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A// ni„htx flrscrr,',/. 9 1 C 8 : y I I ■J SniT/^K G J \ CONTENTS Tur-; Sl'juixt The natural r. tlm ].„liti,,,l ,in„ T), i. • -»"o...i.a. .■..i,.„-„„._,,,:.',;,„:;;;:,; ;:;;■;;:,;,::, "- do-.^ », .^,,, Page 1 ^''""•'•''-Attitude or tlH. -la h T^\ "' ^'^" ^'J^^'^«-r of the ;';'^'-'H.t asi,i,.ations.--ThJo: :!';;,tfrr''-f ^-^--- and ''" -•'Po«tn>|.hisc..s th,. Trioolo -RI.. '^"'"^^1''^"' of both - at .Montreal . . '' ^ *"''-''i^"'^ to Xcnv En^dand-The Imh * • • CMAPTKIi m '''";•; JlRiTi.sir Provinces Ontario ,he eoro of th, ConlVdnation-Its o)u f • i • «onety and soc-ial sc-ntinuMit-Ffr 1 .11 "'''"■^«>''-^-."?tn,ct«r^ oi' -' juvonih. charac.ter-a , H l^,;^'^""^;:^^ '" the Lou^b^jj ,,j } iii^-fho i.nl.hc .school svMvm-The VI CONTEXTS Clmrclii's — Xatio;i;ilitits and national societies — ("amnlian rcspoet for law— riililie justice and tlic licncli— Sociiil lit'i- Tlic climate --I'astiiucH — Coninicii f and industry — Trade orf^anisations — Social itrohlcius— City govcrnuH'Ut — Litciviturc, Art, ansi(ins, heroic exploits, and relations with the Indian trihes — UrsuUnc convents and liosjiitals — Aims of the Jesuits — Their rule — .Moral decadence of the Order— Fcuindation of Montreal — The Sulpicians and their relations to the Jesuits — Failure of t^>uel)ec as a colony — i",|ioch of Louis XIV. — Koyal administration extende(l to the colony — Coll)ert's commercial system and the Intendant Talon — The fur trade — Bushran,t;ing— Passion for exidoration, ami feats of dis- coverers — Al)uses under Louis XV. — The parish cleriry — Moral .state of the colony — Contrast between the I'leiidi and Knj^dish colonists — The Conquest ........ G-1 CHAPTEK V Fur.xcH Caxaha AfiKU thk CoNgr^sT What was to lie dom with (^Michec ? — The iiuestion settled hy the American Revolutitui — Military rule — British concessions to the con(|uered people prcservi' their allct,'ianoe durinj.^ the American invasion — The < >ueliee Act — Incomiiifjof royalist refuijecs fioni tin- American ((donies, and formation of an oli^randiy of conquest — With the French Revolution comes a re- settle inent of Quehec — Policy of Pitt — Attempt to .separate the races hy dividiiiij; the colony into a French ami a P.ritish Province -Failure of that attempt — Political contlict l)ctween the two races in Lower Canada under the Parliamentary Constitution — Want of information and of decision on the jiart of the Home Government — British rule an improvement on French rule— War of 18PJ — The French Canadians atrain faithful to (ircat Ihilain— Renewal of civil strifi' after the war — Inell'ectual mis.sion of Lord Gosford— Rebellion breaks out and is suppressed — End of the Constitution — Military opinion as to the value of Canada as a depend- ency ......... 80 r \ 'ONTHNTS VII CH.A I'TKK VI History op IJitkh Canada """"u';;;;t;:;:;;' :Lf l^i;: '^ ■■■ '-^-"-'-•n.* ».„«. „ „ C,u„, la-Si jc„7it,L! ,J "".''""^ -<>n,Citn.i f ,.,i,i,l, li..f„n„. , ) I \ "'"''-C»"llirt o.ewi.,.,! tlio Governor aT„l il,l CHAPTKR VII The ITxiTEi) Piwvinces . 121 CHAPTEK VIII The Federal Constitu TION The moiiarcliioal element of the Constitntin., Tl, . n thoods— Futility of Mil CONTENTS ntt<'iii|its tn iiifidiliicc jiristoi'rai'y iiitn flic Xtw WofM -('fiiiinla in ic.llil V ii Ki'ildiil Itr|ml)lic I)i'vi;itiniisiif llic L'.ilii|ili;iii Coiistitutloii tViilii tlir AiiM'riiMii iiHiilcl I'liwiTs lit' the cciitriil ;;uvriiiiiii'iil ami Ic^'isljitiiir - Till' vrlii |iu\vrr Till' < aiiiiiliiiii Scnati' cDiiiparcil witli the Aiiit'l'iraii St'iiat". and witli til.' I>iili.>li llniisc dl' LmiU Tln' ' '...laijiaii Ijuiisc nf CniiiMiKiis ah'l its ciiniiMisition L-K'nlism in rlrctiniis I'ai'ty ,i;nvrinnii'nt. Wt'aU poinLs dl" tlic clcctivi' systrni I'i-dv ini in] L^nvciniiiints .unl Iffiisliltlirt'S Till' inli'll'li'tatinll nf tlir ( 'unstilUliiill -Tllr Sll|Hrllir CnlUt --Till' Civil S('rvi('i'— Till' .linliciary— Ciiniila juartirally iiiilciiinilint nl tlio nintlii'i' riiiintiy —Canada iU'Dnls no ini'irdrnt t'ur lri>li lluini' lliilr — A writti'U rnnstitiitiiMi a nerrssity i>t' di'mornu-y— Ottawa as tlu' scat ot "jovcrnnicnt ....... I',i;'c 1 l 7 ClIArTKR IX I'lillTS OK CoNl i:l>KI{Ari(>N Diuililt'nl increase nt' military scciuity -The iiu'iiiporatiiiii ot the X>>i-iU-\Vesr lli'si>tanei' ut' I lie Krciich h ill'-luccds tu the aiuiexatiou - Kederal rail- rnad>. the Inter, iilnnia; and the Canadian raeilie - Adn|iti(in of a I'lo- tei live taiill" under the name nf '• National Policy "- KtVeets ot that measure, [laitieularly in ri\<,'ard to the settlers of the North-\Vi'>t -Aii- l>arent failure of Ci'ufederatiuM to |iroduce national unity —As|ii;-;ition of Kieiieli Canada to Mpaiati nationally eoiitinncd and increased i^Mie-tion of the .lesuits' estates — Kenuiiciatioii of the. national veto on jiroviiicial lej,'islat ion -Want of national union and of Dominion parties entails f^ovcrnmeiit hy eorni|ition The I'aeitie Railway scandal -liijuiy to the Itolitieal character of the iicijilc Conlliet of sectional with national interests- -The tiiiaiicial condition of the I)oniinion — The l•^\odus from Canada to tlu> Cnitcd States ..... 1!V.> CHAl^TKK X Till-; ('aN.\I>1AN QLK.^lKtN Depcndnici' — The sanction of the mother country necessary for any clianf,'o of jiolitical relations -Canada considering' the iirohlem of Inr future — Oistinction lietween a colony and a colonial ile|icnd"ncy Misleading,' use of the term " Kinpirc" -Supposed inlluence of Miitinient on emi<,'ratioii — The >treUi:th of Eui^lami lies in lierscdf, not in her dependencies — Kni,'land"s jirotection of Canada precarious — Canada's complaints against I'ritish di[iloniaey rolitieal tutelage no longer possilde —Society in the New World unalterably dcniooratic — Hritish interests in Canada — Value of the lilial sentinu lit and that of dependence compared . . 2->T fOXTKNTS IX n( ISt la- liulcpcinhin'i — The " (,'iiii;ula Kiisi" movi'iiuiit -Its ti'iiiltiicy to imlopi'iid- ClU'i- -'rii;lt M)lllfii)li of till' I'liilili'iii i»ii)liii))li' ill it.scir Obstilflcs til its iidujttioii -Tlic luunil 1)1' til' II ovi'.'iicin . . . I'aj;*' 'J.'-J Iiiiinrinl Ffilrratloii ()\\/\\\ dl" tin' iiiuvciiiciit -Al'siiiiT (il ,i!iy ili'lliiiti- |i1jiii - Thi' M'liniif witliom [nviMiIf it in liistorv — What umild he tlu' ulijcct of tip' As.soriaiioii ? — A limit to tlu' lii't'cts of strain and t(lcj,'i;iiili in aiiiiiiiil.uiii;; distiiuic Wlmt would I'l' tin' ii'Iutioii of tlii' Ffdci.il .i,'ovijni- iiifiit to the iJriti.sli iiioii.'iridiy f — What di|>!omfiti(' itolii^y widdd prevail • — Coiii|ilexitii'H and fiiiliarrassincnts of tin- pro|i().seii system — Dillioultit's of si'ttiiiL,' tin- iK'i^'otiatioiis on foot — Diliiculty of liiidiii;,' trustworthy rcpitsrirtativi's of till' colnnirs Amoral fi'drralion ol tlic whole Kn:.dish- sjicakiii^ rair morr liasiMr 'riic i oloiiirs will not part with Hi'll'-<,'ov('rii- iiient ........ 'I'u PiiIHIi'iil /'/(/(»,( — •' Aiiinxatioii " an impro' i ■ term — Union of Canada with thr AiiicriiMii Uepiililic mi;^ht lie on iijual and lionourabic terms, like that of Scotland with Eni,daiid--Servi((' which Canadu, ifadmittel to the ( 'inunils of the IJni'Mi, mii^ht ren . . to Kiii^iand ily enterin;^ tiie Union Canada iiei'd not fort'eit her peculiar (diar.icler or her historical associa- tion-!- -The idea thiit the coniiei'tion waihi he one of moral dispaia^enient unfoMidcd — The evils -ml dantr'-iM ol li.th countries suhstaniiaily the saJiic — Oltjeetions on tiie "ground of ovev-"ularf,'ement of territory and populations — No lino of political clt>ava.L,'e on tin itinuiil-Anii ricans ready to welcome Canada into the I'nion — No thoni^ht ui ioni|iie>t or violent annexation l>itlicnlty of gani,diii; Canadian sentiment -The Canadian people certainly in favour of free trade with their continent — liospectiiif^ their feelinj^ as to iioliticul union nothing can he ceitainly said — Ditlieulty of hringing such a union ahout on the American as well as on the Canadian side — The jirinuiry forces will in the tiid {ire vail ........ 207 CoviDirrcinl Union — Mr. IJayard on the suhject- -Tin' name Coinniercial I'nion adopted in contradistinction to Political Union. Account of the movement — ller own continent the natural market of Canaua-Re- cijirocity of trade or reei|irocity of tariffs the motto of the. Conservative leader — Tin; continent an economical whole— Reciprocity the dictate ot nature— S])ccial strength of the ease with regard to the mimrals of Canada — The .shipiiiiig interest of Canada needs the freedom of the coastiiig-tradi — The Americans on their side ready foi' Reciproi'ity — I'olicy of Mr. lUaine—An.swer to the assertion of Protectionists that there can- not be a profitable trade l)ctwcen Canada and the United .States — Kemarkable growth of the trade in eggs when free from duty — Prevalence of smuggling under the nic:,ent system — Special hardshiiis resulting from the tarilf to Manitoba and the Maritime Provinces- Comparison of the Hritish with the American market — Ri-asons why the near market is the liest — Counter-])roposal of an Imperial Zollverein — Fatal olijections to that plan — Elforts of the Canadian Covernment to open up new markets CONTENTS — Tlio natural interests of Canada all in favour of Recii)rocity— Objcetions to Commercial Ciiou between the United States and Canada similar to those made between Enj,'land and Scotland— Appeal of Protectionists to Imperial sentiment— Answer to the allegation that Comnn-rcial Union would be annexation in disi^uiso— Practical difliculties of the scheme enhanced by the M'Kinley taritV— The policy of the M'Kinley Act not likelv to endure— A new citrnmoirial era aiiparcntly dawning for the United States Page '281 APPENDICES- .1. Mil. Henry W. Darlixo on Bankinci . B. Mr. Thomas Shaw on Agriculture ^n Ontario C. Mr. T. D. Lkdyard on Mining 303 307 3:>1 oils • to 3 to lion "ine not the 281 i03 JOT $21 Lviuiou: MaciuillaM & iiuioix: MaciuilluJi & Co Slanf'ardii Gtct/' S.ttnF* CHAPTER I ^s,^' LUWSTOH, O M ~ l\ 1^- THE SUBJECT Whoever wishes to know what Canada is, and to understand the Canadian question, should begin by turning from the political to the natural map. The political map displays a vast and unbroken area of territory, extending from the boundary of the United States up to the North Pole, and equalling or surpassing the United States in magnitude. The physical map displays four separate projections of the cultivable and habitable part of the Continent into arctic waste. The four vary greatly in size, and one of them is . very large. They are, beginning from the east, the Maritime Provinces — Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island ; Old Canada, comprising the present Provinces of Quebec and Ontario ; the newly-opened region of the North- West, comprising the Province of Manitoba and the districts of Alberta, Athabasca, Assiniboia, and Saskatchewan ; and |: British Columbia. The habitable and cultivable parts of Ithese blocks of territory are not contiguous, but are divided yrom each other by great barriers of nature, wide and irre- claimable wildernesses or manifold chains of mountains, the Maritime Provinces are divided from Old Canada by the wilderness of many hundred miles thixDugh which the Inter- B I 2 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. li colonial Railway runs, hardly taking up a passenger or a bale of freight by tlie wa;, . Old Canada is divided from Mani- toba and the North-West by the great freshwater sea of Lake Superior, and a wide wilderness on either side of it. Mani- toba and the North-West again are divided from British Columbia by a triple range of mountains, the Eockies, the Selkirks, and the Golden or Coast range. Each of the blocks, on the other hand, is closely connected by nature, physically and economically, with that portion of the habitable and cultivable continent to the south of it which it immediately adjoins, and in which are its natural markets — the Maritime Provinces, with Maine and the New England States ; Old Canada, with New York and with Pennsylvania, from which she draws her coal; Manitoba and the North- West, with Minnesota and Dakota, which share with her the Great Prairie ; British Columbia, with the States of the Union on the Pacific. Between the divisions of the Dominion there is hardly any natural trade, and but little even of forced trade has been called into existence under a stringent system of protection. The Canadian cities are all on or near the southern edge of the Dominion ; the natural cities at least, for Ottawa, the political capital, is artificial. The principal ports of the Dominion in winter, and its ports largely throughout the year, are in the United States, trade coming through in bond. Between the two provinces of Old Canada, though there is no physical barrier, there is an ethnological barrier of the strongest kind, one being British, the other thoroughly French, while the antagonism of race is intensified by that of religion. Such is the real Canada. Whether the four blocks of territory constituting the Dominio' ^ car for ever be kept by political agencies united among themselves and separate from their Continent, of -.'J^fL). CHAP. THE SUBJECT : a bale . Mani- of Lake Mani- British kies, the e blocks, hysically ,able and nediately Maritime ates ; Old •om wliich Vest, with the Great Union on ^nion there of forced stringent all on or tural cities icial. The its ports tates, trade nces of Old there is an ing British, [sm of race >al Canada, ^tilting the licies united ontinent, of which geographically, economically, and with the exception of Quebec ethnologically, they are parts, is the Canadian question. Where the subject is so complex and so disjointed, to devise a satisfactory arrangement is not easy. Writers and readers of tlie history of the Dominion too well know how wanting it is in unity. For the special purpose of this work, which is neither elaborate description nor detailed history, but the presentation of a case and of a problem, it seemed best first, briefly to delineate the Provinces, which are the factors of the case, then to sketch their political history, leading up to Confederation, then to give an account ot the Confederation itself, with its political sequel, up to the present time, and finally to propound the problem. The general reader, if any one answering to that description ever takes up this work, may skip the chapter on the Federal polity, the subject of which to the reader specially interested in Colonial institutions will probably seem the most important of all. To impart anything like liveliness to a discussion of the British North America Act one must have the touch of Voltaire. The writer knows too well that he is on highly contro- versial ground. All he can say is that the subject is clearly and practically before the public mind ; that he has done his best to take his readers to the heart of it by setting the whole case before them ; that his opinions have not been hastily S formed ; that they have not, so far as he is aware, been P . I biassed by personal motives of any kind ; and that he does I not think that the honour or the true interest of his native icountry can for a mnmeut be absent from his breast. CHArTEE II THE FRENCH PROVINCE The eldest first. Canada proper was a French colony. To the hahiians, as the Quebec peasantry are called, it is a French colony still ; for they know no Canadians but those of their own race. French enterprise it was that first looked down from the high-pooped barque, in which, without chart or quadrant, it had braved the wide and wild Atlantic, upon the St. Lawrence, then running between forests full of bears, moose, and beavers, and roamed by a few human wolves in the shape of Eed Indians. Tlie true Canada is tlie river e.xplored by Jacques Cartier, with its shores, its affluents, and the country of which it is the outlet. A royal river it is, bearing on its broad breast of waters Atlantic steamers a thousand miles from its mouth, and running between high banks, while its rival, the Mississippi, spreads over vast fiats of mud ; its weak point being that the frost of Canadian winter binds it half the year in chains which invention has been tasked in vain to loose. Quebec and Montreal are the only historic cities of the Dominion, and Quebec alone retains its 1 With regard to this and the following chapter, the writer owes acknow- ledgment to Picturesque Canada, edited by Principal Grant, D.D., and also to the article by Dr. Prosper Bender, on the French Canadian Peasantry, in the Magazine of American Histoi'y, August, 1890. -*9 cii.vr. II THE FRENCH PROVINCE I ony. To , it is a but those ?st looked lont chart ntic, upon of bears, wolves in the river Acnts, and liver it is, ;eamers a een high .st flats of [an winter has been the only etains its Iwes acknow- and also to Intry, in the liistoric aspect. Even in Quebec tliere are in the way of buildings but scanty remnants of the Bourbon days. But the citadel, tlie prize of battle between the races, the key and throne of empire, stills crowns the rock whicli stands a majestic warder at the portal of the Upper St. Lawrence ; and tlie city witli its narrow, steep, and crooked streets, crouching close under its guardian fortress, recalls an age of military force and fear in contrast to tlie cities of the New World, with their broad and straight streets spreading out freely in the security of indu: *^rial peace. Quebec is a surviving offset of the France of the Bourbons, cut oil' by conquest from the mother country and her revolu- tions. Its character has been perpetuated by isolation like the form of an antediluvian pnimal preserved in Siberian ice. Just now the ice is in appearance freezing harder than ever, though there are ominous crackings and rumblings which to the listening ear seem to portend dissolution, and do certainly portend critical change. The Bourbon monarchy is gone, and very faintly is its image replaced in the heart of the French Canadian by that of the alien monarchy of Great Britain. The aristocracy is gone, since the seigniories in- stituted by Louis XIV — poor counterparts of Old World seigniories even while they existed — have been bought up and abolished, though a slight influence is retained by a few old families. The power of the notary rests on a foundation of adamant which no conquest or revolution can overthrow. But it and all other powers, political or social, are small compared with that of the priest. Quebec is a theocracy. While Eome has been losing her hold on Old France and on all the European nations, she has retained, nay tightened, it here. The people are the sheep of the priest. He is their political as well as their spiritual chief and nominates the !• CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. politician, who serves the interest of the Church at Quebec or at Ottawa. The faith of the peasantry is medieval. It is in Quebec alone on the Western Continent that miracles are still performed. The shrine of Ste. Anne de Beaupre is thronged with pilgrims and thickly hung with votive offerings, though her cures are confined to ailments of a certain class, chiefly nervous, and she has not restored a limb or healed anybody of cancer. A bishop writing to the people of his diocese about his visit to Rome assumes that they receive as undoubted truth the legend of the three fountains marking the three boundings of St Paul's head after it had been cut off, and that of St. Zeno and his 10,203 companions in martyrdom. Not only have the clergy been the spiritual guides and masters of the French Canadian, they have been the preservers and champions of his nationality, and they have thus combined the influence of the tribune with that of the priest. The hahitant is a French peasant of the Bourbon day. The "Angelus" would be his picture, only that in the " Angelus " the devotion of the man seems less thorough than that of the woman, wliereas the habitant and his wife are alike devout. He is simple, ignorant, submissive, credulous, unprogressive, but kindly, courteous, and probably, as his wants are few, not unhappy. If, in short, there is an Arcadia anywhere, in his village most likely it is to be found. He tills in the most primitive manner his paternal lot, reduced by subdivision, executed lengthways, to a riband-like strip, with, if possible, a water-front ; the river having been the only highway of an unprosperous colony when the lots were first laid out. His food is home-raised, and includes a good deal of peasoup, which affords jokes to the mockers. His raiment is homespun, and beneath his roof the hum of the spinning- II THE FRENCH PROVINCE wheel is still heard. His wife is the robust and active partner of his toil. Their cabin, tliough very humble, is clean. Such decorations as it has are religious. The Churcli services are to the pair the poetry and pageantry of life. If either reads anything it is the prayer-book. There are, however, Chamons Popnlaircs, though probably more read by the cultivated than by tlie people, and there is a folk-lore brought apparently from Old France, perhaps from tlie France before Christianity.^ The domestic affections among the Jiahitans are strong ; that grand source of happiness at least is theirs ; and two or more branches of the same family are found living in harmony under tlie same roof. The habitant is not cultivated or aspiring, but his life is above that of the troglodyte of La Tcrrc. Close observers think that they can still trace the race characters of tlie two districts of Old France from which the French Canadians came, and distinguish the Breton Celt from tile more solid and shrewder Norman ; but the general characteristics prevail. It is denied that the language is a patois, such as a Parisian could not understand, though there are in it old Breton and Norman words and phrases. English words and phrases have also intruded, but these French patriotism is now trying to weed out. The French Canadians breed apace. To them, as to the Irish, the Churcli preaches early marriage and speedy re-mar- riage in the interest of morality, and to multiply the number of the faithful, perhaps also with an eye to fees. From a return just laid before the Quebec Legislature it appears that for the grant of a hundred acres of land bestowed as a reward upon families boasting twelve or more children, there are ^ See an interesting article by Mr. Edward Farrer, a distinguished Canadian journalist, in the Atlantic Monthly for April, 1882. I CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION THAP. 1009 claimants. One family nnmbers twenty-three ; a family of twenty-six has been known. There is no saying what bound there would be to the extension of the French if they did not prefer pills made of paper with a likeness of the Virgin to vaccination as a preventive of smallpox. As it is, they are overflowing in multitudes into New England, and threaten, in conjunction with the Irish, who are also settling there in great numbers, to supplant tlie Puritan in his old abode. They are also displacing liie English in Eastern Ontario, and making the politicians of the province feel their power. The digestive forces of Canada have been too weak to assimilate the French element even politically as those of the great mass of American Englishry have assimil- ated, sufficiently at least for the purposes of political union, the French population of Louisiana. Instead of being assimilated, the French Canadians assimilate, and Scotch regiments disbanded among them have become French in language, in religion, and in everything but name and face. The factories of New England welcome the French not only on account of the cheapness of their labour, but because they are tractable, amenable to factory discipline, and not addicted to industrial war. Farming is not the cnly pursuit of the French Canadians in their own country. With it they combine one of a more stirring kind. They furnish a large proportion of the lumber- men. The forest wealth of Canada is immense, though it is now, unfortunately, being fast reduced not only by the axe, but by forest fires, which the carelessness of trappers or tramps kindles, and which are terrible in their destructive range, while governments, their thoughts engrossed by the party conflict, have left the forests to take care of themselves.^ ^ In Ontario a forest-ranger has now been appointed, in the person of Mr. Phipps, ■^ho had done good service in calling attention to the subject. II THE FRENCH PROVINCE For lumbering winter, wlien the snow makes slides, is the season, so that the French peasant may conihine it with the cultivation of his little farm, ricturescjue writers dwell with rapture on the romance of life in the lumber shanty, the forest rinj^'ing with the axe, the glories of the winter land- scape by sunlight and by moonlight, the healthiness of the work, the vigour and skill which it calls forth, and the joviality of the gangs, touching with poetry even " the huge pan of fat pork fried and floating in gravy." ^ In the dangerous work of guiding the logs down the stream, above a"!], great nerve as well as agility is displayed. The lumber slianty is also a school of temperance, for in it no ]i(pior is allowed. Nor does religion fail to say her mass there, or to unpack her bale of ecclesiastical wares. The land east of Quebec city is poor ; even with the help of the lumber trade subsistence is rapidly outrun l)y popula- tion, and if there were not this ready outflow into the aJjoining states of the Ameri«,an Union, Quebec would be a second Ireland, and an analogy would be presented which might be useful in teaching Irish reformers to deal with the fundamental problem of congestion rather than try to feed a heedless and thriftless people with statutory parliaments. But the priest looks on emigration with an evil eye ; it takes away his flock, and tliose who return, as not a few do when they have earned some money in the New England factory, are apt to bring back with them the mental habits of a free commonwealth. Schemes of " repatriation " have been formed, but of course in vain, and desperate attempts are being ma-^ -^ to turn the current of emigration northwards to Lake St, John. Shipment to the French settlement in Manitoba is ^ See Picturesque Canada, vol, i, " Lumbering," where a complete and very interesting description of the trade and all that relates to it will be found. i I »i.-|...T.~..l. I,.-^.,..^.^ 10 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. another device of the same policy; but the star of French colonisation in Manitoba is waning low. This is one quarter from which danger threatens the Church's "ancient and solitary reign." Another is the railway, which, by bringing the peasant and his wife within the attraction of the city with its luxuries and vanities, corrupts the rural simplicity and contentment approved with good reason by the Church. Hence fulminations of clerical wrath against social corruption which would prove the Church's system a failure if they were taken literally and without allowance for the fervour of the pulpit. While the people are poor the Church is, for such a country, immensely rich. Not Versailles or the Pyramids bespoke the power of the king more clearly than the great Church and the monastery rising above the cabins bespeak the power of the priest. Exactly how great the wealth of the Church in Quebec is cannot be told ; no politician dares to move for a return. A hundred millions of dollars (£20,000,000 stg.) would probably be a low estimate of her realised property, while her income is reckoned at ten millions. Bishop Laval acquired from the Government the seigniories of the Petit Nation, the Island of Jesus, and Beaupre, the last of which, beginning a few miles below Quebec, runs along the St, Lawrence for sixteen leagues, with a depth of six leagues measured from the river.^ Favours have more recently been obtained from obsequious govern- ments, while all legal facilities are given by legislatures not less obsequious. The Church has, by law transmitted from the Bourbon days and recognised at the Conquest, the right of taking from all members of her own communion tithe (though the amount of the impost has been reduced to ^ Parkman's Old Rigime in Canada, p. 164. II THE FRENCH PROVINCE 11 such a 'ramids e great Despeak >alth of ti dares dollars of her at ten ent the s, and below s, with avours Igovern- ilatures Ismitted ^est, the union uced to a twenty-sixth) and money for building and repairing churches.^ Masses for souls are everywhere a source of revenue to her. She is always investing with profit. Besetting the people from the cradle to the grave with her friars and her nuns, she daily gathers in money, of which none ever leaves her coffers, even for taxes, since she asserts her sacred immunity from taxation. Lotteries, in spite of their affinity to gambling, are sanctioned to add to the holy fund. To add to the holy fund priests do not disdain to peddle ecclesiastical amulets and trinkets.^ Nor does Ste. Anne de Beaupre perform her cures for nothing. ^leantime the mayor of St. Jean Baptiste, a village annexed to Montreal, states that of the seventy-five hundred people of that village, six thousand are too poor to protect themselves against small- pox, and the city must come to their assistance, while Ze Canadien of Quebec calls upon the governments of the Dominion and the Province to provide work for the people of the counties below Quebec whose crops ac?. a failure, ^ The tithe was by law only of cereals. The habitant took to growing peas to evade the imj)ost ; but the Church followed him uj) and he gave way. Of late he has taken to growing hay, but the Church again follows him u]», and this time her exaction is the more severe because a heavy tax has been imposed on hay by the United States. In cities, the Church has begun to impose a poll tax on those who do not pay tithes. The cure generally suc- ceeds in collecting by ecclesiastical authority, though resort is sometimes had to the Parish Conimissioners' Courts. A district magistrate at Sherbrooke, not long ago, condemned a habitant to pay §4 (two years' tax of $2 per annum) imposed by the Bishop of St. Hyacinthe. The magistrate, who is a lawyer o^ thirty years' standing, based his decision partly on the decree of the bislio[) aiid ])artly on the fact that defendant's family had the spiritual services of the cure, for which he awarded a quantum meruit. The case is reported in the Revue Legale, a law report edited by a judge of the Superior Court of ^lontreal, without any question of its soundness. In the Province there has also been a long struggle against paying tithes to the movable mis- sionaries. But the Su])erior Court has also sustained this impost, though the old French edict declares that settled cures alone had the riglit to collect tithes. ^ See for this the article "Romanism in Canada" in the Presbyterian yjlevieio, New York, July, 1886. 1 I' If.- i\ 12 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. warning them that unless the ^Matane Kaihvay he pushed on to give the people bread there will be an exodus which will be ruinous to the Dominion. The treasury of the Province is empty, and her financiers are fain to levy political tribute on the Confederation or to raid by taxation of financial com- panies on the strongbox of the commercial Protestants at Montreal. The Reformation was perhaps to a greater extent than is commonly supposed a movement of economical self- preservation on the part of communities whose land and wealth were being absorbed by the Church, The champions of the Church say that for all that she tak'3s she gives full value in the sliape of morality and cha;dty. Her charity, if it means the control of charitable institutions, is not unconnected with her finance. It is probably on financial grounds, in part, that she is at this moment struggling to keep the lunatic asylums in her hands. But she has made the people in her way moral, as well as in her way religious. Her rule is almost Genevan in its austerity ; ball,? and low dresses are denounced as well as Opera Bouffe. The relations of the sexes are watched with a jealous eye. Probably the most favourable specimen of the Roman Catholic system anywhere to be found is in Quebec, where, be it remembered, the Church has been under British rule, linked to a British province, tempered in her action by British influences, and stimulated by Protestant emulation Nevertheless, looking to the condition of the people on the one hand, and the vast array of churches, convents, and rectories on the other, we are reminded of Edniond About's saying about the peasantry of the Romagna, who were back- ward and unprosperous though they liad fourteen thousand monks preaching to them the gospel of labour. What the mind of the Church is respecting popular I CHAl*. ■I II THE FRENCH PROVINCE 13 ihed on ich will rovince tribute ial com- tants at r extent ical self- and and that she lity and baritable ;. It is s at this ler hands. 3 well as an in its 3 well as ed with a en of the 11 Quebec, ler British action by inulation e on the lents, and 1 About's ere back- thousand popular n education we know from the history of countries such as Southern Italy, Spain, the Iloraan Catholic provinces of Austria, and the Spanish colonies in South America, where she has had it all her own way. The Jesuit boasts of his services to education in Canada and elsewhere : he has no doubt cultivated the art to great perfection after his kind ; but the objects of his attention as an educator have been yoaths destined for the priesthood, or sons of the rich and powerful whom it was his aim to draw into his net, and to whom he imparts a set of showy and superficial accom- plishments serving mainly to allay the thirst for truth. In Quebec the Church has it not all her own way. She is exposed to the rivalry and criticism of a body of Protestants on the spot, and of a still larger body in the Dominion. She has therefore taken up popular education, but she has taken it up without zeal and given it an ecclesiastical turn. The days may have gone by when by a Statute of the Province of Quebec school trustees were authorised by law to sign with a mark ; but illiteracy still prevails. The mayor of a town cannot always write. Mr. Arthur Buies, a French Canadian journalist of eminence, cites a witness who, having held a high official position, and lived in a rural district for fifty years, deposes that among the men between twenty and forty not one in twenty can read, and not one in fifty '^an write ; that they will tell you that they have been at school but have forgotten all they learned ; and that what the " all " was you will be able to guess when you know that the teachers were mostly young girls taken from the convents with a salary of from 200 to 400 francs a year, and chosen because their priests were unable to pay the convent tuition |fees.^ This account seems to be borne out by the inquiries ^ Arthur Buies, La Lanterne, Montreal, 1884, p. 113. ill 14 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. of the Massachusetts School Inspector among the French Canadian immigrants in Massachusetts, though these are likely to be not among the least active-minded or intelligent of the community from wliich they come. In fact education for the masses is probably little more than preparation for the first communion. The series of school books in use in the Province is highly ecclesiastical and very poor. Tlie school history is a characteristic work.i It scarcely mentions British Canada, treats the British as alien intruders, exults in French victories over them, imputes to them insidious designs of crushing French nationality, and glorifies the priesthood for having preserved it from their attacks. Lord Durham, the author of the hated union with British Canada, is accused of having scattered money broadcast for that object, and Sir John Colborne is charged with ravaging the country at the head of seven or eight thousand men when the rebellion was over and order had been restored. The Conquest, the pupil is taught to believe, was followed by eighty years of persecution, of religious intolerance, and of despotism, during which England was following, with regard to Canada, the sinister policy which she liad pur- sued with regard to Ireland. This is a primer sanctioned by the Council of Public Instruction in a province styled British. There is at present no ill-feeling among the French Canadians against Great Britain. British rule has been too mild to provoke hatred. British lioyalty when it visits Quebec is perfectly well received. But Great Britain is a foreign country to the French Canadian. There is in Quebec a circle of French literary men con- ^ Abrege d'Histoire du Canada a I'usage des Jeunes Etudiants de la Pro- vince de Quebec, par F. X. Tonssaint, Trofcsseur a I'Ecole Normale- Laval. Approuvo par le Conseil de I'lnstruction Publique, Montreal, 1886. CHAP, II THE FRENCH PROVINCE 16 French ese are .elligent lucation tion for a use in scarcely itruders, to them olorifies attacks. L British idcast for ravaging aen when pd. The owed by and of , with lad pur- nctioned e styled Diig the rule has ty when it Great men con- de la Pro- inale- Laval. 6. taining some names of eminence; but it is hardly more connected with the Church and her people than was the literary circle of tlie eighteenth century with the Church and her people in France. It draws its intellectual aliment from Paris, where some of its members are well known, and M. Frechette, the poet of French Canada, has won a crown. Probably it is itself better known at Paris than in Quebec. In this Paradise of Faith there is a serpent called the Farii Rouge, though it is not Dynamitard or Atheist, but merely Liberal, or at most free-thinldng, and opposed to clerical domination. It had at Montreal a literary society called the Institut Canadien. This society, for taking heterodox literature, was excommunicated as a body by the Church. Guibord, one of its members, died under the ban, and the Church refused to let him be buried in the Catholic cemetery where he had owned a lot. The Provincial courts upheld the sentence of the Church. But the Privy Council on appeal, after debating the question, as Carlyle says, with the iron f^^ravity of Eoman augurs, decided that men nmst, according to the Canon Law, be excommunicated individually, not in the lump; consequently that Guibord had not lost his right to burial in the cemetery. The Church showed fight, the militia w^ere under orders, a huge block of granite was prepared to protect the grave from desecration, a colli- sion seemed to be impending, when the Bishop of Montreal cut the knot by proclaiming that in whatever spot the excommunicate might be laid that spot would thereby be cut off from the rest of the ground and deconsecrated ; so that in the rest of the ground the faithful might sleep tlncontaminated and in peace. Till lately, however, the Church of Quebec remained a fi 16 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. true daughter of the Church of monarchical France, and kept her Gallican tradition, giving Cfesar his due, and living at peace with the civil power. But at length the same change has passed over her which has passed over the Eomau Catholic Churches of Europe, since, having lost the allegiance of the national governments, they have been compelled to throw themselves for support on their spiritual centre, and to exalt without limit the authority of the Pope. Ultramon- tanism has come, and in its van the Jesuit bearing with him the Encyclical and Syllabus, his own work. Having, besides his surpassing skill in intrigue, the ecclesiastical influences of the time in his favour, he captures the Episcopate, fills the Church with his spirit, extends his '^mpire on all sides. The Sulpician order, Gallican in sentiment, whose great seminary rises over Montreal, after a bitter struggle goes down before him, and resigns to him in part the cure of the wealthy city. Against the University, the last fortress of Gallicanism or Liberal Catholicism, his batteries have opened. From his own pulpit, or through the lips of bishops who speak as he prompts, he denounces Gallicanism as a pestilent error, brands Liberal Catholicism, the Catholicism of Montalembert and Lacordaire, as insidious poison, reasserts in the language of Bui the Encyclical the medieval claims of the Papacy to domina- sioj tion over conscience and over the civil power, scornfully fasj repels the idea that the priest is to confine himself to the oldj sacristy, claims for him the right of interference in elections, is the censorship of literature and of the public press. Against bet^ Protestantism and its pretended rights he proclaims open war ; it has no rights, he says ; it is merely a triumphant synj imposture ; no religion has any right, or ought to be treated * by the State as having any, but that of Eome. Eome is the ^ft] rightful sovereign of all consciences ; and will again, when she '^o\ 4, i CHAr. II THE FRENCH PROVINCE 17 can, assert her authority by the same means as before. Wal- ls declared against religious liberty, progress, and the organic principles of modern civilisation. On such a course the ship of the French Church of Quebec is now steering, with the Jesuit at the helm. If she holds on, a collision can hardly fail to ensue. It has been said very truly that the Jesuit always fails. This world would be strangely ordered if he did not. His wisdom has never been equal to his craft. When by craft he had got James II into his hands, he, by want of wisdom, hurried the king along the road to ruin. He may do the same with the Nationalist party and politicians of Quebec. In the history of the Order, as often as the marvel- lous labours of the sons of Loyola in maj'orcm Dei rjloriam seemed on the point of being crowned with success there has come an ajjlavit Dcas et dissipcUi sunt. But though the Jesuit has always failed, his failures have been tremendously costly to humanity. The ascendency of Ultramontanism has been aided by the change which has taken place in the position of the clergy, brands They used to hold their cures, under an ordinance of Louis 1 mbert and XIV, by a fixed tenure, like the freehold of an English rector. 1 ifTua""e of But they have now been put generally on the footing of mis- r t domina- sionaries, removable at the pleasure of the bishop. The old- . pornfuUy fashioned cure, a man something like the English rector of the . ' If to the old school, quiet and sociable, is passing away, and his place . gjections. i^ being taken by a personage of a more stirring spirit, and A crainst better suited to be the minister of Ultramontane ambition. Vims open With this advance of ecclesiastical pretensions comes a t-'umphant^ynipathetic growth of nationalist aspiration. The dream of Vie treated *^i"6^ch nation on this continent has long been hovering P me is tbe''®^!'^ the minds of French Canadians, though it is hard to say ;e, and kept id living at ame change the Komau le allegiance jompelled to ;entre, and to Ultramon- •ino' with him ;iving, besides [ influences of ,pate, fills the tU sides. The treat seminary s down before e wealthy city. iGallicanism or ed. 10 From his speak as he '] le. again; when she^Pf'' f'^^' the idea has ever assumed a distinct shape or formed a '" 1 18 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAl'. definite motive of action. The Abbu Gin<,n-as in a i)aniplilei some years ago, after glorifying the Dark Ages, justifying the Inquisition, and revdving the claims of Innocent III, set forMi what he deemed the necessary policy of French Canadian statesmen towards the Dominion, describing it as one of conciliation, more or less elastic, with the creation of a pupal and French nationality always in view as its covert aim. But now the twin movement has taken a more pronounced form. M. Honor(5 Mercier has risen to lead Ultraniontanisni and Nationalism at once, and has been raised by their joint forces to the Premiership of the Province, while the old Con- servative or Bleu party, which corresponded to the Gallican party in the Church, has suffered a complete overthrow. M. Mercier proclaims himself the devout liegeman of the Pope, wears a papal decoration on his breast, seeks the papal blessing before going into an election contest, champions all ecclesiastical claims, restores to the Jesuits their estates, and boasts to a great Eoman Catholic assemblage at Baltimore that he has thereby redressed the wrong done by George III. At the same time he avov.'s his Nationalism in language that makes British ears tingle. At the unveiling of a joint memorial to Breboeuf, the Jesuit martyr, and Jacques Cartier, the French discoverer, he bids the Eed and Blue party of Quebec blend their ensigns in the Tricolor. He celebrates his political victory in a hall profusely decorated with French flags, while only one Dominion flag is to be seen. " Gentle- men," he says, pointing to the Tricolor, " this flag you know : it is the national flag. The government which you have you know ; it is the national government. The party which I have before me I know. This flag, this government, and this party are to-night honoured by the National Club. It is a national triumph which we celebrate to-night, and not CHAl'. II THE FRENCH PROVINCE 19 pamplilet ifying the , set forth Canmliiin as one of of a papnl 3 vert aim. (ronounced montanisiu their joint le old Coll- ie Gallicaii throw. M. [ the I'ope, the papal ampions all lestates, and Baltimore George III. nauacie that of a joint ues Cartier, Lie party of |e celebrates ith French " Gentle- you know ; »ii have you ■ty which 1 nt, and this lub. It is a ;, and not national merely in name but national in tendencies, aspira- tions, and sentiments." Tiie French Canadian nation tele- graphs its salutations to the Pope, and the Pope telegraphs back his benediction to the French Canadian nation. C>n a day in September 1887 the Fi'cnch flag was lioistcd above the British flag on the Parliament House of Quebec in honour of the Frencli frigate La Mincrve. This was afterwards said to have been an accident. It was an accident full tif omen. lietwcen Old France and the New France of the priests a "ulf was set by the Atheist Eevolution. There seems to have been some change of feeling in the minds of the Quebec clergy when Napoleon restored the Church, and when after- wards the old regime came back with the Bourbons. But since 1830 Liberalism, with the interlude of the Empire, has reigned again in Old France and repelled clerical sympathy. The Liberals of Quebec cultivate their connection with tlie mother country, who begins on her part to meet their advances and' to show renewed interest in her great colony. But the moral sovereign of Quebec is the Pope, and tlie out- come of this movement, if it bears fruit at all, will be a French and Papal nation. The hearts of tlie French Canadians were, however, deeply moved by the spectacle of the Franco-German War. " If any one," said Sir George Cartier at that time, "would know to-day how far we are Frenchmen, I answer: ' Go into the towns, go into the country, accost the 1 nimblest among us and relate to him the events of that gigantic strujriile which has fixed the attention of the world ; announce to him that France is conquered ; then place your hand upon his breast, and tell me what can make his heart beat if it be not love for his country.' " n Lord Durham, coming immediately after what was called I rebellion, but was really rather a war between the two races 3«a TV M' ! 20 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION • HAl', ill Lower Caiiiula, describes not only tlie estrangement of the races but tlieir mutual bitterness as extreme. The bitterness has in great measure passed away ; the estrangement remains. Tliere is hardly any intermarriage ; marriages of Eoniau Catholics witli Protestants are in fact interdicted by the,' Church of Kome. There is hardly any social intercourse either of young or old. Lord Durham said that the two races meet in the jury-box only for the utter subversion of justice. In any political case, or any case in which an appeal can be made to the sentiment of race, they meet only for the sub- version of justice still : at least a disagreement of tlie jury is sure to result. The politicians have to act with Britisli colleagues, with whom they must also associate. They have to speak English, because while French as well as English is recognised in the Parliament at Ottawa a member speaking French only cannot produce much effect ; and some of them, Mr. Laurier and j\Ir. Chapleau for example, are among the very best English speakers. But constant intercourse is con- fined to the leaders ; the British and French members generally, even at Ottawa, live much apart. As the French population in Quebec increases, the British population decreases ; it is likely in time to be thrust out altogether from the whole of the Province except a quarter of Montreal. In the city of Quebec there are now, it is believed, not more than six or seven thousand British remaining, and, as the shipbuilding trade has fled from its former seat, the British element being bound up with commerce, it is likely that the decline will go on. The eastern townships on the south of the St. Lawrence were once entirely British, and were under English law while the rest of the Province was under the Custom of Paris ; but that district is now rapidly passing into French hands. The Bishop has the power of ^Ch niAv, 11 TIIH FKKNCH PROVINCE 21 lent of the bitterness it remains, of Roman ed by tlu; intercourse B two races of justice. )eal can be or the sub- the jury is ith British They have , English is dv speaking ne of them, among tlu; urse is con- h members the British thrust out quarter of is believed, Lining, and, ler seat, the |it is likely lips on the Iritish, and 'ovince was low rapidly le power of creatin.u' an ecclesiastical parish wliich by subtle links draws after it the civil and tlie municii)al parisli. The Jhitisli farmer is liarassed by an increase of his assessment as well as by social intiuences adverse to his peace and comfort. He becomes ready to sell out, and the Church advances money to the Frenchmen for the purchase at an easy rate, which she can do witli profit to herself, because in the Frenclnnan's hands the farm becomes subject to tithe and Church repairs. One Protestant church after another is closed and in one parish after another French is proclaimed as the only language in which the records are to be kept. The commerce and wealth of Montreal are still in British hands, the reactionary ecclesiasticism of the French being little propitious to com- mercial pursuits. But commercial ^Montreal in French Quebec is becoming an outpost of an alien territory ; proposals have been made for transferring it from Quebec to Ontario, close to the border of which it lies. Under the present jurisdiction it runs no small risk of being despoiled by the needy financiers of a separate race, as would Belfast if the taxing power in Ireland were committed to lioman Catholic and Celtic hands. Meanwhile the British traders of Montreal think of little but theii- trade, or of their pleasure, and make no head against the progress of the foe. In trutli to make head something like a martyr spirit is required, for the Church can punish in his trade or profession the man who dares to show himself her enemy. Free and bold voices are heard, but they are few, and the ears to which tliey speak are for the most part closed against anything which, by disturbing .quiet, might interfere with the interests of trade. The less Ultramontane element of the Itoman Catholic -Churcli still holds its ground in the Laval University at 'Quebec, to which Liberals resort, and which has hitherto held I 22 CANADA AM) THK CANADIAN QUESTION CHAI'. Jesuit ascendency at bay. I'rotestanti.sni has its tlourisliing place of high education in ^IcGill University, at Montreal, wliilc the Church of England lias a small University at Lennoxville. Amongst the strongest bulwarks of Protestantism in the Province is the Presbyterian College at ]\Iontrcal. There are French Protestants in the J'rovince to the number, it is said, of about 10,000. These are by origin converts from Eoman Catholicism, and may l)e regarded with interest, as a recurrence of the tendency Avhich gave birth to the Huguenots, but seemed to have been thoroughly crushed out of existence between Ultramontanism on the one hand and Voltaire on the other. They have produced, in the person of Mr. Joly, who was for a short time Provincial Premier, the most thoroughly upright and the most univers- ally respected among the public men of the Province. The point at which the empire of the Church in Quebec and the Jesuit's ideal polity are most threatened, is the junction with the American Eepublic, produced by the overflow already noticed, of the French population into the north-eastern States of the Union. This exodus the Church, while she deplores and dreads it, is constantly augmenting, both by her encouragement of early marriages and by her own absorption of wealth. She may send her priests with the exiles and try to extend lier rd\^ of childlike submission and unin- quiring faith ovei Massachusetts; but in this she will not succeed. Nor w'U she be able to prevent the connection between the French from being the conduit of American ideas fatal to faith and tithes. Among the Eoman Catholics of Quebec itself there are sectional divisions which may some day lead to rupture, while the intellectual tendencies of the age being what they are, the Parti Rouge is not likely to decrease. There are those who suspect that even M. Mercier ClIAl'. II THE FRENCH I'UOVINCE 28 oiirishiiig rcal.wliilti nnoxvillc. Ill in tlitj [Hi to tilt' by origin irded ^vitll 'e birtli to ly crushed one hand m1, in the Provincial 3t nnivers- Lce. in Quebec lie junction ow already ■th- eastern while she ,th by her absorption lexiles and and unin- e will not ;onnection American Catholics may some ies of the :, likely to . Mercier Sf jiiniself is less narrow in his convictions than from his public professions and actions has appearoil. At this moment ho is said to be braving Ultramontane ire by transferring the lunatic asyluius from religious to secular keeping. Hut it is in the quarter of the exodus that we may look with most assurance for the beginning of the end. In the meantime, however, the French Canadians in Vermont, Xew Hampshire, and Massachusetts, remain French Canadians. Tiiey form settlements by themselves. They cling to their language and their religion. They remain in close communication with those whom they have left be- hind, and population circulates between the two divisions. Thus New France now stretches across the Line into the the United States, one section of her being on the British side of the Line, the other section, the proportion of which already amounts to two-sevenths, and is always increasing, on the other side. Let those who dream of a war between Canada and the United States ponder this fact, and remember that they w^ould have to call upon one part of New France to take arras in a British quarrel against the other part. At Montreal there is a large settlement of Irish, who show their gregarious tendency by dwelling together in a quarter of the city called Griffintown. In the relations of the Irish to the French Catholics difference of race sharpened by industrial competition seems to predominate over identity of religion, to the advantage of the British Protestants, whom the combined force would overwhelm. 1! ' t ami CHAPTER III THE BRITISH PROVINCES Ontario, formerly Upper Canada, and better designated as Britisli Canada, was the nucleus and is the core of the Confederation. It will be seen on the map, running out between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie on one side, and Lake Huron and the Georgian Bay on the other, Windsor on its extreme point being almost a suburb of Detroit, though separated from that city by the Detroit river. That great tongue of land is its garden, but it has also fruitful fields along the Upper St. Lawrence. It reaches far back into a wilder and more arctic country, rich however in timber, and still richer in minerals. The minerals would yield great wealth if only the treasure-house in which an evil policy kee]os them locked could be opened by the key of free-trade. "Ilicli by nature, poor by policy," might be written over Canada's door. Eich she would be if she were allowed to embrace her destiny and be a part of her own continent ; poor, comparatively at least, she is in striving to remain a part of Europe. At present the great industry of Ontario is farming. It is so still, in spite of the desperate efforts of protectionist legislators to force her to become a manufactur- ing country without coal. The farmers are usually freeholders, but leaseholders are growing more common. Not a few of cn.w. Ill THE imiTLSH PROVINCES ated as of the ing out id Lake : on its thou2;h at great il fields into a ber, and d great policy e-trade. en over Dwed to atinent ; 1 a part ;ario is fforts of ufactur- holders, few of the farms are mortgaged, as are a good many of the farms in the United States. Let this be noted by those who fancy tliat to make a happy commonwealth they have only to do away with landlords and divide the land among small pro- prietors. The mortgagee is a landlord who never resides, never lielps the tenant, never reduces the rent. Much of the money, liowever, borrowed in Ontario has been spent in clearing or improving farms in a new country, and has proved an excellent investment to the borrower. The farms are generally from one to two hundred acres. The Canadian farmer works with his own hands, unlike the British farmer on a large farm who rides about and watches his men work. If 11'"^ has not sons to help him he hires a labourer, who gets good wages, and lives with the farmer and his family, thus having a rise in life ; for in England the farmer is now usually too much a gentleman, and his wife is far too much a lady, to live with the labourer. Tlie system in Canada, however, has of late been changing, and labourers' cottages are beginning to be built. The labour-savins; machines which are amoncc the wonderful products of American invention, and of which the self-binder is the paragon, save the farmer much hire of men. Canada flatters herself that she is ahead of England in their use, Xowhere probably on this continent is the farming high ; the laud having liitherto been abundant, the farmer has preferred to work out his farm and move on. Thus the yield in some districts has decreased ; it is said also that the crops have suffered by tlie clearing of the land, whicli exposes them to the cold winds. Li a new country there is r general tendency to lavishness and waste ; trees liave been recklessly cut down, and replanting has been neglected. Hitherto the chief products have been wheal and barley ; but a deluge of grain is now pouring down I'rom the North-West, 1 26 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAl'. while the M'Kiiiley Act, if it stands, will shut out the barley from the American market ; and the Canadian farmer is turning his thoughts to cattle, which in this climate are free from disease. The aspect of the farm-houses and farms in Ontario will show even the passing traveller that agriculture lias prospered, though just now it is depressed and the value of farm property has gone down. The Canadian farmer, however, to earn his living out of tl\e land has to N/ork hard and to bargain hard. Perhaps to the P]nglish gentleman who tunis farmer in Canadf the second is almost as unfamiliar as the first. The season of the Canadian farmer's hardest work is the short arul hot summer by which his crops are brought rapidly oil In the winter he carries his grain to market in his sleigh over the good roads which the snow then makes for him, looks after his cattle, or gets his implements into order, and has more time for rest and social enjoyment. His diet is not so good as it ought to be ; partly because he cannot bear to keep for him- self anything that his farm produces if it will fetch a good price ; partly because his cookery is vile. So say those who know him best.^ Fried pork, bread ill-baked, heavy pies, coarse and strong green tea, account for the advertisements of pills which everywhere meet the eye, and perhaps in part for the increase of lunacy. From liquor, however, the Canadian farmer abstains. He has become temperate without coercive law, and for liim prohibition is an impertinence. He is alto- gether a moral man and a good citizen, honest, albeit close, as indeed he needs to be, in his dealings. He supports his minister and his schoolmaster, though both perhaps on a rather slender pittance. Such is the basis of society in British Canada. Apparently it is sound. The agrarian revolutionist, at all events, has little char.ee of disturbing a ^ See Mr. Shaw's paper in the Ap]tPi)'l>x. s in THE BRITISH PROVINCES 27 t barley mer is ire free rms ill culture /^alue of ovvever, bargain ,rmer in it. The tiort ail-'-. oil. hi iqh over oks alter lore time 00(1 as it for hini- h a good iiose who |ivy pies, iiiients of part for aiiadiaii coercive e is alto- close, as [ports liis |aps on a )cie*y in agrarian Itiirbinf' a community of substantial freeholders, each of them tilling the land which his fatlier or his not very remote ancestor won, not from a subjugated race with tlie Norman sword, but from the wilderness witli the axe and the plough. Where the basis of society is sound, we can afford to think and speak freely about the rest. In British Canacht, as in the United States, we see that the world gets on without the squire or any part of the manorial system. In Canada, as in the United States, the rich live in cities ; they have no country houses ; they go in summer to watering-places on the Gulf of the St. Lawrence, or more commonly in the United States, to Europe, or to the cottages wliich stud the shores and islets of the Muskoka Lakes. Not that the total absence of the manorial system does not make itself felt in American civilisation. Wealth, at all events, is the worse for having no rural duties. A yeoman proprietor of one or two hundred acres, let the agrarian reformers of England observe, is not a peasant pro- prietor or of kin to the peasant characters of Zola. Let them observe also that America has been organised .' r the system from the beginning. In England to introduce peasant pro- ( rietorship you would have to pull down all the farm build- ings and build anew for the small holdings, In France you b'A only to burn the chateaux. In this fundamental respect of yeoman proprietorship, without a landed gentry, the structure of society in British Canada is identical with its structure in the United States. It is identical in all fundamental respects. Canadian sentiment may be free from the revolutionary tinge and the tendency to indiscriminate sympathy with rebellion unhappily contracted by American sentiment in the contest with George III ; but it is not less thoroughly democratic. In everything the ■ ■ tf^r f ■lii I |i! 28 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAl'. pleasure and convenience of the masses are consulted. In politics everybody bows the knee to the people. Where there is wealth there will be social distinctions, and opulence even at Toronto sometimes ventures to put a cockade in the coach- man's hat. Titled visitors who come either to Canada or to the United States have too much reason to know that the worship of rank is personal, and can survive under any social system. But aristocracy is a hateful word to the Canadian as well (iF- to the American ear. It is politically a word wherewiti ' -oujure backwards. Any exhibition of the tendency v u. be fatal to an aspirant. If a citizen has a pedigree, real or factitious, he miist be content to feed his eyes on it as it hangs on his own wall. Wealth everywhere is power, and everywhere to a certain extent commands social position. Tiiis is the case in Toronto and the other cities of British Canada. But wealth in Toronto society has not everything quite its own way. There is a circle, as there is a circle even at New York, which it does not entirely command. Nor does a young man forfeit his social position by taking to any reputable calling. In that respect we have decidedly improved on the sentiment of the Old World. One sign of the pervading democratic sentiment is the servant diflicuitv, about which a continual wail from the mistresses of households fills the social air. The inexperience of masters and mistresses who have themselves risen from the ranks, the dulness of small households which makes servants restless, and the rate of wages in other employments, may in part be the causes of this ; but the main cause probably is the democratic dislike of service. Ilarely, if ever, will you see a native American servant, and in Canada the domestics are chiefly immigrants. The work in the factory [II THE BRITISH PROVINCES 29 may be mucli harder, and the treatment less kind than in the househohl ; generally they are ; but the hours of work over, the girl calls no one mistress, and she can do what she likes in the evenings and on Sundays. In the household the democratic scorn of service is unpleasantly apt to display itself by mutiny. Ladies complain that the parts of mistress and servant are reversed, and that it is the servant that requires a character of the mistress. People begin to wonder how the relation is to be kept up, and tl^ey talk of flats, hotels, and restaurants, a recourse to which would be very injurious to domestic life and affection. It has been suggested that the children of families may have again, as they did in former days, to help in the housew^ork. They would probably like any- thing which gave vent to their bodily energies almost as well as play. Dishonesty on the other hand among domestics appears to be rare, and a Canadian servant is less punctilious than an English servant in mixing different kinds of work. Another unattractive manifestation of the democratic spirit is the be- haviour, in cities at least, of the lower class of Canadian boys, of which even the most silver-tongued of governors-general could not bring himself to speak with praise. Neither the schoolmaster nor anybody else dares effectually to correct the young citizens. Something may perhaps be due to the extensive and increasing employment, from economical motives, of women as teachers. There are those at least who think that this practice is not favourable to subordination or t*" 'he cultivation of some manly points of character ; while others contend that the gentler influence is the stronger. The question as to the effect likely to bo produced on the character of a nation by the substitution of the schoolmistress for the schoolmaster is at all events worthy of consideration. Apart however from any special cause, no one can l»e surprised at 30 CANADA AND THE CAT^ADIAX QUESTION OIIAP. n '':1 ;il hearing tliat in a new and crude democracy there is a want of respect for authority, and of courage in exercising it, which makes itself felt throughout the social frame, and. on which the young rowdy soon learns to presume. No wonder juvenile crime is on the increase. It was to be expected that in the democratic hemisphere fustian would at first be inclined to take its revenge on broadcloth for the predominance of broadcloth in tlie Old World. Roughnesses of this kind, with the servant difficulty and the boy anarchy, are the joltings in the car of human progress on its road to the glorious era of perfect order and civil'GPtion, combined with perfect equality, wliich the generation after next will see. Meantime the general textuiT aiiJ. habits of society are not easily changed. The social ways of inan, his social distinctions and his social courtesies, are still much the same in British Canada and the United States that they are in Old En^rland. A city in British Canada differs in no respect from an American city of the second class. It is laid out in straight streets crossing each other at right angles, with trams for the street car — the family chariot of democracy, which by carry- ing the working man easily to and from his work enables him to live in the suburbs, where he gets a better house and better air. Nor does city life in Canada differ from that in the United States. It is equally commercial, and though the scale is smaller than that of Wall Street the strain is almost as great. People are glad to escape to the freshness of something like primitive life on a Muskoka islet, or even to get more entirely rid of civilisation and its cares by " camping out " on a lake side. Of late there has been in Canada as elsewhere a great rush of population to the cities. Toronto has grown with astonishing rapidity at the expense Ill THE URITISH PROVINCES 31 of the smaller towns and villages, and fortunes have been made by speculations in real estate. The cause of this is believed to be parti}'' education, which certainly breeds a distaste for farm work. Another cause is the rail\vt y, which brings the people to the cities first to shop or see exhibitions, and, when they have thus tasted of city pleasures and shows, to live. The passion for amusement and excitement grows in Canada as fast as elsewhere. Eailways, moreover, have killed or reduced some country employments, such as those of carriers and innkeepers. This tendency to city life is universc>l, and it may be said that what is universal is not likely to be "■vil. ]3ut the people cannot afford to be so well housed in the city as they are in the village ; their children grow up in worse air, physical and moral ; and though they have more of crowd and bustle they have really less of social life, because in the village they all know each other, while in the city they do not know their next-door neigh- bour. In the cities the people will be brought under political influences different from those of the country, and a change of political character, with corresponding consequences to the commonwealth, can hardly fail to ensue. The learned professions, and not only the learned pro- fessions but all the callings above manual labour, such as those of clerks and of assistants in stores, are almost as much overstocked in Canada as they are in the United States. An advertisement for a secretary at £140 a year brings seventy -two applications. Let young Englishmen who think of emigrating note this. There has been many a sad case of disappointment. We have had educated gentle- men, when they had spent what they brought with them reduced to manual labour, happy if they could get that. [;ii 32 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. The I'ublic School system in Canada is much tlie same as in the United States, and as in the United States is regarded as the sheet-anchor of democracy. The primary schools are free ; at the Higli Schools a small fee as a rule is paid.^ At Toronto University there are no fees for University lectures, but the youth during his course has to board himself, so that except to the people of the University town the education cannot be said to be free. If it were we should be in danger of having a population of penniless and socialistic graduates. As it is there are more than graduates enough. In the city of Toronto in one year S600,000 were levied for .Public Schools, including the expenditure on sites, buildings, and repairs, besides the sum expended on High Schools and Separate Schools, amounting to nearly $100,000 more. Grumblers then began to challenge the principle of the system, and to ask why tlie man who has one child or none should be called upon for the schooling of the man who has six, when three-fourths probably of the people who use the schools are able to pay for themselves. The answer is that with a popular suffrage ignorance is dangerous to the commonwealth. Unluckily there is reason to believe that of the class likely to be dangerous a good many escape the operation of the system. It appeared from a recent report of the Minister of Education that 25 per cent of the children are not in school at all, while of those on the register the attendance was not more than half the roll. Tlie attendance is higher in cities than it is in the country, where the weather in the winter season is a serious obstacle ; but in the cities and towns it is only about 60 per cent. Attendance is legally ^ The trustees have the oiition of renuttinf; the fee, ami this is commonly done as u reward for proficiency in the public school. I CHAP. same tes is iuiavy 1 rule 3S for tias to ^rersity b were iiniless (3 tliau le yeav ag the lCS the Schools, 1 began why the poll fov •fourths to pay suffrage lulucldly to be of the [nister of not in ;endance higher in the ies and legally Icommonly MI TflE liRlTISIl PROVINCES 33 compulsory, but the law is a dead letter ; nor is the well-to-do artisan anxious to havj the ragged waif in the i^cllOol at his child's side. In the New England of early days, the first and classical seat of the system, the Common School would answer strictly to its name. It would be really common to a group of families, all of whom might take a personal interest in it. This would be a different thing from a great State machine maintained by taxing the whole community for the benefit of a certain portion of it, taking education entirely out of the hands of parents and extinguishing, as it must, the sense of parental duty in that respect. In American connnonwealths, however, the system of free education, expedient or inexpedient, just or unjust, is a fixture. But British statesmen had better inquire before they take the leap. Some people it seems propose to give not only free education but free breakfasts. Bribery in the old days of corruption was petty ; now it is being raised in scale and dignity by demagogues who bribe whole classes out of the public funds. When it is understood that instead of working and saving you may vote yourself the earnings and savings of other people, industry will lose some of its charm. The Public Schools, saving the Separate Schools for Eomaii Catholics, are secular. To satisfy the religious feelings of the people some passages of Scripture of an undogmatic character are read witliout comment. This in strictness is a deviation from the secular principle : thoroughgoing secular- ists object, and there has been a good deal of controversy on the subject. The practice is defended on the ground that the moral code of the community is a necessary part of edu- cation, and that the ethics of the gospel, apart from any- thing dogmatic, are still the moral code of the community. D 1 84 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CUAI\ Clergymen are by law allowed access at certain hours, but this privilege is not used. The organ of religious education is the Sunday School. Of these there are said to be in Ontario nearly 4000, more than half of the number being Methodists, with 40,000 unpaid teachers. The Sunday School is made attractive by entertainments, picnics, and excursions. The New World has produced no important novelty in religion. Universalism, the only new sect of importance, is but Methodism with Eternal Punishment left out. Upon that doctrine in almost all the Churches, as well of Canada as of the United States, the humanitarianism of democracy has acted as a solvent. Perhaps the Presbyterian Church should be excepted. At least a very eminent preacher of that church in Toronto, who had breathed a doubt some years ago, was compelled to explain, after a debate in Knox Church which recalled the debates of the primitive councils. The two Presbyterian Churches had just united, but their distinctive characters were still visible, like those of two streams which have run together yet not perfectly com- mingled, and the men of the Free Kirk exceeded those of the Old Kirk in orthodox rigour. Freedom from an Establishment begets tolerance as well as equality : the co- operation of the ministers, of all Protestant Churches at least, in good works is almost enforced by public opinion ; dogmatic differences are softened or forgotten, and among the masses of the laity practically disappear. There is even talk of Christian union. Old -standing organisations, with the interests attached to them, are in the way ; but economy may in time enforce, if not union, some arrangement which, by a Iriendly division of the spiritual field, shall enable a village, which neither knows nor cares anything about dogma, to I 1 ^sw cuAr. Ill THE imiTISII PROVINCES 86 urs, but ducation be in er being Sunday lies, and ovelty in Drtance, is Upon that lada as of )cracy bas rob should er of that 3onie years ; in Knox ve councils. ^, but their )se of two •fectly corn- id those of from an [ty : the co- Shurches at [ic opinion ; among the [is even talk g, with the ;onomy may which, by a )le a village, dogma, to n ■^ feed one pastor instead of starving three. Of the Trotestaut Churclios in Ontario the largest and the most spreading is ^Methodism, strong in its combination of a powerful clergy with a democratic participation of all members in church work ; strong also in its retention of the circuit system, which saves it from the tioubles bred in other voluntary churches by the restlessness of congregations which grow weary of hearing tlie same preacher. The Presbyterian Church is that of the Scotch, here, as everywliere, a thrifty, wise, and powerful clan. Tlie Baptists also maintain their ground l)y their austere and scriptural purity, though the great principle of which they were the first champions and martyrs, separation of the Church from the State, is no longer in so much need of champions or in any need of martyrs. Amidst the grow- ing indifference about dogma, the question between infant and adult baptism would not in itself be enough to support a church. The Anglican Church in Canada, as in England, may almost be said to be two churches — one Protestant, the other neo-Catholic — under the same roof. The two live iu uneasy union, and hard is the part of their bishop. They are held together by a body of laity unspeculative and at- tached to the I'rayer-book. Neo-Catholicism gains ground fast among the clergy ; even a college founded by Low Churchmen to stem the movement finds itself turning out High Churchmen. The Mass, the Confessi' or-,!, the monastic system, Protestants say, are creeping in. biill the English of the wealthier class, whatever their opinions, generally adhere to their old Church : so do the English of the poorest class, who are unused to paying for their religion, and among whom the Anglican clergy are very active. All the Pro- testant Churches, even that of the Baptists, have relaxed their Puritanism of form and become a3Sthetic : church archi- V ! V ~ 36 CANADA AND TlIK CANADIAN (,»UESTION MAI". li liiii' tuctui-e, music, llowers, liavo /generally been introduced. The nietr()])()litan church of the ^letliodists at Toronto is a Cathedral. There is a tendency also in preaching to become lively, perhaps sensational. The most crowded church on Sunday evenings in Toronto is one in whi ' *he preacher handles the topics of the day with the freeduiu of the plat- form, and amidst frequent applause and laughter. The Church of Eome, of course, stands apart with the Encyclical and Syllabus in her hand waiting till the time for putting them in execution shall arrive. In Ontario she is mainly the church of the Irish, the race which is now netirly her last hope. She does not appear to gain l)y conversion. She musi be gaining, however, in wealth, for her churches and convents continue to rise. Her prelates affect hierarchical state, go about in the insignia of tlieir orde" and claim a social rank as princes or nobles of a Univers uirch, which the other clergies are now inclined to challenge. In Ontario she has succeeded in obtaining for herself Separate Schools supported by the State. Upon this question also issue is about to be joined. Apart from ecclesiastical pre- tensions, and the desire to make the child a churchman first and a citizen afterwards, there seems to be no justification for the privilege. Eoman Catholic children attend public schools in the districts where their sect is not numerous enough to claim a division of the rates without the slightest prejudice to their religion. There is no feeling whatever against Roman Catholicism apart from the feeling against priestly domination or aggression, while in politics the Church is only too strong. A Protestant holding high offices has been seen on his knee before a Cardinal. Orange- ism itself in Canada is political, not religious : it still carries in its processions the effigy of William of Orange ; but it is v't fllM"- III THK r.RITISII rilOVINCES n (1. The to is a » Ijecoiuo lurcli on preaclier the plat- er. The hicyclical )r putting is luaiuly learly her iion. She rches and ierarchical d claim a i-ch, which [n Ontario Separate estion also ,stical pre- ■hnian first ustification lend public numerous \\Q slightest whatever ino' against to o [olitics the [ding high Orange- |still carries ; but it is a bulwark not of Protestantisni, hut of a Tory Cltnonnnent ; and it goes to the poll and eats at the same party- table with the Iloman Catholic, and even with the Ultra- montane. North America has had no Torquemada or Alexander IJorgia, and has not been thi; scene of priestly persecution or of papal crime. In tlie streets of Toronto tlie drum of the Salvation Army is still lieard. Other revivals have for the most part quickly passed away, but this endures. So far at all events it lias in it the genuine spirit of Christianity that it points tlie road to excellence and happiness not througli the reform of others, much less through dynamite, blood, and havoc, but through self-reform. AVlierever books find th ir way criticism and scepticism must now go with them. There is in Toronto an Agnostic circle, active-minded and militant. What is at work in minds beyond that circle nobody can tell. But there is no falling off in the outward signs of religion. Churches are built as fast as the city grows ; their costliness as well as their number increases, and they are wonderfully well filled. Sunday is pretty strictly kept, though there is an agitation for Sunday street cars and the strong Sabba- tarians have failed to put down Sunday boats. With regard to the whole of the American continent this appear ance not only of undiminished but of increased life in the Churches while free inquiry is making inroads, of which those who read cannot help being conscious, on old beliefs, is an enigma which the result alone can solve. Revision of creeds is in the air, and it is probable that among the laity of all the Protestant Churches there lias been formed a sort of Christian Theism in which many, without formulating it, repose. The tide of scepticism does not beat so fiercely n 88 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAl'. against Free Churches as igainst an Establishment. To suppose that all the religion is hollow or mere custom would be absurd. We must conr-lude that people in general still lind comfort in worship. Nor can it be doubted that belief in God and in conscience as the voice of God is still the general foundation of Canadian morality. With the Ikitish are mingled in Ontario a large number of Irish, who, as in the United States and everywhere else, cling to the cities, follow the priest to the third generation, ban 1 together, do a great deal of the political as well as of the liquor trade, and cherish a hatred of England not so bitter, at least not so violent in its manifestations, as that whicli is cherished by their race in the United States. There are also Scotch-Irish, whose ways are tliose of the Scotch. There is a settlement of Germans in Waterloo County who remain German, and make excellent farmers and citizens, though they would vote against the prohibition of lager. Gaelic is still spoken in Highland settlements. There is a French settlement in Essex county, beside the Detroit river, a relic of the era of old French fur- trading and adventure. Before the fall of slavery Canada was the asylum of the fugitive slave, as was made known to the world by the famous case of Anderson the slave who had killed a man in escaping from bondage, and whose extradition when demanded was refused, or at least evaded, by the Canadian Courts, the Home Government showing its resolution to support Canada in upholding the right of asylum. Hence there are in Canada a number of negroes, of whom some have done well, in spite of the obstacles of race and climate, and one has attained wealth by an invention. There are scatterings of other races, the last arrival being the Italian with his grinding organ and, we hope, without his knife. The increase of > Ill THE BRITISH PROVINCES 89 wealth and speculation has not failed to attract the Jew, who brings with him his tribal exclusi'v;,,.-,.,, his tribal code, his tribal ways in trnre. If thcro is a feeling aiiainst him here it is not relif'ious, for on tlie American continent, while open irreligion still gives offence, each man is free in every respect to choose his own religion. In the Eastern part of tlie Province, a non-British ele- ment of a more ominous kind appears. The French population of Quebec is overflowing that district and has already in two or three counties almost supplanted tlie British. It intro- duces its own ecclesiastical system, and imports its own language into the public schools. Opposition has been aroused, and the advance of the Frencli language in the schools has been for the moment checked, but it is difficult to get party politicians to act with vigour against an invader who has the power of turning several elections. The French ]U'ess on comjiactly, acting us a unit in their own interest ; and it is not likely that the limit of their extension in Ontario has yet been reached. Nationalities are not so easily ground down in a small community as they are when thrown into the hopper of the mighty American mill. National societies, or societies which partake of the nationalist character, such as the St. George's Society, the Sons of England, the St. Andrew's Society, the Catholic Celtic League, and the Orange Order, are strong, and their strength gives umbrage to those who see in it a detrac- tion from loyalty to the commonwealth. The passion for association is powerful over the whole continent and gives birth, besides the National Societies, the Orange Order, and the Freemasons, to Knights of Pythias, Good Templars, Odd- fellows, Knights of the IMaccabees, Foresters, Royal Black Knights of Ireland, and other brotherhoods, benevolent and I i II 40 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN (QUESTION CHAl". social. High-sounding titles of office and resplendent regalia probably form part of the attraction. On a wide continent, however, without ancient centres or bonds of union, a man would feel almost like a grain in a vast heap of shifting sand if he did not attach himself to some brotherhood. Some of tlie brotherhoods march through the streets in military array and go through drill. In industrial communities there is a paradoxical union of love of military show and glory with dislike of standing armies and of n»'^*'^ary service. The Americans have elected four or five soidit to the Presidency, besides nominating others as candidates, while England has had only two military Prime Ministers, Stanhope, who did not owe his position to achievements in war, and the Duke of Wellington, who was a great European diplomatist and the real head of his political party. The rec( rjtion of the Cana- dian Volunteers when they returned froi i Fisii Creek, Cut Knife, and Batoche, eclipsed the reception of the British army when it returned from the Alma and Inkerman. The respect for law which prevails in all States of the Union on which slavery has not left its taint, and which is the salt of American democracy, prevails not less among British Canadians. It extends to the judges, who, as a body, have well deserved the confidence of the people. When a master of the press who had trampled at his pleasure on the characters and feelings of his fellow-citizens in general assailed a judge whose decision had offended him, he was made at once to feel that opinion was against him and he slunk away. Some time ago a little clan of local desperadoes was lawlessly slain by some of the people whom its outrages had provoked, and the local jury refused to convict the slayers. This is about the only case of the kind, and though deplorable in itself and genemlly deplored, it was Ill THE BRITISH rROVINCES 41 like some of the cases of lynching in the United States, in part a proof not so much of lawlessness as of the general respect for law. Where no rural police is needed, and none consequently is maintained, when hrigandage does appear there is no way of dealing with it except through the Vigilance Committee. Justice in all Canadian courts keeps her gown though not her wig, while in the United States the gown is worn by the Judges of the Supreme Court only. The American or Canadian citizen does not need to be impressed .so much as the British peasant ; but everybody needs to be impressed, and the Canadian custom is the better. Canadian judges are underpaid. One eminent advocate, after taking a seat on the iiench, found his income so much reduced that he returned to the Bar. It is needless to say that this is false economy, and that there can be no expedition of business without a presiding judge of sufficient eminence thoroughly to control his Court. Democracy, though lavish in general expenditure, which it does not count, is niggardly in salaries, which each man compares with his own earnings. Canada, like the United States, has discarded the Old World distinction between barrister and solicitor. Both sorts of work are taken by the same firm. The system of firms saves a barrister at all events from the sadness of waiting year after year in solitary chambers for briefs which do not come. Canada flatters lierself that in her Courts, as in those of England, criminal justice is more prompt and sure than it is in the United States, where such are the chicaneries, the delays, and the weakness of opinion that to get a murderer hanged is very difficult, however certain his guilt may be. It must be owned, however, that in the recent Birchall case we had a display of sen- sationalism which showed how faint is the boundary which divides our society from the society of the United States. 5 I », 42 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. Toronto is said to be English, and likes to have that reputation. Of the leaders of society some are English by birth, and all of them keep up the connection by going a good deal to England. This habit grows with the shortening of the passage and the cheapness of the sojourn ; not with the best results to Canada, for unless the chiefs of society every- where will remain at their posts and do their duty, the edifice cannot stand. Canadian boys and youths are sometimes sent to the public schools and universities of England, but seldom, it is believed, with good results. What the boy or youth gains by superior teaching he is likely to lose by estrange- ment from the social and industrial element in which his life is to be spent, and by contracting tastes suitable rather to the mansions of the British gentry than to Canadian homes. English fashion perhaps presses rather heavily on us. We are apt to outvie London in the heaviness of our dinners and the formality with which they are exchanged, and the once pleasant afternoon tea has become a social battue. Mrs. Grundy has too much power. The easy sociability, however, which delights and refreshes is everywhere with difficulty attained. The man who said that others might make the laws of a nation if they would let him make its ballads ought to have bargained also for the making of the games. English games and sports are the fashion in Canada, as indeed they are among the young men of wealth in the United States. Cricket is kept up in face of great difficulties, for in a com- mercial community men cannot afford to give two days to a game, wliile Canadian sunmier scorclies the turf, and there are few school playing-fields and no village greens. Baseball, which is the game of tlie continent, is played in two hours, and requires no turf. Lacrosse is called the Canadian game, but it is Indian in its origin, and some think that to Indians Ill THE BRITISH PROVINCES 43 it belongs. Football is also much played, and under the regular English rule, everything being kicked except the ball. lu Toronto the red coat of the English fox-hunter is seen, though it is not to be supposed that foxes can be preserved amoiig democratic hen roosts or freely chased over democratic farms. At Montreal, under the theocracy, you may see a real fox chased over tences as stiff as an Englisli fox-hunter could desire. The Turf, the gambling table of England, has its minor counterpart in her colony. Yachting and rowing are popular, and Toronto has produced the first oarsman of the world : unhappily these also have brought betting in their train. The Scotchman keeps up his Scotch love of curling and of golf. Imitations are generally unsuccessful, and it was not likely that an imitation of the British sporting man or anything British would be an exception to the rule. But Anglomania, whatever it may be worth either to the imitators or to the imitated, is as strong among the same class in the United States as it is in Canada. It angers the loyal He- publican and draws from him bitter jests. Nor can the rich men of Toronto be fonder of tracing their pedigrees to England than are the rich men of the United States. A winter of five months or more, during which cattle must be housed, the thermometer falling sometimes to fifteen or twenty below zero ; a vast thaw ; a joyous rush into bud and leaf, unlike the slow step of English spring; a summer which, after two or three weeks, turns the country from green to brown, ripens the best of apples, in favoured spots peaches, and brings the humming bird ; a clear bright autumn — such is Ontario's year. The great lalces temper the extremes in their neighbourhood while they cloud the winter brightness. The stillness of Canadian winter has departed with the sheltering forests. After winter has set in there is generally r ^•i"^ 44 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAV. hi a recurrence of the warm weather, with a golden haze in the air, which fancy styles Indian summer. Canadians do not wish to have Canada regarded as a winter country, nor do they quite like to see pictures of the toboggan or snow-slide, the snow-shoe, and the ice-boat sent to England as the symbols of their life. It is true, however, that the winter is long, and that a good deal of the pastime is connected with it. To suit the climate a Canadian house ought to be simple in form, so as to be easily warmed, with broad eaves to shed the snow, and a deep veranda as a summer room ; and what is suitable is also fair to the eye. But servile imitation produces gables, mansard roofs, and towers, just as fashion clothes Canadian women in I'arisian dresses. Canadians are often told by those who wisli to Hatter them that as a northern race they must have some great destiny before them. But stove heat is not less enervating than the heat of the sun. The Northern tribes which conquered the Eoman Empire had no stoves, and they had undergone the most rigorous process of natural selection, both by exposure to frost and by tribal war. Concidering that of all the banks of British Canada not one in the last twenty years has failed to pay its depositors in full, and that only of one have the notes been at a dis- count, and this only for a few hours, it may safely be said that Canadian commerce is sound. Englishmen who have speculated have lost ; especially if their concern was owned on one side of the Atlantic and managed on the other. But those who have invested in known banks or companies have, it is believed, seldom had reason to complain. The banks everywhere, as the great organs of the commercial system, have enemies in the Socialists, who would wreck and plunder them if they could. Governments also everywhere are haunted by the fancy that, because it is their duty to la THE BRITISH PROVINCES 45 stamp the coin, they have a right to the profits of tlie money trade, and they are sometimes inclined to legisLate accordingly.' But their inclination has been hitherto kept within bounds. Canadian industry can hardly be said to present any special feature, saving that, owing to the severity of the winter, there is more or less of a close season in out-of-door trades, which, with high wages during the rest of the year, nuist always be trying to industrial character. Industrial questions, trade unionism, its aims and methods, its conflict with capital and free labour, the upheaval of the labour world by strikes, are the same in Canada as in the United States and England. Canada is, in fact, included in the American organisation of the Knights of Labour, which has thus in a way industrially annexed her. Toronto has her anti-poverty society, for the nationalisation of land. She has Socialism more or less pronounced. She has her Socialistic journalists instilling class hatred into the heart of the working man, inciting the " toiler " to an attack on the "spoiler," and blowing the trumpet of industrial w\ar. The storm may be less violent in the bay than on the wide ocean, but it is part of the universal storm. Toronto was startled at hearing that four per cent of her people had been receiving some kind of relief. Xot a few of the recipients probably were new-comers or wanderers, and few were actual paupers. But these cities have lived fast, and the cares and problems of maturity are already upon them. Still they recoil from the idea of a poor law, and indeed from any regular form of public relief. There is a notion that public relief pauperises. The sentiment is to be ^ In the Appendix will be found a note on the special banking system of Canada, in contrast with that of the United States, by ^Mr. Henry "\V. Darling, formerly president of the Canadian Bank of Commerce and of the Toronto Board of Trade. ! 1 1 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CUAV. J i i I III I m \'i I respected, but that which really pauperises is relief unwisely- given, as private charity is too apt to be. What, after all, is free education but a vast system of public relief, though received for the most part by those who are not in need ? City government in Canada presents the same problems whicli it presents in the United States, and is likely soon to present on the grandest scale in London, now endowed with representative administration. These elective governments of cities are survivals from the Middle Ages, when each city was a little commonwealth in itself, when its rulers were concerned chiefly with tlie guardianship of franchises and the regulation of trade, when there was little thought of anything sanitary or scientific, when every man was his own police- man, and when, moreover, the city was a social unit, and the chief men lived in the heart of it, took the lead, and were mayors and aldermen. A city is now merely a densely peopled district in special need of scientific administration. Its social unity is gone, and the chief men live in suburban mansions and are above taking part in municipal affairs, while nobody knows the citizens of his street. Com- bination for the purpose of selecting aldermen is out of the question, and you .come by a fell necessity under the rule of the ward politician, which means maladministration, waste, neglect of public health, and too often jobbery and corruption. New York with its Tammany is the climax to which city government of this kind tends. Toronto has no Tammany, and has had no Tweed. But her debt is heavy, and she is just now much exercised by the problem of administration. Even if there is nothing worse, the ephemeral character of a government annually elected, and with the minds of its members always set on re-election, would pre- clude foresight and system. Spasmodic attempts at reform ei Ill THE BRITISn TROVIXCES 47 are made, but their eliect dies away. No one I»x>k3 for a radical change. A board of commissioners, which some ])ro- pose, would no doubt be a vast improvement ; bat it would be very difficult to get the people to part to that extent with their power, though they would be amply repaid in assurance of health and comfort, while the power after all really resides not in the people, as they fancy, but in those who manage the elections. Something, however, is being done in the way of a devolution of the aldermanic power on skiUed healt). officers and engineers. Economy there can Ijardly \)e where the money and the power of voting it away are in different hands. There is one city on the continent with the admini- stration of which now everybody, at least everybody who has anything to lose, seems to speak with confidence and satisfaction : this is Washington, which as a Fe<;3eral district is administered by three commissioners appointed by the President of the United States. Washington has a heavy debt, but this was contracted some time ago. The counties are governed by elective councils, with reeves, which have not very much to do or to spend. Against these no complaint is heard. Of provincial legislation and politics there will be something to be said presently in connection with those of the Dominion. Canada is a political expression. This must t»e borne in mind when we speak of Canadian Literature. Tlie writer in Ontario has no field beyond his own Province and Montreal. Between him and the Maritime Provinces is interfKJse*! French Quebec. jManitoba is far off and thinly peopled To expect a national literature is therefore unfair. A literature there is fully as large and as high in quality as could l>e rear*>nably looked for, and of a character thoroughly health}'. Perhaps a kind critic might say that it still retains sometliing of the I' , ;TTri 4S CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION • HAl'. old Englisli sobriety of style, and is comparatively free from the straining for effect which is the bane of the best literature of the United States. The area is not large enough to support a niagazine, though the attempt has more than once been made. It is hardly large enough to support a literary paper. Ontario reads the magazines of the United States, especially the illustrated magazines in which New York leads the world. Canada has been at a disadvantage alongside of the United States in falling under British copyriglit law, and also in having her booksellers cut off by the tariff from their natural centre of distribution at New York. To fill an order at once a double duty must be i)aid. Let it be remembered also that it is difficult for the sapling of Colonial literature to grow beneath the mighty shadow of the parent tree. It is not so long since the United States were without writers of mark. Even now have they pro- duced a great poet ? To make a centre of Art is still harder than to make a literary centre, because art requires models. There can barely be said to be an art centre in the United States. For art, people are likely long to go to Europe. Of milliona^'' es Canada has not many, and such as there are can hardly be expected to give high prices for pictures and statues where they have no connoisseurs to advise them. Ontario, however, has produced a school of landscape painters the merit of which has been recognised in England. For subjects the painter has to go to the liocky Mountains, the more poetic Selkirks, the magnificent coast- scenery of British Columbia, the towering cliffs of the Saguenay, or the shores and shipping of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Ontario has pleasant spots, but little of actual beauty or of grandeur, if we except Thunder Bay, with some other points on the shore 11 tl of ti( '{sM C? ini wes ''iHI ilo; Dis ^^1 rivf oft ! Ill THE nRITISII PilOVIXCES 4!> M of Lake Superior, and the unpaintablo Niagara.^ In u new country there can be tew historic or picturesque LuiUlings, so that the painter's landscape must lack historic or human interest. Nor can there be anything like the finished loveliness of England. The gorgeous hues of Canadian autunni and the glories of Canadian sunset are nearly all, and these often reproduced will tire. That the love of beauty and the desire to possess objects of beauty are not wanting, the stranger may learn by a glance at the display in the Toronto otores or at the house architecture of the new streets, which, whether the style be the best or not, un- questionably aspires to beauty and does not always miss its aim. The rows of trees planted along all the streets and the trim little lawns are proof of taste and refinement which cannot fail to please. Science, as well as literature and art, has its centres in old countries. But from these, unlike literature and art, it can be imported by the student. Medical science is imported into Canada, as is believed, in full perfection. Canadian surgery performs the most difficult operations with success. The traveller who is borne safely on the Canadian Pacific Eailroad along the gorges and over the chasms of the Itocky Mountains will acknowledge the skill and daring of the Canadian engineer as he will acknowledge in all details of the service the excellence of Canadian railway administra- tion. In the International Bridge at Buffalo is seen another Canadian achievement. Ontario is a network of railways ; * Perha])s some of the most ]>ictiives([ue scenery in Ontario is to be found in the Dundas VaUey, on the Grand River, and among the Blue Mountains west of CoUingwood. Fine is the view from Queenston Heights, looking ilown the Niagara lUver to Lake Ontario. The lake scenery in the Muskoka District, and in the region around Peterboro, is also attractive ; so is the river scenery at the outlet of Lake Ontario, among the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence. 1 - ^ i i ■Tli ima I ' 1 < 11 I'l 'Hi liil 50 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAI>. probably she lias more miles of ^Vem in proportion to her population than any other district in the world ; and if they pay no dividends on their stock the British capitalist who has been the chief investor may have the satisfaction of thinking how much he has done to promote the material civilisation of a great colony. In the use of agricultural machinery the Province, it has already been said, believes herself to have outrun the mother country. The dearness of labour here, as in the United States, has stimulated the invention or adoption of its substitutes. The streets of Toronto are a maze of wires, telegraphic and telephonic, and the chief thoroughfares are lit with the electric light. Every office, almost every house, of any pretensions, has its telephone, and converses not only with the rest of the city but with places fifty miles off. In what some people are still pleased to call Canadian wilds life is almost vexed with improvements. Journalism labours under the same disadvantage as literature in respect to the smallness of the area. With less than two millions of people, with an attainable circulation for any one paper of hardly more than twenty-five thousand, and considering the expense of telegraphic intelligence, how can a provincial press be maintained on a metropolitan scale ? In fact, journalism, so far as the morning papers are concerned, has a hard life. It bears up however, and Toronto reads at breakfast tin j th. Jebates in the British House of Commons < '" vening before, looks on as well as the Londoner at all il is going o.. in the world, and shares in full measure the ..idfi ition of humanity by the electric wire. The Canadian I'ress is, in the main, American not English in its character. It aims ai the lightness, smartness, and crispness of New York journalism Ill TIIK imiTISil I'llOVlNCES 51 latliLT than at tlie solidity of the London Times. There is an intercliange of writers with New York. Enterprise in the collection of gossip and scandal is now a feature of tlie press ill all countries and everywhere bears the same relation to taste and truth. Canada, wIkmi the value of tlie connection is under dis- cussion, is always set down as a place where an Englishiiian can find a home. A sudden change lias come over the attitude of the occupants of the American continent on the subject of Emigration. Till lately the portals were opened wide and all the destitute of the earth were bidden to come ill. It was the boast of America that she was the asylum of nations. Now the door is half shut, and there are a good many who, if vhey could, would sliut it altogether. Malthus has his day again. The world has grown afraid of being over-peopled. Moreover, the Trade Unions want to close the labour market. They have forced the Canadian Govern- ment to give up assisting emigration, and they watch with a jealous eye anything like assistance to emigration on the other side of the water. There is, however, still a demand in Canada for farm labourers, and the labourer if he is steady and industrious will do well and earn wages which in a few years will enable him to own a farm. There is a demand also for domestic servants, if they come prepared to be useful, and not with the notion that a colony is a place of high wages and no work. For teachers or clerks, it has already been said, there is absolutely no room unless they have been engajjOd beforehand. The Trade Unions declare that there is no room for mechanics and take every one by the throat who says that a good mechanic may still do well. Setting the cost of living against the higher rate of wages, it is doubtful whether a British mechanic improves his lot by coming to r I ! '! nivHi ill CANADA AND I'lIK CANADIAN i.tl'KSTlUN t IIAIV C'luinila. Ilousi' itMil is lii,L;,li, clotlics mvc dcnr, iiiul ii ^rciii, (leal of I'lU'l is iiMniinul. 'I'lic tlilVcrciirii in Wnt cost ol' I'licl would soon ctnial the (liricrciu'o lu'lwccn I lie |)ri'.'c of a lirkct to Canada and a lick^'l. to Now Zealand. ( )no cannol. Iidp wondi>rin|^ (hat. a poor man wlio works out ol" doors and wlio dot's not. dream of ih'jh atini; (ho «'\|)loits of Atlila and Clovis should t'hoos(> a country wKci" the winter is severe. The notion that, an !*ai;lishman iMijoys a prefereiu'e in Canada is pleasant, hu: not. well lonn«led. ll(^ is ruthei- apt. [o he an ohjecl of jealousy. Anytiiinj^ like favour shown to him i^ives inuhrai^e. The api)oint!nent. ol' three Mn^lish Trot'essors in Toronto I'niveisily roused a i'eelini.;' whicdi linuered lon,i;'. i-'rom the jiolitieal ahus(> of iMij^Iand which constantly olVends an JMii^dishman in thi> American Tress, and which is largely a homa_i;(> paid to Irish senlinu^nt, tlu^ Canadian Tress oi' coursi> is tVee ; lait soi'ial allusions may \h\ sometimes sihmi not of a friendly kind. If the wi'ittMs aw, Irish or Socialists, still th(> allusions ai)pear. The jeah)usy is. j)erhaps, a. legacy of the times when most of the hi^h phuH's and nood things were in tht> hands of enu^ranls from the Imperial country." At all events, it has heen with truth saitl that in any candidature no nationality is so weak as the. Kn^lish. In the United States, on the contrary, wdnle there is a traditional prejudice against Knu'land, against the indi- vidual Knglishman there is lume. He is perfectly welcome to anv emidovment or apiH)intment that ho can u'cit. Ho w- ever, an Enulishmaii intcndinii to eniii'iate luid bettor turn ' A trai'o of this fooling liugors in a passiigo cniboilioil in Osgood's Ilandhuolc of tit r Marifiinr Frovi iters. "Tlio Nova Scotians liav<' not liilliorli) songlit to tiualifv thonisolvos In- oultnro and study tor imlilic honours and iirefonnonts because thoy know that all the ot'.ioos in the 'U'oviiU'o would bo filled by Hritish oarpot-baggors." It is not hero only that the term "carpet-bagger' has boon seen. Ill TIIK I'.Uri'ISII I'ICOVINCKS Iiis llioiif^'hl lii'Ml. In AiiHtniliii, mid NfW /cmIuikI vvlicic llicrri is III) picJiKlicii (mMici' !i|,'aiiiHt, liini or liin (•,(»imirv, iin]»Iy l<» M.'iiiitol);!, .'ind I.Im; recent, ittlcnients of the North- West,. Tlmrc; nil alike; an; n(!W- couiers, and no oik; has to encoiiiatr any jealousy or pro- jiidice whatever. Lord Durhain said in his rainoiis llttpoi't on (!atiada: "There is one, consi(h;ratioii in ]»a,rti(adar which has oecurnid to (ivery ohsr.rvaiit travidler in tlasse oiii- (colonies, and is a snltj(!ct of loud conijilaint within the (;oloiiies, I alliule t,o the striking contrast, wiiicli is j)r(!seiited l)etwe(!n the Anieriean d the IJritish sides oi" tlu; frontier li ami Mie lirilisn siMes oi tlu; Ironlier line, in resjiect t,o every sieii of productive industry, iii(;reasin,!^ wealth, and pro^rnjs- sive civilisation. l>y descrihin^' one side;, and reversinfj the, nicturcf, tlu; other would lie also deseribcit]." That t'lis was so ill Lord Diirhani'.s day was not the fault of (Canadian hands, hiaius, or hearts. It is not the fault of Canadian hands, brains, or imarts if the contrast, thoii;^di softened, still exists and is noticed by the stran[,f(!r wdio })asses from the; southern to the northern shore of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence, as he compares Windsor, Hamilton, London, Kin;^'ston, and even Toronto, with J)etroit, liuffalo, Itoehester, and Oswego. The cause is the exclusion of Canada from the e,ommercial pale of her continent, and the result would be the same if .'in t!([ual [)ortion of En<,dand were cut olf from the rest. The standard of living and of material civilisation is neces- sarily higher in the wealthier country. Let the traveller i j :i I 64 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN i^L'KSTION ClIAI'. make due allowance for tliis if he mlsscs an air of homelike comfort in a Canadian house or if he does not find luxury in a Canadian country inn. It has been said that the want of duties, such as country life provides for the rich in Phigland, is felt in Canada ; though it is of course not felt nearly so much in a country where millionaires are rare as it h in the United States, where they abound in every great city. Politics un- happily are repulsive, and a man born to independence is not inclined to put his neck under the galling yoke of party; otherwise the public service would be the natural occupation of the rich. They might still take part in social effort ; they might help to keep the press in good hands ; they might even exercise a political influence out.side party, and corrective of its spirit. As it is, tlie heirs of wealth on the American continent are too often men of pleasure, spending half their time and money in London or Paris, while as their wealth excites envy they are a dangerous cla.s.s. But men who have no duty laid upon them will seldom make duties for them- selves, and in this sense at least the Gospel is still true, which says that it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. From British as well as from French Canada there is a constant flow of emigration to the richer country, and the great centres of employment. Dakota and the other new States of the American West are full of Canadian farmers ; the great American cities are full of Canadian clerks and men of business, who usually make for them.selves a good name. It is said that in Chicago there are 25,000. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians have relatives in the United States. Canadians in great numbers — it is believed as many nvi III THE BRITISH PROVIXCES 55 as 40,000 — enlisted in the American army during the civil war. There is a Lodge of the Grand Army at Ottawa. A young Canadian thinks no more of going to push his fortune in New York or Chicago than a young Scotchman thinks of going to Manchester or London. The same is the case in the higher callings as in the lower : clergymen, those of the Church of England as well as those of other churches, freely accept calls to the other side of the Line. So do professors, teachers, and journalists. The Canadian churches are in full communion with their American sisters, and send delegates to each other's Assemblies. Cadets educated at a Military College to command the Canadian army against tlie Americans, have gone to practise as Civil Engineers iu the United States. The Benevolent and National Societies have brandies on both sides of the Line, and hold con- ventions in common. Even the Orange Order has now its lodges in the United States, where the name of President is substituted iu the oath for that of tlie Queen. American labour organisations, as we have seen, extend to Canada. The American Science Association met the other day at Toronto. All the reforming and philanthropic move- ments, such as the Temperance movement, the Women's Eights' movement, and the Labour movements, with their conventions, are continental. Intermarriages between Cana- dians and Americans are numerous, so numerous as scarcely to be remarked. Americans are the chief owners of Canadian mines, and large owners of Canadian timber limits. The railway system of the continent is one. The winter ports of Canada are those of the United States. Canadian banks trade largely in the American market, and some have branches there. There is almost a currency union, American bank-bills commonly passing at par in > 11 nil i 66 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAl*. iiiiiii Ontario, while those of remote Canadian Provinces pass at par only by special aiTangement. American gold passes at par, wliile silver coin is taken at a small discount : in Winnipeg even the American nickel is part of the common currency. The Dominion hank-bills, though payable in gold, are but half convertible, because what the Canadian banks want is not British but American gold. Canadians go to the American watering-places, while Americans pass tlie summer on Canadian lakes. Canadians take American periodicals, to which Canadian writers often contribute. Tliey resort for special purchases to New York stores, or even those of the Border cities. Sports are international ; so are the Base Ball organisations ; and the Toronto " Nine " is recruited in the States. All the New-World pln'ases and habits are the same on both sides of the Line. The two sections of the English- speaking race on the American continent, in short, are in a state of economic, intellectual, and social fusion, daily be- coming more complete. Saving the special connection of a limited circle with the Old Country, Ontario is an American State of the Northern type, cut off from its sisters by a customs line, under a separate government aivl flag. |-!!l The Maritime Provinces, — Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, — cover, at least the first two of them cover, the area of the old French Acadie, which, sub- merged by the tide of conquest, shows itself only in the ruined fortifications of Louisbourg, once the Acadian Gibraltar, in remains of the same kind at Annapolis, and in a relic of the French population. The name, with the lying legend of British cruelty connected witli it, has been em- balmed not in amber, but in barley-sugar, by the writer of Ill THE BRITISH TROVIXCES are in a Evangeline} The Maritime Provinces — the cultivable and habitable parts of them at least — lie a thousand miles away from Ontario, with the French Province between. But tliey are, like Ontario, British colonies, and in the main identical with it in all social and political respects. Allowance has only to be made, in the cases of Nova Scotia and New Bruns- wick, for less of farming and more of minin;^, of shipping, and, in proportion, of lumbering. Prince Edward Island is a farming community witli rich lands, almost cut off from the mainland in winter, insular in character, keeping in the ancient paths, and w^ell satisfied with itself. Xova Scotia has a source of wealth specially her own, in her rich mines of bituminous coal. She is also a great fruit-growing country, and Burke would not have called her " a hard-featured brat," at least he would have confined his epithet to her Atlantic front, if he had been eating Annapolis apples. Halifax and St. John are the two winter ports of the Dominion. The harbour of St. John, the tide being here strong, is always open ; the magnificent basin of Halifax is very seldom closed. To society at Halifax the presence of the garrison and the squadron lend a military and naval hue. The newly-opened region of the North-West is as far from Ontario as Italy is from England, while it forms an integral part of the great prairie region to which belong INIinnesota and Dakota. It now embraces the province of IManitoba and the districts of Alberta, Athabasca, Assiniboia, and Saskat- chev.'an, carved out of tlie North-West, and administered 1. 1 ^ Lieut. -Governor Sir Adams Archibald, Mr. Parknian, and Dr. Kings- ford have completely disposed of this fiction, and shown that the deportation of the Acadians was a measure of necessity, to which recourse was had only when forbearance was exhausted. The blame really rests on the vile and murderous intrigues of the priest Le Loutre. The commander of the troops, Winslow, was an American. m ■,:' i » 1 . ! 1 i i { ( i 1 1 1 u ; «• 68 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. as Territories on a system borrowed from the American Consti- tution. The North-West was the vast hunting-ground of tlie Hudson's Bay Company, and the field of a singular and noble service, the members of which passed a great part of their lives in lonely arctic posts far away from civilisation and human intercourse, save with wild Indians, getting one mail from England in the year, yet losing nothing of their character as highly civilised men. The Company was one of that great group formed in the early days of commercial adventure, most of which outlived their usefulness and have now quitted the scene, but without the support of whic.'i, in an age when the globe was unexplored, when international law was hardly known, when piracy and brigandage were rife, when on barbarous shores the trader could look only to his fellow - trader for protection, commerce would scarcely have ventured to put off into the unknown. That the Company should try to keep its hunting-ground intact and bar out settlement from it, by representing it as unfit for cultivation, was no more than might have been expected. The region is a series of vast steppes. It is a sensation not to be forgotten which you experience as, standing upon the platform of the railway car on the road from St. Paul, you shoot out upon that oceanic expanse of prairie, purple with evening, while an electric light perhaps shines on the horizon like a star of advancing civilisation. What is the extent of the fertile land in the North- West, and how great are the capabilities of the region is hardly yet known, but it is known that they are vast. The balance wavered at first between the fertility of the soil on one hand, and the rigour of the climate on the other. The discovery of abundant fuel was required to turn the scale, and coal in abundance, though not of the first quality, has been found. The wheat is the very best, the root crops and Ill THE BRITISH PROVINCES 59 vegetaLles are superb. The enemies of the fanner are the late and early frosts. The grasshopper, another old enemy, has hardly appeared in force since the settlement. Just before harvest time the weather is no commonplace topic, and a deep anxiety broods over the land. More than once the hope of a rich harvest has been blighted. It is idle to deny that the summer is short. But the yield is so abundant that fat years make up for lean years. Experience will teach its lessons, and already the farmer is learning not to trust too much to wheat-growing, but to mix with it the keeping of cattle, which, notwithstanding the cold, are said to do well. The prairie grass turns to a natural hay, which furnishes winter food. In summer nothing can be balmier or more life-giving than the prairie air, nothing more charming than the prairie gay with tiowers. In winter the glass faUs sometimes to forty below zero, or even lower, but the people tell you that the cold is not felt because it is dry ; perhaps also because all the settlers there being young, their blood is warm. If they do not want the thread of aged lives to be cut by the winter's shears they will have to build solid houses, for which happily, in Manitoba at least, they have good building stone and brick. Not to feel the cold in a wooden shanty, with the snow driving through its chinks in forty below zero, blood must be warm indeed. Emigrants should not go to the North-West without the means of providing themselves with good houses, warm clothes, and fuel. This region, however, does not, like JMinnesota, lie in the zone of blizzards. It might have been thought that on the prairie, where agricul- tural machines have full swing, in a climate where close dwelling has advantages, material and social, large farming would, if anywhere, have succeeded, while its success might have been the inauguration of a new industrial and social i i ! 1 1 i n ;: |.^ t i E in! I I ill s ! I, 11 ii; 1 ii i!.'i;i ii;,:.,:i|l; 1 ii 111: ■'■ 1' m CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION (HAP. system. ]>ut on the Bell Farm it was tried in the ablest liands, and did not pay. It seems that nothing will make farming pay but the sweat of the owner's brow and the close- ness of the owner's fist. Winnipeg shows by the mixture of rough shanties with buildings of a better class and some of tlie highest class, that she rose but yesterday out of the prairie. She has only just recovered from the demoralisation of commerce by " the boom," a wild burst of gambling in real estate which raged at her birth and drew* to her a loose population. But as the centre of distribution, of govern- ment, of law, of education, and above all of railways, she can hardly fail to thrive. If Manitoba and the rest of the region till up slowly, the fault lies, as will hereafter appear, not in anything that nature has failed to do, but in things which man has done. In situation Brandon is superior to Winnipeg. The dead level of the prairie line is broken, and there is a general cheerfulness in the landscape which cradles the thriving young town. Tlie journey seems long over a steppe monotonous as the sea, and with a horizon equally level, to Calgary, where you find yourself in the ranch country, undu- lating and park-like, with the range of the Eockies full in view. T^ .e immigration has been of a motley sort, and not all of the kind which forms the best material for a new community. The ]\Iennonites work very hard, are thrifty, and w411 no doubt give up their exclusiveness and become citizens in time, since military service, conscientious dislike of which was the ground of their isolation, has no existence in their new home. The Icelanders, used to such a climate, do well. The Skye crofters have hardly been farmers ; they are children of a mild though damp climate ; and it was not to be expected that their settlements would look more prosperous than they Ill TITK BRITISH rROVIXCES 61 do. It is lucky that the idea of importing Irish an4 planting them in shanties over a large district was giveu np. Tlie Irish are not farmers ; they are spade husbandmen, who have hardly handled a plough and have never seen a machine. Nor are they pioneers. Their hearts would have sunk in the solitude, and tliey would liave gone off to their kinsmen in the United States. Young Englishmen as a class have not done well ; they have energy and pluck, but not steady industry, self-denial, or the habit of saving. Tbe jesters of the Xorth-West call " remittances from home " the English- man's harvest. Of a good many the ^Mounted Police is the last haven. AVliat the North-West needs is the tiuating population of the continent, farmers to the manner boni. To send East- Londoners, who have hardly seen a plougb, to the climate and the life of the North -West, is cniel kiiitluess, and so it has proved. If the North-West fills up. Old Canada will l«e dwarfed, and, supposing Confederation to endure, the centre of power will shift westward, though the loss by Ottawa of all eontnd over the North- West is perhaps the more likely result. British Columbia again is separated from the Ncxnth-West by a triple range of mountains, the liockies, the Selkirk*, the Golden or Coast range, in traversing which the Pacitie Kailway proclaims the glory of Canadian science. This Pmvince is the I*acific slope of the mountain range, clothed with pine of the noblest size, thougli not deemed equal in quality to that of Nova Scotia, but hardly within reach of the lumlierman except on the lower fringe. Her flora is Pacific, fo eoni- pletely does she belong to that side of the world. Vi unwooded land British Columbia has not much, wLilf clearing, where the timber is so heavy, would be too costly ; but she has coal at Nanaimo, she has plenty of salmon for caiming. I \i t ' : I »i Mil ii; hi 's CANADA AND TUK CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. and she is understood to be very rich in minerals. Tliere is a project for opening her mineral wealth by a railway carried through the mountain region in concert with the American government. Her climate is warm compared with that of other provinces in the same latitude, and she has an open thougli damp and raw winter. The vegetation is tropicid, not in variety, but in luxuriance. Nothing can be more impressive than a ride in the forest, through the vast and silent arcade of pines and cedars, so gigantic that they almost shut out the sky. The coast scenery, with views of the American Snow mountains, is superb, though one might wish that the " Olympian Range " had a less pedantic name.^ Vancouver is the leading port of British Columbian commerce. She hopes to have a gTeat Asiatic trade and become a mighty city. Land is accordingly held in that city at fabulous prices, which those will pay who share the gorgeous dream. A^'ictoria sleeps in beauty over her little pile of earnings from the gold- washings and from the trade of early days. Her cottage villas with their rose gardens have an English look, and she prides herself on being English in character and spirit. As she is on an island where the railway cannot reach her there seems to be not much chance of her reawakening to any active commercial life. The most lively thing about her at present is the Chinese Colony, where we come into contact with the advance guard of that countless host which, bar it out with laws and poll-taxes on immigration as you will, hunger driving it on and capital craving for its cheap labour, can hardly be arrested in its march, and may some day possess the coast of the Pacific. ^ Canadian and American mountains have often names too prosaic. Peaks, instead of being called, like Swiss peaks, the Storm peak, the Silver ]>eak, the Peak of Thunder, the Maiden, are called after railway directors and politicans. Ill TIfH lUUTISH PROVINCES 63 It is in tlie Nortli-West and in IJiitish Columbia that tlio Red Indian is now chiefly to be seen ; for among those on the Eastern lleserves there is little of the pure blood. The race, every one says, is doomed. It has fallen into the gulf between the hunter state and that of the husbandman. "Whisky has con- tributed to its ruin. The sudden disappearance of the buffalo, which is the most surprising event in natural history, has deprived the hunter of subsisteiii . Little will be lost by humanity. The Red Indian has the wonderful powers of enduring hunger and fatigue wliich the hunter's life engenders; he has the keenness of sense indispensable in tracking game : he seems to have no other gift. Ethnologists may find it instructive to study a race without a history and without a future ; but the race will certainly not be a factor in New World civilisation. Musical Indian names of places and rivers, Indian relics in museums, Indian phrases, such as "going on the warpath" and 'burying the hatchet" — these and nothing more apparently will remain of tlie aborginal man in North America. His blood is not on th( head of the British Government, which has always treated him with humanity and justice. ! I!*' ' it h'\ hi '■ I f!'! CHArXKli IV FIJENCII CANADA RKFOUE TIIK CONQUEST^ 111! 1 Jacques Cartieii, tliougli venerated as tlie founder of the Frencli Colony, was ordy the discoverer of the St. Lawrence (1535). He made trial of the climate by wintering at Quebec, where he lost many of his crew by cold, hunger, and scurvy, and he opened relations with the Indians in a rather sinister way by kidnapping a chief with three of his tribe. But he formed no permanent settlement : Eoberval, his contemporary and successor in the enterprise, totally failed. The real founder of Canada did not appear on the scene until seventy years after. This was Samuel de Champlain (1G03-35), one of that striking group of characters to which the sixteenth century gave birth, and which combined the force, hardihood, and romance of feudalism with the larger views and higher objects of the Ileformation era. The man would have been a crusader in the thirteenth century who in the sixteenth was a maritime adventurer and the founder of a colony. Champlain, though it does not appear that he ever was of the Reformed faith, and though he ultimately became ^ The principal sources of tliis and the following historical sketch, besides the Rclalions dcs Jcsuilcs and Le Clercq's L' Establissement de la Foi, are Mr. Parkman's narratives, and the histories of Garneaii, Christie, ]\liles, MacMullen, and Kingsford, with Cavendish's Debates in the British House of Commons, in 1774. I CHAP. IV FKENCII CANADA I5EF0KK TIIH CONtjUKST e» connected with tlie .lesuits, litul fought for lleniy IV, and must tlierefore have belonged to the more liberal and patriotic party of Roman Catholics. At this time there was beginning to be an exodus of Huguenots to New France, like that of the persecuted Puritans to New England, which came a few years afterwards. Henry IV seems to have encouraged the move- ment, seeing perliaps how tlie tide was running in France and guessing wluit was in store, when his protection should have been withdrawn, for the party to which he had belonged. Mad New France been colonised by Huguenots, bringing with them the energy, the industry, the intelligence, and the love of freedom which marked them in their own country, New England would have had a formidable rival, and to the French, not to the English race and tongue the American continent might now Ijelong. French writers look back with a wistful eye to the glory that miglit have been. As it was, Quebec, with France herself and everything belonging to her, fell into the hands of the Catholic lieaction, and of its incarnation and apostle the Jesuit. The Jesuit of course devoutly excluded the Huguenot, carefully searching vessels lest tliey should have brought over any one tainted with the pestilence of heresy. Not only did he exclude the Huguenot, but as far as possible he excluded the Jansenist. By this he did the Colony incomparably more harm than he ever, by his boasted activity as a civiliser and educator, did it good. In fact, during the early stages of its history, while it remained under Jesuit domination, it was not a colony at all. It was a Jesuit mission grafted on a station of the fur trade. The Jesuit missionaries, who came to the settlement in 1625, did for the glory of God and of their Order things which have found in our own day a brilliant and sympathetic chronicler. Our accounts of their exploits are derived from )'t '^aW^ 66 ONADA AND TIIH (WNADIAN QlJKHTION CIIAI" i f il i; " IJi'liitioiis," writ ((Ml l)y (lu'iiisclvcs luul piiltlislKMl in 1alliy wilh it, ami opcninu; ila' purses of i]\r (U'voul, all o\' Avliieli ]nnposes, not, excejjtinL!; tlk! last, tlicy eH'eetualIy t!erv(>(I. Noi" is it ])ossil)le to put. unreserved conlichintH^ in the narrativos of men the most st-nsible of whom lived in an atniosi)here o\' miracli', divine and diabolical, saw demons ainiinj;' darts at lliem, r(>eoivt>d su])ernatural warninj^s, and beheld liiM'y crosses travcrsinj^ the sky. Vi!t thci'c can Ix; no doubt that .lesuitism had in New France its luM'oes and its martyrs. It had martyrs who, with a fortitude which nothiuL;' but sincori* enthusi'sni could have sustained, braved tlie ])erils and hardshi])s of the wilderness, endured the woise horrors of life in tlie Indian hut, and underwent without llinchinjj; at the hands of the Inxpiois tortures ecpial ]>hy- sically at least to thosi^ which their Kuro})can bri^thren were iuHicting, or causing' to bi> iutlicted, on heretics in the duui^eons of the Inquisition. Thesi^ were at all events victories of tlu^ Idijjher over the lower man. it was certain that the Order "vvould draw into it at lirst some ])ure enthusiasts; and it was likely that these would wish to t^o, and would by the policy of the Order be sent, rather to the missionary lield than to that of Kuropean propagandism and intrigue. Jesuitism is redeemed by its missionary element imper- sonated in Xavier and ihvbtvuf. It was their own vi'rsion of Christianity of course that the Sons of Lo} ola taught. rerha])s it was a Christianity in some respects not uncongenial to the Indian. " You burn your enemies," said a Jesuit to an Algonquin chief, '' and God does the same." In the pictures of lost souls tormented by demons wdiich were presented to them, the Indian might see his own practices ascribed to the Supreme Being. An Indian w^oman whom the Fathers were IV KUKNCIT CANADA I'.Kl'OI'tK THF, CONf.iUKST 67 trying' t.o coiivfM't., rcrtiscd (o lie, sciil to Hi'iivcmi wIkmi tiny li:ul told licr tliiit Imt dcjul cliildicn wcri' in IJi'll. Nor r/,u\ their ])liilo.so])lii(; ('ido^ist i'orhciir smiling' at tin' I'livolity, not to say letichisiii, of soiiin of tlicir rcli^^doiis ideas and |trai'ticfs. Tlic missionaries aic always lookin;^^ out with j»('(;uiia,r oa^cr- ncss foi' dyiuL,' (dnldren whom, hy l)aj)tism, in ihr. iurtivi! a(hidnistraLion of which rather e(|uiv()cal Htrata;^fenis aic sometimes en)i)loy(Ml, they seinl, as they thiidv, sti'aiL,dit from Ihdl lo Paradise. Tiieii : liaumatnrLjy miifht justify the Indian in callinif them, as he, did, the I'Vciiieh ni(!dicin(; men. In spitx! ol" all the seli-devotion of the I'athers and all their heroism, their missions (^anie almost to naught. They had the misfortune to Ix; confronted by the Iro'juois, of all lied Indians and of all savage.s the most valiant, the most politic, and the most fiendish. Cham])lain, by allying' himsidf with the Huron enemi(!S of th(! lrof|Uois, rashly stirred the teirible swarm. Wy the Iro([Uois tin; Jlurons, among whom the Jesuits liad planted their missionaries and made converts, were overthrown, and in 1G4'.J utterly destroyed. To a Huron it naturally appeared hard that this should be the reward of allegiance to the true (}od ; nor does it seem impossible that by the <'hp.ii;:'e the convert may have lost something of the warlike character necessary to save him in the ruthless struggle for existence. A lew of the Iro(|Uois themselves were aftiirwards converted, and the descendants (jf such con- verts, under the name of tluj Caughnawagas, steer the tourist down the Lachine rapids to Montreal. ^Mr. Parkman gives the Jesuit credit for having by contact softened tlui manners of the Indians generally ; but thi' seems hardly consistent with his own statements that the Fathers connived at the torture of prisoners by theii Indian converts, and that when the Jesuits had become, as in course of time they did, more il \ CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAr. political than missionary, the converts were launched in scalping parties against the colonists of Xew England. The palm of religious heroism must be shared by the Jesuits with the Ursulines. The " Iielations " of the Jesuits had lired the hearts of devout women in France with the same missionary enthusiasm, mingled, as the historian fails not to see, with a yearning for personal distinction. These women performed miracles as hospital nurses and as angels of charity in the struggling and suffering settlements, while they were props of a system under which the Colony could hardly be anything but a hospital and an almshouse. A hospital was founded at Montreal, to afford a theatre for the religious activity of these ladies, before there was any need of one, and when tlie money and the labour were sorely required for other purposes by a settlement feebly struggling for existence. Marie de I'lncarnation seems to have rivalled St. Catherine or St. Theresa in the intensity of her .self-devotion, in her erotic transports, and in all that is most characteristic of a female saint. Jeanne le Ber, another saint, was the Simeon Stylites of her sex : she shut herself up for twenty years in a cell behind the altar, rarely speaking, and inflicting on herself incredible mortifications. This might be seraphic, but it was not a practical model for the settler's wife. If the heroic eftbrts of the Jesuit as missionary were baffled by adverse circumstances, as the organiser of a colony he failed through the inherent and fatal falsity of his ideal. His object, as he avowed, was to make Quebec a Northern Paraguay, in other words, a community of human sheep absolutely devoted and submissive to their ecclerJastical shepherd. But human sheep are not colonial pioneers. Nor was the ascetic view of the world or the palm held out to self-torturing saiutship likely to stimulate the agricultural IV FRENCH CANADA BEFORE THE CONQUEST 69 or commercial effort necessary to place a colony on a sound material basis. The Puritans of New England, it has been justly observed, however austere and however narrow might be their religion, believed in a Giver of material as well as spiritual blessings, and in the material as well as in the spiritual sphere laboured with all their might to carry into effect the Divine intention. To make a Paraguay, nioicover, it was necessary that the temporal and spiritual powers should be united in the hands of the priest. To l)ring this about was in New France, as everywhere else, the Jesuit's constant aim. With the help of devout Governors he to a great extent succeeded, and tlie result was that petitions were sent to France praying '■ that an end might be put to the Gehenna produced by the union of the temporal with the spiritual power." The moral code under Jesuit rule was Genevan in its rigour as well as ultra-ecclesiastical in its formality. For breach of its ordinances men were whipped like dogs. It was enforced, as was complained at the time, not only by the confessional, but by a system of espionage wliicli made the Jesuit master of all family secrets and tyrant of all house- holds. To the Jesuit his Canadian realm seemed a spiritual Paradise and the Gate of Heaven, albeit the blessed souls in it lived in constant peril of famine and of the tomahawk. But it seemed by no means a Paradise to some untamed spirits, whose energy as pioneers, though unhallowed, the Colony perhaps could ill aiford to lose. These fled from it to the free life of the forest, and became as buslirangers tlie perpetual scandal of the Government. A genuine and great service was done by the priests in op])osing the brandy trade, which was play'ng havoc among the Indians, and we need not regard the insinuation of a governor with whom they had quarrelled, that the/ wished themselves to engross the profits t i h il r H !! ii^i 8 70 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. of the trade. It is probable, however, that before its fall, the Order had become not only political but commercial in Quebec, as it had in Europe, where the scandalous bankruptcy of one of its commercial houses was among the immediate causes of its suppression. One of the governors at least reports that it was getting the fur trade into its hands. It shared the inevitable fate of all the Orders, which, beginning with a seraphic ideal and a renunciation of all worldly goods, fell from their unattainable aim into corporate ambition, pursuit of inordinate wealth, and a corruption which, contrasted with their professions, brought on them hatred, contempt, and at last the whirlwind of destruction. Quebec, the Paradise of the Jesuits, had a competitor and an object of jealousy in Montreal, founded in 1642 by jMaisonneuve, whose figure belongs to the same group as that 0*' Cliamplain, though he was more of a religious devotee. Montreal was under the influence of the Sulpicians, a branch of whose Order, the Eecollets, had preceded the Jesuits in the Canadian Mission. Quebec accused Montreal of Jansen- ism and received with a slight ^neer of incredulity jMontreal miracles, even when they were so little trying to a child-like faith as that of the man's head which talked after being severed from the body. Sulpicianism, on the other hand, spoke with delicate irony of the Jesuit Relations, and in- sinuated a comparison between them and the tales of the East Indian traveller who made a valiant soldier, when he had fired away his last bullet, load his musket with his own teeth. After the lapse of two centuries and a half this battle between Jesuit and Sulpician, Ultramontane and Gal- lican, has been renewed. As an agricultural or commercial settlement New France remained a failure, its only trade being the fur trade, while IV FRENCH CANADA BEFORE THE CONQUEST 71 the Iroquois incessantly prowled around it like wolves and picked off the tillers of the fields who worked with the loaded arquebuse by their sides. The Home Government generally had its hands full of home troubles and dis- tractions, while such aid as was sent from private sources was sent not to the colony but to the mission, liichelieu, when engaged in reorganising the monarchy on the centralis- ing principle, did not fail to turn his thoughts to the colony. He reformed the Constitution of the Commercial Company, which was in fact its only government other than the priest- hood, and sent it soldiers, though in numbers wholly in- adequate to its defence. But then came the troubles of the Fronde. When these were past, and over the wreck of feudal independence rose in all its might and glory the administrative despotism of Louis XIV, a dead-lift effort was made to inspire life, after the autocratic fashion, into the colony, and make it the starting-point of a French and Catholic empire which, extinguishing the English and Dutch colonies, should embrace the whole of the continent. The regiment of Carignan-Salieres was sent out in 1G65 and repressed the Iroquois, while a not less potent agency in the salvation of the Settlement was the advent, as governor, ot Frontenac, the Clive of Quebec. By the side of the plumed governor, Mdio, like the governors of provinces in France represented the feudal aristocracy Surviving in its state and in its military character under the king, though shorn of its political and military power, came in less showy costume the Royal Intendant, to whom in all administrative matters the power had been transferred. The Intendant Talon was a colonial Colbert — able, active, and upright like his chief ; and, like his chi^ef, he did all that could be done under the radi- cally false system of monopoly and protectionism to animate 1 !f II ' ,1 .»* €^ 72 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN (,)UESTION CllAl', and foster trade. To recruit *^lie population, winch between asceticism and the Iroquois was at a very low ebb, large con- signments of young women were shipped out by despotic fiat from France, and marriage was encouraged in the same style by means of premiums on offspring and penalties on celibacy. Feudalism, such as it was in France since its teeth had been drawn by the Monarchy — feudalism, tliat is not political or military but only manorial — was imported into the colony as the land system of the French realm ; and a number of seigniories were carved out under which the settlers held their lands as censitaircs, like the copyholders under an English manor, though with the feudal forms of investiture instead of entry on the court roll. The militia was kept in the hands of a king's ofticer, and the criminal jurisdiction of the seignior was very small. Some of the feudal incidents, such as the obliiration to use the lord's mill and oven, must have been almost a dead letter ; but there was an oppressive fee to the lords on sales. So much of democracy there was on the American soil even under Bourbon rule that the peasant would brook no name that savoured of villeinage, but styled himself the hcibitant. The colony was also en- dowed with a noblesse formed out of rather sorry materials, such as the disbanded officers of the Carignan reginumt and plebeian settlers whoso vanity led them to buy social rank. The result, as plainly appears and might have been surely foreseen, was not a genuine aristocracy, but a false caste of insolence, idleness, and vagabondage, though the genius of the New World so far asserted itself that the colonial gentleman, unlike the gentleman of the mother country, was permitted without loss of rank to engage in trade. In New as in Old France the despotism was absolute. I II IV FRENCH CANADA BEFORE THE CONQUEST 73 The Supreme Council which was instituted at tliis time (1663), and ousted the Commercial Company from all polit- ical power, was only another name for the rule of the lioyal Governor, of the Intendant, and in matters ecclesiastical of the liishop. The Intendant by his decrees regulated not only the police but commercial and civil life. Of the local self-government, which formed the soul and the liope of New England, not a germ was allowed to appear. One Governor conceived the idea of providing the colony with a minia- ture counterpart of the States-General ; but he was at once given to understand that the Court, far from wishing to extend the venerable institution to the colonies, was disposed to regard it as obsolete at home. It is needless to say that no organ or exj^ression of public opinion was allowed. The colony was of course under the French criminal law, with its arbitrary imprisonment and judicial torture. Louis XIV, albeit devout, and more devout than ever when he had fallen under the influence of the Maintenon, still meant to be King of the Church as well as of the State. He had not even shrunk, when his royal dignity was in question, from bullying the Pope, lielations were somewhat strained between the representatives of the Eoyal power and the head of the Church, Bishop Laval. This prelate, wdiose name is still great in French Canada and is borne by the Laval University, was the paragon of asceticism in his day. He lay on a bed full of vermin ; he ate tainted meat ; the wonder is tliat he escaped canonisation. He was a fast ally of the Jesuits, and a champion of the doctrines which they then preached and are now again preaching on the same field respecting the supremacy and infallibility of the Pope, the independence and liberty of the Church, and the duty of the State to submit to the Church in case of any conflict IM •^mr 71 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP, between them.' Laval, who particularly prided himself on his humility, had frequent disputes with the Governors about precedence, in which the Governors showed more spirit than is shown by politicians when threatened with ecclesiastical displeasure at the present dny. They said to the churchman in effect, like their precursor Poutrincourt, " It is your busi- ness to obey me on earth and to guide me to heaven." A curb, and a strong curb, was legally imposed on the Episcopal power and ambition by the Eoyal ordinance, which decreed that the tenure of the cures should be fixed, as in France, and that they should be no longer removable at the Bishop's will. It is needless to say that Monopoly and Protectionism failed to give new life to industry and commerce. Decrees forbidding merchants to trade with the Indians, forbidding them to sell goods at retail except in August, September, and October, forbidding trade anywhere above Quebec, forbidding the sale of clothing or domestic articles ready-made, forbidding trade with the New England Colonies, that is with the natural market, forbidding any one to go there without a passport — decrees giving a monopolist company power to make domi- ciliary visits for the discovery and destruction of foreign goods, ordering that vessels engaged in foreign commerce should be treated as pirates, and that every one found with an article of foreign manufacture in his possession should be fined " — with other like ordinances, produced the same sort of results which similar policy, pursued by mei, less excus- able in error than Colbert and Talon, is now pro- ducing in the same field. Nor could exclusion from the natural market be compensated in those days any more than ^ See Parkman's Old Regime in Canada, p. 166, where the Jesuit Father Braun is cited. - Parkman's Old Jidgime, p. 290. IV FRENCH CANADA BEFORE THE COX<^*rE*T 1 1> ill these by the creation of a forced market iu the West Indies or elsewhere. An attempt of the beneficent King to speed the plough by the introduction of negro slavery had no better success, being baffled at once by the climate. The colony made nothing and produced nothing except beaver skins, to be exported to France in payment for the supplies of all kinds which it drew thence. It was cv^sequently bankrupt, coin fled from it, giving place to bad paper, and at last to card money. Even the trade in beaver skins was so bedevilled by monopoly and government regukiion that at one time the company destroyed three-fourths of the stock on their hands to avert a glut. In the fur trade, b^wever, was such life as the colony had apart from the activity of the clergy. Into this were drawn all th(»se who pireferred the freedom of the forest to the paternal despotism of the In- tendant and the priest. A strange and wild life it was. The bushrangers (coureurs des hois) threw off ci%'ilisiition, lived with the Indians, intermarried with them, leame*! Indian habits, became itiore than half Indians themselves, and some- times were made chiefs of Indian tribes. They t«:<0'k to war- paint and feathers. They took even to scalping, &ii>i were in consequence treated by Wolfe as out of the kws of war. They regarded themselves, however, as gentlemen, and it is said that some of the best families in Quebec are descended from this stock. Closely connected with the spirit of this roving life was the adventurous passion for discovery, which reached its climax in the marvellous exploration of the ^Mississippi by La Salle. As explorers the French were not less superior to the staid and plodding Xew Englander than they were inferior to him in industry, commerce, and the qualities requisite for building up a commonwealth. To the Jesuit I' 1 ! I (t ! i ■ ( i H '^ i ■1 1 1 1 ,1 i! \ \ 76 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN ()UESTION CHAP. missionaries, too, is duo the credit of wonderful exploration, notabl}- on the Ujiper Lakes. It was natural also that in the magnificence of their schemes, military and territorial, the Frencii should have the pre-eminence. With no other basis than a settlement of a few thousands of people on the St. Lawrence they asi)ired to the extension of their Empire by a chain of military posts westward to the jMississippi and down its whole course to New Orleans. In their vaulting ambition the men of New France were true Frenchmen. Su[)posing a despotic administration to be inspired by probity and beneficence, its eye cannot see nor can its arm reach across the Atlantic. Colbert meant very well to the colony, and even his King meant well. But after Louis XIV and Colbert came Louis XV and the Eegency, I'ompadour and Dubois. Then began in the unhappy dependency a reign of unbridled corruption and abuse. Peculation and extortion to an enormous extent were carried on by a gang of officials, at the head of which was the Intendant Bigot, whose chateau near Quebec was a sort of outpost of the Pare aux Cerfs. It is astonishing that, vexed as they were with imposts, pillaged as they were by scoundrels in office, and harassed as they were by compulsory service in the militia and on public works, the peasants of Quebec should have remained true as they did to their King and to France. Pompadour was not so hostile as Maintenon to Huguenots, and would not have opposed their settling in New France. But the Huguenot was now extinct ; in his place had come Voltaire. The historian bespeaks our sympathy and admiration, not only for the missionary, but for the parish priest, who went about through the sparse settlements of a wild peasantry, along the inhospitable shore, performing Mass, baptising, con- fessing, and preaching, in defiance of great hardship and no IV FKEXCII CANADA UEFORE THE CONQUEST n small peril. These men, no doubt, ai'ter tlui down Tall of asceticism, kept alive such religion and such morality as then- was. But of morality there seems in the closing days of the colony to have been as little as there was of industry or trade. The soldiery, the bushrangers, the fur trade and its roystering fairs, the association with the Indians, the habits and examples of Pompadourian Intendants, ap])ear ])y their united agencies of corruption to liave morally ruined the Xorthcrn Paraguay. Of education there had never been any except that which the Jesuits gave to the boys destined for the priesthood, or to the sons of the few people of quality. French gaiety remained ; so, we are told, did tlie polish of French manners, and the Colonists, we are also told, spoke French well. The French colonist, however, if he was backward in the arts of peace was not to be despised in Avar. This he showed in the long conflict with the English colonies and their mother country which fills the closing period of this history. The very absence of industrial and commercial pursuits preserved the military character. The bushranger was the best of bushfighters and could act in perfect unison with his savage comrade the Ped Indian. The New Eng- landers, though they came of the Ironside blood and had the making of the best soldiers in them, were not soldiers, but traders and mechanics. Wolfe speaks very disparagingly of his Colonial Eangers. The first capture of Louisbourg by a Colonial army supported only by a British Meet w^as a stroke of luck, due to the mutinous state of the garrison and th(! weakness of the Commandant. Moreover the English colonies were divided in their councils : they had with the inde- pendence and self-reliance the stiff-neckedness of republicans, and the weakness in joint action which it entails. It w^as 1 ^ IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I :■ 1I32 136 t^o 2.2 1.8 1.25 1.4 1.6 < 6" — ► V] <^ /}. o e). e. ^A m. 0%. 9. a o /. / //a w Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y 14580 (716) 872-4503 \ iV ^^ o % V ^ '^ 4^ \. X k O^^ V- Q- l^r # ^ 'l" 78 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. very hard to bring eaoa colony to take its part in any common enterprise or furnish its contingent to any common force. The Frencli, on the other hand, were united under the absolute conmiand of the lioyal Governor, who could call them all to arms and dispose of everything they had for the King's service. Nor were the French nobles, by whom the governorship was held, ill-fitted for the military part of their work. Frontenac especially was a man of great genius for war as well as of iron character ; he left a name dreaded by the English Colonists and renowned in Canadian history, though sullied by his murderous employment of the savage ; not that anybody abstained from the use of this vile auxiliary, whose subsequent introduction into the revolu- tionary war by the British was not the horrible innovation which rhetoric painted it, though assuredly it was a crime as well as a blunder. Superior as they w^^e in population and in wealth, the English colonies m' have been lost had they not been united, as far as were capable of union, and supported by their mother miry. As soon as her arm, after a long and desperate si iggle, had laid low their formidable rival and assured their afety, she was made to feel what had been their real tie to her. The conquest of Quebec is familiar to all ; and has been narrated by Mr. Parkmau in the two most charming volumes, perhaps, even of his charming series. If he fails in anything, perhaps it is in not perfectly painting the character of Wolfe, one of the most interesting, if not one of the most important or dazzling, figures in military history. Near the famous battle-field on which the steadiness of the British soldier, reserving his fire for the decisive volley while his comrades were falling fast around him, determined that to his race, not to the French, should belong tlie New World and its hopes, IV FRENCH CANADA liEFORE THE CONQUEST 79 ' i! stands the monument raised by the victor to the joint memory of Wolfe and Montcalm. The warlike aristocracy of Franco and the military duty of England could not have encountered each other in more typical forms. Voltaire, more philosopher and philanthropist than patriot, celebrated by a feast the transfer of New France from the realm of despotism to that of freedom. ]\Ir. Parkman says : " A happier calamity never befell a people than the conquest of Cr.nada by the liritisli arms. V ■ I sn CHAPTP:Pt V riJENCII CANADA AFTEIl THE CONQUEST (1759) I 1 I I- Quebec liad been won. What was to be done with it ? The highest wisdom said, " Add it to the New England Colonies by which it will soon be assimilated, and leave the whole independent, content with the Empire of British civilisation over the New World, and with the moral supremacy which the mother country, provided the filial tie remains unbroken, is sure to retain." Cromwell had meditated giving the Colonies Jamaica. But such a policy was beyond the ken of the statesmen of that day, and few even among the calmest observers had any conception of it. We must re- member, moreover, that in times before Adam Smith a distant dependency seemed to everybody to have real value inasmuch as the Imperial country monopolised its trade. Still the question remained whether Quebec should be left French and governed as a conquest or made English. That question was settled by the American Revolution, which compelled the Imperial Government to court the French of Quebec and respect their nationality. That a revolt of the American colonies would follow when the curb of French rivalry had been removed was surmised by clear-sighted men at the time, albeit it would be hard to accuse England of blindness, because she failed to foresee that the requital cHAr. V FREXCII CANADA AFTER THE CONQUEST 81 i ? The :jolonies e whole ■ilisatiou y which nbroken, the ond the Qong the must re- Smith a lal value ,ts trade. Id he left ;h. That |n, which 'rench of )lt of the »{ French tr- sighted England reciuital of her supreme effort ou l)elialf of her American colonists would bo their secession. Mr. Samuel Adams and the rest of tlie Boston counterparts of Wilkes and Home Tooke, who fomented the quarrel till it became revolution and civil war, cihould have had a little patience and waited till Quebec had been not only conquered but made Kuglisli. To make her English as she then was would not have been iiard. Her French inliabitants of the npper class, had, for the most part, quitted lier after the conquest and sailed witli their property for France. Tliere remained only 70,000 peasants, to whom their language was not so dear as it was to a member of the Institute, wlio knew not the difference between codes so long as tliey got just^'ce, and among whom, harsh and abrupt change being avoided, the British tongue and law might have been gradually and ^ :dessly introduced. While the war lasted, and for a sliort time afterwards, the government was military, and the ultimate policy of the Ih-itish Government with regard to the conquered Province was in suspense. That the government should at first be military was inevitable, and French >vriters who speak of this with indignation must remember what was the conduct of tlie House of Bourbon or of the French Republic to countries overrun by their armies. They should remember the plan which was sanctioned by Louis XIV for the treatment of New York in case it should be conquered, and according to which Protestantism would have been uprooted, all property confiscated, the inhabitants generally deported, and those who remained put to convict labour on the fortifications. The Americans called upon the Canadians to join them in their revolt. But the Canadians had already begun to taste the fruits of the Conquest. They had been released from the vexations of constant military service and allowed G I ! i.ill ': I i I n ! til 1 1. ; I 1 1 ' jiiill 39 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAI'. to til] their farms. Tlieir religion had been respected to a greater extent even than >vas required by the terms of the Treaty of Cession. Not only were the parish clergy left in possession of their tithes, but the religious orders also, saving the anti-national Jesuits, had been left in possession of their estates. Ijourbon despotism and corruption had departed. Instead of arbitrary tribunals, trial by jury had been intro- duced, though the hahitant at first hardly understood the boon, while the Seignior thought it a derogation from his ragged dignity to be judged by shopkeepers and peasants. The Puritans, or rather ex-Puritans of New England, had made the retention of Eoman Catholicism in Quebec one of the counts in their indictment of the British Government. In an address to the British people they spoke of the religion of the Canadians as one " that had drenched Great Britain in blood and disseminated impiety, bigotry, persecution, nmrder, and rebellion through every part of the world." Afterwards, calling the French Canadians to freedom, they treated the religious question in a different strain. " We are too well- acquainted," they said, " with the liberality of sentiment dis- tinguishing your nation to imagine that difference of religion will prejudice you against a hearty amity with us. You know that the transcendent nature of freedom elevates the minds of those who unite in the cause above all such low-minded infirmities. The Swiss Cantons furnish a memorable proof of this truth ; their union is composed of Catholic and l*rotest- aut States, living in the utmost concord and peace with each other ; and they are thereby enabled, ever since they bravely vindicated their freedom, to defy and defeat every tyrant that has invaded them." The Quebec clergy, however, did not forget the former and as they probably thought more sincere manifesto. Their weight was cast into the other scale, and laving their kartell, intro- od the oiu liis 2asaiits. nd, liad c one of srnment. religion iritain in , murder, terwards, ;ated tlie too well- ment dis- FRENXH CANADA AFTER THE CONQUEST 83 their chief, the Bishop of Quebec, exhorted his people to be true to British aUegiance and repel the American invaders. To tlie blandishments of Franlclin and his coadjutors the priests replied that Great Britain had kept her faith, preserved to tlie French people their laws and customs, shielded their religion, left the monasteries their estates, and even ordered the military authorities to pay honour to Catholic processions.^ Nor did the Seigniors like the look of revolution. The peasantry were slow to move, rejoicing to have got back to their homesteads and thinking that it was not their quarrel ; the city of Quebec narrowly escaped capture by the Americans under Arnold and Montgomery ; but the beliaviour of the invaders helped to stir up the people against them, and the Province was saved. The Governor, Sir Guy Carleton, was a man worthy to command. Had he been in the place of the torpid Howe, the heavy Clinton, or the light Burgoyne, there might have been a different tale to tell. The danger, however, had determined the policy of the British Government and led to the practical abandonment, as it proved for ever, of the thought of Anglicising Quebec. The settlement embodied in the Quebec Act, framed by Lord Xorth's government, not only secured to the French people the free exercise of their religion and to the priesthood its revenues, but established the French civil law and French procedure without juries. It put an end to the military dictatorship by giving the Province a governing Council which was to be partly composed of Catholics ; an Ele^ctive Assembly could not have been safely given to people recently conquered, nor did the French themselves demand it; they had been accustomed only to obey, and were satisfied if their rulers were just. The Quebec Act was opposed as anti- ^ Garneaii's History of Canada, Bell's edition, vol. ii, i). 148. 1 1 t;' f J '! iV 84 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION ' HAf, British by Cluitliain almost with liis last hroatli. It was oppos(!(l iilso by Burke, but not on the j^round of hoHlility to the l{on)iin Ciitholic religion. "There is," said liurk*-, "but one healing, (.'atholic principle of toleration which ought to find favour in this House. . It is wanted not only in our colonies, but here. The thirsty earth of our own country is gasping and gaping aitd crying out for that healing .shower from heaven. The noble lord has told you of the right of those people by the Treaty ; but I consider the right of con- quest so little and the right of human nature so much that the former has very little consideration with me. I look ujion the people of Canada as coming by the dispensation of God under the British government. I would have us goveni it in the same manner as the all-wise disposition of Providence would govern it. We know He suffers the sun to shine upon the righteous and the unrighteous ; and we ought to sull'er all classes without distinction to enjoy equally the right of wor- shipping God according to the light He has been pleased to give them." The earth of England unhappily was to gasp and gape for the healing shower for another half-century. Burke's view as to the treatment of the conquered was noble, but it would have extinguished conquest altogether. Yet Burke himself was no enemy to aggrandisement by war. By this time, however, it was not only with the French, or with the difficulty which their nationality pre.%nted, that the British Government had to deal. After the Conriuest a number of British adventurers, for the most part it seems not of a high class, had settled in the Province and had at once got its commerce — for which the French peasants had no turn — into their hands. Presently came a crowd of American Royalists, driven into exile by the Kevolution, and full at once of extreme British feeling and of wounded jiride. These I-KKXCIT CANADA AfTKR THK CONOL'EST 86 ii|fi ;-n t was ity to , " but oht to in our ntry i^ nhoNVd" ri^bt of : of con- that the ok "V^'^ 1 of Ood }itx\\ it ii^ rovidence ;,inf; "po^ , sulVer all ibt of wor- ,lf;aHed to iH to ^as]) If.century. wan noble, bf-r. Yet war. be Trencb, lif^nted, tbat :onfiuest a |i Heems not ifid at once :,tH bad no ,f American land full at ide. Tbese men aspired to bein;^ an oli'^'anby of con([uest. At tbo same time they tlioni^ht that th«;y onj,'iit to carry the British Con- stitution, with all tlie liWities and j)rivileges whicli it gave them, on the soles of th'.'ir fc;et. lioth as a limit to their ascendency, and as a curtailment of their Ihitish freedom, the CJueboc Act was haU?ful Vt ihem, and they laboured vehe- mently, with all the enjnne-^ which they could comnmnd at home, for its repeaL Sr> far they succeeded that Habeas Corpus was restored. Tim iroubles which lasted till 1841 had now begun. In 1791 came, with t}i<; pr%Tess of the French iievolution, anotlier crisis of oj>inioh in Kiigland. and in connection with it a resettlement of Quel>ec. Thr; fK)litir'al date of the discussion is marked by the quairel ljK:twf;en Ibirke and Fox. Pitt now laid his hand to the work. His plan for jjutting an end to the strife between the c/jinqiifcring and the coujiuered race was se])aration. He dividif^l Canada into two provinces — Lower Canada for the YntwM and Up})er Canada for the British, many of whom liad Med to those wilds from the United States after the revolutionary war. This ])olicy was approved by ]>urke. "For us to attempt," said Burke, "to amalgamate two population* composed of races of men diverse in language, laws, and liabitudes, is a complete absurdity. Let the proposed constitution Im* founded on man's nature, the only solid basis for an enduring government." Pitt was scarcely acting in liarmony with this oracle when he bestowed on the French as well as on the British Province an exact counterpart, or what was !rUpf»o«^d to be an exact counter- part, of the British Constitution, Each J'rovince was to have, besides the Governor wlio repre.Vinted the Crown, a legislative council nominated by the Crown to represent the House of Lords, and an Assembly elec't maintain tlicir authority, and at the same tinie to ])our oil u])on the waters, became tiie objects of fiery remonstrance, sometimes even of insult thinly veiled. The Home (lovernment, looking on from afar, in the days before steam communication and ocean telegi'iiphs, knew not what to mak(! of the fray or how to deal with it. Its own p(dicy wiis not clearly deiined, nor did it know wliether it meant really to bestow rarliamentary government on a dependency or not. So far was i' from understanding the situation that in 1839 we find Lor.i ])iirliam informing it, with tlie pomp of a momentoui revelation tiuit tlie conllict in French Canada was one not of ]'o1iLical opinion but of I'ace. .Moreover, power in Downing Street was always chang- ing hands, and was wielded one day by a Tory and the next by a Liberal or a Tory of a more Liberal brand. Governors correspondingly different in character were sent out : now a military nuivLinet like llaldimand, now a reactionary aristo- crat like the Duke of liichmond, anon a conciliator like I'revost or CJosford. The governors who made themselves popular with the French were of course regarded as traitors and detested by the British. Sir James Craig, who is said to have usually addressed civilians as if they needed the cat-o'- nine tails, seemed to the ]^)ritish just the man for that country. There were still among the British political leaders some who clung desperately to the policy of ascendency, and contended that the I'rovince ought to be Anglicised, and might be Anglicised if it were handled with resolution. Pre-eminent among them was Chief Justice Sewell, a sort of Canadian Fitzgibb"". These men often got the ear of the Governor, to whom their circle had almost exclusively social access, and, when the Home Government was Tory, the ear of the 1 :l 90 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. i Home Government. As the net result, a loyal though liberal historian has to say that " the government of Canada was one continued blunder from the day in which Amherst signed the capitulation of Montreal to the union of the Provinces," and that it presented a painful contrast to the resolute treatment of Louisiana by the Americans, who had at once introduced their laws and language. It is doubtful whether his parallel is perfectly correct, but he is certainly right as to his facts. The British minority was reinforced, its sense of superiority was increased, and the enniitv between it and the French majority was aggravated by the settlement in the district south of the St. Lawrence, called the Eastern Townsliips, of a colony of English farmers whose improved and energetic cultivation presented a contrast to the slovenly agriculture of the French.^ Angry questions as to the representation of the Eastern Townships in the Assembly and as to the extension of the French civil law to that district were at the same time added to the budget of discord. Nevertheless, compared with the rule of the Bourbons, the British rule was beneficent, and the Province, however discontented, had improved. M. Papineau, the rebel that was to be, drew the contrast at th^ hustings between the government under which he was living and that of former days. " Then," said he, " trade was monopolised by privileged companies, public and private property often pillaged, personal liberty daily violated, and the inhabitants dragged year after year from their homes and families to shed their blood from the shores of che great lakes, from the banks of the Mississippi and the Ohio to Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Hudson's Bay. Now religious toleration, trial by jury, Habeas Corpus, afford legal and equal security to all, and we need submit to ^ See Lord Durham's Report. ir CHAl'. FRENCH CANADA AFTER THE CONQUEST 91 iberal IS one ed the ;," and itment )duced )arallel 'acts, priority French district ps, of a nergetic ilture of n of the ^.tension me time no laws but tliose of our own making. All these advantaires have become our birthright, and will, I hope, be the lasting inheritance of our posterity. To secure them let us only act as British subjects and freemen." An eminent American judge avowed to the writer that he saw with pleasure the extension of the British Empire, because with British domin- ion went the reign of law under which no man could be de- prived of property or right otherwise than by legal process. In the hearts of the upper and more Conservative classes the British Crown had perhaps taken the place of the French Crown as an object of loyalty, though of a loyalty far less intense. There had been for a time difficulties M'ith the French Church. Tlie ticklish question had been raised whether the King of Great Britain had not either stepped into the place of the King of France and inherited the French King's control over ecclesiastical appointments, or even become ecclesiastically supreme as he was in England. But the point had been waived by the prudence of a government which felt its need of clerical support, and the French clergy were pretty well contented with their relation to the State. They were more than contented with the conduct of England in waging war against the Bevolutionary Atheism of France, and gave thanks to God for having snatched the people of Canada from dependence on an impious nation which had overturned the altars.^ Thus it came to pass that, in 1812, when war broke out between England and the United States, the French Canadians were once more true to England. The seigniors were as much opposed as ever to liepublicanism. The priests, though they might have less reason than before to dread the in- tolerance of Puritanism, had been set more than ever against ' Garneau's Histo*"/, vol. ii, p. 225. 1 ii >-/ .<]HMM,>MlUhM>U».<.^ v«.,.w» ,v ' I'liil I . ' ^'1 I;:'!!: il^ll m \ liti Ml ' I 92 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. democracy by its alliance with Atheism in their mother country, while the national aspirations which had now become strong in the French breast recoiled from the prospect of absorption in the population of the United States. In the person of De Salaberry, a brilliant captain appeared of the French race, but trained in the ]>ritish service. His victory at Chateauguay over a vastly superior force was among the most famous exploits of the war. French Canada, the Americans probably expected, would fall at once into their arms. But they had overrated the attractiveness of Republican institutions to the Frenchman, and had falsely assumed that the British and their rule were as odious in the French Canadian's eye as in their own. Americans are fond of dilating on the harsh features of the English character, which they say make England hateful to all men of other races, and from which they flatter themselves that their own character has become in three generations entirely free. But they have twice offered French Canada liberation from the yoke, welcoming her at the same time to their own arms, and twice she has answered them with bullets. It was the saying of an eminent French Canadian that the last gun in defence of P>ritisli dominion on this continent would be fired by a Frenchman. True, the saying was expressive less of loyalty to Great Britain than of desire to preserve under her pro- tection a nationality separate from the United States, and perhaps a theocracy untouched by llepublican influence ; yet it could hardly have been uttered if England had been hate- ful. About British unsociability too much has been said. It is true that such characters as are suited for command are generally less amiable than strong. But in India, saving the sympathetic disturbance set up in Oude by the Sepoy mutiny, there has not been a political insurrection since the (ir CHAl'. lotlier , now ■ospect In the red ol' I. His ze was >nacla, ce into iness of falsely s in the ire fond mracter, of other leir own ee. But ■rom the i-ms, and le saying ,efence of id by a f loyalty her pro- ites, and lice; yet een hate- leen said, lommand a, savin;4 ;ie Sepoy Isince the FRENCH CANADA AFTER THE CONQUEST 93 formation of the lUitisIi Empire, and when llussian invasion threatened, all the feudatories came forward of their own accord with contributions to tlie defence. England was right in ceding the Ionian Isles, but no bitter recollection of her rule, it is believed, lingers there. The Corsicans put them- selves into her hands, and the Sicilians after 1815 would gladly have remained under her protectorate. The Egyptians do not want to be rid of the r>ritish, though France wants to see them out of Egypt. How did France, the reputed paragon of sociability, get on with the Sicilians in the days of the Sicilian Vespers, with the Germans at a later date, or with the nations whose territories her armies occupied under Napoleon ? How does she get on with the Algerian tribes ? The Americans, happily for themselves, have not yet been tried in this way. The war with the Americans over, civil strife began again. This is the proper phrase. The French, the mass of them at least, were not fighting against British government or connec- tion, but against the ascendency of the other race in office and in the Legislative Council. Their feeling towards the liritish government was rather that of disappointed and weary suitors than of rebels ; they mistrusted its knowledge more than its intentions. They cried like their forbears in France, "Ah, si le Bob le savait!" Matters, however, went from bad to worse. For four successive years the Assembly stopped the supplies, so far at least as lay in its power ; for the Crown had a fixed civil list and certain revenues of its own, besides the privilege, in extreme need, of falling back on the Imperial treasury ; it could even turn the tables on the Members of the Assembly by causing the Legislative Council to throw out the Bill for their pay. Since the year 1830 revolution had once more broken \\ I , 94 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. I ^i lllti i;ij;il ■:!' •iili loose in France, and the infection had spread to some of the Trench leaders and to some active spirits among the young lawyers and journalists. A few of the British in Lower Canada were also touched by it and joined the French patriots against their own race. Though there had heein a good deal of talk about popular education, the French people were still very ignorant ; out of eighty-seven thousand of them whose names were affixed to a petition only nine thousand could write ; and their minds were thus open to any delusions which the leaders chose to propagate. Just at this time civil discord was approaching the revolutionary point in Upper Canada, and though the two movements were distinct and had different sources, there was a sympathy between them, and the leaders were in close communication. Papineau, a great popular orator, put himself at the head of the French malcontents, and Nelson at the head of the British. When the crisis was approaching the Home Government became alive to the danger. The tocsin, in fact, was rung in ninety- two resolutions passed by the Canadian Assembly, and demanding, under the guise of a series of reforms, a practical revolution. Lord Gosford was then sent out with two other commissioners to inquire and advise. He preached concord with much unction but with little success. He reported in favour of some practical reforms, but against the change which would have made the Assembly master of the Govern- ment, and on which that body had set its heart. To make the Assembly master of the Government would have been not only tantamount to abdication on the part of the Crown, but would have entailed the abandonment of the British minority to the mercy of the exasperated French. Resolutions in the sense of the Eeport were moved by Lord John Russell in the House of Commons and carried in spite of the opposition of CHAT. )f the Lower Eitriots d deal L-e still whose could lusions le civil Upper ict and 1 them, iiieau, a French When became ninety- ily, and )ractical ,vo other concord |orted in change |Govern- 'o make leen not iwn, but linority lis in the In in the Uition of V FRENCH CANADA AFTER THE CONQUEST 95 Roebuck, Molesworth, and other Radicals who had espoused the cause of the Canadian patriots. This was the signal for insurrection. The French clergy either were off their guard, or, there being on this occasion no danger to their religion from New England Puritans or French Atheists, wavered between their love of order and their patriotism as French- men. At all events, they interfered too late to prevent the rising, though in time to render it if possible more hopeless. All the Ijritish and even the Irish rallied at once round the Government. Nelson proved himself a man of leading if not of light, and, though untrained to arms, repulsed a British detachment which attacked a hamlet in which he was entrenched. Papineau ran away. Sir John Colborne, a resolute veteran of Wellington's school, who was in command, soon swept the rebellion out of existence, and flung the American desperadoes who had come to join it over the border. Some of the leaders were hanged ; martial law reigned, and the Constitution of French Canada came to a disastrous end. The next stage in the political history of the Province is its union with British Canada, of which we shall presently take up the thread. Among the documents in Christie's History of Lower Canada (vol. vi), is a paper on the troubled state of French Canada, by a military man, whether Sir John Harvey, suc- cessively governor of Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia, or by Lieut.-General Evans, is uncertain. The writer speaks with the frankness of his profession. " To a people," he says, " in no respect identified with their rulers, French in their origin, their language, their habits, their sentiments, their religion, — English in nothing but in the glorious Constitution which that too liberal country has conferred upon them, — the sole effect of this boon has ■y^r" 96 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CIIAl'. ii^ii, i !8!i!l been to enable tbeni to display in a constitutional manner those feelings of suspicion, distrust, and dislike by which the conduct of their representatives would warrant us in believing them to be animated towards their benefactors. The House of Assembly of Lower Canada has not ceased to manifest inveterate hostility to the interests of the Crown, it has with- held its confidence from the local government, and has through this blind and illil)eral policy neutralised, as far as it could, every benefit which that government has wished to confer upon the people ; and that the popular representatives have acted in unison with the feelings of their constituents the fact of their having invariably sent back those members whose opposition to the government has been most marked may be thought sutllciently to prove. Ought not such a people to be left to themselves, to the tender mercies of their gigantic neighbours, whose hewers of wood and drawers of water they would inevitably become in six months after the protection of the ]jritish fleets and armies had been withdrawn from them ? The possession of this dreiiry corner of the world is productive of nothing to Great Britain but expense. I repeat that the occupation of Canada is in no respect compensated by any solid advantage. Nevertheless, it pleases the people of England to keep it much for the same reason that it pleases a mastiff or a bull -dog to keep possession of a bare and marrowless bone towards which he sees the eye of another dog directed. And a fruitful bone of contention has it proved, and will it prove, betwixt Great Britain and the United States before Canada is merged in one of the divisions of that Empire, an event, however, which will not happen until blood and treasure have been profusely lavished in the attempts .0 defend what is indefensible, and to retain what is not worth having." m- I '1 rilAP. inner h the eving louse .nifest witli- irongli could, confer s have [its the embers niarked I people niirantic ter they jotection n from orld is repeat l3ensated people pleases ,are and another has it and the divisions happen id in the what is FRENCH CANADA AFTER THE (:ON()UEST 97 ri " This dreary corner of the world " may he relegated to oblivion with Voltaire's quclques aiyents dc ncige. The rest of the quotation will provoke dissent. But the soldier has hit the mark by saying that the only use which the French- Canadians had made of the Constitution given them by Great Britain was to renew in a constitutional form their struuglo against the power which had conquered them with the sword. Not only were they enabled to renew the struggle but to renew it with success ; for the rebellion in both provinces, though vanquislied in the field of war, was victorious in the political field and ended in the complete surrender of Imperial power. It is the height either of generosity or of folly wlieu you have beaten people with arms to bestow on them the means of beating you with votes. The French are not to be blamed in the slightest degree for what they have done. Bather they are to be admired for their patriotic constancy and the steadiness with wliich their aim has been pursued. A British colony conquered by France would have acted just as they have acted : it would have used any political power which the conqueror gave it or wliich it had extorted from his fears as an instrument for breaking his yoke. The fact with which statesmen have to deal is that the power has been so used by the people of New France under the guidance of their clergy, and that Quebec at tlie present day, tlinugh kindly enough in its feelings towards Great Britain, is not a British colony, but a little French nation. , , H I! i if" i 'fin 'i Hi :: !{ > Ji ■■'ill ' ' ii !i' i|!lf • CHArTER VI HISTORY OF UI'PEK CANADA* Had the Americans been as wise and merciful aft';r their first as they were after their second civil war, and closed the strife as all civil strife ought to he closed — with an amnesty — British Canada would never have come into existence. It was founded by tlie Loyalists driven by revolutionary vengeance from their homes, who at the same time settlfid in large numbers in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. These men were deeply wronged, and might well cherish and hand down to their sons as they did the memory of the wrong. They had done nothing as a body to put themselves out of the pale of mercy. They had fought as every citizen is entitled and presumjjtively Umnd to fight for the government under which they were bom, to which they owed allegiance, and which as they thoujdit gave them the substantial benefits of freedom. They hail fought for a connection which, though false, at all events since the colony had grown able to shift for itself, and fraught with the peril of discord, was still prized by the colonists generally, as might have been shown out of the mouth of all the revolu- ' The chief sources of this historical sketcli are Mac3Iul]en's Canada, Read's Life of Sivicoe, Coffin's fVar of 1812, Sir Franciii Bond Hea.l's Narrative, Mr. Lindsey's Life of W. Lyon Mackenzie, Dent's Uj/per Canadian Rebellion, and Lord Durham's Report. I ! Jii CHAI'. VI mSTYjBY OF UPI'ER CANADA 99 leiT first he strife inesty — >Tice. It lutionary settled in ^fl Prince nd migVit (lid the a body to ad fougbt id to fight to which .rave them ight for a the colony I the peril lera ■iiy, as the revolu- lleTi's Canad(U Bond Head' hper Canadian tionary leaders, including Samuel Admiis, the principal fomentor of the quarr*;!. Tlie constitutional means of redress liad not been exhau.st(i<(J, nor was there any reason to despair of obtaining a reixial of the Tea Duty as a repeal of the Stamp Tax liad l>fcen obtained. A grouj) of Boston republicans, who had l>een bent from the first, notwitlistanding their disclaimers, on bringing about independence, laboured to excite the people and prevent reconciliation. The in- telligence and property ( the colonies, the bulk of it at least, had been on the loyalist side till it was repelled by the blundering violence of thft government and its generals ; nor would it have been ]x>!«ible to fix upon a point at which the normal rule of civil duty wm reversed and fidelity to the Crown became treason Ui the commonwealth. Outrages had been committed on both sides, as is always the case in civil war. England, at all events, was bound in honour to protect the refugees in their new home ; * otherwise she might have listened to counsels of wis/lom and withdrawn politically from a continent in which she had no real interest but those of amity and trade. If an empire antagonistic to the United States is ever formed upon the north of them, and if trouble to them ensues, they have to thank their ancestors who refused amnesty to the vanquished in a civil war. British Canada, when it was severed from French Canada received by Pitt's Act tlie same Constitution. It was pro- vided with a Governor, called in the case of the younger province Lieutenant-Governor, to represent the Crown; an Executive Council to represy«lMts in their new home, England voted £3,300,000 to indemnify them {tx thfdr lost estates. J I 100 CANADA AXn THE CANADIAN QUESTION CIIAl'. liii:; of Lords ; and aii Elective Assembly to represent the House of Conniions. Tliis was called " the express image and transcript of the British Constitution." But though it might be the express image in form, it was far from being the ex- press image in reality of Parliamentary (Government as it exists in Great Britain, or even as it existed in Great liritain at that time. The Lieutenant-Governor, representing the Crown, not only reigned but governed, with a ministry not assigned to him by the vote of the Assembly, but chosen by himself, and acting as his advisers, not as his masters. The Assembly could not effectually control his policy by with- iiolding supplies, because the Crown, with very limited needs, had revenues, territorial and casual, of its own. Thus the imitation was, somewhat like the Chinese imitation of the steam-vessel, exact in everything except the steam. But in the new settlement there was other business than politics on hand, and perhaps Parliamentary Government, party, and the demagogue came quite as soon as they were needed. British Canada had as her first Lieutenant-Governor, Sim- coe, and save in one respect she could not have had a better. Local history still fondly seeks to identify the spot where he pitched his tent — a tent which had belonged to Captain Cook — when the shore of Lake Ontario, on which the fair city of Toronto now stands, was a primeval forest, and the stillness of the bay, now full of the puffing of steamers and the hum of trade, was broken only by the settling of flocks of water- fowl or by the paddling of the Indian's canoe. Sinicoe had a good estate in England, and had sat in the House of Com- mons. He might have lived at home at his ease when he chose to live under canvas in a Canadian winter and struggle with the difficulties of founding a commonwealth in Canadian wilds. The love of active duty must have been strong in CHAV. louse le ex- as it Britain Iff the ,ry not iseii by I. The f with- l needs, 1ms the . of tlie it in the itics on and the VI HISTORY OF I'l'l'Kll CANADA 101 him. But tlie love of fighting Yankees was strong also, and it led him at last into relations with Indians hostile^ to the United States which alarmed the Home (Jovernment and cut short his useful career. As colonel of the Queen's Kauu^ers in the revolutionary war he had served the Crown gallantly, and at the same time* had commanded the respect of his opponents. His cliaracter in itself would have been enough to prove that a patriot might be opposed to the revolution. His intercourse with the better men on the other side re- minds us of the letter of Sir William Waller, the Parlia- mentary general, to a lloyalist friend at the outbreak of the Civil War in England, praying that the war, since it must come, might be waged without personal animosity and in a way of honour. The Duo de liochefoucauld Liancourt, the paragon of French liberal aristocrats and of landlords, driven into exile by the revolution, looks in on Governor Simcoe and reports of him that he is "just, active, enlightened, brave, frank, and possesses the confidence of the country, of the troops, and of all those who join him in the administration of public affairs, to which he attends with the utmost appli- cation, preserving all the old friends of the King and neglect- ing no means of procuring him new ones. He unites," says the Due, " in my judgment all the (qualities whicli his station requires to maintain the important possession of Canada, if it be possible that England can long retain it." The governor's face, in his portrait, bespeaks force of character, honesty, and good sense. His good sense he showed by admitting, in spite of his prejudice against the Americans, settlers from the United States, though he was careful to guard his frontier with a line of U.E. Loyalists, placing the Americans in the rear. With all his fervent attachment to Great Britain, he knew at all events that Canada was on the American continent. It |: ( §' , . !: w ■ 102 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION til AT, At Niagara, then tlie capital, in a log-liousc wliicli l)v liiancourt describes as small and miserable, but which if it were now standing would be venerated by Ontario as much as Itome venerated the hut of Ivoniulus, Simcoe assembled for the first time the little yeoman Parliament of British Canada with all the forms of monarchical procedure, and in phrase which not unsuccessfully imitated the buckram of a Speech from the Throne, announced to his backwoods Lords and Commons the reception of the "memorable Act," by which the wisdom and ben'-ficence of a most gracious Sover- eign and the British Parliament had " imparted to them the blessings of our invaluable Constitution," solemnly enjoining them faithfully to discharge "the momentous trusts and duties " thereby committed to their rough hands. The meeting being at haiTCst time, and the harvest being of more consequence than politics, out of the five legislative coun- cillors summoned two only, and out of the sixteen assembly- men summoned five only, attended. The good sense of those present, however, seems to have risen to the level of their legislative functions. Probably it showed itself now and for some time afterwards by letting the governor legislate as he pleased. The session over, ihey wended their way homeward, some on horseback through pathless woods, camping out by the way, or using Indian wigwams as their inns, some in bark canoes along tlie shore of Lake Ontario and down the St. Lawrence. It was not easy, as Simcoe found, to get a Par- liament together in those days. This was the heroic era before politics, unrecorded in any annals, which has left of itself no monument other than the fair country won by those obscure husbandmen from the wilder- ness, or perhaps, here and there, a grassy mound, by this time nearly levelled with the surrounding soil, in which, after their I m r ;i!!iii THAI-. li Dc if it much iritisli iiid in 11 of a Lords Sover- em the joining its and . The of more e coun- sembly- of those of then- and for e as he eward, out by in bark the St. t a Par- in any the fair wilder- Ihis time iter their VI HISTORY OF UPl'KR CANADA >; 103 hfe's })artnorship of toil and endurance, the pioneer and Ids wife rest s'-'^e by side. " The backwoodsman," says liistory,* " wliose fortunes are cast in the remote inhuid settlenuMits of tlie pre- sent day, far removed from churches, destitute of ministers of th ' (Jospel and medical men, without schools, or roads, or the many conveniences that make life desirable, can alone a])preciate or even understand the mmu'rous difliculties and hardships that beset the first settler amon^ the a^'ue-^wamps of Western Canada. The clothes on his back, witli a ritle or old musket and a well- tempered axe, were not unfrequently Am full extent of his worldly possessions. Thus lightly e([uipped he took possession of his two hundred acres of nlosely-timbeied forest land and commenced operations. The welkin rings again with his vigorous strokes, as huge tree after tree is assailed and tumbled to the earth ; and the sun presently shines in upon the little clearing. The best of the logs are partially squared and serve to build a shanty; the remainder are given to the flames. Now the rich mould, the accumulation of centuries of decayed vegetation, is gathered into little hillocks, into which potatoes are dibbled. Indian corn is planted in another direction, and perhaps a little wheat. If married, the lonely couple struggle on in their forest oasis like the solitary traveller over the sands of Sahara or a boat adrift on the Atlantic. The nearest neighbour lives miles off. and when sickness comes thev have to travel far through the forest to claim human sympathy. But for- tunately our nature, with elastic temperament, adapts itself to circumstances. By and by the potatoes peep up, and the corn - blades modestly show themselves around the charred maple stumps and girdled pines, and the pros- pect of sufficiency of food gives consolation. As winter ^ MacMuIleu's Canada, p. 232. > I 1 i i r - -■ ' — - •"'■ ■■i~««^'^»>---- ->-«•■ I > ■.»>--«f'aA»>«,y.yy V 104 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. approaches, a deer now and then adds to the comforts of the solitary people. Such were the mass of the first settlers in Western Canada." The rough lot, we trust, was cheered by health and hope, while the loneliness and mutual need of support would knit closer the tie of conjugal affection. To the memory of con- querors who devastate the eailh, and of politicians who vex the life of its denizens with their struggles for power and place, we raise sumptuous monuments : to the memory of those who by their toil and endurance have made it fruitful we can raise none. But civilisation, while it enters into the heritage which the pioneers prepared for it, may at least look with gratitude on their lowly graves. With clergy the people in those days were very scantily provided,^ and their work, with their home affections, must have been their religion, the solemn and silent forest their temple. When the clergyman came his life in going round to settlements through an uncleared countrv was, as survivors of the primitive era will tell you, almost as hard as that of the backwoodsman himself. In due time the English of Canada showed their kinship to those of New England by setting up common schools, and their civilisation, though backward and rude at first, developed itself generally on the lines of their race. Simcoe was followed by Hunter and Gore, about whom not much is known, but who were evidently weaker men, and failed to restrain wrong-doing which Simcoe had restrained. Even of these, however, and of the whole line of Royal Gover- nors in both Provinces, it may be said that whether they were strong or weak, wise or unwise, popular or unpopular, there rests not upon the name of any one of them the stain of 1 MacMullen's Canada, p. 248. HAP. VI HISTORY OF UPPER CANADA 105 tlic tiers lope, kuit con- 3 vex r and )ry of •uitful ,to the ;t look cautily ;, must 3t their hf round irvivors as that rlish of .and by though on the whom lien, and Itrained. . Gover- Ley were Ir, there Istain of dishonour.^ Neither British Canada nor French Canada in British hands ever liad an Intendant Bigot. The errors and inisdeeds of the Governors arose chiefly from their ignorance of the country which they were sent to rule. On their arrival they almost inevitably fell into the liands of the dominant cli(|ue. The Home Government, from wliicli they took their orders, was if possible more ignorant tlian they were, and its councils changed with every change of a party adnunistration. It was their doom, in short, to be the instruments of that futile and pernicious attempt of the Old World to regulate the lives of connnunities in the New World which is now happily drawing to its close. For the character of the people, and perhaps even for their material welfare, the imported rule of men of honour, had they only been better informed and more impartial, might ii; itself have been not less desir- able than that of the party leaders who have succeeded them. But party government, we will hope, is not tiie end. The colony was fdling up with settlers from different quarters. There came in, besides Englishmen, Scotchmen who brought Presbyterianism and usually Liberal ideas with them, Anuiricans who had lived under a IJepublic, and Irish- men, both Orange and (Jreen. Political life began, though it was still of little importance compared with the axe and the plough. Even so early we hear of an ' independent ' Member of Parliament who is killed in a duel, though we are not told that the duel was owing to his difference of opinion with the Treasury Bench. On the more active and democratic spirits the neighbourhood of the American liepublic could ^ Peter Russell, who acted as adminihtrator between the governorships of Simcoe and Hunter, appears to liave disgraced himself by rapacity in the matter of Crown lands. Parting presents to CJovernors were (piestionable, but probably had not been condemned in those days. No charge of actual cor- ruption was ever made against a Royal Governor. m 4 m 106 I 'I CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAI', .1 ■ 1 JM;ii •1 ' ! ■5 im\ i!! I :!il! II I I |l not fail to tell. An independent Press was born in a log hut, the embryo editorials being no doubt written and printed by the same hand. Under Hunter and Gore abuses had grown up, especially in the land department and in the administration of justice. Keformers arose, lieform had its proto-martyr in Thorpe, an English barrister sent out to a Canadian judgeship, and apparently an upright man, who for protesting against wrong was deprived of his place through the influence of Governor Gore, misadvised probably by the Council. Willcocks, an immigrant journalist, whom the Governor had learned to regard as " an execrable monster who would deluge the Province with blood," also testified in prison to the liberty of the Press. But political conflicts were suspended by the War of 1812. Into that war the weak and unconscientious Madison was forced by tlie violent party whose leading spirit was Henry Clay, not for the reasons alleged, about which nothing was afterwards said in the negotiations for peace, but mainly in the hope of conquering Canada, and furthering the ambitious ends of the party. England had the war with Napoleon on her hands ; victory seemed likely to rest with the oppressor of nations, and the United States, it was thought, might share with him the glory and the booty. Let it never be forgotten that the best part of the American people opposed the war. Their attitude was marked by the com- parative absence of attacks on Canada along the line of Vermont and Maine ; though the loss and suffering fell most on the maritime states of New England, and little on the West, which had driven the country into the war. Unprin- cipled aggression met with its due reward. The American invaders were repeatedly beaten by handfuls of Canadians, and the names of Sir Isaac Brock, and his comrades- iV: nxr. VI HISTORY OF UPPER CANADA lo; log and uses L the ,d its to a who place bably ^vhom anster Eied in nflicts adison •it was lothing mainly ig the r with 3t with lought, never people le corn- line of [\\ most Ion the Fnprin- lerican ladians, Inrades- in-arms, including the Indian chief Tecuniseh, were endeared by heroic exploits to the country which they successfully defended against tremendous odds. Tlie first invtider, General Hull, and his army capitulated to a Canadian force not half tlieir number, and the Canadians conquered Michi- gan. On Queenston Heights, tlie scene of Brock's deatli and his array's victory, the idol of Canadian patriotism sleeps beneath a monumental column which challenges by its stateliness respect for Canadian art. Of the share which French Canada and De Salaberry had in the defence men- tion has already been made. As the war went on it became more ferocious, and the inhuman burning of Niagara by the Americans in mid- winter was avenged by havoc not less inhuman, and by the burning of the Capitol at Washington. The Americans learned in time to fight well, and the battle of Lundy's Lane, near the close, was the most desperate of all. Till midnight the struggle went on, the roar of the cannon and the rattle of the musketry contending with the thunder of Niagara, and the loss on both sides was terrible. The superiority of American resources also showed itself upon the lakes ; the Canadian flotilla on Lake Erie was totally destroyed, and Toronto, then called York, twice fell into the hands of the enemy. When N.apoleon had lallen, the hands of Groat Britain were free, the better party among the Americans prevailed, and they were ready for peace. Their aggression would have ended more disastrously than it did had not Pakenham blindly dashed his army against the cotton bales of New Orleans, and had the large force which England was at last enabled to send to Canada been placed under the command of a better soldier than Prevost. Americans say that the war did them good by consolidating the Union. A nation has hardly a right to consolidate its !ii1l 11 mmm 108 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAl', |ii! ;i :■!; i m\ ll ' I:'''"!! union by slaughtering and despoiling its unoffending neigh- bours. But slavery, from which the real danger of disruption arose, was not weakened in its political influence ; on the contrary it was strengthened by the war. Whatever attrac- tion American institutions might before have liad for Canadians was counteracted or weakened by American aggression. Worst of all was the effect which the fratri- cidal conflict inevitably had in renewing and envenoming tlie schism of the Anglo-Saxon race. Before that fime British Canadians and Americans had hardly looked upon each other as foreigners. Americans had freely settled and been received as citizens in Britisli Canada. Two generations have not sufficed to efface the evil memories of 1812. Ministers of discord, seeking to fan the dying embers of international hatred, still appeal to the names of Brock and liis companions -in -arms, whose glory they sully by such misuse.^ Tlie war over, the political struggle began again — with all the more intensity, perhaps, because the war had unsettled the people and excited their combative propensities, while, farming having been neglected, depression ensued as soon as the military expenditure had ceased. In the course of the next fifteen years a regular Eeform Party was born. It had reason enougli for its existence. The Government with all ' Injustice has been done to the memory of General Proctor, whose name seems wortJiy to be coupled with that of Brock. He gained one brilliant victory. It appears to be admitted that his retreat before Harrison's iinnionsoly superior and far more effective army had become inevitable after the destruction of the Canadian flotilla on Lake Erie. Even if, as the court- martial on him pronounced, he did not conduct the retreat with judgment, tliere seems to be no shadow of a pretence for charging him with personal iiiisconduct. The court-martial expressly acquitted him of any charge of that kind. His name was coupled with a misfortune, which was not his fault, and h^ seems not to have been popular in command ; but there is apparently nothing to justify an impeachment of his courage. LllAV. VI HISTORY OF UPPER CANADA 109 i I eigli- ption a the ttrac- i for ericaii fratri- ng the British I each d been orations [ 1812. bers of ock and 3y such with all Liisettled Is, while, soon as of the It had kvith all Ihosc name le brilUiUit I Harrison's |taV)le after , the court- Ijmlgment, Ih personal I charge of las not his Vt there is its patronage and influence, including the disposal of the Crown lands, had fallen into the hands of a King called the " Family Compact " — a nickname borrowed, it seems, from the diplomatic history of Europe rather than suggested by the number of family alliances among the members. The nucleus of the Family Compact was a group of United Empire Loyalists who might not unnaturally deem them- selves a privileged class. To this was added a nunjber of retired officers and other British gentlemen who had received grants of lands but found themselves ill fitted for farming in the bush, and better fitted for holding places under iJovern ■ ment, together with scions of genteel families in England, sent out sometimes for the family's good. The Compact formed a social aristocracy as well as a political ring. It had, like all such political bodies, a tail less aristocratic than itself. Its strongholds were Government House, the occu- pant of which was ail the more under its influence because he had no other gentlemen with whom to associate ; the Executive Council, which was entirely in its hands, and the Legislative Council or Upper House of Parliament, which it also engrossed, and through which it was enabled to veto any bills passed by the Elective Assembly. The Elective Assembly, it will be borne in mind, could not effectually coerce the Government and the Upper House, as the British House of Commons had done, by stopping the supplies, the Government having a fixed civil list and a territorial revenue of its own, with the Imperial treasury whereon to fall back in extreme need. In the Assembly itself the Family Compact was able to control many seats, and sometimes a majority, through the influence of the Government, aided by irregularities in the representation. Its adherents filled the Bench, the magistracy, the high places of the legal profession, and those m wmmmm mmmm turn Hi- III I ill^ I i .'•! Ill 1 ' I! 1^1: nil ?^H i! i'- .5 ^. , ' II'' P^' ,1; ' i l„r' 1 I'lll i Hill i ll ■ il 110 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CIIAl'. of the Episcopal Church, which at that time was virtually established and endowed by the State, By grant or purchase, its members had got into their hands nearly the whole of the waste lands of the Province, they were all-powerful in the Cliartered Banks, and at last shared among themselves almost all offices of trust and profit.^ By the appropriation of the public lands the Compact not only robbed the commonwealth, but, as the lands were held for a rise, obstructed settlement and retarded the progress of the country. It enhanced its unpopularity by giving itself social airs, though the account of its grand mansions, its trains of lackeys and its banquets, found in some historians, are certai'"''y overdone. Of its mansions some remain and are of modest dimensions, nor did its chief members leave great wealth. The Compact showed its exclusiveness even towards British immigrants, excluding them by jealous restrictions from free practice in the legal and medical professions, " so that an Englishman emigrating to Upper Canada found himself almost as much an alien in the country as he would have been in the United States." ^ The politics of the Compact were Tory, of course, and it was ardently loyal to British connection, so long, at least, as Toryism reigned at home. Like its counterpart in England, it was closely allied with the Established Church. Not all its leaders were jobbers : some were sincere lovers of prerogative. Sir John Beverley Eobinson, for example, Attorney-General, afterwards Chief Justice, and the ruling spirit of the Executive Council, was a high-minded as well as very able man, though it is impossible to disconnect his name from a system of administrative jobbery, or from some acts of partisan injustice. At liis side was Dr. Strachan, Archdeacon and afterwards Bishop of Toronto, a clerical ^ Lord Durham's Report, p. 66. - Ibid., p. 74. VI HISTORY OF UPrER CANADA 111 I ■ aspirant who had passed from Presbyterianism to Angli- canism, as was generally believed, with a view to th(» advancement of his fortunes — a man of remarkable force of character, able and shrewd, though not wise, the type of a clerical politician, and, like all clerical politicians, even more mischievous to the Church for whose inte^'ests he fought than to the State. Beside the Family Compact there was gradu- ally formed a Conservative party, in which tlie Compact ultimately merged, of men who had no desire to abet the oligarchy in its abuses, but recoiled from revolution. The Eeform party was in like manner divided into an extreme and a moderate wing. Of the moderate and constitutional wing the chief was Eobert Baldwin, a man whose renown for integrity and wisdom is such as to make him a sort of Canadian Lord Somers. Of the extreme and covertly repub- lican wing the chief man at the time was William Lyon Mackenzie, a wiry and peppery little Scotchman, hearty in his love of public right, still more in his hatred of public wrongdoers, clever, brave, and energetic, but, as tribunes of the people are apt to be, far from cool-headed, sure-footed in his conduct, temperate in his language, or steadfast in his personal connections. With Mackenzie were Dr. Eolpli, a man of more solid ability, of deeper character and designs, whom his admirers call sagacious, his critics sly; and Bidwell, the son of a refugee from American justice, but himself apparently a man of virtue as well as sense. War was declared on a number of issues — the constitution of the Legislative Council, which the patriots wanted to make elective and to purge of placemen ; the administration of the Crown lands ; the independence of the judges, which was compromised both by their liability to removal at pleasure and by their holding seats in Parliament ; the control of the ;1 i: ij 4'.:. ^ 3; .. l;|| II ^ ill 112 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN f,>i;E.STIO\ f'HAP. revenue and the civil list, besides a nuiulx-r of personal questions, such as always present thenis■ "-nS and ui^right man as well a,, ,, ^f"''"'"^ "as a strong -ans inclined to .ink at a, ^ b: I.T ^1 '''' '^' "" kannig to prerogative, deer«Hl if , , ''"'' '' '"""^"7 for the Crown, and C.t • ,'" ""'^ '" '""'^ "'" fortress Hi3 gracious reply Ta Tn' '' ""'"' "' I'"""'"" -•'•'■ Address with muci «..- J:;:::, 7 :^ --e your congratulations." His ,e,, ,j;„ ;"^,, '■''"'^- >'- for your -as, " Gentlemen, I have ^^Tivedtl tr"'' """""' ''""" »'>ts." He welcomed a na.ri^ 1 '''""™ °'' ""^ '"''^^t- ^'tanding to their .1^^^' '°""'''"™ "'"^ artillery„,en ance of ball-cartridge ujT""- """' ""'' ' """""^ «""- t'-reby, as in fact did thi :";'! ""' '° ^""'™"' ^'"'"■■ng '"d not regard the Home G,! ' ^'"^''""^- ">^' they ""t the reve., J^^r' ^f, -"^«% oppressive' i ■"^■bt be sadly misinformed. In ,1 S[Z n ' i V ; l! t v, i • I ti! liii m< 4 i III I'i Ml ') 114 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION oil A I'. England itself a revolution had by this time taken place. Since the close of the war with Napoleon, the current of political life, long frozen, had begun to How. The winter of Liberalism had ended ; its sun rose high again, and Parlia- mentary reform had come. The change extended to the Colonial Office, though there Liberalism was still limited by lingering tradition. Even from the Canningite Lord Goderich the agitator received a degree of attention which scandalised the Tories of the Canadian Assembly. Among other things Lord Goderich laid it down in his despatch that ecclesiastics, if they were to keep their seats in the Council, ought to abstain from interfering with secular atfairs; in- timating his opinion at the same time "that by resigning their seats they would best consult their own personal comfort and the success of their designs for the spiritual good of the people." The Legislative Council treated the despatch with open contempt. By the Liberal Lord Glenelg a catalogue of grievances drawn up by the Reformers with Mackenzie at their head was respectfully considered, and a reply was written promising important reforms and concessions, though not the one great concession, Re- sponsible Government. The law officers of the Compact, Boulton and Hagerman, were also dismissed for rebellion against the liberal policy of the Crown, whereupon the loyalty of the Tories gave way and they began to throw out hints of " alienation " from " the glorious Empire of their sires," and of " casting about for a new state of political existence." On a liberal policy congenial to that which prevailed in England the Home Government was now bent. But to carry it out through a warrior like Colborne was impossible, and he was recalled, though only to command against the rebels in the French Province. Before leaving, I VI JIISTORV OF Uri'Eli CANADA m however, lie set the house on fire by authorisinj^ the creation of fit'ty-seven llectories out of the disputed Clergy Eeserves Fund. Though the number actually carved out was only forty- four, it gave to the Church a substantial slice of the endow- ment which she claimed. This measure produced intense exasperation. The choice of a man to take Colborne's place, and give etfect to the new policy, which the Colonial Ollice made was so strange that to account for it recourse has seriously been had to the hypothesis of mistaken identity.^ Sir Francis Bond Head, a half-pay major, an assistant Foor-Law commissioner, the hero of a famous ride over the I'ampas, and the writer of light books of travel, was awakened in the dead of night at his lodging in Kent by a King's messenger, who brought him the appointment of the Lieutenant- Governorship of Upper Canada, with a summons to wait on the Colonial minister next morning. In justice to him be it remembered that he declined, and accepted only when pressed in a manner which made acceptance a duty. He was recommended no doubt by the manner in which he had done his work as Poor- Law commissioner, by his genial temper, his knowledge of the world, and the plucky and adventurous character, shown in his ride, which was likely to make him a favourite with people whom the Colonial Secretary might think more back- woodsmen in character than they really were. Nor was he ^ The story told by Mr. Roebuck and others to Sir Francis Iliiicks that Sir Francis Bond Head was mistaken for Sir Edmund Walker Head, afterwards Governor-General, is still current, but cannot be worthy of credence. Sir Edmund Head, having been born in 1805, was at this time only a little over thirty, and though known to his friends as a political student, he had made no mark as yet in public life. It was not till six years afterwards that he was appointed to the Poor-Law comniissionership, when he came forward as a imblic man. H'such a blunder was possible on the part of Lord Glenelg, it was not possible on the part of the permanent Under Secretary, who was then Sir James Stephen. i 116 CANADA AND TIIK CANADIAN gUKSTlON CIIAI'. VI '■ ijll'i', J wanting in discenimont or in force ; lie did a great service by forbidding the Canadian Banks to suspend si)ecie payment in a connnercial crisis, and inducing them to ride out, at a sound ancliorage, the financial storm which was sweeping over the United States. JUit he was very impulsive, very vain, and under the influence of success became light-headed. Joseph Ilume and other Liberals connnended him to their brethren in Canada, perhaps taking on trust the nominee of a Liberal government, lie brought with him as the chart for bis course Mackenzie's cfttalogue of grievances, with Lord Cflenelg's commentary ])romising, as has already been said, practical reforms and an administration in accordance with the reasonable wishes of the people, but not promising Jvcsponsible Government, that is, the surrender of the power of the Crown to the representatives of the people. If the Colonial Office itself was still undecided on the vital point, it could not find fault with a Go\ernor for taking what to him was the natural line. If it was itself still with hesitating hand fingering the keys of the fortress, it could hardly expect its delegate, — such a delegate, above all, as the horseman of the Pampas, — to perform for it the act of capitulation. Sir Francis was appointed in 1836. In jNLarch 1837 Lord John Eussell, speaking hi tJie House of Commons, pronounced Cabinet Government in the colonies incompatible with the relations which ought to exist between the mother country and the colony. " Those relations," he said, " required that His Majesty should be represented in the colony not by ministers, but by a Governor sent out by the King, and responsible to the Parliament of Great Britain. Otherwise," he said, " Great Britain would have in the Canadas all the inconveniences of colonies without any of their advantages." This seems enough to justify the resistance of Sir Francis Bond was \ was t practi tion the C; com])li King Welfare a i)ati( Siicii \\ these si Sir himself given a an elecl expectal both pa his weal niission, tlie who he had and Jiid reachinfif whicli th designs u combat, it noted, from the the peoph neighbour kenzie the vt IIISTOIiV OK UrPKR CANADA 117 Bond Head to IJcspoiisible Goveriiuioiit. (Jloiiel,Lj liiinself was vorbosn and ambiguous, but the upshot of his inandatu was tliat " in tlic administration of Canadian affairs a suflicient practical responsibility already existed without the introduc- tion of any hazardous schemes," and that the last resort of the (Canadians, if they were discontented, was to carry their complaints to the f(jot of the throne, whose occupant (then King William IV) " felt the most lively interest in the welfare of his Canadian sulijects, and was ever ready to devote a patient and laborious attention to any representations." Such was the atmosphere of constitutional fiction in which these statesmen lived ! Sir Francis laughed when, on entering Toronto, he found himself placarded as " the tried Reformer," he who had never given a thouglit to ])olitics, who liad scarcely ever voted at an election. Y>y the lleformers he was received with glad expectation, by the Conservatives with sullen misgiving; but both parties soon found themselves mistaken, lie showed his weak side at once by a theatrical announcement of his mission, and by indiscreetly communicating to the Assembly the whole of Lord Glenelg's letter of instructions. Presently he had interviews with the leading licformers, Mackenzie and liidwell. In them he thought he detected designs reaching beyond the redress of the particular grievances which they had laid before the Colonial Office — Eepublican designs in short, such as he deemed it his special vnontion to combat. Nor was he far wrong, for their aim, once more be it noted, was nothing less than to take away the Government ^ from the Crown and hand it over to the represcLtatives of', the people. It cannot be doubted that the example of the. neighbouring Republic was in their minds. By Lyon Mac- kenzie the baronet and man of society was personally repelled. H CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap. ' liM m i 3 ^1' tl ' The tiny creature," he says, " sat during the interview with , his feet not touching the ground, and his face turned away from me at an angle of 70 degrees." That Mackenzie had been a "pedlar lad" and an "errand-boy" was all against happy relations with the Lieutenant-Governor. Head soon found himself in the arms of the Compact, and fighting against Kesponsible Government as democratic, American, and sub- versive of British institutions. This he now deemed his grand mission. Hard hitting ensued between him and the Reformers both in the Assembly and out of it. He even forgot his social tact and cut Toronto to the heart by telling her deputies that he would talk down to the level of their understandings. The Opposition played into his hands by identifying itself with Papineau and the agitators in the Lower Province, whose object clearly was revolution, and by giving publicity to an indiscreet letter of Joseph Hume talking of " independence aiid freedom from the baneful domination of the mother countrv." These mistakes threw the force of the Conservative party decisively into the scale of the Government. Loyal addresses came in. Tlie Lieutenant- Governor seized the advantage and went to the country crying Treason. The cry prevailed, with the help of Government J influence unsparingly used, cormption, mob violence, and the inequalities of the representation. A large majority in favour of the Government was returned. Head was beside himself with exultation, and fancied that his spirited policy had put all his enemies under his feet and made him perfectly master of the situation. " In a moral contest," he wrote to the Colonial Office, " it never enters into my head to count the number of my enemies." " The more I am trusted," he said, " the more cautious I shall be ; the lieavier I uni laden, the steadier I shall sail." The Colonial Office had begun to .•*■! VI HISTORY OF UPPER CANADA 119 suspect what sort of an instrument it had in the man who wrote to it in this style, and told it that he was aware his gasconading answer to an address " might be cavilled at in Downing Street, as he knew it was not exactly according to Hoyle, but it must be remembered that revolutions could not be made with rose-water." Still it could not be denied that he had succeeded. The Colonial Office waited with mingled curiosity and anxiety for the result. The result was that the Reformers were driven to despair, and the more violent of them to rebellion. Under the leader- ship of Mackenzie, the malcontents armed and drilled. Con- fident in the power of his moral thunderbolts, the Lieutenant- Governor scoffed at danger, sent all the regular troops to the Lower Province, neglected to call out the militia, or even to put his capital in a state of defence, and turned a deaf ear to every warning. Toronto all but fell into the hands of the rebels. Mackenzie, who showed no lack either of courage or of capacity as. a leader, brought before it a force sufficient for its capture, aided as he would have been by his partisans in the city itself, and he was foiled only by a series of acci- dents, and by the rejection of his bold counsels at the last. Just in time however help arrived, the rebellion collapsed, and its leaders fled. A filibustering war was for some time kept up by the American " sympathisers " along the border, and the bunung of the Caroline, a piratical steamer which the Canadians sent flaming over Niagara, gave rise to diplomatic complications. The American authorities were slow in acting ; but they acted at last, and Jiere is no reason to believe that the American people in general strongly sym- pathised with the rebellion in Ji iti'-ii Canada, much less with that in the French Province, After all, these raids, repre- hensible as they are, may be regarded, like the trouble given if ■*l! r-r^" ■pup 120 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap, vi , to diplomacy about tlie Fisheries and Behring's Sea, as so I many blind efforts of the New World to shake off European interference. On the other hand, when it is said thai the Canadian rebellion was put down by British bayonets, let it be borne in mind that in Upper Canada there was not a single British bayonet when the rebellion was put down. In both Canadas it was, in fact, not a rebellion against the British Government, ' but a petty civil war, in Upper Canada between parties, in 'Lower Canada between races, though in Lower Canada the British race had the forces of the Home Government on its side. " We rebelled neither against Her Majesty's per: on nor her Government, but against Colonial misgoveniment, were the words of one of the rebel leaders in Lower Canada. The two movements were perfectly distinct in their origin and in their course, though there was a sympathy between them, and both were stimulated by the general ascendency of Liberal opinions since 1830 in France, in England, and in the world at large. The rebellion was the end of Sir Francis Bond Head. Now came Lord Durham, the son-in-law of Grey, and an Avatar, as it were, of the Whig Vishnu, to inquire into the sources of the disturbance, pronounce judgment, and restore order to the twofold chaos. i CHAPTEll Vir THE UNITED PROVINCES 1 ,i;> 1 *■ ■f H Lord Durham was a splendid specimen of tlie aristocratic man of the people, such as perhaps only the Whig houses, after being out of office for half a century, could have pro- duced. From the hotel where His Excellency put up all other guests were cleared out, and not even the mails were allowed to be taken on board the steamer which bore his person. Invested with large powers, he exceeded them in playing the despot. He issued an ordinance banishing some of the rebels to Bermuda, under penalty of death if they m should return. This delivered him i' ^o the hands of Brougham, who bore him a grudge, and at once set upon him in the House of Lords, pointing out that His Excellency's ordinance could not be carried into effect without committing murder. The Prime Minister was compelled to disallow the ordinance. Durham after thundering very irregularly against the ungrateful Government which had thrown him overboard, tiimg up his commission, folded his tragic robe round him, and went home. He had time, however, to produce, with the ^ The principal sources of this sketch, besides a number of pamphlets and State papers, are MacMullon's History of Canada, Scrope's Lift' of Lord Stjdcn- htim, Walrond's Letters and Journals of Lord Ehjin, Dent's Last Forty Years, CoUins's Life of Sir J. A. ^fal•d()ll((/d, and Gray's ''nnfederatiou of Canada. iiUi I '-:.■■ 122 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. $ I' help of Charles Biiller, who was his secretary, a very able and memorable Eeport (1839). His diagnosis was to the effect that the disease in Lower Canada arose from a conflict of races, while in Upper Canada it was political. The remedy proposed was to unite the Provinces and give them both Responsible Government. In Lower Canada the tw^o races, Durham held, would never get on harmoniously by themselves. The causes of estrange- ment w^re too deep and the antipathy was too strong. The British minority would never bear to be ruled by a French majori. "father than this they would join the United - States, ?».. that they might remain English, cease to be ' British." Ot fusion, according to Lord Durham, there was no hope. Opposed to each other in religion, in language, in character, in ideas, in national sentiment, hardly ever inter- marrying, their children never taking part in the same sports, meeting in the jury-box only to obstruct justice, the two races vvere " two nations warring iu the bosom of a single State." The rebellion had divided them sharply into two camps. "No portion of the English population had been backward in taking aims in defence of the government; with a single exception no portion of the Canadian population was allowed to do so, even where it was asserted by some that their loyalty induced them thereto." There was nothing for ' it but a union of the Provinces, in which a British majority should permanently predominate, and which should place the British minority of the Lower Province under the broad I ECgis of British ascendency. Durham flattered liimself that by the same measure French nationality with all the political difficulties, and all the obstacles to economical improvement which it carried with it, would be gradually suppressed. " A plan," he said, " by which it is proposed to VII THE UNITED PROVINCES 123 ensure the tranquil government of Lower Canada must ijiclude in itself the means of putting an end to the agitation of national disputes in the legislature by settling at once and for ever the national character of the Province. T entertain no doubt as to the national character which must be given to Lower Canada ; it must be that of the British Empire, that of the majority of the population of British America, that of the great race which must in no long period of time be predominant over the whole North American Continent. Without effecting the change so rapidly or so roughly as to shock the feelings and trample on the welfare of the existing generation, it must henceforth be the first and steady purpose of the British Government to establish an English population ■ with English laws and language in this Province, and to trust its government to none but a decidedly English legislature." Steady purpose of the British Government ! Steady purpose of a Government which itself was changed on an average about once in every five years, and which neither had nor could liave any purpose in reference to its far-distant and little-known dependency but to get along from day to day with as little trouble and danger as it could ! Did not Durham himself say, that in the case of Lower Canada the Imperial Government, "far removed from opportunities of personal observation, had shaped its policy so as to aggravate the disorder ;" that it had sometimes conceded mischievous pretensions of nationality to evade popular claims, and sometimes pursued the opposite course ; and that " a policy founded upon imperfect information and conducted by con- tinually changing hands had exhibited to the colony a system of vacillation which was in fact no system at all?" Durham took it for granted that tlie British majority would act patriotically together against the French. Strange that he, 124 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CIIAl'. I'resh from the field of a furious faction fight, sliould have been so forgetful of tlie ways of faction ! Sir Francis Bond Head saw in this case what Lord Durham and Charles Buller did not see. " So long," he said, " as Upper Canada remains by itself I feel confident that by mere moderate government her ' majority men ' would find that prudence and principle unite to keep them on the same side ; but if once we were to amalgamate this province with Lower Canada, we should instantly infuse into the House of General Assembly a powerful French party, whose implacable opposition would be a dead, or rather a living weight, always seeking to attach itself to any question whatsoever that would attract and decoy the ' majority men,' and I feel quite confident . . . that sooner or later the supporters of British institutions would lind themselves overpowered, not by the good sense and wealth of the country (for they would, I believe, always be staunch to our flag), but by the votes of designing indi- viduals, misrepresenting a well-meaning inoffensive people." Apart from the writer's Toryism, this passage was prophetic. Tlie British were sure to be split into factions, and their factions were sure to deliver them into the hands of the French. The only way of operating with success on two discordant races is to set an impartial power above them both, as Pitt meant to do when by his Act of Union he brought Ireland under the Imperial Parliament, though he could not help impairing the integrity of the Imperial Par- liament itself by introducing the Irish Catholic vote. , Head's own proposal to annex ^Montreal to British Canada was more sensible than the plan of miion, though it would have left the P>ritish of Quebec city and the Eastern Town- ships out in the cold. The reunion of the two Provinces had been projected before: VII THE UNITED rROVINCES 12;1 it was greatly desired by tlie liritish of the Lower Province ; and in 1822 a bill for the i)urpose had actually been brought into the Imperial I'arlianient, but the French being bitterly opposed to it, the Bill had been droi>ped. The ¥• nch were as much opposed to reunion as ever, clearly seeing, what the author of the policy had avowed, that the measure was directed against their nationality. But since the rebellion they were prostrate. Their Constitution had been superseded by a Provisional Council sitting under the protection of Imperial bayonets, and this Council consented to the union. The two Provinces were now placed under a Governor-General -''itli a single legislature, consisting like the legislatures (jf the two I'rovinces before, of an Upper House nominated by the Crown and a Lower House elected by the people. Each Province was to have the same number of representatives, although the population of the French Province was at that time much larger than that of the British Province. The French language was proscribed in official proceedings. French nationality was thus sent, constitutionally, under the yoke. But to leave it its votes, necessary and right as that might be, was to leave it the only weapon which puts the weak on a level with the strong, and even gives them the advantage, since the weak are the most likely to hold together and to submit to the discipline of organised party. On the subject of Responsible Government the decisive words of the Durham Eeport are these : " We are not now to consider the policy of establishing representative government in the North American colonies. That has been irrevocably done, and the experiment of depriving the people of their present constitutional power is not to be thought of. To conduct the government harmoniously in accordance with its established principles is now the business of its rulers ; and I [ * I l^MI^ as 126 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUKSTIOX cn.vr, 1^ know not how it is possible to secure that hanuony in any other way than by administering the goveniinent on those principles which have been fonnJ perfectly efficacious in Great Britain. 1 wouhl not impair a single prerogative of tlie Crown ; on the contrary, I believe that the interests of the people of these colonies require the protraction of y>rerogatives which have not hitherto been exercise to carry on the government in unison with a representative body it must consent to carry it on by means of those in whom that representative body has confidence." In plain words, the ' Crown must let the House of Commons cho^jse the ministers, ' and through them determine the policy. What was to be left to the Crown ? " Its prerogatives." AVliat were they when it had surrendered supreme power ? Canada would have seen perhaps if the imperious author of the liejK^rt had stayed to make the experiment of liesponsible Govenirnent in his own person ; and it is not unlikely that insteaxl of the anticipated harmony, discord and perhaps collision would liave ensued. Perfectly efficacious, Durham said, the system had been in Great Britain. But he forgot that it had not been really tried before the Reform Bill; that the Keforni Bill had been only just passed ; and that even in Great Britain tlie answer still remained to be given to the Duke of Wellington's question, how the Queen's Government was to be carried on. In place of Durham, the experiment was made (1839-41) by Poulett Thomson, afterwards Lord Sydenham, a steady man of business and a prodigious worker, inifji^jrious only in his demands on official industry. He perfonned the function of capitulation on the part of the Crown with a good grace, and fairly smoothed the transition, though he did not escape (.11 A r. VII THE UMTKD PROVINCES 12/ 111 any I those ous in ; of the of the ij^'atives Crown iquence ' on the it must III that rds, the inisters, be left ey when 1(1 have |d stayed his own icipated ensued, heen lU 1 really ad been b answer uestion, ^839-41) steady only in function d grace, escape abuse. His first mirii-stry was formed of the men whom he found in office on hi-i arrival, and who were Conservatives. But these men couW not accommodate themselves to the new system. They f'enowl with the question of Responsible Govern- ment, and when tliey faintly affirmed the doctrine with their lips their hearts were evidtiiitly far from it. Nor could they fully take in the idea of a Cabinet, or understand the mutual responsibility of it« members, the necessity for their agree- ment, and the duty incumbent on them of resigning when they differed vitally from their colleagues, or of going out of offtce with the rest. Mr. Dominic Daly, for instance, acted as if he deemed himifC'lf a fixture in office, whatever might be the fleeting policy of the hour. Mr. Draper, the Ajax of the Conservatives, being pressed on the vital point, enveloped himself in a cloud of words, and said " that he looked upon the Governor as having a mixed character ; firstly, as being the representative of lloyalty ; and secondly, as being one of the Ministers of Her Majesty's Government and responsible to the mother country for the faithful discharge of the duties of his station, a resjx^n.sibiiity which he cannot avoid by saying that he toe reduced to a cipher, and tliat such a system would make the colony an independent state." It passed resolutions (1S41) which affirmed plainly, though in Blackstonian phras<,% that in all colonial affairs the Governor must be ruled by hb advisers, that his advisers must be assigned him by the Aii^mbly, and that the policy must be that of the majority. The men of the old dispensation had presently to retire and to make way for a ministry which had I' i i lli V ' } I'll ■i ^ii It 128 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION nrAi*. for its head Robert Baldwin the Eeforiiier witli whom was afterwards johied Lafontaine, a Frenchman ,-ho liad been the political associate of Papineau thongli he himself just stopped short of rebellion. Even Dr. IJolph, the Upper Canadian rebel and exile, ultimately found a place in a lieform Government. All however was not ^et over. The advent of I'eel to power in 1841 had placed the Colonial Ofhce once more in Conservative hands. Sir Charles Bagot, the first CJovernor appointed by the Conservatives, was a life-long Tory, but a well-bred and placid gentleman, who accepted with grace his constitutional position of figurehead, dispensed hospitality to politicians of all parties, and turned his energies to the encouragement of practical improvements, such as making roads, and to the laying of first stones, now one of the chief functions of British Iloyalty. But his conduct did not give satisfaction to Tories either in the colony or at home. Lord Stanley, the Colonial Secretary in Peel's second Ministry, by no means acquiesced in the view that his representative should be a cipher and the colony an independent State. Stanley's appointment was Lord Metcalfe (1843-5), a man of the highest eminence in the East Indian service, who in Hindostan, and afterwards in Jamaica, had governed on the most liberal principles, but had governed. In Canada also he meant to govern on liberal principles, but in Canada also he meant to govern. The East Indian official, accustomed to administer in his own person, was shocked to find that he was " required to give himself up entirely to the council," " to submit absolutely to their dictation," " to have no judgment of his own," " to be a tool in the hands of his advisers," and " to tear up Her Majesty's Commission by publicly declaring his adhesion to conditions including the complete nullification \\ HAV. llOlU luul uself fpper in a jel to n-e ill /ernor but a Lce his itality to the iiaking 2 chief 3t give Lord try, by Intative State, man of [vho in Ion the a also ida also |med to [hat he ," " to .gment s," and [daring cation VII THE UNITED I'ROVIXCES 129 of Her Majesty's Government." Accustomed in the Indian Civil Service, the purest in tlio world, to appoint liis subordi- nates by merit, he was shocked at being told that he must allow the patronage of the Government to be used for the purposes of the party in power and must proscribe all its opponents. He tried to make his own appointments, and brought on a storm. The Assembly carried a I'csolution affirming in effect that the prerogative of appointment, with all the rest, had passed entirely from the Crown to the Parliamentary Ministers, and the Ministry resigned. The Governor, the Colonial Secretary approving his course, formed a makeshift Ministry of the men of the old school, and appealed from the majority to the country. The distin- guished and high-minded civil servant now found himself, to his intense disgust, immersed in all the roguery, corruption, and ruffianism of a fiercely-contested election, forced to use government patronage as a bribery fund, and to pay for " Leonidas Letters " with appointments to public trusts. He and his Ministry came out of the fray with a small majority. His death cut the inextricable knot. With him expired Monarchical Government in Canada. Nothing but its ghost remained. Sir Edmund Head is said to have afterwards lingered wistfully in the Council Chamber and to have been shown the door by a Conservative minister. Metcalfe was succeeded by Lord Cathcnrt, a soldier, sent out probably on account of the threatci!!:.,' aspect of the boundary dispute with the United States. Then came Lord Elgin (1849-54), in whom again we see the public servant of the Empire whose only rule has been administrative duty in contrast with the party leader and the demagogue. Elgin was a Conservative, and was sent out by a Conservative Govern- ment, but he was calm and wise. He accepted Responsible K 130 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CUAl'. Government, and even flattered himself that under that system he exercised a moral influence such as would make up to the Crown for the loss of its patronage. This, with his personal gifts and graces, and while the system was still in the green wood, he may possibly have done. It is more certain tliat he gave an impulse to material improvemei i the way of railways, canals, and steamboats, as well as to the advance- ment of education. In one case he accepted Responsible Government with a vengeance, for he gave his assent to the Rebellion Losses Bill. The bill was denounced by the Tories both in Canada and in the British House of Commons as a bill for rewarding rebels; a bill for indemnifying rebels it undeniably was. The Tories in Canada rose, pelted the Governor-General at Montreal with stones and rotten eggs, put his life in some danger, and raised a mob by which the Parliament House was burned down. 'leir opponents did not fail to taunt them with their faili.' ^ yalty ; but it must be owned that they were sorely tried, and that the Rebellion Losses Bill was a humiliation. Such humiliations are the lot of an Imperial country retaining its nominal supremacy and its responsibility in a hemisphere where it has resigned or lost all power. The Ashburton Treaty, made some years before, cutting Maine out of Canada's side, seemed to Canadians an instance of similar weakness on the part of the Home Government. They made too little allowance for the distracting liabilities of an Empire exposed to peril in every quarter of the globe. There was still, however, a field for which Elgin was well suited, and in which he could act without the danger of " falling," to use his own words, " on the one side into the nimit of mock majesty, or on the other, into the dirt and con- fusion of local factions." By the adoption of Free Trade in VII THE UNITED PROVINCES 131 184() England had cut tlie comniurcial tie between liersell and lier colony, and deprived the colony of its advantage in , the British market. Commercial depression in Canada ensued. Property in the towns fell fifty per cent in value. Three-fourths of the commercial men were bankrupt. The State was reduced to the necessity of paying all the ollicers, from the Ciovernor-Cleneral downwards, in debentures whicli were not exchangeable at par. A feeling in favour of annexa- tion to the Unit(id States spread widely among the commer- cial classes, and a manifesto in favour of it was signed not only by numy leading mercliants, but by nuigistrates, Queen's counsel, militia ofhcers, and others holding commissions under the Crown. Elgin himself was astonished that the discontent did not produce an outbreak. There was, as he saw, but one way jf restoring contentment and averting disturbance. This was " to put the colonists in as good a position commercially as the citizens of the United States, in order to which free navigation and reciprocal trade with the States were indis- pensable." To this view he gave effect by going to Washing- ton and there displaying his diplomatic skill in negotiating the Reciprocity Treaty, which opened up for Canada a gainful ' trade, especially in her farm products, with the United States, and was to her, during the twelve years of its continuance, the source of a prosperity to which she still looks back with wistful eyes. The rush of prosperity at the time turned the head of the community, and caused over-speculation, whicli led to a crisis in 1857. The grand revolution having been accomplished, the minor changes which were its corollaries followed in its train. After hesitation on the part of religious Eeformers like Lafontaine, who cherished the idea of a provision for religion, the Clergy lieserves were secularised. The same stroke i 1 w - iu'tt**'' ml 3i A 1 i; ■ !■ 11 132 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTIO>" CHAl'. knocked off the fetters of the Church of Pji^^'Uuid, gave her the election of her own officers, and set her free to win back the hearts which, as a domineering favourite of the State, she had estranged. Tithe in Lower Canada ought to have been abolished at the same time ; but it was guaranteed, or was held to be guaranteed, by the Treaty of Cession, made Avith a most Christian dynasty which had ceased to reign and which , has since been replaced by an Anti-Cliristian Eepublic. University tests were repealed, and the University of Toronto was thrown open : whereupon, Bishop Strachan gave way to his resentment, and instead of sticking to the ship in which he had still the advantage of possession and of social primacy, went off in a cockboat and founded a new Anglican University. Other sectarian universities had been founded while that of Toronto was confined to Anglicanism, and the net result has been six or seven degree-giving bodies in a Province the resources of which were not more than equal to the support of one university worthy of the name. At length, happily for the advancement of high education, learning, and science in Ontario, university consolidation has begun. The Upper House of the Legislature was made elective, with the same suffrage as that of the Lower House, but with larger constituencies, and a term of eight years. Municipal institutions on the elective principle were given to Upper Canada. In Lower Canada the seigniories, with all their vexatious incidents, were swept away, not however without compensation to the seigniors, theories of agrarian confisca- tion not having then come into vogue. The French speedily verified the prediction of Sir Francis Bond Head, and belied the expectation of Durham and Buller. " They had the wisdom," as their manual of history before cited complacently observes, " to remain united among them- VII THE UNITED PROVINCES 133 selves, ind by that union were able to exercise a happy influence on the Legislature and the Goviui-ur*." Instead of being politically suppressod, they soou, thanks to their compactness as an interest and their docile obedience to their leaders, became politically dominant. The Ih'itish factions at once began to l)id against each other for their sup- port, and were presently at tlieir feet. Nothing could show this more clearly than the Rebellion Losses Bill. The statute proscribing the use of the French language in official pro- ceedings was repealed, and the Canadian Legislature was i made bilingual. The Premiership was divided between the English and the French leader, and the Ministries were designated by the double name — " the Lafontaine-Baldwin," or " the Macdonald-Tache." The French got their full share of seats in the Cabinet and of patronage; of public funds they got more than their full share, especially as being small consumers of imported goods they contributed far less than their quota to the public revenue. By their aid the Roman ' Catholics of the Upper Province obtained the privilege of Separate Schools in contravention of the principle of reli- gious equality and severance of tlie Church from the State. Tn time it was recognised as a rule that a Ministry to retain power must have a majority from each section of the Pro- ' vince. This practically almost reduced the Union to a federation, under which French nationality was more securely entrenched than ever. Gradually the French and their clergy became, as they have ever since been, the basis of what styles itself a Conservative party, playing for French support by defending clerical privilege, by protecting Frencli nationality, and, not least, by allowing the French Province to dip her hand deep in the common treasury. On the other hand, a secession of thorough-going Reformers from the ill I 1^ i til 134 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAl'. >i Moderates who <^loried in the name of ]3ald ivin, gave birth to the party of the " Clear Grits," the leader of which was IMr. George Brown, a Scotch Presbyterian, and wi\ich having first insisted on the secularisation of the Clergy Reserves, became, when that question was out of the way, a party of general opposition to I'rench and Roman Catholic influence. 'J'he population of Upper Canada having now outgrown that of Lower Canada, the Clear Grits demanded that the repre- sentation should be rectified in accoru ce with numbers. The French contended with truth that the apportionment had been irrespective of numbers, and that Upper Canada, while her population was the smaller, had reaped the ad- vantage of that arrangement. jMortal issue was joined, and " Eep. by Pop." (Representation by Pop dation) became the Reform cry. The war was waged with the utmost vehemence by Mr. Brown and his organ, the Glohe, which became a power, and ultimately a tyrannical ]wwer, in Canadian politics. But the French, with the British faction which courted their vote, were too strong. A change had thus come over the character and relations of parties. French Canada, so lately the seat of disaffection, became the basis of the Conservative party. British Canada became the stronghold of the Liberals. But the old Tories of British Canada, true at least to their anti- pathies, comljined with the French against the Liberals in the amalgam styled Conservative. Irish influence, almost as sectional as the French, was now beginning to grow powerful. The famine of 184G had thrown upon the shores of Canada thousands of miserable exiles, stricken with pestilence as well as with famine. At the moment when Canada lost her commercial privileges as a colony, she was called upon to perform the most onerous of colonial duties to the mother country, and the duty was VII THE UNITED PROVINCES 135 nobly performed, the medical profession taking the lead in heroic philanthropy. Abortive insurrections in Ireland added some political exiles. Among the number was D'Arcy M'Gee, a Fenian leader who, in a happier political climate, doffed his Fenianism while he retained his enthusiasm and his eloquence, and for doffing his Fenianism was murdered by his quondam fellow- conspirators. There was now an Irish as well as a French vote to be played for. Had not the difference of race generally prevailed, as we have said, over the identity of religion, there might have been a coalition of the two Roman Catholic races, which would almost have reduced the other races to political servitude. A struggle of principle is sure to leave some men of principle as well as mark upon the scene. Such were Robert Baldwin on one side, and Draper on the other. But when these have passed away faction, intrigue, cabal, and selfish ambition have their turn. What else can be expected with party government when the great issues are out of the way and nothing but the prizes of office remains ? Already, in Lord Elgin's time, politics had entered on a phase of party without principle. He had pensively remarked that in a community " where there was little if anything of public principle to divide men, political parties would shape them- selves under the influence of circumstances, and of a great variety of affections or antipathies — national, sectarian, and personal." " You will observe," he says, " when a Ministry is trying to recruit itself by coalition, tliat no question of principle or of public policy has been mooted by either party during the negotiation. The whole discussion has turned upon personal considerations. This is, I fancy, a pretty fair sample of Canadian politics. It is not even pre- tended that the divisions of party represent corresponding llll tl 'I Ran I 'W 136 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAl". divisions of sentiment on subjects which occupy the public mind." He complains that his Ministers insist on appealing to \o\f personal motives, as if they did not believe in the existence of anything higher, that unprincipled factiousness is taken for granted as the rule of conduct on all hands, and that he is himself in danger of being besmirched by its mire. A period of tricky combinations, perfidious alliances, >and selfish intrigues now commenced, and a series of weak and ephemeral governments was its fruit. The Hincks- Morin, the MacNab-jSIorin, the Tachc-Macdonald, the Brown- Dorion, the Cartier-Maodonald, the Sandfield Macdonald- Sicotte, the Sandfield Macdonald-Dorion,the Tache-Macdonald (second) administrations followed each other like the shifting scenes of a farce, their double headships indicating the necessity of compounding with the French, whose vote was the great card in the game. Unfortunately they left their traces. " A political warfare," said Senator Terrier (a ^Montreal merchant) afterwards in the debate on Confedera- tion, " has been waged in Canada for many years of a nature calculated to destroy all moral and political principle, both in the Legislature and out of it." In such a competition, unscrupulous craft, with a thorough knowledge of the baser side of human nature, is sure to prevail, and to mount to the highest place. It did prevail ; it did mount to the highest place, and became the ideal of statesmanship to Canadian politicians. It was in the course of this unimpressive history that the one remaining prerogative of the Crown was exercised by the Governor- General for the last time.^ In 1858, Mr. George Brown, the leader of the " Clear Grits " put the * It has been since pxercised on one occasion by a Lieutenant-Governor of a Province. VII THE UNITED rROVINCEvS 13/ the ernor of Conservative Ministry in a minority on the question of the choice of a site for the Capital, the Queen having given her decision in favour of Ottawa. Though the combination against the Government was fortuitous, and the question not one of principle, the IMinistry resigned ; it was surmised because they thought it politic to appear as martyrs to their loyal respect for the Sovereign's judgment. The Governor, Sir Edmund Head, sent for INIr. Brown but refused him a dissolution, on the ground that the Parliament was newly elected, that there was no reason for supposing that public opinion had changed, and therefore that there was no justification for throwing the country again into the turmoil of an election. Mr. Brown's fortuitous majority deserting him, his Ministry at once fell. The Governor was '^f course fiercely denounced by the Grits for partisanship ; but supposing he still held the prerogative of dissolution, it would seem that he did right ; he certainly did what was best for the country. A farcical sequel to this episode was I the " Double Shuffle," a name applied to a piece of legerde- main by which the old Ministers, on resuming their places, contrived to bilk the constitutional rule which required them to go to their constituencies for re-election. Public morality was outraged. The courts of law, by an extremely technical construction, sustained the trick. But nothing smarter was ever done by any Yankee politician. At last there came a Ministry with a majority of two, which afterwards dwindled to one, so that the fate of the administration might hang upon the success of a page in hunting up a member before a division, and the dangerous opportunity was afforded to each individual politician of saving the country by his single vote. Dissolutions only made faction more factious. Finally there was a deadlock. ■^1 i i i .1 138 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION C'HAr, ( I '■ The wheels of the political machine ceased to turn, and the most necessary legislation was at a stand. As a door of escape from the predicament into which their factiousness and selfishness had brought the country, the politicians bethought them of a confederation, including all the North American Colonies of Great Britain. In this the antagonism between British and French Canada, which was the im- mediate source of the dilemma, would be merged, and altogether there would be a fresh deal. The idea of such a confederation was not new. Lord Durham had recommended it in his Report : even before his day. Judge Haliburton had ventilated the idea in Scan Slick; while Mr. George Brown, finding that he could not carry his project of Representation by Population, had been proposing that the Union between Upper and Lower Canada should be recon- stituted on a federal footing, so that they might be made independent of each other in their local affairs. The three Maritime Provinces — Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island — had, as has been already said, meditated a Legislative Union among themselves; and, though a difficulty about the choice of a capital had come in the way, it is likely that in time they would have carried the project into effect. Another inducement to confederation at this juncture , was the belief that it would bring to all the Provinces an I increase of military strength and of security against invasion. On this head there was at the time some ground for alarm on account of the critical position into which Canada as a dependency of Great Britain had been drawn in relation to the United States. Before the American Civil War Canada had been, like the mother country, an enemy of the Slave Power ; one of the first acts of her yeoman legislators in the 'il' VII THE UNITED PROVINCES 139 Upper Province had been the abolition of slavery ; and she liad prided herself on being the refuge of the slave. At the opening of the conflict between Slavery and Freedom her lieart had been where it was natural that it should be. lint after the Trent affair she had been drawn, together with the aristocratic party in England, into an attitude of hostility to the North. Her citizens had taken to drilling, and she had sounded the trumpet of defiance. Her Government had strictly discharged their international obligations, but the Confederates had violated the neutrality of her territory in the case of the St. Alban's raid, and some of her own citizens who were hot sympathisers with the Slave Power had hardly kept their sentiment within the bounds of the Queen's proclamation. The Union was now tiiumpiiant and had a large and victorious army at its command. There was reason to fear that its ire, kindled by the conduct of Great Britain in the matter of the Alabama, and by the stinging language of the British Press, might find vent in an attack on the dependency. There had in fact been a Fenian raid encouraged by the laxity of the American Government, if not by its connivance, and somebody having blundered, a number of Canadians had in the disastrous affair of Eidgeway fallen in defence of the frontier. The second Fenian raid in 1870 was a mere imposture got up to make the money flow again from the pockets of Irish servant girls ; but the first was rendered formidable by the presence among the raiders of Irishmen who had fought in the American Civil War. It was a natural impression, though some saw through the fallacy at the time, that the political union of the I'rovinces would greatly add to their force in war. The Home Authorities also applauded the j)roject, in the hope that the colonies would become better able to defend themselves, I ' V 140 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN 'QUESTION chap. lean thencefortli less heavily for protection on the arm of the overburdened mother country, and be less of an addition to her many perils. Some years before, Lord lieaoonsfield, then Mr. Disraeli, Imperialist as he was, had written in con- fidence to the Minister for Foreij'n Affairs urdnj^' him to pusli the Fisheries question to a settlomc'nt while the influences at Washington were favourable, and reniarkinj:^ V that " these wretched colonies will all be indr-pendent too ' in a few years and are a millstone round our necks." ^ What Mr. Disraeli said in the ear was said on the housetop by the Edinhimjh Review, which after averring that it would puzzle the wisest to put his finger on any advantage , resulting to Great Britain from her dominions in North America, and glancing at the " special difficulties which beset her in that portion of her vast field of empire," j)ronounced it not surprising that "any project which may offer a prospect of escape from a political situation so undignified and unsatisfactory should be hailed with a cordial welcome by all parties concerned." If the same thing was not said by other statesmen it was present in a less distinct form to the minds of some of them : at least they were very anxious that the millstone should be a millstone no more, but be able to provide for its own defence at need and perhaps to help the mother country. Colonial Keforraers like the Duke of Newcastle, Mr. Adderley, and Mr. Godley who clung to the political connection, were just as desirous of relieving the mother country of the military' burden and of 'training the colonies to self-reliance and virtual in- dependence as were the men of the so-called Manchester • School, who advocated complete independence. Cobden and Bright, it may be remarked by the way, though their ^ See Lord Malmesbury, Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, rol. ii, p, 344. VI r THE UNITED PROVINCES 141 opinion was avowx-d, nevor took a very active part in tlie discussion. A third motive; was the hope of calling into existence an intercolonial trad d th^ ,r own institu- tions, the reply perhaps will be that the in.- dtutions are not 'their own but were imposed upon them by a group of ^ politicians struggling to escape from the desperate predica- VII THK UNITED rilOVlXCES 145 was rieral ions, voter's the Darty The on a issue eday ;'ealth stitii- e not ip of jdica- ment into wliicli their factiousness had drawn them, emjdoy- inj,' in some cases very ([uestionable means to arrive at their end, and bringing to bear upon Canada the power of a distant government and Parliament, which, wortliy as tliey might ])e of reverence, were those of the liritish, not those of the Canadian people. So far as political alUnity was concerned the ^Maritime I'rovinces were ready for Confederation. To each of tlieni had been given the same Constitution as to the two Canadas. Each of them had a Governor, an Executive Council, an Upper House of Parliament nominated by the Crown, and a Lower House elected by the people. The political history of each of them had followed the same course. In each of them an otlicial oligarchy had entrenched itself in the Executive Council and the Upper House. In each of them its entrenchments had been attacked and at last stormed by the popular party which predominated in the Elective House. In Prince Edward Island with the struggle for responsible government had been combined a war with an absentee pro- prietary of original grantees, which was at last settled under an Act of the Imperial Parliament, such as was in those times deemed a startling infringement of proprie- tary rights, though it was mild indeed compared witli the) Irish land legislation of the present day. Patriots in the Maritime Provinces had in fact acted in sympathy with patriots in Canada, and the leaders of either party in each l)attlefi(dd had kept their eyes fixed upon the other. Sir Francis Head, for instance, watched anxiously the progress of the struggle in New Brunswick, and in the surrender of the Colonial Office and its representative there read the general doom. Everywhere the war had been waged on nearly the same issues, the chief being the control of the civil list, and ■ ■ m^tt'i J^ ■ ^1 '•:'i 116 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN (,>UESTION chap, vii everywhere its result had been the same. EesjDonsible government had prevailed, and the Crown, under a thin veil of \ constitutional language, had given up its power to the people. About the time when in Canada Sir Charles JNIetcalfe was striving to recover power for the Crown a desperate attempt of the same kind had been made bv Lord Falkland in Nova Scotia. But Lord Falkland. like Sir Charles Metcalfe, succumbed to destiny, whose Minister in his case was the great orator and patriot. -luseph Howe. CHArTEE VIII THE FEDERAL COXSTITUTIOX ' 1 In dutiful imitation of that glorious Constitution of the mother country, with its division of power among kings, lords, and commons which, though it really died witli William TIT, still exists in devout imaginations, the Constitution of the Canadian Dominion has a false front of monarchy. The king who reigns and does not govern is represented by a Governor- General who does the same, and the Governor-General solemnly delegates his impotence to a pu})pet Lieutenant-Governor in each pro-^ vince. Everything is done in the names of these images of Royalty, as everything was done in the names of the Venetian Doge and the Merovingian kings ; but if they dared to do anything themselves, or to refuse to do anything that they were toll to do, they would be instantly deposed. IJeligious Canada prays each Sunday that they may govern well, on the understanding that heaven will never be so unconstitu- tional as to grant her prayer. Like their British prototype, ^ The Canadian Constitution is to be studied in the Britisli Nortli Anieiica Act of 1867, on whicli abundant coninientaries have appeared by Messrs. Todd, Bourinot, O'Sullivan, Watson, and Doutre. To the works of thesi; learned and eminent writers the reader is referred for sucli details as do not come within the scoj)e of this very general sketch. The debate on Confedera- tion in the Canadian Tarliament (Quebec, ISt!.")) may be consulted by the diligent reader. Extracts from the principal speakers are giveii in Colonel Gray's work on Confederation. "! H i ; 148 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. 1 they deliver from their tlirones speeches svhich have been made for them by their I'rime Ministers, to wliom they serve as a ventriloquial apparatus. Each of tliem, to keep up the constitutional illusion, is surrounded by a certain amount of state and etiquette, the Governor-General, of course, having more of it than his delegates. At the opening of the Dominion Parliament by the Governor-General there is a parade of his bodyguard, cannon are fired, everybody puts on all the finery to which he is entitled, the knights don their insignia, the Privy Councillors their Windsor uniform, and the ladies appear in low dresses. At the opening of a Provincial Parlia- ment the ceremony is less impressive, and in some cases is reduced to a series of explosions mimicking cannon. The last prerogative which remained to the Governor- General was that of Dissolution. We liave seen that Sir Edmund Head exercised his own judgment in declining to dissolve Parliament at the bidding of Mr. George Brown. But this power of control seems since to have been abandoned like the rest. The Governor-General now appears to feel himself bound to dissolve Parliament at the bidding of his Minister, without any constitutional crisis requiring an appeal to the country, or cause of any kind except the convenience of a Minister wlio may think the moment good for snapping a verdict. We here see that a political cipher is not always a nullity, but may sometimes be mischievous. That the ex- istence of a Parliament should be made dependent upon the will and pleasure of a party leader, and should be cut short as often as it suits his party purposes, is obviously subversive of the independence of the legislature. Such an arrangement would never be tolerated if it were openly proposed. But it is tolerated, and with perfect supineness, when, instead of the name of the Prime Minister, that of the Governor-General is VI 11 THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 119 used. The robe of the Queen's representative in this and other cases forms the decorous cover for the practices of the colonial politician. In the case before us the arbitrary power grasped by the party leader under constitutional forms in the Colony seems even to have exceeded that grasped by the party leader in the mother country. In the mother country some good authorities at least still maintain that the Crown has not entirely resigned the prerogative, and that the Sovereign may refuse a dissolution, except in case of a Parlia- mentary crisis, such as renders necessary an appeal to the people, or when the House of Commons has been deprived of autliority by the close approach of its legal end. At all events, in England tradition has not wholly lost the restraining power which it had when government was in the hands of a class pervaded by a sense of corporate responsibility and careful not to impair its own heritage. An American or Canadian politician in playing his game uses without scruple every card in his hand ; traditions or unwritten rules are nothing to him ; the only safeguard against his excesses is written law. The Americans are surprisingly tolerant of what an English- man would think the inordinate use of power by the holders of office ; but then they know that there is a line drawn by the law beyond which the man cannot go, and that with the year his authority must end. The politician in Canada, not less than in the United States, requires the restraint of written law. A Governor-CTcneral has been made to read a speech from tlie Throne commending to the nation a commercial policy which was not only opposed to his own opinions as a free trader, but laid protective duties on British goods. Nor is it possible to doubt that in appointments his personal conscience and honour are treated as entirely out of the question. A — -.-ti i.i» ^y^^y^ vsBSmBM ! i! 1;J I' ::i: I 'i 1 I i '1 ■' f f I I, y 150 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN (,)UESTION CHAl". Governor-General, about whose own keen sense of right ihere could be no question, has thus been made to place upon the Bench of Justice, manifestly for a party purpose, a man upon whose appointment the whole profession, without distinction of party, cried shame. To the appointment of his own repre- sentatives, the Lieutenant-Governors or to those of Senators, the Governor-General, it is generally believed, has not a word to say. . We had a decisive proof of the Governor-General's impotence in the case of ]\Ir. Letellier de St. Just, who was deposed from the Lieutenant-Governorsliip of Quebec. Mr. Letellier had been appointed by a Liberal Government. He quarrelled with a Provincial Ministry of the opposite party for breach of rules, turned it out, and called in other advisers, who, upon an appeal to the Province, were sustained, though by a bare majority. The Quebec Conservatives were infuriated at the loss of the Provincial patronage. In tlie Dominion Senate, where their party had a majority, tliey at once got a vote of censure passed on the Lieutenant-Governor. They had not at that time a majority in the House of Commons, but a general election having soon after given them a majority, they passed a vote of censure in the Lower House also. The party leader thereupon, as Prime Minister, " advised " the Governor-General to dismiss ^Mr. Letellier. It was simply an act of party vengeance, ^Fr. Letellier having done nothing which was not strictly within the letter of the Constitution, and having been sustained by the people of his province. The Act of Confederation required that for the dismissal of a Lieutenant-Governor a cause should be assigned. The only cause assigned was, that after the adverse vote of the Dominion Parliament " his usefulness had ceased." Evidently this was no cause at all, but a mere mockery. What the law required VIII THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION lol was the assignment of a specific breach of duty, of wliich it could not be pretended that the Lieutenant-Governor had been guilty. The votes of the Senate and the House oi Commons were nothing but manifestations of party resent- ment. Their character was marked by the manner in whicli they had been passed ; not in the same session, so as to re- present the judgment of Parliament, but in different sessions, the vote of the House of Commons being delayed till the result of the election liad given the party power in tliat House. It was evident that the conscience of the Governor- General recoiled from this treatment of his own representative, whose rights and character he was specially bound in honour to guard. He referred to the Colonial Office, but the Colonial Office bade him obev his constitutional advisers. He might have done the Colony a great service, though at some risk to liimself, had he told the ]\Iinister that on questions of policy he was ready to be guided by others, but that on questions of justice, especially in a case where his own deputy was concerned, he had a conscience of his own, and that he would do wliat honour bade him or go home. The Minister would probably have given way, and at all events a most wholesome lesson would have been read. But grandees do not run risks. Noblesse oblige is the reverse of the truth. The nobleman is rather apt to feel that even if he does what would compromise another, his rank will carry him through. The Governor-Generalship, it is said, saves Canada from presidential elections. Presidential elections are an evil, and as at present conducted by popular vote they are a morbid excrescence on the American Constitution, since the framers intended the electoral college really to elect, though it is strange that they should not have foreseen that election by a college chosen for the nonce would result in a mandate. Ul ^\ ! \nsm 152 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. But the Governor- Generalship is not the Presidency of Canada : the Prime Ministership is the Presidency, and the general election in which the Prime Ministership and Cabinet offices are the prize is little less of an evil than the presidential election. The same answer meets the allegation that the Governor -Generalship or the monarchical element which it represents is a pledge of political stability. The Government of Canada has of late years presented an appear- ance of stability, the account of which will be given hereafter. But in Australia ministers, notwithstanding the presence of a governor, are as fleeting as shadows chasing each other over a field, and the same was the case in Canada before Con- federation. The real government is liable to constant change, which is no more tempered or countervailed by the per- manency of the Governor than by the permanency of the Sergeant-at-Arms. An American government is comparatively stable, having a fixed tenure for four years. The constitutional hierophants of Ottawa, such as Mr. Alpheus Todd, assure the uninitiated in solemn tones that in spite of appearances which may be deceptive to the vulgar, the Governor-Generalship is an institution of great practical value, as well as of most awful dignity. Highly deceptive to the vulgar, it must be owned, the appearances are. If it is said that the service is not political but social, and that the little Court of Otta^ra is needed to refine colonial manners, the answer is first, that the benefit must be limited to the Court circle ; and secondly, that colonial manners do not stand in need of imported refinement. Nobody who lives long on the American Continent can fail to be struck with the fact that vulgarity is but the shadow of caste. The man- ners of men who have raised themselves from the ranks of industry are in all essential respects perfectly good, so long V VIII THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION U>3 as the men are allowed to remain in their native element of equality and not infected with aristocratic notions or set striving to imitate an alien model. If there is anything in Canadian manners which is traceable to the Court at Ottawa, it is not that which is best in them. Indeed, if the stories whicli sometimes get abroad of Ottawa balls and suppers are true, Ottawa refinement itself occasionally stands in need of refining. The example of an expensive household or of profuse entertainments is of questionable value. One Governor- General was specially noted for the profusion of the entertain- ments by which he courted popularity, as well as by the increase which he made in the cost of his office to the country ; and it is said that officials with small salaries at Ottawa rue his fancy balls to this hour. The same Governor- General also courted popularity by oratorical oours, or, to use the common phrase, by going on the stump. The orations necessarily consist largely of flattery, and the effect of flattery on a young nation is pretty much the same as on a young man. When Royalty became a denizen of Government House an attempt was made by some zealous officials to intro- duce monarchical etiquette. An enthusiastic professor of deportment went over privately to consult the Lord Cham- berlain, and published a manual for the instruction of ignorant Canadians, The keynote is struck by the exordium, " What on this earthly sphere is more enchantingly exclusive than Her Majesty's Court " — a doubtful assertion, perhaps, since the powers of wealth have triumphantly forced their way into those precincts. " The impression," proceeds the Professor, "made by the debutante is a lasting one in England, consequently art is brought to bear, and the ', L I. 164 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN (tLf^STION CHAP. [\, i, '! tt 1 " curtseys, the walk, the extending th(t arm for the train, and each pliysical movement are practised re];>eat';dly hifora some competent teacher of deportment, wlio cljarges well for the lessons." Imagine the ladies of a commercial colony fired with this ambition ! The genius of the O^ntinent rejected etiquette as it had rejected I'itt's prolferc-d boon of a hereditary peerage. When an edict went forth that at Court balls ladies should appear in low dresses, unb;^s tliey could obtain from their physicians a dispensation on the ground of health, a comic journal had a print of a barc-f^>otfcd servant girl asking the master of the ceremonies wheth»:r nakedness at that extremity of the person would not do as well. As an object of social worship the repreHentative of Itoyalty keeps his place. Like J Royalty itself, he is taken about to open institutions or exhibitions ; words of approbation which he may be pleased to utter are recorded as oracles, anrl sacrificial banquets are offered to him. What i.s the social value of such a worship every one must deteople will also l)elieve in the usefulness of baronetcies and knijfhthoods, which have survived the catastrophe of the aV>rtive Canadian peerage, and of which the Governor-General h the supposed conduit, though it is surmised that of late the party leader has virtually got this prerogative also into hk hands, and added it to his general \ii- !i 156 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN (QUESTION ciiAr. i I fund of influence. Let ns have titles of honour by all means, so long as they denote a public trust. Let the Councillor of State or the Judge be styled Honourable, and the ^layor His Woiship. Let scientific and military eminence be marked by their appropriate decorations. There is no reason why Democracy should deny herself such emldems of civil dignity and incentives of generous and)ition any more than there is a reason why she should deny herself rational and symbolic state. She too must have her {esthetics. But titles of chivalry do not denote a public trust. In the age of chivalry they had a meaning ; now they are merely personal decorations, and if they serve any public object it is that of introducing into the Colonies, in the supposed interest of British aristocracy, sentiments af. variance with those on which, in such communities, public effort and public virtue must be based. They can feed, to put it plainly, nothing but llunkeyism. Some of the worthiest men in Canada have refused them. They are given sometimes "with little discern- ment ; they have even served to gild dishonour. Baronetcies, the fashion of creating which has of late been revived, are open to the further objection which was urged with decisive force against the creation of an hereditary peerage in a country where there are no entailed estates. We may some day have a baronet blacking shoes. To make a Canadian politician a baronet is to tempt and almost to constrain him to use his political opportunities for the purpose of accu- mulating a fortune to bequeath to his son. This is no imaginary danger. Nor when honour has been forfeited can the title and its influence be annulled. Aristocracy had its uses in its time. That it served as an organising force in a barbarous age, no one versed in history will deny. The feudal lord was not a sybarite with a fii tl J T'-r VIM THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION !HAr. ians, or of :ayov e be Basou ; civil tlian il and D titles age ol" ;rsonal that of rest of ose on 1 virtue .ing but la have (liscern- )nctcies, ed, are decisive ere in a ay some anadian rain him of accu- is is no ieited can erved as ersed in ite with a m title ; sheathed in iron, he lived, as a leader, a magistrate, and a rural law-giver, laborious days. Possibly the services of the institution may not yet be exhausted in tlie lands to which it is native : there it may at all events be destined to smooth a transition. But it has no business in the New Workl, and the attempt to import it never luis done and m^ver can do anytliing but miscliief. To make a colony iin outpost of aristocracy for the purpose of lu.iintaining tliat institution at home is to sacrifice the political character of an American community to the interest of a European caste. The Lieutenant-Governorships are bestowed by the party leader invariably on his partisans and usually on worn-out politicians. That they form a decent retir(;ment for those who have spent their energies in pu])lic life but on whom the com- munity would not consent to bestow pensions, forms the best defence for their existence. Political value they have none. The theory is that Government House in each province forms a centre of society : but the men after their stormy lives are generally too weary for social effort and llic salary is not sufficient for hospitality on a large scale. Men uf wealth and high social position, who might fulfil the social ideal, are not likely to take the appointments. As one of them said bluntly, they do not want to keep a hotel for five years. Passing through the false front into the real edifice we find that it is a federal republic after the American model, though with certain modifications derived partly from the liritish source. The Dominion Legislature answers to Con- gress, the Provincial Legislature answers to the State Legis- lature, the Dominion Prime Minister and Cabinet answer to the President and his Cabinet, tlie Provincial Prime ]\Iinisters and their Cabinets to the Governor and Officers of States. The relations of the Province and the Dominion to each other i r l;'ii !' ;'i'i; If. 8 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION nixv, are in the mjiiu tli(5 .siiino as those of the State and the Federation. Were a Canadian Province to be turned at once into a State of the Union the change would be felt by the people only in a certain increase of self-government. The political machinery would act as it does now. The deviations in the Canadian copy from the American original are chiefly in the direction of an increase of the Federal power. The framers of the Canadian Constitution fancied that American secession was an awful warning against leaving the Federal Government too weak. In this they were mistaken, for slavery and slavery alone was the cause of secession, and had the Federal (lovernment pos- sessed authority to deal with the Southern institution and pro- ceeded to exert it, that would only have precipitated the catastrophe. Perhaps, however, the Canadian legislators were also swayed by the centralising tendency and sentiment of the monarchy with which they were connected. Their bias at all events was in favour of central power. Some of them would have preferred a legislative union had they been able to over- come the centrifugal nationalism of Quebec. To the Federal Government and Legislature in Canada belong criminal law and procedure. To the Federal Government belongs the appointment of all the judges. To the Federal Legislature belong the regulation of trade and the law of marriage. The Federal Government has the direct command of the Militia, whereas in the United States the President can only call upon the State CJovernment for military aid. It has by the Con- stitution a political veto on all State legislation, whereas in the American Eepublic State legislation can be cancelled only on legal grounds by the Supreme Court. And whereas by the American Constitution all powers not given to the Federa- tion are left in the States, by the Canadian Constitution all n»,i VIII Till-: FEDERAL fOXSTITl^l'IOX 1.10 [)()\vei'3 not given to tliu provinces are left in the Federation. 'J'his last distinction is important. The orign. of it was, tliat the sovereign power which gave birth to the Confederation had its seat not, as in tlie case of the Americans, in the several federating communities, hut in the Crown and Parlia- ment of Great Britain. About the nature and importance of the national veto on provincial legi.slation doubts have recently been raised from a motive which will presently be explained, but there were no doubts at the time. Mr. (afterwards Sir John) JJose said in the debate: "The other point which commends itself so strongly to my mind is tliis, that there is a veto power on the part of the CJeneral Government over all the legislation of the Local Parliaments. ... I believe this power of negative, this power of veto, this controlling power on the part of the Central Government, is the best j)rotection and safeguard of the sy.stem ; and if it had not been provided I would have felt it very difllcult to reconcile it to my sense of duty to vote for the resolutions. But this power having been given to the Central Government it is to my mind, in conjunction with the power of naming the local governors, the appointment and payment of the judiciary, one of the best features of the scheme, without which it would certainly, in my opinion, have been open to very serious objection." This plainly refers to a power of political control to be exer- cised in the interest of the nation, not to a mere power of restraining illegal stretches of jurisdiction, a function which belongs not to a government but to a coart of law. Again, Mr. Mackenzie, afterwards I'remier, said : " The veto power is necessary in order that the General Government may have a control over the proceedings of the Local Legislature to a certain extent. The want of this power was the great source v'?! 1 { i i lli I 160 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION ciiAi-. of weakness in tlie United States, and it is a want tliat will he remedied by an amendment in their Constitution very soon." This coukl not refer to a mere power of restraining excesses of jurisdiction on the part of State Legislatures, since sucli a power is already possessed and constantly exercised by the Supreme Court. In like manner Mr. Dorion, Mr. Joly, and other opponents of the scheme assume that the veto is geneiv.1 and regard it accordingly with suspicion. The point of these remarks will hereafter appear. Thus, constitutionally, the Canadian Dominion is less federal and more natioi^^^ than the American liepublic. Practically the reverse is -he fact, because in the case of the American liepublic the unifying forces, economical and general, of which the power increases with the advance of commerce and civilisation, have free action, the barrier of slavery being now removed ; whereas in the case of Canada tlieir action is paral\'sed by geographical dispersion, com- mercial isolation, and the separatist nationality of French Quebec. The American President is elected by the people at fixed periods, and for a term certain. He and his Cabinet have no seats in Congress, nor has he any part in legislation except his veto and such influence as his position in the party may enable him to exercise beliind the scenes. The framers of the American Constitution were full of Montesquieu's false notion about the necessity of entirely (separating the executive from tlie legislative, and probably also of that supersensitive dread of the presence of placemen in the popular assembly which in England gave birth to the Place Bills. The Canadian Premier, like the British Premier, is elected by the people at periods rendered unct-rtain by the power of dissolu- tion, and for so long only as he can keep hi^ majority in the VIII THE FEDERAL COXSTITUTIOX 181 House of Commons. On the other hand, he and his Cabinet have seats in l*aiiiament, where, with their majority at th'jir hack, they initiate the most important part of h^gislation and control the whole of it. Assuming tliat government is to be by party, the Canadian and British system has clearly the advantage in resi)ect to the conduct of legislation. The American House of llepresentatives is apt for wjint of leader- ship to become a legislative chaos. Order and the progress of business are securp,! only by allowing the speaker, who ought as chairman to be neutral, to act as the party leader of the majority, and control legislation by a partisan nomination of the committees. A speaker having thought it right to con- fine himself to his proper duties, anarchy prevailed and legis- lation was at a standstill till a masterful and unscrupulous partisan got into the chair, when legislation and expenditure marched with a vengeance. The advantage, we say, depends on the existence of government by party ; for, were party out of the way, there seems to be no rear^on why a legislative assembly with a competent chairman should not get on with its business as well as an assembly of any other kind. Another plea which may be made for the Canadian system is thu by a sure and constitutional process it brings the e::ecutive into agreement with the legislature and with the people by whom the legislature is elect«^d, whereas when President Andrew Johnson entered upon a course of policy directly at variance with the policy of Congress no remedy could be found except the very rough remedy of impeach- ment. It is on this account that some Canadians boast that tlieir system is more ;emocratic than that of the Americans, and taunt the /imerican Eepublic with being monarchical and even rtulucratic. On the other hpud, the American system gives the country I I \ \ \ 162 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAl'. : ! m mi a stable executive iudepeiuleut ot the Huctuating majorities 0^' the leuislative chamber and ot" those shiftin!4 combinations, jealousies, and cabals which in I'rance, and not in France alone, have been making it almost impossible to find a firm foundation for a government. The American Executive for the four years of the Presidential term is independent ; it would be so at least were it not for the baleful influence of the power of re-election. As it is, the veto is sometimes exercised most uprightly and with the best eilect, while the I'residential Government, raised in some measure above the party strife, enjoys a dignity and a measure of national respect which to the party Premiership are denied. A Canadian Premier always engaged in party fighting and manceuvring, perpetutdly on the stump, stoops to acts which, if done by an American President, would cause great scandal. The American system moreover has the advantage of sometimes ad^iiJliing to the Cabinet and to tlie highest service of the State men of high administrative ability who are not party managers and rhetoricians. Such selections indeed have been not un- frequently made. Turgot would probably have been a bad Parliamentary leader and a failure on the stump : he could hardly have made his way into a Parliamentary Cabinet ; but in an American Cabinet, supposing his name had become known as an administrator and a mastei" of political science, he might have found a place. Of the Presidents themselves, several have been men who, though attached to the party by which they were nominated, had not spent their lives in the party war, and their patriotism and breadth of view have been greater on that account. AVhen we come to compare the Canadian Senate with its American counterpart, though the form and the nominal power are the same the actual difference is great indeed. I I ---v^i VIII THE FEDERAL COXSTITUTIOX 163 Tho Aiiiei'icaii Senate, elected liy the State Legislatures, is in the full sense of the term a co-ordinate branch of the Federal Congress with the House of Representatives, rejects the Bills passed by the House with perfect freedom, and with equal freedom initiates legislation on all su])jects except finance. It has a veto on appointments, and can in this way put strong though irregular pressure on the Executive. It has a veto on all treaties, as Foreign Governments wiildi have the misfortune to negotiate with that of the United States know to their cost. Of late, under a violent stress of party exigency, it has been bringing a stain \i])on its record. It has been consenting to a Taritf Bill, the folly of which no man of sense can fail to see, and doing in regard to the admission of new States and the decision of Senatorial elections what no party exigency can excuse. Faction corrupts all that it touches. There is also a growing belief that wealth exerts an undue intluence both directly and indirectly in Senatorial elec- tions. Still the power of the Senate remains tlie same ; its authority is generally regarded by Americans as the sheet- anchor of the State, and a seat in it is, after the Presidency, the highest prize of American and)ition. The Canadian Senate nominated by the Crown is, on the contrary, as nearl}' a cipher a? it is possible for an assembly legally invested with large powers to he. The (piestion as to the constitution of the Upper House when it came before the framers of the Dominion Constitution was not mooted in Canada for the first time. Under the old Constitution, first of the separate then of tlie United l*rovinces, the Legislative Council, as the L^pper House was then called, had been nominated by the Crown. This system had been pronounced a failure and a change to the elective system was one of the reforms which followed the transfer of supreme power from the Crown to the people. !:. 5 n !. - ' ■ ' ■! ttmm 164 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION (HAP. 'i 1 i. > Lord Elgin was iu favour of tlie change, though he saw as lie thought that among its advocates, with some whose aim was Conservative, there were others whose aims were "subversion and pillage." He expressed his belief " that a second legis- lative body returned by the same constituency as the House of Assembly under some differences with respect to time and mode of election would be a greater check on ill-considered legislation than the Council as it was then constituted ; " and he predicted that Eobert Baldwin, who opposed this with other organic changes, and having got what he imagined to be the nearest thing to the British Constitution wished to cast anchor, would, if lie lived, find his sh'ip of State among unexpected rocks and shoals. His own ideas, perhaps,were not very clear. He wished to introduce the elective principle, yet in such a way as not to exchange " Parliamentary Govern- ment," which was his idol, for " the American system," which he abjured ; but in what essential respect a system with two elective Chambers and with supreme power vested in the representatives of the people would difl'er from the American system he might have foun I it difficult to explain. In 1856, however, as has been already said, the change was made and the system adopted was that of election by popular vote, the suffrage being thp same as that for elections to the House ol' Commons, but the el'^ctoral divisions nmch larger, and the term eight years instead of four. The alternative of election by Provincial legislatures of course could not present itself under the legislative union. The experiment of an Upper Chamber elected by the people appears not to have been successful, the labour of canvassing the extended electoral divisions being found so oppressive by candidates that thr best men declined to come forward. It is curious that the Fathers of Confederation when they came to debate the con- VIII THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 16: stitution of their Upper House seemed to tliink tliat their only choice \vas between the retention of election liy popuhir suffrage and a return to tlie system of nomination by the Crown. It did not occur to them apparently that as tliey were about to erect L*rovincial legislatures corresponding to the State legislatures of the Americans they might vest in these the election of the Senate. Tlieir chief reason for rejecting the elective principle and going back to nomination appears to have been that if the Senate felt the sap of popular election in its veins, its spirit would become too high, it would clahn equality as a legislative jiower witli the House of Commons, perhaps even in regard to money bills, and collision between the Houses would ensue. But these are perils in- separable from the system of two Chambers. Wherever the power is divided between two assemblies, collision may at any time arise, and if the collision is prolonged deadlock may ensue. There has been legislative deadlock or something very like it at Washington when one of tlie political parties has had a majority in tlie House of liepresentatives and the other in the Senate. You cannot liave the advantages of union and division of power at the same time. To construct a body which, without claiming co-ordinate authority, sliall act as a Court of legislative revision, and as the sober second- thought of the community, is practically beyond the power of the political architect. He must try to ensure sobriety where he places power. To suppose that power will allow itself on important matters to be controlled by impotence is vain. Evidently the image of the House of Lords liovercd before the niind-^ of the builders of the Canadian Constitution. But the House of Lords has never acted as a court of legislative revision or as an organ of the nation's sober second-thought. It has acted as the House of a privileged order, resisting all '. ^ L I- \ ; J n im CAXADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION cuAr. tj, h ill i cliaiigG ill lliu interest of p-.vilege. It resisted rarliameiitary ret'orin till it was overborne liy tlie threat of a swamping creation of peers. All tlie power which it retains is tlie j»o\ver of hereditary rank and wealtli. Nothing analogous to it exists or can exist in Canada, and in franiintj Canadian institutions it ouglit to have been put out of sight. Nomination having been chosen it followed that the ap- pointments should be for life : notliing else could give the nominees of the Crown even a semblance of independence. But the result is a nullit}', or ratlier an addition to the nundjer of vicious illusions, since tlie sense of responsil>ility in the Lower House may be somewhat weakened by the ini[)ression, however false, that its acts are subject to revision. The Senate is treated with ironical respect as the Upper House and surrounded with derisive state. The decorations of its Chamber surpass those of the Commons' Chamber as the decorations of the Lords' Chamber surpass those of the Commons' Chamber at Westminster. The members sit in gilded chairs, are styled Honourable, and on all ceremonial occasions take precedence of the holders of real power. But these, like the observance paid to the Governor-General and his Vicegerents, are merely the trappings of impotence. The Senate neither initiates nor controls important legislation. After meeting for the Session it adjourns to Avait for the arrival of Ijills from the Commons. About once in a Session it is allowed to reject or amend some measure of secondary importance by way of showing that it lives. It is supposed to be sometimes used ])y the Minister who controls it for the purpose of quashing a job to which lie has been obliged to assent in the Lower House. Measures of importance may sometimes be brought in first in the U])per House, for the sake of saving time, but they never originate with it. At ii VIII THE FEDERAL COXSTITUTIOX 16? the end of the Session the measures passed in the Lower House are hurried through the Upper House with liardly time enough for deHberation to save the semblance of respect for its authority. Its debates are rarely reported unless pi([uancy happens to be lent to theni by personal altercation. Nobody dreams of looking to it for the second-thought of the nation, or imagines that in any political emergency it could serve as the sheet-anchor of the State. Men of a certain class may seek seats in it for the sake of the title, the trappings, and whatever of social grade may bo attached to membership. To some possibly the annual payment of a thousand dollars and mileage may be an attraction. But Senatorships are not sought from the promptings of a generous ambition or a desire to render active service to the country. Almost the onlv serious business of the Senate is sitting in judgment, as tlie House of Lords used to do, on divorce cases, an incongruous function, exercised because the French Catholics will not allow the Dominion to have a regular Divorce Court. ^ The experience which led under the Union to the reform of the old nominee Legislative Council and the judgment of Lord Elgin on that subject are confirmed ; and it is proved that under the elective system nothing which is not based on election can have power. It is true that the work of those who instituted the nominee Senate has hardly liad a fair chance. They may have reckoned on a broad, tolerably impartial, and patriotic exercise of the power of appointment. They may have had before their minds an assem1)ly coni]n'ehending representatives of national eminence in all lines, not tlie agricultural and mercantile only, but the professional, the scientific, the educa- • \\\ I :H ' Tlianks to tlie exertions of Senator Oowan, sonietlun \>*)\\eT for a party purpose, if for no narrower object. " My dear P , I want you before we take any steps about T. Y 's appointment to see about the selection of our candidate for West Montreal. From all I can learn AV. W will run the best. He will very likely object ; but if he is the best man you can easily hint to him that if lie runs for West Montreal and carries it, we will consider that he has a claim to an early seat in the Senate. This is the great object of his ambition." This letter, from a Priiiie Minister to a local party manager, illustrates at once the sort of work which a Canadian Prime Minister does and the principle upon which he uses his power of appointment to the Senate. Money spent for the party in election QonteaU and faithful adherence to the person of its chief, especially when he most needs support against the moral sentiment of the public, are believed to be the surest titles Uj a s^^-at in the Canadian House of Lords. If tliere is ever a show of an impartial appointment it is illusory. When the exj>enditure of money is a leading qualification, commerce l« pretty sure to be well represented. But no one will j>relend that tlie general eminence of Canada is represented by iu Senate. No intel- ' Tliis includes soiul' nieiubor.s of the (;1<1 Levii,]ativ'; Council, in the selection of whom the Act enjoined that consideration should ^i^ shown to both jiolitical parties, • ' , .Oil - - ^ . . -- . - ■ ■' \- i ^*ni VIII THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION IGO S e for run best West claim of his local icli a vhich oney leiice leeds , are ladiaii artial louey well iierai iutel- llcctioii lolitical lectual or fifrifrntific distinction finds a place, while illiteracy scarcely <,'xcl«fles those who liave served a party header well. The age of the members as a body woiUd in itself preclude active work. It will be seen from the letter just quoted that the Prime Mini.ster treats the Governor-General as a perfect cipher in tf^^^^rd to these appointments, and looks upon the j>atronage m fcntirely his own, I'ropose that a party leader shall in his own name nominate one branch of the Legislature and you will be met with a shout of indignation ; but under the name of the Crown a Prime IMinister is allowed to nominate a branch of the Legislature without protest of any kind. Such h the use of fictions ! A life tUESTION CHAT. the House of Lords. To swamp an udversu nutjority in the Senate a Minister is allowed to create three or six extra Senators. The device is hoth clumsy and invidious, besides being open to exception as a recognition of the party prin- ciple. J hit weighted down as the scale now is with the following of a single politician, an additional creation of six would have no perceptible effect upon the balance. If the other party sliould come into oflice, and the Senate under the influence of the Outs should be inclined to give trouble to the Ins, there is no way of bringing it to its senses short of a revolution. Instead of being a mere cipher, it may possibly become an active source of evil if it ever allows itself to be used as an engine by the man to whom the majority of its members owe their nominations, for the purpose of embarrass- ing the Government when he is out of power. In imitation of the Constitution of the United States, which recognises the federal principle by giving two Senators to each State without regard to population, the Canadian Act of Federation assigned an equal number of senators (24) to each of the great divisions of the Dominion, Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritime Provinces. Provision was made for the extension of the principle to provinces thereafter to be admitted. As the Senate was to be distinctively federal, re- presenting the provinces, the House of Commons was to be national, representing the people of the whole Dominion. In the House of Commons and the Ministers whose tenure of office depends upon its vote supreme power centres. In this the Canadian Constitution is a faithful ropy of that of Great Britain. But copying the Constitution of Great Britain not for Canada only, but for all communities like Canada, is perilous work unless they understand their model more I ; P! VIII THE TEDKRAL CONSTITUTION 171 distinctly tliaii it is understood at lionic. Tlic IIouso of Commons was not originidly intended to l)e tlie (lovernment or even the J.ej^islature. The Government resided in the Crown, and the ]{ouse of Commons was merely the repre- sentation of tlie ])eople summoned l»y the Crown to grant it money, and at the same time to inl'orm it ahout tin; state and wants of the country. Through its hold over the purse it gradually drew to it supreme power and in effect hecame the State. JUit it at the same time ceased to l)e in reality a popular assembly, and became, though in irregular and illegitimate ways, a representation of the wealth and high political intelligence of the nation. In this phase of its existence it was oligarchical, no doubt, and legislated in the interest of a class, but it was a powerful and dignified assembly capable of governing the country. It was enabled to be wliat it was because England had a large leisure class at liberty to devote itself to public life and to serve the country without wages. It is now as a consequence of demo- cratic change rapidly losing tliis character, and it is at the same time becoming an anarchy and a bear-garden incapable eitlier of legislation r)r of government, incapable even of })utting down the feeblest rebellion or preserving the integrity of the nation. A commercial colony has no such class as that which supplied the members of tlie House of Commons in the palmy days of that body. It has very few men of wealth and leisure, still fewer of those who, having inherited wealth, are at liberty from their youth, if they possess the sense of duty or the ambition, to devote themselves to politics. The chiefs of commerce, the leading manufacturers and the bankers, the lawyers and physicians who are in good practice, the most substantial and the wealthiest members of the community generally, cannot afford to leave their business .. h ■»• IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-S) 1.0 I.I 1.25 •?*iM ilM '- m 12.2 'i I4£ I II 2.0 1.4 1.6 V2 ^ /}. VI ^ VJ '>^ // >t^^ /^ -^ y Photographic Sciences Corporation A ^^v :\ \ O^ «• » 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, NY. 14580 (716) 873-4503 ip fA :/. :! ^\'^0 !# <^ n^nl H 172 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. and spend four inontlis of every year in rather petty politics at Ottawa, to say notliing of tlie drafts made upon their time by canvassing, correspondence with constituents, and the fell demands of the stump. It is necessary therefore to have recourse for politicians to an inferior class of men, and too often to those who have failed in other industries or prefer living on the public to living by the sweat of their brows. Go to one of these assemblies, look behind the thin line of ability or of political experience presented by the front bench, and you will see the connection of effect with cause. Business interests and the necessity of looking after legisla- tion which affects their trades will draw to Parliament a certain number of commercial men, and these probably will be about the best material that you will get, though they are not likely to be statesmen, while they are likely to have interests of their own. This is not a criticism upon the work of the framers of the Canadian Constitution alone ; it applies to the whole system of govenr'ng through supposed imitations of the British House of Commons. When you have in making up your legislature to call in the country lawyer, the country doctor, the storekeeper, the farmer, the payment of members plainly becomes a necessity. The salary of a thousand dollars and mileage is small, but it is enough to tempt a man hanging rather loose upon industry, or a country practitioner with little practice. Advocates of the system assume the case to be, that the electors having chosen a poor man for his worth it is requisite in order to secure to them his services to give him a salary, whereas the fact may be, that the salary induces the poor man to compass heaven and earth in order to press himself on the electors. To French members, whose habits are very frugal, the indemnity is said to be sometimes a livelihood, and there is VIII THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 173 reason to believe that their unwillingness to risk the loss of it forms something of a practical check upon the ^Minister's use of the power of dissolution. Public men of tlie higher stamp liave been heard to condemn the system as apt to call into activity local intriguers who devote themselves to capturing beforehand the favour of the constituency, and close the avenue against worthier candidates whom the election day might otherwise bring forward. The revolutionary party in England appears to have taken up payment of members as a democratic measure. It is democratic with a vengeance, and is a pretty sure way of turning the highest of callings into a trade not so high. Still where there is no leisure class, or where the leisure class is excluded from public life, as a needy man cannot live on his sense of duty, you have to choose between paying him regularly and letting him pay himself in irregular ways. Of the two evils the first is clearly the less. Among the American errors, of which even Liberals who took part in founding the Canadian Confederation promised themselves to steer clear, was universal suffrage. Canadian suffrage in those days was comparatively conservative, the qualification being practically ownership of a freehold, which was not beyond the reach of any industrious and frugal man. But the inevitable Dutch auction has been going on, alike in Dominion and in Provincial politics, and it is evident that to universal suffrage — to manhood suffrage at least — Dominion and Provinces will soon come. Already they have come to its very verge. Thus power will be transferred from the freehold farmers to people far less con- servative, and at the same time from the country to the city. It has already been mentioned that the public school system does its work but imperfectly in educating the dangerous \\\ I I \)ii I ' 174 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN gUESTION CIIAl'. I? { class. As in Great I'ritain so in Canada, the politicians Avho style themselves Conservatives vie in the competition with those who call themselves Liberals, and like their compeers at Westminster "dish the Whigs." It was a Conservative Minister that extended the franchise to Indians, wiio, it was anticipated, would have patriotism and intelhgence enough, if proper inducements were held out to them, to vote for the Government candidate. The same Minister attempted, prob- ably with the same strategical motive, to give tlie franchise to women, but the conservatism of his French supporters, in regard to the relations of the sexes, forced him to withdraw his proposal. Canadian politics are also exemplifying a weakness of democracy which though little noticed by political writers is very serious — its tendency to narrow localism in elections. In the United States the localism is complete, and the ablest and most popular of public men, if he happens to live in a district where the other party has the majority, is excluded from public life. In England, before the recent democratic changes, places were found on the list of candidates for all the men of mark, wherever they might happen to live, and a good many non-residents are still elected, though localism has evidently been gaining ground. In Canada there is a chance still for a non-resident if he holds the public purse, perhaps if he holds a very well-tilled purse of his own, but as a rule localism prevails. Even the Prime Minister of Ontario, after wielding power and dispensing patronage for eighteen years, encounters grumbling in his constituency because he is a non-resident. A resident in one electoral division of Toronto would be rather at a disadvantage as a candidate in another division, though the unity of the city, commercial and social, is complete. The mass of the people r lUAl'. \vlio with peers ativo t was ougb, r the proh- ichisG Liis, in hdraw less of ters is actions, ablest e in a cUided ocratie for all !, and a Dcalisni ire is a purse, [vn, but Ister of [age for tuency ectoral ;e as a |ie city, people VI II THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION ua into whose hands power has now passed naturally think much less of great questions, political or economical, than of their own local and personal interests ; of these they deem a local man the best champion, and they feel that tliey can correspond more freely about theui with him than with a stranger. liesides they like to keep the prize among them- selves. Such, in the exercise of supreme power, are tlie real tendencies of those whom collectively we worship as the people. That the calil)re of the representation must be lowered by localism is evident ; it will be more lowered than ever when the rush of population, especially of the wealthy part of it, to the cities shall have concentrated intelligence there and denuded of it the rural districts. The Hare plan, of a national instead of a district ticket, would immensely raise the character of the representation if it could be worked ; but it assumes a level of intelligence in the mass of the people far above what is likely for many a generation to be attained. In the meantime as, on the one hand, the local man represents the choice of nobody outside his own district, and on the other hand men are excluded by localism whom the nation at large would elect, the net outcome can hardly be with truth described as an assembly representing the nation. But the most important point of all in the case of Canada, as in that of every other Parliamentary country, is one to which scarcely an allusion was made in the debate on Confederation, and of which the only formal recognition is the division of the seats in the Halls of I'arliament. liegu- late the details of your Constitution as you will, the real government now is Party; politics are a continual struggle between the parties for power ; no measure of importance can be carried except through a party ; the public issues of ^\ ii ■'p 176 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAl", 111 F :; V'fi the (lay are those which the party managers for the purposes of the party war make up ; no one who does not profess allegiance to a party has any chance of admission to public life. Let a candidate come forward Wxth the highest reputa- tion for ability and worth, but avowing himself independent of party and determined to vote only at the bidding of his reason and conscience for the good of the whole people, he would run but a poor race in any Canadian constituency. If independence ever presumes to show its face in the political field the managers and organisers of both parties take their hands for a moment from each other's throats and combine to crush the intruder, as two gamblers might spring up from the table and draw their revolvers on any one who theatened to touch the stakes. They do this usually by tacit consent, but they have been known to do it by actual agreement. What then is Party ? We all know Burke's definition, though it should be remembered that Burke on this, as on other occasions not a few, fits his philosophy to the circumstances, which were those of a member of a political connection struggling for power against a set of men who called themselves the King's friends and wished to put all connections under the feet of the King. But Burke's definition implies the existence of some organic question or question of principle, with regard to which the members of the party agree among themselves and differ from their opponents. Such agreement and difference alone can recon- cile party allegiance with patriotism, or submission to party discipline with loyalty to reason and conscience. Organic questions or questions of principle are not of everyday occurrence. When they are exhausted, as in a country with a written constitution they are likely soon to be, what bond is there, of a moral and rational kind, to hold a party together VIII THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 177 j)rgaiiic leryday [y with 3ond is r)gether r o and save it from becoming a mere faction ? Tiie theory that every community is divided by nature, or as tlie language of some woukl ahnost seem to imply, by divine ordinance, into two parties, and that every man belongs from his birth to one party or th. other, if it were not a ludicrously patent example of philosophy manufii.ctured for the occasion, would be belied by the history of Canadian parties with their .kaleidoscopic shiftings and of Canadian politicians who have been found by turns in every camp. Lord Elgin, coming to the governorship when the struggle for responsible govern- ment was over, and a lull in organic controversy had ensued, found, as his biographer tells us, tliat parties formed them- selves not on broad issues of principle, but with reference to petty local and personal interests. On what could they form themselves if there was no broad issue before tlie country ? Elgin himself complained, as we have seen, that his ministers were impressed with the belief that the object of the Opposi- tion was to defeat their measures, right or wrong, that the malcontents of their own side would combine against them, and that they must appeal to personal and sordid motives if they wished to hold their own. That is the game which is played in Canada, as it is in the United States, as it is in every country under party government, by the two organised factions — machines, as they are. aptly called ; the prize being the Government with its patronage, and the motive powers being those common more or less to all lactions — personal ambition, bribery of various kinds, open or disguised, and as regards the mass of the people, a pugnacious and sporting spirit, like that which animated the Blues and Greens of the Byzantine Circus. This last influence is not by nny means the least powerful. It is astonishing with what tenacity a Canadian farmer adheres to his party Shibboleth when to him, N i sa 178 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION (-•HAP, --If as well as to the coniinunity at large, it is a Shibljoleth and nothing more. Questions of princii»le, about which public feeling has been greatly excited, questions even of interest which appeal most directly to the pocket, pass out of sight when once the word to start is given, and the race between I31ue and Green begins. Questions as to the character of candidates are unhappily also set aside. It is commonly said that Canada produces more politics to the acre than any other country. The more of politics there is the less unfortunately there is of genuine public spirit and manly readiness to stand up for pul)lic right, the more men fear to be in a minority, even in what they know to be a good cause. People flock to any standard which they believe is attracting votes ; if they find that it is not, they are scattered like sheep, I'olitical aspirants learn from their youth the arts of the vote -hunter; they learn to treat all questions as political capital, and to play false with their own understand- ing and conscience at the bidding of the wirepullers of their party. The entrance to public life is not thvough the gate of truth or honour. These are not peculiarities of Canada ; they are things common to all countries where the party system prevails, and peculiar only in their intensity to those countries in which party is inordinately strong. It is a necessity of the party system that the Cabinet is made up not of eminent administrators, but of men who are masters of votes or skilful in collecting them. One minister represents the French vote, another the Irish Catholic vote, a third the Orange vote, a fourth the Temperance vote. The Ministry of Finance in a commercial country is consigned to a star of the philanthropic platform. Next to gathering votes by management the chief attribute of statesmanship is effectiveness on the stump. Hardly a public man in Canada w. VIII THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 179 blic rest O ^'cen !r of only auy less nauly iar to cause, acting d like le arts .ons as rstand- f their crate of anada ; party 10 those 3inet is (fho are kiinister lie vote, The Tned to lithering iship is I Canada has a high reputation as an administrator. The Prime Minister notoriously pays little attention to his department. He speaks on great public questions, such as the fiscal system, only to show that he has not nnich given his mind to them. His title to his place is tliat of unique experience and imrivalled dexterity in the collection and combination of votes. In all this Canada only resembles other Tarliamentary countries, but in analysing a particular set of institutions it is necessary to recall the general facts. The ahsence in the debate on Confederation of any attempt to forecast the composition and action of Federal parties fatally detracts from the value of the discussion. If Australia or any other group of Colonies thinks of following the example of Canada, a forecast, as definite as the nature of the case will permit, of Federal })arties will be at least as essential to the formation of a right judgment as the know- ledge of anything relating to the machinery of the Con- stitution. Party government necessarily brings with it a party Press, with its well-known characteristics, in which the party Press of Canada has certainly not l)een behind its compeers. Of late an independent journalism has been struggling into existence and giving some expression to opinions unsanctioned by the party machines. Questions, such as that of the Jesuits' Estates Act, on which the politicians were tongue- tied, have in this way been freely treated, and men who would never receive a party nomination have been enabled on such questions to take a share of public life. The best apology for Party is one which at the same time. in the case of Canada as in every other case, discloses an almost fatal weakness in the whole elective system of govern- ment. The system theoretically assumes that the electors 180 CANADA AND THK CANADIAN QUESTION CUAl' ft! •' I.J will lay their lieads to^fcithur to choose the ])e,st men. Tractic- ally, it is iniiossible for the electors to do anytliin^^ of the kind. Tliey are a multitude of people unkncjwn for the most l)art to each other, without anythin;,' to bring them together, and without any power of setting a candulature on foot. I'he best (pialified are not likely, perhaps they are of all the least likely, to come forward of themselves. An organisation of some sort there must be to bring a candidate forward and collect votes for him, and it is difficult to devise any other sort of organisation than Party. The inevitable results of this, however, are the domination of faction, with all its malignity, its violence, its corruption, its calumny, its reck- lessness of the common weal ; the ascendency of the Caucus and of Mr. Schnadhorst ; government of the people by the people, and ^or the people, in name, government of the Boss, by the Boss, and for the Boss, in reality. The consequence in England is nearly half the House of Commons trooping out behir 1 a party leader, and under the lash of the party whip, to vote against their recorded convictions for the dismember- ment of their country. The fruits of the system in Canada, and everywhere else, are of the same kind. In Canada, as elsewhere, though there are honourable men in public life, the standard of morality which ought to be the highest in politics is in politics the lowest. The community is saved by its general character, by its schools, its churches, its judiciary ; by the authority which chiefs, generally worthy, and always more or less able, exercise over industrial and commercial life. By its elective polity it would scarcely be saved. The partition of powder giving the civil law to the Pro- vinces and the criminal law to the Dominion, whereas by the American Constitution both are given to the States, does not seem very reasonable in itself The same legislative m vm THE I'EDKKAL CONSTITUTION 181 la, as the llitics its liary ; |\vays 2rcial Pio- s by does lative intellect is required in both cases, nor is tlie boundary between the two lines clearly defined. JUit this Avas a necessary concession to Quel)ec, Avho clinj^s to her French law as a pledge of her national existence. It has been already nientioni'd that the absence of divorce courts is a concession to the same influence. Tlie structure of the provincial governments and legisla- tures gencirally, with theirconstitutional Lieutenant-Governors, their Tarliamentary I'reniiers and Cabinet, is the same as that of the Dominion government and legislature, though on a small scale. Like the Governor-Cleneral, the Lieutenant- Governor is a figurehead, and constitutional writers who say that he has the assistance of an Executive Council to aid and advise him in administering public affairs, might say the same thing with equal truth of his flagstaff. Identical also is the procedure, and so is the ceremony, so far as any ceremony is retained. But Ontario, Manitoba, and British Columbia — democracy apparently becoming more intense as it goes west — have done away with the Upper House. In other provinces, as in Nova Scotia, efforts have been made to abolish the Upper House, as a waste of public money, but the House clings to its existence. Members nominated on the sjiecial condition that they shall vote for abolition, when they have taken their seats, find reasons for endless delay. No proprietor of a rotten borough ever clung to his political property with more tenacity than a democrat clings to any anomaly in which he has an interest. The change to a single house, if not material in itself, brings clearly to view the fact that a heavy responsibility is cast on these bodies of municipal legislators, which by a single vote can in one night enact the most momentous change in anything connected with civil right or property, totally M f : I- ■•; 1 1 1 1 M'tJ . l1 i 182 CANADA AND THK CANADIAN QUESTION C1IAI-. alter the la\v of wills, or profoniully modify the relations between the sexes by the introduction of female siilfrage. The Legislature of Ontario once broke a will at the solicitation of parti(!S interested, tliough the Courts of Law found a reason for treating the Act as void. The Governor of a State in the American Union has a real veto, which he exercises freely. A governor put his veto not long ago on a Bill passed in a moment of heedlessness, which would have subverted the civil status of marriage. Moreover no amendment can be made in the Constitution of an American State, no extension of the State franchise can take place, without submission to the i^eople. This is a great safeguard. The general disposi- tion of the people is against change. In other respects the experience of Switzerland in regard to the Keferendum is confirmed by that of the United States. At all events the people are not accessible to personal influence or cajolery as individual legislators are, while the issue being submitted to them separately, and not mixed up with other issues, as is the case at general elections, can be better grasped by their intelligence. Nominally the Lieutenant - Governor of a province has a veto, really he has none ; and once more we see tho pernicious effect of constitutional figments in veiling real necessities. Volitical architects in the United States, looking democracy in the face, attempted at all events to provide the necessary safeguards. At first, under the Canadian Constitution, the same man could sit both in the Dominion and the Provincial Legislatures. Provincial Legislatures were led by luon who sat in that of the Dominion. But, by a self- denying ordinance (1872), the wisdom of which was perhaps as questionable as that of self-denying ordinances in general, it is now forbidden to any man to sit in more Legislatures than one. Tliis change increases the demand on the not very VIII TIIK FKDKKAL CONSTITUTION isa i: filing [tates, its to ladian mand re led self- Irhaps Ineral, itures very ftbuiulant stock of legislative capacity in the country, lowers tlie (luality of tlie Trovincial Legislatures, and enliances the peril of committing vital questions to their hands. The fanner, the country practitioner, or the vilhige lawyer, are good representatives, we are told, of the average mind ; they may be, but to solve aright problems at once the most difficult and the most momentous sometliing more than the average mind is required. I'erhaps tlie advocate of the party system may find a specious argument in the subordina- tion which it entails of the rank and file of a legislative assembly on each side to the party leader, who is likely to be a man of superior intellect and knowledge. The leaders are usually lawyers, and acquainted with the Britis'r statute book, which forms a lamp to gui'^e their feet in the legislative path. Yet lawyers complain of the Ontario statute book, and the need of a govei.iment draftsman seems to be felt. The function of interpreting the Constitution in the last resort, and kee])ing each of the Powers within its proper bounds, discharged in the United States by that august tribunal the Sui)reme Court, is discharged in the case of Canada, as of the other Lv^lonies, by that still more august tribunal, the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council, with its romantic range of jurisdiction, now deciding who shall take a Hindoo inheritance and offer the family sacrifice to a Hindoo deity, now pronouncing on the validity of an excommunication laid on by the Eoman Catholic Church of Quebec. In the integrity and ability of the Judicial Com- mittee absolute confidence is felt ; but a doubt is sometimes raised wliether judges ignorant of Canada can place them- selves exactly at the right point of view, and complaints are heard of the distance and the expense. To spare suitors in these respects was partly the object in giving Canada a 184 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION THAP. • if'' r 1 1 ' t , >5' i , Supreme Court, which intercepts not a little of the litigation ; and which, if the Canadian Confederation ever becomes inde- pendent, will be to it what the Supreme Court is to the United States. Tlie Judicial Committee, though a legal, not a political tribunal, perhaps does not leave considerations ot statesmanship entirely out of sight. In deciding questions between the Dominion and the Provinces it seems to have leant to the side of Provincial autonomy, as most conducive to the peace of the Confederation, much as in ecclesiastical cases it leans to comprehension in the interest of the stability of the Church. The American Constitution is subject to amendment, as we know, though by a very guarded process. So much of the Canadian Constitution as is composed in the Act of Confedera- tion can be amended only by the same authority by which the Act was passed, that of the Imperial Parliament. This amounts almost to practical immutability, for the Imperial Parliament, sinking beneath the burden of its own business, has no time or thought to bestow on the improvement of colonial institutions. That power of Constitutional amend- ment, without which there cannot be full liberty of self- development, Canada can hardly hope to acquire without the severance of the political connection. More than one good thing in her polity Canada has derived from her specially English traditions. She has in the first place a permanent Civil Service which saves her from the Spoils System introduced in the United States by that incarnation of faction and mob-rule, General Jackson, whose victory at New Orleans, as it made him President and filled American politics with his spirit, though he lost not a score of men in the action, is the most dearly bought victory in history. Party in Canada does not, as in England, quite L !■ CHAl'. VIII THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 185 ition ; inde- the il, not ons ot istions ) have ducive iastical ^ability [lent, as 11 of the afedera- y which t. This mperial msiness, Inient of amend- of self- lout the ida has Is in the ler from ^tes by Fackson, lent and 1st not a victory Id, qnite keep its hands off tlie Civil Service. It practically takes the appointments, for though there is an examination system, this is so managed as to be like the sugar-tongs which the French- man held, in compliment to the habit of his English liost^, while he slipped his fingers between them to take up the sugar. Vacancies are also made for partisans by superannua- tions, and a Coilectorship of Customs has just been kept open for two years to suit the political convenience of the Govern- ment. Still Canada, compared with the United States, is free from the Spoils System. To the heads of her permanent Civil Service she owes it that while government, in the persons of the Parliamentary heads of departments, is on the stump, or dickering for votes, she enjoys the general benefits of a regular and intelligent administration. In the second place, election petitions are tried as in England by the judges, and with the same good results, while in the American House of Repre- sentatives contested elections are decided as they were in England in the days before the Grenville Act, by a party vote. In the third place, the judges themselves are appointed by the Executive for life, instead of being, as they are in most American States, though not in all or in the case of the Supreme Court, elected by the people for a term of years ; a system of which the Americans themselves feel the evils, and which they are disposed to modify by lengthening the judge's term. In England Party has now resigned to professional merit most of the appointments to tlie judiciary. This is not the case ill Canada, though a few impartial appointments have been made. The Americans, when their Confederation was framed, wisely closed all pecuniary accounts between the Federal Government and the States, and absolutely separated the Federal Treasury from tlnse of the States. The Canadians I If Mil 186 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION (JHAl*. not so wisely left the account open and permitted subventions to be granted by the Central Government to the Provinces. The consequences are, as might have been expected, continual demands for increased subventions, under the too-familiar name of " Better Terms," the opening of a sluice of Federal corruption, and the weakening of Provincial independence. Each Province, especially Quebec and the poorer Provinces, instead of practising economy and helping itself, is always looking for Government doles. Mr. George Brown, one of the chief framers, foresaw this, and was for defraying the whole of the local expenditures of the local governments by means of direct taxation, but the Sons of Zeruiah were too strong for him. " Whether the constitution of the Provincial Executive savours at all of Eesponsible Government or not," said Mr. Dunkin in the Debates on Confederation, " be sure it will not be anxious to bring itself more under the control of the Legis- lature, or to make itself more odious than it can help, and the easiest way for it to get money will be from the General Government. I am not sure, either, but that most members of the Provincial Legislature will like it that way the best. It will not be at all unpopular, the getting of money so. Quite the contrary. Gentlemen will go to their consti- tuents with an easy conscience, telling them, ' True, we had not much to do in the Provincial Legislature, and you need not ask us very closely what we did ; but I tell you what, we got the Federal Government to increase the subvention to our Province by five cents a-head, and see what this gives you — $500 to that road — $1000 to that charity — so much here, so much there. That we have done ; and have we not done well ? ' I am afraid in many constituencies the answer would be, ' Yes, you have done well ; go and do it again.' I am afraid the provincial constituencies, legislatures, and Tl VIII THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 187 executives, ^vill all show a most calf-like appetite for the milkiug of this one magnificeut government cow." Practically the cow has been Ontario, the wealthiest by far as well as the most populous of all the Provinces, but politically weaker, because more divided by faction, than Quebec. The Imperial Government retains a veto on all Dominion legislation, though not on the legislation of the Provinces, which is liable to disallowance by the Dominion Government alone. But so far as the internal legislation of Canada is concerned, the Imperial veto is like that veto of the British Sovereign on British legislation, which since the time of William III has slept the sleep that knows no waking. Competent judges seem to think that, let Canada do what she will within herself, even if she chose to indulge in a civil war, the Colonial Office will interpose no more. She has legalised marriage with a dead wife's sister, while in the United Kingdom such marriages remain illegal. She has adopted a tariff adverse to the mother country. It is only when Canadian legislation comes into direct collision with British rights, as in the case of copyright, that restraint is attempted, and even in the case of copyright it is not patiently borne. Foreign relations, of course, with the power of peace and war, remain in the hands of the Imperial Government. But Canada has gone a long way towards the attainment of diplomatic independence in regard to commercial policy. She is allowed to negotiate commercial treaties for herself under the auspices of the British Foreign Office, and subject to Imperial treaty obligations. In the everlasting imbroglio about the fisheries her Government has a voice which, it naturally uses in the way dictated by its own interests, political as well as commercial. A motion was made two 6!'t: I V '■I i 188 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION ("UAl". sessions ago for the appointment of a representative of Canada, who would practically have been an ambassador, at Washing- ton, but was defeated by the Government majority. England sends out a general to command the militia, but the last two generals have had troubled lives, and nativism is claiming tlie appointment as its own. The disposal of the forces belongs to the Canadian Government. It seems almost incredible that either the relation of a Canadian province to the Dominion, or that of the Dominion to the Imperial country, should have been seriously cited as a precedent for the relation which Mr. Gladstone's Bill would have established between the Sovereign Parliament of Great Ijritain and his vassal Parliament of Ireland. Break the whole of the United Kingdom to pieces, give each piece the rights of a Canadian Province, put a federal government like that of the Dominion over them all, and you will have a counterpart of the Canadian polity. Xo Canadian Province would rest content with such a position as that of a vassal community paying tribute, but with only a local assembly and no share in the councils of the nation, although the Canadian Provinces were drawn together by a common desire for closer union, at least on the part of their political leaders, whereas Ireland would set out with revolt burning in her veins. The only analogy capable of being cited on the Irish question which Canada presents is the relation between the Eoman Catholic majority and the Protestant minority in Quebec, and this is not in favour of leaving the Protestant minority in Ireland to the tender mercies of a Eoman Catholic Parliament there. In passing it may be remarked that before analogies are drawn for the guidance of statesmen in dealing with such problems as that of Ireland, either from Canadian or American ^^ vni THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 18d institutions, and bef'oro it is assumed that federation is tlie universal cure, it would be well to consider how far sucli a thing as a jrenuine federation now exists. The Acha^m League was a federation, inasmuch as it was a combination for nuitual defence, the States still remaining separate ; so originally was the Swiss Bund. But the Swiss Bund now is a nation witli a federal structure. So is the American Biepublic. liaihvays, telegraplis, commerce between States, the action of federal parties, and other unifying influences, wliatever the Constitu- tion may say, liave made the Americans a nation. There will presently be a national marriage law, and it will very likely be followed by a uniform commercial code, tlie want of which is greatly felt by conmiercial men or companies doing business over tlie whole Union or in several States. Against the course of nature the Jeffersonian Democrat protests in vain, Mr. Parnell has announced that Iiis aim is to put Ireland on the footing of a State in the American Union. Let him first ascertain what practically as well as constitu- tionally that footing is. The Central Government of Canada, as we have seen, has national powers, such as that of criminal legislation, and by the Constitution it has a national veto. Germany is a nation in process of construction. Austria and Scandinavia are uneasy wedlocks without union. The Canadian Constitution belongs mainly, not wholly, to the written class. Its framers declared that the Government under it was "to be administered according to the well- understood principles of the British Constitution," thereby recognising "understandings" as a virtual part of it. The most important understanding, of course, was that the Sovereign, in whom the Government was solemnly proclaimed to be vested, should not govern at all. We have had occasion in reference to the exercise of the prerogative of dissolution ^1 190 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION i'HAl'. to notice how precarious is an understanding in a land where tradition has no force and every one goes to the full length of his tether. A written Constitution strictly limiting every- one's powers appears to be an exigency of democracy with which the British democracy itself will have some day to comply. Ottawa, which was chosen as the capital of the United Canadas, and retained as that of the Confederation, is an official city, and can never be anything else. Its only com- merce is lumber, which, as the forests are cut down, is a receding trade, and there is nothing to draw general residence to it. Its climate combines the extremes of heat and cold. When selected it was simply the nearest lumber village to the Pole. The motives for the selection appear to have been three — fear of the rivalry among the great cities, Quebec, Montreal, and Toronto, fear of mobs such as that which had burned the Parliament House at Montreal, and fear of American invasion if the capital were too near the frontier. For the fear of mobs there was little ground, and against American invasion the distance of a few davs' march would scarcely be a sufficient barrier. The best reason was the beauty of the site, on a bluff over the Ottawa river, of which the buildings are not unworthy. Washington, till lately, was in like manner a merely official city without commerce or society; but it is now becoming the social centre of the continent, while the haggard ugliness of thirty years ago is being changed into remarkable beauty. Politics and poli- ticians, especially politicians of the rural class, need the tempering criticism and the refining influence of general society, while the combination of interests and ideas — political, commercial, lilerary, professional, and social — in London or Paris, is a school of public character and thought. Tlie I ltl VIII THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 191 Supreme Court which sits at Ottawa ic said to suffer by the absence of a resident Bar. A mistake wy,s made in not follow- ing the American example and federalii:>ing the district in which the capital stands. It is an anomaly that the federal capital should be in provincial jurisdiction, and that the Legislature should be dependent on provincial authorities for the maintenance of order at its doors. It is from Ottawa evidently that the journals and reviews in England mainly receive their accounts of men, affairs, and sentiment in Canada. With all respect for " our own correspondent " we may be permitted to observe that the official world of Ottawa is naturally loyal to itself, and that not all Canada is official. If the North-West prospers and is peopled, the centre of political power will shift to the centre of the continent, and Ottawa as a capital will then be misplaced. But before this can happen other changes will most likely come. ■■ :H \m \' CHAPTKli IX FRUITS OF COXFEDEUATION 1 II Among tlie ostensible objects of Con federation the most immediate perhaps were military strengtli and security against American aggression. Sceptics, among whom were two British officers,- pointed out at the time that if the number of the militia would be increased by Confederation, the length of frontier to be defended would be much more increased, and that though a bundle of sticks might, as Federationists said, become stronger by union, the saying might not hold good with regard to a number of fishing-rods tied together by the ends. The Dominion since its extension to the Pacific has a frontier, for the most par,*", perfectly open, of something like 4000 miles, while the garrison is broken into four t-,octions, far beyond supporting distance of each other. The frontier of Manitoba and the North- West Territories, which for 800 miles is a political line, has to defend it the militia which can be furnished by a population of 150,000. In the ^ Books consulted : Collins's "Life ami Times of Sir J. A. Macdoiiald, " Stewart's "Canada under the Administration of Earl Duflerin," Collins's "Canada under the Administration of Lord Lome/' The Statistical Year liooks of Canada, Morgan's " Dominion Annual Registers," and Mr. A, Blue's valuable issues of the Ontario Bureau of Industries and Statistics. - "Confederation of British North America," by E. C. Bolton and H. II. Webber, Royal Artillery. London, 186G. CHAP. IX FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 103 days of her •,'lorious defence against American invasion, Canada was comparatively compact. jMoreover, she was a fastness of forest ; she liad no great cities on her frontier at the mercy of the invader ; nor liad the invader raih-oads to enable him to bring his superior forces to bear, tliougli as we have seen they began to tell as tlie war went on. Neitlier was there then a great mass of French Canadians on the south side of the line in close connection, local and social, with tlieir brethren on the north. The Canadians of that day as backwoodsmen were rough soldiers ready-made. Tliey were less democratic than they are now, and followed Aiove willingly perhaps than their descendants would the royal officers who were set over them, or their own gentry. They had in this respect the same sort of advantage over the Republicans at the beginning of the war as the Cavaliers had over the Rorndheads and the Southerners over the North, till the Roundheads and the North learned the necessity of discipline. The regular force of the Dominion consists of schools of cavalry, infantry, and artillery, limited by law in the whole to a thousand men. Tlie embodied Militia are in number 38,000, partly Frencli. Half of this body is each year called out for a fortnight. City regiments voluntarily drill once a w^eek during half the year. The enrolled Militia, comprising all men of military age, exists only on paper, though by Canadian politicians, speaking to the British public and anxious to please their hearers, it has been represented as an organised force ready at any moment to spring to arms. In the North-West there are a thousand Mounted Police, who, however, are confined by law to the Territories. There is a Military College at Kingston of high repute ; but there is no army staff, commissariat, or provision for field hospitals. The men may be the worthy descendants 'i I I. ' 194 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CUAI'. of those who fought at Queenston Ileiglits or Chateaiiguay, but su])posiiig eacli of them to be a rahidin it must be left to soldiers to judge what force Canada would be able to put into the field within the time allowed by the swift march of modern war. Tlie Duke of Wellington said that to defend her- self successfully, Canada must command the Lakes, and in the War of 1812 loss of the command of the Lakes, after strenuous efforts to keep it, was at once followed by disaster. But Canada has no vessels of war on the Lakes ; thanks to her commercial isolation, she has very little lake or river shipping of any kind. At sea she would have to trust entirely to the 1 Jritisli fleet. It is true the American army is also very small, while the American militia is probably not better drilled than that of Canada. lUit it has been seen that money will buy men. The Americans have among them a good many innnigrants trained under the military system of Europe, and they showed in their Civil War that they could quickly turn wealth into military power. In vain does Imperial eloquence appeal to an industrial community on this Continent to keep up a regular army. It is not solely or principally the dislike of expenditure that stands in the way ; it is the whole character of the people ; it is their character, political and social, as well as commercial ; for they would fear that the army would become their master and that they would have an aristocracy of scarlet over their heads. That their fears would not be idle even the present bearing of some wearers of uniform shows. And who is the enemy ? A community allied to the Canadians by blood, in which half of them have relatives, with which in all things saving government, and the customs line they are one. Imperialist writers, while in trumpet tones they call Canada to arms, admit that the American Eepublic wall in the natural course of events IX FRUITS OF CONFKDEKATION 1»0 one day acquire the Protectorate of lier Continent. Is the dit'terence between tutela^^e and union so momentous tliat a people, who are or are destined to be under tutehige, can be expected to live armed to the teetli against tlieir own sons, brothers, and cousins for the purpose of averting union ? Alight it not even occur to them wlien they were told to beat tlieir ploughshares into swords that union was the higher condition of the two ? " Only one absurdity can be greater — pardon me for saying so — than the absurdity of supposing that the British Parliament will pay £200,000 for Canadian fortifications ; it is the absurdity of sup[)osing that Canadians will pay it themselves. Two hundred thousand pounds for defences! and against whom ? against the Americans? And who are the Americans ? Your own kindred, a nourishing people, who are ready to make room for you at their own table, to give you a share of all they possess, of all their prosperity, and to guarantee you in all time to come against the risk of invasion or the need of defences if you will but speak the word." So, writing to the Colonial Secretary, said Lord Elgin, Governor- General of Canada, and an ardent upholder , if ever there was one, of British connection. Unity of command the l*rovinces had before as British dependencies under the general whom the Home Government might send out. I'erhaps they were more sure of having it in their former state than they are in a state in which jealousies and rivalries among themselves might possibly in- terfere with devotion to the common cause. After Confederation the British troops were withdrawn. The flag of conquering England still floats over the citadel of Quebec, but it seems to wave a farewell to the scenes of its glory, the historic rock, the famous battlefield, the majestic river which bore the fleet of P^ngland to victory, the monu- 106 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN gUESTION C'HAl'. ment on wliich the fliivalry of the victor lias inscribed together the names of Wolfe and Montcalm. For no British redcoats muster round it now. The only British redcoats left on the Continent are the reduced garrison of Halifax. The beat of England's morning drum will soon go round the world with the sun no more. But as its last tlirob dies away will be heard the voice of law, literature, and civilisation still speaking in the English tongue. The noblest of England's conquests is that which will last for ever. Those who crow over what they imagine to be the collapse of the movement in favour of Colonial Emancipation and {igainst Imperial aggrandisement which prevailed thirty years ago forget how much that movement effected. They forget that it brought about not only the cession of the Ionian Islands, which was its immediate fruit, but the withdrawal of the troops from the Colonies, the proclamation of the principle of Colonial self-defence, and a largely increased measure of self-government. The framers of Confederation, however, promised them- selves not only increase of military strength but a North- American empire to be formed by incorporating the North- West, British Columbia, and Newfoundland, so that their realm should stretch from sea to sea and over the great adjacent island on the east. As regards the North- West and British Columbia their hope was fulfilled. The Hudson's Bay Company found itself constrained by Imperial pressure and the precarious character of its chartered rights to sell in 1869 its almost measureless domain, much of which, how- ever, is as hopelessly sterile as Sahara, for £300,000 and some reservations of good land. Possession was not taken without resistance. In the North- West was a population of French half-breeds belonging to the Catholic IX FRUITH OF CONFEDERATION 107 Church ill whom their kinsint'n iiiiJ t'cllow-CatiidliL's loiully saw the germ of u Frencli and Catliolic nation whicli should in time occupy tliat vast region to tlie exchision ol' llritisli and Protestant colonisation. Mor»'over the Halt-breeds felt that their hunting and trapjiing-grounds would be threatened and their very primitive industries supplanted by the advance of the agricultural settler. Their leader, l.ouis Kiel, upon the a})proach of the first Canadian governor of the territory called his people to arms, set up a provisional government, and put to death, with circumstances of great atrocity, Scott, a British Protestant and an Orangeman who resisted his assumption of power. At the approach of Sir Carnet Wolseley, Kiel collapsed and presently fie^!, aided, as was afterwards dis- covered, with money for his flight by the Canadian Govern- ment, which, placed between the devil of Orange wrath and the deep sea of French sympathy with the leader of French race and religion, had no desire in deciding on the fate of the rebel chief to choose between two modes of destruction for itself. The struggle was renewed in 1885, when the Half- breeds, having been exasperated by the disregard of their prayers respecting some land claims, to which the Ottawa Government, absorbed in the party struggle, found no time to attend, and being also probably alarmed by the advance of an alien civilisation, welcomed back Kiel as their chief and once more rose in arms. That he had been amnestied in the mean- while did not prevent Kiel from playing the same game over again. The rising of the Half-breeds was quelled, and Batoche, their hamlet-capital, was taken by a Canadian force under General Middleton, after a resistance which the candour of history must allow to have done credit to the valour of those poor people, (Considering that they could put into the field only a few hundred men of all ages, a man of ninety and t I I, (' .if' i 198 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN gllKSTION CHAP. »! ..S^: a boy (»f sixlt'cni being found among tlio slain, tliat only a i)art of tlieni wore anned with rilles, and that even tliese wore short of aniniunition. Kiel suffered deatli and deserved little synipatliy, since he had not only l)roken his amnesty but been M'illimj; to sell hinis;.'lf and his cause to the Government. Quebec, however, boiled over with sympathy for him, wliich would ])crliaps have proved more formidable had not he by jdaying the prophet given olfence to the priesthood. The Liberal 0})position in the Dominion Parliament, misled by the temporary ferment, and thinking to gain the French vote, took up Kiel's cause and ])k'aded for his exemption from punishment on tlie two grounds, not very consistent with each other, that he was insane and that his olfence was political. That a man who had conducted with no small address an arduous enterprise and retained complete control over his followers was insane in such a sense as to make him irrespon- sible for his actions could be believed by no human being, even if there was a streak of madness in liiel's general character ; M'liile it was evident that if every olfence which could be styled political was to go unpunished, society would be at the mercy of aiiy brigand who chose to say that his object in lilling it with blood and havoc was not booty but anarchy or usurpation. Some of the best men in the Opposition refused to vote with their leader, and the Govern- ment, standing to its guns, gained a well-merited victory. Among the troops sent to the North-West were two regiments of French militia. lUit these were not sent to the front. Of the two Colonels, one left the army in the field and went home, while the other telegraphed to the Minister of JMilitia his advice that the troops should be employed in guarding the forts and provisions, and that men fighting in the same way as the rebels should be sent to make the war. It is but fair Wf (11 A p. IX FliUrrs OF CONFEDERATION 199 to suppose that what tlicsc <,falhuit olliccrs wislied to shun was not ]K)wder but i)olitical ruin. Tho suppression of tliis |K?tty insurrection cost tlio J)oniinion $8,000,000, besides the loss of life, a fine paid for tlie supineness or the political distractions of tlie (lovernment, wliich when the Ilel>eliion had broken out issued a Commission to iiKpiire into the Half-breed claims. The French yet clin<^ to the hope of making the Nortls- West their own. Their Archl)ishop still reigns, not without opulence and state, in St. I>oniface, the transriveriae suburb of Winnipeg, and they have an imnn'gration agency managed by priestly hands. lUit tlie l)alance of destiny has clearly turned against them ; as ])ioneers tliey are no match for their rivals. The Legislature of ^lanitoba has passed an Act abolishing the official use of the French language and the Separate Schools for Catholics. The Half-breeds are not a strong race, nor is immigration doing much to recruit their numbers. The next generation will probably see their few thousands merged in a great inflow of English-speaking settlers. When the North- West is peopled, and filled perhaps with a population partly drawn from the United States and other quarters not Canadian, it being locally far removed and commercially disunited from the eastern parts of the Dominion, what will be the effect on the cohesion and stability of Confederation ? That is a question which the politicians of to-day have probably ])ut off to the morrow. Newfoundland, the oldest of British Colonies, has hitherto refused, in spite of all overtures, to come into Confederation, and her decision seems now to be final. The owners of her boats, who are the owners of her fishermen, probably think that their interest is better served Ijy remaining apart ; A ■' P' iSi 200 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAV. perhaps she also looks with alarm on the growtli of Confedera- tion debt. The Confederation, on the other hand, by taking her in would annex a very bitter local feud between Orangemen and Catholics, conniiit itself to the naval defence of an island, add to the Fisheries question with the United States a similar but more dangerous question with France, in which she would have her own French against her, and open a new field of political corruption. To link together the widely -severed members of the Confederation two political and military railways were to be constructed by united effort as Federal works. The first was the Intercolonial, spanning the vast and irreclaimable wil- derness which separates Halifax from Quebec. This has been constructed at a cost of S40,000,000, and is now being worked by the Government at an annual loss, the amount of which it is difficult to ascertain, but which is reckoned by an independent authority at $500,000. The Canadian Pacific has also been constructed at a cost to the Dominion in money, land grants, guarantees, com- pleted works and surveys of something like $100,000,000, though it was promised by the original project that there should be no addition to taxation. Of the military value of these lines, and of their availability as a route for the transmission of troops from England to India, it is for military men to judge. At the time when the Inter- colonial was projected, the two British officers of artillery, whose pamphlet has been already cited, pointed out that the line would be fatally liable to snow -blocks. It would be awkward if, at a crisis like that of the Great Mutiny or that of a Eussian invasion in India, the reinforcements were blockaded by snow in the wilderness between Halifax and Quebec. We need hardly take into account such a chance as - PIT" IX FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 201 that of the closing of Halifax harbour by ice, which happens not more than once in thirteen or fourteen years. It is a more serious consideration that the line where it approaches the northern frontier of Maine runs, if the enemies are the Americans, within easy reach of a raid. Still more exposed to hostile attack is the Canadian Pacific, which runs along the northern shore of Lake Superior, the southern shore of which is in the hands of the Americans, and for 800 miles across the prairie country where the frontier is perfectly open. In the mountain region there are points at which, if an enemy could get at it with dynamite, it might, as the writer has been assured on competent authority, be blocked for months. Against snow-blocks and against avalanches, which are frequent, careful provision on a large scale is being made ; but landslides also are frequent in that region, where it has been jocosely said " the work of creation is not quite finished." One of them blocked the course of the great Thompson liiver for forty-eight hours. But the fact is constantly overlooked in vaunting the importance of this line to the Empire that its eastern section passes through the State of Maine, and would, of course, be closed to troops in case of war with any power at peace with the United States.^ In sending troo]is to India there would be two transhipments, a consideration the importance of which again it is for the War OHico to determine. ^ The Quarterly licvieiv, for example, sjmke of ine Caiiiuliaii Pacific Railway as running from "start to finish" over IJriti.sh ground, though the lino was at that very moment apj)lying for bonding j)rivilegt's to the Government of the United States. I take the opportunity of repeating that the statement of the Qaarterh/, that I had been going about the United States trying in vain to persuade the Americans to annex Canada, is baseless. The only occasion on which I spoke publicly of the political relations of Canada with the United States was at a debating society in New York, where I had been invited to take part in the discussion ; anil what I said on that occasion was, in clfect, that political union was a liuestion for the future, while the improvement of it ■■] 202 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. m\ \\i%\ fi As a commercial road the Intercolonial is a failure, for the simple reason that there is not, nor is there likely to be, any trade of the slightest importance between Canada and the Maritime Provinces of the Dominion. Small nmst be its receipts for local traific between Quebec and Halifax or St. John. Its commercial usefulness will be reduced, if possible, still lower if not altogether destroyed, now that the Canadian Pacific, its reputed consort in the great Imperial scheme, cuts it out by taking the route, 200 miles shorter, through the State of Maine ; nor can the condition to which it will probably be reduced by commercial depression fail to tell upon its efficiency even as a military road. What are the success and prospects of the Canadian Pacific as a commercial road we shall be better able to say when the earnings of the original and national line between Ottawa and the Pacific coast are distinguished from those of the Eastern and American extensions, which are no part of the original and national enterprise. So far as the profits of the Canadian Pacific Railway are made at the expense of the Grand Trunk they are made at the expense of a road which has done a great deal more for Canada than the Canadian Pacific Railway itself, and in which £12,000,000 sterling of British capital are invested. As a colonisation road its achievements are very doubtful. It has strung out the settlers along a line of 800 miles, carrying them far away from their markets and their centres of distribution, raising their freights, and, what is worst of all, depriving commercial relations was the question of the present. The story published in the Qiutrtcrly about a rebuke administered to me for my Annexationist sentiments by General Slierman, at the banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of New York, is also a pure fiction. The General spoke before me, he spoke to his own toast, and my speech on that occasion was confined to the commercial question, the political question being mentioned only to exclude it.— G. S. IX FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 203 them of the advaiitaijes of close settlement which in a wintry climate are particularly great. Many emigrants it carries all down the line to British Columbia, whence, there being hardly any land for them to take up, they pass into the Pacific States of the Union. In one of the emigrant trains there were found ten persons bound for British Columbia and fifty- eight bound for places in the United States, Besides this, the monopoly granted to the Company in consideration of the sacrifice of commercial to military and political objects in the laying out of the line long weighed like lead upon the rising community. To this, in conjunction with the tariff and with some unfortunate land regulations made both by the Company and the Government, it is due that whereas Dakota and Manitoba started eighteen years ago on nearly equal terms, Dakotahas a population of over 500,000, while that of Manitoba is about 150,000. At one time Manitoba was brought to the verge of despair : men who had been members of a Conserva- tive Government were leaving her for the United States. Yet the Ottawa Government, in pursuance of its political aims obstinately maintained the monopoly by the exercise of its veto, and was supported in so doing by its compliant majority in the Dominion Parliament. Suddenly, on a transpar- ently hollow pretext, it changed its course. The province petitioned the Crown for a hearing before the Privy Council, and it is commonly believed that the British Government then sent the Ottawa Government a hint, to which the Ottawa Government gave ear. Manitoba would otherwise have escaped ruin only by secession, and a Canadian Government which boasts that by its statesmanship the Confederation is held together, and excuses the most equivocal practices by that plea, would itself have been the immediate author of dissolution. t- . Hi I ", !a,3 m : !;■ ■ ': m 204 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTIOX CIIAI'. There is one point of view in which the history of the Canadian Pacific Kailway is most instructive. It was originally proclaimed as a purely national and imperial enterprise which was to assure the perpetual separation of Canada from the United States, frustrating for ever the designs of American ambition, and in which no Yankee was in any way whatever to take part. So everybody said and Sir George Cartier swore. An American firm was in the syndicate ; an American, now Vice-President of the United States, was the first Vice-President of the Company ; a genuine American was the first manager and is now President. The line runs through the State of Maine; it connects the Canadian with the American railway system not there only but at the Sault Ste. Marie and at its Pacific terminus. It is an applicant for bonding privileges at Washington, and in danger of being brought under the Inter- State Commerce Act. It is in fact, or soon will be, as much an American as a Canadian line. The C. P. E. even discriminates in its freights, involuntarily no doubt, against Canadians and in favour of Americans.^ Such is the outcome of designs for the sup- pression of geography and nature. In opering a trade among the Provinces, a natural trade at least, these inter-provincial railroads have failed, for the ^ The following is from an ofRoial source : "1st. The rate on wheat from Winnipeg to St. John, N.B., is 50 cents, and to Halifax, 63^ cents per 100 pounds. These are rates for traffic when carried by the C. P. R. alone. '2d. The rates on wheat from Minneapolis to Portland, Me., is 42| cents, Boston, 42^ cents, and New York, 37^ cents per hundred pounds. These rates apply wlicre trafhc takes tlie route from Minneapolis via the " Soo Line" and C. P. R., and were made effective Jan. 1st inst. Prior to that date each of tlie above ; • was 5 cents less per 100 pounds. 3d. The lirst-class rate on general ! ji. .. ilise from St. John, N.B., to Winnipeg is |2.64 per 100 pouu'l io Ml Montreal $2.08 per 100 pounds. Tliese rates apply via theC. I f;.ii. rile rates on first-class general merehandise from Portland and Boston to Miiuu;;ipoli;i is $1.05 per 100 pounds, via C. P. R. and "Soo Line." ti&iii cnAi'. IX FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 206 ;ory of tlie ). It was i imperial jaration of ever tlie aiikee was ' said and >'as in tlie he United a genuine ient. Tlie nects the here only lus. It is n, and in IJommerce rican as a s freights, favour of the sup- iral trade I, for the wheat from II ts per 100 alone. 2cl. ts, Boston, rates ap]»ly Line" and ite each oi' iss rate on 4 per 100 irtland and Sou Line." simple reason that the Provinces have liardly any products to exchange with each otlier, and that means of conveyance are futile when tliere is nothing to be conveyed. " I take," says Mr. Longley, the Attorney-General of Xova Scotia, " the solid ground that naturally there is no trade between Ontario and the Maritime Provinces whatsoever. Witliout tlie aid or compulsion of tariffs scarcely a single article produced in Ontario would ever seek or find a market in Nova Scotia or the other Maritime Provinces. In like manner, unless under similar compulsion, not a product of the Maritime Provinces would ever go to Ontario. Twenty years of political union and nine years of an inexorable Protectionist policy designed to compel inter-provincial trade have been powerless to create any large trade between these two sections, and what it has created has been unnatural, unhealthy, and consequently profitless." As illustrations, Mr. Longley points out that Ontario sent to the United States $7,000,000 worth of barley, timber to the same value, and $4,000,000 worth of animals and their produce, but to the Maritime Provinces none ; while, on the ether hand. Nova Scotia sent to the United States also in spite of heavy duties $2,000,000 worth of fish, $600,000 worth of minerals, and $500,000 worth of farm products ; sending none to Ontario. " Of the geniune natural products," continues INIr. Longley, " Nova Scotia sends practically nothing to Ontario. If the exports of Nova Scotia to Ontario are carefully studied, it will be found that they consist chiefly of refined sugar and manu- factured cotton, the product of two mushroom industries called into existence by the Protective system, and which do not affect one way or another the interests of 500 individuals in the entire province of Nova Scotia." To any one who may ask why this state of things exists, " God and nature," ''' i s Ili i '■m\\p r 206 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. he says, " never designed a trade between Ontario and the Maritime Provinces. If I have a barrel or ton of any com- modity produced in Xova Scotia, and I desired to send it to Toronto or Hamilton, the cost of sending it thitlier, unless it were gold, would probably be more than the value of tlie commodity. But I can at any moment put it on board of one of the numerous vessels or steamers wliich are daily leaving every port in Nova Scotia for Boston and send it to that city for twenty or thirty cents. If I desired to go to Toronto and Hamilton to sell it I should have to mortgage my farm to pay the cost of the trip, whereas I can go to Boston and back for a few dollars." Much more would he have to mortgage his farm if he carried his bales to Calgary or Vancouver. The moral drawn by Mr. Longley is, " that the Maritime Provinces have no natural or healthy trade with the Upper Provinces, but with the New England States ; that the Upper Provinces have no natural trade with the Maritime Provinces, but with the Central and Western States adjoining them ; that ^Manitoba has no natural trade with the larger provinces of Canada, but with the Western States to the south of her ; that British Columbia has no trade with any part of Canada, but with California and the Pacific States. In other words, that inter -provincial trade is unnatural, forced, and profitless, while there is a natural and profitable trade at our very doors open and available to us." The harvests of the North-West, as they cannot be movc^ south, go along the Canadian Pacific Eailway to the sea. If an Asiatic trade comes to Vancouver the tea will be carried across the Continent. But this is not inter-provincial trade, nor, being merely of a transitory kind, can it add much, beyond the railway freight, to the wealth of the Dominion. The French province, the people of which live on the IX FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 207 produce of their own tarms and clothe themselves with the produce of their own spinning, is uncommercial, and lies a non-conductor between the more commercial memhers of tlie Confederation. To force ti.ide into activity between the Provinces and turn it away from the United States, giving the Canadian farmer a home market, and consolidating Canadian nationality at the same time, were the ostensible objects of the adoption in 1879 of a Protective tariff. The real object perhaps was at least as much to capture the manufacturer's vote and his contributions to the election fund of the party in power. Protectionists boast and enlightened men speak sadly of tlie course which opinion has been taking on this subject. It is true that through the extension of the suffrage the world has passed from the hands of Turgot, Pitt, Peel, and Cavour into those of a multitude ignorant of economical questions, swayed by blind cupidity, the easy dupe of protectionist sophistry ; and that fallacies which it was hoped had been for ever banished have thus regained their power. But in the United States and Canada it is less mistaken opinion that has been at work than the influence of sinister interest. The Canadian politicians who framed the Protective tariff were not and had never professed to be believers in Protection. If they had been identified with any fiscal policy it was that of Free Trade, at least between Canada and her own Continent. Their watchword had been reciprocity of trade or reciprocity of tariffs, in other words, the enforcement of Free Trade by Retaliation, which, though the purists of Free Trade may condemn it, is not protectionism but the reverse. If they had formed their design, they masked it till the election was over and declared that what they meant was not pro- tection but readjustment, for which and lor an increase of a I lit I ;t i. .J! ( i^oil \ 'i08 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAT. taxation to fill a deficit there were good grounds. They so far paid homage to their old principles as to keep in their Tariff Act a standing offer to the United States of reciprocity in natural products, though, as the Americans could not in common justice to their own interests allow their manu- factures to be excluded, this was little better than a mockery. But even this they afterwards threw overboard, and one of them declared broadly that free trade even in farm products is an evil, so tliat Kent had better keep her hops and Worcestershire her apples all to herself ; for this would not be more absurd than the refusal of Manitoba to sell hard wheat, or of Ontario to sell her superior barley across the Line, and take American products or manufactures in pay- ment. The upshot is that on the neck of the Canadian as of the American Commonwealth now rides an association of protected manufacturers making the community and all the great interests of the country tributary to their gains. Before a general election the Prime Minister calls these men to- gether in the parlour of a Toronto hotel, receives their contributions to his election fund, and pledges the com- mercial policy of the country. Then British journals in their simplicity advise Canada to meet the M'Kinley Act by a declaration of Free Trade. It would be waste of words to argue over again to any intelligent reader the questions whether Canada, or any other country, can be enriched by taxation, and whether natural or forced industries are the best. That to which attention should be called is the difference between the case of Canada and that of the United States, the example of which Canada follows. The United States are a continent extending from regions almost arctic to regions almost tropical, embracing an immense variety of production, producing nearly every- .; CHAI'. IX FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 209 any )ther I'al or ition Inada lada t'rom icing fery- thing in short, except tea and spices, witli a niarlcet of 03,000,000. The Lirgest measure of Free Trade ever passed was the American Constitution, which forbade a customs line to be erected between States. Tiiis it is — not the protective taritf on the seaboard — that has been the source of American prosperity. In like manner it was not Napoleon's continental system that gave his Empire such a measure of prosperity as it enjoyed, but the large area which it included, and over which there was Free Trade. The Canadian Dominion lies all in a high latitude, and its range of production is limited. The market, instead of being 63,000,000, is under 5,000,000, and these 5,000,000 are divided into four or five markets widely distant from each other, and most of them sparse in themselves. The effect might have been easily fore- told. A number of ftictories have been forced into existence, and have prospered as forced industries prosper. Of the cotton mills only one or two, it is believed, have paid dividends, several are in liquidation, and the owners of others have been trying to find English purchasers at a discount of 50 per cent. The loyal attempt to foster the iron and steel industry of Canada, by a duty excluding British manfactures, for which a Canadian Finance Minister was rewarded with a baronetcy, has totally failed. Of course there is continual running to Ottawa for larger draughts of the fatal stimulant, when the first draught has failed. " The imposts," says an ex-President of the Toronto Board of Trade, " are a mass of incongruous absurdities ; the duties on raw materials are now as high in some cases as those on the manufactured articles. In attempting to extend to all industries the benefits of protection, the height of the ridiculous was reached when the duty was largely increased upon umbrellas and parasols for the special behoof of one small concern p I'l 210 CANADA AND TUK CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. wliich failed within the year." A juitriot writes to the Minister of Finance to say that he i)roj)oses to foster home industries and consolidate the notion by starting a canned- soup factory, but he must have a duty of 20 per cent on canned-soup, and a i)rotective duty on tomatoes. About the stomachs of the consumers nothing is said. Combines are now being formed to keep up prices. A spasmodic demand for labour and an artificial rise in wages have been followed by short time. In the first days of the system the Minister of Finance made a triumphal progress through the factories to witness and glorify the work of his own hands ; he has not repeated his tour. What are the fruits of the policy to the public need hardly be told. A great wholesale dealer in woollens and cottons, in a debate at the loronto Board of Trade, deprecating free trade with the United States, said that if American goods were admitted free, the capital invested in Canadian manufactories under the protective tariff would not be worth more than a third of its face value ; the inference from which was that the interest on the other two-thirds, if paid at all, nmst be paid by the community. This, however, applies only to the forced industries. Those of the Canadian manufacturers who feel that their industries have a natural and sound basis disclaim the desire of protec- tion, and ask only a fair field. In no trade probably would American competition be keener than in the manufacture of agricultural implements. Yet the other day a firm o'' large manufacturers in that line declared for free trade with the United States. The agricultural implement business, they said, had been overdone, they wanted more people to whom to sell, and they would not be afraid of American competition. Another large manufacturer in the same line, spoke to the same effect, pointing out, by the way, that the immense ^^ tllAl', IX FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 211 to tlie r lionio canned- cent on out the nes are iiand for iwed by lister of ;ories to has not ;y to the ealer in ^oard of tes, said capital rotective e value ; he other munity. Those dustries protec- ' would cture of |o'' large lith the ^s, they whom |)etition. to the imense territory which in Canada had to be covered in order to embrace a sutticient market, was a heavy addition to tlie manufacturer's expense. These are not by any means tlie only firms which take that view. It is the hothouse plants that shrink from the open air ; and while all possible con- sideration is due to those who have been induced bv Parlia- ment to invest, it is hard that the community should be required for ever to expiate the mistake. The isolation of the different Canadian markets from each other, and the incompatibility of their interests, add in their case to the evils and absurdities of the protective system. What is meat to one Province is, even on the protectionist hypothesis, poison to another. Ontario was to be forced to manufacture ; she has no coal ; yet to reconcile Nova Scotia to the tariff a coal duty was imposed ; in vain, for Ontario after all continued to import her coal from Pennsylvania. Manitoba and the North-West produce no fruit ; yet they were compelled to pay a duty in order to protect the fruit-grower of Ontario 1500 miles away. Hardest of all was the lot of the North -West farmer. His natural market, wherein to buy farm implements, was in the neigh- bouring cities of the United States, where, moreover, implements were made most suitable to the prairie. But to force him to buy in Eastern Canada 25 per cent was laid on farm implements. As he still bought in the States, the 25 per cent was made 35 per cent. Handi- capped with 35 per cent on his implements, and at the same time with railway monopoly, as well as with the general imposts of the tariff', he has to compete with the farmer of Minnesota or Dakota, buying in a free market, and enjoying freedom of railway accommodation. An attempt was made to show that manufactories had been called into If m i' 'i I ^pr- 212 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. I .-J* M' Uv.v existence in Manitoba, and that she was exporting their products ; but '>o Federal Parliament. But their mission is not to take counsoi with the other representatives of the nation so much as to look to the separate interest of Quebec, and above all to draw from the treasury of the Dominion all that can be drawn in aid of her empty chest. They let pass no opportuni^ v of doing their duty to her in that line. On one occasioj . a^y stayed out of the House haggling with the Government t i the bell had rung for a division, when the Government gave way. Quebec, as revelations going on at ill H i 216 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. this moment .show, is politically corrupt, and by her corruption she may be held in the Union, but of what benefit the Union will be to her partners, or how they will be indem- nified for the expense, it is not easy to see. Her people, saving the Protestant traders of Montreal and the remnant of British commerce at Quebec, being very poor, their contribu- tion to the common revenues is small. The creative genius of Lord Lome, besides a Eoyal Society and a Eoyal Acaden^y. bestowed on Canada a National hymn. The hvinn shoula have been written '<■. "''ternate stanzas of French and English. The beauty of the French languagu, the brilliancy of French literature, the graces of French character, the value of the contributions made by France to the common treasure of civilisation, on which Governors-General preaching harmony dilate, are by nobody denied. But supposing Quebec to be the depositary of all French gifts, Tiiere vicinity to them is little worth when the separation in all other respects is as complete as if seas rolled or Alps rose between. France may enrich the store of humanity, but the store of the Dominion, material or moral, is not enriched by simple want of homo- gene. V and harmony among its members. The last deliverance on this subject from the French side is La Question du Jour, by M. Faucher de Saint - Maurice. The author puts the question, " Shall we remain French ? " and answers it with a thundering "Yes," hurling his anathemas at all whom he suspects of a desire to bring about denationalisation. A curious and instructive part of the pamphlet is that which, in portraying the emotions of Quebec on the occasion of the Franco - German war, displays the passionate attachment of New France to her own mother country. " At the thought of the struggle in which the land ' :'-|l IX FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 217 aurice. eiicli ? " ig liis ; about of the Quebec lys the mother he land of our fathers is engaged the French bh^od stirred in our veins, as though it had never been chilled, and we sliouted for the flag of our mother country as if it had never ceased to wave over our heads." " We admire tlie United States, whose prosperity dazzles us, but France alone is the object of our passionate love." " Our thoughts M\d our hearts belong to our mother country." We have seen that Sir George Cartier, of all Frenchmen the most British, spoke in a similar strain. In the event of a war between Great Britain and her most probable enemy, on which side are we to suppose that the hearts of the French Canadians would be ? After reckoning up all the elements of French population and strength, including 108,605 " Acadians " in the Maritime Provinces, M. Faucher de Saint-Maurice concludes by saying, " With courage, with p^^rseverance, with union, with effort, and above all with a constant devotion to our religion and our language, the future must be ours. Sooner or later, marching on together, we shall arrive at the position of a great nation. The logical conclusion of my work can only be this — One day we shall be Catholic France in America." This writer, at all events, has formed his design. The coping-stone and the symbol of nationality in the Con- stitution, it has been already said, was the national veto on Provincial legislation, that vast power, as Sir Alexander Galt,^ one of the Fathers of Confederation, called it, and that palla- dium, as he deemed it, of Protestant and civil rights in Quebec, which might oonerwisc be exposed Avithout defence to Ultramontane aggression. Yet this coping-stone of nation- ality, this palladium of civil right, both the parties have abandoned or reduced to nullity under the pressure of the French- Catholic vote. In the transfer of Quebec from France ^ Church and State, by Sir Alexander T. Gait, K.C.M.G., Montreal, 1876. I! 218 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. to Britain the revenues of the parish clergy were secured with the religion of the people, but the estates of the religious orders were laft to the pleasure of the Crown, and the Solicitor-General Wedderburn advised that wliile the other religious orders might be allowed to exist, that of the Jesuits, on account of its anti-national character, could not. The Crown, as a matter of humanity, allowed the remaining Jesuits subsistence on the estates for their lives. In 1773 the Order was suppressed by the Pope. The estates then, at all events, fell to the Crown, which held them for the purposes of education, and ultimately transmitted them to the Province impressed with that trust. But the restored Order laid claim to the estates. The claim would have been met by any Government in Europe with de;'isi.0D But Quebec had fallen under Jesuit influence. An Act was passed (1888) by the Provincial Legislature in which Protestantism has a merely nominal representation, assigning to the Jesuits the sum of $400,000 by way of compensation for the estates. To give colour to the transaction the sum of $60,000 was assigned to Protestant education. The Pope's name was inti.aaced in the Act as arbiter of the arrangement. Apologists in Parliament pretended that this was a mere expedient of conveyancing ; but if it had been nothing else it would most certainly have been avoided. There could be no doubt about the spirit and intention of the Act ; had there been any it would have been set at rest when Mr. Mercier, as we have already said, before an assembly of lioman Catholic Bishops and Clergy, boasted that he had emulated the glorious deeds of the American Eevolutionists by undoing the wrong done by George III. The Act was a rampant assertion of Eoman Catholic ascendancy by the endowment out of a public fund of an Order formed specially for the t\ CHAP. Mired gious the other (Suits, The lining . 1773 len, at rposes ovince L claim )y any 5C had 588) by has a .its the To )0 was le was lement. mere else it be no d there ^lercier, atholic ed the ndoing ampant wment for the ' IX FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 219 subversion of Protestantism, and at the same time a recogni- tion of the Pope as the ecclesiastical sovereign of Quebec. Morally, if not legally, it was an excess of jurisdiction, since religion is not in the list of subjects with which the I'rovincial Legislatures are authorised by the Constitution to deal, while the endowment out of the public treasury of a professedly propagandist Order was certainly a religious measure and one of an extreme kind, as we should soon have been made to understand had the Legislature of Ontario endowed a Protestant mission for the subversion of the Koman Catholic Church. Yet such is the power of the French vote that both parties fell on their faces before it. The position of the Government was the worst, since the hoUowness of its affected respect for Provincial self-government was betrayed by its own recent conduct in vetoing a Railway Act of the Manitoba Legislature, the legality of which could not be questioned, in the interest of its auxiliary, the Canadian Pacific Railway. But a Liberal party, voting for the public endowment of Jesuitism, also cut a strange figure. Only thirteen members out of a total of 215 in the Dominion House, however, dared to uphold the national character of Confedera- tion, British ascendancy, the rights of the Civil Power, and the separation of the Church from the State. After the division, the members who had voted for the endowment of Jesuitism lulled their consciences, as they sometimes do, by singing " God save the Queen." Indignation, however, was aroused, great meetings were held at Toronto and elsewhere in Ontario to protest against the Act, and the most powerful movement that has yet been witnessed outside the party machines was organised under the name of Equal Eight, and is still on foot. It aims at the repression of priestly influence in politics, and of French encroachment at the same time; > .1 iJ '%■=' H' 220 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. and its first fruits have been the abolition of Separate Schools and the discontinuance of French as an official language in Manitoba. It is not religious or directed in any way against the faith or worship of the Roman Catholics, but political and purely defensive. It is religious at least only in so far as the Church, not less than the State, has an interest in that entire freedom of each from the interference of the other which is a great organic principle of society in the New World. T' e Maritime Provinces and those of the West have been imperfectly incorporated, if they can be said to have been incorporated at all, into the old political parties which have their basis in the two Canadas, and were formed before Con- federation upon questions and in interests with which the other Provinces had no concern ; the Conservative party being a combination of the reactionary clericism of Quebec with the Toryism and Orangeism of Ontario, the Liberal party being a counter- combination of the Liberals of Ontario with the misnamed Parti Rouge of Quebec. It can hardly be said that in the remoter Provinces a Dominion party, otherwise than as a combination for securing local advantages through the Dominion Government, exists. When the writer asked a denizen of the Pacific Coast what were the politics of his Province, the answer was. Government appropriations. Once more let Australians who propose to follow the example of the British North - American Provinces by forming an Australian federatioi remark that this, r.nder our present system, means the creation of Federal parties, and that unless a basis of principle for Federal parties can be assigned. Government appropriations will be the basis. "There is a perfect scramble among the whole body to get as much us possible of this fund for their respective constituents ; cabals Ht IX FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 221 are formed by which the clitl'erent members mutually play into each other's hands ; general politics are made to bear on private business, and private business on general politics ; and at the close of the Parliament the member who has succeeded in securing the largest portion of the prize for his constituents renders an easy account of his stewardship, with confident assurance of re - election." This picture, though drawn by Lord Durham of the legislature of a single colony, would be found to be heightened in its colours as well as extended in its scale when the constituencies were Provinces, and the members were the representatives of Provincial interests. It would be so at least unless such momentous issues and such a pervading spirit of Federal patriotism were awakened as have not yet been witnessed in the Canadian Confederation. In the want of a real bond among the members of Con- federation, the anti-national attitude of Quebec, the absence of real Dominion parties, and the consequent difficulty of holding the Dominion together and finding a basis for the administration must be found the excuse, if any excuse can be found, for the system of political corruption which during the last twenty years has prevailed. " Better Terms," that is, increased subsidies to Provinces from the Dominion treasury, Dominion grants for local railways and other local works and concessions to contractors, together with the patronage, including, as we have seen, appointments to the Senate, have been familiar engines of government. It was a Con- servative member of the Senate who the other day, when the usual batch of railway grants was pushed through at the end of the Session, could not refrain from protesting against a vast system of bribery. Post offices and local works of all kinds are held out by Government candidates as bribes to I . 5 1 . 1 i 1, ;! mm 222 CANADA AND THP] CANADIAN QUESTION CHAl'. constituencies witli an openness which would idniost have scandalised a French constituency under the Second Empire, and it is painful to see how paltry an inducement of this kind will prevail. " The people of County want railways and other public works, and they all know that the policy of the Government rej^arding railways is liberal. If a Govern- ment supporter is elected, any reasonable request will be granted. It rests entirely with the Government candidate what will be done." Such is the language held. The result of an election won by the I'rotectionist Government the other day in Victoria County, was reported to the English Press as highly significant, and as showing that the people were against lleciprocity ; but the fact was apparent from the returns that the Government had gained its majority of 133 by two subsidies to local railways.^ Nova Scotia and New ^ Here are two speeiinens, which will probably be enough. The first is an extract from a circular letter of a Roman Catholic bishop to the electors of Antigonish, Nova Scotia, in favour of Sir John Thompson, Minister of Justice, and a member of the Bishop's communion. The second is the address (in French) of a Quebec member of the Dominion Parliament to his constituents. " Seventeen months ago you needed postal communication and facilities in various localities, and already you have no fewer than five new post-offices opened. You needed improvement in our railway tariff. Through Air. Thompson's strenuous elforts you have obtained these. If you needed money to repair most useful public works or to complete others and to originate more, already no less than .^34,346 has been placed at your disposal for that purpose, yet this magnificent sum is doubtless but an instalment of the amount which we may expect under the auspices of this most efficient bene- factor, to be expended for our advantage. Lastly, he has been mainly instru- mental in persuading the Cabinet to undertake and build a railway through Cape Breton as a Government measure. He has thus conferred an inestim- able boon to Eastern Nova Scotia, as well as on that fine island in whose prosperity we all feel the liveliest interest. In view of the foregoing undeni- able facts, I ask you, gentlemen, have you not every reason to be proud of your admirable representative and deei)ly grateful for what he has already achieved in your behalf, and confident that your public works, whether begun or only in contemplation, will be satisfactorily completed by him more likely than by men who now ask you to oust him. ^ Indeed it is simply incredible IX FRUITS OV CONFEDERATION 223 Brunswick, as they suffer particularly from the commercial atrophy produced hy severance from their natural markets, are specially open to the intluence of the Treasury, and l»efore an election a Nova Scotian, who is master of such arts, is actually that Hon. A. McCJilliviay is now iinder the impression that he can witliout office anil in the cold shades of opposition serve you better than he can, an incomparably abh'r man, in the commanding juisition of Minister of Justice. It is plainly therefore your duty as patriotic citizens to resist such conduct and to vote one and all for tlie Minister of Justice, who so eminently deserves your confidence and esteem, and not to give him his discharge. In tlie exist- ing circumstances it would be an act of senseless ingratitude, a public calamity, and a lasting disgrace, for which I trust you will never be guilty of making yourselves answerable. In a word, to do yourselves full credit you ought not only to return Mv. Thompson, but to return him liy an over- whelming majority. Gentlemen, I confidently leave the issue in your hands, and remain your devoted well-wislier and servant in Christ." "Les deux grandes questions politii^ues qui interessent le comte sont la construction de nos chemins de fer et les travaux publics. Au sujet du chemin de fer, j'ai fait un travail plus qu'ordinaire afin d'obtenir les subsides necessaires a sa construction. J'ai envoye vingt-deux rcquetes ;\ tons les honorables cures du comte afin de les faire signer, lesquels re{[uetes demand- aicnt un subside de $100,000. Vingt requetes m'ont etc retournees couverte de dix-huit cents signatures ; deux ne m'ont pas etc renvoyees, je ne sais pourquoi. II est vrai que la demande de §100,000 n'etait pas suffisante scion ce que j'ai appris plus tard, et j'ai modifie ma demande en la portaut a §239,000. " Tons les deputes Canadiens m'ont donne leur appui, et dix-huit Scna- teurs ont signe ma demande que j'ai adressce au Conscil Prive. Jusqu'au dernier moment Ton ni'a fait les plus grandes promesses. Sir Hector mc disait toujours : 'Mon cher Couture, ne crains rien ; les subsides ne S'lnt pas encore votes, mais nous n'oublierons pas ton comte.' Justju'au dernier mom- ent j'ai supporte le Gouvernement, meme j'ai vote contre mes convictions, confiant dans les promesses qui m'etaient faites. *' Quand aux travaux publics, j'ai demande tellement que mes confreres me reprochaient de vouloir enlever les deux tiers des subsides du Donnnion, J'ai demande §40,000 pour le comte, et j'avais encore les memes promesses des Ministres. A la fin voyant que rien ne venait j'ai commence a m'apercevoir que Ton voulait me jouer, et j'ai cru me rendre aux vceux du comte en reins- ant d'approiiver une conduite aussi deloyale, et j'ai vote contre le Gouverne- ment. Je savais que le comte me reprocherait pas d'avoir vote contre un gouvernement qui ne voulait rien m'accorder. C'cst sur la question des (piinze millions au Pacifique c^ue je me suis separe du gouvernement. Je croyais (jue ces gens en avaient eu assez ; il est vrai qii'ils donnaient des garaiities en terre au gouvernement, mais je savais que la creme de ces terres etait vendue." m i f 1 At I 224 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN UUESTION CIIAl*. brought over from England, and put for the time into the ^linistry, that he may secure to tlie Oovernnient the votes of his I'rovince. Tliis he does l>y promises the fulfihnent of which, it was reckoned at the time, would cost several millions. If you express surprise at the result of an election in one of the Maritime Provinces, the explanation which you get is four Government grants or promises of grants for piers, wharves, or local works of some kind. The Govern- ment, which, it is justly said, ought in the matter of public works to act as trustee for tlie whole people, in effect proclaims that public works will be regulated by the interest of constituencies whose support it receives. That " the whole North -West of Canada has been used as one vast bribery fund" is a statement just made by a leading member of the Opposition, who can point to at least one recent and most flagrant instance in proof of his sweeping accusation. But what corruption can be more pestilential or more dangerous to the commonwealth than the surrender of the commercial policy of the country to private interests, in return for their votes and the support of their money in elections ? No president of the United States, being a candidate for election, could without total wreck of his character and prospects, assemble the protected manufacturers in a room at an hotel and receive their contributions to his election fund. In Quebec it is an eminent Conservative journalist and politician of that Province who says that the electors are wholly demoralised; that if all the constituencies are not equally rotten, the symptoms of the evil are everywhere to be seen ; that the electors, those who are well off not less than the poor, compel the candidates to bribe them ; that the franchise is a merchantable commodity ; that many will not go to the polls without a bribe. The clergy denounce the CHAI'. IX FRUITS OF CONFKDERATION iito the votes of ment of several election licli you ants for Govern- )f public • n effect ! interest he whole , bribery er of the md most on. But angerous mmercial for their lis ? No election, irospects, an hotel alist and 3tors are are not diere to not less that the Kvill not lince the practice from the altar, but in vain. In truth tlic priests, who, instead of leaving the voter free, and bidding him make an independent use of his vote, coerce him in their own interest, are not in the best position for reading him homilies on electoral duty. The truth is, that under a t .vCy the people are not citizens : they do not understand the political franchise or value it ; and when you preach to them about its responsibilities, you preach in vain. Tliey not unnaturally regard it as a thing to be used in their own interest, and if they like, to be sold. The Conservative politician just cited is now producing in a series of papers startling proofs in support of his allegation. Once the character of tlie means by which Government is maintained appeared too plainly, with a result fatal for a time to the Ministry by which the system was being carried on ""bis was in the case of the Pacific Itailway Scandal, tb .DCS of which reached as far as England. The I'rime Minister and two of his colleagues were convicted of liaving received from the grantee of a railway charter, whose position was virtually that of a contractor, a large sum of money to be used in elections. It was pretended by the Ministers that the money was a political subscription to the Party fund ; but it was well known that the commercial gentleman from whom it was received took no interest in politics, and could have had only his commercial object in view. It was also pleaded that there was nothing wrong in the charter granted him, and this was true ; but it was evident that the Government, when it had taken his money, would be in his hands. Public indignation was strongly aroused, and for the moment overcame party feeling ; the Government, deserted by its majority, fell ; and the country, on an appeal being made to it, emphatically ratified the verdict of the House of 9 ';!' mm "11 226 CAXADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chai\ Commons. The conduct of the Governor-General uas, in his own opinion at least, and in that of the courtly pundits of Ottawa, constitutional in the highest degree. He continued to treat the accused Ministers as his constitutional advisers. At their instance, when Parliament had become completely seized of the question, he prorogued it on what were thought at the time factitious grounds, and relegated the inquiry to a Commission named by the Ministers themselves. He allowed letters written by himself tc the Colonial Secretary, when the case was incomplete, to be laid before the House, for the purpose of influencing its judgment. It did not occur to him, nor does it occur to the constitutional writers who applaud him for continuing to give his confidence to his Ministers, that this was not a case of confidence in Ministers, nor a political question at all, but a State t^.^al, with which he had no more business to interfere than he had to interfere with the course of justice in a court of law. It is true the tribunal in this case was equivocal and unsatisfactory, the question as to the retention of office by the Ministers being mixed up with the criminal indictment. There ought to be, though there is not at present, a regular process of impeachment, with a regular tribunal, and political corruption, whether in a Minister or any one else, ought to be made a distinct offence ; it would seem to be as capable of definition as other breaches of trust, and it certainly is not less heinous. One of the convicted Ministers was afterwards made a knight. Nobody, it is right to say, suspected the Prime Minister on this or any other occasion of taking anything for himself. In that sense he certainly spoke the truth when, at the beginning of the affair, he declared to the Governor-General upou his honour as a Privy Councillor that he was innocent of tlie charge. The case of the Onderdonk contract, on the western portion of the CHAP. IX FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 227 ias, in his )undits of continued I advisers, jompletely re thought iquiry to a ae allowed ^, when the the purpose him, nor pplaud him listers, that r a political lad no more li the course unal in this on as to the up with the there is not th a regular nister or any would seem les of trust, he convicted dy, it is right or any other liat sense he ming of the his honour as charge. The lortion of the same line, which was afterwards brought forward in Parlia- ment, wore a very sinister aspect. But the Government had an overwhelming majority at its command.^ Strong evidences have unhappily been produced to show that by Government advertising and printing contracts, the system of corruption has been extended to the Press. What influences are behind the Press has become for all common- wealths alike one of the most serious questions of the day. It is a comfort in speaking of these unsavoury matters to be able to reflect once more that Canadian society in general is sound, and that power in regard to the ordinary concerns of life is in the hands not of politicians but of the chiefs of commerce and industry, of judges and lawyers, of the cler^:}', and of the leaders of public opinion. Yet the character of the people cannot fail to be affected by familiaritj' with political corruption. Their political character at all events, cannot escape the taint. A member of a local legislature is convicted, after investigation by a committee, of ha\-ing on more than one occasion taken money corruptly. He never- theless retains the support of his constituents. He is elected to the Dominion Parliament. The Prime ^linister, whose henchman he is, makes liim Chairman of the Finance Com- mittee, and is prevented from making him Deputy Speaker only by the threat of an appeal to tlie record. The man is on the point, as is generally believed, of being made a Senator when another transaction conies to light, so foul in itself and in all its circumstances, that the Government is obliged with apparent reluctance to abandon its supporter to justice, and ' An account of the case will he found in Mr. CoUins's Canada umdicr fha Adminutf ration of Lord Lome, ]i. 207 d scq. The section havini^ l»eea t&ken over by the C.P.R., that Comiiany is now suing the Dominion for ^6.000, "JOO on account of aUeged defects or shortcomings in construction. mi^?t-ii ■■ft !!:r 228 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION OIIAP, li consent to the verdict of a committee pronouncing his conduct "discreditable, corrupt, and scandalous." Thereupon he resigns his seat, appeals to his constituents, pleading that he is no worse than the rest, and is re-elected. It has been asserted, on the strength it would seem of some highly official information, that in Canada scandab of corruption are almost unknown. If by this it is meant that few Canadian politicians take money for themselves, and that wealth amassed by corruption is rare among them, the statement is perfectly true, and it is equally true of the politicians in the United States, about whose illicit gains very exaggerated notions prevail. As a rule, politicians in both countries live and die poor ; and, consider- ing what they have to go through, it is wonderful that the attraction of politics should be so strong But otherwise it is from the scandal, not from the corruption, that we a^e free. The pity is the greater because if ever a community was by its national character qualified for elective institutions it was that of the farmers of Canada. Political morality, and to some extent general morality with it, have been sacrificed to the exigencies of an artificial combination of provinces, and of an isolation of those provinces from their continent, which is equally artificial. Nor are the sectional interests of Quebec and the other Provinces the only sectional interests, or the only interests of an anti-national character, with which the head of a Canadian Government has had to deal. He has had to propitiate with seats in the Cabinet and doles of patronage churches — above all the Roman Catholic Church — political combinations, such as Orangeism, and even a ^philanthropic combination like Prohibitionism, which at present has a seat in the Cabinet. The Eoman Catholic vote is so well in hand that it is cast almost solid for one party in the Provincial IX FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 229 elections of Ontario and at once transferred to the other in the Dominion elections, good consideration being received from both sides. The Premier of Ontario, though a zealous Presbyterian, finds himself compelled by the influence of the hierarchy not only to uphold the system of Separate Schools for Eoman Catholics in the face of his own recorded protest against it, but to deny Roman Catholics the ballot in the election of School Trustees, which the more liberal of them demand, but to whicli the hierarchy object, because their control over the elections would thereby be impaired. The Irish vote is of course to a great extent identical with the Eoman Catholic vote, yet as a political force it is distinct, and its power is inordinate. The lower are the political qualities of any body of men, and the less fit it is to guide the State, the more sure are its members politically to hold together, and the greater its influence will be. This is one of the banes of all elective government, and how it is we are to get rid of it or prevent it from growing, it is not easy to see. The abasement of American politicians and the American Press before the Irish vote is one of the most ignominious and disheartening passages in the history of free institutions. It reached its extreme point when, in miserable fear of the Irish groggeries of New York, the Senate of the United States refused to do honour to the memory of the great Englishman whose voice of power, in the darkest day of their fortunes, had triumphantly pleaded their cause before his country and the world. The motive for the resolutions passed by American Legislatures of sympathy with disunionism in Ireland, as well as the breach of international propriety which they involve, is freely admitted by American politicians. Similar resolutions from the same motive were passed by Canadian Legislatures, both Federal and Provincial, the Con- i! F , 230 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. servative Premier of the Dominion, with the Grand Cross of the Bath upon his breast, leading the way. Let Englishmen, before they welcome as the sincere expression of Canadian opinion, such manifestoes as the Loyalty Eesolution passed by the Dominion Parliament of last session on the motion of Mr. Mulock, call to mind the fact that the same Assembly had before passed what was virtually a resolution in favour of the dismemberment of the United Kingdom. When Mr. William O'Brien came over to Canada with the avowed pur- pose of insulting, and if possible expelling from the country, Her Majesty's representative, those who, like the present writer, took an active part in opposing his irruption had the opportunity of seeing what the real influence of loyalty was among Canadian politicians compared with that of the Irish vote. That colonies would allow themselves to be used by Irish disaffection as levers for the disruption of the mother country was hardly foreseen as an incident of the system of dependence either by the opponents of the system or by its defenders. Unhappily, England herself is in no position to cast a stone either at Canada or at the United States, for subserviency to the Irish, nor has there been anything in the conduct of the lowest of Canadian or American vote-hunters to match with the conduct of British statesmen who have leagued with the foreign enemies of their country and accepted aid from theClan-na-Gael for the subversion of the Union. That the Irish should thus have been able by acting on the balance of parties to put the heads of the Anglo-Saxon common- wealths under their feet is surely a tremendous comment on the system of universal suffrage with government by faction. What has been said will serve to explain two things apparently enigmatic. One of these is the stability of the Canadian government, wliich, saving one interruption, has IX FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 231 remained unchanged for more than twenty years, while in Australia the changes of government have been prodigiously rapid. There having been really no Dominion parties, none, at least, united by any great principle or important issue, the Opposition has hitherto had no ground of attack or battle- cry, while the Government, resting on its patronage and its bribery -fund has been always becoming more strongly en- trenched, and has been able to carry the elections, at which no great question was presented, by dangling before the eyes of constituencies the Federal purse. Its election fund has also been much better supplied than that of the Opposition, which has had no corps of protected manufacturers to which to appeal, and no senatorships to hold out as prizes to the aspir- ing millionaire. The adverse influences which now threaten it, Nationalism in Quebec, by which its chief pillar is shaken, and the movement in favour of a reform in the tariff, which is evidently gaining strength, are of recent growth, and have never before had a chance of showing their force in a general election. The other phenomenon to be explained is the sin- gular division of the power, the Dominion government being in the hands of the Conservative party, while the govern- ments of the Provinces, saving the two least important of them, are in the hands of the Liberals. This has been supposed to prove that the people of the Dominion, whatever may be their local leanings, are all united in favour of the fiscal system or "National policy," as it is called, of Sir John Macdonald. What it really proves is that the Dominion bribery-fund is used in Dominion, not in Provincial, elections, and used with the more effect because a great many of the people, especially in the newly annexed Provinces, are com- paratively apathetic about the affairs of the Dominion, while they feel a lively interest in their own. The truth of tliis J 232 CANADA ATsD THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. fi solution is clearly shown in the case of Manitoba. To that Provin(3e, which has no manufactures, the tariff is an unmixed evil ; it is an evil of the most oppressive kind, and, could it be submitted to the votes of the people, there would be an overwhelming majority in favour of its repeal. Yet Manitoba, while in her local legislature out of thirty-eight members four only are Conservatives, sends to Ottawa a Conservative dele- gation which supports the tariff, and not only the tariff but railway monopoly, against which the Province is a unit. When the election comes round, the government secures the scats by petty bribes and by promises. This, new settlements being for the most rart needy, it is too easy to do, the more so as the principal settlers, who would be likely to be inde- pendent and patriotic, are too much occupied with their own affairs to go to Ottawa, while for a government to find " heelers " is never difficult. We cannot help once more warning the Australians that Federation under the elective system involves not merely the union of the several States under a central government with powers superior to them all ; but the creation of Federal parties with all the faction, demagogism, and corruption which party contests involve over a new field and on a vastly ex- tended scale. It is surprising how little this obvious and momentous consideration appears to be present to the minds of statesmen when the question of Federation is discussed. It is a strong comment on the Protection system that since its inauguration there has not only been no abatement, but apparently an increase of the exodus from Canada to the United States. It is reckoned that there are now on the south of the Line a million of emigrants from Canada and half a million of their children. A local journal finds that it has 300 subscribers in the United States, and believes IX FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 233 that ill fifteen years it must have lost a thousand in that way ; and from another journal, issued in one of the choicest dis- tricts of Ontario, we learn that the population there has been almost at a standstill. In one week 300 persons went from St. John and 400 from Montreal. The Americans may say with truth that if they do not annex Canada, they are annexing the Canadians. They are annexing the very flower of the Canadian population, and in the way most costly to the country from which it is drawn, since the men whom that country has been at the expense of breeding leave it just as they arrive at manhood and begin to produce. The value of farm property has declined in Ontario, according to the current estimate, 30 per cent, and good authorities hold that this estimate is within the mark. It would be wrong to ascribe either the exodus or the decline in the value of land directly and wholly to the fiscal system. There is a natural flow of population to the great centres of employ- ment in the United States, and there is no real barrier of a national or sentimental kind to check the current, the two communities being, in all save political arrangements, one. The depression of agriculture and the fall in the value of farms are common in a measure to the whole continent, and are consequent on the depreciation of farm produce, perhaps also, so far as the United States are concerned, on a change in the once frugal habits of the farmer. But if Canada had fair play, if she were within the commercial pale of the Continent, by admission to a free market, combined with freedom of importing machinery, her minerals and other resources could be turned to the best account, she would have more centres of employment in herself, and her farmers would have morp 'souths to feed. There is a shifting of the agri- cultural p Oj^ ulation in the United States as well as in Canada, I!-- BUki m Wf I. f V 234 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. and many farms hove been deserted in Massachusetts and Vermont. But these people are not lost to their country : those who emigrate from Canada to the States are. The promise of the Protectionist legislator to the farmer that he would give him a lich home market has at all events been signally belied. Nor is the wisdom of the policy demonstrated by a great decline in the value of that kind of property for wliich a special benefit was designed and the produce of which is the staple of the community. If the M'Kinley Act remains in force, the consequence will probably be an increase of the exodus. Especially, there is likely to be a largely increased exodus from Quebec, the agricultural products of wliich are not of a kind suitable for exportation to a distant market, so that, the near market being closed, the people will have to suffer or to depart. Strange to say, the exodus has told in favour of the stability of government ; not only because it forms a vent but because the emigrants, as a rule, are the most active-minded, and there are probably among them at least two Liberals for one Conservative. Government by subsidies and grants cannot be economic- ally carried on. Nor is the Canadian form of government in itself simple or inexpensive. Eight Constitutional Monarchies with as many Parliaments, four of the Parliaments having two Chambers, and the members of all being paid, are a con- siderable burden for a population under five millions and by no means wealthy. It is commonly said in Canada that we are "too much governed." Political architects in framing their Constitutions should have some regard for the cost of working among people whose wealth is not boundless. The work done by the eight Parliaments in the way of real legis- lation, apart from mere faction-fighting, would, if summed up, 1" IX FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 285 cut a poor figure in comparison with the expense. The eight Constitutional Monarchies have cost fully four millions of dollars since Confederation without doing any work at all. Hence, while the American debt, to which everybody pointed as a bugbear at the time of Confederation, has, notwith- standing the enormous squandering of public money by the tariff men, been rapidly decreasing, the Canadian debt has been almost as rapidly increasing, and now amounts to two hundred and forty millions net, or $50 per head of the whole population. The gross debt is two hundred and eighty millions, while of the securities some are very doubtful. If the demand for subsidies continues, the Canadian question may be settled by finance. The Dominion has been immensely extended in territory since Confederation by the accession of the North-West and British Columbia. This extension has necessarily brought with it an addition of population and wealth, irrespectively of any stimulus given by institutions or political relations, though as we have seen, the growth of population in Manitoba and the rest of that region has been slow compared with its growth in the new States of the Union. But in Old Canada the growth of population and wealth is far from having kept pace with their growth within the commercial pale of the continent. In the six years, 1880-8G, the natural growth of population in Ontario would have been 250,000, the actual growth was only 128,000. There is no estimate of the aggregate wealth, nor any means of distinguisliing the savings of the people from the large amount of capital borrowed from England ; but the visitor who crosses from the American to the Canadian side of the Line and compares the cities and towns on one side with those on the other can feel no doubt as to the effect of exclusion from the commercial pale. ij ■T^ ijmi-tKriJnil 1 286 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION ciiai'. ix The Canadian people are industrious, energetic, and thrifty ; their country is ricli in resources. The political institutions or relations must be bad indeed which could altogether arrest their progress. But this does not prove that an ill-cemented Confederation is or can be well cemented, that figureheads are useful, that a Senate which does nothing is worth the expense, that a fiscal policy of the Dark Ages promotes industry and commerce, or that it is a good thing to be governed by corruption. Nor is there any pessimism in saying that the qualities and energies which in spite of an evil policy have done what we see, would under improved conditions do more. "When Jingoism conspires with the party of commercial monopoly in the United States to bring on a tariff war, Canada is exhorted to show her fortitude, and told that if she does she will survive. No doubt she will survive ; but like her neigh- bour across the Line and England herself she wants not only to live but to live well. CHAI'. IX 1 thrifty; ititutions ler arrest cemented heads are I expense, iistry and erned by CHAPTEK X THE CANADIAN QUESTION ' I qualities lone what 3. When monopoly Canada is 3 does she her neigh- kvants not Section T. — Dependence No one can now take up a Canadian newspaper or listen to a group of Canadians talking about politics without being made aware that Canada has the problem of her future before her. It is idle to suppose that Canadians Avill be prevented from discussing that problem or from conferring freely with their neighbours across the Line on a subject of the highest practical interest to both communities. If it is lawful for an ex- Governor- General of Canada to write on the Canadian question in an American magazine, surely it is lawful for Canadians and /.mericans to interchange their thoughts in the way they find convenient. Nor will free discussion do any harm. Not a plough will be stopped on the farm, not a spindle will cease to turn in the factory, not a politician will pause in his hunt for a vote because this debate is going on. Statesmanship is not made more practical or in any way improved by blindness to the future. The fruits of Canadian industry are being lavished by scores of millions on political railways and other works, the object of which is to keep Canada for ever separate from her neighbour. If perpetual separation is impossible, justice to the people requires that this waste of their earnings shall cease. r I i 238 CANADA A.;D the CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. To answer at once the cries of treason which, as soon as the main question is approached, are raised by the official world and ])y the Protected MunufacLurers, let us say that no Canadian, and so far as we are aware no American, has ever proposed tliat Canada should change her political relations to the mother country without the mother country's assent. If the Crown and I'arliament of Great Britain sanction a cliange, the treason thenceforth will be in resistance. There must have been talk of the iniion between England and Scotland before it took place, and there has been talk of a union of Portugal with Spain ; but so long as all was open and with- out prejudice to national duty on either side there could be no treason. Let him who deals with the Canadian question first of all clear his mind of the confusion between a colony and a dependency. Tlie proposal to put the coping-stone on colonial independence is branded as anti-colonial. Carthage was a colony but not a dependency of Tyre. The communities of Greater Greece were colonies, not dependencies of the Greece which sent them forth. The States of America are colonies of England, though they are dependencies no longer, and had they been let go in peace they would still be bound to the mother country by the filial tie. None are greater advocates of colonisation or cherish the link between the mother country and the colony more than those who are most opposed to the protraction of dependence. " Mother of free nations " is by all deemed the proudest title that England can bear, and a. dependency is not a nation. The notion, peculiar to the moderns, that a colony ought to remain a dependency has its root not in any ground of reason or policy, but in the feudal doctrine of personal allegiance as an indefeasible bond between the liegeman and the lord. The founders of New CHAl*. X THE CANADIAN QUESTION 239 IS soon as he official ly that no 1, has ever elations to issent. If 1 a change, here must i Scotland a union of and with- •e could be ion first of lony and a I on colonial lage was a munities of the Greece ire colonies er, and had lund to the ,T advocates her country )osed to the ions " is by bear, and £■ iliar to the mcy has its the feudal ,sible bond ers of New England believed themselves, as their manifesto shows, to bo indefeasibly liegemen of King James. lUit tliis fallacy has long been dead, and by the recent naturalisation treaties it has been buried. That the colonies in the ojirly stage of their existence needed tlie protection of the mother country against the rival powers of Europe was a more substantial but still only a temporary reason for tlie connection. A better way was at one time opened. It was agreed by the Treaty of Neutrality between Louis XIV and James II (1(186) that the colonies of England and France in America should remain at peace when the nations were at war. The Treaty came to nothing, but it pointed true. Another fallacy to be shunned, especially when the horo- scope of Canada is being cast, is that of treating " the Empire " in the lump, assuming a vital connection between all its parts and taking it for granted that the destiny of all of them is the same. Mr. Freeman may be rather rigorous on the sub- ject of political nomenclature, but he has done a service by showing that the term Empire has been greatly misapplied and that its misapplication leads to practical delusion. It applies only to India, the Crown Colonies, and the military stations, which alone are held by a tenure really imperial and governed with imperial sway. An Asiatic dominion extending over two hundred and fifty millions of Hindoos, a group of West Indian islands full of emancipated negro slaves, a Dutch settlement at the southern point of Africa, occupied to secure he ojd passage to India, a conquered colony of France in the Indian Ocean, a factory like Hong Kong, military or coaling stations iike Gibraltar, Malta, and Aden — what have these ' 1 common, or why are they likely to be for all time bound up with groups o^ self-governing British colonies in North America or Australia? Why again should Canada and mm ia-:.i If ili 1: ■;:;■;: 240 CANADA AXD THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. Australia be treated as if their cases were identical, so that what is done with one must be done with the other, when Canada lies along the edge of a vast confederacy of kindred states with whicli are all her natural relations, diplomatic and commercial, while Australia lies in an ocean by herself, and such external relations as she has are with Cliiria ? The real tie among the members of the motley group is England's command of the sea, which in successive wars has en^'.bled her to pick off the transmarine possessions of her eiiemies. But the loud cries of high Imperialists for an increase of naval defences show that superior as Great Britain may still be in naval force to her rivals no single power any longer commands the seas. On the other hand, to fancy that because one possession or dependency is resigned all nmst go is surely a mere illusion, produced by the vague use of a common name for things which liave nothing in common. Is England to be bound for ever, without any regard to change of circum- stances, on penalty of the loss of her greatness and at the risk of all her general interests, to hold every sugar island taker, in the days of slave -grown sugar, every coign of vantage occupied in the struggle against the continental system of Napoleon ? When the cession of the Ionian Islands to Greeco was proposed, the cry was raised that this would be the signal for general dissolution. Yet no dissolution ensued, nor was there any sign among the nations of diminished respect for Great Britain. She found herself all the stronger for being rid of a possession which in case of war must either have been garrisoned at a ruinous sacrifice or abandoned with disgrace, and the shrieks of dissolution were suspended, not to be raised again till the announcement of the cession of Heligoland. Let the Canadian question then be considered by itself and with reference to the circumstances of Canada, CHAP. THE CANADIAN QUESTION :4l il, so that ler, when f kindred iplomatic )y herself, na ? The England's ,s enf.bled : eiiemies. ncrease of I may still any longer lat because ;o is surely mon name England to of circum- at the risk and taker if vantages system of to Greece, the signal :d, nor was respect for for being fther have loned with lended, not cession of Iconsidered if Canada, not to those of Jamaica, Malta, South Africa, or Hong Kong. What is gained by the present system of dej>euileuce or semi-dependence as applied to Canada ? What would be lost if it were exchanged for the filial tie ? That is a question which, as even Imperial Federationists proclaim, the course of events has practically raised. That the connectk»n lays on Great Britain heavy responsibilities, both miliiary and diplomatic, that it adds not a little to the burdens and perils of empire, is plain. Were England to withdiaw jKjlidc lly from the American continent she would be quit ni«t only of the diplomatic entauglements and disputes witli tlie United States about boundaries and fisheries, but of the ill-fed lor the had been? very time lan feeling Ik of that iat popular ,ed States. particular hey come? of British 293,099 ; ssed on to :ad. That with a |ates is, as t the fact. lie British e\v home ,nd of the hnu' emi- are going its bestow a thought. It suffices them to know that they here their fiiends have gone before them, and where they will be better off than they are at home. Besides, as we have seen, the emigration question has now entered on a new phase, and the people of whom the mother country wishes to be rid the colony is no longer inclined, or not so well inclined as it used to be, tu receive. It looks as though England might have for the future to close her own ports against the influx of Polish Jews or foreigners of any race, and in this or other ways to set bounds to the growth of her own population and liud means of feeding her offspring at home. Of dominion over the Colony barely a rag remains to the mother country, and even that remnant is grudged, and is being constantly nibbled away. The appellate jurisdiction of the Privy Council has been narrowed by the interposition of the Canadian Supreme Court ; there is a smouldering agitation for the transfer of the military command from a British to a Canadian officer, and with regard to commercial matters there is a gradual assertion of diplomatic independ- ence. This we have seen. The appointment of a Governor- Genera^ is about all that remains ; and it perhaps may not be long before the Colonies generally improve upon the ex- ample of Queensland, which asserted a veto, and, under some constitutional form of recommending a name to Her Majesty, take the appointment to themselves. Tliat England can derive no military strength from a dependency 3000 miles away, without any army or navy of its own, and with an o])en frontier of 4000 miles, will surely be admitted by all, and is in effect proclaimed by Imperialists when they strive to goad Canadians into setting up a standing army. She cannot even derive that false show of strength solemnly styled " prestige " : the weakness , \ fijll' 244 CANADA AND THE CANADLW QUESTION CHAP. is too patent and too confessed to deceive even an opponent capable of taking pasteboard for a stone wall. Enlist soldiers in Canada England may, if she cliooses to pay much higher wages than she pays her soldiers now, and perhaps bounties into the bargain ; so, as the enlistments during the Civil War showed, can the American Government. The soldiers would no doubt be good, though British officers might have some trouble with democratic recruits not brought up like the British peasant to obey a gentleman,, But Canada will never contribute to Imperial armaments at her own expense. Even Australia, which is more British than Canada, and has no Xew France in the heart of it, seems not likely to send another regiment at her own expense to an Imperial war; and when it was faintly proposed in Canada to emulate Australia in devotion there was a chorus of dissent. Conservative organs showing special anxiety to relieve their Government of the suspicion. The Conservative leader in Canada has intimated that the Colony will help the mother country only in case of defensive war ; and he evidently did not regard as defensive the war in Afghanistan or that in Egypt. The mercantile marine of Canada claims the fourth place among those of the world. It is often spoken of as a nursery for the British navy. The mercantile marine of Great Britain can of course draw from it freely in case of need, as does the mercantile marine of the United States — for of those American fishermen about whose rights a>)lomatists contend the majority are said to be Canadians. But the new warships recjuire seamen specially trained for the service. Besides, while people are dilating upon the military and naval resources of Canada as aids in time of need to the mother country, French Canada is left out of sight. Let the War Office ask the Canadian High Commissioner whether he thinks that Quebec would, under '*-v^ CHAP. THE CANADIAN QUESTION 21; opponent t soldiers h liit^lier bounties Oivil War 3rs would five some like the will never 50. Even IS no New cl another and when istralia in Lve organs jnt of the intimated ly in case defensive iiercantile lose of the le British of course mercantile fishermen jority are YQ seamen )eople are anada as Janada is lian High Id, under any (3onceivable circumstance, send contingents or subsidies to British armaments, or allow the Dominion, which is con- trolled by the French vote, to send them. The most likely antagonist of England is France, and in a war between France and England the hearts of the French Canadians, if not their arms, would be on the wrong side. There was no difficulty in raising Papal Zouaves. " There are," says Sir George Cornewall Lewis,^ "supposed advantages flowing from the possession of dependencies which are expressed in terms so general and vague that they cannot be referred to i.ny determinate head. Such, for example, is the glory whicii a country is supposed to derive from an extensive Colonial Empire. We will merely remark upon this imagined advantage that a nation derives no true glory from any possession which produces no assignable advantage to itself or to other comnumities. If a country possesses a dependency from which it derives no public revenue, no mili- tary or naval strength, and no commercial advantages or facili- ties for emigration whicli it would not equally enjoy though the dependency were independent . . . sucli a possession cannot justly be called glorious." These are the words of a Minister of the Crown and a colleague of Lord Palmerston. Great Britain may need a coaling station on the Atlantic Coast of Xorth America, not for the purposes of blockade, whicli could no longer have place when all danger of war was at an end, but for the general defence of her trade. Safe coaling stations and harbours of refuge, rather than territorial dependencies, are apparent!} what the great exporting country and the mistress of the carrying trade now wants. New- foundland would be a safe and uninvidious possession, and it has coal, though bituminous and not yet worked. The Ameri- ' j!:ssay on the Oovcrtimcnt of Dependencies, p. 239. i|' ^ ( i I 216 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAl', '."'■■■h4 I •.: i wmi'i ■*-' '-'■ cans Jo not covet islands, for the defence of wliicli they would have to keep up a navy. The island itself would be the gainer ; there would be some chance of the development of its resources ; with nothing but the fishery the condition of its people seems to be poor. Let England then keep New- foundland. Cape Breton is rather too close to the coast, otherwise it has coal in itself, and Louisbourg might be restored. The strength of England is and alwavs has been in herself, not in her dependencies. Alone she fought and van- (piished Louis XIV and Napoleon, as well as IMiilip IL Some sepoys sent to Egypt in the war with France, some sepoys brought to the Mediterranean fourteen years ago as a demonstration against Eussia, the regiment raised by Australia for the campaign in the Soudan — these are about the total amount of military contribution ever drawn by the Imperial country from what is called the Empire, lilack regiments were raised in the West Indies, and the lOOtli Ilegiment was originally raised in Canada, but at Imperial expense. On the other hand, one dependency at least has drawn heavily on Imperial resources in an hour of extreme peril. When Wellington faced Napoleon at Waterloo he must, as he looked on the raw levies or foreign auxiliaries around him, have thought with bitterness of his victorious veterans who M'ere on the wrong side of the Atlantic, engaged in what, as the conquest of Canada was the Americ.in aim, was really a Colonial war. Had Canada then been in the American Union her friendly vote might have turned the scale of its councils generally in favour of England. The British in the United States have hitherto to a great extent declined naturalisation, repelled perhaps by the political feeling against their native country. But they have now been persuaded to take the wiser course, and are being naturalised in great CHAl'. ey would d be tlie pineiit of idition of ;ep New- he coast, restored, been in and van- liilip II. ce, some ago as a A.ustralia the total Imperial ^'iits were ent was On the avily on When e looked m, have ho were ., as tlie really a merican of its lish in eclined against aded to 1 great X THE CANADIAN QUESTION 247 ■} \'< numbers. As th ,'ote makes itself felt, tlie infli soon of the Irish vote and of the enemies of England on politics will decrease. The Nova-Scotian vote is said to have told the other day in ^Massachusetts. No other kind of aid will it be in Canada's power to lend. If this assertion is ques- tioned, let the Canadiari Government be called upon, while yet it is time, to say plainly what assistance, military or naval, it is able to ufford, and in what contingency the assistance will be afforded. Sir Henry Taylor cannot be said to have forfeited his character as a patriotic Englishman when he wrote, as Under- Secretary for the Colonies, to Lord Grey : " I cannot but regard the North-American Provinces as a most dangerous possession for this country, whether as likely to breed a wa^" with the United States or to make a war otherwise generated more grievous and disastrous. I do not suppose the I'rovinces to be useless to us at present, but I regard any present uses not obtainable from them as independent nations as no more than the dust in the balance compared with the evil con- tingencies." It may be said that this was written in 1852, and that since that time we have had new lights. Some persons may have had new lights ; but those who have not are no more unpatriotic in saying that the possession and that its uses are as dust in the balance compared with its evil contin- gencies than was Sir Henry Taylor. Now on the side of the Colony. The disadvantages of dependence stare us in the face. If to l)e a nation is strength, energy, and grandeur, to be less than a nation is to have less than a full measure of all these. Nor can any one who has lived in a dependency fail to see that the high spirit of inde- pendence is not there. Its aljsence is marked by restless and uneasy self-assertion, by a misgiving which sometimes lurks ,1 *■' ill 248 CANADA AXD THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. under an outward Ijoast fulness, by a constant craving for the notice of the Imperial country, coupled with a jealousy of lier superiority and of the supposed pretensions of those who belong to her. To live not to yourself but to another man, said the philosopher of old, is moral slavery, and a dependency lives to the Imperial country, not to herself The full pride of country cannot have place, nor can the full attachment to country. The social centre of the rich and eminent is in the Imperial capital, and in their social centre are their aspira- tions and their hearts. There is not found in Canada the same public munificence which there is in the United States ; nor are there found, as in the United States, great citizens wdio, without going into public life, witliout coveting its prizes, recoiling perhaps from it altogether, as it is under the party system — still take an active interest in all questions which deeply concern the welfare of the community, head movements of reform, political as well as social, throw them- selves even into the political conllict when the salvation of the State hangs in the balance, and in a measure neutralise the evil influence of faction and its retainers. The depend- ency shares, it may l^e replied, the greatness of the Imperial nation. It does ; but only as a dependent ; it bears the train, not wears the royal robe. Military and naval protection Canada may be said to receive ; but it is protection of a very precarious kind. It is not pretended that the arm of England would save Canada from invasion : the most that is alleged is, that when Canada had suffered all the evils of invasion she w^ould be redeemed by the pressure which the English navy w^ould put upon the seaboard cities of the enemy. What amount of naval force Great Britain would be able to spare for the defence of colonial trade in case of a war between her and any other X THE CANADIAN QUESTION 249 :! maritime power is a r|uestion which must be answered by the Admiralty, whose utterances on the sul)ject hitlierto have not been comtbrting. But it could hardly be such as to prevent a rise in the rate of insurance such as, the market of the Uidted States being half closed by the tariff, would ruinously reduce Canadian trade. The saving to Canada of military and naval expense is one of the great inducements always held out to her for adhering to the connection. The ohter is the saving of diplomatic expense, which, however, will not be com- plete if the proposal to have residents at seats of commerce, in addition to the High Commissioner at London, is carried out. Diplomatic expense is not found intolerable by Switzer- land, Denmark, Belgium, or Sweden, although they are mixed up with European diplomacy, of which Canada would l)e clear. In the balance against this claim to protection and this saving of expense must be laid the heavy weight of a constant liability to entanglements in the quarrels of England all over the world, -with which Canada has nothing to do, and about which notliing is known by her people. Her commerce may any day be cut up, and want brought into her homes by a war about the frontier of xVfghanistan, about the treatment of Armenia or Crete by the Turks, about the relations of the Danubian principalities to Eussia, or about the l)alance of power in Europe. No one in Canada who forms his estimate of public sentiment through his senses and not through his fancy can doubt what the result would be. That in all diplomatic questions with the United States the interest of Canada has been sacrificed to the Imperial exigency of keeping the peace with the Americans is the constant theme of Canadian complaint, '" I do not think " — these are the words of a Canadian knight — "that w^e are under any deep debt of gratitude to English statesmen, that Vi ?l! 250 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. I I il' ' we owe tlieni mucli, unless, perchance, it may be the duty as Christian men to forgive them for the atrocious bhuulers wliich liave marked every treaty, transaction, or negotiation wliich they have ever had with the United States where the interests of Canada were concerned, from the davs of IJenjamin Franklin to this hour, not excepting their first or second treaty of Washington." V>y the Treaty of 1783, confirming tlie independence of the United States, England not only resigned the territory claimed by each State of the Union severally, but abandoned to the general government immense teri'itories " unsettled, unexplored, and unknown." That this was done partly through ignorance appears from the fact that in the Treaty the north-western angle of demarcation was fixed at the north-west corner of the Lake of the Woods, from which point of departure it was to run due west to the sources of the Mississippi; whereas the sources of the ]Mississippi were afterwards found many hundred miles to the south, so that the line prescribed was impracticable.^ This is the beginning of a long and uniform story, in the course of which not only great tracts of territory but geographical unity has been lost. To understand how deeply this iron has entered into the Canadian soul the Englishman must turn to his map and mark how much of geographical compactness, of ndlitary security, and of com- mercial convenience was lost when Great I'ritain gave up !Maine. The British statesman would with truth reply that he had done all that diplomacy could do, that he had gone to the very verge of war with the United States, and that with a world-wide empire and world-wide enmities on his hands he could not afford to go beyond. The Canadian, if he were ^ See article "How Treaty-making unmade Canada," by the late Lieut.- Colonel Coffin, Ottawa, in the Canadian Monthly, May, 1876, CHAT. (lutv as blumlers ^rotiatiou here the davs of r first or nf 1783, England :e of the /ernnicnt iknown." ;ais from anule of the Lake IS to run ereas the nd many rihed was uniform territory and liow soul the much of of corn- gave up eply that 1 gone to at with a hands he he were late Liciit.- TIIK CANADIAN t^UKSTION 261 reasonable, would acquiesce, but lie wouUl ft'id that tlie sincerest wish to protect without the power was not protec- tion. A large portion of Minnesota, Dakota, IMontana, and Washington, Canada also thinks she has wrongfully lost. Those are causes of discontent ; discontent may one day breed disaffection ; disaffection may lead to another calamit- ous rupture ; and instead of going forth into the world when the hour of maturity has arrived witli tiie jjarent's blessing, the child may turn in anger from the [)aternal door. About tlie advantages of political tutelage hardly a word need be said. Practically the idea has been abandoned. How coidd a democracy in ]<]urope regulate, to any good purpose, tlie progress of a democracy in America al)out tlie concerns of which it knows almost nothing, and which is superior to itself in average educition and intelligence ? ]>ritish democracy has enough to do in regulating itself. In former days, when the Ihitish Government consisted of the chief men of the nation exercising real power ihc illusion of tutelage was possible ; but who can Ijelicve that a colony is the better for being guided by the delegates of an English caucus ? Even the best informed in England are still too uninstructed about Canada to interfere usefully in her affairs? If the days are "./one by when the Admiralty could send out sentry-boxes for the troops, water- casks for a ilotilla on Canadian lakes, and spars for the use of vessels in a land of pine, the writer has seen posted in England a proclamation of the Privy Council in which Ontario v/as called " that town," and he has heard a well-educated Englishman con- gratulate a Canadian on the removal l»y the settlement of the Alabama cpiestion of all causes of enmity between Canada and Great Britain. The House of Commons notoriously cannot be got to attend to colonial questions. In the debate I ii I );,'■' 11 263 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN (,)UESTIOX CIIAP. on the Qucljec Act it was near being counted out, and in the division winch was to decider the constitution and laws of the dependency only seventy -two members took part. An Act relating to the South-African Confederation was passed in an all-night sitting held to beat obstruction. Nobody blames people for knowing or caring little about matters with which they have nothing to do. (.'anadians care and know little about Australia or the Cape of Good Hope. But to talk of tutelage is absurd. If liritish monarchists have continued to cherish the hope of establishing through the agency of Canada hereditary monarchy and aristocracy on this (.'on- tinent, and thus wresting from democracy a part of its dominion, let that hope be for ever laid aside. The structure and si)irit of Canadian as well as American society, it must be repeated, are thoroughly democratic. The homage paid to titled visitors from the old country and the social worship of the Governor-General are indications merely of personal habit, not of any political return to the past. Americans and Canadians are in this respect the same. In the hereditary principle there is not on the American Continent a spark of life. The abdication of the Brazilian dynasty was the knell. That democracy on the American continent and elsewhere may some day pass through faction into anarchy, and that out of the anarchy a strong government may arise, is among those possibilities in the womb of the future which no external power can help to the birth ; but on the soil of the New World hereditary monarchy and aristocracy can never grow. Canada has received, it is true, large advances of British capital. Her debt to England has been reckoned at $650,000,000, though of the portion invested in the construc- tion of Canadian railways most may be practically written off. How far facility of borrowing is really a blessing to any THE (ANAUIAN QUKSTIOX 253 country is ii question which need not bo discussed. En_L;lish capital is now pouring' into tliu United States ; it lias poured into the Argentine IJepublic, Spain, llussia, Kgy[tt, 'I'urkey, Mexico, and every country in which it appeared that profitable investments could be found. Investment is as cosmopolitan as trade. Let Canada keep up her ciedit and the llritish investor will not curiously inquire whether the Governor-General is sent out from England or elected by the Canadians themselves. Sentiment then, apparently, is the sole life of the present connection. Of sentiment no one wishes U) speak irreverently. But to be sound, it nuist after all have its root in some kind of utility, and when the root is dead the days of the llower are numbered. Besides it is l)ut the exchange of one senti- ment for another which i;? more certain to endure. Why is the filial sentiment of less value than the sentiment of de- pendence? It is surely rather the nobler of the two. The Greek colony which kept the fire taken from the mother country's altar always burning on its sacred hearth and assigned to the representatives of the mother country places of honour, effectively preserved, in its classic fashion, the bond of the heart ; and why should not the same thing be done in forms suited to our time by a Colony at the present day? Protracted dependence may imperil the filial tie if resentment is caused on either side by the failure to render services which can no longer be rendered, and perform duties which can no longer be performed. v !• 1 *■ ; I'r fr? Section II. — iNDErENDEXCE Confederation was followed by a movement in the direction of Independence, chiefly among the young men of Ontario, If i' ! 254 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. which was called " Canada First." The name was the title of a panipldot written in 1371 by j\Ir. W. A. Foster, a barrister ol' Toronto, wliicli iired a number of younn' liearts. To in- dependence the movement manifestly tended, if tliis was not its avowed or deiinite aim. The autliors of C'onfedei'ation, to induce the people to accept their policy, liad set before them glowing pictures of tlie resources of the country, and made strong ajjpeals to patriotic pride, hope, and self-i'idiance. These produced their natural efi'ect on ardent and sanguine souls. It happened that just at the same time tlie gener- ation of immigrants from England which had occupied many of the leading places in the profes,sions and c('...merce was passing off the scene and leaving the fudd clear for native ambition, while the witlidrawal of the troops also brought socially to the front tlie young natives wlio had before been somewhat eclipsed in the eyes of ladies by the scarlet. " Canada First" was rather a circle than a party : it eschewed the name of party, and the Country above Party was its cry. Some of the group were merely nativists who desired that all power and all places should be filled by born Canadians, that the policy of Canada should be shaped by her own interest, and that she should be first in all Canadian hearts. With some a " national policy " for i\i2 protection of Canadian manufactures was probably a principal object. But that to which the leading spirits more or less consciously, more or less avowedly, looked forward was Independence. That they aimed at raising Canada above the condition of a mere dependency and investing her with the dignity of a nation they loudly proclaimed, aud they would have found that this could not be done without putting off dependence. " Canada First " was violently denounced and assailed by the politicians of the two old parties, who betrayed in their treatment of the il CHAP. n the title I barrister s. To m- s ^vas not ('ration, to ilbre tlieni and made If-reliance. \ sanguine the gener- l occupied , cciiUierce r for native so brought Det'ore \)een the scarlet, it eschewed was its cry. i-ed that all Canadians, )V her own dian hearts, of Canadian ,ut that to sly, more or That they of a mere of a nation nd that this " Canada le politicians tment of the X THE CANADIAN QUESTION 255 generous aspirations to which they had tlieni selves apj^aled the re^d source of their policy and the spirit in which they had acted as the authors of Confederation. The Court of Ottawa also exerted its inikience, including its influence over the masters of the Press, in the same direction. Tlie movement found a leader, or thought that it had found a leader, in a native Canadian politician, who was the child of ])romise and the morning star at tliat time. Ihit ;i! the decisive moment party ties prevailed, the leader w".< k»st, and the movement collapsed, not however without leaving strong traces of its existence, which are beginning to show themselves among the vounger men at tlie present dav. In one respect, at all events, the men of " Canada First " were vhht. Thev saw or at least felt — even the least WId and the least clear-sighted of them felt — that a comwunitv in the X'-w World nnist live its own life, lace its own responsibilities, grow and mould itself in its own way : that Anglo-.Saxuu nations in Xorth America could no more Itr tied ibr ever to the apron-strings of the mother coimtrr than England could have been tied for ever to the apron-strings of Frieslaud, or France to those of the mother country of the Franks. There was nothing on tin; fnce of it impracticable in the aim of "Canada First." rheie is nothing in nature or in political circumstances to iorbid the existence on this Continent of a nation independent of the IJnit^ Slates. American aggression need not be feared. Tlie violence and unscrupulousness bred of slavery having passed away, the Americans are a moral people. It would not l)e possibk* for Clay or any other demagogue now to excite them to a; . un- provoked attack upon another free nation or even to a Pjanifest encroachment on its rights. If they had been tiiibustcTS they u (i ' i:^ 1 ^i! 4 ^ ■ -v ■^>f : '''] i|;'r B ~^' fli ^^^■. i B ' ' CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAl'. would have shown it wlien they had an immense army on foot, witli a powerful na\y, and when they were flushed with victory. The Xew England J^tates, and the non-slavery element of the nation generally, were opposed to the AVar of 1812. An independent Canada, however inferior to them in force, might rest in perfect safety by their side. But when Canada First" was born the Xorth-Wust had unly just been acquired. British Columbia was as yet hardly incorporated, and the absolute want of geographical compactness or even continuity was not so apparent as it is now. Enthusiasm was blind to the difficulty presented to the devotees of (-^anadian nationality by the separate nationality of Quebec, or if it was not blind, succeeded in cajoling itself by poetic talk about the value of French gifts and graces as ingredients for combination, without asking whether fusion was not the tliinfi' which the French most abhorred. There is no reason why Ontario should not be a nation if she were minded to be one. Her lerritory is compact. Her population is already as large as that of Denmark, and likely to be a good deal larger, probably as large as that of Switzerland ; and it is sufficiently homogeneous if she can only repress French encroachment on her eastern border. She would have no access to the sea : no more has Switzerland, Hungary, or Servia. Already a great part of her trade goes through the United States in bond. The same thing might have been said with regard to the Maritime Provinces — supposing them to have formed a legislative union — Quebec, lU'itish Columbia, or the North- West. In the Xorth-West, rating its cultivable area at the lowest, there M'ould l^e room for no mean nation. But the thread of each rrovince's destiny has now become so inter- twined with the rest that the skein can hardly be disentangled. CIIAV. X THE CANADIAN QUESTION 257 Tiny on ed with -slavery War of tlieni in lit \vlien list been rpcratecl, or even tliusiasm ^^otees of f Quebec, by poetic loTedicnts was not lere is no slie were :-)opulation ily to be a itzerlaud ; ly repress ould have ungary, or rough the rard to the formed a the North- larea at the r.ut the le so inter- Isentangled. Tliat the Xorth-West, if it is not released from the stranoliiia tariff, may take a course of its own is not unlikely ; but it is unlikely that the course will be Independence. Section III. — Imperial Federation It w^as probably the sight of the tie visibly weakening and of the approach of Colonial independence that gave birth, by a recoil, to Imperial Federation. But the move- ment has been strangely reinforced from another source. Home rulers, who, under that specious name would surrender Ireland to Mr. Parnell, think to salve their own patriotism and reconcile the nation to their policy by saying that in breaking up the United Kingdom they are only providing raw materials for a far ampler and grander union. In the case of '.hi.: late Mr. Forster, the only statesman who has seriously ^inuraced the project, sometliing might be due to the Nemesis of imagination in the breast of a (Quaker. The Imperial Federationists refuse to tell us their plan. They bid our bosoms dilate with trustful enthusiasm for arrangements which are yet to be revealed. They say it is not yet time for the disclosure. Nor yet time when the last strand of political connection is worn almost to the last thread, and when every day the sentiment opposed to centralisation is implanting itself more deeply in Colonial hearts 1 While we are bidden to wait patiently for the tide, the tide is running strongly the other way. Now New- foundland claims the right of making her own commercial agreements with the United States independently of other Colonies. Disintegration, surely, is on the point of being complete. At least we may be told of whom the Confederation is s CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. fi ^l to consist. Are the negroes of the West Indies to be included ? Is Quashee to vote on Imperial policy ? But above all, what is to be done with India ? Is it, as a Canadian Federationist of thorough - going democratic tendencies demanded the other day, to be taken into Federation and enfranchised ? If it is, the Hindoo will outvote us by five to one, and what he will do with us only those who have fathomed the Oriental mystery can pretend to say. Is it to remain a dependency ? Then to whom is it to belong ? To a Federation of democratic communities scattered over the globe, some of which, like Canada, have no interest in it whatever? Its fate as an Empire would then be sealed, if it is .lot sealed already by the progress of democracy in Great Britain. Or is it to belong to England alone ? In that case one member of the Confederacy will have an Empire apart five times as large as the rest of the Confeder- ation, requiring separate armaments and a diplomacy of its own. How would the American Confederation work if one State held South America as an Empire ? Some have suggested that Hindostan should be represented by the British reside-^ts in India alone. If it were, woe to the Hindoos. Again, the object of the Association must surely be known. Every Association of a practical kind must have a definite object to hold it together. The objects which, naturally suggest themselves are common armaments an*t a common tariff. But Canada, as we have ^^en, refuses to contribute to common armaments, and Australia, though she sent a regiment to the Soudan, now apparently repents of having done it. Great Britain is a v ar power ; the Colonists, like the Americans, are essentially unmilitary, and liere would be the beginning of troubles. As to the tariff, the Canadian Protectionists, who make use of Imperial Federation as a CHAl'. X THE CAXADIAX QUESTION 259 to be ? But it, as uocratic en into \o() will us only L pretend horn is it Huunities lada, have ire would irogress of England y will have 3 Coni'eder- uacy of its ork if one ■e suggested 3I1 reside -^ts be known. [e a definite .1 naturally |l a conunon lontribute to It a regiment ling done it. :s, like the ^vould be the lie Canadian leration as a stalking-horse in their struggle against free trade with the United States, are always careful to say that they do not mean to resign their right of laying protective duties on British goods. Victoria also seems wedded to her Protective system. What remains but improvement of postal com- munication and a Colonial Exhibition, neither of which surely calls for a political combination unprecedented in history. Unprecedented in history the combination would be. The Eoman Empire, the thought of which, and of its Civis Romanus sum, is always hovering before our minds, was vast, but it was all in a ring-fence. Moreover, it had its world to itself, no rival powers being interposed between Home and her Provinces. It was an Empire in the proper sense of the term. Its members were all alike in strict subordination to its head. The head determined the policy without ques- tion, and danger to unity from divided counsels there was none. We confuse our minds, as was said before, by an improper use of the term Empire. The name applies to India, but to nothing else connected with Great Britain unless it be the fortresses and Crown Colonies. Our self- governed Colonies are not members of an Empire, but free comnmnities virtually independent of the mother country, which for the purpose of Confederation would be called upon to resign a portion of their independence. Of the Spanish Empire it is needless to speak. Its name is an omen of disaster and a warning against the blind ambition which mistakes combination for union and colossal weakness for power. After all, the Poman Kmpire itself fell, and partly because the life w\as drawn from the members to the head. The Achiean League, the Swiss Bund, the Union of the Netherlands, the American Union, all were perfectly natural CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. combinations, not only suggested but commanded by a common peril. In three out of the four cases the communitir j which entered into the compact were kindred in all respects ; in the case of the Swiss Bund they were equal. In the case of the Confederation now proposed, they would be neither kindred nor equal ; and fasten the people of the British Islands, those of the self-governed Colonies, the Hindoo, the African, and the Kaffir together with what legislative clamps you will, you cannot produce the unity of political character and sentiment which is essential to community of councils, much more to national union. Steam and telegraph, we are told, have annihilated distance. They have not annihilated the parish steeple. They have not carried the thoughts of the ordinary citizen beyond the circle of his own life and work. They have not qualified a common farmer, tradesman, ploughman, or artisan to direct the politics of a world-wide State. How much does an ordinary Canadian know or care about Australia, an ordinary i.ustralian about Canada, or an ordinary Englishman, Sooichmaji, or Irishman about either? The feeling of all the Colonists towards the mother country, when you appeal to it, is thoroughly kind, as is that of the mother country towards the Colonies. But Canadian notions of British politics are hazy, and still more hazy are British notions of the politics of Canada. When John Sandfield Macdonald, the Prime Minister of Ontario, died, his death was chronicled by British journals as that of Sir John A. Macdonald, the I'rime ]^Iinister of the Dominion. About India Englishmen know more, because their interest in it is so great ; but Canadians know nothing. The framers of these vast political schemes, having their own eyes fixed on the political firmament, forget that the eyes of CHAP. THE CANADIAN QUESTION 261 by a unitif'i spects ■, le case neither [slands, African, ips you iter and Is, niucli liliilated steeple, y citizen have not )r artisan lucli does ralia, an lisliman, ncf of all appeal country f British otions of acdonald, lironicled >nald, the use their The heir own le eyes of )Vl ■mg men in general are fixed on the path they tread. The suffrage of the Federation ought to be limited to far-reaching and imaginative minds. A grand idea may be at the same time practical. The idea of a United Continent of Xorth America, securing free trade and intercourse over a vast area, with external safety and internal peace, is no less practical than it is grand. Tlie benefits of such a union would be always present to the mind of the least instructed citizen. The sentiment connected witli it would be a foundation on which the political architect could build. Imperial Federation, to the mass of the people comprised in it, would be a mere name conveying with it no definite sense of benefit, on which anything could be built. To press this receding vision a little closer, what would be the relation of the Federal Government to the British monarchy ? Would the same Queen be sovereign of both ? Would she have two sets of advisers ? Suppose they should advise her different ways ! Would she appoint, as she does now, the heads of all the other members of the Federation ? It would hardly do to let the President of the United States appoint all the State Governors. How would the Supreme Court be constituted ? Such an authority would certainly be needed to interpret the Constitution, and the British monarchy would have to be a suitor before it. How would the decrees of the Federationists be enforced, say, iu case of refusal to send the war contingent ? How, again, would the representation in the Federal Parliament be apportioned ? If by population, the representation of the British Islands would so outnumber the rest that the rest would deem their representation practically a nullity, and jealousy and cabals would at once arise. The very number, too, would be a difficultv. If Great Britain had members in I i If li t i I 262 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN (tUESTION CHAP. proportion to St. Helena and Fiji, the Parliament would have to meet on Salisbury Plain. These are not questions of detail, nor do they attach only to a particular scheme : they are fundamental, and attach to every scheme that can be conceived. The Parliament of Great Britain must cease to be a Sove- reign Power. The Imperial Congress itself would not be a Sovereign Power. Like the Congress of the United States, it would ha subject to the Federal Constitution, and would have so much authority only as that Constitution assigned it. The Sovereign l*ower would be in the people of the Empire at large, and a curious Sovereign they would be. The same person could not be the head at once of a Federation and of one of the comnninities included in it any more than the same person could be I'resident of the United States and Governor of the State of New York. Her Majesty would have to choose between the British and the Pan- Britannic Crown. Canada is a Confederation in herself. Movements are on foot for a Confederation of the Australian Colonies and of those of South Africa. A Confederation of the West India Islands has also been proposed, AVe should thus have a striking novelty in political architecture in the shape of a Confedera- tion of Confederations. But it seems certain that New Zea- land would not, and that some isolated Colonies could not, join any Federation, in which case the members of the Central Parliament would represent partly Federations, partly single communities. Strange apparently would be the complication of fealties, obligations, and sentiments which would hence arise. This Union, so complex in its machinery, with its members scattered over the world, and distracted by interests as wide X THE CANADIAN QUESTION 268 apart as the shores of its members, Home liulers think they could maintain, while they bid us despair of maintaining the Parliamentary Union of Ireland with Great Britain. Even to assemble the Centralised Convention would be no easy task. The governments, British and Colonial, are all party governments and all liable to constant change. The delegate trusted by one party would not have the confidence of the other, and before the Convention would proceed to business somebody's credentials would lie withdrawn. We have seen in the case of Canadian Confederation how Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island flew off from the aureemeiit at which their delegates had arrived. In truth there woidd probably be a general falling away as soon as payment for Imperial arma'uents came into view. The Federation would be nothing if not diplomatic. But whose diplomacy is to prevail? That of Great Britain, an European Power and at the same time Mistress of India? That of Australia, with her Eastern relations and her Chinese question ? Or tliat of Canada, bound up with the American Continent, indifferent to every- thing in Europe or Asia, and concerned only witli her relation to the United States ? If we may believe Sir Charles Dilke, Australia avows her intention of breaking away from England should British policy ever take a line adverse to her special interests in the East. Achaia, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United States, all federated under the pressure of necessity, which, stern and manifest as it was, had yet scarcely the power to overcome the centralised forces. To do the work of that necessity there ought at least to be an equally strong desire. But what proof have we of the existence of such a desire ? Australia, far from being eager, seems to be adverse ; in some 264 CANADA AND Tni-: CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. of her cities the missionary of Imperial Federation can scarcely lind an audience. From South Africa comes no audible response. In British Canada the movement lias no apparent strength except what it derives from an alliance with l*rotectionism, which, as has already been said, repudiates a commercial union of the Empire and insists on maintaining its separate tariff. To the French nationalists of Quebec any- thing that would l)ind their country closer to Great Britain is odious, and they were disposed to receive the present Governor- General coldly because they suspected him of favouring such a policy. In Great Britain itself the move- ment shows no sign of strength. For several years, under Lord Beaconsfield, Imperialism had everything its own way, yet not a step was taken towards Fedei-ation. That was the grand opportunity ; but Federationists failed to grasp it by the forelock. Not a step has been taken to this hour beyond holding a meeting of Colonists, absolutely without authority, which dined, wined, and talked about postal communications, all power of dealing with the great question having been expressly withheld. Lord Beaconsfield's successor in the Tory leadei'ship has plainly declined to commit himself to the project. We seem to be a long way from a spontaneous and overwhelming vote, nothing short of which would suffice. The approach to centralisation at once sets all the centrifugal forces in action ; it did this even in the case of American federation, so that the project narrowly escaped wreck ; and miscarriage "would beget, instead of closer union, discord, estrangement, and perhaps rupture. Let us bear the warning example of the rupture with the American Colonies in mind. AVhat is the real motive for encountering all the difficulties and perils of this moi'e than gigantic undertaking, for running r ruimiug X THE CANADIAN QUESTION 2(55 laboriously counter to the recent course of Colonial history, as well us to the natural tendencies of our race, and for taking the political heart and brain, as it were, out of each of those free conmiunities and transferring them to London ? AVe are told that the Federal Empire would impose peace upon the world. This assumes that dispersion is strength, and that Great Britain would be made more formidable in war by being bound up with unmilitary comnuinities. Ihil suppose it true, surely the appearance of a world-wide power, grasping all the waterways and all the points of maritime vantage, instead of propagating peace, would, like an alarm gun, cdl the nations to battle ! The way to make peace on earth is to promote the condng not of an exclusive military league but of the Parliament of JNIan, tlie moral Parliament of j\Ian at least, by eidarging the action of international law and repressing the ambitious passions to which, however philan- thropic may be our professions, Imperialism really appeals. If no distinct object can be assigned, if no definite plan can be produced, if the projectors are conscious that there is no practical step on which they can venture, surely the project ought to be frankly laid aside and no longer allowed to darken counsel, hide from us the real facts of the situation, and prevent the Colonies from advancing on the true path. There is a Federation which is feasible, and, to those who do not measure grandeur by physical force or extension, at least as grand as that of which the Imperialist dreams. It is the moral federation of the whole English-speaking race throughout the world, including all those millions of men speaking the English language in the United States, and parted from the rest only a century ago by a wretched quarrel, whom Imperial Federation would leave out of its IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) V // {/ C?, :/ 1.0 I.I 12.5 la 11^ S40 2.0 1.8 1.25 1.4 1.6 ■^ 6" — ► v] (^ /^ A>^ ^^J ^. ^2 "># (? / /a W r Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MA:/'} STREET WEBSTER, N.Y 14580 (716) 872-4503 V ^q\' ^9) .V cT \ \ O^ n. % ^^ .<''^ W C/j I 266 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. pale. Xothing is needed to brin.,' this about but the volun- tary retirement of England as a political power from a shadowy dominion in a sphere which is not hers. There is no apparent reason why, among all the states of our race, there should not be community of citizenship, so that a citizen of any one of the nations might take up the rights of a citizen in any one of the others at once upon his change of domicile, and without the process of naturalisation. This would be political unity of no inconsiderable kind without diplomatic liabilities, or the strain, which surely no one can think free from peril, of political centralisation. Unless all present appearances on the political horizon are delusive, the time is at hand when the upheaval of the labour world, and the social problems which are coming into view, will give the politicians more serious and substantial matter for thought than the airy fabric of Imperial Federation. The old project of giving the Colonies representation in the Imperial I'arliament appears to have been laid aside. The objections urged against it by Burke on the ground of distance have been to a great extent removed by steam, though it might even now be difficult to call together a world-wide l*arliament in time of maritime war. But the objection still decisive is that the Colonies would not put their affairs into the hands of an Assembly in which their representation would be overwhelmingly outnumbered. Xor could they trust representatives domiciled in London who, under the influence of London society, would be apt to be- come more British than the British themselves. These new countries, which have such difficulty in finding suitable men for their own legislatures, would have difficulty in finding men to represent them at Westminster at all. They might X THE CANADIAN QUESTION 267 have to fall back on expatriated millionaires, in whom not the slightest confidence as representatives of Colonial sentiment could be placed. Supposing that the members for the Colonies remained colonial, and tried to make up for their lack of numbers at Westminster by combining among them- selves and log-rolling, they might become a serious addition to the distractions of the British Parliament, which assuredly need no increase. Let it be taken as certain and irreversible that the Colonies will not part with any portion of their self-govern- ment. If a scheme can be devised by which they can be governed by an Assembly at Westminster without any loss to them of self-government it may, supposing it to be presented to them in an intelligible and practicable form, stand a chance of consideration at their hands. Section IV. — Political Union Annexation is an ugly word ; it seems to convey the idea of force or pressure applied to the smaller State, not of free, equal, and honourable, union, like that between England and Scotland. Yet there is no reason why the union of the two sections of the English-speaking people on this Continent should not be as free, as equal, and as honourable as the union of England and Scotland. We should rather say their reunion than their union, for before their unhappy schism they were ono people. Nothing but the historical accident of a civil war ending in secession, instead of anmesty, has made them two. When the Anglo-Saxons of England and those ol Scotland were reunited they had been many centuries apart ; those of the United States and Canada have been separated for one century only. The Anglo-Saxons of Eng- i 268 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. land and Scotland had the memory of many vrars to estrange them : the Anglo-Saxons of Canada and the United States have the memory, since their separation, only of one war. That a union of Canada with the American Common- wealth, like that into which Scotland entered with England, would in itself be attended with great advantages cannot be liuestioned, whatever may be the considerations on the other side or the reasons for delay. It would give to the inhabit- ants of the whole Continent as complete a security for peace and imm unity from war taxation as is likely to be attained by any community or group of communities on this side of the Millenium. Canadians almost with one voice say that it would greatly raise the value of property in Canada ; in other words, that it would bring with it a great increase of prosperity. The writer has seldom heard this seriously disputed, while he has heard it admitted in the plainest terms by men who were strongly opposed to Union on poli- tical or sentimental grounds, and who had spent their lives in the service of Separation. The case is the same as that of Scotland or Wales in relation to the rest of the island of which they are parts, and upon tli,eir union with which their commercial prosperity depends. The Americans, on the other hand, would gain in full proportion as England gains by her commercial union with Wales and Scotland. These inducements are always present to the minds of the Canadian people, and they are specially present when the trade of Canada, with the rest of her Continent, is barred by such legislation as the M'Kinley Act, when her security is threat- ened by the imminence of war in Europe, or when from internal causes she happens to be acutely feeling the com- mercial atrophy to which her isolation condemns her. Canadians who live on the border, and who from the shape X THE CANADIAN QUESTION 269 of the country form a large proportion of the popuLation, have always before their eyes the fields and cities of a kindred people, whose immense prosperity they are pre- vented from sharing only by a political line, while socially, and in every other respect, the identity and even the fusion is complete. On the other hand, there is the affection of the Colonists for the mother country, which has always been kind to them in intention, even if she has not had the power to defend their rights and her interference has ceased to be useful. This might prevail if union with the rest of the race on this Continent, under the sanction of the mother country, would really be a breach of affection for her. But it would be none. It would be no more a breach of affection than the naturalisation, now fully recognised by Bri^" ' law, of multi- tudes both of Englishmen and of Canadians in the United States. Let us suppose that the calamitous rupture of the last century had never taken place, that the whole race on this Contment had remained united, and had parted, when the time came, from the mother country in peace ; where would the outrage on love or loyalty have been ? Admitted into the councils of their own Continent, and exercising their fair share of influence there, Canadians would render the mother country the best of all services, and the only service in their power, by neutralising the votes of her enemies. Unprovoked hostility on the part of the American Eepublic to Great Britain would then become impossible. It is now unlikely, but not impossible, since there is no wickedness which may not possibly be committed by demagogisni pander- ing to Irish hatred. Nor need Canada give up any of the distinctive character or historical associations which she has preserved through h i r 270 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION ciiAr. Ill' the continuance of her connection witii the mother country. ScotlanJ> h still Scotch, and her idol Sir Walter Scott was the type at once of patriotic Britons and of Scotchmen. The Federal system admits wide local diversities, and if Ontario or Nova Scotia clings to the British statute-book, to the British statute-book it may cling. There is no reason even why Canadians, who like to show their spirit by military celebrations, should not celebrate Canadian victories as the Scotch celebrate Bannockburn. Americans would smile. Of the antipathy to Americans sedulously kept up within select circles and in certain interests, there is absolutely none among the Canadian people at large. It would be strange if there were any, considering that half of them have brothers, sons, or cousins on the American side of the Line. " Bom- bard New York ! " said a Canadian to the writer when some- body was declaiming in that vein ; " why, my four sons live there ! " On the Pacific Coast of the United States a British shell could scarcely burst without striking a Canadian home. The masses do not read much history or cherish antiquarian feuds. If the President of the United States were to visit Canada, he would be received as cordially as he is in any part of his own Eepublic ; more cordially, perhaps, since in Canada the people of both parties would unite in the ovation. If the language held by Canadian Jingoes or "Paper Tigers," as they are called, about American character were the truth or anything like the truth, union with such people ought indeed to be declined at any sacrifice of military security or commercial profit. But even those who hold it hardly believe it. An Imperialist journal in London the other day ended an article on the influence of Americans in England by saying that they are too like the English in all THE CANADIAN QUESTION 271 § essential respects to produce any possible change in English character. That, as regards the normal American, is the hict. Tlie present writer has known the Americans not, like most of their critics, only in the citie.<, but in the country and the country town. As a lecturer and re-sident in an American University he has been brought into contact with American youth ; he has friends among Americans of all vocations and professions ; lie has seen the people under the ordeal of civil war, seen their conduct in the field, their care of the wounded, and their treatment of their captured enemies ; and to him the idea tliat Canadians would undergo moral disparagement by the Union seems of all reveries the most absurd. Sheer snobbishness, to tell the truth, has not a little to do with the aifectation of contempt for Yankees. This is one of the ways in which vulgarity tries to make itself genteel. The good feeling of Canadians towards their mother country is strong, genuine, disinterested, and cannot be too highly prized. But there is a blatant loyalty which it is very easy to prize too highly. If a man makes a violent and offensive demonstration of it against those whom he accuses of American sympathies, you are apt presently to find him in the employment of some American company, peddling for an American house, or accepting a call to the other side of the Line. AVe have alreadv, in our his- torical retrospect, had occasion to observe that when by untoward circumstances interest is divorced from senti- ment, the loyalism which before had been the most fiery in its manifestations can suddenly grow cold. If England ever has occasion to call on her children in Canada for a real sacrifice, she may chance to repeat the experience of King Lear. There are varieties too little noticed by critics of American 070 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAl'. character in different parts of the Union. Those are black spots. In certain districts lawlessness and want of respect for human life remain as the traces of slavery, whose cause Canadian Jingoism ardently espoused. Xew York has its shoddy wen 1th which the better Americans despise, and which British aristocracy, though scornful of American de- mocracy, sometimes takes to its arms. I'apid commercial development has bred gambling speculation, and with it unscrupulousness, of which Canada also has her proj)ortionate share, though in both cases the amount of knavery is small compared with tliat of sound and honest trade. Party politics are the same on both sides of the Line, and on neither side, happily, are they the whole of life. The Canadian politician exactly resembles the American, and none the less when he has been knighted. Both countries would be in a bad way if the demagogue ruled society and trade. Political corruption is or. a far larger scale in the wealthier country, but it is more shameless in the poorer country. About the American Press there is a good deal to be said, but not more than there is about the successive personal organs of a Prime Minister of Canada. Canada has the advantage of not having broken with her history or bearing on her political character, like the American, the trace of a revolution ; but America is gradually renewing her historical associations, and since she has had herself to contend with rebellion and been threatened within by the Anarchists, the revolutionary sentiment has been losing force. In the wealthier country and that which had the start in civilisation is found a higher standard of living, with more of science and culture ; in the other, more frugality and simplicity of life. Both communities are threatened by the same social dangers and disturbances, nor is there any conservative force in one which there is not in the 1 CHAl'. e black respect ;e cause has its ise, and lean de- iimercial with it ortionate is small Party n neither Canadian the less I be in a Political country, bout the not more If a Prime ot having ;haracter, merica is since she n-eatened tent has at which .ndard of [her, more ities are Ices, nor is lot in the THE CANADIAN QUESTION 378 other, the phantom of monarchy in Canada being, as has been shown, no conservative force at all, hut rather serving to disguise the action of forces the reverse of conservative. There is continual harping on the laxity of the American divorce law, and Canada was told that if she traded more witli the Americans Canadian wedlock would be in danger of the contagion. Illinois and Indiana, where the laxity prevails, are not the United States. However, scarcely had the warning been penned, when we had proof that, even as it is, no impassable gulf of sentiment divides us from Indiana and Illinois. The fear that with the addition of Canada the Union would be too large and that its cohesion miglit give way, which is felt both by Canadians and Americans, though natural, seems not to be well-founded. Slavery being ex- tinct there is no longer any visible line of cleavage. So long as the freedom of the system is preserved, there seems to be no limit to its possible extension, provided the territory, though vast, is within a ring fence. Nobody is likely to rebel against an arrangement which, without fettering local self- development, gives safety against attack from without, peace and freedom of intercourse within. People must be revolu- tionary indeed if they can take arms against mere immunity from evils. The tariff question does not form a line of cleavage, and is in a fair way to be settled by the ballot. If 300,000,000 Chinese can get on well together under a centralised Government, surely 100,000,000 of the higher race can get on together under a government much more elastic. The problem of races at the South no doubt is still serious, but there is no tendency to a renewal of seces- sion, and the South is becoming daily smaller and less im- portant in proportion to the Union T The growth there of 1 M ! u il i 274 CAKADA AKC THE CANADIAN QVB.T,ON CHAP. • -u V,ntli modify VoUtical character manufacturing u—.^^ M ^^, 3„,i,,3tic ,„d Und the f ^'- '" *X a State out of the KepuhUc, .evolution, such as -c. « t Jce ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^^^ and the occupatrn of the r ^^^.^^^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^.^t contingencies ^vh,chm,,h^h^at^n^^ ,^^^^ ^^^^^^ „„ they are very remote, whUe to L ^^^^^^ ,he Pacific is more open than the^ ^^^„„,,y ,Uh Again, Canadians who heartuy 1> ^^^^.^^^^ .Hat tire should he ^^^'Z^^:^^ A^eri- rather than one, »"* the wish ^^^^ . ^ ^^^^.^^ ^,, cans not a few. But we na ^^^^^^^^ ^^^^,^^^ ^^^ experiments are not he.ng ■ ^^.^^^^ ^^^ ,1^, ^.^e party government arc th^s^e^an ^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^ iu both Bepublics. ^f"'^"" ^i„,t system, of a sub- between the Vresidentral a"* '^^j^^^, J ,3 might make ordinate W, yet -t u«-P»f^f '^ ^,,3, ,he advantages of it worth while to orego J.J a .me^a^^^ ^^^^^^^^^ ^^.^^ „, union, supposing that the a „ territorial division separation were not 00 grea , and ^^^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^„^^ ,vere not extravagantly at var an ^^.^^ ^^.^^^ ^^^^ The experiments of P^'f -^^;"£;,"' Besides, those who reference to ^— ;Sr:ust see that the political scan the future without ^"3"" ^ j^^^e great Republic, fortunes of the Continent are e"-^'^ ^ ^^^^^^.^e interests and that Canada wmhestpromo^^e^o- ^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ by contributing without -n";"^ '^'y l^^^, the saving Z the way of P0«'^-^ ^^-'^nttf the common Hope, of the main chance and the u n ^^^ ^^^^.^.^^ ^^ ^^jj_ ^ character iocialistic unese, 'vre at present Canada on cracy vvisb s Continent itful Ameri- lity the two suffrage and are the same iuch as that em, of a sub- ,s migbt make advantages of nucal evils of itorial division fiat of Kature. ,,ied with some tes, those who ,at the political areat Republic, Ltimate interests ,11 that she has jvards the saving ,e common hope, tradition of self- . foreign element in need of the a into the Union THE CANADIAN QUESTION m would bring it. Canadians feel all tliis without being dis- distinctly conscious of it : they are taking less interest in British and more in American politics : in British politics they would take but little interest if their attention were not turned that way by the efforts of the Irish to drag every- body into their clan feud. A Presidential election now makes almost as nuich stir in Canada as it does in the United States. There is something to be said in favour of recognis- ing destiny without delay. The reasoning of Lord Durham with regard to French Canada holds gDod in some measure with regard to Canada altogether in its relation to the Anglo- Saxon Continent. He thought it best to make the country at once that which after the lapse of no long time it nmst be. And this reminds us of another reason for not putting oft' the unification of the English-speaking race, since it is perfectly clear that the forces of Canada alone are not sufficient to assimilate the French element or even to prevent the indefinite consolidation and growth of a French nation. Either the conquest of Quebec was utterly fatuous or it is to be desired that the American Continent should belong to the English tongue and to Anglo-Saxon civilisation. The Americans in general are not insensible, perhaps they are more sensible than they sometimes affect to be, of the advantages and the accession of greatness which would accrue to the Republic by the entrance of Canada into the Union. They expect that some day she will come to them, and are ready to welcome her when she does. But few of them much desire to hasten the event, and hardly any of them think of hastening it by coercion. The M'Kinley Act was not intended to coerce Canada into the Union. Its objects were to rivet Protection and catch the farmer's vote, though it was welcomed by the Tory Prime Minister of Canada and his m 976 CANADA AND TIIK CAXADIAN QUESTION CHAP. following' as a pluu.sihlo j^iound for iiisultiiij,' (lemon.strjition.s against tlio Americans, and this at tliu moment when Great IJritain was carryin;^ on . IZetseq. See also Mr. Ledyard's luemorandum in the Appendix to this volume. 286 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CIIAI'. The shipping interest of Canada again pines for the free- dom of the coasting trade. Canadian vessels are not allowed to trade between American ports, and have often to return without a cargo. The consequence is that the Canadian marine is fast disappearing from the Lakes. Of the vast trade in ore and grain on the Upper Lakes less than 10 per cent is now carried in Canadian bottoms. The Canadian tonnage passing through the Sault Ste. Marie Canal has fallen to 4 per cent, the rest being American. The new Canadian- built tonnage in the past five years is not over 5 per cent of that launched from Lake shipyards. There is little use in constructing at immense expense a special lock for Canada alongside of the j\.merican lock at the " Soo," while Canadian shipping is being made the victim of a policy of extermina- tion. The Dominion Statistical Abstract, for 1889, admits a decrease of the amount even of the seagoing trade of the country carried in Canadian bottoms compared with that carried in foreign bottoms. There has also, according to the same authority, been a steady decline in the number and tonnage of the vessels built in the Dominion during the last ten or twelve years, that is since the inauguration of the Protectionist policy of Sir John Macdonald. Protectionists who profess that it is an object of their system by multiply- ing industries to diversify national character, should consider whether a variety of it will not perish with the mariner. The Americans, on their side, want to buy things which Canada has to sell ; they want an extended market for the products of a more southern climate, such as fruits; they want an extended market for their manufactures. They can manufacture as a rule better and more cheaply, because they do it on a larger scale and can specialise ; whereas the manufacturer with a small market is obliged to produce !f^ CIIAF. THE CANADIAN QUESTION 287 the free- , allowed return >nadiau the vast m 10 per Canadian las fallen ^nadian- IV cent of tie use in 3r Canada Canadian xtermina- , admits a ide of the 1 with that nfT to the imber and \a the last ion of the ;ectionists multiply- i consider finer. Qgs which arket for as fruits;. es. They y, because liereas the produce several kinds of goods to keep liis liands employed. All this is most strongly felt at Detroit, Buffalo, and other com- mercial cities along the frontier which find themselves cribbed and confined by the Customs line. It has been objected by some American Protectionists that America would be giving a market of 65,000,000 in exchange for one of 5,000,000, as though markets when thrown together were exchanged and not enjoyed in common. According to this reasoning the 60,000,000 of Americans outside the State of New York would be better off without the 6,000,000 of that State. But American capital also wants free access to the natural resources of Canada, her mineral resources especially, which await only the touch of capital, together with the opening of the market, in order to turn them into wealth for the benefit of all the people of the continent. Mr. Blaine, the political leader of the Protectionist party in the United States, has shown himself alive to the need of new markets by declar- ing in favour of Reciprocity, and he will not be long in finding that the only American community reciprocal trade with which would be of much value is the Dominion of Canada. The half-civilised masses of South America want little except gaudy cottons, with which they are supplied to their satisfaction by England. It is alleged by Protectionists that there cannot be a pro- fitable trade between Canada and the United States, because the products of the two countries are the same. The pro- ducts of the two countries, even their natural products, leaving out of sight special manufactures, are not the same. In the United States are included regions and productions almost tropical. Canada, on the other hand, has bituminous coal, for which there are markets in the United States, and plenty of nickel, of which the United States have but little. u\ 288 CANADA AND THK CANADIAN gUKSTION CHAP. 848.522,404 S5G,3G8,990 Canada lias lumber to export, and the United States want all they can get. Both countries produce barley, but the Canadian barley is the best for making beer, and its exclusion by the M'Kiidey Act brought out a heavy vote at lUiffalo against the party of Mr. M'Kinley. This is the first answer. The second and the most decisive is that, in spite of the tariff, Canada has actually been trading with the United States more than with England or any other country in the world, and nearly as much as with all the other countries in the world put together. In 1889 her exports to Great Britain were $38,105,120 ; her imports from Great Britain were $42,249,555. Her exports to the United States were her imports from the United States were Of the total trade of Canada, in the same year, 41"35 per cent was with Great Britain ; 49'65 was with the United States; while only 9 per cent was with the rest of the world. To take even the case of farm products, of 18,799 horses which Canada sold in one year, the United States bought 18,225. Of 443,000 sheep, they bought 363,000. Of 116,000 head of cattle, they bought 45,000. Of $107,000 worth of poultry, they bought $99,000 worth. Of $1,825,000 worth of eggs, they bought all. Of $593,000 worth of hides, they bought $413,000 worth. Of 1,416,000 pounds of wool, they bought 1,300,000 pounds. Of $9,456,000 worth barley, they bought all. Of $743,000 worth of hay, they bought $070,000 worth. Of $439,000 worth of potatoes, they bought $338,000 worth. Of $83,000 worth of vegetables, they bought $75,000 worth. Of $254,000 worth of miscel- laneous agricultural products, they bought $249,000 worth. Manitoba and the North-West believe that, were the tariff wall out of the way, the United States would be their best customer for a great deal of high-class wheat. In spite of the I' CIIAI'. want all Canadian in Ijy the jainst the he second f, Canada nore than id nearly vorld put :ain were lin were ites were ;ates were the same i was with with the I products, he United ;y bought lit 45,000. 00 worth. S593,000 1,416,000 ^9,456,000 \i of hay, potatoes, egetables, f miscel- 00 worth, the tariff their best )ite of the X THE CANADIAN QUESTION 289 fisheries disputes and taxes, out of $7,000,000 worth of fi.sh, the United Slates take annually about $.'),(^00,000 worth.' The case is nccially stron*,' with regard to some of the smaller I'rovinces. I'rince Edward Island exported in 1889 only S800 worth of agricultural products to frreat I>ritain, while she exported to the United States 841)0,000 worth. The total export of her own produce to all countries in that year amounted to $974,000, of which $680,000 worth went to the United States. The exports of liritish CoUunbia for 1889 amounted to $4,284,000, of which $2,782,000 in value went to the United States, and only $870,000 went to Great Britain. To these Provinces the tariff war is ruinous, and they have some reason for demanding compensation in sub- sidies from the Dominion. High as the tariff wall between Canada and the United States is, trade, we see, has climbed over it. Wherever an opening is made in the wall, trade at once rushes through. Before the removal of the duty on eggs, the trade in them was nominal : it rose, when the duty was removed, to over $2,000,000 in 1889. The M'Kinley tariff sends it down again. Smuggling, as might be expected, is rife along the whole Line, with the usual consequences to popular morality and honest trade. When a border township in which the potato crop is Jiort cannot go to the adjoining township for potatoes, a severe appeal is made to the hamlet's respect for law. To Manitoba and the North- West, which neither have manufactures, nor, as farm products are their staple, are likely to have them, the tariff is a curse, without even a shadow of compensation. It is difficult to believe that in ^ See speech in the Dominion House of Commons of Sir Richard Cart- wright, ex-Minister of Finance, March 14, 1888. T ' *-- 990 CANADA AND THE ^"ANADIAN QUESTION CIFAl tliat region it will be possible for ever to mtiiiitaiii the Custom line, the frontier being merely an imaginary boundary drawn across the prairie for 800 miles, with identically the same population on each side of it, so that a village, even a house, maybe placed astride the line, and the housewife with a new kettle may be liable to duty in passing from one room to the other ; while the Ottawa Government, for the benefit of which the duties are imposed, is remote and, with too good reason, unbeloved. But the ease of Manitoba is hardly worse than that of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, which get absolutely nothing to make up lor their exclusion from their natural market in New England, the attempt to force Ontario, by violent legislative pressure, to buy her coal of Nova Scotia instead of buying it of Pennsylvania having utterly failed. The assertion that the British market is better for Canada than the American market has already been met by the figures. If for a time the English market was better than the American the reason was that the British market was open, whereas the American market was half closed by the tariff. Eemove the Customs line between Canada and the United States and there can be no dcubt about the value of the American compared with that of the British market. No people are individually so rich as the Americans, or so ready to pay freely for everything they want or fancy. The American market is always inoi'easing with the rapid growth of population. It is also secure, whereas that of England, or any transmarine country, would become very insecure if England were at war with a maritime power. Canada would then be without any free market at all. But it is needless to discuss this question, because when the American market was opened to Canada that of England would not be closed. Canada would enjoy them both. THE CANADIAN QUESTION 291 Tilt! luiar market imist as a rule be the best, not only on account of the diilerence in freights, but in many cases on account of the perishableness of goods. It nnist be best for fruits, fish, vegetables, anil even for poultry and eggs. It is the be^t for horses, the breeding of which is a great Canadian industry, and might be a greater. The American comes to Canada and buys the horses on the spot, whereas if the horses are sent to England, unless they at once take the fancy of the market, they may eat up a great part of their value before they are sold. Not till the American market is opened can its full value be understood. Commercial Union between Scotland and England gave a value to black cattle «.nd kelp which could hardly have been foreseen. Troduc- tion would adapt itself to the new demands, and new roads to wealth would be found. ]iesides, Canada wants to buy as well as to sell, and the near market, even irrespect- ively of freights, is preferable as the most convenient and the most likely to produce exactly the kind of goods required. This will be acknowledged by the buyers of farm machines and implements in the North- West. It has been proposed that rather than succumb to the force of nature, and allow Canada to secure her destined measure of prosperity by trading with her own continent, England should put back the shadow on the dial of econo- mical history, institute an Imperial Zollverein, and restore to the Colonies their former protection against the foreigner in her market. It is hardly necessary to discuss a policy in which Great Britain would have to take the initiative, and which no British statesman has shown the slightest disposi- tion to embrace. The trade, both of imports and exports, of England with the Colonies was, in 1889, £187,000,000 ; her total trade in the same year with foreign countries was 292 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. £554,000,000. Is it likely that she will sacrifice a trade of £554,000,000 sterling to a trade of £187,000,000 sterling? The framers of an Imperial ZoUverein, moreover, would have some lively work in reconciling the tendencies of strong Protectionist Colonies, .such as Victoria and Canada, with the free trade tendencies of Great Britain and New South Wales. The Conservative Prime Minister of England, if he has been correctly reported, holds that the adoption of Protection, on which the Imperialists of Canada insist as a condition of any arrangement, would in England kindle a civil war. The Canadian Government shows its sense of the situa- tion and of the real effect of its policy by trying to open up new markets in distant countries, in the West Indies, in Brazil, in the Argentine Pepublic, in France, in Spain, in Australia — in the ^loon. It thus hopes to stay the craving of Canadian commerce and industry for their natural market. It has been compared to the father who told his boy that he could not be taken to the circus, but that if he was good he should be taken to see his grandmother's tomb. If the Canadian manufacturer, as the Protectionists aver, is unable to compete in his own market with the American, how can he compete with him in the markets of other countries ? It may safely be said that all the natural interests in Canada, the farming interest — which is much the greatest of all — the lumber interest, the mining interest, and the shipping interest, would vote for a measure which would admit them freely to the American market. On the other side are only the protected manufacturers. But the protected manu- facturers are strongly organised, whereas the other interests, notably the farmers', are comparatively unorganised ; so that, as was often said in the case of the United States, the fight between Protection and Free Trade is a fisht between an CHAP. 1 trade of sterling ? iv, would . of strong , with the Lth Wales. 3 has been tection, on ion of any the situa- te open up Indies, in in Spain, the craving ral market. 3oy that he as good he b. If the r, is unable how can he BS ? interests in greatest of le shipping admit them de are only ted mann- er interests, d ; so that, 3S, the fight between an THE CANADIAN QUESTION 293 army and a mob. The Protectionists have a firm hold upon the present Government, the existence of which is completely bound up with their system, and which looks to them largely for its election fund. It has, however, been already said that they are the hot-house industries which are alarmed. Of the Canadian manufacturers who feel that their business is natural and has a sound basis not a few avow themselves ready for an open market. They would have in some cases to put their production on a new footing, making fewer articles and on a larger scale, but, this being done, they do not fear the competition. They would still have the advantage of some- what cheaper labour. Sir George Stephen, than whom there can be no higher authority, in a circular addressed in 1875 to the heads of the woollen trade, with which he was then con- nected, said that if Canada could have free interchange with the United States of all products, whether natural or manu- factured, she " Wvjuld become the Lancashire of the continent and increase in wealth and population to a degree that could hardly be imagined." That some of the weaker houses might suffer is acknowledged, and is to be lamented. All possible consideration is due to those whom Parliament has encouraged to invest. But the whole community cannot be allowed to suffer, nor can commerce and industry be kept for ever on an unsound basis, for the sake of a few. Besides, it will be mercy to shut the door of unsound investment. But this is the bane of the l*rot(3ctionist policy : when its unwisdom appears, you cai: hardly draw back from it without doing injury to artificial industries which it has created, and those engaged in them. Not that the artisans will sud'er.^ For them the expansion of natural industries would furnish fresh em- ployment, if not in Canada in the United States, to which ^ See Himdbook of Commercial Union, pp. 122 d scq. Mr. Jury. I 'i 294 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. I I ^d ft (fir n ' ii i I they pass with little hesitation when the labour market invites. Canadians are told, to scare them from Commercial Union, that if the tariff wall were out of the way they would become "hewers of wood and drawers of water for the Yankees." Hewers of wood for the Yankees they are already to their own great profit. It is not obvious why the producer of raw materials should be deemed so much beneath the factory hand; perhaps looking to the effect of manufactures on national character in England we might think that a nation would be wise in contenting itself with so much of factory life as nature had allotted it. Whatever yields most wealth will raise highest the condition of the people, their standard of living, and their general civilisation. Another bugbear is the fear that Canadian cities will be swallowed up by New York, though the cities of the State of New York itself, Buffalo, Eochester, Syracuse, Oswego, and even Albany, which is within four hours' run of New York, are growing all the time.^ These vague alarms remind us of those raised on com- mercial grounds by the opponents of the union between England and Scotland. The English were told that their wealth would be devoured by the hungry Scots, the Scotch were told that they would become commercial slaves to the wealthy English, and " with their grain spoiling on their hands, stand cursing the day of their birth, dreading tlie expense of their burial." The able and eloquent Lord Belhaven formally paused in the middle of his speech that he might shed a tear over the approaching ruin of his country which he foresaw in a vision of woe. Lord Marchmont in reply said that he thought a short answer would suffice. " Behold, he dreamed ; but, lo, when he awoke, behold, it was a dream." The reality ^ See Handbook of Commercial Union, pp. 86 et scq. Mr. Janes. THL CANADIAN QUESTION 29L was what the Duke of Argyll in his work on Scotland calls " The Burst of Industry." It was the works and warehouses of Glasgow, the shipbuilding yards of the Clyde, and the farms of the Lothians. To make up for the dearth of economical arguments against Reciprocity its opponents appeal to Loyalty and the Old Flag. " Discriminate against the Mother Country ! Never ! " So with uplifted hands and eyes cry Trotectionists who are running to Ottawa to get higlier duties laid on British goods, and would not be sorry to shut the gate, if they could, against British importation altogether. Canada does already discriminate against Great Britain, if not on any specific article, on tlie aggegate trade. It has been shown that she collects about four per cent, more in the aggregate on British than on American goods, and admits more American than British products free.^ When the privileges enjoyed by the Colonies in the British market were withdrawn and the commercial unity of the Empire was broken up, notice was in effect given to each member of the Empire to do the best that it could for itself under its own circumstances. The circum- stances of Canada are those of a country commercially bound up witli another country much larger than itself and with a high tariff. It is surely too much to expect that all Canada shall remain in a state of commercial atrophy for the sake of a few exporting houses in Great Britain. The British people themselves would never be brought to make such a sauifice. The discrimination would not, like the duties imposed by Canadian Protectionists on British goods, be directed against British commerce ; it would be merely, like the equalisation of excise, a necessity incidental to an arrangement for the benefit of Canada with the United Stiites ; so that no breach * See Handbook of Commercial Union, pp. 175 et scq, Mr. Drydcn. 296 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. Uf A vv m of good feeling would be involved. Not a penny would be taken from the British Crown. Nor would England be really a loser ; she would gain by the enluinced value of her Canadian investments more than she would lose by the reduction of her exports. It is further alleged that Commercial Union would be Annexation in disguise. AVhen railways were introduced it was thought that a gauge uniform with the American would be annexation in disguise and a difference of gauge was insisted on accordingly. Is there a natural tendency on the part of Canada to political union ? If there is, increased intercourse of any kind, whether locomotive or commercial, will no doubt help it ; but nothing can help it more than the fusion of population by the exodus which the separatist policy keeps up. The enemies of Reciprocity forget that they are themselves the most active of annexationists, if not in regard to the Canadian territory, in regard to the Canadian people. Canada would be as much as ever mistress of her own political destinies, nor could any step towards political union be taken without the free vote of her citizens. If her nationality is sound what does she require more? That would be a weak nationality indeed which should depend on a Customs line. The German ZoUverein, which is pointed out as a warning example, would never have unified Germany or tended much to her unification had not she already been a nation, though in a state of political disruption. Zollvereins are now, it seems, being proposed between other communities of Central Europe without any idea of altering political relations. If the reciprocity in natural products enjoyed under the Elgin treaty did not impair Canada's independence, why should reciprocity in manufactures destroy it ? Not only did tlie Elgin treaty not impair independence THE CANADIAN QUESTION 29/ but it put an end to the movement in favour of annexa- tion, which commercial distress had generated, and which liad led to the Annexationist manifesto of 1849. In entering into any contract, the parties, whetlier nations or men, must give up their independence to the extent for which they covenant : in no other sense would a commercial treaty, however extensive, if freely made on both sides, be on either side a surrender of independence. Dependent on the Americans for her winter ports Canada already is, and large branches of her railway system are on their soil and in their power. Americans who desire immediate Annexation are always against Connnercial Union. Commercial Union would include mutual participation in the fisheries, in the coasting trade, and in the use of the canals and water-ways. In this it is distinguished from Unrestricted Eeciprocity, which would equally involve the complete removal of the Customs line. In regard to the fisheries it would give effect to the policy of British states- men who desired, as Shelburne and Pitt seem to have desired, that England and her American colonies should not become foreign nations to each other, but divide amicably between them the family heritage. In no other way is the dispute about the fisheries likely to be ended. Even sup- posing a treaty satisfactory to diplomacy to be made, fisher- men are not diplomatists ; they are naturally tenacious f>f the trade by which they live ; they will always be prone to deny their rivals the facilities and hospitalities incident to treaty rights, and thus quarrels will be apt to arise. The main objection to Commercial Union is the difficulty of framinf!', in concert with the Americans, a uniform sea- board tariff. This difficulty, however, as matters stood before the passing of the M'Kinley Act, was by no means insuper- f Biv 298 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. K 9 able, the principle of the American and Canadian tariffs being the same, and the difference of rates not very great. The smaller interest in case of disagreement might, as in ordinary bargains, without loss of honour, yield a point. An arrangement would probably have been brought about easily enough by a conference of commercial men, free from the malign influences of party, and unaffected by the appeals to national pride and jealousy which, if the negotiation were in the hands of a party government, the opposite party, in its anxiety to discredit its rivals would be sure to make. Nor need there be any fears of subsequent disturb- ance of the agreement, from any source, at least, but a quarrel between Great Britain and the United States, such as that by which the Reciprocity Treaty was overturned. Com- merce after a little experience would be t.,^ sensible of the benefit to renounce it or allow the politicians, whom, by a resolute effort, she can even in the United States control, to wrest it from her. The line of Custom houses built across a continent which nature has forbidden to be divided, once pulled down, will never be built up again. Fresh obstacles and of a serious kind might have been created by the M'Kinley Act. Commercial Unionists did not feel them- selves called upon to raise the general questions between Protection and Free Trade, so far as the seaboard tariff was concerned. They confined their aim to the removal of the Customs line across their own continent, which on any rational hypothesis is an evil, unless it would be a good thing to have a Customs line between Pennsylvania and New York, or between York and Lancashire. But there must be limits to the compromise of principle, even for the sake of an immediate advantage so great as Commercial Union will bring. Canada cannot commit treason against THE CANADIAN QUESTION 299 civilisation. However, the manifest faults of the measure, com- bined with the enormous waste of public money incurred in baling out surplus revenue to avert a reform of the tariff", have proved too much for the superstition or the sufferance of the American people. Symptoms of a change of opinion had even before appeared. At the last Presidential election, Mr. Cleveland was defeated more by party than by protec- tion, and more by the manufacturers' money than either, and there was a marked increase of the meclian^'cs' vote in favour of a reduction of the tariff, showing that the fallacious belief in protection as a mode of raising wages was losing its hold. Moreover, protection was being nullified by the extension of its own area, which exposed the protectionist to increased competition, national it might be, but not more welcome to him, in spite of his patriotic professions, than that of the foreigner. New England is now praying for free admission of raw materials. The Kepublican party in the United States is the war party kept on foctt for the sake of maintaining the war tariff in the interest of tlie protected manufacturers. It has made a desperate effort to retain power and to rivet its policy on the nation by means which have estranged from it the best of its supporters ; but in the late elections it has received a signal, and probably decisive, overthrow. What all the preachings of economic science were powerless to effect has been brought about at last by the reduction of the public debt and of the necessity for duties as revenue. A new commercial era has apparently dawned for the United States, and the lead of the United States will be followed in time by the rest of the world. By the abandonment of the Customs duties on American goods, the Canadian government would lose revenue perhaps to the amount of ^7,000,000. This loss might be made up 11 ii 800 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION CHAP. i0,()()0, and in Savin},'3 Banks !?20,oO(),()()0. Thcsi; sums have l)een o1)taiiu'd hy a raie of interest hein;^ i)aid at a higher rate tlian tlie largest Chartered Banks found it necessaiy to pay. The Buihling Societies and Loan Companies whi'Ji liave the power to tiike deposits have also been active coni})etitors with the Banks in tlds deiiartnient, and, since 18(!7, the deposits in these institutions have increased from .^577,2!)'.) to $17,757,370 in 1889. The managers of such companies are beginning to realise that there is danger in borrowing on call and loaning on land security without adequate reserves immediately availalde being re- tained. A run upon one company in troublous times would jtrobably precipitate disjister, and efforts are being made to convert call deposits into true debentures when opportunity olfei's. The Chartered Banks are not allowed to loan money on the security of their own stock or on real estate. The monthly return of their assets and liabilities, made to the Finance Minister, is elaborate, Itut serves a useful purpose, and as published is carefully studied and commented upon in the tinancial ])apers. The rate currently paid by the Banks for deposits is from 3 per cent to 5 per cent. A rate of interest so high has attracteil large deposits: in 18G7 the total amount at the credit of depositors was 830,052,193 ; in 1889 it was 8120,243,755. The rate on loans and discounts varies from per cent to 8 per cent, accoiding to the character of the business ; and dividends are paid from per cent to 12 per cent, according to the running capacity of the Bank, and the skill with which it is managed. The Dominion Bank, whose head- (piarters are in Toronto (Capital $1,500,000 and Best $1,300,000), pays dividends of 10 per cent jier annum, and their shares of $100 are sold for $230. The Bank of Toronto (Capital $2,000,000, and Rest $1,400,000), also i)ays dividends of 10 per cent per annum, and their sluvres are quoted at 224 per $100. The Bank of ^Montreal (Capital $12,000,000, and Rest of $0,000,000), pays 10 per cent, and the market value of their shares is 229 per $100. Most of the other Banks in the Province pay a yearly dividend ranging from to 8 per cent, after ciirrying, in many instances, a substantial amount to the Best Account and providing for contingencies. The more substantial Loan Companies pay an annual dividend of 10 per cent, and frequently with a bonus to their stockholders. The Dominion "Statistical Abstract" gives the total amount of money on deposit in 1889, in the Chartered Banks, Post Office, and Government Savings l^ank, and in the hands of Loan Companies, as upwards of $207,000,000, equal to the sum of $40 per head of the population. ai t i agency of 3 are 4G3, [>0, and ill aiiu'd liy u ( 'liarU'ivd liave the i with the eposits in r57,37G in to realise ^ on hind ! bein;^' re- el pr()l>ably ill! deposits ii'y on the y return of i ehiborate, tudied and from 3 per acted large si tors was 1 loans and ig to the )er cent to , and the lose head- 300,000), of $100 and Rest and their (Capital le market ]ianks in cent, after t Account ompauics a bonus gives the id Banks, of Loan n of $40 APPENDIX B THE AGRICULTURE OF ONTARIO By Thomas Shaw, Professor of /[(jricalinrr (ind Arboriculture, Ontario Aijricidtural Collcijc, Guelpli, Ontario. The climate of Ontario admits of the growing of as great a variety ol" produce as that of England, IIk^ natural capability's of her soils are probably greatei-, and she is ahead of Great Britain in the iuti'oduction and use of agricultural implements of the most approved kind.'. The Province produces liner siimples of various kinds of grain, a greater variety of the pure bi'ciuls of live stock, and a better ([uality of several of the most useful kinds of fruit, than any other province or state on the North American Continent. It is not, we fear, generally known that the people of this Province ship annually to Great Britain from one-third to one-fourth as many finished bullocks as the whole of the United States, and that we export annually to the latter country, in the face of a high tarilf to he extent of many millions of dollars, the same kinds of agricultural i)roducts that are grown in that great Repul)lic. In tlu; lio])e of dispelling in some (h'gree miscon- ceptions and of disseminating the truth, tiie writer has consented to prepare this briff essay. We do not claim foi the Province the first place in the world for agricultural refourcos and development, but we do claim for it a foremost place. If the reader will but bear in mind that one hundred years ago nearly the whole of Ontario was primeval forest, and that seventy years ago the very spot on which these college walls now stand was the liDine of the wild beast, he will concur in the conclusion that the development of the agricultural resources of this country has been simply wonderful. The Soil, Climatic, and Pkoduct.s of Ontario The climate of Ontario is very in vig'- ratmg. In the summer it is rather warm, but the amount of l>right sunshine, especially in the 308 APPENDIX B harvest moiitlis, is very favouraLle to the quick conducting of the 6,216 )0,993 6,790 abilities t form. ads the 0111 the ?88 the t;ite in )ats 1.5 bushels per acre. The State giving the largest return of fall wheat dur- ing this term was Michigan ; spring wheat, Dakota ; barley, Wisconsin ; and oats, Illinois. The average prices obtained in the leading cities of Ontario for the various crops grown during the preceding seven years ending 1888 are given in the following table : — Fall Wheat, per bushel Spring Wheat ,, Barley „ Oats „ Rye Pease , , Corn (in ear) ,, Buckwheat ,, Beans ,, Potatoes ,, Hay, per ton 88.8 cents 89 57.4 36.1 60.8 62.3 28.5 40.9 93.8 42.3 $11.50 Live Stock Statistics for 1889 Number of Live St >ck — Horses . . 618,795 Cattle . . 1,891,899 (779,171 being milch cows) Sheep . . 1,344,180 Swine . . 835,469 Poultry . . 6,304,298 Value of Farm Live Stock, §105,731,288. The principal breeds of horses bred pure are the Clydesdale, the Shire, and Percheron of the heavy breeds, and of the light ones the Standard bred trotting horse, and the Cleveland Bay. The Clydes are by far the most numerous. The chief of the breeds of cattle bred pure are the Shorthorn, the Hereford, the Aberdeen Angus Poll, the Galloway, the West Highland, the Devon, the Ayrshire, the Jersey, the Guernsey, and the Hclstein. Of these. Shorthorns are by far the most numerous. The leading pure breeds of sheep include the Leicester, the Lincoln, the Cotswold, the Oxford Down, the Shropshire Down, the Hampshire Down, the Southdown, the Horned Dorset, and the Merino. Of these the Leicester is the longest established in the country. The chief of the pure breeds of swine are the Berkshire, the York- shire, the Essex, the Suffolk, the Poland China, the Chester White, and the Taniworth. Of these the Berkshire is the best established. No one State or Province of the continent can compare with Ontario in the number of the pure bred animals produced, taken as a whole, in the variety of the breeds, or in the individual excellence of the animals composing them. Because of this Ontario has become in a sense a 312 APPENDIX \i breeding ground of pure stock of a liigh order for almost every State in the American Union. Cheese Statistics for 1889 Number of Factories ,, Patrons . Average number of cows Milk used, lbs. Cheese made, lbs. Value of Cheese, S Value per lb., cents , Milk to make lib. of cheese, lbs. Creameries Statistics for 1889 In operation . Butter made, lbs. Value, $ . . . Cheese made at Creameries, lbs. Value of Cheese, .$ Total value of Produce, $ 784 43,215 273,231 760,146,327 72,592,847 6,787,619 9-35 10-47 38 876,003 184,067 219,808 14,406 198,473 Nearly all the butter as yet produced in Ontario is made in private dairies. No better idea can be obtained of the great agricultural capabilities of this Province intrinsically and relatively than by glancing over a summary of the exports. Owing to the method adopted in making up the official trade and navigation returns for the Dominion of Canada and its respective Provinces, it has been found impossible to ascertain exactly the relative proportion of the agricultural products exported from Ontario to Great Britain and the United States respect- ively, Ontario has no shipping port, and those engaged in making up the trade returns place the products exported to the credit of the country from which they have been finally shipped. Thus it is that Quebec Province, with Montreal as the leading shipping port for Ontario, is credited with the production of a large proportion of the shipments from Ontario. For instance, in the official returns which end 30th June 1889, Ontario is represented as having shipped to Great Britain during the preceding twelve months, of aninmls and their produce to the value of $2,139,450 ; and Quebec as having exported of the same, to the value of §13,477,182. The true facts of the case are that nearly the whole of this produce came from Ontario, as it consisted almost wholly of fat and store cattle, sheep, and cheese, of which Quebec Province produces very little for export. If the exports from the two Provinces be added together, and say five-sixths of the whole, or a still larger proportion, credited to Ontario, we will then get an approximate idea of the extent of the Ontario exports. m. THE AGRICULTURE OF ONTARIO 313 y State in 784 43,215 73,231 1«,327 32,847 37,619 9-35 10-47 33 r6,003 ?4,067 L9,808 [4,406 )8,473 in private ipabilities ig over a making Canada ssible to products respect- fiking up country Quebec iitario, is ipraents nd 30th Britain oduce to le same, t nearly almost Quebec the two r a still oximatc m: The following summary is taken fDni the official rcturiis for the fiscal year ending 30th .Tune 1889. It relates to the exports of agri- cultural products from Ontario and Quebec together as compared with those of the whole Djniinion : — From Ontario From the and Qiii'bi'C. Dominion. Animals and their produce . . . .§21,788,799 §23,894,707 Agricultural products .$12,272,760 ^3, 114,11] This implies that probably more than threedburths of the agricul- tural products of the whole Dominion are produced by Ontario. Ontario produces and export* the greater portion of the cattle and sheep that are sent out of the Dominion. Of the former about 60,000 head have been sent annually to Great Britain, and 40,000 head to the United States during recent year*. The si'.me may be said of sheep, of which about 30,000 head are i-ent annually to CJreat Britain, and 300,000 head to the Unittd States. The same is also true of horses, of which about 1 6,000 head are sent annually to in. United States. The cheese export from Ontario and Quebec, for the year ending 30th June 1890, was 88,041,857 pounds, and was valued at ^9,465,936. The value put ufKja the cheese at the port of shipment is higher than the estimate put upon it in the factory returns. The same year Ontario exported egg-? to the United States to the value of $1,544,974, apples to Great Britain to the value of !?1, 013,909, and to the United States to the value of $179,247. Ontario is the principal producer in the Dominion of all the aforementioned articles ; and also exports wool, flax, and beans in considerable quantities. Her export of barley for the year referred to above was 9,716,993 bushels, valued at $6,329,502. The exports of all other kind.-' of gr-ain have dwindled to almost nothing, and are sure to decrease still further, as witliout a doul)t Ontario is destined to grow great through the production of live stock and live stock products. Tre Methods Usually Adopted by the Canadian Farmer Although the methods practi5e lilt tliat it lent to bar liave been ;he people our store jier cent isands and i paid on 1 into this into tlie 3es, cattle, Methods ige when n various cnown by [ farming :asionally s and of re or less ed in the he whole e portion n is now se of the sulky jJe culti- entireh- are done cut by Hay of it in ily to a nto the lachines which set 300 prepar- pump- jhinery sxpedi- ds, but stables the walls of *• liich are of stone, brick, or wood lined with tar-paper, and these support a wooden building, usually termed a barn, in which are stored the food supplies. Ihe livt^ stock being in the lower apart- ment, the food and litter kept overhead are thus very easily fed to iheni. In many of the buildings the cattle drink without leaving the stalls, and other facilities for doing the work are equally perfect. The Impovkri.shmext of the Soil The system of farming practised by the first settlers may justly be termed a land-robbing one. In clearing the land they cut down the heavy growth of timber which covered the soil, applied to it the torch, and reduced the whole to ashes. There was thus added to the stores of fertility, that had been accumulating for ages preceding, an immense quantity of potash. Thus it was that the farmer could go on and grow wheat year after year with an ample return at first, but which after a time gradually became less, until the crop proved unremunera- tive. Thus it was also that slovenly methods of farming came to prevail which even now in many sections are sapping the prosperity of Canadian farming. In this respect, however, the dawn of a brighter day has arrived. Ontario has almost entirely ceased to be an exporting country of grain, or indeed of food of any kind that may be fed to stock ; such food is almost entirely fed upon the farm, which of course tends to the reten- tion of its fertility. Were it not for the duty of 7|- cents per bushel on Indian corn or maize brought from the United States, large quantities of this would l)e imported and used by our farmers in fattening their stock. Artificial fertilisers are also beginning to be used, but their use has not as yet become general. As the Dominion is rich in phosphates and other forms of artificial fertilisers, we may confidently hope that the farmer, who is fast awakening to a sense of the value of such manures, will use them as regularly as he now does those which are made in the barnyard. We may confidently hope then that the period of soil exhaustion is rajjidly drawing to a close, and that it will be followed by one of soil enrichment. Ontario is already imi)orting food f^ cal)i!i and without. After a time other help hud to he called in, and from the nature of things the lahourer of necessity had to lodge with his employer. The emjiloyer then usually made a bargain with the em])loyed t(j the elfect that he would jtay the foi'iner a certain sum for a given time and fni'iiish hoai'fl, lodging, and washing. Thus it was that a system originated which tends to obliterate all social dis- tinctions between the farmer and those whom he employs. This state of matters is, howcn'er, gradually changing. It is sloAvly giving way to that system which fui'uishes cottages for the labourer and his family. In many instances one of the cottagers provides board and lodging for the other portion of the hired helj) of the farm, and before very hmg it is not at all ini])robable that the necessary accommoda- tion for the assistants of the fann will be furnished in this way. In this tendency to obliterate social distinctions between the farmer and his hired help there was leally nf) hardshij) imposed upon the former, wliere he did not desire to have it otherwise, but when he wished to carry on the work of the larm and at the same time main- tain saci'ed the privacy of his home, he was not always able to do so because of the scarcity of labour. The labourer from the vantage ground which was thus given him became dictatorial in his attitude, and oftentimes compelled the farmer to come to terms. But with the increase of population and the introduction of improved machinery all this is rai)idly changing, insoraiich that it is probable that ere long the help employed upon the farm will not be lodged and fed in the house of the farmer. The Diet of the Ontario Farmer . The diet of the Ontario farmer is not what it shoidd be, or what it might be. No class of people in the world are better situated in regard to opportunity for providing a suitable diet. The country provides in abundance a wonderful variety of wholesome products, Ontario produces wheat, oats, and buckwheat in fine form. No country can better furnish beef, pork, mutton, and fowl of a high order. Any farm in Ontario will produce a wide variety of vegetaldes in abundance, and also small fruits ; and large sections, as has already been shown, will grow as fine apples, peaches, pears, and plums as can be found in the world. All of these products in many sections can be grown ui)on one and the same farm. Notwithstanding, the farmers generally live upon a diet that is more or less unwholesome. This has arisen in part from the vicious system of selling everything off the farm of first quality that woidd bring in money, and in part from THE AOItlCULTUKE OF OXTAKIO 317 uuwliolcsoine and defective nietlioils of preparation. 'I'hc Ontario farmer lives far too much on salt pork and pastry preparations. Were it not for tliis he would unduul)tedly take a foremost place for robust physical dev('lo])nient aiiuinL^st tlu- rural ])opulation of any laml. The corrective inlluences of this abnormal state of things are ahvaily at work, and will, it is hoped, soon briiij,' about a radical I'eform in the dietary jiractices of the farmer. Thk A(;uicultural Associations of Oxtauio The aj.;riculture of this Province has been ^'reatly assisted by the various Agricultural Associations o])eratin<,' within it. The oldest association within the Province is the (Council of the Agricultural and Arts Association, which for more than fcnty years held an agricultural and arts exhibition every year. This feature of the work of the Council has been brought to a close for the j)resent. Joint-stock associations hold exhibitions annually in some important centres. The (ilovernment has made provision for holdiug exhibitions annually in every township of the Province where this may be desired by the people, and these are usually held. We have an associatiim of the Ijreedei-s representing the Clydesdale and Shire horses, the Shorthorn, Ayrshire, and llolstein breeds of cattle, and the sheep, swine, and poultry industries. The cheese industry is represented by two associations, east and west, and the butter industry by one. The Bee Keepers' Association of Ontario is leading the world at the present time in the method it has adopted for the eradication of foul brood, and the Ontario Fruit Growers' Association has accom- })lished a work second only in importance to that achieved by the Cheese Dairy Associations previously referred to. A system of Farmers' Institutes has been established by the Government, whereby the farmers nifiy meet in any electoral district in the Province for the purpose of discussing questions relating to agriculture, and these are addressed ])eriodically l)y the professors of the Ontario Agricultural College at Guelph. This college has a farm of 550 acres attached to it, a large portion of which is devoted to experimental purposiis. The sons of farmers who are willing to labour diligently at this college may participate in the benefits which it olh r« at a very trifling cost, though the expense to young men f'-io other countries is greater. Ontario as a Field for Immigration The agriculture of Ontario invites two classes of immigrants at the present time. The first of these should possess sufficient capital to purchase an Ontario farm of from one to two hundred acres, and the second the ability to labour well with their hands in the capacity of farm servants. wf r 318 AITEXDIX P. til Mm It would not be prudent, liowevcr, for the British capitalist to eng.ipo in Ontario fariuiu",' who was not possessed of a fair share of knowledfjc regai'din}^ .igricidture as practised in Great Britain. Lacking this he WduM Milt lie likely to succeed. The tenant farmer of Britain ]H)ssesse(l of sutiicient capital to enable him to ])iirclias(' and stuck a farm here would very probably succf;ed in Ontario farming. But he would not succ(!ed without having due regard to the niodificaticms of methoil rendered necessary by the differences of climate, and the changed relations as regards laltour. The season of growth •■ Ontario is relatively short as compared with the corresponding pe: /i growth in Ih'itain. Labour has to be jterformed therefore with much energy, and the aid of the most perfected labour-saving machines must needs be called in. The class of tenant farmers from Great Britain who will succeed best as farmers in this country are those whose predilections lead them into stock-keeping, for we have already shown that the agriculture of Ontario in the future will consist \ery largely f)f the pr(jductioii of live stock and the products of the same. The amount of capital recpiired to purchase a farm of the dimensions indicated would be from $10,000 to $15,000, and to stock the farm and e(piip it with implements of tillage would take about $2000 or $3000. The system of renting or leasing farms in Ontario has never become popular, and is not practised to a very great extent. This is owing to the fact that usually the farmer is the proprietor. Leasing is, however, beconung more fre(pient during recent yeai-s, s-- at Avhere a tenant has proved his efliciency he has little difficulty 'taining a farin to lease. The rental paid is from $3.00 to $4.00 per acre per year, much depending upon soil and locality. Long leases are seldom given in this country, and the tenant is not usually hampered to any great extent b;;^tl?e terms of the lease. In instances not a few, persons who began by leasing farms have ended by becoming the proprietors. The efficient farm labourer can always find emidoyment in Ontario when once he has proved his efficiency, so that the capable farm hand coming from Britain, indeed from any other country, need have no misgivings in regard to getting regular work when once he has proved his ability. The difficulty encountered at the first may l)e overcome by working cheaply for a time. The average wages paid to a farm hand per annum from 1882 to 1888, without board, was $254, and with board $163. The demand for efficient farm labourers in Ontario is always in excess of the supply. Those most in demand from foreign countries are such as are competent to feed and care for live stock. The demand for domestic servants on the farm has never yet been met. The hours of labour for this class are no doubt long, but the domestic enjoys many of the privileges of the household oftentimes not accorded to such in other homes. The average wages paid per month, THE AGRICULTrRK OF ONTARIO 319 Ht to enKaRo knowifdpi- iiig this lu' iu i)().sse8sc'(l t'atiu lioi'f would not of metlioil le changed Ontario is /I growth ich energy, mist needs n who will [•edilections II that the ;e]y of the amount at' ited would tl e<[uip it )0. has never t. This is Leasing is, it where 'taining ear, much en in this at extent vho began |n Ontario irm hand have no IS pi'oved lovercome a farm |254, and Ontario \a foreign tock. |yet been but the limes not month, -M ?*' with board, was $6.28 during the year 18><8, Inunigrants of this class, iurnished with credentials as tt) character, can at ill times Hud ready employment in farmhouses. ThI': Trade Rki.ationh of ONr.airo The trade relations of Ontario are not satisfactory to a majority of th(; farmers. A large number of them desire to have closer tradt* relations with the people of the United States. Tliey look upon that country as the natural market foi' a large jirojMJrtion of their ])r()ducts. That this view is the correct one is clearly apparent from the extensive trade which they have carried on with the United States during recent years in the face of a high turilf. The agricultural exports to the United States and Great Brita'n respectively from the Pi'ovinces of Ontario and Quebec cond)ined, for the fiscal year ending 30th June 1890, are giv(!n in the olhcial returns as follows : — Tofi. Hiitain Tnflio U. H. Animals and their produce . . S15,GltJ,63'2 $3,938,827 Agricultural products . . . 3,319,3 98 8. 654, 824 Sl8,l»3t),036 .'$14,fi93,651 As the greater portion ot the above produce went from Ontario, we thus see that, in the face of a duty averaging over 20 per cent, the Province of Ontario has sent at least three-fourths as much agricultural produce to the United States as to (Jreat Britain during the year referred to. This trade has been carried on in products all of which are grown in the United States, and in most of which that country is a very great exporter. These facts and figures demonstrate very forcibly, first, the high character relatively of Ontario farming, and secondly, the overwhelm- ing advantages of contiguity in trade. There is no saying what this trade in agricultural products between Ontario and the United States might not have been had there been no tariff restrictions to meet. We are furnished an excellent example of this in the development of theegg trade. On 1st January 1871 the duty of 10 per cent on eggs going into the United States was removed. Durijig the half-year preceding this period the value of the eggs imported into the United States from all countries was not more than .$5,403. In 1883 the import of eggs by that country from Canada (and most of them came from Ontario) amounted to 14,683,061 dozens, and the price paid for them to $2,584,279. A large majority of the farmers therefore are impatient of the barriers in the way of their trade with their southern neighbours, and many of them are clamouring to the Government for their removal. What the ultimate eff'ects of failure to attain this end may be it is difficult to forecast. That it will strengthen the desire for 7^-^ 320 APPENDIX B political union witli that people is more than a pofsibility. In the meantime the efl'ects of these restrictions iipon our agriculture are depressing, and this depression has shown its(;lf in various ways; but in none so strikingly as in its effects upon emigration from Canada to the United States. By the United States census returns we learn that in 1860 the number of Canadians in that coimtry was 249,970, In 1880 the number was 7 17, IS?; and although we cannot give tlie numbers from the census niturns for 1890, it cannot be less than 1,000,000 at the present time. Add to this the natural increase of our people there, and we would probably find not less than two millions of the people of tliat country emigrants from this Dominion, or their descendants. A large majority of these went from Ontario. To say that the restrictions on trade were the sole cause of this exodus would not be correct, but they are no doubt a prime cause, and the constant drain upon the enterprising class of our young men from the source indicated furnishes cause for great regret. Ontario Agricultural College, 22(Z Odoher 1890. ¥> sibility. In the r agriculture are arious ways ; but . from Canada to irns we learn that 'as 249,970. In cannot give the not be less than itnral increase of jt less than two 1 this Dominion, : from Ontario, ole cause of this prime cause, and young men from APPENDIX C MINERAL RESOURCES OF CANADA By T. D. Ledyard, Toronto The continent of North America is abundantly su])plied with t'coiiomic minerals which are distributedalike througli tin- Dominion ol'Canachi and the United States, and are confined by no international boundary. The. British Pi'ovinces are as rich in mineral wealth as the neighbouring Republic, with a sti'iking difference, however, in favour of the latter in the matter of development. The industrial situation of the world is changing ; the supremacy in ir^nand steel manufactures hitherto held by Great Britain is about to be transferred to the continent of Amei'ica. Reports of the late census show that the manufacture of ])ig-iron in the United States during the last ten yt-ars has been extraordinary, and at the present rate of increase that country is destined to become the leading producer of pig-iron in the world, ])()ssibly reaching this distinction very soon. The (piantity of pig-iron jjroduced in the United States during the census year 1890 was 250,000 tons in excess of the production of Great Britain during the calendar year 1889, being 9i million tons as compared with 3^ millinns in 1880 and 2 millions in 1870. Whereas England sujjjtlied in 1878 as much as 45 per cent of the world's prcxluction of pig-iron, as against 16 ]»er cent su])plied by the United States ; in 1889 England oidy supplied 33 per cent, while the productiim of the United States had increased to over 30 per cent, and is rapidly growing. While the ])roduction of iron ore in the Lake Superior districts was 5,000,000 tons in 1888 it grew to 7,000,000 in 1889, and in 1890 will exceed 8,000,000 tons. The United Stiites contain a population of about 65,000,000 and Canada is supposed to contain 6,000,000, so that to be even in the race the Dominion should show one tenth as much as the production V 822 APPENDIX C of her great neighbour, and in this the greatest of all industries should produce annually nearly a million tons of pig-iron, Accf)rding t(j the Cirovernnient returns, however, Canada produced less than 60,000 tons last year, or not quite one fifteenth nf what she should jjroduce to be on a par with the United States in proportion to population. This disproportion is not the fault of our ores, for Canada possesses a great abundance and variety of iron ores. Sir William Logan, our great geologist, predicted that Canada would become eventually one of the greatest iron producing countries of the world, but for want of a market our iron manufactui'es have as yet made little progress. In Nova Scotia near the Atlantic coast are found numerous deposits of iron ore in close proximity to coking coal ; these are as well situated as any ores on the ccmtinent, and possess " the requirements for cheap manufacture, and being so near na .;ati(jn, have great facilities for transport. The manufactui-ers of Massachusetts and the Eastern States are earnestly urging their Government to aduiit coal and iron ores free, so as to enable them to (!ompete with Pennsylvania, and represent that free trade in these articles is highly essential to their welfare. The United Stati's last year used upwards c'" 15,000,000 tons of iron ore, and Canada should in like proportion \ -^e 1,500,000 ; but the production of Canada in the same time was less than 90,000 tons. The Canadian production of coal is only about Oi^e-tifth of what it should be to make it pro])ortionately equal to that ctf the States. Some excellent hematites showing 65 per cent metallic iron, and almost free from impurities, suitable for steel, are found in Nova Scotia, while in other sections are found magnetites and limonites of good quality. Manganese occurs in numero\is places both in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, some rich enough to be used in glass-making, and a good deal rich enough for spiegel-eisen and steel manufacture. Although there is no coal in Ontario or Quebec, there are iron ores, both magnetic and hematite, of the finest qiiality. These ores are generally found in well-wooded districts where hard wood suited to make charcoal abounds, and there are just as great facilities to make cheap charcoal iron as anywhere in America. Estimates show that in well-situated parts charcoal iron might be manufactured for $10 per ton, which would allow a large margin for profit ; yet there is not a single blast furnace in operation in Ontario, Mdiile the charcoal furnaces in Michigan i)roduce.d last year about 200,000 tons of j'ig-ii'on worth nearly $4,000,000. Within al)out 100 miles cast of Toronto an iron mine is being developed containing ore giving 68 to 70 i)er cent metallic iron with practically no phosphorus or sulphur, and suitable to make the finest FUNERAL RESOURCES OF CANADA 323 iistries should steel. There is a large hed of this ore which, if it were in the States, would doubtless be employing 400 or 500 men and producing several hundred tons per day. This ore is about one-half the distance from Pennsylvania furnaces that the furnaces are from Lake Suinn-ior mines ; and if such ore as this had free access to tlie States it would greatly cheapen their steel manufacture, but the duty of 75 cents ]>er ton is a lieavy impost. A leading English iron trade journal lately stated that the principal reason the United States could not make steel as cheaply as England was that their Bessemer ores cost too much, the cost being quoted at $7 per ton in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But this Ontario ova can l)e delivered in Pittsburgh for $4 per ton (if there is no duty), which is about as low as the best Bessemer oros cost at English furnaces. If there were no trade restrictionr,, Toronto, the capital city of Ontario, should l)e an excellent point for the manufacture of iron and steel. It possesses fully as great facilities for such manufactures as Clncago had thirty years ago, before that city commenced to make ir(;n. Ores could be laid down in Toronto for i?2.50 to $3.50 ])or ton, which cf)st S5 to $6 in Chicago ; and coke could be obtained from Connellsville, Pennsylvania, as cheaply as in Chicago. But the population of Canada alone is too small and too scattered to support iron and steel manufactures, except at one or two points, of a size suffi- cient to uiake them ])rofitablf, for ex])e.r!ence teaches that small Avoi'ks cannot manufacture nearly so ]»rohtiil)ly as large ones. AVest of Port Arthur on the Canadian side of Lake Superior are Ibund extensive deposits of magnetic iron ore, ver\' rich and suitable for steel uiaking, which are not worked as yet, although fi'om the adjoining districts of Minnesota about one million tons annually are being mined. On an island in Lake Winnipeg is a liirge deposit of hematite. In" British Columbia are numerous deposits of good iron ores, with great facilities \'ov smelting, as coal abounds in that Province. In British Columbia, as in Nova Scotia, coal is found close to the sea shore ; the best market for both is in the neiglibouring States where a large population reipiires cheap fuel, and free trade in I'uel would be of immense benefit to lioth countries. The nickel ores recently discovered in the Sudl)ury district, on the line of the Canadian Pacific Railway about 300 miles north-west of Toronto, are extremely valuable, and promise to become of great importance. The nickel occurs in magnetic iron jtyrites yielding from 1 to 3 per cent nickel, and in sonu' cases as high as 4 to 5 per cent, the ore also often containing a paying ])ropoi'tion of copper. By roasting with charcoal most of the sulphur can be expelled, and it is then smelted with coke, anil reduced at the mines to a matte containing about 15 per cent nickel and 20 per cent copper. Y 2 5. Si-* i 321 AITENDIX C A small proixji'tion of nickel is found L^really to improve the quality of steel, renderin. Nova Scotia is annually increasing its gold production ; the district west of Port Arthur in Ontario is liecoming an important silver producei- ; and both silver and gold are found in many parts of British Columbia. From what has been said it will Ite a})parent that although Nature has been bountiful to Canada in the distribution of mineral wealth, yet her gifts are deprived of much of their benefit by artificial barriers to trade, which it is to be hoi)ed the good sense of both countries will shortly I'emove. friction, mpanies uties in 1 being Printed by R. & R. Clark. Edinburgh.