John A (66 page)

^*100
Accident played a large part in determining that nineteenth-century Canada was among the blotches of red on the map. In the negotiations for the Treaty of Paris of 1763, Prime Minister Pitt the Elder came close to handing Canada back in exchange for France's sugar-rich islands of Guadeloupe. In the end, he held on to Canada largely out of fear of public outrage at the abandonment of the conquest for which the dauntless hero General James Wolfe had given his life.
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^†101
In 1872 Disraeli made imperialism the central tenet of Conservative Party policy. He was drawn to this stance because he had realized that working-class Britons, newly enfranchised by the 1867 Reform Act, were strong supporters of the Empire, perhaps as a source of colour in their hard lives.
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^*102
Cobden could lay a claim to be the father of the “Narcissism of small differences,” that practice whereby some Canadians stare intently across the border to identify differences between themselves and their neighbouring Americans. After a tour of the two countries in 1859, he proclaimed that Canadians “looked more English than those on the other side of the American frontier—they are more fleshy and have ruddier complexions.”
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^*103
The accused was a runaway slave charged with murder in the United States whom the British Anti-Slavery Society was seeking to protect from being extradited from Canada.
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^*104
The Times
went on to comment sourly, “We put no great trust in the ‘gratitude' of colonies.”
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^†105
The earliest first-rate colonial secretary—to everyone's amazement, and even more so because he had insisted on the portfolio—was Joseph Chamberlain—but he didn't take office there until the post-Macdonald year of 1895.
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^*106
Trollope had his finger on the public pulse. He had Phineas Finn go on to say that the British did care “that Canada not go to the States because although they don't love the Canadians, they do hate the Americans.”
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^*107
Back home, Newcastle gave a level-headed analysis of the implications of what he had said to Seward: “The injury to our own trade of burning New York and Boston would be so serious we ought to be as reluctant to do it as to destroy Liverpool and Bristol,” he reported. He added, though, “but they know we must do it if they declare war.”
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^*108
A rough precedent existed in the creation of Brazil, which broke away from Portugal in 1822 and remained an independent kingdom, under Pedro I and Pedro II, until it became a republic in 1899.
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^*109
A rough translation, provided by a bilingual friend, would be: “Certainly no one would have dreamed of Brown walking hand in hand with Macdonald, Cartier and Galt.”
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^*110
In one article, MacDermot criticized Macdonald for failing to show any awareness of having read, among others, “the Fabians.” Since the Fabian Society was formed only in 1884, this seems a critical reach too far. In fact, the Fabian leaders Sidney and Beatrice Webb did come to Canada, in 1897, and didn't much like what they saw: a “complete lack of thinking” about social problems in a “nation of successful speculators in land values.”
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^*111
During the century and a half since, Maritime Union has remained a topic of academic interest, but of none whatever to Maritime people and politicians.
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^*112
In fact, the Intercolonial enabled Canadian manufactures to capture the Maritime market from local companies. At the time Macdonald spoke, though, the Reciprocity deal with the United States had made east-west traffic incidental to the huge flow of north-south traffic.
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^*113
As a consequence of the 1982 Constitution Act, the BNA Act was renamed the Constitution Act, 1867.
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^†114
To improve his own knowledge, Macdonald in this letter asked for a copy of a standard work, G.T. Curtis's
History of the Origin, Formation, and Adoption of the Constitution of the United States
.
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^†115
In the published edition of Feo Monck's journal, Macdonald's name was left a discreet blank, but her original page contains the handwritten note “Macdonald afterwards Premier.”
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^*116
Within a year, as the government moved to the new, permanent national capital in Ottawa, Quebec City would lose even its temporary parliament building.
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^*117
The term used then was Legislative Council, but for simplicity's sake, Senate and senators are here used throughout.
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^*118
Today, the equivalent share of government spending on education, health and social programs would be around 70 per cent.
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^*119
To confirm the indistinguishable interconnectedness of law and politics, of the thirty-three Fathers, two-thirds, or twenty-one, were lawyers, but, like Macdonald, lawyers who had learned the trade on the job.
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^†120
The interest the delegates took in the Senate would have reached fever pitch had they known that serious consideration would be given later to granting to all the Confederation senators “the rank and title of Knight Bachelor.” Macdonald scotched this idea by pointing out to the colonial secretary that quite aside from the possibility of an errant senator lowering the tone of knighthood, it “would entail a title on his wife, which might not in all cases be considered desirable.”
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^*121
No protection was provided for French Canadians as such or for any ethnic group, Aboriginal people excepted. The protections were all to religion and to language.
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^*122
This revealing letter is reproduced in full in Alastair Sweeny's
George-Étienne Cartier: A Biography
.
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^*123
Macdonald was exaggerating for effect. Tupper, Nova Scotia's premier, denounced the “absurdity” of provinces claiming any sovereignty and said that Confederation would instead make Nova Scotia “a large municipality under the Central Government; but just as clearly a municipality as the City of Halifax now is under our Provincial Government.”
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^†124
Brown so doubted the usefulness of provincial governments that he said they “should not take up political matters.”
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^*125
A nine-foot-long oak-and-basswood table in the Saskatchewan Legislative Library at Regina may be the same one around which the Quebec City delegates bargained for the resolutions. It was used in the Privy Council at Ottawa from 1865 to some date in the 1883–92 period, when it was brought to Regina. It probably came to Ottawa from Quebec City, and so may have been used at the Confederation conference, but no certain connection has been established.
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^*126
To further mollify the Americans, the Canadian government compensated the St. Albans banks for their losses with thirty thousand dollars in banknotes and forty thousand in gold.
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^†127
In June 1864, the value of the Canadian dollar reached $2. 78, a peak never even approached since.
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¹²⁸
In his report on the Charlottetown and Quebec conferences, published in 1865 under the title
The Union of the British Provinces
, the pro-Confederation Prince Edward Island delegate Edward Whelan dealt delicately with Macdonald's performance: “Illness induced by fatigue from assiduous devotion to public affairs, compelled him to curtail his observations.”
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^†129
It's possible there was a concealed brace behind Macdonald, as was often used to enable a client to last out the minute and a half or more of motionlessness required for the exposure.
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¹³⁰
That Hugh John should have gone to university at the age of fifteen was not in the least unusual. Some undergraduates then were a year younger. No high schools existed until the 1870s, and bright students were prepared for university entrance exams in special schools. See A.B. McKillop,
Matters of Mind: The University in Ontario, 1791–1951
.
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^†131
As must have galled Macdonald, Brown at this time made himself wealthy for life by selling his farm and lands in southwestern Ontario for a handsome $275, 000.
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¹³²
Macdonald had received his first honorary degree in 1863 from Queen's University; it was also the first honorary degree awarded by Queen's, which he had helped to found.
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¹³³
Before his speech, Macdonald had already rejected a suggestion by Brown that he should move a series of resolutions on the scheme.
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^†134
This purely tactical use by Macdonald of the term “treaty” was later seized on by advocates of the “Compact Theory” of Confederation. They held that it was a compact or treaty negotiated between the provinces, with the federal government set up by them to perform certain functions. But the provinces, as colonies, had no power to negotiate anything. Further, Ontario and Quebec didn't exist before Confederation and had no one to negotiate on their behalf. A supposed compact or treaty that no one signed, and whose two largest participants (representing four-fifths of the population) didn't exist, is difficult to take seriously.
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^†135
Although democracy, as a grand theory, had few supporters in Canada, the country's political system was quite respectably democratic in practice. While the franchise was limited to property-owning males, as in Britain, there were many more of them here than there, and the vote was extended to Roman Catholics and Jews much earlier here. Walter Bage hot, the great British political analyst, wrote in
The English Constitution
(published in 1867) that while “the masses in England are not fit for elective government,” because too little educated, “the idea is roughly realized in the North American colonies.”
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^†136
O'Halloran's speech is quoted in that excellent source book
Canada's Founding Debates
, edited by Janet Ajzenstat. One chapter, “Direct Democracy: Pro and Con,” contains an extended analysis of both sides of the argument. O'Halloran himself suffered one serious handicap as an advocate of democracy: he had been educated at the University of Vermont and had served in the U.S. Army, all of which put him under severe suspicion.
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^*137
Macdonald used the phrase “peace, welfare and good government” rather than the now familiar “peace, order and good government.” See Chapter 22 for a fuller explanation of this iconic phrase.
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^†138
Macdonald—predictably—could switch his arguments against democracy to suit his political convenience. In one letter he denounced constituency nominating conventions as “immoral and democratic,” but then went on to advise his preferred candidate that “if a respectable and influential body of delegates is likely to be called together, you must exert every energy to have your friends chosen.”
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^*139
As noted earlier, Dunkin predicted that the constant cry of the provinces would be “Give, give, give.” On defence, he commented with equal acuity, “The best thing Canada can do is to keep quiet and give no cause for war.” Dunkin joined Macdonald's cabinet in 1869.
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^†140
Howe himself on one occasion argued that “deadly weapons, so common in the streets of Montreal, are rarely carried in Nova Scotia, except in pursuit of game.”
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^*141
Over time, as may be only a coincidence, there has been a displacement of one nationally unifying virtue by the other. In the nineteenth century, there was little tolerance in Canada—hence the sectarianism and open religious hatreds. Today, there is little loyalty to institutions, from marriage to employers.
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^*142
Brown very generously contributed five hundred dollars to the by-election fund and wrote, “[I] will not be behind if further aid is required.”
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^*143
The militia's adjutant general, Colonel Patrick MacDougall, later wrote that the Fenians had functioned as “invaluable, though involuntary, benefactors of Canada” by giving its people “a proud consciousness of strength.”
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^†144
The Fenian who had actually proposed the raid was accused of being a Canadian agent and expelled from the movement.
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^†145
Anti-Confederates argued that a referendum should be held before any final commitment to Confederation was made, but Tupper retorted that the same legislature had approved negotiations to create a Maritime Union—with no provision for a referendum.
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^†146
New Brunswick's Governor Gordon, as so often, summed up the electoral chicanery perfectly: “Confederation has hardly any friends here, but it will be carried by large majorities nonetheless.”
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