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Date: 1865-03-27
By: The Montreal Herald
Citation: “Curiosities of the Political Situation”, The Montreal Herald (27 March, 1865)
Other formats: TBA

CURIOSITIES OF THE POLITICAL SITUATION.

—Of course it is well understood that the present political situation of the Province has been developed out of the necessity felt by Mr. Brown to obtain justice for Upper Canada, and his willingness to suffer any degree of personal martyrdom, arising from the desertion by him of his friends for the attainment of that object. With the stern virtue of a Roman father, sacrificing his son to the laws of the country; or with that crucifixion of the affections with which Othello, while protesting his love for his drunken lieutenant, warned him that he must “never more be officer of mine;” the President of the Council tearfully parted from his old companions, and doubtless with indignant blushes took up with the corruptionists as new ones,—all to give effect to a great principle of equity, the establishment of which would reward him for years of suffering under unjust slanders, and would for ever end the dissensions which were distracting the unhappy country. Without being quite so enthusiastic in our admiration of this great act of self-abnegation as some other observers, we were not disposed to say that personal or political relationships ought to stand in the way of the arrangement of a great public question, and to hold that if Representation according to Population were achieved in any efficient degree, there might be fair ground for accepting even the co-operation of the corruptionists themselves. What, however, we now find very astonishing, is the rapidity with which the great principle, whose promulgation, like that of other gospels, has cost so much anguish to its apostle, was lost sight of so soon after its recognition had been attained. Sad it is to reflect that the principle was lost again within a very few weeks after it had been thus dearly attained, and lost on an occasion when its value, if it have any, must have been supreme. If indeed the opinions of a numerical majority ought in our system of government to have an influence based upon arithmetical proportion, in the particular acts of ordinary legislation, how much more so when the decisions to be arrived at were of a universal character, determining in an irrevocable manner the fundamental law, which was for ever after to dominate over every political act of the country, whether of greater or less importance? Yet it was in circumstances of this vast and enduring importance that the President of the Council, who had just bought Rep. by Pop. at so costly a price, threw it away, or allowed it to be filched from him without uttering a cry of resistance or alarm. Thus it did happen, however, that in virtually legislating for the whole future of the country at the Quebec Conference, and in contriving the guarantees, which, after the nature of guarantees, were of course to be permanent, the little populations of Prince Edwards Island and Newfoundland threw votes as potent as that of all the people of Canada, inasmuch as the voting was by Provinces, and each one exercised an equal suffrage. It must be admitted that this was a sudden and rather grotesque outcome of the establishment of a great principle of representation based on population. But this is not the only contradiction which is to be noted in our present political situation. That arises chiefly in the conduct of Mr. Brown and his “liberal” friends. But within a few years—since the great American outbreak—we have heard from Conservative politicians and presses a series of wonderfully persistent and eloquent pleadings for the right of peoples to self-government. It is true, indeed, that in professing to adopt the views of a school which they had formerly condemned, they fell into certain errors such as is natural to persons walking in unusual paths, and did apply the doctrine of the rights of people to self-government in a manner which would have strangely astonished the teachers of that doctrine, who certainly never supposed that they had sanctioned the breaking up of established societies as a mere matter of passion or caprice. But in however odd a manner they have applied their newly found principles, they have conceived the utmost horror of any kind of pressure brought to bear on unwilling communities to submit to political connection with others. They have held this so broadly as to conclude that members of confederated communities could at any moment, by an act of that mere volition which stands in the place of reason, dissolve a connection of nearly a century. We might thence have concluded that nothing would have been so shocking to these gentlemen as the idea of establishing a new confederation between unwilling members. The slightest hint of reluctance, one might have supposed, would alarm their delicacy, and cause them voluntarily to withdraw from an alliance that was not met at least half way by the party to which it was proffered. Strange to say, nothing of this kind seems to have occurred to our conservative admirers of the right of self government, who are also desirous of confederation. Our overtures having been flatly refused, or the consideration of them sulkily postponed by the independent communities to which they have been addressed, we might have expected the politicians to whom we refer to have at once retired from a scheme whose accomplishment, under the circumstances, would be so abhorrent to their principles. Instead of that, we were told that the refusal of New Brunswick to confederate with us was a reason why we should press on the project of confederation with more zeal than ever; and to add to the strangeness of their conduct, these admirers of the right of self-government are sending an embassy to a third power to obtain its influence for the enforcing of their project upon those who wish to have nothing to do with it. There is, indeed, a consideration of which we have lately heard a great deal, which, independently of the right of self-government, might have reconciled the persons of whom we speak to the failure of the grand scheme. It is that, as they have frequently shown in the case of the United States, vastness of territory under one rule is not a cause of happiness to the inhabitants, nor of stability to the institutions. How well have they shown the folly of a desire for “Empire,” even of the desire of preserving an Empire already created—how plainly have they proved that the United States was altogether too large to be under the same government, and that in such extended territory there must grow up antagonistic interests, which, from their self-repellant forces, must promote violent disruption. This philosophical generalization might, therefore, have reconciled them to the failure of an experiment attended by so many dangers, as that which, we have been told, would create a nation with a territory larger than all the rest of North America, and, of course, larger than that which these thinkers consider too unwieldy for cohesion. Perhaps it is the fact that the immensely largest portion of this vast territory, about whose bigness there has been so much rejoicing, is uninhabitable, which makes it supposed that we could not venture upon its vast proportions without danger. But then one fails to see the value of its prodigious extent. Far be it, however, from us to affect to reconcile the inscrutable paradoxes of such logicians as those we speak of. We content ourselves with indicating them, in the hope that our darkness may hereafter be enlightened.