Canada and the Canadian Question

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1

CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION

CANADA

AND

THE CANADIAN QUESTION

BY

GOLDWIN SMITH, D.C.L.

ii

WITH MAP.

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fLott^on # $efo gorft

MACMILLAN AND CO.

TORONTO: HUNTER, ROSE AND CO.

1891

All rights reserved

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

The Subject

The natural v. the political map— The Provinces of the Dominion and their
economical relations — The question propounded . . Page 1

CHAPTER II
The French Province

Canada proper a French colony — Dominion of the Papacy and the Church in
Quebec — The French peasantry and their lot — Rapid increase of their
numbers — Their occupations — Hold of the Church upon them — Wealth
of the Church — The Jesuit and his relation to education — The Parti
Rouge — The Guibord affair — Recent change in the character of the
Church — Attitude of the Church towards the State, and towards the
British and Protestant population — Ecclesiastical pretensions and
nationalist aspirations — The Quebec Premier the champion of both —
He apostrophises the Tricolor — Relations between the British and
French race in the Province — Extrusion of the British — Protestant
strongholds — Exodus of French Canadians to New England — The Irish
at Montreal ........ 4

CHAPTER IH
The British Provinces

Ontario the core of the Confederation — Its chief industries — Structure of
society and social sentiment — Effects of democracy in the household and
on juvenile character — City life — The public school system — The

vi CONTENTS

Churches — Nationalities and national societies — Canadian respect for
law — Public justice and the bench — Social life — The climate — Pastimes
— Commerce and industry — Trade organisations — Social problems — City
government — Literature, Art, and Science — Journalism — Emigration and.
native feeling towards the emigrant — Migration of Canadians to the
United States — Practical fusion of the two nations — The Maritime
Provinces, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island —
Manitoba and the North- West — British Columbia Page 24

CHAPTER IV

French Canada before the Conquest

Jacques Cartier, the discoverer — Champlain, the founder of Quebec — Coming
of the Jesuits — Their missions, heroic exploits, and relations with the
Indian tribes — Ursuline convents and hospitals — Aims of the Jesuits —
Their rule — Moral decadence of the Order — Foundation of Montreal —
The Sulpicians and their relations to the Jesuits — Failure of Quebec as a
colony — Epoch of Louis XI V. — Royal administration extended to the
colony — Colbert's commercial system and the Intendant Talon — The
fur trade — Bushranging — Passion for exploration, and feats of dis-
coverers — Abuses under Louis XV. — The parish clergy — Moral state of
the colony — Contrast between the French and English colonists — The
Conquest ........ 64

CHAPTER V

French Canada after the Conquest

What was to be done with Quebec I — The question settled by the American
Revolution — Military rule — British concessions to the conquered people
preserve their allegiance during the American invasion — The Quebec Act —
Incoming of royalist refugees from the American colonies, and formation of
an oligarchy of conquest — With the French Revolution comes a re-
settlement of Quebec — Policy of Pitt — Attempt to separate the races by
dividing the colony into a French and a British Province — Failure of that
attempt — Political conflict between the two races in Lower Canada under
the Parliamentary Constitution — Want of information and of decision
on the part of the Home Government — British rule an improvement on
French rule — War of 1812 — The French Canadians again faithful to
Great Britain — Renewal of civil strife after the war — Ineffectual mission
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

B.W*

CONTENTS vn

CHAPTER VI

History of Upper Canada

Upper Canada founded by the United Empire Loyalists — Their wrongs as a
vanquished party shut out from amnesty — Constitution of British
Canada — Simcoe its first Governor — Beginnings of political life and
controversy — Governorships of Hunter and Gore — "War of 1812 — The
Tory ' 'Family Compact " — Conflict between it and the Reformers — Leaders
of the Reformers, Mackenzie, Rolph, and Bid well — The clergy reserves and
other political issues — Demand for responsible government — Governorship
of Sir Francis Bond Head — Conflict between the Governor and the
Reformers — Rebellion breaks out and is suppressed — End of the governor-
ship of Sir Francis Bond Head .... Page 98

CHAPTER VII

The United Provinces

Mission of Lord Durham — His report on the situation — Re-union of the two
Provinces under a single Governor and legislature — Concession of
responsible government — The change carried into effect by Lord
Sydenham — Parties and politics under the new constitutional system —
Governorship of Sir Charles Bagot — An attempt of Lord Metcalfe as
Governor to restore the power of the Crown brings him into conflict with
the Assembly and the people — Practical end of monarchical government in
Canada — Governorship of Lord Elgin — Personal influence retained by him
under the new system — The Rebellion Losses Bill — Secularisation of the
clergy reserves — The reciprocity treaty — Failure of the policy of union to
bring about British ascendency or assimilate the French element —
Influence of the French in politics — Political combinations and parties —
The " Clear Grits " and the struggle for representation by population —
Series of ephemeral administrations — Political deadlock from which
refuge is sought in Confederation — Other motives for that measure — Mood
in which it was carried ...... 121

CHAPTER VIII

The Federal Constitution

The monarchical element of the Constitution — The Governor-General — His
loss of political power — His social and other functions — The office devoid
of constitutional value — Baronetcies and knighthoods — Futility of

vm CONTENTS

attempts to introduce aristocracy into the New World — Canada in
reality a Federal Republic — Deviations of the Canadian Constitution from
the American model — Powers of the central government and legislature
— The veto power — The Canadian Senate compared with the American
Senate, and with the British House of Lords — The Canadian House of
Commons and its composition — Localism in elections — Party government
— Weak points of the elective system — Provincial governments and
legislatures — The interpretation of the Constitution — The Supreme Court
— The Civil Service — The Judiciary — Canada practically independent of
the mother country — Canada affords no precedent for Irish Home Rule
— A written constitution a necessity of democracy — Ottawa as the seat of
government ....... Page 147

CHAPTER IX

Fruits of Confederation

Doubtful increase of military security — The incorporation of the North-West
— Resistance of the French half-breeds to the annexation — Federal rail-
roads, the Intercolonial and the Canadian Pacific — Adoption of a Pro-
tective tariff under the name of "National Policy" — Effects of that
measure, particularly in regard to the settlers of the North-West — Ap-
parent failure of Confederation to produce national unity — Aspiration of
French Canada to separate nationality continued and increased — Question
of the Jesuits' estates — Renunciation of the national veto on provincial
legislation — Want of national union and of Dominion parties entails
government by corruption — The Pacific Railway scandal — Injury to the
political character of the people — Conflict of sectional with national
interests — The financial condition of the Dominion — The Exodus from
Canada to the United States' . . . . . 192

CHAPTER X

The Canadian Question

Dependence — The sanction of the mother country necessary for any change of
political relations — Canada considering the problem of her future —
Distinction between a colony and a colonial dependency — Misleading use
of the term "Empire" — Supposed influence of sentiment on emigration
— The strength of England lies in herself, not in her dependencies —
England's protection of Canada precarious — Canada's complaints against
British diplomacy — Political tutelage no longer possible — Society in the
New World unalterably democratic — British interests in Canada — Value
of the filial sentiment and that of dependence compared . . 287

CONTENTS ix

Independence — The "Canada First" movement — Its tendency to independ-
ence — That solution of the problem probable in itself — Obstacles to its
adoption — The moral of the movement . . . Page 253

Imperial Federation — Origin of the movement — Absence of any definite plan
— The scheme without precedent in history — What would be the object
of the Association ? — A limit to the effects of steam and telegraph in
annihilating distance — What would be the relation of the Federal govern-
ment to the British monarchy ? — What diplomatic policy would prevail ?
— Complexities and embarrassments of the proposed system — Difficulties
of setting the negotiations on foot — Difficulty of finding trustworthy
representatives of the colonies — A moral federation of the whole English-
speaking race more feasible — The colonies will not part with self-govern-
ment ........ 257

Political Union — "Annexation" an improper term — Union of Canada with
the American Republic might be on equal and honourable terms, like
that of Scotland with England — Service which Canada, if admitted to the
Councils of the Union, might render to England — By entering the Union
Canada need not forfeit her peculiar character or her historical associa-
tions — The idea that the connection would be one of moral disparagement
unfounded — The evils and dangers of both countries substantially the
same — Objections on the ground of over-enlargement of territory and
populations — No line of political cleavage on the continent — Americans |
ready to welcome Canada into the Union — No thought of conquest or
violent annexation — Difficulty of gauging Canadian sentiment — The
Canadian people certainly in favour of free trade with their continent —
Respecting their feeling as to political union nothing can be certainly
said — Difficulty of bringing such a union about on the American as
well as on the Canadian side — The primary forces will in the end
prevail ........ 267

Commercial Union — Mr. Bayard on the subject — The name Commercial
Union adopted in contradistinction to Political Union. Account of the
movement — Her own continent the natural market of Canada — Re-
ciprocity of trade or reciprocity of tariffs the motto of the Conservative
leader — The continent an economical whole — Reciprocity the dictate of
nature — Special strength of the case with regard to the minerals of
Canada. — The shipping interest of Canada needs the freedom of the
coasting-trade — The Americans on their side ready for Reciprocity — Policy
of Mr. Blaine — Answer to the assertion of Protectionists that there can-
not be a profitable trade between Canada and the United States —
Remarkable growth of the trade in eggs when free from duty — Prevalence
of smuggling under the present system — Special hardships resulting from
the tariff to Manitoba and the Maritime Provinces — Comparison of the
British with the American market — Reasons why the near market is the
best — Counter-proposal of an Imperial Zollverein — Fatal objections to
that plan — Efforts of the Canadian Government to open up new markets

X CONTENTS

— The natural interests of Canada all in favour of Reciprocity — Objections
to Commercial Union between the United States and Canada similar to
\ those made between England and Scotland — Appeal of Protectionists to

Imperial sentiment — Answer to the allegation that Commercial Union
would be annexation in disguise — Practical difficulties of the scheme
enhanced by the M'Kinley tariff— The policy of the M'Kinley Act not
likely to endure — A new. commercial, era apparently dawning for the
United States . . , . . . Page 281

APPENDICES—

A. Mr. Henet W. Darling on Banking . . 303

B. Mr. Thomas Shaw on Agriculture in Ontario . 307
G. Mr. T. D. Ledtard on Mining . . . . 321

V

MXJ&

CHAPTER I

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
these blocks of territory are not contiguous, but are divided
from 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 through which the Inter-

B

2 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

colonial Bail way runs, hardly taking up a passenger or a bale
of freight by the way. 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 Bockies, 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
Dominion can for ever be kept by political agencies united
among themselves and separate from their Continent, of

L

I THE SUBJECT 3

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
Teaders of the 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
formed; that they have not, so far as he is aware, been
biassed by personal motives of any kind ; and that he does
not think that the honour or the true interest of his native
country can for a moment be absent from his breast.

CHAPTER II

THE FRENCH PROVINCE l

The eldest first. Canada proper was a French colony. To
the habitans, 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. The true Canada is the river
explored 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 flats 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 History, August, 1890.

chap, ii THE FRENCH PROVINCE 5

historic aspect. Even in Quebec there are in the way of
buildings but scanty remnants of the Bourbon days. But
the citadel, the prize of battle between the races, the key
and throne of empire, stills crowns the rock which stands a
majestic wardeT at the portal of the Upper St. Lawrence ;
and the city with its narrow, steep, and crooked streets,
crouching close under its guardian fortress, recalls an age of
military force and fear in contrast to the cities of the New
World, with their broad and straight streets spreading out
freely in the security of industrial peace.

Quebec is a surviving offset of the France of the Bourbons,
cut off by conquest from the mother country and her revolu-
tions. Its character has been perpetuated by isolation like
the form of an antediluvian animal 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 Borne 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

6 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 Beaupr^ 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 Eome 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 habitant 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, whereas 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 7

wheel is still heard. His wife is the robust and active
partner of his toil. Their cabin, though very humble, is
clean. Such decorations as it has are religious. The Church
services are to the pair the poetry and pageantry of life.
If either reads anything it is "the prayer-book. There are,
however, Chansons Populaires, though probably more read by
the cultivated than by the people, and there is a folk-lore
brought apparently from Old France, perhaps from the France
before Christianity. 1 The domestic affections among the
habitans 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 the same roof. The habitant
is not cultivated or aspiring, but his life is above that of the
troglodyte of La Terre.

Close observers think that they can still trace the race
characters of the two districts of Old France from which the
French Canadians came, and distinguish the Breton Celt
from the 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 Church 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

1 See an interesting article by Mr. Edward Fairer, a distinguished Canadian
journalist, in the Atlantic Monthly for April, 1882.

8 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

1009 claimants. One family numbers 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 the Puritan in his old
abode. They are also displacing the 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 only 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. 1

1 In Ontario a forest-ranger has now been appointed, in the person of Mr.
Phipps, who had done good service in calling attention to the subject.

ii THE FRENCH PROVINCE 9

For lumbering winter, when the snow makes slides, is the
season, so that the French peasant may combine it with the
cultivation of his little farm. Picturesque writers dwell with
rapture on the romance of life in the lumber shanty, the
forest ringing 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." 1 In the
dangerous work of guiding the logs down the stream, above
all, great nerve as well as agility is displayed. The lumber
shanty is also a school of temperance, for in it no liquor 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 by popula-
tion, and if there were not this ready outflow into the
adjoining states of the American 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 those 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 made
to turn the current of emigration northwards to Lake St.
John. Shipment to the French settlement in Manitoba is

1 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.

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
iiml 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
we.iv. 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
(he 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
(£-0,000,000 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
TSeiuipnS, 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. 1 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
i Parkman's Old lUgime in. Canada, p. 164.

ii THE FRENCH PROVINCE 11

a twenty -sixth) and money for building and repairing
churches. 1 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 3pite 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. 2 Nor does Ste. Anne
de Beaupr^ perform her cures for nothing. Meantime 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 Le
Canadwn 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 are a failure,

1 The tithe was by law only of cereals. The habitant took to growing
peas to evade the impost ; but the Church followed him up and he gave way.
Of late he has taken to growing hay, but the Church again follows him up,
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 Commissioners' 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 of thirty years' standing, based his decision partly on the decree of
the bishop and partly 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 Montreal, 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 Superior Court has also sustained this impost, though the old
French edict declares that settled cures alone had the right to collect tithes.

2 See for this the article "Romanism in Canada" in the Presbyterian
Review y New York, July, 1886.

12 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

warning them that unless the Matane Bailway be 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 Eeformation 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
takes she gives full value in the shape of morality and
charity. 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; balls 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
Boman 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 Edmond About's
saying about the peasantry of the Bomagna, who were back-
ward and unprosperous though they had fourteen thousand
monks preaching to them the gospel of labour.

What the mind of the Church is respecting popular

II THE FRENCH PROVINCE 13

education we know from the history of countries such as
Southern Italy, Spain, the Roman 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
youths 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 can
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. 1 This account seems to be borne out by the inquiries

1 Arthur Buies, La Zanterne, Montreal, 1884, p. 113.

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 which 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.

The school history is a characteristic work. 1 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 had 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 Boyalty 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-

1 Abrege d'Histoire da Canada a l'usage des Jeunes Etudiants de la Pro-
vince de Quebec, par F. X. Toussaint, Professeur a l'Ecole Normale-Laval.
Approuve par le Conseil de l'lnstruction Publique, Montreal, 1886.

II THE FRENCH PROVINCE 15

taining some names of eminence; but it is hardly more
connected with the Church and her people than was the
literary circle of the 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 Parti
Rouge, though it is not Dynamitard or Atheist, but merely
Liberal, or at most free-thinking, 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 gravity of Eoman augurs, decided that men must,
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 were 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
uncontaminated and in peace.

Till lately, however, the Church of Quebec remained a

16- CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

true daughter of the Church of monarchical France, and kept
her Galilean tradition, giving Cassar 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 Roman
Catholic Churches of Europe, since, having lost the allegiance
of the national governments, they have been compelled to
throw themselves for Bupport 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
bis 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 empire 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
the Encyclical the medieval claims of the Papacy to domina-
tion over conscience and over the civil power, scornfully
h.spels the idea that the priest is to confine himself to the
r-ncristy, claims for him the right of interference in elections,
the censorship of literature and of the public press. Against
Protestantism and its pretended rights he proclaims open
war ; it has no rights, he says ; it is merely a triumphant
imposture ; no religion has any right, or ought to be treated
by the State as having any, but that of Rome. Rome is the
rightful sovereign of all consciences ; and will again, when she

ii THE FRENCH PROVINCE 17

can, assert her authority by the same means as before. War
is 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 majorem Dei gloriam
seemed on the point of being crowned with success there has
come an afflavit Deus et dissipati 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.
They used to hold their cures, under an ordinance of Louis
XIV, by a fixed tenure, like the freehold of an English rector.
But they have now been put generally on the footing of mis-
sionaries, removable at the pleasure of the bishop. The old-
fashioned cur4 a man something like the English rector of the
old school, quiet and sociable, is passing away, and his place
is being taken by a personage of a more stirring spirit, and
better suited to be the minister of Ultramontane ambition.

With this advance of ecclesiastical pretensions comes a
sympathetic growth of nationalist aspiration. The dream of
a French nation on this continent has long been hovering
before the minds of French Canadians, though it is hard to say
how far the idea has ever assumed a distinct shape or formed a

c

18 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

definite motive of action. The Abb6 Gingras in a pamphlet
some years ago, after glorifying the Dark Ages, justifying the
Inquisition, and reviving the claims of Innocent III, set forth
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 papal
and French nationality always in view as its covert aim.
But now the twin movement has taken a more pronounced
form. M. Honors Mercier has risen to lead Ultramontanism
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 avows his Nationalism in language that
makes British ears tingle. At the unveiling of a joint,
memorial to Brebceuf, 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 ; v
it is the national flag. The government which you have you V
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

ii THE FRENCH PROVINCE 19

national merely in name but national in tendencies, aspira-
tions, and sentiments." The French Canadian nation tele-
graphs its salutations to the Pope, and the Pope telegraphs
back his benediction to the French Canadian nation. On a
day in September 1887 the French flag was hoisted above
the British flag on the Parliament House of Quebec in honour
of the French frigate La Minerve. This was afterwards said
to have been an accident. It was an accident full of omen.

Between Old France and the New France of the priests a
gulf was set by the Atheist Revolution. 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 the
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 the out-
come of this movement, if it bears fruit at all, will be a French
and Papal nation. The hearts of the French Canadians were,
however, deeply moved by the spectacle of the Franco-German
War. " If any one," said ?ir 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 humblest
among us and relate to him the events of that gigantic struggle
which has fixed the attentioa 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/ "

Lord Durham, coming immediately after what was called
a rebellion, but was really rather a war between the two races

20 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

in Lower Canada, describes not only the estrangement of the
races but their mutual bitterness as extreme. The bitterness
has in great measure passed away ; the estrangement remains.
There is hardly any intermarriage; marriages of Soman
Catholics with Protestants are in fact interdicted by the
Church of Some. 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 the jury is
sure to result. The politicians have to act with British
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 Mr. 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

ii THE FRENCH PROVINCE 21

creating an ecclesiastical parish which by subtle links draws
after it the civil and the municipal parish. The British
farmer is harassed by an increase of his assessment as well
as by social influences 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 with profit to herself, because in the Frenchman'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
ecclesiastieism 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 Boman
Catholic and Celtic hands. Meanwhile the British traders of
Montreal think of little but their trade, or of their pleasure,
and make no head against the progress of the foe. In truth
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 they 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 Boman Catholic
Church still holds its ground in the Laval University at
Quebec, to which Liberals resort, and which has hitherto held

22 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

Jesuit ascendency at bay. Protestantism has its flourishing
place of high education in McGill University, at Montreal, while
the Church of England has a» small University at Lennoxville.
Amongst the strongest bulwarks of Protestantism in the
Province is the Presbyterian College at Montreal.

There are French Protestants in the Province to the
number, it is said, of about 10,000. These are by origin
converts from Eoman Catholicism, and may be regarded with
interest, as a recurrence of the tendency which 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 pearly marriages and by her own absorption
of wealth. She may send her priests with the exiles and
try to extend her reign of childlike submission and unin-
quiring faith over Massachusetts ; but in this she will not
succeed. Nor will 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

ii THE FRENCH PROVINCE 23

himself is less narrow in his convictions than from his public
professions and actions has appeared. At this moment he is
said to be braving Ultramontane ire by transferring the
lunatic asylums from religious to secular keeping. But 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, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, remain French
Canadians. They 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 would have to call upon one part of New France
to take arms 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.

CHAPTEE III

THE BRITISH PROVINCES

Ontario, formerly Upper Canada, and better designated as
British 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
keeps them locked could be opened by the key of free-trade.
"Bich 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

chap, in THE BRITISH PROVINCES 25

the farms are mortgaged, as are a good many of the farms in
the United States. Let this be noted by those who fancy
that 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
helps the tenant, never reduces the rent. Much of the
money, however, 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 he 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. The system in Canada, however, has
of late been changing, and labourers' cottages are beginning
to be built. The labour-saving machines which are among
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. Nowhere probably on this continent is the
farming high ; the land having hitherto 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 the clearing of the land, which
exposes them to the cold winds. In a new country there is
a general tendency to lavishness and waste ; trees have been
recklessly cut down, and replanting has been neglected.
Hitherto the chief products Have been wheat and barley ; but
a deluge of grain is now pouring down from the North-West,

26 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

while the M'Kinley 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
has prospered, though just now if is depressed and the value of
farm property has gone down. The Canadian farmer, however,
to earn his living out of the land has to work hard and to bargain
hard. Perhaps to the English gentleman who turns farmer in
Canada the second is almost as unfamiliar as the first. The
season of the Canadian farmer's hardest work is the short and
hot summer by which his crops are brought rapidly on. 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. 1 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 him 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 chance of disturbing a

1 See Mr. Shaw's paper in the Appendix.

in THE BRITISH PROVINCES 27

community of substantial freeholders, each of them tilling the
land which his father or his not very remote ancestor won,
not from a subjugated race with the Norman sword, but from
the wilderness with 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 Canada, 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 which 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 for the system
from the beginning. In England to introduce peasant pro-
prietorship you would have to pull down all the farm build-
ings and build anew for the small holdings. In France you
had 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

28 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

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
t system. But aristocracy is a hateful word to the Canadian
as well as to the American ear. It is politically a word
wherewith to conjure backwards. Any exhibition of the
tendency would be fatal to an aspirant. If a citizen has a
pedigree, real or factitious, he must 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. This 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 difficulty, 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. Earely, if ever,
will you see a native American servant, and in Canada the
domestics are chiefly immigrants. The work in the factory

in THE BRITISH PROVINCES 29

may be much harder, and the treatment less kind than in the
household ; 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 they 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 housework. 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
to the 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 be 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 be surprised at

30 CANADA AND THff CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

hearing that 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 the Old
World. Eoughnesses 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
civilisation, combined with perfect equality, which the
generation after next will see. Meantime the general
texture and habits of society are not easily changed. The
social ways of man, his social distinctions and his social
courtesies, are still much the same in British Canada and the
United States that they are in Old England.

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

in THE BRITISH 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 partly education, which certainly breeds a
distaste for farm work. Another cause is the railway, 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 universal, and it
may be said that what is universal is not likely to be evil.
But 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

m

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.

32 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

The Public School system in Canada is much the 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 High Schools a small fee as a rule
is paid. 1 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
8600,000 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 8100,000 more. Grumblers then began
to challenge the principle of the system, and to ask why the
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. The 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. Attendaitce is legally

1 The trustees have the option of remitting the fee, and this is commonly
done as a reward for proficiency in the public school.

in THE BRITISH PROVINCES 33

compulsory, but the law is a dead letter ; nor is the well-to-do
artisan anxious to have the ragged waif in the school 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 commonwealths, 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
Roman Catholics, are secular. 'To satisfy the religious feelings
of the people some passages of Scripture of an undogmatic
character are read without 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

34 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

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
friendly division of the spiritual field, shall enable a village,
which neither knows nor cares anything about dogma, to

in THE BRITISH PROVINCES 35

feed one pastor instead of starving three. Of the Protestant
Churches 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 troubles bred in other voluntary churches by the
restlessness of congregations which grow weary of hearing
the same preacher. The Presbyterian Church is that of the
Scotch, here, as everywhere, a thrifty, wise, and powerful
clan. The Baptists also maintain their ground by 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 in
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 Prayer-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 Confessional, the monastic
system, Protestants say, are creeping in. Still 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 aesthetic : church archi-

36 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

tecture, music, flowers, have generally been introduced. The
metropolitan church of the Methodists 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 which the preacher
handles the topics of the day with the freedom of the plat-
form, and amidst frequent applause and laughter. The
Church of Borne, 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 nearly her
last hope. She does not appear to gain by conversion. She
must be gaining, however, in wealth, for her churches and
convents continue to rise. Her prelates affect hierarchical
state, go about in the insignia of their order, and claim a
social rank as princes or nobles of a Universal Church, 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 Eoman 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

in THE BRITISH PROVINCES 37

a bulwark not of Protestantism, but of a Tory Government ;
and it goes to the poll and eats at the same party-
table with the Soman Catholic, and even with the Ultra-
montane. North America has had no Torquemada or *
Alexander Borgia, and has not been the scene of priestly
persecution or of papal crime.

In the streets of Toronto the drum of the Salvation Army
is still heard. Other revivals have for the most part quickly
passed away, but this endures. So far at all events it has in
it the genuine spirit of Christianity that it points the road
to excellence and happiness not through the reform of others,
much less through dynamite, blood, and havoc, but through
self-reform.

Wherever books find their 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. Eevision of
creeds is in the air, and it is probable that among the laity of
all the Protestant Churches there has been formed a sort of
Christian Theism in which many, without formulating it,
repose. The tide of scepticism does not beat so fiercely

38 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

against Free Churches as against an Establishment. To
suppose that all the religion is hollow or mere custom would
be absurd. We must conclude that people in general still
find 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 British are mingled in Ontario a laige number
of Irish, who, as in the United States and everywhere else,
cling to the cities, follow the priest to the third generation,
band 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
which is cherished by their race in the United States. There
are also Scotch-Irish, whose ways are those 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

in THE BRITISH PROVINCES 89

wealth and speculation has not failed to attract the Jew,
who brings with him his tribal exclusiveness, his tribal
code, his tribal ways in trade. If there is a feeling
against him here it is not religious, for on the 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 the 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 the 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 French 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
press on compactly, acting as 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 Maccabees, Foresters, Royal Black
Knights of Ireland, and other brotherhoods, benevolent and

40 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

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
the 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 military service. The
Americans have elected four or five soldiers 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 reception of the Cana-
dian Volunteers when they returned from Fish 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 generally deplored, it was

in THE BRITISH PROVINCES - 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 brigandage 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
Bench, 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 herself 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 therecent Birchall case we had adisplayof sen-
sationalism which showed how faint is the boundary which
divides our society from the society of the United States.

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, while Canadian summer scorches the turf, and there
are few school playing-fields and no village greens. Baseball,
which is the game of the 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

in THE BRITISH PROVINCES 43

it belongs. Football is also much played, and under the
regular English rule, everything being kicked except the ball.
In Toronto the red coat of the English fox-hunter is seen,
though it is not to be supposed that foxes can be preserved
among democratic hen roosts or freely chased over democratic
farms. At Montreal, under the theocracy, you may see a real
fox chased over fences as stiff as an English 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 Ee-
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 lakes 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

44 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

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 Parisian dresses. Canadians are often told by
those who wish to flatter 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 Boman Empire had no stoves, and
they had undergone the most rigorous process of natural
selection, both by exposure to frost and by tribal war.

Considering 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

in THE BRITISH PROVINCES 45

stamp the coin, they have a right to the profits of the money
trade, and they are sometimes inclined to legislate accordingly. 1
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,
must 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 war. 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. Not 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

1 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 W.
Darling, formerly president of the Canadian Bank of Commerce and of the
Toronto Board of Trade.

46 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

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
which 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 the 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

in THE BRITISH PROVINCES 47

are made, but their effect dies away. No one looks for a
radical change. A board of commissioners, which some pro-
pose, would no doubt be a vast improvement ; but 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 skilled health
officers and engineers. Economy there can hardly be 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 Federal 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 be borne in
mind when we speak of Canadian Literature. The writer in
Ontario has no field beyond his own Province and Montreal.
Between him and the Maritime Provinces is interposed French
Quebec. Manitoba 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 be reasonably
looked for, and of a character thoroughly healthy. Perhaps
a kind critic might say that it still retains something of the

48 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

old English 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 magazine, 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 copyright law,
and also in having her booksellers cut off by the tariff from
their natural centre of distribution at New York. To fill an

s

order at once a double duty must be paid. Let it be
remembered also that it is difficult for the sapling of
Colonial literature to grow beneath the mighty shadow of
the parent ti;ee. 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 millionaires
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 Eocky 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

in THE BRITISH PROVINCES 49

of Lake Superior, and -the unpaintable Niagara. 1 In a new
country there can be few historic or picturesque buildings,
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
autumn 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 stores 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
Rocky 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 ;

1 Perhaps some of the most picturesque scenery in Ontario is to he found
in the Dundas Valley, on the Grand River, and among the Blue Mountains
west of Collingwood. Fine is the view from Queenston Heights, looking
down the Niagara River 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.

E

50 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

probably she has more miles of them 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 time the debates in the
British House of Commons of the evening before, looks on
as well as the Londoner at all that is going on in the world,
and shares in full measure the unification of humanity by
the electric wire. The Canadian Press is, in the main,
American not English in its character. It aims at the
lightness, smartness, and crispness of New York journalism

in THE BRITISH PROVINCES 51

rather than at the solidity of the London Times. There is an
interchange of writers with New York. Enterprise in the
collection of gossip and scandal is now a feature of the press
in all countries and everywhere bears the same relation to
taste and truth.

Canada, when the value of the connection is under dis-
cussion, is always set down as a place where an Englishman
can find a home. A sudden change has 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
in. 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 they could, would shut 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
engaged 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

62 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

Canada. House rent is high, clothes are dear, and a great
deal of fuel is required. The difference in the cost of fuel
would soon equal the difference between the price of a ticket
to Canada and a ticket to New Zealand. One cannot help
wondering that a poor man who works out of doors and who
does not dream of repeating the exploits of Attila and Clovis
should choose a country where the winter is severe.

The notion that an Englishman enjoys a preference in
Canada is pleasant, but not well founded. He is rather apt
to be an object of jealousy. Anything like favour shown to
him gives umbrage. The appointment of three English
Professors in Toronto University roused a feeling which
lingered long. From the political abuse of England which
constantly offends an Englishman in the American Press,
and which is largely a homage paid to Irish sentiment, the
Canadian Press of course is free ; but social allusions may be
sometimes seen not of a friendly kind. If the writers are
Irish or Socialists, still the allusions appear. The jealousy
is, perhaps, a legacy of the times when most of the high
places and good things were in the hands of emigrants from
the Imperial country. 1 At all events, it has been with truth
said that in any candidature no nationality is so weak as the
English. In the United States, on the contrary, while there
is a traditional prejudice against England, against the indi-
vidual Englishman there is none. He is perfectly welcome
to any employment or appointment that he can get. How-
ever, an Englishman intending to emigrate had better turn

1 A trace of this feeling lingers in a passage embodied in Osgood's Handbook
of the Maritime, Provinces, " The Nova Scotians have not hitherto sought to
qualify themselves by culture and study for public honours and preferments
because they knew that all the offices in the province would be filled by
British carpet-baggers." It is not here only that the term " carpet-bagger "
has been seen.

in THE BRITISH PROVINCES 53

his thought first to Australia and New Zealand where there
is no prejudice either against him or his country, and the
Irish are not so strong. These remarks have reference,
of course, only to the emigrant who goes .to a colony to
push, his fortunes in competition with the natives, not to
him who goes to live on his own patrimony or the farm
which he has bought, seeking nothing beyond. Nor does
what has been said apply to Manitoba, and the recent
settlements of the North- West. There all alike are new-
comers, and no one has to encounter any jealousy or pre-
judice whatever.

Lord Durham said in his famous Eeport on Canada:
" There is one consideration in particular which has occurred
to every observant traveller in these our colonies, and is a
subject of loud complaint within the colonies. I allude to the
striking contrast which is presented between the American
and the British sides of the frontier line, in respect to every
sign of productive industry, increasing wealth, and progres-
sive civilisation. By describing one side, and reversing the
picture, the other would be also described." That this was so
in Lord Durham's day was not the fault of Canadian hands,
brains, or hearts. It is not the fault of Canadian hands,
brains, or hearts if the contrast, though softened, still exists
and is noticed by the stranger who passes from the southern
to the northern shore of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence,
as he compares Windsor, Hamilton, London, Kingston, and
even Toronto, with Detroit, Buffalo, Eochester, and Oswego.
The cause is the exclusion of Canada from the commercial
pale of her continent, and the result would be the same if an
equal portion of England were cut off from the rest. The
standard of living and of material civilisation is neces-
sarily higher in the wealthier country. Let the traveller

54 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

make due allowance for this if he misses 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 England, is felt in
Canada ; though it is of course not felt nearly so much in
a country where millionaires are rare as it is 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 outside party, and corrective
of its spirit. As it is, the 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 class. 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 fanners ;
the great American cities are full of Canadian clerks and men
of business, who usually make for themselves 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

in THE BRITISH PROVINCES 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
the Americans, have gone to practise as Civil Engineers
in the United States. The Benevolent and National Societies
have branches 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 in the oath for that of the 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

56 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

Ontario, while those of remote Canadian Provinces pass at
par only by special arrangement. American gold passes at
par, while silver coin is taken at a small discount : in
Winnipeg even the American nickel is part of the common
currency. The Dominion bank-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 the summer
on Canadian lakes. Canadians take American periodicals,
to which Canadian writers often contribute. They 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 phrases 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 and flag.

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 with it, has been em-
balmed not in amber, but in barley-sugar, by the writer of

in THE BRITISH PROVINCES 57

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 they
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 mining, of shipping,
and, in proportion, of lumbering. Prince Edward Island is a
farming community with rich lands, almost cut off from the
mainland in winter, insular in character, keeping in the
ancient paths, and well satisfied with itselt Nova 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 Minnesota
and Dakota. It now embraces the province of Manitoba and
the districts of Alberta, Athabasca, Assiniboia, and Saskat-
chewan, carved out of the North- West, and administered

1 Lieut. -Governor Sir Adams Archibald, Mr. Parkman, 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.

58 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 the
Hudson's Bay Company, and the field of a singular and noble
service, the members of which passed a greaTpart 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 which, 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

m THE BRITISH PROVINCES 59

vegetables are superb. The enemies of the farmer 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. Bat 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 weU. 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 flowers. In winter the glass falls 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 Minnesota, 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 fanning
would, if anywhere, have succeeded, while its success might
have been the inauguration of a new industrial and social

60 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

system. But on the Bell Farm it was tried in the ablest
hands, 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
the [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
fill up slowly, the fault lies, as will hereafter appear, not in
anything that nature has failed to do, but in things which
man has dona 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. The 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.

The immigration has been of a motley sort, and not all of
the kind which forms the best material for a new community.
The Mennonites work very hard, are thrifty, and will 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

in THE BRITISH PROVINCES 61

do. It is lucky that the idea of importing Irish and planting
them in shanties over a large district was given up. The
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 they would have 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. The jesters of
the North-West call " remittances from home " the English-
man's harvest. Of a good many the Mounted Police is the
last haven. What the North-West needs is the floating
population of the continent, farmers to the manner born. To
send East-Londoners, who have hardly seen a plough, to the
climate and the life of the North -West, is cruel kindness,
and so it has proved.

If the North-West fills up, Old Canada will be dwarfed,
and, supposing Confederation to endure, the centre of power
will shift westward, though the loss by Ottawa of all control
over the North-West is perhaps the more likely result.

British Columbia again is separated from the North-West
by a triple range of mountains, the Eockies, the Selkirks, the
Golden or Coast range, in traversing which the Pacific Eailway
proclaims the glory of Canadian science. This Province is
the Pacific slope of the mountain range, clothed with pine of
the noblest size, though not deemed equal in quality to that
of Nova Scotia, but hardly within reach of the lumberman
except on the lower fringe. Her flora is Pacific, so com-
pletely does she belong to that side of the world. Of
unwooded land British Columbia has not much, while clearing,
where the timber is so heavy, would be too costly ; but she
. has coal at Nanaimo, she has plenty of salmon for canning,

62

CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION

CHAP.

and she is understood to be very rich in minerals. There 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
though damp and raw winter. The vegetation is tropical,
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. 1
Vancouver is the leading port of British Columbian commerce.
She hopes to have a great 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. Victoria
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.

1 Canadian and American mountains have often names too prosaic.
Peaks, instead of being called, like Swiss peaks, the Storm peak, the Silver
peak, the Peak of Thunder, the Maiden, are called after railway directors
and politicans.

i

in THE BRITISH PROVINCES 63

It is in the North- West and in British Columbia that the
Bed Indian is now chiefly to be seen ; for among those on the
Eastern Keserves 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 subsistence. Little will be lost by
humanity. The Eed Indian has the wonderful powers of
enduring hunger and fatigue which 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 the aborginal
man in North America. His blood is not on the head of the
British Government, which has always treated him with
humanity and justice.

CHAPTEE IV

FRENCH CANADA BEFORE THE CONQUEST 1

Jacques Gartier, though venerated as the founder of the
French Colony, was only 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 (1603-35),
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 Eeformation 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 Eeformed faith, and though he ultimately became

1 The principal sources of this and the following historical sketch, besides
the Relations des Jesuites and Le Clercq's L fistablissement de la Foi, are Mr.
Parkman's narratives, and the histories of Garneau, Christie, Miles, MacMullen,
and Kingsford, with Cavendish's Debates in the British House of Commons,
in 1774.

chap., iv FRENCH CANADA BEFORE THE CONQUEST 65

connected with the Jesuits, had fought for Henry IV, and
must therefore have belonged to the more liberal and patriotic
party of Eoman 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 perhaps how the tide was running in France and
guessing what was in store, when his protection should have
been withdrawn, for the party to which he had belonged.
Had 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 belong. French writers look back with a wistful
eye to the glory that might have been. As it was, Quebec,
with France herself and everything belonging to her, fell into
the hands of the Catholic Eeaction, and of its incarnation and
apostle the Jesuit. The Jesuit of course devoutly excluded
the Huguenot, carefully searching vessels lest they 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

F

66 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

" Eelations," written by themselves and published in France,
for the purpose of exalting the name of the Order, exciting
sympathy with it, and opening the purses of the devout, all
of which purposes, not excepting the last, they effectually
served. Nor is it possible to put unreserved confidence in
the narratives of men the most sensible of whom lived in an
atmosphere of miracle, divine and diabolical, saw demons
aiming darts at them, received supernatural warnings, and
beheld fiery crosses traversing the sky. Yet there can be no
doubt that Jesuitism had in New France its heroes and its
martyrs. It had martyrs who, with a fortitude which
nothing but sincere enthusiasm could have sustained, braved
the perils and hardships of the wilderness, endured the worse
horrors of life in the Indian hut, and underwent without
flinching at the hands of the Iroquois tortures equal phy-
sically at least to those which their European brethren were
inflicting, or causing to be inflicted, on heretics in the dungeons
of the Inquisition. These were at all events victories of the
higher over the lower man. It was certain that the Order
would draw into it at first some pure enthusiasts; and
it was likely that these would wish to go, and would by the
policy of the Order be sent, rather to the missionary field
than to that of European propagandism and intrigue.
Jesuitism is redeemed by its missionary element imper-
sonated in Xavier and Brebceuf. It "was their own version of
Christianity of course that the Sons of Loyola taught. Perhaps
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 which were presented to
them, the Indian might see his own practices ascribed to the
Supreme Being. An Indian woman whom the Fathers were

iv FRENCH CANADA BEFORE THE CONQUEST 67

trying to convert, refused to be sent to Heaven when they
had told her that her dead children were in HelL Nor can
their philosophic eulogist forbear smiling at the frivolity, not
to say fetichism, of some of their religious ideas and practices.
The missionaries are always looking out with peculiar eager-
ness for dying children whom, by baptism, in the furtive
administration of which rather equivocal stratagems are
sometimes employed, they send, as they think, straight from
Hell to Paradise. Their thaumaturgy might justify the
Indian in calling them, as he did, the French medicine men.
In spite of all the self-devotion of the Fathers and all
their heroism, their missions came almost to naught. They
had the misfortune to be confronted by the Iroquois, of all
Eed Indians and of all savages the most valiant, the most
politic, and the most fiendish. Chaniplain . by allying himself
with the Huron enemies of the Iroquois, rashly stirred the
terrible swarm: By the Iroquois the Hurons, among whom
the Jesuits had planted their missionaries and made converts,
were overthrown, and in 1649 utterly destroyed. To a Huron
it naturally appeared hard that this should be the reward of
allegiance to the true God ; nor does it seem impossible that
by the change the convert may have lost something of the
warlike character necessary to save him in the ruthless
struggle for existence. A few of the Iroquois themselves
were afterwards converted, and the descendants of such con-
verts, under the name of the Caughnawagas, steer the tourist
down the Lachine rapids to Montreal. Mr. Parkman gives
the Jesuit credit for having by contact softened the manners
of the Indians generally; but this seems hardly consistent
with his own statements that the Fathers connived at the
torture of prisoners by their Indian converts, and that when
the Jesuits had become, as in course of time they did, more

68 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

political than missionary, the converts were launched in
scalping parties against the colonists of New England.

The palm of religious heroism must be shared by the
Jesuits with the Ursulines. The " Eelations " of the Jesuits
had fired 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 the money and the labour were sorely required for
other purposes by a settlement feebly struggling for existence.
Marie de Tlncarnation 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 efforts 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 ecclesiastical
shepherd. But human sheep are not colonial pioneers. Nor
was the ascetic view of the world or the palm held out to
self-torturing saintship 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, moreover, it
was necessary that the temporal and spiritual powers should
be united in the hands of the priest. To bring 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 the result was that petitions were sent
to France praying u 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 which 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 afford to lose. These fled from
it to the free life of the forest, and became as bushrangers the
perpetual scandal of the Government. A genuine and great
service was done by the priests in opposing the brandy trade,
which was playing havoc among the Indians, and we need
not regard the insinuation of a governor with whom they had
quarrelled, that they wished themselves to engross the profits

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
Maisonneuve, whose figure belongs to the same group as that
of Champlain, 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 sneer of incredulity Montreal
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 Eelations, 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. Eichelieu,

> 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 whoUy 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-Sali&res was sent out in 1665 and
repressed the Iroquois, while a not less potent agency in the
salvation of the Settlement was the advent, as governor, ol
Frontenac, the Clive of Quebec. By the side of the plumed
governor, who, 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
Eoyal 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 chief, he did all that could be done under the radir
cally false system of monopoly and protectionism to animate

72 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

and foster trade. To recruit the population, which 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, that 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 censitaires, 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 officer, and the criminal jurisdiction of
the seignior was very small. Some of the feudal incidents,
such as the obligation 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 habitant. The colony was also en-
dowed with a noblesse formed out of rather sorry materials,
such as the disbanded officers of the Carignan regiment and
plebeian settlers whose vanity led them to buy social
rank. The result, as plainly appears and might have
baen 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
(he 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.

iv FRENCH CANADA BEFORE THE CONQUEST 73

The Supreme Council which was instituted at this time
(1663), and ousted the Commercial Company from all polit-
ical power, was only another name for the rule of the Eoyal
Governor, of the Intendant, and in matters ecclesiastical of
the Bishop. 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 hope 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 expression 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. Eelations were somewhat
strained between the representatives of the Eoyal power and
the head of the Church, Bishop Laval. This prelate, whose
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 that 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

74 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION ch±1>.

between them. 1 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 day. 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 curis 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 2 — with other like ordinances, produced the same sort
of results which similar policy, pursued by men 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

1 See Parkman's Old Regime in Canada, p. 166, where the Jesuit Father
Braan is cited.

2 Parkman's Old BAgime, p. 290.

iv FRENCH CANADA BEFORE THE CONQUEST 75

in these by the creation of a forced market in 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 consequently
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 regulation that at
one time the company destroyed three-fourths of the stock on
their hands to avert a glut. In the fur trade, however, was
such life as the colony had apart from the activity of the
clergy. Into this were drawn all those who preferred 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 civilisation, lived
with the Indians, intermarried with them, learned Indian
habits, became more than half Indians themselves, and some-
times were made chiefs of Indian tribes. They took to war-
paint and feathers. They took even to scalping, and were in
consequence treated by Wolfe as out of the laws 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 New Englander than they were
inferior to him in industry, commerce, and the qualities
requisite for building up a commonwealth. To the Jesuit

7fl CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION ohap.

missionaries, too, is due the credit of wonderful exploration,
notably on the Upper Lakes. It was natural also that in the
magnificence of their schemes, military and territorial, the
French should have the pre-eminence. With no other basis
than a settlement of a few thousands of people on the St.
Lawrence they aspired to the extension of their Empire by &
chain of military posts westward to the Mississippi and down
its whole course to New Orleans. In their vaulting ambition
the men of New France were true Frenchmen.

Supposing 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 Regency, Pompadour
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
i i] .posed their settling in New France. But the Huguenot was
now extinet ; 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 FRENCH CANADA BEFORE THE CONQUEST 77

small peril. These men, no doubt, after the downfall of
asceticism, kept alive such religion and such morality as there
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, appear by their
united agencies of corruption to have morally ruined the
Northern 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 the 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 war. 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 Bed Indian. The New Eng-
enders, 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 Hangers. The first capture of Louisbourg by a
Colonial army supported only by a British fleet was a stroke
of luck, due to the mutinous state of the garrison and the
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 was

78 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

very hard to bring each colony to take ita part in any
common enterprise or furnish its contingent to any common
force. The French, on the other hand, were united under
the absolute command of the Royal 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 were in population
and in wealth, the English colonies might have been lost
had they not been united, as far as they were capable of
union, and supported by their mother country. As soon as
her arm, after a long and desperate struggle, had laid low
their formidable rival and assured their safety, 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. Parkman 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 the New World and its hopes,

iv FRENCH CANADA BEFORE THE CONQUEST 79

stands the monument raised by the victor to the joint memory
of Wolfe and Montcalm. The warlike aristocracy of France
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. Mr. Parktnan says: "A happier calamity never
befell a people than the conquest of Canada by the British
arms."

CHAPTEE V

FRENCH CANADA AFTER THE CONQUEST (1759)

Quebec had 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 Bevolution, 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

chap, v FRENCH CANADA AFTER THE CONQUEST 81

of her supreme effort on behalf of her American colonists
would be their secession. Mr. Samuel Adams and the rest
of the Boston counterparts of Wilkes and Home Tooke, who
fomented the quarrel till it became revolution and civil war,
should have had a little patience and waited till Quebec
had been not only conquered but made English. To make
her English as she then was would not have been hard.
Her French inhabitants of the upper class, had, for the
most part, quitted her after the conquest and sailed with
their property for France. There remained only 70,000
peasants, to whom their language was not so dear as it was
to a member of the Institute, who knew not the difference
between codes so long as they got justice, and among whom,
harsh and abrupt change being avoided, the British tongue
and law might have been gradually and painlessly introduced

While the war lasted, and for a short time afterwards, the
government was military, and the ultimate policy of the
British Government with regard to the conquered Province
was in suspense. That the government should at first be
military was inevitable, and French writers who speak of this
with indignation must remember what was the conduct of
the House of Bourbon or of the French Eepublic 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

82 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

to till their farms. Their religion had been respected to a
greater extent even than was 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. Bourbon despotism and corruption had departed.
Instead of arbitrary tribunals, trial by jury had been intro-
duced, though the habitant 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, murder,
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 Protest-
ant 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

v FRENCH CANADA AFTER THE CONQUEST 83

their chief, the Bishop of Quebec, exhorted his people to be
true to British allegiance and repel the American invaders.
To . the blandishments of Franklin and his coadjutors the
priests replied that Great Britain had kept her faith, preserved

*

to the 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. 1
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 behaviour 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 QuebecJ
The settlement embodied in the Quebec Act, framed by Lore}
North'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 Elective
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-

1 Garneau's History of Canada, Bell's edition, vol. ii, p. 148.

84 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

British by Chatham almost with hie last breath. It was
opposed also by Burke, but not ou the ground of hostility to
the Roman Catholic religion. " There is," said Burke, " but
one healing, Catholic 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 and 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 upon
the people of Canada as coming by the dispensation of God
under the British government. I would have us govern 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 suffer 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 nationaKty presented, that
the British Government had to deal After the Conquest 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 Revolution, and full at
once of extreme British feeling and of wounded pride. These

v FRENCH CANADA AFTER THE CONQUEST 85

men aspired to being an oligarchy of conquest. At the same
time they thought that they ought to carry' the British Con-
stitution, with all the liberties and privileges which it gave
them, on the soles of their feet. Both as a limit to their
ascendency, and as a curtailment. of their British freedom, the
Quebec Act was hateful to them, and they laboured vehe-
mently, with all the engines which they could command
at home, for its repeal. So far they succeeded that Habeas
Corpus was restored. The troubles which lasted till 1841
had now begun.

In 1791 came, with the progress of the French Eevolution,
another crisis of opinion in England, and in connection with it
a resettlement of Quebec. The political date of the discussion
is marked by the quarrel between Burke and Fox. Pitt now
laid his hand to the work. His plan for putting an end to
the strife between the conquering and the conquered race
was separation. He divided Canada into two provinces —
Lower Canada for the French and Upper Canada for the
British, many of whom had fled to those wilds from the
United States after the revolutionary war. This policy was
appitoved by Burke. " For us to attempt," said Burke, " to
amalgamate two populations composed of races of men diverse
in language, laws, and habitudes, is a complete absurdity.
Let the proposed constitution be founded on man's nature,
the only solid basis for an enduring government." Pitt was
scarcely acting in harmony with this oracle when he bestowed
on the French as well as on the British Province an exact
counterpart, or what was supposed to be an exact counter-
part, of the British Constitution. Each Province was to have,
besides the Governor who represented the Crown, a legislative
council nominated by the Crown to represent the House of
Lords, and an Assembly elected by the people to represent

86 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

the House of Commons. The Governor was furnished with
an Executive Council, the counterpart of the Privy Council,
at least as the Privy Council was in the days when it really
advised the sovereign, not of the modern Cabinet. Of the
extension of the Cabinet system to a dependency nobody then
dreamed. It was assumed that the Crown would govern
through its representative, and shape its own policy with the
aid of ministers chosen by itself, much as it had in Tudor
England, though with a general regard for the wants and wishes
of the people signified through their representatives in an
Assembly. The whole British polity, civil and ecclesiastical,
was to be reproduced. Provision was made for an aristocracy
by empowering the Crown to annex hereditary seats in the
Upper House to titles of nobility. Provision was also made
for a Church Establishment by setting apart an eighth, or, as
the Church construed the Act, a seventh, of the Crown lands
as Clergy Eeserves. The genius of the New World repelled
from the outset the attempt to introduce aristocracy made by
Pitt, as it had, though not so decisively, repelled the similar
attempt made by Louis XIV. The attempt to introduce a
Church Establishment took more effect, and was destined to
be the cause of much trouble. The Test Act being declared
not to extend to Canada, both Houses of the Legislature and
all the offices were thrown open to Eoman Catholics. Pitt
thus carried what it might have been hoped would prove the
first instalment of Catholic Emancipation. Prejudice against
the Eoman Catholic Church had yielded, even in the breasts
of British Tories, to the hatred of the common enemy, the
Atheist Eevolution, while to aristocracy the French signiories
became more congenial than ever. In the British Province
British law, both civil and criminal, was established ; in the
French Province was established the criminal law of England

r

T FRENCH CANADA AFTER THE CONQUEST 87

with the civil law of France, based on the custom of Paris.
By giving up Lower Canada to the French and to French law,
the Act of 1791 finally decided that French nationality
should be preserved, and that British civilisation should not
take its place. Thenceforth England brooded like a mis-
guided mother-bird upon an egg from which, by a painful
and dangerous process, she was to hatch a French Canadian j
nation. New France would soon have been cut off from her '
mother country by the Eevolution and the war which
followed. From the rest of the continent she was cut off by
race, language, and religion. She would in all probability
have come to naught had she not been placed under the aegis
of conquerors powerful enough to protect her nationality and
constrained to protect it by their fears.

Pitt's policy missed its mark. The two races were not
separated by the division of the Province. The British still
clung to the trade of Quebec, which their commercial energy
had begun to develop, and still struggled to maintain their
political ascendency over the conquered race. Their strong-
holds were in the Executive, in the Legislative Council
appointed by the Crown, and in Downing Street, to which
they had almost exclusive access. The stronghold of French
patriotism was the elective Assembly, in which the French
soon had a large majority. The French did not at first care
for free institutions, nor were they fit for them : an autocratic
governor ruling them justly, sympathetically, and economi-
cally, would have suited them much better than any parlia-
ment. Neither their priesthood nor their seigniors liked
anything of a republican cast. But they grasped the votes
which Imperial legislation had put into their hands as
weapons to be used for the protection of their nationality
and for the overthrow of the oligarchy of Conquest. The

88 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

situation was much the same that it would have been in
Ireland had the Catholic Celts been admitted to Parliament
and formed a majority of the popular House, while the House
of Lords, the Castle, and the influence of the Imperial
Government had remained in the hands of a Protestant
minority. Had the demand of the French for an elective
Upper House been conceded, the British minority would, as
Lord John Eussell said at the time, have been left absolutely
at the mercy of the French. Patriot leaders soon appeared,
and oratory could not fail in a community of Frenchmen.
The English had brought with them the Press. To combat
British journalism French journalism soon started into life,
and, among the French who could read, became an organ of
perpetual agitation. The battle-fields were the control of the
revenue and the civil list, the composition of the Legisla-
tive Council (which the patriots desired to make elective
that they might fill it with men of their own party), and
the tenure of the judges, whom they wished to make
irremovable, like the judges in England, in order to dim-
inish the power of the Crown, besides minor and per-
sonal questions about which party feelings were aroused.
Controversies about the land law also arose and set the
seigniorial patriots among the French somewhat at cross
purposes with the patriots pure and simple. The commer-

( cial interest, which was entirely British, clashed with the
agricultural interest, which was mainly French. There was

1 constant strife between the Upper Chamber, which was in the
hands of the British, who filled it with placemen, and the
Lower Chamber, which was in the hands of the French ; the
Upper Chamber perpetually putting its veto upon the legisla-
tion of the Lower Chamber. The French, untrained in English
constitutional government, went beyond the bounds of con-

v FRENCH CANADA AFTER THE CONQUEST 89

stitutional opposition. Gallic temper often broke out, and
governors, struggling painfully to maintain their authority,
and at the same time to pour oil upon the waters, became the
objects of fiery remonstrance, sometimes even of insult thinly
veiled. The Home Government, looking on from afar, in the
days before steam communication and ocean telegraphs, knew
not what to make of the fray or how to deal with it. Its
own policy was not clearly defined, nor did it know whether
it meant really to bestow Parliamentary government on a
dependency or not. So far was it from understanding the
situation that in 1839 we find Lord Durham informing it,
with the pomp of a momentous revelation, that the conflict
in French Canada was one not of political opinion but of
race. 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 martinet like Haldimand, now a reactionary aristo-
crat like the Duke of Eichmond, anon a conciliator like
Prevost or Gosford. 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 British 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 Province 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
Fitzgibbon. 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

90 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

Home Government. As the net result, a loyal though liberal
I historian has to say that " the government of Canada was one
i 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 enmity between it and the French
majority was aggravated by the settlement in the district
south of the St. Lawrence, called the Eastern Townships, of a
colony of English farmers whose improved and energetic
cultivation presented a contrast to the slovenly agriculture of
the French. 1 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 the 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 the 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

1 See Lord Durham's Report.

v FRENCH CANADA AFTER THE CONQUEST 91

no laws but those of our own making. All these advantages
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 with the
French Church. The 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 Revolutionary 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. 1

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 Republicanism. The priests, though
they might have less reason than before to dread the in-
tolerance of Puritanism, had been set more than ever against

1 Garneau's History, vol. ii, p. 225.

•f

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 British 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
Kepublican 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 natter 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
British 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 hfer pro-
tection a nationality separate from the United States, and
perhaps a theocracy untouched by Eepublican 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

v FRENCH CANADA AFTER THE CONQUEST 93

formation of the British Empire, and when Eussian invasion
threatened, all the feudatories came forward of their own
accord with contributions to the 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 British, 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 British
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 Roi 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 onec more broken

94 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

loose in France, and the infection had spread to some of the
French leaders and to some active spirits among the young
lawyers and journalists. A few of the British in Low:er
Canada were also touched by it and joined the French patriots
against their own race. Though there had been 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. Eesolutions in the
sense of the Eeport were moved by Lord John Eussell in the
House of Commons and carried in spite of the opposition of

v FRENCH CANADA AFTER THE CONQUEST 95

Eoebuck, Molesworth, and other Eadicals 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 British 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

96 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

been to enable them 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 illiberal 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 sufficiently 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 British fleets and armies had been withdrawn from
them ? The possession of this dreary 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 to defend what is indefensible, and to retain what is
not worth having."

v FRENCH CANADA AFTER THE CONQUEST 97

" This dreary corner of the world " may be relegated to
oblivion with Voltaire's guelques arpents de neige. 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 struggle
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 vanquished 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 when
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. Eather they are to be admired for
their patriotic constancy and the steadiness with which 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 which
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 the
present day, though kindly enough in its feelings towards
Great Britain, is not a British colony, but a little French/
nation.

CHAPTEE 'VI

HISTORY OF UPPER CANADA 1

Had the Americans been as wise and merciful after their first
as they were after their second civil war, and closed the strife
as all civil strife ought to be closed — with an amnesty —
British Canada would never have come into existence. It
was founded by the Loyalists driven by revolutionary
vengeance from their homes, who at the same time settled 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 presumptively bound to fight
for the government under which they were born, to which
they owed allegiance, and which as they thought gave them
the substantial benefits of freedom. They had 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-

1 The chief sources of this historical sketch are MacMullen's Canada,
Read's Life of Simcoe, Coffin's War of 1812, Sir Francis Bond Head's
Narrative, Mr. Lindsey's Life of W. Lyon Mackenzie, Dent's Upper Canadian
Rebellion, and Lord Durham's Report.

ohap. vi HISTORY OF UPPER CANADA 99

tionary leaders, including Samuel Adams, the principal
fomentor of the quarrel. The constitutional means of redress
Tiad not been exhausted, nor was there any reason to despair
of obtaining a repeal of the Tea Duty as a repeal of the
Stamp Tax had been obtained. A group of Boston
republicans, who had been bent from the first, notwithstanding
their disclaimers, on bringing about independence, laboured
to excite the people and prevent reconciliation. The in-
telligence and property of the colonies, the bulk of it at
least, had been on the loyalist side till it was repelled by the
blundering violence of the government and its generals ; nor
would it have been possible to fix upon a point at which the
normal rule of civil duty was reversed and fidelity to the
Crown became treason to 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 ; x otherwise she might have
listened to counsels of wisdom 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 the 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 represent the Privy Council ; a Legisla-
tive Council nominated by the Crown to represent the House

1 Besides protecting the Loyalists in their new home, England voted
£3,300,000 to indemnify them for their lost estates.

100 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

of Lords ; and an Elective Assembly to represent the House
of Commons. This 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 Britain
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-
holding supplies, because the Crown, with very limited needs,
had revenues, territorial and casual, of its own. Thus the
f 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. Simcoe 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

vi HISTORY OF UPPER CANADA 101

him. But the 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 Government and cut
short his useful career. As colonel of the Queen's Eangers
in the revolutionary war he had served the Crown gallantly,
and at the same time had commanded the respect of his
opponents. His character 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 EoyaJist 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 Due de Eochefoucauld 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 which 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.

102 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

At Niagara, then the capital, in a log-house which De
Liancourt describes as small and miserable, but which if it
were now standing would be venerated by Ontario as much
as Eome venerated the hut of Eomulus, 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 beneficence 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 harvest 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, they 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 the shore of Lake Ontario and down the St.
Lawrence. It was not easy, as Simcoe found, to get a Par-
liament together iu 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

vi HISTORY OF UPPER CANADA 103

life's partnership of toil and endurance, the pioneer and his wife
rest side by side. " The backwoodsman," says history, 1 " whose
fortunes are cast in the remote inland settlements of the pre-
sent day, far removed from churches, destitute of ministers
of the Gospel and medical men, without schools, or roads,
or the many conveniences that make life desirable, can alone
appreciate or even understand the numerous difficulties and
hardships that beset the first settler among the ague-swamps
of Western Canada. The clothes on his back, with a rifle or
old musket and a well- tempered axe, were not unfrequently
the full extent of his worldly possessions. Thus lightly
equipped he took possession of his two hundred acres of
closely-timbered 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 they 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

1 MacMullen's Canada, p. 232.

104 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION ohap.

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 earth, 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, 1 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 country 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 Eoyal 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.

vi HISTORY OF UPPER CANADA 105

dishonour. 1 Neither British Canada nor French Canada in
British hands ever had an Intendant Bigot. The errors and
misdeeds 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 hands of the dominant
clique. The Home Government, from which they took their
orders, was if possible more ignorant than they were, and its
councils changed with every change of a party administration.
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 communities 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 in 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 the end.

The colony was filling up with settlers from different
quarters. There came in, besides Englishmen, Scotchmen
who brought Presbyterianism and usually Liberal ideas with
them, Americans who had lived under a Eepublic, and Irish-
men, both Orange and Green. 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 Eepublic could

1 Peter Russell, who acted as administrator between the governorships of
Simcoe and Hunter, appears to have disgraced himself by rapacity in the
matter of Crown lands. Parting presents to Governors were questionable, but
probably had not been condemned in those days. No charge of actual cor-
ruption was ever made against a Royal Governor.

106 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

iiot 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. Eeformers arose. Eeform 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 the 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-

vi HISTORY OF UPPER CANADA 107

in-amis, including the Indian chief Tecumseh, were endeared
by heroic exploits to the country which they successfully
defended against tremendous odds. The first invader,
General Hull, and his army capitulated to a Canadian force
not half their number, and the Canadians conquered Michi-
gan. On Queenston Heights, the scene of Brock's death
and his army'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 Napoleon had fallen,
the hands of Great 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

108 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

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 had 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 the
schism of the Anglo-Saxon race. Before that time British
Canadians and Americans had hardly looked upon each
other as foreigners. Americans had freely settled and been
received as citizens in British 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
his companions -in -arms, whose glory they sully by such
misuse. 1

The 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 Beform Party was born. It had
reason enough for its existence. The Government with all

1 Injustice has been done to the memory of General Proctor, whose name
seems worthy to be coupled with that of Brock. He gained one brilliant
victory. It appears to be admitted that his retreat before Harrison's
immensely 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,
there seems to be no shadow of a pretence for charging him with personal
misconduct. The court-martial expressly acquitted him of any charge of
that kind. His name was coupled with a misfortune, which was not hiB
fault, and he seems not to have been popular in command ; but there is
apparently nothing to justify an impeachment of his courage.

vi HISTORY OF UPPER CANADA 109

its patronage and influence, including the disposal of the
Crown lands, had fallen into the hands of a Ring 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 number 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 Govern-
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 all 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

110 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

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
Chartered Banks, and at last shared among themselves almost
all offices of trust and profit. 1 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 certainly 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." 2 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 his side was Dr. Strachan,
Archdeacon and afterwards Bishop of Toronto, a clerical

1 Lord Durham's Report, p. 66. s Ibid., p. 74.

vi HISTORY OF UPPER CANADA 111

aspirant who had passed from Presbyterianism to Angli-
canism, as was generally believed, with a view to the
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 interests he fought than
to the State. Beside the Family Compact there was gradu-
ally formed a Conservative party, in which the 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. Bolph, 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

112 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

revenue and the civil list, besides a number of personal
questions, such as always present themselves in the heat
of party war. Among all the special subjects of controversy
most stir was made by the Clergy Eeserves. Pitt, as
we have seen, had set apart an eighth, or, according to the
clerical interpretation, a seventh of every land grant " for the
support of a Protestant clergy." This, by tying up blocks of
land all over the country and standing in the \fray of close
settlement, created an economical grievance, besides the
jealousy excited by the favour shown to a particular Church,
and a Church which, looking down upon all her sisters, treated
their members as dissenters. To complicate the question, the
term " Protestant clergy " was ambiguous. The Presbyterians,
then equal in number to the Anglicans, claimed a share on
the ground that their Church in Scotland was recognised by
the State ; the other Churches not Roman Catholic claimed
a share on the ground that they also were Protestant, while
thorough -going Eeformers and Boman Catholics united in
demanding complete secularisation. But all the special
grievances and demands of the Eeformers were summed
up and merged in their demand for "Responsible Govern-
ment." By Responsible Government they meant that the
government should be carried on, not by an Executive
nominated by the Governor and independent of the vote of
Parliament, but, as in England, by a Cabinet dependent for its
tenure of office on the vote of the Commons. They meant, in
short, that supreme power should be transferred from the
Crown to the representatives of the people. It was nothing
less than a revolution for which they called under a mild
and constitutional name. Mackenzie, who had for some
time been spitting fire through his journal, having been
borne into the Assembly on the shoulders of the people, the

vi HISTORY OF UPPER CANADA 118

battle began in earnest, and with all the bitterness which his
tongue could lend to it. The oligarchy from the outset
defended itself furiously with every weapon at its command.
It had before harried Gourlay — a benevolent and inquiring
Scotchman who came among its lieges taking notes and
printing them — out of his mind. It had persecuted the elder
Bidwell under an Alien Act. It shut up Collins, another
patriot, in gaol on a charge of libel. It now, having a
majority in the Assembly, five times lawlessly expelled
Mackenzie and still more lawlessly voted him incapable of
re-election. The hot-blooded youths of the oligarchy were
hurried into actual outrage : they wrecked Mackenzie's
printing press, and the party paid the fine by subscription.
The Governors during this period were two soldiers, Sir
Peregrine Maitland and Sir John Colborne, neither of whom
understood politics. Sir Peregrine was weakly subservient
to the oligarchy, and he got himself into a scrape by using
military force in a civil case. Sir John Colborne was a strong
and upright man as well as a good soldier, and was by no
means inclined to wink at abuses; but he had a military
leaning to prerogative, deemed it his duty to hold the fortress
for the Crown, and was eminently devoid of popular arts.
His gracious reply to an Address was, "I receive your
Address with much satisfaction and thank you for your
congratulations." His less gracious and more succinct form
was, " Gentlemen, I have received the petition of the inhabit-
ants." He welcomed a patriotic deputation with artillerymen
standing to their guns and troops served with a double allow-
ance of ball-cartridge. Mackenzie went to England, showing
thereby, as in fact did the Eeformers generally, that they
did not regard the Home Government as wilfully oppressive,
but the reverse, though it might be sadly misinformed. In

I

114 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

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 flow. 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
Godericb 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 affairs; 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 Eeformers
with Mackenzie at their head was respectfully considered,
and a reply was written promising important reforms
and concessions, though not the one great concession, Ee-
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,

vi HISTORY OF UPPER CANADA 115

however, he set the house on fire by authorising the creation
of fifty-seven Kectories out of the disputed Clergy Keserves
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
effect to the new policy, which the Colonial Office made was so
strange that to account for it recourse has seriously been had
to the hypothesis of mistaken identity. 1 Sir Francis Bond
Head, a half-pay major, an assistant Poor-Law commissioner,
the hero of a famous ride over the Pampas, 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

1 The story told by Mr. Roebuck and others to Sir Francis Hincks 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 commissionership, when he came forward as a
public man. If 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.

116 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

wanting in discernment or in force ; he did a great service by
forbidding the Canadian Banks to suspend specie payment
in a commercial crisis, and inducing them to ride out, at a
sound anchorage, the financial storm which was sweeping
over the United States. But he was very impulsive, very-
vain, and under the influence of success became light-headed.
Joseph Hume and other Liberals commended him to their
brethren in Canada, perhaps taking on trust the nominee of
a Liberal government. He brought with him as the chart for
his course Mackenzie's catalogue of grievances, with Lord
Glenelg's commentary promising, as has already been said,
practical reforms and an administration in accordance with
the reasonable wishes of the people, but not promising
Eesponsible 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 Governor 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 March 1837 Lord John
Russell, speaking in the 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

vi HISTORY OF UPPER CANADA 117

Bond Head to Responsible Government. Glenelg himself
was verbose and ambiguous, but the upshot of his mandate
was that " in the administration of Canadian affairs a sufficient
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 foot of the throne, whose occupant (then
King William IV) "felt the most lively interest in the
welfare of his Canadian subjects, and was ever ready to devote
. pW and laborio., 1*. to a» 7 r.preL.tas."
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 thought to politics, who had scarcely ever voted at
an election. By the Reformers he was received with glad
expectation, by the Conservatives with sullen misgiving ; but
both parties soon found themselves mistaken, * He 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 Reformers, Mackenzie
and Bidwell. In them he thought he detected designs
reaching beyond the redress of the particular grievances
which they had laid before the Colonial Office — Republican
designs in short, such as he deemed it his special vocation 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 representatives 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.

118 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

" 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
Eesponsible Government as democratic, American, and sub-
versive of British institutions. This he now deemed his
grand mission. Hard hitting ensued between him and the
Eeformers 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 and freedom from the baneful
domination of the mother country." These mistakes threw
the force of the Conservative party decisively into the scale of
the Government. Loyal addresses came in. The Lieutenant-
Governor seized the advantage and went to the country crying
Treason. The cry prevailed, with the help of Government
influence unsparingly used, corruption, 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 heavier I am 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 main 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 wax was for some time
kept up by the American " sympathisers " along the border,
and the burning 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 there is no reason to
believe that the American people in general strongly sym-
pathised with the rebellion in British 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

120 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap, ti

to diplomacy about the Fisheries and Behring'g Sea, as so
many blind efforts of the New World to shake off European
interference.

On the other hand, when it is said that 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 person
nor her Government, but against Colonial misgovernment,"
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.

'['he 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.

CHAPTEE VII

THE UNITED PKOVINCES 1

Lord Durham was a splendid specimen of the aristocratic
man of the people, such as perhaps only the Whig houses,
after being out of office for half a century, could have 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
should return. This delivered him into the hands of
Brougham, who bore him a grudge, and at once set upon him
in the House of Lords, pointing out that His Excellency's
ordinance could not be carried into effect without committing
murder. The Prime Minister was compelled to disallow the
ordinance. Durham after thundering very irregularly against
the ungrateful Government which had thrown him overboard,
flung up his commission, folded his tragic robe round him,
and went home. He had time, however, to produce, with the

1 The principal sources of this sketch, besides a number of pamphlets and
State papers, are MacMullen's History of Canada, Scrope's Life of Lord Syden-
ham, Walrond's Letters and Journals of Lord Elgin, Dent's Last Forty Tears,
Collins'8 Life of Sir J. A. Macdonald, and Gray's Confederation of Canada.

122 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

help of Charles Buller, who was his secretary, a very able and
memorable Keport (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 Eesponsible Government.
In Lower Canada the two races, Durham held, would never
get on harmoniously by themselves. The causes of estrange-
ment were too deep and the antipathy was too strong. The
British minority would never bear to be ruled by a French
majority. Rather than this they would join the United
States, and "that they might remain English, cease to be
British. ,, Of fusion, according to Lord Durham, there was
no hope. Opposed to each other in religion, in language, in
character, in ideas, in national sentiment, hardly ever inter-
marrying, their children never taking part in the same sports,
meeting in the jury-box only to obstruct justice, the two
races were " two nations warring in the bosom of a single
State." The rebellion had divided them sharply into two
camps. "No portion of the English population had been
backward in taking arms in defence of the government ; with
a single exception no portion of the Canadian population was
allowed to do so, even where it was asserted by some that
their loyalty induced them thereto." There was nothing for
it but a union of the Provinces, in which a British majority
should permanently predominate, and which should place
the British minority of the Lower Province under the broad
aegis of British ascendency. Durham flattered himself that
by the same measure French nationality with all the
political difficulties, and all the obstacles to economical
improvement which it carried with it, would be gradually
suppressed. " A plan," he said, " by which it is proposed to

vii THE UNITED PROVINCES 123

ensure the tranquil government of Lower Canada must
include in itself the means of putting an end to the agitation
of national disputes in the legislature by settling at once and
for ever the national character of the Province. I entertain
no doubt as to the national character which must be given
to Lower Canada ; it must be that of the British Empire,
that of the majority of the population of British America,
that of the great race which must in no long period of time
be predominant over the whole North American Continent.
Without effecting the change so rapidly or so roughly as to
shock the feelings and trample on the welfare of the existing
generation, it must henceforth be the first and steady purpose
of the British Government to establish an English population
with English laws and language in this Province, and to trust
its government to none but a decidedly English legislature."
Steady purpose of the British Government ! Steady purpose
of a Government which itself was changed on an average
about once in every five years, and which neither had nor
could have any purpose in reference to its far-distant and
little-known dependency but to get along from day to day
with as little trouble and danger as it could! Did not
Durham himself say, that in the case of Lower Canada the
Imperial Government, "far removed from opportunities of
personal observation, had shaped its policy so as to aggravate
the disorder;" that it had sometimes conceded mischievous
pretensions of nationality to evade popular claims, and
sometimes pursued the opposite course ; and that " a policy
founded upon imperfect information and conducted by 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 the British majority would
act patriotically together against the French. Strange that he,

124 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

fresh from the field of a furious faction fight, should have been
so forgetful of the ways of faction ! Sir Francis Bond Head
saw in this case what Lord Durham and Charles Buller did
not see. " So long," he said, " as Upper Canada remains by
itself I feel confident that by mere moderate government her
4 majority men' would find that prudence and principle
unite to keep them on the same side ; but if once we were
to amalgamate this province with Lower Canada, we should
instantly infuse into the House of General Assembly a
powerful French party, whose implacable opposition would
be a dead, or rather a living weight, always seeking to attach
itself to any question whatsoever that would attract and
decoy the 'majority men/ and I feel quite confident . . .
that sooner or later the supporters of British institutions
would find themselves overpowered, not by the good sense
and wealth of the country (for they would, I believe, always
be staunch to our flag), but by the votes of designing indi-
viduals, misrepresenting a well-meaning inoffensive people."
Apart from the writer's Toryism, this passage was prophetic
The British were sure to be split into factions, and their
factions were sure to deliver them into the hands of the
French. The only way of operating with success on two
discordant races is to set an impartial power above them
/ both, as Pitt meant to do when by his Act of Union he
brought Ireland under the Imperial Parliament, though he
could not help impairing the integrity of the Imperial 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 union, though it would
have left the British 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 PROVINCES 125

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

On the subject of Eesponsible Government the decisive
words of the Durham Report are these : " We are not now to
consider the policy of establishing representative government
in the North American colonies. That has been irrevocably
done, and the experiment of depriving the people of their
present constitutional power is not to be thought of. To
conduct the government harmoniously in accordance with its
established principles is now the business of its rulers ; and I

126 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

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

In place of Durham, the experiment was made (1839-41)
by Poulett Thomson, afterwards Lord Sydenham, a steady
man of business and a prodigious worker, imperious only in
his demands on official industry. He performed the function
of capitulation on the part of the Crown with a good grace,
and fairly smoothed the transition, though he did not escape

Vii THE UNITED PROVINCES 127

abuse. His first ministry was formed of the men whom he
found in office on his arrival, and who were Conservatives.
But these men could not accommodate themselves to the new
system. They fenced with the question of [Responsible Govern-
ment, and when they faintly affirmed the doctrine with their
lips their hearts were evidently far from it. Nor could they
fully take in the idea of a. Cabinet, or understand the mutual
responsibility of its members, the necessity for their agree-
ment, and the duty incumbent on them of resigning when
they differed vitally from their colleagues, or of going out of
office with the rest. Mr. Dominic Daly, for instance, acted
as if he deemed himself a fixture in office, whatever might be
the fleeting policy of the hour. Mr. Draper, the Ajax of the
Conservatives, being pressed on the vital point, enveloped
himself in a cloud of words, and said " that he looked upon
the Governor as having a mixed character ; firstly, as being
the representative of Eoyalty ; and secondly, as being one of
the Ministers of Her Majesty's Government and responsible
to the mother country for the faithful discharge of the duties
of his station, a responsibility which he cannot avoid by
saying that he took the advice of this man or of that man."
The Assembly, however, was not to be hoodwinked, nor was
it to be appalled by the assertion, however unquestionably
true, that by the acceptance of the new principle "the
Governor would be reduced to a cipher, and that such a
system would make the colony an independent state." It
passed resolutions (1841) which affirmed plainly, though in
Blackstonian phrase, that in all colonial affairs the Governor
must be ruled by his advisers, that his advisers must be
assigned him by the Assembly, and that the policy must be
that of the majority. The men of the old dispensation had
presently to retire and to make way for a ministry which had

128 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION cha*.

for its head Robert Baldwin the Eeformer with whom
was afterwards joined Lafontaine, a Frenchman who had
been the political associate of Papineau though he himself
just stopped short of rebellion. Even Dr. Eolph, the Upper
Canadian rebel and exile, ultimately found a place in a
Reform Government.

All however was not yet over. The advent of Peel to
power in 1841 had placed the Colonial Office once more in
Conservative hands. Sir Charles Bagot, the first Governor
appointed by the Conservatives, was a life-long Tory, but a
well-bred and placid gentleman, who accepted with grace his
constitutional position of figurehead, dispensed hospitality
to politicians of all parties, and turned his energies to the
encouragement of practical improvements, such as making
roads, and to the laying of first stones, now one of the chief
functions of British Royalty. But his conduct did not give
satisfaction to Tories either in the colony or at home. Lord
Stanley, the Colonial Secretary in Peel's second Ministry, by
no means acquiesced in the view that his representative
should be a cipher and the colony an independent State.
Stanley's appointment was Lord Metcalfe (1843-5), a man of
the highest eminence in the East Indian service, who in
Hindostan, and afterwards in Jamaica, had governed on the
most liberal principles, but had governed. In Canada also
he meant to govern on liberal principles, but in Canada also
he meant to govern. The East Indian official, accustomed to
administer in his own person, was shocked to find that he
was " required to give himself up entirely to the council," " to
submit absolutely to their dictation," " to have no judgment
of his own," " to be a tool in the hands of his advisers," and
" to tear up Her Majesty's Commission by publicly declaring
his adhesion to conditions including the complete nullification

vii THE UNITED PROVINCES 129

of Her Majesty's Government." Accustomed in the Indian
Civil Service, the purest in the world, to appoint his 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 resolution
affirming in effect that the prerogative of appointment, with
all the rest, had passed entirely from the Crown to the
Parliamentary Ministers, and the Ministry resigned.

The Governor, the Colonial Secretary approving his course,
formed a makeshift Ministry of the men of the old school,
and appealed from the majority to the country. The 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 Cathcart, a soldier, sent
out probably on account of the threatening aspect of the
boundary dispute with the United States. Then came Lord
Elgin (1849-54), in whom again we see the public servant of
the Empire whose only rule has been administrative duty
in contrast with the party leader and the demagogue. Elgin
was a Conservative, and was sent out by a Conservative Govern-
ment, but he was calm and wise. He accepted Responsible

E

130 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

Government, and even flattered himself that under that system
he exercised a moral influence such as would make up to the
Crown for the loss of its patronage. This, with his personal
gifts and graces, and while the system was still in the green
wood, he may possibly have done. It is more certain that he
gave an impulse to material improvements in the way of
railways, canals, and steamboats, as well as to the advance-
ment of education. In one case he accepted Eesponsible
Government with a vengeance, for he gave his assent to the
Rebellion Losses BilL The bill was denounced by the Tories
both in Canada and in the British House of Commons as a
bill for rewarding rebels ; a bill for indemnifying rebels it
undeniably was. The Tories in Canada rose, pelted the
Governor-General at Montreal with stones and rotten eggs,
put his life in some danger, and raised a mob by which
the Parliament House was burned down. Their opponents
did not fail to taunt them with their failing loyalty ; but it
must be owned that they were sorely tried, and that the
Rebellion Losses Bill was a humiliation. Such humiliations
are the lot of an Imperial country retaining its nominal
supremacy and its responsibility in a hemisphere where it
has resigned or lost all power. The Ashburton Treaty, made
some years before, cutting Maine out of Canada's side, seemed
to Canadians an instance of similar weakness on the part of
the Home Government. They made too little allowance for
the distracting liabilities of an Empire exposed to peril in
every quarter of the globe.

There was still, however, a field for which Elgin was well
suited, and in which he could act without the danger of
" falling," to use his own words, " on the one side into the
nSant 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

1846 England had out the commercial tie between herself
and her colony, and deprived the colony of its advantage in
the British market. Commercial depression in Canada
ensued. Property in the towns fell fifty per cent in value.
Three-fourths of the commercial men were bankrupt. The
State was reduced to the necessity of paying all the officers,
from the Governor-General downwards, in debentures which
were not exchangeable at par. A feeling in favour of annexa-
tion to the United States spread widely among the commer-
cial classes, and a manifesto in favour of it was signed not
only by many leading merchants, but by magistrates, Queen's
counsel, militia officers, and others holding commissions under
the Crown. Elgin himself was astonished that the discontent
did not produce an outbreak. There was, as he saw, but one
way of restoring contentment and averting disturbance. This
was " to put the colonists in as good a position commercially
as the citizens of the United States, in order to which free
navigation and reciprocal trade with the States were indis-
pensable." To this view he gave effect by going to Washing-
ton and there displaying his diplomatic skill in negotiating
the Eeciprocity Treaty, which opened up for Canada a gainful
trade, especially in her farm products, with the United States,
and was to her, during the twelve years of its continuance,
the source of a prosperity to which she still looks back with
wistful eyes. The rush of prosperity at the time turned
the head of the community, and caused over-speculation,
which led to a crisis in 1857.

The grand revolution having been accomplished, the minor
changes which were its corollaries followed in its train.
After hesitation on the part of religious Eeformers like
Lafontaine, who cherished the idea of a provision for religion,
the Clergy Keserves were secularised. The same stroke

\

132 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

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

The Upper House of the Legislature was made elective,
with the same suffrage as that of the Lower House, but with
larger constituencies, and a term of eight years. Municipal
institutions on the elective principle were given to Upper
Canada. In Lower Canada the seigniories, with all their
vexatious incidents, were swept away, not however without
compensation to the seigniors, theories of agrarian 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, and by that union were able to exercise a happy
influence on the Legislature and the Government." Instead
of being politically suppressed, they soon, thanks to their
compactness as an interest and their docile obedience to
their leaders, became politically dominant. The British
factions at once begau to bid against each other for their sup-
port, and were presently at their feet. Nothing could show
this more clearly than the Bebellion Losses Bill The statute
proscribing the use of the French language in official pro-
ceedings was repealed, and the Canadian Legislature was
made bilingual. The Premiership was divided between the
English and the French leader, and the Ministries were
designated by the double name — " the Lafontaine-Baldwin,"
or " the Macdonald-Tach&" 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 Soman
Catholics of the Upper Province obtained the privilege of
Separate Schools in contravention of the principle of reli-
gious equality and severance of the Church from the State.
In time it was recognised as a rule that a Ministry to retain
power must have a majority from each section of the 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 French
nationality, and, not least, by allowing the French Province
to dip her hand deep in the common treasury. On the other
hand, a secession of thorough-going Eeformers from the

184 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

Moderates who gloried in the name of Baldwin, gave birth
to the party of the " Clear Grits," the leader of which was
Mr. George Brown, a Scotch Presbyterian, and which having
first insisted on the secularisation of the Clergy Keserves,
became, when that question was out of the way, a party of
general opposition to French and Boman Catholic influence.
The population of Upper Canada having now outgrown that
of Lower Canada, the Clear Grits demanded that the repre-
sentation should be rectified in accordance with numbers.
The French contended with truth that the apportionment
had been irrespective of numbers, and that Upper Canada,
while her population was the smaller, had reaped the ad-
vantage of that arrangement. Mortal issue was joined, and
" Bep. by Pop." (Bepresentation by Population) became the
Beform cry. The war was waged with the utmost vehemence
by Mr. Brown and his organ, the Globe, which became a power,
and ultimately a tyrannical power, in Canadian politics. But
the French, with the British faction which courted their vote,
were too strong. A change had thus come over the character
and relations of parties. French Canada, so lately the seat
of disaffection, became the basis of the Conservative party.
British Canada became the stronghold of the Liberals. But
the old Tories of British Canada, true at least to their anti-
pathies, combined with the French against the Liberals in the
amalgam styled Conservative.

Irish influence, almost as sectional as the French, was now
beginning to grow powerful. The famine of 1846 had thrown
upon the shores of Canada thousands of miserable exiles,
stricken with pestilence as well as with famine. At the
moment when Canada lost her commercial privileges as a
colony, she was called upon to perform the most onerous of
colonial duties to the mother country, and the duty was

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 feUow-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 Soman Catholic races, which would almost have
reduced the other races to political servitude.

A struggle of principle is sure to leave some men ot
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, that no question of
principle or of public policy has been mooted by either
party during the negotiation. The whole discussion has
turned upon personal considerations. This is, I fancy, a
pretty fair sample of Canadian politics. It is not even pre-
tended that the divisions of party represent corresponding

136 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

divisions of sentiment on subjects which occupy the public
mind. 1 ' He complains that his Ministers insist on appealing
to low personal motives, as if they did not believe in the
existence of anything higher, that unprincipled factiousness
is taken for granted as the rule of conduct on all hands,
and that he is himself in danger of being besmirched by its
mire. A period of tricky combinations, perfidious alliances,
and selfish intrigues now commenced, and a series of weak
and ephemeral governments was its fruit. The Hincks-
Morin, the MacNab-Morin, the Tach^-Macdonald, the Brown,-
Dorion, the Cartier-Macdonald, the Sandfield Macdonald-
Sicotte, the Sandfield Macdonald-Doribn,the Tach^-Macdonald
(second) administrations followed each other like the shifting
scenes of a farce, their double headships indicating the
necessity of compounding with the French, whose vote was
the great .card in the game. Unfortunately they left their
traces. "A political warfare," said Senator Ferrier (a
Montreal merchant) afterwards in the debate on 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. 1 In 1858, Mr.
George Brown, the leader of the "Clear Grits" put the

1 It has been since exercised on one occasion by a Lieutenant-Governor of
\ Province.

vii THE UNITED PROVINCES 137

Conservative Ministry in a minority on the question of the
choice of a site for the Capital, the Queen having given her
decision in favour of Ottawa. Though the combination
against the Government was fortuitous, and the question
not one of principle, the Ministry resigned ; it was surmised
because they thought it politic to appear as martyrs to their
loyal respect for the Sovereign's judgment. The Governor,
Sir Edmund Head, sent for Mr. Brown but refused him a
dissolution, on the ground that the Parliament was newly
elected, that there was no reason for supposing that public
opinion had changed, and therefore that there was no
justification for throwing the country again into the turmoil
of an election. Mr. Brown's fortuitous majority deserting
him, his Ministry at once fell The Governor was of course
fiercely denounced by the Grits for partisanship ; but
supposing he still held the prerogative of dissolution, it
would seem that he did right ; he certainly did what was
best for the country. A farcical sequel to this episode was
the " Double Shuffle," a name applied to a piece of 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.

138 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

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 Beport: even before his day, Judge Haliburton
had ventilated the idea in Sam Slick ; while Mr. George
Brown, finding that he could not carry his project of
Representation by Population, had been proposing that the
Union between Upper and Lower Canada should be 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
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

vii THE UNITED PROVINCES 139

Upper Province had been the abolition of slavery ; and she
had prided herself on being the refuge of the slave. At the
opening of the conflict between Slavery and Freedom her
heart had been where it was natural that it should be.
But after the Trent affair she had been drawn, together with
the aristocratic party in England, into an attitude of hostility
to the North. Her citizens had taken to drilling, and she
had sounded the trumpet of defiance. Her Government had
strictly discharged their international obligations, but the
Confederates had violated the neutrality of her territory in
the case of the St. Alban's raid, and some of her own citizens
who were hot sympathisers with the Slave Power had hardly
kept their sentiment within the bounds of the Queen's
proclamation. The Union was now triumphant and had a
large and victorious army at its command. There was
reason to fear that its ire, kindled by the conduct of Great
Britain in the matter of the Alabama, and by the stinging
language of the British Press, might find vent in an attack
on the dependency. There had in fact been a Fenian raid
encouraged by the laxity of the American Government, if
not by its connivance, and somebody having blundered, a
number of Canadians had in the disastrous affair of 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 Provinces
would greatly add to their force in war. The Home
Authorities also applauded the project, in the hope that the
colonies would become better able to defend themselves,

140 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

lean thenceforth less heavily for protection on the arm of the
overburdened mother country, and be less of an addition to
her many perils. Some years before, Lord Beaconsfield, then
Mr. Disraeli, Imperialist as he was, had written in con-
fidence to the Minister for Foreign Affairs urging him to
push the Fisheries question to a settlement while the
influences at Washington were favourable, and remarking
that "these wretched colonies will all be independent too
in a few years and are a millstone round our necks." 1
What Mr. Disraeli said in the ear was said on the housetop
by the Edinburgh Review, which after averring that it would
puzzle the wisest to put his finger on any advantage
resulting to Great Britain from her dominions in North
America, and glancing at the " special difficulties which beset
her in that portion of her vast field of empire," pronounced
it not surprising that "any project which may offer a
prospect of escape from a political situation so undignified
and unsatisfactory should be hailed with a cordial welcome
by all parties concerned." If the same thing was not said
by other statesmen it was present in a less distinct form to
the minds of some of them : at least they were very anxious
that the millstone should be a millstone no more, but be
able to provide for its own defence at need and perhaps to
help the mother country. Colonial Eeformers 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

1 See Lord Malmesbury, Memoirs of cm Ex-Minister, vol. ii, p. 844.

vii THE UNITED PROVINCES HI

opinion was avowed, never took a very active part in the
discussion.

A third motive was the hope of calling into existence an
intercolonial trade to make up for partial exclusion from that
American market which Canada had been enjoying to her
great advantage during the last twelve years. To the anger
which the behaviour of a party in England had excited in
America, Canada owes the loss of the Reciprocity Treaty, and
the bitter proof which she has since had of Lord Elgin's say-
ing that free navigation and reciprocal trade with the States
are indispensable to put her people in as good a position as
their neighbours. If Great Britain can with justice say that ^7
she has paid heavily for the defence of Canada, Canada I
can with equal justice reply that she has paid heavily, in I
the way of commercial sacrifice, for the policy of Great /
Britain. '

Under the pressure of necessity the faction-fight was
suspended, and a coalition government, after some haggling,
was formed (1864) with Confederation as its object, the Grit
leader, Mr. George Brown, and two of his friends entering it,
with Sir John A. Macdonald and his Conservative colleagues,
under the figure-headship first of Sir Etienne Tache and, on
his death, of Sir Narcisse Belleau. The spectacle was seen,
as a speaker at the time remarked, of men who for the last
twelve years had been accusing each other of public robberies
and of every sort of crime seated on the Ministerial benches
side by side. Delegates, comprising the leading men of both
parties, were appointed by the Governors of Canada, Nova
Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, at the
instance of the several legislatures. They met and drew up
a scheme which, having been submitted to the legislatures,
was afterwards carried to London, there finally settled with

142 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

the Colonial Office, and embodied by the Imperial Parliament
in the British North America Act, which forms the instru-
ment of Confederation. The consent of the Canadian Legis-
lature was freely and fairly given by a large majority. That
of the Legislature of New Brunswick was only obtained by
heavy pressure, the Colonial Office assisting, and after
strong resistance, an election having taken place at which
every one of the delegates had been rejected by the people.
That of the Legislature of Nova Scotia was drawn from it, in
defiance of the declared wishes of the people and in breach
of recent pledges, by vigorous use of personal influence
with the members. Mr. Howe, the patriot leader of the
Province, still held out and went to England threatening
recourse to violence if his people were not set free from the
bondage into which, by the perfidy of their representatives,
they had been betrayed. But he was gained over by the
promise of office, and those who in England had listened to
his patriot thunders and had moved in response to his appeal,
heard with surprise that the orator had taken his seat in a
Federationist administration. Prince Edward Island bolted
outright, though high terms were offered her by the delegates, 1
and at the time could not be brought back, though she came
in some years afterwards, mollified by the boon of a local
railway for the construction of which the Dominion paid. In
effect, Confederation was carried by the Canadian Parliament,
led by the politicians of British and French Canada, whose
first object was escape from their deadlock, with the help

1 In the autumn of 1866, Mr. J. C. Pope (Premier of Prince Edward
Island) went to England " and an informal offer was made through him by
the delegates of the other provinces, then in London, settling the terms of
Confederation, to grant the Island $800,000 as indemnity for the loss of
territorial revenue and for the purchase of the proprietors' estates, on condi-
tion of the Island entering the Confederation." — History of Prince Edward
Island, by Duncan Campbell, p. 180.

vii THE UNITED PROVINCES 143

of the Home Government and of the Colonial Governors
acting under its directions.

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

Legally, of course, Confederation was the act of the
Imperial Parliament, which had full power to legislate for
dependencies. But there was nothing morally to prevent the
submission of the plan to the people any more than there was
to prevent a vote of the Colonial Legislatures on the project.
The framers can hardly have failed to see how much the
Constitution would gain in sacredness by being the act of
the. whole community. They must have known what was
the source of the veneration with which the American
Constitution is regarded by the people of the United States.
The natural inference is that the politicians were not sure
that they had the people with them. They were sure that
in some of the provinces they had it not. The desire of
escaping from the political dilemma, however keenly felt by

144 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

the leaders, would not be so keenly felt by the masses, and
the dread of American invasion would scarcely be felt by
them at alL There was no such pressure of danger from
without as that which enforced union on the members of the
Achaean League, on the Swiss Cantons, on the States of the
Netherlands, on the American Colonies ; while the British
Colonies in North America were already for military purposes
as well as for those of internal peace united under the
Imperial Government, so that the main purpose of a federal
union was already fulfilled. Without worship of universal
suffrage or of the people, it may be said that the broader
and deeper the foundation of institutions is laid the better,
and that the sanctity once imparted by the fiat of a king
can now be imparted only by the fiat of the whole
nation. A compact invalid in its origin may, no doubt, be
made valid by acquiescence; but the Constitution of the
Canadian Confederation is valid by acquiescence alone. It is
said that at general elections which followed, federation was
practically ratified by the constituencies : but at a general
election different issues are mixed together ; various questions,
local and personal as well as general, operate on the voter's
mind; the legislative questions are confused with the
question to whom shall belong the prizes of office ; party
feeling is aroused ; a clear decision cannot be obtained. The
only way of obtaining from the people a clear decision on a
legislative question is the plebiscite. Unless the single issue
is submitted a fair verdict will never be returned. If some day
Canadians are called upon to make a great sacrifice of wealth
and security in order that they may keep their own institu-
tions, the reply perhaps will be that the institutions are not
their own but were imposed upon them by a group of
politicians struggling to escape from the desperate predica-

vii THE UNITED PROVINCES 145

ment into which their factiousness had drawn them, employ-
ing in some cases very questionable means to arrive at
Ifeb end, and bringing Z bear upon Canada the power of a
distant government and Parliament, which, worthy as they
might be of reverence, were those of the British, not those of
the Canadian people.

So far as political affinity was concerned the Maritime
Provinces were ready for Confederation. To each of them had
been given the same Constitution as to the two Canadas.
Each of them had a Governor, an Executive Council, an
Upper House of Parliament nominated by the Crown, and a
Lower House elected by the people. The political history of
each of them had followed the same course. In each of
them an official oligarchy had entrenched itself in the
Executive Council and the Upper House. In each of them
its entrenchments had been attacked and at last stormed by
the popular party which predominated in the Elective House.
In Prince Edward Island with the struggle for responsible
government had been combined a war with an absentee 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 with the
Irish land legislation of the present day. Patriots in the
Maritime Provinces had in fact acted in sympathy with
patriots in Canada, and the leaders of either party in each
battlefield had kept their eyes fixed upon the other. Sir
Francis Head, for instance, watched anxiously the progress of
the struggle in New Brunswick, and in the surrender of the
Colonial Office and its representative there read the general
doom. Everywhere the war had been waged on nearly the
same issues, the chief being the control of the civil list, and

L

146 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap, vii

everywhere its result had been the same. Eesponsible
government had prevailed, and the Grown, under a thin veil of
constitutional language, had given up its power to the people.
About the time when in Canada Sir Charles Metcalfe was
striving to recover power for the Crown a desperate attempt
of the same kind had been made by Lord Falkland in Nova
Scotia. But Lord Falkland, like Sir Charles Metcalfe,
succumbed to destiny, whose Minister in his case was the
great orator and patriot, Joseph Howe.

n

CHAPTEE VIII

THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 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 with William III, 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 puppet Lieutenant-Governor in each pro-
vince. Everything is done in the names of these images of
Eoyalty, 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 told to do, they would be instantly deposed. Eeligious
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,

1 The Canadian Constitution is to be studied in the British North America
Act of 1867, on which abundant commentaries have appeared by Messrs.
Todd, Bourinot, O'Sullivan, Watson, and Doutre. To the works of these
learned and eminent writers the reader is referred for such details as do not
come within the scope of this very general sketch. The debate on Confedera-
tion in the Canadian Parliament (Quebec, 1865) may be consulted by the
diligent reader. Extracts from the principal speakers are given in Colonel
Gray's work on Confederation.

^»fciK S » g« V S- »

148- x CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

they deliver from their thrones speeches which have been
made for them by their Prime Ministers, to whom they serve
as a ventriloquial apparatus. Each of them, 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 have 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 who 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

vni THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 149

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
authority 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-General has been made to read a speech from
the 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

150 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

Governor-General, about whose own keen sense of right there
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 hadadecisive proof of the Governor-General's impotence
in the case of Mr. Letellier de St. Just, who was deposed from
the lieutenant-Governorship 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, arid 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 the Dominion Senate,
where their party had a majority, they 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, Mr. 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

vni THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 151

was the assignment of a specific breach of duty, of which it
could not be pretended that the Lieutenant-Governor had
been guilty. The votes of the Senate and the House ol
Commons were nothing but manifestations of party resent-
ment. Their character was marked by the manner in which
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 had given the party power in that
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 obey his constitutional advisers. He might
have done the Colony a great service, though at some risk to
himself, had he told the Minister 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 what honour bade him or go homeJ 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.

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 tjie 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 Ottawa 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

viii THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 153

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
which 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 tours, 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 Eoyalty 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

154 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap*

curtseys, the walk, the extending the arm for the train, and
each physical movement are practised repeatedly before some
competent teacher of deportment, who charges well for the
lessons" Imagine the ladies of a commercial colony fired,
with this ambition ! The genius of the Continent rejected
etiquette as it had rejected Pitt's proffered boon of a
hereditary peerage. When ah edict went forth that at Court
balls ladies should appear in low dresses, unless they could
obtain from their physicians a dispensation on the ground of
health, a comic journal had a print of a bare-footed servant
girl asking the master of the ceremonies whether nakedness
at that extremity of the person would not do as well.

As an object of social worship the representative of
Eoyalty keeps his place. Like Eoyalty itself, he is taken
about to open institutions or exhibitions ; words of approbation
which he may be pleased to utter are recorded as oracles, and
sacrificial banquets are offered to him. What is the social
value of such a worship every one must determine for himself.
In England it seems that the worship goes on while the
smallest and most necessary payment for the support of the
idol raises a storm of popular anger.

The practical aim of a Governor -General is social popu-
larity combined with political peace. So long as he simply
gives way in everything to the politicians, he will have a
quiet course, and at the end of it he will go away amidst
general plaudits with the reputation of having " governed "
Canada well. Discerning eulogists will even point out to
you the particular gifts of mind and temper which have,
enabled him to administer his province with so much success.
He is then qualified in the eyes of the Home Government for
a higher post, and India will be fortunate if she does not some
day get from this manufactory of spurious reputations a less

viii THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 155

competent Viceroy than Lord Lansdowne. Connection and
responsibility end together with the parting salute.

As an authoritative informant of the Home Government
about Canadian affairs and sentiment the Governor- General,
besides being a newcomer to the country, lies under the
twofold disadvantage of being a personage to whom it is
difficult to speak the truth, and of being always in an official
capital where, on certain subjects, not much truth is
spoken. If, like Haroun Alraschid, he could go about' in
disguise conversing with his lieges, he might learn and impart
to the Colonial Office what would be worth knowing. As it
is, when we read the disquisitions of an ex-Governor-General
on the country which was the scene of his administration, we
at once become sensible of the happy environment in which
during his tenure of office he has lived.

There are those who think that figments, though worse
than useless in any other department, are useful in politics, and
that there is an occult virtue in the practice of fetichism and
hypocrisy. Only let those theorists remember that the rever-
ence which is bestowed on the false is withdrawn from the
real ruler, and that servile worship of a fetich and manly
respect for lawful authority are not always found dwelling in
the same breast. Democracy has its perils, Heaven knows.
Let us look them in the face and deal with them as best we
may. To hide them from us by throwing over them the veil
of a mock monarchy is not to help us in our endeavour.

The same people will also believe in the usefulness of
baronetcies and knighthoods, which have survived the
catastrophe of the abortive Canadian peerage, and of which
the Governor-General is the supposed conduit, though it is
surmised that of late the party leader has virtually got this
prerogative also into his hands, and added it to his general

156 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

fund of influence. Let us 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 Mayor
His Worship. Let scientific and military eminence be
marked by their appropriate decorations. There is no reason
why Democracy should deny herself such emblems of civil
dignity and incentives of generous ambition any more than
there is a reason why she should deny herself rational and
symbolic state. She too must have her aesthetics. 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 at 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
flunkeyism. 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 s,erved as
an organising force in a barbarous age, no one versed in
history will deny. The feudal lord was not a sybarite with a

vni THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 157

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 the 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 World, and
the attempt to import it never has done and never can do
anything but mischief. To make a colony an outpost of
aristocracy for the purpose of maintaining that 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 retirement for those who
have spent their energies in public 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 the salary is not
sufficient for hospitality on a large scale. Men of 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
British 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, the Provincial Prime Ministers
and their Cabinets to the Governor and Officers of States,
The relations of the Province and the Dominion to each other

158 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

are in the main the same 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 Government 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 Government for military aid. It has by the Con-
stitution a political veto on all State legislation, whereas in
the American Republic 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

vin THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 159

powers not given to the provinces are left in the Federation/
This last distinction is important. The origin of it was, that
the sovereign power which gave birth to the Confederation
had its seat not, as in the case of the Americans, in the
several federating communities, but in the Crown and Parlia-
ment of Great Britain.

About the nature and importance of the national veto on
provincial legislation 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) Rose said
in the debate : " The other point which commends itself so
strongly to my mind is this, that there is a veto power on
the part of the General Government over all the legislation
of the Local Parliaments. ... I believe this power of
negative, this power of veto, this controlling powqr on the
part of the Central Government, is the best protection and
safeguard of the system ; and if it had not been provided I
would have felt it very difficult 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 court of law. Again,
Mr. Mackenzie, afterwards Premier, 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

160 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

of weakness in the United States, and it is a want that will
be remedied by an amendment in their Constitution very
soon." This could not refer to a mere power of restraining
excesses of jurisdiction on the part of State Legislatures,
since such 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 general, and regard it accordingly with
suspicion. The point of these remarks will hereafter appear.

Thus, constitutionally, the Canadian Dominion is less
federal and more national than the American Republic.
Practically the reverse is the fact, because in the case of the
American Eepublic 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
their action is paralysed 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 behind the scenes. The framers of
the American Constitution were full of Montesquieu's false
notion about the necessity of entirely separating the executive
from the 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 uncertain by the power of dissolu-
tion, and for so long only as he can keep his majority in th£

viii THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 161

House of Commons. On the other hand, he and his Cabinet
have seats in Parliament, where, with their majority at their
back, they initiate the most important part of legislation and
control the whole of it. Assuming that government is to be
by party, the Canadian and British system has clearly the
advantage in respect to the conduct of legislation^) The
American House of Eepresentatives is apt for want of leader-
ship to become a legislative chaos^ Order and the progress
of business are secured 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 reason 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 that by a sure and constitutional process it brings the
executive into agreement with the legislature and with the
people by whom the legislature is elected, 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 their system is more democratic than that of the
Americans, and taunt the American Eepublic with being
monarchical and even autocratic.

On the other hand, the American system gives the country

M

162 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

a stable executive independent of the fluctuating majorities
of the legislative chamber and of those shifting combinations,
jealousies, and cabals which in France, 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 effect, while the
Presidential 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 manoeuvring,
perpetually 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 admitting
to the Cabinet and to the 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 master 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.

When 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.

vni THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 163

The American Senate, elected by the State Legislatures, is in
the full sense of the term a co-ordinate branch of the Federal
Congress with the House of Eepresentatives, rejects the Bills
passed by the House with perfect freedom, and with equal
freedom initiates legislation on all subjects except finance.
It has a veto on appointments, and can in this way put
strong though irregujar pressure on the Executive. It has a
veto on all treaties, as Foreign Governments which 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 upon its record. It has been
consenting to a Tariff 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
influence both directly and indirectly in Senatorial elec-
tions. Still the power of the Senate remains the 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 ambition. (The Canadian
Senate nominated by the Crown is, on the contrary, as nearly
a cipher as it is possible for an assembly legally invested with
large powers to be. The question 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
the United Provinces, the Legislative Council, as the Upper
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.

164 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

Lord Elgin was in favour of the change, though he saw as he
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 he lived, find his ship 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 differ from the American
system he might have found 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 the same as that for elections to the House of
Commons, but the electoral divisions much 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 the
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 165

stitution of their Upper House seemed to think that their
only choice was between the retention of election by popular
suffrage and a return to the system of nomination by the
Crown. It did not occur to them apparently that as they
were about to erect Provincial legislatures corresponding to
the State legislatures of the Americans they might vest in
these the election of the Senate. Their 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
claim equality as a legislative power with 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 the political parties
has had a majority in the House of Eepresentatives and the
other in the Senate. You cannot have the advantages of
union and division of power at the same time. To construct
a body which, without claiming co-ordinate authority, shall
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 hovered before
the minds 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

166 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

change in the interest of privilege. It resisted Parliamentary
reform till it was overborne by the threat of a swamping
creation of peers. All the power which it retains is the power
of hereditary rank and wealth. Nothing analogous to it exists
or can exist in Canada, and in framing Canadian institutions
it ought to have been put out of sight.
/^Nomination having been chosen it followed that the ap-
pointments should be for life : nothing else could give the
nominees of the Crown even a semblance of independence.
But the result is a nullity, or rather an addition to the number
of vicious illusions, since the sense of responsibility in the
Lower House may be somewhat weakened by the impression,
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 wait for the
arrival of Bills 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 by the Minister who controls it for the
purpose of quashing a job to which he has been obliged to
assent in the Lower House. ( Measures of importance may
sometimes be brought in first in the Upper House, for the
sake of saving time, but they never originate with itJ At

vin THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 167

the end of the Session the measures passed in the Lower
House are hurried through the Upper House with hardly time
enough for deliberation io save the Semblance of respect
for its authority. Its debates are rarely reported unless
piquancy happens to be lent to them 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 be attached to
membership. (jTo some possibly the annual payment of a
thousand dollars and mileage may be an attraction. J But
Senatorships are not sought from the promptings of a generous
ambition or a desire to render active service to the country.
Almost the only serious business of the Senate is sitting in
judgment, as the 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 Go\xTt}J 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 had 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 assembly comprehending representatives
of national eminence in all lines, not the agricultural and
mercantile only, but the professional, the scientific, the educa-

1 Thanks to the exertions of Senator Gowan, something more of the
character of a regular Divorce Court has recently been given to the Senate.

168 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

tional, and opening its doors to men capable of doing good
service in special departments of legislation, as well as of
lending by their character and attainments dignity to the
Legislature, but without inclination or aptitude for the party
platform or the turmoil of popular elections. Even the Bona-
partes tried to make their Senate respectable by giving it a
character of this kind. But of the seventy-six Senators of
Canada, all but nine 1 have now been nominated by a single
party leader, who has excercised his power 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 W. W will run

the best. He will veiy likely object ; but if he is the best
man you can easily hint to him that if he 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 greajb object of his
ambition. ,, This letter, from a Prime 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 contests 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 to a seat in the Canadian
House of Lords. If there is ever a show of an impartial
appointment it is illusory. When the expenditure of money
is a leading qualification, commerce is pretty sure to be well
represented. But no one will pretend that the general
V eminence of Canada is represented by its Senate. No intel-

1 This includes some members of the old Legislative Council, in the selection
of whom the Act enjoined that consideration should be shown to both political
parties.

viii THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 169

lectual or scientific distinction finds a place, while illiteracy
scarcely excludes those who have served a party leader well.
The age of the members as a body would in itself preclude
active work. It will be seen from the letter just quoted that
the Prime Minister treats the Governor-General as a perfect
cipher in regard to these appointments, and looks upon the
patronage as entirely his own. Propose 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 Minister is allowed to
nominate a branch of the Legislature without protest of any
kind. Such is the use of fictions !

A life tenure, though it makes a nominee more independ-
ent than a tenure for a term of years, does not make him
entirely independent of the power which created him, though
it does make him entirely independent of the people and of
public opinion. He is still eligible for political office as well
as for a baronetcy or a knighthood. He has sons and
nephews. The other day a controversy having arisen about
the quality of cloth furnished to the Militia for uniforms, it
transpired that the contractor was a member of the Senate.
In the case of the British House of Lords general independ-
ence is secured, apart from any mode of political appoint-
ment, by hereditary rank and wealth, and there is usually
nothing to be feared but the bias of the privileged order.

That of seventy-six members all but nine would ever be
the nominees of a single party leader the framers of the
Constitution can hardly have anticipated. But they did
anticipate a preponderance of different parties in the two
Houses which might bring on a collision and a deadlock.
Against this they tried to provide by an expedient borrowed
from the British method of constitutionally coercing

\

; rw>¥

170 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

the House of Lords. To swamp an adverse majority in the
Senate a Minister is allowed to create three or six extra
Senators. The device is both clumsy and invidious, besides
being open to exception as a recognition of the party prin-
ciple. But 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 should come into office, 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 Goyernment 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 copy 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

vnr THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 171

distinctly than it is understood at home. The House of
Commons was not originally intended to be the Government
or even the Legislature. The Government resided in the
Crown, and the House of Commons was merely the repre-
sentation of the people summoned by the Crown to grant it
money, and at the same time to inform it about the state and
wants of the country. Through its hold over the purse it
gradually drew to it supreme power and in effect became the
State. But it at the same time ceased to be 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 what 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 this character, and it is at the
same time becoming an anarchy and a bear-garden incapable
either of legislation or of government, incapable even of
putting 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 the 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

172 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

and spend four months of every year in rather petty politics
at Ottawa, to say nothing of the 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 gQt, 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 governing 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 the higher
stamp have 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

174 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

class. As in Great Britain so in Canada, the politicians who
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, who, it was
anticipated, would have patriotism and intelligence 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 the 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-filled 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

viii THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 175

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 they can
correspond more freely about them with him than with a
stranger. Besides they like to keep the prize among them-
selves. Such, in the exercise of supreme power, are the real
tendencies of those whom collectively we worship as the
people. That the calibre 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 jpen 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 Parliament. Eegu-
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

176 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

the day 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 with 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

vin THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 177

and save it from becoming a mere faction ? The theory that
every community is divided by nature, or as the language of
some would almost seem to imply, by divine ordinance, into
two parties, and that every man belongs from his birth to
one party or the other, if it were not a ludicrously patent
example of philosophy manufactured 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, that 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 the 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 factions — 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 any means
the least powerful. It is astonishing with what tenacity a
Canadian farmer adheres to his party Shibboleth when to him,

N

178 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

as well as to the community at large, it is a Shibboleth and
nothing more. Questions of principle, 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
Blue 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 public 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. Political 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 through 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

vin THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION ( 179

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 much given his mind
to them. His title to his place is that of unique experience
and unrivalled dexterity in the collection and combination of
votes. In all this Canada only resembles other Parliamentary
countries, but in analysing a particular set of institutions it
is necessary to recall the general facts.

The absence 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 parties 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 been 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 THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

will lay their heads together to choose the best men. Practic-
ally, it is impossible for the electors to do anything of the
kind. They are a multitude of people unknown for the most
part to each other, without anything to bring them together,
and without any power of setting a candidature on foot. The
best qualified 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 for 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
behind 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 power giving the civil law to the Pro-
yinces and the criminal law to the Dominion, whereas by
the American Constitution both are gjven to the States, does
not seem very reasonable in itself. J The same legislative

vin THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 181

intellect is required in both cases, nor is the boundary
between the two lines clearly defined. But this was a
necessary concession to Quebec, who clings to her French law
as a pledge of her national existence. It has been already
mentioned that the absence of divorce courts is a concession
to the same influence.

{ The structure of the provincial governments and legisla-
tures generally, with their constitutional Lieutenant-Governors,
their Parliamentary Premiers and Cabinet, is the same as that
df the Dominion government and legislature, though on a
small scale. ) like the Governor-General, 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. LBut 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 special 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

182 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

alter the law of wills, or profoundly modify the relations
between the sexes by the introduction of female suffrage.
The Legislature of Ontario once broke a will at the solicitation
of parties interested, though 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 people. 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 Eeferendum 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 the pernicious effect of constitutional figments in veiling
real necessities. Political 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 men 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. This change increases the demand on the not very

Yin THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 183*

abundant stock of legislative capacity in the country, lowers
the quality of the Provincial Legislatures, and enhances the
peril of committing vital questions to their hands. The
farmer, the country practitioner, or the village 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 something more than the
average mind is required. Perhaps the 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 British statute
book, which forms a lamp to guide their feet in the legislative
path. Yet lawyers complain of the Ontario statute book,
and the need of a government draftsman seems to be felt.

The function of interpreting the Constitution in the last
resort, and keeping each of the Powers within its proper
bounds, discharged in the United States by that august
tribunal the Supreme Court, is discharged in the case of
Canada, as of the other colonies, 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 whether 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 chap.

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. The Judicial Committee, though a legal, not
a political tribunal, perhaps does not leave considerations of
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

vin THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 185

keep its hands off the Civil Service. It practically jiakes 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 hosts,
while he slipped his fingers between them to take up the
sugar. Vacancies are also made for partisans by superannua-
tions, and a Collectorship 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 Eepre-
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 the judiciary. This is not the case
in 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 those of the States. The Canadians

186 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

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 w6 have done ; and have we not
done well V 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

viii THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 187

executives, will all show a most calf-like appetite for the
milking of this one magnificent 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

188 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

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 the 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
Britain 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. No 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

ym THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 189

institutions, and before it is assumed that federation is the
universal cure, it would be well to consider how far such a
thing as a genuine federation now exists. The Achaean League
was a federation, inasmuch as it was a combination for mutual
defence, the States still remaining separate ; so originally was
the Swiss Bund. But the Swiss Bund now is a nation with
a federal structure. So is the American Republic. Eailways,
telegraphs, commerce between States, the action of federal
parties, and other unifying influences, whatever the Constitu-
tion may say, have 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, the want of
which is greatly felt by commercial men or companies doing
business over the whole Union or in several States. Against
the course of nature the Jeffersonian Democrat protests in
vain. Mr. Parnell has announced that his 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 framets 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

190 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

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 days' 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, literary, professional, and social — in London or
Paris, is a school of public character and thought. The

viir THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 191

Supreme Court which sits at Ottawa is said to suffer by the
absence of a resident Bar. A mistake was made in not follow-
ing the American example and federalising 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.

CHAPTER IX

FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 1

Among the ostensible objects of Confederation the most
immediate perhaps were military strength and security
against American aggression. Sceptics, among whom were two
British officers, 2 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 part perfectly open, of something
like 4000 miles, while the garrison is broken into four
sections, 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

1 Books consulted: Collins's "Life and Times of Sir J. A. Macdonald,"
Stewart's " Canada under the Administration of Earl Dufferin," Collins's
" Canada under the Administration of Lord Lome," The Statistical Year
Books of Canada, Morgan's "Dominion Annual Registers," and Mr. A. Blue's
valuable issues of the Ontario Bureau of Industries and Statistics.

2 "Confederation of British North America," by E. C. Bolton and H. H.
"Webber, Royal Artillery. London, 1866.

chap, ix FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 193

days of her glorious defence against American invasion,
Canada was comparatively compact. Moreover, she was a
fastness of forest ; she had no great cities on her frontier at
the mercy of the invader ; nor had the invader railroads to
enable him to bring his superior forces to bear, though as we
have seen they began to tell as the war went on. Neither
was there then a great mass of French Canadians on the
south side of the line in close connection, local and social,
with their brethren on the north. The Canadians of that
day as backwoodsmen were rough soldiers ready-made. They
were less democratic than they are now, and followed more
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
Eepublicans at the beginning of the war as the Cavaliers had
over the Eoundheads and the Southerners over the North,
till the Eoundheads 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. The embodied Militia
are in number 38,000, partly French. Half of this body
is each year called out for a fortnight. City regiments
voluntarily drill once a week 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

o

194 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

of those who fought at Queenston Heights or Chateauguay,
but supposing each of them to be a Paladin 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. The 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
British fleet. It is true the American army is also very small,
while the American militia is probably not better drilled
than that of Canada. But it has been seen that money will
buy men. The Americans have among them a good many
immigrants 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 will in the natural course of events

ix FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 195

one day acquire the Protectorate of her Continent. Is the
difference between tutelage and union so momentous that a
people, who are or are destined to be under tutelage, can
be expected to live armed to the teeth against their own sons,
brothers, and cousins for the purpose of averting union ?
Might it not even occur to them when they were told to beat
their 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 supposing 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 flourishing
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 Provinces had before as British
dependencies under the general whom the Home Government
might send out. Perhaps 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 England to victory, the monu-

196 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

nient on which the chivalry of the victor has 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 throb 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
against 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 FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 197

Church in whom their kinsmen and fellow-Catholics fondly
saw the germ of a French and Catholic nation which should
in time occupy that vast region to the exclusion of British
and Protestant colonisation. Moreover the Half-breeds felt
that their hunting and trapping-grounds would be threatened
and their very primitive industries supplanted by the advance
of the agricultural settler. Their leader, Louis Eiel, upon the
approach 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 Garnet Wolseley, Eiel
collapsed and presently fled, 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 Eiel as their chief and once
more rose in arms. That he had been amnestied in the mean-
while did not prevent Eiel 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

198 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

a boy of sixteen being found among the slain, that only a part
of them were armed with rifles, and that even these were
short of ammunition. Eiel suffered death and deserved little
sympathy, since he had not only broken his amnesty but been
willing to sell himself and his cause to the Government.
Quebec, however, boiled over with sympathy for him, which
would perhaps have proved more formidable had not he by
playing the prophet given offence to the priesthood. The
Liberal Opposition in the Dominion Parliament, misled by
the temporary ferment, and thinking to gain the French vote,
took up Kiel's cause and pleaded for his exemption from
punishment on the two grounds, not very consistent with each
other, that he was insane and that his offence 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 Kiel's general
character ; while it was evident that if every offence which
could be styled political was to go unpunished, society would
be at the mercy of any brigand who chose to say that his
object in filling 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. But 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 Militia
his advice that the troops should be employed in guarding the
forte and provisions, and that men fighting in the same way
as the rebels should be sent to make the war. It is but fair

ix FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 199

to suppose that what these gallant officers wished to shun was
not powder but political ruin. The suppression of this petty
insurrection cost the Dominion $8,000,000, besides the
loss of life, a fine paid for the supineness or the political
distractions of the Government, which when the Eebellion
had broken out issued a Commission to inquire into the
Half-breed claims.

The French yet cling to the hope of making the North-
West their own. Their Archbishop still reigns, not without
opulence and state, in St. Boniface, the transriverine suburb
of Winnipeg, and they have an immigration agency managed
by priestly hands. But the balance of destiny has clearly
turned against them ; as pioneers they are no match for their
rivals. The Legislature of Manitoba 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 put 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 by remaining apart ;

200 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

perhaps she also looks with alarm on the growth 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, commit 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 $40,000,000, 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

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 Eiver
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. 1 In sending troops to
India there would be two transhipments, a consideration
the importance of which again it is for the War Office to
determine.

1 The Quarterly Review, for example, spoke of the Canadian Pacific RaUway
as running from " start to finish" over British ground, though the line was
at that very moment applying for bonding privileges to the Government of
the United States. I take the opportunity of repeating that the statement of
the Quarterly, 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 ; and what I said on that occasion was, in effect,
that political union was a question for the future, while the improvement of

202 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

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 must be its receipts for local traffic 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 Quarterly about a rebuke administered to me for my Annexationist
sentiments by General Sherman, 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 advantages 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, whilethat 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.

204 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

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. K. even discriminates in its freights,
involuntarily no doubt, against Canadians and in favour of
Americans. 1 Such is the outcome of designs for the sup-
pression of geography and nature.

In opening a trade among the Provinces, a natural trade
at least, these inter-provincial railroads have failed, for the

1 The following is from an official source : "1st. The rate on wheat from
Winnipeg to St. John, N.B., is 50 cents, and to Halifax, 63 J 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 J cents, Boston,
42£ cents, and New York, 37J cents per hundred pounds. These rates apply
where traffic takes the route from Minneapolis via the " Soo Line" and
C. P. R., and were made effective Jan. 1st inst Prior to that date each of
the above rates was 5 cents less per 100 pounds. 3d. The first-class rate on
general merchandise from St. John, N.B., to Winnipeg is $2.64 per 100
pounds, and from Montreal $2.08 per 100 pounds. These rates apply via
the C. P. R. 4th. The rates on first-class general merchandise from Portland and
Boston to Minneapolis is $1.05 per 100 pounds, via C. P. R. and "Soo Line."

ix FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 205

simple reason that the Provinces have hardly any products
to exchange with each other, and that means of conveyance
are futile when there is nothing to be conveyed. " I take,"
says Mr. Longley, the Attorney-General of Nova Scotia, " the
solid ground that naturally there is no trade between Ontario
and the Maritime Provinces whatsoever. Without the 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 other 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 Mr. 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,"

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 Nova Scotia, and I desired to send it to
Toronto or Hamilton, the cost of sending it thither, unless it
were gold, would probably be more than the value of the
commodity. But I can at any moment put it on board of
one of the numerous vessels or steamers which 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. Londey 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 moved 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 farms and clothe themselves with the
produce of their own spinning, is uncommercial, and lies
a non-conductor between the more commercial members of
the Confederation.

To force trade 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 the
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 for an increase of

208 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

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 that 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-

ix FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 209

thing in short, except tea and spices, with a market of
63,000,000. The largest measure of Free Trade ever passed
was the American Constitution, which forbade a customs line
to be erected between States. This it is — not the protective
tariff 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 factories 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

1

210 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

which failed within the year." A patriot writes to the
Minister of Finance to say that he proposes to foster home
industries and consolidate the nation by starting a canned-
soup factory, but he must have a duty of 20 per cent on
canned-soup, and a protective 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 Toronto 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, must 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 of 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

ix FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 211

territory which in Canada had to be covered in order to
embrace a sufficient market* was a heavy addition to the
manufacturer's expense. These are not by any means the
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 by 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 tp 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

212 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

existence in Manitoba, and that she was exporting their
products ; but the list was found to embrace the work of
lime kilns, blacksmiths' forges, photography, and re-shipments
of old railway engines.

The British reader will not be surprised to hear that the
arguments used by the defenders of the system are only such
as have been a hundred times confuted. In the case
of Canada, as in other cases, the protectionist makes no
attempt to lay down his principle by defining native in-
dustries, or to say what is the proper area for its application ;
why Ontario should not benefit by protection against New
Brunswick, as well as against New York, or New York
benefit by protection against her sister States. The state-
ment that England nursed her manufactures by protection
is still repeated, and so is the plea for infant industries,
babes who, when they come to manhood, instead of giving up
their pap and swaddling-clothes, take you by the throat and
demand more. The protectionists loudly profess loyalty,
which with them means high duties on American goods.
Their organs labour to keep up hatred of the people of the
United States, just as the organs of protectionism in the
United States labour to keep up hatred of England. But
the main strength of protectionism in Canada, as in the
United States, lies in its Lobby and in the money which it
subscribes for elections. International hatred, directed in
Canada against her American neighbours, and political
corruption, are two inseparable companions of the system.
A third is smuggling, which is rife all along the Canadian
border, to the detriment of lawful trade, and with the usual
effect on the morality of the people.

For the fusion of population between the Provinces
Confederation seems to have done as little as for the creation

^ — — —

ix FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 213

of inter-Provincial trade. Keciprocal trade indeed is almost
necessary to fusion. In the census return for 1881, which
is the last, it appears that in that year there were of natives
in Ontario, 105 settled in Prince Edward Island, 310 in
New Brunswick, and 333 in Nova Scotia ; in all, 748 natives
of Ontario settled in the Maritime Provinces. Much the
same state of things is found in Quebec, with the exception
of two counties which border on a district of New Brunswick,
with an identical population. On the same day there were
of persons of United States birth, 609 in Prince Edward
Island, 5108 in New Brunswick, 3004 in Nova Scotia ; or,
roughly speaking, thirteen times as many natives of the
United States in the Maritime Provinces as there were natives
of Ontario. It is found, moreover, that in 1861, before
Confederation, and when there was no Intercolonial railway,
there were 6700 natives of the Maritime Provinces in
Ontario ; twenty years afterwards there were only 7200.
In Quebec, among the people of eight or ten populous
counties, not a man from the Maritime Provinces was to be
found, immigration had actually declined in spite of the
official connection. Meantime it appears that there are
1,000,000 immigrants from Canada in the United States.

Without commercial intercourse or fusion of population,
the unity produced by a mere political arrangement can
hardly be strong or deep. It will, for the most part, be con-
fined to the politicians, or to those directly interested in the
work of Dominion parties. No inhabitant of Nova Scotia or
New Brunswick calls himself a Canadian. The people of
British Columbia, priding themselves on their English
character, almost disdain the name. Manitoba and the
North-West have been largely colonised from Ontario, yet
Manitobans tell you that though their personal and family

214 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

connections are cherished, as a community they are severed
from Eastern Canada. All the Provinces are under the
British flag. All are united by the sentiments common
to British Colonies and by historical associations. This
they were before Confederation. That Confederation has
as yet increased the community of feeling or strengthened
the moral bond there is nothing in the attitude of the
Provinces towards each other, political or general, to prove.

So much as to the British Provinces. Of Quebec some-
thing has been already said. If there is a word hateful to
French ears it is amalgamation. Not only has New France
shown no increase of tendency to merge her nationality in
that of the Dominion ; her tendency has been directly the
other way. She has recently, as we have seen, unfurled her
national flag, and at the same time placed herself as the
French Canadian nation, under the special protection of the
Pope, who accepts the position of her ecclesiastical lord. At
her head, and to all appearances firmly seated in power, is the
chief of the Nationalist and Papal party, who bids Blue and
Eed blend themselves in the tricolor and restores to the
Jesuits their estates. The old Bleu or Conservative party,
associated with the clergy of the Gallican school, which by
its union with the Tories in the British Provinces linked
Quebec politically to the Dominion, has fallen, as it seems, to
rise no more. What life is left in it is sustained largely by
Dominion subsidies of which the Ottawa Government makes
it the accredited channel. " The complete autonomy of the
French Canadian nationality and the foundation of a French
Canadian and Catholic state, having for its mission to
continue in America the glorious work of our ancestors," are
the avowed aims of the Nationalist and Ultramontane press.
Greybeards of the old Conservative school protest that all

ix FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 215

this means nothing, that no design of autonomy has been
formed, and that it is unjust to speak of French nationality
and theocracy as dangers to Confederation. Whether the
design has been distinctly formed or not matters little if the
tendency is manifestly there and is gaining strength every
day. Let those who prophesy to us smooth things take stock
of the facts. When one community differs from another in
race, language, religion, character, spirit, social structure,
aspirations, occupying also a territory apart, it is a separate
nation, and is morally certain to pursue a different course,
let it designate" itself as it can. French Canada may be
ultimately absorbed in the English-speaking population of
a vast Continent ; amalgamate with British Canada so as to
form a united nation it apparently never ca,n. In the Swiss
Confederation there are diversities of race, language, and
?eligion, but the union is immemorial ; it was formed and is
held together by the most cogent pressure from without; its
territory is compact and surrounded by a mountain wall;
the races and religions are interlocked, not confronted like two
cliffs, and the division into small cantons tends to avert a
broad antagonism of forces. After all, Switzerland has had its
Sonderbund, and the Jesuit, whose intrigues gave birth to the
Sonderbund, is now dominant in Quebec. Quebec sends her
representatives to the Federal Parliament. But their mission
is not to take counsel 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 opportunity of doing their duty to her in that line. On
one occasion they stayed out of the House haggling with the
Government till the bell had rung for a division, when the
Government gave way. Quebec, as revelations going on at

(

V

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
Academy, bestowed on Canada a National hymn. The
hymn should have been written in alternate stanzas of
French and English.

The beauty of the French language, 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, mere 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-

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

ix FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 217

of our fathers is engaged the French blood stirred in our
veins, as though it had never been chilled, and we shouted
for the flag of our mother country as if it had never ceased to
wave over our heads." " We admire the United States, whose
prosperity dazzles us, but France alone is the object of our
passionate love." " Our thoughts and 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 108,60.5 "Acadians" in the Maritime
Provinces, M. Faucher de Saint-Maurice concludes by saying,
" With courage, with perseverance, 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 Gait, 1
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 otherwise be exposed without 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

1 Church and State, by Sir Alexander T. Gait, K.C.M.G., Montreal, 1876.

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 left to the pleasure of the Crown, and the
Solicitor-General Wedderburn advised that while 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 derision. 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
introduced 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 Eoman Catholic
Bishops and Clergy, boasted that he had emulated the
glorious deeds of the American Bevolutionists 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

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 Provincial
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 Eoman Catholic
Church. Yet such is the powefr of the French vote that both
parties fell on their faces before it. The position of the
Government wsfs the worst, since the hollowness of its affected
respect for Provincial self-government was betrayed by its
own recent conduct in vetoing a Eailway Act of the Manitoba
Legislature, the legality of which could not be questioned, in
the interest <rf its auxiliary, the Canadian Pacific Eailway.
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;

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.

The 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 federation remark that this, under 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 as
possible of this fund for their respective constituents ; cabals

ix FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 221

are formed by which the different 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 hftve 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

222 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

constituencies with an openness which would almost 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 regarding 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 Protectionist Government the
other day in Victoria County, was reported to the English
Press as highly significant, and as showing that the people
were against Eeciprocity ; but the fact was apparent from
the returns that the Government had gained, its majority of
133 by two subsidies to local railways. 1 Nova Scotia and New

1 Here are two specimens, 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 Mr.
Thompson's strenuous efforts 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 deeply 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 OF CONFEDERATION 223

Brunswick, as they suffer particularly from the commercial
atrophy produced by severance from their natural markets, are
specially open to the influence of the Treasury, and before an
election a Nova Scotian, who is master of such arts, is actually

that Hon. A. McGillivray is now tinder the impression that he can without
office and in the cold shades of opposition serve you better than he can, an
incomparably abler man, in the commanding position of Minister of Justice.
It is plainly therefore your duty as patriotic citizens to resist such conduct
and to vote one and all for the Minister of Justice, who so eminently deserves
your confidence and esteem, and not to give him his discharge. In the 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 Mr. Thompson, but to return him by an over-
whelming majority. Gentlemen, I confidently leave the issue in your hands,
and remain your devoted well-wisher and servant in Christ."

"Les deux grandes questions politiques 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
n&sessaires a sa construction. J'ai envoye* vingt-deux requites a tous les
honorables cures du comte' afin de les faire signer, lesquels requetes demand-
aient un subside de $100,000. Vingt requites m'ont ete* retourn^es couverte
de dix-huit cents signatures ; deux ne m'ont pas ete* renvoyees, je ne sais
pourquoi. II est vrai que la demande de $100,000 n'6tait pas suffisante selon
ce que j'ai appris plus tard, et j'ai modifie ma demande en la portant a
$239,000.

" Tous les deputes Canadiens m'ont donn£ leur appui, et dix-huit Sena-
teurs ont sign6 ma demande que j'ai adressee au Conseil Prive\ Jusqu'au
dernier moment Ton m'a fait les plus grandes promesses. Sir Hector me
disait toujours : ' Mon cher Couture, ne crains rien ; les subsides ne sont pas
encore votes, mais nous n'oublierons pas ton comteV Jusqu'au dernier mom-
ent j'ai support^ le Gouvernement, m§me j'ai vot6 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 Dominion.
J'ai demande $40,000 pour le comt£, 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 voeux du comte* en refus-
ant d'approuver une conduite aussi deloyale, et j'ai vot£ contre le Gouverne-
ment. Je savais que le comt6 me reprocherait pas d'avoir vote contre un
gouvernement qui ne voulait rien m'accorder. C'est sur la question des quinze
millions au Pacifique que je me suis separe du gouvernement. Je croyais que
ces gens en avaient eu assez; il est vrai qu'ils donnaient des garanties en
terre au gouvernement, mais je savais que la creme de ces terres etait vendue."

224 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

brought over from England, and put for the time into the
Ministry, that he may secure to the Government the votes of
his Province. This he does by promises the fulfilment 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 the 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 n6t 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

ix FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 225

practice from the altar, but in vain. In truth the 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
theocracy 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. They
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 the 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. This was in the case of the Pacific Eailway Scandal,
the echoes of which reached as far as England. The Prime
Minister and two of his colleagues were convicted of having
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

Q

226 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

Commons. The conduct of the Governor-General was, 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 to 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 trial, 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 wjien, at the beginning of the
affair, he declared to the Governor-General upon his honour as
a Privy Councillor that he was innocent of the charge. The
case of the Onderdonk contract, on the western portion of the

ix FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 227

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. 1

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 clergy,
and of the leaders of public opinion. Yet the character of
the people cannot fail to be affected by familiarity 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 having 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 Minister, whose
henchman he is, makes him Chairman of the Finance Com-
mittee, and is prevented from making him Deputy Speaker
only by the threat of an appeal to the record. The man is
on the point, as is generally believed, of being made a Senator
when another transaction comes 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

1 An account of the case will be found in Mr. Collins's Canada under the
Administration of Lord Lome, p. 207 et seq. The section having been taken
over by the C.P.R., that Company is now suing the Dominion for $6,000,000
on account of alleged defects or shortcomings in construction.

228 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

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 scandals 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 are 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 Eoman 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 Eoman Catholics the ballot in the
election of School Trustees, which the more liberal of them
demand, but to which 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-

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
aicl 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, which, 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 this

232 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

solution is clearly shown in the case of Manitoba. To that
Province, 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
railw.ay monopoly, against which the Province is a unit.
When the election comes round, the government secures the
seats by petty bribes and by promises. This, new settlements
being for the most part 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 in 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 more mouths to feed. There is a shifting of the agri-
cultural population in the United States as well as in Canada,

234 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

and many farms have 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 rich 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
which 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
which 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,

ix FRUITS OF CONFEDERATION 235

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, 1880-86, 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 distinguishing 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.

236 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap, ix

The Canadian people are industrious, energetic, and thrifty;
their country is rich 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.

CHAPTEE X

THE CANADIAN QUESTION

Section I. — 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 will 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 Americans 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.

238 CANADA AND 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 by the Protected Manufacturers, let us say that no
Canadian, and so far as we are aware no American, has ever
proposed that Canada should change her political relations to
the mother country without the mother country's assent. If
the Crown and Parliament of Great Britain sanction a change,
the treason thenceforth will be in resistance. There must
have been talk of the union 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. The 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

x THE CANADIAN QUESTION 239

England believed themselves, as their manifesto shows, to be
indefeasibly liegemen of King James. But this fallacy has
long been dead, and by the recent naturalisation treaties it has
been buried. That the colonies in the early stage of their
existence needed the protection of the mother country against
the rival powers of Europe was a more substantial but still
only a temporary reason for the connection. A better way
was at one time opened. It was agreed by the Treaty of
Neutrality between Louis XIV and James II (1686) 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
the old passage to India, a conquered colony of France in the
Indian Ocean, a factory like Hong Kong, military or coaling
stations like Gibraltar, Malta, and Aden — what have these
in common, or why are they likely to be for all time bound
up with groups of self-governing British colonies in North
America or Australia? Why again should Canada and

240 CANADA AND 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 which 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 China ? The
real tie among the members of the motley group is England's
command of the sea, which in successive wars has enabled
her to pick off the transmarine possessions of her enemies.
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 must go is surely
a mere illusion, produced by the vague use of a common name
for things which have 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 taken
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 Greece
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,

THE CANADIAN QUESTION 241

not y& those of Jamaica, Malta, South Africa, or Hong
Kong.

What is gained by the present system of dependence 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 connection lays
on Great Britain heavy responsibilities, both military and
diplomatic, that it adds not a little to the burdens and perils
of empire, is plain. Were England to withdraw politically
from the American continent she would be quit not only of
the diplomatic entanglements and disputes with the United
States about boundaries and fisheries, but of the ill-feeling
which her presence on the continent enables her enemies in
the United States to keep up against her, and which is adding
seriously to her embarrassments in dealing with the Irish
question. Hardly could any fisher of Irish votes succeed in
inflaming the American people against a nation in another
hemisphere with which they would no longer be brought into
contact. What are the compensating advantages ? The ex-
clusive command of colonial markets which formed at least a
substantial ground for the old colonial system, England has
no more. No longer can she in the interest of her manu-
factures forbid a colony to make a horseshoe or a nail.
Instead of that the Dominion of Canada lays protective duties
on her goods. The chief of that which calls itself the loyal
party in Canada has asserted Canada's right to do this,
whether Englishman, Scotchman, or Irishman likes it or not,
in ringing and almost defiant tones. It is still held that the
colony cannot in her tariff discriminate against the mother
country's goods ; this little more than sentimental privilege
is all in the way of commercial advantage that England has

R

242 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

now. It is said that trade follows the flag. It follows the
flag at first to a new colony which has no manufactures of
its own. But apart from this and from national tariffs com-
merce is no discerner of nationalities.* If the trade of Canada
with Great Britain has hitherto exceeded (though it no longer
exceeds) her trade with the United States, it is not because
the British market is maternal, but because it is free. Find
the merchant who in making a purchase, even of the bunting
for the flag itself, has asked on patriotic grounds where the
goods were made, and you will have some ground for saying
that trade follows the flag. Did not the trade of England
with her American Colonies, instead of diminishing, increase
from the time when the Union Jack was exchanged for the
Stars and Stripes, evil as the day of separation had been?
To take the book trade as an example. At the very time
when, in consequence of the Trent affair, Canadian feeling
was excited against the Americans, the vast bulk of that
trade-prices then ruling low and copyrights of great popular
works not having expired — was going to the United States.
Patriotic or philanthropic movements in favour of particular
markets have beenoftenset on foot,and to what have they come?
As to Emigration, there went in the year 1888 of British
emigrants to Canada 49,168, to the United States 293,099 ;
while of those who went to Canada half at least passed on to
the United States. What the emigrant wants is bread. That
an Englishman in quest of employment will meet with a
warmer welcome in Canada than in the United States is, as
has already been said, a natural impression, but not the fact.
There is nothing to make an emigrant prefer the British
dependency to the Anglo-Saxon Colonies as his new home
except the anti-British tone of American politics and of the
American press ; and on this probably few intending emi-

x THE CANADIAN QUESTION 243

grants bestow a thought. It suffices them to know that they
are going where their friends 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, to 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 find 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-
General 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.

That England can derive no military strength from al . : a *r
dependency 3000 miles away, without any army or navy
of its own, and with an open frontier of 4000 miles,
will surely be admitted by all, and is in effect proclaimed /l " !ir f /*</&-%
by Imperialists when they strive to goad CanaLns into
setting up a standing army. She cannot even derive that false
show of strength solemnly styled " prestige " : the weakness

244

CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION

CHAP.

/*,

* l \

&

UJ

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 chooses 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 New
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 diplomatists contend the majority are
said to be Canadians. But the new warships require 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

Mi ii 1,1 ^fjUP^P" — wuii »^ JBBPWPi

x THE CANADIAN QUESTION 245

any conceivable 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, 1 "supposed
advantages flowing from the possession of dependencies which
are expressed in terms so general and vague that they cannot
be referred to any determinate head. Such, for example, is
the glory which 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 communities. 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 which it would not equally enjoy though * ,
the dependency were independent . .^Such a possession^ ^ , t
^eaSnbTjustly be called glorious." These are the words of & *. /y r ", /'
Minister of the Crown and a colleague of Lord Palmerston. , ,/ /. ,

Great Britain may need a coaling station on the Atlantic /• r
Coast of North America, not for the purposes of blockade, ^ / ^ € ^ jgUu ^ '■
which 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 L( K ^i} 4 / ^
dependencies, are apparently what the great exporting country ^^^^J
and the mistress of the carrying trade now wants. New- ,y^ lK £, r[
foundland would be a safe and uninvidious possession, and it -t*^*/,-^ f
has coal, though bituminous and not yet worked. The Ameri- <* *-i V- '<•'.•

1 Essay on the Government of Dependencies, p. 239. />vrv < <<-# w

^4,46

246 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

1

cans do^not covet islands, for the defence of which 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

p.*-, l r( (i ^ ite people seems to be poor. Let England th en keep New -

/^►^v^^iv^Jfoundknd. Cape Breton is rather too close to the coast,

t j T> *(>* otherwise it has coal in itself, and Louisbourg might be restored.

,/'«<•<*&-** The strength of England is and always has been in

t \.<m* ,v herself, not in her dependencies. Alone she fought and van-

* ""^frw,' quished Louis XIV and Napoleon, as well as Philip II.

i/ <&***»*' 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. Black regiments were

raised in the West Indies, and the 100th Begiment 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 were

on the wrong side of the Atlantic, engaged in what, as the

conquest of Canada was the American 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

Tr - - - ^ -

x THE CANADIAN QUESTION 247

numbers. As soon as their vote makes itself felt, the influence
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 Canadian Government be called upon, while
yet it is time, to say plainly what assistance, military or naval,
it is able to afford, and in what contingency the assistance
will be afforded.

Sir Henry Taylor cannot be said to have forfeited hia^
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 war
with the United States or to make a war otherwise generated
more grievous and disastrous. I do not suppose the Provinces
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 be 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 absence is marked by restless and
uneasy self-assertion, by a misgiving which sometimes lurks

248 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

under an outward boastfulness, by a constant craving for the
notice of the Imperial country, coupled with a jealousy of her
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
live, * L fa£rid «** not * hei V. m pnd'
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
who, without going into public life, without 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 conflict 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 be 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 would be redeemed
by the pressure which the English navy would 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 question which must be answered by the
Admiralty, whose utterances on the subject hitherto have not
been comforting. But it could hardly be such as to prevent
a rise in the rate of insurance such as, the market of the
United 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 other 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 be 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 nothing is known by her people. Her commerce may I J \ *K* ><!■<* / c
any day be cut up, and want brought into her homes by a \ k> l l, »y* **
war about the frontier of Afghanistan, about the treatment of k^ w/Su&
Armenia or Crete by the Turks, about the relations of the n^ /*',' ///
Danubian principalities to Russia, or about the balance of / , , • /.;
power in Europe. No one in Canada who forms his estimate V/ <- ' a
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 K I do not think " —
these are the words of a Canadian knight — "that we are
under any deep debt of gratitude to English statesmen, that

250 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

we owe them much, unless, perchance, it may be the duty as
Christian men to forgive them for the atrocious blunders
which have marked every treaty, transaction, or negotiation
which they have ever had with the United States where the
interests of Canada were concerned, from the days of
Benjamin Franklin to this hour, not excepting their first or
second treaty of Washington." By the Treaty of 1783,
confirming the 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 territories "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. 1 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 military security, and of com-
mercial convenience was lost when Great Britain 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

1 See article " How Treaty-making unmade Canada," by the late Lieut-
Colonel Coffin, Ottawa, in the Canadian Monthly, May, 1876.

x THE CANADIAN QUESTION 251

reasonable, would acquiesce, but he would feel that the
sincerest wish to protect without the power was not protec-
t\on^/L large portion of Minnesota, Dakota, Montana, andl G^L*^
Washington, Canada also thinks she has wrongfully lostj^^t^^ ^W
These are causes of discontent ; discontent may one day J^/ ^p?
breed disaffection; disaffection may lead to another calamit- JLff y <KjL ^ Aji ' a *
ous rupture ; and instead of going forth into the world when
the hour of maturity has arrived with the parent's blessing,

the child may turn in anger from the paternal door. T

About the advantages of political tutelage hardly a word
need be said. Practically the idea has been abandoned.
How could a democracy in Europe regulate, to any good
purpose, the progress of a democracy in America about the
concerns of which it knows almost nothing, and which is
superior to itself in average education and intelligence?
British democracy has enough to do in regulating itself. In
former days, when the British Government consisted of the
chief men of the nation exercising real power the illusion of
tutelage was possible ; but who can believe 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 gone by when the Admiralty could send out
sentry-boxes for the troops, water- casks for a flotilla 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 was called "that
town," and he has heard a well-educated Englishman con-
gratulate a Canadian on the removal by the settlement of the
Alabama question 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

252 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

on the Quebec Act it was near being counted out, and in the
division which was to decide 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. Canadians care and know little
about Australia or the Cape of Good Hope. But to talk of
tutelage is absurd. If British monarchists have continued to
cherish the hope of establishing through the agency of
Canada hereditary monarchy and aristocracy on this Con-
tinent, and thus wresting from democracy a part of its
dominion, let that hope be for ever laid aside. The structure
and spirit 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

x THE CANADIAN QUESTION 253

country is a question which need not be discussed. English
capital is now pouring into the United States ; it has
poured into the Argentine Eepublic, Spain, Russia, Egypt,
Turkey, 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 credit and
the British 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 to speak irreverently.
But to be sound, it must after all have its root in some kind
of utility, and when the root is dead the days of the flower ( n^. ^
are numbered. /Besides it is but the exchange of one senti- Sj *' ; ci J
ment for another which is more certain to endure. Why \&4>*CC * <
the filial sentiment of less value than the sentiment of de- ' ' '' \ a '\ ' '
pendence? >lt is surely rather the nobler of the two. The ^°.,, : ' {&
Greek colony which kept the fire taken from the mother ^ *\ K 7
country's altar always burning on its sacred hearth and ' "*r****

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.

Section II. — Independence

Confederation was followed by a movement in the direction
of Independence, chiefly among the young men of Ontario,

254 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

which was called " Canada First." The name was the title
of a pamphlet written in 1871 by Mr. W. A. Foster, a barrister
of Toronto, which fired a number of young hearts. To in-
dependence the movement manifestly tended, if this was not
its avowed or definite aim. The authors of Confederation, to
induce the people to accept their policy, had set before them
glowing pictures of the resources of the country, and made
strong appeals to patriotic pride, hope, and self-reliance.
These produced their natural effect on ardent and sanguine
souls. It happened that just at the same time the gener-
ation of immigrants from England which had occupied
many of the leading places in the professions and commerce
was passing off the scene and leaving the field clear for native
ambition, while the withdrawal of the troops also brought
socially to the front the young natives who 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 the 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, and 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

x THE CANADIAN QUESTION 255

generous aspirations to which they had themselves appealed
the real source of their policy and the spirit in which they
had acted as the authors of Confederation. The Court of
Ottawa also exerted its influence, including its influence
over the masters of the Press, in the same direction. The
movement found a leader, or thought that it had found a
leader, in a native Canadian politician, who was the child of
promise and the morning star at that time. But at the
decisive moment party ties prevailed, the leader was lost, and
the movement collapsed, not however without leaving strong
traces of its existence, which are beginning to show themselves
among the younger men at the present day.

In one respect, at all events, the men of " Canada First "
were right. They saw or at least felt — even the least bold
and the least clear-sighted of them felt — that a community
in the New "World must live its own life, face its own
responsibilities, grow and mould itself in its own way ; that
Anglo-Saxon nations in North America could no more be tied
for ever to the apron-strings of the mother country than
England could have been tied for ever to the apron-strings of
Friesland, or France to those of the mother country of the
Franks.

There was nothing on the face of it impracticable in the
aim of "Canada First." There is nothing in nature or in
political circumstances to forbid the existence on this
Continent of a nation independent of the United States.
American aggression need not be feared. The violence and
unscrupulousness bred of slavery having passed away, the
Americans are a moral people. It would not be possible for
Clay or any other demagogue now to excite them to an un-
provoked attack upon another free nation or even to a manifest
encroachment on its rights. If they had been filibusters they

256 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

would have shown it when they had an immense army on
foot, with a powerful navy, and when they were flushed with
victory. The New England States, and the non-slavery
element of the nation generally, were opposed to the War 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 North- West had only 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
Canadian 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 thing which the French most abhorred. There is no
reason why Ontario should not be a nation if she were
minded to be one. Her territory 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 ^rould 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, British Columbia, or the North-
West In the North- West, rating its cultivable area at the
lowest, there would be room for no mean nation. But the
thread of each Province's destiny has now become so inter-
twined with the rest that the skein can hardly be disentangled.

x THE CANADIAN QUESTION 257

That the North-West, if it is not released from the strangling
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 was 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 froxn 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 the late Mr. Forster, the only statesman who has
seriously embraced the project, something 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! 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

258 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

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 not 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 residents
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 and a common
tariff. But Canada, as we have seen, 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 war power; the Colonists, like the
Americans, are essentially unmilitary, and here would be the
beginning of troubles. As to the tariff, the Canadian
Protectionists, who make use of Imperial Federation as a

J

x THE CANADIAN QUESTION 259

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 Cvm
Romanics 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 Eome 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
communities 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 Eoman Empire itself fell, and partly
because the life was drawn from the members to the head.

The Achaean League, the Swiss Bund, the Union of the
Netherlands, the American Union, all were perfectly natural

260 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

combinations, not only suggested but commanded by a
common periL In three out of the four cases the communities
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 Australian about Canada, or an ordinary Englishman,
Scotchman, 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
Prime Minister 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

x THE CANADIAN QUESTION 261

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 North America, securing free
trade and intercourse over a vast area, with external safety
and internal peace, is no less practical than it is grand. The
benefits of such a union would be always present to the mind
of the least instructed citizen. The sentiment connected with
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 prefes 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, in 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 difficulty. If Great Britain had members in

262 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION 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 be subject to the Federal Constitution, and would have
so much authority only as that Constitution assigned it.
The Sovereign Power 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 communities included in it any
more than the same person could be President 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. We 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 263

apart as the shores of its members, Home Eulers 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 be withdrawn, "We
have seen in the case of Canadian Confederation how Nova
Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island flew off
from the agreement at which their delegates had arrived. In
truth there would probably be a general falling away as soon
as payment for Imperial armaments 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 that of Canada,
bound up with the American Continent, indifferent to every-
thing in Europe or Asia, and concerned only with her relation
to the United States ? If we may believe Sir Charles Dilke,
Australia avows her intention of breaking away from England
sjhould 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 THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

of her cities the missionary of Imperial Federation can scarcely
find an audience. From South Africa comes no audible
response. In British Canada the movement has no apparent
strength except what it derives from an alliance with
Protectionism, 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 bind 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 Federation. 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 leadership 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.

What is the real motive for encountering all the difficulties
and perils of this more than gigantic undertaking, for running

r

x THE CANADIAN QUESTION 265

laboriously counter to the recent course of Colonial history, as
well as to the natural tendencies of our race, and for taking
the political heart and brain, as it were, out of each of those
free communities and transferring them to London ? "We 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 communities. But 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, call
the nations to battle ! The way to make peace on earth is to
promote the coming not of an exclusive military league but
of the Parliament of Man, the moral Parliament of Man at
least, by enlarging 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 n6 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

266 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

pale. Nothing is needed to bring 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 Parliament 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 Parliament 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* Nor
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 one people. Nothing but the historical accident
of a civil war ending in secession, instead of amnesty, has
made them two. When the Anglo-Saxons of England and
those oi 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-

268 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

land and Scotland had the memory of many wars 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
questioned, 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 immunity 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 their 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 British 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 Continent 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 Bepublic
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 demagogism pander-
ing to Irish hatred.

Nor need Canada give up any of the distinctive character
or historical associations which she has preserved through

270 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

the continuance of her connection with the mother country.
Scotland is 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

x THE CANADIAN QUESTION 271

essential respects to produce any possible change in English
character. That, as regards the normal American, is the fact.
The present writer has known the Americans not, like most
of their critics, only in the cities, but in the country and the
country town. As a lecturer and resident in an American
University he has been brought into contact with American
youth ; he has friends among Americans of all vocations and
professions ; he 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 that 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 affectation 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. We have already, 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

272 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

character in different parts of the Union. These 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 New York has its
shoddy wealth which the better Americans despise, and
which British aristocracy, though scornful of American de-
mocracy, sometimes takes to its arms. Eapid commercial
development has bred gambling speculation, and with it
unscrupulousness, of which Canada also has her proportionate
share, though in both cases the amount of knavery is small
compared with that 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 on 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

x THE CANADIAN QUESTION 273

other, the phantom of monarchy in Canada being, as has been
shown, no conservative force at all, but 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 with
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 might 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. The growth there of

»

T

274 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

manufacturing industries will both modify political character
and bind the States to their Northern market. Socialistic
revolution, such as would take a State out of the Eepublic,
and the occupation of the Pacific Coast by the Chinese, are
contingencies which might threaten the Union, but at present
they are very remote, while to Chinese irruption Canada on
the Pacific is more open than the United States.

Again, Canadians who heartily accept democracy wish
that there should be two experiments in it on this Continent
rather than one, and the wish is shared by thoughtful Ameri-
cans not a few. But we have seen that in reality the two
experiments are not being made. Universal suffrage and
party government are the same, and their effects are the same
in both Eepublics. Differences there are, such as that
between the Presidential and the Cabinet system, of a sub-
ordinate kind, yet not unimportant, and such as might make
it worth while to forego for a time at least the advantages of
union, supposing that the dangers and economical evils of
separation were not too great, and if' the territorial division
were not extravagantly at variance with the fiat of Nature.
The experiments of political science must be tried with some
reference to terrestrial convenience. Besides, those who
scan the future without prejudice must see that the political
fortunes of the Continent are embarked in the great Eepublic,
and that Canada will best promote her own ultimate interests
by contributing without unnecessary delay all that she has
in therway of political character and force towards the saving
of the main chance and the fulfilment of the common hope.
The native American element in which the tradition of self-
government resides is hard pressed by the foreign element
untrained to self-government, and stands in need of the
reinforcement which the entrance of Canada into f he Union

x THE CANADIAN QUESTION 275

would bring it Canadians feel all this 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 much 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 good 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 must be.
And this reminds us of another reason for not putting off 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

276 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

following as a plausible ground for insulting demonstrations
against the Americans, and this at the moment when Great
Britain was carrying on difficult negotiations at Washington
on Canada's behalf. Of conquest there is absolutely no
thought. The Southern violence and the Western lawlessness
which forced the Union into the War of 1812 are things of
the past. The American people could not now be brought to
invade the homes of an unoffending neighbour. They have
no craving for more territory. They know that while a
despot who annexes may govern through a viceroy with the
strong hand, a republic which annexes must incorporate, and
would only weaken itself by incorporating disaffection. The
special reason for wishing to bring Canada at once into the
Union, that she might help to counterbalance the Slave
Power, has with the Slave Power departed. So far as the
Americans are concerned, Canada is absolute mistress of
her own destiny, while she is welcome to cast in her lot
with the Republic. Such is the impression made upon the
writer by his intercourse with Americans of all classes during
twenty years.

Of Canadian opinion the one thing that can be said with
certainty is that the great mass of the people, and especially
those who dwell along the border of Ontario, in the Maritime
Provinces, in Manitoba or other districts of the North- West,
and those who are engaged or wish to be engaged in the
mining, lumbering, or shipping trade, strongly desire freedom
of commercial intercourse with their own Continent. Such
appears to be the wish of the people and of the politicians in
Quebec also, as well indeed it may be, since the American
market is the only market which Quebec has. The tendency
of the priesthood is isolation, as the safeguard of their
dominion and of their tithe; but their position is in all

x THE CANADIAN QUESTION 277

respects somewhat altered by the exodus, and it is doubtful
whether they would dare to oppose themselves directly to the
material welfare of the masses. Nothing apparently can save
the restrictive policy of the present Government and its
confederate, the protected manufacturer, except the use of
the same engines which have so long sustained a similar
policy in the United States. On the question of political
union apart from commercial union there are no means of
gauging popular sentiment, the question never having been
brought definitely before the people and expression not being
free. But the English inquirer had better be cautious in
receiving the confident reports of official persons, or listening
to public professions of any kind. The very anxiety shown
to gag opinion by incessant cries of disloyalty and treason
shows that there is an opinion which needs to be gagged.
People were taken by surprise when in 1849, under the
pressure of commercial distress, a manifesto in favour of
annexation appeared with the signatures of a number of the
leading men of the country. In these democracies, where
everybody from his cradle is thinking of votes,- and to be in a
minority is perdition, political courage, whether in action or
speech, is not a common virtue. Politicians especially
tremble at the very thought of a premature declaration of any
kind. But the notion that a man who at a meeting of
ordinary Canadians should avow his belief in an ultimate
reunion of the two sections of his race would be " stoned * or
even hissed, may be proved from experience to be a mistake.
A bold man had avowed annexationist opinions in official
company at Ottawa. One of the company, horrified at his
profanities, told him that he should feel it his duty to de-
nounce them if he were not restrained by social confidence.
" Come down," was the reply, " into the street, collect the

278 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

biggest crowd you can, and I will soon relieve you of the
restraint of social confidence.*' The other day an ex-Governor-
General undertook to assure the world that the slightest
suspicion of annexationism would be absolutely fatal to a
candidate in an election. Almost on the very day on which
his ex-Excellency's paper reached Canada an avowed annexa-
tionist was elected by a large majority for a county in
Ontario. Annexation is not the platform of either party, and
as a rule, nobody can get himself elected without a party
nomination. But supposing a candidate had the party
nomination and were locally strong the suspicion of annexa-
tionism would do him very little harm. Of this, indeed, we
have already had practical proofs, besides the example just
cited. Since the passing of the Jesuits' Estates Act and the
revelation in connection with it of priestly influence and
designs, the saying of Lord Durham's Eeport that the day
might come when English Canadians to remain English would
have to cease to be British, or something like it, has been
heard on many sides.

There is a conflict of forces, and we must judge each for
himself which are the primary forces and likely to prevail.
Prevail the primary forces will in the end, however long their
action may be suspended by a number of secondary forces
arrayed against them. In the case of German and in that of
Italian unity the number and strength of the secondary forces
arrayed against the event were such, and the action of the
great forces was so long suspended by them, that it seemed
even to sagacious observers as if the event would never come.
It came, irresistible and irreversible, and we see now that
Bismarck and Cavour were the ministers of destiny.

In the present case there are, on one side, geography,
commerce, identity of race, language, and institutions, which

x THE CANADIAN QUESTION 279

with the mingling of population and constant intercourse of
every kind, acting in ever-increasing intensity, have brought
about a general fusion, leaving no barriers standing but the
political and fiscal lines. On the other side, there is British
and Imperial sentiment, which, however, is confined to the
British, excluding the French and Irish and other nationalities,
and even among the British is livelier as a rule among the
cultivated and those whose minds are steeped in history
than among those who are working for their bread ; while
to set against it there is the idea, which can hardly fail
to make way, of a great continent with an almost unlimited
range of production forming the home of a united people,
shutting out war and presenting the field as it would seem
for a new and happier development of humanity. Again,
there are bodies of men, official, political, and commercial,
whose interests are bound up with the present state of things,
whose feelings naturally go with those interests, who in many
cases suffer little from the economical consequences of isola-
tion, arid who, gathered in the capital or in the great cities,
exercise an influence out of proportion to their numbers on
public opinion and its organs. Great public undertakings
involving a large expenditure, produce fortunes to which
titles are sometimes added, and which form strong supports of
the existing system, though they are no indications of general
prosperity, and the interests of their possessors is as far as
possible from being identical with that of the farmer, who
meantime is paying ruinous duties on his farm implements
and on some of the necessaries of life. Eepulsion is also
created by the scandals of American politics, by the corrup-
tion which has reigned of late, by the turmoil of Presidential
elections, and by such enormities as the Pension List, while
political scandals and evils at home, being familiar, are less

280 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

noted. Men of British blood, moreover, even when they are
friendly to closer relations with the United States, are dis-
gusted by the anti-British language of the American Press
and of some of the American politicians. Above all there is
the difficulty of getting any community, but especially a
democracy in which there is no strong initiative, to quit the
groove in which it has long been running. On the American
side there is, to countervail the promptings of high policy and
natural ambition, the partisan's fear of disturbing the adjust-
ment of parties. There is the comparative indifference of the
Southern States of the Union to an acquisition in the North.
There is, moreover, a want of diplomatic power to negotiate a
Union. The southern politicians were statesmen after their
kind, secure in their seats and devoted to public life. They
governed the country as a nation, though with ends of their
own. Their successors, besides being by no means safe in
their seats, are to a great extent delegates of local interests,
each of which, like the members of a Polish diet, has and
exercises a veto in the councils of the nation. Upon successive
attempts to pursue a definite policy towards Canada the veto
has been put by one local interest or another. If negotiations
for a Union were set on foot, the party out of power would
of course do its best to make them miscarry, and a patriotic
Press would not fail to lend its aid. Every sort of suscepti-
bility and jealousy on such occasions is wide awake. The
great English statesmen, trained in the highest school of
diplomacy, who negotiated the Union with Scotland found
their task hard though they operated under far easier condi-
tions. However, if the primary forces are working towards
an event, sooner or later the crisis arrives ; the man appears,
and the bidding of Destiny is done.

THE CANADIAN QUESTION 281

Section V. — Commercial Union 1

" I am confident," said Mr. Bayard, the American Secretary
of State, to Sir Charles Tupper, " that we both seek to attain
a just and permanent settlement — and there is but one way
to procure it, and that is by a straightforward treatment on
a liberal and statesman-like plan of the entire commercial
relations of the two countries. I say commercial, because I
do not propose to include, however indirectly or by any
intendment, however partial and oblique, the political relations
of Canada and the United States, nor to affect the legislative
independence of either country." The object of the move-
ment now on foot under the name of " Commercial Union " is
to bring Canada within the commercial pale of her own
continent, and thereby put an end to the commercial atrophy
which her isolation entails. A reciprocal benefit would of
course be afforded to the United States in an increase of com-
mercial area and opportunities of opening up new sources of
wealth. The name Commercial Union, which has been
challenged as suggestive of political union, was adopted in
contradistinction to it, and in exact accordance with the
intention of Mr. Bayard. The measure would be necessarily
accompanied by an assimilation of the excise and of the
seaboard tariff, without which there would be smuggling of
liquors across the line, and of goods through the ports of one
country into the other. Whether there should be a pooling

1 For all that relates to the question of Commercial Union, and the whole
subject of Canadian commerce and industry in connection with that move-
ment, see the "Handbook of Commercial Union : a collection of papers read
before the Commercial Union Club, Toronto, with speeches, letters, and other
documents in favour of Unrestricted Reciprocity with the United States."
Toronto: Hunter, Rose & Co. [294 pp. Crown 8vo, 25 cents = Is. stg.]
1888.

282 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

of the seaboard duties is a separate question. Community of
Fisheries, the Coasting Trade, and Water-ways is included in
Commercial Union.

The movement in Canada originated with a Farmers'
Convention in Toronto, and was taken up by the Farmers'
Institutes of the Province. On the farmer's mind had
dawned the fact that he was the sheep, and the protected
manufacturer was the shearer. The special organ of the
movement has been the Commercial Union Club, an association
independent of political/ rty. The policy of Reciprocity,
however, has been embraced by the Liberal Party now in
Opposition : it forms the main plank in the platform of that
party ; and will, in all probability, be the issue at the coming
elections. On the American side a resolution in Congress
authorising the President to treat for Commercial Union with
the Canadian Government has been brought forward by
Mr. Hitt, of Illinois, and has been passed unanimously by
the House of Eepresentatives, while in the Senate it has
failed of unanimous consent only by one vote. Another
resolution pointing the same way was brought forward by
Mr. Butterworth, the member for Cincinnati, one of the fore-
most men in the Eepublican party, and like Mr. Hitt
thoroughly friendly both to Canada and to Great Britain,
life has been given to the movement by the public spirit and
energy of Mr. Erastus Wiman, a Canadian who has won his
way to a high place in American commerce without ceasing
to be a Canadian, and has done more than any other man to
keep up attachment both to Canada and England and to
sustain the honour of the British flag at New York, so that
he is well placed for dealing with any question in the interest
of all three countries. A word of justice is due to him, since
he has not been fairly treated by certain journals in England

x THE CANADIAN QUESTION 283

whose confidence is abused by their correspondents in Canada
on this and on other Canadian questions.

That the market of her own continent is the natural
market of Canada, both as a seller and a buyer, even so strong
an Imperialist as Sir Charles Dilke admits, and no one but a
protected manufacturer or a fanatical Tory would attempt to
deny. The Conservative leader, Sir John Macdonald, has
always professed to be doing his utmost to bring about
reciprocity. His motto has been Eeciprocity of Trade or
Eeciprocity of Tariffs, meaning t if he had recourse to
reciprocity of tariffs it was only oecause he could not get
reciprocity of trade, and in order to enforce it. His Pro-
tectionist Tariff Act contained a standing offer of reciprocity
in natural products. This, as has been said before, was
illusory, inasmuch as the Americans evidently could not, in
common justice to their own interests, allow their manufactures
to be excluded while they admitted the natural products of
Canada ; but it was at all events the homage paid by political
strategy to commercial wisdom. If the offer has now been
cancelled, this, it may safely be said, is not because conviction
has changed on the commercial question, but because the
irritation bred by the M'Kinley Act presents an opportunity
for an appeal to that feeling against American connection
which is the life of the existing system. M. Chapleau, one
of Sir John Macdonald's French colleagues, still declares for
Eeciprocity in the teeth of the declaration of Mr. Colby,
another member of the Government, against it, as well as of
the general action of the Administration, showing thereby
apparently his sense of the fact that Eeciprocity is a prime
necessity in the French Province. Let any one scan the
economical map of the North American continent with its
adjacent waters, mark its northern zone abounding in minerals,

284 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

in bituminous coal, in lumber, in fish, as well as in special
farm products, brought in the north to hardier perfection, all
of which the southern people have need : then let him look to
its southern regions, the natural products of which as well
as the manufactures produced in its wealthy centres of
industry are needed by the people of the northern zone : he
will see that the continent is an economic whole, and that
to run a Customs line athwart it and try to sever its members
from each other is to wage a desperate war against nature.
Each several Province of the Dominion is by nature wedded
to a commercial partner on the south, though a perverse
policy struggles to divorce them. The Maritime Provinces
want to send their lumber, their bituminous coal, and their
fish to the markets of New England ; Ontario and Quebec
want to send their barley, eggs, and other farm products, their
horses, their cattle and their lumber to New York and other
neighbouring States ; Manitoba and the North- West want to
send their superior wheat, their barley, their wool, and the
fish of their great lakes to St. Paul and Minneapolis ; British
Columbia wants to send her bituminous coal, her salmon, and
the timber of which she is the mighty mother, to California
and Oregon. All of them want to get American manufactures
as well as the products of a more southern climate in return.
It must be long before Canada can produce a first-rate
printing press. Even when an article is made in the
Dominion, the freight from one of the scattered Provinces to
another may be ruinous. British Columbia was paying for nails
a price for transit exceeding their first cost at Montreal 1
Canada is not one market but four, widely separated from
each other, and each of them sparse in itself.

It is in regard to minerals, perhaps, that the case of Canada

1 See Handbook of Commercial Union, p. 56.

x THE CANADIAN QUESTION 285

is the hardest. She has all the economic minerals except
tin. She has vast stores of magnetic and hematatic iron, such
as would make the best of iron and steel. In some districts
she is rich in copper and nickel. She has valuable veins of
silver and gold-bearing quartz, the former in the Lake
Superior district, the latter in Nova Scotia and British
Columbia. She has abundance of coal, both in British
Columbia and in Nova Scotia. Chemical minerals she has
also in abundance, and stores of mineral manure. Yet the
total value of her mineral exports for 1888, was under
$5,000,000, of which nearly a half was for bituminous coal,
while she imported hard coal to nearly the same value.
What she wants is a free market, free inflow of American
capital, free purchase of mining machinery. 1 On the American
shore of Lake Superior mining is rife, and its yield is immense ;
on the Canadian shore, which is not less rich in minerals, it
sleeps. Continual appeals are made to the Government by
Protectionist patriotism to " open up " the mines, as though
a Government could open up production of any kind otherwise
than by giving it fair play. With free trade Port Arthur, in
the centre of an immensely rich mining district, instead of
being, as it now is, a mere village, might be a mining city.
Let the mines be opened and there would be a mining
population such as would give the Canadian farmer a home
market for which he would not have to pay. For the home
market which Protectionism gives him he pays both in the
price and quality of the goods. An interestf or a country
trying to make itself prosperous by such means is, as has
been truly said, like a man trying to lift himself up by his
boot-straps.

1 See Handbook of Commercial Union, pp. 73 et seq. See also Mr. Ledyard's
memorandum in the Appendix to this volume.

286 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

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 American 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 tb 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

x THE CANADIAN QUESTION 287

several kinds of goods to keep his hands 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 Eeciprocity, 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.

N

288 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

Canada has 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'Kinley Act brought out a heavy vote at Buffalo 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
$38,105,126 ; her imports from Great . Britain were
$42,249,555. Her exports to the United States were
$48,522,404 ; her imports from the United States were
$56,368,990. Of the total trade of Canada, in the same
year, 41*35 per cent was with Great Britain ; 4965 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 $670,000 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

x THE CANADIAN QUESTION 289

fisheries disputes and taxes, out of $7,000,000 worth of fish,
the United States take annually about $3,000,000 worth. 1

The case is specially strong with regard to some of the
smaller Provinces. Prince Edward Island exported in 1889
only $800 worth of agricultural products to Great Britain,
while she exported to the United States $466,000 worth.
The total export of her own produce to all countries in that
year amounted to $974,000, of which $686,000 worth went
to the United States. The exports of British Columbia 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 short 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

1 See speech in the Dominion House of Commons of Sir Richard Cart-
wright, ex-Minister of Finance, March 14, 1888.

U

/

290 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

that region it will be possible for ever to maintain 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 case of Manitoba is hardly
worse than that of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, which
get absolutely nothing to make up for 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 doubt 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 increasing 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.

x THE CANADIAN QUESTION 291

The near market must as a role be the best, not only on
account of the difference in freights, but in many cases on
account of the perishableness of goods. It must be best for
fruits, fish, vegetables, and even for poultry and eggs. It is
the best 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
and kelp which could hardly have been foreseen. Produc-
tion would adapt itself to the new demands, and new
roads to wealth would be found. Besides, 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 Zollverein, 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 Eepublic, in France, in Spain,
in Australia — in the Moon. 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 fight between an

x 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 "would 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 Protectionist policy : when its unwisdom appears, you
can 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 suffer. 1 For them the
expansion of natural industries would furnish fresh em-
ployment, if not in Canada in the United States, to which

1 See Handbook of Commercial Union, pp. 122 et seq. Mr. Jury.

294 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

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. 1 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 the 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

1 See Handbook of Commercial Union, pp. 86 et seq. Mr. Janes.

x THE CANADIAN QUESTION 295

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 Eeciprocity its opponents appeal to Loyalty and the
Old Flag. " Discriminate against the Mother Country !
Never I " So with uplifted hands and eyes cry Protectionists
who are running to Ottawa to get higher 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 the aggegate trade. It has been shown that she
collects about four per cent, more in the aggregate on British
than on American goods, and admitsmore American than British
products free. 1 When the privileges enjoyed by the Colonies
in tha 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 with 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 sacrifice.
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 States ; so that no breach

1 See Handbook of Commercial Union, pp. 175 et seq. Mr. Dryden.

296 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

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 enhanced 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. When 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 Eeciprocity 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 Zollverein, 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 the Elgin treaty not impair independence

V

x THE CANADIAN QUESTION 297

but it put an end to the movement in favour of annexa-
tion, which commercial distress had generated, and which had
led to the Annexationist manifesto of 1849. In entering into
any contract, the parties, whether 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 Commercial 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 of 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 framing, 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-

298 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

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 Eeciprocity Treaty was overturned. Com-
merce after a little experience would be too 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 oh 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

x 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 mechanics' 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 Eepublican party in the United States
is the war party kept on foot for the sake of maintaining
the war tariff in the interest of the 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

800 CANADA AND THE CANADIAN QUESTION chap.

partly by new taxes of such a character as not to press on
industry or shackle trade — to begin with, an increase of
the excise— partly by economy in subsidies to Provinces,
public works undertaken for political purposes, and needless
expenditure on legislation and government. To say that
such economy is impracticable, would be to admit that a
confederation, united by no natural bond of geography, race,
language, or commercial interest, can be held together only
by corruption.

While these pages are going through the press, Canada is
the scene of a general election. Seeing that the tide in favour
of free trade with the continent was rising, and, before the
constitutional time for the next election came round, might
rise to an overwhelming height, the Protectionist Government
of Sir John Macdonald has sprung a dissolution on the
country, the Governor-General passively lending the pre-
rogative for that purpose. There is not a shadow of constitu-
tional ground for the step, and the reason alleged — that the
Government contemplates making overtures on the trade
question to the Americans, and cannot do this without a
fresh Parliament at its back — was evidently hollow. The
Government at first sought to head off the current of opinion
and dish the Opposition by declaring for Bestricted against
Unrestricted Reciprocity. But this strategy has failed of effect,
and the appeal on the part of the Government is now to
" The Old Flag," with which are coupled " The Old Leader,"
and "The Old Policy," against American connection. On
the issue thus raised the deliverance of the country will be
made. The verdict will be greatly confused, not only by
local questions, such as that of a Submarine Tunnel for Prince
Edward Island, which seems uppermost in the Islander's

x THE CANADIAN QUESTION 301

mind, but by the Equal Eight movement against Jesuit and
priestly aggression, which is still strong, and cuts across the
lines of political and commercial party. The Protected
Manufacturers will do their best, and the Government will ply
all the engines which it has long had at its command. To
ply those engines in Nova Scotia the Canadian High Com-
missioner has been brought over from England. Nor have
party names and shibboleths lost their extraordinary power.
Tories, though in favour of Eeciprocity, will still vote Tory.
To stimulate the enthusiasm of loyalty " Annexation plots "
are being discovered, and the discoveries are paraded with all
the resources of emotional eloquence and sensation type.
What will come out of this chaos is, at the time of our
writing, uncertain. But already tidings reach us from the
rural districts which seem to show that the farmer, however
much he may care for the Old Flag, cares also for his bread.
Should the Government be beaten or even hard pressed in
a pitched battle of its own seeking on the question of relation
with the United States, the result will be full of meaning.

APPENDIX A

CANADIAN BANKS AND BANKING

By Mr. Henry "W. Darling, Ex-President of the Toronto

Board of Trade.

The Canadian Banks hold their franchises by virtue of an Act of
the Dominion Parliament, which expires periodically and has just been
renewed, extending the Bank Charters for ten years from July 1891.

The Bank of British North America, and the Bank of British
Columbia are incorporated by Royal Charters, but are subject to the
provisions of the Canadian Act in all respects, except as to the double
liability of their Shareholders. The system of Banking modelled
upon the plan of the Scotch Banks with Branches, has proved
admirably suited to the wants of a new country, and although the
management generally has not been conspicuous for ability trans-
cending that of all the other commercial enterprises of the country,
the failures and consequent losses to the public have been neither
numerous nor large. The tendency of the management is towards a
legitimate banking business conducted upon well-established principles.

The provisions governing the creation of new Banks are not too
onerous to prevent their increase as the needs of the country may
require. Under the new Act the safeguards and restrictions are
increased, and they are now severe enough to discourage speculative
schemes, a substantial paid-up capital, and a contribution to the fund
in the hands of the Government guaranteeing the circulation, being
requisite before power to issue notes is granted.

The list of Shareholders published annually as a Government
return, and presented to parliament, shows that the Shareholders are
chiefly residents in Canada, with a few in Britain and the United
States. The liability of the Shareholders in case of failure in
a further amount equal to the amount of the shares held is
no doubt a deterrent to foreign investors. The Banks are permitted
to issue their own notes in denominations of $5 and upwards in
multiples of $5 to the extent of their bona fide unimpaired

304 APPENDIX A

paid-up capital. Under the new Act, which comes into force
in July 1891, they deposit with the Government a sum equal to
5 per cent upon the average circulation of the Bank during the
previous year ; and this fund is held as a guarantee against loss to the
public from the circulation of their notes. Any impairment is to be
made up by proportionate contribution from each Bank, in payments
not exceeding in any one year 1 per cent of the average amount of its
notes in circulation. Experience has shown that the risk of ultimate
loss on the circulation through the failure of a Bank is infinitesimal,
and in order to prevent temporary depreciation to holders of bank
notes on the suspension of a Bank, it is provided that they shall
bear interest at the rate of 6 per cent per annum until the process
of redemption is resumed, either by the Bank or by the Liquidator.
It is also incumbent upon the Banks to make provision for the
redemption of their notes at a central point in each Province, which
ensures their passing at par from end to end of the Dominion. The
circulation constitutes a first lien upon all the assets of the Bank,
including the reserved liability of the Shareholders. It may therefore
be affirmed that there is a circulating medium in Canada adequate to
all the requirements of the business in it, which cannot be forced
upon the community in excess of the daily need, because it is under-
going redemption daily at three central points, and possessing the
essential element of elasticity. From the monthly return made to the
Government by the Banks, it is shown that the maximum of Bank
circulation for the past year (1889) was $33,577,700, and the entire
assets, including the Shareholders' Capital and Reserve Fund and
double liability of Shareholders standing between the public and loss
upon it, was $397,300,000 — ample security in the aggregate. The
guarantee fund in the hands of the Government, amounting to about
$1,700,000, with the obligation to contribute to any impairment of
it to the extent of 5 per cent upon the average annual circulation
of each Bank, is regarded as sufficient to meet loss in any case of
failure. The system, however, has its chief recommendation in the
element of elasticity, enabling the Banks to meet any extra pressure
for money, in moving the crops for instance, by an increase in their
circulation without causing a stringency, raising rates of interest, or
reducing loans to their regular customers. In this respect it is
regarded as superior to the system in the United States, where the
circulation of each Bank is secured by Government Bonds deposited
with the Government against the notes issued. Here the element of
elasticity is entirely wanting, and the market value of the bonds
makes it unprofitable for the Banks to hold them, and a stringency
ensues upon any abnormal demand for money.

In addition to the notes of the Chartered Banks, the Dominion
Government issues legal tender in $1, $2, $4 bills, and those of larger

BANKS AND BANKING 305

denominations, and this is authorised by Act of Parliament to the
extent of $20,000,000, but limited at present by order in Council to
$19,000,000. The average circulation of those notes for the past
year has been about $16,000,000 ; and, although the Chartered Banks
are not compelled to keep any fixed amount of cash in their Treasuries
as Reserves proportioned either to their Capital or Liabilities, not
less than 40 per cent of their Cash Reserves must be in these
Dominion notes. By this means a certain volume of circulation is
secured. A forced loan is thus obtained by the Government from the
Banks without interest

The Reserves held by the Minister of Finance are regarded by
competent authorities as wholly inadequate, viz. 15 per cent in
gold: 10 per cent in Canadian Government securities guaranteed by
the British Government; and the remaining 75 per cent in
Dominion debentures. To prevent the defection of its Gold Reserves
by a demand for export to New York when it would be profitable to
send gold there British sovereigns are paid out, and American gold,
which could be negotiated without discount or depreciation, refused.
The Government circulation is further stimulated by making certain
proportions of it redeemable only at certain cities. It is of course
a legal tender in every part of Canada.

The system of Banks with large capital, having their head offices
in the commercial centres and extending their operations by means of
branch offices at various points, is admirably suited to a new country,
and in this respect is also regarded as superior to the National Bank
system of the United States, where branches are forbidden and the,
operations of each Bank are restricted practically to the locality in
which it is established. In Canada the savings of the people are
gathered up at points where they can be attracted in amounts
sufficient to warrant the opening of a Branch Bank, and if the local
loaning business offered is small or undesirable, the funds are
employed in commercial and industrial centres, and the value of
money is thus equalised, or nearly so, all over the Dominion. It is
assumed that in the hands of a Bank with large capital and a liberal
reserve fund deposits are safer than when entrusted to a smaller insti-
tution whose opportunities of doing a safe, legitimate, and profitable
business are restricted to the discounts offered in a single locality.

Four of the largest Banks in Canada have offices in New York, one
has an office in Chicago, and one in San Francisco, where they do a
large business in Foreign Exchange, and employ their Reserves on call
and short-date loans, so that they may be immediately available in
cases of emergency. Further than this, and with the exception of the
ordinary items sent from and to either side for collection, the Banks
in Canada and the United States have no relations with one another.

The Government of Canada has been an active competitor with the

X

306 APPENDIX A

Chartered Banks for the savings of the people, through the agency of
the Post Office and Savings Banks. Of the former there are 463,
with a balance at the credit of depositors of $23,000,000, and in
Savings Banks $20,000,000. These sums have been obtained by a
rate of interest being paid at a higher rate than the largest Chartered
Banks found it necessary to pay.

The Building Societies and Loan Companies which have the
power to take deposits have also been active competitors with the
Banks in this department, and, since 1867, the deposits in
these institutions have increased from $577,299 to $17,757,376 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 available being re-
tained. A run upon one company in troublous times would probably
precipitate disaster, and efforts are being made to convert call deposits
into true debentures when opportunity offers.

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,
but serves a useful purpose, and as published is carefully studied and
commented upon in the financial papers.

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 attracted large
deposits: in 1867 the total amount at the credit of depositors was
$30,652,193 ; in 1889 it was $126,243,755. The rate on loans and
discounts varies from 6 per cent to 8 per cent, according to the
character of the business ; and dividends are paid from 6 per cent to
1 2 per cent, according to the running capacity of the Bank, and the
skill with which it is managed. The Dominion Bank, whose head-
quarters are in Toronto (Capital $1,500,000 and Rest $1,300,000),
pays dividends of 10 per cent per annum, and their shares of $100
are sold for $230. The Bank of Toronto (Capital $2,000,000, and Rest
$1,400,000), also pays dividends of 10 per cent per annum, and their
shares are quoted at 224 per $100. The Bank of Montreal (Capital
$1 2,000,000, and Rest of $6,000,000), pays 1 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 6 to 8 per cent, after
carrying, in many instances, a substantial amount to the Rest 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 Bank, and in the hands of Loan
Companies, as upwards of $207,000,000, equal to the sum of $40
per head of the population.

APPENDIX B

THE AGRICULTURE OF ONTARIO

By Thomas Shaw, Professor of Agriculture and Arboriculture, Ontario

Agricultural College, Guelph, Ontario.

The climate of Ontario admits of the growing of as great a variety of
produce as that of England, the natural capabilities of her soils are
probably greater, and she is ahead of Great Britain in the introduction
and use of agricultural implements of the most approved kinds.

The Province produces finer samples of various kinds of grain, a
greater variety of the pure breeds of live stock, and a better quality
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 tariff to the extent of many millions of
dollars, the same kinds of agricultural products that are grown in that
great Republic. In the hope of dispelling in some degree miscon-
ceptions and of disseminating the truth, the writer has consented to
prepare this brief essay.

We do not claim for the Province the first place in the world for
agricultural resources 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 home 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, Climate, and Products of Ontario

The climate of Ontario is very invigorating. In the summer it is
rather warm, but the amount of bright sunshine, especially in the

308 APPENDIX B

harvest months, is very favourable to the quick conducting of the
operations of the husbandman. Some seasons there are not half a
dozen showers through the whole of the harvest time. During other
seasons it is different, but grain or fodder is seldom spoiled from over-
much moisture. The winters of Ontario are not so favourable to the
operations of the husbandman ; as he cannot usually conduct field
operations after the end of November nor before the middle of ApriL
His stock also requires to be housed during that season, which
necessitates a large output of food and labour. The season of growth
is very rapid. Barley sown during the closing days of April is often
housed before the end of July. Field operations must therefore of
necessity be done in a somewhat hurried manner. The climate seems
to suit stock-growing admirably, as the diseases which so often hamper
and thwart the efforts of the stockman in Europe are unknown here.
We have no pleuro-pneumonia, nor foot-and-mouth disease amongst our
cattle. The swine plague is unknown. There is no active disease at
work amongst our flocks of sheep, and the same maybe truthfully
said of our horses. This happy immunity from disease is a great boon
to the grower of live stock.

The soil of Ontario is varied in an unusual degree. The Province
embraces all shades of soil, from a light sand to a heavy clay ; its
prevailing character is that of a clay loam. Relatively it is rich and
productive, more so perhaps than any similar area in the North
American Continent Considerable portions of it do not require
under-draining owing to the porous nature of the subsoil, and yet it
cannot be said of any large area of it that it is leachy, although
much of it is not yet under -drained. This work is now being
carried on with a great deal of vigour in several sections. It is owing
to the varied nature of the soil of Ontario that so large a variety of
crops may be grown. In this respect the Province is singularly
favoured. In the western half of it fall wheat can be grown of the
first quality. The Ontario six rowed barley is not equalled perhaps
by any in the world for brightness of colour, and for its suitability to
make beer such as the Americans desire. Heavy crops of rye, spring
wheat, oats, and peas can be grown in almost any part of the Province.
Indian corn or maize flourishes in the Lake Erie counties, where it
can be grown to great perfection, and it will grow admirably
throughout the whole Province for ensilage or fodder purposes.
It is now being grown very extensively for these uses, and the
average quantity of green corn that can be grown on an acre in one
season is probably not less than 15 to 18 tons. Buckwheat, though
not much grown, does very well in all parts except in the most
northerly counties.

The Province is not only admirably adapted to the growth and
proper curing of hay, composed of a variety of grasses and clovers, but

THE AGRICULTURE OF ONTARIO 809

it will grow field roots, such as turnips, mangels, and carrots in fine
form in nearly all the counties. Sugar beets may also be readily
grown, yielding by analysis fully as high a percentage as can be
obtained in Germany or France, but as yet we have no sugar beet
factories established.

Rape may also be grown in great perfection, and the fattening of
lambs on this for the United States market by pasturing is becoming
an important trade. The southerly sections of Ontario are admirably
adapted to the growing of many kinds of fruits. The climate in these
is tempered by proximity to the waters of the Great Lakes. Small
fruits, such as strawberries, raspberries, currants, and gooseberries, will
grow well in almost any section of the country. All the Lake counties,
and indeed all the counties of the West, grow apples, excellent in
quality and in great abundance in favourable years. Pears, plums, and
cherries produce well in the same sections. Peaches flourish in certain
sections of Lakes Erie and Ontario, though the crop is somewhat pre-
carious. In the same localities enormous quantities of the finest grapes
are now being grown. Garden vegetables of many kinds, including
squash, celery, tomatoes, melons, etc., are grown in finest form. In
1888, 180, 557 acres were devoted to orchard and garden purposes. The
immense original forests of Ontario are largely a thing of the past.
Generally speaking, the farmers have sufficient timber for fuel, but
many of them have not a sufficient supply for building purposes.
Almost the only timber now used for fencing purposes is cedar, utilised
in the form of posts on which wires are stretched, either with or with-
out barbs. Re-foresting is only in its infancy, but trees planted for
purposes of protection in winter are now becoming quite common. In
1888 the returns of the assessors gave the amount of farm lands in
the Province as 22,058,279 acres —

Cleared .... 11,314,725 acres

Woodland .... 8,512,740

Swamp, marsh, or waste . 2,230,814

The amount returned as woodland does not by any means represent
unbroken forest, but lands as yet uncultivated, and from a large portion
of which the forest has been largely removed.

In the same year the staple field crops occupied 7,616,350 acres,
and the pasture grounds 2,535,604 acres. There has been a marked
decrease in the number of acres devoted to pasture during recent years,
owing to the great increase in the growth of soiling and ensilage crops.

Although at the time of writing the report for 1889 of the Bureau
of Industries is not yet published, through the kindness of its secretary,
Mr. A Blue, we are enabled to give in advance the following statistics
relating to the agriculture of Ontario in 1889 : —

310

APPENDIX B

Acreage, Yield, and Value of Field Crops

Bush.

Acres.

Bushels.

per
Acre.

Value.

Fall Wheat

822,115

13,001,865

15-8

$11,493,648

Spring Wheat .

398,610

5,697,707

14-3

5,019,680

Barley ....

875,286

23,386,388

26-7

10,290,011

Oats

1,923,444

64,346,301

33*5

19,625,622

Rye

90,106

1,431,679

15-9

728,725

Pease ....

708,068

13,509,237

19-1

7,524,645

Corn (in ear)

187,116

9,248,199

49-4

2,395,283

Buckwheat

56,398

1,272,578

22-6

502,668

Beans ....

21,380

371,893

17-0

471,188

Hay and Clover (tons)

2,386,223

3,728,313

1-56

37,208,564

Potatoes ....

145,812

14,355,529

98-5

6,531,766

Mangel-wurzels .

21,218

7,223,478

341

No estimate

Carrots ....

11,261

3,431,959

305

936,925

Turnips ....

111,103

37,021,260

333

8,440,847

Value of all Field Crops

$111,169,572

The aggregate returns given in the above Table and the average
yield per acre compare as follows, with the same during the seven
preceding years :

Average yield
per acre.

Bushels.

Fall Wheat .

Spring Wheat

Barley .

Oats

Rye

Pease

Corn (in ear) .

Buckwheat .

Beans

Hay and Clover

Potatoes

Mangel-wurzels

Carrots .

Turnips .

19*8 bush.
15-9 „
26-1 „
357 „
16*4 „
20-7 „
67-5 „
22*2 „
20*9 „

1-33 tons
121-5 „
437-1 „
353 -4 „
394-9 „

18,778,659
9,248,119

19,766,436

55,997,425
1,814,636

13,123,509

12,290,797

1,367,427

465,182

2,942,900

18,919,185
7,826,216
3,590,993

39,556,790

From these figures it is apparent that the fine natural capabilities
of the soil of Ontario have not as yet been brought out in best form.
But while this is true it should be remembered that Ontario leads the
North American continent in the yield obtained per acre from the
principal cereal crops. During the seven years ending with 1888 the
average yield of fall wheat from Ontario exceeded that of any State in
the Union 4-1 bushels per acre, barley 3 bushels per acre, and oats 1.5

THE AGRICULTURE OF ONTARIO

311

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

88.8 cents

Spring Wheat

>»

89

Barley

>>

57.4

Oats

>>

36.1

Rye

>>

60.8

Pease

»>

62.3

Corn (in ear)

»>

28.5

Buckwheat

>>

40.9

Beans

»>

93.8

Potatoes

j> <

42.3

Hay, per ton

• «

$11.50

L

rvE Stock Statistics for 1889

Number of Live Stock —

Horses

618,795

Cattle

1,891,899 (779,171 being milch cows)

Sheep

1,344,180

Swine

835,469

Poultry

6,3<

04,298

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 Holstein. 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 Tamworth. 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

812

APPENDIX B

breeding ground of pare stock of a high order for almost every State in
the American Union*

Cheese Statistics for 1889

Number of Factories

784

,, Patrons ....

43,215

Average number of cows

273,231

Milk used, lbs. ....

760,146,327

Cheese made, lbs. ....

72,592,847

Value of Cheese, $ .

6,787,619

Value per lb., cents ....

9*35

Milk to make lib. of cheese, lbs.

10-47

Creameries Statistics for 1889

In operation ....

33

Butter made, lbs.

876,003

Value, $

184,067

Cheese made at Creameries, lbs.

219,808

Value of Cheese, $

14,406

Total value of Produce, $

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 animals 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.

i

THE AGRICULTURE OF ONTARIO 813

The following summary is taken from the official returns for the
fiscal year ending 30th June 1889. It relates to the exports of agri-
cultural products from Ontario and Quebec together as compared with
those of the whole Dominion : —

From Ontario From the

and Quebec. Dominion.

Animals and their produce .... $21,788,799 $23,894,707

Agricultural products $12,272,760 $13,414,111

This implies that probably more than three-fourths of the agricul-
tural products of the whole Dominion are produced by Ontario.

Ontario produces and exports 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 years. The same may be said of
sheep, of which about 30,000 head are sent annually to Great Britain,
and 300,000 head to the United States. The same is also true of
horses, of which about 16,000 head are sent annually to the 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 upon the cheese at the port of shipment is
higher than the estimate put upon it in the factory returns. The
same year Ontario exported eggs 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 $1 7 9,247. 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 kinds of grain have dwindled to almost
nothing, and are sure to decrease still further, as without a doubt
Ontario is destined to grow great through the production of live stock
and live stock products.

The Methods Usually Adopted by the Canadian Farmer

Although the methods practised by the Ontario farmer are defect-
ive in many respects relatively, his practice is advanced when com-
pared with that of the other Provinces and States of North America.
No other proof of this is required than the success which has attended
his efforts in capturing foreign markets in competition with the
people of all nations. Fat bullocks sent from Ontario command
high prices in the markets of Liverpool, store steers are eagerly
bought up by Scottish farmers in Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Dundee.
Ontario cheese commands the highest price in the markets of London,
and Ontario apples can at any time find purchasers on British docks
more readily than those from the United States. Ontario barley

314 APPENDIX B

flowed into the New England States in a stream so constant that it
has been thought necessary by the United States Government to bar
its entrance by a duty of 30 cents per bushel. Our horses have been
sought for to the extent of about $2,000,000 annually by the people
of that country, and these, along with large numbers of our store
cattle, have climbed over a tariff wall in the face of a 20 per cent
duty ; and now our lambs are entering their markets in thousands and
tens of thousands, although a duty of 75 cents has to be paid on
every lamb going into that country.

A very large portion of the pure-bred live stock imported into this
country from Britain finds its way over our Western border into the
United States ; and our best market for the pure bred horses, cattle,
sheep, and swine that we raise is found in that market. Methods
which give such results as these cannot be behind the age when
viewed as a whole. In Ontario we have some specialists in various
lines, but the system generally adopted is more commonly known by
the name of " mixed " farming. Those who practise mixed farming
rear a sufficient number of horses to till their lands, and occasionally
one or two for sale. The sale of butter from their cows and of
poultry and eggs keeps the family in groceries ; generally more or less
beef, mutton, and pork are sold in addition to what is used in the
family. Nearly all the grain and fodder required, if not the whole
of these, is grown upon the farm, and sometimes a considerable portion
is also sold in the local markets.

A very large proportion of the work done upon the farm is now
done by machinery. Much of the ploughing is done by the use of the
sulky plough, and much of the harrowing by the use of the sulky
harrow. Machines are also being introduced which will enable culti-
vating to be done in the same way. The sowing is almost entirely
done by the use of the seed-drill The mowing and reaping are done
by the use of machines. A large proportion of the pea crop is cut by
the pea harvester. The sulky horse-rake does all the raking. Hay
loaders load much of the hay, and horse forks deposit much of it in
the mow. In some instances sack-lifters elevate the loads bodily to a
high position in the barns, and in others the load is carried into the
mow from off the waggon by means of slings. Threshing machines
are of the first order, and they are run by steam-engines which
have been so perfected in their appendages that they may be set 300
yards away from the barn. The steam-engine is often used in prepar-
ing food for the stock, and windmills are frequently employed in pump-
ing water for their use. The extent to which the aid of machinery
is called in enables the farmer to get over his work with much expedi-
tion, and with a much reduced expenditure of bodily strength.

The live stock is all housed in winter, sometimes in sheds, but
more frequently in what are termed basement stables, that is, stables

THE AGRICULTURE OF ONTARIO 315

the walls of which 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. The live stock being in the lower apart-
ment, the food and litter kept overhead are thus very easily fed to
them. In many of the buildings the cattle drink without leaving
the stalls, and other facilities for doing the work are equally perfect.

The Impoverishment op 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 be 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 rapidly drawing to a close, and that it will be followed by one of
soil enrichment. Ontario is already importing food for live stock
from Manitoba and the North-West, and these importations will un-
doubtedly increase from year to year, all of which will be favourable
to the retention of the fertility of our soils if not to its positive increase.

The Social Condition op the Farmer

The condition of the farmer socially is not all that could be
desired. The farmer in Ontario does not occupy the same position
in society relatively with the farmer of Great Britain. The social
distinctions are largely obliterated between him and the labourer
which he employs. Nor in the community generally does he occupy
that high position socially to which the dignity of his calling should

316 APPENDIX B

entitle him. The first has arisen from influences inseparably associated
with the early settlement of the country. Nearly all the early settlers
in Canada were immigrants from Britain, who came from the labour-
ing classes. Each family did its own work at first, both within the
log cabin and without After a time other help had to be called in,
and from the nature of things the labourer of necessity had to lodge
with his employer. The employer then usually made a bargain with
the employed to the effect that he would pay the former a certain sum
for a given time and furnish board, 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, however, gradually changing. It is slowly giving
way to that system which furnishes 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 help of the farm, and before
very long it is not at all improbable that the necessary accommoda-
tion for the assistants of the farm will be furnished in this way. In
this tendency to. obliterate social distinctions between the farmer
and his hired help there was really no hardship imposed upon the
former, where he did not desire to have it otherwise, but when he
wished to carry on the work of the farm and at the same time main-
tain sacred 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 rapidly changing, insomuch 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 op the Ontario Farmer

The diet of the Ontario farmer is not what it should 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 vegetables
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 upon 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 would bring in money, and in part from

THE AGRICULTURE OF ONTARIO 317

unwholesome and defective methods of preparation. The Ontario
farmer lives far too much on salt pork and pastry preparations. Were
it not for this he would undoubtedly take a foremost place for robust
physical development amongst the rural population of any land. The
corrective influences of this abnormal state of things are already at
work, and will, it is hoped, soon bring about a radical reform in the
dietary practices of the farmer.

The Agricultural Associations op Ontario

The agriculture of this Province has been greatly assisted by the
various Agricultural Associations operating within it The oldest
association within the Province is the Council of the Agricultural and
Arts Association, which for more than forty 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 present Joint-stock
associations hold exhibitions annually in some important centres.
The Government has made provision for holding exhibitions annually
in every township of the Province where this may be desired by the
people, and these are usually held.

We have an association of the breeders representing the Clydesdale
and Shire horses, the Shorthorn, Ayrshire, and Holstein 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-
plished 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 may meet in any electoral district in the Province for the
purpose of discussing questions relating to agriculture, and these are
addressed periodically by 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 purposes. The
sons of farmers who are willing to labour diligently at this college
may participate in the benefits which it offers at a very trifling
cost, though the expense to young men from 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.

318 APPENDIX B

It would not be prudent, however, for the British capitalist to engage
in Ontario farming who was not possessed of a fair share of knowledge
regarding agriculture as practised in Great Britain. Lacking this he
would not be likely to succeed. The tenant farmer of Britain possessed
of sufficient capital to enable him to purchase and stock a farm here
would very probably succeed in Ontario farming. But he would not
succeed without having due regard to the modifications of method
rendered necessary by the differences of climate, and the changed
relations as regards labour. The season of growth in Ontario is
relatively short as compared with the corresponding period of growth
in Britain. Labour has to be performed 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 very largely of the
production of live stock and the products of the same. The amount of
capital required to purchase a farm of the dimensions indicated would
be from $10,000 to $15,000, and to stock the farm and equip 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, becoming more frequent during recent years, so that where
a tenant has proved his efficiency he has little difficulty in obtaining
a farm 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
by the 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 employment 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 be 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 AGRICULTURE OF ONTARIO 319

with board, was $6.28 during the year 1888. Immigrants of this class,
furnished with credentials as to character, can at all times find ready
employment in farmhouses.

The Trade Relations of Ontario

The trade relations of Ontario are not satisfactory to a majority of
the farmers. A large number of them desire to have closer trade
relations with the people of the United States. They look upon that
country as the natural market for a large proportion of their products.
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 tariff

The agricultural exports to the United States and Great Britain
respectively from the Provinces 6f Ontario and Quebec combined, for
the fiscal year ending 30th June 1890, are given in the official returns
as follows : —

To G. Britain To the U. S.

Animals and their produce . . $15,616,632 $3,938,827
Agricultural products . . . 3,319,398 8,654,824

$18,936,030 $14,593,651

As the greater portion of 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 Great 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
the egg trade. On 1 st January 1871 the duty of 1 per cent on eggs going
into the United States was removed. During 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 effects of failure to attain this end may
be it is difficult to forecast. That it will strengthen the desire for

320 APPENDIX B

political union with that people is more than a possibility. In the
meantime the effects of these restrictions upon our agriculture are
depressing, and this depression has shown itself 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 country was 249,970. In
1880 the number was 717,157; and although we cannot give the
numbers from the census returns 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 that 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,
22d October 1890.

i

i

APPENDIX C

MINERAL RESOURCES OF CANADA

By T. D. Ledyard, Toronto

The continent of North America is abundantly supplied with economic
minerals which are distributed alike through the Dominion of Canada and
the United States, and are confined by no international boundary. The
British Provinces are as rich in mineral wealth as the neighbouring
Republic, with a striking difference, however, in favour of the latter in
the matter of development The industrial situation of the world is
changing ; the supremacy in iron and steel manufactures hitherto held
by Great Britain is about to be transferred to the continent of America.
Reports of the late census show that the manufacture of pig-iron in the
United States during the last ten years 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, possibly reaching this
distinction very soon.

The quantity of pig-iron produced 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 9 J million tons as
compared with 3| millions in 1880 and 2 millions in 1870.

Whereas England supplied in 1878 as much as 45 per cent of the
world's production of pig-iron, as against 16 per cent supplied by the
United States ; in 1889 England only supplied 33 per cent, while the
production of the United States had increased to over 30 per cent, and
is rapidly growing.

While the production 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 States 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

Y

322 APPENDIX C

of her great neighbour, and in this the greatest of all industries should
produce annually nearly a million tons of pig-iron.

According to the Government returns, however, Canada produced
less than 60,000 tons last year, or not quite one fifteenth of what she
should 'produce 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 manufactures 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 continent, and possess all the requirements
for cheap manufacture, and being so near navigation, have great
facilities for transport

The manufacturers of Massachusetts and the Eastern States are
earnestly urging their Government to admit coal and iron ores free, so as
to enable them to compete with Pennsylvania, and represent that free
trade in these articles is highly essential to their welfare.

The United States last year used upwards of 15,000,000 tons
of iron ore, and Canada should in like proportion use 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 one-fifth of what it
should be to make it proportionately equal to that of 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 numerous 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 quality. 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, while the charcoal furnaces in
Michigan produced last year about 200,000 tons of pig-iron worth
nearly $4,000,000.

Within about 100 miles east of Toronto an iron mine is being
developed containing ore giving 68 to 70 per cent metallic iron with
practically no phosphorus or sulphur, and suitable to make the finest

MINERAL RESOURCES OF CANADA 328

BteeL There is a large bed 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 Superior mines ;
and if such ore as this had free access to the States it would greatly
cheapen their steel manufacture, but the duty of 75 cents per ton is a
heavy 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 ore can be delivered in Pittsburgh for $4 per
ton (if there is no duty), which is about as low as the best Bessemer
ores cost at English furnaces. If there were no trade restrictions,
Toronto, the capital city of Ontario, should be an excellent point for
the manufacture of iron and BteeL It possesses fully as great facilities
for such manufactures as Chicago had thirty years ago, before that city
commenced to make iron.

Ores could be laid down in Toronto for $2.50 to $3.50 per ton,
which cost $5 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 make them profitable, for experience teaches that small works
cannot manufacture nearly so profitably as large ones.

West of Port Arthur on the Canadian side of Lake Superior are
found extensive deposits of magnetic iron ore, very rich and suitable
for steel making, which are not worked as yet, although from the
adjoining districts of Minnesota about one million tons annually are
being mined. On an island in Lake Winnipeg is a large deposit of
hematite. In British Columbia are numerous deposits of good iron
ores, with great facilities for 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 neighbouring States where a
large population requires cheap fuel, and free trade in fuel would be
of immense benefit to both countries.

The nickel ores recently discovered in the Sudbury 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 pyrites yielding from
1 to 3 per cent nickel, and in some cases as high as 4 to 5 per
cent, the ore also often containing a paying proportion of copper. By
roasting with charcoal most of the sulphur can be expelled, and it is
then smelted with coke, and reduced at the mines to a matte containing
about 15 per cent nickel and 20 per cent copper.

Y2

824 APPENDIX C

A small proportion of nickel is found greatly to improve the
quality of steel, rendering it tougher and stronger. There is no doubt
steamships will hereafter be made of nickel steel ; and if there were no
artificial hindrances to trade much of the manufacture should be
carried on in Canada.

Estimates based upon the past increase of production, and taking
into consideration the increasing population of the States, show that
the probable consumption of pig-iron in the United States will be
20,000,000 tons by the end of the century. The consumption of
iron and steel is the index of the industrial prosperity of a nation. Is
Canada to share in the wonderful prosperity which will ensue from
such an immense consumption of iron on the American continent, or
are we to be shut out by trade restrictions ?

The discovery of platinum in the Sudbury district also promises to
be of some importance, and is opportune in view of the increased
demand for that mineraL The production of asbestos in the province
of Quebec is rapidly increasing, 4400 tons having been mined in 1888
and upwards of 6000 in 1889, with considerably more in 1890, the
value being from $30 to $150 per ton. New uses are constantly being
found for this interesting mineral. The demand at present exceeds
the supply, and asbestos mining will no doubt be a source of much
profit in the future.

The production of phospate of lime (apatite) is also increasing,
30,000 tons having been mined last year against 22,000 the year
before. Canadian apatite is a fertiliser of high grade, some of the ore
containing 80 to 87 per cent pure phosphate of lime. Phosphate and
asbestos are allowed to enter the United States free of duty, and although
that country is not by any means the only market for them, the rapid
increase in their production shows the benefit a free market gives.

In contrast to this take the item of grindstones, upon which there
has been a duty of $1.75 per ton. In 1888 were produced in Canada
5764 tons, which fell to 3404 tons in 1889. Excellent grindstones
are found on several parts of the Nova Scotia coast, whence they could be
shipped to Atlantic ports in the United States much cheaper than the
present cost, but here again the tariff obstructs trade to the detriment
of both countries.

There are many copper ores in Canada. Nova Scotia has rich
copper glance, and there is cupreous pyrites in New Brunswick and
the eastern townships of Quebec, while British Columbia contains some
copper ores which often carry gold or silver. There is a great field
for industry in the development of our copper ores.

Lead production in Canada suffers severely from tariff restriction.
Galena is found in several parts of Canada and baryta often accompanies
it, but owing to the small demand in Canada and prohibitory duties in
the States, the market is very limited, only 337 tons of lead being

MINERAL RESOURCES OF CANADA 325

produced in a year against 180,000 tons during the same time in
the States.

British Columbia has many mining districts which produce lead
ores rich in silver, now only beginning to be developed.

Already large veins of galena are known which carry 40 to 50 ounces
of silver to the ton, and some as high as 200 or 300 ounces. A great
future is, no doubt, in store for this industry, and there can be as little
doubt that the Pacific Province will prove one of the richest parts of
the continent. Bismuth has been found in British Columbia, and, if
proved to be in quantity, will be of great value, as it has not hitherto
been found in commercial quantities in America. In Ontario and
Quebec there are many veins of fine white feldspar suitable to make
porcelain. The best Muscovite mica occurs in many places, but is
shut out by a tariff of 35 per cent. There is plenty of graphite in
Canada, but very little demand for it

There are many varieties of marble and serpentine ; some beauti-
ful white marble suitable for statuary, which is little developed owing
to the small Canadian demand and the high American duties.

The same may be said of mineral paints, quantities of which are
found, but put to little use. Canada possesses great stores of petroleum.
In addition to those in Western Ontario, which are extensively worked,
there are large districts in our North-West Territories containing inex-
haustible supplies of mineral oil

The western part of Ontario has numerous salt wells from which a
much larger supply could be produced, and from which many people
in the United States could obtain cheaper salt, one of the necessaries
of life, if it were not for the duties. In many parts are good qualities
of soapstone, and in Quebec excellent roofing slates, the production of
which could be greatly increased if that commodity were allowed to
find its natural market.

Canada has her share of the precious metals. Nova Scotia is
annually increasing its gold production ; the district west of Port
Arthur in Ontario is becoming an important silver producer ; and both
silver and gold are found in many parts of British Columbia.

From what has been said it will be apparent 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 hoped the good sense of both countries will
shortly remove. _r~-^-'

Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh ^^^^FOlVjV/

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