Document Information

Date: 1864-08-30
By: The Montreal Herald
Citation: “French and English and Confederation”, The Montreal Herald (30 August, 1864)
Other formats: TBA

FRENCH AND ENGLISH AND CONFEDERATION.

— When two races are compelled, or induced by circumstances to live on the same soil, under one political organization, if they have, as they usually have, different institutions, manners and ideas, the Government must be carried on upon one of three principles. The stronger race, whether their predominance springs from greater numbers or greater force, may compel the weaker to relinquish their own modes of life and adopt those of their more powerful neighbours—a plan generally pursued by conquering nations. Or the two may live along side of each other, each preserving its own institutions intact, as historians tell us was done in the Roman Empire after the German tribes had squatted upon its soil, and introduced their “customs,” leaving the Roman Provincials whom they found there still to be governed by their “laws.” Both of these devices are clumsy, the first of them is cruel, and neither are adapted to a state of society where both races enjoy an equal degree of civilization, and are sufficiently polished to respect each other, and desire and expect gradually to mix with each other and become one people. The Romans when they admitted first of all the Italians, and afterwards the rest of the Provincials to an equality with the citizens proper probably first practiced the third course—that which, giving all parties the same right, looks to a gradual interchange of the particles which make up the two races; the intercommunication of ideas between them; the consequent softening of some customs and modes of thought, and the generalization of others according as good taste or right reason shall show reasons of preference. It is in the United States, however, where circumstances and the spirit of the present age has caused this method to be carried out on the widest scale. There can of course be no absolute permanency in any human institution, and institutions subject to the control of legislatures and administrators periodically elected by popular vote must of course be maintained, or changed according to the mass of opinion which shall prevail in the country to which they belong. Now this we take it is, and should be recognized as being the principle of social and political developement among ourselves. We are sure it must be so in practice, and we complain of attempts to obstruct the natural motion of the machine, not because such attempts can arrest our progress but because it inflicts upon us frequent and uncomfortable jars, as we travel along our predestined road. We are led to these remarks just now by the tone of discussion which has been adopted by a large part of the French Canadian press upon the subject of Confederation. One would think, to read the articles which are now daily seen in these journals, that some absolutely perfect institutions had been discovered, and set up in Lower Canada; that, however, excellent as they are they are only appreciated by a part of the population, while the other part in Lower Canada, and almost the entire body of the people in Upper Canada are constantly plagued with an evil spirit prompting them to pull down this beautiful structure and replace it by something which seems to possess for these publicists unheard of horrors. Everything else, therefore, is to be set aside in order that “our institutions” should be stereotyped for ever, according to the vain boast of the rulers of the Medes and Persians or the equally vain attempt of the Administrators of the Celestial Empire. The institutions and modes of thought of the two races according to these writers are to be regarded according to the figure adopted by one of them as mutually repulsive chemical atoms. There is to be no mixture, no permeation. Moreover, this conservatism is to be altogether one-sided, for the love of the smaller part of the population for its ideas and institutions is not to be gratified by any modification of the general political and social arrangements; but is to be wholly ignored, and the results which might arise from its action strictly guarded against. It is on these grounds that the proposed constitutional changes are considered—not whether they will create a greater sum of absolute justice—not whether they will strengthen the country, or promote the prosperity of the people; but whether they will insure for all time to come the continuance of existing institutions and the preponderance of the French element. On the one hand we are told that this has been fully done already and that it only remains to give permanency to the work by an arrangement which will make any other than the French race absolutely powerless in Lower Canada—on the other that that element is now powerful; and that it must be weakened by any change whatever. We appreciate and even admire the spirit which thus clings to the memory of those who have gone before us, and to the institutions under which we grew up, irrespective of their inherent excellence. Yet we cannot but see that, respectable as it is, it is neither just to others nor congenial with improvement. In fact, how many of the “institutions,” which were once French Canadian have ceased to be so with the full approbation of those immediately concerned—how many have been introduced among them, which they would be sorry to part with? Are not our whole criminal and municipal systems English in their origin, and are they the worse on that account? Was not the Seigniorial Tenure most decidedly French Canadian, and yet did not the French Canadians clamour for its abolition? Why should they suppose that the last social or political change has been adopted—that hereafter the world is to stand still, or that they are to stand still, and let it pass them? But unless they do so, why do they seek to insist on this permanency of institutions, for the mere sake of permanency? Do they not know that the British Canadians in Lower Canada, with a wise eclecticism, have adopted the French civil code, and prefer it because it is better than the English; just as the French Canadians prefer the English Criminal Code on account of its superiority to the inquisitorial methods of their own mother country? Why should we not both continue thus to exercise our fair share of influence on each other, each race accepting the excellencies of the other, and imparting, at the same moment that it developes, its own? Are we or our children always to be as we are? Whatever efforts may be made, the nature of things is against such attempts at forcing stagnation. It is by no means improbable that influenced by circumstances beyond human control, the country will see some elements of the separate nationality of each race growing and other elements weakening, with a constant increase in the force of the whole population. There can be no question for instance that during the last quarter of a century the numbers of the French race in Lower Canada have augmented proportionably more than the other race; it is almost equally certain that the use of their language, as the only medium of conversation, has diminished. Why should any one complain of one fact or the other, when both are due to natural causes, with no repression exercised in either direction? We regard the present position of many of our French fellow-citizens as a mistaken one—mistaken in respect to the rights of British Canadians in Lower Canada, at the moment—mistaken, in the future, as regards their own. All that we can expect or desire is to have the political arrangements of the country so made as to give all classes the same opportunity for growth in the various elements of strength;—to give all ideas the same opportunities of being adopted as they shall commend themselves to reasonable men; but we shall certainly have a right to resist any attempts, such as we now see put forward as part of the new political programme, to cut us off from any part of the national life, and to build up for ever one fixed rigid class of ideas, in which we cannot have a part, and can as little modify, especially if this is done by the aid of an exclusive system of granting lands. Moreover, endeavours of this sort always, sooner or later, lead to reaction, and we are by no means sure that some of our French Canadian fellow-subjects in their excessive fear of giving their British fellow-subjects a fair influence in our present political organization, are not preferring another organization, where the power of the British race will necessarily prove very much greater, however at first disguised, should its possessors ever set themselves to exercise it for the purpose of injustice.