Document Information

Date: 1864-07-01
By: True Witness
Citation: “Canada and the United States”, True Witness (1 July, 1864)
Other formats: TBA

CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES.

—The most superficial observer must be struck with the close, we may say the perfect analogy subsisting betwixt the state of affairs in these two countries. In the former, thank God, we have not as yet had recourse to material arms; and if there be aught of honesty or wisdom—aught of capacity to profit by the example of our Southern neighbors—we may entertain the hope that, in time, even the wordy warfare now waged may be stilled; and that peace and harmony betwixt the two Provinces, and the two distinct races by whom they are severally inhabited may be restored.

This however cannot be expected from the proposed Federation, or from any probable modification thereof: and he indeed must be exceedingly deficient in political foresight who does not perceive that the scheme lately announced in the Legislature for allaying “sectional differences” can but have the effect of intensifying and perpetuating them. As rationally might the sick man expect a quiet night’s rest from the application of a blister, or a dose of salts, as the Canadian publicist anticipate a cessation of “sectional differences” from a Federation, either of the two Canadas, or of all the British North American Provinces.

The cessation of “sectional differences,” forsooth, from a Federal Union! Are men mad or do they believe their listeners to be fools, that they assail our ears with such trash. Let us but turn our eyes for a moment to the southward, to the battle-fields of the Army of the Potomac; and then ask ourselves how far has a Federal Union tended to allay, or prevent the growth of “sectional differences” betwixt the members of that Federation? Never was a Federal Union inaugurated, never can a Federal Union again be inaugurated, under such favorable auspices, and such fortunate conditions, as those under which was inaugurated the Federal Union of the North American Republic. Betwixt its component parts, there were no essential differences of race or creed. Heirs to the same social system, inheritors of the same “common law” of England, of the same traditions, the same literature, the same mother tongue, and the same religion, with no bitter memories of the past to look back upon, flushed with recent triumph over a common enemy, and newly conquered independence, comrades on many a hard fought field—of one blood, of one lineage, and of one faith—the people of the young American Republic might well believe their political fabric to be destined to an immortality and a prosperity not accorded to the systems under which other men lived.—If ever, we say, there was a form of Government devised by the wit of man calculated to ensure its own stability, the designs of its originators, to maintain peace amongst its members, and to do away with all possibility of future discord, or “sectional differences,” that form of Government was that of whose birth our grandfathers were the witnesses, and of which we have beheld the overthrow in the storm of civil war. And yet there are men mad enough, or, shall we say impudent enough, to prate to us of a Federal Union of these Provinces as a specific against “sectional differences!”

Why! already the two Canadas stand to one another in the hostile relations of South to North. What the Yankees are to the people of Virginia, Georgia and the Carolinas, that are the great mass of the Upper Canadians to us of Lower Canada. They are our Yankees; and for the last quarter of a century, the history of this portion of North America is but the record of the gallant struggles of the French Canadian race against that Yankee dominion. Alien to one another, as we have often said, in blood, in language, and religion, with no community of interests or traditions, of literature, or of social usages, with no bond to unite them, except their common allegiance to Queen Victoria—the people of the two Canadas present in their respective positions a contrast the most striking to the people of the thirteen Colonies when the latter inaugurated that Federal Union of whose bloody consequences we are the spectators. And with this example before our eyes, with this instance of the inefficiency of any form of Federal Union to prevent the growth of “sectional differences” and their development into internecine war, we prate about a Federal Union as a means to allay already existing, and deep seated differences; differences having their roots deep down in the soil of our social being, and springing from the ineradicable differences of race and creed which distinguish the people of one Province from those of the other! Is this simply folly? or must it be set down to the account of something worse than madness, and more disgraceful than folly? We allude, of course, to the language of the Evening Telegraph and other journals favorable to the scheme of Federation.

We are told that the Federal system in the United States has failed, not from its intrinsic defects, but because of the disturbing influence of slavery; because of the antagonism betwixt Slave States and Free States. This we do not admit; for though the existence of the slavery element may have slightly precipitated the rupture, it is in no sense its cause. But let this pass. For the sake of argument let us grant all that can be attributed to slavery as the cause of the civil war; and what then? Have we not Popery in Canada? and are not Popery and Protestantism as mutually antagonistic as slave labor and free labor? Have we not ethnological differences, as well as religious differences? and are not these fully equivalent to those differences betwixt North and South which, according to one set of theorists, have caused the break up of the Federal Union?

Because we say these things, we are not insensible to, not willing to prolong, the evils which spring from “sectional differences,” betwixt subjects of one Sovereign, and to whom we of the Lower Province are profoundly attached, and sincerely loyal. We are for union, but for moral, not political union; and we know that the more closely the people of Upper and Lower Canada are politically united, the less will they be morally united. We aim at union, we say, but a moral union, by the means, and as the consequence, of a political severance. Politically separated, each Province under its own legislature in the enjoyment of full autonomy, Upper and Lower Canada would be the closest and the most steadfast of friends. Politically united, they are, and ever must be, mutually provoking one another to wrath, and inspiring one another with fears and jealousies. Upper Canada will still be to the Lower Province what Massachusetts is to Virginia, and Mr. George Brown must stand towards the French Canadians as the hated Butler. The only chance for a thorough cordial union betwixt the two Provinces lies in their political separation.

To those who labor under the delusion that in mere political union there is strength, and that a political separation of the two Canadas would leave the Provinces weak, and unable, if attacked, to cope with an enemy in time of war—we would respectfully offer one suggestion. Were the thirteen colonies, because each was governed according to its own form of Constitution, Patent or Charter, the less able, because of their political severance, to make head against the formidable military power of France on this Continent? Were they, because of their political difference, the less morally united in the hour of danger, or less formidable to their foes, than they would have been had all their peculiar forms of government been merged into one, and a complete political unity established betwixt them? Certainly not. For all purposes of offence or defence, the thirteen colonies were one; and they were one as towards the enemy, because as towards one another they were several and distinct; because in short, they were morally and not politically united. So too would it be with us, and all the British North American Provinces, were our relations towards one another as were those of the thirteen colonies; were each Province left free to govern itself without interference of any kind from its neighbors.

But this moral union, of which the basis must be the perfect autonomy of the several Provinces, and of which the results would be peace and good will at all times, and in the hour of danger a combined front against the common foe—is not at all the kind of union after which Protestant Reformers, Clear Grits, Rouges and Liberals do hanker. It is only as a means to an end, the triumph of democracy, of the principles of ’89, and the spoliation of the Catholic Church in Lower Canada, that our political opponents value Union. Look at their writings: search the columns of the Witness—or of its twin brother the Toronto Globe, the organ of Mr. George Brown—and what shall we find? Always the most extravagant laudations of Italian Unity; and because thereby the great and good work of secularising the property of the Church, of putting down Monkery, and subjecting all ranks and conditions of the clergy—and ultimately it is hoped the Pope himself—to the civil power has been signally promoted. This is the great work, the crowning mercy of Italian Unification: and this is the work which Protestant Reformers and the friends of Mr. George Brown hope to carry through in Canada by the same agencies. We do our enemies no wrong in this, for they make no secret of their ultimate designs. In that they approve of the robbery and persecution of the Church in Italy, how can it be believed that they would shrink from the carrying out in a United Canada, of measures of which they approve in a United Italy?

But without entering at the present into any details, or urging to day the innumerable objections, moral and material, that naturally present themselves to the scheme of a Federation of all, or any of the British North American Provinces, let us content ourselves with the consideration how far such an arrangement would be likely to smooth down asperities, and allay “sectional differences.” Here we quit the domain of theory, for the domain of facts. In letters, indelible letters of blood, is the solution of this problem written, so that to all ages it is given to know how vain it is to expect that a Federal Union shall prevent the growth of mutual jealousies and hatred.

The several States of the American Republic were united in Federal Union, and under the most favorable circumstances conceivable. Circumstances, so favorable, that never can we expect them to be repeated.

The several States of the Union are now engaged in the most deadly, the most cruel war recorded in history. On the one side the North lavishes its blood and treasure to enforce its hated yoke upon the seceded South: on the other side the Southerners with a heroism and devotion without parallel, submit cheerfully to the bitterest of privations, to have their homes devastated, and their fields laid waste, in the hopes of thereby being able to escape from the odious connexion with their Yankee neighbors.

Therefore a Federal Union does not afford any guarantee whatever against the development to the most dangerous proportions, of what are euphuistically termed “sectional differences.”

In short, to dispose of the whole question as to the efficacy of a Federal Union to promote concord, we have but to ask ourselves—what are the Southerners fighting for? For what cause are they shedding their heart’s blood on the field of battle? We reply—to throw off a yoke which long years of bitter experience has proved to be too grievous to be borne; a yoke alas! which some amongst us it seems are intent upon imposing on Canada. We are, and we are not ashamed to own it, Secessionists at heart, sympathisers with the South: not because we do not detest slavery—but because heart and soul we would uphold the principle of State-Rights against Federal Sovereignty, or in other words Centralisation. Sympathising therefore as we do with the South in its efforts to throw off the yoke of Federal Centralisation—we cannot, in common consistency, but be heart and soul opposed to the Federal Union of such heterogeneous elements as the Provinces of British North America.