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Date: 1866-10-24
By: Montreal Herald
Citation: “Confederation and the Rights of the Legislatures and the People” Montreal Herald (24 October 1866).
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CONFEDERATION AND THE RIGHTS OF THE LEGISLATURES AND THE PEOPLE.

We have been requested by the writer to publish this letter, it having been rejected except on conditions which were not agreeable to the author:—

To the Editor of the Montreal Gazette:

SIR,—I notice that in your editorial of the 13th instant, respecting Confederation, you ask: “Can the Parliament of Great Britain recognize a faction led by Mr. Howe, or any portion of the people whom he, by his harangues, may have moved to sign this petition as ‘the inhabitants of Nova Scotia.’ Can it recognize any other authority than the legislature of Nova Scotia, as competent to represent ‘the inhabitants?’ Any attempt to do so would be not only manifestly absurd, but it would lead to endless confusion.”

Might I ask, in reply, why the Legislature of New Brunswick was not regarded as competent to represent the inhabitants of that Province when, in 1865, it decided by a large majority against Confederation? Governor Gordon, as you are aware, would not accept that decision, but persisted in his belief that public opinion had not changed, or would, or could, be made to change and finally succeeded in an intrigue to refer the question a second time to the decision of the people,—respecting which second appeal the Montreal Gazette in May last forcibly observed, “it is fortunate that the destiny of these Colonies is now once more confided to the hands of the electors of New Brunswick.” And here one or two more questions suggest themselves.

Why should the destiny of all the North American Colonies be determined by elections in one of them, and that one the third in rank? And why in the face of the facts of two elections having been held in New Brunswick, one with your cordial approval, to test popular feeling on the question of Confederation, are more than one-half the adult population of Nova Scotia characterized as “a faction led by Mr. Howe” for having exercised the humbler constitutional right of signing a petition to their Queen against that measure? What if the petitioners would say, in their anger, that those members of their Legislature who voted for Confederation unauthorized by their constituents, were a faction led by Sir Fenwick Williams?

And in truth, what right has a Legislature to vote its own destruction?

I know it has been done; and we have the alarming intimation from Mr. Fennings Taylor, in his “Biographical Sketches,” Part 1, that the Nobleman who has been selected to direct to completion the scheme of a Federal Union of these Provinces “bears the title of the first Viscount of his name, one of a small sagacious band whose prescience and discretion enabled them to bring about a more intimate union between Great Britain and Ireland,” Mr. T. adding, with some naiveté, “If the past history of the family and race has any influence in directing its future destinies, then may we not look forward with confidence to the success of kindred services on a different field, in another hemisphere?” But neither Lord Monck’s hereditary “discretion,” nor any other accessory, can make that right which is intrinsically wrong. “I have only to appeal,” says a great lawyer, “to the ordinary principles of delegated authority to show that a Parliament never could, and never can, be justified in voting its own extinction. Try the question by the rules of every day life. You employ a servant to manage your affairs, but not to supersede yourself. Now, of what is a Parliament composed if not of the servants of the public—of men sent there by the people to represent the wants and wishes of the people? The servant cannot supersede the master—he is employed for the purpose of managing the master’s business; and to admit the doctrine that he would be justified in turning the master’s rights and property to his own purposes would uproot the whole social system, and, when applied to matters of government, would of course be equally effective in producing a revolution in the civil state. The common sense of every man tells him that the delegate can never supersede, much less destroy the principal;”—(O’Connell.) “You are appointed to make laws, and not Legislatures,” says Lord Chancellor Plunkett; “you are appointed to exercise the functions of legislators, and not to transfer them; you are appointed to act under the Constitution, and not to alter it; and if you do so, your act is a dissolution of the Government. You resolve society into its original elements, and no man is bound to obey you.” But I can also cite from one who will perhaps be regarded by your readers as a more strictly an authority—one of whom it cannot be said, in bar to his judgment, that he had in view personal wrongs and the oppression of his brothers. In Locke’s celebrated treatise upon Government we read: “The Legislature cannot transfer the power of making laws into other hands, for it being but a delegated power from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over to others The people alone can appoint the form of the Commonwealth which is by constituting the legislature and appointing in whose hands that shall be, and when the people will have said, we submit and will be governed by laws made by such men and in such terms, nobody else can say other men shall make laws for them. The power of the Legislature being derived from the people by a positive voluntary grant and institution, can be no other than what the positive grant conveyed, which being only to make laws and not to make legislatures, the Legislature can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws, or to place it in other hands.”

Mr. Howe is now engaged in urging upon the attention of the English Government and people, the injustice, as tested by the principles thus clearly laid down, of an attempt to force an entirely new system of Government upon his native country; and it is surprising to find so many Conservatives par excellence speaking of his efforts with scorn, and labouring in the interest of the enemies of British constitutional freedom on this continent. But it is to be hoped that these efforts will be successful, and that the people at large of these Provinces will be allowed the exercise of a right, which, with startling inconsistency, has thus far been accorded only to a fractional part of them.

I regret, Sir, that you should see fit to speak of Mr. Howe as a “demagogue.” The appellation is unjust, and as applied to a man of his life and labours is indecent. But I should remember that public men live long, and even prosper, after being so insulted. No doubt the Earl of Derby was a demagogue when he leaped upon a table and told the people not to pay taxes, till electoral reform was granted; O’Connell was a demagogue; and so is Mr. Bright. And what was Mr. George E. Cartier on the 22nd of October, 1837,—and what is he now,—and what are your relations towards him?

I have the honor to be, Sir,

Your ob’t servant,

MATTHEW RYAN.

Montreal, Oct. 16, 1866.