Canada under British Rule by Sir John George Bourinot (story reading txt) 📖

British people, but the _habitants_ pursued the even tenor of ways which did not include enterprise and improved methods of agriculture.

The value of the total exports and imports of the provinces reached $150,000,000 by 1864, or an increase of $100,000,000 in a quarter of a century. The great bulk of the import trade was with Great Britain and the United States, but the value of the exports to the United States was largely in excess of the goods purchased by Great Britain--especially after 1854, when Lord Elgin arranged a reciprocity treaty with the United States. Lord Elgin represented Great Britain in the negotiations at Washington, and the Congress of the United States and the several legislatures of the Canadian provinces passed the legislation necessary to give effect to the treaty. Its most important provisions established free trade between British North America and the United States in products of the forest, mine, and sea, conceded the navigation of the St. Lawrence to the Americans, and the use of the canals of Canada on the same terms as were imposed upon British subjects, gave Canadians the right to navigate Lake Michigan, and allowed the fishermen of the United States to fish on the sea-coasts of the British provinces without regard to distance from the shore, in return for a similar but relatively worthless privilege on the eastern shores of the republic, north of the 30th parallel of north latitude. During the thirteen years the treaty lasted the trade between the two countries rose from over thirty-three million dollars in 1854 to over eighty million dollars in 1866, when it was repealed by the action of the United States government itself, for reasons which I shall explain in a later chapter.

The navigation of the St. Lawrence was now made continuous and secure by the enlargement of the Welland and Lachine canals, and the construction of the Cornwall, Williamsburgh, and Beauharnois canals. Railways received their great stimulus during the government of Sir Francis Hincks, who largely increased the debt of Canada by guaranteeing in 1852 the bonds of the Grand Trunk Railway--a noble, national work, now extending from Quebec to Lake Michigan, with branches in every direction, but whose early history was marred by jobbery and mismanagement, which not only ruined or crippled many of the original shareholders, but cost Canada eventually twenty-three million dollars. In 1864 there were two thousand miles of railway working in British North America, of which the Grand Trunk Railway owned at least one-half. The railways in the maritime provinces were very insignificant, and all attempts to obtain the co-operation of the imperial and Canadian governments for the construction of an Intercolonial Railway through British American territory failed, despite the energetic efforts of Mr. Howe to bring it about.

After the union of the Canadas in 1841, a steady movement for the improvement of the elementary, public, or common schools continued for years, and the services of the Reverend Egerton Ryerson were engaged as chief superintendent of education with signal advantage to the country. In 1850, when the Lafontaine-Baldwin government was in office, the results of the superintendent's studies of the systems of other countries were embodied in a bill based on the principle of local assessment, aided by legislative grants, for the carrying on of the public schools. This measure is the basis of the present admirable school system of Upper Canada, and to a large extent of that of the other English-speaking provinces. In Lower Canada the history of public schools must be always associated with the names of Dr. Meilleur and the Honourable Mr. Chauveau; but the system has never been as effective as in the upper province. In both provinces, separate or dissentient schools were eventually established for the benefit of the Roman Catholics in Upper or Protestant Canada, and of the Protestants in Lower or Catholic Canada. In the maritime provinces satisfactory progress was also made in the development of a sound school system. In Nova Scotia Dr. Tupper, when provincial secretary (1863-1867), laid the foundations of the excellent schools that the province now enjoys.

During this period the newspaper press increased remarkably in influence and circulation. The most important newspaper in the Dominion, the _Globe_, was established at Toronto in 1844 by Mr. George Brown, a Scotchman by birth, who became a power from that time among the Liberal politicians of Canada. No notable books were produced in the English-speaking provinces except "Acadian Geology," a work by Dr. Dawson, who became in 1855 principal of McGill University, and was, in later years, knighted by the Queen; but the polished verses of Crémazie and the lucid histories of Canada by Ferland and Garneau already showed that French Canada had both a history and a literature.

Towards the close of this memorable period of Canadian development, the Prince of Wales, heir-apparent to the throne, visited the British American provinces, where the people gave full expression to their loyal feelings. This was the third occasion on which these communities had been favoured by the presence of members of the royal family. Prince William Henry, afterward William IV, visited Nova Scotia during the years 1786-1788, in command of a frigate. From 1791 until 1797 Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, father of the present sovereign, was in command of the imperial forces, first at Quebec, and later at Halifax. The year 1860 was an opportune time for a royal visit to provinces where the people were in the full enjoyment of the results of the liberal system of self-government extended to them at the commencement of the Queen's reign by the mother-country.

A quarter of a century had passed after the union of the Canadas when the necessities of the provinces of British North America forced them to a momentous constitutional change, which gave a greater scope to the statesmanship of their public men, and opened up a wider sphere of effort to capital and enterprise. In the following chapter I shall show the nature of the conditions which brought about this union.


CHAPTER VIII.


THE EVOLUTION OF CONFEDERATION (1789--1864).

SECTION 1--The beginnings of confederation.


The idea of a union of the provinces of British North America had been under discussion for half a century before it reached the domain of practical statesmanship. The eminent Loyalist, Chief Justice Smith of Quebec, so early as 1789, in a letter to Lord Dorchester, gave an outline of a scheme for uniting all the provinces of British North America "under one general direction." A quarter of a century later Chief Justice Sewell of Quebec, also a Loyalist, addressed a letter to the father of the present Queen, the Duke of Kent, in which he urged a federal union of the isolated provinces. Lord Durham was also of opinion in 1839 that a legislative union of all the provinces "would at once decisively settle the question of races," but he did not find it possible to carry it out at that critical time in the history of the Canadas.

Some ten years later, at a meeting of prominent public men in Toronto, known as the British American League, the project of a federal union was submitted to the favourable consideration of the provinces. In 1854 the subject was formally brought before the legislature of Nova Scotia by the Honourable James William Johnston, the able leader of the Conservative party, and found its most eloquent exposition in the speech of the Honourable Joseph Howe, one of the fathers of responsible government. The result of the discussion was the unanimous adoption of a resolution--the first formally adopted by any provincial legislature--setting forth that "the union or confederation of the British provinces, while calculated to perpetuate their connection with the parent state, will promote their advancement and prosperity, increase their strength, and influence and elevate their position." Mr. Howe, on that occasion, expressed himself in favour of a federation of the empire, of which he was always an earnest advocate until his death.

In the legislature of Canada Mr., afterwards Sir, Alexander Tilloch Galt was an able exponent of union, and when he became a member of the Cartier-Macdonald government in 1858 the question was made a part of the ministerial policy, and received special mention in the speech of Sir Edmund Head, the governor-general, at the end of the session. The matter was brought to the attention of the imperial government on more than one occasion during these years by delegates from Canada and Nova Scotia, but no definite conclusion could be reached in view of the fact that the question had not been taken up generally in the provinces.

The political condition of the Canadas brought about a union much sooner than was anticipated by its most sanguine promoters. In a despatch written to the colonial minister by the Canadian delegates,--members of the Cartier-Macdonald ministry--who visited England in 1858 and laid the question of union before the government, they represented that "very grave difficulties now present themselves in conducting the government of Canada"; that "the progress of population has been more rapid in the western province, and claims are now made on behalf of its inhabitants for giving them representation in the legislature in proportion to their numbers"; that "the result is shown by agitation fraught with great danger to the peaceful and harmonious working of our constitutional system, and, consequently, detrimental to the progress of the province" that "this state of things is yearly becoming worse"; and that "the Canadian government are impressed with the necessity for seeking such a mode of dealing with these difficulties as may for ever remove them." In addition to this expression of opinion on the part of the representatives of the Conservative government of 1858, the Reformers of Upper Canada held a large and influential convention at Toronto in 1859, and adopted a resolution in which it was emphatically set forth, "that the best practicable remedy for the evils now encountered in the government of Canada is to be found in the formation of two or more local governments to which shall be committed the control of all matters of a local and sectional character, and some general authority charged with such matters as are necessarily common to both sections of the provinces"--language almost identical with that used by the Quebec convention six years later in one of its resolutions with respect to the larger scheme of federation. Mr. George Brown brought this scheme before the assembly in 1860, but it was rejected by a large majority. At this time constitutional and political difficulties of a serious nature had arisen between the French and English speaking sections of the united Canadian provinces. A large and influential party in Upper Canada had become deeply dissatisfied with the conditions of the union of 1840, which maintained equality of representation to the two provinces when statistics clearly showed that the western section exceeded French Canada both in population and wealth.

A demand was persistently and even fiercely made at times for such a readjustment of the representation in the assembly as would do full justice to the more populous and richer province. The French Canadian leaders resented this demand as an attempt to violate the terms on which they were brought into the union, and as calculated, and indeed intended, to place them in a position of inferiority to the people of a province where such fierce and unjust attacks were systematically made on their language, religion, and institutions generally. With much justice they pressed the fact that at the commencement of, and for some years subsequent to, the union, the French Canadians were numerically in the majority, and yet had no larger representation in the assembly than the inhabitants of the upper province, then inferior in population. Mr. George Brown, who had under his control a powerful newspaper, the _Globe_, of Toronto, was remarkable for his power of