FRENCH CANADA.
CANADA has had a two-fold history: French and English. The two
elements of the population have not amalgamated to any
appreciable extent, the hindrance arising from religion rather
than race. We have then today a French-speaking Canada and an
English-speaking Canada. It is important to keep in the mind a
clear idea of the proportion of the one to the other. The
tendency of the French population to remain concentrated in a
single province or its immediate neighbourhood, (I do not forget
the Acadian French, but they cannot seriously affect the
position), makes it easy to indicate this proportion, and its
fluctuation. In 1759 Quebec was Canada--a Canada entirely French
and Roman Catholic. In 1791 Ontario was set off as a separate
province, and within fifty years was of itself equal to the
French province in population and superior in wealth. Today
Quebec is the only French-speaking province among the seven
which make up the Confederation. An overflow into a few of the
border counties of Ontario, a limited and {154} scattered
migration to the north-west, mark the only further expansion of
the French population over new areas in Canada. A considerable
migration to New England, where the Quebec peasant becomes a
factory operative, is interesting, because it shows that he
resists amalgamation in the United States as steadily as in
Canada. Quebec then, still represents French Canada. It has a
population of 1,500,000, of whom 1,200,000 are French. It should
be added that the wealth and influence of the great and growing
city of Montreal are in the hands of the English minority, as
were the wealth and influence of the city of Quebec in its days
of greatest prosperity. A certain unprogressive spirit hampers
the Frenchman, and gives a striking commercial and industrial
advantage to the English population. Perhaps this contrast may
in part be explained by the fact that the conquest of 1759 was
followed by the return to France of a small, but intellectually
and commercially important element of French Canadian society,
while the English population was reinforced a few years later by
an influx of loyalist energy and ability.
Roughly speaking, therefore, the French of Canada stand to the
whole people as, at the most, a million and a half to five
millions. The many provinces which are still to be carved out of
the north-west will be English speaking. It is true that the
French _habitans_ have large families, and the natural increase
of the race is somewhat greater than that of British colonists,
but on the other hand the whole inflow of immigration increases
{155} the weight of the English-speaking provinces; the outflow
to New England lessens that of Quebec. The relative influence
and numbers of the French element in Canada will never be
greater than they are at present, but rather less, partly owing,
as I have said, to the formation of new provinces, but even more
to the hesitation of French Canadians to follow the advice of
their wiser leaders like Mr. Laurier, and throw themselves more
entirely than they have hitherto done into the tide of
Anglo-Saxon movement on the continent. More than one historian
has pointed out that the efforts of French kings and ministers
to make Quebec a preserve for a single set of ideas paralyzed
the energies of the colonists in early days. There seems to me
to be a like danger now, arising from similar causes, that it
may become the less energetic community of a strenuously
progressive continent. But it can never dominate Canadian
development, or permanently block the general movement of the
Dominion in any given direction.
From another point of view French Canada today represents one of
the most interesting triumphs of British constitutional
government. When the Province of Quebec came under British
dominion in 1763, it had never known what free government by the
people meant. Governors and Intendants, with almost despotic
power, or taking their orders even in minute detail from a
French king or minister in Paris, left no room for popular
control. Striking indeed was the contrast which the province
presented to the {156} English colonies further south, which
from their very foundation began to organize a system of local
self-government. In Quebec the beginnings of self-government had
still to be made after 1763, or, rather, after 1774, the date of
the Quebec Act. Yet the remark of Montalembert, that the
Frenchman in Canada under British institutions has attained a
liberty which the Frenchman of France never knew, is in strict
accord with fact. France, which seems to have wasted few regrets
on a colony which had always been poor and a drain upon her
resources, plunged into all the horrors of the Revolution to win
a liberty which after all for more than a century has wavered
between name and reality. The people of her surrendered colony,
carrying on, along with the British provinces, the agitation for
responsible government by methods entirely constitutional, save
for the slight outbreak of 1837, have gained and continue in the
secure enjoyment of a popular freedom as complete as that of any
country in the world; a recognition for their religion such as
that religion cannot command in France. Between the European
Frenchman, moreover, and the French Canadian is the barrier
raised by the Revolution. Modern France does not send emigrants
to Quebec, where, indeed, they would scarcely be welcome. The
typical French republican, with his atheism, his free life, and
his contempt for religious forms, would be curiously out of
place in the average French Canadian community, devout, moral,
and conservative. He would, indeed, run no slight risk of {157}
being boycotted by clerical orders. The sentimental tie with
France or race and language remains, and to the honour of French
Canadians be it said, is fondly cherished, though it is not
sustained by that constant intercourse and hearty literary
sympathy which so bind the English world together. The reasoned
political allegiance of the people goes out to the British
connection, which gives steadiness to their public and security
to their religious life.
Once more, French Canadians have profound objections to
annexation to the United States. They go in numbers to work in
the mills and factories of New England, or in the forests of
Michigan or Maine for a few months or a few years, forming a
large proportion of the so-called exodus, but those who become
naturalized American citizens have hitherto been an unimportant
fraction of the whole. Many return, the movement to and fro
being continuous. Those who stay form more or less distinct
communities of their own, to which cohesion is given by the
curé, who follows to supply the ministrations of their religion.
The simple loyalty of the habitant to his Canadian home and to
his religion is no slight offset to his narrowness of political
outlook and his somewhat unprogressive habit of mind. It made
him fight against American aggression in 1774; it added a bright
page to Canadian history by the heroic part taken in the war of
1812, when 400 French Canadians under de Salaberry defeated at
Chateauguay an army {158} of 3000 Americans. Happily we need not
now think of like aggression, but should danger ever again
threaten Canada, there are the strongest reasons to believe that
the Frenchman even of the United States would soon find his
place beside his compatriot in the old home, fighting for the
land he loves with a passionate affection.
It is only natural that, with race, language, and religion on
the one side, and on the other a heritage of free political
institutions giving security to all of these, we should find
fluctuations of expression among an excitable people in regard
to national attachment. On the whole, however, the steadiness of
French Canadian loyalty to British institutions is remarkable.
Cardinal Manning told me in 1886 that French Canadian bishops
and clergy had over and over again assured him that their people
were practically a unit in preferring British to French, or any
other connection, and since that time the pastoral addresses of
the highest ecclesiastics have more than once confirmed this
statement in explicit terms.
Sir George Cartier described himself as an Englishman speaking
French, and he no doubt meant it as a sincere indication of the
drift of French Canadian thought. When a conspicuous French
politician--not a Conservative--told me in Ottawa three years
since that he would not be afraid to stand on any platform in
Quebec and affirm that, in the event of war between France and
England, other things being equal, four French Canadians out of
every five would not only {159} sympathize with, but prefer to
fight for England, the energy of the statement was a surprise to
me; but I have no reason to doubt the speaker's sincerity. The
absolute truth of the statement cannot be questioned, if the
supposed contest involved the substitution in Quebec of
anti-religious French Republicanism, which the French Canadian
hates, for the tolerant system of Britain. Looking back upon all
that has happened in France since 1789, looking even at the
condition of the Republic today and its attitude towards
religion, the French Canadian may, and, it may be added, often
does, sincerely echo the thought of the brilliant historian of
the French occupation of America when he says that 'a happier
calamity never befell a people than the conquest of Canada by
the British arms.'
In criticism of what has so far been said of French Canada it
will no doubt be replied that Mr. Mercier, the late leader of
the French Nationalist party in Quebec, has taken occasion to
denounce the proposal to work out some scheme of British unity,
and has pointed to independence as, in his opinion, the ideal
future for Canada. No doubt Mr. Mercier was for a time able to
introduce new features into the political life of Quebec, but
there is no reason to suppose that he broke down even for a
moment the traditional policy of his people, who have long
looked upon their British connection as the chief safeguard for
the rights which they most value. The exposure of Mr. Mercier's
political methods and the collapse of his system make {160} it
perhaps unnecessary to discuss his views on national affairs.
Mr. Laurier, the exceedingly able and fair minded leader of the
opposition in the Canadian Parliament, is described in 'The
Problems of Greater Britain,' as 'more or less in favour of'
Imperial Federation. He has lately, probably under the pressure
of political events in the Dominion, expressed the opinion that
independence, rather than Federation with the Empire, was the
more desirable end of Canadian development, basing his argument
chiefly upon the idea that Canada would, in a federated empire,
be drawn into European wars. I have dealt with this objection in
another place. Mr. Laurier is devoted to the honour and the
interest of Canada, and it may be taken for granted that if
these can be proved to coincide with the honour and interest of
the Empire, any difficulty which he sees in British unity would
disappear.
It will be admitted that the experience of Sir John Macdonald in
dealing with the French Canadian people, and his knowledge of
French Canadian sentiment towards the Empire and the Dominion
were unique. As a statesman he had every reason to consider and
conciliate the French vote, by which his parliamentary majority
was in part maintained throughout his career. Yet he never saw
in French Canadian feeling any bar to a united Empire. In 1889,
at a time when certain Quebec politicians, and even members of
his own Cabinet, were declaiming {161} rather vigorously against
the idea of Imperial Federation, I had an opportunity of asking
his opinion as to the ultimate attitude which Quebec was likely
to take towards the question. His reply, given without reserve
or hesitation, was marked by a decision which was manifestly the
outcome of much thought upon the question. I try to reproduce
this opinion, not so much to attach to it the weight of his
great name, as because it bears upon the face of it the
recommendation of reason and truth. 'The relation of Quebec
towards the Empire is fixed,' said he, 'by the facts of history
and the aspirations of the people themselves. The controlling
idea of the French Canadian is to retain his language, religion
and civil institutions, necessarily held under a critical tenure
on a continent in the main Anglo-Saxon. But he has in the treaty
of 1763 and the Quebec Act founded upon it a Magna Charta as
dear to him as is to an Englishman that won from King John. By
that treaty the honour of England was pledged to France that the
Frenchmen of Quebec who then became British subjects should be
continued in the enjoyment of their religious and civil
institutions. In annexation to the United States or in Canadian
independence this guarantee would be given up. In the Great
Republic the French Canadian would run the risk of being blotted
out as was the Frenchman of Louisiana. In an independent Canada
he would hold his own with difficulty. He must in the long run
vote to follow the Empire in whatever {162} direction its
development may lead. This condition is permanent; all others
are temporary. The interest of the French Canadian will lie in
resisting separation, whether in the direction of independence
or annexation.'
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