British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government, 1839-1854 Part 14

Still, in spite of the acquittal of Hincks, there were cases of complicated corruption, and a mult.i.tude of little squalid sins. Men like Sir Allan MacNab, who had been bred in a system of preferments and petty political gains, found it difficult to avoid small jobbery. "He has such an infernal lot of hangers on to provide for," wrote one minister to another, concerning the gallant knight, "that he finds it difficult to do the {317} needful for them all."[19] It is clear, too, that when John A. Macdonald succeeded MacNab as Tory leader, purity did not increase. It was no doubt easy for George Brown to criticize Macdonald's methods from a position of untempted rect.i.tude, and no doubt also Brown had personal reasons for criticism; but he was speaking well within the truth, when he attacked the Tory government of 1858, not only for grave corruption in the late general election, but for other weightier offences. It was elicited, he said, by the Public Accounts Committee that 500,000 of provincial debentures had been sold in England by government at 99, when the quotation of the Stock Exchange was 105 @ 107, by which the province was wronged to the extent of 50,000. It was elicited that a member of Parliament, supporting the government, sold to the government 20,000 of Hamilton debentures at 97 which were worth only 80 in the market.... It was elicited that large sums were habitually drawn from the public chest, and lent to railway companies, or spent on services for which no previous sanction of Parliament had been obtained.[20] It is, perhaps, the gravest charge {318} against Macdonald that, at the entrance of Canada into the region of modern finance and speculation, he never understood that incorrupt administration was the greatest gift a man could give to the future of his country.

In a young and not yet civilized community it was natural that the early days of self-government should witness some corruption among the voters, the more so because, at election times "there were no less than four days, the nomination, two days' polling, and declaration day, on all of which, by a sort of unwritten law, the candidates in many const.i.tuencies were compelled to keep open house for their supporters,"

while direct money bribes were often resorted to, especially on the second day's polling in a close contest.[21]

Apart from jobbery and frank corruption, Canadian politicians condescended at times to ign.o.ble trickery, and to evasions of the truth which came perilously near breaches of honour. The most notorious breach of the const.i.tutional decencies was the celebrated episode nicknamed the "Double Shuffle." Whatever apologists may say, John A.

Macdonald sinned in the very first essentials of political fair-play.

He had already {319} led George Brown into a trap by forcing government into his hands. When Brown, too late to save his reputation, discovered the sheer futility of his attempt to make and keep together a government, and when it once more fell to the Conservatives to take office, Macdonald saved himself and his colleagues the trouble of standing for re-election by a most shameful const.i.tutional quibble.

According to a recent act, if a member of Legislative Council or a.s.sembly "shall resign his office, and within one month after his resignation, accept any other of the said offices (enumerated above), he shall not vacate his seat in the said a.s.sembly or Council."[22] It was a simple, and a disgraceful thing, for the ministers, once more in power, to accept offices other than those which they had held before resignation, and then, at once, to pa.s.s on to the reacceptance of the old appropriate positions. They saved their seats at the expense of their honour. In spite of Macdonald's availability, there was too much of the village Machiavelli about his political tactics to please the educated and honest judgment.

It was very natural too that, in these early struggles towards independence and national {320} self-consciousness, the crudities inseparable from early colonial existence should be painfully apparent.

In Canada at least, vice could not boast that it had lost half its evil by losing all its grossness. According to Sir Richard Cartwright, the prolonged absence from domestic a.s.sociations, led to a considerable amount of dissipation among members of parliament. The minister who dominated Canadian politics for so many years before and after Confederation set an unfortunate example to his flock; and many of the debates read as though they drew their heat, if not their light, from material rather than intellectual sources. Apart from offences against sobriety and the decalogue, there can be no doubt that something of the early ferocity of politics still continued, and the disgrace of the Montreal riots which followed Elgin's sanction of the Rebellion Losses bill was rendered tenfold more disgraceful by the partic.i.p.ation in them of gentlemen and politicians of position. Half the success of democratic inst.i.tutions lies in the capacity of the legislators for some public dignity, and a certain chivalrous good nature towards each other. But that is perhaps too high a standard to set for the first colonial a.s.sembly which had exercised full {321} powers of self-government since 1776. After all, there were great stretches of honesty and high purpose to counterbalance the squalid jobs and tricks.

If Macdonald sinned in one direction, Alexander Mackenzie had already begun his course of almost too austere rect.i.tude in another.

Opposition kept a keen eye on governmental misdoings, and George Brown, impulsive, imprudent, often lacking in sane statesmanship, and, once or twice, in nice honour, still raised himself, the readers of his newspaper, and the a.s.sembly which he often led in morals, if not in politics, to a plane not far below that of the imperial Parliament.

But the highest level of feeling and statesmanship reached by Canadian politicians before 1867 was attained in those days of difficulty in 1864, when the whole future of Canada was at stake, and when none but Canadians could guide their country into safety. There were many obstacles in the way of united action between the leaders on both sides; the attempt to create a federal const.i.tution was no light task even for statesmen of genius; and the adaptation of means to end, of public utilities to local jealousies, demanded temper, honesty, breadth of view. George Brown, who with all his impracticability and lack of restraint, behaved with {322} notable public spirit at this time, spoke for the community when he said, "The whole feeling in my mind is one of joy and thankfulness that there were found men of position and influence in Canada, who, at a moment of serious crisis, had nerve and patriotism enough to cast aside political partizanship, to banish personal considerations, and unite for the accomplishment of a measure so fraught with advantage to their common country."[23] In the debate from which these words are taken, Canadian statesmen excelled themselves, and it is not too much to say that whether in attack or defence, the speakers exhibited a capacity and a public spirit not unworthy of the imperial Parliament at its best.[24]

It would, however, be a mistake to exhibit the Canadian a.s.sembly of early Victorian days as characterized for long by so sublime and Miltonic a spirit as is suggested by the Confederation debates. After all, they were mainly provincial lawyers and shrewd uncultured business men who guided the destinies of Canada, guilty of many lapses from dignity in their public behaviour, and exhibiting {323} not infrequently a democratic vulgarity learned from the neighbouring republic. That was a less elevated, but altogether living and real picture of the Canadian politician, which Sir John Macdonald's biographer gave of his hero, and the great opposition leader, as they returned, while on an imperial mission, from a day at the Derby: "Coming home, we had lots of fun: even George Brown, a covenanting old chap, caught its spirit. I bought him a pea-shooter and a bag of peas, and the old fellow actually took aim at people on the tops of busses, and shot lots of peas on the way home."[25]

It now becomes necessary to answer the question which, for twenty years, English politicians had been putting to those who argued in favour of Canadian self-government. Given a system of local government, really autonomous, what will become of the connection with Great Britain? So far as the issue is one purely const.i.tutional and legal, it may be answered very shortly. Responsible government in Canada seriously diminished the formal bonds which united that province to the mother country. For long the pessimists in Britain had been proclaiming that the diminution of the governor-general's authority and {324} responsibility would end the connection. After the retirement of Lord Elgin, that diminution had taken place. It is a revelation of const.i.tutional change to pa.s.s from the full, interesting, and many-sided despatches and letters of Sydenham, Bagot, and Elgin, to the perfunctory reports of Head and Monck. Elgin had contended that a governor might hope to establish a moral influence, which would compensate for the loss of power, consequent on the surrender of patronage to an executive responsible to the local parliament;[26] but it was not certain that either Head or Monck possessed this indirect control. In 1858 Sir Edmund Head acted with great apparent independence, when he refused to allow George Brown and his new administration the privilege of a dissolution; and the columns of _The Globe_ resounded with denunciations which recalled the days of Metcalfe and tyranny. But, even if Head were independent, it was not with an authority useful to the dignity of his position; and the whole affair has a suspicious resemblance to one of John A. Macdonald's tricks. The voice is Macdonald's voice, if the hands are the hands of Head. Under Monck, the most conspicuous a.s.sertion of independence was the {325} governor's selection of J. S. Macdonald to lead the ministry of 1862, instead of Foley, the more natural alternative for premier.

Nevertheless Monck's despatches, concerned as they are with diplomatic and military details, present a striking contrast to those of Sydenham and Elgin, who proved how active was the part they played in the life of the community by the vividness of their sketches of Canadian politics and society. So sparing, indeed, was Monck in his information, that Newcastle had to reprove him, in 1863, for sending so little news that the Colonial Office could have furnished no information on Canada to the Houses of Parliament had they called for papers.[27] During the confederation negotiations, the governor made an admirable referee, or impartial centre, round whom the diverse interests might group themselves: but no one could say that events were shaped or changed by his action. The warmest language used concerning Her Majesty's representative in Canada may be found in the speech of Macdonald in the confederation debate: "We place no restriction on Her Majesty's prerogative in the selection of her representative. The Sovereign has unrestricted freedom of choice. Whether in making {326} her selection she may send us one of her own family, a Royal Prince, as a Viceroy to rule us, or one of the great statesmen of England to represent her, we know not.... But we may be permitted to hope that when the union takes place, and we become the great country which British North America is certain to be, it will be an object worthy the ambition of the statesmen of England to be charged with presiding over our destinies."[28]

Apart from the viceregal operations of the governor, the direct action of the Crown was called for by the province in one notable but unfortunate incident, the choice of a new capital. Torn asunder by the strife of French and English, Canada was unable, or at least unwilling, to commit herself to the choice of a definitive capital, after Montreal had been rendered impossible by the turbulence of its mobs. So the Queen's personal initiative was invited. But the awkwardness of the step was revealed in 1858, when a division in the House practically flung her decision contemptuously aside--happily only for the moment, and informally. George Brown was absolutely right when he said: "I yield to no man for a single {327} moment in loyalty to the Crown of England, and in humble respect and admiration of Her Majesty. But what has this purely Canadian question to do with loyalty? It is a most dangerous and ungracious thing to couple the name of Her Majesty with an affair so entirely local, and one as to which the sectional feelings of the people are so excited."[29] It had become apparent, long before 1867, that while the loyalty of the province to the Sovereign, and the personal influence of her representative were bonds of union, real, if hard to describe in set terms, the headship over the Canadian people was a.s.sumed to be official, ornamental, and symbolical, rather than utilitarian.

In other directions, the formal and legal elements of the connection were loosening---more especially in the departments of commerce and defence.[30] The careers of men like Buchanan and Galt, through whom the Canadian tariff received a complete revision, ill.u.s.trate how little the former links to Britain were allowed to remain in trade relations.

There was a day when, as Chatham himself would have contended, the regulation of trade was an indefeasible right of the Crown. That contention {328} received a rude check not only in the elaboration of a Canadian tariff in 1859, but in the claims made by the minister of finance: "It is therefore the duty of the present government, distinctly to affirm the right of the Canadian Legislature to adjust the taxation of the people in the way they judge best, even if it should meet the disapproval of the Imperial ministry. Her Majesty cannot be advised to disallow such acts, unless her advisers are prepared to a.s.sume the administration of the affairs of the colony, irrespective of the views of the inhabitants."[31] Similarly, the adverse vote on the militia proposals of 1862, which so exercised opinion in Britain, was but another result of the spirit of self-government operating naturally in the province. It was not that Canadians desired consciously to check the military plans of the empire. It was only that the grant of autonomy had permitted provincial rather than imperial counsels to prevail, and that a new laxity, or even slipshodness, had begun to appear in Canadian military affairs, weakening the formal military connection between Britain and {329} Canada. Canadian defence, from being part of imperial policy, had become a detail in the strife of domestic politics. "There can be no doubt," Monck reported, "that the proposed militia arrangements were of a magnitude far beyond anything which had, up to that time, been proposed, and this circ.u.mstance caused many members, especially from Lower Canada, to vote against it; but I think there was also, on the part of a portion of the general supporters of government, an intention to intimate by their vote the withdrawal of their confidence from the administration."[32]

Even before 1867, then, it had become apparent that the imperial system administered on Home Rule principles was something entirely different from a federation like that of the United States, with carefully defined State and Federal rights. All the presumption, in the new British state, was in favour of the so-called dependency, and the British Tories were correct, when they prophesied a steady retrogression in the legal rights possessed by the mother country. But the element which they had ignored was that of opinion. Public feeling rather than const.i.tutional law was to be the new foundation of empire.

How did the {330} development of Canadian political independence affect public sentiment towards Britain?

The new regime began under gloomy auspices. In 1849 Lord Elgin gave the most decisive proof of his allegiance to Canadian autonomy; and in 1849 a violent agitation for annexation to the United States began.[33]

Many forces a.s.sisted in the creation of the movement, and many groups, of the most diverse elements, combined to const.i.tute the party of annexation. There was real commercial distress, in part the result of the commercial revolution in Britain, and Montreal more especially felt the strain acutely. "Property," wrote Elgin to Grey in 1849,[34] "in most of the Canadian towns, and more especially in the Capital, has fallen 50 per cent. in value within the last three years.

Three-fourths of the commercial men are bankrupt. Owing to free trade a large proportion of the exportable produce of Canada is obliged to seek a market in the States. It pays a duty of 20 per cent. on the frontier. If free navigation, and reciprocal trade with the Union be not secured for us, the worst, I fear, will come, {331} and at no distant day." Now, for that distress there seemed to be one natural remedy. Across the border were prosperity and markets. A change in allegiance would open the doors, and bring trade and wealth flowing into the bankrupt province. Consequently many of the notable names among the Montreal business men may be found attached to annexation proclamations.

Again, in spite of the great change in French opinion wrought by Elgin's acceptance of French ministers, there was a little band of French extremists, the _Rouges_, entirely disaffected towards England.

At their head, at first, was Papineau. Papineau's predilections, according to one who knew him well, were avowedly democratic and republican,[35] and his years in Europe, at the time when revolution was in the air, had not served to moderate his opinions. The election address with which he once more entered public life, at the end of 1847, betrays everywhere hatred of the British government, a decided inclination for things American, and a strong dash of European revolutionary sentiment, revealed in declamations over _patriotes_ and _oppresseurs_.[36] Round him gathered a little band {332} of anti-clericals and ultra-radicals, as strongly drawn to the United States as they were repelled by Britain. Even after Papineau had reduced himself to public insignificance, the group remained, and in 1865 Cartier, the true representative of French-Canadian feeling, spoke of the _Inst.i.tut Canadien_ of Montreal as an advocate, not of confederation, but of annexation.[37]

After the years of famine in Ireland, there was more than a possibility that, in Canada, as in the United States, the main body of Irish immigrants would be hostile to Britain, and Elgin watched with anxious eyes for symptoms of a rising, sympathetic with that in Ireland, and fostered by Irish-American hatred of England. Throughout the province the Irish community was large and often organized--in 1866 D'Arcy M'Gee counted thirty counties in which the Irish-Catholic votes ranged from a third to a fifth of the whole const.i.tuency.[38] Now while, {333} in 1866, M'Gee spoke with boldness of the loyalty of his countrymen, it is undoubtedly true that, in 1848 and 1849, there were hostile spirits, and an army of Irish patriots across the border, only too willing to precipitate hostilities.

For the rest, there were Americans in the province who still thought their former country the perfect state, and who did not hesitate to use British liberty to promote republican ends; there were radicals and grumblers of half a hundred shades and colours, who connected their sufferings with the errors of British rule, and who spoke loosely of annexation as a kind of general remedy for all their public ills. For it cannot be too distinctly a.s.serted that, from that day to this, there has always been a section of discontented triflers to whom annexation, a word often on their lips, means nothing more than their fashion of d.a.m.ning a government too strong for them to a.s.sail by rational processes.

The annexation cry found echoes throughout the province, both in the press and on the platform, and it continued to rea.s.sert its existence long after the outburst of 1849 had ended. Cartwright declares that, even after 1856, he discovered in Western Ontario a sentiment both strong and {334} widespread in favour of union with the United States.

But the actual movement, which at first seemed to have a real threat implicit in it, came to a head in 1849, and found its chief supporters within the city of Montreal. "You find in this city," wrote Elgin in September, 1849, "the most anti-British specimens of each cla.s.s of which our community consists. The Montreal French are the most Yankeefied French in the province; the British, though furiously anti-Gallican, are with some exceptions the least loyal; and the commercial men the most zealous annexationists which Canada furnishes."[39]

Two circ.u.mstances, apparently unconnected with annexationism, intensified that movement, the _laissez faire_ att.i.tude of British politicians towards their colonies, and the behaviour of the defeated Tory party in Canada. Of the first enough has already been said; but it is interesting to note that _The Independent_, which was the organ of the annexationists, justified its views by references to "English statesmen and writers of eminence," and that the Second Annexation Manifesto quoted largely from British papers.[40] The second fact {335} demands some examination. The Tories had been from the first the party of the connection, and had been recognized as such in Britain.

But the loss of their supremacy had put too severe a strain on their loyalty, and it has already been seen that when Elgin, obeying const.i.tutional usage, recognized the French as citizens, equally ent.i.tled to office with the Tories, and pa.s.sed the Rebellion Losses Bill in accordance with La Fontaine's wishes, the Tory sense of decency gave way. Many of them, not content with abusing the governor-general, and pet.i.tioning for his recall, actually declared themselves in favour of independence, or joined the ranks of the annexation party. In an extraordinary issue of the _Montreal Gazette_, a recognized Tory journal, the editor, after speaking of Elgin as the last governor of Canada, proclaimed that "the end has begun. Anglo-Saxons! You must live for the future. Your blood and race will now be supreme, if true to yourselves. You will be English at the expense of not being British."[41] But other journals and politicians were not content with the half-way house of independence, and the majority of those who signed the first annexation manifes...o...b..longed to the Tory party.[42]

John {336} A. Macdonald, who was shrewd and cool-headed enough to refuse to sign the manifesto, admitted that "our fellows lost their heads"; but he cannot be allowed to claim credit for having advocated the formation of another organization, the British-American League, as a safety-valve for Tory feeling.[43] Unfortunately for his accuracy, the League was formed in the spring of 1849; it held its first convention in July; and the manifesto did not appear till late autumn.

Still, it is true that the meetings of the League provided some occupation for minds which, in their irritable condition, might have done more foolish things, and Mr. Holland MacDonald described the feelings of the wiser of his fellow-leaguers when he said at Kingston: "I maintain that there is not an individual in this a.s.sembly, at this moment, prepared to go for annexation, although some may be suspected of having leanings that way."[44] It was a violent but pa.s.sing fit of petulance which for the moment obscured Tory loyalty. When it had ended, chiefly because Elgin acted not only with prudence, but with great insight, in pressing for a reciprocity treaty with the United States, the British American {337} League and the Annexation Manifesto vanished into the limbo of broken causes and political indiscretions.

The truth was that every great respectable section of the Canadian people was almost wholly sound in its allegiance. Regarded even racially, it is hard to find any important group which was not substantially loyal. The Celtic and Gallic sections of the populace might have been expected to furnish recruits for annexation; and disaffection undoubtedly existed among the Canadian Irish. Yet Elgin was much more troubled over possible Irish disaffection in 1848 than he was in 1849; the Orange societies round Toronto seem to have refused to follow their fellow Tories into an alliance with annexationists; and, as has been already seen, D'Arcy M'Gee was able, in 1866, to speak of the Irish community as wholly loyal.

The great ma.s.s of the French-Canadians stood by the governor and Britain. Whatever influence the French priesthood possessed was exerted on the side of the connection; from Durham to Monck there is unanimity concerning the consistent loyalty of the Catholic Church in Canada. Apart from the church, the French-Canadians, when once their just rights had been conceded, {338} furnished a stable, conservative, and loyal body of citizens. Doubtless they had their points of divergence from the ideals of the Anglo-Saxon west. It was they who ensured the defeat of the militia proposals of 1862, and there were always sufficient _Rouges_ to raise a cry of nationality or annexation.

But the national leaders, La Fontaine and Cartier, were absolutely true to the empire, and journalists like Cauchon flung their influence on the same side, even if they hinted at "jours qui doivent necessairement venir, que nous le voulions ou que nous ne le voulions pas"--to wit, of independence.[45]

Of the English and Scottish elements in the population it is hardly necessary to say that their loyalty had increased rather than diminished since they had crossed the Atlantic; but at least one instance of Highland loyalty may be given. It was when Elgin had been insulted, and when the annexation cause was at its height. Loyal addresses had begun to pour in, but there was one whose words still ring with a certain martial loyalty, and which Elgin answered with genuine emotion. The Highlanders of Glengarry county, after a.s.suring {339} their governor of their personal allegiance to him, pa.s.sed to more general sentiments: "Our highest aspirations for Canada are that she may continue to flourish under the kindly protection of the British flag, enjoying the full privilege of that const.i.tution, under which the parent land has risen to so lofty an eminence; with this, United Canada has nothing to covet in other lands; with less than this, no true Briton would rest satisfied."[46]

As all the distinctive elements in the population remained true to Britain, so too did all the statesmen of eminence. It would be easy to prove the fact by a political census of Upper and Lower Canada; but let three representative men stand for those groups which they led--Robert Baldwin for the const.i.tutional reformers, George Brown for the Clear-Grits and progressives, John A. Macdonald for the conservatives.

Robert Baldwin was the man whom Elgin counted worth two regiments to the connection, and who had expressed dismay at Lord John Russell's treason to the Empire. When the annexation troubles came on, he made it perfectly clear to one of his followers, who had trifled with annexation, that he must change his views, or remain outside the Baldwin connection. {340} "I felt it right to write to Mr. Perry, expressing my decided opinions in respect of the annexation question, and that I could look upon those only who are in favour of the continuance of the connection with the mother country as political friends; those who are against it as political opponents.... I believe that our party are hostile to annexation. I am at all events hostile to it myself, and if I and my party differ upon it, it is necessary we should part company. It is not a question upon which a compromise is possible."[47]

Loyalty so strong as this seems natural in a Whig like Baldwin, but one a.s.sociates agitation and radicalism with other views. The progressive, when he is not engaged in decrying his own state, often exhibits a philosophic indifference to all national prejudice--he is a cosmopolitan whose charity begins away from home. There were those among the Canadian Radicals who were as bad friends to Britain as they were good friends to the United States, but the Clear-Grit party up to confederation was true to Britain, largely because their leader, after 1850, was George Brown, and because Brown was the loyalest Scot in Canada. Brown was in a sense the most remarkable figure of the time in {341} his province. Fierce in his opinions, a vehement speaker, an agitator whose best qualities unfitted him for the steadier work of government, he committed just those mistakes which make the true agitator's public life something of a tragedy, or at least a disappointment. But Brown's work was done out of office. His pa.s.sionate advocacy of the policy of Abraham Lincoln and the abolition of slavery kept relations with the United States calm through a diplomatic crisis. He it was who made confederation not possible, but necessary, by his agitation for a sounder representation. His work as opposition leader, and as the greatest editor known to Canadian journalism, saved Canadian politics from becoming the nest of jobs and corruption which--with all allowance for his good qualities--John A.

Macdonald would have made them. Never before, and certainly never since his day, has any Canadian influenced the community as Brown did through _The Globe_. "There were probably many thousand voters in Ontario," says Cartwright,[48] "especially among the Scotch settlers, who hardly read anything except their _Globe_ and their Bible, and whose whole political creed was practically dictated to them {342} by the former." Now that influence was exerted, from first to last, in favour of Britain. In his maiden speech in parliament Brown protested against a reduction of the governor's salary, and on the highest ground: "The appointment of that high authority is the only power which Great Britain still retains. Frankly and generously she has one by one surrendered all the rights which were once held necessary to the condition of a colony--the patronage of the Crown, the right over the public domain, the civil list, the customs, the post office have all been relinquished ... she guards our coasts, she maintains our troops, she builds our forts, she spends hundreds of thousands among us yearly; and yet the paltry payment to her representative is made a topic of grumbling and popular agitation."[49] In the same spirit he fought annexation, and killed it, among his followers; and, when confederation came, he helped to make the new dominion not only Canadian, but British. In that age when British faith in the Empire was on the wane, it was not English statesmanship which tried to inspire Canadian loyalty, but the loyalty of men like Brown which called to England to be of better heart. "I am much concerned {343} to observe," he wrote to Macdonald in 1864, "that there is a manifest desire in almost every quarter that ere long, the British American colonies should shift for themselves, and in some quarters, evident regret that we did not declare at once for independence. I am very sorry to observe this, but it arises, I hope, from the fear of invasion of Canada by the United States, and will soon pa.s.s away with the cause that excites it."[50]

Of Sir John Macdonald's loyalty it would be a work of supererogation to speak. His first political address proclaimed the need in Canada of a permanent connection with the mother country,[51] and his most famous utterance declared his intention of dying a British subject. But Macdonald's patriotism struck a note all its own, and one due mainly to the influence of Canadian autonomy working on a susceptible imagination. He was British, but always from the standpoint of Canada.

He had no desire to exalt the Empire through the diminution of Canadian rights. For the old British Tory, British supremacy had necessarily involved colonial dependence; for Macdonald, the Canadian Conservative, the glory of the Empire lay in the {344} fullest autonomous development of each part. "The colonies," he said in one of his highest flights, "are now in a transition stage. Gradually a different colonial system is being developed--and it will become, year by year, less a case of dependence on our part, and of over-ruling protection on the part of the Mother Country, and more a case of healthy and cordial alliance.

Instead of looking upon us as a merely dependent colony, England will have in us a friendly nation--a subordinate but still a powerful people--to stand by her in North America in peace or in war. The people of Australia will be such another subordinate nation. And England will have this advantage, if her colonies progress under the new colonial system, as I believe they will, that though at war with all the rest of the world, she will be able to look to the subordinate nations in alliance with her, and owning allegiance to the same Sovereign, who will a.s.sist in enabling her again to meet the whole world in arms, as she has done before."[52]

These words serve as a fitting close to the argument and story of Canadian autonomy. A review of the years in which it attained its full strength {345} gives the student of history but a poor impression of political foresight. British and Canadian Tories had predicted dissolution of the Empire, should self-government be granted, and they described the probable stages of dissolution. But all the events they had predicted had happened, and the Empire still stood, and stood more firmly united than before. British progressives had advocated the grant, while they had denied that autonomy need mean more than a very limited and circ.u.mscribed independence. But the floods had spread and overwhelmed their trivial limitations, and the Liberals found themselves triumphant in spite of their fears, and the restrictions which these fears had recommended. Canadian history from 1839 to 1867 furnishes certain simple and direct political lessons: that communities of the British stock can be governed only according to the strictest principles of autonomy; that autonomy, once granted, may not be limited, guided, or recalled; that, in the grant, all distinctions between internal and imperial, domestic and diplomatic, civil authority and military authority, made to save the face of British supremacy, will speedily disappear; and that, up to the present time, the measure of local independence has also been the measure of local loyalty {346} to the mother country. It may well be that, as traditions grow shadowy, as the old stock is imperceptibly changed into a new nationality, and as, among men of the new nationality, the pride in being British is no longer a natural incident of life, the autonomy of the future may prove disruptive, not cohesive. Nothing, however, is so futile as prophecy, unless it be pessimism. The precedents of three-quarters of a century do not lend themselves to support counsels of despair. The Canadian community has, after its own fashion, stood by the mother country in war; it may be that, in the future, the attempt to seek peace and ensue it will prove a more lasting, as it must certainly be a loftier, reason for continued union.

[1] Elgin-Grey Correspondence: Elgin to Grey, 26 April, 1847.

[2] He was reporting (18 December, 1854) the pa.s.sing of acts dealing with the Clergy Reserves, and Seigniorial Tenure.

[3] Pope, _Life of Sir John Macdonald_, i. p. 151.

[4] _Life and Speeches of the Hon. George Brown_, pp. 47-48.

[5] Baldwin to Hincks, 22 September, 1854: in Hincks, _Lecture on the Political History of Canada_, pp. 80-81.

[6] The Clear-Grits are thus described in _The Globe_, 8 October, 1850: "disappointed ministerialists, ultra English radicals, republicans and annexationists.... As a party on their own footing, they are powerless except to do mischief." Brown had not yet transferred his allegiance.

[7] Quoted from Dent, _The Last Forty Years_, ii. p. 190.

[8] Ministerial explanations read to the House of a.s.sembly, by the Hon.

John A. Macdonald, on Wednesday, 22 June, 1864.

[9] Elgin-Grey Correspondence: Elgin to Grey, 2 August, 1850.

[10] Head to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, 26 May, 1856.

[11] Statement of the Hon. John A. Macdonald in the a.s.sembly, 26 May, 1856.

[12] See _Appendix to the First Report of the Board of Registration and Statistics_, Montreal, 1849.

[13] _Life of the Hon. George Brown_, p. 263. This is undoubtedly an overestimate--prophetic rather than truthful.

[14] _Life and Speeches of the Hon. George Brown_, p. 267.

[15] Pope, _Life of Sir John Macdonald_, p. 234.