THE EVE OF CONFEDERATION
A day of loftier ideas and greater issues in all the provinces was
about to dawn. The ablest politicians had been prone to wrangle like
washerwomen over a tub, colouring the parliamentary debates by personal
rivalry and narrow aims, while measures of first-rate importance went
unheeded. The change did not occur in the twinkling of an eye, for the
cherished habits of two generations were not to be discarded so
quickly. Goldwin Smith asserted[1] that, whoever laid claim to the
parentage of Confederation, the real parent was Deadlock. But this was
the critic, not the historian, who spoke. The causes lay far deeper
than in the breakdown of party government in Canada. Events of
profound significance were about to change an atmosphere overladen with
partisanship and to strike the imaginations of men.
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The first factor in the national awakening was the call of the great
western domain. British Americans began to realize that they were the
heirs of a rich and noble possession. The idea was not entirely new.
The fur traders had indeed long tried to keep secret the truth as to
the fertility of the plains; but men who had been born or had lived in
the West were now settled in the East. They had stories to tell, and
their testimony was emphatic. In 1856 the Imperial authorities had
intimated to Canada that, as the licence of the Hudson's Bay Company to
an exclusive trade in certain regions would expire in 1859, it was
intended to appoint a select committee of the British House of Commons
to investigate the existing situation in those territories and to
report upon their future status; and Canada had sent Chief Justice
Draper to London as her commissioner to watch the proceedings, to give
evidence, and to submit to his government any proposals that might be
made. Simultaneously a select committee of the Canadian Assembly sat
to hear evidence and to report a basis for legislation. Canada boldly
claimed that her western boundary was the Pacific ocean, and this
prospect had long encouraged men like George Brown to look {23} forward
to extension westward, and to advocate it, as one solution of Upper
Canada's political grievances. It was a vision calculated to rouse
the adventurous spirit of the British race in colonizing and in
developing vast and unknown lands. Another wonderful page was about to
open in the history of British expansion. And, hand in hand with
romance, went the desire for dominion and commerce.
But if the call of the West drew men partly by its material
attractions, another event, of a wholly different sort, appealed
vividly to their sentiment. In 1860 the young Prince of Wales visited
the provinces as the representative of his mother, the beloved Queen
Victoria. His tour resembled a triumphal progress. It evoked feelings
and revived memories which the young prince himself, pleasing though
his personality was, could not have done. It was the first clear
revelation of the intensity of that attachment to the traditions and
institutions of the Empire which in our own day has so vitally affected
the relations of the self-governing states to the mother country. In a
letter from Ottawa[2] to Lord Palmerston, {24} the Duke of Newcastle,
the prince's tutor, wrote:
I never saw in any part of England such extensive or beautiful outward
demonstrations of respect and affection, either to the Queen or to any
private object of local interest, as I have seen in every one of these
colonies, and, what is more important, there have been circumstances
attending all these displays which have marked their sincerity and
proved that neither curiosity nor self-interest were the only or the
ruling influences.
Of all the events, however, that startled the British provinces out of
the self-absorbed contemplation of their own little affairs, the Civil
War in the United States exerted the most immediate influence. It not
only brought close the menace of a war between Great Britain and the
Republic, with Canada as the battle-ground, but it forced a complete
readjustment of our commercial relations. Not less important, the
attitude of the Imperial government toward Confederation underwent a
change. It was D'Arcy McGee who perceived, at the very outset, the
probable {25} bearing of the Civil War upon the future of Canada. 'I
said in the House during the session of 1861,' he subsequently
declared, 'that the first gun fired at Fort Sumter had a message for
us.' The situation became plainer when the _Trent_ Affair embroiled
Great Britain directly with the North, and the safety of Canada
appeared to be threatened. While Lincoln was anxiously pondering the
British demand that the Confederate agents, Mason and Slidell, removed
by an American warship from the British steamer the _Trent_, should be
given up, and Lord Lyons was labouring to preserve peace, the fate of
Canada hung in the balance. The agents were released, but there
followed ten years of unfriendly relations between Great Britain and
the United States. There were murmurs that when the South was subdued
the trained armies of the North would be turned against the British
provinces. The termination of the Reciprocity Treaty, which provided
for a large measure of free trade between the two countries, was seen
to be reasonably sure. The treaty had existed through a period which
favoured a large increase in the exports of the provinces. The Crimean
War at first and the Civil War later had created an unparalleled demand
for the food products {26} which Canada could supply; and although the
records showed the enhanced trade to be mutually profitable, with a
balance rather in favour of the United States, the anti-British feeling
in the Republic was directed against the treaty. Thus military defence
and the necessity of finding new markets became two pressing problems
for Canada.
From the Imperial authorities there came now at last distinct
encouragement. Hitherto they had hung back. The era of economic dogma
in regard to free trade, to some minds more authoritative than Holy
Writ, was at its height. Even Cobden was censured because, in the
French treaty of 1861, he had departed from the free trade theory. The
doctrine of _laissez-faire_, carried to extremes, meant that the
colonies should be allowed to cut adrift. But the practical English
mind saw the sense and statesmanship of a British American union, and
the tone of the colonial secretary changed. In July 1862 the Duke of
Newcastle, who then held that office and who did not share the
indifference of so many of his predecessors[3] to the colonial
connection, wrote sympathetically to Lord Mulgrave, the governor of
Nova Scotia:
{27}
If a union, either partial or complete, should hereafter be proposed
with the concurrence of all the Provinces to be united, I am sure that
the matter would be weighed in this country both by the public, by
Parliament, and by Her Majesty's Government, with no other feeling than
an anxiety to discern and promote any course which might be the most
conducive to the prosperity, the strength and the harmony of all the
British communities in North America.
Nova Scotia, always to the front on the question, had declared for
either a general union or a union of the Maritime Provinces, and this
had drawn the dispatch of the Duke of Newcastle. A copy of this
dispatch was sent to Lord Monck, the governor-general of Canada, for
his information and guidance, so that the attitude of the Imperial
authorities was generally known. It remained for the various
provincial Cabinets to confer and to arrange a course of action. The
omens pointed to union in the near future. But, as it happened, a new
Canadian ministry, that of Sandfield Macdonald, had shortly before
assumed office, and its members were in no wise pledged to the {28}
union project. In fact, as was proved later, several of them, notably
the prime minister himself, with Dorion, Holton, and Huntington,
regarded federation with suspicion and were its consistent opponents
until the final accomplishment.
The negotiations for the joint construction of an intercolonial railway
had been proceeding for some time. These the ministry continued, but
without enthusiasm. The building of this line had been ardently
promoted for years. It was the necessary link to bind the provinces
together. To secure Imperial financial aid in one form or another
delegates had more than once gone to London. The Duke of Newcastle had
announced in April 1862 that the nature and extent of the guarantee
which Her Majesty's government would recommend to parliament depended
upon the arrangements which the provinces themselves had to propose.[4]
There was a conference in Quebec. From Nova Scotia came Howe and
Annand, who two years later fought Confederation; from New Brunswick
came Tilley and Peter Mitchell, who carried the cause to victory in
their province. Delegates from the Quebec meeting {29} went to London,
but the railway plan broke down, and the failure was due to Canada.
The episode left a bad impression in the minds of the maritime
statesmen, and during the whole of 1863 it seemed as if union were
indefinitely postponed. Yet this was the very eve of Confederation,
and forces already in motion made it inevitable.
[1] _Canada and the Canadian Question_, by Goldwin Smith, p. 143.
[2] _Life of Henry Pelham, fifth Duke of Newcastle_, by John Martineau,
p. 292.
[3] Between 1852 and 1870 there were thirteen colonial secretaries.
[4] Dispatch of the colonial secretary to the lieutenant-governor of
New Brunswick.
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