OBSTACLES TO UNION
The prospect was indeed one to dismay the most ardent patriot. After
the passage of the Constitutional Act of 1791 the trend of events had
set steadily in the direction of separation. Nature had placed
physical obstacles in the road to union, and man did his best to render
the task of overcoming them as hopeless as possible. The land
communication between the Maritime Provinces and Canada, such as it
was, precluded effective intercourse. In winter there could be no
access by the St Lawrence, so that Canada's winter port was in the
United States. As late as 1850 it took ten days, often longer, for a
letter to go from Halifax to Toronto. Previous to 1867 there were but
two telegraph lines connecting Halifax with Canada. Messages by wire
were a luxury, the rate between Quebec and Toronto being seventy-five
cents for ten words and eight cents for each additional word. Neither
commerce nor friendship could {12} be much developed by telegraph in
those days, and, as the rates were based on the distance, a telegram
sent from Upper Canada to Nova Scotia was a costly affair. To reach
the Red River Settlement, the nucleus of Manitoba, the Canadian
travelled through the United States. With the colonies of Vancouver
Island and British Columbia the East had practically no dealings. Down
to 1863, as Sir Richard Cartwright once said,[1] there existed for the
average Canadian no North-West. A great lone land there was, and a few
men in parliament looked forward to its ultimate acquisition, but
popular opinion regarded it vaguely as something dim and distant. In
course of time railways came, but they were not interprovincial and
they did nothing to bind the East to the West. The railway service of
early days is not to be confounded with the rapid trains of to-day,
when a traveller leaves Montreal after ten in the morning and finds
himself in Toronto before six o'clock in the afternoon. Said
Cartwright, in the address already cited:
Even in our own territory, and it was a matter not to be disregarded,
the state {13} of communication was exceedingly slow and imperfect.
Practically the city of Quebec was almost as far from Toronto in those
days, during a great part of the year, as Ottawa is from Vancouver
to-day. I can remember, myself, on one occasion being on a train which
took four days to make its way from Prescott to Ottawa.
Each province had its own constitution, its tariff, postage laws, and
currency. It promoted its own interests, regardless of the existence
of its British neighbours. Differences arose, says one writer, between
their codes of law, their public institutions, and their commercial
regulations.[2] Provincial misunderstandings, that should have been
avoided, seriously retarded the building of the Inter-colonial Railway.
'The very currencies differ,' said Lord Carnarvon in the House of
Lords. 'In Canada the pound or the dollar are legal tender. In Nova
Scotia, the Peruvian, Mexican, Columbian dollars are all legal; in New
Brunswick, British and American coins are recognized by law, though I
believe that the shilling is taken at twenty-four cents, which is less
than its value; in Newfoundland, {14} Peruvian, Mexican, Columbian, old
Spanish dollars, are all equally legal; whilst in Prince Edward's
Island the complexity of currencies and of their relative value is even
greater.' When the Reciprocity Treaty was negotiated at Washington in
1854, Nova Scotia felt, with some reason, that she had not been
adequately consulted in the granting to foreign fishermen of her
inshore fisheries. In a word, the chief political forces were
centrifugal, not centripetal. All the jealousy, the factious spirit,
and the prejudice, which petty local sovereignties are bound to
engender, flourished apace; and the general effect was to develop what
European statesmen of a certain period termed Particularism. The
marvel is not that federation lagged, but that men with vision and
courage, forced to view these depressing conditions at close range,
were able to keep the idea alive.
There was some advance in public opinion between 1850 and 1860, but, on
the whole, adverse influences prevailed and little was achieved. The
effects of separate political development and of divided interest were
deeply rooted. Leaders of opinion in the various provinces, and even
men of the same province, refused to join hands for any great national
purpose. Party conflict absorbed {15} their best energies. To this
period, however, belongs the spadework which laid the foundations of
the future structure. The British American League held its various
meetings and adopted its resolutions. But the League was mainly a
party counterblast to the Annexation Manifesto of 1849 and soon
disappeared. To this period, too, belong the writings of able
advocates of union like P. S. Hamilton of Halifax and J. C. Tache of
Quebec, whose treatises possess even to-day more than historical value.
Another notable contribution to the subject was the lecture by
Alexander Morris entitled _Nova Britannia_, first delivered at Montreal
in 1858 and afterwards published. Yet such propaganda aroused no
perceptible enthusiasm. In Great Britain the whole question of
colonial relations was in process of evolution, while her statesmen
were doubtful, as ours were, of what the ultimate end would be. That a
full conception of colonial self-government had not yet dawned is shown
by these words, written in 1852 by Earl Grey to Lord John Russell: '_It
is obvious that if the colonies are not to become independent states,
some kind of authority must be exercised by the Government at home._'
This decade, however, witnessed some {16} definite political action.
In 1854 Johnston, the Conservative Opposition leader in the Nova Scotia
legislature, presented a motion in these terms: 'Resolved, That the
union or confederation of the British Provinces on just principles,
while calculated to perpetuate their connection with the parent state,
will promote their advancement, increase their strength and influence,
and elevate their position.' This resolution, academic in form, but
supported in a well-balanced and powerful speech by the mover, drew
from Joseph Howe, then leader of the government, his preference for
representation in the British House of Commons. The attitude of Howe,
then and afterwards, should be examined with impartiality, because he
and other British Americans, as well as some English statesmen, were
the victims of the honest doubts which command respect but block the
way to action. Johnston, as prime minister in 1857, pressed his policy
upon the Imperial government, but met with no response. When Howe
returned to power, he carried a motion which declared for a conference
to promote either the union of the Maritime Provinces or a general
federation, but expressing no preference for either. Howe never was
pledged to federation as his fixed {17} policy, as so many persons have
asserted. He made various declarations which betokened uncertainty.
So little had the efforts put forth down to 1861 impressed the official
mind that Lord Mulgrave, the governor of Nova Scotia, in forwarding
Howe's motion to the Colonial Office, wrote: 'As an abstract question
the union of the North American colonies has long received the support
of many persons of weight and ability, but so far as I am aware, no
political mode of carrying out this union has ever been proposed.'
[Illustration: Sir Alexander T. Galt. From a photograph by Topley.]
The most encouraging step taken at this time, and the most far-reaching
in its consequences, was the action of Alexander Galt in Canada. Galt
possessed a strong and independent mind. The youngest son of John
Galt, the Scottish novelist, he had come across the ocean in the
service of the British American Land Company, and had settled at
Sherbrooke in the Eastern Townships of Lower Canada. Though personally
influential and respected, he wielded no general political authority,
for he lacked the aptitude for compromise demanded in the game of
party. He was the outspoken champion of Protestant interests in the
Catholic part of Canada, and had boldly declared for the annexation of
Canada to the {18} United States in the agitation of 1849. His views
on clericalism he never greatly modified, but annexation to the United
States he abandoned, with characteristic candour, for federation. In
1858 he advocated a federal union of all the provinces in a telling
speech in parliament, which revealed a thorough knowledge of the
material resources of the country, afterwards issued in book form in
his _Canada: 1849 to 1859_. During the ministerial crisis of August
1858 Sir Edmund Head asked Galt to form a government. He declined, and
indicated George Cartier as a fit and proper person to do so. The
former Conservative Cabinet, with some changes, then resumed office,
and Galt himself, exacting a pledge that Confederation should form part
of the government's policy, assumed the portfolio of Finance. The
pledge was kept in the speech of the governor-general closing the
session, and in October of that year Cartier, with two of his
colleagues, Galt and Ross, visited London to secure approval for a
meeting of provincial delegates on union. Galt's course had forced the
question out of the sphere of speculation. A careful student of the
period[3] argues with point {19} that to Galt we owe the introduction
of the policy into practical politics. In the light of after events
this view cannot be lightly set aside. But the effort bore no fruit
for the moment. The colonial secretary, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton,
declined to authorize the conference without first consulting the other
provinces, and the government did not feel itself bound because of this
to resign or consult the constituencies. In other words, the question
did not involve the fate of the Cabinet. But Galt had gained a great
advantage. He had enlisted the support of Cartier, whose influence in
Lower Canada was henceforth exerted with fidelity to win over the
French to a policy which they had long resisted. The cause attained
additional strength in 1860 by the action of two other statesmen,
George Brown and John A. Macdonald, who between them commanded the
confidence of Upper Canada, the one as Liberal, the other as
Conservative leader. Brown brought before parliament resolutions
embodying the decisions of the Reform Convention of 1859 in favour of a
federation confined to the Canadas, and Macdonald declared
unequivocally for federative union as a principle, arguing that a
strong central government should be the chief aim. {20} Brown's
resolutions were rejected, and the movement so auspiciously begun once
more exhibited an ominous tendency to subside. The varying fortunes
which attended the cause during these years resembled its previous
vicissitudes. It appeared as if all were for a party and none were for
the state. If those who witnessed the events of 1860 had been asked
for their opinion, they would probably have declared that the problem
was as far from solution as ever. Yet they would have been mistaken,
as the near future was to show. A great war was close at hand, and, as
war so often does, it stimulated movements and policies which otherwise
might have lain dormant. The situation which arose out of the Civil
War in the United States neither created nor carried Confederation, but
it resulted, through a sense of common danger, in bringing the British
provinces together and in giving full play to all the forces that were
making for their union.
[1] Address to Canadian Club, Ottawa, 1906.
[2] _Union of the Colonies_, by P. S. Hamilton, Halifax, 1864.
[3] See the chapter, 'Parties and Politics, 1840-1867,' by J. L.
Morison, in _Canada and its Provinces_, vol. v.
{21}