of the situation in Canada, and the result of Lord Durham's report was
the passage of an imperial act reuniting the provinces into one, with a
legislature of two houses. The constitutional act of 1791, which had
separated French and English, as far as possible, into two sections, was
clearly a failure. An effort was now to be made to amalgamate, if
possible, the two races. The two provinces were given an equal
representation in one legislature, and the French language was placed in
a position of inferiority, compared with English in parliamentary and
official {358} proceedings and documents. At the same time the British
Government recognised the necessity of giving a larger expansion of local
self-government.
[Illustration: Judge Haliburton ("Sam Slick").]
During the period of which I am writing Canada had given evidences of
material, social, and intellectual progress. With the close of the War
of 1812, and the downfall of Napoleon, large bodies of immigrants came
into the province and settled some of the finest districts of Upper and
Lower Canada. Scotch from the highlands and islands of Scotland
continued until 1820 to flock into Nova Scotia and other maritime
provinces. Although the immigration had been naturally stopped by the
troubles of 1836 and 1838, the population of Canada had increased to over
a million of souls, of whom at least four hundred and fifty thousand were
French Canadians. The Rideau, Lachine, and Welland Canals date from this
period, and were the commencement of that noble system of artificial
waterways that have, in the course of time, enabled large steamers to
come all the way from Lake Superior to tide-water.[1] In 1833 the _Royal
William_, entirely propelled by steam, crossed the ocean--the pioneer in
ocean steam navigation. A few years later Samuel Cunard, a native Nova
Scotian, established the line that has become so famous in the world's
maritime history. In Lower Canada the higher education was confined to
the Quebec Seminary, and a few colleges and institutions, under the
direction of the {359} Roman Catholic clergy and communities. Among the
habitants generally there were no schools, and the great majority could
neither read nor write. In Upper Canada high schools for the education
of the upper classes were established at a very early day, and the
Cornwall Grammar School, under the superintendence of Dr. John Strahan,
for some years was {360} the resort of the provincial aristocracy. Upper
Canada College dates from these early times. But in 1838 there were only
twenty-four thousand children at school out of a total population of four
hundred thousand. In the maritime provinces things were not much better,
but in Nova Scotia the foundation of King's,--the oldest university in
Canada--Dalhousie, and Acadia Colleges, as well as Pictou Academy, shows
the deep interest that was taken in higher education. In all the
provinces there was an active and even able newspaper press, although its
columns were too much disfigured by invective and personalities. In 1836
there were at least forty papers printed in Upper Canada alone. The
names of Cary, Neilson, Mackenzie, Parent, Howe, and Young are among the
names of eminent journalists. It was only in the press, in the pulpit,
at the bar, and in the legislature that we can look for evidences of
intellectual development. The only original literary works of importance
were those of Judge Haliburton, who had already given us the clever,
humorous creation of "Sam Slick," and also written an excellent history
of Nova Scotia. In the happy and more prosperous times that followed the
union of 1840, and the establishment of political liberty, intellectual
development kept pace with the progress of the country in wealth and
population.
[1] Governor Haldimand first established several small canals between
Lakes Saint Louis and Saint Francis, which were used for some years.
{361}
XXV.
RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT AND ITS RESULTS--FEDERAL
UNION--RELATIONS BETWEEN CANADA
AND THE UNITED STATES.
(1839-1867.)
The passage of the Union Act of 1840 was the commencement of a new era
in the constitutional history of Canada as well as of the other
provinces. The most valuable result was the admission of the
all-important principle that the ministry advising the governor should
possess the confidence of the representatives of the people assembled
in parliament. Lord Durham, in his report, had pointed out most
forcibly the injurious consequences of the very opposite system which
had so long prevailed in the provinces. His views had such influence
on the minds of the statesmen then at the head of imperial affairs,
that Mr. Poulett Thomson, when appointed governor-general, received her
Majesty's commands to administer the government of the united provinces
"in accordance with the well-understood wishes and interests of the
people," and to employ in the {362} public service only "those persons
who, by their position and character, have obtained the general
confidence and esteem of the inhabitants of the province." During the
first session of the Canadian legislature the assembly passed certain
resolutions which authoritatively expressed the views of the supporters
of responsible government.
[Illustration: Joseph Howe in 1865]
Nevertheless, during the six years that elapsed after the passage of
this formal expression of the views of the large majority of the
legislature, "Responsible Government" did not always obtain in the
fullest sense of the phrase, and not a few misunderstandings arose
between the governors and the supporters of the principle as to the
manner in which it should be worked out. In Canada Lord Metcalfe, who
succeeded Baron Sydenham--the title of Mr. Poulett Thomson--on his
sudden death at Kingston in 1841, brought about a political crisis in
consequence of his contention for the privilege--utterly inconsistent
with the principles of responsible government--of making appointments
to office without the advice of his council. In Nova Scotia Sir Colin
Campbell, who was more suited to the military camp than to the
political arena, endeavoured to throw obstacles in the way of the new
system, but he was soon recalled. His successor, Lord Falkland, a vain
nobleman, was an unhappy choice of the colonial office. He became the
mere creature of the Tory party, led by James W. Johnston, a very able
lawyer and eloquent speaker, and the open enemy of the liberals led by
Joseph Howe, William Young, James Boyle Uniacke, and Herbert {363}
Huntington. The imperial government recognised their mistake, and
replaced Lord Falkland by Sir John Harvey, the hero of Stoney Creek in
1813, who had done much to establish parliamentary government in New
Brunswick. In 1847 Lord Elgin--the son-in-law of Lord Durham--was
appointed governor-general, and received positive instructions "to act
generally upon the advice of {364} his executive council, and to
receive as members of that body those persons who might be pointed out
to him as entitled to do so by their possessing the confidence of the
assembly." No act of parliament was necessary to effect this important
change; the insertion and alteration of a few paragraphs in the
Governor's instructions were sufficient. By 1848 the provinces of
Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, and by 1851 Prince Edward
Island, were in the full enjoyment of a system of self-government,
which had been so long advocated by their ablest public men; and the
results have proved, on the whole, despite the excesses and mistakes of
party, eminently favourable to political as well as material
development.
[Illustration: Robert Baldwin.]
In the historic annals of the great contest that was fought for
responsible government, some names stand out most prominently.
Foremost is that of Joseph Howe, the eminent Liberal, whose eloquence
charmed the people of Nova Scotia for many years. In his early life he
was a printer and an editor, but he became a leader of his party soon
after he entered the legislature, and died a lieutenant-governor of his
native province. In New Brunswick, Lemuel A. Wilmot, afterwards a
judge and lieutenant-governor, was a man of much energy, persuasive
eloquence, and varied learning. Robert Baldwin, of Upper Canada, was a
statesman of great discretion, who showed the people how their
liberties could be best promoted by wise and constitutional agitation.
Louis Hyppolite Lafontaine was one of the most distinguished and
capable men that French Canada has {365} ever given to the legislature
and the bench. By his political alliance with Mr. Baldwin, the
principles of responsible government were placed on a durable basis.
In the parent state the names of Lord John Russell, Mr. Gladstone, and
Earl Grey--colonial secretaries from 1839 to 1852--are especially
associated with the concession of those great principles which have
enlarged the sphere of self-government in the colonies of the English
Crown.
{366}
During the quarter of a century that elapsed from 1842 to 1867--the
crucial period of national development--an industrious population
flowed steadily into the country, the original population became more
self-reliant and pursued their vocations with renewed energy, and
confidence increased on all sides in the ability of the provinces to
hold their own against the competition of a wonderfully enterprising
neighbour. Cities, towns, and villages were built up with a rapidity
not exceeded even on the other side of the border. In those days
Ontario became the noble province that she now is by virtue of the
capacity of her people for self-government, the energy of her
industrial classes, the fertility of her soil, and the superiority of
her climate. The maritime industry of the lower provinces was
developed most encouragingly, and Nova Scotia built up a commercial
marine not equalled by that of any New England State. The total
population of the provinces of British North America, now comprised
within the confederation of 1867, had increased from a million and a
half in 1840 to three millions and a quarter in 1861--the ratio of
increase in those years having been greater than at any previous or
later period of Canadian history. It was during this period that the
Grand Trunk Railway, which has done so much to assist the material
progress of the old province of Canada, was constructed. In 1850 there
were only fifty miles of railway in operation throughout Canada, but by
1867 there were nearly three thousand miles, and that magnificent
example of engineering skill, the Victoria Bridge, carried passengers
across {367} the St. Lawrence at Montreal, and connected Canada with
the great railway system of the United States. With railway
development must always be associated the name of Sir Francis Hincks,
an able statesman of the Liberal party, who recognised the necessities
of a new country.
So far from the act of 1840, which united the Canadas, acting
unfavourably to the French Canadian people it gave them eventually a
predominance in the councils of the country. French soon again became
the official language by an amendment to the union act, and the claims
providing for equality of representation proved a security when the
upper province increased more largely in population than the French
Canadian section. The particular measure which the French Canadians
had pressed for so many years on the British Government, an elective
legislative council, was conceded. When a few years had passed the
Canadian legislature was given full control of taxation, supply, and
expenditure, in accordance with English constitutional principles. The
clergy reserves difficulty was settled and the land sold for public or
municipal purposes, the interest of existing rectors and incumbents
being guarded. The great land question of Canada, the seigniorial
tenure of Lower Canada, was disposed of by buying off the claims of the
seigniors, and the people of Lower Canada were freed from exactions
which had become not so much onerous as vexatious. Municipal
institutions of a liberal nature were established, and the people of
the two Canadian provinces exercised that control of their local
affairs in the {368} counties, townships, cities, and parishes which is
necessary to carry out public works indispensable to the comfort,
health, and convenience of the community, and to supplement the efforts
made by the legislature, from time to time, to provide for the general
education of the country. With the magnificent system of public
schools now possessed by Ontario must always be associated the name of
Dr. Egerton Ryerson, a famous Methodist, the opponent of Mackenzie's
seditious action, and for many years the superintendent of education.
In Nova Scotia it was chiefly through the foresight of Sir Charles
Tupper, when premier, that the foundations were laid of the present
admirable system. During the same period the schools of New Brunswick
and Prince Edward Island were also placed on an excellent basis. In
the maritime provinces no express legal provision was made for separate
or denominational schools, as in Upper and Lower Canada--schools now
protected by the terms of the federal union of 1867. The civil
service, which necessarily plays so important a part in the
administration of government, was placed on a permanent basis.
The anxiety of the British Government to bury in oblivion the
unfortunate events of 1837-38 was proved by an amnesty that was granted
soon after the union of 1841, to the banished offenders against the
public peace and the Crown. William Lyon Mackenzie, Louis Joseph
Papineau, and Wolfred Nelson came back and were elected to Parliament,
though the two first never exercised any influence in the future.
{369}
[Illustration: Sir Louis H. Lafontaine.]
Then occurred an event which had its origin in the rebellion, and in
the racial antagonism which was still slumbering in the bosom of the
State. In the first session of the Union Parliament, compensation was
granted to those loyalists of Upper Canada, whose property had been
unnecessarily or wantonly {370} destroyed during the outbreak. The
claim was then raised on behalf of persons similarly situated in Lower
Canada. The Conservative Draper government of 1845 agreed to pay a
small amount of rebellion losses as a sequence of a report made by
commissioners appointed to inquire into the subject. At a later time,
when Lord Elgin was governor-general, the Baldwin-Lafontaine ministry
brought down a measure to indemnify all those persons who had not taken
part in the rebellion, but were justly entitled to compensation for
actual losses. The Tory opposition raised the cry, "No pay to rebels,"
and some of them in their anger even issued a manifesto in favour of
annexation. The parliament house at Montreal was burned down, a great
number of books and records destroyed, and Lord Elgin grossly insulted
for having assented to the bill. This very discreditable episode in
the political history of Canada proved the extremes to which even men,
professing extreme loyalty, can be carried at times of political
passion and racial difficulty.
[Illustration: L. A. Wilmot.]
The union of 1841 did its work, and the political conditions of Canada
again demanded another radical change commensurate with the material
and political development of the country, and capable of removing the
difficulties that had arisen in the operation of the act of 1840. The
claims of Upper Canada to larger representation, equal to its increased
population since 1840, owing to the great immigration which had
naturally sought a rich and fertile province, were steadily resisted by
the French Canadians as an unwarrantable interference with the {371}
security guaranteed to them under the act. This resistance gave rise
to great irritation in Upper Canada, where a powerful party made
representation by population their platform, and government at last
became practically impossible on account of the {372} close political
divisions for years in the assembly. At the head of the party
demanding increased representation was Mr. George Brown, an able man of
Scotch birth, who became the conductor of a most influential organ of
public opinion, _The Toronto Globe_, and the leader of the "Grits," or
extreme wing of the Reformers or Liberals. In opposition to him were
allied Mr. George Etienne Cartier, once a follower of Papineau, but now
a loyal leader of his race, and Mr. John Alexander Macdonald, who had
occupied a prominent position for years as a Conservative leader.
The time had come for the accomplishment of a great change foreshadowed
by Lord Durham, Chief-Justice Sewell, Mr. Howe, Sir Alexander Gait, and
other public men of Canada: the union of the provinces of British North
America. The leaders of the different governments in Canada, and the
maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward
Island combined with the leaders of the opposition with the object of
carrying out this great measure. A convention of thirty-three
representative men[1] was held in the autumn of 1864 in {373} the
historic city of Quebec, and after a deliberation of several weeks the
result was the unanimous adoption of a set of seventy-two resolutions
embodying the terms and conditions on which the provinces through their
delegates agreed to a federal union. These resolutions had to be laid
before the various legislatures and adopted in the shape of addresses
to the Queen, whose sanction was necessary to embody the wishes of the
provinces in an imperial statute.
The consent of the legislature was considered sufficient by the
governments of all the provinces except one, though the question had
never been discussed at the polls. In New Brunswick alone was the
legislature dissolved on the issue, and it was only after a second
general election that the {374} legislature agreed to the union. In
Nova Scotia, after much discussion and feeling, the legislature passed
a resolution in favour of the measure, though a popular sentiment
continued to exist against the union for several years. In the
December of 1866 a second conference of delegates from the governments
of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, was held at the Westminster
Palace Hotel in London, and some modifications were made in the Quebec
resolutions, chiefly with a view of meeting objections from the
maritime provinces. In the early part of 1867 the imperial parliament,
without a division, passed the statute known as the "British North
America Act, 1867," which united in the first instance the province of
Canada, now divided into Ontario and Quebec, with Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick, and made provisions for the coming in of the other provinces
of Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, British Columbia, and the
admission of Rupert's Land and the great Northwest.
From 1840 to 1867 the relations of Canada and the United States became
much closer, and more than once assumed a dangerous phase. In 1840 the
authorities of New York arrested one Macleod on the charge of having
murdered a man employed in the _Caroline_, when she was seized by the
loyalists during the outbreak of 1837. The matter gave rise to much
correspondence between the governments of Great Britain and the United
States, and to a great deal of irritation in Canada, but happily for
the peace of the two countries the courts acquitted Macleod, as the
evidence was clear he had {375} nothing to do with the seizure of the
vessel. In 1842 the question of the boundary between Maine and New
Brunswick was settled by what is generally known in Canada as "the
Ashburton Capitulation." As a result of the settlement made by Mr.
Daniel Webster on the part of the United States, and of Mr. Alexander
Baring, afterwards Lord Ashburton, on behalf of Great Britain, the
State of Maine now presses like a huge wedge into the provinces of New
Brunswick and Quebec, and a Canadian railway is obliged to pass over
American territory, which many Canadians still believe ought to be a
part of the Canadian Dominion. In 1846 Great Britain yielded to the
persistency of American statesmen, and agreed to accept the line 49
degrees to the Pacific coast, and the whole of Vancouver Island, which,
for a while, seemed on the point of following the fate of Oregon, and
becoming exclusively American territory. But the question of boundary
was not even then settled, as the Island of San Juan, which lies in the
channel between Vancouver and the mainland, and is mainly valuable as a
base of offensive and defensive operations in times of war, was, in
later years, handed over to the Republic as a result of its successful
diplomacy.
During this period the fishery question again assumed considerable
importance. American vessels were shut out from the waters of certain
colonial bays, in accordance with the convention of 1818, and a number
of them captured from time to time for the infringement of the law.
The United States Government attempted to raise issues which would
{376} limit Canadian rights, but all these questions were placed in
abeyance for twelve years by the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, which
opened up the provincial fisheries to the people of the United States,
on condition of free trade between the provinces and that country in
certain natural products of the mines, fisheries, and farms of the two
peoples. This measure was in itself an acknowledgment of the growing
importance of the provinces, and of the larger measure of
self-government now accorded them. The treaty only became law with the
consent of the provincial legislatures; and, although the Canadian
governments were not directly represented by any of their members, the
governor-general, Lord Elgin, who personally conducted the negotiations
on the part of England at Washington, in this, as in all other matters
touching colonial interests, was assisted by the advice of his
responsible ministers. The treaty lasted until 1866, when it was
repealed by the action of the United States in accordance with the
provision bringing it to a conclusion after one year's notice from one
of the parties interested.
The commercial classes in the Eastern and Western States were, on the
whole, favourable to an enlargement of the treaty, so as to bring in
British Columbia and Vancouver Island, now colonies of the Crown, and
to include certain other articles the produce of both countries, but
the real cause of its repeal was the prejudice in the North against the
provinces for their supposed sympathy for the Confederate States during
the War of the Rebellion. A {377} large body of men in the North had
brought themselves foolishly to believe that the repeal of the treaty
would, sooner or later, force the provinces into annexation. A raid
made by a few rash Confederates who had found refuge in Canada, on the
St. Albans Bank, in the State of Vermont, deeply incensed the people of
the North, though at no time could it be proved that the Canadian
authorities had the least suspicion of the proposed expedition. On the
contrary, they brought the culprits to trial, placed companies of
volunteers along the frontier, and even paid a large sum of money in
acknowledgment of an alleged responsibility when some of the stolen
money was returned to the robbers on their release by a Montreal
magistrate. When we review the history of those times and consider the
difficult position in which Canada was necessarily placed, it is
remarkable how honourably her government discharged its duties of a
neutral between the belligerents.