Document Information
Date: 1864-08-25
By: The Montreal Herald
Citation: “Confederation from a French Point of View”, The Montreal Herald (25 August, 1864)
Other formats: TBA
CONFEDERATION FROM A FRENCH POINT OF VIEW.
—While it is impossible to judge of any scheme till it is matured, and, therefore, it is impossible to approve or condemn the plan which the present Ministry may elaborate for the purpose of solving the admitted and existing difficulties of our own Provinces, it is adviseable that the people who may have to pronounce upon that plan, when presented, should not be taken by surprise, nor have to deal with materials which they see for the first time, and do not comprehend. It is well that all parts of the population should understand what are the desires of other portions; what directions each will seek to impress upon the contemplated movement; what will meet with approval, or with disapprobation; and what result may be looked for as the consequence of one or the other arrangement which may be finally adopted. This circumspection, for reasons which we need not particularize, but which will be readily understood, is especially necessary on the part of the English speaking portion of the population of Lower Canada. We include in this suggestion all to whom that designation applies; for though it may be true that, in the present nearly balanced condition of parties, one or another section of the English speaking population may be sometimes useful enough to make it worth while to secure their support, a state of political existence may be imagined when their united influence would be comparatively so small that they might all be treated with the same indifference. These reasons make it important for us to note the speculations of those who think for the majority of the population of Lower Canada upon the projected constitutional changes; and for this purpose, in accordance with our custom of setting before our readers every expression of opinion from influential sources on this highly interesting subject, we to-day translate from the columns of the Journal de Quebec an article which, though it first appeared in a French newspaper, is not without authority as an exponent of ideas which may be largely entertained on the banks of the St. Lawrence. The writer, who, according to French law, signs his article, is M. Rameau, a gentleman who, we believe, resided in Canada, wrote for the French Canadian press, still interests himself largely in our politics, and is still quoted here with apparent approbation, especially by the French journals published at Quebec. We shall not, at this moment, seek to combat what we must regard as the intolerant and vain ideas of the publicist, who, forgetting history and geography, can seriously and consciously set himself, at this time of day, to elaborate a scheme to make Lower Canada purely French, by legislative discouragement to the emigration of any other than the French race instead of according equal justice to all, in the assured faith that the prosperity of any must carry with it the prosperity of the rest, and must build up the country which ought to be the patrimony alike of all who make it their home. We rather desire just now to point out that these ideas are entering into the domain of facts—are being set before a large part of the people of this country as determining motives of action, and are meeting if not directly with influential encouragement, certainly with influential circulation unchecked by tokens of dissent. The scheme of constitutional change which Mr. Rameau offers to his French, and the Journal de Quebec to its French Canadian readers, has the merit at least of simplicity both in its objects and methods. The first are tersely described to be the “disengagement of Lower Canada from its mongrel and fatal alliance with Upper Canada, in order that Lower Canada may then occupy herself in perfect freedom with the progress of her own colonization, by attracting an emigration of a races homogeneous with her own, and may develope her institutions according to her character, her origin, and her necessities, without any foreign adulteration. Such are the objects The means are not less plainly set forth. The government, the elections, the collection and distribution of the revenues, in short all the essential machinery of administration is to belong to each Province.” The Federal government is to have little to do; is to be wholly subordinate; is to have its legislators imperatively instructed as to their votes by the Provincial Legislatures like the representatives of the old Dutch States General; and to have its decrees annulled, not like those of the Washington Congress by the solemn legal decision of the Supreme Court of the entire Confederacy, but by any one of the local legislatures where faction may for the moment be in the ascendancy. We need not say how impossible we esteem all this, and yet when the subject first came up by the formation of the existing Government, we expressed an opinion that it would be precisely this sort of Confederacy which would alone be satisfactory to the ruling party in Lower Canada, as now constituted. Though that party may not express itself with the same frankness as M. Rameau, they will, like him, regard as utterly inadmissible, and will, with all their force, oppose any arrangement which will make the Central Government and Legislature predominant, or permit it to “exercise any substantial interference in the administration of “the country.” Great Britain, however, whose Government must be consulted, will certainly see nothing so pleasant in the operation of the doctrine of supreme state rights and a subordinate general government, as developed among our neighbours, as to induce her to fall into the views of M. Rameau, or those which, with whatever modifications of his programme, are likely, in our judgment, to be popular in Lower Canada. What then?