Document Information

Date: 1866-04-09
By: Montreal Herald
Citation: “FRENCH CANADIAN VIEW OF THE PRESENT PHASE OF CONFEDERATION” Montreal Herald (9 April, 1866)
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FRENCH CANADIAN VIEW OF THE PRESENT PHASE OF CONFEDERATION.

(Translated from Le Canadian, Independent, Ministerial)

We put together several passages from Ministerial journals, which appear to throw some light on the projects of the government on the subject of Confederation:

We have every reason to hope that public opinion will declare itself in favour of an union, whose precise bases will be fixed in a new Conference with the Imperial authorities at London—Montreal Gazette.

It is not improbable that each of the Legislatures will pass resolutions declaring that union is desirable, and demanding a new Convention to elaborate the details. If that should happen we believe that the new Convention will be held at London; the English government acting as arbiter, and that an Imperial Act will be passed immediately after. * * * If this line of conduct is followed we may hope to see the union established within the twelvemonth.—Hamilton Spectator.

Mr. Smith, Premier of the New Brunswick government, has expressed himself as follows:

I shall never be in favour of a project which includes representation based on population, such as is proposed in the Quebec scheme. * * * I would rather go down with the ship; but I should have no objection provided there was in the construction of the Upper House or otherwise some check to protect the interests of New Brunswick.

And thereupon a paper favorable to Confederation expresses itself thus:

The plan is evidently if the government is sustained, to name a Committee of the Assembly, who will agree on a plan of union without perilling the position of the Cabinet. —St. Johns Telegraph.

The answer of Mr. Smith on the subject of representation indicates that he has been informed by superior authority that he must accept willingly or unwillingly this representation based on population, and his check is but the grape skin, in which he proposes to wrap up the pill which he is to swallow, in order that it should taste less bitter. We shall, therefore, have Confederation, and we should not be surprized if the Committee which is spoken of should content itself with some general and vague declaration, like the speech of Mr. Smith. England will do the rest. —Journal de Quebec.

“From these indications it seems to result that the project of the Government, if it can obtain a general declaration of the Maritime Provinces in favour of union, is to carry the affair to England, assemble a new Convention in London, and then solicit the intervention of the Imperial Government to cut the knot of the questions agitated within the Conference, without any previous submission of them to the People of the Colonies. The new Conference would, therefore, be but a comedy to prepare the coup de Theatre, which is to put an end to the liberty which it has been hitherto pretended to accord to us of choosing for the Canadian Confederation that form of constitution which they may judge most suitable. This would be an odious ambuscade for all the Provinces, but especially for the Maritime Provinces, England invited to intervene by a certain number of the members of the new Conference, perhaps by a seduced or a brow-beaten majority of them, would constitute herself the judge of the questions which divide us and the arbiter of our destinies. An Imperial decree would impose on us a Constitution—perhaps that of the Quebec Convention—in an aggravated form, for it may be remembered that the Colonial Secretary did not think it sufficiently centralized—perhaps even a legislative union which would be still more in accord with English notions. Thus our free choice would be taken away at the most decisive moment of our history—the right of every people which enjoys constitutional institutions to decide its own lot, and to determine on the laws which are to govern it. In a stroke of the pen we may say that the results of all our struggles for freedom, of the conquests which we have made against arbitrary power would be blotted out and lost. Our Ministers—unworthy heirs of those who at the cost of so many efforts obtained for us the inestimable privileges of responsible government, would replace our destinies in the hands of England, at the risk of seeing our nationality overwhelmed in a legislative union of all the Provinces. We have no prejudices against England. On the contrary, we feel ourselves full of equity and impartiality for her; but we cannot disguise from ourselves that without any hostility towards the French Canadian population, she cannot take any special account of their peculiar position, and that it would be impudent to look to her for guarantees which she has no interest in according to us. Her policy has been in all time to fuse all races here into one —her own, and thus create a single nation in Canada. If she be called on to judge our differences she will naturally be inspired by her own opinions, and follow their invariable tendency; and she will impose on us a constitution that will appear to her to assure in a short time the extinction of all diversities and the creation of a single nationality.”