne and the famous Earl of Dundonald (1797). Here Sir John Wentworth, Sir J. C. Sherbrooke, the Earl of Dal- housie. Sir James Kempt, Sir Peregrine Maitland and Sir Colin Campbell dispensed the hospitalities of Government House with varying degrees of social success. The amusements were not dissimilar to those of Montreal and Quebec. Riding was nmch indulged in, and regattas upon the magnificent har- bour were a frequent source of pleasure, while horse- racing had been in 1833 established for some time on a fairly good scale. There was, of course, no racial division, and entertainments were conducted according to the strictest English fashion and rules of etiquette. There were in these years few man- ufacturers or labourers in the city and those of the latter class who were there are described by a trav- eller of the day who spoke with some authority * as being " always better dressed than in England." The manners and customs of all the Maritime Provinces partook much of the characteristics of their earlier settlers — and were accordingly largely Loyal- ist or Scotch. During these years the people of ♦John McGregor (1833), British America, vol. 1, p. 333. 'hh 'msm g SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN BRITISH AMERICA. 119 New Brunswick, after the fi -st pioneer period when agriculture vvas necessarily the chief occupation, be- came mainly engaged in tlu timber business, while those of Xova Scotia and Oape Breton were still occupied chiefly in cultivati: ig the soil and fisheries. The people of Prince Edw rd Island were largely agriculturalists. In type, a ^ ood part of the Atlantic population gradually approximated to that of the tnll and muscular American la social matters St. John, in Xew Brunswick, an( in fact thegreater part of the people in that Province, fcdlowed very largely the customs and habits of tie United States. This statement applies chiefly to he masses, as the gov- erning, or aristocratic, elem?nt in the community clung strenuously to the socijl practices of England or of the Thirteen Colonies prior to the Revolution. It was natural that such should be the case. The Loyalists, or their descendants, Avere supreme in these years — even more so tl an in Halifax where the military and naval influence was very great — and they cherished the traditions which had come to them from those whom a well-known American writer "' has described as " the best material we had, in staunch moral traits, intellectual leadeivship, social position and wealth." The Acadian part of the population did not change much during these years and remains even now largely what it was in the eighteenth century. There had been occa- * Clmrles Dudley Warner, in Harpers Magazine, March, 1889. i I i 1. ! . ■ I M' 'M: ^ ' ' If'. An 120 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. sional intermixture with the Indians, while tlie fash- ions were those of the old French peasantry — moc- casins and wooden shoes being still in frequent use. Music and dancing were most popular amusements, weddings were the occasion for the feasting of a whole village, Sunday was a day of gaiety and pleas- ure. Industrious, but not enterprising, virtuous, honest and inoffensive, the Acadian contributed a quietly useful element to the development of the Provinces, but one which was not so influential in the first half of the century as it became in later days. Outside of the two cities the evolution of population in the Maritime Provinces, between 1800 and 1840, took the form of a welding together of Scotch settlers and farmers, and later American resi- dents — intent on speculative possibilities in the tim- ber and other trades — with lesser numbers of Eng- lish and Irish emigrants. The Loyalist class kept somewhat apart, and this separation had a pro- nounced effect upon the political struggles which, though very mild prior to 1830, became for decades after that date somewhat fiery in quality and inter- esting in character. In Upper Canada the social development of the people was more complex than in the other Prov- inces. The military element, though an interesting local feature in the still small towns of York and Kingston, or in London village upon the Thfinio« was never -vtrong enough to control or grmtly i- fy the social structure as a whole. ''' -n ^ SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN BRITISH AMERICA. 121 rival races as in Lower Canada, although there were very pronounced rival tendencies and some extrane- ous national customs. But they were in no case so pronounced as to overpower all others, and the re- sult was that gradually and imperceptibly the Loyalist customs of pre-rcvolution days, the more modern American habits and ideas of social equality, the aristocratic tendencies of military officers, the peculiarities of Scotch and Irish and English set- tlements, the national traits of French-Canadian and German villages, became gradually, though by no means fully or perhaps even clearly, merged in a new national type. Up to the year 1841 it is ques- tionable if this process could be plainly discerned by the passing observer, but it was none the less in these years that its foundation was laid and the national evolution of Canadian character and customs really commenced. Even yet, at this end of the century, abundant traces can be found in the United Empire Loyalist settlements along the St. Lawrence, around the Bay of Quinte and in the Niagara Peninsula of the superior culture and stand- ing of that particular class of settler. So, during these years, the Highland settlement of Glengarry, the migration of English gentlemen and military officers to the vicinity of Cobourg, the Irish colony around Peterborough, the military settlement at Perth, the Talbot settlement in Elgin County, the Canada Company's colonies in the Huron Tract, the Paisley operatives in Wellington, the Germans m 1^5" I 1 1 'it 1 ■u fi i i; ^ 1 ! i 1 !, 1 122 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. in Waterloo, Huron and Renfrew, the French- Canadians who overfloAved into Prescott and Russell Counties, or who had survived in Essex County from the days when France held sway down into the Ohio Valley, each left some peculiar impress of character, and often of language, upon ^he respective localities. • During the first quarter of the century the situa- tion was too strenuous and the immigration not sufficiently imiiential, or varied, to permit of any marked process of class a^^^Mnilation or class an- tagonism. The society of the Province was Loyalist and ofiicial, the Government of the Province, outside of occasional developments in the Assembly, was also Loyalist in character. But most people, whether of this class or belonging to the newcomers of the period, were too busy subduing the soil and clearing the forest to attend very much to social pursuits. Even politics were neglected for work in the fields. Slowly the log-cabins gave way to more com- modious houses ; chopping and logging j)artics of set- tlers were succeeded in many places l>y the employ- ment of paid labourers ; the gorgeous costume of a gentleman in the earlier Georgian era — which was often all the clothing the first settlers had — gave way to homespun garments and then again to clothes more suited to still changing conditions; the travelling preacher was replaced by a building of what was still termed the Established Church, or perhaps by a Methodist chapel ; distance was modi- fied by the creation of better roads ; pork and pump- i ■■■ Bra^HH^amiin SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN BRITISH AMERICA. 123 i I I kin pie gave place in many a home to the roast beef and dainties of a long past day; wolves, lynxes and bears became scarcer and less fearful to the women and children of the separated settlements or isolated homesteads; and gradually the customs and culture of civilised society became again the privilege of the Colonist. But even at the end of this forty-year milestone in the century there was much that was primitive in Upper '^anadian conditions. The country houses were still wooden structures, in the main clap- boarded and often painted red or yellow. The in- terior was not framed with any apparent view to organised comfort or the saving of labour; and architecture was evidently not yet a scientific prin- ciple, or practice, with the average farmer, settler or village merchant. The old-fashioned fireplace and ovens, the strong and plain and inartistic furniture, the absence of all modern fads or fripperies and eveti '^^ carpets and curtains, the bone-handled knives and iron forks or spoons, the light of the tallow dip (produced in many cases by long and wearisome domestic Manufacture), the rough implements of the farmer, which included scythes and cradles and flails, were all indicative of wha;, now seem like archaic conditions. Yet these things were com- forts, and even luxuries, compared to the possessions and surroundings of two decades before. About 1820 this development took a new turn. The War of 1812 and its immediate effects were no ' ■\i w I'il 1 111 » 124 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. longer felt and a new population was beginning to come into the country, while more and more the men who had been born within its bounds were raking an interest in affairs and imbibing opinions from its history and surrounding conditions. Upon the people then living in Canada, and on their sons and daughters, the war had left the sometimes im- perceptible but always imperishable mark which all such conflicts must leave — whether for good or ill. It tended to crystallise the rapidly forming social conditions into a faint imitation of the classes sur- rounding the British throne and into an organised antagonism to American democracy. This wa? nat- ural under the circumstances, and it must be ad- mitted that the Loyalist gentry during this period made an admirable social element for any commun- ity to possess. Being also the chief officials of the Colony it was natural that their position should affect political conditions. The incoming immi- grants, whether from Great Britain, Ireland or the United States, resented the establishment of such a class, partly, perhaps, because the bulk of them were not considered eligiblo for admission to its ranks. Hence the old story of social conditions acting and reacting upon the body politic. And, even when their political power had departed in great measure and their somewhat aggressive British principles been fused into the treatment of a mass of new con- stitutional problems, in years following the union of Upper and Lower Canada, tho Loyalists still re- 1 4 SOCIAL CONDrriONS IN BRITISH AMERICA. 125 i mained the dominant social factor of the Province. That their influence in this respect upon the moral tone of Canadian home life was good few will deny, and despite the apparent social development of later years along American lines the student will find much that was permanent in this influence and bene- ficial in its inherited application. There were, however, other elements of importance in this process of evolution. Tlie strongest in both the Maritime Provinces and Upper Canada was that of the Scotch settler. Grim in his determina- tion to conquer the difiiculties of the soil and obli- vious even to the loneliness of the wilderness ; earnest in his adherence to certain high and sometimes strained standards of moral duty, and strong in his sturdy religious convictions; he made a splendid pioneer. Like the Loyalists, though in a different application, these Scotch colonists in all the Prov- inces brought to the youthful country principles which constitute the best and surest foundation for the welfare of a nation. Both were firm in their adherence to the ideals of British home life and moral conduct, and both were vigorously op])osed to the looser marriage laws and conditions of which there were even then indications in the United States. But here they separated. The members of the one body, though loyal to the Established Cliurch and to religion as they understood it, were leaders of the lighter social life which was evolving in the scattered communities and which found expression ■ ii' ■;i'i S |! if 1^ :i i I I y 126 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. notably at York (Toronto) and Kingston; the mem- bers of the otherj like their compatriots in the land of the heather, practised a more severe religion and lived a quieter life. The former was of one politi- cal faith, the latter was divided in that respect as they were afterwards in their allegiance to the dif- ferent divisions of Presbyterianism. Another most important element in the population of this period and of distinct influence upon social manners and customs was also primarily of a religious character — the Methodists. Their number was at first very limited, but, as immigration in- creased, they reproduced upon Canadian soil most of the conditions and habits prevailing amongst their associates in England or the United States. Travelling preachers infused enthusiasm into their little gatherings; camp-meetings, tea-meetings and " socials " served the purposes respectively of religious discussion and intercourse; while the de- pendence of a section upon the Church in the Re- public and of another section upon their brethren in England produced a controversy which had most vital effects upon the national tendencies of the period and resulted ultimately in the triumph of the British element. This body also helped in the g"ra < > n H o K O > O « > J /■»*-, I ]■ '*!■' ( • 9 ?. w Ol X < w z w w (J X. S 55 ,1' EARLY EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT. 129 CHAPTER VI. < w a. < "b OJ ti < US 7, •A 7. W a tfl y. a 55 EARLY EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT. During the first years of the century in the Eng- lish Provinces the majority of mothers taught their 'laughters and the fathers their sons what they had themselves learned amid far different scenes and conditions, and in long past years. Schools for the mass of the isolated people in Upper Canada there were practically none. In the village of Kingston the Rev. Dr. Stewart had for some time taught classics to a few fortunate pupils, as had the Rev. Mr. Addison at I^ewark. Almost envi- roned by woods, a small school existed at Port Royal, taught by Deacon Trayes (a Baptist), and elsewhere at Fredericksburgh, Ernest-town, York, Ancaster and a few other settlements, similar schools had been established. Amidst these pioneer conditions the Rev. John Strachan also laid the foundation of per- sonal fame and success by commencing, in 1804, a school at Cornwall through which in following yeirs there passed the future political masters of Upper Canada— men sucL as Robinson, Macaulay, Mc- Lean, Boulton, Jones, Sherwood, Cartwrigk and Bethune. But the general situation was a serious one. lieut.-Governor Simcoe, in April, 1 79.-, wrote ii 1^ r 130 PROOBESS or CANADA IN THE CENTURY. to Bishop Mountain of Lower Canada — who then had jurisdiction over the Upper Province — express- ing the belief which then prevailed so universally amongst the governing classes, and in those pioneer days perhaps properly, that religion and education should go together. He urged the establishment of churches and schools, and went on to si)eak of that fear of United States influence which prevailed then, and throughout thq first quarter of the century, in every department of Canadian life and progress: " It is of serious consideration that on the approach of the settlements of the United States, particularly on the St. Lawrence frontier, these people, who by experience have found that schools and churches are essential to their rapid establishment (as a nation), may probabh^ allure many of our most respectable settlers to emigrate to them, while in this respect we suffer a disgraceful deficiency." In this connection it was stated four years later, by a passing traveller,* that the policy of the Government was " to exclude schoolmasters from the States lest they should instil republicanism into the tender minds of the youths of the Province." A few district schools were established by law in 1807 and, in 1816, £24,000 was voted by the Legis- lature for the establishment and maintenance of common schools. The difficulties, however, were naturally very great on account of the sparseness of * Tour through Canada, by " A Citizen of the U. S.," 1799. l*\, EARLY EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT. 131 the population, tliough matters were aided somewhat by th>e independent building of log schoolhouses wherever enough settlers lived in one vicinity to war- rant the employment of a teacher. The duties of this individual were onerous, his qualifications very inferior, his character often far from good, and his wages wretched. In 1841 after the passage of the Common School Act of that year, salaries averaged little more than a hundred dollars a term, although with this munificent remuneration went the privi- lege of "boarding around" without charge at the homes of his pupils— taking each house in turn. The life of the teacher, who was very often a retired soldier, was a miserable one and that of the unfor- tunate scholars seems to have been little less so. They had to sit for hours in a wretched shanty which was cold in winter, hot in summer, and dusty and dirty all the year round. The light was bad, the seats were without backs and too high for the little ones' feet to touch the floor. Floggings were frequent, weariness profound, noise and disorder incessant. The success of the district schools established by the Government does not seem to have been very pronounced, and in 1819 the allowance to teachers was reduced to £50, in all cases where the number of pupils did not exceed ten! Four years later Lieut.-Governor Sir Peregrine Maitland obtained permission from the Imperial Government to estab- lish a Board of Education for the Province and for the management of a proposed University. Its I 4' i 132 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. Chairman uas tlip Rev. Dr. Strachan, and the other members were the Hon. Joseph Wells, the Hon. G. H. Markland, the Rev. Robert AJdison, the Hon. John Beverley Robinson and Mr. Thomas Ridout. Au attempt was also made to provide general reading books for the schools, and in 1824 the annua) sum of £150 was appropriated for the purchase of " books and tracts designed to afford moral and religious instruction." The Common School Act was arranged to apply to Indian schools in the Prov- ince and much-needed provision was made for the examination of teachers bv Countv Boards of Edu- cation. Inefficient though this regulation was in practice it served as a beginning for better things. According to a statement made by Dr. Strachan * in 1827 there were then 340 common schools in the Province in which ten or twelve thousand children were taught reading and writing, the elements of arithmetic and " the first principles of religion." He went on Xo say that the people, scattered as they were over a vast wilderness, were now becoming in- terested in the importance of education to such an extent that schools supported l)v subscription were more iiumcrous thai; those established by law. In the decade following 1830 a number of spasmodic efforts were made in the Legislature to establish an efficient educational svstem. Dr. Strachan and the Hon. William Morris laboured for the betterment of *= An Appeal to the Fnends of Religion and Literature. London, 1827. f u EARLY EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT. I33 conditions in the higher branches of learning, while Dr. Charles Duncombe of Norfolk and Colonel Mahlon Burwell of the London District did good serv- ice for the cause of elementary education. Un- fortunately the whole subject became involved in current questions of politics and several school bills passed by the Assembly were rejected by the Legis- lative Council. i)r. Duncombe moved a resolution in 1831 asking the Government to sot apart a quantity of public lands for the support of conmion schools and declared therein that: '' There is in this Province a very general want of education ; that the insufficiency of the Common Sdiool Fund to Sup- port competent, respectable and well-educated teach- ers has degraded common school teaching from a regular business to a mere matter of convenience to transient persons, or common idlers, who often stay but for one season and leave the schools vacant until they accommodate some like person, whereby the minds of the youth of this Province are left without due cultivation, or ivhat is worse, frequently with vulgar, low-bred, vicious and intemperate examples before them in the persons of their monitors." There was too much truth in these general facta, though political feeling can be clearly seen in the resolution as a whole, and even in this portion of it. To organise a really efficient school system in the backwoods, and amongst pioneer settlements, was a task of extraordinary difficulty and required means far beyond the resources of the Provincial Govern- wm^^^mmf^tm k 134 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. m ment. Help was rendered by England iu many ways, and much more would have been given had noi the opposition to a State Church developed naturally into antagonism towards State schools — with their inevitable religious teaching. Sir John Colborno, Lieuter ant-Governor of the Province, was largely instrnnental in founding Upper C^auada College in 1830, and through this Canadian Eton there has since passed a stream of boys Avho, as a rule, have been fairly well educated and have in an astonish- ingly large nimiber of cases distinguished themselves in Canadian history. Victoria College was estab- lished in 183G bv the Weslevan Methodists, and for years did a service to that section of the population similar to the work done by Upper Canada College for the official and Loyalist classes. In 1840 the Congregationalists established a Theological In- stitute at Toronto, wiiile the United Presbyterians formed a Divinity Hall. In 1836 Dr. Duneombe — who within twelve months was destined to be a pro- scribed rebel and whose views were of an extreme Kadieal nature — had been sent by the Assembly to report wpou American schools and colleges and ap- pears to have cone his work fully and well. But po- liiicai feeling had grown v^^y bitter and statements and proposals emanating from the Assembly, and 18 a result of American experiences, were naturally looked npon with suspicion by those in power. Noth- ing definite was therefore done, and in 1837 a sum was voted tor the educational purposes of 400,000 t J .A t EARLY EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT. 135 people very J-'ttle greater than had been given in 18 IG for the needs of u hundred thousand souls. In 1839 a Commission composed of the Eev. Dr. McCaul, long afterwards President of the Uni- versity of ^Poronto, the Rev. II. J. Grasett, after- wards Dean of Toronto, and the Hon. S. B. Harri- son, was appointed to inquire into the educational condition of the Province. Various recommenda- tions were made and the examination of many prom- inent witnesses indicated a very unfortunate state of affairs. Besides the crucial point — tlie known in- efficiency of the teachers — there seems to liave been a general fear of alien influence in the schools. The Hon. William Morris told the Commission that hun- dreds of the youth of the country were being sent to American schools and were there imbibing re- publican ideas incompatible with national loyalty or with affection for British constitutional principles. The Hon. James Crooks spoke strongly al)out the employment of alien school teachers. Others ex- pressed similar fears and opinions. Dr. Thomas Bolph "" had alroady i,nvon the Government warning of this when Avriting, in 1830, regarding the condi- tion of affairs he had witnessed four years before that date. He declared it a really melancholy matter to traverse .he Province and to visit many of the common schools. " You find a herd of children, instructed by so'.ne anti-British adventurer instill- * Observatimts Madfi during a Vi»it to Upper Canada, hv Dr. Thomas Rolph. Dundas, U.C., 1886. I ikl 136 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CEN1URY. ing into the young and tender mind sentiments hostile to the parent state ; false accounts of the late war in which Great Britain was engaged with the United States; geographies setting forth New York, Boston, Philadelphia, ete., as the largest and finest cities in the world; historical reading-books describ- ing the xVmerican population as the most free and enlightened under heaven ; insisting on the superior- ity of their laws and institutions to those of all the world ; and American spelling-books, dictionaries and grammars, teaching an anti-British dialect and idiom." It was a number of years, however, be- fore anything was done in this particular connection, while the General Report of tlie Commission was not acted upon until after the union with Lower Canada in 1841. Meantime the general lack of higher educational facilities, and the paucity of op- portunity for any kiid of efficient learning, had re- sulted in a mixture of classes and creeds and even nationalities in such schools as did exist, and this had a not unwholesome effect upon the })rocess of social evolution which was going slowly on. In the Maritime Provinces educational develop- ment was earlier and perhaps more successful than in Upper Canada. The growth of Halifax as a military, naval and social centre and of Rt. Joan as a Loyalist city had something to do with this fact, while immunitv from th« worst effects of the War of 1812 and freedom from the more severe forms of political strife had still more. For many T EARLY EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT. I37 years after the foundation of Halifax, in 1749, the London Society for the Propagation of the Gospel did much for the infant Province in sending out and paying school teachers and clergymen. In 1788 the Legislature established a Seminary at Windsor, KS., which in 1790 became King's College, and in 1802 a University with a Koyal Charter and a grant of three thousand pounds from the British Government. From that time ^xntil 1834 the Uni- versity received £1,000 annually from the same source. Unfortunately, the by-laws of this inst;*v,- tion were made to embody the ideas of the dominant and ruling powers of the day, both at home and in the Colony, by excluding Roman Catholics and Dis- senters from participation in its privileges, and this led to a prolonged agitation which resulted in 1816 in the establishment of Pictou Academy, in 1829 of the Horton Academy at Wolfville and in 1838 of Acadia College at the same place. Meanwhile, in 1321, Lord Dalhousie, whose conciliatory disposi- tion and generous views upon social, religious and educational nuitters Iiad won him great populari<-y in Xova Scotia, endeavoured to ameliorate the sec- tarian controversies of the time by establishing Dal- housie College as a medium for general higher educa- tion. In some way, however, a mistake was made, or offence mistakenly felt, by the non-appointraent of the Rev. E. A. Crawley whom the Baptists de- sired as their representative upon the teaching staff. The result of this was the formation of Acadia, "^BT rsaa ii ii r 1 138 PROGRESS Oi^ CANADA IN THE CENTURY. while the really wide measure of freedom in Dal- housie made the authorities of King's College averse to amalgamation. Hence the net result of this well-intended action was tire existence of three in- stitutions of higher learning instead of one. An Act was passed in 1811 giving some general encouragement to popular education by granting £25 to any settlement, consisting of thirty families and raising not less than £50 by local assessment. And, in 1825, when it went out of operation there were 217 schools reported, with 5,514 pupils, at an aver- age cost to the Province of £10,000 a year. In 1832 Nova Scotia was divided into school districts, each with its Board of Commissioners, and in 181:2 the conmion and high schools of the Province were re- ported as having 854 teachers and 29,382 pui)ils. They were supported by £83,000 raised locally amongst some 250,000 of a ]K)pulation and £34,000 granted by the Provincial Government. Progress had therefore been fairly rapid, and there appears no doubt that the system, crude as it may have been in many ways, was better in application than v/as that of Upper Canada at the end of this period. Had it not been for the controversies respect'" ng re- ligious teijiis and denominational teaching which dis- sipated the energies and divided the resources of the people much greater success would have been acliicved. As with Xo\'a Scotia, the educational institutions of New Brunswick began practically in the estab- < EARLY EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT. 139 lishment of a College. Xo sooner had the Loyalist immigrants been settled upon their lands and the new Colony separated from the older Province (1784) tlian the Executive Council put aside 2,000 acres in the vicinitv of the settlement at Frederic- ton, for the maintenance of a Provincial Academy which in 1800 became the New Brunswick College and in 1828 • ns incorporated by Royal Charter as King's College — long afterwards as the Univer- sity of Xew Hrunswick. As was the case every- where in those early years it was distinctly a Church Oi England institution, and so remained until 1845. The first Educational Act of the Provi '••* - as passed in 1802, and inaugurated the crudr inmencement of what afterwards became a splendid system. By that date most of the settlements had private schools of the same precarious and pioneer character as marked those of Upper Canada. These efforts of the settlers, detached as they necessarily were, re- ceived, however, great assistanjo from several socie- ties connected with the Established Church. In this way the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel did a magnificent work, contributed liberally towards the maintenance of the schools, and sent out teachers of the highest training and education. Another external influence of great benefit was the Xew England Company — a JMissionary Society of the days of Charles T. — which, after the Revolu- tion, had transferred its labours to Xew Brunswick and soon established a number of schools for Indians. 90*8* ■mil V I 140 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. But, during this period, the chief agency in the Province from outside was the National Society which had been founded in London, in 1811, for " the education of the poor in the princij^les of the Establislied Church." It very soon became strong and influential from its adoption of what was called the Madras system — after its originator who had first introduced it when acting in India as Garrison Chaplain at Madras. In 1818 one of these schools was opened at St. John, and within six years there were thirty-seven similar schools in New Brunswick with 4,730 pupils. By 1825 most of the parish schools of the Province were conducted under this system, and had been given a small Legislative al- lowance and placed under the superintendence of the Governor and a Board of Trustees. Subsequent agitation against denominatioiuil education affected their position but not materially during the period under review. The first grammar school of the Province was founded at St. John in 1805, and by means of grants from the Government, and liberal aid from the people, soon became a most successsful institution. Through an Act passed in 181 G gram- mar or high schools were soon established in many of the counties, and most of them were placed under the charge of clergymen who combined teaching witli their parochial duties. This condition of affairs continued until 1829, when the population had in- creased largely and the development of other relig- ious denominations in public importance and influ- ! 1 t»i J j mmmmmmm EARLY EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT. 14i enc(? caused the passage of a law forbidding the ac- ceptance of such employment by a beneficed clergy- man, or active minister. These schools were not very successful, and as late as 1846 a Legislative Report declared them '• inferior to many of the parish schools." Meanwhile the efforts to organise an effi- cient common school b,\ otem had not proved popular, local taxation for such a purpose was repudiated bv the people, and in 1845 the whole Provincial grant for such schools was £12,000 — as compared, how- ever, with £375 in 1815. The apathy seems to have been very great, and outside of the parish schools, where clergymen and old-fashioned teachers were often employed, the system of itinerant boarding, small salaries and cheap work was naturally in- efficient. During this period General Sir Howard Douglas, Lieutenant-Governor from 1824 to 1829, did all that was possible to encourage public interest in educational matters. In Prince Edward Island in these years, and de- spite an appeal from Governor Fanning in 1790 to the Asiiembly for '* the training up of youth to read- ing and to the necessary knowledge of the principles of religion and virtue," nothing was done by the Legislature until 1825, wiien the first Education Act was passed. This measure undertook to pay one- sixth of the teachers' salaries and granted £50 to each county for the employment of a grammar school master. In 1833 there were 74 schods and 2,276 pupils ill the little Pro'ince. During 1834 a Board 142 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE (JENTURY. M'as established for the examination of grammar school teachers who, npon passing, became qualified for a modified Government grant varying from £5 to £20. In 1836 the Central Academy was formed at Charlottetown for purposes of higher education. Away up in the wilds of the Xorth-West something was also being done at this time aloi.g these lines. Lord Selkirk, in striving for the maintenance of his storm-environed settlement on the Rod Iliver, did not forget this A'ital factor in its welfare, and in 1819 sent out a Protestant clergyman for purposes of education. A school was put up in the succeeding year upon a site now within the limits of the City of Winnipeg while not far away from this place, and amongst the Indians and Ilalf-breeds, there rose a Roman Cacholic school under the instruction of an earnest French-Canadian missionary — Father Provencher. The settlement was organised in 1835 as the District of Assiniboia, but no official prevision was made for schools, and they continued to fallow the extension of religion and to rise by virtue of private subscription, side by side with churches of different denoniinations. Two years before this date, however, a Church of England school had been founded, for iho education mainly of the children of the Hudson^ Bay officials, which neai'ly forty years afterwards, and through many vicissitudes, be- came St. John's College. Meanwhile, the oldest established and in these years most thoroughly organised educational system M EARLY EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT. I43 in British America— that of Lower Canada— had been passing through natural and varied changes. Wlien the century opened it saw a matured system of Roman Catholic higher education tlirougii the medium of seminaries, colleges and convents; and these were added to in subsequent years by the estab- lishment of the Colleges of Xicolet, St. Hyacinthe, St. Therese, St. Anne and L'Assomption. But education remained very backward amongst the m^asses. The Roman Catholic Bishop Hubert in 1789 declared that not three dozen persons in each parish (of the habitant class) could read or write. In 1801 Lieut.-Governor Sir Robert Shore Milnes promoted a law, which was passed, for tlie estab- lishment of free schools. The Act remained without effect, however, until 1818, when the Royal Institu- tion of Learning was incorporated for the encourage- ment of popular education. But its teachers were Protestants and the rural population would not send Its children to the schools thus formed— the result being that after twenty years of more or less well intended work only 37 schools were under the juris- diction of this institution. In 1820 Lord Dal- housie, who had come up from Xova Scotia as Gov- ernor-General, proved his liberality of view once more by suggesting an>4:3, and Protestant education, as such, had distinctly languished d\iring this period, while in the years immediately preceding and follow- ing the Rebellion of 1837 the whole system Avas paralysed. It was not until after the union with Upper Canada in 1841 that matters began to brighten. The whole educational system in Lower Canada up to that date may be summarised in a w'ord. There was much attention and money de- voted to higher education of an ecclesiastical nature, much to elementary education of a religious char- acter. But the habitants as a whole were not fully instructed in what is now understood by all to be educational essentials. Xor were Protestants very much better off — except where they had estab- lished semi-private schools of a character not unlike those of Upper Canada and with very similar faults. * Montgomery Martin, History of British Colonies, p. 156, 1843, London. \ H X K X X. ■ < c O a > a! p b H s n > r K c t v; ^% 'W /a 'ew ^ >^ / V IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 2.5 I.I '" itt 1 2.2 If ':i° mil 2.0 1.25 1.4 1.6 Photograpnic Sciences Corporation ^ \ « :\ \ «^ ^\ ^\ ?u^ % 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y 14380 (716) 872-4503 r^ ^^ ^ .

w ■« W W z o q u < ai W Q Z << ■A w < > ft •A < o X CHAPTER VII. THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGIOUS PKOQEESS. Turning from the earlier details of educational progress, or lack of progress, in British America, to the all-important question of religious development, it can be easily recognised by the student of history that no factor in the evolution of the Canadian people has been so vital as that of religion. It af- fected not only the homes and individual character of the settlers, but in Lower C'uiada it controlled the masses in times of war and modified public opinio'i in times of constitutional controversy and amid the storms of rebellion. In Upper Canada it aifected, through the Clergy Reserves issue, the political struggles of many years, while by the innnigration of men of diverse denominations it modified social and educational conditions as well. So to a lesser degree in the Maritime Provinces. And, M'h"n tbe varied influences and movements llius aft'ected by religious belief arc thrown into the melting-pot of history few will be found of such serious import to Canada as that of Roman Catholi- cism. Apart from its record of Jesuit missions to the Hurons, the Iroquois and the Algonquins; its 10 146 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. profound influence upon the French Government and settlement of Lower Canada and in the thoughts and livea of the Acadians; its effect upon the American Revolution and loyal response to the American in- vasion of 1775; there stands cut the fact that from the commencement of the niieteenth century it has been the chief moulding and ruling influence in the live?, the habits, the politics and even the allegiance of the French-Canadian population of Lower Can- ada. In 1800 the adherents of the Church of Rome in all the vast B; itish territorv in North America hard- ly numbered 250,000; in 1851 thoy h.ad risen toamil- lion souls of whom 107,000 wer(» in Upper Canada, 90,000 in the Maritime Provinces, and the re- mainder in Lower Canada. At the beginnii.g of the century the Church in the latter Province controlled land grants of nearly 8,000,000 acres, and in 1854, according to the Anglican Bishop of Toronto (Dr. Strachan), its endowments, tithes and other dues in that part of the country represented a capital value of $20,000,000. Meanwhile it had done it& fullest religious duty by the people of the parishes of Lower Canada. Every little village had its church building, every habitant had religious facilities close at hand, every isolated sertler was visited from time to time, in all weathers and at all seasons, by some devoted priest. Each succeeding Bishop of (Quebec during this period promoted education by means of Church schools or ecclesiastical seminaries, while lofty and costly religious edifices rose in Montreal, I THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGIOUS PROGRESS. WJ and Quebec, and Halifax, and Toronto to mark the growth of the doctrines of the Church. In 1800 the most remarkable man in. the history of the Canadian Church became Bishop of Quebeo — Jean Octave Plessis. His first wo/k was to ob- tain official British recognition and a position similar to that of the Church of England Bishop in the Province, together with a revival of the rights of the Church as held prior to the Conquest. As a result of his well-known loyalty to the Crown — proven by addresses and mandemenis from 1794 to 1812 — and so far as such privileges were considered compatible with existing conditions, he was eminently success- ful, and in addition was granted by the British Gov- ernment for himself and his successors a yearly salary of £1,000. His second, and perhaps greatest, work wjis to iuiiuence the minds of the people up to the very time of his death in 1825 along the lines of British loyalty and allegiance. In his mandement of September IG, 1807, issued at a time when war with the United States seemed inevitable, there occurred the following thoughtful words in this con- nection : " You have understood, my dear brothers, that your interests are not apart from those of Great Britain : vou arc convinced as we are that it is im- possible to be a good Christian without being a loyal and faithful subject; you have believed that you would be unworthy the name of Catholics and Canadians if, forgetting tlic rules of your holy religion and the example of your ancestors, you 148 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. i n should show disloyalty or even iiidiflperencc when it is a question of doing your duty." And in a mandement issued on October 29, 1813, the Bishop used the words which follow : " Thanks to Heaven for the victories gained in July over the French in Spain by Lord Wellington." During the years following 1812 the Church took little part in the stormy polities of the time, until events were seen to be again approaching a dangerous issue. Then, with the warm approval of Bishop Signay of Quebec, the Bishop of Montreal issued a mandement — October 24, 1837 — irculcating obedience to authorities and firmly denouncing rebellion. This document had a wide influence, and, while not preventing j.U trouble, it greatly limited the field and scope of J.q ensuing period of violence and bloodshed. The organisation, to some extent, of the scattered branches of his Church in British America had meanwhile been an- other result of the influence and work of Bishoj) Plessis. In 1820 he had obtained the Po]^ e's ap- proval and the King's consent to the establishment of auxiliary Dioceses at Montreal and in Upper Can- ada and the North-West Territories. As a result of the preliminary arrangements which he was thus able to oifect the Rev. Father Macdonell was made Vicar-General of Upper Canada, Dr. La rtiguo became the Vicar-Generrl of Montreal, and the devoted mis- sionary. Father Provencher, was appointed to r. similar position in St. Boniface, Manitoba. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, prior to this date, were made Vicariates Apostolic. THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGIOUS PROGRESS. I49 During this first part of the century the progress of the Church was indeed very great. It ran con- currently with the phenomenal natural increase in the French population, and the end of the period boasted a well or^^anised ecclesiastical system includ- ing the greater part of the population of Lower Canada amongst its adherents, several Bishops in each of the other Provinces, over a dozen large religious educational institutions, fifty communities of women and nearly half a million members of tem- perance orders. In Upper Canada the history of the Church of Rome begins with the settlement of pioneer Frenchmen in the County of Essex in 1782 and includes the romantic struggles and loyal rec- ords of the Glengarry Colonists from the Scotch J^ighlands. The master mind of the Church in this period and Province was Bishop Alacdonell, who from tlio foi'rth year of the century devoted himself to the building up of a loyal and powerful Catholic*^ body in Upper Canada. He was a man who com- bined the martial instincts and statecraft of a past age with the plainer qualities of nv. earnest religious pioneer, and had he lived ii, a widci sphere would have no doubt made a greater name icr himself. But that he co\dd have done a greater service to his Church is questionable. For thirty years he travelled fi'om mission to mission in the Province over roads which were often little better than " blazed " paths through the forest, or faint tracks over a wilderness: and endured all the hardships of cold and heat and T 150 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THF CENTURY. tlie rough life of a rough and ready time with the faith of an enthusiastic Churchman and the typical courage of a vigorous Scotch pioneer. His corre- spondence with the Home or Provincial authorities at diflFerent times and his conduct duriiig the War of 1812 stamp his character as that of a loyal, wise and natural leader of men. Pltvsicallv, his stature was immense and his courage undaunted ; mentally he was cool, resolute and imperturbable. Writing to Sir Francis Bond Head, the Lieutenant-Governor, in 1836, and in reference to some political attacks made upon him in connection with his scat in the Legisla- tive Council, the Bishop — who had been appointed to the newly-formed Diocese of Upper Canada in 1820 — declared with pardonable pride that " the erection of five-and-thirty churches and chapels, al- though many of them are in an unfinished state, built by exertion and the zealous services of two- and-twenty clergymen, the major part of whom have been educated at my own expense, afford a substan- tial proof that I have not neglected my spiritual functions nor the care of the souls under my charge." " And," he added, '' T have expended since I have been in ^^ > Province no less than thirteen thousand pounds of my own private means, besides what 1 received from other quarters, in building churches, chapels, jn-esbyteries and schoolhouses, in rearing young men fo; the Church and in promoting general education." Following the famous Glengarry settlement of l| i THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGIOUS PROGRESS. 151 1804, and the practical birth of the Church in Up- per C^anada, there was comparatively little organised Roman Catholic immigration for a number of years and, in 1817, Bishop ^Eacdonell stated in a letter to the Colonial Secretary that the population of the Province ii; this respect was only 17,000. In 1825, however, tlie Perth settlement of Irish Catholics was formed, in 1831 a similar colonv was established \n Peterborough County, and four y(»ars latei there came a lar^e (.Catholic migration from Germany into the present Counties of Bruce, Huron and Perth. But it w?is not until 184C and onwards that tlie great streiim of Irish emigration set in which so largely helped the membership and influence of the Church of Rome in the Upper Provinces. By 183(5, however, there were 10 priests, one Bishop and 35 churches in the Province — the IJishop receiving £500 per annum from the British Government and the clergy a total sum of £1,000 a year. In 1842 the Catholic population of the Province was 65,000 out of a total of 487,000. Meantime, througliout the Maritime Provinces, the progiH?ss of this par- ticular Church hud not at first been very great. Its backbone was to be found amongst Scotch settlers who had come out prior to 1800 to Prince Edward Island; ii; a small Irish settlement at Halifax dating from awf^y back in 17(50; and amongst the Acadian and Indian population. Bishop Burke, ;vho had been consecreted Vicar-General in Nova Scotia by the Bishop of Quebec in 1817, was the most zealous of 4 lit l?l 1 l/~ 152 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE (^F.NTURY. early Catholic missionaries in these Provinces, Init his Diocese was not fully organised until some time after his death, when, in 1842, Dr. Frascr was ap- pointed Bishop of Halifax, and Father Dollard, Bishop of Fredericton. By 1S38 Xova Scotia had some 20,000 adherents of the Church; three years later Prince Edward Island is stated to have had a similar numher; while in Xew Brunswick there seems to have been a still greater relative increase. Most of the Irish and many of the Scotch settlers who came to the ^faritimc Provinces be- tween 1830 and 1840 were of this faith and helped to swell the story of its later successes. Far away in the vallev of the Assiniboine French- Canadian missionaries led by Fathers Provenchcr and Desmoulins were meanwhile planting the cross amongst the Indians and Ilalf-breed settlers scattered through the region to which Lord Sel- kirk had brought his sturdy Scoitchmen. The two priests mentioned arrived in 1818 and were the first to come since fortv vears before when a wandering priest had accompanied Do Verandrye's expedition and been killed l)v Indians at the Lake of the Woods. They were also the vanguard of a series of faithful missionaries who for half a century acted as the pioneers of iheir Church in all the wide region be- tween the Assiniboine and the shores of the Pacific, and by 1841 could boast of a large, though scattered, following amongst the Indians and Half-breeds of the plains. 4 ' ! 1 :l I I 1 THE VERY REV GEORGE MONRO GRANT, LL.D ii ^^[ i t ! h 1 ...;»■ i: '' fi^H i^nHj ;|hS Jl if V THe RiiV. JOHN COOK, D D., I,I..D. THE FOUNDATIONS OF RiSLIOIOUS PROGRESS. 153 If the prominent position of the Church of Rome_> through the nunibc of its adherents and the impor- tance of its pioneer work in the evolution of French- Canadian character, deserves first consideratior in this place, that of the Churcii of England more than ranks with it in the weight of formative force which it brought to bear upon the religious and political de- velopment of the English Provinces bordering upon the great lakes or within sight and sound of the stormy Atlantic. To the people of Upper Canada, and in some measure to those of the ^laritime Prov- inces, the missionaries of this Church, — supported by the Imjierial Government or helped by the So- ciety for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Church ^lissionary Society and the Society for the Propa- gation of Christian Knowledge — constituted the cliief religious influence in their early years of set- tlement. And, when fully established among the people, it became one of the principal political and social factors of a later day. It cost in those times much more money than was available in pioneer set- tlements to maintain the clergy and erect churches. In the first years of the century a log hut constituted the sacred edifice, and a travelling missionary was the occasional preacher to a congregation which had ]>robably come from great and varied distances to hear him. For the support of this work and in the accompanying improvement of conditions and in- crfased pivmanence of ministration the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel was, in particular, a source of wide benefit to the struggling people. T ^i *! 1 1 '' i i a' ' ■ * ■ Is 1 J ' Jj i il IB «^ s.- I il 1 5.J. PR JCIRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. lis history is the history of the Church of England in Canada. Each Diocese, as it was carved out of territories just emerging into a condition of com- parative comfort and civilisation, could look back into the years immediately preceding its birth and could see how the wilderness liad been watered and cultivated in a religious sense by the ministrations of this great English organisation. In 1816 the in- fant Church was receiving o\er £12,000 from its funds. In 1821 it was in receipt of £21,000, and ior long after IS-tl it received from tlie same source an average of £23,000 a year. Little wonder that on September 9th, 1841, the Diocese of Toronto should pass an Address, expressive of its gratitude to the Society, in which occur tlie following words: "In 1801, nine cleruvmen, missionaries of vour Society, were the only labourers in the inunense vine- yard comprised in the Province of Canada; in 1841, two Bishops and one hundred and fifty clergymen are found within the same limits exercising this oversight of the Clnirch of God. . . . To vou wo liave been indebted for our lirst foundation and support as a visible Church in this Colony, and ever since for an uninterrupted series of the most munifi- cent benefactions." From 1811 the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge and the Church ^lissionary Society had been also doing much for the cause of Church expansion, and these Societies were generously aided by grants from the British Govern- THE FOUNDATIONS OF llELIGIOUS PROGRESS. 155 nient — aometimos directly to themselves, sometimes to the Provincial Government. In the former con- nection, for twenty years ending in 1833, a Par- liamentary grant of $16,000 was annually given the S.P.G., while after that date for some years salaries were paid directly to the clergy from the Government. In 1836 £30,000 was thus paid out tofurther religious progress in British America. Some portion of thissnm went to the (Miurch of Scotland and the Church of Rome, but tlie bulk of it was received by tlie Church of England. In Upper Canada £4,500 was granted to missionaries and £7,600 to the ministers of the Church. With other allowances the amount reached p total of xl 7,800. So in Lower C'anada with a total of £6,090, and in Xova Scotia with a sum of ;:.2,300 given to the Bishop and the xVrchdeacon of Halifax. Meanwhile, these and other large sums of money, fillhough put to excellent use, had proved quite in- sufHcient to keep pace with the progress of the popu- lation and the growth of its needs. Other de- nominations therefore, in time, developed strength and outnumbored in many parts of the Provinces the principal religious element of their earlipr life. But for a long period the Church of England had its own way so far as that phrase can be used where a prolonged struggle with the forces oi tusture was i- continuous progi-eas. It rested deep in the hearts Ci Loyalist siMlers, and was to the large iiiajority of them a part .aid' pa reel of the patriotism .,h"cli had brought them to this new land. In 1784 the Rev. T ( I. I . :»» i.j I • I lii t.i fel ; i ! {5 156 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. John Stuart had visited the pioneer settlements from Montreal to N^ewark, preaching to Indians and Loyalists alike. Two years later he settled at Cata- raqui (Kingston) and in 1787 Nova Scotia was established as a Diocese which embraced the whole of Canada, with Dr. Charles Inglis installed as the first Bishop of a Colonial See. By the Imperial Act of 1791, which separated Upper and Lower Canada, one-seventh of all the Avaste lands — amounting ultimately to some 2,500,- 000 acres — was set apart for " the maintenance of a Protestant clergy," and became the in- nocent cause of a vast amount of future political agitation and religious fulmination. The set- tled policy of the British Government, and con- sequently of (^olonial Governors, in these years and during the first quarter of the next century, was the establishment of a State Church in British Am- erica. Simcoe strongly urged it upon the Colonial Office and ho was followed by many others. It was a most natural suggestion and policy at. that time. The Church was established in England and in- fluenced the State in more ways than one. Dis- sent was absolutely unrecognised so far as religious equality was concerned, and political equality in this respect was still in the clouds. The new country could not supjiort its own clergymen and the Church of England was sending them out to the help of the colonists, while Parliament was voting large sums for the same purpose. Moreover, the bulk of its mmmmmm m id a- le Jt d e THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGIOUS PROGRESS. 157 English commuuity for many years belonged to the Established Church of the Mother Country, while in Lower Canada the Roman Catholic Church was practically an established one. And, not till well on the " thirties " did the Church of Scotland, so far as it was domiciled here, seriously object to this policy. But when the population changed in charac- ter and became one of mixed and varicl religious be- lief storm-cloudsof discontent naturally accumulated. Dr. Jacob ^[ountaiu was the first Anglican Bishop of Upper and Lower Canada (17913-1852), and during more than three decades laboured amidst au English population which slowly increased over vast areas of territory — a circuit of some 3,000 miles — from 15,000 people to a third of a million. When he commenced his ministrations there were six clergymen in Lower Canada and three in the Ui)p('r Province. At his death he loft sixty-one clergymen, of whom forty-eight were missionaries of the S.P.G. During these years his future successor, the Bev. Dr. Charles James Stewart, had done a great work in the religious upbuilding of the Eastern Towi shij)s of Lower Canada ; and in his eleven years of following Epis- copal administration he did more than zealous serv- ice to the whole Church. A Bishop at tliat time was really a travelling missionary whose influence depended largely upon the greatness of his Chris- tian personality and had little to do with the trap- pings of ceremonial or office. The pioneer days of the Church in Canada resembled in this respect the 158 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. beginnings of the Christian Church on the plains of Palestine, ^lence it was that the beautifully pure and elevated character of Bishop Stewart had such an effect upon all who knew or heard him. The period had now arrived for the division of the great Diocese and, in 1839, after one visitation from the new Bishop — Dr. George J, Mountain, who travelled over 2,500 miles and confirmed 2,000 persons during three months of incessant labour — the Bishopric of Toronto was created and Dr. John Strachan appointed to preside over a Diocese in- cluding practically all Upper Canada. According to the Report presented by Dr. Mountain during the preceding year to Lord Durliam the Province (out of a population of about 400,000) contained at this time 150,000 adherents of the Church of England, 73 clergy and 90 churches. But there was said to bo much need for more clergymen. Whole counties were without a single minister of the Church and at least one hundred more were re- quired, while in Lower Canada fifteen or twenty were needed. With the appointment of Bishop Strachan, and the previous establishment in 1837 of 44 Crown Kectories by Lieut.-Governor Sir John Colborne, came the accentuation of a growing con- flict over the Clergy Keserves question. The now Bishop was the most remarkable man whom the Churcli in Canada has produced. He was em- phatically its master-builder, and had lie united suas-ity of manner with his natural force of char- t ; J THE B'OUNDATIONS OF RELIGIOUS PROGRESS. I59 acter and vigour of intellect he might have wielded even greater influence. As it was, this njan of small stature but immense and aggressive courage was from the Ix'ginning of the century, and through all this formative period of Canadian history, a vital power in the religious, educational and political de- velopment of the country. Meantime the Church's progress in the jMaritime Provinces and elsewhere had been slow but steady. Bishop succeeded Bishop — Dr. Charles Inglis, the first and perhaps the ablest, dying in 1810. In the year before that event there had been twenty-three clergymen and twenty-eight Anglican schoolmasters in the Provinces of Xova Scotia and Xew Bruns- wick. The first Church missionary to Prince Ed- ward Island, which had been chiefly settled by Scotch Presbyterians, was sent in 1811). Under BishoiJ John Inglis (1825-1850) much advance- ment was made, and four years after his appoint- ment there were 27 clergymen in Xova Scotia, 20 in IS^ew Brunswick and two each in the Islands of Cape Breton and Prince Edward. Provincial Church Societies were formed for promoting local 'self-help, and in 1830 there were 34 clergymen with 28,000 adherents of the Church in Xova Scotia— the latter less in number than the Presbyterians or Roman Catholics — and in ^ew Brunswick some 20 clergymen and churches mainly supported by the S.P.C.Tv. In all parts of these Provinces the same issue had arisen which was troubling Upper Canada, I t !' I 1(5U PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. and the objection of other growing denominations to the social and state supremacy of one Cliurch was strongly asserting itself. Elsewhere, in far-off and still unknown Manitoba, the Rev. John West had gone in 1820, under the auspices of the Church Missionary Society, and upon the site of the present St. John's Cathedral in Winnipeg had built a little wooden church and preached to a miscellaneous audi- ence of trapi)ers, ITalf-breeds and Indians. Others succeeded him, but not until 1840 was a first Indian Mission sent into the wild interior where in more than one case Koman Catholic missionaries had already sown the seed of their faith. The influence of Presbyterianism in Canadian history M'as not fis distinct in this earlier period as that of other religious denominations. From the establishment of a Presbytery in Truro, Nova Scotia, in 1776, this Church in British America had par- taken largely in the divisions and differences of tlie Church in Scotland, and had added some of its own to the list. Burgher and Anti-Burgher Synods, the Church of Scotland, the Presbyterian CMiurch of Canada, the United Presbyterian Churcli, the Beformed Presbyterian Church, the Tlnited So-* cession Church of Scotland, the American As- sociate Beforn od Church and tlie United Synod of Upper Canada, all had their place and did tlieir work during the decades up to 1841. But, earnest as the missionaries and preachers of Calvinism Avere, and strong as was a position based \ :- X m w < o 7: o « a w K o w < o > b (A O BWK 1 ' II *■. Il I m m fc^,-....,.-..-.W^-LW. cn «^ hJ o 3 o Q W •J o » o ti a > M a M S > W 35 I «i n >t «im»- <« n « tM i« fn. s o Q u 'J OS o CI o oi Q > H P< U a > w as 14 I THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGIOUS PROGRESS. 101 upon the sturdy settlements of Scotchiucu which spread from Prince Edward Island to the banks of the St. Lawrence, it was naturally greatly af- fected bv tliese manifold divisions and sometimes bitter differences. In each of the Provinces, there- fore, the history of the Church is that of courageous clergymen struggling, as individuals, to preach and teach in many and scattered communities while, col- lectively, bending somewhat Avasted energies to the task of defending a pet doctrine of Church gov- ernment, or perhaps of finding some loophole for its assimHatiou with a slightly different principle held by another body or branch of a common Presbyte- rianism. In the Maritime Provinces the pioneer minister of this denon.ination was the Rev. Dr. James McGregor. From his arrival in 1786 until his death in 1830 ho continuously traversed the entire region, preaching and praying for a people scattered over a vast wilderness; forming and cher- ishing his little congregations; and, from Cape Breton to the borders of the United States, build- ing up the principles of Presbyterianism in a broad and general sense amongst the slowl}- growing popu- lation. Especially does the County of Pictou, in !N^ova Scotia, owe him enduring gratitude for his varied services to its early settlers. Dr. McGregor was followed by men like the Rev. Dr. Thomas McCulloch, and others, who ofton combined with their religious work the important element of secular education. 11 I! . I 1 !•! " 1'^ ,( t^ 1' ■ ' . 1 ■' \' u Ik m 162 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. The first Presbyterian minister in Lower Canada was the Rev. George Honry, vvho took charge of a small congregation in Quebec in 17 THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGIOUS PROGRESS. 1(',9 ?rs. Moravianism found a place in Upper Canada in 17*.>2. and its settlement at Moraviantown, with the good ^vork done by its sturdy missionaries amongst the Indians, marks the pages of early Canadian history. The first Lutheran Church in Nova Scotia dates from 1761, and in Upper Canada from 1779. The doctrines of this denomination spread widely amongst the German settlers of all the Provinces and by 1841 a number of its churches were in ex- istence. They maintained a close alliance with the American Church. So did the Evangelical Associa- tion which established itself, in 183G, amongst the Germans of Waterloo County and in a few years had obtained a large number of adherents. The Mennonites and Tunkers also received, frs^m the earliest days of immigration, a large measure of Mipport amongst the German settlers in Upper Canada. The Unitarian movement commenced to influence Canadian religious sentiment in 183G, when an attempt was made to found a congregation in Montreal. The effort was not successful for some years, but ultimately many scattered churches of this faith were to be found in the different Provinces. The Quakers date in British America from the year 1800, when Lieut.-Governor Simcoe gave to some forty families from the States a largo grant of land in the County of York. In time other settle- ments were formed in Upper Canada and a Yearly Meeting of these most industrious, frugal and honest people came to be held for purposes of regulation lYO PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. y I t .M1 f- ill and government, although, like many other minor sects, they retained a close union with the United States section of their Church. The negroes in Upper Canada had meanwhile organised amongst themselves a British Methodist-Episcopal Church as the outcome of an American missionary effort com- menced in 1834. Their Canadian Annual Con- ference was established four years later. The Jews early occupied a prominent place in Mont- real, and Hebrew names are to be 'ound amongst the lighting militia during botn the War of 1812 and the events of 1837. The first regularly ordained Jewish minister was the Rev. Raphael Cohen, who came from London in 1778. Synagogues were built from time to time, and grad- ually the influence and standing of this racial re- ligion rose to a high level in the chief city nf Lower Canada. Ts^ot till years after the end of the first part of the century, however, did a Hebrew Synagogue find its place in Upper Canada. Suc'n was the religious position of British America in these years. The dominant denomination every- where, except in Lower Canada, was the Church of England, and its semi-establishment had made it a secular power in each Province as well as the central figure of political controversy. With it, at times, stood the Church of Scotland and a large part of the Wesleyan Methodists ; against it and in favour of absolute religious equality was an important sec- tion of the Methodists, and, finally, the groat mass THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGIOUS PROGRESS. 171 of that Church together with the Baptists and a large section of the Presbyterians. These somewhat changing religio-political combinations vitally af- fected public incidents, and without the key which this fact affords much of Canadian history is an enigma to the outside student. Upon the social system of the community these Church divisions also had a direct formative effect. The years up to 1841 constituted for them all a period in which, despite apparently struggling and opposing influences, they tended, though slowly and almost imperceptibly, in the direction of denominui/lonal union. As with constitutional questions, so in this respect, fusion was emerging by degrees from confusion, and unity out of apparent disintegration. k m % \ n i Mi V 172 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. CHAPTER VIII. EARLY TRANSPORTATION^ TRADE AND GENERAL PROGRESS. The greatest problem presenting itself to Canadian pioneers — after the initial difficulties of obtaining food and shelter — was that of transportation. Until the forests were pierced with roads and the rivers bridged, or made passable for boats of heavier ton- nage than a bark 3anoe, travel was obviously very difficult, trade practically impossible and social in- tercourse rare. Hence Simcoe's establishment of high-roads and the early appearance of stage-coaches upon the few routes which could then be used for that purpose. 'Not until 1817 were Kingston and York connected in that way and in the following year by a steamboat on Lake Ontario. Not until 1826 was a stage established between York and Niagara, and only in the same year was a steamer first placed on the Lakes of St. Francis and St. Louis in the St. Lawrence River. Meantime the mail was carried to the various villages in the wilderness by Indians, by white pedestrians armed with an axe to facilitate progress, or by a postman upon horseback. In the first years of the century the mail only came every three or four months to places away from the I ^wm EARLX^ TRANSPORTATION AND TRADE. 173 Stage roads, and as late as 1807 mails were carried by pedestrians from Montreal to York, Niagara and Amherstburg. Not until 1842 was a daily stage line for this purpose, and for the convenience of pas- sengers, actually established through Upper Canada. The progress, however, had been steady, if slow, and by 1840 there were 405 Post Offices and 5,736 miles of post-roads in the Province. The process and progress of road-making was very similar in all the Provinces, except that Lower Canada, being so much older and more settled, was somewhat better equipped in the beginning of this period. Bridle roads were first made so that settlers on horseback could meet for worship, visit their neighbours, and attend to events so all-important in pioneer communi- ties as births, marriages and deaths. Over them, also, pack-horses carried grain and other movables. Then came winter, when snow and ice made these narrow, swampy roads comparatively easy and when mere tracks in the wilderness became smooth paths for the rapid-moving sleigh. Gradually, log roads were built over marshy ground and made wide enough for wheeled vehicles, as well as for horses and sleighs. To these " corduroy " roads succeeded the graded road, iii places where fonces and farms began to mark the clearings and the settlers could find time to do a little draining, bridging and grad- ing. Finally, came the gravel roads which marked the highest tide of progress in this direction up to 184;t 174 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. ^ f ml km i \ \ f 'i The next point of vital importance was that of water communication. Though possessed of the greatest system of lakes and rivers in the world the scattered population, which seemed spread like pyg- mies over the soil of British America, had to en- counter the accompanying difficulties of whirling rapids and vast waterfalls. They found that valu- able as was the St. Lawrence, stretching with its lake extensions two thousand miles into the continent and with its branches of the Richelieu and Ottawa watering their two chief Provinces, much would have to be done to assist nature before these mar- vellous facilities for traffic and travel could be ef- fectively used. The stages of progress in this direc- tion included the bark canoe used by the Indian, the voyageur, the hunter and trapper, and the pioneer traveller. Then came the French-Canadian craft called the bateau, of some forty feet in length and capable of carrying considerable quantities of food or merchandise and of being towed by ropes and windlasses, or men and oxen, through shallow rapids or over necessary portages. It could also be fitted up, in some measure, for passengers and could be sailed or rowed as desired. The Durham boats were introduced after 1812 by Americans and came to be largely used on the great lakes. They were flat-bottomed barges with greater tonnage and capac- ity than the bateaux. Beginning with 1793 a few Canadian vessels had appeared on the lakes at in- tervals, but not until 1817 did the first steamer EARLY TRANSPORTATION AND TRADE. 175 make its initial trip from Prescott to York — al- though the Hon. John Molson had already, in 1800, launched the Accommodation as the pioneer steam- boat on the lower St. Lawrence. To make these improvements iu transportation applicable, however, tj trade and other Canadian conditions, it was absolutely necessary to construct canals connecting in a navigable sense the various great waterways possessed by the Provinces. Early efforts had been made to build locks and aid the navi- gation of the bateaux and Durham boats, and by 1823 some seven hundred of the former and fourteen hun- dred of the latter were carrying goods, or produce- down the St. Lawrence. Seven years before that date the Lachine Canal had been opened and the Kapids of the St. Louis, just above Montreal, overcome at a cost to the British Government of $50,000 and to Lower Canada of $438,000. By means of the Eideau Canal, which made the Ottawa Eiver avail- able for large boats, and thus connected Kingston with Montreal, a river resembling the Rhine in length and the Danube in magnitude became avail- able for the peaceful steamers of intei -provincial trade and travel. Opened in 1832, the canal was originally intended for military purposes, and with this in view cost the Imperial Government $3,900,- 000. Other projects were discussed during this period, and the Welland Canal, the Richelieu Canals, the Cornwall Canal and the Beauharnois Canal formed the subject of frequent debate in the Legis- 176 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. latures of Upper and Lower Canada. Money was voted by the Assemblies and sometimes vetoed by the Council, or the Crown, while enterprises were commenced and then temporarily abandoned. The trail of the political serpent was over everything and material interests, as well as education and other vital matters, were neglected in order to fight over sectional and sectarian and racial issues. One man in Upper Canada, however, did what was possible to retrieve the situation, and mistaken though its management was and costly as its consti'uction be- came, the Welland Canal which connects Lakes Eric and Ontario in place of the furious rapids and falls of the Niagara, owes its existcnjo to the enthusiasm and initiatory labours of the Hon. William Hamilton Merritt. He was a man of great earnestness, though not a good public s^xjaker, and has been described as having a heart and feelings which were ardently British and a manner and style of thought eminently American. He forced his project through, so far as connecting Lake Ontario with the Weliand River for small vessels was concerned, by 1829. But, though he had accomplished a work beside which the famous Bridgewater Canal in England or the efforts of Do Witt Clinton in l^ew York State re- sembled a rill of Avater in comparison with a rush- ing river, much remained before large steamers could pass from lake to lake — although by the year 1S.30 more *han $2,000,000 had bet.n spent upon the work in improvements and additions. For many years f' I EARLY TRANSPORTATION AND TRADE. 177 this heavy expenditure continued — even after the Government had assumed control in 1842. Includ- ing most of the sum mentioned over eight millions had been spent upon general canal improvements by 1833. With the growth of transportation facilities there came some development in trade. But it was a trade largely between adjoining communities and consisted mainly in the barter of agricultural prod- uce for supplies of merchandise and occasional luxuries imported from Great Britain. Traffic be- tween the Provinces was very slight. The Hon. James Stuart — afterwards Chief Justice of Lower Canada and a baronet — stated in 1824, in connec- tion with a projected union of tiie Provinces, that " there is absolutely no intercourse whatever between the Canadas and New Brunswicic. An immense wilderness separates tlie inhabited parts of both and they have no interchangeable commcdities admitting of trade by sea. Nova Scotia is remote, is only ac- cessible from the Canadas by land through New Brunswick, and keeps up a small trale with Lower Canada by means of the Gulf of St. Lawrence in productions from the West Indies. Between Lower Canada and Prince Edv/ard Island there is hardly any communication whatever." Little trade was done Avith the United States during the first forty years of the century, as all the Provinces were under the preferential British trading regulations Jind their doors were, as far as possible, barred and 12 I- I' M 11/ ; J i 'it ill i 178 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. bolted against foreign commerce. In 1827 the im- ports of the British Provinces from the Republic did not amount to three million dollars, while their exports to that country were only one-seventh of that amount. But this policy had a very natural cflFect upon the creation and development of Canadian shipping. As the consumption of imported products grew in volume and the external trade of the Provinces was at the same time confined to vessels flying the Brit- ish flag, it was to be expected that the vast forest areas of the country would be utilised for building ships as well as for supplying (Jreat Britain with timber. From a very early period indeed, the City of Quebec had been the scene of shipbuilding, and the t^i'Ht year of the century saw 21 ships of 3,700 tons built at Quebec and leaving that port. During the next twenty-three years the average of Canadian- built ships was somewhat great' r, and in 1824:~20 there seems to have been a marked im[)otus given to the industry, judging by the fact that the number rose from 38 to S-i and the tonnage from 10,498 to 19,172. Then the average number fell once more until, in 18-10, the tonnage became 26,500 and the number of ships 04. Meanwhile, in the !N[aritimo Provinces lliere had been a gradual growth of ship- ping interests from the time in 1761 Avheu the Pom- pey, a shallop of 25 tons, had been built in Yar- mouth County, Nova Scotia. In 1798, Pictou be- gan a long career in this respect by launching a EARLY TRANSPORTATION AND TRADE. 170 vessel of GOO tons, and from the excellent (juality of local woods and tiie development of trade with the West Indies, a largo business was created, until, in 1825, general financial depression caused a seri- ous collapse. Up till 1841 these Maritime Prov- ince vessels were largely built for sale in Great Britain and were of a suniewhat inferior quality. But after that date there ensued a period of great prosperity — the palmy days of the industry. Siiip- buikling also became a considerable interest in New Brunswick, where the conditions were similar to those of the sister Province and where, in 1841, new shipfi were built with a tonnage of 33,991 and numbering "ighty-Hve. iMcanwhile, tiie first steamer to cross the Atlantic, the Ivoyal William, had been built at (Quebec. In Augustj 188.'}, after trading for a couple of years between Quel>ec and Halifax, it had crossed the ocean from Pictou to London in twenty-fivo days. A tab- let in the Parliament Buildings at Ottawa now commemorates ihi^ pioneer forerunner of a mighty host of steamshij)ft — the beginning of the greatest revolution in the w^orld's carrying trade. Other vessels soon followed, and in 1839 a Nova Scotian went to Liverpool and founded the famous Cunard Line of steamers which commenced in the follow- ing year to call at Halifax, But New York soon captured the Line and has ever since retained it. By this time there were a number of steamers on Lake Ontario, though the canals were still too small 1 P 1 i! 11 I i' 'l ■■ ^'i \ '% 1 Hit |.' ' \ ' ' 1 i 1 1 i! 180 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. to permit of much steam traffic with Lower Canada. In 1835 the Beaver was launched oi the Thames by King William IV. and sent out to the Pacific Coast of British Columbia for the use of the Hudson's Bay Company. A year later it was carrying furs from Alaska and continued in active work for over fifty years — the pioneer steamer of the ]!^orthern Pacific and precursor of many greater ships. The first steamer built in New Brunswick was launched in 1816, and in another quarter of a century several were running between St. John and Boston and other ports. In 18.36 the total shipping of Nova Scotia, inwards and outwards, was 700,000 tons; of New Brunswick 684,000 tuns; of Prince Edward Island 41,000 tons; of Lower Canada 090,000 tons. In addition to this large external shipping interest, and the ships built locally at the chief ports, there was an industry most important to any community which borders on the oceans, or which has within its bounds such inland seas as British America boasts — that of fishing. Through the bays and fiords of the Maritime Provinces skilful workmen, here and there, built such crafts as might suit the somewhat stormy waters of the Gulf or the Bay of Fundy, and bupplied them to the sturdy fishermen who swarmed out in pursuit of their avocation much as their Norse ancestors hcd done from the coasts of Europe upon wider and wilder missions. The result was the establishment of an industry which has produced and maintained a large seafaring class EAKLY TRANSPORTATION AND TRADE. 181 13S upon the coasts of British America — not dissimilar to that of Newfoundland — and which in a later period was to be duplicated upon the shores of the Pacific. During these years the timber trade was a veri- table handmaid of colonisation, the source of wealth to shipping interests, and of occupation to an im- mense number of saw-mills and many thousands of men. Colonial ships and timber had a heavy fiscal jtreference in the British market over their chief rival — the timber of the Baltic — and became at times the subjects of plunging speculation and of serious loss as well as of large profit. But upon the whole the trade did great service to the infant Colonies and the seas were white for many years with the sails of vessels from Quebec, Halifax and St. John carrying square timber, boards, deals, staves, shingles, oars and various other branches of the in- dustry to the crowded wharves of the Mother Coun- try. The resources of British America in this respect were then almost incalculable. From the Atlantic coasts there stretched inland, and north of the great lakes, two thousand miles of forest, lake and wilder- ness. Out of this during the present century at least .50,000,000 acres of forest arr-a have l)een cleared for purposes of agriculture or else denuded of trees b}; the ravages of fire. It was natural, therefore, that these immense forests of pine, oak and tamarack should in time attract attentioit, investment and labour. To the earlier established French-Canadian ' ^* li 11 I ! ! \ 1 1 I ■ 1 1 1 H 1 182 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. they do not scorn to have afforded much interest in a business way, but, commencing with the infl ix of English-speaking Colonists in 1783, they soon be- gan to appear more than a haunt for wild animals, a home for the fur trade or an obstacle to settlement. Philemon Wright, early in the new century, ob- tained a largo tract of timber on the Ottawa River, north of the Chaudioro Falls, and in 1806 sent down that historic stream its first raft of logs. Though the importance of the trade was not officially recognised until 1823, when Lord Dsilhousie's Ad- ministration imposed an export tax upon timber, it was not long before the forests of this great region Avere ringing with the axe of the woodman, while many saw-mills were ]ii operation along tlie Ottawa or the St. Lawrence, and the lumberman had be- come an important, though somewhat roving and er- ratic, factor in Canadian development. The external trade of British America was, dur- ing the first part of the century, chiofl}' with the ]\Iothor Country, and seems to have boon a fairly ])rofitable one. In 1808 the Canadas imported from Great Britain, via Quebec, five million dollars' worth of manufactured goods at the rate of sixteen dollars per head of the population, and from the West Indies, in British ships, some $050,000 worth of products. The imports from the United States were composed of merchandise, tea, provisions, to- bacco, oats, pino masts, and pot and pearl ashes, to the N'alue of about a million and a half dollars. er- EARLY TRANSPORTATION AND TRADii. 183 There were six million dollars' worth of exports to Great Britain, composed mainly of furs, wheat and flour, timber, staves, masts, new ships, fish and pot and pearl ashes. The last item was an important industry during many years of this period.* As the years passed on these figures grew somewhat in volume but not to an extent pro])ortionate to the in- crease of the population. The following table of imports and exports in 1827 and in 1836 illusti'ates the general progress and position of the trade with Great Britain, and is collated from Montgomery ]\fartin's semi-official work upon the British Colonies (London. 1843): Province. Imports TO. Ifi37. 1836. Exports from. 1827. 1836. Tlie Canadas SH.:r.2.4.'iO »13,60r,5.3.5 $2,343,830 $3,167,87.5 NiwBrunswlck 1,184,700 4,215,840 1,131,860 1,247,210 Nova Scotia \ r'-'oe Breton Island -.. 1,577,085 2,217,185 215,825 289,850 Prince Edward Isiiiiid ' Hudsou'sBay Settienient.. 136,000 206,905 255,8»5 131,565 $7,651,535 $«),3."17,415 |8,047,370 $4,836,500 The growth of the imports from the Mother (Coun- try, as compared with the almost stationary and very small proportions of the export trade, is interesting; and, while serving to prove the value of Colonies to a metropolitan people, indicates also the absence of industries and money amongst the settlers in the new land. Had the latter possessed means the ira- * Eighty Years* Progress of British Noi'th America, Toronto, 1804, p. 292. M p. M 184 PROGRESS OB' CANADA IN THE CENTURY. ports would have been infinitely greater. Mean- while, the United States was but slowly improving its position in British American trade — although, despite differential tariffs and stringent navigation laws, its imports from the Provinces in 1827 were $445,000 in value, while its exports to them amounted to $2,700,000. The figures did not vary nuich in the next decade, and even as they were, some part of the exports seem to have been American timber products intended for the British market. The general imports and exports of British America (luring this period were not very varied. Some de- tails of the former constitute interesting reading for the Prohibition advocates of this end of the cen- tury. At the Port of Quebec, in 1824, for instance, vessels from Great Britain brought over a hundred thousand gallons of different kinds of wine, seventy thousand gallons of rum and eighty thousand gal- lons of brandy. From Teneriffe came twenty-three thousand gallons of wine and from the West Indies and other Colonies a million gallons of rum. Over five million pounds of muscovado sugar were also imported and hardly one million of refined sugar. From the United States came some rice and tobacco. Curiously enougli the records show the import of only 48 gallons of whisky from Great Britain in that year. Amongst the exports timber from Lower Canada and New Brunswick constituted tlie most considerable item, while ships made an excellent showing. Between 1814 and 1837, inclusive, 6,618 EARLY TRANSPORTATION AND TRADE. 185 vessels, with a tonnage of 838,940, were built in British American ports — more than four times the number built in all the other British Colonies put together. The export of wheat and flour was very small, amounting to twenty-five quarters in 1815 and to only a hundred thousand quarters in 1833. At times wheat was actually imported from the ^Mother Country. Fish, though not in very large quantities, were shipped from the Maritime Prov- inces. The indications are, however, that the large catches along the coasts were chiefly consumed in the homes of the settlers. There were some evidences of growth in the interchange of trade during this period between the different Provinces, but it was slight — the principal intercolonial trade being with the West Indies. This did not vary greatly, and amounted in 1836 to a total import and export of three million and a half dollars. In manufacturing and industrial progress the record of the Provinces between 1800 and 1840 was interesting in its nature but slight in comparative result. From the illimitable iron resources of the country early efforts had been made to extract sup- plies of that central factor in all industrial prog- ress. Actuated chiefly by military reasons the French Government, as far back as 1737, started the St. Maurice Forges, and here during the succeeding century, and partly under British Executive con- trol, the industry was carried on with varying de- grees of success in a region of which the City of \v i 'A ' (■ 1 ■ , 1 ' , . ! } i i V i 18G PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. Three Rivers afterwards became the centre and from which a recent authority states* that .05 L.)n ore can still he produced of a nature rivalling the best ever produced in Sweden. Other iron works were started from time to time at Marmora, in Upper Canada, and in the ^Maritime Provinces, but lack of capital and shipping facilities, coupled with an external competition which was unchecked in those days by tariff arrangements, soon forced tliem to succumb. In no case, however, was there any lack of the raw material, and during all these tentative efforts at development there lay in the Maritime Provinces splendid deposits, not only of iron ore but of mineral fuel and flux, while in the Canadas there was an inexhaustible growth of wood suited for purposes of charcoal fuel, as well as abundance of the necessary fluxes. The textile trades received an early and successful start in the Provinces owing to the encouragement given by French Governors and oflicials to domestic manufactures of all kinds of clothing. As far back as ]()7l the Intendant Talon informed the Government at Paris that he could, if necessary, clothe himself from head to foot with Canadian-made garments. The fla c and wool spin- ning wheels and the clumsy loom soon became es- sential adjuncts to the house of the linhitonf, and the women of Lower Canada were able to make * Mr. George E. Drumnicnd, President of 'he General Min- ing Association of Quebec Province, in Canada : An Encyclo- poedia, vol. 5, p. 508. EARLY TRANSPORTATION AND TRADE. 187 everything from clothes and towels to carpets and bedding. To the incoming Loyalists and colonists of a later period homespun clothing was equally essential, and in the early years of the century, in every lonely settlement or isolated home in the wilder- ness of British America, women might be seen weav- ing the woollen garments which their families Avere so glad to have. As years passed on, however, and the settlements grew in nund)ers and importance, a woollen industry ;vas established in the more modern sense of that word. The saw-mills recpiired at lirst for cutting up the tindier needed for pioneer houses and furni- ture, and afterwards for the export trade, and the grist mills scattered here and there throughout the Canadas for dealing with the farmers' grain, were added to by carding and fulling mills of American design and manufacture. Upper Canada, in 1(S27, had 91 of the former and 70 of the latter and Lower Canada in 1S42 had 18G carding mills and 144 full- ing mills. In the ^Maritime Provinces the hand- loom and spinning-wheel remaincnl the favourite for some time after these dates, as they also did amongst the habitanis of Lower Canada. The manufacture of woollen goods on power-looms was commenced, in 1837, at Chanddy in the latter Province and at about the same time at Georgetown, Upper Canada. The principal progress in this direction vv^as made some twenty years later, partly as a result of the in- flux of Scotch immigrants of the weaving class, and 188 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. m (Hi ; 1 ( ■ t IIP partly because of increased resources in capital. A curious but unsuccessful experiment was made in 1822 on the banks of the Assiniboine to utilise the vast number of wasted buffalo skins lying upon the prairies, by turning the wool into cloth. After the expenditure of some twelve thousand dollars, during three years, the venture was given up. Linen and hemp manufacturing was coterminous in the Prov- inces with the pioneer domestic woollen industry. Linen cloth-making is recorded by the Jesuits in 1688, and in 1734 some ninety thousand pounds of flax were grown for the making of cordage. The latter, however, Avas never a successful industry de- spite bounties and prizes given during both the French and earlier British periods of rule. The linen and cotton industries, as well as that of silk manufacture, were developments of the latter half of the nineteenth century. The first paper mill in Lower Canada was started in 1803, and some sixteen years later another was established in Xova Scotia, and in 1820 one was founded at Ancaster in Li'pper Canada. During the next fifty years, however, the growth of this industry was very slow and gave little indication of its present proportions. Boot and shoe making originated in Lower Canada in 1828, but during this period the progress was slight — the factories being small, the machinery poor and the output insignificant. But the beginnings had been made in nearly all these industries, and much has been due, then and since, EARLY TRANSPORTATION AND TRADE. 189 to the clever workmanship, the natural patience and innate deftness of the French-Canadian. To him the textile interests and leather trades of British America are more greatly indebted than is generally understood. By the middle of the century the manufactures of the Provinces were therefore just emerging from the cradle of tentative endeavour. Political troubles had somewhat hampered their growth by checking the influx of capital and the creation of confidence in new enterprises. Yet there were some industries of importance in the country, aside from the ship- building interests and the 3, .500 saw-mills and grist mills which existed in British America in 1833 and which have been already referred to in a general way. Distilleries, tanneries, foundries, soap and candle works, slate works, starch factories, cooper- ages, brick-yards, nail factories, spade and shovel works, breweries, match factories, cigar and vinegar factories and machine-making establishments, to say nothing of the varied branches of the timber in- dustry, existed in the various Provinces. But these were chiefly small concerns of a local character, dependent upon their immediate vicinity for sup- plies of raw material and unable to attain more than a local distribution and sale owing to poor roads and the general cost of transportation. The occupation of the masses was still agriculture, The knowledge of its principles was improving, while the practice of the majority of those in thd 190 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. t I I* u I ii 1 « i ■i '. i ', i slowh' settling counties was, in 1841, vastly superior to that of the pioneers who had in so majiy casen left the bench or bar, the desk or the drawing-room, to handle a primitive plough in the wilderness. Young men were not yet ashamed of the soil which their fathers had tilled, nor were they yet filled with an insensate ambition to crowd into towns and cities. Political agitation might check industrial and financial development, hamper immigration and chill enterprise, but it could not make the farmer forego his sowing and reaping and raising of stock, or prevent the settler from spreading around him a wider area of fertilitv. The result was that in tipper Canada, during the fourteen years following 1826, the occupied acres had increased by 3,500,000; the cultivated acres from 599,00^^ to 1,811,000; the number of horses from 23,000 to 75,000 ; and the oxen, cows and cattle generally from 113,000 in number to 204,000. In the vear 1S33 there were, in all the British Xorth American Provincos, a million and a half of pcojjle possessed of two hundred thou- sand horses, nearly a million horned cattle, seven hundred thousand hogs and a million and a quarter sheep. In the Maritime Provinces also the record of progress was good in this respect ; M'hile in Lower Canada, owing to a disinclination to adopt new methods and partly, perhaps, from the liampering influence of the Seiijncurial svstem in certain directions, agricultural matters may be described as practically iu a stationary condition. EARLY TRANSPORTATION AND TRADE. 191 Meantime, the evolution of the Canadian bank- ing system had commenced in 1817 by the foundation of the Bank of Montreal — afterwards the largest banking institution in either Canada or the Unite'l States. The Quebec Bank was founded in the suc- ceeding year. Like everything else in Canada the attempted legislation before that date, and the con- tinuous efforts afterwards to improve, extend or limit the financial system of the country, show a distinct conflict between British and American influences. At first the latter won, and the framework of most of the earlier legislation was characterised by Am- erican ideas and methods. JMontreal in the second decade of the century was the centre of the import- ing trade for the interior regions of Upper Canada, and it was natural that the first bank should be started there. Small shopkeepers had gradually established themselves in the larger settlements of the country, and, as the forest gave way to the farm and the villagC; they organised a kind of business in which credit M'as a Icjuling feature — the pioneer giving payment in produce for the simple articles of comfort or clothing which could be obtained from the shop and the merchant shipping the produce to !^[ontreal in pavment of his account with the ini- J. 1/ jiorter. In 1S23 the Bank of U]»per Canada was tstablished at York and soon had a number of branches. The Bank of New Brunswick was started ill 1S20 and the Connnercinl Bank of the IVfidland District at Kingston, U.C., and the Bank of Xova 192 progress; of CANADA IN THE CENTURY. I I Scotia at Halifax, in 1832. Then followed the Bank of British America (London, England) and the Gore JJank (Hamilton, U.C.) in 1836. Five years from the latter date there were eleven banks in the two Canadas, with numerous and scattered branches and having a total capital of nearly elevp" million dollars, deposits of four millions anc counts of sixteen millions. During this perioa, and in- deed for many years afterwards, the vagaries of tliese financial institutions were multiform and at e times alarming even to the distant Imperial Gov- ^' ermnent. Politics founded more than one of them ;■ and in time wrecked several in the years succeed- ing 1841. Legislation of the wildest kind and schemes of most inevitably disastrous character abounded, and when reaching the final stage of the Governor's approval were usiuilly sent home for final action and tiiere either seriously amende ' or else vetoed altogether. Finally, in 184rO, Lor J n Rus- sell, after careful consideration and the recc ^ r, of all possible authoritative advice, drew up a series of regu- lations for the guidance of Provincial administrators which were afterwards largely incorporated in the general Canadian sj'stem. The history of these monetary institutions affords indeed a most striking illustration of a beneficial influence in Colonial matters exercised by tli^ oft-despised intervention of Downing Street. It was all very natural. Neither pioneers, farmers, French Seigneurs, Lower Cana- dian habitants, nor political agitators, could- be e.\- CENTURY. llowed the Bank [land) and the 36. Five years 3n banks in the ittered branches elevp" million anc counts )erioa, and in- lie vagaries of Itiform and at Imperial Gov- ^' m one of them f3, years succeed- \ iest kind and rous character '■ al stage of the home for final lendo ' or else jonl n Rus- le rue ^ r, of all I series of regu- administrators )orated in the ory of these most striking in Colonial itorvention of ral. Neither Lower Cana- could' be ex- THR RKV. EGERTON RYERSON, D.D. ..'•■^ . ;(' i if I: i, i I ; ltance of British rule at the hajids of men who understood, in far greater measure than themselves, how to administer its principles — as then practised. And this despite errors of judgment and evidences of ignorance in those rulers which must now be admit- ted. But the Colonial Office and the Governors THE FOUNDATIONS OF GOVERNMENT, 201 had, even at the best, a difficult task in Lower Caii- ada. A jiopular elective Assembly, with a Legislative Council appointed by the Crown and an Executive Council to advise the Governor, had been created after the Act of 1701, there as well as in Upper Canada. It was hoped that the Assembly would prove conciliatory, would make friends of the mass of an alien i)opulation, and would facilitate govern- ment while promoting the unity of races. Within a few years of the century's o])ening it had com- menced to do exactly the reverse. The two Councils were naturally in the hands of the dominant English minority ; the Asseml)ly soon, and with equal ap- propriateness, fell into the hands of the popular French majority. Then came the crucial issue. Had there been fri(Mulship and social intercourse between the races; had the English been able or willing to trust the French-Canadians; had the latter been as loyal to what were called British institutions as they claimed to be in Parliamentary resolutions; had either section clearly understood the questions discussed with so much foam and froth in French ]>apers and with such limited comprehension in the English press ; had the Governors been firm and con- sistent in their own jiolicy and been steadily sup- ported at home; the development which followed might have been steadily useful and cohesive. As 't turned out the process was one which involved the evolution of a discontented majority into a party of triumphant popular demagoguery. 202 PUOGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. !•!? ■ i Nl I .L II hH II ' !1 The first and chief mistake of the Ilome Govern- ment was in beginning at the top of the edifice of [lopular rule instead of at the bottom, and for this it had to suflFer in thirty vears of Lower Canadian tur- moil. It gave elective institntions of a Parliament- ary eliaracter to a people not only utterly untrained in such matters, but to whom the very principle of suffrage was a vague abstraction. It gave them this franchise when, individually and as a race, they were ignorant of its proper use and at a time when in England herself complete rc«])onsible government was not a fact, ^fany hundreds oi years had been required in the Old Land to permeate the masses with a proper knowledge of how to apply their power within limits which assured moderation of procedure and stability of administration. The English people had evolved the existing system — incomplete as it was — out of centuries of town and countv and local government. In Lower C*anada a Legislature sprang full-panoplied into the political arena within an hour, and a people who did not know even the mean- ing of the lowest forms of municipal government and had been trained under a system devised by French Kings of the most autocratic type were ex- pected to use this complex popular machine with the experienced honesty of English squires and the patriotic purposes of a Pitt or a Burke. Naturally, they did not employ it in the way expected and before long were using it with all their power to obtain anything and everything from the Executive, or from THE FOUNDATIONS OF GOVERNMENT. 203 the Colonial Office, which might strengthen the in- fluence of their race and check the dominance of the conquerors. Of course the Executive Council — comi)osed at first entirely and afterwards chiefly of Englishmen, as was the Legislative Coinicil — was t'xpected to counteract any possible struggle for su- piC'macy by the popular House. It did so, but only at the expense of incessant friction between the As- sembly and the Council, the Governor and the ma- jority of the people. The Governors were 'in- structed, it is true, to conciliate the masses, and they sometimes did so to the point of serious inconsistency — Sir George Provost apj)earing to repudiate the vigorous policy of Sir J. TT Craig and Lord Gos- ford to have for a time renounced the strongly ap- plied principles of the Earl of Dalhousie. Neither the Governors, the English population, the French leaders nor the French habitants knew ex- actly what they wanted to achieve in these years, such proposals as there were being destructive and not constructive. The Governors did not desire to lessen the Crown's prerogative of appointing its own advisers; and no one in any party in Lower Canada advocated in practical form the establishment of a Cabinet or Ministry subject to the entire covitrol of the Assembly and appointed by the Crown. The Governors naturally did not Avant to strengthen in the Colony an influence which was steadily showing itself more and more aggressive and hostile towards the British minority; and when surrenders of prin- 204: PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. \ ■ \4 ii ciple or practice were made for purposes of con- ciliation it was always found that they wore merely used as levers with which to work furtluM- con- cessions. They did strive to hring toj^other the two races, but when any one Governor pleased the French he antagonised the English, and rice iwrsa. They knew nothing, and the Colonial OfHce knew nothing, as yet, of the possibility of Kiaking i\ Governor the constitutional sovereign of a (pstant country, and at the same time the nominal representative of the Brit- ish Crown. Such a theory would have then seemed to involve the practically complete severance of con- nection between the countries. Moreover, under the circumstances, in Lower Canada it would liave been at this time impossible. Part of the funds iised in the Province came from Great Britain. Im- perial troops were maintained there by the Crown. The Customs duties were controlled by the Imperial Government. !Manv of tlu^ official salaries were paid from the same source and Imperial moneys were constantly at the service of the Governors. The Colony was neither self-supporting nor self-govjrn- ing in the modern sense of the word. The general mission of the Governor, under definite instructions from the Imperial Government and apart from minor details of compromise or conciliation, was to act as the non-partisan head of the Province and to rule it, with or without -the advice of the English or French, in the best interest of its union with Great Britain. Ho was his own Prime ^Minister. That he sov THE FOUNDATIONS OF GOVERNMENT. 205 rn- eral ons nor as in nil). times beeanic the licail of the British section of the people and was looked upon as the bitter enemy of the other and larger parts of the population, or else, through a desire to conciliate the latter element, be- came the instrument of the Assembly in its conflict with the English, seems to have been the inevi- table result of conditions which evolved into a \n'o- longed racial struggle. The English population were also in the clouds upon constitutional matters, though not quite in the same measure as the French. Thev naturally be- lieved that in a British country they should be su- preme under the Crown, and, knowing their own loyalty while gravely doubting that of the popular majority, they expected to have their views main- tained by the Kepresentatives of the Crown. Eng- lishmen filled the chief positions in the Province, frequently held in person more than one office, and made the Legislative and Executive Councils to some extent instruments for registering their de- cisions and expressing their opinions. Their views Avere by no means always accepted by the Governors. Nor were they always opposed to Avhat would now be termed the best interests of the people. But they were essentially tlie opinions of a class which was alien in thought and i)ractice to the average French- man, and therefore either incomprehensible or un- pleasant to him. A very natural difficulty between the races was also that of religion. Men like Her- man W. Tlyland, who was for many years in office^ M { •I! 206 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. were bigoted, though lioncst, in the belief that Protestantism must be made dominant in the Colony. Even a leader such as Ciiief Justice Scwell, who bore the curiously mingled reputation of being at the same time a keen politicirn and a dignified and impartial Judgu, vas described by Sir John Coape Sherbrooke, in 18 IG, in a despatch to the Colonial Secretary,* as having inspired a feeling of violent hostility amongst all classes and in all parts of the Province, mainly because of the popular belief that he was strongly artagonistic to the Roman Catholic laith. It took many years and much careful and cautious work by ecclesiastics such as Bishop Plessis and conciliatorv Governors like Sherbrooke and Dal- Ifousie before this religious antagonism Avas modified. Fortunately, it was somewhat assuaged before the general racial rivalry had developed into armed hos- tilities. In another direction there was a serious conflict of interest. The English were a trading and conniiercial people. The French were essentially an agricultural people, and when their leaders as- sumed control of the Assembly, and endeavoured to completely control taxation, their pol'cy was to keej) the soil free of all burdens and nuike the citv and business interests of the Province be,ir the brunt of the taxation. This attitude was keenly and natural- ly resented by the English minority. The French leaders, while drifting from a curious * Christie, History of Lower Canada, vol. 11, p. 268. -Xtiiiliimlmumi THE FOUNDATIONS OF GOVERNMENT. 207 radicalisn; —which combined ideas received from England, France and the United States — into the republicanism which preceded their revolt, were ignorant of the true functions of their constitutional position. They strove to strengthen, and succeeded for a time in doing so, the influence of their race by attacks upon British Governors, English Judges, English Councils and, eventually, the British Par- liament. Occavsionally they were right, frequently they were wrong, and especially so from the stand- point and conditions of those times. The Governors were fiercely criticised by them for not actijig in a constitutional sense as the Sovereign acted in Eng- land, though it was utterly impossible to do so with- out a Ministry responsible to the people, and, as can- not be too strongly reiterated, this does not appear to have been even suggested by the French and was certainlv not demanded. The Executive Council, which was really an advisory conmiittee of the Legis- lative Council, wi.s constantly berated for not being representative of the popular majority in the Lower House, r .t when French members were appointed to eitlier of tlie Councils they straightway lost all weight or influence. The Government was attacked for years because soine of the Judges — as being the best fitted men in a very limited English ])opula- tion — were members of these political Councils, but when Governor after Governor asked the Assembly to pass a measure which would remedy the diffi- culty by making the Judiciary independent of poH- TTT- I i 208 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. tics and its members ineligible for such offices, the request was refused unless the right of voting their yearly salaries, and thus making them subservient to the wishes of the French majority in the Assembly itself, was also given. The latter bodv demanded vicorouslv and eon- tinuovisly the right to control the Government by controlling the reveniie and expenditure of the Prov- ince, and around this claim centred the controversies of the entire period from 1800 to 1837. Part of the revenue came from the Customs and Excise, which were in the hands of the Home authorities and were mainly subject in disposal to the advice of the Governor and liis Executive Council. xVnother por- tion came from local taxation and was controlled in its origin and application by the Assembly — sub- ject to the approval of the Legislative C!*ouncil and Governor. There was another variable quantity in the controversy consisting of Imperial Army Funds which were under the direct and specific control of the Governor and from wliicii he sometin.os drew over a term of vears to the ext<'nt of from twenty to a hundred thousand ])ounds, when required to meet ordinary expenses of administration wliicli the As- sembly might refuse to provide for. All expendi- ture was supposed to be initiated by the Governor. After a struggle the po|)ular body obtained from the Crown the right to vote the entire amount of expen- diture, inclusive of the revenue from all sources and excepting any sums which might be paid by I f THE FOUNDATIONS OF GOVERNMENT. 209 311- 1)V i*. the Imperial Goveriiiiieiit. But this power was given oil the distinct understanding that an ade- quate sum would be voted as a permanent Civil List to His Majesty in accordance Avith the custom of the British Parliament and for the payment, in this case, of salaries to Canadian officials and of expenses which were assumed to be not subject to change. By one excuse and another the carrying out of this part of the settlement was postponed, and the supply vote was made every year a subject of continuous and acrid controversy over the position of officials — often Judges — whom the Assembly \vanted dismissed, or changed, and over the refusal of tha Council to agree to grants having such pro- posals included. The history of this period in the Lower Province is essentially formative in a political sense because the French-Canadians had to crowd into less than half a century the discussions and political educa- tion which England had taken many centuries to develoj). That the habitant and his leaders went astray, and trivd to make the terms race and party interchangeable, was not so much the fault of the easy-going but excitable nature of the former or so greatlydiscreditableto his loyalty to what demagogues fcoon made him consider an alien and hostile au- thority, as it was traceabh' to the English folly of trying to transplant an old English oak upon French soil. The intention was good but the reasons fallacious and the result regrettable. Between 1830 14 ■y ^m 2l(> PROGRESS OF CANAD^* IN THE CENTURY. ! m I m ! ! 11 f ami 1837 sedition, to many in Lower Canada, was a positive virtne, and to the leaders there loomed upon the horizon of hope a vision which took the somewhat shadowy form of a French republic Avhich might be based upon the example and insti- tutions of the United States and guarded by its neighbourhood and friendship. Tliis expectation and the inevitably resulting bloodshed was feared and foreseen by the English minority, and when the final flash of folly came Lord Durham reported to the Imperial Government in 1838 what seemed to him at tiiat time to be the " irreconcilable enmity " of the two branches of the people and the '* irremedi- able disaffection of the whole French population." In this respect he was fortunately a false prophet, but his belief sufficiently illustrates the position of the two races. Out of this very extreme of violence, however, came the crown of constitutional experience which prepared the French Canadians for their fu- ture career in making them understand the superior advantage of constitutional agitation and fair play to all classes and races over the results of rebellion. And in that sense the insurrection was a great for- mative influence in Lower as well as in Upper Canada. In all the Maritime Provinces during this period political development was upon lines similar to tho, direction of affairs in Upper Canada, but with tho cxceptio!! that agitation was moderate, conditions less Bti-enuous and politics comparatively mild, until lY. THE FOUNDATIONS OF GOVERNMENT. 211 ida, was loomed ;ook the republic id iusti- [ bv ita >cctation 5 feared I'lien the orted to enied to Miiuity " rremedi- ion." In )het, but fi of the iolencp, )erienco leir fu- superior lir play bell ion. cat for- Upper period r to tlio, t'ith tlio ons less until ibout 1834, when Sir Colin Campbell came out as Lieut.-Governor of Xova Scotia and Joseph Howe forged to the front as a Liberal orator and politician. After that time the issue between the Executive and Legislative C^ouncils and the representative As- sembly was very much like the same struggle else- wiiere. The Governors of these years were men of high character and obeyed their instructions from the Imperial Government, as it was their duty and sup- posed function to do. They asked the advice of their Executive when it seemed desirable, and ex- pected to control its policy on behalf of the (^rown and in the interest, as they deemed it, of Jiritish connection and unitv. Thev strove naturally to I. f L maintain Loyalist influence in the Councils and to strengthen the hands of the Church which was estab- lished in the Old Land and which all Tiritish Gov- ernors in this period looked upon as a bulwark of loyalty against the disaffection which might develop from seeds of American relii'ious democracy. In- evitably other classes of tlie growing population re- sented the application of these views and soon sought to check them by controlling the House of Assembly and the supplies. But it seems no more reasonable to denounce the Council of Xova Scotia, as Howe did in 1837, as being " exclusive, intolerant, opposed to the spread of civil and religious liberty, enlight- enment and education among the people and actu- ated by motives of self-interest," than it was to pro- <:laim the Liberals in that Province as disloyal be- 212 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. II \ I cause tliej attacked the Governor who was without the shield of a Prime Minister. In the light of a later period we can see that the Loyalist or Tory leaders of the Maritime Provinces were in the main honourable and honest men. Exclusive they might he, but only in very few cases did they ever take ad- vantage of their position in any sense of self-interest, while the Church of England had been in so nuirked a measure the pioneer of religious and educational work in all these Provinces that the desire of the Governors and Councils to strengthen its hands was easily defensible. In Xew Brunswick difficulties between the Assembly and tho Governors had oidy been occasional, but about 1834 they also became acute, and under an agitation .ed by Lemuel Allen "Wilmot they Avero in great measure settled by the concession to the Legislature of control over the revenues in return for what Lower (\inada had prom- ised but (lid not grant — a j)ernuuu'nt Civil List. Prince Edward Island was meantime governed upon a genuinely despotic Itasis. Its soil was largely owned by English capitalists, and as the Governors lepresented them more than they did the Crown, popular influence in the country was insiguincant during the whole of this period. i ! ili k«» MaaiMKMHi^MilaMIMNai THE EVOLUTION OF A REBELLION. 213 CHAPTER X. TJIK inOLUTlOX OK A UKBET.LION. The political and constitutional conditions in the various Provinces had hccn so much alike during the first forty years of the century — Avith the excep- tion of the racial factor in Lower Canada — that the ultimate issue of rehellion or reform turned larj^oly upon the personal qualities of the leaders. With- out the tempestuous recklessness of chariicter in AVilliam Lyon AFackenzie, the troubles in Ippor Can- ada would never have reached the arbitrament of force. Without the fiery eloquence, the uncon- trolled passion, the comntandin<>' presence and the personal power of Louis tFoseph Papineau, the racial feelings of a portion of the French-Canadian popu- lation Avould never have been beaten into a white heat upon the anvil of rlietorical misrepresertation. With the marvellous influence which *!ie oratory and personality of Joseph Uowe exercised <.ver the people of Xova Scotia he conld have driven his political enemies like chaflF before the wind and led his fol- lowers along any path of fire and fury which he de- sired. Tint, thongli impetuous and enthusiastic, as ■well as eloquent, he was stable in his loyalty to the* "JfT 2U PROQREaS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. ( : t i ) i I m Crown and sane in his wider mental outlook. So with Lemuel Allan Wilmot in New Brunswick. Possessed of distinct oratorical ability though lack- ing in mental magnetism, he was essentially a Par- liamentary leader and debater rather than a politi- cal firebrand, while his Loyalist descent prevented him from rushing into reckless courses. Yet all these men seemed for years to be in the same boat, and with only degrees of violence between them. Of the early Tory leaders much miglit be writ- ten. Their political views have been so unpopular and so misunderstood in times which know nothing of the conditions under which they governed, and little of the principles by which they were actuated, that space might well be given, and must some day be given, to an adequate picture of their lives and idealh. Jonathan Sewell in Lower Canada, John Beverley Robinson in Upper Canada, S. G. W. Archibald and James W.. Johnston in Xova Scotia and Ward Chipman in Xew Brunswick were men of the lughest type — honourable, cultured, able and, in different degrees, eloquent. .Tohn Straelian of Fpper C^anada was a militant ecclesiastic of an older school, and stands out upon the pages of history with a rugged force which is so picturesque as to be exceedingly attractive to the imaginative mind. But defiance usually attracts more attention than defence, the apostle of change is always more popular than the guardian of the constitution, and tlie ad- vocate of revolution more discussed than the THE EVOLUTION OF A REBELLION. 215 preacher of evolution. Hence the dominance of tho agitator in the formative pages of Canadian history. In Upper Canada political events prior to or during the War of 1812 were not very important. Peter Hunter and Francis Gore succeeded Simcoo as Lieut. -Governors, and tho latter, who spent much of his time in England, had his place filled by Ad- ministrators such as Brock, Sheaffe, De Rottenburg, Drummond and Murray. In 1818, Lieut. -General Sir Peregrine Maitland, a son-in-law of the Duke of Richmond, a veteran of Waterloo and a handsome man of aristocratic bearing and naturally conservative mind, became Lieut-Governor. T,en years later an- other veteran of the Peninsular War, Sir John Colbonic — afterwards a Field ^Larshal and a peer with the title of Rarou Scaton — succeeded to the position. In 18oG he was re])laeod by Sir Francis Bond Head, an English official of little political or constitutional experience, but with a passionate be- lief in British connection and the forms of Britisli government. Two years later Sir George Arthur, another military man of some Colonial experience as Governor in Tasmania and Honduras, came to the lielm, and, with a few months' exceprion, guided its affairs through tho darkened days whieli followed the rebellion into the brighter but still troubled }>erio(l which opened out of the Union of 1841. During these years large grants of land were made in every direction and to almost any person wlio could sliow i-eason for its possession and use, or 210 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. title in the shape of Loyalist service or good local position. Colonel Talbot received 48,500 acres, the l.,aird of ^[cXab was given a large grant, Bishop Mountain received 12,000 acres, and the heirs of General Brock a similar amount. But the great mass went to specific interests, or rather individuals rep- resenting certain conditions or enactments. In the Clergy Beserves were included 2,,'{J)."),000 acres; to the United Empire Loyalists were given 2,000,000 acres; to the Canada Company, for the encourage- ment of colonisation and in return for a definite payment, tiiere were granted 2,484,000 acres; in the Indian Beserves, m 1838, thei'c were some 600,000 acres. The !A[ilitia, chiefly after the War of 1812, received 045,000 acres, the schools of the Province were given 500,000 acres, and discharged soldiers and seamen were granted 440,000 acres. A bal- ance of over eigiit hundred thousand acres was divided amongst retired army and navy officers, magis- trates and barristers, clergymen, Executive and Leg- islative Councillors and surveyors." A total of 575,000 acres is recorded in Lord Durham's cele- brated Bejwrt as having been allotted to miscel- laneous purposes which he was unable to trace in detail. This sums up over eleven million acres of wihl lands disposed of during this period. By 1838, indeetion has been freely charged. But ihere was nothing to buy in a political sense. These men and others like them were in any case friends of the Government iwA Tories to the hilt. There was no organised Opposition which they could have joined with propriety, while the loud itself was tliien comparatively valueless. Those who held it for a quarter of a century no doubt made money, and in this profit Liberal families like the Baldwins shared. At the same time there were unquestion- ably abuses, of which the treatment of the Inon as interlopers Avithout stake in the coun- try, without knowledge of its institutions, Avithout sympatliy for its foundation, without that loyalty to the Crown which was to them as their very life. Gourlay 's views were in some inspects far- seeing, and from the standpoint of to-day just, but otliers were beyond nu'asuvo foolish and erratic. Foi this ruined gentlenuin from Fifeshire to under- take a vigorous pR;itation against the established Cfov- ernment of the I'lovince before he had be(Mi a year within its bounds was suffic'entl; exasperating to the Iiolders of power. But when be conunenced to have whu Were deemed seditious mei^tings and to send complaints to England, it is not surprising that tlia Ik' I* Lili >,, , I •ii THE EVOLUTION OF A REBELLION. 221 lesult was unpleasant to him. Tt has been more so to similar agitators in greater countries than Upper Canada. His point o; view may be seen and judged in an extract from a work '■" published some years !at«r : " The fancy of giving to Canada the British Constitutit: \ was a good one : about us rational as to thinkof cultivating sugar-canes in Siberia or to enter- tain hope from grafting a fruit twig on an icicle." Gourlay had been j) receded by other would-be re- formers. Robert Thorpe was an Englishman ap- pointed in 1805 by tlie Colonial Office to be a Judge in Upper Canada. He early took a vigorous part in politics, and as a liadical was elected to the Assembly Boon after his arrival. It is not surprising that the Governor and Executive Council should have ob- tained the recall, within two years, of a Judge who had not been more than a few months in the countrv before he informed the i)eoi)le that their Adminis- tration possessed " neither talent, education, infor- mation nor even manners." Yet this ])ersonal trav- esty ujmn judicial functions is a jwlitical hero to many Canadian writers, and was so to many peo^de in the Province at a time when one of their chief and most important planks of policy was the separa- tion of Judicial and Legislative functions — the re- moval of Judges from the two Co\UK'ilsI So in the case of Judge Willis, wl-o, after a few months in York, undertook to censure Attorney-General Hob- * Statistical Account of fjijKT Canada, by Robert Gourlaj, Loudon. 1823. >.\ ! I 222 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. iuson from the Bench for some extraneous matter, to denounce the legal system of the Colony, and to P'rofess his public s\inpathy with those who opjwsed the Government. Xaturally he was recalled and be- came another hero of the agitators. Surveyor-Ge!i- oral Wvatt was dismissed l)ecause he refused to ac- cept the dictum that an office-holder should have no politics, and Wilcocks, ft.r similar cause, lost the posi- tion of Sheriif in the Home District and died, event- uallv, in the American armv at Fort Erie. Later on Barnabas Bidwell, a refugee from American justice,* and a friend of Gourlay's, was elect.ed in 1821 to the Assembly but was promptly expelled on motion of Attorney-General Hobinson. His son, Marshall S})ring Bidwell, was Speaker of the House and a leading Liberal Avlien the Rebellion broke out. Other instances of oppression, or alleged oppres- sion, must be mentioned, (\iptain ^lathews, a Brit- ish half-pay officer Avho had been elected to the As- sembly, was summoned to England and liis half-pay stopped, because at a theatrical performance at York in 1825 he had, in aii hilarious mood, called on the orchestra to play some American airs. In 1828 a man named Forsyth erected a high fence in front of his property at Xiagara Falls so as to prevent visi- tors fi'om seeing them »vithout staying at his inn. TJjwn his refusal to remove the barrier Sir Peregrine Maitlaud sent some soldiers who demolishjd the * Canada and tlie Canadian Question , hy Goldy.in Smith, London, 1891, p. 11. THE EVOLUTION OF A REBELLION. 223 Jrit- As- 'ork the Isi- •iiie tl 10 lith. fence and one of Forsyth's liouses. Both these men became Ki ! hi ^li F II [' ji V^ a 5- if 1, f 226 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. W. B. Robinson, II. J. Boulton and A. K. McNab, bad a majority for wbat all through this period was called by its opponents the " Family Com- pact." The origin of the name is found in the fact that the Tory members of the two Councils, and the holders of many offices in the Province, were frequently related to each other. It was not the case to the extent which has been often believed and stated, but it was sufficiently so to give the designa- tion point and to increase the personal animosities of the time. From the social limitations then prevalent , the smallness of population, and the natural and political ties which grew out of pioneer days, some degree of relationship was inevitable, but to assert that the offices in the Province were all filled by relations, and for that reason, is an ex- treme development of partisan bias and misstate- ment. There was, however, too much of it to deserve popular approval either then or now. In 1831 the Tory majority in the Assembly passed a bill render- ing the Judges and the Executive Council inde- pendent of the House in the matter of salaries. It was nicknamed the " Everlasting Salary Bill " and was the subject of intense vituperation. Yet, so far as the Judge was concerned, few would take ex- ception to it in these days. In 1834 the Assembly was once more captured by the extreme party, despite the loss of many mod- crate Liberals as the result of a letter received by Mackenzie from Joseph Hume in which the eminent I THE EVOLUTION OF A REBELLION. 227 [cNab, period Corn- he fact Is, and B, were not the vred and clesigna- mositica ns then and the pioneer able, but were all s an ox- niisstate- deserve |l831 the 1 render- Icil inde- rics. It 111" and st, so far take ex- I captured lany niod- -eived by eminent English Radical expressed the belief that events in Canada must " terminate in independence and freedom from the baneful domination of the Mother Country." Mackenzie did not repudiate the senti- ments thus expressed, and at the next elections they had somewhat the effect of a boomerang. In 1836 Sir Francis Bond Head appf^tred on the scene as Lieut.-Governor and with the reputation of being an English Liberal. lie at once filled three vacancies in the Executive Council by the appointment of Lib- erals in the persons of Messrs. Baldwin, Bolph and Dunn. But the coalition arrangement did not last long, as the new Councillors believed that they diould be consulted upon every detail of government, in- cluding appointments, and this was according to neither precedent nor practice. Then came gen- eral elections into which the Governor tlirew himself heart and soul in the belief that it was a struggle between monarchy and republicanism, between loyalty and disloyalty, between British and Amer- ican institutions.* Ho certainly had some ground for the feeling. A letter from Papineau, in Lower Canada, addressed as Speaker of its Assembly to Bidwell, as Speaker in Upper Canada, and dated March 15th, 1836, declared, amongst other inter- esting assertions, that : " The state of society all over continental America requires that the forms of its Government should approximate nearer to that * A Narrative, by Sir Francis Ik>nd Head, Bart., London, 1839, p. 65. J nl ll! 228 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. selected, under propitious circumstances and after mature consideration, by the wise statesmen of the neighbouring Union, than to those into which chance and past ages have moulded European societies." The publication of this extraordinary document, coupled with the statement in the famous Hume letter, the well-known American tendency of Mac- kenzie's own views, and the expressions of lesser men along similar lines, had a decisive effect upon the electorate. The result of this extreme position, and th'" equally strong attitude taken by the Rep- resentative of the Crown, was that Loyalist or British sentiment was everywhere aroused; the new settlers who had been pouring into the Province gave in many cases their first and last Tory vote; Mackenzie, Perry, Lount, Bidwell (who had once more been actively supporting his old-time leader) and many other Radicals were beaten at the polls ; and a Tory minority of eleven in the Assembly was turned into a majority of twenty-five. Then Mac- kenzie lost all control over himself and the insurrec- tion followed. The histoi'y of this period in Lower Canada is the record of a confused medley of conflicting ideas and impossible ideals. Governor succeeded Gover- nor, with Tory or Liberal proclivities as the case might be, but with exactly similar results of popular dissatisfaction — varied though the causes were. The century opened with Sir Robert Shore Milnes acting as Lieutenant-Governor. Then, in 1807, THE EVOLUTION OF A REBELLION. 229 after >f the hance .ties." iment, Huino ' Mac- lesser t upon osition, le Rep- ilist or ;he new »rovince •y vote; ad once leader) ,e polls; ibly was in Hac- tiisvirrec- mada is ig ideas Gover- case popular s were. Milnes n 1807, tlie came General Sir James H. Craig, who was suc- ceeded in 1811 by General Sir George Prevost. Able, honest and laborious, the former became to the French-Canadian the embodiment of British supremacy in that alien and oppressive aspect which agitators were beginning to give it, while to the Eng- lish element he was the ideal of a stern and vigorous ruler who would stand no nonsense from a con- quered people of doubtful loyalty. Le Canadien was forcibly suppressed in 1810 for the unquestion- able preaching of sedition at Quebec, and this com- menced a long struggle between rival newspapers of extreme views, with the occasional and bitterly re- sented interference of the Government. Each of the papers, English or French, addressed the readers of its race without any fair reference to the views of the other, and the consequence was that each side grew in violence of sentiment without the least adequate idea of what the opposite standpoint really was. The rolling and broadening river of racial and religious antagonisms Avas not bridged by a press having views along party lines irrespective of those two great issues. Some of the English-speak- ing people did, it is true, take the side of the French- Canadians up to a certain point, and the chief of these was John Xeilson of Quebec. But they \,v're themselves groping in the dark in a constitutional sense and could do little to help the solution of the growing riddle, although they did not like the ex- treme views of men like Rvland who, as the Gov- "W9I. fi ' 1 i hi 1 ; 1 ) Im i n H H 230 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. ernor's Secretary and close adviser, wrote to Eng- land in 1808 that the Assembly would soon become a " focus of sedition and an asylum for all the dem- agogic turbulence of the Province." In some meas- ure he was right, but extremes beget extremes, and his known contempt for the religious faith of the French population did something to increase the fric- tion and promote the result that he feared. In April of the succeeding year Pierre Bedard, a Radi- cal French-Canadian of great ability, declared in the Assembly that the existing system was a consti- tutional monstrosity, advocated a responsible min- istry and deprecated the fierce attacks upon the Gov- ernor. But he was universally regarded as the apostle of revolutionary doctrines and evil ideas,* and his courageous suggestion found no support then or for many years afterwards. Yet without that principle in sight the agitations of the following period were but eruptive evidences of discontent or disloyalty without the advantage afforded by con- structive proposals or the excuse furnished by a practicable policy. Sir George Prevost was very different in per- sonality and principle from Craig. Conciliatory and yielding in character, he gave an imprassion to the French element in the Province that if their demands were maintained with sufficient vigour they would be eventually granted, and the entire revenues * Histoire du Canada, by Francis Xavier Garneau, vol. 3, p. 139. i THE EVOLUTION OF A REBELLION. 231 of the Province and the control of the Executive Council and Judiciary be placed in their hands — to say nothing of the ultimate acceptance of the elective Legislative Council scheme which was just beginning to be urged. For this he was not altogether cen- surable, and, so far as Lower Canada was concerned, his Administration succeeded in rallying the people generally to the defence of their country during the war and in. relegating unpleasant questions in some measure to the background. The Civil List dis- cussions constituted the chief political topic at this time, though only in a preliminary degree of vio- lence. The Assembly, in 1809, had offered to pay the salaries of the officials and to thus relieve the Imperial authorities of what was called the Civil List. They at the same time thanked the British Government for having so long assisted in defraying this expenditure. Most of the English members in the House supported the proposition, but the bill was rejected by the Council on the ground that it was a scheme to make them dependent on the As- sembly, ami not until 18 lo was the offer accepted by command of the ITc^me Government, on the under- standing that a pormai\ent Civil List would be voted. This was not done, ard further disputes of a com- paratively unimpo-'tant character ensued until, in 1820, the Earl of Dalliousic succeeded the Duke of Richmond as Governor- in-Chief. The lattcr's career of aristocratic prominence and promise had been sadly closed by death from hydrophobia in 1819 ^"V^ 'iK v^.%^. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) ^ / o . THE EVOLUTION OF A REBELLION. 233 btubble, through the heated minds of his auditory. It must be remembered in this connection that, so far as using the position of Speaker as a partisan office was coucorned, he had the precedent of the Upper House in the different Provinces, where the Chief Justice usually held the Speakership while acting also as an adviser to the Governor. Into the midst of these curious constitutional conceptions and political practices Lord Dalhousie came with clear ideas of government and iduty. His belief was that until the country should be freed of this universal strife little material progress could be made. Agriculture, through all this period and up to 1841, was neglected for politics; transportation matters, so essential to a scattered population, re- ceived slight attention; education was left in the hands of the Church or of private individuals. The new Governor had excellent plans of his own upon these points, but lie first tried to get rid of the everlasting revenue discussions, and to that end asked the Assembly once more to fulfil its pledge and grant a permanent Civil List. When this was refused he appropriated the necessary funds and paid the expenses himself. The sources available for use in this way were the proceeds of an Imperial excise tax on spirits and molasses dating from 1774, and the " casual and territorial revenue " derived from leases of mines and sales of land. The fuKds ob- tained from customs duties on goods coming into the Province — for Upper Canada as well — were entirely 234 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. in the hands of the Assembly, and its disposition of these moneys, later on, caused serious disputes with the Upper Province, which culminated some fifteen years afterwards ; and in the n ^antime helped an agitation amongst the English of Quebec and Montreal for the immediate legislative union of the two Provinces. A scheme was actually proposed in 1822 by the British Government which arranged, incidentally, for the elimination of the French lan- guage from the Legislp.tive debates in the course of a defined period. This unpopular proposal, coupled with oome noisy talk amongst the English minority, and the later defalcation of the Receiver-General (John Caldwell) in the large 8U)a of £96,000, in- creased immensely the feeling against Lord Dal- housie and prevented his really useful plans for the well-being of the Province from being successful. He had meantime freely used Imperial funds from the Army Chest to " carry on the King's Govern- ment " and to pay salaries when th-; Assembly re- fused to vote the Appropriation Bill. In 1827 he refused to receive or accept Papineau as Speaker — in accordance with a recognised Royal prerogative and because of the latter's violent language regard- ing himsflf as the King's Representative. Then came mass meetings, bitter language, acrid discus- sions and petitions demanding his recall, together wHh counter meetings, petitions and speeches amongst the English party. The Imperial Parliament in 1828 appointed a ■^•■' j^as^^r THE EVOLUTION OF A REBELLION. 235 he Committee to examine into the affairs of both the Canadas, and it finally recommended thpt the Crown duties should be placed in control of the Assembly on condition of its granting a permanent Civil List as in En-^land; that the Judges should give up their seats in the Executive and Legislative Councils ; that Bishops should not be allowed to interfere in matters of government; that Receivers-General should give security and have their accounts ex- amined by the Assembly's auditors; and that the membership of the Executive and Legislative Coun- cils should be enlarged and made more representa- tive. There would have been no difficulty in carry- ing out these suggestions had the Assembly been reasonable, but nothing would really satisfy its now fiery aspirations except complete dominance in the Province. The road was indeed almost ready for the restless steeds of insurrection. It was roughly paved with the bitter execration which Lord Dal- housie, who was one of the most amiable, courteous and generous of men, received during these years. He had been describe i as ? public robber gorging himself with plunder ; as one who hated the religion, language and laws of La Nation Canadienne; as an arrogant and oppressive tyrant who was stirring up a rebellion which would sweep the remains of British power from the American continent. His recall at this time and appointment to the Command- in-Chief of India did not improve the situation. And yet almost his last act had been to help erect I 11 236 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN TUB CENTURY. the now famous Quebec monument to the joint memory of Wolfe and Montcalm. He left Canada in September with the regret of all the English element and to the delight of the French-Canadians. The recommendations of the Canada Committee in the Imperial Parliament were now placed in the hands of Sir James Kempt, who for two years con- tinued to administer affairs in Lower Canada with the rank of Lieutenant-Governor. He made several reforms, or changes, along the lines of that Report and called some prominent French-Canadians to the Executive Council. But the central issue — the con- trol of the Crown revenues — remained unsettled, and after a period of deceitful calm, agitation broke out with fresh vehemence owing to the steady re- fusal of the Colonial Office to place the entire revenue in the har.ds of the Assembly whilst its pledge cf a permanent Civil List remained unkept. And so this question stood until the insurrection and the succeeding union with Upper Canada. Lord Aylmer took the place of Sir James Kempt in 1830, and in the following year received appointment as Governor-in-Chief. His period of rule, terminating in 1835, is important for its vain efforts at concil- iating the fire-eating French majority in the As- sembly and the Province; for the refusal of the House to vote supplies and the inability of the Gov- ernor to pay all the officials out of the revenue at his command; for the wasting of time in the As- sembly by passing votes of censure on the Govern- ■■01 aaoB THE EVOLUTION OF A REBELLION. 237 ment, listening to fanatical speeches, and eramining charges made against Judges in different parts of the Province by violent partisans. In the elections of 1831 an Assembly had been elected composed largely of young Frenchmen fired by the flaming heat of Papineau's oratory. This extraordinary man seems to have become blinded by the praise and popu- larity which had come to him and was now en- deavouring to emulate the exploits of Washington, and raise himself to the position of father and founder of a new republic. Lord Goderich, a clear- headed and wise Colonial Secretary, and Lord Ayl- mer, were both willing to give the Province every measure of liberty which Avas possible, but the As- sembly would do nothing except emit long and vio- lent addresses to the Crown. In 1833, Bedard, Quesnel, Cuvilier and Neilson, leaders of the mod- erate Liberals, openly withdrew from Papineau and his party and the Assembly, almost as a unit, fell into the hands of the latter. The position was becoming intolerable, and Gar- neau, the literary and historical hero of French Canada, frankly admits in regard to the action of the House towards the propofesls of Goderich and Aylraer that a "malign influence ' had carried it beyond all prudential limits.* Speaking in the Assembly in January, 1834, Papineau declared that the time had come for the people to set about ob- ♦ Histoiredu Canada, by F. X. Gameau, vol. 3, p. 821. ;- » 238 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. tainmg a remedy for their grievances even if " the soldiery should slaughter them for it ; " denounced monarchical institutions with eloquent vigour; and proclaimed what he believed to be tlie certain fact that " before long the whole of America will be republicanised." Then came the famous Ninety- Two Resolutions which formed the basi.i for con- tinuous and fiery harangues throughout the Province during the following three years. They were very long and involved and contained many repetitions and much verbiage. Sifted down, the document was a denunciation of the Governors-General for mal- administration and of the two Councils for abetting them in it. The assertion of a partial control over the Crown revenues by the Crown's Representative was given as the chief grievance in this connection. The rejection of the Assembly's violent proposals by the Legislative Council, the fact of most of the Judges being of English birth, the elimination of the French language in some of the Courts, the efforts that had been made to unite the two Canadas, the fact of 157 officials being of English birth or origin and only 47 of Erench-Canadian birth, were the other principal charges. Coupled with these com- plaints, and the accompanying declamation, were strong expressions of admiration for the republican institutions of the United States and the statement that they held a larger place in the affections of the people than those of England. The Resolutions were passed on March 1st, 1834, THE EVOLUTION OF A REBELLION. 239 in the form of an Address to the Crown, and by an overwhelming majority. The action was promptly opposed by Addresses from the loyal English ele- ment of the Province. The most notable document on the latter aide of the case was issued by the Montreal Constitutional Society on I^'ovember 20th. In it the grievances of the minority were pointed out. They were stated to have suffered from the feudal tenure of land and the cramped condition of the laws relating to real property, in both its regis- tration and exchange. They protested against the tax imposed by the Assembly upon British immi- grants and the arrangement of the counties in the Eastern Townships so that a French minority could return a majority of representatives. They pointed out that the qualification of magistrates, militia of- ficers and jurors was made to depend upon small property possessions, while most of the English people were engaged in trade and commerce and in- dustry and were therefore debarred from these posi- tions. They dealt with " the abuse of power " .aown by the Assembly in its repeated expulsion of Thomas Christie and the consequent disfranchisement of the electors of Gaspe, because he had once expressed strong views regarding the policy of the French majority in that House. They protested against the large salary paid D. B. Viger as the agent of the Assembly in London — without the assent or agree- ment of the other parts of the Legislature. The refusal of the Assembly to grant a bankruptcy law, -% 240 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. the advice of Papineaii that no intercourse should be held with the English population, and the refusal of the House to pass any but temporary laws, were referred to. The willingness shown by some Colo- nial Secretaries to listen to the opinions of the As- sembly, and the consequent compromise of the dig- nity of the Crown by an unwise change of Governors, was protested against. Abuses in the Land Depart- ment were, however, unsparingly dealt with, the feebleness of the Executive Council was pointed out, and the accumulation of offices in the hands of one or two individuals criticised. But it was declared that the English minority were now " an insulted and oppressed people," and that something must be done to remedy the position of affairs. The reply of the Imperial Government was the despatch, in 1835, of a Koyal Commission of Inquiry headed by the Earl of Gosford, who was at the same time appointed to succeed Lord Aylmer. Everything that man could do to conciliate the victims of a stormy agitation was done by Lord Gosford. But to evolve order out of the political chaos which now existed was impossible. It was no longer a question of wholesale constitutional change; it was a situa- tion of rampant violence in langu.ige and action. The militia was permeated with discontent, the French officers were in most cases centres of agita- tion, the juries would nowhere convict a French- Canadian, and Papineau was parading the Province like a paper Prince in pompous fiction. THE EVOLUTION OF A REBELLION. 241 After a year's ef*'>rt to calm the country the new Governor had to practically give up conciliation, though, unfortunately, he had not the strong char- acter necessary in the ador«;ion of the other alterna- tive of coercion. Matters went on from bad to worse. Then came the Keport of his Commission and a resolution bat 1 upon it — moved in the House of Commons by Lord John Kussell in February, 1837 — which pointed out that the Assembly of Lower Canada had granted no supplies since 1832 and that $710,000 was due to Judges and civil servants. It declared that the proposal to make the Legisla- tive Council elective ought not to be granted, but that in some way it should be made more representa- tive of the people as a whole. No one was pleased by this paper compromise, while the so-called pa- triots were roused to the wildest denunciation. Pap- ineau's organ in Montreal, The Vindicator, declared that henceforth there could be no peace in the Prov- ince and ' no quarter for the plunderers." " Every- thing is lawful when the funda^r^ental liberties are in danger," continued this interesting sheet. '"The Guards die — they never surrender." The spirit of disaffection seemed in the air and in the very soil, and the violence of insurrection was, in fact, soon manifested. But it yet remained for the Church of Kome to show its power and its place in the com- munity, and for the responsible element amongst the French-Canadians to exercise its influence, and, in combination, to turn a threatened revolution into 16 i jMiH ' g p img wt 242 P^i< 'C'.ESS OF C-ANADA IN THE CENTURY. a series of enlarged riots. The two Provinces had now, however, been brought in different ways, and by excitable agitators, to the verge of what history has termed the Rebellion of 1837. Papineau and Mackenzie were standing hand in hand at the part- ing of the roads, and, encouraged as the leaders ,of revolution in the United States had once been long before by the apparent support of some public men in Great Britain, they took the path marked out for them by the voice of vanity and the pleadings of prejudiced passion. f If OUT OF REBELLION INTO UNION. 243 CHAPTER XL OUT OF BEBELLION INTO UNION. The period between 1837 and 1840 had been the stormiest time in the history of the Canadas. The troubles which developed into a futile and fugitive insurrectionary movement in the two Provinces hardly, however, deserved the name of rebellion. Heated as was the feeling in Lower Canada against the ruling English class and bitter as was the de- nunciation in Upper Canada of what was termed the oligarchy and family compact, the basis of real grievance or genuine oppression was je^er suffici- ently strong to make a serious revolutionary attempt probable. Ignorant as the French population were regarding the peculiar workings of a British con- stitution which depends so much upon precedent and practical operation and so little upor theory and logic, and inflamed a'? they were in election con- tests or street riots by the speeches of demagogues, they yet knew enougli of the discrepancy of forces between themselves and the British Empire ':o listen, attentively, though not very willingly, when the mandement issued in 1837 by Bishop Lartigue of Montreal advised them of the folly and sin of a 244 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY, : useless rebellion. And this despite the clever at- tempts of Papineau to pledge the co-operation of American democracy in an effort to make all North America republican in government. In Upper Canada the same fact applies with far greater force. The general population of that Province, whether Liberal or Tory, knew well enough that there was not sufficient reason for the employment of force and that in any case there was no hope of its suc- cessful use unless the United States joined in — and of such a possibility thoie was no proof. But dissatisfaction, no matter how limited, makes a loud noise, although the blaze of enthusiasm which surrounded Papineau and made the banks of the St. Lawrence an apparent scene of general sedition ; or the heated talk of Mackenzie in Upper Canada, with his Vigilance Committees and armed bodies of men; were evidences of popular excitement rather than of dangerous public discontent. Sir Francis Bond Head, the Lieutenant-Governor of the Upper Province, was in this respect a statesman where Lord Gosford in Lower Canada was a mere shadow of Imperial strength. The former is the niost vigor- ously denounced man in Upper Canadian history. Yet it is only because circumstances have made him the embodiment of opposition to proposals which other days and other conditions have rendered prac- ticable. One of the few Canadian writers who have fully appreciated his devoted loyalty and real serv- ices to the Empire * describes him as being " true OUT OP REBELLION DCXO UNION. 245 as steel and most staunch to British law and British principle in the trying days of his Administration," and as possessed of a loyalty which was both chival- rous and magnetic. He was quixotic, sometimes bombastic, and occasionally unwise. But he had first sized up a difficult situation and then carried an election which made loyalty a living power in a community which was allowing the small Radical and republican minority to overshadow by noise and violence both its Tory and Liberal elements. He then decided that the influence back of Mackenzie, in his more violent proposals, was small and not more than the local militia was quite capable of dealing with. In this conclusion events showed him thoroughly right, and, in his much discussed step of sending all the regular troops to the Lower Prov- ince to help the suppression of the more serious troubles there, he would s'^em to have acted the part of a statesman. The matter had to some time come to a head in his own Province, and, if the militia could cope with it, local loyalty would be stimu- lated, while possibly bitter memories of a rising crushed by British troops would be eliminated from tlie situation. Ho was criticised for being at last taken by surprise. So far as the marcli of the rebels upon Toronto was concerned there is little doubt that he was. But the suddenness of the movement was at • Dr. Alpheus Todd, C.M.O., in Reminiscences of a Canch dian Pioneer, by Samuel Thompson, Toronto, 1884, p. 136. 1^^t«A 246 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. I 1 ■li- the last a surprise to Mackenzie himself. And the latter's incendiary speeches throughout the Province and the " Declaration of the Reformers of Toron- to," published in his paper, The Constitution, sup- plied sufficient ground for the Lieut.-Governor's be- lief that there would be neither peace nor material progress in Upper Canada until the trouble had come to its inevitably violent end. So he had sent the troops out of the Province and calmly awaited events. The Declaration was a curious document. Amongst the quietest of its terms were the " baneful domination " of Great Britain and " the mockery of human government," under which the people had been " insulted, injured and reduced to the brink of ruin." Grievances of a now generally admitted character were placed side by side with denunciations of a character intended evidently to compare with those of another and more famous " Declaration " issued by the one-time colonists to the south. It was of such a nature as to hardly require further description, though its blatant demagoguery had the useful effect of finally estranging Liberals like Bald- win and Ryerson from even nominal association with the extreme wing of their party. The process had been going on for some years, and this document was the last instrument in a general party disin- tegration. Meanwhile the rebellion had made some headway in Lower Canada, where Lord Gosford was at one moment writing the Colonial Secretary, Lord OUT OF REBELLION INTO UNION. 247 Glenelg (September 2d, 1837), that "all hope of conciliation has passed away " and in the next re- fusing the offer of British inhabitants at Montreal to form a Royalist rifle corps. Unlike Sir Francis Bond Head, he had not a militia which was in the main loyal and to be depended upon, but he had the elements of it in the English part of the population. Moreover, he should have benefited by the example of the Royal Governors in the Thirteen Colonies, where the historic weakness of decision and rule had invariably bred aggressive action and rebel success. Had he shown energy and determination all Papi- neau's wonderful edifice of agitation would prob- ably have collapsed, as did the rebellion itself when Sir John Colborne afterwards pricked its military bubble with the precision and power of a Peninsular veteran. And, though some kind of outbreak vrv-& probably inevitable, it might have been very much less threatening in appearance and earlier develop- ments. Dr. Wolfred Nelson, a Montreal physician of English birth and a Radical member in the As- sembly, was Papineau's chief supporter. Dr. O'Callaghan, afterwards a well-known literary man of New York; Thomas Storrow Brown, a popular iron merchant and in later days a pamphleteer; Amury Girod and Dr. Chenier; were others. A. N". Morin and D. B. Viger, afterwards members of the Canadian Government in the days of Union; L. H. Lafontaine, destined to be Premier of the IH i I • 248 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. United Provinces, Chief Justice of Lower Canada and a Baronet of the United Kingdom; George E. Cartier, afterwards Minister of Militia in the Do- minon of Canada and also a Baronet; were amongst the earlier fathers and leaders of the movement which was now to culminate. The first blow was struck in Montreal, where members of the Doric Club, a British constitutional organisation, were pub- licly attacked on the streets by the " Sons of Liberty," as a young men's rebel society which had considerable footing in the city was called. During the 7th of November, repeated conflicts took place between these two factions, and finallv the office of The Vindicator, a Papineau organ, was broken into and the presses and type destroj^ed or scattered. At night the troops paraded the streets and pre- served some kind of order. Meanwhile the country along the Richelieu loomed up as the centre of serious disaffection. At St, Charles, on that river, a meeting had been held on the 23d of October com- posed of some thousands of people from the s'x counties along its banks, and thirteen fiery resolu- tions, with but one meaning, had l)ecn adopted under advice from Papineau and IN'elson and inspired by the example of what were termed the " wise men and heroes of 1776 " in the neighbouring republic. On the same day a very large Loyalist meeting had been held in Montreal. The troubles in that city, on T^ovember 7th following, precipitated matters. Where outrages in the country parishes around OUT Oi' REi'^'LLION INTO UNION. 249 Montr ;al upon loyal citizens and the utter inability of magistrates i . protect them did not succeed, this riot was at last efiectnal. Lord Gosford abandoned his supine policy and issued warrants nine days later for the arrest of Papineau, O'Callaghan, Brown and others. Near Longuouil, on the 18th Novem- ber, however, a large body of rebels succeeded in rescuing two or three of the lesser leaders who had been arrested, and this may be considered as the real beginning of the insurrection. Papineau fled to St. Denis — a village on the Richelieu — where he stayed with Nelson and was surrounded by friends and followers. To arrest him an expedition was despatched by General Sir John Colborne, who now took matters in hand as Commander-in-Chief of the Forces. It was composed of 250 n\en and led by Colonel Gore. On November 23d, after a weary march of sixteen miles on a dark and stormy night, Gore unsuccessfully attacked a strong position held by Nelson and had to retire leaving six men dead on the field. Papineau left during the conflict and finally got away to the States. Meantime, Colonel Wotherall captured the neighbouring rebel position at St. Charles without much difficulty, and an Am- erican who was in command fled precipitately with- out much attention to the order of his going. At the news of this disaster Nelson's forces melted away like snow in springtime and the chagrined leader was himself captured as he tried to escape. A miserable incident of the moment was the murder of Lieuten- I: 1^: i 250 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. ant Weir, a young officer carrying despatches between Montreal and Sorel, who was captured by some of Dr. Nelson's troops, and in making a dash for liberty was shot down and hacked to pieces by the rebels. The capture of St. Denis and St. Charles had, how- ever, calmed this part of the country. Elsewhere, Sir John Colborne led a force of two thousand regu- lars and militia into the district north of Montreal, and at the village of St. Eusiache, where some thou- sand men were entrenched, was compelled to storm the stone church of the parish in which Dr. Chenier and his followers made a mad but gallant defence. iJfot till the blazing roof was falling upon them and the walls around crushing them did the brave habitants seek to escape — the most of them in vain. Chenier was killed and a monument to his memory, nearly half a century later, was erected by senti- mental sympathisers in one of the residential streets of Montreal. At St. Benoit a mob of unorganised rebels was found, but their leaders fled and they promptly surrendered after having done no greater harm than destroying the homes and harvests of some neighbouring English settlers. In revenge the latter burned a part of the village during the night. For the moment the rising was crushed. It did not then or afterwards comprise any large proportion of the people.. Papineau thought that they rested in the hollow of his hand, but he had found himself in a fool's paradise. The moderate element in the masses appreciated the difference between standing ■!li OUT OF REBELLION INTO UNION. 251 behind an eloquent and ma(rnetic leader in the con- stitutional defence of what ihey deemed the pres- ervation and assertion of their racial character, and a rebel movement in favour of the subversion of their allegiance and the establishment of a form of govern- ment which had worked such havoc in France and v.'hich was now denounced so powerfully by their priests. With the Church stood the old Seigneurial families, while back of them was a large farming community which did not want civil war, though it knew little of constitutional matters and delighted, as all Frenchmen do, in agitation and effervescent eloquence. Even the French-Canadian militia, though distrusted, seems in many places to have been loyal, and Colonel de Hertel, in command of 1,500 men, assured Sir John Colborne of their posi- tive loyalty and willingness to go into active service. In January, 1838, Lord Gosford was recalled and Sir John Colborne appointed Administrator. In February following the most important action in the early constitutional history of the country occurred in the selection of the Earl of Durham, as Governor- General and special High Commissioner of British America, to adjust existing difficulties in the Can- adas. During the same month some six hundred fugitives and sympathisers crossed the frontier from Vermont under command of a brother of Dr. Nel- son's, and with fieldpieces and arms to supply an- other hoped-for insurrection, but were driven back by some regulars and hastily gathered English ! '\ 262 PROGRESS OB^ CANADA IN THE CENTURY. militia. In April the Lower Canadian constitution was suspf^nded and a Special Council appointed by Sir John Colborne to take the place of the Legisla- ture. It was composed of representative men of all classes and creeds such as De Lery, Stuart, McGill, Quesnel, Molson, Cuthbert and Knowlton. By May, however, the Province seemed to be quiet, martial law was abolished and the English-speaking militia allowed to return home. The rebellion in Upper Canada was an equal fiasco. There was a great difference in conditions however. In the one case the large majority was actively loyal and there was no element oi racial enmity. In the other the large majority was pass- ively sullen, with racial considerations struggling against religious convictions and commands. The latter won. The centre of trouble in Upper Canada was around Toronto. Mackenzie's series of meet- ings throughout the Province had their natural effect, and by November drilling and rifle-shooting Av'oro being practised at sundry places and some fifteen hundred men had volunteered to take up arms. The military plan — if sucli it can be called — was to attack Toronto upon a certain date, cap- ture the 4,000 stands of arms in the City Hall, together with the Lieutenant-Governor and leading people, and then to proclaim a Republic with Dr. Rolph — a man who had succeeded during this whole period in keeping upon good terms with both sides — as President. A mistake was made in the date OUT OF REBELLION INTO UNION. 253 decided upon for marching on the city, and this in- creased the inevitable futility of the whole niove- monl;. On December 4th, three days l)efore the time Mackenzie had arranged for, Rolph issued ordei's for the advance of eight hundred men who had meanwhile gathered at Montgomery '« Tavern, a few miles outside of Toronto. They had been drilled for some time by Van Egmond, an old-time officer of Napoleon's, and were led by Samuel Lount, a blacksmith by occupation. Two unpleasant in- cidents had occurred. A City Alderman named Powell, who lived to be Mayor of Toronto, was cap- tured, but escaped by shooting his guard. Colonel Moodie, a well-known settler and popular gentleman who bad served with distinction m the British army, was shot dead Avhile riding scornlilly through the rebe] lines. The news of the advance was soon re- ceiv((d in the city and messengers despatched with all speed by the Liput.-Govcrnor to Colonel (after- wards Sir A. N.) McXab instructing him to bring up what were called in those days " the fighting men cf Core " — a township of which Hamilton is now the civic centre. The rebels marched until witliin half a mile of Toronto and then retreated in till haste in face of a picquet of twenty men who had fired at them and then retired. At Montgomery's they lay until December 7th, by which time the Governor and McXab were ready to turn the tables and attack the rebel position with some 500 militia. Sir Francis Bond Head had meantime, and for purposes i 11 254 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. of delay, attempted to negotiate with Mackenzie through a curiously formed delegation composed of Rolph and Baldwin, but without success further than the staving oflf for some hours of the first rebel movement. Almost every one in Toronto had stoo^ by the Government when the tidings came. The Chief Justice, the Judges, the Executive Council, the City officials and aldermen, all took up arms and surrounded the Governor with a support which was certainly strong in a moral, if not in a trained mili- tary, sense. Many of these prominent volunteers had, however, served in the War of 1812 and knew the smell of gunpowder full well. At the Tavern, or in its vicinity, when the Governor and McNab ar- rived with their force, were nearly a thousand rebels picturesquely armed in many cases with nothing better than scythes, axes or pitchforks. Sir Francis called on them to lay dowu their arms, but Mackenzie refused and the militia bravely advanced on the opposing lines. The exchange of volleys was hot for a short time, but the rebels were soon scat- tered and the battle over. The prisoners taken were in most cases pardoned and released, while for a short time the neighbourhood was patrolled by an eager and ready militia force to which volunteers came flocking in from the country districts in such num- bers, that the Governor did not know what to do with them. Mackenzie fled to his little stronghold of Navy Island, on the American side of Niagara Ri^T^er, whence — behind guns procured from the OUT OF REBELLION INTO UNION. 255 State arsenals of New York — he issued a republican manifesto signed by himself and Lount, Fletcher, Lloyd, Van Egmond, Graham, Duncombe and others. The last named tried to get up a little in- surrection in the London District, but as soon as he heard of Colonel McNab's approach with a militia force, retired to the common refuge at that time of Canadian malcontents — the United States. Rolph had left some time before for the same shelter. Mackenzie in his Xavy Island manifesto spoke boastingly of American help in saving Upper Can- ada from its position of " Eg\'ptian thraldom," and declared that vast numbers of men from the States generally, together with arms, provisions, money and artillery from Buffalo, 'N.Y., were coming to support his standard of resistance against " the hired red-coats of Europe." In his hands was a steamer called The Caroline, moored upon the American side of the river, which fired constantly upon the Canadian shore. McNab, who with his militia was watching this little game of war, finally sent a band of marines and volunteers in rowboats to destroy the nuisance. They took the steamer from under the guns of a United States fort on December 27th, landed the crew and then sent her in flames over the Falls of Niagara. Soon afterwards Navy Island was deserted under the fire of heavy guns sent up by Sir John Colborne. Mackenzie was then arrested, tried and sentenced, on the American side, to eigh- teen months' imprisonment for attacking a friendly t\ 'li I mm 256 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. ration. But organised attacks from the United States border continued. A threefold one had been planned from the Cities of Ogdensburg and Buflfalo in New York and Detroit in the State of Michigan. The leaders quarrelled, however, and in the multi- tude of rebel and alien counsellors there was some relief to Canada which, even as it was, had to equip and maintain a force of four thousand militia along its frontiers. The rebel plans were mainly success- ful at this time in showing the most brazen-faced indifference along the border to all the international obligations of the Republic and in causing great trouble and expense to the Governments of Canada as well as worry to the peaceful settlers upon tihe Canadian frontier. Much of Mackenzie's success in getting men and armaments was through the " Hunt- er's Lodges " which liad been openly organised throughout the border States for the purpose of at- tacking Canada and annoying England. On Janu- ary 7th, 18.'>S, aboiit a thousand Americans and rebels took possession of the Canadian Island of Bois Blanc, in the Detroit Biver o])posite Am'ierstburg, and a man named Sutherland assumed connnand, bringing with him from Cleveland a number of stands of arms, fieldpieces, etc At Detroit a large schooner was publicly loaded with cannon and small arms from the State Arsenal and despatched to his Old. The vessel was attacked, however, by some Canadian militia and captured. Shortly afterwards Sutherland surrendered to the American authorities. fjurg, Land, r of large feuiall his Isomo ,'anU |itic3. \ ; 1 I SIR JOHN BEVERLEY ROBINSON. f H, JOSEPH HOWE. OUT OF REBELLION INTO UNION. 257 1^ I I and was tried and acquitted. A little ia':er, two thousand men under Van Rensaeller, who Lad al- ready commanded at Navy Island, assembled at Quebec Creek, on the St. Lawrence, but finding that Kingston, on the opposite shore, was well prepared they eventually dispersed. Sutherland then made another attempt upon Amherstburg by taking pos- session of Pelee Island with a view to crossing over and cajituring the Canadian town. But Colonel Maitland, with a force of regulars, was too quick foi* him, crossed tho river on the ice and attacked the marauders with a loss to them of thirteen killed, forty wounded and a number of prisoners. Tho British loss was two killed and twenty-eigiit wounded. Meanwhile, events looked threatening upon the American side of the line in connection with the Maine boundary and in a far worse sense than the condonation of guerilla attacks. War seemed very possible, and Sir John Colborne, who in readiness, determination and energy was another Brock, soon had the frontier in as strong a state of defence as was practicable. Forts were strengthened, new for- tifications arranged, large barracks built at London and considerable reinforcements received from Eng- land and distributed along the frontiers of the Up- per Province. With 40,000 militia at the back of tlie regulars the country therefore stood in a condi- tion of fair preparation for eventualities. In spite of all his rebuffs, however, and the strong position 17 I! i I ■il 258 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. of the Province, ^lackenzie continued to do his best to injure it and, incidentally, to embroil two great nations in war. In May, one of his satellites with fifty men boarded the Sir Tlobert Peel — a well- equipped Canadian vessel — 'n the St. Lawrence at ji point opposite Kingston, thrust the crew and passengers on shore and pillaged and burned the ship. Various minor outrages occurred along the borders at this time, but the Americans finally helped in suppressing them, and as summer advanced anxiety was allayed. In the autumn, however, news came of another intended series of attacks, and Sir George Arthur, who had succeeded Sir F. Bond Head on March 23d, at once called out part of the militia. The 10th of November was the date selected and three simultaneous attacks were to be made on Upper and Lower Canada. On that day, uccordingly, the steamer United States left Oswego, N.Y., amid the cheers of a large crowd, and, after meeting some scliooners with armed bands on board, landed 250 rebels at Windmill Point, near Prescott. They were promptly attacked by a local force of militia, and after some days of fighting and of wait- ing for the arrival of guns from Kingston, the marauders surrendered. Nino Canadians were killed and some forty-five wounded. Von Schultz, the rebel le^ider, was afterwards hung, and his trial is notable for being the first appearance in Canadian history of Sir John A. Macdonald, who, as a young lawyer, defended the prisoner. OUT OF REBELLION INTO UNION. 259 iftcr )ard, '. of :ait- tlic I wore trial idian Iroung On December 4th one more efifort was made against Amherstburg. Some 150 rebels crossed from Detroit to Windsor, captured the small militia guard, burned a steamer at the wharf and somo houses, murdered a negro who refused to join them, and marched out to Sandwich, two miles away. Meanwhile, the militia-iUen managed to escape, and in revenge the marixi'ders murdered an army surgeon whom they hai:^ened to encounter. Shortly afterwards, howevei-, tiiey met their match in Colonel Prince, a veteran and well-known settler, a deter- mined, old-fashioned Tory and member of the Leg- islative Council, a man whose reputation stands out clearly in the history of the period and now rises above the Aveak-kneed slanders and fears which followed his prrmpt action. He routed them with twenty-one rebeis killed and one Canadian lost. Four of those who were capiured he promptly hanged, and for this action the Colonel was widelj' criti- cised. But he little recked that sort of thing whore duty seemed to demand action. And his course certainly struck terror into rebel hearts. Windsor had been strongly garrisoned, but as soon as ho ap- proached with his militia the invaders crossod over to Detroit, while some who fled into the woods were afterwards found frozen to death. This ended the troubles in Upper Canada. For the first rebel movement only two of those who had been captured were executed — Lount and Mathews. Every eifort was made by the humbled party of discontent to ii 260 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. save them, but Sir George Arthur was a man of strong ideas and he believed it a duty to the State that the law should take its course. For this he stands under the shadow of much savage denuncia- tion from those who since that time have imbibed or inherited the belief that Canadian liberties are based upon this puny and panicky revolt. When, in 1838, the second series of border movements were finally crushed less mercy was shown. Nine of those who accompanied Von Schultz — chiefly Americans — were executed at Kingston, three at London, and a largo number of others were trans- ported to British penal settlement. In Lower Canada no executions whatever had taken place after the troubles of 1837. Lord Dur- ham had come out with what he believed to be, and what should have been, almost absolute powers of conciliation and arbitration of grievances. lie found a condition in which no French jury would have convicted the prisoners in hand, no English jury would have acquitted them, and no mixed jury have agreed. He did not wish to resort to military trials and thus accentuate the prevailing difficulties, but rather to restore social order and civil authoritv. I.' Eventually, therefore, a proclamation had been is- sued on June 28th, 1838, pardoning minor offenders, banishing eight of the principal leaders to Bermuda and forbidding Papineau and others to return on penalty of death. The Imperial Parliament, in- fluenced by Lord Brougham and other personal ene- OUT OF REBELLION INTO UNION. 261 hi I mies of the Governor-General, refused to endorse this action and declared it illegal. Lord Durham instantly resigned, returned home, and was suc- ceeded by Sir John Colborne. These divided coun- sels amongst the rulers and the mistaken leniency shown the instigators and participators in the revolt had an effect the reverse of what was hoped for by Lord Durham. The ignorant peasantry continued in many places in the Lower Province to be led by agitators who worked in secret association with the bodies which were being formed in the neighbouring States; and the departure of Lord Durham on No- vember 3d, 1838, was the signal for commencing a new rising in Lower as well as Upper Canada. On that date the steamer Henry Brougham was seized in the St. Lawrence by four Imndred rebels, a mail, named Walker was killed near Laprairie, and the whole district surrounding Montreal was again in arms. Sir John Colborne, however, was not a man to bo trifled with. Martial law was pro- claimed, tlie Habeas Corpus Act suspended and the Montreal gaol speedily filled with prisoners. An attack was made ujion Laprairie by some rebels, but it required little more than the unexpected war- whoop of a few loyal Indiaui., n'ho left church in order to seize their arms and defend their homes, for this attempt to be quickly frustrated. Robert Nelson, meantime, crossed the border to Napier- ville with a band of marauders and was soon joined bv some two thousand rebels. He at once issued a 11.. I , i > T^ 262 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. " Declaration of Independence " based upon the '" multiplied outrages and cruelties of the Govern- ment " and of that " mercenary army whose track is red with the blood of our people." It was aigued by himself as President of the new Republic of Lower Canada and furnishes a fitting parallel to the similar document issued by Mackenzie in Upper Canada. While Nelson established himself at Napierville, a rebel named Cote formed a depot at a point some twenty miles away, and within American territory, for the purpose of receiving supplies, etc., from United States sympathisers. A movement made by the loyal militia of the district threatened, however, to cut off the communication between the two by an occupation of Lacolle Mill, and Dr. Cote accord- ingly advanced to attack that point. But he was routed and compelled to retire before he reached the Mill. On November 6th, Sir John Colborne marched for the front with four regiments of regu- lars and about 400 Indians and 500 militia, and was joined later by two regiments of Glengarry militia. With the victorious volunteers in his rear and this army in front, the self-installed President now found himself in rather a tight place. He had a thousand men in hand, and with them did the only thing possible; turning around and marching for Odelltown, which was held in his rear by some two Hunf'red militia. The fight there centred in a Methodist .Church, which the militia had occupied, OUT 01' KEBELLION INTO UNION. ?m and was bravely conducted on both sides. But a small contingent of additional militia coming up, the rebels broke and fled, and Nelson Avas one of the first to make for the American border. The local disturbance was now quickly crushed and the loyal people of this particular county — who had been con- siderably insulted and harried by the rebels — now took their revenge despite the orders of Sir John Oolborne, and many ruined homes and burned build- ings consequently marked the path of this renewcc attempt at rebellion. The Executive clemency of the past was not repeated. A large number of arrests Averc made and twelve men were convicted before courts-martial and duly executed. Of these, six were proven murderers and five had been in- eluded in Lord Durham's previous amnesty. A number of minor rebels were transported. Amongst the prisoners were Lafontaine and D. B. Viger. The former was soon released; the latter, though positively refusing to give security for good be- haviour, was also eventually released without condi- tion. It may be added here as a curious com- mentary upon what is called justice, that, while so many of the victims and dupes suffered iu various ways, the leaders of this revolt were in time all forgiven and in most eases alloAved to take an actiA'o part in public life. Papineau Avas amnestied in 1847 and Mackenzie tAA'o years later. Both after- AA-ards sat in the Assembly of United Canada. Wolfred Xolson Avas tAvice MaA'or of Montreal, and ii •^^rr r 264 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. ! i! I in I Lafontaine, Viger, Cartier, Rolph and Morin all lived to be Ministers of the Crown. Upon the grave of the struggle time has placed a mistaken monument, while the light of liberties since evolved has crowned it with a happy halo. But history, when freed from the bias of politics in- evitable to the earlier literature of a young com- munity, will do the subject more justice. Mac- kenzie in his later days honestly and bitterly re- gretted his share in the troubles, and there is no doubt that others did so in equal measure. Yet the feeling is very widespread that complete self-gov- ernment in Canada was the result of this rebellion. The truth is that such conditions would have de- veloped in any case, and probably earlier if the Imperial authorities could have felt assured of French-Canadian loyalty. Responsible government was not understood by the rebels and was naturally not favoured by the ruling party in either Prov- ince. In Lower Canada the struggle was really an effort to ensure the absolute dominance of the French element in a system where its leaders had already complete control of the Assembly and hoped to get similar power over the Council through the elective tenure proposal. In Upper Canada the Opposition, legitimately enoigh, wanted to rule the Province, and its leaders claimed, with truth, that the Govern- ment meted out the spoils of oflSce to its own sup- porters and excluded others from fair participation i 30, •n- 5IR DANIEL WILSON, LL.D. , F R.S.C. I :l^ B l! m !! i THE RT. REV. A. T. DUNN, D.D. OUT OP REBELLION INTO UNION. 266 in land grants or positions. But this is to-day a cardinal principla of party lifo. Reforms and changes of different kinds were demanded. But they weie too often asked by the voices of agitators and demagogues, disappointed seekers alter official favours, or alien immigrants and settlers of a few years' residence. In the earlier days of the Prov- ince Government had to be centralised, and even up to the middle of the century Governors com- plained to the Colonial Office of the extreme diffi- culty of getting good men to fill public positions. The Imperial authorities made concession after con- cession. Legislation regarding the Church Estab- lishment, the privileges of the Church of England, the severance of Judicial from Executive adminis- tration, the holding of conventions, the taxing of wild lands, are cases in point. Lord Durham's Report arose out of the rebellion, and upon it much subsequent legislation was based. But Lord Gos- ford's Commission had been appointed and reported before the insurrection took place, and when its conclusions were found to be inadequate another would have been appointed in any case. Once the Reform Bill and ensuing legislation became facts in England similar development in the Colonies was inevitable, and was retarded rather than hastened by the firebrands who stirred up embers of dissatis- faction into flames of civil strife. Responsible gov- ernment did not come for years after the rebellion and the publication of the Durham Report, and it l.!f -1- 1 1:1 "p= 266 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. !i 1 •M; It came to the Maritime Provinces, \vhere no rebellion had been dreamed of, at the same time that it was evolved in the Canadas. The fact is that, like every portion of the unwritten British constitution at home, this creation of self-government amid strange and new conditions in a distant dependency of the Empire, had to be a result of time and graded experience rather than of any sudden spring into succe&sful operation. The little real knowledge which existed amongst the leaders of the malcontents regarding the full application of British institutions to this coun- try, in the sense now understood, is seen by their final and absolute sympathy with republican prin- ciples. They were those actually favoured from the first by the leaders and tendencies of ^he violent minority, and the only pity is that so many good men and crave wore carried away by the passions of the time into supporting a fallacious advocacy and a futile insurrection. Meantime, the share taken by the Maritime Prov- inces in these events had been of a significant though not a serious character. They had the same institu- tions as Upper Canada, Avith a similar dominant class and similar difficulties in the working of their still crude and partially unformed systems. But in- stead of boasting secret revolutionary societies, armed uprisings and sought-for international raids, they remained absolutely loyal to the Crown and the Provincial Governments. The Assembly of Xow Brunswick even went so far as to declare in tlif* OUT OF REBELLION INTO UNION. 267 summer of 1837* that the House " should repu- diate the claim set up by another Colony that the Executive Council ought at all times to be subject to removal on address for that purpose from the popular branch of the Government," although it added an expression of belief that the body in ques- tion " should be composed of persons possessing the confidence of the country at large and that the cordial sympathy and co-operation of that body are absolutely indispensable." In Nova Scotia, during the first forty years of the century, the Lieutenant- Governors had been Sir John Wentworth, sturdy in principle and practice; Sir George Prevost, mild and popular in administration and with qualities which suited a small arena but signally failed in a stormy one; Sir John Coape Sherbrooke and Lord Dalhousie, both men of marked ability and equal popularity; Sir James Kempt, Sir Peregrine Mait- land and Sir Colin Campbell,! the latter of whom ruled during the days of the rebellion and afterwards passed through a period of bitter conflict with Joseph Howe. In Xew Brunswick there was a suc- cession of military Lieutenant-Governors, from Colonel Thomas Carleton, who rnled in 1784-1803 and was u brother of Lord Dorchester, to Major- General Sir Howard Douglas, who was appointed in * Letters and Speecfies of the Hon. Joseph Howe, edited by William Annaml, vol. 1, p. 14;}. + Maj. -General Sir Colin Campbell (1778-1847), Rometimes mistakenly referred to in Canadian historical works aa the Lord Clyde of Indian fame. I f I u. 268 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. li'' I- It ■ t ill II. i m \' i 1824 and stayed until 1831 amidst general popular- ity and appreciation of his efforts to advance the ma- terial interests of the Province. Major-General Sir Archibald Campbell and Major-General Sii* John Harvey were his immediate successors. TJje latter acted from May, 1837, to April, 1841. As one of the heroes of the War of 1812 and a man of kindly and liberal views he made a very successful Administrator. During the Rebellion period Sir Charles Augustus Fitzroy, nfterwards a well-known Australian Governor, presided over the affairs of little Prince Edward Island — Jime, 1837, to No- vember, 1841. Speaking on 12th December, 1837, Sir J. Har- vey, in reply to an address of the people of St. John, publicly assured the Governor-in-Chief that not only was a large body of New Brvinswick militia ready to co-operate in crushing the insurrection, but that he would bo able and willing to place himself at its head. In a despatch to Sir John Colborne about the same date he added the declaration that : " I can depend upon the loyalty of the people of this Province to a man." On December 28th he ad- dressed a special Session of the Legislature in strong terms, and the reply of the Assembly declared that if help was needed, and despite the rigours of the winter season, it would be available " while a man remains in these loyal Provinces able to take the field." On January Hth, 1838, an address of con- gratulation to the Lieutenant-Governor and militia OUT OF REBELLION INTO UNION. 269 of Upper Canada was passed and £10,000 voted for any emergency which might arise. On the 25th of the same month Sir Colin Campbell addressed the !N^ova Scotian Legislature, and the Assembly promptly passed a resolution expressing its pride that " the constitutional force of the Upper Prov- ince has defeated the traitorous attempt to cast off British allegiance." These utterances show the standpoint of the people in the Maritime Provinces and are additionally significant at a time when the shadowing influence of border hostility was being felt in full measure as a result of the dispute over the Maine boimdary. After this controversy had been simmering in bitterness for some time the Gov- ernor of Maine decided in 1839, at a moment when American cities bordering upon the other Provinces were also breathing threats and practising open hostility, that the opportunity had come to settle the question and seize the disputed territory. A conflict had taken place in the wintry woods between some Maine and New Brunswick lumbermen and in territory which remained necessarily in British hands until the question of right was settled. Gov- ernor Fairfield of !Arainc thought, however, that the arbitrament of war would be a better way of de- ciding the issue than arbitration or negotiation, and therefore maintained his lumbermen in provisions, captured the Britisli Warden of the disputed region, and carried him to Augusta. Sir John Harvey sent 1,800 militiamen to hold the Aroostook River Jii $:: » .11. ! Ih : V 270 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. country; Fairfield issued a call for 10,000 State troops to take the whole territory; Sir John sent up two regiments of the line with artillery and volunteers to support the militia in their position; Xova Scotia voted all her militia and £100,000 in money to help New Brunswick; Upper Canada sent offers of aid; and the troops, people and militia of the Maritime Provinces were as full of fight as was the Governor of Maine. And the clamour was not confined to these regions. Daniel Webster almost stampeded his Government into war with (jrreat Britain over this and other matters — the chief and real reason being that at last the Canadas w^ere deemed ready for annexation. Fortunately Presi- dent Van Buren was calm, held the dogs of war in leash, and sent General Winfield Scott to the scene of trouble. The matter was then settled, for the moment, by the two officers who had fought and learned to respect each other at Lundy's Lane and Stony Creek. A little later Webster won a blood- less victory over Lord Ashburton, and the Rebellion of 1837 must be recorded as having, amongst its other ill effects, first encouraged the hostile action of Maine and then caused the British Government to weaken visibly in its negotiations with Washington upon this question. Why, as many in Great Britain no doubt suggested, fight the serried masses of Amor- ican democracy for Colonies which are striving to adopt republican institutions or, in many individual eases, American allegiance? To some extent the i ssr! OUT OF REBELLION INTO UNION. 271 loyalty of the Maritime Provinces answered this naturally prominent query. Out of Lord Durham's famous Report came the Union of Upper and Lower Canada. It was not in response to any express desire of the rebel element 3r from motives of conciliation. It was in direct antagonism to the fondest aspirations and avowed wishes of the French-Canadian population and was not even favoured by the Tory majority in Upper Canada. But the occasion made it possible, and Lord Sydenham, who succeeded Sir John Colborne in Octol^er, 1839, was a statesman sufficiently wise and able to carry out the dictum of Lord Durham. During his brief six months' Administration the latter had studied the situation in all the Provinces ; had done much energetic travelling and made numer- ous personal inquiries; had employed able agents, of whom the members of his own Executive Council — which had replaced Sir John Colborne's Special Council and was composed chiefly of Englishmen — were the chief, and notably Mr. Charles Buller; had kept himself aloof from all social cliques and political parties; and had met in Conference the Lieutenant-Governors of the different Provinces. Lord Dui'ham's ensuing Report was dated January 31st, 1839, and is one of the most memorable docu- ments in Imperial history. It was presented to Parliament and in May reached Canada, where its conclusions and the policy based upon them worked a practicnl revolution in the relation and constitu- li • ill 272 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. J tions of all the Provinces. A little more than a year afterwards the sensitive, patriotic and brilliant nobleman who had penned its pages was dead — partly perhaps from the disapijointment of a high- strung nature and partly from a constitutional feebleness of frame which was, no doubt, seriously affected by the nine months of labour during which he had studied and governed the storm-tossed Prov- inces, written seventy important despatches and com- pleted his thorough, voluminous and systematic statement, lie described in his Report the material backwardness of the Canadas; the conditions by which the ruling party successfully met and checked the popular Assemblies through its control of the Legislative Councils; and the indefinite nature of the demands which were made in some quarters for what was called " responsible government " — some- thing which its own advocates did not understand. He dealt at length with the desire of American set- tlers in the countrv to assimilate its institutions with those of the United States and the following reference * to the existing state of the Colonists in their relation with the neighbouring Ilepublic is most eloquently interesting : " The influence of the United States surrounds him on every side and is for ever present. It ex- tends itself as population and intercourse increases; it penetrates every portion of the continent into * Lord Durham'B Report, pp. 111-113. ' OUT OF REBELUON INTO UNION. 273 which the restless spirit of American speculation impels the settler or the trader; it is felt in all the transactions of coramerce from the important oj^era- tions of the monetary system down to the minor de- tails of ordinary traffic; it stamps on all the habita and opinions of the surrounding countries the com- mon characteristics of the American people. . . . If we wish to prevent the extension of this influence it can only be done by raising up for the !North American Colonist some nationality of his own; by elevating these small and unimportant communities into a society having some objects of a national importance; and by thus giving their inhabitants a country which they will bo unwilling to see ab- sorbed into one even more powerful." There was naturally a good deal of criticism of the Report. Sir George Arthui wrote Lord Xor- manby, the Colonial Secretary, that " on many im- portant points he (Lord Durham) has been much misinformed" and in a later despatch he adds that " a considerable section of persons who are disloyal to the core " are extravagantly elated because of its terms.* Both Houses of the LTpper Canadian Legislature protested against its assertions, and Chief Justice Robinson urged vigorously, in a letter to the Colonial Secretary, that " the injurious tend- ency of the Report " should be counteracted in every possible way. And, with the sincere enthu- * Despatches quoted by Sir Francis Bond Head, in " An Ad- dress to the House of Lords," London, 1840. 18 iil li I V^i\ I ' t } I 274 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. si asm of his old-fashioned principles, he denounced it by pen and voice, both in Canada and in Eng- land. Sir Peregrine Maitland, with many years' experience in Nova Scotia and Upper Canada, de- clared on August 19th, 1839, that " it gives an in- accurate and unfair description of the Province and people of Upper Canada." Nevertheless it was a great and statesmanlike document. Mistakes there were, of course, but its advice has upon the whole been followed, its prophecies in the main fulfilled, its historical statements generally, though not in- variably, accepted. The chief recommendation of Lord Durham — after his advocacy and description of responsible government, the establishment of municipal institutions and the building of a rail- way which should connect the various Provinces — was the union of Upper and Lower Canada and the consequent submersion of French national ideas, and certain republican tendencies of the Upper Province, in a system which would be dependent upon the popular vote of the whole mixed community and be influenced, it was hoped, by other than sectional divisions and limitations. On March 23d, 1839, the Upper Canadian Assembly carried resolutions proclaiming the Provincial separation of 1791 to have been un- wise, declaring an united Legislature to be now in- dispensable and appointing agents to go to England to arrange the terms of union. The Council re- jected the resolutions, and nothing definite followed OUT OF REBELLION INTO UNION. 276 until the arrival of the Right Hon. Charles Poulett Thomson — afterwards Lord Sydenham — as Gover- nor-General. His appointment dated from October, 1839, and he came out Avith the reputation of being a strong Liberal and a good sound business man who had made a reasonable success of his position as President of the Board of Trade. He was hardly given credit, however, for the astute statesmanship which soon carried everything before it. Upon his arrival he laid the plan of union, as proposed by the Imperial authorities, before the Special Council of Lower Canada — which had been revived with a membership similar to that of Sir John Colborne's — and it was accepted with only three dissentients. Ixi the Upper Province the situa- tion was more difficult than in one where the whole French population could, and had to be, ignored. Upper Canada was in the governing hands of a Tory party intrenched behind additional power and actual popularity won by the crushing of an insurrection through the unaided action of a militia composed largely of its own members. And its leaders w^ere well known and lionest opponents of the main politi- cal principle practically pledged by the proposed constitution — that of the responsibility of the Ex- ecutive. But the heads of the so-called " Family Compact " — a phrase declared by Lord Durham to be inaccurate — were more patriotic than they had been given credit for by their opponents. The heavy debt of the Province, its practical bankruptcy in i I 276 PROGRESS OF CANAlJA IN THE CENTURY. 1;! Ir! regard to reveniio and expenditure, the stagnation of trade and industry, the emigration out of the country ratlier tlian into it, the general feeling of uneasiness and discontent, made it seem necessary to sacrifice their intrenched position, to accept ar- rangements nith Lower Canada, and to trust the principles of loyalty and conservatism which they cherished to the new constitution — even though it threatened to give the decision into the hands of a section of the pojDulation whose one-time leaders had been scattered by the results of a rash api)eal to arms. Mr. Poulett Thomson also appealed to the Ex- ecutive and Legislative Councils on the ground of the strong wishes of the British Govermnent and the necessity for strengthening the country against pos- cible American aggression. He finally prevailed and resolutions were passed by the Legislature favouring an union based upon equal Provincial representation, the granting of a sufiicient and per- manent Civil List and the assumption of the LTpper Canadian debt by the united Provinces. A measure embodying those principles passed the Imperial Parliament in July, 1840, and came into effect by proclamation of the Governor-General (now Lord Sydenham) on Pebruary 10th, 1841. By Its terms the Legislature of the united Provinces consisted of the Queen, or her Representative, a Legislative Council of twenty members appointed by the Crown, and an Assembly of eighty-four members elected OUT OF REBELLION INTO UNION. 277 equally by the two Provinces. The Executive Coun- cil was to be composed of oight members chosen by the Governor-Genei'al from both Houses. Those selected from the Assembly were to return to their constituencies for election as in the Ministries of the Mother-land. In this, and the arrangement that bills for the expenditiire of money must origi- riate with the Government, are to be seen the first l>ractical steps in the direction of responsible gov- ernment. A Civil List of £75,000 for the payment of officials, Judges, etc., was permanently estab-^ lishcd. Thus equipped, a new constitutional start was made and every power given by the Imperial authorities for the working out of a full, free and flexible form of government in the United Provinces. it Br i ' I'. m PART TWO. THE FORMATION OF A DOMINION, 1841-1867. CHAPTER XII. ■ !; respoxsiblp: ooveuxment and its results. During tlie first forty years of the century the Canadas had seen public discussion develop into open disaffection ; during the next twenty-five years they were to see Parliamentary discussion and "s- pute develop into deadlock. And yet both processes were in the end serviceable to the l,^ .- interests of the people. The first helped to create the Union of 1841 and gave an opportunity for the French and English people to mix and mould their politics along other than racial lines. The second lielped to evolve a wider and greater union out of the apparent constitutional collapse of the smaller one. But it does not follow because good happened to come out of these evils that the same ends might not have been more wisely and beneficially achieved by the cultivation of harmony rather than discord, of peace ratlier than strife. During the first and 27^ RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 279 formative period discussion and heated controversy had evolved a mimic civil vvisr, and out of these con- ditions arose Provincial union and free and popular government. It was not, however, the armed strifo which brought about responsible government — it was the previous discussions, and their resumption with greater understanding in the years following the re- bellion. So it was that the deadlock in the functions of government which appears superficially to have so largely caused the confederation of all the Colonies in 1867 — althoug^h undoubtedly an important factor in making politicians turn their attention to any means of possible escape from existing difficulties which might present itself — was yet not the chief cause of the greater union. Even in this case, how- ever, the practical failure in the Canadas of tliat responsible government, which had been so earnestly fought for, ('arri< 1 with it many important reforms and the seeds of a constant discussion which must necessarily have nlarged the scope of political thought as it events, lly helped, at least, to enlarge the field of political action. The Colonies of British America were now to try a new form of government. Under early Gov- ernors like Wentworth, Simcoe and Dorchester they had experienced absolute monarchy in its simplest and best application. During the first part of the nineteenth century they had been ruled under the aristocratic system of a limited and comparatively mild oligarchy. !N"ow they were to evolve a pure Jl;l ii «« ogo PROGRBKS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY, t democracy under mouarchical forms. The condi- tions were not very favourable. "When Lord Syden- ham met the united Parliament at Kingston in June, ■'.84:1, he found a French-Canadian feeling that the Unio'i v/as intended to kill the French nationality/' and amongst many of the Tory and i^oyalist leaders the belief, expressed in 1836 by the Toronto City Council, that " it would be fatal to the connection of these Provinces with the Mother Country." The carrying out of the Imperial desire to develop min- isterial responsibility he found hampered by the be- lief that — as Lord Durham put it in his Report — many of the Reform or Liberal leaders " wished to assimilate the institutions of the Province to those of the United States." He faced a situation in Up- per Canada where nearly all of the Judges were strong Tories and the juries very often rabid Radi- cals. There was everywhere a lack of College educa- tion and of good elementary training. Progress was hampered by efforts to exclude English professional men — physicians, lawyers, etc. — from practising in the Provinces. Political feeling, oi course, ran high, and the Orangemen in tapper Canada, who were in- creasing in numbers through immigration from the North of Ireland, had no liking for the now alliance with French and Catholic Canada, while the latter population fully agreed with a clause regarding Orangeisra contained in a Roman Catholic address * Garneati, vol. 3. p. 402. en -fl a n w o K Wf! I '^* ; h f 'f' ft 1 B i < W cc o a en > hJ 5 u \i < w H iz; o > 55 PS > Z o u EESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 281 to Lord Durham, in whicli that nobleman waa politely asked to " pnt dov.n this increasing abomi- nation." Lord Sydenham was himself a Liberal, and was acting under 'Instructions from Lord John Kussell, and a new complication was thus introduced into the situation by his political aversion to the still dominant party in the Canadas. The word had now practically gone out that responsible government was to be established in British America. There were, however, withdraw- als from that decision, there was hesitancy in its application by Governors, there were differences in definition by changing Colonial Secretaries. People generally did not know what it really meant, and this Lord Sydenham himself clearly states in a letter dated Toronto, Xovember 20th, 1839. It is oven a question as to how far he went in favouring the application of the principle itself. The Tory position in these years and in all the Provinces had been thoroughly consistent, and despite any and every fault charged to their account the fact stands out clearly that they were the British party in the countrv and that theii* lovalty was a merit in those tempestuous times which should redound 1o theii- lasting credit. Xo stronger proof of this could have been given — not even frequent service in the field — than their acceptance of the Union with its avowed probabilities of their own overthrow, mainly because it was the wish of the British Government. They had l>een consistent in opposing complete HI I.' : I 282 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. popular government, not only from their own natural and inherited standpoint of dislike to a democracy which to them spelled American principles and l)ractices, but because their own policy had fre- quently appeared to realise the wishes of the Im- perial authorities. As late as July, 1837,* the Colonial Office had taken a strong position in this connection. In response to an Address to the Crown from the Assembly of Nova Scotia, wherein " the language would seem to indicate an opinion, which is not yet distinctly propounded, that the Assembly ought to exercise over the public officers of that Colony a control corresponding with that which is exercised over the Ministers of the Crown by the House of Commons," it was announced that '' to any such demand Her Majesty's Government must oppose a respectful, but at the same time a firm declaration that it is inconsistent with a due ad- vertence to the essential distinctions between a metropolitan and a Colonial Government and is, fur- ther, inadmissible.'' When the same party found itself face to face at times with a situation in which their cherished prin- ciples were attacked with the apparent support of the Imperial Government, they found relief and com- fort in the different interpretations which could bo honestly given to Imperial despatches and in the T * Despatch from Lord Glenelg to Sir Colin Campbell, July 6t1i, 1887. T mmmmmm RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 283 somewhat chaotic condition of Liberal views upon the application of the principle. And the difficult and seemingly insuperable obstacle remained now, through all the practical experiments in responsible government, as it had appeared in the early and shadowy speculations concerning its possibilities, of how to combine the Imperial functions of i\\e Queen's Representative with his Colonial position. Upon this point both parties held strong convictions and presented strong arguments. In the new Prov- ince of Canada Lord Sydenham might have done what was left for Lord Elgin to achieve at a later period — created a working system which would have harmonis€-d some of these conflicting interests and aspirations. lie had the ability and the neces- sary qualities, but fate removed him by an accidental fall from his liorse in the autumn of 1S41 before he could do more than meet the Legislature and forward the introduction of a municipal system aiid the regulation of the currency and the customs; while urging the extension of canals ami the estab- lishment of an efficient common school svstem. His successor was Sir Charles Bagot, an experienced tliplomatist and formerly Britisli "Minister at Wash- ington. He held the post until March, 184.3, and signalised his administration by calling Louis Hy])olite Lafontaine. the Liberal leader from Lower Canada, Robert Baldwin, tlie Liberal leader from Upper Canada, and Francis Hincks, another Re- former or Liberal, to the Executive Council or. as T^ 384 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. it was now beginning to be termed, the Ministry. But there was still no Prime Minister and no Cabinet selected by, and personally responsible to, one political leader. There was a crude attempt at it, and later on the Attorneys-General of Canada West and Canada East - were supposed to be equal in position and to have the right to choose their owh followers for the Government upon a basis which changed continuously and was the subject of much inter-part}-^ controversy. Now came a crucial issue. It was pretty well recognised in theory that the Executive Council in its general policy must be dependent upon and guided by the majority in the Assembly, though there were many loo])holes of escape from this re- sponsibility and many deviations from it. And ihe Liberals were wise and consistent in doing their utmost to press tlie advantage which this recogni- tion gave them. ]3ut they soon found, on partially obtaining office, that th.e control of patronage was not in their hands and that the Governor-General — Sir Charles Metcalfe, who had succeeded Sir Charles Bagot — was detennined not to give it up to them. And in this decision he had the approval of the Colonial Office. Sir Charles was a somewhat old- lashioned statesman of high personal honour and with a past reputation for Liberal views. But in * After the Union of 1841 Lover Canada was called Can- ada East and Upper Canada Canada West. After Confeder- ation the former became Quebec and the latter (")ntario. ;ri RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 285 (.'anadiaii matters lie had lofty ideals regarding his own duty and the necessity for preserving the pre- rogative of the Crown in what seemed to him and his numerous followers the last important strand in the silken chain of British union. He therefore made sundry appointments without asking the ad- vice of his Executive, and Baldwin and Lafontaine l>romptly resigned. A general election took place, the Tor'es, or Conservatives as they now termed themselves, naturally took the Governor's side, and Sir Charles was sustained. Although the Liberals Avore right in their contention as self-government Avas afterwards worked out, it was not vet under- stood how the Governor-General could be deprived of all power over appointments without weakening his authority in such a measure as to destroy the Colonial prestige of the Crown. William Henry Draper, the Conservative leader and a man of silvery eloquence who held the per- sonal respect of all shades of political thought and who had for a short time led the first Ministry of the new Province, formed a Government — if it could vet be called bv that name. There was no difficultv about appointments now, because those made by the Governor-General, even if he did not ask ad- vice, were likely to be acceptable in the nature of things. He and his Ministers had much tlie same principles, and no question of fitness from the stand- ]H:)int of loyalty could arise between tlicni regarding positions thus filled. It was naturally otherwise -M I T 1 1 286 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. with men who had been mixed up with the rebel leaders and the insurrectionary movements, al- though the impartial historian can find much to praise in the character and policy of the two chief Liberal leaders of this period. Baldwin was noted for his prudence and common sense, and for a con- scientiousness which almost unfitted him for public life. His integrity has never been doubted, and bis name still stands in Canadian political history as a synonym for honour and honesty. His ability as a statesman, however, was greater than his skill as a politician, and during these years he was largely instrumental in founding the local and municipal institutions of Upper Canada and in constituting, or remodelling, the Courts of the Province. La- fontaine was a man of striking appearance, with a square J^apolconic face and massive brow, conserva- tive in character and sometimes in policy. It is hard to understand from his later career how he could have been such a sincere and enthusiastic fol- lower of Papineau's, and the only possible explana- tion is in the fiery spirit of vigorous youth. Of him Baklwin spoke in January, 1844, as a man ■whom he had found " so clear in his perception of right, so prompt in his assertion of it, and so stern in the condemnation of arts of low and party in- trigue,'' tliat he deemed it a comfort to have such a guide and a glory to have such a leader. Making every allowance for the party feeling and personal sentiment in such an utterance, there was much of RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 287 I truth in it. The marvel is that with men of this type in conmiand there shonkl have been such extreme and inexcusable bitterness in i)arty war- fare. The attacks upon Sir Charles Metcalfe during this period were so violent as to be brutal and beyond defence, unless it be found in the heated nature of public feeling after the incidents of insurrection. In the same way it is impossible to do anything but condemn the Conservative fury of a later date at the Rebellion Losses Bill. Yet the leaders of that party were also men of high character. Draper has already been referred to. Sir Allan McXab was a handsome, hearty, courageous and vigorous personage whom nothing daunted and who lived to the full every moment of his life, and felt in every nerve and fibre of his body an intense loyalty to th3 British connection for Avhich he had often fought and which he believed to be endangered by the ad- vance of reform. lie was a Tory of the olden times transported to a scene of struggling modern de- mocracy. Kobert Baldwin Sullivan was the most brilliant of the politicians of this period. As an orator ho had no equal in the House, and possessed a knowledge as varied and interesting as his powers of expression Avere vivid and entertaining. But his reputation for inconsistency proved an obstacle to his attainment of high political power. Dominick Duly, long afterwai'ds Governor of Prince Edward Island and one of the Australian Colonies, and I ! ( t 288 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. knighted for his genei-al services, was u man wlio cared nothing for popular government and deemed liis whole duty to lie in serving the Queen's Rep- resentative faithfully and fully in any position he miglit bo asked to fill. lie was '' the permanent Secretary, the Vicar of Bray of Canadian politics." Yet there is no reason to doubt his honour and the honesty of his sentiments. He always stood by the Governor-General and knew that in doing so he aroused at times the most bitter hostilitv. Colonel (afterwards Sir) Etienne Pascal Tache was the Conservative leader in Lower Canada and a gentle- man of the best Seigneurial type. Others during this and following years who came to the sur- face of the stormy sea of politics Avere Francis Ilincks (a moderate Liberal of great ability who early obtained a high financial reputation and was always a fluent and incisive speaker), John Sand- field Macdonald, D. B. Vigor, A. IN". Morin, Etienne Parent, T. C. Aylwin, John Is"eilson, William Ham- ilton Merritt, ]\falcolm Cameron, Isaac Buchanan, James Morris, R. E. Caron, Alexander Morris, Ogle R. Gowan (the Orange leader), J. E. Cauchon, P. J. O. Chauveau, L. T. Drummond, Henry Sher- wood, and, last and greatest of all, John A. Mac- donald and George Brown. Sir Charles Metcalfe — who was raised to the peerage in January, 1845 — fought sternly and steadily his battle with those Avhom he thought ene- mies of the Queen's prerogative, and at the same the and one- same H O as > R a i ■ n k ^Flffif:'^' 'iffy fCM:'^*" ■'■■■ l^^' ^W^ ? iii i 1 II ^ 'i'^ IB 1 ' ; 1 1 i l-A IT ' , THE HON. LOUIS JOSEPH PAPJNEA' ■■—I RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 989 time silently struggled with the painful death which was surely coming to him from a cancer in the cheek. There is no more mournful picture in Canadian history than is afforded by the spectacle of this in- domitable and conscientious Governor fighting tho most bitter opposition and extreme and continuous suffering in what he deemed to be the cause of the Crown. Finally he was conquered by nature, though not by man, and went home to die. For a couple of years General the Earl of Cathcart took his place and carried on his policy as Governor-General, and in January, 1847, was succeeded by the Earl of Elgin. The latter found a problem which for the moment overshadowed even the evolution of respon- sible government through its progressively complex stages. About £40,000 had been voted by the As- sembly, under Conservative guidance, to compensate loyal persons in Upper Canada who had suffered during the Rebellion. The Lower Canadian repre- sentatives had at once demanded a similar grant, and a Commission of Inquiry had declared that while the total claims amounted to a quarter of a million, yet £100,000 would cover the real losses. The Draper Government awarded £10,000, which the French-Canadians naturally resented as an in- sult, especially as they were still without adequate representation in the Government and were lumped in the popular mind of the Upper Province as having all been rebels together. Feeling became very bitter and once more the racial element threatened to domi- 19 if: 25K) PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY, uate affairs. A firm, judicious and skilful haud was indeed required, and in Lord Elgin's the iron and velvet were happily combined. In the year after his arrival general elections were held of an exceed- ingly stormy character and the Conservatives were defeated. Draper accepted the situation, resigned his office and was succeeded by Baldwin and Lafon- taine. Full French representation was given in the new Ministi'/, the principle of responsibility to the Assembly wa3 fully and finally decided, and Lord Elgin also accepted the Liberal view of appoint- ments to office. This ended the struggle for com- plete self-government, and it remained now for the Province of Canada to apply and practise the prin- ciple. The same year saw similar conditions prevail in the other Provinces. In New Brunswick, however, the central question for years had been the bound- ary issue with Maine. It was settled in 1842 by the wretched Ashburton Treatv, in which Daiiiel Webster so signally over-reached the indifferent Englishman and effected a compromise by which 7,000 square miles went to the State of Maine and 5,000 to N^ew Brunswick. During this period the question of responsible government was not very seriously discussed. The differing views expressed by Lord John Russell and Lord Glenelg, as Colonial Secretaries, had befogged the public mind, and, in any case, the administration of Sir Jolin Harvey was so acceptable that no one worried very much RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 21*1 in iiial in •vey inch over constitutional tlieories. Tlie Assembly in 1839 even threw out a motion asking for responsible gov- ernment. Sir John was succeeded by Sir William Colebrooke, and in the genertd elections of 1842, as a result of stagnation in the lumber trade, a scourge of fire in St. John and a deficit between revenue and expenditure, the Liberals in the Prov- ince had ij still harder time of it. The succeeding Assembly represented what was really the over- whelming conservatism of a people who did not want change of any sort, and had a feeling that some of their present troubles weiC due to the previous and partial realisation of Liberal efforts. The new Assembly in fact passed a congratulatory address to Sir Charles Metcalfe, the Governor-General, upon a despatch which he had forwarded to the Lieuten- ant-Governor, and in which he claimed the right of the C''own, through its representatives, to make appointments and to recommend a reconstruction of the Legislative Council so that all political parties and ixligious denominations should be represented in it. An interesting event, typical of the quietness of New BrunsAvick politics, was the death in 1844 of William Odell, who had held the position of Pro- vincial Secretary since 1818, when he s icceeded his father — the first and pioneer occupant of the posi- tion. Incidentally, a conflict occurred over this vacancy, which the Governor ratlier rashly filled by the appointment of his son-in-law. All parties ob- jected to the appointment on the ground of Mr. ,;::! lit if! iH 292 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. lleade being a non-resident with, as yet. no stake in the Province. Of the various political leaders, however, only L. A. Wilmot took the high ground of Canadian Liberals and claimed this as a good opportunity for the introduction of responsible gov- ernment. The Governor did not press the matter and the position was finally given to a local man. IN^othing important then occurred until 1847, when a dcsj)atch was received from Earl Grey, Colon al Secretarv, addressed to the Lieutenant-Governors of the Provinces and clearly defining the principles of responsible government. Coming from the Im- perial authorities this settled the matter, and in the session of 1848, on motion of Charles Fisher, who had for years supported the policy, both j^arties agreed by a large majority vote that the principles of Lord Grey's despatch should be ajiplied to Now Brunswick as well as Xova Scotia. There was no further trouble upon this point. Sir Edmund Head becainc Lieutenant-Governor in the same vear and administered the system with discretion and suc- cess until 1854. Meanwhile, iN^ova Scotia had gone through an ordeal of fierce and fiery discussion. Lord John Russell's despatch of 1839 regarding the tenure of public officers, in which he mildly intimated that they bhould no longer hold positions upon an absolute life tenure but be liable, as was the Lieutenant- Governor, to removal, had been enthusiastically greeted by the Provincial Liberals. In reality it RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 293 sui lin of uto iUlt- meant little, and, as Sir Colin Campbell, a staunch believer in prerogative, really believed, it still left matters largely in the Governor's hands. But Joseph Howe did not so regard it, and he soon made the walls of the Assembly and the free air of the Province ring with eloquent denunciation of the non- responsible system. In resolutions presented to the House in 1840, and adopted by a vote of thirty to twelve, ho declared that for many years the progress of the Province had been retarded by want of har- mony between the different branches of the Govern- ment, and thai the Executive Council not only did not enjoy the confidence of the country but had wielded powers and patronage in order to hamper the efforts made by the Assembly to purify Provin- cial administration and institutions. Sir Colin sturdily refused to take any action and was soon afterwards recalled — presumably by the advice of the Governor-General (^fr. Poulctt Thomson) who about this time paid Halifax a visit and had sundry discussions with Howe and others. Viscount Falk- land came out in October and tried conciliation by adding Howe and some other Liberals to the Tory element in the Executive Council. Ele^^tions fol- lowed with the Liberals still in a mnioritv in the Assembly. The coalition Executive did not last long. Johnston, the Tory leader, favoured denomi- national colleges and schools, Avith Governmmit grants, and he and his friends did not accept the principle of responsibility to the Assembly. Hown II 294 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. favoured free common schools, one Provincial Uni- versity and complete responsible government. The three Liberals resigned early in 1844 from the Ex- ecutive, and the ensuing elections resulted in a small Tory majority. The Governor and the Liberals were once more in open antagonism, and Howe again commenced the style of campaign he had conducted against Sir Colin Campbell. To say that these campaigns were brilliant and bitter is to very haltingly describe two of the most extraordinary episodes in all political struggle. By innumerable newspaper articles, speeches which read like eloquent essays, and long letters to Colonial Secretaries and English statesmen, Howe, with Junius-like cleverness ami the most vitriolic in- tensity, pilloried these two unfortunate Governors. His sarcasm and the cutting force of his criticism have seldom been equalled, and had he lived in a wider sphere, or in days of later publicity, his name and writings would have been the talk of empires. As it was. Sir Colin Campbell, an old-fashioned gentleman of military strictness in his ideas of honour and ideals of government, went under, and Lord Falkland, despite the approval of Lord Stanley, the Colonial Secretary, was also compelled to ac- cept recall, and in August, 1840, he M'as succeeded by the invariably successful Sir John Harvey. Great as was the ability of Howe, his popular power in the Province had, however, somewhat turned his head. He hould have been more just to a Governor I RESPONSIBLE GrVERNMENT. 295 ver 119 10 r who in the case of Falkland actually had a majority in the Assembly itself. But no better illustration of the difficulties encountered at this time by the Queen's Representatives in all the Provinces can be found than in these violent personal attacks. If responsible government means anything it implies not only the responsibility of the Ministry to Par- liament but the irresponsibility of tlie Governor to any one except the Sovereign-in-Council. But, instead of confining his criticism to the Ministers, Howe followed the earlier example of Papineau and ^Mackenzie, and directed the force of an al- most unequalled invective against the Queen's Rep- resentative — in the teeth of his own statement de- claring in a famous letter to Lord J. Russell, that such a personage was properly '" the fountain of honour, of justice and of mercy: he must offer no insult and should have no enemies." In the autumn of 1847, general elections were held, and this time the Liberals were successful. Meanwhile Lord Grey's despatch had come, and in January, 1848, after a formal vote of want of confidence in the Executive had been carried in the Assembly, John Boyle LTniacke was sent for and formed a Liberal Ministi'y composed of such veterans as Howe, Tobin, Huntington, Des Barres, O'Connor Doyle and George R. Young. The history of Prince Edward Island in this con- nection is more important from its assertion of a principle than because of the magnitude of intere«ti-i nt u 'ii 296 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. involved in a tiny territory with some sixty thou- sand of a population. But none the less had Gov- ernor followed Governor, and all the paraphernalia of Queen's Kepresentative and Executive, Legisla- tive Council and Assembly, been established and maintained. In 1835, under the Governorship of Sir Aretus W. Young, a dispute about supplies occurred between the Council and Assembly, and in the following year Sir John Harvey came as Gov- ernor. In 1837 he was succeeded by Sir C. A. Fitz- roy, who soon found that the real trouble in the Is- land was the absentee proprietary of its land. These Proprietors, sitting in London, drained the settlers of their profits or ejected them if they refused to pay the rents fixed. They were not subject to local taxation except very slightly — £7,000 in twelvo years out of £107,000. The new Governor advised the Proprietors to sell out to the tenants, the As- sembly passed a law assessing their lands, Lord Durham wrote very strongly to Lord Glenelg upon the subject and, finally, the taxing legislation was accepted in London. In 1839 the Executive and Legislative Councils were separated and the Chief Justice retired from the latter. Sir Henry Vcre Huntley became Governor two years later and was succeeded in 1847 by Sir Donald Campbell. During this year a series of resolutions in favour of respon- sible government wore passed and put in the form of a petition to the Queen. Lord Grey's reason for its refusal was the natural one of a lack of popula- RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 207 on 'as nd ef re as 'g 11- rm or 11- tion. But lie offered the control of the revenuea to the Assembly provided a sufficient Civil List was granted — excluding the Governor's salary of £5,000, which the Imperial Government would pay. A gen- eral election was therefore held, the new House met in March, 1850, and pressed the issue more strongly. It in fact refused supplies until the right to change or control the Executive was ac- corded. Finally, in response to an able report from Sir D. Campbell upon the condition, resources and prospects of the Island, Lord Grey decided to grant the demand. The Governor died before the news arrived, and his successor. Sir Alexander Banner- man, announced it to tlie Legislature in March, 1851. A !^[inistry was at once formed consisting of George Coles, Charles Young and other politi- cians, and responsible government was in one more case a fact. The Province of Canada in the sixteen years fol- lowing 184:8 and the formation of the Baldwin- Lafontaiiie Ministry, presented a curious picture of political progress and political failure. The prin- cijjle of responsible government was fully in force and its first result was a new Re])ellioii Losses Bill and racial conflict; its last result was Legislative deadlock. Yot, in between these conditions was a period marked, it is true, by continuous party con- flict and bitter controversy, but marked also by im- portant reforms, the rise of a new school of states- men, and the couiirig to the top of one of those domi- f ■I ! r-^ 208 PROGR'i:SS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. f: •-If 1 i i j I M nant minds which occasionally in the world's history stamps the seal of genius upon national affairs. Early in the Session of 1848 M. Lafontaine intro- duced his measure indemnifying the French-Cana- dian sufferers by the rebellion to the extent of £100,000. Xo amount of clever concealment could avoid the popular perception of the fact that it in- demnified the disloyal as well as tlie loyal — the great majority of sufferers being undoubtedly sympa- thisers with the insurrection, if not active par- ticipants. The Bill provided that no one convicted of high treason, " said to have been committed " in Lower Canada, should be remunerated, but this covered a very small proportion of those who ad- mittedly took part in the insurrection. However, the measure passed both Houses and then awaited, for a while, the sigiiature of the Governor-General. Seldom, or never, in Canadian history has sucli feeling been raised amongst its English population. This proposal to reward rebellion, as it seemed to the excited Loyalists, set the Upper Province and the Tories everywhere in a blaze of indignation. The Bill was declared to \ye the price paid by Bald- win and his friends in Upper Canada for the sup- port of the French Liberals, and therefore the cry of French domination and tl\ie feeling of racial rivalry were added to the bitterness which the picture of public taxation for an indemnity to would-be or actual rebels had aroused. The immediate results were the formation of the Britisli Xorth American RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 2»9 League by men like George Moffatt, Asa TI. Burn- ham, John A. Macdonald, Ogle R. Gowun, P. M. Van Konghnet and J. W. Gamble, with a wide federal union as part of its platform; ♦^ormy meet- ings all over the two Provinces, and a riot in Toronto ; violent protests from the entire Conservative com- munity of Upper Canada — a decided majority upon such r. question as this ; and tremendous exertions to persuade Lord Elgin to veto the P)ill or else sus- pend it for Imperial decision. But His Excellency had no idea of doing anything except take the ad- vice of his IMinisters according to the new principle of responsibility, and he accordingly signed the measure on the 25tli of April. Tlie legislation wns wrong, the princii)le involved wr.s dangerous and not very loyal, the exercise of the veto power would have been immensely popular amongst the English- speaking population. Such action, howevpr, would have fatally antagonised the French at the very be- ginning of this new experiment in popular govern- ment, while the policy adopted really did much to soothe thoir suspicions and develop their loyalty. Lord Elgin himself was mobbed in l\[ontreal as ho came away from giving his assent to the Bill, and the Parliament Buildings were burned by a gather- ing in which irrepressible excitement caused ir- reparable crime and reflected disgrace upon a party hitherto famed for its loyalty and the dignity of its leaders. The House should, perhaps, have ac- cepted the warning of Sir Allan McXab and called T ) a 300 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. for military support, but this was not done and Montreal, in addition to the discredit attached to the occurrence and the destruction of very valuable books and papers, lost finally its position as the seat of legislation for united Canada. For a number of years, Quebec and Toronto now became the al- ternate seat of Government. Apart from tlie innnodiate disasters following this measure it served a great purpose in reviving the suggestion which Chief Justice Sewell had made in 181G regarding a confederation of all the Provinces of Britisli America. Like a meteoric flash in a dark sky that proposal had come and gone. Lord Durham had dreamed of it in 1838, but the vision had faded into the darkness of his own death. Now came the dawn of a vivified ideal and one which never left Canadian ])olitics till its realisation in 1807. Another scheme also came to the stormy surface of affairs at this time, and its suggestion was caused partly by the Rebellion Losses legisla- tion; partly by the collapse of industry, investment and commerce after the Imperial free trade enact- ments of 1840 and the conse<[uent removal of prefer- ential duties and British fiscal protection. A large meeting was held in ^fontreal in favour of annexa- tion to the LTnitod States, and a numerously signed ^Manifesto was issued in a moment of ephemeral rage at the apjiarent desertion of Canada by the Lnperial Parliament in trade matters and by the Queen's Representative in local legislation. Many 1*1 *r RKSPONSIULE OOVERNMKNT. 301 men afterwards distinguished in Canadian history signed this extravagant and interesting document. In after years Sir John Abbott, Sir D. L. McPhcr- 8on, Sir Jolm Rose, Sir A. A.. Dorion and other lead- ing politicians had reason to look back with a regret tinged with amusement at this act of signal and youthful rashness. But it illustrates the serious state of affairs which undoubtedly existed and which made a political and business leader like Isaac Buchanan declare that Lord Elgin would be the last Governor- General of Canada. The latter had, meanwhile, offered his resignation to the Imperial Government, but it was declined and his course was afterwards endorsed by both Houses of the British Parliament. The Clergy Reserves issue now came to the front, and with it a man who for nearly three decades was destined to hold a strong place in Upper Cana- dian politics. George Brown was a veliemeat, ag- gressive, forceful politician and writer; editor and proprietor of the Toronto Globe ; a Radical of con- sistently Scotch character; and a violent Protestant in his political opinions with, as a natural corol- lary, strong prejudices against the French-Cana- dians and anything which savoured of Catholic, or for that matter Anglican, ascendency in State affairs. He had for some years led in an agitation against Lord Sydenham's arrangement regarding the Clergy Reserves, and by which it was hoped that the question had been finally settled. This f •• I ! i i a i I r 302 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. legislation had been introduced by the Hon. W. H. Draper, with the Governor-General's strong support, in the last Legislature of Upper Canada, and by its terms the Reserves were to be sold and the proceeds divided — the greater part going to the clergymen of the Church of England and the balance b'ing distributed amongst the other Christian Churches. This was carried by a small majority and was after- wards made law by Imperial legislation. But it never really satisfied the Radical element of the Liberal party, and Mr. George Brown was soon the recognised leader of a wing which came to be called " Clear Grits," as against the section of the party led by Baldwin, Lafontaine and others who were becoming more and more moderate in their views as time passed on and were opposed to any further agitation of the subject and, especially, to the secu- larisation of funds received from future sales. This was the beginning of the break-up of the powerful Liberal Government and party led by Baldwin and Lafontaine. Brown's attitude upon •religious or semi-religious issues gradually estranged French-Canadians from the party, Avhile it divided the English section into followers of Brown and Baldwin respectively. Eventually, it may be said here, the former became the basis of the present Liberal party of the Dominion, although it was not till after Confederation that the sectarian element was sufficiently eliminated to permit of really full and cordial co-operation from French Liberals. RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 303 Tho " IJaldwin Reformers," as they were termed, imder the clever manipulation of ^Ir. John A. Mac- donald — now well in the front of affairs — gradually drifted into the moderate Conservative party which that leader was striving to organise out of the dis- jointed Tory, French, Orange and moderate Liheral sections of the conmiunity. It was only after 18G7, however, that the full result of his labours and skill was realised. Meanwhile, Ministry succeeded Ministry in a variety intinite, if not pleasing, and more like those of the modern French Kepublic than can be seen in any other parallel. Baldwin and Lafontaine retired from public life in 1851. Under the double leadership plan Francis Ilincks and A. N. Morin, George Brown and John Saud- field Macdonald (for tv/o days), J. S. Macdonald with L. V. Si(^otte and then w'ith A. A. Dorion, led the various Liberal Ministries from their respective Provinces up to 1867. During the same period Colonel E. P. Tache and George E. Cartier from Lower Canada acted with John A. Macdonald in a series of changing Conservative Administrations. The whole thing was a political kaleidoscope. Men were Liberals to-dav and Conservatives to- morrow, while party platforms fluctuated much as did personal principles. Other men came to the front from time to time, of whom A. T. Gait, John Rose, Oliver Mowat, William McDougall, L. H. Ilolton, L. S. Huntington, Luc Letellier de St. Justj J. E. Cauchou, xVlexander Campbell, II. L. I k 4 N r\- \ I f-^ S{)4: PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. Lange\in, T. D'Arc}"^ McGee and W. P. Ilowland were the most representative. In 1854, after an agitation extending over thirty years of keen eontroversy, the Clergy Reserves prob- lem was finally settled by an Imperial Act ■which gave anthority to the Canadian Legislature to deal again with the question ; and by an Act of t)ic latter under wliicu the final separation of State and Church in I'j.per Canada was decreed. Endowed rectories were not interfered with and certain provisions were mad(» for the widows and orphans of the clergy. The balance of the Reserves, in both funds and lands^ Avas devoted to jn rposes of educatiou and local Improvement and divided accordingly amongst the townships in proportion to their population. Though urged with such persistence and for so many years by the Liberal leaders of the ProA'ince, this reform was at the last effected by the new Conserva- tive party under the astute leadership of .Mr. John A. Macdonald. So with the tAvin question in Lower Canada of the Seigneurial Tenure which, for half a century, had been recognised as iiampering in some measure the f^ettlcment and progrei^s oi the I'rovince. The Liberals, or French ]nirty, had more than once refused the fence in this connection, and neithe'- P^jpineau in his days of power nor Lafon- taino at a later period had cared very much to face the issue. In 3 855, lio\,ever, the Tache-^racdonald Government settled the matter on the basis of buying out the Seigneurs' claims ; freeing the small farm- TllK HON. LOUIS HYPCT,ITR LAFONTAINE, BART. H,4 -> *<^«.v-'z<^ THE HON. KOBERT BALDWIN, C.B. ^K. ' RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT, 305 ers of the Province from their various feudal dues and taxes; and appointing a Commission which in four years iiad disposed of this most complex ques- tion at an expense to the Province, as a whole, of £650,000. The same period saw the temporary settlement of an important international issue — the trade rela- tions of the growing Provinces with the United States. Lord Elgin, assisted hy Commissioners from Canada and the other Provin-^-^s, arranged the terms of a treaty with W. L. Marcy, the American Secretary of State, ujion the basis of a free exchange of the products of the sea, the fields, the forest and the mine. Americans had also the free run of Cana- dian fisheries, rivers and canals. But the one thing which would have made the Treaty beneficial to the Maritime Provinces was the admission of Provin- cial-built ships to the United States market, and this was not granted. Owing mainly to the Crimean War and the civil struggle in the Republic the ar- rangement finally appeared to be of great value to the Canadian farmer, though in most other directions it redounded to American interests. How Lord Elgin got the measure through the United States Senate is one of the curiosities of diplomatic history and the result stands to the lasting credit of his skill in statecraft, his geniality, personal tact and perhaps, also, to his hos])itality. A tradition prevails to this day in Wasliington that the Treaty was floated through on a sea of champagne. Be that a3 20 ill I i, i 'li *v is r 300 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. it may, the measure lasted from 1854 to 186G, and Avith a seeming success which makes Canadian farm- ers — forgetting that the high prices were chiefly due to war — look back upon the period as a sort of golden age in agriculture. Meanwhile the Crimean contest had stirred up Canadian loyalty. Th'? 100th Regi- ment was formed and recruited in Canada and served with great credit on many a stern-foisght field. Con- gratulatory addresses upon the Battle of the Alma passed the Canadian Legislature, and £20,000 was voted to the widows and orphans of those who fell in the war. Xova Scotia sent Major Welsford and Captain Parker to fall at the storming of the Redan and General (Sir) William Fenwick Williams to win lasting glory at Kars. ^ew Brunswick sent soldiers who at the end of the war brought back to the banks of the St. John many a coveted medal awarded for bravery in the iield. One of the results of these events was the organisation, in ^o55, of a volunteer force which formed the nucleus of the more important militia of a later time. ]\Ieanwliile, the railway idea had taken hold of the Provincial jwliticians, and during these years Ilincks, Howe and Chandler, for the three Prov- iiices of Canada, Xova Scotia and Xew Brunswick respective.'v, were mixed up in all kinds of com- plicated efforts to obtain Ijuperial aid and mutual co-operation in the building of railways. The net result was the Grand Trunk, the Great Western and some minor lines. In 1850 Papiueau, who upon re- RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 307 ^ 'red hJiey ceiviug his pardon had beeu i)i'oinptly elected tu the Legislature, introduced his old-time scheme of an elective Council. Owing, however, to loss of per- sonal influence and other causes it fell flat for the moment. Six years later the experiment was tried in a mild and tentative form by the arrangement that as vacancies occurred in the Legislative Council, by death or retirement, they were to be filled up by election from large and stated constituencies for a period of eight years. In this mixed form the plan could hardly be termed a success and was entirely abandoned at Confederation. Politics still remained bitter, although some of the bad feelings ene- i by the Rebellion period Avcre slowly dyinff ct v. were being replaced by two great sources rivalry and political passion — the represeiitation by popula- tion question and the '' French domination " cry of the Hon. George Brown and the Clohe. In a sense these were connected problems. The former Avas a simple enough matter had it not been for the racial feature. By the tei'ms of union in iMil the represen- tation in the joint Legislavure of the two Prov- inces was exactly e(puil, although the population of Lower Canada at that time was 200,000 greater than that of the Upper Province. And it was under- stood that this was to be the permanent basis of electoral arrangement. When, however. Upper Can- ada grew steadily in population and first eqiudled and then passed the other in numbers it Avas natural that many of her politicians should seek eipial rep- ! if « ! If It l\ h i'u !■ 1 308 PROGRESS OP CANADA IN THE CENTURY. resentatioii — and it was also natural that they should be fiercely opposed by the French-Canadians. Out of this agitation, coupled with the fact that at intervals the Lov/er Canadian contingent in the Assembly controlled the fate of Ministries and of important measures, grew the charge of growing dom- inance on the part of the French and the ever- ready fear of a Protestant population — or the ex- treme section of it — that this also meant Koman Catholic domination. Hence the vigorous denuncia- tions by George Brown, the break-up of the old Liberal party and the gradual development of ab- solute deadlock in the functions of legislation. Mixed up with these difficulties were many minor, though collateral, ones. From the days when Par- liament had sat in Montreal fur the last time it had visited, alternately, Quebec and Toronto — four years in each place. But the peripatetic plan was neither conducive to unity nor comfort and, in 1858, Her Majesty the Queen was asked by Legislative petition to select a central spot, away from the rival cities or the international frontier, where the seat of Government might be permanently established. The little village in the lumber region of the Ottawa, and within soimd of the thundering riiaudiere, was chosen and the name of Bytown changed to that of C>tta^ra. Upon this site grew slowly the massive and stately buildings which are now the pride of a con t'lnental Dominion, though before that result had fair- ly commenced to evolve there were months of foolish .1^ ;rn. I limPi^flEuflmcSi RESPONSIBLE OxOVERNHrENT. 309 vas of iikI |(31V 1 Ir- ish and fruitless discord over the Royal decision. Tlacial and civic rivalry combined to make the Legislature unwilling to accept the Queen's selection, and to its disgrace a resolution was passed by a small majority declaring tiiat Ottawa ought not to be the seat of Government. The Macdonald-Oai'tier Ministry at once resigned and the ^'rown-Macdonald Cabinet was formed, and then overthrown in two days by a vote of non-confidence. Messrs. John A. Mac- donald and George E. Cartier returned to office. During the next session the Governor-General — Sir Edmund W. Head, Bart., had succeedec. Lord Elgin in December, 1854 — informed the Legislature that the Queen's decision was binding, and after another partisan debate the arrangement was finally accepted. Events now moved rapidly towards that federal issue which statesmen could see must be the ulti- mate gonl of British American politics. The pub- lic liad not yet grasped the full idea, but an educat- ive process was going on. Li 1(800 the young Prince of Wales visited the Provinces accompanied by the Duke of Xewcastlc, then Colojiial Secretary, and u large suite. The visit was made in accordance with the desire of the Queen and the Prince Consort to cultivate a personal a^ well as theoretical loyalty to the Crown in its great dependencies. About the same time Prince Alfred was sent to the Cape and then to Australia. Tn British America the Heir to the Throne received a magnificent welcome. Halifax, St. John, (Quebec, ^fontreal and Toronto rivalled i J t Ml h ill } lii 310 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. one aiiothor in evidences of loyalty and pleasure, and the ^faritime Provinces vied with French Can- ada in popular demonstrations. The only bit of discord to mar the absolute harmony of the event was the refusal of the Duke of Newcastle to advise the Prince to pass under certain Orange arches in Toronto, Belleville and Kingston, and the consequent anger of the important organisation concerned. At Montreal the great Victoria Bridge over the St. Lawrence, which at that time was considered one of the wonders of the world, was opened by the Prince, and at OttaM'a the corner-stone of the Par- liament Buildings was laid by His Jioyal Highness. Later, he made a tour of the United States under his subordinate title of Lord Renfrew and in a nomi- nally private capacity — which, needless to say, was openly and almost entirely disregarded. His wel- come Avas a mixture of the sincere and universal hospitality so characteristic of the Bepublic witb a curiosity which was not always polite or pleasant. But the visit did good. In 18G1 Lord Afonck became Governor-General, and in the succeeding year, dur- ing a time when international complications growing out of the American Civil War threatened to in- volve Great Britain and Canada in a struggle with the United vStates, the ^facdonald-Cartier Govc^rn- ment was unfortunately defeated upon a ^filitia Bill which they had introduced with a view to pre- paring for eventualities. There were complex causes for tlie occurrence, but it Tiaturally made an un- 11- h •3 RESPONSIBLE (iOVERNMENT. 311 favourable impression in England. During Jan- uary, 1802, ten tliousand British troops had been hurried to Halifax in connection with the Trent Affair — which was not settled for another year — and at the very time when the Assembly thus re- fused to support a policy of militia reorganisation and military co-operation with the ^lother Country the spirit of war was smouldering fiercely in a caul- dron of international dispute. The ^Manchester School, which was then dominant in l)ritish politics, delighted in this apparent evidence of Canadian in- difference to Imperial matt<^rs, and from Lord Palm- erston and the Times downward there was much contemptuous reference to the spiritless loyalty, or lack of loyalty, which had been shown. The fact, of course, was that politics were uppermost and the public unconvinced that war was really probable. During this period there was a strong sympathy shown by the Canadian press for the Southern States, although at the same time Canadians to the number of 40,000 men are said to have served in the Northern armies. ^fany Southerners made the Provinces a place of refuge and of communication with friends in the Northern States, and one of the results of this condition of affairs was the plunder- ing of an American vessel in Lake Erie. A raid upon the border town of St. Albans, in Vermont, was also made in October, 1804, by twenty-three Southerners wlio robbed the banks of some $250,000, shot the cashier of one institution, and then made 312 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. their escape back into Canada. They were promptly arrested and f$90,000 recovered, but were as hur- riedly released by the Montreal Chief of Police, who, at the same time, returned the money to them with a hasty kindness and zeal which lost him his place and eventually made the Province responsible for the sum. It Avas duly paid over and volunteers stationed on the frontier to prevent the recurrence of an incident which, nevertheless, created intense ill-feeling in the United States. At the close of the Civil War occurred the Fenian Raids of 186G and the abrogation of the Reciprocity Treaty. The Fenian Raids wore the outcome of the im- mense migration of discontented Irishmen to the United States in 1849 and immediately following years, and of the hostility aroused in the Northern States tOAvard Great Britain by the Alabama in- cident and the alleged sympathy of that country for the Southern cause. The movement was helped also by the existence of a great body of idle men in tho Re])ublic who had for some years served as soldiers, and now, at the close of tho Civil War, felt no in- clination to turn again to manual labour or the bind- ing occupations of a time of |>eace. The ground was therefore ripe for mischief and Fenian societies sprang up all through the froatier States — nom- inally for the purpose of " freeing " Ireland, practi- cally for the invasion of Canada as being the nearest and easiest way of hurting Great Rritain. Head- quarters were established at .^ew York in a palatial THE HON. AI^EXANUER MACKENZIE. I I IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I 1.25 «12|IM 12,5 IllilM 2.2 'Stt 1.4 12.0 1.8 1.6 "/a ^ n ^/W ^a c". a y /A Photographic Sciences Corpordtion ^^ V » m ^ \ \ ^. I ^ ' ;'! teers were allowed to return horne. But a little later the Fenian movement into Canada reallj began, and on May 31st fourteen thousand men were ordered out for actual service. In three davs 20,000 men were under anns. The details of ensuing events need not be entered into. They were important in their consequences but trivial in the number of men engaged and in the nature of the actual conflicts. On the old battle-grounds of the Niagara, nine hundred Fenians were m^t by a detachment of Canadian militia, but, owing to the mistakes of officers who misapprehended instructions, the Canadians were compelled to retreat from what is called the Battle of Ridgeway, leaving nine dead and twenty-two wounded on the field. Hearing, however, of the approach of a larger force, with n number of regu- lars amongst them, the Fenian contingent retired across the river to Xew York State. Other inva- sions were threatened at different points on the border, but were checked bv the concentration of troops on the Canadian side. Some invasions fol- lowed in later vears, but this was the record for 1866. It seems a small sum total of actual hostili- ties, yet it involved a militia expenditure of a million dollars over the normal figure, the death of several brave .young Canadians, and a serious loss to the people, through the natural and inevitable disorgan- isation of business. Upon the footsteps of this trouble came also the abrogation of the Keciprocity Treaty and the conse- RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 315 queixt shattering of many commercial ties and in- terests; together with a linal realisation of the failure of responsible government to remove racial rivalries. This latter political principle had now been in operation for twenty-five years, and so far as Canada was concerned had been an instrument of both good and evil. It found the two Provinces wrecked in a constitiUional sense upon the shoals of rebellion ; it left the ship of state foundering upon the rocks of racial and religious jealousy. Yet in effect the value of self-government had been vin- dicated, and only popular abuse of the privilege had made its nominal failure possible. It had by free discussion evoked some common grounds of action between people of different creeds and race. It had forced the settlement of the Clergy Reserves, the Seignourial Tenure and the Seat of Govern- ment (p.iestion. It had evolved a system of Cabinet construction and ministerial responsibility which, however, was continuously hampered by the attempt to introduce the alien element of confidence from a double majority — one from each part of the Prov- ince. Upon this issue the whole system was now stranded, and out of the impossibility of forming a stable Government — which became finally and fully evident in 1864 after a dozen organised and reorgan- ised Ministries in two years — came the partisan willingness to consider a wider union. From the granting of responsible government nntil the period when Confederation became every- 816 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. i''li' :',;;' where a living issue the Proviiices facing the waters of the Atlantic were not greatly troubled in a political sense. It took time, of course, to exactly fit the new constitutional garment to the body of pablic life, but there was no such 'turmoil as was bred hj the BaniG process in the Canadas. For some years fol- lowing 1850 the great subject of discussion was the Intercolonial Railway suggested by Lord Durham and fitfully urged from time to time thereafter. As a political issue Joaepli Howe made it his own, paid a visit to Englai.ul, and delivered eloquent speeches which he followed up by numerous letters addressed to Earl Grey. Conferen?es ensued be- tween the Provinces; varying com)" lexities were introduced by the building of the Grand Trunk in Upper Canada ; plans for co-operation amongst the Provinces were received in degrees varying from the friendly to the frigid; internsitional considerations were found to exist under whicli England refused to subsidise a road unless free from American con- nections and distant from the American border; and the whole thing finally fell through until after Con- federation had been some years* in existence. In 1852, at the age of seventy-four, Sir John Harvey died in Government House, Halifax, after having ruled for sixteen years in Prinoo Edward Island, Newfoundland, Xew Brunswick and N^ova Scotia, and always with success and popularity. Such a record, in those days, stamps his memory as that of a statesman as well as a soldier. Sir John m iii If! ' RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 817 Gaspard Le Marcliant succeeded him for six years, and the Earl of Mulgrave — afterwards Marquess of Norinanb;y — acted as Lieutenant-Governor from 1858 to 1863. Sir Eichard Graves Macdonnell then held the position xor a little over a year and was replaced for two years by a distinguished native of the Province, Sir Fenwick Williams of Kars, ,vho had the honour of presiding over its entry into the new Dominion. In 1855 a first a+tempt to intro- duce a Prohibitory liquor law in British America was made by the Conservative leader in Nova Scotia, the Hon. J. W. Johnston, but was laughed and ridi- culed out of court by Joseph Howe. A memor- able incident of this year was Howe's defeat in 'Cumberland County by one of the most striking ngures in all Canadian history — Dr. Charles Tup- per. Handsome in appearance, stroni^ in physique, energetic beyond political parallel in the Prov- ince, eloquent with a sledge-hammer force whicli was yet to ring from Halifax to Vancouver and to leave its impress in the TPtropolis of the Em- pire, Dr. Tupper was, even it this time, a worthy foe of the man who had hell N'ova Scotia so long in the hollow of his hand. More fortunate than he, a time was to come when events would enable him to be a potent figure in national and Imperial devel- opment as well as in the smaller arena of his native Province. The Conservatives came into power in 1857 under Johnston and Tupper, v/ere sustained at the elections of 18 Go, and in the succeeding year f 5| 318 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. Dr. Tupper introduced a measure which completely revolutionised the educational system of the Prov- ince and another which proposed the Legislative union of the Maritime Provinces and proved a pre- text for the wider union which evolved out of the en- suing discussions. In New Brunswick little had, meanwhile, occurred of importance. Sir Edmund W. Head acted as Lieutenant-Governor until 1854 and was succeeded for seven vears oy Sir J. H. T. Manners-Sutton. The Hon. Arthur Hamilton Gordon — afterwards Lord Stamnore — presided over its affairs from 1861 until Confederation. There was little party spirit shown until 1855 — the chief topics of political dis- cussion being the proposed Intercolonial Railway and an agitation for retrenchment in the Judges' salaries led by Wilmot ar:d Fisher. A more im- portant subject of wider controversy was the right to place a protective duty on flour, and afterwards on other_ products of local industry, as well as the right to grant a bounty to the fishermen of the Province. Lord Grey, who was at the Colonial Office and just then sitting on the valve of an active and pulsating free trade principle, naturally objected, but he had to finally give way, as did Downing Street in 1858, when the lion. A. T. Gait imposed his Canadian protectionist duties. Then came the heated dis- cussions over Confederation, led on the one side by the Hon. S. L. Tilley and in opposition by the Hon. A. J. Smith. Prince Edward Island had meantime RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 311) been using every possible way and means to settle its complicated land tenure question. The Imperial Government was only too anxious to find a solution, but it was naturally and jjroperly bound to defend the just rights of the Proprietors, as it was also desirous of alleviating admitted grievances and checks upon settlement. Something was done in 1854 when the Provincial Government purchased for re-sale to settlers, under free tenure, a large estate of 81,000 acres. Then the Assembly proposed that the Imperial Government should guarantee a loan of £100,000 to enable them to buy out other pro- prietors, but, after some promising negotiations, this scheme fell through. Finally, a Poyal Commission of Inquiry was asked for and in 1860 appointed — one Commissioner by the Colonial Government, one by the Imperial authorities and one by the Pro- prietors. In 1858 the estates of the Earl of Selkirk, who had done such pioneer service to the Island, were purchased — 62,000 acres for the sum of £6,586. The ensuing Report of the Commission was a singu- larly able document, and proposed, in brief, that the absentee proprietors who owned more, than fifteen thousand acres should be obliged to sell, down to that amount, when asked by their tenants; and that the Imperial Government should guaran- tee the loan previously suggested by the Provincial Assembly. This was not done, however, and the question smouldered unsettled until after Confeder- ation. As Governors of the little Province Sir ii )' Bli Hij 1 i ' 1 '^-' 1 -.: I r [ ! 1 1 i 1 ii |,. . ■, i • w < I 320 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. Dorainick Daly (of Canadian fame) had succeed- ed Sir A. Bannerman in 1851: and Mr. George Dun- das ruled, at least nominally, until 1868, when ho was replaced by Sir Robert Hodgson. Mr. (after- wards Sir) William C. F. Robinson succeeded in 1870 and governed until after the Province entered the Dominion. Far away to the North and West some progress had been made during this period. In the North- West regions proper, the Red River Settlement was still apparently an oasis of colonisation in a wild waste where Indian and Ilalf-breed camps and fui-- trado forts monopolised the commerce and control of the country. But, although the fur trade was unquestioned monarcfi of the land from Lake Su- perior to the Rockies and Sir George Simpson, a vigilant, energetic and able ruler of the territory, was not too fond of settlers, yet around the numer- ous trading-posts which he placed on rivers, lakes and bays there naturally arose a raimber of flourish- ing little colonies whiph, in turn, attracted isolat'^'I and occasional settlers who were not connected with the Hudson's Bay Company. But these latter were exceptional. In 1849 the Company founded Victoria as the capital of its Pacific territories and with a basis of thirty settlers in addition to its own employes. Richard Blanshard was the first Gov- ernor of the infant Colony, but a year later threw up the ofiice and was succeeaed by Mr. (afterwards Sir) James Douglas — the chief figure in British . .-ifc. umer- akes iinsli- with atter unded and 3 o\vn Gov- hrew wards ritish '9 d M « d Z < in w V) as o CO O 2! O I li I ! ( j . i !l 1 i ! w t i.*. r 1 i i ■ 1 , ! 11 'h ■ I \": \ (• 1 j 1 'X - ^ - T- ir-'-' "S o z o o > (-■ w > o RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 321 o 55 O B! O H > (-■ m w > s o Columbian pioneer life. During his rule many things happened. In and about 1856 miners poured into the region watered by the Fraser and Thompson Rivers and very soon the wild canyons and pine-clad heights of the great mountainous interior of the mainland swarmed with adventurers and every kind of rough and turbulent character. In 1858 Douglas was given charge of this region as well as Vancouver Island, and for six years administered it with an iron hand. He then retired and was suc- ceeded on the Island for two years by Mr. (after- wards Sir) Arthur E. Kennedy and on the Main- land by Mr. Frederick Seymour. Meantime Governor Douglas had also to deal with a critical international complication arising out of the Oregon Treaty by which Great Britain, in 1840, yielded up to the United States a hrp^o territory she had always claimed as hers, and ahich included all the splendid Puget Sound region aud the greater parts of the pre«out States of Washington and Oregon. The new controversy arose out of the question as to which channel was meant in the terms of the Treaty defining the boundary line through the waters aud island^; between Vancouver Island and the United States ma, ianl. Only one had been then known to exist; afterwards there were found to bo three. The Island of San Juan was the centre of controversy as it commanded British shores and was an important position from a military standpoint. In 1854 some American squatters settled on the 21 I 'Hi i ■I I' 'I lii! 1 1 1 ^'' i ! J; 1 322 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. Island, and soon two rival flags were flying and national i)assions being coni'uually aroused. In 1859 a wandering pig brought the nations interested to the verge of war. One of these animals, belong- ing to the Hudson's Bay Fort, strayed on to the un- enclosed ground of an American settler, named Cutler, who promptly shot it and then scori^fully re- fused pajTiient. The demand for remuneration was even resented as an outrage, and General Harney sent a force of United States troops to occupy and administer the whole Island. Governor Douglas had abundant troops at his command and Pritr.h warships on the spot, but, with characteristic Brit- ish patience, he awaited the decision of his Govern- ment. On learning of the event, however, the Am- erican Administration apologised, sent General Winfield Scott to replace Harney and, eventually, in 18G0, a joint occupation was arranged. In 1872 the issue was decided by arbitration, and, as usual, against England. Other matters now came up of a constitutional na- ture. Vancouver Island and the Mainland had been taken from the control of the Hudson's Bav Com- pany in 1858, as a result of the lapsing of the ar- rangement under which they had promised — and failed — to colonise as well as govern. The two di- visions were made separate governments, as already stated, but owing to the danger which afterwards arose of the Island being carried into the swing of a strong annexation movement resulting from the in- M. ngSTiii'mi-iaal RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 323 flux of Americans, it was reunited in 1866 with the Mainland by Act of the Imperial Parliament and with Mr. Anthony Musgrave as Governor. For eight years following 1850 the Government had been solely in ihe Governor's hands and for five years following 1858 in the hands of a Governor and Executive Council. In March, 1860, Governor Douglas met a Council of fifteen members — partly appointed, partly elected, and from both the Island and the Mainland. This arrangement lasted till 18G4 when separate Legislative Councils were convened. ^NTot until February, 1871, did a properly elected As- sembly sit for the Province. By that time the splendid dream of a Dominion stretching from sc-u to sea had been partially realised and was awaiting the final decision of these representatives of still scattered settlements in the wilds of the Selkirks an*^ on the shores of the Pacific. ■■■■■■i 324 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. CHAPTER XIII. TWJ^XTY-FIVE YEARS OF MAIERIAL PROGRESS. ^ t ■ I! During the formative period of Canadian history the principal progress of the country had, in all the Provinces, taken the shape of transforming the forest areas into farm lands and at the same time adjust- ing varied views of government and life, brought from older civilisations into harmony with the con- ditions of a new aud potential empire. In the succeeding quarter of a century the first l)hase of this development is still more clearly re- corded in the statistics of the period as well as in the greater comforts of the home and the more populous character of the small cities and towns. There had been a largo immigration just jjrior to the Ilebellion, but, except as to driblets, this ceased during the troubles of that time. Between 1840 and 1850, how- ever, some 350,000 souls Avere landed at Quebec, a large proi)ortion of whom — perhaps a half — went to the United States. During tlie single year 1847, when the terrible Irish famine was at its height, nearly a hundred thousand ]ieople came to that port, of the new world. Between 1852 and 1805, 3:}G,000 *■■ ■ TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF MATERIAL PROGRESE.. 325 )() immigrants arrived at Quebec,* and a somewhat similar proportion as above seem to have stayed in Canada. In 1866 the immigrants amounted to 28,000. Like an army this mass of people spread over the soil of Canada or the neighbouring Re- public. Up the St. Lawrence Valley they came in thousands and settled the forests of the Huron Tract in a manner which would have made Gait envious and did eventually astonish the Canada Company. A great territory back of the Tract which had been regarded as swamp land was thrown open by the Government, and in a short time two large counties — Bruce and Waterloo — stretching up to the shores of the Georgian Bay, were ringing with the axe of the settler. In 1857 the Counties of Wellington and Grey were formed out of what had been called the Queen's Bush, and in the succeeding ten years became the home of many thousands of families from the Old Land. In 1843 the Countv of Simcoe had been set apart for settlement and in seven years its popula- tion grew to 25,000. It was the policy of the Gov- ernment at this time to open up the counties back of Kingston, Peterborough, Toronto, Montreal and Ot- tawa, and, owing to this influx of settlers, the plan was very largely successful. Xew Brunswick also began to recei^'c some accessions to its population, though not in a similarly bountiful measure. Be- • Report of A. C. Buchanan, Chief Government Immigra- tion Ajjent, Queb*o, 18fifi. 326 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. tween 1834 and 1840 the increase had been about 30,000 and in the next eleven years it was 37,000. In 1847, the year of Ireland's sori'ow and of Eng- land's succour to the extent of millions of pounds sterling, ninety-nine vessels arrived from that country laden with victims of " ship-fever." Thou- sands died of the plague on the way, other thou- sands in the St. Lawrence River, and these years will be as memorable in Canadian history as is the cholera period of 1832-34, when that terrible disease wreaked havoc at Quebec and Montreal and in many parts of Upper Canada — amongst not only the unfortunate immigrants who had brought it to the country but amongst all classes of the people. In the two French Canadian cities thousands had also died from the earlier scourge. With this influx of people and despite the passage of many to the United States the settlement of the Provinces grew steadily, thoagli not rapidly, as may be seen from the follow- ing table: 1851. 1801. 1871. LowerCanada 890,861 1,111,566 1,191,516 Upper Canada 052,004 1,896,091 1,620,851 Nova Scotia 276,117 380,857 887,800 NewBrunswick iM,800 252,W7 886,594 PrliiceEdward Island 66,000* 80,857 94,021 Manitoba and British Columbia lO.ooo* 46,814 3,377,188 8,lftl,W8 8,626,096t It %vas upon the whole a good class of population. * Estimated, f Indians, 100,000 included. 4. TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. &27 The extreme element of political tl-ought and the disloj'al or discontented section went largely over the border and left behind a stable, solid and sub- stantial mass of hard-working people. Between 1861 and 1871 emigration of all kinds from Eng- land decreased, and Canada sank into a background illumined only by the civil conflagration in the United States and the not very inviting prospect of war. Prosperity in the United Kingdom and the dominance of stormy politics in the Canadas also had their effect upon emigration. In 1861 the Census returns for the four chief Provinces gave forty-four per cent, of the people as belonging to the Church of Rome, fifteen per cent, each to the Church of England and the combined Presbyterian di- visions, fourteen per cent, to the Methodist Churches, and a little over six per cent, to the Baptist denomina- tion. The most interesting feature of these figures is, of course, the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church in Lower Canada, where 85 per cent, of the people belonged to that faith, and the decline of the Church of England in its comparative numerical strength as well as in its governing and political in- fluence. At the same date the adult male popula- tion of the Provinces was composed of 320,000 farmers with 209,000 labourers — including lumber- men — and 115,000 mechanics. Only .7'7^,000 were engaged in trade and commerce and fisi.'?rie9, so that the still overwhelming preponderar.ee of the farm was very visible it il ". , III V 'Ijt i t -1 828 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. Since the Union of the Canadas in 1841 there had been an enormous expansion in this agricultural pro- duction. The forest had in so many great regions given way to the farm; the methods of cultivation had so greatly improved and the knowledge of the farmers, derived from growing practical acquaint- ance with the soil and climate, had so largely in- creased ; while prices, owing to wars in the East and West, in Hindostan, the Crimea and the Southern States, had so bountifully grown ; that the farmers of these Provinces shared in a common expansion of prosperity which is never likely to be seen again. In 1861 the Census had shown a cash value in farms of $537,000,000, in live stock of about $120,000,000, and in implements of $25,000,000. Xiue years later a reasonable estimate in this connection * placed the value of farms at $072,000,000, of live stock at $150,000,000, and of agricultural implements at $31,000,000, while the value of the products was estimated at $196,000,000. Between 1854 and 1866 the products of the farm had gone into the markets of the United States free, while the various wars of the period, and especially the one which withdrew a million of men in the United States from productive pursuits and threw them into a prolonged and sanguinary struggle, naturally ran the prices of products up. But as time passed conditions gradually changed, and from finding the United * James Young, M.P., in th« Year Book of Canada, Mqu* tr«al, 1871. i '^^'.^fi^^ i n > w H « JO C3 < w S3 to < C o z o 5' ! 1 1 ■ ■ HV 5^' -?: ^w i • • i J-.-' ' ''.'11 ; a 1 f. (■•1-^' * ■ ■■ ;■ 1.^^.- i;i^^^ ^ 'ipm 1 - if-. I wmm \ 1 W M'^'- ,* At « I i • t ■s w I \ < 1 ". .*.-^' J- . 1 ■ * # 1 ■ :^^?^=*L^^ t^ H O o > o % w o H CO w > < c < TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. 329 O o < > o w ►J b O > w Q < < States under the Reciprocity Treaty and the circum- stances just noted a splendid market for their prod- ucts, Canadian farmers about the time of Confedera- tion and the repeal of that Treaty were discovering an unpleasant development of American competition in local markets and a growing competition of the same kind in British markets. ^leanwhile trade and conunerce showed signs of progress, despite difficulties of various kinds. Up to 1841 pioneer conditions of transportation and the comatose state of enterprise and investment following the American Revolution period had prevented much continental interchange and restricted both imports and exports. Tt took some time to rise out of these conditions, and still longer to get railways and canals into established an>i I itt. iili ii r?5 1^; tonnage in 1863 was 85,250. The total for the three Provinces rose from 85,680 tons in 1860 to 155,551 tons in 1866, while in little Prince Edward Island the figures between 1850 and 1863 ran from 14,000 tons, valued at half a million dollars, to 26,000 tons, valued at nearly a million. With this and connected industries the himber trade grew in all the Provinces and the apparently illimitable forests began to visibly shrink before the unceasing labours of thousands of woodmen added to the long-continued and persistent advance of the pioneer settler, or progressive farmer, in search of more soil and increased facilities for production. In extending the making of ships steam came to help their increased use and the birth of this period saw the commencement of the great Cunard Line of ocean steamers at the hands of Mr. (afterwards Sir) Samuel Cunard, of Halifax, while 1852 saw the beginning of the Allan Line of steam- ers on the St. Lawrence. Then came the extension of the Eichelieu and Ontario Xavigatiou Company, and other lines commenced to run from Lake On- tario to the sea or from Quebec to Liverpool. By the time of Confederation there were innumerable steamers on the Great Lakes and the larger rivers of British America and a total inland and sea-going tonnage w'lich made Canada three years later, in 1870, possess the fourth mercantile navy in the world — 7,591 ships with a tonnage of 899,096.* In * Statesman's Year Book, London, 1870. TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. 341 the year 1868 forty thousand British and fifteen thousand foreign vessels, with a thirteen million ton- nage, registered at the ports of the New Dominion. Another branch of commerce which expanded greatly during this period was the development of the boundless fisheries of the seaboard and the lakes. This the Reciprocity Treaty had helped by provid- ing the American market for the fish and hampered by giving freedom to American fishermen in Cana- dian waters — in 1866 United States craft under Canadian licence numbered 454, while many fished without licence. The estimated value of this Amer- ican catch in the year mentioned was from twelve to fourteen millions of dollars. The Canadian and Maritime Provinces at the same time caught in sea and lake waters, so far as recorded, fish to the value of $0,263,000, and this included both those for ex- port and for local consumption. Turning again from the sea to the land, we find that mining was still in its infancy, though the resources wete im- measurable. Some small development was going on, however, in plumbago mining at Buckingham on the Ottawa, in iron at Marmora in Upper Canada, in copper in the Eastern Townsliips, in gold and coal in Nova Scotia. The latter Province showed a production in 1865 of 601,000 tons of coal, worth about two million dollars. Analysing the material progress of this period, the most remarkable advance seems to have been in means of transportation and in agriculture — the 842 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. 1 !■.' twin bases of material development. Manufacturing was still a creation of powers which were " cribbed, cabin'd and confined." The beginning had been made, however, in cottons and in woollen and iron industries. Andrew Paton in 1860 started what afterwards became tlie largest woollen factory in the Dominion; James Rosamond in 1857, after a pre- vious effort in Carleton Place, founded the Almonte Mills which were destined to afterwards grow to very large proportions. George Stephen and Company of Montreal — the head of wliicli became one of the creators of the Canadian Pacific Railwav and a Peer of Great Britain — were perhaps the chief wholesale people of the time in this line. The Census of ISTl sliowed 270 cloth-making establishments in the four Provinces with a productive value of five million and a half of dollars. At the same time there were 6.50 carding and fulling mills; while over seven million yards of cloth were still made on hand-looms in the houses of the people. In 1857 a knitting factory was started in Belleville, and the industry soon found a footing — especially in Paris and Gait, U.C. Cotton manufacturing to any extent did not oom- raence till the early sixties, but there were pioneer mills established twenty years before that period, and notably the one at Sherbrooke, Lower Canada, which was promoted in some measure by the Hon. A. T. Gait. Another was established in Thorold, Upper Canada, in 1847, and in 1801 the oldest ex- isting cotton mill was started in St. John, N".B., by TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. 343 W. Parks & Son. Yet progress was slow, and up to 1871 there were only eight mills in all the Prov- inces. In the same year there were only 21 paper mills in existence, while the boot and shoo industry made slower progress than it had done prior to 1841. In providing improved means of transportation, however, the Provinces had laid a notable foundation for future commercial progress as well as for a fair measure of present prosperity, and it remained for the following two decades to carry on the system to continental and Imperial proportions. Agriculture had meanwhile made prosperous farmers out of pio- neer settlers, and the figures for 186G showed twen- ty-one million acres of land surveyed and sold, or granted, in Upper Canada, nineteen million acres in Lower Canada, six millions in Xova Scotia and nine millions in Xew Brunswick. Only a propor- tion of this land was as yet cultivated, however, and back of it was a vast, unsettled and ungranted re- serve of some fourteen millions in the Maritime Provinces, together with the apparently illimitable wastes of the far West. 344 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. CHAPTER XIV. ; TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OP POPULAR PROGRESS. While political experiments of various kinds were being tried in the Provinces, with differing de- grees of success, and the party system was passing through its preliminary stages and constantly bub- bling up to the surface of the constitutional caul- dron, the people were slowly evolving into a larger and broader life with a bettor and truer view. The pioneer period was passing away in all the older parts of the country, and men found themselves able to devote their time and talents to plans for the bet- terment of popular conditions and the elevation of the public mind. Sir Samuel Tunard and Sir "Hugh Allan breasted the difficulties of ocean steam trans- portation, while IMerritt and Young, Hincks and ITowe, devoted themselves to the development of canal or railway communication. Dr. Pyerson and Bishop Strachan in Upper Canada, T)r. J. B. Meilleur and the Hon. P. J. O. Chauveau in Lower Canada, ex- erted the widest influence in promoting educational improvement, whilst clergymen of all denominations helped in all the Provinces to raise the religious and general staiidard of the people. Many of the incom- a < w w •< o o O 5? P O o O ii- Li. hi f if' i < hi H O to O ;z! i4 M n Z B a fit W X mmm i < tn H O CO O M n z « K P« W s TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF POPULAR PROGRESS. 345 ing immigrants were of superior type in physique and education, and had come to British America with a view to bettering themselves by growing up with a new country and not because they were driven from the Old Land by political discontent or personal fail- ure. The majority of those who came out during the famine years and the storms of the early forties naturally drifted into the United States, where they found institutions different from those under which they had suffered. Of course there were many ex- eeptioiiS, but, as a whole, the element which main- tained its sjTupathy with British ideas of govern- ment and its loyalty to the Crown now showed a tendency to stay in the Provinces, and thus help to deepen the foundation so well laid by the original Lovalists. Improved educational facilities also began tc per- form a great work. At the Union of the Can- adas in 1841 a measure was passed reorganising the Common Schools, authorising the establishment of Separate Schools for P/otestants in Lower Canada and for Roman Catholics in Upper Canada, aneen done elsewhere in edu- cational matters. In Lower Canada, where the re- bellion had practically destroyed the school system, •i k 352 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. one of the first acts of the united Legislature of 1841 was an attempt at its re-establishment. Jean Bap- tiste Meilleur was shortly afterwards appointed to superintend the new arrangements, during 1851 School Inspectors were installed, and four years later M. Pierre J. O. Chauveau commencGd a career of signal service to his Province and to the intellec- tual development of the Canadian people by succeed- ing M. Meilleur as Chief Superintendent — a position which he retained until he became Premier of Que- bec in 1867. Under his administration various new and beneficial regulations were made regarding both high and primary education. Three JSTormal Schools were established, eight Classical Colleges for the train- ing of the clergy were created from time to time, and in 1859 a Council of Public Instruction, com- posed of eleven Catholics and four Protestants, was established. By 1867 there were 3,712 connnon schools in the Province with 208,000 scholars, who were maintained a*- a cost of $728,000 — the greater l^art being paid by the municipalities. j\r. Chauveau helped also in the formation of a French and English Journal of Instruction and in the ci^eation of a pen- sion fund for teachers. In Lower Canada there was comparatively little sectarian strife in this connec- tion, and it stands to the lasting credit of the French and Catholic majority that, as soon as the passions of the pre-Union days had cooled down, an edu- cational system was established which did ample justice to the minority. More than that, there was Ill- lie JAMES BRUCE, EARL OF ELGIN AND KINCAHDINE- i i¥ m 1 iP , 1 i ! . . f, 1 i' i i 1 i;' I iill -i: II m THE EARL OF DURHAM, G.CB TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF POPULAR PROGRESS. 353 little or no effort to curtail Protestant privileges, and in this respect the echo of the campaigns in Upper Canada against religious or sectarian schools was very slight. Laval University was inaugurated at Quebec in 1854, and some years later formed a branch at Montreal which afterwards became the centre of a prolonged controversy between the extreme ele- ments of thought in the Roman Catholic Church. Both branches of the institution, however, did splendid service to the cause of ecclesiastical higher education and later on to law and medi- cine in their separate and distinct departments. In 1829 the University of McGill had started in a small way in Montreal through the munifi- cence of the Hon. James McGill of that city. It was intended to be the centre of the Protestant edu- cational interests of the Province, but until 1855, when Sir William Dawson first took hold of the College, its life was a scene of struggle and doubt- ful service. After that time, under the control of this singularly able educationalist, scientist and writer, the University grew in power and prosperity. Bequests were left to it and presents made, from time to time, amour ting to millions of dollars; and libraries, buildings, scientific collections, depart- ments of teaching and professorial chairs were added until it became the foremost University in British America and perhaps upon the whole continent. By 1867 it was well on the way towards this position, 23 1: t 354 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. and the affiliation, between 1860 and the former date, of seven theological colleges of different denomina- tions helped greatly. In 1843 the Church of Eng- land institution. Bishop's College, Lciinoxville, had been started, and this also assisted in the develop- ment of Protestant education generally in the Prov- ince. It had not been an easy task in Lower Can- ada to arouse an interest in educational matters. Parents were not then ambitious for their children in the manner of later days, and they had around them the effect of dependence upon the semi- religious instruct'on of the Catholic priests and schools and upon arrangements which might be made for them but not by them. Even in the Upper Prov- ince people were not enthusiastic, and it required many years to fully inculcate the principle of co- operation in educational work, as between the tax- payer and the teaching institutions of the Province, and in the general interest of popular progress. To Dawson and Chauveau belong largely the honour of having formed the feeling in Lower Canada which Ryerson and Strachan evolved in other ways in the Upper Province. In ^ova Scotia free schools were established by Act of the Legislature under the Premiership of Dr. (Sir Charles) Tupper in 1864. The number of common and high schools in the Province in that year was 1,112, with 35,000 pupils maintained at a cost of $163,000 — two hundred more schools, twenty thousand more expenditure and ten thousand more *i TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF POPUIAR PROGRESS. 355 pupils tlian there had been thirteen years before. During the next few years the new system was ad- ministered by Dr. Theodore II. Rand, as the old one had been by Dr. Forrester and Dr. ( Sir) J. W. Daw- son. Under it the Executive Council, or Ministry, constituted the Council of Public Instruction and the Proviii.'e was divided into eighteen counties, each presided over by an Inspector. There were also 34 districts, each with a Board of Commissioners ap- pointed by the Government. Then there were a large number of sections with elective Tia^^tees. These latter were the most important Boards, and really constituted the popular government of the schools \mdcr conditions laid down by the other functionary bodies. In the summer term of 1808 there were 1,598 sections, with fourteen hundred schools and teachers, and seventy-two thousand pupils. By the assessment of these sections nearly three hundred thousand dollars were raised, while the County funds and Provincial grants produced two hundred and fifty the =vand more. This was in- deed a different state of a "airs froi i the universal lethargy and indifference which had been shown in the early forties. Higher education had meantime been developed by County Academies, or high schools, of which there were ten in 1868, and by colleges and universities which had been started and maintained largely as a result of sectarian rivalry. Dalhousie University, after a season of collapse, was revived in 1863. St. Francis Xavier College was 1 ( I '■ -• '; Is " . , J i^HI H ! ^^^ Mff' s! 1 1 '' i iiii 1' i ^H^^^H iR ^' ■ikii^< PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. established in 1854 as a Eoman Catholic institution; while Acadia and King's College maintained a some- what struggling existence by the support of their respective denominations. In Xew Brunswick a Committee was appointed to investigate the condition of the schools, in 1845, and, tv'o years later, as a result of their Rep it to the Legislature regarding the public apathy and the evils of cheap itinerant teachers, an Act of reor- ganisation was passed which formed a Board of Education, granted aid to teachers, constituted scliool districts and created a Normal School at Frederic- ton. In 1852 amendments were made and other im- provements effected — amongst them the appointment of a Chief Superintendent of Education. The Rev. James Porter, J. Marshal D'Avray and Henry Fisher held the position in turn up to 18G0 and Dr. John Bennett during the ensuing eioven years. Free schools were not created until after Confederation and Separate Schools were still allowed. In the sum- mer term of 1868 there were 861 schools, 881 teach- ers and 31,000 scholars, with a Provincial expendi- ture of forty-two thousand dollars and a m\inicipal expenditure of lifty-seven thousand. Prince Edward Island adoj.'ted free schools in 1852, established a Nor- mal School four years later and the Prince of Wales College in 1860. Little was done in the North- West during this period except the reorganisation of St. John's School, in 18G0, by the present Archbishop Machray. In British Columbia the limited popU' TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF POPULAR PROGRESS. 357 St. )pU' » lation of Vancouver Island was given free schools by tbe Hudson's Bay Company in 1855, but owing to political complications and changes the system was practically inoperative by 1868 and educational matters generally remained in a very crude and uu- satisfactorv state. Religious progress throughout the country in the years following rhe early forties was very great. Tu the large towns it was marked to the eye by little wooden structures being transformed into handsome brif^k churches, whilo more and more frequently edifices of stone were found gracing the streets of cities like Montreal or Toronto. With the growth of Colleges in the English Provinces, home-trained ministers of the different denominations came to fill the pulpits, while in Lower Canada a still higher grade of culture and more complete code of ecclesias- tical education emanated from its numerous religious seminaries and colleges. The wandering mission- ary gradually gave way to tho clergyman in his set- tled parish or to the minister in charge of a singlo congregation in village, town or populous numicipal- ity. The itinerant ^lethodist preacher was given a longer stationary term, aiul it was only in the back regions or in the West<>rn wilds, where there was still ample room for missionary efforts, that one could now witness the magnificent ,'ind streuiious work of the pioneer preacher. Gradunlly, too, the various denominations became more or less self-sup- porting. The great missionary societies of the Old ^1 if I! lilii 358 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. Land were no longer called upon for the ordinary Bupport of coiigregations or parishes, and only in spe- cial cases of loss, or of proposed building operations, was direct assistance asked. With the final settle- ment of the Clergy Reserves self-support became the motto of Church of England parishes as well as of Methodist congregations, and> though the process was a somewhat slow one and funds for many years con- tinued to come from varied sources in Great Britain, yet by 1867 the principle of self-help was not only a pious aspiration but, in all the populous parts of the English Provinces, an accepted fact. Equality in ecclesiastical conditions and functions and opportunities, coupled with the growth of popu- lar democracy of a somewhat new type and the influx of a population which in the United Kingdom had been composed more of Dissenters than of Church- men, rendered the progress of the Methodist denomi- nation during tliis period the most marked. Erom two hundred and eighty thousand in all the Prov- inces, in 1851, its adherents rose to four hundred and fifty thousand in 1861 and to nearly six hun- dred thousand in 1871. The eloquence of preachers like Ryerson, Richey, Punshon, Douglas and Car- man had something to do with this result: the min- istration of enthusiastic pioneer itinerants like Case, Ryan, Black, Reynolds, Davison and Richardson had immense influence ; while the practice of putting young men through periods of probationary preach- ing before admission to the Ministry created a fund \m ' TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF POPULAR PROGRESS. 359 of constant and earnest labour. No class distinc- tions troubled these men, and they came from farms or villages, entered and passed through College, and finally returned to work in similar farms or villages, amongst people whom they knew and understood. This was a great and little apprehended advantage. They rarely preached over the heads of the listeners, and, £,s a rule, and often to the verge of extrava- gance in diction or style, tried to preach down to their hearts. The early difficulties arising out of international alliances and suspected disloyalty dis- appeared entirely in the forties, and, as time passed, union amongst themselves became a watchword which after Confederation made the principle a realised fact. The Canadian Wesleyan Church and the New Connection Methodists joined together in 1841 and the Wesleyan Conference and the Eastern Dis- trict were united in 1854. But these were really only preliminary to the great union of 1874. Mis- sion work was undertaken in the North- West, and in 1854 the British Conference gave up its missions in the Hudson's Bay Territory to the Wesleyan Con- ference of Canada. A very different duty and position from that of Methodism were those assumed and still maintained by the Church of England. In the history of the Provinces during the century the Church had been the mother of religious ceremony and function, while its ministers had been at the heart of every good work and the sharers in every form of privation .,!: 360 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. and suffering. From tlio Mother-land came steady streams of money and men to help the labours of its scattered missionaries and the building of its churches and parsonages. Nor did this process cease when the political storms of the thirties had blown ov^'r British America. But, unfortunately, the Church became connected, in the minds of the population Avhich did not belong to it, with a domi- nant political party which they hated, and its religions extension was injured by the growth of its political influence. To many minds — though false- ly so because the central feature of its ministrations is their application to all — the Church of England became the Church of a class. And it never bene- fited very greatly by the much-denounced Clergy Reserves. The Rectories established by Sir J. Col- borne were an exception, and the moneys which finally came to the Church therefrom between 1841 and 1854 were certainly of some assistance. But perhaps they did more good than harm by sapping that voluntary principle amongst Churchmen which has so greatly helped the Established Church at home. A complete and well-maintained State Church in the early and struggling ^^||l w ;■/ i * /■ 1 V / '.1 / b_ t ssno^ ; < JO C > iiji ' 1 'M i ^1 ill; '•'ifl (1 i j si f" If*. 1 ! K 4 . '1 { . "^S" **■■■•*<■«■««)■• l^£ I ■ ■s 11 !iit c H o « o > X 1-. c Z o o til K > 1 THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE DOMINION. 385 cohesive community out of still scattered settle- ments. A few had dim visions of a great future for the distant West; some had shadowy hopes of a national independence guarded by British friend- ship and embodying a sort of Colonial offspring of the Manchester School; a very few felt that Confedr>ration might lead, through independence, to Annexation. But the great mass of the people and politicians supported it in ouler to strengthen the Provinces — first in their Government through co- hesion and centralisation, and next in their organised power to resist extraneous pressure whether political, commercial or military. Opposition came from different sources and varied motives. M. Joly de Lotbiniere, during the Con- federation debates of 1865 in the Canadian Legis- lature, opposed the scheme primarily and vehement- ly because it had been recommended by men like Sowell, Robinson and Durham, whose " avowed ob- ject it was to obliterate French-Canadian national- ity." The lion. A. A. Dorion, leader of the Lower Canadian Liberals, a man of courteous and charming character, a fluent master of both languages and a s;^Kiakcr of deft gentleness and pure diction, op- posed it because the appointment by the Crown of the Governor-General, the Lieutenant-Governors of the Provinces, the members oi the Senate and of the Legislative Councils, and tlie Speakers of the Upper Houses, would put immerse power in the hands of Downing Street and indirectly make the Provincial 25 at' t »'t Ill- *J : I 386 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. Governments mere satellites of the centr.il star at Ottawa. He and others failed even yet to grasp the full significance and scope of a I'esponsible govern- mental system which would eventually mould ft^rms and institutions into an unwritten constitution con- trolled in all essential points by the Cabinet of the new Confederation — and indirectly by the people. The Hon. L. II. Ilolton, a Liberal leader from Mon- treal, denounced the measure as revolution, and an unnecessary revolution. It was to him " a crude, immature and ill-considered scheme," leading to un- told expenditures for the Intercolonial Railway and for defence, and threatening the country generally with "a period of calamities" su'^h as it had never before known. The Hon. Christopher Dunkin, afterwards famous in connection with certain tem- perance legislation in the Dominion, made the most exhaustive and elaborate of all the speeches against Confederation. He believed the measure would lead to disunion instead of union ; that the rival- ries of Upper and Lower Canada would shatter the paper ties of federation; that eventually the Prov- inces would separate, under such a system, from the British Empire. He considered the proposed Senate useless as a Federal check upon legislation and harmful as being based upon no form of public opinion. The difficulties in the construction of a Federal Cabinr t he deemed insurmountable while sec- tional influences would in any case soon lead, in his opinion, to a Federal deadlock. There would be im- >A ;■■*«■ THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE DOMINION. 387 limited confusion in legal and judicial matters aa between the Federal and Provincial Governments; the expenditures on great railways and western ex- pansion projects would bankrupt the Union; while the attempt to combine the differing political ideas and principles of the Provinces would cause " en- ormous jobbery and corruption." Some of these fears were not unreasonable. The fact is that if the proposed union gave unlimited scope for opti- mism and the higher elements of patriotic asj^iration it also afforded ample room for pessimism and the natural narrowness of view which is to be found in all small communities. It is interesting and important in this connection to notice how one man dominated the private con- sideration and the public discussions of this question as he had for two decades, in greater or lesser de- gree, controlled the political and chameleon-like changes of the day. " John A.," as he was popularly known at this time throughout the Canadas, and in some measure down by the sea, Avas the greatest man that British America has produced. Migrating with his father from Scotland when a very young child, Sir John A. Macdonald grew up among the peo- ple and of the people. A Tory from youth up, his politics crystallised gradually into a mod- erate and mellowed Conservatism which enabled him to grasp the skirts of fortune and adjust in time the disintegrating atoms of early Toryism and eftrl^ Liberalism into a party wkich. ho believod I I ' J . i 388 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. to combine the distinctive British tendencies of the former with the progressive policy of the latter. No man in Canadian history has been more pub- licly abused; no leader in Canadian life has been so personally loved. He was in the highest sense of the word a political opportunist, but, whether con- sistent or otherwise in small matters, there was one great principle — that of Imperial unity — which he stood by from the days of his earliest political mani- festo to the time of his last declaration to the people : " A British subject I was born, a British subject I will die." He was always far-seeing i)i policy. In 1849 he favoured Colonial Federation, in the later fifties he supported Colonial Protection, in the early sixties he suggested closer Imperial Union. He possessed neither a commanding pres- ence nor what is generally called eloquence. But his mobile and expressive face, his pleasant manner and easy gestures, his amusing stories and clever treatment of opponents, his marvellous memory for names and faces and detail, his knowledge of human nature and perennial geniality, his quick percep- tion and perfect genius for statecraft and political combination, made him easily the chief of British statesmen upon this continent. When, therefore. Confederation became a living issue he naturally presided over the Quebec Conference and the suc- ceeding one in London, was the recognised leader of the movement here and in England, the only one who received in 1867 the honour of knighthood, ^ THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE DOMINION. 389 and the inevitable first Prime Minister of the New Dominion. Yet Sir John Macdonald could have done little without George Brown, George E. Cartier, S. L. Tilley and Charles Tupper. His genius was shown in compelling the co-operation of Liberals such as Brown and Tilley ; in winning the devotion of leaders so strong in their own Provinces as Cartier and Tupper. His personal relations with Brown were so bitter — this was the almost single exception to a rule in A,Vhich political enemies were usually his personal friends — that the two leaders were not on speaking terms before the coalition of 18G4 and re- lapsed into the same state after Brown had retired from the Cabinet. A word here as to the latter's general position. During the year 1858, at a Liberal Convention in Toronto which had been called by himself, he had advocated a federal union of the two Canadas instead of the existing Legislative Union as being a remedy for present evils. But for any further extension of the principle he was not then prepared, as he stated in a letter to the Hon. L. H. Holton of Montreal. In fact he thought they " would bo past caring for politics when that meas- ure is finally achieved." Li the Session of 18G4, h«wever, new light had come and he moved for a Committee to consider Constitutional changes, and, as its Chairman, reported on June 14th in favour of a federative system to be applied either to tHe Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada or to the ■iji \\\ IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) % /. {./ .,<" c^ ■It' '«>:«-' s y. Ua 1.0 I.I IL25 ''° IM |||||2 "12.0 lA 11 1.6 Pk)tographic Sciences Coipordtion m <^ k^< V ^^ \\ 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, NY. 14580 (716) 872-4503 'i^ ri>^ &?, <■■!- \l J,90 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. l\ whole of British America. The movement at the moment was largely a political one arising out of the weakness of the Tache-Macdonald Ministry, but it constitutes the basis of the claim made by some writers for regarding Mr. Biown as the principal parent of Confederation. The day after the pres- entation of his Report, the Government was over- thrown and the final stage of deadlock was reached, together with the coalition period which made a wider union politically possible. Mr. Goldwin Smith, with the superficiality which usually marks an epigram, has stated that "the parent of Con- federation was deadlock," f.nd upon this conclusion a Liberal writer of later days bases his belief that because the deadlock was produced by George Brown the latter was therefore the real father of the policy.* Of much of this political strife Brown had unquestionably been the cause. Honestly and hon- ourably he hold oerrain views regarding Upper Can- ada and the desirability of its dominance In a racial and religious connection, and for them he fought during many years with an utter disregard of the interests or wishes of the other partner to the Union and of his own personal and political prosracts. A stubborn, conscientious leader, an unsparingly vigor- ous journalist and speaker, and a sincere lover of his Province, he has left an indelible impression upon its history. But it was not in the constructive * William Buckingham, in Canada ; An Encyclopaedia, voL 6, p. S05. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE DOMINION. 391 sense. Macclonald and he were essentially the an- tipodes of each other in this particular. The one was great at organisation, construction, conciliation ; the other at obstruction, conflict and the advocacy of change. To the Confederation movement, however, G^r^itc Brown brought the prestige of Liberal leadership in Upper Canada, the element of pronounced Protestantism which had proved so difficult of as- similation with the Catholicism of LoAver Canada, and the powerful influence of the Globe. Cartier brought his strong personality, his popularity with French-Canadians and a reputation for loyalty to Provincial ideals which enabled him to triumph over the opposition of Dorion and other French Liberals who would not be led by Brown. Gait brought not only his skill and reputation as a finan- cier but also his influence as leader of the Protestant minority in Lower Canada. D'A.rcy McGee, who was still a Liberal, and, until the time of the Feniau raids, a force amongst the Irish voters generally, brought his wonderful tongue and skilful pen to aid the cause. Tilley, as the Liberal Premier of New Brunswick, and Tupper, as the Conservative Premier of Nova Scotia, were able to combine at the Char- lottetown Conference in receiving the Canadian Delegates; in supporting their proposition for a fur- ther and enlarged discussion of the projected Mari- time TJnion ; and in adjourning that gathering to meet later at Quebec in order to try and arrange tho ,41 1 1 392 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. details of a wider and wiser British American federation. The result of this policy was the meeting of Dele- gates at Quebec on October 10th, 1864, from all the Provinces of British America — including New- foundland, whose representatives were F. B. T. Car- ter and Ambrose Shea, .iiid Prince Edward Island, whose Delegates were Colonel Gray, Edward Palmer, W. H. Pope, GcL-ge Coles, T. H. Haviland, E. Whclau and Andrew A. Macdonald. The Prince Edward Island Delegates, with those from the main- land Provinces, have been commonly known as the " Fathers of Confederation." Those from Canada were Sir Etienne P. Taclie, John A. Macdonald, George E. Cartier, William. McDougall, George Brown, Alexander T. Gait, Alexander Campbell, Oliver !Mowat, II. L. Langevin, T. D'Arcy McGee, James Cockburn and J. C. Chapais. From Nova Scotia came Dr. Charles Tupper, W. A. Henry, Jonathan McCull}-, Adams G. Archibald and R. B. Dickey. New Brunswick was represented by Samuel Leonard Tilley, John M. Johnston, Peter Mitchell, Charles Fisher, E. B. Chandler, W. IL Bj^ceves and John Hamilton Gray. Out of this Con- ference came the seventy-two Resolutions which prac- tically constituted the British North America Act of 18G7 — so far as the terms and conditions of that measure are concerned. But there was a long strug- gle before complete success came to the policy thus promulgated. The Union Resolutions were adopted I a. at Hh IS W o Oh t/3 o ;^< 0! a K X w O w a; «1 K w Of r/5' 5 tn S: O >5 w < « K z tn O W n THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE DOMINION. 393 in the Canadian Assembly, in 1865, by 91 to 33 votes and in the Legislative Council by 45 to 85. Fifty- four from Upper Canada and thirty-seven from Lower Canada constituted the favourable vote in the Assembly. After two general elections in New Bri aswick and a change of Government, the Reso- lutions were approved in July, 1866, by good ma- jorities. In Nova Scotia, as in Canada, they were adopted by the Legislature — on the motion of the Hon. Dr. Tupper in the j\ssembly and by a vote of 31 to 19 — without a ^c^eral election. But the re- sult in the Maritime Province, owing to the antag- onism of Joseph Howe, was a prolonged and some- times dangcT'ous agitation for secession. Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland refused to come into the Union, while British Columbia and the North- West were not yet in a sufficiently organised and populated stage to deal with the question. In De<;ember, 1866, Delegates from the four Provinces met in London to make final arrangements. Mr. John A. Macdonald was appointed Chairman, and of the Quebec Conference members Messrs. Mac- dougall, Ctirtitr, Gait, McCully, Tilley, Fisher, Johnston, Mitf;hell, Arc}iibald, Tupper, Langevin and Henry were also present. The new names amongst the Delegates were those of J. W. Ritchie of Nova Scotia — afterwards Chief Justice of the Dominion — W. P. Ilowland of Upper Canada and R. D. Wilmot of New Brunswick. The final details were settled, and on the 28th of March, 1867, the :- I > I 1 <( ! >5» r I li * I'. It 5' ^' 394 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. Resolutions, after passing through the Imperial Par- liament as the British North America Act, re- ceived the Queen's Assent and became the constitu- tion of the new Dominion of Canada on the ensuing First of July. Under the terms of this Federal constitution, or by virtue of British precedent and Canadian practice, the following system was then established or has since evolved: 1. A Governor-General representing the Queen, appointed by the Crown for five years, and holding practically the same place in the Canadian Consti- tution that the Sovereign does in Great Britain. 2. A Cabinet composed of members of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada, who may be chosen from cither branch of Parliament, and whose chief is termed the Premi'"'r. lie is usually leader of the House of Commons as well as leader of his party. The Cal)inet must command the support or confidence of a majority in the Commons and was composed at first of twelve Ministers, each in charge of a Department. 3. A Senate whose members are appointed for life by the Governor-General-in-Council. It is com- posed of 78 members, who must possess a property qualification, be thirty years of age, and British sub- jects. They receive $1,000 for a Session of thirty days, with travelling expenses. 4. A House of Commons composed of members elected for a maximum period of five years by popu- lar vote — from 1898 under the franchise of the r^r 'iji THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE DOMINION. 395 * respective Provinces — and subject to dissolution at the will of the Governor-General. This power is, however, greatly restricted by precedent and prac- tice. There is no property qualification, br.t mem- bers must be tv;enty-one years of age, British sub- jects and not disqualified by laAv. There are in 1899 213 members and the Sessional allowance in $1,000. 5. The Provincial Governments are composed of the Lieutenant-Governor, appointed for a term of five years by the Governor-General-in-Council ; the Cabinet or Ministry, composed of departmental officers selected from either lionse of the Legisla- ture, and often additional members without office; a Legislative Council in Nova Scotia and Quebec composed of members appointed for life by the Provincial Government or Lieutenant-Governor-in- Council, and in Prince Edward Island elected by the people; and a Legislative Assembly elected for a maximum period of four years by popular vote. In all the Provinces manhood suffrage, limited by residence and citizenship, ultimately became the law, except in. Prince Edward Island. By the terms of the British North America Act the Dominion Parliament was to have control of the general affairs of the Dominion, including matters not specifically delegated to the Provincial authori- ties. The chief subjects were: The regulation of trade and commerce and the postal system ; the pub- lic debt, public property, and borrowing of money on public credit; the militia, and all matters con- ^.fi ii I' ,] 396 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. nected with the local defence of the country; navi- gation, shipping, quarantine, and the coast and in- land fisheries ; currency, coinage, banks, weights and measures, bills and notes, bankruptcy and insolv- ency; copyright and patents of invention and dis- covery; Indians, naturalisation laws and aliens; marriage and divorce; customs and excise duties; public works, canals, railways and penitentiaries; criminal law and procedure. The Provincial Legislatures were to have control of certain specified subjects, including direct tax- ation within the Province; the borrowing of money on the credit of the Province; the management and sale of public lands locally situated and of the wood and timber thereon ; the establishment, mainte- nance and management of prisons and reformatories, hospitals, asylums and charitable institutions gen- erally; licences to saloons, taverns, shops and auc- tioneers; the control of certain public works wholly situated v'ithin the Province; the administration of justice, including the organisation of Provincial Courts ; the control of education and municipal in- stitutions. Under the terms of the Act, Ontario hasi at the end of the century 92 representatives in the House of Commons, Quebec 65, Xova Scotia 20, 2^ew Brunswick 14, Prince Edward Island 5, Manitoba 7, British Columbia 6, and the ]^orth- West Territories 4. ' The basis, according to popu- lation, is that of Quebec with its 65 members, and a rearrangement takes place after each decennial THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE DOMINION. 397 Census. The average population to each representa- tive is now 22,688. On July Ist, 1S67, the first Dominion Ministry w&s formed by Sir John A. Mac- donald. His colleagues were the Hon. Alexander Tilloch Gait, Hon. William Macdougall, Hon. George Etienne Cartier, Hon. Samuel Leonard Tilley, Hon. Jean Cliarles Chapais, Hon. Alexan- der Campbell, Hon. Peter Mitchell, Hon. William Pearce Howland, Hon. Adam Johnston Fergusson- Blair, Hon. Edward Kenny, Hon. Hector Louis Langevin and Hon. Adams George Archibald. Following this union of the four older Provinces of British America under the common name of Can- ada — Upper Canada becoming the Province of On- tario and Lower Canada the Province of Quebec — came the period of continuous territorial expansion necessary in order to complete and render continental in extent this dream of early statesmen. The vast Hudson's Bay Company possessions were purchased by the Dominion in 1869, and on July 15th, 1870, a portion of that country emorr^d Confederation as the Province of Manitoba — aficr |)assi*:g through the storms of the Red River Rebellion. On Julv 20th, 1871, British Columbia follov/ed the example thus given. A Resolution in favour of Confedera- tion had passed its Legislature in 1867, but had en- countered some opposition from Lieut. -Governor Seymour and his Ministers. On January 29th, 1868, a large public meeting was held in Victoria and an active agitation started by the Hon. Amor de /ill I ll 398 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. Ooamos and others which resulted in the formation of a League to advocate the policy of union. J. F. McCreight, John Eobson, Robert Beaven, Hugh Nelson, 11. P. P, Crease, and other afterwards prominent citizens, joined in the movement. The chief opponent of the scheme was Dr. J. S. Ilelmcken, who seems to have been actuated by a strong American, if not annexationist, sentiment, and to have been supported by a certain section of the population which had come into the Province from the St tes to the south. An energetic debate on the question arose in the Assembly in March, 1870, and a favourable Resolution based upon ar- rangements proposed by Governor Musgrave — who had meanwhile replaced the late antagonistic Gov- ernor by advice of Sir John Macdonald to the Im- perial authorities — was finally carried unanimously. Messrs. Helmcken, Carrall and Tnitcli were then sent to Ottawa and the terms finally settledA-tho principal item of discussion, then and afterwards, being a pledge by the Dominion to construct the Canadian Pacific Railway. By a trans-continental railway only could tlie' J^iuvince be brought into Confederation in any other than the barest technical and constitutional sense. •s[ Prince Edward Island, after protesting that it would ne'er consent, finally came into the Union on July 1st, 1873, partly from a desire to have its land question settled; partly because of failure in the local shipbuilding trade, thb imposition of high American duties upon Pro- I THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE DOMINION. 399 vincial fiah, and the consequent commercial deptes- sion; partly because of inability to make the local revenue meet the objects of expensive railway devel- opment to which the Province was pledged. With the completion of Confederation the Prov- inces entered upon the straight path towards nation- ality — either British or independent — and under the control of a man who was determined that it should be the former. Storms and struggles were to come and overshadow at times the seeming great- ness of the Canadian future ; but nothing seemed to blot out or really blur the impression stamped on the canvas of fate when the Queen's Proclamation was published on July 1st, 1867, and th« birth of the new Dominion was formally announced. From thenceforward its record is that of an unceasing evolu- tion along the lines of union — educational, religious, social and political. In a general sense and, of course, with ihe weakness of all generalisations, the age of constitutional struggle may be said to have passed into a period of transportation policy which, in turn, was succeeded by one of tariff controversy and then of mineral development. PART THREE. FORMATION OF A NATIONALITY, 1867-1900. 1 1 I;- CHAPTER XVI. CONSTITUTIONAL, PKOGEESS UNDER FEDERAL INSTI- TUTIONS. lii' III li I H When bells pealed and cannon thundered on the first Dominion Day of these newly federated Provinces the sound marked the birth of an epoch in the history of a continent as well as of an Empire — a period of slow but sure growth and consolida- tion in the British nation thus formally established upon American soil. The acceptance of the Premier- ship and the successful formation of the first Fed- eral Ministry by Sir John A. Macdonald * marked * 111 honour of the achievement of Confederation Mr. Mac- donald had been created a K.C.B. by the Queen, and Messrs. Rowland, Macdougall, Tupper andTilley Companions of the Bath. Mr. Cartier declined the latter honour — deeming himself entitled, as the French-Canadian leader, to at least equality of treatment with Mr. Macdonald. He was amply satisfied in the succeeding year with a baronetcy, and hia col- league, Mr. H. L. Laugevin, was also accor led a C.B. 400 c H mm i Mac- iind nions ;ming least mply 18 col- 01 o ft « r ir. > C c M X a w M 1"4| h I. I il i! M\ M i^^} i « ^ : § ~;r f T' 1 -"■■'■■■ ^:' i'; ^ Ij 1 1 1 > o 2: > w O a. < 2; < W 2: o to CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS. 401 o o < > o > w > >4 o < w o at the same time the realisation of cherished per- sonal ambitions and the final stage of evolution in the creation of a great political party. It had been evident to Sir John from almost his first entrance into public life, in 1844, that the future of the Prov- inces depended upon getting the French and English divided upon non-racial lines. To achieve this end, and by using opponents to advantage, he had carried reforms which the Liberal party had pressed for vears but had been unable to effect, lie had never been particular about party allegiance when a friend could be won or an enemy placated, and this, com- bined with his extraordinary personal magnetism, had enabled him in years preceding Confederation to win over Libei-als such as M. H. Foley, D'Arcy McGee, Fergusson-Blair and Francis llincks. There were many others who, in the shifting politics of those days, had ultimately come under the banner of John A. Macdonald and served him against the powerful onslaughts of George Brown and his paper. He was now able, in a greater field, to put in prac- tice the policy of years, to break up finally the old party lines so often based upon racial and religious issues, and to establish a political organisation more in harmony with the circumstances of the new Do- minion. He announced his intention of forming the first Federal Ministry with, if possible, the co-operation of men from all sections of the country and all divisions of political thought, who may have contributed to the creation of Confederation. 26 If' 4:02 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. ; I Six Liberals and six Conservatives were finally included in his Cabinet — Maedougall, Howland, Fergusson-Blair, Tilley, Mitchell and Archibald constituting the first element, and Campbell, Car- tier, Langevin, Chapais, Gait and Kenny the last. In the appointments to the Senate which, of course, were made by the Governor-General upon his recommendation thirty-six Liberals were selected and thirty-six Conservatives. George Brown, with characteristic impracticability, refused to have any- thing to do with the new combination, callea a Con- ference in Toronto, rallied round himself strong support and organised the basis of the present Lib- eral party of Canaif-, An even more important dissentient from the principle of coalition was Joseph Howe of N'ova Scotia. In some unfortunate way his opposition to Conf edo. ation had been taken for granted and he had not been included in any of the Conferences upon the subject, although for so many years the foremost politician of his Province, lie was now naturally, and no doubt honestly, a con- firmed opponent of the whole scheme and an equally bitter antagonist of the Government which em- bodied its principles. He was also the head of the opposition to Dr. Tupper in Nova Scotia. The latter, it may be mentioned here, had been offered a seat in the new Dominion Ministry, but had, together with D'Arcy McGee, waived his strong personal and political claims in order to help Sir John in certain difficulties of sectional representa- CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS. 403 tion which had arisen. In New Brunrv.ick and Quebec there was no very vigorous Opposition or- ganised although, in the latter Province, Messrs. Dorion and Holtcn did their best to oppose the new arrangements and to support Mr. Brov/n in has Ontario activities. The party then formed around the person of Sir John A. Macdonald was called the Liberal-Conservative party, and this somewhat absurd name is still used upon formal occasions. Popularly, it became known as the Conservative or Tory party, while members of the Opposition soon received and accepted the old-time political names of Reformer, Grit, or Liberal. Meanwhile the administrations of the Provinces generally were being constructed and carried on along the new lines provided by the Federal constitution. The Maritime Provinces for a time retained the Lieut. -Governors previously appointed by the Im- perial authorities — Sir Charles Hastings Doyle in aSTew Brunswick and Sir W. F. Williams in Nova Scotia. The first Ontario Legislature was opened by Major-General Henry W. Stisted as Lieutenant- Governor, and in Quebec Sir Narcisse F. Belleau, a native of the Province and for a time Prime Min- ister of Canada before Confederation, was ap- pointed to the position. The first Premier of On- tario was John Sandfield Macdonald, who had been associated with Antoine A. Dorion in the Liberal leadership, but who had latterly drifted away from his moorings and come under the magnetic influence I lit 11: 'V irf m Id 404 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. of John A. Macdonald. For many years he was the idol of the Catholic population of the Upper Prov- ince. He coul4 speak Gaelic and make a good speech in English and was clever and shrewd in character. But his opinions M'ere not always stable, it was often hard to tell what he would do next, and in later years he, not inaccurately, termed himself " an Ish- maelite in politics." His Ministry was mainly Con- servative in composition. In Quebec the Hon. P. J. O. Chauvcau, so long and eminently connected with educational matters, formed a Government of similar political texture. In Nova Scotia, the Hon. Hiram Blanchard and, in !N^ew Brunswick, the Hon. A. R. Wctmorc, headed Cabinets of a some- what colourless nature so far as party politics were concerned. Thus equipped the Dominion started upon its course. To trace its political history on- wards in detail is of course impossible here, but an effort may be made to present some of the salient points of progress. The position and functions of the Governor- General changed gradually, and became s:3ttled, by precedent and practice, into that of a constitu- tional Sovereign guided, in his relationship toward the people of Canada, by a clearly defined recog- nition of the right of his Ministry to control the entire internal policy of the country so long as they retained the confidence of a Parliamentary majority — subject, however, to his usually dormant power of dismissing the Government and his admit- i BBS I- ■v hi KED SUCKER POINT, I .. I? ! ; . L- 1.. . , '; 1 ;. 1. 1 ■^^ to W o *(. t-* O < < K 2 O a; m w s o o OS < < o K a o Ctf CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS. 405 ted right to control the important point of Parlia- mentary dissolution. At the same time, and as the Dominion grew in strength and influence, the position of the Governor-General as the representative of Im- perial interests also increased in importance. All the correspondence between the Government of Great Biitain and the Government of Canada centred in his hands, and all the intricate threads of Imperial policy as affecting Canada had to be considered by him and presented in turn to his Cabinet. There were no more stormy deputations to Downing Street, or passionate appeals to the British Parlia- ment by irresponsible political agents as in the days of Papineau, Viger and Mackenzie. Much of what may be termed the foreign policy of Canada — for want of a better jihrase with which to describe the external affairs of a Dependency which had not yet risen to Imperial partner-hip — was in his hands, and upon his advice to the Colonial Office turned many interests of grave import. Sir John Mac- donald has, in this connection, paid the highest tribute to Lord IMonck * for his management during several serious years of Provincial relations with the United States. Lord Lisgar (Sir John Young), who succeeded him in December, 1868, had charge of much of the intricate correspondence connected with the Washington negotiations of ensuing years * Life and Times of Sir John A. Macdonald, by Joseph Pope, Ottawa. 406 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. '' 1 il 1 i i ' 1 \i and the claims of Canada to receive compensation for the Fenian Raids. Willi the coming of Lord "Dufferin in June, 1872, there began a new .'ouception of the position and its duties. Hitherto the influence of the Governor- General, under the responsible system of govern- ment, was supposed to be entirely a personal and social one — except where Imperial interests were af- fected. Now the magnetic power of an almost per- fect eloquence softened, chastened, flattered and moulded public opinion until the Earl of Dufferin became a great personal and political mence m the land; and it was seen how pronounced might be the power of a brilliant nobleman in the position of Queen's Representative and apart altogether from the ordinary degree of prestige surrounding that position. Almost at the beginning he had to face a difiicult constitutional point. In 1873 the party storm-cloud known as the Pacific Railway Scandal broke over the heads of the Conservative Ministry of Sir J. Macdonald, and the Opposition demanded the instant dismissal of the Government at the hands of Lord Dufferin. Charge after charge was brought, and pressed, Avhile Sir John Mac- donald requested a pi'orogation of Parliament — in- stead of a resignation by himself, or a dissolution — in order that a responsible Royal Commission might examine and report upon the whole matter. This Lord Dufferin finally decided was only just, and moreover expressed his belief that so long as his CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS. 407 tor in Government had a majority in Parliament he was bound in such pffairs to follow its advice. Although he was much censured at the time his view came to be generally accepted, and his own personality soon carried him triumphantly clear of any temporary discontent. In 1874 he had much to do with ar- ranging satisfactory terms with. British Columbia, at a time of great local dissatisfaction over the fail- ure to commence building the Canadian Pacific Railway; while his silvery speeches at Winnipeg and Victoria fairly electrified the people of the West through their eiogant description Cx the vast resources and splendid fi-ture of the country. — — - — - ^^- The Marquess of Lome, who came out in 1878, accompanied by his wife the Princess Louise, and whose appointment was a part of Lord Beacons- field's Imperialistic policy, also had his constitu- tional difficulty. M. Luc Letellier de St. Just, Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec and a Liberal in his former politics, had dismissed his Conservative Ministry on the ground of neglect to supply him with important documents for signature and ap- proval. He found a Liberal leader to form a new Government and to live for a time on the sufferance of the Legislature. Meantime, however, Mr. Mackenzie, the Liberal Premier at Ottawa who had supported this action in Parliament, had been defeated, and a strong demand came to Sir John Macdonald from the Conservatives of Quebec to dismiss M. Letellier de St. Just. Lord Lome objected because, under •S-**!*!****,. '«*»'--W.>«««A*- I i ; li ill 1 1 1 * 1 i ■ t 1 ti. J' W- \ 408 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. all the principles of British responsible government, the Lieiitenant-Governor's action had been disposed of from a constitutional point of view as soon as a new Premier had assimied responsibility for it and obtained the support of the House of Assembly. Party feeling ran too high, however; Sir John in- sisted upon his point and Lord Lome referred the whole matter to the Colonial Office. The result was not very satisfactory to him, as it practically con- sisted of instructions to follow the advice of his Ministers. Accordingly the Lieutenant-Governor was removed. The Marquess of Lansdowne suc- ceeded Lord Lome in October, 1883, and had a con- siderable share in conducting the Canadian side of the controversies which followed about the Atlantic Fisheries. Sir John !Macdonald has expressed his belief that Lord Lansdowne was the ablest of all Canada's Governors-General, and there is no doubt that the lucid and valuable nature of his despatches concerning affairs in the Dominion and its relation to the Empire was largely instrumental in causing his appointment as Viceroy of India. A curious 'evidence of develojunent in the recognised functions of a position was shown at the time William O'Brien came to Canada for the purpose of expressing Irish Home Rule dislike of Lord Lansdo^^^le as an Irish landowner. It was so widely felt that a Governor- General could not defend himself in such a case without loss of dignity and popular respect that there was an almost universal expression of indigna- mt. n :hk1 Ay. iu- 'as w CO » O 777— ■ , , ...jii^M'MliWiKr*" JB nfpi^ ''"' m^^lflfl^^K vrt^ ''r P^ '^^^ oi ill 3h lat « w ^^ a w en O W -■*: w.-r. w N W M o < o 13 (-4 * :il I '^ ili^ n H u a o w o en O X w a CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS. 409 w *-* N W u o < i4 -1- « W o: 50 O n o »-» 2 « O w c > > o K « « n * ,ii ■ I LAVAL UNIVEKSITY, MONTREAL. mi ii LAVAL UNIVERSITY, QUEBKC. "pTr^^""— '" '- CONSTITUTIONAL PROGitFPS. 417 serious trouble at the outset of its new career. In the main this was owing to th« fiery and eloquent personality of Joseph Howe. He had opposed Con- federation in the old Assembly against Dr. Tupper and his liiends, but unsuccessfully. At the polla in the elections which followed the Union in all the Provinces, he had his revenge and absolutely overwhelmed the Confederates. Tupper alone of all his party in Nova Scotia came to the new House of Commons at Ottawa, while two Confederates only entered the doors of the Assembly at Halifax. The air rang with denunciation of the Dominion and with cries for repeal of the Union. Howe had made the Province believe itself to have been tricked into a policy and position which would destroy its in- dependence, menace its connection with Great Brit- ain and hamper its progress. He declared that if the Legislature which passed the Federal proposals had gone to the people, as did the New Brunswick Assembly, the Province would not then be in the Confederation. The new Assembly passed almost unanimous Resolutions in favour of secession, a Delegation composed of Howe and others was sent to lay petitions before the Throne for permission to leave the Confederation, and from every town and village flowed in a stream of supporting appeals. The scene was then transferred to London, where Howe appeared with a Province almost absolutely behind hira in a plan to break up the new Domin- ion; and with the knowledge in his own mind and 27 ruTi 1 if/" ■"' i -JS^" iH ■ :■( 418 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. in the public mind of Nova Scotia that thousands were willing to take up arms against the assertion of Federal supremacy. To London also went Tupper on behalf of the Dominion Government, armed with full powers of negotiation and abundance of force- ful ability — perhaps the only man in Nova Scotia whom Howe had found a rival really worthy of his steel. The representative of the Province did everything in his power to obtain Imperial permis- sion for the repeal of the Union, but failed. Dr. Tupper as representative of the Dominion did every- thing possible in opposition, and won. At the same time he spent days in negotiation and conversation with Howe, offered hira better financial terms for his Province, seats in the Senate for his friends, a place in the Government for himself. Above all he pointed out the results of the inevitable failure should agitation be afterwards continued — an in- flamed people, riots and perhaps civil war, financial ruin to individuals and to the Province, half a cen- tury's retrogression. These arguments had an effect which no personal considerations could for a moment have had with Howe and he weakened somewhat in the fierceness of his feelings. But he did all that man could do to carry out his mission, though upon his return home there was an immediate and per- ceptible effort to control the more violent spirits. Sir John Macdonald, Tupper, Cartier and others followed him to Halifax, skilled diplomacy directed by Sir John's master-hand wa? brought into plajr^ ■Sf i: CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS. 419 better terms were arranged in accordance with Dr. Tuppcr's promises, Howe entered the Dominion Cabinet and the issue was practically settled. Two results followed however. The tribune of the people lost his marvellous popularity and stood in his new position like a shattered idol upon a pedestal. The realisation of this fact ultimately broke his heart, and, although he returned to Halifax three years later as the first native Lieutenant-Governor of his Province, he only lived a few months to enjoy the honour. Yet he had fully done his duty. Up to the point of absolute rebellion he had struggled against destiny as few others have done, and only drew back before lurid possibilities which entailed an enormous responsibility upon a man who seemed to hold the people in the hollow of his hand. He "was not a reckless and irresponsible Mackenzie, and therefore stopped at the brink, turned back and made the best terms possible for his Province. To an in- flamed public mind it looked like treachery; to the historian who knows the honourable and pure char- acter of the man it looks like patriotism of a high type. Howe had managed in 1872 to carry his Province despite the defection of friends and the mutterings of discontent. But it was a last effort and result of his wonderful oratory. Up to within a few years of the close of the century Eepe; 1 has continued to be heard of at the polls in Nova Scotia ; the bitterness remained for long in the hearts of the people, and resolutions were even passed in the As- 420 PROGRESS, OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. I, sembly. The steady growth of a wider national life, however, slowly but surely destroyed this senti- ment, and time has now fi'^ally drawn a veil over the whole dangerous and futile movement. In 1868 it was felt by the Dominion Government that some steps should be taken to secure the great Hudson's Bay Company territories for Canada ; and that the time was most opportune as the two hundred years' charter of the famous body of Adventurers into Hudson's Bay was about to come up again for re- newal at the hands of the Imperial Parliament. Sir George Cartier and the Hon. William Mac- dougall were, therefore, sent to London, and after varied negotiations and discussions Canada was allowed by the Imperial authorities to purchase from the Company its proprietary rights and its monopoly of trade. Accordingly, in 1870, £300,- 000 was paid to the Hudson's Bay Company, a twentieth of all lands surveyed for future settle- ment was promised to it, and certain guarantees were given against excessive taxation. It was still to retain numerous and important trading-posts, a vast influence over the natives, and wide facilities for commerce. The reasons for this expansive policy on the part of the Dominion were strong and the results exceedingly important. The United States had re- cently purchased the wilds of Alaska and was well known to havr a :.atural desire for further extension ; while the people of Canada were not very sure as to the possible effect which a big bid from the Republic t i caaa MMi CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS. 421 might have upon the Hudson's Bay Company. Moreover, the central settlement on the Red River was known to contain many American adventurers of a type not unlike the Fenians, and it was be- lieved that the Company had hardly done its duty in the matter of colonisation. There was no sub- stantial reason for any fear of the Company's loy- alty. Later kno^vledge of its history shows that it was really the cause of saving all tliis vast region to the Crown, and that, if the Provinces to the south had earlier undei'stood their own possibilities of ex- pansion and the Colonial Office not been dominated by the Little Englanders, Oregon and Washington, and Alaska itself, might have formed a part of the Dominion. But the true Imperial spirit was now dawning in the minds of the Canadian people, and the time had arrived in the North-West for its change from a region of traps and furs, of buffaloes and Indians, into one of steadily developing agriculture and all the varied forms of civilised energy. At first, the twelve thousand people — mainly French and Indian Ilalf-broeds, some Americans and a few Canadians — did not understand the situation. And, unfor- tunately, it was not explained to them except by the appearance of land surveyors and the spread of countless rumours. Out of this ignorance came op- position and then the splutter of a brief and fantas- tic rebellion. The horde of Indians roving over the vast prairies of the West knew nothing of the matter #^ r Ml. ir i ji X. li i; -""■ ''' " ;| 1 ~ -} ! ^i 422 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. at all, but were none the les*? subjects for serious speculation when trouble threatened — partly in this case from their numbers, partly from their intimate relations with the Half-breeds, partly from their susceptibility to the schemes of unscrupulous agi- tators. Largely owing, however, to the influence of the Hudson's Bay Company there was but little diffi- culty with them at this time. The storv of the rebellion which followed is a curious one and might very well be a long one. The French Half-breeds of the Red Kiver had for leader a clever, eloquent, unscrupulous, partially educated and very ambitious man in the person of Louis Riel. He had a sufficiently mixed element to ap- peal to and one which required a positive genius for conciliation to combine and ccncentrate in a suc- cessful insurrection. It is creditable to his ability that he was able to browbeat the somewhat indiffer- ent Company and the loyal Canadians, and to de- ceive the Half-breeds by promoting jealousy of Canadian rule, fears of heavy taxation, natural prejudices against the land surveyors and thoughts of a disgraceful position as the Colony of a Colony — without self-government or the rights of British sub- jects. The English-speaking and French-speaking Half-breeds were jealous of each other's religious views and possible supremacy under the new dis- pensation ; while the pure white element was di- vided into loyal Canadians, Fenians with fond and foolish republican aspirations, and American set- 3»- 11 CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS. 423 tiers dreaming of Annexation. This population, with ail its jumble of peculiar views and possibili- ties, Kiel stirred up into such antagonism to Can- ada and such conflicting internal jealousies that, in the winter of 1869 when news arrived of the Cana- dian appointment of the Hon. William Macdougall as Governor of the unorganised territory, he was able to raise the flag of insurrection, proclaim him- self " Provisional President " of a new Republic and prevent the entrance, into what is now Mani- toba, of Macdougall and his staff. The latter, from out of the wilds of Minnesota, in the United States, issued vain orders and appeals, but was compelled eventually to return to Ottawa leaving Kiel at the head of affairs until his dream of power was shat- tered in the summer of 1870 by the arrival of the Wolseley expedition. Meanwhile the latter rioted in a rough-and-ready rule which was marked by streaks of cleverness in policy and by such miserable incidents as the mur- der of a young Canadian named Scott, who was shot by the order of the " President " on a pre- tended charge of seeking to breed dissension in the little Republic. Of the stuff that romances are built upon was the imprisonment of some loyal Canadians in old Fort Garry and the escape of Dr. (afterwards Sir John) Schultz in a wild and stormy night, and his succeeding journey on snow- shoes over the vast wilderness of seven hundred miles which lay between the Red River and civilisa- •;!fcl!l if,: I * '• -", ft 'ii M m 424 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. tion. Gaunt in appearance and broken in health through starvation and suffering, he quickly helped to set Ontario on fire with indignation; and, in days prior to railway connection with the Canadian West, a force of seven hundred volunteers and five hun- dred regulars under command of Colonel Garnet J. Wolseley war soon wending its weary way by lakes and rivers and wilds to revenge the death of Scott, to restore British-Canadian rule, and to bring peace and harmony to a now hunted and cowed people. Royal Commissions had meanwhile been sent up by the Dominion Government, and Donald A. Smith (now Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal) had used his personal influence and that of the if udson's Bay Company to restore order, without much avail. They had, however, with the aid of Bishop Tache, prevented any more Scott episodes. On August 24th, 1870, Wolseley reached Fort Garry, in the heart of the Red River Settlement, only to find that the tiny phantom of a Republic had crumbled into dust and that Riel had fled to the United States. There he was destined to pass several years of exile, and from thence he eventually came to lead another and more serious insurrection. Colonel Wolseley quickly restored order, escaped the Lieutenant-Governorship which it is understood he was willing to accept, highly praised the volun- teer portion of his force, and returned home to be- come eventually Commander-in-Chief of the Army and one of the two or three leading British soldier? > o m X a r; o > o > ■ ^W^ £ » ■ f i. / < ■J ■■ * ■ m . > '-i ■/ ■ „ • -v- ■"■? ' , ■ ,. » f I, ^ ," ' ■ K. K . ...r^\^ V... ■r s \!\ { i \ 1 if 1 -.■U;:4l i 1 It I \k t ^^F r A VIKW IX ROSEDALE, NEAR TOROX TO. CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS. 42f of his period. Manitoba was organised under the terms of the British North America Act and ad- mitted into the Confederation with all the privileges of a Province, while Fort Garry, in time, became the great prairie city and commercial centre — Winni- peg. Such was the constitutional birth of Manitoba. It was, and is, a small Province, but comprises with- in its bounds the most fertile soil in the world and the most marvellous wheat-bearing qualities. North and east and west of it stretched the boundless prairies and plains, river valleys and lakes and streams, of what were then the practically unknown North-West Territories. No government was as yet given them because their only population was still in the main a roving and hunting body of men who acknowledged little of interest or influence ex- cept that of the Hudson's Bay Company. But gradually people came, settlements were formed, and railways established, until in 1876 Keewatin was formed into a District under the Lieutenant-Gov- ernor of Manitoba, and in 1882 Assiniboia, S.'^s- katchewan. Alberta and Athabasca were organised under a Lieutenant-Governor who placed his pio- neer capital upon the prairies at a little settlement christened Regina. There were various phases ia the constitutional progress of these Territories. A Lieutenant-Governor with a Council appointed by himself was the first ; an Advisory Council of four Members chosen from an elected Assembly of twenty-two members was the next; an Executive I INTO. ?"' 1 I V 426 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. Council and Legislative Assembly with practically all Provincial powers except the right to borrow money and control the Crown Lands followed. Then in 1898 came complete responsible govern- ment. In 1895 the still unorganised regions of a million square miles had been formed into the Dis- tricts of Ungava, Franklin and Mackenzie and placed under the Regina Government. Two years later the District of Yukon was carved out of this region and in 1898 taken under Dominion jurisdic- tion. / Meanwhile various events had occurred. D'Arcy McGee, whose eloquence had given him such in- fluence over his fellow-Irishmen and such a marked place in Canadian history, was murdered by Fenian instrumentality at the door of his own house — upon the very verge of his entry into the Government of the country he had served so well and just after a brilliant speech in the House urging conciliation and kindness to the Repealers of Nova Scotia. The fan- tastic but costly Fenian Raids of May, 1870, into Quebec, and of October, 1871, into Manitoba fol- lowed. The volunteers were again called out, an- other half million dollars was spent by the country, and the Fenians were driven back over the border after a brief struggle at Eccles Hill in the East and by the intervention of United States troops in the far West — after long delays and many warnings to the American Government. The Atlantic fisheries questi(3n came up, an important militia measure CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS. 427 was passed, the Washington Treaty was arranged. British troops to the number of 14,000 men were withdrawn from Canada in accordance with Man- chester School principles, and the Dominion found itself to all intents and purposes a free British nation upon the American continent. Constitution- al points between the Provinces arose from time to time. Ontario and Quebec had a prolonged struggle over the large debt which they had jointly incurred during the days of Legislative union and of which, under the Act of Confederation, the Do- minion Government was to assume part and the rest to be equally divided between the two Provinces. The division was left to arbitration, but eventually the differences became so great that Quebec with- drew its Arbitrator and its Legislature refused to be bound by the award. Stormy discussions fol- lowed at Ottawa and eventually the matter went to the Courts, and is not yet entirely settled. In 1871 a question arose in New Brunswick which affected the school system of the whole Dominion in a constitutional sense. A Provincial law was passed establishing free and non-sectarian schools. The Roman Catholics, however, wanted their own separate institutions, as in Ontario, where the chil- dren should receive definite instruction along Catho- lic lines and to which their taxation should be ap- plied, instead of to schools which they could not conscientiously use. They appealed to the Dominion Government for disallowance of the measure on the t. tf 428 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. ground of its violating certain provisions of the British North America Act. This was refused, and they then appealed to the Courts and finally to the Judicial Committee in London, where the Provin- cial law was declared constitutional. There was no further public trouble in the matter, although local discussions of details in tho operation of the law have since taken place. Then came the union of Prince Edward Islancl and British Columbia with Canada, the constitutional completion of Confedera- tion from the Atlantic to the Pacific and the pledge of a trans-continental railway. '*]^In 1872-3 arose one of those party issues which shake a country to the core, overthrow Governments and change the cur- rent of events. During the former year the Do- minion general elections had taken place, and one of the prominent questions was the proposed con- struction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The Government was sustained, but in the Session of tho ensuing year charges were made upon the floor of Parliament, by the Hon. L. S. Huntington, of the most serious character. Flagrant corruption was al- leged in connection with tihe sale of the charter for the projected road, and private letters and tele- grams stolen from the desk of Mr. (afterwards Sir) J. J. C. Abbott of Montreal were produced which proved that the Government, through Sir George Curtier, had undoubtedly obtained from Sir Hugh Allan, head of one of two rival Companies, large sums of money for election purposes. A Royal J^ CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS. 429 JP Commission was appointed and sat, but did nothing more than report the evidence. Stonny discussions in the press, in Parliament and on the platform fol- lowed, and a wave of public indignation swept the Government finally into a position where Sir John Macdonald felt compelled to resign. Mr. Alex- ander Mackenzie was sent for and formed a Liberal Cabinet with Dorion, Cartwright, Letellier de St. Just, Huntington, Blake and others as members. In the following year he appealed to the people and was given a large majority. Sir John Macdonald never attempted to deny tho receipt and expenditure of these moneys and no one ever accused him, even during one of the two hottest election contests in Canadian history, of having personally benefited. But the Cabinet of Canada was unfortunately the Carlton Club of the Conservative party, and the combination of these two functions really explains the whole situation. Money had to be obtained and used in the elections, but it should not have been obtained by members of the Government. And, although it was proved that Sir Hugh Allan had received nothing and had been promised nothing for his contributions; that he had always given generously to the party funds as be- came a man interested in particular phases of its canal and railway policy; and that in his pet am- bition of being President of the consolidated Com- pany which it was hoped would be formed out of the two rival concerns at Toronto and Montreal, he 430 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. had bee.-i disappointed through Sir John's own in- tervention ; yet it was very properly felt that the Goverament should not have accepted anything from him. An incident of the elections was tl "^turn to Parliament of Louis Kiel from the Ha iCed con- stituency of Provencher, in Manitoba. He man- aged to corae secretly to Ottawa and to secretly sign the roll; but, as a fugitive from justice with an in- dictment for murder against him, was at once ex- pelled the House and on being re-elected was again expelled. At the same time, however, the general amnesty extended to the rest of the rebels was now granted Kiel and his lieutenant Lepine — very fool- ishly as it turned out*-^ The commencement of the Canadian Pacific Railway followed under loud threats of secession from the Pacific "' es of the Dominion if the pledges of 1872 wer adhered to; and in 1878 Sir John Macdonald came back to power with a triumphant majority based upon his policy of protection to native industries and his own marvellous personal popularity. Between this date and his death in 1891 his continuously sus- j tained Government included members such as Thompson, Campbell, Tilley, Tupper, Foster, Caron, Bowell, Macpherson, White, Chapleau, Abbott, Langevin, Frank Smith and C. H. Tupper. In 1885 came another Nova Scotian issue in the shape of a demand for a larger annual subsidy. This was based on the ground that other ProviaceB had re- a>£S CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS. 431 ceived more favourable terms since 1868 than it had; that its financial condition was bad and its resources insufficient for the purposes of government and internal improvement; that the Province had not received sufficient compensation for local rail- ways which had been taken over by the Dominion; and that its Customs contributions to the Dominion treasury were greatly out of proportion to its re- ceipts from the Dominion. Upon the refusal of " better terras " the mutterings of the old Repeal movement were again heard in the land, the Legis- lature passed Resolutions in favour of instant seces- sion, and a Provincial Government favouring these views was actually returned by a large majority. It was, however, only a game of political bluff, and the constituencies of the Province continued to re- turn a large majority to Ottawa of Confederates and Cons'^rvatives. Meantime an International Commissic sitting at Halifax in 1877 had awarded Canada $1 00,000 for the American use of its fisheries dur. j; ten years, and later on (1888) a new Fisheries Treaty was negotiated by Mr. T. F. Bayard, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain and Sir Charles Tupper, but was thrown out in the United States Senate. The Saskatchewan rebellion of 1885 brought Riel once more to the front and, incidentally, brought good out of evil by developing the most marked eviden^.es of really national unity amongst Prov- inces F'i-retched in a thin streak of population across ' ' ' l,*^ 1 «' 'M' [ I ■ , 432 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. half a continent. It was largely the result of a clever agitator being permitted to play upon the fears and prejudices of an ignorant class in the conmunity. But these feelings had some substan- tial basis. Unlike the Half-breeds on the Red River in Manitoba, those living on the prairie banks of thf: Saskatchewan, some hundreds of miles away, had never been granted title-deeds or patents for their land; and in a season of wild speculative ex'jitement they naturally feared the possibility of seizure on the part of unscrupulous speculators. Pe- titions seemed to be useless, while all around them tho buffalo was failing and the Indians as well as tlio Half-breeds were finding a cordon of not im- probable starvation drawing around them. In the midst of their discontent Riel was called for as the nun who had forced the Government to give the Manitoba Half-breeds their patents and as an agi- tator whom that Government had been apparently afraid to punish for the murder of Scott. He came to their aid, and they naturally tliought his help ■\vi)uld be considerable. For a while he was moderate in advice, constitutional in agitation and reasonable in view. Then the wild free air of tho prairies seemed to get into his easily inflamed mind, memories of past power recurred to him, daily evi- dences of present influence over a scattered but numerous population of Half-breeds and Indiana came home to his senses, republican sentiments re- vived in his mind and were aided by spiritual CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS. 433 fanaticism and the force of his own eloquence. He cast fear and consequences to the winds, gathered the Half-breeds around him at Batoche, called on the Indians to join him, and rebellion was once more a fact on Canadian soil. Scattered through these great regions were some thirty-five thousand In- dians. The men of these tribes were mostly skilled hunters and would have made brave warriors. They were friends of the Half-breeds and wove associated with them by ties of kindred life and occupation and often of blood. If they joined the insurrection the whites of much of the vast country between Winni- peg and th(3 Kockies, and north to Hudson's Bay and the Arctic seas, were at their mercy. Kiel did his best but failed for the moment, excepting in the cases of Big Bear and Poundmaker — two chiefs with considerable followings. Great anxiety naturally prevailed at Ottawa. It was felt that if the Indians did not at once join Kiel they would certainly do so in the event of any suc- cess won over Canadian troops, and that the terrors of the historic scalping-knife and the horrors of fire and doath were hanging over the heads of the entire Noith-West settlers. Scarcity of food had made the tribes restless and, despite the excellent administration which as a whole has characterised the record of Canadian relations \vith the Indians, the danger was a serious one. Preparations were quietly made, but, in the month of March and like r flash of lightning, came the news that Kiel had 28 111 St 11 ! I.' 434. PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. taken advantage of a rumoured declaration of war by Russia against Great Britain, had assumed ab- solute authority at Batoche, given the conjmand of his troops to Gabriel Dumont — a skilful buffalo hunter and Half-breed — and that the latter had de- feated near Duck Lake a force of Mounted Police with a loss of twelve men killed and seven wounded. In a moment Canada and the other Provinces were in a blaze. The Government call Iv: troops was responded to with a rush, and in three days Cana- dian militiamen were on the march from Quebec, Montreal, Kingston and Toronto, while regiments had volunteered for service from Halifax 10 Winni- peg. General Middleton, in command of t' e Militia as a whole, was placed in charge of the expedition and proved a careful, skilful and fortunate leader. Three points, at considerable distances from one an- other, were menaced by the rapidly spreading re- bellion — Prince Albert by the Half-breeds at Batoche, Battleford by the Indians under Pound- maker and Fort Pitt by Big Bear's Indian Reserve. Near the latter point, at Frog Lake, a massacre of white people did take place, and shortly afterwards the Fort was itself captured. General Middleton arranged his forces into three columns after their junction with those of Winnipeg. They had already endured great privations and suf- ferings from cold in marching the long distance which had to be traversed north of Lake Superior — owing to the incomplete condition of the Canadian _j^ - JRY. n of war umed ab- 'inand of I buffalo ' had de- d Police vounded. ces were ops was s Cana- Quebec, gimenta Winni- Militia >edition leader, one ail- ing re- ?ds at Pound- eserve. icre of •wards three nipeg. i suf- tance ior — idian CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS. 435 Pacific Railway and the refusal of the United States Government to permit British armed troops to cross its territory by rail. The first column under Lieut.- General Bland Strange, and numbering five or six hundred, was sent against Big Bear and his fol- lowers. The second, numbering about the same and under the command of Lieut.-Colonel W. D. Otter, was despatched to the relief of Battleford, The main column, under his own command, consisted of nearly a thousand men and was to relieve Prince Albert and subjugate Batoche. Upon the whole this carefully matured plan was carried out. Mic'- dleton first met the rebels at Fish Creek on April 24th, where they fought so stubbornly and well that he was for a moment checked and induced to await reinforcements before advancing further in pursuit of the retiring enemy. Meanwhile Colonel Otter relieved Battleford, marched out to meet Pound- maker and plunged into a gully opening upon Cut Knife Hill. Here his troops were virtually sur- rounded by a wall of fire, and though they fought steadily and well had to eventually be withdrawn. A week later occurred the three days' struggle at Batoche between Middleton's forces and the Half- breeds intrenched behind rifle-pits in a region fur- rowed with ravines and guarded by trenches. At last, on the 12th of May, the slow process of distant shot and shell was abandoned, and, under orders from the General and by the more immediate command of Colonels Van Straubenzie, Williams and Grasett, a t4 4'li 436 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. charge was made which cleared the rifle-pits in a hurry and scattered the rebels like chaff. In a few days Kiel was a prisoner and the insurrection prac- tically at an end. General Strange, a little later, came up with Big Bear, but was repulsed from a strong position which the old savage held near Fort Pitt. Two days afterwards, however, a portion of the band was severely punished by Major Steele and the prisoners captured at Frog Lake were rescued. Early in July the Chief came in and surrendered, and on the 5th of the month the troops started for home, where they received such a welcome and were the cause of such really national demonstrations as Canada had never seen before. In the summer Kiel was tried for high treason at Begina, found guilty and executed in September, despite a tremendous political uproar which arose over the claim that he was a Frenchman and a Catholic and was being condemned for that reason; that the insurrection was justified by the neglect of the Governnent to meet the Half-breeds' com- plaints in time; and that he was insane and should therefore be merely shut up in safe-keeping for tho rest of his life. The Liberal press made a fierce campaign upon this general issue, Quebec was aroused as it had perhaps not been since the days of 1887 or 1849, and Honore Mercier rode into office in thfit Province upon a triumphant wave of sec- tarian and sectional bigotry. But the sentiment was only a momentary one. When tho Dominion elcc- If IS CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS. 437 tions came on in January, 1887, Messrs. Chapleau, Langevin and Caron, who had taken the'r political lives in their hands, refused to bow or bend to the storm of racial and religious feeling, and stood by Sir John Macdonald, were able to hold the Prov- ince for the Conservative party and for the consti- tutional exercise of the principle of Dominion authority in the teeth of Provincial prejudices and policy. Incidentally, and during the debate upon the question in the House of Commons, Mr. Edward Blake made one of his greatest speeches in an at- tack upon die Government, and Mr. (afterwards Sir) John S. D. Thompson delivered a reply which stands in history as one of the most logical and lucid ever given in a Canadian Parliament. It estab- lished permanently his reputation as a great debater. The result of the rebellion was, in the main, bene- ficial, and the local consequences of Government neglect, or insurrectionary discontent, or political strife, were transmuted by the influence of pride in the volunteers and the popular ardour of a military campaign into a strengthened national sentiment which spread like a wave from shore to shore of the Dominion. As a result of the coming into power in Quebec of M. Mercier with an extreme religious and racial party masquerading under the name of Liberal, or at times of " Le parti Rationale," certain important legislation connected with the historic Jesuits' Estates was enacted. At the time of the Cession i^ M m i 1 'M 'li i: 3; ! i ! 438 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. of Canada the Jesuits held large properties in and around Quebec ; and under the terms of the Treaty with France and the subsequent suppression of the Order by the Pope these came into the hands of the British Government. An allowance was granted, however, to every then living member of the Order in Canada. In 1814 the Papal suspension was re- moved and an agitation began for the restoration of the Estates, or for the indemnification of the Order itself — whose priests were returning once more to the land in which their earlier predecessors had so greatly suffered and so strenuously laboured. Finally, in 1888, M. Mercier took advantage of his large majority in the Quebec Legislature and of a strong politico-religious feeling amongst the people, to introduce and pass an Act granting $400,000 to the Order as complete compensation for these claims. At the same time he very shrewdly granted the Protestant Educational Committee of the Province $60,000 for the use of their institution <. A power- ful agitation v\^as at once commenced in Ontario, led by Mr. D'Alton McCarthy, an eminent lawyer and Conservative politician, for the disallowance of the measure at the hands of the Dominion Govern- ment. Discussion raged everywhere and consider- able religious feeling was aroused, especially by a peculiar use of the Pope's name in the Preamble to the measure. The matter was fiercely debated in Parliament, but Sir John Macdonald stood firmly upon the ground that, whether good or evil, the CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS. 439 in and Treaty of the of the ranted, Order legislation was constitutional and that he would not contravene Provincial rights by advising the use of the Crown's prerogo+ive of veto. As the general question of Provincial rights was one upon which the Liberals had hitherto taken a strong posi- tion — notably in cases connected with Provincial boundaries, Provincial and Dominion rights in streams and rivers, the sphere of control in tem- perance legislation and the power of appointing Queen's Counsel — they now supported the Conserva- tive Government and placed McCarthy and his sup- porters in a minority of 13 to 188. Out of the ac- companying agitation, however, grew the Equal Rights Association, based upon the old-time theory of George Brown that French-Canadianism and Roman Catholicism were acquiring too great a power in the country. It had its effect in stirring up feeling over the Manitoba School Question and in the Ontario elections of 1890, but had largely lost its force by the Dominion elections of the suc- ceeding year. An extreme result of this agitation was the ephemeral, but violent, Protestant Protec- tion Association — an importation in form and con- stitution from the United States. Another religious issue came to the front, partly in the same connection. The Province of Manitoba in 1890 had abolished its Catholic Separate Schools and established a system based largely upon that of New Brunswick. The Roman Catholic minority considered this measure unconstitutional and in coa- St ti Cftiiii I f 440 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. If :| I imln ill i!' I\ li* ' F ' traventioh of a distinct understanding at the time of entering Confederation, in 1871, that their Sepa- rate Schools would never be interfered with. They appealed to the Courts and thence to the Imperial Privy Council. That body decided the legislation to be within the powers of the Province. Then a second appeal on another point went through the Courts and to the Privy Council, and the result was a decision that a minority in any Province, which deemed itself oppressed, had a right to de- mand redress from the Governor-General-in-Counci], or in other words from the Dominion Government. This was at once done. Meanwhile, the brilliant intellect and keen discernment of Sir John Mac- 'lonald was no longer at the head of the Adminis- tration at Ottawa. After his death in 1891, Sir John J. C. Abbott had succeeded to the Premier- ship for a year and a half and been replaced in December, 1892, by Sir John S. D. Thompson. The latter's pathetic and memorable death at Wind- sor Castle, just after being sworn of the Imperial Privy Council by the Queen, made Sir Mackenzie Powell Prime Minister in December, 1894. By his Government it was now decided to resto t e the Sepa- rate Schools, and a Remedial Order to that effect was issued. The Premier of Manitoba refused to act upon the command, agitation for the guarding of Provincial rights commenced in Ontario, the pres- sure of the Prench-Canadians for the restoration of the schools of their compatriots in the West con- I- 1 ■: f i . ! ' i Ol I k *H » ^^^ mf <-■ ^^^ X . ■■ -t . .^ ^. .. . .1, — f-ni- o u s X u < o » m X CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS. 441 < J- Q < o u o w tinned, trouble in the Ministry developed, and finally Sir M. Bowell resigned and in May, 1890, was succeeded by Sir Charles Tupper. The re- organised Government introduced a Bill into Par- liament along the lines of the Remedial Order, but could not get it through the House, a general elec- tion followed in June, the veteran of a thousand Tory battles was beaten, and Sir Wilfrid Laurier came into power with the Liberals, for tiie first time since 1878 and upon a policy of conciliation rather than coercion. He eventually succeeded in compro- mising matters with the Liberal Premier of Mani- toba, and thus settled a question which had seriously menaced the friendly and constitutional harmony of the Provinces in relation to one another. Meantime, and in the various Provinces, political and constitutional matters had followed along the lines set by Dominion precedent ; though there was keen jealousy in the preservation of every right which might be deemed theirs under the constitu- tion. In Ontario, Sandfield Macdonald was replac^^d as Premier by a Liberal Government in December, 1871, with Edward Blake as Premier. A year later Mr. Blake resigned to go into Dominion politics and was succeeded by Oliver Mowat, who had left the Bench for the Premiership, and now continued to hold that position through all the mutations of party strife for twenty-four years. In 1896 Sir O. Mowat accepted the Lieutenant-Governorship of the Province and was replaced by Mr. Arthur S. Hardy, 1 1» t m i'fi ?iiii m- 4jf v*\ r^il"; ^)i^ 442 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THS CENTURY. who in 1899 was succeeded by Mr. George W. Ross. The leaders of the Conservative Opposition during this long period were Mr. (afterwards Chief Justice Sii') M., C. Cameron and Mr. (afterwards Chief Justice Sir) W. R. Meredith. Then came for a short time Mr. G. F. Marter and the present leader Mr. J. P. Whitney. In Quebec the Chauveau Min- istry was succec'i d, in 1873, by that of the Hon. G. Ouimet. Then came C. B. de Boucherville, H. J. Joly de Lotbiniere, J. A. Chapleau, J. A. Mous- seau, J. J. Ross and L. O. Taillon. With the ex- ception of M. Joly de Lotbiniere, who was Premier for a year, by grace of the T iputenant-Governor, these were all reorganisations of an existing Con- servative Cabinet. But on January 27, 1887, the lion. Ilonore Mercier — afterwards created a Count of the Holy Roman Empire by the Pope — came into office and held power until December, 1891, when C. B. de Boucherville, L. O. Taillon and E. J. Flynn were the successive heads of another Conservative Ministry. In 1897 the Hon. F. G. Marchand car- ried the Province for the Liberal party and came into power. Politics in the Maritime Legislatures were not very clearly defined after Confederation. The Con- servatives, as a rule, carried the Provinces in Do- minion elections, while the Liberals, who had ob- tained all the rights they desired, were reasonably content — aside from the secession agi*^^' " i^^ N'ova Scotia. In that Province, Hi > hwd, s RY. W. Ross, during Justice Chief for a t leader au Min- le Hon. 'ille, II. • Mous- the ex- J*remier )vernor, ig Con- 87, the Count tne into ^hen C. Flynn rvative id car- l came re not B Con- n Do- id ob- )nably N'ova bard, CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS. 443 William Annand, P. C. Hill, S. H. Holmes, J. S. D. Thompson and W. T. Pipes were alternately Premiers, until 1884, when the Hon. W. S. Fielding came into power and held the reins as a Liberal, with a coalition Cabinet, until he entered the Do- minion Ministry in 1896 and was replaced at Hali- fax by the Hon. G. H. Murray. In New Bruns- wick, Mr. Wetmore was succeeded by G. E. King, J. J. Fraser, D. L, Ilanungton and A. G. Blair. From 1833 until 189G, wlien ho entered the Lauricr Ministry, the last-named politician remained at the head of a sort of eoalition — though himself a Lib- eral and, like Mr. Fielding in Nova Scotia, an ally of the other Provincial Liberal Governments. He was succeeded, first by James Mitchell and then by the Hon. H. E. Emmerson. In Prince Edward Is- land, L. C. Owen, L. II. Davies, \V. W. Sullivan, Frederick Peters, A. B. Warburton and Donald Far- quharson succeeded one another as Prime Minister. Manitoba was governed from the days of Union, in 1870, by Alfred Boyd, M. A. Girard, IL J. H. Clarke, R. A. Davies and D. II. Harrison. The two chief Premiers and politicians of the Prairie Province were, however, John Norquay (1878-87), a big, clever, jovial, honest Half-breed, and Thomas Greenway, from 1888 to 1900 when he was defeated, and replaced by the Hon. Hugh John Macdonald — son of the great Dominion Premier. In con- nection with this Province an important consti- tutional point arose in 1887 over the attempted "k hr> f ! \ 444 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. ; t !I 11 ■ T construction of the Red River Railway — a line running south from Winnipeg and contravening the Dominion arrangements made with the Canadian Pacific Railway Company in 1880 and accepted by Parliament. At the point of crossing the C.P.R. difficulties occurred which almost ended in conflict between the Provincial and Dominion authorities; while Manitoba rang with fierce denunciation of what was termed the " Monopoly Clause " in the Charter and the determination of the Dominion Government to enforce it. Deputation after deputa*- tion went to Ottawa and protest after protest came from the Provincial Legislature until, in 1888, a compromise was effected and the clauses in dispute waived by the C.P.R. Company in return for a fifty-year Dominion guarantee of interest on a $15,- 000,000 issue of 3^ per cent, bonds, secured upon the Company's imsold lands — about 15,000,000 acres. >^ British Columbia, meanwhile, was ruled, as Prime Minister and in succession, by J. F. McCreight, Amor de Cosmos, A. C. Elliot, G. A. Walkem, R. Beaven, William Smythe, A. E. B. Davies, John Robson — a pioneer leicder and politician who per- haps made the greatest impression upon its history — Theodore Davie, J. II. Turner and C. A. Scmlin. In the North-West Territories, and through various phases and forms of constitutional government, Mr. F. W. G. Ilaultain has, since 1887, been the chief figure in politics and administration. In municipal matters marked progress took place 10 RY. —a line ning the Canadian ?pted bj C.P.R. conflict lorities ; tion of in the miinion deputa- 5t came 888, a lispiite for a a $15,- )on the acres. Prime I'eight, m, R. John ) per- istory smlin. irioug , Mr. chief place CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS. 445 > during this period. Prior to the Union of 1841 there had been practicallv no municipal institutions in Lowcir Canada, while, in Upper Canada, the Pro- vincial Legislature had been burdened with an in- finite amount of detail ^vork in connection with vil- lages, towns and counties. After that date many of these matters W3re delegated to local bodies of p, siill somewhat crude composition, and in Lower Cai.ada efforts were made to e/olve a system which would modify that French-Canadian ignorance of munici])al institutions which had in earlier days so disastrously extended to other constitutional prin- ciples tiud conditions. But it was not until after Confederation that a system was fully established in all the Provinces by which each county, city, town, township, illage or parish controlled its own public improvements, public health, morals and, in some measure, public taxation. With the exception of Prince Edward Island, however, a complete and reasonably efficient municipal code is now in opera- tion in all the Provinces of the Dominion. Such is the briefest possible record of Canadian constitutional matters since Confederation. There has betri friction between the Provinces at times; there have been inevitable troubles of a racial, re- ligious or educational charactin*; there have been curious developments of a political kind. But the progress has been steady, and, despite party contro- versy and party accusations, sectarianism and sec- tionalism have markedly decreased. Federal ties i- ' ;!i il ll. !i Alii ll 446 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. H have been developed into national ones and mutual interests have so increased that even the advocacy of so-called Provincial rights has lost its old-time charm. Foreign intrigues have had a vital influence in this connection, but they too have lost their force, owing mainly to the vigour and sincerity of Sir John Macdonald's life-ideal of a great British Dominion, and latterly to the wisdom of Sir Wilfrid Lanrier in upholding the same principle and carrying his party along similar lines of Imperial and constitu- tional development. m i'u IS m A mm ; ;^ 11 TRANSPORTATION AND TARIFFS. 447 CHAPTER XVII. PEOGEESS IN TEANSPORTATION AND TAEIFFS. J ~ 1 1 Railways and tariffs have been so intermixed with the politics and progress of Canada during the last half of the nineteenth century that it is almost impossible to dissever them. They take, in fact, the place of earlier constitutional struggles and seem to permeate every project of trade, every material interest of each and every Province, and all the mat- ters affecting the daily life and movement and busi- ness of the people. At the end of the century the immense distances of British N'orth America have been covered by nearly seventeen thousand miles of railway, where only twenty-two hundred existed in 1868— with working expenses of $35,000,000 and earnings of $52,000,000 in 1897, as compared with earnings of $12,000,000 and corresponding expenses in the year after Confederation. When the Provinces began their Federal career the Grand Trunk Railway had been built, had run its course of bankruptcy, and was on the slow up- grade toward the period when it would stretch out to Chicago in the United States and amalgamate i if rr-J ~t I -| 448 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. J. » i ik liiH with its own line half the small railways of Ontario. V The Intercolonial Railway was still the subject of a discussion which had lasted from 1835 onwards, and had included various tentative surveys and numerous negotiations in London and at the Pro- vincial capitals. But its completion was now a part of the pact of Federation, and the methods and cost of operating had become the chief elements of discussion. The final surveys through Xew Brv s- wick and Nova Scotia were made by Mr. (now Sir) Sandford Fleming, the exact route was decided upon, questions of construction were fought over and set- tled, and the work commenced and carried on luitil the 1st of July, 1870, when the whole line was opened to traffic at a total cost to the Dominion of $22,488,000. The mileage of the system was, in 1895, 1,186 miles and the through distance from Halifax to Quebec was GT5 miles. By legislation and arrangements made in 1S9S the direct connec- tion of the line has been carried on to Montreal. Great Britain Avas originally interested in this Rail- way as a means for transporting troops, and she be- came more directly connected with it by a subse quent guarantee of loans amounting to £3,000,000 for its construction — partly in return for the waiving by Canada of her Fenian Raid claims against the United StatesN<(lt must also be said that had it not been for the reckless surrender of territory by the Imperial Government under the Ashluirton Treaty the distance to cover between Montreal . and Ilali- it : ■!l:l ^TURY. 1 of Ontario. 3 subject of 35 onwards, iirvejs and at the Pro- ^vas now a iiethods and elements of ^ew Brr s- (now Sir) sided upon, er and set- ?d on raiiil > line was )minion of n was, in ance from ct tl ul gislation connec- Montreal. lis Rail- she be- a subse ,000,000 e waiving ■ainst the lad it not by the Treaty lid Ilali- THE HON. SIR SAMUEL LEONARD TILLUV. M IN ! 1 ■:■ i ;: THE HON. SIR RICHARD J. CARXWRIGHT, G.C.M.G TRANSPORTATION AND TARIFFS. 449 fax would have been less by two hundred miles, ten million dollars of expenditure would have been saved, and a winter port on the Atlantic coast secured to the Dominion.* y Following the construction of this line and the binding together of Quebec and the Atlantic Prov- inces came the entry of British Columbia into the Confederation and the pledge to connect Ontario by rail with the distant shores of the Pacific. It was not a new project, but was none the less a daring one in its inception, its execution and its comple- tion. The idea in 18 34 \vas a favourite one with Thomas Dalton, Editor of the Toronto Patriot; Sir Richard Bonnycastle, in 1846, had written of an iron belt from the Atlantic to the Pacific; Sir John Ilarvey in the succeeding year, and with that states- manship which seems to have ever characterised his polit'y and ideas, spoke to the Legislature in Nova Scotia of " a great chain of communication which may be destined at no remote period to connect the Atlantic with the Pacific Ocean ; " Robert Christie in his History of Lower Canada, Major Carmichael Smyth, R.E., Lieutenant, Synge, R.E., and a few others wrote of it in 1848-9; Joseph Ilowe de- clared at ILilifax on July 15th, that. " Many in this room will live to hear the whistlu of the steam engine in the passes of the Rooky Mountains ; " Alan Macdonell of Toronto, in the same year, tried to or- * Sir Sandford Fleming, in History of the Intercolonial Railway. 29 iWi li li^^i it "U :;■ : )' IK' m i \m i \\- \ 450 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. I li' ganise a Company for the construction of a Pacific Railway. Others who favoured or advocated the project in succeeding years were the Hon. John Young of Montreal and Chief Justice Draper of Upper Canada, Lord Bury and Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Lord John Russell and Mr. Roebuck in the Imperial Parliament, Sir S. Cunard, Lord Car- narvon, Henry Yule Hind and Sir Sandford Flem- ing (1862). But it was in the main a theoretical dream, a ship of thought passing in the night, or a striking perora- tion for some patriotic speech until, in 1870, the Government of Sir John Macdonald agreed to its construction as the only means of bringing British Columbia into Confederation and the only method of making that union a practical and serviceable one. From this time until 1880 the question was a centre of continually changing storm-clouds of polit- ical struggle, and comparatively small practical progress was made. Mr. Sandford Fleming was appointed Engineer-in-Chief in 1871, and published two volumes of Surveys which showed somewhat more clearly than had been generally understood the tremendous difficulties of the undertaking. Then came the battle of the Companies, headed respectively by Sir Hugh Allan, J. J. C. Abbott and Donald A. Smith in Montreal, and by Mr. (after- wards Sir) D. L. Macpherson, Frank Smith and others in Toronto. The Pacific Scandal followed, the Government of Mr. Mackenzie was formed, and MM* TURY. f a Pacific 'ocated the EEon. John Draper of rd Bulwer uck in the Lord Car- 'ord Flem- im, a ship ng perora- 1870, the ^ed to its g British Y method ^rviceable ion was a of polit- practical ting was )ublished omewhat derstood irtaking. headed )ott and (after- ith and )Ilowed, ed, and TRANSPORTATION AND TARIFFS. 451 the Liberal policy of constructing sections of the road so as to connect with and utilise various bodies of water was proceeded with. Finally, Sir J. Mac- donald came back to power, and, in 1880, with Sir Charles Tupper as Minister of Hallways, tlie con- tract for the construction of the Canadian Pacific was duly signed, and in 1881 was approved by Par- liament. The new Company was strong in repu- tation and ability and, as it afterwards proved, in determination and vigour. George Stephen (after- wards Lord Mount-Stephen), Donald A. Smith (afterwards Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal), P. B. Angus, James J. Llill and Duncan Mclntyro were the chief promoters. Sir William C. Van Ilorne came from the United States in 1881 and from that time, either as General Manager or Presi- dent, directed the destinies of the road until the end of the century. The Company undertook to build and operate the line for a consideration of $25,000,- 000 and 25,000,000 acres of selected land along its route, together with the right of way through public lands and the necessary ground for stations, docks, wharves, etc. Steel rails, telegraph wire and other dutiable articles were to be admitted free for its first construction. Parts of the road then built were to be handed over by the Government and no line running south in competition was to be per- mitted. Great difficulties were encountered from the first. Construction on the north shore of Lake Superior it- .( :■ ?.? 452 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. was a veritable problem in engineering science, and piercing the Rockies and Selkirks was something which has seemed to the traveller of late years a new wonder of the world. Criticism in financial circles, bitter deprecation in political circles, lack of faith in the public itself, met the Company at every turn. The chief promoters and partners in the enterprise staked not only their reputations but their fortunes on it, and yet, more than once, abso- lute and complete failure stared them in the face. Once the Dominion Government, after grave hesi- tation and under serious protest from members of its own party as well as the Opposition, advanced $35,- 000,000 and practically saved the enterprise and its promoters from ruin. The Avholc amount was paid back in a few years. By the terms of the contract the Railway was to be completed in 1890. As a matter of fact the last spikn on the great iron road was driven by Sir Donald A. Smith on November 7th, 1885. It was the successful end of perhaps the greatest financial and engineering enterprise of the nineteenth century. The Government of Canada were involved, for good or ill, in the result, the for- tunes of the leading men of Montreal were staked upon it, the welfare of the Bank of Montreal through its ]\ranager, Mr. R. B. Angus, was concerned in it, the fate of the Conservative party depended upon the issue, while the unity of the western and eastern Provinces hung upon its completion. Great for- tunes ultimately came to the promoters and peerages RY. TRANSPORTATION AND TARIFFS. 453 nee, and nnething years a financial cs, lack pany at tners in ions but 3e, abso- he face, ve hesi- rs of its ed $35,- and its 'as paid :iontract As a on road >vember aps the of the Canada he for- staked h rough 1 in it, [ upon Jastern at for- eragea^:*^ land honours were showered upon them ; but onlj the most carping of critics, or minds unable to compre- hend the tremendous strain, of such a struggle, could object to their rewards. To the country the importance of this event can hardly be over-estimated. Towns and villages grew up in a night and remained as the centre of popu- lous agricultural, lumbering or mining regions. Branch lines were sent out in every direction and tha great Xorth-West opened up to settlement and cul- tivation. Port Arthur, Fort William, Kut Port- age, Calgary, Vancouver, grew from nothing into towns, and in the last-named case to an important city and a possible rival of San Francisco. Im- mense elevators were built at central points by the Company for the holding of grain, large steamers were placed on the Great Lakes, telegraph lines were constructed over mountain and prairie, and, in 1892-3, lines of steamships under the control of the Company commenced to run betv.'een Vancouver and China and Japan and from the same Pacific port to Honolulu and Australasia. It was the beginning of a new era of progress, the completion of Cana- dian unity in a material sense, the injection of a new commercial, financial and national life into the veins of the Dominion^^A>MeanAvhile, small railways or branch lines had been constructed in every direc- tion as the country was slowly but surely opening up through its sparsely populated area of three mil- lion square miles. By absorption of minor roads ' -J ill -I' 464 PROQRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. and by general construction the Grand Trunk Rail- way System, in 1897, was possessed of 3,1G1 miles of rail, receipts amounting to $10,977,000, expenses of $1], 303,000, a passenger traffic of $4,850,000 and a freight traffic of $11,107,000. At the same time and in the same way the Canadian Pacific Railway had 0,283 miles of rail, $20,822,000 of receipts, $12,198,000 of expenses, $4,941,000 of passenger traffic and $13,030,000 of freight traffic* Other lines, including the. Government-owned and managed Intercolonial of 1,300 miles, possessed over seven thousand miles of rail and receipts amounting to fifteen millions of dollars. The progress of transportation interests by soa and on the lakes of Canada was also very marked duiing this period. Various canals were built, or deepened, in connection with the great waterway stretching from the sea to the head of Lake Su- perior. The Lachine was improved at a cost of six and a half million dollars, the Beauharnois was rc- l^laced by the Soulanges at a cost of four millions, the Welland was deepened and enlarged by an ex- penditure of over sixteen millions, the Carillon and Grenville were improved at an expense of three mil- lions, and upon the Cornwall, Murray and St. Ann's, respectively, over a million dollars was spent. t The work upon these artificial aids to the continental * Government Year Book for 1897. \ Official Report by G. F. Baillarge, Deputy Minister of Public Works, Ottawa, 1889. RY. nk Rail- 51 miles expenses 856,000 le same Pacific 000 of 000 of traffic* ed and )ssessod •eceipts V sea narked lilt, OP terwaj ce Su- of six 'as re- llions, m ex- 1 and i mil- ^nn's, The ental sr of TRANSPORTATION AND TARIFFS. 456 waterway cost Canada between the time of Con- federation and the year 1889 the sum total of $33,960,783. Adding the $21,124,928 spent prior to 1867 and the sums expended on repairs, renewals and maintenance during the whole period, the gen- eral cost of Canadian transportation improvements in this connection may be placed at $75,000,000 by the end of the century. The latest work constructed has been the Sault Ste. Marie Canal which con- nects Lake Superior and Lake Huron over Canadian soil ; while in July, 1897, Parliament authorised a further expenditure of four and a half millions for the uniform deepening of the St. Lawrence Canals so as to permit a vessel of 14 feet draught to load at Fort William and pass through to Montreal — four- teen hundred miles — without breaking bulk. On June 28th, 1894, Lord Aberdeen as Governor- General of Canada unveiled a memorial tablet in the Parliament Buildings at Ottawa in honour of the Koyal William which, in 1833, was the first vessel to cross the Atlantic by steam-power. Constructed in Canada and owned by Canadians, it was the pioneer of those mighty fleets of ocean steamers which now cover the seas of the world. The vessels connected with these great fleets and the carrying trade of Can- ada by sea, between 1869 and 1896, had a total ton- nage of 80,000,000 in British ships, 29,000,000 in Canadian and 58,000,000 in Foreign ships. In. 1896 the British vessels arriving at Canadian ports numbered 1,684, with a tonnage of 2,350,338; the I n i } 1 H i if i ' fiifi f n 11 '■ hi 456 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. 1 f ^(illfli: Canadian vessels, 6,810, with a tonnage of 1,067,- 954; and the Foreign vessels, 5,291, with a tonnage of 5,895,360. According to registered tonnage Can- ada ranked in this year after the United Kingdom, the United States, the German Empire, France and the Netherlands — the two latter standing very little higher in tonnage than the Dominion. Meanwhile, the carrying trade on the Great Lakes had increased enormously until the ships going through the Ameri- can Sault Ste. Marie Canal possessed a tonnage greater than those carrying the trade of the East and the West through the Suez Canal. In 1868 the vessels arriving and departing from Canadian ports on inlana waters had numbered forty thousand — one-third being American. In 1896 they numbered thirty-five thousand, of which one-half belonged to the United States. So far as Canada is concerned tliese figures do not, therefore, show progress in the right direction ; but the stiingency of United States regulations, the exclusion from American canals de- spite the Arrerican use upon equal terms of those be- longing to Canada, and the enormous growth of American lake-shore populations a?" compared wi':h ^b3 smaller Canadian increase, explain the situation. 'Jhe tons of fi-eight carried respectively, however, were in 1896 nearly equal in number — slightly over a million. The coasting trade of the Provinces — inland and seaboard — nearly trebled between 1876 and 1896, i.nd rose from 10,300,000 tons in the first-named RY. 3,067,- tonnage ige Can- ii^gdom, lice and ■V little nwhilo, icreased Amori- t^onnago ast and ^68 the II ports sand — inbered 8'ed to icerned in tlie States als de- 3se be- th of wi^^h ation. /over, over and 896, imed -J « K o S! O K O ',^ c. z 5 G p n r< r b CO > D S3 o z n p I 'i I i p wa''' . • p f?-' ' I i ll L ' \ I ■ 1, 1 f 1 1 * i 1 1 THE HON. SIR FRANK SMITH If i TRANSPORTATION AND TARIFFS. 457 year to 27,431,000 tons at the latter date. Upon all the lakes and shores of Canada, boats, steamers and ships of varied kinds are now plying, and in place of the swift and silent canoe propelled by savages and speeding over the bosom of secret waters at the beginning of the century, there is now heard the shrill whistle of the steamer — not alone in the Great Lakes but on the Lake of the Woods, on Lake Manitoba and Lake Winnipeg, in the beautiful regions of Muskoka in Kv hern Ontario, on the rivers of British Columbia and on all the seacoasts of half a continent from the Yukon to the St, Law- rence. The Canadian Pacific line of steamers on Lake Huron and Lake Super^'or and the lines run- ning between Vancouver and Sydney, or Vancou- ver and Hong Kong, are creditable evidences of Canadian enterprise. Sir William Van Home was a pioneer in this resj^ect, as Sir Hugh Allan, Sir Samuel Cunard and the Hon. L. A. Senecal were in the St. Lawrence or upon the Atlantic. Down the great Canadian river from Montreal there now streams an ever-increasing volume of traffic which the Allan and Dominion Lines carry to Livei'pool with the assistance, from Halifax or St. John, of the Beaver and Furness and other lines of stf^am- ships. Local lines also now run from the Mari- time Provinces to Newfoundland, Jamaica, Ber- muda, the V^ Indies and Cuba. Shipbuilding has not grown greatly in the years approaching the end of the century. lis flo"risli- t i I r r I i ijHHI' I 458 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. ing days — in the time when British tariff prefer- ences for timber existed and there was a steady Brit- ish demand for wooden ships — have passed away, and it is probable that the record of 3,873 ships, with a tonnage of 1,285,000, built a', Quebec be- tween 1787 and 1875, vrill never be repeated. In- deed the number decreased for all Cana:la from 490 in 1874 to 227 in 1896. Great possibilities and resources exist, however, in connection with the iron and steel industry, and there is no reason why, in time, the seaports of Quebec and I^ova Scotia should not again resound with the ring of a new and greater form of shipbuilding' and mark the revival in the beginning of the twentieth century of a prominent occupation in the pioneer days of British America at the opening of the nineteenth century. Intimately connected with the transportation de- velopment which had thus bound together Provinces separated by great forests, lakes or mountains has been the tariff history, discussion and policies aris- ing out of these peculiar geographicul conditions. Questions of protection and free trade have not been and could not be considered upon the same plan as they are in other countries. The United States has alvays possessed a home market and a local de- mand of ever-increasing proportions. Great Brit- ain has had the advantages of immense capital and, in earlier days, of superior skill as well as of con- sistent protection to its industries. Australia has no great neighbouring competitor and rival such a3 fTURY. iriff prefer- 3teady Brit- issed away, ,873 ships, Quebec be- eated. In- i from 490 ilities and t!i the iron n why, in )tia should nd greater ^'al in the prominent I America tation de- Provinces tains has cies aris- en dit ions, not been ' plan as 1 States local de- at Brit- tal and, of con- ilia has such as TRANSPORTATION AND TARIFFS. 459 •al encourage- oe, as an out- the United States. At first, of course, the strug- gling and isolated British American Colonics had the advantage of the Imperial preferential tariff — which did as much for their timber trade as it did for West Indian sugar. But in the middle of tho century came its abrogation and the creation of con- ditions which soon developed into a complete local control of the tariff and attempts to make better trade arrangements AvitL the American Republic. Incidentally^ protection to native industries became a factor in polities and Government. Mr. J. W. Johnston, the Tory leader in IN^ova Scotia, urged in 3847 the adoption of "a high pr ment to tho industries" of his P come of the right given to ti. Colonies in the previous year to regulate their own tariffs. At the same time the Canadian Legislature passed an Ad- dress to the Imperial Go\'ernment asking it to nego- tiate a treaty of reciprocity with the United States, and, during the years immediately following, placed the Republic, by legislation, upon a fiscal equality with the Empire. In 1858 a large meeting was held in Toronto under tho initiative of the Hon. Isaac Buchanan and an Association for the promotion of protection formed. In the same year the Gait Tariff was framed despite protests from the Colonial Sec- retary and from sundry British manufacturing centres. Like the protests of Canadian public meet- ings, of private individuals and of the Governor- General himself (Earl Cathcart) against the abro- ;' ^nP-iai"' "■ i. f I i 1 l|lli^ i SHI i 460 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. gation of the preferential tariff bj England, they were disregarded. The Reciprocity Treaty of 1854 was abrogated in 1^66 and Confederation followed. The Canadian tariff for the ensuing decade averaged seventeen per cent., and, during part of that period, owing to the situation in the United States which immediately succeeded the Civil War, it proved a sufficient pro- tection to local industries. But by 1875 American industries had completely recovered from the shock of war, and were able to pour their surplus goods into the Canadian Provinces at prices that defied the competition of concerns having only a small capital and a confined market. The result was a general demand for further and higher duties, the return to power of Sir John Macdonald, the crea- tion of the " ^N^ational Policy of Protection " in the Session of 1879, and the maintenance, since that date and despite a change of Government in 1896, of a tariff averaging thirty per cent, in its protec- tion of Canadian industries and products. What- ever may be the technical or theoretical qualities of Protection there can be little doubt, apart from partisan discussion, of the value of this policy to the Canadian Provinces. Like the railwavs it has proved a great solvent of the difficulties of space, a most usef u I instrument in the creation of trade inter- change amongst isolated communities, a factor in the evolution of national sentiment. Instead of allowing to grow up — or trying to promote as did INTURY. TRANSPORTATION AND TARIFFS. 461 ngland, they abrogated in lie Canadian eventeen per owing to the immediately ^iffieient pro- 's American m the shock irplus goods that defied ily a small ssiilt was a duties, the J, the crea- on" in the since that It in 1896, its protec- !ts. What- pialities of part from policy to ays it has )f space, a rade inter- factor in nstead of ote as did the Commercial Union agitation of a decade later — trade between Nova Scotia and the State of Maine, Ontario and New York, Quebec and Vermont, Mani- toba and Minnesota, or British Columbia and Wash- ington, it aimed to encourage the interchange of their own products between the various Provinces, over their own r ways and to the general advan- tage of their own people. The policy seems to have been beneficial to internal trade without injuring external commerce. During the five years ending in 1897 the total of exports and imports was in round numbers two hundred millions greater than it had been in the five years ending in 1885 ; while the estimated trade between the Provinces in 1896 was $116,000,000 as against a million dollars in 1861 * and a comparatively amall iiilerchange in 1879. From 1876 to 1896 the tariff, or questions con- nected with it, constituted the central topic of Cana- dian controversy, although the conception and con- struction of the Canadian Pacific Railway camo close upon it in importance and public interest be- tween the years 1872 and 1885. The fiscal issue in the Dominion involved not only the time-honoured problem of protecting home industries without devel- oping monopolies, of promoting industrial interests without injuring agriculture, of helping the producer without hurting the consumer, but it included the * Report of Hon. W. P. Rowland, Sessional Papers of Canada, vol. 5, 1862. ! 11 i . ;'i ' iJ I :] ii ill ,1 1 1 II: 462 PkOGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. mi ' constant discussion of trade relations with Great Brit- ain and the United States and the relative value of the two markets to the Canadian masses. Upon the whole, monopoly has not been encouraged to any serious extent in Canada by the tariff, and the few millionaires whom the country has produced owe their money more to mines and distilleries and rail- ways than to fiscal arrangements. Perhaps the chief exception is the agricultural implement industry with its amalgamation of small concerns in one large Company and its immense and concentrated busi- ness. It is safe to say also that no country in the world has such well-distributed wealth and so little real poverty. The Canadian tariff, as it has been under Conservative rule and is now under a Liberal Administration, has been maintained with very fair success as a buffer against the tremendous external competition of both English and American manu- facturers, and that of American farm products — though not at a height sufficient to make serious monopoly possible. Its average, in fact, is about one-half the United States rate. In 1888, Sir Charles Tupper, as Minister of Finance, endeav- our(?d to promote ir^n and steel manufacture in Can- ada by a re-arrangement of the duties. But whether the tariff and the bonuses were insufficient, or the market too small, or investors too cautious, or per- haps for all three reasons, the effort did not succeed except in a most tentative way. In other direc- tions the tariff has been a partial failure. Ontario ^URY. TRANSPORTATION AND TARi'FFS. 468 Great Brit- e value of Upon the ed to any id the few need owe 5 and rail- 3 the chief industr/ one large ated busi- try in the d so little has been a Liberal very fair 3 external an mami- roducts — e serious is about 888, Sir , endeav- e in Cau- ; whether t, or the , or per- t succeed 3r direc- Ontario still gets the bulk of its coal from Pennsylvania in- stead of from Nova Scotia; and Manitoba grumbles about the price of eastern manufactures as it does about the traffic rates charged by the Canadian Pacific. But these have never been very serious complaints, or difficulties, and a majority of the people have continued, in five general elections, to approve the main principle. The two parties during this period divided very summarily upon the issue of free trade and protec- tion. Mr. Mackenzie refused to dally with the question in the closing days of his regime, although he might by doing so have saved the political situa- tion, lie had lived a free-trader and ho would die as one — in a party sense. It may be thought that the question of principle was not greatly affected as between an average of seventeen per cent, and one of thirty per cent. ; but, as already intimated, it cer- tainly did constitute the difference between un- limited American competition and a restricted com- petition. Mr. Mackenzie and Sir Richard Cart- wright were defeated, and from the day, in 1879, when Sir Leonard Tilley announced and carried as Finance Minister his new protective tariff, the Lib- eral leaders fought vigorously and steadily against the whole system and policy. Sir E. Cartwright defied his opponent of that time, as he did Mr. George E. Foster in later days, upon countless plat- forms, and everywhere took the ground that free trade in principle is good for the consumer, good i'l ■? . ■}'■ ! i t.^5?' 464 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. for the farmer, good for every one except the " spoon- fed " manufacturer ; though he accepted the condi- tion that a tariff for revenue in a new and young country is necessary. But it should not be protec- tive. Year followed year and election followed election; Mr. Edward Blake succeeded Mr. Mac- kenzie as leader and Mr. Wilfrid Laurier succeeded him; until by 1888 the Liberal Opposition was in a state of natural disappointment and individual pessimism sufficient to make almost any new and ag- gressive policy acceptable. This was found in the agitation for closer trade relations with the United States, called variously Unrestricted Reciprocity, Unrestricted Free Trade, and Commercial Union. It was not a difficult issue to raise in a country which had so greatly benefited by the old-time Reciprocity Treaty of 185-1-06, Limited in its application to natural products as that arrangement had been, the glamour of jiriccs created by days of war, in a time of reciprocity, still rested in the memories and hearts of many prosperous and many poverty-stricken farmers. Apart from that memorable Treaty and the efforts to renew it which had been made in 1866 by Sir A. T. Gait, Hon. W. P. Howland, Hon. W. A. Henry and Hon. A. J. Smith; in 1869 by Sir John Rose and Sir E. Thornton; in 1871 by Sir John Mac- donald at the Washington High Commission Con- ference; in 1874 by the Hon. George Brown and Sir E. Thornton; in 1887 by Sir Charles Tupper and Ml "31 %)\ .■nl ■f-i 711 IliiiilM i i URY. (C e •• spoon- ihe condi- nd 3'oung be protec- fol lowed Mr. Mac- Jucceedod n was in iidividual V and ag- ser trade ^'ariously e Trade, ;ult issue benefited 854-GG. nets as 1 ])rices iprocity, ■ many ariners. efforts by Sir Henry m Hose n ]\[ac- n Con- md Sir >cr and as > d X « X f < > h en -i r. \ ! ^ ^ (V- IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) i.O I.I ■^ IIIIIM ^50 2.5 .,» iiillM 2.2 !!M u i!i2 2.0 ■Ji — i- .. i.8 1.25 1 1.4 1.6 ^ 6" — ► p /i <^ /# A 'c*l "^^^ J»'> v' O 7 --I' Photographic Sciences Corporation m V ^^ V <> ^^ 23 WEST MAIN STRCET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 '<^ «?x &:»- f/j TRANSPORTATION AND TARIFFS. 465 ' ifii Mr. Chamberlain; there had been more than one attempt to advocate and promote a free trade which should be wider in its scope than the mere inter- change of natural products. Mr. Ira Gould had urged before the Montreal Board of Trade in 1852 a measure of free trade with the States which sh"rH include manufactures and should not trouble abo; * results so far as England was concerned. His motion had been lost by fifteen to six. A Select Committee of the Canadian Legislature composed of men of all parties — Messrs. Hamilton Merritt, William Cayley, John Rose, A. A. Dorion, Isaac Buchanan, Malcolm Cameron and W. P. Howland ■ — had, in 1858, recommended that " the principle of reciprocity be extended to manufactures ... in the same manner as to the productions of the soil." Elaborate Reports by United States officials — such as that of J. W. Taylor in 1860, E. H. Derby in 1867 and J. N. Lamed in 1870 — urged the same policy; whilst the Oswego and Chicago Boards of Trade in 1854, Committees of the United States House of Representatives in 1862, in 1876, in 1880, in 1884 and in 1886, and Mr. W. H. Seward, United States Secretary of State, in 1865, supported simi- lar schemes. Mr. L. S. Huntington, afterwards a member of the Mackenzie Government, moved in the Canadian House of Commons on March 16th, 1870, that " a continental system of commercial in- tercourse, under one general customs union," would be beneficial. The motion was lost by 100 to 58. 30 I r,' iit ii I 1^' '}y ^1r •! 466 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. The revival of this old idea, in the form of a new policy and under new names, was inaugurated in 1887 by Mr. Erastus Wiman, a wealthy Canadian living in New York, Mr. Goldwin Smith, the pes- fiimistie and erratic but exceedingly able English writer then living in Toronto, and Mr. Valancey E. Fuller, then head of the Ontario Farmers' Insti- tutes, living in Hamilton. Sir Richard Cartwright, in the following year, took up the policy freely and with much frankness, Mr. Laurier did so at a later period w?tb some apparent hesitation, and Sir Oliver Mow at with a dubious approval which was understood to turn upon how far it might affect relations with the Mother Countrv. The whole con- troversy, then and afterwards, turned upon what Unrestricted Free Trade with the United States — the phrase generally adopted by the Liberal party — might mean. Mr. Goldwin Smith declared frankly that it involved commercial union with the United States, the adoption of their tariff against England and the complete removal of all duties from tha frontiers of Canada and the United States. Messrs. Hitt, Butterworth and Sherman, the chief supporters of the policy in the United States, af- firmed the same, and Sir E. Cartwright declared that if discriminationj against British goods was necessary he would accept the consequences. Mr. Laurier and Sir Oliver Mowat, and others, asserted that a reciprocity such as they desired in both natural and industrial products could be obtained without HlfWM Tiiirii iwwww TRANSPORTATION AND TARIFFS. m discrimination — though how no one seemed able to explain.* The Conservatives took up the issue, and upon it fought and won the battle of the general elections in 1891. The tariff remained practically unchanged, Unrestricted Free Trade gradually dropped out of the political vocabulary, and the elections of 1896 were carried by the Liberal party upon local issues and apart from the now exhausted tariff question. The final settlement of the pro- longed controversy — so far as the nineteenth century ,is concerned — came with the announcement in 1897 that the Laurier Government intended to initiate a tariff giving British goods a distinct preference in the Canadian market of 25 per cent. It was, however, found impossible to carry this out under the terms of certain Imperial Treaties with Bel- gium and the old German Zollverein without in- cluding those countries. But with the Diamond Jubilee Conference in London between Mr. Cham- berlain and the Colonial Premiers, and from the urgent pressure of the Canadian Government, came the abrogation of the troublesome Treaties and, in 1898, the final establishment of a British preferen- tial tariff in the Dominion. At the end of the cen- tury, therefore, Canada had done in some measure what England did in the beginning of that period, lib. * Resolutions in connection with this question were for- mally presented to the Canadian House of Commons during the Sessions of 1888 and 1889 by Sir R. Cartwright and to the United States House of Representatives in 1889 and 1890. i Hi'ii 468 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. and had moderated her protective system so as to include within its bounds the products of Great Britain and all portions of the Empire imposing a certain limited range ol duties upon Canadian products. I' '-•• RY. THE EXTERNAL RELATIONS OF THE DOMINION. 469 so as to )f Great posmg a anadian CHAPTER XVIII. THE EXTERNAL RELATIONS OF THE DOMINION. The relations of Canada with the Empire were greatly simplified and centred by the pact of Con- federation. Railway negotiations and tariff com- plications between the scattered Colonies found their solution at Ottawa instead of London. The possible area of difference between an Imperial Governor and his Colonial Ministers was narrowed from half a dozen local capitals to the Dominion centre. Issues which a quarter of a century before would have kept the people in a continuous flurry of excite- ment and Downing Stroet in a state of strained un- certainty were relegated to the cool and impartial shades of a small chamber in London, where sat the Judicial Committee of tho Privy Council. Local defence, which pioviously had been a question of arrangement batween the Colonial Office and the Colonial Governments of British America, with very doubtful results, became an organised fact with a pledged yearly expenditure of at least a million dollars. Tho Imperial defences of the east and the west, of Halifax and Esquimaiilt, were united by the Canadian Pacific Railway, and eventually were assisted by a small annual contribution from the 111! 1! V Ml f in 'i m \ I)} i I'll 470 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. Dominion Government. ^Negotiations for the pro- motion of common interests between Great Britain and British America were rendered much easier, and a comprehension of what those interests really were was made more certain, by the establishment of the central Federal authority at Ottawa. The surrender of Canadian territory, or slack attention to Cana- dian claims and interests, by an Imperial Govern- ment burdened with immense and varied responsi- bilities throughout a worla-encircling realm, were rendered improbable — at least without the recogni- tion and voluntary acceptance of the Canadian people. And, of course, Canada's importance to the Empire as a factor in its general strength, as a half-way house for its commerce and as a pivotal point in its naval power, became more evident. The history of Canada up to that time had been a curious medley of contradictory considerations so far as the advantages of British connection were con- cerned. Great Britain had purchased its existence and early maintenance at a vast expenditure of men and money in her wars with the French and Indians and American Colonists. She had spent upon its defence forces in times of peace during the nine- teenth century at least three hundred millions of dollars.* She had guaranteed Canadian loans to the extent of $20,000,000 and had received neither * British Parliamentary Returns, 1853-73, furnished to the author by the courtesy of the War Office ; also article by Sir John Lubbock in Nineteenth Century, March, 1877. Bam BOB !i Y. were ^THE EXTERNAL RELATIONS OP THE DOMINION. 47I monetary contribution nor fiscal favour at the hands of the Canadian people. In earlier days she had helped to defray the expenses of their 8catter(;d Governments, to pay the cost of colonisation efforts, to support their constitutions in days of rebellion, to defend their borders from invasion; while for a hundred years their coasts and commerce had been guarded from danger by the mighty fleets of the Mother-land. Yet there had been another side to the picture, and it was not a pleasant one. From the earliest days of empire in British America dense and dark ignorance too often prevailed concerning local conditions, needs and aspirations. The Col- onial Office embodied crude British views of what the Colonies ought to be and ought to do rather than representing a clear perception of what they were and what they wanted. With a natural but not commendable narrowness it was thought that policies and principles which suited the small area, large and growing population, trained political life and centuries-old constitution of the British Isles should equally apply to the vast spaces, the scattered peoples, the diverse national conceptions and the pioneer life and crude constitutions of a new coun- try. Experiments were manifold, from the grant- ing of dual language rights to the French-Canadians up through all the varied forms of paternal, oli- garchic. Colonial Office and semi-popular systems of Government. No single system was adopted and then adhered to. Governors and forms of Govern- r If/ I ; 472 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. i'jil ment were changed as readily as one changes a coat, and continuity of policy seemed to be the last thought, or at least result, of Downing Street ad- ministration. Yet there can be no doubt of the good intentio'ns which existed and of the excellent character of the British statesmen who tried to create or mould the Canadian constitution. Men in charge of the Colonial Department such as Lord Batlmrst, Sir George Murray, Lord Goderich, Lord Gle^ielg, the Marquess of Kormanby, Lord John Russell, M.v. Gladstone, Mr. Sidney Herbert, Sir Edward Bulwer- Lytton, the Duke of Newcastle, the Earl of Carnar- von and so on up to Mr. Chamberlain at the end of the century, were leaders of the best personal and political type. But there was no continuity of policy. Parties came and went, and with them the Colonial Secretary and the existing Colonial policy. Hence the failure of the Colonial Office on more than one occasion to endorse a Canadian Governor at times when firmness meant the success of his Administration and Avoakness the addition of greater burdens for his successor and more problems for Downing Street. Hence the utter incapacity shown in many of the negotiations with the United States. Ignorance of the value of territory produced in- difference, and out of indifference came diplomatic inefficiency. The weakness of Oswald and the ig- norance of Shelburne gave the United States in 1783 tbe garden of the continent stretching down maiNM rRY. hanges a J the last treet ad- ntentidns jr of the ould the of the irst, Sir lelg, the ell, Mr. Bulwer- Carnar- the end personal unity of hem the [ policy, ►n more overnor of his greater ms for ' shown States, ced in- lomatic the ig- ates in down I .' i'r-^ > ( \ GILBERT PARKER, D.C.L., M.P. il «' <\\ .•^ " v<--' J '"^''"^^^k^ ^ / .'i^W H^ ¥ ^- 1 Im ■■; / ■"/. Up *G^^Hlfc f ^^rT^H^H Bg^^^^^ >fll l^ftl !:•■ ■ ' '■^«i^^"- SIR JAMES MacPHERSON LE JtOINE. THE EXTERNAL RELATIONS OF THE DOMINION. 473 through the central valley of the Mississippi and the Ohio. The friendliness of Lord Ashburton to the United States in 1842,* his apparently complete ignorance of the value of the territory in dispute, as including a future winter seaport on the Atlantic for the British American Provinces, and his desire to conclude a Treaty at almost any cost, lost Canada not only a national seaport but a region which was admittedly hers by maps in the possession of Mr. Daniel Webster, the American negotiator, and in the hands of the United States Senate at the time of ratifying the Treaty f — maps which should have been known to Lord Ashburton and which would have been under the conditions prevalent in all more recent negotiations. So in the events preceding the Oregon Treaty of 1846, if British politicians l\pd understood something of American methods and politics, they would not have accepted President Polk's Message of 1845 as indicating any real danger of war, nor would they have permitted the earlier * Martineau's History of England. In Sir A. H. Gordon's Life of Lord Aberdeen (page 179) is the statement that when that nobleman was Foreign Secretary he " determined to send a special mission to America and entrusted it to Lord Ashburton who, as the head of the great house of Baring, was nearly as much interested in the peace and prosperity of the United States as in that of Great Britain. ... He did his work well. ... It was generally felt that peace was well worth purchasing at the price of a tract of barren pine swamp." f Thomas Hodgins, Q.C., " British and American Negotia- tions affecting Canada," in Canada : An Encyclqpcedia of the Country, vol. 6. '■]v k 474 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. Il ■k X. ! joint occupation of so-called disputed territory by which the Republic acquired claims which were pressed in an ever-increasing ratio of progression — with a final compromise leaving che United States in possession of soil to which discovery and colonisa- tion seem to have alike entitled Canada or Great Britain. Had English statesmen in those days been pos- sessed of Imperial prescience Lord Aberdeen would not have declined to accept California from Mexico for fear of hurting the susceptibilities of the United States,* nor would Lord Derby for the same reason have refused Sir John Macdonald's proposal, as in- cluded in the first draft of the British North Amer- ica Act, to make Canada in name a Kingdom, in- stead of a dependent Dominion. And the Behring Sea and Yukon and Alaska boundary troubles of a later date would have been prevented by an ac- ceptance of the subsequent opportunity to acquire Alaska from Russia. So with ^Newfoundland and the French-shore question, to say nothing of far- away opportunities lost and complications created by such wasted chances as have occurred in the Orange Free State, Delagoa Bay and the Island of New Guinea. I have said elsewhere in this volume that the maintenance and strength of British senti- ment in Canada constitute one of the miracles of the nineteenth century. And there cannot be the * Life of Lord Aberdeen, by Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon, p. 193. THE EXTERNAL RELATIONS OF THE DOMINION. 475 slightest doubt of this* fact to those who are familiar with the utterances and recorded views of British statesmen during the decades which immediately followed the middle of the century. Men such as Lord Ellenborough and Lord Brougham, Sir Wil- liam Molesworth and Lord Ashburton himself, Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden, Lord Derby and Lord John Russell, expressed not only a willingness to let Can- ada and the Colonies go if they desired to do so, but a belief that they would eventually and neces- sarily sever their Imperial connection. Colonial permanent officials such as Sir Henry Taylor and Sir F. Rogers — afterwards Lord Blachford — are on record as advising that steps be taken to prepare for and to hasten the event. The latter, when Under- Secretary of State for the Colonies, had the almost incredible ininertinence to write his Chief, the Duke .4. 7 of Newcastle, that : " As to our American Posses- sions I have long held and often expressed the opinion that they are a sort of damnosa hereditas; and when Your Grace -nd the Prince of Wales were employ- ing yourselves so successfully in conciliating the Colonists, I thought you were drawing closer ties which might better be slackened. I think that a policy which has regard to a not very far-off future should prepare facilities and propensities for separs,- tion." Little wonder that a small party, and perhaps a larger public opinion of a secret character, developed in all tlie Colonies in favour of eventual independ* 476 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. ence. Little wonder that for a time the crv of " Cut the painter " was popular amongst the young men of the Australasian Colonies, whilst the note of " Little England " found its echo throughout the British !N^orth America. Lit*^^le wonder that Lord Elgin voiced the feeling of all loyal men in the external states of the Empire and of many another British Governor in otlier parts of the world, and in later days, when he wrote to Lord Grey, Colonial Secretary, on November 16tli, 1849, a vigorous and afterwards oft-repeated protest against the utterances of Imperial statesmen — de- claring that : " When I protest against Canadian pro- jects for dismembering the Empire, I am always told that the most eminent statesmen in England have over and over again told us that when we choose we might separate." Little wonder that when Mr. Edward Blake, in 1875, delivered the well-known Aurora speech in which he advocated Imperial Federation, as opposed to a future of In- dependence, it Avas like a voice crying in the wilder- ness. Little wonder that years afterwards and for a brief space the Liberal party in Canada seemed in- clined to adopt the then cast-oif garments of the old English school of Imperial negation and even showed some willingness to cultivate American re- lations rather than British. They have since more than atoned as a governing party for views which probably originated in the lack of sympathy shown by England during so many years — 1846 to 1872 — f URY. le erv of the young the note ghout the ler that 3yal men of many s of the to Lord er 16th, id protest men — de- dian pro- 11 always England vhen we ier that ered the dvocated e of In- 3 wilder- and for emed in- ■ the old « id even ■lean re- ce more a which Y shown 1872— THR HOy. THOMAS CHASE-CASGRAIN. Q,C., Lt.D. 'W IM», IS- THE HON. CLIFFORD SIFTON, Q.C. ■TJrWWBWaf^SKHSBW THE EXTERNAL RELATIONS OF THE DOMINION. 477 with Colonial ambitions and development; and have carefully avoided the pitfalls of a policy which, in 1891, made Mr. Edward Blake cast his Imperial hopefulness to the winds and come forward with the pessimistic expression of a belief that Canada stood on the verge of annexation to the United States. But no neglect of territorial rights, no ignorance of the needs of the Provinces, no mistakes in ad- ministration and policy, no slights inflicted upon public sentiment, could really and permanently affect the loyalty of the Canadian population. Prior to Confederation it was a sentiment based upon the traditions of United Empire Loyalists, upon the home feeling of British emigrants, upon the sense of French-Canadians that British connection best conserved their institutions, their religion and their racial affinities, and upon a general consciousness of the self-evident weakness of the scattered Prov- inces. After Confederation it became associated with a deeper feeling of affection for a new and broadening Canadian empire — the home of a future nation of the north. For a brief period the future perhaps was in doubt, and the issue involved in that serious test of Canadian loyalty — the Washington Treaty of 1871 — ^was a serious one. Had the de- tails of the negotiations been known the arrange- ment could never have passed the Canadian House of Commons, For the admission of Americans to the inshore fisheries of the Atlantic coast Canada got little immediate return, although, in 1877, the '" ^ Wl :.* 478 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. it i w M Halifax Arbitration awarded $5,500,000 to the Do- minion as against the $14,500,000 which she had claimed for their ten years' use. Reciprocity was absolutely refused, the Fenian Raid claims were not even discussed, the subsequent arbitration of the ownership of the Island of San Juan gave that im- portant place to the United States, and the settle- ment of the Alaskan boundary has proved to be a broken reed. Sir John Macdonald, however, ex- erted the powers of his wonderful personality and appealed to all the dormant loyalty of the people and Parliament to accept a Treaty whose rejection might involve the Empire and the Republic in war — and his appeal was successful. If Canadians had known that in the meetings of that High Commission at Washington Sir John Macdonald stood practically alone, and in many cases was obliged to oppose the combined English and American Commissioners in defence of Cana- dian interests, even he could not have stirred their loyalty to the point of accepting the arrangement made. The correspondence which has, since his death, been published, shows the courageous and continuous contest which he fought for Canada and reveals the intense anxiety of the English Commis- sioners — partly under pressure from the Home Government and partly under the belief that Presi- dent Grant meant the fiery threats of war contained in his annual Message — to carry home with them a Treaty which should remove the cloud of possible 'mHtm' — ■PWi TRY. THE EXTERNAL RELATIONS OF THE DOMINION. 479 3 the Do- she had )city was were not n of the that im- he settle- l to be a ever, ex- ility and le people rejection c in war etings of 5ir John in many English Df Cana- ?ed their ngement ince his ous and lada and Commis- Home it Presi- ontained them a possible conflict hanging over the two nations.* It was the last time in Imperial history when there has been any serious thought of sacrificing Canadian interests upon the altar of peace. Since then Canada has become the practical negotiator of its own treaties, subject to final Imperial approval, but endorsed by the aid of British ambassadors and helped by the backing of Imperial prestige and diplomatic ex- perience. The negotiation of the Fisheries Treaty of 1888 by Mr. J. Chamberlain and Sir Charles Tupper which the United States Senate refused to accept; the making of the French Commercial Treaty and the negotiations with Spain and Brazil ; the intercolonial negotiations between Canada and Australasia which culminated in the Ottawa Con- ference of 1894; the similar efforts with the British West Indies, and with Cape Colony between Mr. Cecil Rhodes and the late Sir John Thompson; illustrate this fact and indicate the different status to which Confederation has raised the British Am- erican Provinces as well as the change which has come over the whole external and internal relations of the countries of the Empire. But, if the sympathies of the English-speaking people of Canada have been maintained towards the Mother-land by memories of an historic and national character and of the French-speaking people by appreciation of liberties and privileges * Life of Sir John A. Macdoyiald, by Joseph Pope, Ottawa, 1894. J ■'! 1 1 1 1 \ . I 480 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. preserved intact; if, on the other hand, such feel- ings have sometimes been alienated by lack of com- prehension on the part of Britain and dulness of vision on the part of British statesmen; there has been mixing and merging with these influences and moulding many of the characteristics and political incidents of Canadian history the powerful factor of United States contiguity. It, of course, affected the very foundations of the country through the im- migration and bitter memories of the United Em- pire Loyalists and the subsequent defence of their homes and hearths from invasion by the French- Canadians. The sympathy of the lawless and some- times cultured and intelligent elements of the Re- public made the small rebellions of Canadian his- tory more significant and more difficult of settle- ment. Its fiscal hostility and very occasional fiscal friendship run through every page of our annals as an alternate policy of coercion and conciliation — always with a more or less veiled belief that " mani- fest destiny " must in the end compel the assimila- tion of Canada with its own powerful community. Its influence affected to some extent the school- books and educational systems of the Provinces, the political character of the people, the earlier phases of banking legislation and the social manners and customs of all the country outside of Quebec. Its journalism has controlled — in a modified way — the press of Canada ; and its literature in the later form of cheap magazines and multitudinous books of an QRY. such feel- !k of com- iulness of there has lences and i political ful factor ;e, affected gh the im- nited Ern- ie of their le Frencli- and some- af the Ke- ladiaii his- of settle- lonal fiscal ' annals as ciliation — lat " mani- e assimila- iommunity. the school- >vinces, the lier phases anners and uebec. Its I way — the later form (ooks of an m SIR HUGH ALLAN. II Jte 1 .^. ' ill I I ^vi^^B i" j i i ■ ■ 1 i 1 i i 1 J 5 1 '^» /,«•<»!„»; ite^\.iac |j|,0A..> »-•'•' Wk^m ^, -%ji ^: ■ ? ^ '(^m_,3ihH{i ^^•*^'- ' M^^ f am -^IB^fe '^<^^H .1. ^ vB ^ '^H^BPP ' 1" ^Kpi te.' ^ ,^r ^M s ^, y ^^^^^IRff! X /jflp' . <\ « *. ^■'^^W'^"^ , " ^z-^" A '■ jf jt- A \ THE HON. WILLIAM TKMPLEMAN. THE EXTERNAL RELATIONS OF THE DOMINION. 481 ephemeral character has swept the whole field of Canadian readers. Its cable service from London to New York controls the news columns of the Cana- dian press as it does the pages of American papers. Its superior wealth and great financial and industrial resources have at times manipulated the Canadian market and affected the welfare of most vital Cana- dian interests. Finally, the pressure of so many mil- lions of peoplo upon the southern border of Canada has had a curiously complicated and general effect connected with, and y^t frequently apart from, the above considerations. It has made the people of the Dominion very demo- cratic and very apt to be ignorantly critical of Eng- lish institutions with all their peculiar mingling of aristocratic forms and popular control. It has pre- vented Canadians from being, very often, the mon- archists from principle which they are through per- sonal loyalty to the Queen and her interpretation of monarchical rule. It has made them see England's House of Lords and Established Church and other cherished home institutions through American or British Radical glasses rather than by the medium of that appreciation of historic structures which it might be supposed that distance in time and space would make natural and appropriate. It has made jiossible a public opinion of British political leaders such as Beaconsfield, Salisbury and Chamberlain which partakes more of the American view than of the svmpathisiug Imperial sentiment which, how- h I' if 482 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. .. ',' ever, the end of the century is rendering possible. It must be remembered that since the United States Civil War the cabled statements, opinions and sketches of English Tory leaders have been almost entirely from the standpoint of their political op- ponents, while matters connected with the develop- ment of the Empire abroad, or of its unity at home, have received but scant attention. To-day in Can- ada, as an illustration, there is but little comprehen- sion of the great work done by Mr. Disraeli in check- ing the separatist policy of the Manchester school and little knowledge of the splendid Imperial ideals of Mr. Cecil Rhodes. To many the one is an his- torical charlatan, the other a selfish capitalist. It is, of course, not unnatural that the American view of British public life or Imperial unity should be the view of a foreigner out of sympathy with its principles and out of touch with its progress — ex- cept where there has been a Radical effort to effect changes in the direction of American ideals. But it is a pity that such a foreign view should have been grafted to so great an extent upon the Canadian mind by the constant reading of American papers and American cabled news. Upon the other hand, the contiguity of the United States has had a centrifugal as well as a centripetal effect. Proximity has made Canadians aware of the anomalies of its constitution, the admitted cor- ruption of its politics, the inequalities in its treat- ment of coloured peoples, the evils of its elective ::i: THE EXTERNAL RELATIONS OF THE DOMINION. 483 judicial system, the extreme sensationalism and un- trustworthiness of a part of its press, and (up to the year 1898 and the Spanish War) the bitterness of its popular feeling toward England. The very power and population of the United States have helped to keep Canada loyal to the Empire. Pres- sure of this kind forced, or helped to force, the Provinces into federation, and knowledge of the greatness of the Republic and the competition of its boundary, fishery, trade and tariff interests with those of Canada have prevented the growth of that independence sentiment in the Dominion which so many British politicians of earlier days tried to promote and which it might have been thought the French-Canadians themselves would favour. Hos- tile expressions and policy towards Canada and England, however, coupled with a knowledge of cer- tain American defects in character, institutions and politics, did more than discourage independence agitation and sentiment. They destroyed the prob- ability and possibility of annexation. There was a time when danger in this direction really threat- 'ened Canada. It never came from fear oi the United States, nor from threats of coercion. It did not come from the prolonged teachings and efforts of Mr. Goldwin. Smith and his oft-reiterated proph- ecy of continental union. It did not come from any feeling against England — unless it were an uncon- scious one — nor did it emanate from movements in the direction of greater local independence within i .i .*^;-"i' i-- I Jl t 484 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. the Empire. It was not fatiilitaied by the forma- tion of an Annexation. St Association in Montreal in 1849 any more than it v is by the organisation of the Continental Union Association of Ontario in June, 1892, with Mr. Goldwin Smith as Hon. Presi- dent and a consequent large distribution of annex- ationist literature throughout the country. It came about by what .' :'ms, in 1888 and im- mediately sijuuccding yearo. to have been a strong, sudden and apparently widespread feeling that Canada was lying between two great streams of com- mercial life and sharing in neither. A portion of the people were aroused by the full tide of prosper- ity at that time visible in the United States, and ex- pressed through the medium of the Commercial Union agitation referred to in the preceding chap- ter, to a consciousness of the comparative smallness and slowness of Canadian development in connec- tion with the continent as a whole. Another and a larger portion were stirred up by the advocacy of the Imperial Federation League, and the vigorous presentation of its principles on the platform and in the press, to a vivid perception of the national future opening out before them as partners in the power and resources and commerce of the British Empire. These two principles — unconsciously to the people at large — came into conflict at the gen- eral elections of 1891, and the British sentiment obtained the victory. The whole issue was a bless- ing in disguise, just as its meaning or import at the RY. THE EXTERNAL RELATIONS OF THE DOMINION. 485 e forma- ntreal in sation of itario in m. Presi- )f annex- and im- a strong, ling that IS of com- )ortion of f prosper- s, and ex- Dmmercial ing chap- smallness n connec- her and a vocacy of } vigorous rra and in national ers in the le British iously to t the gen- sentiment as a bless- lort at the time was concealed and unperceived by the masses. Politics were mixed up with it and helped to ob- scure the real position. It was never in any sense a deliberate issue of loyalty against disloyalty or annexation against federation. But it was decided- ly a contest of tendencies. Had the American tend- ency got the upper hand the result might have been very serious, and the parting of the ways in Cana- dian history have really proved a sliding scale to- wards continental assimilation. As it was, a most tempting commercial bait was refused, the British tendencies triumphed, all parties accepted the re- sult and the sliding scale turned towards Imperial unity. Meanwhile, the very practical element of a grow- ing commerce, whicl^ was being developed along eastern and western routes of transportation, rather than in a southern direction where tariff obstacles barred the way, was slowly but surely bringing Great Britain and Canada together in the bonds of a common material interest. It was a somewhat curious process and, in the teeth of so-called natural laws and the effects of contiguity, has afforded a striking illustration of the influence wielded by careful legislation and the progress of transporta- tion facilities. At Confederation much of Cana- dian produce sought its market in Great Britain by way of tho United States, over American railways and waterways and at the hands of American mid- dlemen. At the end of the century the great bulk / ^ 480 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. of an export trade to Great Britain which has risen from seventeen millions in 1868 to ninety-three millions in 1898 goes via Canadian railways, or the St. Lawrence River, to help supply the teeming millions of the Mother-land. During those thirty years, despite the proximity of its market and the facilities of inter-communication, Canadian exports to the American Republic have only risen from twenty-two to thirty-four millions. Of course, hostile tariffs have had something to do with this result, but it seems probable that even under lower duties increased exports to the United States would to a great degree have simply replaced similar American products shipped to Great Britain. Similarity of conditions and the fact that the United Kingdom is the common market of both countries for agricultural products makes this in- evitable. Yet for many years — up to 1891 in fact — the value of the two markets to Canada in actual export was about equal. From the year named, however, the change took place, and the export to Great Britain first doubled and then trebled upon the figures of Canadian export to the States. For the whole thirty years the total shows $1,260,000,- 000 worth of products sent to the United Kingdom and $955,000,000 worth to the United States. The import trade of Canada in this period shows an exactly opposite condition of affairs, and yet it is not one seriously detracting from the conclusions which may be arrived at from a study of the ex- 1 THE EXTERNAL RELATIONS OF THE DOMINION. 487 3 risen jr-three lys, or eeming thirty md the exports a from course, ith this ir lower 3 would similar Britain. ;hat the of both this in- in fact n actual named, xport to ed upon es. For J60,000,- iingdom tes. od shows id yet it nclusions the ex- ports. In 1868 the imports from Great Britain were thirty-six millions of dollars and in 1898 four millions less, while in the meantime imports from the United States had risen from twenty-six to seventy-eight millions. Viewed in the bulk these figures do not look much like an increase in trade with Great Britain which might be considered of advantage to the Mother-land as well as to Canada. Analysing the figures, however, it is found that a very large part of Canadian imports from the States is, and has been, composed of raw material for manufacture or consumption and which Great Britain either does not produce or can hardly ex- pect to compete in. From the coal mines of Penn- sylvania, and in preference to its own mines in Nova Scotia, Canada took, in 1898, nearly ten mil- lion dollars' worth of coal and coke. From the Re- public she received at the same time five and a half millions of cotton and cotton goods — mainly raw cotton from the South — while, however, taking three and a quarter millions' worth of manufactured cot- ton from England. Some thirteen millions' worth of Indian corn, wheat and various breadstuffs were also imported from the States together with eight millions' worth of hides and skins, gutta percha, indiarubber and wood, or manufactures of wood. These were all products in which Great Britain could hardly expect to compete — although to them, unfortunately, is now to be added an im- portant item which stood a few years ago in a dif- I ;l. I T' ♦f '^ % ! > ^ i I '\ j> ! ^ » ifi ■ I i 1 ti { 488 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. ferent category. For the first twenty years of Con- federation Canada imported iron and steel in about equal quantities from England and the States. Then the scale commenced to turn, and in 1898 the Do- minion took fourteen million dollars' worth from the Republic and only two millions from the Mother- land. Contiguity had something to do with the re- sult, but the main influence has been the undoubted all-round advance of the United States in connec- tion with this great industry. Then there is, of course, a scattering import of manufactures in which the small total of each import, when combined, be- comes a fairly large amount owing to the infinite variety of American industries and the special convenience or local taste which has at times to be consulted. In important lines, however, such as cottons, woollens, flax, hemp and jute, silk, etc., Great Britain fully holds her own, and, as the pref- erential tariff of 1898 comes into full and fair operation, the advantage should gradually but surely be on her sid'C. Even as it is, the fact may fairly be considered surprising that, between 1868 and 1898, Great Britain should have exported to Canada a total of $1,331,000,000 worth of goods (nearly all manufactured) as compared with $1,404,000,000 exported by the United States to the Dominion and made up, in large but fluctuating proportions, of raw material and agricultural products. About the same time that the export trade of Canada to Great Britain was commencing to in- Y. of Con- ,n about 9. Then the Do- 'rom the Mother- 1 the re- idoubted connec- •e is, of in which ined, be- ) infinite i special ties to be such as ilk, etc., he pref- and fail' ut surely ay fairly 868 and Canada learly all 000,000 mion and IS, of raw trade of ig to in- , HI SIR ALEXANDER MACKENZIE. f'M fef.| : nil I THE HON. SIR FRANCIS HINCKS, K.C.M.G. THE EXTERNAL RELATIONS OF THE DOMINION. 489 I crease by leaps and bounds a strong movement had developed, partly because of the Imperial Federa- tion propaganda and partly out of protest against the continental trade advocacy of the day, in favour of preferential trade relations with the Mother-land. Mr. D'Alton McCarthy and others spoke frequently upon the subject, and, on April 25th, 1892, Mr. Alexander McNeill proposed in the House of Com- mons that : " If and when the Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland admits Canadian products to the markets of the United Kingdom upon more favourable terms than it accords to the products of foreign countries, the Parliament of Canada will be prepared to accord corresponding advantages by a substantial reduction in the duties it imposes upon British manufactured goods." Mr. (afterwards Sir) L. H. Davies moved in amendment and on be- half of the Liberal party that : " Inasmuch as Great Britain admits the products of Canada into her ports free of duty, this House is of the opinion tliat the present scale of duties exacted on goods mainly imported from Great Britain should be reduced." The amendment was defeated on a party division and the main motion accepted by 97 to G3 votes. But both Resolutions showed how the lines of cleav- age in British versus American trade ideals were being softened and the two parties drawn to- gether. A little later, on January 12, 1893, Mr Wilfrid Laurier, at a meeting in Toronto, declared that " the very idea of Imperial Federation is to me f I 1 4. 490 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. very alluring." In 1894 the Ottawa Conference took place, and Delegates from all the Australasian Colonies and the Cape joined with those of Canada in discussing questions of closer Colonial union — commerce, cables and tariffs — and amongst other im- portant Resolutions declared that : " This Confer- ence records its belief in the advisability of a cus- toms arrangement between Great Britain and her Colonies by which trade within the Empire may be placed on a more favourable footing than that which is carried on with foreign countries." In the politi- cal campaign of 1896, Sir Charles Tupper, in his Manifesto, urged " a tariff based on mutual con- cessions " as between Canada and the Empire, and the Liberals, after defeating him at the polls, put in practice, in 1897, a part of the proposal — sustaining at the same time the policy of their Parliamentary Resolution of 1892. Other steps in the movement for closer Imperial Unity followed. Sir Henry Strong became a mem- ber of the Judicial Committee of the Imperial Privy Council where he sat in judgment with representa- tives from Australia and the Cape as well as from the British Isles. The famine in India brought out an expression of the Imperial sympathy in Can.n- dian hearts to the amount of $200,000. The Hon. William Mulock, as Canadian Postmaster-General, in 1898 became the means of realising in result the prolonged labours of Mr. Henniker Heaton, M. P., in England, and Imperial penny postage was pro- LY. THE EXTERNAL RELATIONS OF THE DOMINION. 491 iference ralasiaji Canada union — ther im- Confer- f a cus- and her may be at which le politi- r, in his ual con- )ire, and s, put in istaining imentary Imperial } a mem- lal Privy presenta- as from )ught out in Cana- ?he Hon. General, result tho [1, M. P., was pro- claimed an established fact. In Tuly of the same year a Military Commission, appointed by the Im- perial Government, examined the defences of Canada with a view to their improvement, while Major-General E. T. H. Hutton, C.B., after a dis- tinguished experience in Australia, came out as Commander of the Canadian Militia. In the suc- ceeding year occurred the sweeping expression of Canadian loyalty and British sentiment embodied in the despatch of Contingents of three thousand troops to South Africa — a fitting event with which to stamp the end of a century of conflicting develop- ment and very varied views as to the future of British America. The parting of the ways had in- deed come, and the chosen road seems now to lead straight to the goal of a united and permanent Em- pire despite struggles which must still occur and difficulties which must inevitablv be met. And in this connection the words of Sir John A. Mac- donald, whose life and memory constitute such a bulwark of British sentiment on this American con- tinent — spoken in 1888 — should not be forgotten: " I look forward to the time when Australia, if not confederated so closely as ourselves, will have a confederation for offence and defence; when South Africa will also be a Confederation ; and when there shall be determiu-il -by treaty the quota to be fui*- nished by our cuxiiiary nations toward the defence of the Empire." It is evident, therefore, that the Dominion haa •I i I 492 PROGRESS OP CANADA IN THE CENTURY. ill now at the end of the nineteenth century reached a platform of permanent national policy. Despite the mistakes of English diplomats and the cold- ness, or indifference, of earlier Imperial leaders, its people are strongly British in sentiment, and the one-time frequently expressed aspirations for inde- pendence are no more heard of. Despite the glamour of American wealth and commercial great- ness the trend of Canadian trade and tariffs is to- ward the Mother-land. Despite the proximity of American institutions, the influence wielded hy the ideals of an immense and populous democracy and their admitted effect upon the opinion of individu- als, the Canadian system of Government is in tho main a duplication of the British Constitution with all its historic charters, precedents and practices. The supremacy of the law and the public respect for decisions of an absolutely independent judiciary; the controlling power of the House of Commons, under the law of the realm and combined with the principle of Ministerial responsibility; the perma- nence and independence of the Civil Service of Canada and the constitutional usages of its Parlia- ment, Legislatures and Governments; all approxi- mate to the Imperial model of Great Britain. It is a wonderful fact under the varied circumstances sur- rounding Canadian development that such should be the case and is perhaps only less so than the exist- ence and power of the Empire to which the Domin- ion adheres. >i RY. reached Despite ;he cold- iders, its and the for inde- pite the ial great- iffs is to- :imity of }d by the jracy and individu- is in the ition with practices, espect for judiciary ; bommons, I with the he perma- jer^ice of its Parlia- approxi- lin. It is tances snr- should be the exist- he Domin- PEOPLE AND COUNTRY AT END OF CENTURY. 493 CHAPTEK XIX. THE PEOPLE AND THE COUNTRY AT THE END OF THE CENTUEY. During the thirty years which have followed Confederation the general progress of Canada has been very great. Not only has the country grown in constitutional status, expanded territorially from ocean to ocean, developed in fiscal freedom and taken immense strides in the creation of transportation facilities, but its people have obtained a wider out- look through their closer connection with the Em- pire, while public life and the private culture of the community have developed in a beneficial though somewhat cosmopolitan manner. The Dominion still remains essentially a country of farms and farmers. Despite the existence and continued growth of cities and the now settled tendency of young men to drift from the farms into industrial and populous centres for the purposes of employ- ment, or professional studies and pursuits, the agri- cultural element continues to be the backbone of Canadian life and strength. Toronto has increased, since 1881, from 96,000 people to double that num- ber, Montreal from 156,000 to 250,000, Victoria from. 0,000 to 20,000, Vancouver from nothing to ! 494 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. 20,000, Winnipeg from 8,000 to 40,000, and smaller places in proportion. Yet the equality of growth, as between rural and urban life, has been fairly well maintained by the agricultural development of the great North- West, the progress of mining in British Columbia and the general development of North- western Ontario. There were in 1891 649,000 farmers and farmers' sons in the Dominion and some 76,000 farm labourers. The number consti- tuted a slight decrease over the figures of 1881, owing to the causes mentioned, but there is little doubt that the figures of the next Census will show a considerable increase in this branch of the popu- lation as a result of the continued and very apparent opening up of new regions. Statistics are never interesting, but they are some- times necessary, and the future of Canada depends so decidedly upon its agricultural position that it is well to note hero something of what has already been achieved. Throughout Manitoba, where the golden grain waves in the passing summer breezes like a sea of molten gold, there is land capable of bearing, according to Sir C. E. Howard Vincent, a crop of two hundred million quarters of wheat, and in 1898 its total production of grain reached 47,- 000,000 bushels. In the great grain elevators which have been erected by the Canadian Pacific and the Milling Companies the capacity has been increased from eight million bushels in 1891 to eighteen mil- lion bushels in 1898. The total farm property of ■ii *Y. PEOPLE AND COUNTRY AT END OF CENTUR '. 495 [ smaller growth, irly well it of the 1 British f North- 649,000 lion and iv consti- of 1881, I is little will show the popu- appareut are some- 1 depends that it is 8 already vhere the er breezes capable of Vincent, a vheat, and ached 47,- tors which ic and the increased ;hteen mil- roperty of Ontario, including farm lands, implements, build- ings and live stock, was valued in 1897 at $905,000- 000 — a decrease of fifty millions in fourteen years. In view, however, of the generally low prices which have prevailed for farm products, the severe com- petition of Manitoba, the influence of hostile Ameri- can tariffs and the continental and, in fact, world- wide decrease in the values of land, this is not a bad showing. As a matter of fact the farmers of Canada consti- tute one of the most prosperous classes which are to be found in any community. In Ontario, mile after mile of comfortable farmhouses, large barns and well-cultivated fields testify of this fact to the pass- ing traveller. Inside these houses the change is very great from the conditions of fifty or even thirty years ago. The organ or piano ha8 taken the place of the spinning-wheel; easy chairs and cushioned lounges replace the old-fashioned furniture of the stiff-backed past or the home-made articles of pioneer days; fashionable garments, for Sunday at any rate, have replaced amongst the females of the family the homespun material of a previous gener- ation ; carriages or buggies have succeeded for many purposes to the farm waggons of other days. Some- times, however, a mortgage has come to kill tl '^ old- time independence of the farmer. And in some other respects improvement cannot be said to have been marked. The diet of the farm is not good. There is too much pork and pie, and too little of the i i ■ 496 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. cream which goes in such abundant measure into cheese and butter for purposes of sale. And it may even be said that there is not enough of that health- giving beer which helps to make the English farmer and strong. " Gentleman farming " is largely a matter of the past, and there are but few " Squires " in the Canadian community. Work is persistent, and for the man pleasure is too rare; prices are low, and many have strained their means to set up sons in the far-away North-West. Yet upon the whole the Canadian farmer is well off, and when be keeps in touch with scientific improve- ments, with proper changes in crop, with the rec- ommendations and experience of the Experimental Government Farms, he can always do better. In the North- West ranching hai3 taken the place of ordinary farming, and the boast of possessing " cattle upon a thousand hills " has become a Canadian privilege. To Great Britain the farmer is steadily turning more and more as being his great market. In 18(i7 he exported to that country $4,546,000 of animal and agricultural products and to the United States $14,800,000. In 1897 he sent to Britain forty-five millions' worth and to the Republic only seven mil- lions' worth. The Maiitimc Provinces and Quebec have not shared so much in this expansion as they should I'lave done, owing to primitive methods of farming amongst French-Canadians and the rival in- fluences of shipbuilding, lumbering or mining JRY. isure into nd it may lat health- Lsh farmer ming" ia ro but few Work is too rare; heir means iVest. Yet [S well off, ic improve- ,tli the rec- xperimental better. In B place of dng " cattle I Canadian ily turning In 18fi7 of animal rited States in forty-five y seven mil- and Quebec sion as they methods of the rival in- or mining i i L U' THE HON. SIR THOMAS GALT. rr^ * r r -~ n s. -3L t :! ■ \ !. J: THE HON. SIR JOHN ALEXANDER BOYD. PEOPLE AND COUNTRY AT END OF CENTURY. 497 >. amongst the people on the Atlantic coast. But in the last few years great efforts have been made to share in the increase of cattle-raising, the phenomenal growth of the cheese industry and the improvement in butter-making which have marked agricultural progress in other parts of the Dominion. Altogether, the development of these years has been satisfac- tory, and is illustrated by the fact that between 1881 and 1891 the total of acres occupied in Canada in- creased by fifteen millions, the acres of improved land by seven millions, the production of wheat by ten million bushels, of oats by twelve millions, of fruit by twenty -three millions. The export of cattle increased in value from $951,000 in 1874 to over seven million dollars in 1897 and the export of cheese from $620,000 worth in 18G8 to a value of over seventeen millions in 1898. Intimately connected with the farm life of the country is the nature of the homes and habits of the people generally. Partly owing to the slow growth of population — according to the Census returns it was 3,635,024 in 1871, 4,324,810 in 1881 and 4,833,239 in 1891 — and the consequeni preponder- ance of a better class of population than is possible in communities where the increase is large and pro- miscuous; partly because of the strict tenets of Presbyterianism, the consistent influence of Roman Catholicism and „lic objection of the Church of England to divorce; the moral sentiment and char- acter of the Canadian people have remained at a high 32 It : I' ; ■.* i t X 498 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. point of excellence. Out of the 840,000 immi- grants who are said to have come into the country between 1868 and 1898* many went on and settled in the United States and the balance were composed, as a rule, of the best class of settlers — people with some small means and with a clearly defined national sentiment which made them prefer living in a land where they could retain their allegiance to an ac- ceptance of the more glittering and surface attrac- tiveness of a great foreign Republic where their nationality would be lost. Distinctly alien elements have not been encouraged as settlers^ and up to 1898, when some 6,000 Galicians were settled in the North West, the great majority of immigrants have been from the British Isles — with a tendency amongst the Irish element to drift away to the United States. In addition to this gradual growth of the Canadiaa population having been of benefit to the moral status of the community, it has, in vast regions of the North-West, also enabled the full machinery of popular government to be evolved and thoroughly practised before the inevitable flood of future popu- lation finds its way thither. Following the early social sentiments of the Provinces, when the Church of Rome in Quebec stamped the seal of its absolute disapproval upon * The figures of immigration into Canada are admittedly defective. This total is, however, furnished by the Domin- ion'Statistician from the best available statements and is as nearly accurate as possible. URY. PEOPLE AND COUNTRY AT END OF CENTURY. 499 •00 immi- ae country ind settled composed, eople with 3d national ; in a land to an ac- ace attrac- 'here their m elements ip to 1898, the North- have been !y amongst ited States. Canadian loral status ons of the chinery of thoroughly iture popu- of the Quebec oval upon ;s in admittedly the Domin- its and is as divorce, and was fully endorsed in that connection by the rigid tenets of Presbyterianism and the feel- ings of English Churchmen in the other Colonies, Canada since Confederation has been notable for an old-time adherence to the sacredness of the marriage tie and for its open objection to the growing loose- ness of legislation and sentiment in the United States upon the subject. In Ontario, Quebec, the Territories and Manitoba complete separation can only be obtained through public application to Par- liament and trial by the Senate, and then only for the Scriptural reason. The Maritime Provinces and British Columbia have Provincial Courts, and, since Confederation, 196 divorces have been granted by them. Parliament has only granted sixty di- vorces, and these figures therefore constitute the sum-total during thirty years in a population of four or five millions. The Temperance question since 1867 has been a much-discussed one. It has assumed every form of agitation and legislation from moderate restriction to entire prohibition. The Dunkin Act — a local option measure — was in force in parts of Upper and Lower Canada at Con- federation. In 1875, Sir Charles Tupper proposed and carried through Parliament a Prohibitory Act for the I^orth-West Territories dealing chiefly with the sale of liquor to Indians. Three years later the Hon. R. W. Scott carried his famous Canada Tem- perance Act which relegated the power of Prohibi- tion to the cities and counties of the Dominion and 'JfT 500 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. was voted upon in nine of the former and seventy- three of the latter. After many years of ups and downs and much energetic and eloquent advocacy in earlier days by Mr. George E. Foster and Mr. George W. Eoss — the one afterwards Dominion Minister of Finance and the other Premier of Ontario — the Act is now in force (1899) in one city and twenty-seven counties. But of these only three are outside the Maritime Provinces. Various attempts have been made to obtain total Prohibition in the Provinces and in the Dominion. Mainitoba, in 1892, polled a majority of eleven thousand five hundred for the principle, Prince Edward Island in 1893 gave it seven thousand two hundred majority, Nova Scotia in 1894 polled one of thirty-one thousand four hundred, and Ontario' in the same year voted in its favour by eighty-one thousand seven hundred majority. Emboldened by these successes, though they were never put into legislative practice, the advocates of Prohibition ob- tained in 1898 a Dominion Plebiscite upon the ques- tion and a majority of 13,687 in the country as a whole. But as Quebec voted in the most overwhelm- ing manner against the proposal — with a majority of 98,000 — and as the total votes polled for and against it were only 43 per cent, of the votes on the Dominion lists, the Government very properly re- fused to consider the result of the test as a popular mandate in favour of Prohibition. As a whole the Canadian community is essentially a temperate one. rURY. PEOPLE AND COUNTRY AT END OP CENTURY. 501 ad seventy- of ups and idvocacy in and Mr. Dominion 'remier of in one city these only 3. Dbtain total Dominion. of eleven )le, Prince ousand two polled one nd Ontario eighty-one )oldened by r put into hibition ob- 3n the ques- Duntry as a overwhelm- a majority ed for and i^otea on the )roperly re- s a popular a whole the iperate one. It does not consume as much whiskey as the Scotch, as much beer as the English, or as much lager and other stimulants as the Americans. The French habitant is by nature temperate and indulges chief- ly in light home-made wines; the farmer elsewhere in the country drinks little and is usually very steady in his habits; while the cities have not the large vicious element possessed by greater centres of population in older countries. Temperance socie- ties, temperance lodges in various labour and politi- cal organisations, and temperance banquets, have in late years been steadily increasing. It is interest- ing to note in this connection that while the popula- tion has increased by perhaps a million, the con- victions for drunkenness between 1885 and 1898 have remained stationary — a little over eleven thou- sand in the respective years. In 1886 there were 3,509 convictions for indictable offences and 30,365 summary convictions in all Canada as against totals of 5,787 and 32,419 respectively in 1898. In the latter year the inmates of the Penitentiaries of Canada included 1,446, of whom the great majority were native-born. One-half were of French ex- traction, eleven hundred were able to read and write and nearly a half were between the ages of twenty and thirty. Contrary to popular belief only 445 were intemperate in their original habits. Turning from these considerations to the all-im- portant point of religious development, it is probable that th€ most instructive feature of the three do- i;; i;i •i i I 502 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. it i cades following Confederation has been the tend- ency toward denominational unity and friendship. The class distinctions which in earlier days tended to keep various religious bodies apart have largely dis- appeared, while the objections to an interchange of pulpits have gradually died away in all the Chris- tian divisions outside of the Church of Rome and the Church of England. A more cosmopolitan spirit has entered into the majority of Canadian Churches, and the country as a whole has not re- mained outside the stream of modern tendency to- ward a pulpit which is able to treat, or which aims at treating, of every branch of social life as well as of theological theory or dogmatic principle. Mean- time unity has been in the air. In 1868 the Free Church Synod of the Maritime Provinces and the Church of Scotland Synods of those three Provinces combined. In 1875 the Church of Scotland in Canada and the Canada Presbyterian Church of the Maritime Provinces came together in a general union which soon embraced the whole Dominion denomi- nation. In the previous year the Wesleyan Metho- dist Conference of Canada, the Canadian New-Con- nection Conference and the Wesleyan Conference of Eastern British America combined as the Methodist Church of Canada. By 1883 the feeling of religi- ous, or denominational, kinship had so matured that the Methodist Church of Canada united its forces with those of the Primitive Methodists, the Bible Christians and the Methodist Episcopal Church in I! I ! !l ! PEOPLE AND COUNTRY AT END OF CENTURY. 503 a general Dominion body — The Methodist Church in Canada. In Canada as a whole the Roman Catholic Church maintained its numerical supremacy and, in 1891, had nearly two million adherents, or 41.21 per cent, of the population, as compared with the Methodist 17.54 per cent., the Presbyterian 15.63 per cent, and the Church of England 13.37 per cent. The Methodists had 847,000, the Presbyterians 755,- 000 and the Church of England 646,000 adherents according to this Census. In Ontario, between 1871 and 1891, the greatest increase had been with the Methodists, the Presbyterians coming next, the Roman Catholics third and the Anglicans fourth. In Quebec the Church of Rome added 272,000 to the number of its adherents and the Protestant de- nominations only a few scattering thousands. The three Maritime Provinces placed the Roman Catho- lics first in their growth and the Methodists second — the Church of England in two of the Provinces actually showing a decrease. In Manitoba, British Columbia and the Territories, however, the Presby- terian Church came first in its increase, the Church of England second, the Methodists third and the Roman Catholics fourth. Taking the Dominion as a whole, and during these two decades, the Church of Rome increased its adherents to the number of 429,- 000, the Methodists 256,000, the Presbyterians 161,000 and the Church of England 120,000. It will thus be seen that from being first in numbers ( I ii *'■!■ i :'.; 504 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY, and influence in three of the old Provinces of Brit- ish America the last-named denomination has be- come last among the ciiief divisions of Christianity. The other most notable feature of these religious facts is the marked growth of Roman Catholicism in all the older Provinces of the Dominion. The- Baptists made substfntial progress during this period and especially in church building — in which connection, however, the Church of England led all the Protestant denominations and the Church of Rome. Between Confederation and the end of the cen- tury there was an immense advance in educational systems and facilities, Not that the principle aimed at by men like Dawson, Rand, Chauveau and Ryerson was changed by their successors, but that a proper appreciation of the desirability of free schools and good schools was brought home to the minds of the people and better means were con- sequently given in all the Provinces for improve- ment and development. In Ontario, where the subject received the most attention and organised effort, a great advance has been made. The School Act of 1871 amended the system of 1850 very con- siderably; and in 1876 the position of nominated Chief Superintendent of Education was abolished and the schools were placed under the charge of a political Minister. Since then the system has been much centralised and modified and has been admin- istered from 1883 to 1899 by the Hon. George W.. RY. 1 of Brit- 1 has be- istianity. religious tholicism on. The- •ing this -in which id led all hurch of the cen- ucational principle Lveau and but that ■ of free le to the verc con- improve- lere the organised le School very con- ominated abolished irge of a has been n adrain- eorge W.. StR JOHN CHRISTIAN 3CHUI,T7,. K.C.M.O. 4 MADAME ALBANI-GYB. PEOPLE AND COUNTRY AT END OF CENTURY. 505 Ross. In 1871 the average attendance at the free, or public, schools was 188,000; in 189G it was 271,- 000. The number of High Schools had only in- creased by twenty-seven, but the expenditui'e upon them had risen over six hundred thousand dollars. The Catholic Separate Schools had received the benefit of sundry amendments to the law and had increased from IGl to 339. In Quebec the system was slowly improved in details, but the main principle of governing by means of Catholic and Protestant Committees of Public Instruction, with complete control of their respective funds under the general guidance and responsibility of a Su- perintendent, remained the same. From 1870 to 1895 the Hon. Gedeon Ouimet held the position of Superintendent and did good service to tlie general cause of education in his Province where, in 1897, there w re 307,000 children attending school as compare ' with 212,000 at Confederation. The Ro- man Cat. lie schools, including colleges and uni- versities, nil inhered 5,848. The Catholic clergy ui Quebec during these decades ministered unceasing- ly to the cause of education — in that combined moral, Christian and secular form which they inculcate. To them Quebec owes seventeen colleges, and to the teaching Orders of women a very large number of scholars owe an education which is excellent in scope and character. In these days of advanced woman and of masculine pursuits and occupations for females it is interesting to note that, in 1896, ir ^1 I SI 506 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. over thirteen thousand children in the Province studied domestic economy, over sixteen thousand learned knitting and more than twelve thousand mastered the twin arts of sewing and embroidery. "" It may be added here *' it in 1896 there were over 30,000 male students being educated by Roman Catholic religious Orders throughout Canada, while 44,000 female students vvere being trained by the various Sisterhoods. In Nova Scotia the School system is under the control of a Chief Superintendent of Education, and the position since Confederation has been held by Dr. T. H. Rand, the Rev. A. S. Hunt, Dr. David Allison and Dr. Alexander H. MacKay. It has worked well in the promotion of public interests through an increase of teachers from 1,360 in 1867 to 2,438 in 1896, in the increased average attendance of pupils from 36,000 to 53,000, in the growth of popular assessments for school purposes from $353,- 000 to $570,000, and m the addition of $80,000 to the amount of the Provincial grant for education. In N^ew Brunswick Dr. Theodore H. Rand held charge as Chief Superintendent from 1871 to 1883, and was succeeded in course by Mr. William Crocket and Dr. James R. Inch. A somewhat acute controversy took place in the Province over the Com- mon Schools Act of 1871, which waa carried through the Legislature by the Hon. George E. King — now • The Hon. P. BoucIiht de la Biu6re, in Canada : An En- q/clopcedia of the Country, vol. 8, p. 24. ^-a 4 L URY. PEOPLE AND COUNTRY AT END OF CENTURY. 507 Province thousand thousand broidery."" were over •y Roman ada, while ed by the under the Education, been held Dr. David \ It has ; interests in 1867 ittendance growth of om $353,- 580,000 to education, land held to 1883, William vhat acute the Com- d through 'ing — now la : An En- a Judge of the Supreme Court of Canada. By this meas: re all the property of the Province was made subject to assessment for the support of non-secta- rian and free schools. The Roman Catholics naturally opposed it, and also, unfortunately, a large class who disliked direct taxation, even for edu- cational purposes. Mr. King was thus trying to de- fer New Brunswick what Dr. Tuppfr had done in 1864 for Nova Scotia. Eventually the matter was settled by a compromise under which Roman Cath- olic teachers. Sisters of Charity, etc., could be employed in the public schools subject to the passing of similar examinations and the same inspection as all other teachers. The plan has worked well, and between 1877 and 1896 the number of schools in- creased by over four hundred and the pupils by six thousand. The storm centre in educational matters, however, during a portion of this period was the little Prov- ince of Manitoba. Under the system established in 1871 the schools were managed by a joinL Roman Catholic and Protestant Committee in much the same manner as in Quebec. But the two Sec- tions did not work well together, and in 1876 the Protestant one pronounced in favour of the abolition of Catholic Separate Schools. Vari- ous modifications of the original system were made, but no really serious change occiirred until 1890 when, under the initiative of the stormy petrel of Manitoba politics, as he afterwards was of ji •4: ii •f 111 ■ - -.' i ^^^^H ^^^^^^^^^^H^l' H ' WM liiiwMii'ii ii 1 t M^IH^^^B I'n iL. 508 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. British Columbia — Mr. Joseph Martin — the Sepa- rate Schools were abolished and the management of education transferred to a Government Department. A political storm followed which aroused bitter sec- tarian feeling and even threatened to set the Prov- inces against one another upon religious lines owing to the transference of the question to Dominion Courts and the Dominion Parliament. liu'iJental- ly it secured the Greenway Government in power through the support of the Protestant majority in Manitoba and defeated the Tupper Government vt Ottawa through its disintegrating effect upon the Conservative party. The legality of the legislation was twice tested before the highest Courts of Can- ada and the Empire, and eventually the Dominion Government of Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Pro- vincial Ministry of Mr. Greenway readied a kind of mild compromise by which the Roman Catholicswere allowed certain of their old-time and minor privi" leges, but with the generally secular character of the public schools conserved. The schools of this Prov- ince increased from 256 in 1883 to 1,032 in 1896, while the number of teachers rose by nearly nine hundred and the pupils by twenty-seven thousand in the same period. The educational system of British Columbia was established in 1872 and amended in many important respects by the Provincial Acts of 1891 and 1896. The chief executive officer is the Minister of Edu- cation, assisted by a Chief Superintendent, and URY. PEOPLE AND COUNTRY AT END OF CENTURY. 609 -the Sepa- gement of spartment. bitter see- the Prov- ines owing Dominion [iieiJental- in power ajority in rnment vi upon the legislation s of Can- Dominion the Pro- a kind of lolicswere nor privi- !ter of the this Prov- in 1896, arly nine thousand mbia was important md 1896. • of Edu- lent, and British Columbia is thus the only Canadian Prov- ince which has followed tlie example of Ontario in placing education under political control. The progress made has been considerable and in the years between 1872 and 1896 the school districts in- creased from 25 to 193, the average daily attendance rose from a few hundreds to fourteen thousand and the expenditure from almost nothing to a couple of hundred thousand dollars. In the North-West Territories education is under the control of a Council of Public Instruction of a somewhat curi- ous character. Four of its members belong to the Executive or Ministry, four are appointed and con- sist of two Roman Catholics and two Protestants. Over the vast extent of territory covered by the scattered population of these regions there were, in 1896, 366 schools with twelve thousand pupils, and the system seems to be working well. How much better it is than the ill-defined, unpopular, badly- equipped system of pioneer days in the older Prov- inces of the Dominion can easily be estimated. The pioneers of the prairies, with all their liability to severe cold, occasional damage to crops and the in- evitable isolation of vast areas, have indeed had few privations and little suffering in comparison with those of their early predecessors in the Lake and Atlantic regions of Canada. And not the least of their advantages has been the possession of these improved educational facilities and of the zealous attention of great religious denominations in the older Provinces as well as in the Mother-land. 610 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. :'H ■ii f i ,1. 1' ' fill 1 ' ■■■^ I ■ '' 1' During this period higher education also made great progress in Canada, and in some of the Prov- inces perhaps received too much attention. Since Confederation five Ladies' Colleges have been or- ganised in Ontario, several Catholic Colleges in Quebec, an Agricultural College at Guelph, in Ontario, and at Truro, in Nova Scotia, and a School of Practical Science in Toronto. Colleges of Music, Medicine, Dentistry have also been es- tablished. A Presbyterian and a Methodist Col- lege were founded in Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba was established in 1877 by a loose union of these institutions with the older Colleges of St. John and St. Boniface. Well-trained stu- dents have now for many years been turned out of the Universities in Montreal, Quebec, Halifax, Fredericton, Toronto, Kingston and Winnipeg in numbers which have steadily increased, until it has become a question in Canada how far the process is an economic advantage. Not finding sufiicient openings in the small population at home for their superior educational qualifications, these students have drifted in very many cases to the neighbouring Republic and have tlius proved a loss to the com- munity as a whole and to the farms from which so many of them had come and to which their newly- trained tastes prevented a return. The high schools acted, of course, as feeders to the Universities, and, while no one can dispute the personal pleasure of a completed education and the advantage of Univer- ^ ' j hi- k 1S^ ii rj[ !'?S JRY. PEOPLE AND COUNTRY AT END OF CENTURY. 511 ilso made the Prov- m. Since ! been or- olleges in uelpli, in ia, and a Colleges o been ea- lodist Col- University by a loose Br Colleges rained stu- nned out of !, Halifax, 'innipeg in until it ha^ e process is J sufficient ae for their so students eighbouring to the com- )ni which so their newly- high schools irsities, and, deasure of a 3 of Univer- sity training in the diffusion of culture, it has be- come an undoubted problem in Canada how the recognition of this fact is to be combined with the retention of its young men in a community which must have workers other than those of an intellect- ual character and is primarily dependent upon the prosperity of its farms and the development of its soil. Like the rush of women into the cities, and into shops and factories, in preference to the adop- tion of domestic service or acceptance of the home life offered tliem by marriage within their own circles, this is a problem which has evolved in the Dominion during the last twenty years and will have to be faced in the next century. It must be said, also, that if higher education has produced its problems, the public school system in Canada has not been without serious defects. Little or no attention is now paid to the manners of the children, respect to superiors or elders is not in- culcated, and the desire to train boys in freedom of thought and speech has too often resulted in laxity, if not licence, of language and manner. The com- bination of politeness with perfect independence is not regarded, apparently, as an ideal condition for the Canadian schoolboy, and the hardly probable extreme of servility is avoided by the frequent evolu- tion of the other extreme of rudeness. Too much grinding study is the characteristic of the public schools and at times children are dwarfed mentally and physically by the varied nature of their tasks i i . I ^MT' 'O^'msamm.a^:.. 512 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. and the influence of a competition for place and position so extreme as to be painful in the case of the very young. There is not sufficient patronage given to the large private schools of the country or sufficient encouragement to the British ideal of cul- tivating character and manliness in boys as well as a knowledge of grammar and arithmetic. Upper Canada College, under the recent control of Dr. George R. Parkin, has become an exception to this rule and is rapidly taking its jilace, in fact as well as in popular designation, as a Canadian Eton. Probably, also, as population and wealth increase in the Dominion the patronage of this and other in- stitutions of the Icind will grow greater. Another serious fault in the public schools is the under-pay- ment of the teachers in consequence of the intense competition for positions. High schools have to face a similar evil owing to the large number of University graduates available for any and every vacancy. Incidentally it may be said, with regret, that the spelling, pronunciation and grammar taught in the lower forms of Canadian schools is patterned very largely, though unconsciously, upon American models and ignores many of the niceties of the English language as cultivated in England, many of the delicate refinements of spelling and of speech to which English culture has attained, and many of the rules laid down by the best English authorities. Proximity may have made this process and result inevitable, but the fact is none the less to be de- plored. a.-g-.Tf=»^ '^Tr?^"' " j'-i . '^i ^ -iagujfc' .imM»f URY. place and le case of patronage ountry or sal of cul- ls well as !. Upper )1 of Dr. 3n to this ct as Avell an Eton, icrease in other in- Another mder-pay- le intense have to umber of nd every th regret, ar taught patterned A-inerican s of the many of )f speech many of Lthorities. nd result to be de- THE HON. GEORGE W. RCSS, 1,1,. D., M.P.P. !> TH3 HON SIR OLIVER MOW AT, Q C, LL.D. PEOPLE AND COUNTRY AT END OF CENTURY. 513 Social conditions, in the meantime, developed great- ly under the changes of the three decades which have closed the pages of a century's history. The posi- tion of the farmers has been slightly referred to. In English-speaking centres the old-time Loyalist class with its official connections, hereditary sentiment and sympathetic touch with English social tradi- tions, has larg(3ly passed away or else has experi- enced the loss of position which so often follows the loss of property or means. Successful mer- chants, well-to-do manufacturers and prosperous pro- fessional men have succeeded to its social place and traditions, and to these classes at the end of the century is due a society which has a curious com- mingling, in it!^ customs and forms, of American freedom and English reserve. Yet Canada is not without old families and hereditary associations. Names such as Baldwin, Haliburton, Gait, Tache, Taschereau, Boulton, Cartwright, Jarvis, Robinson, Denison, Tupper, Molson, Blake, Lotbiniere, Do Salaberry and Sewell occur at once in this connec- tion to any one familiar with the history of the various Provinces. The fact is particularly appar- ent in Quebec where families still frequently main- tain a position of hereditary distinction and where the old Soigneurial system still lives in a social sense. Amongst the liabitants of that Province there has been little change in custom or character during this period. Tliey remain like a piece of media?val Europe imbedded in the heart of a bust- 33 '*.;ili (I mEH 1 i! : ill 514 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. ling continent, although here and there some trav- elling " Jean Baptiste " comes back every now and then from an American industrial town swaggering in the clothes and crude ideas of an extraneous civili- sation and for a time gives to his village a new ex- citement and a glimpse of other conditions. As a whole, however, the habitant is still the cheerful, irresponsible, excitable, moral and religious peasant of fifty and a hundred years ago. Montreal has become the commercial and finan- cial metropolis of the Dominion. Here centres the business of the Bank of Montreal — the largest bank- ing institution on the continent. Here are the head- quarters of the Canadian Pacific Railway and its vast interests. Here still exists a connection with the old-time fur trade through the Hudson's Bay Company. Here are many of the greater wholesale houses of the country and the transportation com- panies which control the Canadian traffic on the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence and the Atlantic. Here are immense manufacturing concerns employ- ing much habitant labour and making occasional millionaires. Montreal is emphatically the seat of social wealth; Toronto is representative of people with what might be termed moderate means; Hali- fax still holds the military society of Canada ; Win- nipeg and Vancouver have all the mixed elements characteristic of rapidly growing Western cities; Victoria constitutes in custom and character a typi- cal English town on Canadian soil. Ottawa is the rt:. 41 PEOPLE AND COUNTRY AT END OF CENTURY. 515 seat of Government and the centre of Vice-regal hospitalities which vary in lavishness, ii display and in degrees of dignity with each occupant of Rideau Hall. Its society is interesting during the Session of Parliament, but at other times loses largely the cosmopolitan and mixed character so typi- cal of a national capital. The labouring classes in Canada are perhaps the most generally contented and comfortable to be found anywhere. Trade Unions and Labour organisations of all kinds flour- ish, but upon the whole relations between employers and working-men are not strained. Strikes have never been numerous, and violence seldom marks those which nave occurred. There was for a time a tendency to combine the labour and fraternal or- ganisations of Canada with the immense concerns of the United States, but at the close of the century there are marked evidences of a desire to draw awav from the connection thus formed with the great prob- lems of American industrial life. Meanwhile other elements in the making of a na- tion, or in the moulding for good or ill of national characteristics, have been evolving in Canada. Tbe creation of a literature and journalism which has been formative in nature and illustrative in charac- ter of the life of the people has latterly been marked. Unfortunately it has still to bo described as a broken and divided development — two streams of English and French thought running side by side and never mixing. With the coming of Confederation there \fl ••^'*»«WRw«t,«a... 4 ' : 1 •f: . i ' i. ■ \ ■• f- . 1 ' ' ■! ' 'f- * ; 1 m M ' ^ 516 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. was a period of very slow growth in the English branch of Canadian literature. The process was de- pendent upon the educational influence of the news- papers, and the latter, for a long time, were more intent upon the material ends of national life — questions of transportation and constitution-making — than upon ue cultivation of flowers of poetry or the seeking out of germs of literary ability Henry J. Morgan, G. Mercer Adam, Dr. Alpheus Todd, Dr. W. II. Withrow, W. J. Kattray, Dr. George Stewart, Dr. J. George Ilodgins, did good service in these earlier years to gei^'^ral literature and un- der most trying conditions of public indifference to all Canadian efforts in that direction. Charles Sangstcr, William Kirby, John Reade, Mrs. Lepro- hon, James de Mille and others endeavoured to up- hold the lamp of romance and poesy. Isabella Val- ancey Crawford, after one flash of genius and beauti- ful poetic creation, died of disappointment as Keats had done in another country and another period. Gradually, however, the change came. With the growth of genuine Canadian sentiment came an ap- preciation of things Canadian, a keener interest in the past of Canada, a fuller comprehension of the beauties and potentialities of its vast Dominion. Dr. William Kingsford, in 1888, undertook the prep- aration of a History of Canada in most elaborate form and from all available dooummfflr'- lata. He finished the work in ten vol S98, and shortly afterwards die ' ti^iui undertak- URY. English 38 was de- : the ncws- vero inoro lal life — )u-making poetry or Henry nis Todd, r. George )d service 3 and un- Ference to Charles rs. Lepro- ed to nil- sell a Val- id beauti- as Keats ?riod. With the ne an ap- [iterest in 3n of the )ominion. : the prep- elaborate lata. He S98, and undertak- t V ;! THE HON. SIMON NAI'OLROX PARENT. \A ^■■^.i 1' ■1 mm (S ;I1I il il I ■ ;.IEUT.-COL. THE HON. FEL,x GAIIRIpt. MAPCMAND, Q.C. v^lMHPWMMWmn^P^WM^MiMIIIH PEOPLE AND COUNTRY AT END OF CENTURY. 517 E..J \ND, Q.C. ing constitutes a monument of ceaseless research and exertion and is a mine of valuable information. Sir John George Bourinot, in magazine and pamphlet and constitutional volume, won his way to reputation and rank. Dr. Goldwin Smith in essay and newspaper argument, book and pamphlet, poured out a stream of literary production which, vdiile often alien in sentiment and inciirring bitter controversial opposition, yet helped by its lucid English and almost perfect style to develop culture and classical taste in tiie community. At the same time, it must be said, his writings frequently had the opposite effect by adding fuel to the flames of a suffi- cientlv violent stvle of Colonial iournalism. The most important of Canadian biographical works, from the standpoint of documentary detail, is Mr. Joseph Pope's Memoirs of Sir John A. Macdonald, published in 1894. From 1880, onwards, public ap- preciation of local literary effort steadily increased, and between 1890 and 1900 it has reached a stage of which the pioneers in Canadian literature could hardly have dreamed. Mrs, Everard Cotes, Miss Lily Dougall, Edmund E. Sheppard, Charles G. B. Roberts, J. Macdonald Oxley, W. D. Lighthall, Mrs. S. Frances Harrison, Willinni ^IcLennan, ^fi'^^s ^Afarshall Saunders and, most prominent of all, Gilbert Parker, have obtained rank in the liter- ature of romance. Mr. Parker, in particular, has won a reputation as wide as the English-speaking world. In Quebec the chief names of this period \h\ n I 518 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. are those of Louis Frechette, the most brilliant poet of his people, Sir James Le Moine, the cultured historical student and writer who dwells on the banks of the St. Lawrence, not far from the Heights of Abraham, M. Faillon, L'Abbe Gosselin, Mgr. C. Tanguay and H. R. Casgrain. Poets of taste and beauty of expression French Canada has produced, in a greater degree of numerical excellence than has been possible elsewhere in the Domin on. Journalism in Canada can hardly be said to have kept pace with literature in its development. What- ever the faults of the latter, and in- a young country they must always be sufficiently numerous, it has Jii least aimed high and has tried to follow the best English models. But the papers of Canada have fallen, to some extent, into beaten paths of American style and taste and manner without being possessed of the imn.3nse backing of wealth and energy which makes even the most wretchedly sensational New York sheet a somewhat marvellous creation. There are exceptions, of course, and at least half a dozen great dailies in the Dominion maintain a curious balance between English solidity and accuracy and American sensational and " slap-dash " journalism. And there is also, beneath the surface, a very saving grace of honour and self-respect which, in spite of ap- pearances and exaggerations and political person- alities, is steadily growing stronger. It is greatly to the credit of Canada that the more distinct these qualities are the more influential has been the paper. 'URY. brilliant le cultured Is on the le Heights , Mgr. C. taste and produced, e than has id to have tit. What- ig country , it has ai k' the best lada have American possessed rgy which onal New 11. There f a dozen a curious iracy and turnalism. !ry saving -tite of ap- il person- greatly to inct these ;he paper. PEOPLE AND COUNTRY AT END OF CENTURY. 519 That the press, as a whole, has been controlled by patriotic motives is apparent from the ease with which racial and religious strife can be stirred up by unscrupulous journals in a country having two races and rival creeds and by the few occasions in which such an influence has really been uppermost. For the rest, increasing education and capital and closer intimacy with British methods and British style may be expected to steadily improve a system of journalism which is better now than that of the United States, though not yet upon the same level as the experienced and dignified press of the United Kingdom. In Quebec journalism is essentially different in scope and character from that of the rest of the Canadian community. It is French, with a str'^ng dash of Provincialism. It is of the soil, yet with many qualities alien to the general environ- ment of the people. It is Canadian, and loyal as a whole to British connection, without being British. The newspaper men of the Province are and have been of a peculiarly brilliant type, and from its Editorial chairs have come many political leaders, eloquent speakers and successful lawyers. Inci- dentally a curious phase of Canadian public life, and one not always beneficial, may be found in the fact that some of the prominent journalists of Quebec are Frenchmen from Paris and not French- Canadians in the true sense of that complex word. Closely and naturally associated with literature and journalism is the growth of art and musical cul- Ill \ i:, i t * f ^ 1 1 i p .-.,.^ - - J § ■ I : .i i ■ 1 ■ -■ if - p rM > 1 r^^l ' ; Hi [II "I rf 520 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. ture. The best that can be said of Canada in this respect is that these are cultivated tastes, and for their full fruition require the leisure which only comes to matured communities and the wealth wl 'ch only results from a fairly developed country. To- ward the end of the century botii these condition>i are becoming apparent, and Avith this stage in Canadian development native ai'tists and musicians are beginning to be api)reciated and understood. Peel, Sandham, Vogt, Edson, Eaton, Eraser, Ward, Bourassa, Jacobi, O'Brien, Harris, have all con- tributed to the progress now apparent ; and the mag- nificent resources in Canada's vast mountains, varied lake and river and forest and island scenery, and pastoral, ranching and hunting views, are being slowly exploited. In this process much good has come from the Royal Canadian Academy, founded in 1879 by the ]\rarquess of Lome, just as the pur- suit of literature and science has been greatly aided by the foundation in 1881 of the Royal Society of Canada. Sculpture has found its chief expression in busts and statues of eminent men and in the representation of various religious subjects for church edifices in the Province of Quebec. The most notable examples of statuary in the Dominion are the memorials to Sir John A. Macdonald in Toronto, Ifamilton, IMontreal and Ottawa, the statue of the Queen at jNfontreal, of Sir George Cartier at Ottawa, of George Brown at Toronto and of General Brock at Quecnston. In music and song Canada, since Con- JRY. la in this and for lick only Ith w! 'ch try. To- onditions stage in nnsicians dcrstood. sr, Ward, all cou- th e mag- ounta;ns, scenery, ire being ^ood has founded the pur- ely aided ociety of cpression I in the octs for he most lion are Toronto, of the Ottawa, il 13 rock ice Con- LORD STRATHCONA AND MCUNT ROYAT., G.C.M G. 'J I i f '1 r ■ r 1 'J i 1 ■n i' ' r 1 i HTi 1 1 1 i ||)|j I.;. ■ \ . 1 i i' P' il I i Jiiil I: THE HON. SIR CHARLES TaprER, BART., G.C.M.G., C.B. i PEOPLE AND COUNTRY AT END OF CENTURY. 521 federation, has been proud of having produced Madame Albani-Gye, and the French-Canadian part of its population sings Sir George E. Cartier's beautiful " Canada nion pays, Mes Amours," while English-Canadians delight in Alexander Muir's " Land of the Maple Leaf." The cities of the country have done much of late years to encourage musical taste by school instruction, by the formation of Colleges of Music, by the organisation of Orches- tras and Choral Societies and by the presentation of the works of great composers. And, while the Dominion has produced no great names in musical composition, it has undoubtedly developed a good standard of musical culture. In other branches of national life progress has been even more marked. To the Militia, or Volun- teer, system which so distinctly differentiates the English-speaking world from other nationalities Confederation naturally gave a great impetus. Very wascly, the command of the forces in Canada (now numbering about 40,000 men) was left in the hands of an Imperial officer, and to the eight men who have since held that position much has been du. — more than will even yet be admitted by those who, unfortunately, have appeared to prefer a locally and politically controlled Militia to one absolutely in- dependent of partisanship. Over a million dollars has boon annually spent in maintaining the system, and the men have proved their efficiency during the Fenian Raids, the ]N'orth-\Ve8t Rebellions and 522 PliOGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. I )■' I upon the battle-grounds of South Africa. Imperial troops, under a Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in British America, have been maintained at Hali- fax and Esquimault. During the last years of the century and by the active efforts of Major-General E. T. H. Hutton, reforms of various kinds have been effected in the Militia with a view to strength- ening it as an arm of the military force of the Em- pire. Incidentally the system has had a great in- fluence in promoting, as well as expressing patriot- ism, and the most ardent lover of peace cannot but appreciate how great a factor in unifying scattered peoples and settlements, or distant Provinces and countries, is a national Militia or a common Army and Navy. Industrial life has had a remarkable expansion during the thirty years following Confederation. Woollens and cottons, agricultural implements and paper and pulp manufactures are largely the prod- uct of this period. The loom and the spinning- wheel have given place, except in a few old-fashioned communities, to large mills and industrial establish- ments, while raw material is every year imported to a greater extent and more and more manufactured goods are exported. In 1898, a million and a quarter dollars' worth of Canadian grey cottons were sent to far-away China, while Canadian implements now largely control the Australasian market and the prod- uct of its pulp and paper mills promises to rival the one-time greatness of its timber trade. Between J; TURY. PEOPLE AND COUNTRY AT END OF CENTURY. 523 Imperial the Forces id at Hali- ears of the jor-General kinds have ;o strength- af the Em- great in- tig patriot- cannot but scattered ances and non Army expansion federation, nents and the prod- spinning- ■fashioned establish- imported ufactured a quarter re sent to 3nts now the prod- to rival Between 1881 and 1891 the number of industrial establish- ments in Canada increased by 25,000, the capital employed by $190,000,000, the number of employes by 116,000, the wages paid by $40,000,000 and the value of the total vitput by $16,000,000. Per- haps, however, the feature of Canadian develop- ment which has attracted most attention abroad is its gold. British Columbia in the " fifties," and onward, produced some fifty millions of gold by the sudden expansion of mining activity and pro- cess of placer mining, but the excitement of the first discoveries died out after a time and in the course of years the production dwindled down to a small annual figure. Then came the mineral epoch of 1896, when the great gold-ore resources of ihe Kootenay regions were made known and the Arctic regions of the Canadian Yukon found to be practi- cally paved with precious metal. Kossland and countless mineral centres grew up in British Colum- bia almost in a night, Dawson City soon held an ice- bound population of thousands in the distant Yu- kon and the world rang with stories of unequalled wealth. The first excitement has now died awav, and in both these regions mining has settled down upon a substantial basis with yearly increased re- sults. The annual production of the Dominion in all minerals has risen from twenty to forty millionii in value, while enormous and uncounted quantities; of gold dust have passed out of the country in the hands of American miners. 524 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. Meantime progress has been equally evident in other directions and may be briefly summarised. The number of Post Offices in the Dominion in- creased, between 1868 and 1898, by fifty-six hun- dred ; the number of letters, under constantly de- creasing rates, rose from eighteen millions to one hundred and thirty-five millions and the newspapers in an equal projiortion ; the tonnage of Canadian shipping rose by four millions and the number of the vessels by six thousand ; the imports doubled and the exports trebled in value; the balance in the Post Office savings banks increased from a few thousands to thirty-four millions of dollars, and the assets of the chartered banks rose from seventy- seven to three hundred and sixty-five millions. By the Census of 1891 there were 28,537,000 acres of land under cultivation. The net Public Debt — mainly expended upon railways, canals and other public improvements — rose from $75,7i>7,135 in 18G8 to $263,956,399 in 1898. During the same period the revenues of the Dominion increased from thirteen to forty millions. j\roanwhile the Pro- vincial debts had risen from nothing to tliirty mil- lions * and the Provincial revenues from five to twelve millions. One of the most striking features in this summary is that relating to banking. Through an exceedingly flexible bank-note system and the main- * Tlie Provincial indebtedness has, with some exceptions, been incurred in opening up new country and backwood regions by means of roads, bridges, railways, etc. .— I TURY. PEOPLE AND COUNTRY AT END OF CENTURY. 525 evident In tunmarised. minion in- ty-six hun- stantlj de- ons to one newspapers Canadian number of ts doubled mee in the 3m a few •3, and the n seventy- lions. By acres of ic Debt — and otlier )i,ioi) in the same ased from the Pro- lirty mil- 11 five to eatures in irough an the main- exceptions, backwocHJ tenanco by each largo bank of many branches the paper money of the country has been made singular- ly easy of application to the requirements of a great- ly scattered population. The circulation is satis- factorily guaranteed and secured, the confidence of the public in the banks is absolute, their capital is large, the profits made are considerable, and the system has worked so well as to justify Canadians in regarding it as one of the highest and best evidences of their national advancement. It is perhaps the most perfect system in its application to the con- ditions of the people and the country which is any- where to be found. In 1898 there were six hundred and forty-one branches, scattered from Halifax to Vancouver and the Yukon, of the thirty-eight Canadian banks. In that year their total paid-up capi- tal was sixty-two millions, the notes in circulation thirty-seven millions, the deposits two hundred and thirty-six millions and the discounts two hundred and twenty-three millions of dollars. Canadian insurance against fire in 1898 showed a total of nearly seven hundred millions, of which two-thirds was carried by British Companies. The life in- surance carried in Canada by Canadian Companies showed the striking increase, between 1868 and 1898, of five to two hundred and twenty-five mil- lions. British Companies increased their business from sixteen to thirty-six millions and American Companies from thirteen to one hundred and five millions. Wu^ III 526 PROGRESS OF CANADA IN THE CENTURY. With all these varied forms of developrient going on in the Dominion it may fairly be conciuded that Canada should stand upon the threshold of another century in a spirit of hope and confidence. In 1800 it appeared as a tiny population of pioneers scat- tered along the northern frontiers of a hostile na- tion ; environed by the shadow of gloomy forests and the sound of savage life ; with the loneliness of a vast wilderness away to the farthest north and west. The past was painful, the present was only relieved by a patriotic fire in the hearts of the Loyalists and by the cheerful hopefulness characteristic of their race in the breasts of the French, while the future was veiled behind dense clouds of evident personal privation and the utter absence of common popular action. In 1900 it stands as a united people of be- tween five and six millions with a foundation, well and truly laid, of great transportation enterprises, of a common fiscal policy and a common Canadian sen- timent. It boasts a greatly expanded trade and com- merce, a growing industrial production, increasing national and Provincial revenues, a wiser and better knowledge of its own vast resources, a steady pro- motion of settlement, and the continuous opening up of new regions in its seemingly boundless terri- tories. Above all it has reached out beyond the shores of the Dominion into a practical partnership with the other countries of the British Empire and is sharing in a greatness and power which the wild- est dream of a United Empire Loyalist in his log- TURY. PEOPLE AND COUNTRY AT END OF CENTURY. 527 nent going 3iuded that of another . In 1800 neers scat- hostile na- forests and 58 of a vast and west. \y relieved ^alists and c of their the future it personal )n popular )ple of be- ition, well rprises, of adian sen- and coni- increasing and better eady pro- opening less terri- ;yond the irtnership Qpire and the wild- 1 his log- hut in the forest of a century since could never have pictured. To meet this apparent destiny, however, qualities must be cultivated such as those possessed by the settlers in pioneer days, and the narrowness of a superficial and vain-glorious democracy as cani- fully avoided as the subservient faults of a selfish despotism. If the people of Canada cultivate a strength of mind which eliminates boasting, a loyalty which avoids spread-eagleism, an educational system which reaches the heart as well as the intel- lect and trains the manners as well as the morals, a religious feeling which avoids bigotry and detests in- tolerance, a national sentiment which is not racial or Provincial but Canadian, an Imperial patriotism which widens the public horizon and strengthens the character of the people while it elevates the poli- tics of the country, that future seems to the finite vision to be reasonably assured. I'^^f T 1 L'r ! m ( } i! ■1 1 1 1 Sl<»-'>!<'t' mm V : "in i. A .. Mi': IW ,• ( I r,- i^i^ r — ' - |ddl^S^Br 1 1 -vto- l: f INDEX. A. Aberdeen, Lord, and his dismissal of the Tupper Ministry, 409. Abolition of dual representation, The work of the, 416. Acadians, Manners and Customs of the, lao ; were exiled by thtir own action, 18. Acadians of 1755, Short sketch of the, 17. Agricultural area and products in Canada, 41)4. Agricultural e:cpansion after the Union, 838. Agriculture in Canada, 1820-40, De- velopment in, 190. Agriculture in JIaritime Provinces, Progress of, 100. Agriculture in 1800, Some figures on, 843. American advance in 1814, The first, 106. Americans and their sympathy for France, 88. American emigrants, and War of 1812 and Rebellion of if37, 08 ; In- flux of some very undesirable, 07. American forces compelled to retire to winter quarters, 99. American Leaders, Separation not wanted by the better class of, 1*6. American Loyalists in Upper Canada in 1800, Condition of the, 57. Americans victorious at Fort Erie and Chippewa, 107. Annexation between Canada and the U.S., Some danger of, 484. Annexation to the U.S., Meeting held in favor of, 300. Art and musical culture. Growth of, 520. Art in British America, The beginning of. 374. Assembly for R.C., The first properly elected, 322. B. Bagot, Sir Charles, succeeds Lord Sydenham, 284. Baldwin-Lafoiitaino G o v e r n in eiil , Breakup of the, !i03, 34 "Baldwin Reformers," What became of the, 303. Daldv. in, Robert, Character of, 28(5. Banks and Banking, 18:^7 to 1867, 337. Banking business. Striking changes in early, 192. Banks founded in British Amei-ica, Some well-known, 191. Banking Institutions in 1898, Condi- tion and extent of, .'525. Bank of Montreal, Founding of the, 191. Banking System, Evolution of the Canadian, 191. Baptist Church, Canada. Success of the, 168. Bateaux, Advent of the French-Cana- dian, 174. Battle of Chateauguay, Clever defeat of the Americans at, 10-J. Eeaver, Tlie S.S., launched by Wil- liam IV., 180. Black llock and other points captured by the British, 101. Black, Rev. William, (jlreat results of the work of the. 107. Bloody Struggle of 1815, Result of the, 110. Board of Education, Establishment of a provincial, 131. Boat Building, Iiacrcase in, 175. Boot and shoe making started in Lower Canada, 1H8. Brandy, wine and rum brought into Canada in 1824, IW. Brant, Joseph tThayendanegea), Some facts concerning, 74, 75. British America, at the end of the formative period of its history, 81,83; Early Social condltiona in. 113; in the opening of the nine- teenth century, 34. British America in 1800, Position of the people of, 53. British American Land Company, Advent of the, 66; makes vipor ous efforts colonisation, 67 ; Prop- erty owned by the. 66. British Canada in 1791-1800, 33. British Loyalist Refugees receive a Government grant. 40. British Methodist Kplscopal Ciiureh, Origin of the, 170. 629 M ;l 1 1 I lr:M ml 580 INDEX. British Nortli America Act, Birth of the, 392. British on Lalce Erie, Disastrous de- feat of the, 101. British part of the Campaign of 1814, 109. British Population in Atlantic Pro- vinces after 1834, Increase of, 73. British regiments stationed through- out Canada, 115, 116. British sentiment in Canada, a mir- acle of the nineteenth century, 474-477. British soldiers intermarry with the French population, 36. Britisli successes toward close of 1813, 106. Brock, Sir Isaac, although handi- capped, worlfs almost miracles, 94 ; captures Hull and liis army, 93 ; Difficulties in the way of, 91 ; Prompt action of, 92 ; receives his death-wound, 96 ; the man for the crises, %, 91. Brown, George, and Joseph Howe, strongly oppose tlie Federal Min- istry, 402. Brown, George, and the Clergy Re- serves, 301 ; rides tlie Protestant Horse, 318. Brown-Macdonald Cabinet o v e r - thrown in two days, 309. Buffalo captured and burned, 106. Buffalo wool into cloth, Unsuccessful attempt to turn, 188. Burgoyne at Saratoga, Surrender of, 31. Burke & Fox after party advantage, 26. Burwell, Colonel M., surveys the site of Londou into town lots, 01. Cabot, John, English colonisation en- hanced by the voyage of, 3 ; Ex- plorations of, 2 ; is badly treated on his return to England, 2 ; sails for the new continent, 1. Canada, Derivations of the name, 3 ; Formation of the provinces of, 1 ; What Great Britam had paid for, 470. Canada and her people at close of the century, 493. Canada and the U.S. In 1827. Trad3 between, 178. Canada Company, Incorporation of the, 63, 64. Canada from 1813 to 1813. Social con- ditions in, 113. Canada in 1800 compared with Canau„ in 1900, 526. Canadian Constitution, Men who tried to mould the, 472. Canadian development after 1820, 123, 124. Canadian education injured by American ideas and teaching, 13o. Canadian Evolution, The annals of tlie more modern perioH # 5: INDEX. 583 3y the Ameri- jy the British, .S., AgiLation ,467. 1 of, 32. ; the banks of SI ; and agri- tion and home ;ry, Influence mt, Condition 80O, Strength lie war, Brav- Ei, Loyalty of, Some very ksures of the, Canada, when 3d, 14. rioter of the me facts con- Datriotic basis ot tlie tyrant lety, a great essful attack ipss of tlie ih treatment ike to give )onsibIe, 202 ; If-, 315; The ian, 198 ; The Result of, 279 L'auada, Style d to Ottawa, r Confedera- lie, 404. nada, Present • he, 410. o 1841, 21,'J. Development le Lieut.-, 411, Some of the, ;r ^e, resisted the advance of American Ideas, 195. Grand Trunk Railway System in 1897, Extent of the, 4&4. Great Britain and United States In 180(1 and 1900, 32, 33. Great Britain apparently helpless in 1812, 89. Great Britain continues her right of searching ships, 86. Great Britain, War declared against, 31. Guardian, Christian, Founding of the, 107. H. Halifax, High life and nobility in, 117, 118; Sports and customs at, 118. Harvey, Colonel, at Burlington Heights, Bfillia.it work of, 101 ; Death of, 316. Head, Sir Francis, Loyalty and action of, 244 ; makes appointments in the Executive Council, 227. Heneker, R. W., is Commissioner of the Britibh American Land Coy., 67. Henry, Patrick, denounces the tyr- anny ot the King, 24. Henry, Re^'. Qeorge.flrst Presbyterian minister In Lower Canada, 102. Higher Education in U.C., Pi ogress of, 349. Hincks, Sir Francis, the hero of the railway period, 832. Historical writing. The frequ'.nt na- ture of, V. Howe, Joseph, defeated on 'lis Lon- don mission by Dr. Tupper, 418 ; defeated by Dr. Tupper, 317; is unjustly severe to the Qovornor- Oeneral, 29.5 ; loses his popu.arity and is heartbroken, 419 ; makes a great flght for responsible gov- erninent, 293 ; Stability and loyalty of, 213 ; the pacification of, 418. Howe, Sir William, Criminal incom- pevence of, 31. Hudson's Bay Company and Lord Selkirk's famous settlement, 77, 78. Hudson's Bay Company, in 1849, 820 ; lose control of Vancouver and the mainland. 322; sells out to the Dominion, 397. Hull, General, invades Canada, 92. Hume, Joseph, Important letter re- ceived from, 220. Hundred and fourth-regiment, Splen- did march of the, 109. Hundredth-Regiment, wins glory at the Crimea, 306. " Hunters' Lodges " greatly aid Mac- kenzie, 2o6. Huron Tract, Extent of the, 64 : Much dissatisfaction over the, 65, 66 ; Rapidity of th« settlement of the, 06. Imperial Act of 1791, the cause of much agitation, 1,56. Imperial Parliament of 1840 pass a iiieasure favoring union, 276. Imper.'.l spirit dawns on the Cana- dian people, 421. Imperial Unity, Steps toward closer, 489, 491. Indian affairs. Bad management of, 75. Indians of Canada honorably treated by the Government, 73. Indian settlers are loyal to Great Britain, 46. Indian Tribes in N.W.T. and B.C., 76, Industries in Canada in 1838, Some Important, 189. Indust^rinl life in Canada, Expansion r', . / Int< r ■ • <~ .il Railway, Project of the, ■1 "■• . -le grear subject of discua- , .>, 816. ii . migration in 1823, extent of the, 61,62. Iroquois Indians, Composition of the, 78 ; made cruel by white man's deception, 9 ; Probable numerical strength of the, 8 ; were a conti- nental scourge, 8; wliisn Cham- plain met them, 7. J. Jesuits, have better success in the Maritime Provinces, 11 ; Heroic labours and martyrdom of tlie, 10 ; Wonderful pioneer labours of the, 9. Jesuits' Estates Allowance, Some re- sults of the, 439. Jesuit Priests, Cause of the limited success of the, 10. Jewish religious movement. First ap- pearance of the, 170. Johnson, Sir William, and the Iroquois distinguish themselves for the King, 81. Journalism, Lea^'Ing men in French- Canadian, 3fiW, Journalism in Ca nada, Development of, 518. .Tournalism in the ,'Iaritime Provinces, Prominent nai.ies in, 367. Journalism Id I pper and Lower Canada, Pron inent names that centre around English, 366. ;! ! 684 INDEX. M. :,l^- ^ King Oeorgo badly advised as to the Thirteen Colonies, 23. King, Mr. E. H., as a banker, 839. ..Kingston and Niagara, Early impor- tance of, 50. Lafontaine, Hypolite, Character of, 880. Lansdowne, Lord, an able Governor- General, 408. Land Grants, 1812 to 1838, Extrava- gant, 218. Land Tenure Question in P.E.I., SW. Lartlgue, Bishop, issues a mandement against rebellion, 243. Late Loyalists, Character of the, 41. Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, comes into power, 441. Laval and McQill Universities, Found- ing of, 353. Lawrence, Governor, and the Aca- dians, 18. Liberal-Conservative Party, Origin of the, 403. Liberal Party, Cause of the formation of the, 197. Literature and journalism. Evolu- tion of, 515. Literature, romance and poetry. Names of early contributors to, 510, 518. " Logging Bee," The old time, M. London, Ont., Condition of site In 1820, 61. Lome, Marquess of, finds a constitu- tional difficulty, 407. Lount and Mathews, Execution of, 259. Lower Canadian Rebels, rise Novem- ber 3d, 1838, 261. Lower Canada iu the opening of the nineteenth century, 84, Lower Canadaprior to 1841, Progress of education in, 143. Lumber industry, greatly assisted by Philemon Wright, 00. Lundy's Lane, Battle of, 107. Loyalists in 1783-4, Condition of the, 89. Loyalists, Principles and aim of the, vi. Loyalist migration into the Maritime Provinces, 43. Loyalist refugees. Origin and charac- ter of, 40, 41. Loyalist settlers. Bitter years of the early, 47 ; Great improvement in the condition of the, 49, 50. Loyalist settlers up to 1800, left their Impress, 47. Macdonald, Sir John A., and Confed- eration, 387 ; and his necessary colleagues, 389 ; comes back to power, 430 ; is ambitious for a great political party, 401: wins over prominent Liberals, 401. Macdonefl, Bishop, Work and Influ- ence of, 149. Macdougall, Governor, prevented en- trance to Manitoba by Kiel, 423. Mackenzie, William Lyon, f.rrested by the Americans, 255 ; Character and power of, 224 ; flriit mayor of Toronto, 225 ; flees to ^' avy Island, 2.")4 ; issues a manifest ), 255 ; pre- cipitates a rebellion, 2 3. Mackenzie, Alexander, forms a Liber- al Cabinet, 429. Madison, President, pledges himself to precipitate a confli jt. 87. Maine boundary trouble in New Brunswick, 290. Maine boundary, Warlile prepara- tions over the, 268, 270 Manchester School, Theory of the, 25. Manifesto of Annexation to the U.S., Names of some who signed the, 300. Manitoba and the Territories, Settle- ment and development; „f, 4&5. Manitoba, British Coluaibia and P.E.L, come into the Dominion, 397, 398. ManitoVia School Question, History of t>ie, 439. Manitoba School Questioi settled, 441. Manufacturing and industrial prog- ress, 1800 to 1840, 185. Manufact>iring preceding Confedera- tion, Progress in, 342. Maritime Provinces, People and cus- toms of the, 119 ; Progress of education in the, 136, 141; The struggle in the, 109. Maroons not satisfactory settlers, 45. Material progress in Canada, Twen- ty-flve years of, 324. Meilleur, Jean Baptiste, and educa- tion in Lower Canada, 8.52. Mercier, M., and the historic Jesuits' Estates, 437. Merritt, Hon. William Hamilton, and the Welland Canal, 176. Metcalfe, Sir Charles, forced to re- tire by disease, 289 ; statesman- ship 01, 284 ; Violent attack upon, 887. Methodism, Crmadiixn, Influence and progress of, 164. Methodism in Canada, 1841 to 1874, 859. Methodism, Strussies and growth of, 265. ., and Conf ed- his necessary >mes back to bilious for a ty, 401; wins erais, 401. >Tk and Influ- prevented en- by Kiel, 423. in, r.rrested by } ; Character flriit mayor of o >■ avy Island, 3st 5, 255 ; pre- , 2.3. lorros a Liber- edares himself fli 3t. 87. lb; e in New lite prepara- (70. (ory of the, 25. m to the U.S., 10 signed the, itores, Settle- enl. „f, 465. 3luaibia and .he Dominion, on. History of stioL settled, lusttial prog- 5. ng Confedera- 2. eople and cus- Progress of 136, 141; The ry settlers, 45. anada, Tweu- e, and educa- la, 3.')2. storic Jesuits' Hamilton, and 176. forced to re- ; statesmaii- attaclt upon, Influence and 1841 to 1874, ioi growth of. INDEX. 535 Methodist College, Coburg, Estab- lishment of the, 167. Methodists, Influence of the early, 126. Militia Bill defeats the Macdonald- Cartier Government, 310. Militia development in Canada, 1841 to 1871, 369. Militia in Canada in 1866, Strength of the, 813. Militia system, Development of the, 521. Mining development preceding Con- federation, 3-11. Moodie, Colonel, Sli iig of, 253. Modern history in imtish America, The real pivot of, 58. Monck, Lord, becomes Governor- General of Canada, 310 ; not pop- ular in Canada, 383. Montgomery's Tavern, Battle near, 253, 254. Montreal and Quebec In the early days, Great variety of people in, 117. Montreal Constitutional Society is- sues a remarkable document, 289. Moravianism, Advent and work of, 169. Mountain, Dr. Jacob, first Anglican Bishop of the Canadas, 1.57. Municipal Loan Bill of 1849, Result of the, 833. Mc. BlcCarthy, D'Alton, leads the minor- ity against Jesuits' Estates allow- ance, 438. McCaul, Dr. John, and higher educa- tion, 350. McClure, General, evacuates Fort Qeorj,'«, 105. McDonnell, Colonel, and his High- land Regiment strike a hard blow, 100. McGee, D'Arcy, Murder of, 42fi. McGill University, Opening of, 144 ; Success and growth of. 353. McGregor, Rev. Dr. James, pioneer Presbyterian minister. McNab, Sir Allan, Character of, 287. N. Napoleon endeavors to subjugate England, 85, 86. Negro settler.i not satisfactory, 45. Nelson, Dr. Wolfred, Capture of, 249. Nelson, Robert, issues a Declaration of Inrlopendence, 261. Newark Village, wantonly burned to the ground, 105. N«w England SUttes, avers* to the war policy, 88. Newspapers in Canada, in 1788 180B, 56. Newspapers, French-Cauadiau, took the lead, 365. Ninety-Two Resolutions, The f..mouB, Non-Intercourse Act of 1808, 86, North American Indian, Origin and nature of the, 5 6. North and West Territories, Progresa of the, 320. Nova Scotia gives untold trouble to the New Federal Government, 416. 417 ; makes further demands and threatens secession, 431 ; re- solves to withdraw from Con- federation, 417. North-West Territories, Progress of education in the, 142. O'Brien, William, falls in his attack on Lord Lansdowne, 408. Odell, William, Provincial Secretary of N.B., dies in 1844, 291. Ojibbiway Indians in 1860, Land pos- sessed by the, 76. Pacific Scandal defeats the Tory Gov- ernment, 429. Paine, Thomas, and his pamphlet, "Common Sense," 25. Pakenham, General, fails to capture New Orleans, 109. Paper mills. Starling of the first, 188. Papineau, L. J., again tries his old scheme of an Elective Council, 807 ; flees to the States, 249 ; pre- cipitates a rebellion, 213 ; remark- able letter from, 227 ; Some chief supporters of, 217. Parkman, Francis, did justice to the opening of the nineteenth cen- tury. V. Parliamentary grants for war pur- poses in 1812, 99. Peace of Versailles, Result of the, 31. Pioneers, Methodist, Names of, 167. Pioneers of the early days, Some prominent, 65. Pioneer steamboat on the St. Law- rence, Thoflr^t, 175. Pioneer work and settlement. Sketch of, 34. Plessis, Jean Octave, Loyalty and work of, 147. Poetry, Some names connected with early Canadian, 86fi. Polit cs in Lower Canada, 1800 to ISai, 228-237 ; Strife enters, 201. Politics took ft n«w «sp«ct, Od crM- !> ill H 536 INDEX. tlon of the Dominion, constitu- tional, 415. Political activity in N.B., 1855, 318. Political changes. Swift and numer- ous, 303. Political leaders in Upper and Lower Canada, 214, 215. Political situation in 1834 becomes active, 225. Political struggles. Too much stress laid upon, v. Politicians of the early Union days, Some of the prominent, 288. Population of British America, 1882 to 18 Jl, 70. Post offices in 1840, Number of, 173. Post offices, 1868-98, Increase in, 524. Presbyterianism in Canada, Early history of, 160 ; in the early days, 863, 365 ; Progress of, 102. Prevost, Sir George, and the conflict In Lower Canada, 97 ; Glaring in- capac'ty of, 105 ; meets a dis- fraceful defeat at Plattsburg, 08; Repulse of the attack of, 100 ; Weakness and vacillation of, 93. Prince Edward Island, gets respon- sible Government, 8S)7 ; is trou- bled by absentee proprietary, 296 ; Political troubles in, 295. Prince of Wales does not pass under the Orange arches, 310 ; opens the Victoria Bridge, 310 ; visits Amer- ica, 309 ; visits the U.S., 310. Proctor, Colonel, Splendid victory of, 99 ; Humiliating defeat of, 102. Prohibitory Liquor Law in British America, First attempt to intro- duce a, 816. Progress of Canada, Authors con- sulted in preparing, vii ; The author's aim in writing, vii ; Twenty-flve years of, 344. Progress, 1811 to 1866. Men who laid the foundations ot popular, 344. Progress under Federal institutions. Constitutional, 400. Protection and free trade as applied to Canada, 458-462. Provincial Governments after Con- federation, Complexion of the, 403. Provincial municipal institutions. Establishment of, 445. Public debt of Canada, 1868-98, In- crease in, 524. Q. Quakers and Mennonites make good settlers, 45. Quakers, The advent of the, 169. uebac Act of 1775, French popula- tion placated by ths, 32. Quebec and Montreal, Unique condI< tion of, 36, 37. Quebec Bank, Founding of the, 191. Queenston Heights, Importance of the Battle of, 95, 90. R. Radical party badly beaten, 228. Railway area, 1868-1900, Increase In, 447. Railway area in British America in ia50, 853. Railway development of 18,51, 331. Railway idea takes hold of Provincial politicians, 806. Rebellion, First violent act of the, 218 ; The evolution of a, 213 ; The Red River, 422. Rebellion in Lower Canada, making headway, 246, 247; Progress or the, 248, 252. Rebellion in Upper Canada, Plan of the, 252. Rebellion Losses Bill, a result of re- sponsible Government, 297. Rebellion Losses, Indemnity for Lower Canadian, 298. Rebellion Losses in Lower Canada, Indignation over the Indemnity Bill for, 298. Rebellion of 1837, a great formative influence, 210; 111 effect of the, 270. Rebellion of 1885, Cause and particu- lars of the Saskatchewan, 431, 484. Rebels, Amnesty granted to the lead- ing, 203. Rebel attacks by Sutherland and Van Rensaeller, 2^, 257. Rebel attack on Toronto, 253. Rebels of 1838 get stern lustico, 200. Reciprocity Treaty, Abrogation of the, 312 ; not an unmixed bless- ing, 330; Result of the abrogation of the, 315. Reform Heroes, Usage of so-called, 282, 223. Reformers, Some prominent, 223. Relations of the Dominion, The ex- ternal, 469. Religious census in Canada In 1881, 827. Rallglous denominations prior to 1841, Formative influence of the, 170, 171. Religious development since Confed- eration, 501, 504. Religious growth In Maritime Prov- inces, 159. Religious intolerance in Lower Can- ada, 20e, Religious orders in New France, Em- inent women connected with the, 11. Jnique condl- ; of the, 101. uportauce of iten, 238. i, Increase in, h America in f 1851,331. I of Provincial t act of tlie, of a, 213 ; Tlia nada, making Progress of nada, Plan of I resiilt of re- ant, 2!)r. ideinniiy for «. ower Canada, he Indemnity eat formative effect of the, and particu- lewan, 431, 434. ed to the lead- rlaud and Van o, 253. iustice, 200. Abrogation of umixed bless- lie abrogation of so-called, jinent. 223. inion. The ex- inada in 1881, R prior to 1841, e of the, 170, since Conted- [aritime Prov- n Lower Can- 7 France, Em- cted with the. INDEX. 637 Religious progress following the early forties, 3.57. Religious progress in British Amer- ica, Foundations of, 145. Religious progress, Some early pion- eers in, 3of . Report of Lord Durham receives se- vere criticism, 273. Representation by population vs. Frenoli domination, 307. Report of Lord iJurhain, Result of the famous, 271. Responsible Ooverumeut obtain:) in N.B., 292. Revenues of the Provinces, 186.5-0, ."iSO. Revolution, Environment of the, 30. Richelieu, Policy of, 11. Rideaii Canal, Purpose of the build- ing of the, 60. Riel, Louis, Arrest and execution of, 430; escapes to the U.S., 434; Great storm in Lower Canada over the execution of, 4.% ; is twice expelled from the House, 430 ; proniotes tiie rebellion, 422 ; returned to Parliament by the half-breeds, 430. Riel Rebellion of 1885, Canadian troops to the rescue, 434 ; Plan of the suppression of tl.e, 434, 436. Road-making, The difficulties of, 51, 52. Robinson, Mr. John Beverley, be- comes Chief Justice. 225. Roman Catholic Church, Progress of the, 149. Roman Catholicism in Canada, The great hold of, 146. Roman Catholic Highlanders, Influ- ence of, 43. Royal Commission of Enquiry under Lord Oosford, 240. Royal Will in :n, first steamer to cross the Atlantic, 179 ; Memorial tab- let in honour of, 455. Ryerson Family, Advent of the. 43. Ryerson, Rev. l)r. Egerton, bpcomos chief Superintendent of Educa- tion, 345 ; Ideal educational sys- tem of, 348 ; on American scliool books, 346 ; prominent figure in Canadian Methodism, 165 ; re- marks on partisan struggle, 109. Salaberry, Colonel de. Clever strat- egy of, 104. Salary Bill, The everlasting, 226. Schools at Kingston, Newark and Cornwall, Some early, 129. School statistics in 1827, 132. School teachers in the early days, Duties of, 131. School Question of New Brunswick, 427. 8chultz,Dr., escapes from Fort Garry, 423. Scotcli settlers, Inlluence of the, 123, Seigneurs, Courtesy and entertain- ment of the, 38. Seigneurial Tenure Question, Settle- ment of the, 304. Self-government in England, Crude state of, 22. Selkirk, Lord, and his efforts at col- onising, 44, 45 ; attacks his ene- mies, 79 ; Death of, 80 ; Early diffi- culties of the Colony of, 79, 80 ; sacrifices much for his Colony, 80. Selkirk Settlement purchased by H. B. Coy. 81. Separate schools. Early agitation over, 3-17. Settlers locating along the Grand River, 60. Settlers of 1784-1816, Typo of the mil- itary, fiS, .59. Sewell, Chief Justice, a representa- tive of English life, 1(U. Shipbuilding, Growth of Canadian, 178. Shipbuilding in Canada, Growth of, 457. Shipbuilding in the Maritime Prov- inces, 178. Shipbuilding preceding Confedera- tion, Progress of, 3;!'.t. Shipping of Maritime Provinces, Some figures concerning, 180. Simcoe, Major-Qenl. John Graves, and the " Late Loyalists," 41 ; and liiu policy of encouraging settlern, 42 ; endeavours to pro- mote education, 129, 1.30 ; estab- lishes iDundas St., .52; Proph- esies about London, Out., 51. Sir Robert Peel, Rebels capture and burn the, 258. Social conditions since Confedera- tion, 513. Social progress in Canada, 373. Society for Propagation of the Gos- pel, Good work of the, 154. Southerners from Canada raid St. Albans, 311. Special Council, Appointment of n, 252. Stage tine. Establishment of a daily, 173. Stamp Act, Final denunciation of the, 2^ Stanley of Preston, Lord, and the Jesuits' Eslat(>s Act, 409. Steamboat launched. The first, in Canada, 55. Stewart, Dr. Chas. James, Good work done by, 157. Strachan, Bishop, and higher educa- INDEX. tion, 350 ; made Bishop of Toron- to, 158 ; organised the Historic Institution at Ccrnwall, 55. Suffolit settlers arrive in Weste/n On- tario in 1832, ei. Sydenham, Lord, ia removed by an ~ unfortunateaccident, a83; malces strong efforts on belialf of Union, 875. T. Talbot, Colonel, assists the settlement of the country, 44. Talon, the Intendant, remarks on Canadian manufactures, 18(i. Tariff issues and municipal institu- tions, Progress of, 370. Teachers and pupils in Upper Canada, 1850 to 1871, 349. Tecumseh, the Great Indian chief, Lamented death of, 102. Temperance reform since 1867, 499. Territories, Constitutional progress of the N.W.T., 425. Thirteen Colonies, Beginning of the revolt of the, 20 ; Cause of the revolt of the, 21, 22 ; Start out ns an independent nationality, 31. TTiompson, John 8. D., makes memo- rable reply to Mr. Blake, 437. Thorpe, Robert, Action and recall of, 221. Timber resources of British America, 181. Timber trade with England, Rapid growth of the, 181. Tory party in Canada, Doctrine of the early, 196. Tory party of 1840, Loyalty of the, 281. Tory leaders of the Maritime Prov- inces, Character of the, 212. Towns and cities in Canada, Increase in, 493. Towns and cities, 1861, Population of Canadian, 372. Trade and commerce after the Union, .S29. Trade and general progress, 172. Trade relations with G. B., Discus- sions on preferential, 489. Transportation, Various stages of early, 172. Transportation and tariffs, Progress in, 447. U. Union of 1840, French-Canadian view of the, 280. United States get the advantage in negotiations. Why the, 472. T^.S. influence on Canadians, 480, 4a3. U.S. trade with British America, 184. Unitarian movement, Beginning of the, 109. Upper Canada College, Founding of, 134. Upper Canada, invaded from Buffalo, 107. Verrazano, Exploration of, 2, 3. Vessels in Canadian carrying trade, 18(19-90, 455. Victoria College and other institu- tions. Establishment of, 134. Vincent, General, Gallant work done by, 10.5. Vindicator, the organ of Papineau, Fiery tone of the, 241. Von Schultz, defended by John A. Macdonald, 258. W. War between O.B. and U.S., nearly brought about by a pig, 322 ; Sha- dow of, 377. War of 1812, Americans thought they could easily win the, 90. War of 1812-15, and its effect on British North America, 83 ; Beneficial re- sults of the, 83, 84 ; Declaration of the, 89 ; Nominal causes of the, 87; Unjust to O.B. and U.S.A., 85. Water communication, Beginning of, 174. Weir, Lieut., Dastardly murder of, 2.50. Welland Canal, Growth and expenses of the, 176. Welding the Provinces together, the work of, 416. Wesley, John, denounced the Colon- ists for their in.surrection, 29. West, Rev. John, Work of the, 100. Wilcox, the rebel, in the House of Assembly, 91. Willis, Judge, Conduct and recall of, 221. Wilmot, Lemuel Allan, a Parliamen- tary leader, 214. Windmill Point, Rebel attack at, 858, Wolseley Expedition against Riel, 424. Wolseley, Colonel, escapes the Lieut.- Governorship, 424. Woollen industry. Establishment and growth of the, 187. Wolfe's famous victory, Result of, 19. Y. York (Toronto) In 1803, Condition of, 51, iA« Beginning of Founding of, from BufFalo, of, 2, 3. irrying trade, Jther institu- t of, 184. nt worlc dona of Papineau, by John A. U.S., nearly pig, 322 ; Sha- thought they ,90. 'act on British Beneficial re- ; Declaration causes of the, , and U.S.A., Beginning of, J murder of, and expenses together, tha ed the Colon- jction, 29. of the, 100. he House of and recall of, a Parliamen- ivttack at, 858, against Kiel, pes the Lieut.- blishmentand , Result of, 19. Condition of,