THE CHARLOTTETOWN CONFERENCE
Not an instant too soon had unity come in Canada. The coalition
ministry, having adjourned parliament, found itself faced with a
situation in the Maritime Provinces which called for speedy action.
Nova Scotia, the ancient province by the sea, discouraged by the
vacillation of Canada in relation to federation and the construction of
the Intercolonial Railway, was bent upon joining forces with New
Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. The proposal was in the nature of
a reunion, for, when constitutional government had been first set up in
Nova Scotia in 1758, the British possessions along the Atlantic coast,
save Newfoundland, were all governed as one province from Halifax. But
the policy in early days of splitting up the colonies into smaller
areas, for convenience of administration, was here faithfully carried
out. In 1770 a separate government was conferred {45} upon Prince
Edward Island. In 1784 New Brunswick was formed. In the same year the
island of Cape Breton was given a governor and council of its own.
Cape Breton was reunited to the parent colony of Nova Scotia in 1820,
but three separate provinces remained, each developing apart from the
others, thus complicating and making more difficult the whole problem
of union when men with foresight and boldness essayed to solve it.
Nova Scotia had kept alive the tradition of leadership. The province
which has supplied three prime ministers to the Canadian Dominion never
lacked statesmen with the imagination to perceive the advantages which
would flow from the consolidation of British power in America.
In 1864, a few weeks before George Brown in the Canadian House had
moved for his select committee on federal union, Dr Charles Tupper
proposed, in the legislature of Nova Scotia, a legislative union of the
Maritime Provinces. The seal of Imperial authority had been set upon
this movement by the dispatch, already quoted, from the Duke of
Newcastle to Lord Mulgrave in 1862.
A word concerning the services of Charles Tupper to the cause of union
will be in order here. None of the Fathers of Confederation {46}
fought a more strenuous battle. None faced political obstacles of so
overwhelming a character. None evinced a more unselfish patriotism.
The overturn of Tilley in New Brunswick, of which we shall hear
presently, was a misfortune quickly repaired. The junction of Brown,
Cartier, and Macdonald in Canada ensured for them comparatively plain
sailing. But the Nova Scotian leader was pitted against a redoubtable
foe in Joseph Howe; for five years he faced an angry and rebellious
province; he gallantly gave up his place in the first Dominion ministry
in order that another might have it; and at every turn he displayed
those qualities of pluck, endurance, and dexterity which compel
admiration. The Tuppers were of Puritan stock.[1] The future prime
minister, a practising physician, had scored his first political
victory at the age of thirty-four by defeating Howe in Cumberland
county. Throughout his long and notable career, a superabundance of
energy, and a characteristic which may be defined in a favourable sense
as audacity, never failed him.
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When the motion was presented to appoint delegates to a conference at
Charlottetown, to consider a legislative union for the three maritime
provinces, the skies were serene. The idea met with a general, if
rather languid, approval. There was not even a flavour of partisanship
about the proceedings, and the delegates were impartially selected from
both sides. The great Howe regarded the project with a benignant eye.
At this time he was the Imperial fishery commissioner, and it was his
duty to inspect the deep-sea fishing grounds each summer in a vessel of
the Imperial Navy. He was invited to go to Charlottetown as a
delegate, and declined in the following terms:
I am sorry for many reasons to be compelled to decline participation in
the conference at Charlottetown. The season is so far advanced that I
find my summer's work would be so seriously deranged by the visit to
Prince Edward Island that, without permission from the Foreign Office,
I would scarcely be justified in consulting my own feelings at the
expense of the public service. I shall be home in October, and will be
very happy to co-operate in {48} carrying out any measure upon which
the conference shall agree.
A more striking evidence of his mood at this juncture is afforded by a
speech which he delivered at Halifax in August, when a party of
visitors from Canada were being entertained at dinner.
I am not one of those who thank God that I am a Nova Scotian merely,
for I am a Canadian as well. I have never thought I was a Nova
Scotian, but I have looked across the broad continent as the great
territory which the Almighty has given us for an inheritance, and
studied the mode by which it could be consolidated, the mode by which
it could be united, the mode by which it could be made strong and
vigorous while the old flag still floats over the soil.[2]
In the time close at hand Howe was to find these words quoted against
him. Meanwhile they were a sure warrant for peace and harmony.
In addressing the Assembly Tupper stated that his visit to Canada
during the previous {49} year had convinced him that for some time the
larger union was impracticable. He had found in Upper Canada a
disinclination to unite with the Maritime Provinces because, from their
identity of interest and geographical position, they would strengthen
Lower Canada. Lower Canada was equally averse from union through fear
that it would increase the English influence in a common legislature.
Tupper favoured the larger scheme, and looked forward to its future
realization, which would be helped, not hindered, by the union of the
Maritime Provinces as a first step. Other speakers openly declared for
a general union, and consented to the Charlottetown gathering as a
convenient preliminary. The resolution passed without a division; and,
though the members expressed a variety of opinion on details, there was
no hint of a coming storm.
The conference opened at Charlottetown on September 1, the following
delegates being present: from Nova Scotia, Charles Tupper, William A.
Henry, Robert B. Dickey, Jonathan McCully, Adams G. Archibald; from New
Brunswick, S. L. Tilley, John M. Johnston, John Hamilton Gray, Edward
B. Chandler, W. H. Steeves; from Prince Edward Island, J. H. Gray,
Edward Palmer, W. H. Pope, {50} George Coles, A. A. Macdonald.
Newfoundland, having no part in the movement, sent no representatives.
Meanwhile Lord Monck, at the request of his ministers, had communicated
with the lieutenant-governors asking that a delegation of the Canadian
Cabinet might attend the meeting and lay their own plans before it.
This was readily accorded. The visitors from Canada arrived from
Quebec by steamer. They were George Brown, John A. Macdonald,
Alexander T. Galt, George E. Cartier, Hector L. Langevin, William
McDougall, D'Arcy McGee, and Alexander Campbell. No official report of
the proceedings ever appeared. It is improbable that any exists, but
we know from many subsequent references nearly everything of importance
that took place. On the arrival of the Canadians they were invited to
address the convention at once. The delegates from the Maritime
Provinces took the ground that their own plan might, if adopted, be a
bar to the larger proposal, and accordingly suggested that the visitors
should be heard first. The Canadians, however, saw no reason to fear
the smaller union. They believed that Confederation would gain if the
three provinces by the sea could be treated as a single unit. {51}
But, being requested to state their case, they naturally had no
hesitation in doing so. During the previous two months the members of
the coalition must have applied themselves diligently to all the chief
points in the project. It may be supposed that Galt, Brown, and
Macdonald made a strong impression at Charlottetown. They spoke
respectively on the finance, the general parliament, and the
constitutional structure of the proposed federation. These subjects
contained the germs of nearly all the difficulties. When the delegates
reassembled a month later at Quebec, it is clear, from the allusions
made in the scanty reports that have come down to us, that the leading
phases of the question had already been frankly debated.
Having heard the proposals of Canada, the delegates of the Maritime
Provinces met separately to debate the question that had brought them
together. Obstacles at once arose. Only Nova Scotia was found to be
in favour of the smaller union. New Brunswick was doubtful, and Prince
Edward Island positively refused to give up her own legislature and
executive. The federation project involved no such sacrifice; and, as
Aaron's rod swallowed up all the others, the dazzling prospects held
out by Canada eclipsed the other proposal, since they {52} provided a
strong central government without destroying the identity of the
component parts. The conference decided to adjourn to Halifax, where,
at the public dinner given to the visitors, Macdonald made the formal
announcement that the delegates were unanimous in thinking that a
federal union could be effected. The members, however, kept the
secrets of the convention with some skill. The speeches at Halifax,
and later on at St John, whither the party repaired, abounded in
glowing passages descriptive of future expansion, but were sparing of
intimate detail. A passage in Brown's speech at Halifax created
favourable comment on both sides of the ocean.
In these colonies as heretofore governed [he said] we have enjoyed
great advantages under the protecting shield of the mother country. We
have had no army or navy to sustain, no foreign diplomacy to
sustain,--our whole resources have gone to our internal
improvement,--and notwithstanding our occasional strifes with the
Colonial Office, we have enjoyed a degree of self-government and
generous consideration such as no colonies in ancient or modern history
ever enjoyed at the hands of a {53} parent state. Is it any wonder
that thoughtful men should hesitate to countenance a step that might
change the happy and advantageous relations we have occupied towards
the mother country? I am persuaded there never was a moment in the
history of these colonies when the hearts of our people were so firmly
attached to the parent state by the ties of gratitude and affection as
at this moment, and for one I hesitate not to say that did this
movement for colonial union endanger the connection that has so long
and so happily existed, it would have my firm opposition.
These and other utterances, equally forceful and appealing directly to
the pride and ambition of the country, were not without effect in
moulding public opinion. The tour was a campaign of education. By
avoiding the constitutional issues the delegates gave little
information which could afford carping critics an opportunity to assail
the movement prematurely. It is true, some sarcastic comments were
made upon the manner in which the Canadians had walked into the
convention and taken possession. At the Halifax dinner the governor of
Nova Scotia, Sir Richard Graves {54} Macdonnell, dropped an ironical
remark on the 'disinterested' course of Canada, which plainly betrayed
his own attitude. But the gathering was, in the main, highly
successful and augured well for the movement.
The Charlottetown Conference was therefore an essential part of the
proceedings which culminated at Quebec. The ground had been broken.
The leaders in the various provinces had formed ties of intimacy and
friendship and favourably impressed each other. At this time were laid
the foundations of the alliance between Macdonald and Tilley, the
Liberal leader in New Brunswick, which made it possible to construct
the first federal ministry on a non-party basis and which enlisted in
the national service a devoted and trustworthy public man. Tilley's
career had few blemishes from its beginning to its end. He was a
direct descendant of John Tilley, one of the English emigrants to
Massachusetts in the _Mayflower_, and a great-grandson of Samuel
Tilley, one of the Loyalists who removed to New Brunswick after the War
of Independence. He had been drawn into politics against his wishes by
the esteem and confidence of his fellow-citizens. A nominating
convention at which he was not present had selected him for {55} the
legislature, and his first election had taken place during his absence
from the country. Yet he had risen to be prime minister of his
province; and his was the guiding hand which brought New Brunswick into
the union. His defeat at first and the speedy reversal of the verdict
against Confederation form one of the most diverting episodes in the
history of the movement.
The ominous feature of the Charlottetown Conference was the absence of
Joseph Howe, the most popular leader in Nova Scotia. This was one of
the accidents which so often disturb the calculations of statesmen.
When the delegates resumed their labours at Quebec he was in
Newfoundland, and he returned home to find that a plan had been agreed
upon without his aid. From him, as well as from the governors of Nova
Scotia and New Brunswick, the cause of federation was to receive its
next serious check.
[1] See _Recollections of Sixty Years in Canada_, p. 2. The original
Tupper in America came out from England in 1635. Sir Charles Tupper's
great-grandfather migrated from Connecticut to Nova Scotia in 1763.
[2] _The Speeches and Public Letters of Joseph Howe_, edited by J. A.
Chisholm, vol. ii, p. 433. Halifax, 1909.
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