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Date: 1865-04-13
By: Thomas D’Arcy McGee
Citation: Thomas D’Arcy McGee, Speeches and Addresses Chiefly on the Subject of British-American Union (London: Chapman and Hall, 1865).
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SPEECHES AND ADDEESSES

CHIEFLY ON THE

SUBJECT OF BRITISH-AMERICAN UNION.

BY THE

HON. THOMAS D’ARCY McGEE, M.R.I.A.,

ONE OF THE MEMBERS FOR THE CITY OF MONTREAL, AND MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE FOR THE PROVINCE OF CANADA.

LONDON:

CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.

1865.

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LONDON:

BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

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TO

E.W. WATKIN, ESQ.,

M.P. FOR STOCKPORT,

WHOSE INTIMATE CONNECTION WITH MANY GREAT ENTERPRISES IN WHICH THE MATERIAL FUTURE OF BRITISH-AMERICA IS INTERWOVEN;

AND, STILL MORE,

WHOSE HIGH-SPIRITED ADVOCACY OF A SOUND COLONIAL POLICY, BOTH IN AND OUT OF PARLIAMENT, HAS CONFERRED LASTING OBLIGATIONS UPON THESE PROVINCES,

This Volume

IS VERY SINCERELY AND CORDIALLY DEDICATED.

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PREFACE.

———

This selection, from a large number of speeches and addresses, delivered during the past few years in the Canadian Parliament, or to public assemblies in the North-American Provinces, has been made, “at the request,”—to use a venerable formula—”of many friends.”

The only object in making public at present such a selection, is, to contribute something, however inconsiderable, to the fullest discussion of what may be called the British-American question.

For the sake of convenience the speeches and addresses are arranged in two parts. I. Addresses

delivered to special societies, or at popular gatherings. II. Speeches in the Canadian Parliament.

This division of the matter selected was intended, in the first place, to aid the “home” reader, personally unacquainted with those Provinces, in forming a fair estimate of the elements which go to make up the aggregate of our present British-American society; and in the second, to give some exemplification of the difficulties, local, sectional, and legislative, which the contemplated Confederation has had to encounter.

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No one can be more conscious than the speaker himself of the deficiencies of every kind to be found in these speeches; they were sometimes made at short notice—sometimes ill-reported, and seldom corrected for the press: if, notwithstanding, they should be found to possess any saving interest, it can only be attributed to the fact that they form a tolerably consecutive running commentary, on the recent course of political opinion in the British Provinces; on the main events of the American civil war, and on the new relations arising for the Provinces out of those events; and, finally, on the efforts which have been made, especially during the last few years, to bring about the establishment of “a new Nationality,” on monarchical principles, in British-America.

Montreal,

April 13th, 1865.

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CONTENTS.

———

PART I

ADDRESSES ON VARIOUS PUBLIC OCCASIONS.

PAGE

THE LAND WE LIVE IN         .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .      1

THE POLICY OF CONCILIATION      .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .      6

THE BORDER COUNTIES OF LOWER CANADA: THEIR RELATIONS

WITH UNITED STATES          .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .      9

CANADA’S INTEREST IN THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR      .           .           .           .           .     12

AMERICAN RELATIONS AND CANADIAN DUTIES            .           .           .           .           .     33

BRITISH-AMERICAN UNION            .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .     38

CHARACTER OF CHAMPLAIN, THE FIRST CAPTAIN-GENERAL OF CANADA: THE

FRENCH-CANADIANS UNDER FRANCE AND GREAT BRITAIN    .           .           .     43

OTTAWA, THE PROBABLE CAPITAL OF AN UNITED BRITISH AMERICA           .           .     51

THE COMMON INTERESTS OF BRITISH NORTH AMERICA           .           .           .           .     56

INTERCOLONIAL RELATIONS AND THE INTERCOLONIAL RAILWAY    .           .           .     68

THE FUTURE OF CANADA   .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .     83

BISHOP’S COLLEGE, LENNOXVILLE, C.E.   .           .           .           .           .           .           .     93

PROSPECTS OF THE UNION .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .     96

“SOME OBJECTIONS TO A CONFEDERATION OF THE PROVINCES CONSIDERED”        .   100

THE CAUSE OF THE QUEBEC CONFERENCE          .           .           .           .           .           .   108

GROWTH OF MONTREAL, AND ITS REQUIREMENTS        .           .           .           .           .   114

THE GERMANS IN CANADA .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .   117

SPEECH AT COOKSHIRE, COUNTY OF COMPTON, DECEMBER 22, 1864  .           .           .   122

THE IRISH IN CANADA; THE IMPORTATION OF FENIANISM       .           .           .           .   141

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PART II.

SPEECHES IN CANADIAN PARLIAMENT.

PAGE

“THE DOUBLE MAJORITY”  .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .   149

CONSTITUTIONAL DIFFICULTIES BETWEEN UPPER AND LOWER CANADA     .           .   154

REPRESENTATION BY POPULATION          .           .           .           .           .           .           .   177

CONSTITUTIONAL DIFFICULTIES BETWEEN UPPER AND LOWER CANADA     .           .   182

CANADIAN DEFENCES         .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .   199

REPRESENTATION BY POPULATION          .           .           .           .           .           .           .   506

EMIGRATION AND COLONISATION            .           .           .           .           .           .           .   210

INTERCOLONIAL RAILWAY DIPLOMACY  .           .           .           .           .           .           .   232

STATE OF THE COUNTRY: PUBLIC DEFENCES      .           .           .           .           .           .   241

INTERCOLONIAL RAILWAY DIPLOMACY  .           .           .           .           .           .           .   251

SPEECH ON MOTION FOR AN ADDRESS TO HER MAJESTY IN FAVOUR OF

CONFEDERATION     .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .   261

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PART I.

ADDRESSES ON VARIOUS PUBLIC OCCASIONS.

=========

THE LAND WE LIVE IN.

ADDRESS TO THE “NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OF MONTREAL, ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS,” 22ND DECEMBER, 1860.

Mr. McGee: Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,—As one of the Representatives of the city of Montreal, I feel it to be an act of duty, and a most agreeable duty it is, to attend the re-unions of our various National Societies, and to contribute anything in my power to their gratification. My respect for all these Societies, and my own sense of what is decorous and fit to be said, have, I hope, always confined me to the proprieties of such occasions; but still, if I speak at all, I must speak with freedom, and free speech, I trust, will never be asserted in vain among a Society composed of the men of New England and their descendants. I congratulate you and the Society over which you preside, Mr. President, on the recurrence of your favourite anniversary, and not only for your own gratification as our fellow-citizens of Montreal, but in the best interests of all humanity in the New World, let us join in hope that not only the sons of New England, but Americans from all other States settled amongst us, will long be able to join harmoniously in the celebration of the arrival of the first ship-load of emigrants in Massachusetts Bay on this day, 240 years ago;—a ship which wafted over

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the sea as large a cargo of the seeds of a new civilization as any ship ever did, since the famous voyage recorded in the legends of the Greeks. It is rather a hard task this you have set me, Mr. President, of extolling the excellencies of “the land we live in”—that is, praising ourselves—especially at this particular season of the year. If it were mid-summer instead of mid-winter, when our rapids are flashing, and our glorious river sings its triumphal song from Ontario to the Ocean—when the northern summer, like the resurrection of the just, clothes every lineament of the landscape in beauty and serenity—it might be easy to say fine things for ourselves, without conflicting with the evidence of our senses. But to eulogise Canada about Christmas time requires a patriotism akin to the Laplander, when, luxuriating in his train oil, he declares that “there is no land like Lapland under the sun.” Our consolation, however, is that all the snows of the season fall upon our soil for wise and Providential purposes. The great workman, Jack Frost, wraps the ploughed land in a warm covering, preserving the late sown wheat for the first ripening influence of the spring. He macadamizes roads and bridges, brooks and rivers, better than could the manual labour of 100,000 workmen. He forms and lubricates the track through the wilderness by which those sailors of the forest—the lumbermen—are enabled to draw down the annual supply of one of our chief staples, to the margins of frozen rivers, which are to bear their rafts to Quebec, at the first opening of the navigation. This climate of ours, though rigorous, is not unhealthful, since the average of human life in this Province is seven per cent. higher than in any other portion of North America; and if the lowness of the glass does sometimes inconvenience individuals, we ought to be compensated and consoled by remembering of how much benefit these annual falls of snow are to the country at large. So much for our climatic difficulties. Let me now say a word or two on our geographical position. Whoever looks at the map—a good map is an invaluable public instructor—not such maps as we used to have, in which Canada was stuck away up at

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the North Pole, but such maps as have lately appeared in this country—will be tempted to regard the Gulf of St. Lawrence as the first of the Canadian Lakes, and our magnificent river as only a longer Niagara or Detroit. His eye will follow up through the greater part of the tidal volume of that river the same parallel of latitude—the 46°—which intersects Germany, and cuts through the British Channel; if he pursues that parallel, it will lead him to the valley of the Saskatchewan, and through the Rocky Mountain passes, to the rising settlements of our fellow subjects on the Pacific. It will lead him through that most interesting country—the Red River territory, 500,000 square miles in extent, with a white population of less than 10,000 souls; a territory which ought to be “the Out-West” of our youth—where American enterprise has lately taught us a salutary, though a rebuking lesson, for while we were debating about its true limits and the title by which it is held, they were steaming down to Fort Garry, with mails and merchandise from St. Paul’s. The position of Canada is not only important in itself, but it is important as a Via media to the Pacific; from a given point on our side of Lake Superior to navigable water on the Fraser River has been shown to be not more than 2000 miles—about double the distance from Boston to Chicago. A railway route, with gradients not much, if at all, exceeding those of the Vermont Central, or the Philadelphia and Pittsburg, has been traced throughout by Mr. Fleming, Mr. Hind, Mr. Dawson, Captain Synge, and Colonel Pailisser; and though neither Canada nor Columbia are able of themselves to undertake the connexion, we cannot believe that British and American enterprise, which risked so many precious lives to find a practicable passage nearer to the Pole, will long leave untried this safest, shortest, and most expeditious overland North-West passage. We cannot despair that the dream of Jacques Cartier may yet be fulfilled, and the shortest route from Europe to China be found through the valley of the St. Lawrence. Straight on to the West lies Vancouver’s Island, the Cuba of the Pacific; a little to the North, the Amoor, which may be

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called the Amazon of the Arctic; farther off, but in a right line, the rich and populous Japanese group, which for wealth and enterprise have not been inaptly called the British Isles of Asia. These, Mr. President, are some of our general geographical advantages; there are others that I might refer to, but on an occasion of this kind I know the fewer details the better. Now, one word more as to our people: the decennial census to be taken next month will probably show us to be nearly equal in numbers to the six States of New England, or the great State of New York, deducting New York city. An element, over a third, but less than one-half of that total, will be found to be of French Canadian origin; the remainder is made up, as the population of New York and New England has been, by British, Irish, German, and other emigrants and their descendants. Have we advanced materially in the ratio of our American neighbours? I cannot say that we have. Montreal is an older city than Boston, and Kingston an older town than Oswego or Buffalo. Let us confess frankly that in many material things we are half a century behind the Americans, while, at the same time—not to give way altogether too much—let us modestly assert that we possess some social advantages which they, perhaps, do not. For example, we believed until lately—we still believe—that such a fiction as a slave, as one man being another man’s chattel, was wholly unknown in Canada.* And we still hope that may ever continue to be our boast. In material progress we have something to show, and we trust to have more. All we need, Mr. President, mixed up and divided as we naturally are, is, in my humble opinion, the cultivation of a tolerant spirit on all the delicate controversies of race and religion,—the maintenance of an upright public opinion in our politics and commerce,—the cordial encouragement of every talent and every charity which

* An allusion to the recent case of Anderson, arrested and tried in Upper Canada, on the charge of killing his master, while attempting to escape, in Missouri. He was finally acquitted by the Upper Canada Court of Appeal, but not until a writ of habeas corpus had been issued from the Queen’s Bench, at Westminster.

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reveals itself among us,—the expansion of those narrow views and small ambitions which are apt to attend upon Provincialism,—and with these amendments, I do think we might make for Christian men, desirous to bring up their posterity in the love and fear of God and the law, one of the most desirable residences in the world, of this “land we live in.”

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THE POLICY OF CONCILIATION.

REMARKS AT MONTREAL, MARCH, 1861.

In reply to the toast of his health, at a dinner given him by his constituents, on the eve of the session of 1861, Mr. McGee (after some local observations) said: The career I have had in Canada led me chiefly into those parts of the country inhabited by men who speak the English language, and using the opportunities which I have had between the time when I ceased to be a newspaper publisher to that of my admission as a member of the Lower Canada bar, I trust I have learned something which may be profitable to me in the position to which you elevated me on trust and in advance. The result of my observations, thus made, is, that there is nothing to be more dreaded in this country than feuds arising from exaggerated feelings of religion and nationality. On the other hand, the one thing needed for making Canada the happiest of homes, is to rub down all sharp angles, and to remove those asperities which divide our people on questions of origin and religious profession. The man who says this cannot be done consistently with any set of principles founded on the charity of the Gospel or on the right use of human reason, is a blockhead, as every bigot is,—while under the influence of his bigotry he sees no further than his nose. For a man who has grown to years of discretion—though some never do come to those years—who has not become wedded to one idea, who, like. Coleridge, is as ready to regulate his conduct as to set his watch when the parish clock declares it wrong; who is ready to be taught by high as well as by low, and to receive any stamp of truth—I may say that such a man will come to this conclusion: that there are in all origins

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men good, bad, and indifferent; yet for my own part, my experience is that in all classes the good predominate. I believe that there have come out of Ireland, noble as she is, those whom she would not recognise as her children; and so with other countries celebrated for the noble characteristics of their population as a whole. In Canada, with men of all origins and all kinds of culture, if we do not bear and forbear, if we do not get rid of old quarrels, but on the contrary make fresh ones,—whereas we ought to have lost sight of the old when we lost sight of the capes and headlands of the old country—if we will carefully convey across the Atlantic half-extinguished embers of strife in order that we may by them light up the flames of our inflammable forests—if each neighbour will try not only to nurse up old animosities, but to invent new grounds of hostility to his neighbour—then, gentlemen, we shall return to what Hobbes considered the state of Nature—I mean a state of war. In society we must sacrifice something, as we do when we go through a crowd, and not only must we yield to old age, to the fairer and better sex, and to that youth which, in its weakness, is entitled to some of the respect which we accord to age; but we must sometimes make way for men like ourselves, though we could prove by the most faultless syllogism our right to push them from the path. In his great speech respecting the Unitarians, Edmund Burke declared that he did not govern himself by abstractions or universals, and he maintained in that same argument (I think) that what is not possible is not desirable—that the possible best is the absolute best—the best for the generation, the best for the man, since the shortness of life makes it impossible for him to achieve all that he could wish. I believe the possible best for us is peace and good-will. With this belief I did my part to heal up those feuds which prevailed in Montreal and westward before and at the election of 1857; I felt that some one must condone the past, and I determined, so far as I could be supposed to represent your principles, to lead the way; I tried to allay irritated feeling, and I hope not altogether without success. We have a country which,

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being the land of our choice, should also have our first consideration. I know, and you know, that I can never cease to regard with an affection which amounts almost to idolatry the land where I spent my best, my first years, where I obtained the partner of my life, and where my firstborn saw the light. I cannot but regard that land even with increased love because she has not been prosperous. Yet I hold we have no right to intrude our Irish patriotism on this soil; for our first duty is to the land where we live and have fixed our homes, and where, while we live, we must find the true sphere of our duties. While always ready therefore to say the right word, and to do the right act for the land of my forefathers, I am bound above all to the land where I reside; and especially am I bound to put down, so far as one humble layman can, the insensate spread of a strife which can only tend to prolong our period of Provincialism and make the country an undesirable home for those who would otherwise willingly cast in their lot among us. We have acres enough; powers mechanical and powers natural; and sources of credit enough to make out of this Province a great nation, and, though I wish to commit no one to my opinion, I trust that it will not only be so in itself, but will one day form part of a greater British North American State, existing under the sanction, and in perpetual alliance with the Empire, under which it had its rise and growth.

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THE BORDER COUNTIES OF LOWER CANADA: THEIR RELATIONS WITH UNITED STATES.

REMARKS AT A POLITICAL PIC-NIC AT ORMSTOWN, COUNTY OF CHATEAUGUAY, JULY 17TH, 1861.*

Mr. McGee said: I am very grateful to you, my friends, for your cordial reception, and to my friend, your worthy member (Mr. Starnes), for the flattering recommendation to your notice which he has just given me. I now understand, when I see him moving about among his constituents, one great secret of his popularity, in the unaffected friendly feeling with which you and he meet, and interchange opinions with each other. for myself, my friends, why am I here? I answer, because you desired it, and your respected representative seconded the request. Being here, what can I say that may interest or instruct you? Mere speaking, for speech-sake, I hold to be almost the lowest exercise of human capacity; but if there be things to be said, which are at once fit for the place, the time, the audience, and the speaker, such speech as that can never be superfluous or impertinent, ill-timed, or in bad taste. Two or three incidents occurred to my honourable friend and myself on our way to this place, which gave me mental occupation along the road, and suggested to me observations which, with one or two others of a more general nature, I very gladly offer you as my mite towards the objects of this festival at Ormstown. The chief of these observations, which I shall present to you before I close, concerns our own social state in Lower Canada; and the other, to which I mean to refer in the first place, concerns

* The period of the first battle of Bull’s Run.

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our present and future relations with the Americans, your next-door neighbours. We stand here on the historic soil of Chateauguay, where De Salaberry, with his handful of volunteers, repulsed an army in the last war, as American armies were then numbered; we are here within two hours’ ride of the American line; your relations and the relations of the adjoining counties, with our neighbours in Western New York, especially since the establishment of the Reciprocity Treaty, are of the most intimate and cordial character. Is it not so? Every true Canadian, every true American, wishes to preserve and perpetuate these peaceful relations. Is it not so? Now, if this be the determination on both sides, there can be little possibility of a rupture, and I therefore entirely agree with the sentiments of those statesmen who think that the late infusion of a small standing army into our old garrisons was of questionable policy. I do not pretend to know upon what representations such an addition to the regular army in this country was made; but if it was made with any feeling of apprehension as to our relations with our neighbours across the line, I think it was premature and unnecessary. It may be what is called an error on the right side, but I confess I look for the preservation of peace between ourselves and the American people far more to the cultivation of a just and generous style of dealing with the national troubles of that people, than I would to the presence here of a few thousand regulars more or less. We have everything to lose, and nothing to gain, by adopting any other tone or any other tactics, and I repeat here, at this the earliest opportunity I have had, what I said in my place in the last Parliament, that all this wretched small-talk about the failure of the Republican experiment in the United States ought to be frowned down, wherever it appears, by the Canadian public. I am not a Republican in politics; long before these recent troubles came to a head in the American Union, I had ceased to dogmatise upon any abstract scheme of government; but I have no hesitation in declaring my own hope and belief—a belief founded on evidence accumulated through several years of observation—that the American

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system, so far from having proved a failure—that that system may emerge from this, its first great domestic trial, purified, consolidated, disciplined, for greater usefulness and greater achievements than before. It is then, it seems to me, the duty of Canadian statesmen to look through the temporary to the lasting relations we are to sustain to our next neighbours; to suppress and discountenance all ungenerous exultation at the trials and tribulations which they are now undergoing; to show them, on the contrary, in this the day of their adversity, that while preferring on rational grounds the system of Constitutional monarchy for ourselves and our children—while preferring to lodge within the precincts of the Constitution elaborated through ages by the highest wisdom of the British Islands, we can at the same time be just, nay, generous, to the merits of the kindred system, founded by their fathers, in the defensive and justifiable war of their Revolution. If we are freemen so are they, and the public calamities which befall one free people can never be matter of exultation to another, so long as the world is half darkened by despotism, as it is. The American system is the product of the highest political experience of modern times, working in the freest field, cast adrift from all European ties, by the madness of an arbitrary minister, blind to all circumstances of time and place; if that fabric should be destined to fall—as fall I firmly believe it will not in our day, nor at any early day,—the whole world must feel the shock, and all the civilised parts of the earth might well be clothed in mourning, if they only understood the value of what they had lost. I am told there are several American citizens here present: I was not before aware of the fact; but if there are, I beg them to take from me, as one of the public men of this Province, that, so far as I am aware, with few and uninfluential exceptions, the press and people of Canada are anxiously and sincerely desirous that they may be able soon to settle their domestic troubles, and that the future course of their Confederation may be as free from anarchical dangers as it has been hitherto, since the days of Washington.

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CANADA’S INTEREST IN THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR.

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED DURING THE AGRICULTURAL EXIBITION, AT LONDON, C.W., SEPTEMBER, 26TH, 1861.

Mr. McGee said: Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:—Many of you have been kind enough, through my much esteemed friend near me (Mr. Frank Smith), to invite me to speak to you on the subject of “Canada’s Interest in the American Civil War” Though you come together from all parts of the Province with a very different object—though you have dedicated this week to compare notes and statistics with each other—though you have been occupied inspecting the plentiful fruits with which an all-gracious Providence has crowned the year—though your imaginations have been busy with the wheat field, the meadow, and the orchard—it was thought that we might spend an evening not unprofitably in considering how far we are likely to be affected in our peaceful progress, our domestic industry, and our external relations, by the stirring events which are taking place on the soil of Virginia and Missouri. Our friends were of opinion—and I fully agree with them—that while cultivating our own fields in peace, under the broad banner of the triple cross—that while cherishing with a natural preference our own institutions, copied in general after the model furnished by our Island ancestors, we still cannot be insensible to the revolution attempted to the south of those great lakes, upon which a portion of Upper Canadians dwell and depend, and from which we in Lower Canada derive most of our freights and exchanges. Standing as we do to the north of the North, riding safely by the firm

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anchorage of a system of self-government, the most liberal that metropolis ever conceded to colony, since the emigrating ages of the Greeks—bound up with the fortunes of a great empire by ” links light as air, yet strong as iron” we conceive that the public intelligence of Canada is sufficiently centred in itself, sufficiently calm, unbiassed, and comprehensive, to form opinions for ourselves, neither parrotted after the organs of the North, nor echoed after the orators of the South. In meeting—in discussing this subject at all—I am sure it is your desire, I can safely say it is mine, that we should utter no word without deliberation and forethought—that if we are to be quoted anywhere as any evidence of the public opinion of this Province, the Province may not be discredited by the spirit in which we speak, nor by the meaning, intent, and substance of what we say. “We all feel, Mr. Chairman, that, end how it may, this surprising civil war is destined to form the third great epoch in the annals of the new world. As Columbus’s discovery made the first, and Washington’s success the second, so this great insurrection of the Africanized States against the Federal authority must be considered the third epoch in American history. It is an epoch, however, yet unformed, whose issue is in the future, whose events are upon the march, and, therefore, to be spoken of by a prudent looker-on with many reservations. In Canada we have this advantage over both North and South, in their present blood-heat temper: we can express ourselves, without fear of censorship or Lynch law, whenever we do see our way clearly, and feel that there is a principle at stake. While I feel buoyed up in an atmosphere of free speech, I must add, on the other hand, that I feel borne down almost to speechlessness by the vastness of the subject. I cannot comprehend—I cannot imagine—how any rational being could approach such a subject in a light, or flippant, or gratified spirit. I cannot conceive the perversity of nature, the hopeless scepticism in man’s self-government, which could make any one applaud at such a national tragedy—at the miserable prospect of a whole continent given over to bloodshed, rapine, and revolution. But of all men, I can

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least conceive the mental state of that English-speaking man, who can hear with satisfaction the language of which he is justly proud—the speech so rich in new and old wisdom—the tongue which we all had hoped a little while ago was dedicated for ever to herald peaceful progress throughout the earth—I cannot conceive the mental state of such a man, of any party, who can hear with satisfaction that language employed in the stern exchange of challenges and countersigns, along all the great central rivers of North America. Since the first dawn of this century the English tongue has not hitherto given expression to the barbarous passions of civil war; and it was one, not of the least, among the services of the Federal constitution to the continent, that men of the same speech—intelligible to each other for all purposes of good, while they obeyed that supreme authority, were neither tempted, nor driven, nor led—at least not in multitudes—to defame each other, in a language whose resources of vituperation are only inferior to its adaptability for free intercourse, for calm argument, and for all the kindly and dignified offices of public and private life. The interests of Canada in the American civil war are, in general, the interest of all free governments, and in particular the interest of a next neighbour, having a thousand miles of frontier and many social enterprises in common with the Republic. We are ourselves an American people geographically and commercially, though we retain our British connection; our situation is continental, and our politics, in the largest and best sense, must needs be continental. It is true our Federal capital is on the other side of the Atlantic, not on this; but although subject to a constitutional monarchy in our external affairs, we claim to be as free a people—indeed, we flatter ourselves we are a freer people—than our neighbours of. New York, or New England, or the North-western States, As a free people, with absolute domestic self-government, with local liberties, bound up in an Imperial Union, governed by our own majority constitutionally ascertained, we are as deeply interested in the issue of the present unhappy contest, as any of the States of the United States; while,

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as a North American people, Canadians are more immediately and intimately concerned in the issue than any other population, not excepting the West Indians or the Mexicans. Let us glance first at the merits of this most unhappy contest. Are the Slave States engaged in a lawful resistance to Federal despotism, or in a wanton assault on the legitimate central authority? To answer this question clearly, it is necessary to look back from the election of last November, in which Mr. Lincoln obtained the votes of a clear majority of the thirty-two States, to the date of the formation of the government by the original thirteen. There cannot, in my opinion, be a doubt on the mind of any one who looks carefully into the historical argument, that the signers of the Declaration of Independence rejected in that document the modern doctrine of Southern slavery; nor that the authors of the Constitution of 1789 regarded its status as merely municipal; nor that the trainers of the North-west Ordinance of 1787 regarded it in the same light; nor that those of the Fathers who declared that the African slave trade should be adjudged piracy after 1808, looked upon “the peculiar institution ” as a baleful tree, to be girdled and finally cut down, rather than to be propagated and fostered, and, like the sacred tree of Abyssinia, invoked and idolized. Of late years, almost within my own recollection, a new doctrine has overrun the South, that slavery is national, not local—constitutional, not temporary; and as it is the nature of one falsehood not to be able to stand alone—as a lie, to stand at all, must be triangulated—so this fallacy has begotten a false philosophy to strengthen it, a false theology to sanctify it; and it has had its day. In asserting its more than municipal pretensions, the slave interest were compelled to buttress it up with the strange doctrines of State sovereignty and the right of secession—to deny, therefore, to the Federal power the prerogatives of what Webster called “a government proper” endued with the first power of all governments,—self-preservation. The previous political question—to the question of Federal oppression—is this: Was the Federal authority ” a government proper “? It may be examined

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historically, or upon the internal evidence of the Constitution, or both. It is certain that the Federal power was first constituted by the cession of ample sovereign attributes by all the people of the thirteen revolted Colonies. All the parties to that compact gave up the treaty-making and war-making powers; the power to coin money; to establish a Supreme Court of Judicature; to pass an uniform law for the admission of citizens by naturalisation.—Virginia gave up her lands, New York gave up her customs, and almost every essential sign and substance of sovereignty became invested in the Federal Administration. If there is any proviso of secession, it must be found in the Federal Constitution; but there is no such proviso there; that instrument confers essential prerogatives of sovereignty, but is dumb as to any imaginable modus for the withdrawal of a State from its State allegiance. Secession is, in this view, a mere question of force—of revolution; and resolves itself into just this: Are the Slave States able to break the bonds with which their fathers bound them, but which they are no longer willing to be bound by? Question of constitutional or conventional right there is none, even for those of the original thirteen States, who now seek to withdraw from their allegiance. But with the more recently acquired States—in the case of Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas, purchased by Federal money and Federal blood—drawn into being by the warmth and nurture of the Federal power—conquered and colonised by Federal arms and Federal laws—the crime of treason is aggravated by the vice of ingratitude, and their secession partakes, in an extreme degree, of the taint of constitutional and conventional repudiation and wrong. And from what description of government is it these States are so eager to break away? By their own declaration, from a government hostile to “the extension” of human slavery; a government whose original sin is, in their eyes, the grand declaration, that “all men”—black as well as white—”are endowed with certain inalienable privileges, among which are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of

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happiness”—a government which, wide-spread as were its arms, and various as were the interests it embraced, was never accused, even by the hottest zealot, of hostility to the general interests of the South, until the day of Mr. Lincoln’s inauguration. On that day, the rebellion, however, was already organised and on foot, under the plea of approaching, rather than of actual, injustice. Thus the cardinal American doctrine—which is British doctrine, too—that the majority, constitutionally ascertained, should rule, was flung to the wind, along with the elder doctrine of inherent natural right; and all that beneficent, elastic system, which has been so long the international law—the system of equilibrium of the new world;—thus the flag, the history, the fame of a common nationality were cast off like a garment out of season;—thus the wisdom of three generations was undone in the madness of a month, and a system, consecrated by the highest genius and the highest virtue of the eighteenth century, was contemptuously rejected by the presumption and petulance of the nineteenth. This terrible reverse may, no doubt, have fallen upon that too prosperous people for some wise, providential end. Those who believe in the retributions of history, imagine they see in it the well-deserved punishment of inordinate ambition. Not satisfied with the overthrow of British power in the original thirteen States, there was a periodical menace held out to British America; not content with the subjugation of the Spanish race in Florida, Texas, and California, there was a like menace held out against Cuba, and Mexico, and Central America. The Monroe doctrine, as expounded at San Juan, has not been entirely forgotten among us. But by far the least defensible series of republican aggressions were those committed upon the aboriginal nations. Whole tribes which, like the Powhattans and the Lenni Lenappe, could count their warriors by tens of thousands, when the white man’s axe first smote their shelter, are now absolutely extinct. East of the Mississippi there remain not above 10,000 aborigines; west of that river, all the remnants of all the tribes combined—adding 100,000 for California—do not exceed, in the total, 350,000. In removing these

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remnants from their old hunting-grounds, all the forms of law were scrupulously observed; the Indian treaties of the Union are an immense collection; but it is impossible to reconcile with any notion of natural right, or conventional justice, such purchases as were made, from the Osage tribe for instance, of 48,000,000 acres of land, for the wretched stipend of $1000 a-year, payable to the chiefs! Still, it must be admitted that in these transactions the Federal policy was mild and merciful compared to the sanguinary intolfrance of individual States—such as Arkansas, Florida, and Georgia. Nor is it an insignificant fact, that while, thus far (and I trust it will be so to the end), the Federal government has humanely refused to enlist the tomahawk and the scalping knife on its side, the Confederate authorities are said to have called back the Cherokee to the eastern war-path, from which he was years ago banished, in the name of Western civilisation.*

South of the Texian border, men see, no doubt, in recent events, another lesson of retribution. The spoil of Mexico has proved the shirt of Nessus to the North. With California, came in an excess of luxury which has been too sudden to be safe. The extension of the Union to the Pacific, before the intervening south-western prairies were surveyed, not to say colonised, was no doubt a violence done to Nature, and as such it has been avenged. But we should remember on this head, that the invasion of Texas—the Santa Fe expedition, the descent on California, the fillibuster forays into South America, were mainly acts of that floating, turbulent Mississippi population, who are the chief authors of the present insurrection. Judged by the event, it would seem that Aaron Burr appeared on that river half a century too soon; had he lived in this generation he would have found fewer legal scruples to overcome—he would have been received in Richmond, not as a culprit to be tried for conspiracy, but as a hero to be honoured for his enterprising patriotism.

*This statement, though generally believed at the time, was not, I am happy to say, subsequently found to be correct.

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Yet vast as the extent of the Union became within the last few years, it may be observed that, between the Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic at least, there is no natural barrier to its governmental unity. A canoe launched on the upper waters of the Missouri, within sight of those snowy summits, may, with a few portages, make its way to the levee at New Orleans; a pine, felled on the Cattaraugus hills, within sight of Lake Erie, may be floated from the Alleghany to the Ohio, and so to the same port with the canoe from Kansas or Dacotah. An old English ballad tells us how—

The Avon to the Severn runs—
The Severn to the sea.

And still more strikingly federal is the river system of this continent, south of the great lakes. Our system also is complete in itself, for we have not a single tributary of size flowing towards us from the south; but it is to be observed of the American Union, that if it had the ambition of a giant it had also the framework of a giant. From another bond of almost equal force with the language and the river system—the memory of a common Pater Patria—the Secessionists are likewise labouring to break away. In him the South as much as the North, and the North as the South, were accustomed to hold forth the great exemplar of patriotism, the highest type of their national character. Yet it now seems doubtful whether, in the hollow repetitions of his praise, the leaders of the Slave States cared to bestow any great degree of study on his character. Though far from being the bloodless myth that vulgar panegyrists have made him—though capable of anger which transported him to the uttfrance of an oath, and of contrition which humbled him to the earth, George Washington was, take him for all in all, the New World’s noblest creature—the least faulty public man of modern times. His striking transition from the camp to civil life always suggests to me, though in another sense than the author wrote it, the Scandinavian poet’s eulogy on the martial astronomer of Uranienborg—

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“The good Knight ceased to walk on
The fields of war and gore,
His sword and helm the balk on
He hung to use no more.

“And he his eye projected
Into the night afar,
And keen the course inspected
Of every twinkling star.”

The grave of Washington ought to have consecrated the valley of the Potomac to peace and union for ever. Will those who now battle about that tomb partition out his dust when they have rent asunder his system? Could either side assume sole custody of those pregnant ashes? To me, the violence done to all actualities, to the living language, the living kindred, and the river system, seems less monstrous and unnatural than this violence done to the maxims and memory of the Pater Patria, by the very means of all others he most abhorred and deprecated—civil war and sectional hostility.

The next question to be considered is, the species of government the seceded States propose to themselves if they should come successfully out of the conflict. They intend to call it a Republic, but they do not attempt to deny that it is to be a pagan Republic—an Oligarchy founded upon caste, the caste founded upon colour. A Republic founded upon the servile labour of 4,000,000 blacks to begin with; with 200,000 or 300,000 planters, and the rest of the white population—over 7,000,000 rather freedmen than freemen; such an Oligarchy, stripped of all disguises, being of the newest, must be of the most exacting and intolerant description. Such an Oligarchy would combine some of the worst features of the worst system hitherto endured by mankind; a rale of caste as inexorable as obtains in India; a Patrician power of life and death; a Spanish contempt of mechanic industry; a Venetian espionage; a Carthaginian subtlety and craft. Organise an American power on such a basis, give it a flag, a Senate, a military aristocracy, a literature, and a history, and you condemn mankind on this continent to begin over again

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the great battle of first principles, which, in the Christian parts of the earth, were thought to have been settled and established some centuries ago. As long as the monstrous doctrines of the innate diversity of the human race, the incurable barbarism of the black, and the hereditary mastership of the white, were confined to individuals, or States, or sections, they were comparatively harmless; but build a government on such a basis; accept 300,000 whites as the keepers and lords of life and death over 4,000,000 blacks; erect an entire social and political superstructure on that foundation, and contemplate, if you can, without horror, the problems and the conflicts you are preparing for posterity!

For, gentlemen, evade it as diplomacy may, what would be the effect of the recognition of such a Republic? If the northern boundary of Maryland (near the 40° parallel) is to be continued to the Pacific, or if the Missouri compromise line of 36° 30 is to be continued, slavery will obtain a larger territory than freedom, north of the equator. We will thus place beneath the feet of a few hundred thousand men, a country larger than all the Free States, or all British America combined; a country exclusive of Mexico—already extending over 15 degrees of latitude, and 40 degrees of longitude; a country abounding in cereal and in tropical products, called for in all the markets of the world. The labour to cultivate this vast scope of continent, so governed, must be servile labour, and the only race of slaves accessible to the new oligarchy are in Africa. The Gulf of Guinea would soon be familiar with the new flag. Once salute it with the honours due to sovereignty in British waters, and you send it with your sanction to the Congo and the Senegal.—While missionaries and men of science are penetrating the inmost recesses of Africa, some by way of Mount Atlas, others through Egypt and Abyssinia, others tracing the line across its vast extent, others starting from Zanzibar and Mozambique—while all this heroism of science and of the cross is exhibited to us on that mysterious stage, are we prepared to sanction the erection of new barracoons on the slave coast, and new

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auction marts for human creatures along the cotton coast? Has the benevolence and science of Europe explored the land only to bring the slave seller and the slave buyer more readily together? Is dense night to settle down again on all the 60,000,000 “who people that forlorn and melancholy region? For of one thing we must rest certain, the government that recognises a slave power on the Gulf of Mexico, recognises by one and the same act that slave power in the Gulf of Guinea. Was it not enough for Europe to have fastened such an evil on the infant societies of the New World, that she now, in the hour of hope for its extinction, comes to the rescue to perpetuate the crime? What has become of all the public penances done for that sin of our ancestors, of all the declarations against slavery and the slave trade? Are they all to be unsaid, renounced, controverted, because Manchester is alarmed for its cotton, and Liverpool and Havre are averse to the blockade? We, in Canada, must feel deeply whatever concerns the prosperity of the Empire; we should grieve to hear of want and suffering in Lancashire, as much as if it were in one of our own populous counties; but we know there is cotton in Brazil, in India, in Egypt, in Surat: we know that cotton grows readily in Guinea, in Jamaica, in Queensland; and we have an abiding faith that the glorious stand taken by the Empire in recent days against African slavery, will not be deserted, because there may be a short supply of a single staple, which in a very few years may be effectually remedied, not only for the present but also for the future of the trade. I do not underrate the vital importance to England of an ample supply of cotton; there are a million mortals depending on that industry; but there is capital enough in England, and there are cotton-fields enough in the rest of the world, to enable Manchester to shake off her dependance on slave labour and now is the time in which that long-desired change can be wrought—once and for ever.

Being a continental people, we have to consider for ourselves, whether we ought to welcome a new era in the military organisation of this continent—whether we ought

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to do or say anything to hasten the advent of such an era. We have been steadily making friends of our republican neighbours during the last twenty years. What have we to expect in the combinations of the future that we do not possess, or that we may not obtain, if their union be preserved? The friendship of the South, in return for our sympathy? Our institutions are too entirely dissimilar to make such a political friendship possible, even if it were desirable, and if the Free States did not interpose their whole extent between us and them; while, judged by the only examples which are vast enough to match this immense disruption—the breaking up of Alexander’s Empire—of the Roman Empire—of Mahomedan unity—of Papal unity at the Reformation—the different dogmas for which these combatants fight, the different systems they hold sacred, must lead to an era of standing armies, of passports, of espionage, of fluctuating boundaries, and border wars. Are we prepared to welcome a state of permanent and still-increasing armaments for North America; are we prepared by word, or deed, or sign, or secret sympathy, to hasten the advent of such times, for our posterity, if not ourselves? I sincerely trust that a wiser and a nobler sense of our position and duties will direct and instruct us to a wiser and nobler use of whatever influence we may possess with the mother country in the present exigency. There is another consideration: if two English-speaking powers take the place of the one with which alone the Empire has had to deal these 80 years past, there will inevitably arise a balance, and a rivalry of diplomacy, between them. If cotton is strong enough to bind England to the South, and if England becomes the intimate ally of the one power, France, her great western rival, will cultivate the most amicable relations with the other. If England makes herself necessary at Richmond, she will cause France to become necessary at Washington; and France will not be slow to cultivate the affections of the North. Strange as it may seem (such is the elasticity of French manners), it is nevertheless true, that the French naval and military officers were highly popular in the war

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of Independence, when stationed at Philadelphia, New York, and Newport. Since Trance parted with her own possessions upon this continent, it has been her traditional policy to build up a West-Atlantic power to combat with England. It was the policy of the old noblesse, who ruled France in 1777; it was the policy of Napoleon I., when he gave up Louisiana, from the Gulf to the Minnesota line, to Jefferson; it is the same policy, which, according to report, led a French prince, very near the throne, to drink to the success of the North, in his recent visit to the other side of the Lakes. The North being the second maritime power-—the second Atlantic power—would form, in alliance with France, a most serious rivalry to England’s maritime ascendency; and I leave you, gentlemen, to ponder over the probable consequences of such an alliance in our waters, or along our thousand miles of frontier, originally explored, and at several points first colonised, from France.

In the first stages of the contest, it seemed to me and others, that the public sympathy in this country was altogether with the North. Some offensive bravado from one or two New York newspapers was made use of by some one or more Canadian journals, to arrest, to turn back the genial currents of that sympathy. A pretence was next made that it was a war undertaken from a lust of dominion, and not from any sincere love of liberty. Because the Federal government, which always recognised slavery as the creature of the municipal law south of the Pennsylvania line, did not rashly set that municipal law at nought; therefore, it was not at all a war for freedom! It would require very little argument—none at all, if the view I have taken of the merits of the controversy be correct—to prove that a war for the unity of the Republic must be necessarily, ipso facto, a war for liberty. The dogmas on which the Republic is founded are genuine articles of every freeman’s creed; like the dogmas of the Christian religion itself, they are held in deposit by the Federal hierarchy; one age or one generation is not sufficient to exhaust or to develope all their latent salutary

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efficacy. It may be that the keepers have not always proved worthy of their trust, that the expositors have not comprehended the true spirit of their own doctrine; but he must be a very impatient, a very unreasonable American reformer, who would not be content with the progress the anti-slavery cause has made, from the days when Mr. Garrison had a halter round his neck in Boston, till the day when Mr. Lincoln was carried on the Chicago platform into the presidential mansion. The fears of the South for the perpetuity of slavery are better evidence than the sophisms of our anti-American editors and orators. They felt the decisive hour gradually but surely drawing nigh, and desiring to guard against every possibility of peaceful emancipation, they are now battling for an opportunity to reconstitute their entire system on the abominable foundation of the eternal bondage of the blacks. Is not battling to put down such a scheme, ipso facto, making war for freedom?

Another argument calculated to prejudice the Canadian mind is this, that the Free are endeavouring to enforce upon the Slave States the very same superiority which their revolutionary fathers denied to Great Britain, If I understand the merits of the American revolution, there is no parallel whatever in the causes of quarrel. In the days of Washington, Mr. Grenville, Lord North, and the other authors of that revolt—for the seeds were shipped from England which were harvested in America,—held that they had an Imperial right to tax the colonies without the consent of their legislatures, and they practically tested that right, first in the Stamp Act, and afterwards in the Tea Tax. Has there been any pretence set up by the South that Congress, the Imperial power, has violated the existing rights or the municipal institutions of any one of the States subject to its superiority? Has there been any direct or indirect interference with the domestic institution, since the slave trade was declared piracy in 1808? The compromises of 1820 and 1850—the adoption of Mr. Douglas’s principle of the right of territories to admission to the Union, with or without slavery, as they should themselves

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determine; the decision of the Supreme Court in the celebrated ” Dred Scott case” were all concessions to the South, or, more strictly speaking, to the desire to perpetuate the Union. Nor, looking at it calmly, from the point of view of history, do I feel disposed to admit that Chief Justice Taney, or Mr. Douglas, or Mr. Clay, went too far, paid too high a price, for the preservation of the Federal bond. The ordinary American mind has been, for a generation or two, so occupied in the contemplation of the blessings of liberty, that it has neglected or overlooked the co-equal worth of unity. This war—this great adversity bursting like a summer thunderstorm in their clear sky—will lead them to inquire into many phenomena in the heavens above and the earth beneath. Discipline and subordination in war will teach them the value of unity and obedience to laws in time of peace. They will learn that unity is to liberty as the cistern in the desert to the seldom sent shower; that of liberty we may truly say, though Providence should rain it down upon our heads, though the land should thirst for it, till it gaped at every pore, without a legal organisation to retain, without a supreme authority to preserve the Heaven-sent blessing, all in vain are men called free, all in vain are States declared to be independent. The contest waged by King George III. against the thirteen United Colonies was a contest to assert the Imperial right of taxation; a right unheard of, as Mr. Burke proved, before the year 1764; a right which we in Canada, loyal as we are, would resist as stoutly as did the Americans in 1776; but the Southern States, in their several ” ordinances of secession, ” have not alleged any parallel innovation on their domestic rights against the United States government. They have alleged a case of oppression, without particulars; there are no specific counts in their indictment; it is one broad general assumption, or assertion, of sovereignty reserved and danger apprehended. Now, as theologians contend that there can be no such thing as heresy in general, neither can we conceive of any such thing as oppression in general. “When men have been badly hurt they know where they are

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hurt, but these people do not. I dismiss, as unworthy of further consideration, the sophism that the revolutionary war of 1776 presents any sort of parallel to this insurrection of the minority against the constitutional majority in 1861. And in discussing it let me add, of my own opinion, that the civil war of itself proves nothing against republican institutions, nor against the Federal constitution considered in itself. It only proves a very old truth, that social slavery cannot long co-exist undisturbed in the presence of political liberty.

Besides the military and diplomatic possibilities of disunion, we have also to consider the commercial interests involved. To show the extent to which our credit and prosperity depend upon that of our neighbours, I will give you, first the figures of what we sold to them for the four years ending with ’54, the year the Reciprocity Treaty was negotiated, and next, what we sold to them in the four years ending with 1860:—

Four years ending 1854 . . . $27,081,887

Four years ending 1860 . . . $58,947,384

This increase from 27 to 58 millions of exports is, as you perceive, more than double, while there is this further consideration to be taken into the account, that whereas on the 27 millions the United States collected $2,400,000 in duties—that is, taxed your industry to that extent in four years, on the 58 millions, if we are to believe Mr. Hatch, they have not collected in the four years ending in 1859—the latest figures in his report—the total sum of $300,000. If, however, the Reciprocity Treaty has been beneficial to us, it has been no less so, in my opinion, to the Americans. We took from them in the four years ending 1860, goods and products to the value of $70,000,000 and upwards. On these imports, we of course raised a very large share of our revenue—fully one-fourth of our whole revenue; but the Americans were not without their profits, and the custom duties fell, as they naturally must, on Canadian consumers. The value of our whole American commerce

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in 1860 may be estimated in this way, that whereas the year’s exports and imports amounted together to over $69,000,000, our exports and imports to and from the United States summed up within a fraction of 38 out of those $69,000,000. Our entire trade with Great Britain reached to but $29,000,000, and with the rest of the world to about $2,000,000. Now, gentlemen, this enormous trade may be injured, decreased, crippled, or even lost in various contingencies. It is a trade maintained with the Free States altogether; it may be injured by their defeats, by their embarrassments, by their onerous burthens in a long-continued war. It may be crippled, or even lost, through international estrangement, enmity, and a spirit of retaliation. I ask the farmers, the millers, the forwarders and lumberers of Upper Canada and Central Canada to think of this, when they see a portion of the press they patronise artfully and continually labouring to stir up hostility and hatred towards the Northern Americans. I venture to ask those journalists themselves to reflect upon the consequences to -Canada of a refusal to continue the Reciprocity Treaty in 1865; to estimate the consequences, to count the cost, to ask themselves how many ploughs may rust in the farmyard, how many bushels may rot in the warehouse, how many mortgages may be foreclosed by the bank or the court; what stringency, what gloom, and what suffering, what permanent check to prosperity must be inflicted upon Canada and its people?

For all these reasons, commercial, diplomatic, military, and Christian, it must be to us a problem of the highest interest, whether this civil war is to be a long or a short one, and on which side the chances of victory may incline. We can only form our judgments as to the issue by comparing the character, the resources, and the situation of the combatants. If the knowledge of causes is prophetic of events, and if we could master the whole of any set of existing facts, we could, probably, construct history à priori for a generation or two after our own time. We must not, however, mistake the bravado articles of any particular press as an infallible index of Northern character, if we do

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not wish to be self-deceived. The people of the North are 20,000,000; they are very generally educated, so far at least as to acquire and exchange the current information of the day. They are, men and women, all politicians, and now all Unionists. Their unanimity, though not so silent, is not less real than that of their Southern brethren. When I see men like Mr. Dickinson and Mr. Everett as warm in the support of Mr. Lincoln’s administration as if they were members of his cabinet, I cannot doubt that the energies of the North are braced, that no man really essential is wanting. We are to remember, however, that this generation of Americans have hitherto had everything their own way—that since the Treaty of Ghent, forty years ago, their voyage of life has been all plain sailing. They have been born to prosperity and dandled in luxury and self-opinion. The first great adversity with such a people is hard to bear, but they bear it bravely, and will learn to bear it better. I may be reminded of their panic flight in the first battle; but what militia, what army, after all, has not been, at one time or another, smitten with panic? Not to mention modern instances, which might seem invidious, no one I suppose will question the courage of the Spaniards who followed Cortez into the city of Mexico; nor the courage of the legions who landed with Caesar to restore Roman ascendency in Egypt. Yet we know that a clamour raised by some sailors who had come up to witness the assault on Alexandria in the one case, and the breaking down of a causeway in the other, threw those Spanish and Roman veterans into panic flight, even under the eye, within the sound of the voice, of their illustrious captains. The North will fight; the North has the numbers two to one in its favour; its credit exceeds in proportion its numbers; it can command both “gold and iron,” the two hinges on which all wars must move. The South, on the other hand, possesses in its peculiar social formation some advantages as a war-making power, which go a good way to make up for its deficiency in numbers and convertible wealth. It cherished in its colonial stage a tincture of feudal pride, which has not been entirely obliterated.

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The spirit of caste is not uncongenial to the military spirit. So long as its 4,000,000 of bondsmen close their ears to the distant din of war, and labour as if the earth did not rock beneath their feet, the whites can spare a percentage to the army, equal to almost double their number at the North. A very large proportion of these whites are horsemen from their childhood, and as cavalry ought to be much superior to an equal number of Northern tradesmen or townsmen. In their unanimity, in their sense of discipline, in their gradations of ranks and classes, they possess some materials of military success which the North might envy. In their consciousness of superiority, sedulously cultivated, and unhesitatingly believed, they have another great element of success; for nothing is more certain than that undoubting belief is often the perfector of its own prophecies. Yet the South, besides its inferiority in numbers and in realised wealth, has the fatal defect of its shallow shores without a first-class harbour from Norfolk to Galveston—a coast more easily blockaded than any other of the same extent with which we are acquainted. They are not by their position, nor by their discipline, a maritime people, and even if they succeed, they must be for ever dependant on some foreign maritime power. Yet with all these drawbacks they are an enemy not to be despised, and the war they wage will neither be a short war nor a weak war.

Whatever indirect advantage Canada or the Empire might derive from the war, the people of Canada can never be indifferent to the dangers to the system of free intercourse and common arbiter, which is to stand or fall in this encounter. It is not by feeding our minds with such paltry passions as have been sometimes appealed to, that we, the possessors of a seventh part of North America, are to shame our Republican neighbours out of their assaults upon ourselves. Our littleness is not to rebuke their littleness; we are not to answer railing with railing, nor to heap up wrath against the day of wrath. We can afford to speak of the American system in this hour of its agony, in the glowing language of their finest poet:

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“Thou, too, sail on, Ship of State!
Sail on, Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid the keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope;
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope.”

We do not—to continue the poet’s image—while the ship is driving on the rocks, her signal gun pealing for aid above the din of the tempest—we do not lurk along the shore, gloating over her danger, in hope of enriching ourselves by the wreck. No, God forbid! Such is not the feeling of the people of Canada. On the contrary, so far as their public opinion can be heard throughout the British Empire or the United States, their wish would be that the Republic, as it was twelve months ago, might live to celebrate in concord, in 1876, the centenary of its Independence. We prefer our own institutions to theirs; but our preference is rational, not rancorous; we may think, and we do think, it would have been well for them to have retained more than they did retain of the long-tried wisdom of their ancestors; we may think, and we do think, that their overthrow of ancient precedents and venerable safeguards was too sweeping in 1776; but as between continental peace and chronic civil war—as between natural right and oligarchical oppression; as between the constitutional majority and the lawless minority; as between free intercourse and armed frontiers; as between negro emancipation and a revival of the slave trade; as between the golden rule and the cotton crop of 1861; as between the revealed unity of the race and the heartless heresy of African bestiality; as between the North and South in this deplorable contest, I rest firmly in the belief, that all that is most liberal, most intelligent, and most magnanimous in Canada and the Empire, are for continental peace, for constitutional arbitrament, for universal, if gradual emancipa-

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tion, for free intercourse, for justice, mercy, civilisation, and the North.*

*Whoever has the patience to follow to the end this series of speeches and addresses will perceive that the strong pro-Northern sentiments of the speaker, so freely uttered in the doubtful and discouraging days of 1861, though never retracted, were repeated less frequently, and with several modifications, during the three succeeding years. This was a natural consequence of the tone taken towards Canada, and the Empire, by the organs of Northern opinion, especially after the affair of the Trent. It is to be hoped that the heartily friendly feeling which was expressed in this address, and so heartily applauded by a fair representation of the best men of Upper Canada, may be found capable of restoration, without any compromise of self-respect on the part of either people.

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AMERICAN RELATIONS AND CANADIAN DUTIES.

ADDRESS TO THE IRISH PROTESTANT BENEVOLENT SOCIETY, QUEBEC, MAY 10TH, 1862.

Mr. McGee said:—Ladies and Gentlemen, I received some time ago, a warm invitation from my friend, Captain Anderson, the Secretary of this Society, asking me to be present and take part in the proceedings of this evening. It was an invitation given with great cordiality, for an Irish society’s benefit, and the object was to enable the society to assist the friendless emigrant, and the unfortunate resident. It seems to be incident to our state of society, where we have no legal provision for the poor, no organised system of relief of any public general kind, that there should be a division of charitable labour among our different voluntary societies,—and as I look upon them all, whether under the auspices of Saint Patrick or any other patron saint, as being themselves but members of one vast society—the society of Canada,—I did not feel that I could, either on Irish or on Canadian grounds, decline the invitation. It is very true, Mr. President, that you and I will not be found to-morrow worshipping under the same roof, but is that any reason why we should not be united here to-night in a common work of charity? With me it is no reason; such differences exist in the first elements of our population: and it is the duty of every man, especially of every man undergoing the education of a statesman, to endeavour to mitigate instead of inflaming, religious animosities. No prejudices lie nearer the surface than those which plead the sanction of religion—any idiot may arouse them, to the wise man’s consternation, and the peaceful

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man’s deep regret. If in times past they have been too often and too easily aroused, we must all deeply deplore it; but for the future,—in these new and eventful days, when it is so essential that there shall be complete harmony within our ranks,—let us all agree to brand the propagandist of bigotry as the most dangerous of our enemies, because his work is to divide us among ourselves, and thereby render us incapable of common defence. It is upon this subject of the public spirit to be cultivated among us—of the spirit which can alone make Canada safe and secure, rich and renowned—which can alone attract population and augment capital—that I desire to say the few words with which I must endeavour to fulfil your expectations. I feel that it is a serious subject for a popular festival—but these are serious times, and they bring upon their wings most serious reflections. That shot fired at Fort Sumter, on the 12th of April, 1861, had a message for the North as well as for the South, and here in Quebec, if anywhere, by the light which history lends us we, should find those who can rightly read that eventful message. Here, from this rock, for which the immortals have contended, here from this rock, over which Richelieu’s wisdom and Chatham’s genius, and the memory of heroic men, the glory of three great nations has hung its halo, we should look forth upon a continent convulsed, and ask of a ruler, “Watchman, what of the night?” That shot fired at Fort Sumter was the signal gun of a new epoch for North America, which told the people of Canada, more plainly than human speech can ever express it, to sleep no more, except on their arms—unless in their sleep they desire to be overtaken and subjugated. For one, Mr. President, I can safely say that if I know myself I have not a particle of prejudice against the United States; on the contrary, I am bound to declare that many things in the constitution and the people I sincerely esteem and admire. What I contend for with myself, and what I would impress upon others is, that the lesson of the last few months furnished by America to the world, should not be thrown away upon the inhabitants of Canada. I do not believe that it is our

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destiny to be engulphed into a Republican union, renovated and inflamed with the wine of victory, of which she now drinks so freely—it seems to me we have theatre enough under our feet to act another and a worthier part; we can hardly join the Americans on our own terms, and we never ought to join them on theirs. A Canadian nationality, not French-Canadian, nor British-Canadian, nor Irish-Canadian patriotism rejects the prefix—is, in my opinion, what we should look forward to,—that is what we ought to labour for, that is what we ought to be prepared to defend to the death. Heirs of one-seventh of the continent—inheritors of a long ancestral story,—and no part of it dearer to us that the glorious tale of this last century,—warned not by cold chronicles only, but by living scenes, passing before our eyes, of the dangers of an unmixed democracy,—we are here to vindicate our capacity, by the test of a new political creation. What we most immediately want, Mr. President, to carry on that work, is men—more men—and still more men! The ladies, I dare say, will not object to that doctrine. We may not want more lawyers and doctors—but we want more men, in town and country. We want the signs of youth and growth in our young and growing country. One of our maxims should be—”early marriages, and death to old bachelors” I have long entertained a project of a special tax upon that most undesirable class of the population, and our friend the Finance Minister may perhaps have something of the kind among the agreeable surprises of his next budget. Seriously, Mr. President, what I chiefly wanted to say in coming here is this, that if we would make Canada safe and secure, rich and renowned, we must all liberalise—locally, sectionally, religiously, nationally. There is room enough in tins country for one great free people, but there is not room enough, under the same flag, and the same laws, for two or three angry, suspicious, obstructive “nationalities.” Dear, most justly dear to every land beneath the sun are the children born in her bosom, and nursed upon her breast; . but when the man of another country, wherever born, speaking whatever speech, holding whatever creed, seeks out a country to

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serve and honour and cleave to, in weal or in woe,—when he heaves up the anchor of his heart from its old moorings, and lays at the feet of the mistress of his choice, his New country, all the hopes of his ripe manhood, he establishes by such devotion a claim to consideration, not second even to that of the children of the soil. He is their brother delivered by a new birth from the dark-wombed Atlantic ship that ushers him into existence in the new world,—he stands by his own election among the children of the household, and narrow and most unwise is that species of public spirit, which, in the perverted name of patriotism, would refuse him all he asks—” a fair field and no favour.” I am not about to talk politics, Mr. President, though these are grand politics—I reserve all else for what is usually called ” another place”;—and I may add, for another time. But I am so thoroughly convinced and assured that we are gliding along the currents of a new epoch, that if I break silence at all, in the presence of my fellow-subjects, I cannot choose but speak of the immense issues which devolve upon us, at this moment, in this country. I may be pardoned, perhaps, if I refer to another matter that comes home to you, Mr. President, and to myself. Though we are alike opposed to all invidious national distinctions on this soil, we are not opposed, I hope, to giving full credit to all the elements which at the present day compose our population. In this respect it is a source of gratification to learn that among your invited guests, to-night, there are twelve or thirteen members of the House to which I have the honour to belong—gentlemen from both sides of the House—who drew their native breath in our own dearly beloved ancestral island. It takes three quarters of the world in these days to hold an Irish family, and it is pleasant to know that some of the elder sons of the family are considered, by their discriminating fellow-citizens, worthy to be entrusted with the liberties and fortunes of their adopted countries. We have here men of Irish birth who have led, and who still lead, the Parliament of Canada, and who are determined to lead it in a spirit of genuine liberality. We, Irishmen, Pro-

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testant and Catholic, born and bred in a land of religious controversy, should never forget that we now live and act in a land of the fullest religious and civil liberty. All we have to do, is, each for himself, to keep down dissensions which can only weaken, impoverish, and keep back the country; each for himself do all he can to increase its wealth, its strength, and its reputation; each for himself—you and you, gentlemen, and all of us—to welcome every talent, to hail every invention, to cherish every gem of art, to foster every gleam of authorship, to honour every acquirement and every natural gift, to lift ourselves to the level of our destinies, to rise above all low limitations and narrow circumscriptions, to cultivate that true catholicity of spirit which embraces all creeds, all classes, and all races, in order to make of our boundless Province, so rich in known and unknown resources, a great new Northern nation.

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BRITISH-AMERICAN UNION.

SPEECH AT A POLITICAL PIC-NIC AT PORT ROBINSON, CANADA WEST, SEPTEMBER 18TH, 1862.

Hon. Mr. McGee said lie had listened with great pleasure to the statesmanlike, national, broad-principled, and high-spirited speech of the Premier of Nova Scotia, (Mr. Howe), and he had heard the fervent, animated, and manly sentiments expressed by his lion, friend, Mr. Mitchell, of New Brunswick, with almost equal pleasure. for his own part he had never been a sectional man. He had no sectional partialities in this country. He was neither a Lower Canadian nor an Upper Canadian. In the Government, or out of the Government, he had never known what the old Province line was. The Province line was obliterated before he came to the country, and never should be restored with his consent. And not being a sectional man as regarded Canada, he was not a sectional man as regarded British America; for if, in the progress of events, we could draw together more closely, in the presence of the perilous circumstances that confronted us on our Southern frontier, the bonds of amity and union with our British brethren who dwelt on the shores of the Atlantic, he, for his part, was ready to bid Godspeed to the Union, and to take his share of the responsibility of bringing it about. The last great act of union that was accomplished on this continent of British America, was accomplished amidst great difficulties, and as it appeared to him very hastily in some of its details, and it had worked in some respects not to the satisfaction of the people either of Upper or Lower Canada. But still that Act of Union of 1840 was a step in the right direction, one step forward in

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the great pathway which Providence seemed to have prescribed to the British people of the northern portion of this continent. And now, looking back at it, he did not think there was a public man of any party, with any pretension to information or influence in Canadian affairs, who would be prepared to go back to the state of things which existed before that Union. As that Union of 1840, therefore, was a step in the right direction, so he believed that, in the fulness of time and of events, a greater union than that would come, and that all the people of the north, bred and nursed under the system of local freedom, under the shadow and protection of the three-crossed flag, would come together in a close union, having learned wisdom from the example of our brethren across the border, whose schism he deplored, and the fruits of which were unhappily seen to day on the field of battle, gathered with the sickle that gathers the crop of death. These results we could not rejoice over, but the example we might profit by. And if we were to be an independent people—which, however, he did not at all apprehend to be probable as an immediate contingency—let us be an independent people with a seaboard as well as an inland country. If we were to be an Imperial people, which he thought was at present our position, let us continue an Imperial people, but not to be an Imperial puppet, to be petted at one moment, and stigmatized before the world at another. Let us not be kept for the convenience of Imperial Senators, as Scott tells us Mungo Malagrowther was kept in the Scottish Court, to be whipped in the place of the young Prince, to show what he ought to have got when he was naughty, because it would have been unconstitutional to have touched any portion of his Royal Highness’s person with a rod. It would appear that when it devolved upon the Empire to subdue the spirit of party at home, the object was sometimes aimed at by administering a whipping to some of its colonial possessions, and that the same thing was resorted to when it was sought to make an impression for some purpose or other on the Government of the Northern States at Washington. These colonies ought not to submit

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to such treatment. Let them say to the people of the mother country, We are willing to bear our share, with you and all portions of her Majesty’s subjects, in the anxieties and perils and dangers of the Empire, but insult and opprobrium we will not take from your hands. He was glad to hear the broad national sentiments to which they had just listened, and he heartily echoed them as one of the representatives of the people of this Province. He thanked his friends from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick for their kindness in coming there to give them, at this critical period in their history, the benefit of those sentiments. And he knew little of public opinion in the British Empire, if before this day six weeks these words, uttered on the Welland, did not meet the eye of every leading statesman of England, whether in or out of the Government. He did not know that, viewed in this light, there had been any public meeting of more importance during the time he had been a resident of Canada. He was glad also to hear the testimony which had been paid to the worth of the late representative of this Division, the Hon. Hamilton Merritt. He could not utter a better wish for his hon. friend beside him (Mr. Currie), than that he might prove himself a worthy successor of the enterprising, clear-headed, laborious old man, whose place he was about to take in the Legislative Council. Mr. Merritt, like all other human beings, might have had defects in his character, but there was one defect which certainly he had not. He had neither a small heart nor a small head. Nature did not make him on a small block, and he made good use of the large quantity of good stuff that went originally to his composition. As long as the Welland Canal connects Lakes Erie and Ontario, as long as Niagara Suspension Bridge remains a monument of engineering skill, so long will the name of Hamilton Merritt continue inseparably associated with Western enterprise. But he was not simply a western Canadian; he was a North American. He was an American by birth, but in Mr. Merritt’s active days) the people of Canada were not badly bitten with the mania of anti-Americanism. If not

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any more American then than now, we did not go rabid against any one whose birthplace was on the other side of the lakes. It was not in the Niagara District alone that Mr. Merritt was interested. He was as much interested in the prosperity of the port of Quebec as in that of Toronto, or St. Catherine’s, or either of the termini of the canal. He saw, as every man of far vision saw, that whatever benefited one part of our common country, must ultimately benefit every part of it; and he could only wish that the new member for the Niagara Division, in assisting in the future legislation of Canada, would approach all questions of commercial intercourse and internal improvement with as large and liberal a spirit as his venerated predecessor had done. It had been said that last year they had had a meeting of condolence, and that this year they had a meeting of congratulation, an important change having taken place in the affairs of this Province in the meantime. He would not, at a gathering of this description, go into questions of party politics, but he would say he believed there had been a most important change effected. After some allusions to recent ministerial changes, Mr. McGee next referred to the rejected Militia Bill of the late Government, and said it was not without considerable difficulty that he had voted against its second reading, bad as many of its details were. He believed it necessary that there should be a certain amount of arms and ammunition in the hands of our own people for the protection of our frontier—not against a national invasion,—against that we must have other remedies—but against marauding bands, who might disturb the peace of our frontier, on the disbanding of the present large standing army of the United States. But, unfortunately for our neighbours, there appeared little likelihood of that disbanding for some time to come. The struggle was, on both sides, he regretted to see, when it was people speaking our own language who were engaged in it, assuming the character of a war of extermination. His own sympathies had been and still were with the North, as the legitimate Government. But no wise people would trust to the forbearance of its neighbours as

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the safeguard of its liberties, and Parliament did well, as matters stood last spring, in voting the sum it did to supplement the defences of the Province in aid of the effort of the Imperial Government. He was also quite willing to aid in the construction of such facilities of communication as would give the British Government free ingress into this territory at all seasons of the year, or to do any other reasonable thing that would give satisfaction to the reasonable feeling of England, and at the same time not beggar and bankrupt the people of Canada. Like Falstaff, lie would do nothing upon compulsion, he would not be driven into any course by those speeches in the House of Lords to which reference had been made by Mr. Howe; but it was our interest as well as our duty to do everything we could to satisfy the people of England that we were ready to bear our reasonable share of the burden of the defence of the Province. This position he would have illustrated by his vote last spring, had he been in the House, and he would be prepared to illustrate it again in the coming session of Parliament. The Government, in providing for the defence of the country, were prepared to go to the limit of their ability, and the limit of their ability was the measure of their responsibility. Mr. McGee then referred to the signs of wealth and abundance among the farmers which had met his eye in travelling through the country, and made an eloquent appeal that some portion of that abundance should be sent for the relief of the suffering operatives in the manufacturing districts of England. Such an act on the part of Canadians would be the best reply they could give to the accusations which had been recently made in England against them.

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CHARACTER OF CHAMPLAIN, THE FIRST CAPTAINGENERAL OF CANADA:

THE FRENCH-CANADIANS UNDER FRANCE AND GREAT BRITAIN.

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT FORT POPHAM, STATE OF MAINE, 29TH SEPTEMBER, 1862.*

The memory of Sieur de Champlain, the fearless navigator and accomplished statesman; the first to explore and designate these shores; whose plans of Empire, more vast and sagacious than any of his time, failed of success only through the short-sightedness of his sovereign, in allowing the Atlantic shores of New England to fall into the hands of his rivals, thereby changing the history of the New World.

Hon. Me. McGee, President of the Executive Council of Canada, addressed the assemblage in response to this sentiment. He said: I beg to assure you, Mr. President, and the gentlemen of the Maine Historical Society, who have done me the honour to invite me here, that I feel it a very great privilege to be a spectator and a participant in the instructive, retributive ceremonial of this day. This peninsula of Sabino must become, if it is not now, classic ground; and this 29th of August, the true era of the establishment of our language and race on this continent, one of the most cherished fasti of the English-speaking people of North America. It is, on general grounds, an occasion hardly less interesting to the colonies still English, than to the citizens of Maine, and, therefore, I beg to repeat in your presence the gratification I feel in being

* This was the commencement of an interesting series of annual celebrations, observed with great éclat, of the foundation of ” the first colony on the shores of New England.” The place is the peninsula of Sabino, at the mouth of the Kenneheck river; the founder was Captain George Popham, brother of Chief Justice Popham, and the time 19th of August (old style), 1607.

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allowed to join in the first, of what I trust will prove but the first, of an interminable series of such celebrations. I would be very insensible, Sir, to the character in which I have been so cordially presented to this assembly, if I did not personally acknowledge it; and I should be, I conceive, unworthy the position I happen to occupy as a member of the Canadian Government, if I did not feel still more the honour you have paid to Canada, in the remembrance you have made of her first Governor and Captain-General, the Sieur de Champlain. That celebrated person was in truth, not only in point of time, but in the comprehension of his views, the audacity of his projects, and the celebrity of his individual career, the first statesman of Canada; and no one pretending to the character of a Canadian statesman could feel otherwise than honoured and gratified, when Champlain’s name is invoked, publicly or privately, in his presence. We have no fear that the reputation of our great Founder will not stand the severest test of historical research; we have no fear that his true greatness will dwindle by comparison with the rest of the Atlantic leaders—the chiefs of the renowned sea-chivalry, of whom we have already heard such eloquent mention. All Canadians ardently desire that he should be better known—be well known—and perhaps, Mr. President, you will permit me to indicate some of the traits in the career, to point to some of the traits in the character, which halo for us for ever the name and memory of the Sieur de Champlain.

What we esteem most of all other features in the life of our Founder, is that chief virtue of all eminent men—his indomitable fortitude; and next to that we revere the amazing versatility and resources of the man. Originally a naval officer, he had voyaged to the West Indies and to Mexico, and had written a memoir, lately discovered at Dieppe, and edited both in France and England, advocating among other things the artificial connection of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Prom the quarter-deck we trace him to the counting-rooms of the merchants of Rouen and Saint Malo, who first entrusted him in 1603, with the command of a commercial enterprise of which Canada was the field.

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From the service of the merchants of Rouen, Dieppe, and Saint Malo, we trace him to the service of his Sovereign—Henry IV. For several successive years we find his flag glancing at all points along this rock-bound coast on which we are now assembled, from Port Royal to Massachusetts Bay. “Whenever we do not find it here, we may be certain it has advanced into the interior, that it is unfurled at Quebec, at Montreal, or towards the sources of the Hudson and the Mohawk. We will find that this versatile sailor has become in time a founder of cities, a negotiator of treaties with barbarous tribes, an author, a discoverer. As a discoverer, he was the first European to ascend the Richelieu, which he named after the patron of his latter years—the all-powerful Cardinal. He was the first to traverse that beautiful lake, now altogether your own, which makes his name so familiar to Americans; he was the first to ascend our great central river, the Ottawa, as far north as Lake Nippising, and he was the first to discover what he very justly calls ” the fresh-water sea ” of Lake Ontario. His place as an American discoverer is, therefore, amongst the first; while his claims as a coloniser rest on the firm foundations of Montreal and Quebec, and his project—extraordinary for the age—of uniting the Atlantic with the Pacific by an artificial channel of communication. As a legislator, we have not yet recovered, if we ever shall recover, the ordinances he is known to have promulgated; but as an author we have his narrative of transactions in New France, his voyage to Mexico, his treatise on navigation, and some other papers. As a diplomatist we have the Franco-Indian alliances, which he founded, and which lasted a hundred and fifty years on this continent, and which exercised so powerful an influence, not only on American but on European affairs. To him also it was mainly owing that Canada, Acadia, and Cape Breton were reclaimed by, and restored to France under the treaty of Saint Germain-en-Laye, in 1632. As to the moral qualities, our Founder was brave almost to rashness. He would cast himself with a single European follower in the midst of savage enemies, and more than once his life

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was endangered by the excess of his confidence and his courage. He was eminently social in his habits—as his order of le bon temps—in which every man of his associates was for one day host to all his comrades, and commanded in turn in those agreeable encounters of which we have just had a slight skirmish here. He was sanguine as became an adventurer, and self-denying as became a hero. He served under De Monts, who for a time succeeded to his honours and office, as cheerfully as he had ever acted for himself, and in the end he made a friend of his rival. He encountered, as Columbus and many others had done, mutiny and impatience in his own followers, but he triumphed over the bad passions of men as completely as he triumphed over the ocean and the wilderness.

He touched the extremes of human experience among diverse characters and nations. At one time he sketched plans of civilised aggrandisement for Henry IV. and Richelieu; at another, he planned schemes of wild warfare with Huron chiefs and Algonquin braves. He united, in a most rare degree, the faculties of action and reflection, and like all highly reflective minds, his thoughts, long cherished in secret, ran often into the mould of maxims, and some of them would form the fittest possible inscriptions to be engraven upon his monument.

When the merchants of Quebec grumbled at the cost of fortifying that place, he said:—” It is best not to obey the passions of men; they are but for a season; it is our duty to regard the future.” With all his love of good-fellowship and society, he was, what seems to some inconsistent with it, sincerely and enthusiastically religious; among his maxims are these two—that “The salvation of one soul is of more value than the conquest of an empire,” and, that “Kings ought not to think of extending their authority over idolatrous nations, except for the purpose of subjecting them to Jesus Christ.”

Such, Mr. President, are, in brief, the attributes of the man you have chosen to honour; and I leave it for this company to say, whether in all that constitutes true greatness the first Governor and Captain-General of Canada

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need fear comparison with any of the illustrious brotherhood who projected and founded our North American States. Count over all their honoured names; enumerate their chief actions; let each community assign to its own his meed of eloquent and reverent remembrance; but among them, from North to South, there will be no secondary place assigned to the Sieur de Champlain.

Mr. President, you have added to the sentiment in honour of Champlain, an allusion and an inference as to the different results of the Trench and English colonial policy, on which you will probably expect me to offer an observation or two before resuming my seat. Champlain’s project originally was, no doubt, to make this Atlantic coast the basis of French power in the New World. His Government claimed the continent down to the 40th parallel, which, as you know, intersects Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois, while the English claimed up to the 45th, which intersects Nova Scotia and Canada.

“Within these five degrees of latitude the pretensions of France were long zealously maintained in diplomacy, but were never practically asserted, except in the 44th and 45th, by colonisation. I am not prepared to dispute the inference that the practical abandonment, by France, of the coast discoveries of her early navigators, south of 45, may have changed, as you say, ” the destiny of the New World”’ It may be so; it may be, also, that we have not reached the point of time in which to speak positively as to the permanent result; for Divine Providence moves in His orbit by long and insensible curves, of which even the clearest-sighted men can discern in their time but a very limited section. But we know, as of the past, that the French power in the reign of Louis XIII. and XIV. was practically based on the St. Lawrence, with a Southern aspect, rather than on the Atlantic, with a Western aspect. All the consequences of this change of Champlain’s plan and policy I am not prepared here so much as to allude to, for that would carry me where I have no wish to go—into international issues, not yet exhausted.

I may be permitted, however, to question that French

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influence, as developed in its Roman Catholic religion, its Roman law and its historical fascinations, was ever really circumscribed to Canada, or was really extinguished, as has been usually assumed, by the fall of Quebec. It is amazing to find in the Colonial records of the period between the death of Champlain and the death of Montcalm, a century and a quarter, how important a part that handful of secluded French colonists played in North American affairs. In 1629, Champlain could have carried off all his colonists in “a single ship”; more than a hundred years later they were estimated at some 65,000 souls; in the Seven Years’ War they were, according to Mr. Bancroft, but as ” one to fourteen” of the English colonists. The part played by the Canadians in war, under the Trench Kings, was out of all proportion to their numbers; it was a brilliant but prodigal part; it left their country exposed to periodical scarcity, without wealth, without commerce, without political liberty. They were ruled by a policy strictly martial to the very last, and though Richelieu, Colbert, De la Gallissionére, and other supreme minds saw, in their “New France,” great commercial capabilities, the prevailing policy, especially under Louis XIV. and XV., was to make and keep Canada a mere military colony. It is instructive to find a man of such high intelligence as Montcalm justifying that policy in his despatches to the President de Mole on the very eve of the surrender of Quebec. The Canadians, in his opinion, ought not to be allowed to manufacture, lest they should become unmanageable like the English colonists, but, on the contrary, they should be kept to martial exercises, that they might subserve the interests of France in her Transatlantic wars with England. Such was the policy which fell at Quebec with its last French Governor and Captain-General; a policy, I need hardly say, which no intelligent Canadian now looks back to with any other feelings than those of regret and disapprobation. A hundred years have elapsed since the international contest to which you refer was consummated at Quebec, and Canada to-day, under the mild and equitable sway of her fourth English sovereign, has to point to trophies of

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peaceful progress, not less glorious, and far more serviceable, than any achieved by our predecessors who were subjects to the French kings. The French-speaking population, which from 1608 till 1760 had not reached 100,000, from 1750 to 1860 has multiplied to 880,000. Upper Canada, a wilderness as Champlain found it and Montcalm left it, has a population exceeding Massachusetts, of as fine a yeomanry as ever stirred the soil of the earth. If French Canada points with justifiable pride to its ancient battlefield, English Canada points with no less pleasure to its newly-reclaimed harvest fields; if the old régime is typified by the strong walls of Quebec, the monument of the new era may be seen in the great bridge which spans the St. Lawrence within view of the city I represent, and whose four and twenty piers may each stand for one hour sacred to every traveller who steams through its sounding tube on his way from the Atlantic to the far West.

In conclusion, Mr. President, allow me again to assure you that I have listened with great pleasure to the speeches of this day—especially to the address of my old and esteemed friend (Hon. Mr. Poor). I trust the sentiments uttered here, at the mouth of the Kennebec, in Maine, will go home to England, and show our English relatives that the American people, unmoved by any selfish motive, are capable of doing full and entire justice to the best qualities of the English character. I am sure nothing was farther from your minds than to turn this historical commemoration to any political account—and certainly I could not have done myself the pleasure of being here if I had imagined any such intention. But after all the angry taunts which have been lately exchanged between England and America, I cannot but think this solemn acknowledgment of national affiliation, made on so memorable a spot as Fort Popham, and made in so cordial a spirit, must have a healing and a happy effect. We have been sitting under your authority, Mr. President, in the High Court of Posterity—we have summoned our ancestors from their ancient graves—we have dealt out praise and blame among them—I trust without violence to truth or injustice to the

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Dead: for the dead have their rights as the living have: injustice to them is one of the worst forms of all injustice, and undue praise to the undeserving is the worst injustice to the virtuous and meritorious actors in the great events of former ages.

When we leave this place we shall descend from the meditative world of the Past to mingle in the active world of the Present, where each man must bear his part and defend his post. Let me say for myself, Mr. President, and I think I may add I speak in this respect the general settled sentiment of my countrymen of Canada, when I say that in the extraordinary circumstances which have arisen for you, and for us also, in North America, there is no other feeling in Canada than a feeling of deep and sincere sympathy and friendliness towards the United States. As men loyal to our own institutions, we honour loyalty everywhere; as freemen we are interested in all free States; as neighbours we are especially interested in your peace, prosperity, and welfare. We are all anxious to exchange everything with you except injustice and misrepresentation; that is a species of commerce which—even when followed by the fourth estate (pointing to the reporters at his right)—I trust we will alike discourage, even to the verge of prohibition. Not only as a Canadian, but as one who was originally an emigrant to these shores as an Irishman, with so many of my original countrymen resident among you, I shall never cease to pray that this kindred people may always find in the future, as they always have found in the past, brave men to lead them in battle, wise men to guide them in council, and eloquent men like my honourable friend yonder (Hon. John A. Poor), to celebrate their exploits and their wisdom from generation to generation.

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OTTAWA, THE PROBABLE CAPITAL OF AN UNITED BRITISH AMERICA.

REPLY TO A TOAST AT A COMPLIMENTARY SUPPER GIVEN BY THE SAINT PATRICK’S LITERARY SOCIETY OF OTTAWA, OCTOBER 14TH, 1862.

Mr. McGee, after a few introductory remarks, of a personal nature, said:—And now you will no doubt expect me to allude briefly to some other subjects in which the people of Canada and the citizens of Ottawa are more deeply interested than in the personnel of the Administration. I suppose you would like to hear my frank opinion on the subject of the Government Buildings in this city. Well, gentlemen, I was one of the last to admit the propriety of reference which was made on that subject; but having admitted and adopted that decision as part of the policy of the present Administration—having done so in perfect good faith, without any ulterior views whatever—I would be the last to consent to reopen the question. Ottawa was not my choice, but it has been selected by Her Majesty, that decision has been frankly adopted by the present Government, and it will be frankly and fully carried out. There is only one remote possibility of disturbing that decision, and that might follow if the members for Ottawa constituencies allowed themselves to be made use of by any party combination. If they allowed the Ottawa question to be made use of as a party question, they might drive others to reopen the question; but unless it is revived by some such error as that—and it is your interest to see that no such error is committed by your representatives—Ottawa may rely upon it that the present Administration will never go back of their word. Yes, gentlemen, not only may your city become the Seat of

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Government of Canada, if your interests are properly represented, but in after times of all British America, between the Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean. I suppose you have all seen in the public journals a good deal of discussion as to the late Intercolonial Conference at Quebec, and a projected Intercolonial railway. Well, gentlemen, all I can tell you on that head is that that newspaper discussion must necessarily be premature, because no man at this moment, in any of the Colonies, or in England, can possibly say what precise shape that project may ultimately take—what route may be chosen—what distances involved—on what terms—under what conditions—subject to what management—that road will be made, if it is made, within a few years. The discussion must be premature, because the project is inchoate—because the negotiation has merely taken its first preliminary form—because, as a negotiation, it can only be matured in London, by and with the consent of the Imperial authorities. Those who desire to avoid rash conclusions and needless retractions will suspend their judgments till the project has matured and received its last form from negotiation, and then if it can be shown to be necessary to strengthen the connection with the mother country—if it can be shown to be necessary to our self-preservation as a British American people—if the liability can be limited, and the proportions fairly adjusted—I, for one, would not shrink from going to the people of Canada, from end to end of the Province, with this test question: ” You think the connection valuable to Canada; what will you pay for it?” Is it worth to you five-twelfths of an iron road four hundred miles long? Is it worth the outlay on an additional link of railway of the distance, say from Montreal to Kingston, or thereabouts? For, gentlemen, depend upon it, we cannot in the North America of our day—in this new American age which announces its advent with salvos of artillery—we cannot go on as we have gone on in the piping times of peace. We have three choices before us: either to continue the Connection, or to set up for ourselves, or to drift into annexation with the Northern Democracy. Not one per cent, of the people of Canada at

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present desire annexation; not one per cent, of the people feel that the hour has come for our entering on an independent political existence; and, therefore, practically the only choice left us is to provide for the proper maintenance, on our side, of the Imperial connection. I say frankly I place this alternative on no impalpable ground; but I do place it on the clear ground of common sense, of self-interest, of self-preservation, as well as on the sense of duty and conscientious obligation. I put it to you on Canadian, rather than on Imperial ground. I say the connection is worth paying for, and the only questions are, whether as to a militia or a military road, what can you pay, and when, and how, will you pay it? But, gentlemen, I do not rest our railroad connection with the Lower Provinces on military reasons only; there are political reasons, and there are commercial reasons as well. As to the commercial reasons, the three Provinces are fully committed to the principle of inter-colonial free trade, which would bring us 800,000 more customers, and if we should unfortunately lose the Reciprocity Treaty in 1865, would give Upper Canada a breadstuff’s market, which takes as much from the United States now, as the United States do from Canada. As to the intrinsic value of the new country to be opened, I have the authority of a gentleman whose ability to judge cannot be questioned in Canada—Mr. “Walter Shanly—who has been over the ground this last summer, and made very full notes of his tour, that with the exception of a belt of some 30 miles on the immediate border of Canada and New Brunswick, the remainder is generally as fine a country as any in North America. And this eastern enterprise may very fairly be looked upon as an additional motive and guarantee for western extension to the Pacific. Before I had a seat in Parliament, in this very city, several years ago, in speaking of the ” Future of Canada,” I expressed the same views I do now, when I say that the route by Lake Huron and Lake Superior to British Central America—to the prairie country too long monopolized by the 268 stockholders of the Hudson’s Bay Company,—to that country rich in hides, in furs, in tallow, in salt, and ni

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mineral wealth—and rich, too, in agricultural capabilities—ought to be opened up, and must lead westward through the Ottawa valley. But we can hardly have the aid of a British ministry or of British capital for Western extension, if we underprice the connection, or refuse to begin at that end of it which lies next to England, and is more immediately required to maintain the connection. As to the general political reasons for the railroad, I think they will be found to be, on farther observation, gentlemen, of the utmost weight, deserving the most careful consideration from the people of Canada. We are, for fully five months in the year, as much “an inland kingdom,” as that Bohemia whose castles, even Corporal Trim was forced to admit, “could not stand by the sea unless God willed it.” We now get to and from the Atlantic, five months in every year, by the grace and favour of the State of Maine; but unless Maine were at some future day to join us politically, that relation between us cannot be counted on, from year to year. Let us reason by experience, and see what has been the condition of other inland states of which we know something, on the continent of Europe. Take the two most conspicuous examples, the two great German powers Austria and Prussia. Why does Austria hold on so tenaciously to her Italian provinces? Because it is only through them she touches the sea. It is only through Venice, Trieste, and Fiume, that Austria exists as a maritime or commercial power; and though I do not know what it cost to construct the railway from Vienna to Trieste, through a very difficult country, I know well what lesson that road ought to teach us. It teaches the lesson of empire, in which Austrian statesmen have not seldom been the teachers of older states than ours. Look again at Prussia in the Baltic. What has been her expenditure between Berlin and Dantzic? Why does she at this moment vote 12,000,000 francs for Jahl, and 25,000,000 francs for Jashmund, in the isle of Eugen? To have outlets to the sea, through her own territory, to secure safe ports, to have her own avenues into the common exchange of all nations—the open ocean. Now, whether the British connection is to

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chment!” Gentlemen, that is an excellent word—Retrenchment—but I will follow it with another, not hostile, not inconsistent with it, the word Development. Retrenchment is the immediate duty, the duty of the day and the hour,—but a government must lead as well as save, it must march as well as fortify, it must originate plans for the future, as well as correct the errors of the past. The eventful opportunity for British America is now; the tide in our affairs is at the flood, we must act as well as examine, advance as well as retrench. It is for us to appropriate the olive branch of peaceful progress, which the great Republic has relinquished for the blood-stained laurel; it is for us to unite the Atlantic and the Pacific, and to lay broad and deep on this soil the foundations of a thoroughly constitutional government. I see here many of the young men of the city and neighbourhood, and to the young men of British North America I look with every hope that they will sustain and maintain the programme of national development in connection with Great Britain, which it is the aim of my colleagues to inaugurate. The future belongs to them, and they belong to their successors; if a generous far-sighted British American policy is to triumph in Canada and the sister Provinces, the young men must be up and doing; if they will follow, I venture to promise they shall have a lead—a lead which will make Canada a great country, and Ottawa the capital of a United British America.

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THE COMMON INTERESTS OF BRITISH

NORTH AMERICA.

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE TEMPRANCE HALL, HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA, JULY 21ST, 1863.

Hon. Mr. McGee said:—Mr. Mayor, Ladies, and Gentlemen,—This meeting has grown out of a very simple circumstance—the desire of several gentlemen, some of them very old friends, to hear from a Canadian representative what was generally thought in his province, as well as what views he himself took, on the subject of the long-talked-of Intercolonial Railway. The invitation was conveyed to me in the kindest terms, by gentlemen for whom I have the highest respect; but it would be folly in me to conceal that I felt a great deal of diffidence as to my own power to meet their expectations. I felt it not only from the nature of the subject to be spoken of—whose very magnitude was embarrassing—but also somewhat on personal grounds, as to what might be right and proper for me, as a Canadian representative, to say; but I nerved myself by saying, ” If we can have no other direct intercourse, either of trade or travel, with our fellow-citizens of Nova Scotia at present, at all events let us have the intercourse of free speech and courteous personal consultation.” I propose, then, to submit to you the views, so far as I understand them, of very many in Canada, on the subject of this projected Colonial connection, with some remarks on the same subject which, perhaps, are more personal to myself. We are of opinion, very many of us, in the first place, that we cannot go on much longer—not many months perhaps, not many seasons certainly—as we have been in the past. Great necessities have arisen within the present decade, both on this and the

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other side of the Atlantic, which seem to say to us, in Canada, and to all British America, “Look well to yourselves; consider carefully the times that now are; observe well that these are not the times of old; take counsel of your new Present as to how you may best confront your new Future.” We may, ladies and gentlemen, be all wrong in thus translating into words the signs of our times, but with this warning voice ringing hourly in my ears, I cannot, for one, keep my eyes fixed only on local or sectional objects; nor shall I to-night treat the great subject you have called on me to discuss, in any local, or sectional, or one-province spirit. I should feel ashamed of myself if I were capable of mingling in the discussion of a subject of this description, anything—the least tinge—of the partisan; neither, I am quite sure, would you receive my arguments, if I were to calculate them exactly for the meridian of Halifax. Moreover, I feel that I must speak of, as well as to, British America,—that the free press of Nova Scotia will carry what I may say to the free press of Canada,—and that the voice raised here to-night on behalf of Colonial unity, feeble as it is, will be audible, within a month, to the farthest western settler who hears the wolf bark by night beyond Lake Huron. Now, what, in outline, is this British America of which we speak? We are four millions of nominal British subjects dotted over a seventh part of the continent. I say nominal British subjects, for we enjoy within ourselves absolute self-government, with an indefinite and sentimental, rather than a practical or onerous allegiance, to a distant, non-resident sovereign. It is to be allowed, however, that there are two exceptions to this state of absolute self-government—the autocratic power of the Government of British Columbia,* and the close oligarchy of the Hudson’s Bay. And, as if to show how thoroughly the rights of the Crown are assumed to be extinguished in the soil of all these immense regions, we learn, only within a week, that that Hudson’s Bay Com-

*This complaint, perhaps overstated at the time, has since been remedied.

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pany have actually sold the proprietorship (and received the pretty luck-penny of £100,000 down) of somewhere about 500,000 square miles of Her Majesty’s dominions in North America, which the sellers pretend to hold in fee by a title derived from King Charles II. Distant as that territory is from us, far in the future as its ultimate destinies may repose, I am sure the Imperial Government will have something to say about its sale, and that we in Canada will have something to say about its delivery. I know nothing but what has been stated in the newspapers as to this sale, but I instance it here, at once, to call attention to the statement, and at the same time to illustrate the anomalous state of our allegiance, where one private company can propose to sell and another to buy a British dominion as large as all England, France, and Germany. A single glance at the physical geography of the whole of British America will show that it forms, quite as much in structure as in size, one of the most valuable sections of the globe. Along this eastern coast the Almighty pours the broad Gulf Stream, nursed within the tropics, to temper the rigours of our air, to irrigate our “deep-sea pastures,” to combat and to subdue the powerful Polar stream, which would otherwise in a single night fill all our gulfs and harbours with a barrier of perpetual ice. Par towards the west, beyond the wonderful lakes which excite the admiration of every traveller, the winds that lift the water-bearing clouds from the Gulf of Cortez, and waft them northward, are met by counter-currents, which capsize them just where they are essential—beyond Lake Superior, on both slopes of the Rocky Mountains. These are the limits of that climate which has been so much misrepresented—a climate which rejects every pestilence, which breeds no malaria; a climate under which the oldest stationary population—the French Canadians—have multiplied without the infusion of new blood, from France or elsewhere, from a stock of 80,000 in 1760, to a people of 880,000 in 1860. I need not, however, have gone so far for an illustration of the fostering effects of our climate on the European race, when I look on the sons and daughters of this Peninsula—natives

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of the soil for two, three, and four generations; when I see the lithe and manly forms on all sides around and before me; when I see, especially, who they are that adorn that gallery (alluding to the ladies), the argument is over, the case is closed. If we descend from the climate to the soil, we find it sown by nature with those precious forests, fitted to erect cities, to build fleets, and to warm the hearths of many generations. We have the isotherm of wheat on the Red River, on the Ottawa, and on the St. John; root crops everywhere; coal in Cape Breton and on the Saskatchewan; iron (with us) from the St. Maurice to the Trent; in Canada, the copper-bearing rocks, at frequent intervals, from Huron to Gaspe; gold in Columbia and in Nova Scotia; salt, again, and hides, in the Red River region fisheries, inland and seaward, unequalled. Such is a rough sketch—a rapid enumeration of the resources of this land of our children’s inheritance. Now, what needs it, this country, with a lake and river and seaward system sufficient to accommodate all its own and all its neighbours’ commerce? what needs such a country for its future? It needs a population sufficient in numbers, in spirit, and in capacity, to become its masters; and this population need, as all civilised men need, religious and civil liberty, unity, authority, free intercourse, commerce, security, and law.

As to population: the young ladies probably would not object that desirable young men should be somewhat more plentiful than they now are in these provinces. What would be a fair American ratio of population for our territory, covering, as it does, a third part of the continent? Twenty millions of a total would give us only five inhabitants to the square mile—our square miles are four millions— a degree of denseness which even a backwoodsman would not find inconveniently close. Of the liberties enjoyed throughout all our part of the continent, it is to be observed, that with the temporary exceptions—Hudson’s Bay and British Columbia—they are in the hands of the people’s elected representatives. We need have no fear for our liberties if our representatives do their duty; but as to the other social and political needs of which I have made

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mention, that one about which I feel just at present most anxious, is authority. I am told I have been taunted a good deal in some leading American journals for my frequently expressed anxiety on this head. I have been taunted as a Liberal, as if lawful authority were inconsistent with liberality; and, as an Irishman by origin, I have not been spared. I answer, Mr. Mayor, to all these flippant deliverances, that if I lived in a state of society in which liberty was in danger from the encroachments or excesses of authority, I should stand fast by liberty; but, whereas, in our new world one plant is indigenous, and grows wild all round us, and the other must be introduced from afar and carefully cultivated, that other equally essential to the very existence of good government, I choose to concern myself most for that which we most need, leaving that which every public man is sure to cultivate, to the charge of its innumerable other guardians. I answer, as an Irishman proud of the name, that in walking in this path I am in the right line of succession with the most illustrious Irish statesmen of the past—O’Connell, Plunkett, Curran, Grattan, and, above all, Burke: their trophies are found on every arch of the temple of the Constitution—their effigies are carved upon the very shrines of its sanctuary. They were statesmen whom the world knew; they were as jealous of authority as they were vigilant for freedom: what names has the school that opposes them produced to equal the least among that illustrious succession? I do feel anxious for the consolidation of our provincial liberties—for the timely planting of a well-denned supreme authority among us, and, therefore, I adopt cordially the only practical form of arrangement which I can by any sign discover—the Union of all the Colonies, under the regency or vice-regency of a royal Prince, or other Imperial ruler. It will, perhaps, be within the recollection of those who hear me,—I rejoice to see around me some of the same friends to-night,—that several years ago, in this very room, I advocated, on commercial and political grounds, this same good cause of Colonial union. Is it not obvious, ladies and gentlemen,—you, to whom I am all but a stranger,—that if I

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did not believe there were very good arguments in favour of such an union, I would not presume, after a lapse of years, to take up, on the same spot, the same cause, before the same community? These arguments, to my mind, are so numerous that I shall be obliged, as formerly, to proceed by way of selection—touching only on a few of the most prominent and popular.

First. There is the argument from Association. What is taught us by the whole history of our times? That the greatest results are produced by the association of small means. In banking, in commerce, in science, association has been tried, and found in general to work wonders. The very Intercolonial Railroad, of which I am by-and-by to speak, is a proof of the absolute necessity of intercolonial association. Canada cannot build it alone; you cannot do it without Canada. What then is the obvious remedy? Is it not the union of our joint credit, skill, and resources for the accomplishment of a common purpose, which singly none of us, nor all of us, can hope to effect?

Second. There is the commercial argument. Why should we, colonies of the same stock, provinces of the same empire, dominions under the same flag, be cutting each other’s throats with razors called tariffs? Here, for example, is my overcoat of Canada tweed, which, imported into New Brunswick, is charged 15 per cent., and in Nova Scotia 10 per cent.—New Brunswick being 5 per cent, worse than you are. Now, the British Islands and all united states and kingdoms have long found it absolutely necessary to have within themselves the freest possible exchange of commodities. Why should not we here? Why should we not have untaxed admission to your 800,000 market, and you to our three million market? I confess I can see no good reason to the contrary. At the Quebec Conference,* over which I had the honour to preside, we decided that intercolonial free-trade should follow at once on the making of the railway, and I look back with satisfaction to having drafted that compact.

* The Intercolonial railway conference of September, 1862.

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Third. There is the immigration argument. I was much struck, speaking on this point, with a note to an article in, I think, “Macculloch’s Commercial Dictionary” in which immigrants bound for these Lower Provinces were warned not to take shipping to Canada, because it was as hard to get here from Quebec to these lower ports, as from Liverpool! Practically, every one knows that an emigrant ship’s cargo is a mixed cargo. Say there are 400 persons aboard one of those ships arriving at New York, 100 will disperse towards the manufacturing districts of New England, another 100 to the mineral districts of Pennsylvania, while the other half will be divided between the landing-place and the agricultural West. The wide market makes the full ship. The diversities of occupation swell up the aggregate of new labourers, and if we were united the inevitable result would be that each of us would secure a much larger share as parts of one great State, than either or all of us can command as separated and obscure provinces. In the past what has been the fact? We gained but one million of British emigrants in all our provinces, from 1815 to 1860, while the United States gained three millions. Three of our natural born fellow-subjects passed us by for one that remained. They helped to swell the ranks and increase the riches of the Republic in a threefold ratio to ours, and they raised it in half a century to so high a pitch of prosperity, that prosperity-mad, it spurned the immigrant, and madly menaced those ancient islands from which it drew its first being as well as the whole outline of its civilisation.

Fourth. There is what I shall call the patriotic argument—the argument to be drawn from the absolute necessity of cultivating a high-hearted patriotism amongst us provincialists. I speak without offence—with an eye to my own part of the country as well as any other—when I ask, why are our ordinary politics so personal; why are our great men sometimes found so small? Because we are sectional and provincial in spirit as well as in fact; we are not simply shut up in our several corners, but we subdivide those corners into pettiest domains. With us, in

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Canada, there is a Toronto party, an Ottawa party, or a Quebec party. It was said of old, “Octavius had his party, Antony had his party, but the Commonwealth has none,”—and thence the decline and fall of Rome. Are we capable in these lands of being inspired with sentiments of a saving patriotism? Are we capable of being kindled into a common passion for a common cause? Capable, I mean, of being made so in advance of events which might prevent the sacred fire from warming or guiding us on in a common contest. I don’t ask you how you would feel down here, on the Gulf or the Bay of Fundy, if you heard Quebec was besieged—that Quebec had fallen. I have no doubt whatever that you would feel a common calamity then, or that we would equally feel it on the St. Lawrence, if we heard that Halifax had been attacked by a fleet of Monitors, or that a hostile force had crossed the St. John. But it might be too late then to remedy the evils of isolation—it would certainly be too late to avert some of the worst of them. Is it not the part of true wisdom now, while we yet have time—now while the actual emergency is not yet upon us—is not this the opportunity, since we must stand or fall together, if war comes, to consult how best we may conduct ourselves by each other, and towards England, so that we may stand, and not fall? so that England may trust, and not distrust us?

Fifth (and for the present lastly). There is the argument of political necessity, arising from the state of our next neighbours. I am not about to say one word—I can lay my hand on my heart and declare that I do not believe I have uttered one word since the commencement of the unhappy civil war—to irritate or embitter republican feeling against us. I deprecate all intermeddling on our part in that war, in which we were commanded to observe a strict neutrality, in spirit and in letter, and I would implore every man who values the blessing of good neighbourhood not wantonly to aggravate the existing bad feeling. In this case, certainly, they who ” sow in bitterness ” can hardly expect “to reap in joy.” I say this in no idle hope or wish to conciliate northern prejudice in its present temper;

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I say it as a lover of peace and a hater of causeless warfare; but if war must come upon us here, in these long peaceful regions, I have no doubt, for my part, that all our people, of every race and creed and class, will be found serried like iron in defence of our own freedom and the imperial connection which ensures it to us. I dare not pretend to predict the end of the present contest; but however otherwise it may end, there must long continue a powerful military element, active and unexhausted. If the South be subdued, armies will be needed to hold it down; if the combatants separate, each will arm his frontiers and replenish his arsenals. It seems to me a question mainly, in this light, whether we shall have two military independencies or one between us and Mexico? If two, then it would be but natural that they should turn back to back—as to their aggressive movements—the South marching south, the North marching north. You remember Pope’s lines—

“Where is the North? In York ’tis on the Tweed!
In Scotland ’tis the Orcades; and there—
‘Tis Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where!”

Where would be the limit of the North then? I put the question through you and through the press of Halifax to all British America. Where would be the limit of the North, in that contingency? I leave the answer to each for himself, while I, for my part, answer, that if these Provinces are united in good time, for mutual support, counsel, and protection, I do not fear that they would be able to hold their own against all comers.

So much for the obvious arguments in favour of Colonial union; the argument from Association: the argument from Commercial advantages: the Immigration argument; the Patriotic argument proper; and the argument drawn from the proximity of danger, from the circumstances existing in the neighbouring States. Here, I quit the general subject, and now beg to come directly to the topic most immediate—the necessity—the absolute necessity on all these grounds—of an intercolonial railroad.

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I am not here to discuss, nor would you care to hear, a detailed discussion of the long-continued negotiations on this subject. But I must take this opportunity of declaring, as one cognisant of all the facts (I think I may say so,) of the last negotiation, that the imputation of bad faith so freely made here and in England, against the Canadian delegates who went over last year, is a groundless and undeserved accusation. I do not desire to be at all disputatious; I think I may say I am impartial in the matter—for with some of the gentlemen as responsible as I was for that negotiation, on the part of Canada, I no longer act: but whether with them or against them, I utterly deny for them and for Canada, the imputation of bad faith. I will tell you candidly how the question is viewed in Canada. Leading public men of all political parties admit that it is most desirable, if the liability could be limited, that this great work, so long projected, should be undertaken. There is no parliamentary party, there is no Cabinet possible, that would say, or dare say,—”no railroad—no connexion—on any terms” At the same time, the non-political men of influence—many in Eastern, and many more in Western Canada, many also of the constituencies, are not favourable to the project at all—certainly not to it as a Government work; they were so scorched by the Grand Trunk, they say, that they dread the fire of any other railroad. In some respects the popular prejudices against the whole thing are not unfounded; but in others, I am bound to say their only basis is a melancholy want of information, as to the extent, resources, and capabilities of this part of British America. The prejudice really, in these last aspects, is against New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, as countries, rather than against the road. People say, ” What do we want with a railway down there? No one lives down there. We have no trade, we are never likely to have any trade with them. The land is a wilderness, and the winter would render the road impassable.” This is, of course, gross assumption; but has not every great improvement to encounter just such assumptions? Was not the Reciprocity Treaty carried against prejudices as perverse—as

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contrary to the facts? Was not the Union of the Canadas themselves a conquest over far worse prejudices? And it is because this want of knowledge can only be combated by intelligence, that I am a volunteer in the needful work of making the different provinces acquainted with each other. It is not harder to pull a prejudice than to pull a tooth—and the unsounder it is, the more necessary to have it out. I invoke intelligence on our side. To combat against such lamentable misconception everything helps, from a weather almanac up to a Scriptural quotation, and even if the railroad should not soon go on, the labours of intelligence will not be altogether lost. In one sentence, ladies and gentlemen, I do not hesitate for my part to say, that if it can be shown to the satisfaction of the people of Canada that the country through which the road would pass, is naturally rich for three-fourths of the way in soil and in minerals; if it can be shown (as is the fact) that, thanks to your warm-hearted neighbour, the Gulf Stream, your winters are far milder than ours, either in Lower or Central Canada; if it can be shown that the liability could be limited to three, or even three and a half millions sterling; if it can be shown that private capitalists able and willing for the work might be found to undertake it; then, ladies and gentlemen, on all these showings, which I myself believe to be perfectly possible, I have no hesitation in saying that the people of Canada, for their own sakes, and for the sake of British connection, would sustain their government in entering at once on this great work, and thus rendering practicable the so desirable Union of all the Colonies.

Here, perhaps, I best may pause. A very few words, and I am done. This great project of Union was, as you know, endorsed by Lord Durham, the Imperial High Commissioner to these Provinces, in 1838. Of late years it had been sustained through all vicissitudes, on this side of the Atlantic, mainly by the advocacy of the many able public men Nova Scotia has given to political life. Some—the chief among them (turning to Messrs. Johnson, Howe, Tapper, Henry, &c), I have the satisfaction of seeing here,

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beside me. They are here, irrespective of party, and I trust I may add, that I have endeavoured, not only out of care for the subject, but from respect to them, to treat the subject wholly without allusion to party, or local distinctions. In the presence of the great subject as I contemplate it, the lines of party are effaced and disappear. I endeavour to contemplate it in the light of a future, possible, probable, and I hope to live to be able to say positive, British-American Nationality. For I repeat in the terms of the question I asked at first, what do we need to construct such a Nationality? Territory, resources by sea and land, civil and religious freedom—these we already have. Four millions we already are—four millions culled from the races that for a thousand years have led the van of Christendom. When the sceptre of Christian civilisation trembled in the enervate grasp of the Greeks of the Lower Empire, then the western tribes of Europe, fiery, hirsute, clamorous, but kindly, snatched at the falling prize, and placed themselves at the head of human affairs. We are the children of these fire-tried kingdom-founders, of these ocean- discoverers of western Europe. Analyse our aggregate population: we have more Saxons than Alfred had when he founded the English realm; we have more Celts than Brien had when he put his heel on the neck of Odin; we have more Normans than William had when he marshalled his invading host along the strand of Falaise. We have the laws of St. Edward and St. Louis; Magna-Charta and the Roman Code; we speak the speeches of Shakespeare and Bossuet; we copy the constitution which Burke and Somers and Sidney and Sir Thomas More lived or died to secure or save. Out of these august elements, in the name of the future generations who shall inhabit all the vast regions we now call ours, I invoke the fortunate genius of an united British America, to solemnise law with the moral sanctions of religion, and to crown the fair pillar of our freedom with its only appropriate capital, lawful authority, so that, hand in hand, we and our descendants may advance steadily to the accomplishment of a common destiny.

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INTERCOLONIAL RELATIONS AND THE

INTERCOLONIAL RAILWAY.

AN ADDRESS AT MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE, ST. JOHN, N.B., AUGUST, 1863.

Mr. McGee said:—Mr. Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen,—The postponement of the present address from Friday evening last till to-night, which I hope has not caused the Committee or the citizens of St. John any inconvenience, arose from my strong desire to see a part of Nova Scotia, of which the traveller, hurried by rail from “Windsor to Halifax, has no conception,—I allude to the beautiful valley between Windsor and Annapolis. For two entire days we traversed that beautiful valley—looking out on those fertile marshes, celebrated in the hexameters of Longfellow, breathing the perfume of meadows, of cornfields, and of orchards. In no part of North America have I seen a lovelier, or apparently a more prosperous, country. I do not wonder that our countrymen of Nova Scotia should be proud of what they called the Garden of their Province, or that they should—for they are a most hospitable people—desire to give strangers such a treat, as a journey through that 80 or 90 miles of their “happy valley.”

While referring to Nova Scotia, I may be permitted, perhaps, to say, that I think the good cause of Colonial Union received a powerful impetus the other night at Halifax. When I left here a fortnight ago, I had no intention whatever of speaking on that subject during my visit to Nova Scotia; but I sincerely rejoice now that the delivery of the address, or lecture, which my friends requested for a local charity, was the occasion of an expression of public opinion by the first men and first

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journalists of that Province, which must be considered most timely and most important. We had, accidentally, present on that evening, my hon. friend the leader of the Government of this Province (Mr. Tilley), with the leading Nova Scotians, and I am sure the practical evidence afforded of the possibility of the union and concord of the public men of these Provinces, was an illustration the most striking that could be furnished to the arguments which had been advanced. Perhaps you will further indulge me in taking this first opportunity to return my warm personal thanks to the people and press of Nova Scotia, for their very great and very undeserved kindness to myself, during my stay among them.

You are aware, ladies and gentlemen, that the immediate object of the present lecture was to advance the organization of our friend Captain Millet’s Volunteer Company. I am sure I shall only be too happy if I can contribute anything in this, or in any other way, to foster a resident military spirit in these Colonies. Every one must see that such a spirit, generously encouraged and wisely directed, is essential to our continuance as free communities; that every drill-room and every armory is a high school of patriotism; and that the popularity of our Volunteers is the fittest expression we can give to the general feeling of public spirited attachment to our free Institutions. In endeavouring to meet, in this respect, the wishes of the Volunteers, we selected, as the subject for consideration,—Intercolonial Relations, and the Intercolonial Railway—a subject naturally and inseparably associated with the causes which have called the Volunteers into existence; and most plainly of all, with the leading questions of Colonial defences and British connection.

I did not touch, at Halifax, on this subject of Colonial defences, because I had matter enough and to spare, of a political and commercial kind: and because I wished to reserve its discussion for the present more appropriate occasion, when, speaking for the Volunteers of St. John, I could more properly introduce the subject of defence, as understood in the Province in which I reside. All parties

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there—theoretically at least—admit that the Imperial connection, as now existing, is well worth fighting for; all parties admit that the extent of our ability is the measure of our responsibility; but no one with us, endorses the doctrine of the new school of Colonial reformers in England, that our measure of local “self-government” necessarily includes self-defence. We hold to the old doctrine, that peace and war are the dread prerogatives that attach to sovereignty only; that to provide means and measures of defence attach as responsibilities to these prerogatives; that not being sovereign powers we can neither make war nor cause war to cease; and, therefore, that our contribution towards the defences of these Provinces must needs be secondary, as our powers and responsibilities are secondary, to those of the Empire at large. But while we hold these maxims, all of us, absolutely, we cheerfully acknowledge that the sacrifices made by the Imperial Government in maintaining the West India fleet—as much for our protection as that of the West Indies—in maintaining the great fortresses from Halifax to Kingston—in dispatching her Guards, as she did in December, 1861, to guard our frontier—we cheerfully and gratefully admit, that these sacrifices on the part of the Sovereign State, demand sacrifices in turn from us, and that, cost what it may, we must, in Canada, for some time to come, maintain a large and effective Militia. The late Government, of which I was a member, armed and equipped in a few months 25,000 men, and enrolled about 10,000 other volunteers, for whose equipment Parliament had made no provision. It is not, perhaps, too much to say, that Canada can and will raise, as a precautionary force, 50,000 active service men; and in case of necessity, I have no doubt we could double the number in a reasonable time.

Perhaps you will allow me to remark here, on the recent views promulgated in England, by Mr. Goldwin Smith, Mr. Adderley, M.P., and others, as to the military relations sustained by the thirteen colonies who became the United States, relations contrasted by those gentlemen with the similar relations sustained by us, much to our disparage-

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ment. These views have been very ably criticised in a pamphlet by my friend the Honorable Mr. Howe, published at London during the present year; but Mr. Howe dealt with the immediate rather than the historical aspects of the question as stated by Mr. Adderley and Mr. Smith. Those gentlemen contrast invidiously as against us, what they call the “self-reliance” of the revolted colonies, in this matter of defence. Now what are the real facts in relation to this military connection of those ex-Colonies with Great Britain during the last century? I utterly deny that there is extant a document, despatch, or precedent, to show that those English settlements ever considered themselves principals in their own defence against France, Spain, or Holland. Against the Narragansetts or the Iroquois they acted for themselves, but when the quarrel was Imperial—when the enemy was a great civilised power,—whatever contingent force they contributed to the campaign,— they claimed their bounty and got it out of the Crown Lands; they claimed their pay and got it out of the Imperial Treasury. The very terms they employed, “Queen Anne’s war,” “King George’s war,” showed the state of their public opinion; in “the French and Indian war”—known in Europe as the “Seven years’ war”—the genius of Chatham contrived to make them more prominent in their own quarrel; but even on that eve of supreme triumph for the English in North America, they never held any other language than that which we hold in Canada, when we contend that the power to make peace or war alone comprehends the duty of providing adequate ways and means of defence. The memorial of the royal governors of New York and New England, Shirley and Clinton, to the Lords of Trade, in 1748; the correspondence of Governors Hutchinson and Dobbs; the plan of Union submitted at the Albany Conference of 1754, by Dr. Franklin; every document of that period, does, in my opinion, place the question just where it now is, that the main defence rests on the Imperial, and the secondary only on the Colonial authorities. Governors Shirley and Clinton were so convinced from ” past experience” that New York

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and New England “would never agree on quotas” (towards Colonial defence), that they saw no hope of getting anything done except by the direct intervention of the Crown, “by royal instructions.” I refer to this entire despatch, and to many other papers on the same subject, published in the voluminous Colonial Records of New York, to show that we have not degenerated from the example of the elder Colonies in their best days; to show that the charge is at least not made out as completely as Mr. Adderley would have his English readers believe.

I advocate the union of the Provinces on, among other grounds, that of better providing for the common defence. I am committing no indiscretion—because their report has been published by order of the Imperial Parliament and of the Canadian Assembly—when I allude to the fact that the late Royal Defence Commission, in Canada, laid great stress on the completion of what they call “the Quebec and Halifax Railway” as a military work. But we have even a better evidence of its importance—the evidence of fact. You all remember when, at the time of the Trent affair, the Persia and other transports were dispatched with troops for Canada in the month of December. They were to get a certain sum if they landed them here or at Halifax, and nearly double the sum if they landed them in the St. Lawrence. Well, the Persia made her way up to Riviere du Loup, but she was obliged to run from that port, leaving some of her boats and men behind her, before half the soldiers were landed; the remainder I believe she brought round here. This occurrence, which happened early in the winter, indicated precisely the military position of Canada for four or five months in the year, and with Canada, New Brunswick, at least, must stand or fall. Nova Scotia, guarded by fleets and fortresses, might be made a sort of cis- Atlantic Gibraltar or Malta, but your destiny and ours, gentlemen, is as inseparable as are the waters which pour into the Bay Chaleurs, rising, though they do, on the one hand on the Canadian, and on the other on the New Brunswick Highlands. Geographically, we are bound up beyond the power of extrication; your Northern coun-

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ties, a great and flourishing portion of this Province, front on our waters; the Miramichi and the Restigouehe draining their thousands of square miles of territory, must for ever associate New Brunswick and Canada as co-partners in the advantages and the casualties of the commerce of the Gulf, When, therefore, I advocate our future union I only follow Nature; the text is given us by Nature; it is for man to make the commentary.

All states and forms of ancient and modern civilisation have been the result of human intelligence, supplementing and supplying the requirements of nature. Voices cried aloud from the void, and man hastened to respond. Thus, in the Plain of Egypt what was needed of old was elevation, and man multiplied the column, the obelisk, and the Pyramid; thus what was needed in modern Europe was expansion, and man invented the mariner’s compass, the ocean ship, and the art of navigation. So uncouth rivers have become celebrated in song, and obscure scenes, glorified by the footsteps of romance, attract wanderers in search of health or pleasure, from the ends of the earth. With the same cry, do the gigantic, dislocated fragments of British America, appeal to our hearts, our senses, and our reason; there they lie outstretched, longing for unity—if we are a generation worthy to organize a nation, assuredly the materials are abundant and are at hand!

I shall not go over again the arguments I adduced at Halifax, drawn from our mutually destructive tariffs, and from the immense results achieved by the principle of association, in our times; but I may perhaps, without impropriety, refer again to the argument to be drawn from the laws which govern immigration and settlement to these Provinces, as compared with the neighbouring states. Many persons express surprise to me, that notwithstanding the civil war, the immigration into the United States should be so immense, and into Canada so comparatively little. It seems to me, that the very existence of the war itself, as long as it is unaccompanied by insolvency, may account for this. Suppose 50,000 mechanics and 200,000 agriculturists have been cut off in this war while the con-

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sumption of the country is not seriously impeded, it is clear there must be an enhanced demand, just now, for a quarter of a million of men to supply their places. It is thus the wide field makes the full ship, and the port from which the redistribution of diverse industries takes place over the greatest extent of country, draws to itself the strong and perpetual stream of fructifying foreign labour. You have in the interior of New Brunswick—I speak on the authority of the Agricultural Professor Johnston—one of the finest unsettled tracts in North America, a tract through which I hope yet to travel by railroad—within sight of the houses of tens of thousands of the proprietors of the soil. But while the maritime Provinces are disunited from Canada, and Canada from them, we are comparatively unseen and unfelt in Europe—we present on the map our puny outlines in vain; give to the Provinces the aspect of Empire, and you will see how strangers will turn to them with such reverence as the Parsee does to the rising Sun.

I am well aware, Mr. Chairman, that we cannot have Union, that we cannot even have a commercial league, without other means of intercourse than we now possess. There was some fanciful talk formerly among us in Canada, that the people of Maine might wish by-and-by to cast in their lot with us, and thus make Maine the bond of connection, east and west. This commanding position seems, however, clearly reserved for New Brunswick, winch alone can unite Nova Scotia and Canada. Now what, you will ask, in your opinion, is the greatest obstacle to the establishment of such direct intercourse? I answer unhesitatingly, ignorance of each other’s true resources and condition. It is not the distance; it is not the cost; it is not the disputes about routes or modes of construction; it is Intercolonial ignorance which, primarily, stands in the way of the Intercolonial Railway. For example, very intelligent people with us, especially in Western Canada, will insist that the winter down here is so severe that the road, if made, would be blocked up all the winter with ice and snow. In vain we show that your 100 miles of railroad, and Nova Scotia’s 60, have not been stopped by such

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causes five days in five years; it is hard to displace preconceived ideas. They argue in this absurd way;—Lower Canada is colder than Upper Canada, therefore, the Lower Provinces are colder than Lower Canada. Now, what are the exact facts on this much misunderstood subject of climate? (I select the figures from the tables prepared for the Smithsonian Institute in 1860, which included all North America.) The mean annual temperature of this and the Nova Scotia coast, taken at the highest and lowest points—Windsor and Pictou—ranges from 51°43 at the former, to 42°09 at the latter—the lowest point being 2 degrees higher than Quebec, and the highest being 2 degrees higher than Hamilton, Canada West; and the average being nearly 3 degrees higher than the mean annual temperature of Montreal or Toronto. It is all in vain to show them this, and to point to Professor Johnston’s report. In spite of agriculturists, geologists, and statistics, like dear old Christopher North in Blackwood’s Magazine, who, having once called Montgomery a Moravian, declared, notwithstanding the poet’s own denial, that Blackwood having called him a Moravian, a Moravian he must be to the end of the chapter,—those Canadians having made up their minds that New Brunswick is a wilderness, declared that a wilderness it must be. It is useless to tell them of the Gulf Stream. They will not believe in the Gulf Stream. I sincerely hope that we will soon be able to knock this prop from under the tottering form of ancient prejudice, and that we will hear no more of the insuperable obstacle of your winter climate. Others are frightened because the Grand Trunk was such a drain on our Province, and argue that the Intercolonial would be just such another.

I admit, however, that there are specious and even reasonable objections to the undertaking being directed or controlled by the political parties in power, for the time being, in these Provinces. I admit that there are some good grounds for alleging that Lord Palmerston’s Government seem disposed to drive a rather hard bargain with the Colonies. I admit that the expenditure ought to be estimated,

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with proximate certainty, before the Legislature of the several Provinces should be called upon to give effect to the project.

On all these grounds there is fair room for discussion and argument; but how any man who looks beyond the hour, can deny the vital necessity for a road, on some conditions, is really what I cannot conceive. No party—no Government in Canada—could take that extreme ground, and live; no man pretending to the character of a statesman would venture on such ground. A resolution opposing the project absolutely was once proposed in the Canadian Parliament, and only seven persons, besides the mover, voted for it in a house of over a hundred. And such, I am certain, would be the fate of any similar vote moved now after a general election. In fact, a feeling of uneasiness pervades the thinking portion of the Canadian people. They feel that a more intimate connection with England is necessary, and that if this is to be effected we must ourselves draw nearer to the mother country. I deny that there was any want of faith on the part of the Canadian Government in the late negotiations in London on this subject. We may have thought the Imperial Government were driving a hard bargain with us, and that they ought to regard this road as a work of military defence; but no one who knows the gentlemen who went as Delegates from Canada could believe them capable of acting in bad faith. With one of those gentlemen I am not acting politically, but whether acting with him or against him, I feel it my duty to bear witness to his integrity and his high sense of honour. Notwithstanding all the difficulties that lie in the way, however, I do not despair of seeing this great work go on, with your and Nova Scotia’s co-operation.

Although I have usually put forward defensive and commercial reasons for the road, I confess to you frankly, that I place as high, or even higher than either, reasons more purely political. I am, from conviction and observation, in favour of giving the constitutional monarchy a fair trial in British America. In the language of the Hon. Premier of Nova Scotia the other night, I am desirous to see that form of free government working side by side with the

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Republican form of free government on this continent. For, I maintain that the limited monarchy, with representative institutions, is as essentially a free government as any republic that ever existed. The name republic is not always synonymous with freedom, as we may see in Venice and ancient Rome; indeed some kingdoms have been administered throughout upon republican principles, and some republics upon despotic principles. I acknowledge the salutary efficacy of what Burke called “the suppressed republicanism “of the British system, and that there are periods and circumstances in which it ought not to be sup pressed; hence seeking anxiously for my adopted country stability as well as the largest liberty, I confess I turn, after many anxious years of consideration, to the expedient of an inviolable head, with responsible advisers, as the only one yet known among men which can give us, in harmonious proportions, a government preservative of freedom, and conservative of law.

[Here the reporter resorts to the “third person.”]

The lecturer dwelt at great length on this subject. He had arrived at his present convictions slowly and somewhat painfully, often forced by experience and reflection to abandon theories which he had believed to be sound, and principles which he had supposed to be just. Liberty and authority were parts of the same thing, and without authority true liberty could not exist. If a monarchy were not possible, and to join the American Democracy were not desirable, what course should they mark out for themselves? Canada could not go on long in the course she is following. She has made the Upper Chamber elective—and as a body representing the people it can claim the right to control money grants. The West having outgrown Lower Canada, demands representation according to population. He believed the principle to be just, and that the demand must one day be complied with. In all these Provinces the authority of the head of the Government has been diminished until it is now almost nugatory. In England this is not so, for the Crown being the fountain of honour, the influence of the monarch is, and always must be, great. The experience of

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all ages has shown that in times of peril authority is essential to the welfare or even to the existence of the State, and that if the head of the Government had his authority unduly impaired in times of peace, he must when danger threatens, burst all these shackles, and, it may be, in the spirit of the highest patriotism assume a degree of power necessary for the protection of the rights and liberties of the people as “well as of his own inheritance. The powers now assumed by the President of the neighbouring republic in suspending the Habeas Corpus, and ordering the arrest of persons and the suppression of newspapers, often by telegraph, showed that this was true. In this, history is but repeating itself. The Roman Republic two thousand years ago, when danger threatened, sensible that its electoral system was not adapted to emergencies, substituted the Consul by a Dictator.

It had been his fortune, he said, to live twice under a Republic, and twice under a Monarchy, and therefore, besides what he read on the subject, he had an introspective view of the working of the two systems. Prom his own observation, he was satisfied that the United States was not the place where a person with European notions and ideas could desire to bring up his family. Their respect for religion, for authority, for law, for old age—all that constitutes the strongest and most enduring bonds of society—all that thinking men value most, is fast disappearing. “Where the most awful and most holy names are used so constantly and so profanely, in the most odious asseverations and the most fearful blasphemy, it was but natural to expect that some great calamity must come for the purgation of people prosperity-mad. But the calamity he anticipated was social, not political. He never did anticipate that the institutions of. the country would prove a total failure. In one way or other the monarchies of Europe had carried on the great work of government for a thousand years. The unity of the States, framed by great and wise men, has not outlived three generations. He would not say that the Americans had not made some important discoveries in politics, as well as in machinery, and excellent adaptations

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of old principles to modern circumstances; but the system, for want of authority, nevertheless must be recast. He asked the audience to reflect how essential to good government the existence of authority is. The Atlantic has washed out of the people of these Provinces many old world prejudices, as well those that are good and salutary as those that are the reverse; yet without the principle of authority, what is there to give stability to the government or to secure the liberties of the people? What avails it that the rich dews and rains of heaven fall on the sandy desert, if there be no cisterns to catch and preserve the water for the sustentation of animal and human life? Whatever be the result of the present struggle on the Potomac and the Mississippi, this much was evident, that we are no longer to have a pacific Republic as our neighbours. Beyond our border will henceforth be a great military power, and we must hasten to decide whether we are to be regarded as crude republics, which, after a few more ripening summers have passed over us, shall fall into the open maw of the great republic, or as destined to form a great northern constitutional monarchy. The condition of these Provinces cannot continue very long to be what it now is. The connection with the Empire is little more than the allegiance which we pay to the Sovereign so earnestly and warmly in words, and yet entails on us responsibilities which may prove too weighty if we are not united under a constitutional monarchy, framed after the pattern of that Government with which we have been so long connected. We cannot have much that has gone to form the present English nation. We cannot have a Norman conquest or Feudal laws; but we may have authority, stability, a revenue for all the things necessary to safety, and the most ample measure of freedom. It has been said of old that empire comes from the North. Shall not we, free from the despotism of Asia, the slavery of America, the pauperism of Europe, create out of these disconnected Provinces which are now unknown to Europe, unknown to America, unknown one to the other, which instead of looking to one another, and aiding one another, stand back to back and

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look to London, to Paris, or to Washington, a great constitutional monarchy, with strength and authority in the government, justice and truth in its councils, and liberty everywhere—a country to be admired and respected by all nations? Henceforth a balance of power—a principle introduced in Europe as a substitute for the temporal supremacy of the Popes—would be necessary to prevent the aggrandizement of the strong and the oppression of the weak. Even Mexico, with its people whose blood was one-eighth Spanish and seven-eighths that of the savage native tribes, was endeavouring to prepare for this future; and would not these Provinces become, as they easily might, a power able to maintain its own independence? The time, he said, was suited for such a change. In the time of the Regency, when the greatest talents were properly employed in exposing to ridicule and contempt the degrading vices of the Sovereign, it would have been difficult; but the virtues, public and private, of the Queen have shed a new lustre on the authority she wields, as the virtues, public and private, and even the domestic afflictions, of Maria Theresa won back the affection and loyalty of the Hungarians for the House of Hapsburg.

The lecturer [says the reporter] concluded as follows:—

This being my general view of my own duty—my sincere, slow-formed conviction of what a British-American policy should be—I look forward to the time when these Provinces, once united, and increasing at an accelerated ratio, may become a Principality, worthy of the acceptance of one of the sons of that Sovereign whose reign inaugurated the firm foundation of our Colonial liberties. If I am right, the railroad will give us Union, Union will give us nationality, and nationality a Prince of the blood of our ancient kings. These speculations on the future may be thought premature and fanciful—but what is premature in America? Propose a project which has life in it, and while still you speculate it grows. If that way towards greatness, which I have ventured to point out to our scattered communities, be practicable, I have no fear that it will not be taken even in my time. If it be not practicable—well then, at least,

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I shall have this consolation, that I have invited the intelligence of these Provinces to rise above partisan contests and personal warfare, to the consideration of great principles, healthful and ennobling in their discussion, to the minds of men.

Let me, before I close, offer with great respect a single suggestion to the British American Press. I have been here, in the lower Provinces, nearly three weeks, and, except a very occasional paragraph, I have not seen a single quotation from the press of Canada; the same thing, I know, holds true with us. Now is it not possible to remedy this fatal absence of intercommunication through the Press? Is it not possible, both here and in Canada, that we should give a little more attention to each other’s affairs, so that when the time comes when we must act together—as come it will—we may learn to meet like old friends, rather than as aliens and strangers?

Mr. Chairman—I beg to repeat once more here in St. John, what I have said this night week in Halifax, that there is no party in Canada opposed to the great enterprise which is to give us union, strength, and security. In that firm conviction I return to my home, prepared to take my humble part—and all the better prepared, I hope, from this visit along-shore—in furtherance of that great measure. I need not appeal to your public men and public writers to judge justly and generously of their contemporaries in the sister Provinces; I am sure that they will do so—for all know, who are publicists, how much we stand in need of fair play and a fair construction of our motives. I do not attempt to prejudge the present Canadian Administration, but I will be much surprised if, whether they stand or fall, many among them do not prove to be staunch friends of union and authority. At all events, there are before the public men of British America at this moment but two courses—either to drift with the tide of democracy, or to seize the golden moment and fix for ever the monarchical character of our institutions. We have now two choices—representative government or democracy; which shall we choose? For my part, I choose the former, and I invite every fellow

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colonist who agrees with me to unite our efforts, that we may give our Provinces the aspect of Empire, in order to exercise influence abroad and at home, to create a state and to originate a History, “which the world will not willingly let die”

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THE FUTURE OF CANADA.

SUBSTANCE OF A LECTURE DELIVERED AT ST. LAWRENCE HALL, TORONTO, NOVEMBER 26TH, 1863.

Mr. McGee said:—I am to speak to you to-night, ladies and gentlemen, of “The Future of Canada.” It is a subject on which I have already spoken frequently in other towns and cities, and I trust it may not be without its interest—judging by the array before me it is not without its interest—for Toronto. Before, however, entering on the discussion of the subject, let me take you all, without preface, into my confidence. I may say, then, that I find it exceedingly difficult to discuss any subject, within a thousand miles of the topics of the day, without exciting the most extraordinary speculations. Our provincial public have many excellent qualities, but they are rather too narrow in the matter of motives of conduct. Is it not possible, for example, to use the words “Canada,” “America,” “Government,” or “Constitution” without subjecting oneself to the suspicion of wrapping up a partisan speech in the disguise of a popular lecture? I remember well, when, some years ago, I delivered a purely didactic lecture in this very place, on “The Political Morality of Shakspeare’s Plays,” some of the critics of the day saw only in my dissertation a clever partisan manoeuvre; but I trust the day has already come, when it will be admitted that it is possible, even for a politician, to choose a great subject of general interest, and to discuss it on its merits, without compromising himself by attempting to steal a march on any portion of his audience. It has been objected to my treatment of this subject, that it is theoretical; that it puts me in the position, for which I own myself wholly unsuited, of a teacher of loyalty; that I

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mingle in the discussion injurious criticisms on our Republican neighbours. To these objections, I answer, that though theoretical to-day, our future will be practical tomorrow; that I do not, and never did, place myself in the position of a preacher of loyalty; that I preach rather security, I preach precaution, I preach self-preservation; that if I criticise the American system of government, I equally criticise our own, and I trust no one will deny me that right of free discussion, which within proper bounds is one of the first—if not the very first—of the rights which constitute the common stock of our freedom. In glancing over the political map of Europe and America, the patent fact strikes every one, that in the old world the governments, with hardly an exception, are monarchical, while in the new world they are republican; Switzerland on the old continent, and Brazil on the new, are alone exceptions to the rule.* From this prevalence of one invariable type on each side the Atlantic, one might be led to conclude that there was some natural fitness, in each case, of the constitution to the circumstances. I do not pretend to deny that it is natural for a larger liberty to flourish in these new regions; that the new-found forest gave way for freedom but not for privilege; but if we look closer, I think we will discern that there are as many varieties among the States calling themselves republican as there are among monarchies; that some monarchies, in all but name, might be considered republics, while some republics partake largely, if not of a monarchical, certainly of an oligarchical character. We must not allow ourselves to be misled by names alone in this discussion, but if possible we must endeavour to force our way through that cactus-fence into the presence of the things themselves. The circumstances of the new world, North and South, were certainly favourable to the erection of republics. The monarchy did not emigrate; the metropolis, with all its attractions, remained in the parent State; the aggrandisement of labour was the foundation of new communities; the old Colonial relation was strained till it

*Mexico has since been added to the American exceptions.

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snapped, and then, by its own bold act, rather than the provision of the parent State, the Colony sprang into independence. Such is the invariable history of the Anglo-American and Spanish-American States, which have preceded us in the pathway of nationality. I allude to them because I know only two teachers capable of instructing us in the way in which we, too, should go,—cotemporary events, and the voice of History. If we go to the oracles of the past, in a sincere spirit of inquiry, we shall never fail of instruction. But we shall find there precisely what we seek for: if we consult History in a spirit of Hatred we shall find there poisonous and deadly weapons enough; but if, in a sincere desire to know and to hold fast by the truth, we seek that source of political wisdom, we can never come away empty or disappointed. And then—as to events; if a man be cotemporary to a great event and will not see it; if the event speaks with the voice of a cannonade, and men will not hear it, the fault and the loss are with that age; a deaf and dumb stolidity which sometimes entails its consequences on after ages. In America, the cardinal events would seem to be, its discovery; the importation of the African as a slave; the revolt of the Thirteen Colonies in 1776; the final abandonment by Spain of South America in 1823; and the Civil War of 1861. If I am not mistaken we are cotemporaries of an event,—this war of Secession,—as instructive for us, as the success of Columbus or of Washington was, for the men of their generations. Looking back to History, and out of the world we live in, I feel as if we, in Canada, with our anxious three millions, and our peculiar situation, were about to embark like the voyagers of old, who first left behind them the pillars of Hercules to sail into the external sea. British precedent and American example are the landmarks of the god for us; beyond them we must go, but it is still in our power to say, on which shore we shall sacrifice, and under which auspices we shall elect to prosecute our destined course. For my own part, ladies and gentlemen, I have considered the problem of American example at its source, and it is one I do not feel free in commending to my countrymen of Canada.

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For me, it has the fatal defect of instability and inconstancy. It may be that, out of their present tribulation, the national character will consolidate and establish itself; but up to the present, whether in manners or in ideas, there has not been that fixity of character in the republic which—even supposing everything there to be for the best—would justify any observer in proposing it as a model to other communities. The colony-bred men who founded the republic, were men with English ideas of law and government. George Washington was quite as ceremonious in his official conduct as George III. He drove to open the first Congress with “buff and blue” liveries—postilions and footmen; and in his bearing towards ambassadors and private citizens, he preserved all the gravity and dignity of a sovereign. As to the judicial office, from the highest to the lowest—from the decisions of the supreme court to the pettiest jurisdictions—the Americans of to-day have departed much farther from the ideas of their grandfathers than we in Canada have, from the English of the age of Alfred. In the legislative department of government, new opinions, no less opposed to the old colonial wisdom, have prevailed. Makers and managers of elections, under the name of conventions, act for the people on the one hand and the candidate on the other; and after the election, the convention leaders naturally constitute themselves “the lobby,” or third house (as it is called), at Washington and all the state capitals. Having made the legislators and the governors in conclave, it is natural they should look after them in office; it is natural, but it is deplorable, that this vast organised, extra-constitutional body called “the lobby,” should dictate its will to those whom it has called into existence. In manners, which are the types of stability or of inconstancy, not less than in ideas, the internal revolution has proceeded, is proceeding, and probably must proceed much further, from the standard of the age of Washington. If the Puritan fathers were to revisit Boston to-day, and hear bits of Mozart music, pouring out of Gothic churches blazoned with stained glass, they could hardly imagine that the congregations boasted themselves the children of the

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Puritans. These signs of change may seem trivial in themselves, but if, as an ancient sage maintained, a change in a nation’s music includes a change in its morals, I surely am not attaching too much importance to them, as illustrations of the absence of stability and fixedness in the American character. If, then, I am correct, in assigning to it this description, I say to those who, secretly or openly, are preaching up Americanism among us, show us that the model you propose to us to imitate is a definite model; show us that what you ask us to copy is stable and certain otherwise you propose that we shall grasp at the rainbow on the spray of the cataract, even at the risk of tumbling into Niagara! As to the other original of a free State, the British Constitution, it, at least, will be allowed, even by its enemies, the merit of stability. As it exists to-day, it has existed for many hundreds of years. It may be said that it is rather strange for an Irishman, who spent his youth in resisting that government in his native country, to be found amongst the admirers of British constitutional government in Canada. To that remark, this is my reply:—if in my day Ireland had been governed as Canada is now governed, I would have been as sound a constitutionalist as is to be found in Ireland.

But although I was not born and bred in the school to see the merits of the British constitutional system, I trust I am not going to quarrel with the sun and the elements, because of late days it has rained 200 days out of the 365 in the year, on the particular spot of earth on which I was born. I take the British constitutional system as the great original upon which must be founded the institutions of all new free States. I take it as one of a family born of Christian civilisation, and of the marriage of that Germanic empire, or rather race, which, breaking into nationalities, transmitted it to other empires to mould for them free institutions. I take it, as combining in itself permanency and liberty—liberty in its best form, not in theory alone, but in practice—liberty at this hour, enjoyed and practised by all the people of Canada of every origin and creed. Can any one pretend to say that a chapter of accidents,

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which we can trace for eight hundred, and which some antiquarians may even trace for a much longer period, will account for the permanence of any one set of institutions? If you say that they have not in themselves the elements of permanency—if they have not the saving salt which preserves the formation of the Government of a free state from one generation to another—how do you account for their continued and prosperous existence—how do you account for it that of all the ancient institutions of Europe this alone remains; and remains not only with all its ancient outlines, but with great modern improvements, and even alterations, but alterations some of which might more properly be called restorations, and all of which have been made in harmony with the design of the first architects? Here is a form of government that has lasted with modifications to suit the spirit of the age for a period of 800 years; and here is another that has lasted 80 years, if it may not now be said to be re-revolutionised by the exigencies of the civil war. One has had a career of eight centuries, and the other of two-and-a-half generations. How is it that I account for the permanency of the institutions of the first? Because, in the first place, their outline plan, whatever abuse or injustice may have been the occasional result of the system, combined all that has ever been discovered in the science of government of material importance. The wisdom of the middle age and the modern, of the earliest political writers and those of a late day, have all laid down one maxim of government—that no unmixed form of government can satisfy the wants of a free and intelligent people; that unmixed democracy, for instance, must result in anarchy or military despotism; but that that form of government which combines in itself an inviolable monarchy and popular representation, with the incitements and inducements of an aristocracy—a working aristocracy, an aristocracy that takes its share of shot in the day of battle, of toil and labour, of care and anxiety in the time of peace: an aristocracy of talent open to the people, who by talent and desert make themselves worthy to enter it—is the highest result of political science, the highest effort of the

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mind of man. Let us see if the British form, apart from any details of its practice, combines in itself these three qualities. If we hold that authority and liberty are necessary to free government—that one is as necessary as the other—then we can apply the touchstone to this system, and see whether it be true to the mechanism on which it stands. The leading principle of the British system is that the head of the state is inviolable. It is necessary to the stability of any state that there should be an inviolable authority or tribunal somewhere, and under the British system that principle is recognised in the maxim that “the king can do no wrong” It is necessary in any free government that there should be some power—either the head of the state or some other power—beyond which an appeal does not lie, an influence not subject to the caprice or whim, or even to the just complaint of the private citizen, contending against the state. This is necessary to prevent reform becoming revolution, and to prevent local abuses becoming the source of general disorganisation. Having placed the principle of inviolability there, and the principle of privilege in the peerage, the founders of the British state took care at the same time that the peerage should not stagnate into a stagnant well, an intolerable pool of pretension and arrogance. They left the device of the House of Lords, so to speak, with one gable—they left it open to any of the people who might distinguish themselves in war or in peace, although they might be the children of paupers, (and some have been ennobled who were unable to tell who were their parents,) to enter and take their places on an equality with the proudest there, who dated their descent by centuries. This inclined plane by which the people might rise to higher position was left open; and this provision was made in order that the peerage should not stagnate into an exclusive caste which could never be added to, or subtracted from, except by the inevitable law of natural increase or decrease. Then as to the English people, there have been great abuses as to their representation in the Government; but since the Reform Bill there has been pretty general satisfaction on this point, and a feeling that all classes have their fair

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influence. This reform may be enlarged from time to time, in accordance with the spirit of the period; but a good proof that at present it meets general approbation and gives satisfaction, is that the party has not yet become by any means powerful that demands a more radical change.* Mr. McGee, having entered at some further length into a consideration of the elements that form the British system, went on to say that in forming the institutions of our country, we should compare this system with that which prevailed in the North American States, to ask ourselves which was the best. He observed that there was a strong democratic element in our society in Canada, but he felt satisfied from his own intercourse with the people that not three-tenths—he might say one-tenth, but he wished to give the widest possible limit—of them were what, by any stretch of the term, could be called democrats. He did not believe that this proportion existed, even if all who were really democrats at heart, but for various motives denied the designation, were to express their private convictions; and this included the whole, whether of French or other than French origin. Formerly the democratic spirit had been much more strongly exhibited in this country. We had made our Legislative Council elective, which in his opinion was much to be regretted. We had adopted to a certain extent the caucus and convention system of the United States, which even many Americans regarded as productive of so much evil, and which he thought had no advantage which should commend it to our approbation. We had also encouraged and sustained a democratic tone in our public press, and in some very conspicuous examples the press had a direct tendency to a low—almost the very lowest—tone of democratic opinion. He spoke of the public press as one who knew it well, and was proud of the rights it enjoyed. Fifteen of the best years of his life had been spent in almost every relation in which he could stand towards public journals. It was because it was desirable that the

* Here the reporter, for the sake of condensation, makes use of the third person, and so continues to the end.

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public press should occupy that position to which it was fairly entitled, that he deplored the exhibition occasionally of a species of levelling, and a spirit of disregard for private rights and private decorum. Now the press, it appeared to him, ought to be a profession, as well as law or medicine. If medicine was important, if the maker of pills occupied an important place in the community, how much more important was the maker of opinions? The physician might destroy his individual patient; the advocate pleading at the bar might utter a fallacy, which the jury could detect or the judge correct, or which the opposite counsel might expose—at worst he would utter his words to impalpable air which closed over and erased them, and there was nothing irrevocable in such words. But the man without a conscience behind a printing-press had a power of multiplying his errors to an alarming extent. If such a man might give out at midnight his lie in relation to public or private interests, he might go home, lay his head upon his pillow, and perhaps bid his God good-night; and before the morning dawned the powerful engine, toiling while he slept, would have multiplied his lie ten thousand-fold, and sent flying over the country, east, west, north, and south, littering the land with libels and filling it with a fulness of falsehood which neither truth nor justice could ever overtake. Of all the professions and callings of our time, there was no man, not even the ordained minister of God, who exercised such a fearful influence, whether for good or evil, in the perversion or formation of opinions, as the director of a powerful public press. And he was sorry to see, as he did not occasionally but frequently see in Canada, an imitation of the worst demagogic arts of the neighbouring States; for there might be a demagogic press, as well as a demagogic politician. He went on to say that not alone in the public press, but in other departments of public life, did he observe some of the evils of the American system—mentioning particularly the manifestly growing practice of lobbying being substituted for petitioning Parliament; but he expressed his conviction that the cause of constitutional government was gaining

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ground every day, and that if the representatives of the people were true to themselves and to the people, it would be shown that there never was a community sounder at the core than ours, or one more ready to make sacrifices for the institutions which they prized. Returning to a consideration of the probable future of Canada., he said it was for the people of the country, with the precedent of England and the example of the American republic before them, to decide which should be the prevailing character of our government—British constitutional or American democratic. for his part he preferred the British constitutional government, not because it was called British, but because it was the best; and he rejected the republican constitutional, not because it was called republican, but because it was not the best. He pointed out that we were now witnessing a great epoch in the New World’s history, and that the events daily transpiring around us should teach us not to rely too much upon our present position of secure independence, but rather to apprehend and be prepared for attempts against our liberties and against that system of government, which he was convinced was cherished by the great mass of the people of the Province. In conclusion, he said he left the subject with his audience. He had but sketched it in outline. He was embarrassed, not with the meagreness, but with the richness and fulness of the topic, and the amplitude of the material connected with it. He had already spoken in seven of the principal towns in Canada, and in the principal cities of the maritime Provinces, on the same text, and every time, of itself, it suggested something new. He only wished it had been presented in a measure better worthy of their attention: but at all events a subject more important and really deserving of contemplation, however treated, could not have been offered than “the Future of Canada”

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BISHOP’S COLLEGE, LENNOXVILLE, GE.

REMARKS MADE AT THE ANNUAL CONVOCATION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF BISHOP’S COLLEGE, LENNOXVILLE, C.E., JUNE 27TH, 1864.

Your Excellency, Mr. Chancellor, Ladies and Gentlemen:—I must confess that when I accepted the kind invitation of the Chancellor of Bishop’s College, and when yesterday I left Quebec, I had hoped that for a season at least, I had left the duties of a public speaker altogether behind me. Besides, Mr. Chancellor, though not wholly unaccustomed to being called to my feet at a moment’s notice elsewhere, this is an occasion and a presence in which I should shrink from anything like unconsidered or ill-considered speaking. It may, perhaps, be doubted, if it is ever admissible for a man to speak without some degree of previous preparation—unless, indeed, he is forced to speak, as he may be forced to strike, in sheer self-defence. You have put me, sir, in that attitude, but I beg you to consider at what a disadvantage. You ought to consider whether or not I had my oratorical wardrobe with me. You ought to have considered that my thesis might be in my trunk at the Sherbrooke station. You will permit me, however, now that I have broken the ice (a most refreshing metaphor in this sort of weather), to enlarge for a moment on two ideas which were referred to by His Excellency in another place, and which have been fructifying in my mind ever since. They led to two trains of thought, one of which included the consideration of the material inheritance, and the other the consideration of the mental inheritance of the young men of Canada. When I am told that this College has not yet completed its twentieth year; when I consider that it stands almost within the

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shadow of the ancient pines which bowed to the same blasts that impelled Cabot and Cartier on their courses when I reflect a moment on the riches which abound above the soil, in the soil, and under the soil of Canada, I cannot but think the merely material prospects of the young men of this country are prospects to be envied. And when I consider on the other hand our mental inheritance,—the conquering English speech, in which a man may travel round the world and find himself on no shore a stranger—when I think of the hived and hoarded wisdom of antiquity, made common to us all by the two magicians, moveable types and the steam press; when I remember that although much has been lost, a priceless amount has been saved from the wreck of ancient schools and societies, I must again congratulate the fortunate youthhood of these Provinces on their ample mental inheritance. One thing, also, ought not to be omitted; it is the glorious associations connected with our own home history. Patriotism will increase in Canada as its history is read. No province of any ancient or modern power—not even Gaul when it was a province of Rome—has had nobler Imperial names interwoven with its local events. Under the French kings Canada was the theatre of action for a whole series of men of first-rate reputation—men eminent for their energy, their fortitude, their courage, and their accomplishments, for all that constitutes and adorns civil and military reputations. Under our English sovereigns—from the days of Wolfe to those of the late lamented Lord Elgin (to speak only of the dead), our great names are interwoven with some of the best and highest passages in the annals of the Empire. We have not, therefore, a history simply provincial, interesting only to the Provincials themselves; but a history which forms an inseparable and conspicuous part in the annals of the best ages of the two first Empires in the world, France and England. I congratulate you, young gentlemen, natives of Canada, on that fact, and I trust you may years hence, at other convocations, when other dignitaries preside, and another age graduates, that you may be enabled to tell your successors how, even within your own time, a great

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step was taken towards the consolidation and advancement of British. North America in the good days when Lord Monck was Governor-General of Canada. Pardon me for having kept you so long, and be good enough to accept my most heartfelt thanks for your very kind and cordial reception.

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PROSPECTS OF THE UNION.

REMARKS AT A DINNER GIVEN TO THE CANADIAN PARLIAMENTARY EXCURSIONISTS TO THE MARITIME PROVINCES, AT THE DRILL-ROOM, HALIFAX, N.S.,* AUGUST 14TH, 1864.

Mr. McGee said: Let me say at the outset that the idea of this visit did not originate with the Canadians; the credit of the invitation and the merit of its conception are due to the citizens of St. John and of Halifax, headed, in the one case by Mr. Donaldson, and by your Mayor in the other. In the next place it would be unfair if I forgot to state that to the great railway of Canada and its public-spirited directors is also due the possibility of our carrying into execution the design of visiting these Provinces, in what I fear you must feel to be rather an invading host.

Men have different objects of ambition; some wish to be great orators, others artists, others to be distinguished in the naval or military services of their country; but to be a good companion and a good fellow-traveller is surely a worthy ambition. There are some of our fellow-travellers, and some also of the sons of Nova Scotia, whom we all desire to hear, and I shall, therefore, make my speech very short. Though I believe I am a good comrade, yet I must say that I am afraid, judging from the present attachment of some of our company to this place, they intend to settle here, or else to deprive your city of some of its fairest treasures. I name no names; I trust that having given

*On an invitation from the Board of Trade of St. John, and the Mayor and citizens of Halifax, about a hundred Canadian gentlemen, members of Parliament, merchants, editors, &c., had spent a month on a tour through New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

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this intimation of their design, you will take all proper precautions to preserve the peace of the city.

I will make one or two observations on secular matters, and first with respect to the public advantage to which this visit may be converted. I can say, as one of the persons representing one of the chambers of the Legislature of Canada, that we did not place any man under any political promise in asking him to join this excursion. There was no political design in the mind of those who sent the invitation or of those who accepted it. I am not myself here as a Minister of the Crown, but simply as a member of the Legislature; but I may say that I hope, and every person present must also hope, that before any great length of time passes we shall have a practical commentary on the intercolonial hospitality of which we are now the recipients. My fears are that we may move too slowly. We do move slowly in British America. In some respects it is our safety—in some cases inertia is an excellent trait of national character, and it might be excellent now if our neighbour’s house were not on fire; but being on fire, slowness in trying to prevent the dangerous element reaching us is nothing else than the act of a maniac. The man who can shut his eyes and blind his thoughts to the circumstances passing around him, is unworthy to have a place in the councils of these free Provinces. I repeat, I fear that we may move too slowly—that we may be overtaken by the coming Northern storm—that we may waste our time—that we may lose the golden moment of opportunity—which, it has been well said, is given to individuals and nations once in a lifetime, and which, if neglected, may never come again. I will add frankly, my hope for a better policy is in the character of the gentlemen who will meet at the proposed Charlottetown Conference. I don’t know how far it will go. It must be a preliminary meeting of course. If it places us a step backward, I shall be grievously disappointed; if it puts us a step forward, we shall be greatly encouraged. My hope is in the character of the gentlemen who will assemble,—in their desire to sink merely local questions. Who will oppose—who are now opposed to our union? Only those

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who have a vested interest in their own insignificance. For, what is it we are called upon to sacrifice? Nations have been called upon often to sacrifice much for the sake of religious and secular liberty—year after year, generation after generation, they have sent out the flower of their youth to die upon the battle-field in order that the patriœ might be saved. But what are we called upon to sacrifice? A few sectional prejudices, a few personal prejudices, some few questions of etiquette and precedence! These we are asked to place upon the altar of general union for the benefit of the whole. The metropolitan Power, with a wisdom which we might well emulate, has invited us to ask the union as a boon that we might have for the asking, Rest assured, if we remain long as fragments, we shall be lost; but let us be united, and we shall be as a rock which, unmoved itself, flings back the waves that may be dashed upon it by the storm. Let me appeal to the press and public men of these Provinces, as I would to those of Canada. Don’t aggravate the difficulties that lie ahead. Don’t magnify particular obstacles that stand in the way of the leading spirits of the different Colonies—as I must call those who have devised this Conference; for it is a Nova Scotia project, this idea of a Conference in respect to Union of the Colonies. I appeal to the press to back up those who have the moral courage to look the future in the face, and are endeavouring to protect these Provinces against the dangers that threaten them. I have had some experience of political life in America—both in the Northern States and in the Provinces—and I think I can prophecy—though it is a dangerous ground to venture on political prophecy that we shall never take a decennial census again, either as British Colonies or independent States, except we have an union of one kind or other.

Before I sit down you will permit me to say, in addition to what has been said by Monsieur Bureau who comes from Eastern Canada, and by Mr. McCrea who comes from the extreme west—from the borders of Lake St. Clair—that all of us, both those who are silent and those who speak, feel deeply the uniform kindness with which we

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have been treated since we have been here. I have been here before, and that was one reason why I was so anxious to come again. My friends have consulted me, and I have told them that this is the ordinary kindness of Nova Scotia; and now, I think I may say for them, one and all, that their ambition is to be classed henceforth among your friends. You will permit me on their part to return our heartfelt thanks. Prom their Excellencies the Lieutenant-Governor, the Vice-Admiral, his Grace the Archbishop—from all classes of the citizens of Halifax, there has been nothing but one continued series of kindnesses since we landed here. That kindness was not merely local, it met us beyond the borders of the Province—in the persons of our friends, Mr. Pryor, Mr. Coleman, and Mr. Wier. They took the trouble to pass the bounds of this Province to meet us, and therefore I think I may say your hospitalities surpass all bounds. Mr. McGee concluded by proposing the health of the Mayor and citizens of “Halifax the hospitable.”

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“SOME OBJECTIONS TO A CONFEDERATION OF THE PROVINCES CONSIDERED.”

ADDRESS DELIVERED AT TEMPFRANCE HALL, HALIFAX, N.S., AUGUST 16TH, 1864.

Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen: Those whose opinions I have every reason to receive with deference,— those who, in this city, have ever been my kind friends, and who hold distinguished places among its citizens have been pleased to say that an address on the subject which has been announced to you would be a useful and almost a necessary close to the Intercolonial festivities of the last fortnight. I have cheerfully yielded my opinion to theirs, and I am therefore to address you, on the subject announced— “Some Objections to a Confederation of the Provinces considered.”

In the first place, Ladies and Gentlemen, I must solicit your kind consideration for whatever you may find defective in the treatment of a subject, so limited even as this is. The festivities of which we, from Canada, have been the objects for several days past, were not, as you may well imagine, the best possible preparation for the discussion of the most important public question ever submitted to the people of these Provinces. I should, I am free to own, have liked more time for uninterrupted reflection, but the commands laid on me were irresistible, and I am here, on short notice, to do the best in my power.

I shall come at once, with your leave, to the matter in hand—the much-talked-of Confederation. The proposal though not very new is yet not at all definite; it is therefore liable to all sorts of conjecture; all sorts of notions are afloat about it, and will continue to be afloat until the

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scheme acquires something like consistency, when we may fairly look for two great natural parties, Unionists and anti-Unionists, ranging themselves on opposite sides of the broad field which will then be fairly open for our discussion.

At the outset I must observe upon the danger we all run of attaching some arbitrary existing meaning to the terra “Confederation” itself. Of confederations there may be, and there have been, as many varieties as of consolidated monarchies. England is a monarchy—so is Russia; but how unlike! The Netherlands were a confederacy, with an hereditary head; Switzerland is a confederacy without any permanent head, hereditary or elective; the neighbouring States are a confederacy, with an elective head, supreme for his time over the army and navy and the administration of affairs. It is not absolutely necessary that our British American Confederacy—if it should be called into existence—should reproduce the American, the Swiss, or the Dutch model; we ought to be able—I trust our leading men are able—to strike out a new creation from the same fruitful source of free governments, to plant amongst us a new variety of the same famous stock, suited to our soil and congenial to our climate. Why should they not? What are the principal objections which have so far developed themselves? Two or three of the chief I will endeavour to state fairly and discuss fairly, and it will be for you to decide with what effect, for I believe I need hardly say to you, I am a friend and earnest advocate of a strong and speedy Confederation.

I. The first objection winch meets one in society is very naturally this—-the inherent weakness of Confederacies themselves, as illustrated in the failure of the South American and the disruption of the North American Confederacies. It must be admitted that the South American Confederacies were short-lived—were in fact mere abortions—that they died almost as soon as their existence was proclaimed; it must be confessed, too, that the great Northern Confederacy has been driven to submit to a dictator at the real presence of domestic danger; but, as I said before, Confederacies

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are of many kinds, and the question, therefore, is many-sided.

Reasoning after the fact, it is easy to be wise, and reasoning on a familiar case, it is easy to be eloquent. The example of the Northern American States which, less than a century ago, were “sister colonies” of Nova Scotia and Canada, may serve as a guide as well as a warning to us. For the present purpose we will pass over the Spanish Republics, where there has been a failure of civilisation rather than a failure of the federal system, and we will consider only the familiar example of the States. They broke away forcibly from the body of the Empire,—I will not say without justification; but having broken away, the generation that succeeded this violent separation set their hearts upon making their society as unlike Europe as possible. Now, I will not pretend to say that we should desire to mould America—even if it were possible, which it is not’—on the forms of Europe,—but I will venture to allege that Europe, in its positive Christianity, in its ancient learning, in its manners, and in its conservatism, presents to America many subjects for study, for imitation, and for admiration. When, therefore, the American Democrat of our century said in his heart, “I will make my country as unlike the rest of Christendom as I can,” he said a vain and foolish thing, and his vanity and folly have brought their own punishment. Every one, of course, has his theory as to the disruption of that Confederacy, and you would probably like to hear my theory. Well, it is this: Every constitution we have any record of, placed the principle of infallibility, at least the seat of absolute last resort,—somewhere. In England, it is in the Queen in Council; in the United States, it was placed in the Supreme Court. When, by their local legislation, a large portion of the States themselves rejected the doctrine of the infallibility, the inviolability of their Supreme Court, when they broke down the very shrine of their constitution, the Government, with or without civil war, was overset. Now, supposing with this example before our eyes we were to form a Confederation, why should we invite at a future day a like

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catastrophe? Why not rather engraft into our system the essentially British principle of investing with inviolability the executive head of the State,—the Viceroy, Duke, or Prince, who might be selected to rule over us? It is of the nature of an executive to be self-protective, and in according such a head all necessary powers, we but follow Nature,—a good guide, when well understood. I account for the failure of the American system to protect itself from domestic enemies, except by unconstitutional means, by the peculiar distribution and limitation of powers under that system,—not from the mere fact of its being a confederated rather than a consolidated Government.—But there is no possible compulsion upon us to make a similar distribution of powers. On the contrary, enlightened as we have been by late events, the natural result would be a Confederacy framed on different principles, in some respects, from the Republican Union.

II. Another objection commonly urged against a union of these Provinces is the heavy public debt of Canada. It is true we owe above $67,000,000; but we are nearly if not quite 3,000,000 people; the assessed value of our real property alone exceeds $400,000,000; our revenue this year, if I am well informed, will considerably exceed our expenditure; the average per head of our debt does not exceed yours in Nova Scotia, for your population; while half the millions we owe are solidly represented by our great public works, stretching from Lake Huron to the borders of New Brunswick. Though our debt is large, I do not admit that the burthens it imposes are unbearable, while I hope to show you on the other hand that the inducements we offer you to unite with us are neither specious nor inconsiderable. Under a common tariff we would offer you a three-million market; under the more intimate commercial system thus established we would offer to your young men connections and employments which no isolated Province can now afford them; through us you would secure your share in the future of that great North-western territory which Lord Sterling estimated capable of sustaining a population of 20,000,000 of souls. These are material

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inducements to union; but there is one of a nature rather less tangible, which yet I hold to be most important. As an element of our common security—as a contribution towards our mutual defence—it is impossible to attach too much importance to the moral effect of our union. Both on ourselves and on our neighbours the mere fact of our being united for purposes of defence would have a most salutary effect, and might go a long way to avert the attempts which might be made, with a greater prospect of success, against our estranged and isolated communities. As it is, we are bound up in each other’s fate without being allied for each other’s help—we are associated in danger, but not in preparation. If, therefore, I add the consideration of our mutual defence to the more material considerations of internal free trade, as an inducement to your union with Canada, I feel confident I am doing my duty at once to Canada and the Maritime Provinces.

III. A third objection arises from the vast extent of country which it is proposed to bring, for general purposes, under one general Government. I do not underrate the difficulties arising from the straggling and outstretched nature of our territory. But modern science has fortunately provided us a remedy against this evil—in steam communication. This invaluable means of communication is, of itself, a reason for union, since we cannot absolutely command its good offices without clubbing our capital. It is not creditable to any of us, nor is it worthy of the enterprise of the Empire to reflect, that if a Canadian wishes, for example, to visit the North-west, he must be indebted to an American enterprise, and pay tribute to an American route; while if he wishes to visit these Provinces, he must, as we all have done, be under .the same necessity of travelling over American soil, and sailing on American waters, to meet his fellow-subjects on the Atlantic! This is a state of things which ought not to be allowed to continue, and which I am persuaded will not be allowed, if Mr. Fleming’s Intercolonial Survey should prove, as I have reason to believe it will prove,—that the long-desired highway can be built for a reasonable sum such as these Provinces can shoulder. Upon the feasibility of that road,

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I admit, the best answer to this objection depends,—an answer I will not anticipate; but if it should be favourable, I beg, gentlemen, you will observe, that it brings even the most distant constituencies of British America as near to each other, in time, as the Scottish constituencies were to London in the last century, or as the Irish constituencies were, fifty years ago, to the same centre of authority.

You will permit me now to refer to the general impression of many other difficulties in the way of. confederation. I shall not go in detail into the discussion of these difficulties, but I will simply ask, as one of my Canadian colleagues did on a critical occasion, “What are statesmen for, if not to remove difficulties?” I have never heard—I do not think you have ever heard—of any state being founded or enlarged, or delivered from danger, except by surmounting difficulties. “But how to do it?” Some one will ask, “What is your plan?” “What do you propose?” I reply, for the hundredth time, here and elsewhere, that I do not presume to answer questions of this magnitude on my individual responsibility. I would proceed as our ancestors always proceeded, in such cases, by taking the sensus communis, with the sanction of the Crown, and I would not fear for the adequacy of the answer after common consultation.

There will, Mr. Mayor and Gentlemen, rest assured, be more than one Conference, before this momentous negotiation can be either completed or abandoned. What we want for the discussion of all the main particulars is our best men, irrespective of their party antecedents. The cry of British America at this hour should be “Men! More men!” not merely an increase of number, but an increase in quality as well as in quantity. Let me illustrate what I mean, by a remote allusion. Alcæus, who, for the lofty truths he uttered, and the music of his utterance, was called ” the divine” taught a free nation of antiquity, which, from smaller beginnings than ours, rose to fill a first place in history, that it was not in broad-armed navies, nor in battlemented walls, that the greatness of a state consisted, but in men, high-minded and brave, who knew their

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rights, and how to preserve them. Here, where we are now assembled, another form of the same thought presents itself to me: time was, when your noble harbour, the pride and boast of all British America, was burthened only by the transitory shadows of the cloud and the canoe, where now we see such broad-armed navies ride as never were dreamt of by the divine Alcæus. Its depths were as fruitful then as now—its tides as constant—its shores as sheltering; but the civilised man has succeeded to the savage, and even the face of Nature itself has changed, under the filial offices of her darling child—the European man. As in material triumphs, so it may be in political. Give us men—high-minded men—men who know their rights, and how to secure them—and we will change the moral and political aspect of British America as greatly and as beneficially as the physical aspect of the once barbarous Chebucto has been changed, since the foundation of the good city of Halifax.

And now, Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen, I have, however imperfectly, complied with the wishes of many valued friends, who desired that I should say a few parting words to you on this subject. By this time to-morrow the waters of the Bay of Fundy will be between our kind friends and us;—before the end of the week, if it please God, we shall be back again in our Canadian homes, recounting the pleasant adventures we have had here and in New Brunswick. Will you permit me, before taking my leave, to utter one last word of appeal to the press and public of these Maritime Provinces? Before I may be able to visit you again, it is possible, nay it is probable, the fate of British America, for all time to come, will be decided. So certain am I that the present moment is decisive of our fate—so certain that elements hostile to our future existence as free, but not democratic States, are in active existence—so assured do I feel that the men who now sway our several councils must save or sacrifice our future fortune—that once more I would beseech all to whom my feeble voice may reach, not to embarrass this great discussion by minor issues. On the contrary, as was said of old, “a great

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spirit befitteth a great fortune.” I trust our press and our public men will exhibit now, in the crisis of our destiny, such a spirit, and that the Great Ruler of all things may, in His infinite wisdom, dispose the hearts of our statesmen to seek above all the true good of the people they govern, and to sink out of sight everything trivial and temporary, personal and mercenary, for the sake, the sole sake, of our glorious British America—for the sake of justice, and peace, and freedom, and Christian civilisation. If, in conclusion (said the hon. gentleman)—if we are indeed of the race who began that work of civilisation twenty centuries ago in the British Isles, in a soil originally so unfavourable, with implements so inferior to what we now possess, and who from such beginnings have worked out such stupendous results—if we are worthy to represent that race—then we shall repeat on a larger scale, commensurate with the largeness of the basis on which we are to raise our structure, the constitutional triumphs of that race, in reconciling liberty with law, in domesticating justice with freedom, in crowning a fair and venerable authority by the voice and hand of an intelligent, self-governed population.

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THE CAUSE OF THE QUEBEC CONFERENCE.

SPEECH AT THE DÉJEÛNER GIVEN TO THE MEMBERS OF THE QUEBEC CONFERENCE, AT MONTREAL, OCTOBER 29TH, 1864.

Mr. McGee said lie had no intention at that late hour, and after their long sitting in Conference that afternoon, to detain them. When they were in the Lower Provinces their hospitable entertainers, many of whom they were glad to see to-night, were, on all occasions, pleased to hear Canadians speak and themselves to listen. He thought, as far as he (Mr. McGee) was concerned, he would best discharge his duty in showing himself a good host by being a good listener. However, as the Canadian politician who earliest made the acquaintance of some of the gentlemen now here, as one who had been, in an humble way, a pioneer of this gathering of the British North American family, he could not, as the only one of the members for Montreal present at this moment, who had not spoken, allow the meeting to separate without giving his hearty endorsement to every word of welcome addressed from the chair and by the various speakers to their friends from the coast Colonies. They were welcome to Canadians as fellow-subjects long estranged from them, and now, he hoped, about to be united. They were welcome to Canadians on their own account, as accomplished gentlemen, and of their accomplishments and powers the meeting had had this evening some evidence. They were still more welcome to Canada on account of the colonies of Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and of the communities there which they represented. As far as he was concerned, he would make no mystery of what brought them here, or of the business with which they were en-

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gaged. They were doubly welcome, to himself, as one of the representatives of the first city of British North America, for the work of union in which they were now engaged. He was told that some of the citizens had often asked, Why this Conference at Quebec with closed doors? Why all this mystery; why this gathering together from the ends of British America of all the leading public men? Why were the several Governors of the Provinces eastward deprived of the benefit of the advice of their responsible advisers, that they should be thus gathered together at Quebec holding close council together? Parties said they elected these gentlemen to administer the government and laws as they exist, and not to frame new constitutions. Why, it was asked, had these gentlemen come here to sketch out, as was reported, the lines of a new constitution? If asked the reason why, he would give the reason in one word, the same which the visitor to St. Paul’s was called upon to read on searching for the monument of Sir Christopher Wren—circumspice! Look around, and they would see the reasons for this gathering. Look at the valleys of Virginia, at the uplands of Georgia; look around in this age of earthquake and political perturbation in North America. Look at the men in these Provinces who were called its statesmen, whom Great Britain had warned solemnly and repeatedly through the press and Parliament, and by direct official notification, that if the Provincials did not provide adequately for the exigencies of their present new condition, England would hold herself blameless for the consequences. Why, she had given us all warning that things could not go on in future as in the past. If they wanted to see reasons for the present Conference let them look across the border, and they would find reasons as thick as blackberries why they should meet as they did and engage in the work which had for some time occupied them. It was now necessary, having gone so far, that they should have with them the cordial and united support of the public opinion and the public voice of the great city of Montreal, the heart and brain of Canada. He trusted, too, they would have the support of the majority of

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all the intelligent people of Canada, of whatever origin, creed, or race. This was not a time for questions about creeds, or origins, or races, but a time either to save or ruin British North America. If its fate were not decided within this decade by its own act, in one sense assuredly it would be, and perhaps not to their satisfaction. If the thirty-three delegates had presumed to go into the Chamber in Quebec to sketch an outline to be submitted to Her Majesty in Council and the Imperial Parliament, before which submission it was not right it should be submitted in any kind of detail to the people of these Provinces—if they had gone into that room in a time of profound peace to sketch a new basis of constitution for these Provinces—they found their justification in the circumstances, in the peculiar position, in which the British American Colonies stood towards Republican North America, and in the intimations, official and unofficial, respecting our duties as to self-defence, conveyed to us for the last three years from the most undoubted sources—from the Government of the Empire itself. The Conference had acted, not in an empirical spirit—they had not gone into Council to invent any new system of Government, but had entered it with a reverent spirit to consult the oracles of the history of their race. They had gone there to build, if they built at all, on the old foundations. They desired not to build an edifice with stucco front and lath and plaster continuations, but a constitutional edifice upon a basis of solid British masonry, solid as the foundation of the Eddystone Lighthouse, which would bear the whole force of the democratic winds and waves, and the corroding political atmosphere of the New World, and which they hoped would stand for ages, a vindication of the solidity of their institutions and of the legitimacy of their origin. In their (the British N. A.) political architecture, he trusted they would vindicate the honour of the races from which they sprung, the Norman, the Saxon, the Celt, the homely, vigorous, fearless Scandinavian, and all the races that had gone to make up the great concrete called the population of the British Empire. He trusted that the British N. A. political architecture

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would not be a plagiarism of republicanism, and not fulfil the predictions so freely showered upon them by some of the New York journals, that the proposed union would be simply democracy in disguise; but that we should not only acknowledge the monarchical principle, but construct an edifice with British connection as the corner-stone, and freedom as the main wall of the structure; and make the people feel their freedom was connected with a due respect for authority and the throne, as well as for those who represented here authority and the throne. In answer to the well-wishing editor of the New York Albion, who had cautioned Canadians against premature rejoicings over the degree of success they had attained, as they had done with regard to the laying of the Atlantic telegraph cable a few years ago, he (Mr. McGee) would venture to assure the editor they had not been experimenting and sounding out of their depth as those who laid the cable did. The members of the Conference had not been together so far without having a fair indication of what each other’s opinions and sentiments were. They wanted no electrical stimulus from England, having only to touch Magna Charta and the Bill of Eights to receive all the inspiration or impulse they wanted in their present labours. So long as they had that electrical inspiration in their libraries, at their sides, they would always know what was thought in England of the work they had been doing at Quebec. In going back to their constituents, he said to their honoured guests, not as an Upper Canadian or as a Lower Canadian, for he had always said the Province line was abolished before he came to Canada, and if it was never drawn again till he drew it, either socially, politically, or any other way, it would remain undrawn long enough—he said to them, not simply as a citizen or representative of Montreal, nor even as an inhabitant of Canada, but as one who desired, and had laboured, in his humble way, to bring about this very spectacle which they to-night witnessed—he would say fearlessly and unreservedly on the part of Canada, that Canada, he firmly believed, sought this alliance, not from mercenary motives, but from a sentiment of common de-

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fence. If they, on their part, came into this union, as lie thought they would, well dowered and in such a manner that no one of the partners could ever upbraid them with their having come in a subordinate position—they could say that if Canada desired this union, which he believed she did, although the public mind of the country was not yet fully formed upon the subject, she went into it for no selfish, small, or mercenary purpose; and they could say for the public intelligence of Canada, and especially for the city of Montreal, that we were year by year, and every year, becoming more enlarged and liberalised in our views; that we were becoming less angry and hostile as sects and classes; that we were becoming better friends, and that now all men agreed that we could go where we liked on Sunday, or nowhere at all, if we liked that better; but that, at all events, on week-days, in our business and social relations, we bore ourselves as one people, with one heart and mind, for the commonweal. They could say that in Canada religious bigotry was at a discount; and if they wished for illustration, he could point his finger and show where the bigot had withered on his stalk, and where once he had a great show of power and influence, now were “none so poor as do him reverence.” Bigots of all kinds, Catholic as well as Protestant; bigots of all classes, on all sides; bigots of race, who believed that no good could come out of the Nazareth of any other origin but their own,—their day of small things—God knew how small—had passed for ever in Canada. Every man was willing to respect every other man’s convictions. We had, at least, reached that degree of self-government, and shown ourselves to be in the best sense civil and religious freemen, fit for self-government, by allowing every man of every creed and sect and race to manage his own affairs in his own way, and to wash his own dirty linen in his own back-yard, so that it did not trouble the neighbours or disturb the peace of the community. He thought their guests from below might assure their neighbours when they returned, that if they united with us they would find all that in Canada—religious combined with political liberty. He was sorry they had been

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so long confined in the political laboratory at Quebec that they would not have time before the necessities of the season compelled them to return to their homes to see what went to make up this great Province—great in resources, great in extent, but greater still in the promise it seemed to hold out, that here in British North America we should establish true freedom—not freedom fair without but foul within, but that true freedom that gave every man his private and personal rights, consistent with the private and personal rights of others. They might say to their constituents, that if Canada went into this union she went into it mainly with a view to promote the common prosperity, to secure the common safety, and to establish the common liberties of all British North America.

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GROWTH OF MONTREAL, AND ITS REQUIREMENTS.

A FEW REMARKS TO THE MONTREAL CALEDONIAN SOCIETY, OCTOBER 30TH, 1863.

Mr. McGee, after some humorous remarks in relation to the hall (the “Crystal Palace”), said: I quite agree with my honourable friend, Mr. Ferrier, that meetings of this description are fit subjects for congratulation; for surely nothing can be more agreeable than to see large assemblies conducted with the utmost order—than to see Care forget its burthen, and Old Age grow young as the night wanes on, and Memory going back to our earliest and happiest recollections, playing the physician’s rather than the tormentor’s part. I have myself seldom missed attending any of these secular festivals, and I cannot feel that an evening is thrown away when it is spent in observing and in sharing the recreations of large classes of our fellow-citizens. The character of our countrymen of French origin for gaiety of heart is proverbial throughout America, and I cannot, for my part, see any reason why, on an occasion, a Scotchman or an Irishman may not be as gay as a Frenchman. Lower Canada is remarkable for many things—for long winters, sudden springs, and rapid vegetation,—long may it be spoken of also as the home of a happy and united people, in whatever language they may meet to exchange their congratulations. It is well for us to know, as we now do for certain, that there is gold on the Chaudière and antimony on Lake Nicolet, but it is even better still to feel, as I do standing here to-night, that there is a growing feeling of brotherhood among our whole population—that there is a sense of security and a day-spring of gladness in the

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hearts of our people. I speak now especially of Montreal, in the social economy of which the Caledonian Society plays an important part, and might be made to perform even a more important part. This Society provides its members during the summer months with free admission to the gymnasium of our deserving townsman, Mr. Guilbault, and, if but for this privilege alone, I wonder there should be a young Scotsman in the city who does not belong to it. If all those who might and ought to be were members of the Society, I have no doubt that in other directions, as well as works of charity and athletic exercises, the usefulness of the Society would be co-extensive with the city. All the sister societies represented on this platform ought to grow as the city grows, and we are apt to boast that no city on the Continent is growing more steadily and solidly than Montreal. I should wish for my part to live to see it extend from Hochelaga to Lachine, but not simply to idolise its vast dimensions. I prefer the gods of the Greeks, nearly of human size, to the gigantic gods of Assyria; and a city is no more worshipful for the number of acres it covers—or the size of its cemeteries—than an idol from Nineveh for being forty feet high. I would desire to see our city (for its character is in the crucible) provide itself with all possible appliances of physical and mental culture, as well as grain elevators and street railways. With 120,000 inhabitants, an opera house, a public library, and a gallery of art ought very soon be within our means, for without books, music, and pictures, neither the eye, nor the ear, nor the understanding of man is of much more value to civilisation than the senses of dead generations are to the people of the living age. Pardon me, Mr. President, for speaking so serious a speech at your festival, but we have had our laugh both at the “dippers” and the “snappers,” and I know that a plea for blending the utile with the dulce is never out of place in a society of Scotsmen. A word or two now upon the modern uses of this festival of Hallowe’en, which Burns has immortalised in verse, and Maclise upon canvas. The ancient superstitious rites which the bard has celebrated have vanished

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one by one out of the by-ways even of the old world; but the old, good, kindly, neighbourly feeling—the old hereditary humour, the old love of social enjoyment—remain, I hope, unimpaired and unchanged. The original of the scene that Burns drew was a Scottish peasant cottage of the middle of the last century—

“Amang the bonnie winding banks,
Where Doon rins, whimplin, clear,
Where Bruce ance ruled the martial ranks
An’ shook his Carrick spear.”

While the scene we witness here to-night, which owes so much to the spell of his genius, is contained within what we are apt to call, a little magniloquently, our “Crystal Palace,” without any of the romantic surroundings or historical associations of the original. But I trust we are not less happy in our lot here, in the new country in which that lot has been cast, than were the “merry, friendly, kintra folk” whose pranks and joys he so heartily approved.

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THE GERMANS IN CANADA.

ADDRESS TO THE GERMAN SOCIETY, CITY CONCERT HALL, MONTREAL, DECEMBER 7TH, 1864.

Mr. McGee said: Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,—My friend Mr. Lomer has been kind enough to devolve upon me the principal part of the duty of addressing you, according to an established local custom in Montreal on these occasions. He has spoken for himself and for the German Society; and while I fully agree with all he has said as to the importance of such a society for the protection of the immigrant and the promotion of German interests generally—while I cordially concur in the satisfaction he has expressed at the excellent understanding which exists among all our national societies (and long may that good feeling continue)—I am sure he will allow me to say that, so far as I am informed, I consider the Grand Trunk Company acted well and wisely in voluntarily settling, instead of litigating, all the claims that could be brought against them arising out of the recent deplorable accident to German immigrants at Belœil.* I think the German and other societies also did well in concurring in that settlement. I think it was well they were present, acting in concert, and I must again express my sincere hope that their cordial good understanding may always continue. While we see and deplore in the chief city of Upper Canada, Toronto, hostile societies organised and, it is said, armed against each other, striving, as it would appear, who should do most to disturb and exasperate

*By the opening of the drawbridge at Belœil, in which some ninety lives of German immigrants had been sacrificed.

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each other, let it still be our pride and boast that our Montreal societies, of whatever origin or whatever religion, are rivals only in acts of benevolence and efforts at improvement. The firmness and forbearance of a few individuals on both sides might have given Toronto the same cheering tale to tell that we have here; and I must say, for my own part, that those in Toronto who have most influence with their fellow-citizens, and who allow a great city like that to drift into a chronic state of strife and hatred, have much to answer for. In this city we have had and now have, and always must have, our differences; but I am quite sure that any armed combination against any portion of our fellow-citizens, any combination against private or associated rights, and therefore against the law of the land, could, in the present temper of Montreal, be put down in forty-eight hours. I wish it were so in Toronto. I hope it may yet be so. It ought to be so; and if the men of real influence in Toronto said the word, it would be so. You will allow me also, I hope, to express my acknowledgments to Professor Simon, whose musical accomplishments I have long been familiar with, for the surprise he has given me in introducing some old words of mine to his exquisite music, and to Herr Brandt, for the true feeling and taste with which (if I may be permitted to say so) he has rendered both words and music. I turn now to another topic, the proper topic of the evening—the German Society of Montreal, or rather the Germans in Canada. I have enjoyed the warm, whole-hearted hospitality of the chief German settlement in Canada, in the county of Waterloo, when they were represented by my able and truly liberal-minded countryman, the Hon. Mr. Foley, who, I regret to say, is no longer in public life in this country. I have seen the flourishing German settlements of the United States, from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin, and knowing the universal character of those settlers—their patient industry, their peaceable demeanour, their power of endurance, and their love of freedom—I have naturally desired to see a large increase of German immigration to this country. The Fatherland, with its fifty

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millions, must, in the future as in the past, throw off a large annual efflux of its hardy and docile population. Whether that efflux finds its way to the Ocean by the Elbe or the Oder, or the Rhine, from north or south or centre—from Catholic States or Protestant—I only wish we could attract them to our shores, and keep them here, at something like the same rate as they do in the United States. And why do we not? Because, in the first place, the name of Canada is not as familiar to the Germans at home as the larger and louder sounding name of America; because at Hamburg and Bremen, at Antwerp and Amsterdam, the name of Montreal is not as familiar as the name of New York. And we shall continue in a great degree to labour under this disadvantage until the great work in which our public men have recently been engaged—the union of all British America—is successfully accomplished. Then British America will be large enough; its field of labour will be diversified enough; its name will sound distinctly enough in the Old World’s ear, to divide with the United States the attention of the emigrating classes all over Germany. One other thing we want, to bring about this result, and that is a fair and generous estimate of the German mind and the German character. A Celt myself, I should be the last man living to admit an innate inferiority in the Celtic race to any other; but I admit disparity, dissimilar gifts, and dissimilar powers. I hope I am sufficiently a citizen of the world to see and acknowledge the strong points of the German character, to admit the great services rendered by them in art and letters—in practical as well as in speculative science—to the rest of the world. Nothing used to astonish me more in the United States than the popular error that, to use the popular phrase, “the Dutch” were an unintellectual people. It used to remind me of the old story of the practical joke played off early in the last century, by a Prince of Würtemberg upon his acquaintances in Venice, while Venice was yet proud and free of Austria, who had indulged very freely in disparaging his countrymen. He invited them to supper, and afterwards to a theatrical entertainment. This

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piece, got up for the occasion, represented a street in Venice, with a solitary lamp burning at a door. The ghost of Cicero was discovered flitting in and out of the shadows, when a German traveller entered, and endeavoured to get admittance to the lighted house. Tailing to get in, he pulled out his watch to learn the hour; he then took out a printed book and began to read by the lamp; till, at last, becoming impatient, he drew his pistol and fired in the air to awaken the Italians. At this the ghost of Cicero, who had watched all the German’s movements, asked for explanations, which were given; and then Cicero demanded, if the barbarians of the north had, since his age, invented the timepiece, printing, and gunpowder, what had the Italians invented? And at this point a Savoyard entered on the scene, crying out, “Heckles! Heckles! Heckles!” This was a very proper rebuke to the arrogance of that particular company, though it was far from just to the Italians as a people. If we are to succeed in forming a new Confederation of the North, in establishing a free and united Monarchy upon the basis of these separated Provinces, we shall only do so by being just to all men, of every origin, speech, and creed, who may desire to come amongst us, to aid in that great work. The general idea of a Confederate government is already familiar to the German mind, from your experience in Switzerland and the Netherlands, and the German Confederation, proper—though the last one is rather a league than a union—a Staatenbunde than a Bundesstaat. It is an idea which combines what the Germans have always cherished—freedom, with what they have always striven for—unity. Not only by its grandeur and prestige but by its security, is it well calculated to attract and interest a thoughtful people, whose migrations, judging from the fruitfulness of the stock, are as yet far from the end. If we may infer the part they are destined to play from the part they have played, then we could wish our country no better gift, than a large infusion of the Germanic element. On this point, if you will allow me (as to the past), I will refer to one of the greatest names of our times, the late Dr. Arnold of

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Rugby, one of the most thorough and most fearless readers of history since Niebuhr’s death. In his inaugural address as Professor of Modern History at Oxford, delivered in 1841, Dr. Arnold showed that Christendom in the fourth century possessed all the intellectual treasures of Greece, all the political wisdom of Rome, and all the ethics of Christianity, but it wanted the German element; that the Middle ages bore an undoubted German character; that the influence of this element was still felt, and would long continue to be felt, “for good or for evil, in almost every country in the civilised world.” As we pretend in British America to belong to the civilised world, and as I believe that influence which Dr. Arnold describes would be for good, I repeat my hope and expectation, that the new era in our internal government may prove a new source of attraction to draw and to settle large numbers of Germans in our future Confederacy. Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, I will not dwell further on these topics, because though they are above all party politics, still I do not wish to obtrude even general politics on any occasion not specially set apart for such discussions. I thank you most gratefully for your very cordial reception, and I congratulate myself on being in the city, and being able to be present at and to take part in this first public festival of the German Society of Montreal. You have made a good beginning, gentlemen, and I can only say, what we all shall be saying two or three weeks from now, that I wish you, from my heart, “many happy returns” of your benevolent festival.

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SPEECH AT COOKSHIKE, COUNTY OF COMPTON, DECEMBER 22, 1864.

ON THE OCCASION OF A PUBLIC DINNER TO MR. J. H. POPE, MEMBER FOR COMPTON.

Hon. Mr. McGee said: Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, I promised my respected friend, your county member, Mr. Pope, to meet him at the recent public dinner given to my colleague, Mr. Gait, at Sherbrooke, and to come over here with him to Compton to speak to you on the subject of British-American Union. I was, greatly to my regret, prevented, by a sudden and sharp illness, from being present at the Sherbrooke dinner; for there is no public man in Canada whose services to the Union deserve all honourable acknowledgment more than Mr. Gait; and there is no place in the country I had rather discuss this question than in ” the Eastern Townships.”* I am here to make good your member’s promise in my behalf, and I am deeply thankful that I am able to be here, and have still a voice to raise in behalf of this cause. This is a border county—it is a county actually undergoing colonisation—it is the home of a mixed people, various in origin, in language, and in creed; and, therefore, a very fit place to consider propositions which must interest men of all languages, origins, and creeds, which involve all our future relations among ourselves and with our neighbours, internal and external. So far as I can help it, gentlemen, I will not trouble you with what has been said before by my col-

*The ” Eastern Townships ” form that portion of Lower Canada lying between Montreal and the American line. They were settled by “Townships,” not by “Parishes,” as in French-speaking Lower Canada.

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leagues in the government at other meetings, but I will endeavour to give you my own views on the nature of the constitutional developments which have been projected by the late Colonial Conferences, to show on what principle the project stands, to illustrate by comparison and contrast the merits of our design, and to show, in closing, its special adaptability to our present situation as British American Provincial communities.

At the start I cannot but congratulate the people of all the Provinces on the fortunate conjunction of circumstances which makes this the best possible time for a searching examination and a thorough overhauling of our political system. When I was in the Maritime Provinces last summer—when the Conferences were still a thing to come—I appealed on behalf of the project to the press and the public there, that it should not be prejudged, and I must say I think a very great degree of forbearance and good feeling was manifested in this respect. But I should be sorry, speaking for myself, now that the stage of intelligent discussion has been reached, now that we have got something before us to discuss, that such a vast scheme should pass, if that were possible, sub silentio. So far from deprecating discussion now, I should welcome it, for there could not be, there never can be, a more propitious time for such a discussion than the present Under the mild sway of a Sovereign, whose reign is coincident with responsible government in these colonies—a sovereign whose personal virtues have rendered monarchical principles respectable even to those who prefer abstractly the republican system—with peace and prosperity at present within our own borders—we are called on to consider what further constitutional safeguards we need to carry us on for the future in the same path of peaceable progression.

And never, surely, gentlemen, did the wide field of American public life present so busy and so instructive a prospect to the thoughtful observer as in this same good year of grace, 1864. Overlooking all minor details, what do we find—the one prevailing and all but universal characteristic of American politics in those days? Is it not that “Union ” is at this moment throughout the entire new

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world the mot d’ordre of States and statesmen? If we look to the far South, we perceive a Congress of Central American States endeavouring to recover their lost unity; if we draw down to Mexico, we perceive her new Emperor endeavouring to establish his throne upon the basis of union; if we come farther north, we find eleven States battling for a new Union, and twenty-five on the other side battling to restore the old Union. The New World has evidently had new lights, and all its States and statesmen have at last discovered that liberty without unity is like rain in the desert, or rain upon granite—it produces nothing, it sustains nothing, it profiteth nothing. Prom the bitter experience. of the past, the Confederate States have seen the wisdom, among other things, of giving their ministers seats in Congress, and extending the tenure of executive office fifty per cent, beyond the old United States period. From bitter experience, also, the most enlightened, and what we may consider the most patriotic among the Mexicans, desiring to establish the inviolability of their executive as the foundation of all stable government, have not hesitated to import, not “a little British Prince,” as I have been accused of proposing, but an Austrian Archduke, a descendant of their ancient kings, as a tonic to their shattered constitution. Now, gentlemen, all this American experience, Northern, Southern, and Central, is as accessible to us as to the electors of Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Davis, or the subjects of the Emperor Maximilian: it lies before us, an open volume, and invites us to well read, and mark, and digest its contents. It was with a view to contribute my mite at the present stage of the discussion, that I accepted Mr. Pope’s kind invitation, and am now here to offer you as clear a view as I can put into words, of the process of reasoning and observation by which those who composed the late Conferences arrived at the decisions at which they have arrived, in relation to the constitution and powers of government in the future Confederation. You have probably all read in the newspapers what purported to be the text—and it was very near the text—of the conclusions arrived at. You have no doubt all read Mr. Brown’s explanations at

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Toronto, and Mr. Gait’s further explanations at Sherbrooke; you have probably also seen two other expressions of opinion, on the general question, in the journals of the day, one from the Honourable Mr. Dorion, who is opposed to all union, except some sort of Federation of the Canadas; another from the Honourable Mr. Hillyard Cameron, who would much prefer a legislative to a federative union. I don’t say that if it could be had by common consent, I would not be prepared to agree with Mr. Cameron; but a legislative union, under our circumstances, was simply out of the question. We might as well ask for the moon, and keep asking until we could get it. It was a question between some form of federative union or no union at all; and I am not at all prepared to say with Mr. Dorion—and never was—that the greater union is not the most desirable, if conditions can be settled satifactorily to all parties. It seems to me—and in saying so I intend no shadow of disrespect to the honourable member for Hochelaga—that the man who can seriously maintain that union is not strength, that five or six comparatively small communities, owning a common allegiance, existing side by side on the same continent, in the presence of much larger communities owning another allegiance, would not be stronger and safer united than separate, that such a one puts himself out of the pale of all rational argument.

I will take as an instance of the irrationality of such an argument, the particular question, the great test question remaining between Canada and England—the question of defence. The future General Government has reserved to itself, saving the sovereignty of England, the control of our militia and military expenditure. Every one can see that a war with England and the United States would be largely a naval war, and such a naval war as the ocean has never before seen—a war that would interest and stir the heart of England even beyond the pitch that made her staid merchants astonish Lloyd’s in 1813 with “three times three cheers” when they heard that the Shannon had fought and captured, and carried the Chesapeake a prize into Halifax Harbour. Suppose, then, in the event of an invasion of

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our soil, either in Upper Canada or Lower Canada—suppose that a flotilla was needed on the St. Lawrence or on Lake Ontario; that England could spare us the gunboats, but not the skilled seamen; would it be no advantage to Canada to have the 50,000 Atlantic sailors of the Lower Provinces to call upon for their contingent to such a service? No doubt the Empire could call on them now, but unless it restored the press-gang it could not make them come. But if by our union we gave that valuable class of men the feeling of common country; if by the intercourse and commerce which must follow on our union, that feeling grew to the strength of identity, we would have enough help of that description—drawn from what my colleague, Hon. Mr. Cartier, calls the maritime element—for the asking. The Imperial power, having conceded to all the North American colonies responsible government, can only secure their co-operation, even in military measures, through those several local governments. Every one can see at a glance how much the Imperial power, and we ourselves, would gain in any emergency—if there were but two governments instead of five to be consulted—how much in promptitude, in decision, in time, in unanimity, and in effectiveness. I need not enlarge, I am sure, on so self-evident a proposition as this: the man that will not see it, will not: that is all I need add on that score. It has, indeed, been asserted by the sceptics in our work that all our theories of increased commercial intercourse are chimerical; and yet, oddly enough, these are the same people who think a commercial union would “secure all the benefits” of this chimerical prospect. Well, I will not meet assertion by assertion, but I will answer a conjecture by a fact. At the very time the member for Hochelaga was issuing his rather inconsistent declaration against a political union, as, among other reasons, wholly unprofitable in a commercial point of view, and in favour of a commercial union as all that was to be desired in itself, at that moment the first steamship, laden with breadstuffs, direct from Montreal to Newfoundland, was dropping down the St. Lawrence, as a result of the partial and brief intercourse

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brought about between the two communities through our Conference at Quebec! That is a fact not very important in itself, perhaps, but very indicative of the possible usefulness of union in a commercial point of view! I may mention another fact: while we were lying in Charlottetown Harbour last September, our attention was called to the arrival of a fine ocean-going steamship—one of a regular line between Boston and Prince Edward’s Island. The Boston people find the trade of that rich little island worth cultivating, and they do it. They know where there is produce and where there is a market, and they establish a line of steamers to run there; yet I am sure they sell nothing to the islanders which we, at half the distance, could not just as well supply them with from Quebec or Montreal. I repeat, however, I will not argue so plain a point as that, with provinces like ours, union is strength, is reputation, is credit, is security. I will just give one other illustration on this last head, and then I will drop the topic where it is. The security for peace which a large political organisation has over a small one, lies not only in its greater unity and disposable force, but in this other consideration, that the aggressor must risk or lose the benefit of much larger transactions in attacking a larger than in assailing a smaller state. If, for example, in our system of defence—in addition to all the Imperial Government could do for us—if we could, by our joint representative action, be sure to shut up simultaneously the River St. John upon the people of Maine, to exclude from the Gulf the fishermen of Massachusetts, to withhold from the hearths and furnaces of New England the coal of Cape Breton—no man can question but that we would wield several additional means of defence, not now at the command of Canada. And so with the Lower Provinces. If their statesmen could wield our forces and our resources in addition to their own, does any sane man pretend that would not be an immense gain to them in their hour of danger? (Hear, hear.) I may be told, again, the Imperial Government can do all this for us if they will: I repeat that the Imperial Government alone can neither do any of these things so promptly, so

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fully, nor with so little trespass on our local responsible governments, as a united legislature could through an united public force, with the aid of a Federal treasury. I really, gentlemen, ought to beg your pardon, and I do so, for dwelling so long on the truism that union is, in our case, strength; but as the first proposition to which we all agreed at the first Conference, I thought I would give some reasons why we had unanimously arrived at that result.

Another objector opposes our project because Colonial Union is inconsistent with Imperial connexion. Well, to that we might answer that we are quite willing to leave it to the statesmen of the Empire themselves to decide that point. If England does not find it so, I think we may safely assume it is not so. And, in point of fact, the Imperial Parliament several years ago decided the question when they passed the New Zealand Constitutional Act, establishing six or seven local governments, under one general government, in that colony. Still another objector contends that the complement of Federalism is Republicanism, because most of the States with which we are familiar as Federal States are also Republics. But this objection is by no means unanswerable. It is true Switzerland is a republic in the sense of having no hereditary head, but the United Netherlands, when a Confederacy, were not a Republic in that sense. It is true the United States and Mexico, and the Argentine Federations, were all republican in basis and theory; but it is also true that the German Confederation is, and has always been, predominantly monarchical. There may be half as many varieties of federal governments as there are states or provinces in the world; there may be aristocratic federations, like the Venetian; or monarchical, like the German; or democratic, like the United States: the only definition which really covers the whole species of governments of this description is, the political union of states of dissimilar size and resources, to secure external protection and internal tranquillity. These are the two main objects of all confederacies of states, on whatever principles governed, locally or unitedly. Federalism is a political co-partnership, which

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may be, and has been formed by Monarchists, Aristocrats, and Democrats, Pagans and Christians, under the most various circumstances, and in all periods of human history. There may be almost as many varieties of confederation as of companies in private and social life. We say, with propriety too, “the company at the hotel,” or “the company who own the hotel;” but the organisation of each is widely different. Our Federation will be British: it will be of the fourth class of Lord Coke’s division for mutual aid. The only element in it not British is the sectional equality provided for in the Upper House—a principle which is known to be alike applicable to the democratic confederation next us, and the monarchical confederation of Germany.

One more objection which comes from an opposite quarter to the last, is that our plan is too stringently conservative. Well, gentlemen, I can but say to that—if it be so—that it is a happy fault, which we may safely leave to the popular elements of our state of society to correct in time. It was remarked long ago by Lord Bolingbroke— and a greater than Bolingbroke has called it ” a profound remark “—that it is easier to graft anything of a republic on a monarchy, than anything of monarchy on a republic. It is always easy in our society to extend democratic influence and democratic authority; but it is not always possible—it is very seldom possible—ever to get anything back that is once yielded up to democracy. If, therefore, our plan should seem at first sight somewhat too conservative, I repeat my own opinion, that it is a happy fault, and the remedy may safely be left to time. So much, gentlemen, for what lawyers call the ” general issue.”

Mr. Chairman,—You will probably like me to define that particular adaptation of the federal system which has lately found such high favour in the eyes of our leading colonial politicians. Well, this definition has been, I think, pretty accurately given in the published text—or what professes to be the text—of the results arrived at at Quebec. Don’t be alarmed: I am not going to read you the whole seventy-two propositions: it will be quite sufficient for my

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purpose to give you, both by contrast and comparison, a broad, general view of what is and what is not included in our proposed constitutional charter. In the first place, I may say, gentlemen, to take the most familiar comparison, that we proceeded in almost an inverse ratio to the course taken in the United States at the formation of their constitution. We began by dutifully acknowledging the sovereignty of the Crown, as they did by boldly declaring their total separation from their former Sovereign. Unlike our neighbours, we have had no question of sovereignty to raise. We have been saved from all embarrassment on the subject of sovereignty, by simply recognising it as it already exists, in the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. There, for us, the sovereign powers of peace and war, life and death, receiving and sending ambassadors, still reside so long as Her Majesty and her descendants retain the allegiance of the people of these Provinces. No doubt, some inconvenience may arise from the habitual personal absence of the Sovereign; but even this difficulty, now that the Atlantic is an eight-day ferry, is not insuperable. Next, we made the general, the supreme government, and the local derivative; while the Americans did just the reverse.

As to the merits and the consequences of this fundamental difference, I must observe this, that merely to differ from another, and a sometime-established system, is, of course, no merit in itself; but yet, if we are to be a distinct people from our republican neighbours, we can only be so and remain so by the assertion of distinct principles of government—a far better boundary than the River St. Lawrence, or the Ashburton line. But suppose their fundamental politics to be right, would we then, for the sake of distinction, erect a falsehood at the North, to enable us to contend against a truth at the South? Would we establish monarchy merely out of a spirit of antagonism? No! gentlemen, God forbid! I of course hold not only that our plan of government is politic in itself, but also that it is better than the American. I am prepared to maintain this at all times—against all comers: for if I had not myself faith in our work, I should scorn to inculcate its

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obligations on the public. We build, as I said the other day at Montreal, on the old foundations, though the result of our deliberations is popularly called “the new constitution.” I deny that the principles on which we proceeded are novel or untried principles. These principles all exist, and for ages have existed, in the British Constitution. Some of the contrivances and adaptations of principles are new; but the Royal authority, Ministerial responsibility, a nominative Upper House, the full and free representation of the Commons, and the independence of the Judges, are not inventions of our making. We offer you no political patent medicine warranted to cure everything, nor do we pretend that our work is a perfect work; but if we cannot make it perfect, we have at least left it capable of revision, by the concurrence of the parties to the present settlement, and the consent of the same supreme authority from which we seek the original sanction of our plan. Still it is to be hoped that the necessity for any revision will seldom occur, for I am quite sure the people of these Provinces will never wish to have it said of their constitution, what the French bookseller of the last century said so wittily, on being asked for the French Constitution, that he did not deal in periodical publications. We build on the old foundations, and I trust I may say, in the spirit of the ancient founders, as well. The groundwork of the monarchical form of government is humility, self-denial, obedience, and holy fear. I know these are not nineteenth-century virtues, neither are they plants indigenous to the soil of the New World. Because it is a new world, as yet undisciplined, pride and self-assertion, and pretension, are more common than the great family of humble virtues whose names I have named. Pure democracy is very like pride—it is the “good-as-you” feeling carried into politics. Pure democracy asserts an unreal equality between youth and age, subject and magistrate, the weak and the strong, the vicious and the virtuous. But the same virtues which feed and nourish filial affection and conjugal peace in private life, are essential to uphold civil authority; and these are the virtues on which the monarchical form of government alone can be maintained.

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There was a time when such a doctrine as this, which I am now inculcating here, in Compton, could hardly get a patient hearing in any part of North America; but that time is fortunately passed away: it is possible in our days, even for republican writers to admit the merits of the monarchical system, without being hooted into silence, as the elder Adams was when he published in Philadelphia, towards the end of the last century, his eloquent “Discourses on Davila.” His grandson and editor, the present able Minister at the Court of St. James’, tells us how the printer was intimidated from proceeding with the publication, and that it was the great cause of his ancestor’s lifelong unpopularity; and for what? Because he maintained, with Burke and Washington, Bossuet and Shakespeare, the divine origin of society, as against the theory of its human origin, upheld by Jefferson, Paine, Rousseau, and John Locke. John Adams could be President of the United States, but he could not get a printer to publish a general treatise on government which admitted the merits of monarchy—which contended that there was “a natural aristocracy at Boston as well as at Madrid “—and the intolerant outcry then raised against him for the “Discourses of Davila” pursued him to the grave. Another American, of even higher mental mark than President Adams—perhaps the very first intellect of all the authors of the American system—was on the same ground equally suspected and equally abused; Alexander Hamilton, in his original plan of the American Constitution, offended in the same way as Adams by advocating “a solid and coercive union” with “complete sovereignty in Congress;” and we all know how, down almost to yesterday, his memory was branded as that of an enemy of the country he did so much to bring into existence. No wonder political science has been almost at a standstill for fifty years on this continent, when no man, however high his position, dared raise a negative to the prevailing democratic theories without permission of the clamorous majority for the time being. At last, and almost simultaneously, the negative has been raised at the extremes of North America—Mexico, and

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Canada; and we, at least here, have no fear that our printers will be bullied into silence like the printer of President Adams. We have not conceived our system in a spirit of antagonism to our next neighbours; we will still have enough in common with them constitutionally to obviate any very zealous propagandised on either part; but we will also have enough left of our ancestral system to distinguish permanently our people from their people, our institutions from their institutions, and our history (when we shall have a history) from their history.

I have referred, Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, to the assertion of somewhat similar principles to our own now being made in Mexico. It would be strange if Canada should reach, by deliberation and forethought, the same results which Mexico has grasped at out of the miserable depths of her long anarchy. We are not yet informed whether the new Emperor designs to consolidate his provinces, or to leave them their local organisations; but this I know, that with all the immense natural advantages of Mexico, I should, for my part, rather take my chance for the permanent establishment of a free monarchy in the North than in Mexico. We have already solved for ourselves one great problem—the legal relation of Church and State—which is still before the rulers of Mexico. If we have but half the population, we have three times the number of men of pure European race that Mexico has; and while I own that I wish every success to the Mexican Empire, under the auspices of France, I have, I confess, still stronger hopes for the successful establishment of the free kingdom of Canada, under the auspices of Great Britain.

“For bright, and fierce, and fickle is the South;

But dark, and true, and tender is the North.”

We have also solved, so far as the late Conferences could do so for these Provinces, the relation of the Crown to the people, the powers of the prerogative, and the sphere of the suffrage. We have preserved every British principle now in use among us, and we have recovered one or two that

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were well-nigh lost; we have been especially careful not to trench on the prerogative of the Crown, as to the rights, or rank, or income of its future representative on this continent; as to the dignity of the office, or the style and title of the future kingdom or viceroyalty, or by whatever other name it may be Her Majesty’s pleasure to designate hereafter her dominions on this continent. Next to the United States, we have the most extended suffrage in the world; some think quite too far extended; but in our state of society, I do not see how that is to be avoided, in the selection at least, of the tax-imposing House of Parliament. We have, besides, restored to the Crown one of its essential attributes when, as the fountain of honour, we leave to the Sovereign the confirmation of the second and Conservative Chamber; and we preserve for the Crown its other great attribute, as the fountain of justice, by retaining its right to appoint the Judges, of course upon the advice of the Constitutional Councillors of the Queen in this country, who are in turn responsible to Parliament and the people for their advice and appointments. We have provided also, in our new arrangements, that the tenure of all offices shall be good behaviour, in contradistinction to the “spoils principle” of our next neighbours. In all these respects we have built on the old foundations, in the spirit of the old wisdom, and we have faith, therefore, that our work will stand.

Naturally, gentlemen, we cannot expect that our course will be all plain sailing. We must have our difficulties, as all states, new and old, have had; and this brings me to refer to the apprehensions excited as to the local legislatures. The difference of language between the majority of Lower Canada, and the majority of the whole union is a difficulty; but it is a difficulty which almost every other nation has had and has solved: in Belgium they have at least two languages, in Switzerland they have three chief languages—German, French, and Italian; the Federal form of Government, the compromise between great states and small, seems peculiarly adapted to conciliate difficulties of this description, and to keep politically together men of

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different origins and languages. I confess I have less anxiety on this score than I have on another—the proper protection of the minorities, as to religion in Upper and Lower Canada respectively. On this point there is no doubt a good deal of natural anxiety felt in these Townships, as there is among my own constituents in Montreal, and I dare say you would like me to enlarge upon it as the point most immediately interesting to yourselves.

I am, as you are, interested in the due protection of the rights of the minority, not only as an English-speaking member in Lower Canada, but as interested naturally and reasonably for my co-religionists, who form a minority in Upper Canada. I am persuaded as regards both minorities, that they can have abundant guarantees—sacred beyond the reach of sectarian or sectional domination—for all their rights, civil and religious. If we had failed to secure every possible constitutional guarantee for our minorities, east and west, I am sure the gentleman who may be considered your special representative at the Conference—(Hon. Mr. Gait)—and I am equally sure that I myself could have been no party to the conclusions of the late Conference. But we both believed—and all our Canadian colleagues went with us in this belief—that in securing the power of disallowance, under circumstances which might warrant it, to the General Government, in giving the appointment of Judges and Local Governors to the General Government, and in expressly providing in the Constitution for the educational rights of the minority, we had taken every possible guarantee, legislative, judicial, and educational against the oppression of a sectional minority by a sectional majority. You will have for your guarantee the Queen’s name,—which I think the case of Ottawa has shown is not without power in Canada; you will have the subordination of the local to the general authority, provided in the constitutional charter itself, and you will have, besides, the great material guarantee, that in the General Government you will be two-thirds of the whole told by language, and a clear majority counted by creed; and if with these odds you cannot protect your own interests, it

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will be the first time you ever failed to do so. The Protestant minority in Lower Canada and the Catholic minority in Upper Canada may depend upon it the General Government will never see them oppressed—even if there were any disposition to oppress them—which I hope there is not in Upper Canada; which I am quite sure there is not in Lower Canada. No General Government could stand for a single session under the new arrangements without Catholic as well as Protestant support; in fact, one great good to be expected from the larger interests with which that Government will have to deal will be, that local prejudices, and all other prejudices, will fall more and more into contempt, while our statesmen will rise more and more superior to such low and pitiful politics. What would be the effect of any set of men in any subdivision of the Union, attempting, for example, the religious ascendency of any race or creed? Why the direct effect would be to condemn themselves and their principles to insignificance in the General Government. Neither you here, nor the Catholic minority in Upper Canada, will owe your local rights and liberties to the forbearance or goodwill of the neighbouring majority; neither of you will tolerate being tolerated; but all your special institutions, religious and educational, as well as all your general and common franchises and rights, will be secured under the broad seal of the Empire, which the strong arm of the General Government will suffer no bigot to break, and no province to lay its finger on, should any one be foolish enough to attempt it.

This is the frame of government we have to offer you, and to this system, when fully understood, I am certain you will give a cheerful and hearty adherence. We offer the good people of these colonies a system of government which will secure to them ample means of preserving external and internal peace; we offer to them the common profits of a trade, which was represented in 1863, by imports and exports, to the gross value of 137,000,000 of dollars, and by a sea-going and lake tonnage of 12,000,000 of tons! We offer to each other special

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advantages in detail. The Maritime Provinces give us a right of way and free outports for five months out of every year; we give them what they need, direct connection with the great producing regions of the North-west all the year round. This connection, if they do not get through Canada, they must ultimately get through the United States; and one reason why I, in season, and perhaps, out of season, have continued an advocate for an Intercolonial Railway was, that the first and closest and most lasting connection of those Lower Provinces, with the continental trade system, might be established by, and through, and in union with, Canada. I do not pretend that mere railway connection will make trade between us and them, but I am quite sure we can have no considerable intercourse, no exchanges or accounts pro or con without such a connection both for postal and travelling purposes. I rejoice, moreover, that we, men of insular origin, are likely to recover by this means one of our lost senses—the sense that comprehends the sea—that we are not now about to subside into a character so foreign to all our antecedents, that of a mere inland people. The Union of the Provinces restores us to the ocean, takes us back to the Atlantic, and launches us once more on the modern Mediterranean, the true central sea of the western world. But it is not only for its material advantages, by which we may enrich each other, nor its joint political action, by which we may protect each other, that the Union is to be desired; it is because it will give, as it only can give, a distinct historical existence to British America. If it should be fortunately safely established and wisely upheld, mankind will find here, standing side by side, on this half-cleared continent, the British and American forms of free government; here we shall have the means of comparison and contrast in the greatest affairs; here we shall have principles tested in their results, and maxims inspected and systems gauged, and schools of thought, as well as rules of state, reformed and revised, founded and refounded. All that wholesome stimulus of variety which was wanting to the intellect of Rome under the first emperors will be abundantly supplied out of our own circumstances and

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those of our neighbours, so that no Cicero need ever, from personal considerations, enter into indefensible inconsistencies, and no Tacitus be forced to disguise his virtuous indignation at public corruption, under the thin veil of an outlandish allegory. I may be sanguine for the future of this country,—but if it be an error of judgment to expect great things of young countries, as of young people who are richly endowed by nature, and generously nurtured, then it is an error I never hope to amend. And here let me say, that it is for the young men of all the Provinces we who labour to bring about the Confederation are especially working; it is to give them a country wide enough and diversified enough to content them all, that we labour; it is to erect a standard worthy to engage their affections and ambition; it is to frame a system which shall blend the best principles with the best manners, which shall infuse the spirit of honour into the pursuit of politics, that we have striven—and who can be more interested for our success than the young men of these Provinces, who are to carry on the country into another century?

We in our time hope to do our duty; not only in “lengthening the cords and strengthening the stakes” of our constitutional system, with a view to that future, but in guarding jealously, in the perilous present, the honour and integrity of this province. I may say to you here, on the Eastern frontier, that the Government of the day are fully informed of all the machinations that have been set on foot, within and without our borders, to drive, or tempt, or trick Canada, out of that straightforward neutrality commanded by the Queen’s Proclamation four years ago. So far, we have been enabled to maintain that neutrality in the letter, as well as in the spirit, and I trust we may be equally successful in doing so, so long as it may be required of us. I am well convinced there is no Canadian who would wish his Government to make any base compliance—to overdo or overstrain any legal obligation—in order to buy for us the inestimable boon of peace; but I am equally convinced, and you will agree with me I feel confident, that all that can be done by way of prevention, however

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onerous or costly it may be to us as a province, ought to be done to maintain friendly relations with our neighbours, so far as they will enable us to do so. The rest depends on them,—on the fairness of their statesmen and the discretion of their military authorities; but come what may in the future, at all events we must see that Canada does its duty, and its whole duty, cheerfully, fully, and fearlessly.

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, I beg your forgiveness for the great length to which these remarks have detained you. But our general plan having already found its way to the public, I was anxious to show our countrymen, here and at home, in a plain, popular way, the processes of reasoning and the guiding principles by which we arrived at the results at which we have arrived. I should blush for myself, and grieve for my colleagues, if we were any of us capable of picking up our principles in a panic, without inquiry or reflection, or examination. I need hardly assure you, gentlemen, that nothing was done or said at Quebec or Charlottetown without full deliberation, and very hard work. It would be invidious to name names in connection with what was regarded by all engaged as a confidential discussion; but while I cheerfully recognise in our countrymen of the Lower Provinces the noble qualities they exhibited throughout the whole of these transactions, I must say, I was proud of Canada’s part in them also. I was proud of the self-control, the ability, the acquirements, and the disinterested unanimity of our colleagues, from Upper as well as from Lower Canada. And now, gentlemen, that the architects have completed their plan, it is for you to say shall the building be put up? It is for you, and for your representatives in Parliament,—for my friend Mr. Pope and the other township members,—for the people of the Maritime Provinces and their representatives to say, whether this, great work is to be carried, with all due diligence, to its completion. If the design should seem to you as wise and fit as it seems to us, then fling all misgivings far behind you and go ahead! Let no local prejudice impede, let no personal ambition obstruct, the

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great work. Why! the very Aborigines of the land might have instructed the sceptics among ourselves that union was strength. What was it gave at one time the balance of power on this soil to the Six Nations,—so that England, France, and Holland all sought the alliance of the red-skinned statesmen of Onondago? What was it made the names of Brant, and Pontiac, and Tecumseth so formidable in their day? Because they too had conceived the idea—an immense stride for the savage intellect to make—that union was strength. Let the personalities and partisanship of our times stand abashed in the presence of those forest-born Federalists, who rose superior to all mere tribal prejudices in endeavouring to save a whole people. And now, my friends of the County of Compton, once more receive my grateful thanks; have no fears for the rights of the minority, but be watchful as you ought to be, and as I am sure your worthy member (who is always at his post when your interests are at stake) will be. The Parliament of Canada is, as you are aware, called by His Excellency for despatch of business at Quebec, on the 19th of January; it is an early call; and I am sure you all feel it will be an important session. I am, I do assure you, persuaded in my inmost mind, that these are the days of destiny for British America; that our opportunity to determine our own future, under the favour of Divine Providence, is upon us; that there is a tide in the affairs of nations, as well as of men, and that we are now at the flood of that tide. Whether the men who have this great duty in charge will be found equal to the task, remains to be proved by their votes; but for my part, I am hopeful for the early and mutually advantageous union of all the Provinces; for the early and firm establishment of our monarchical Confederation on this continent.

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THE IRISH IN CANADA; THE IMPORTATION OF FENIANISM.

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE ST. PATRICK’S SOCIETY, AT CITY CONCERT HALL, MONTREAL, JANUARY 11TH, 1865.

Mr. McGee said: Ladies and Gentlemen, I deserve no credit for coming here to-night from Quebec, at some personal inconvenience, as my friend, the President, has said, for this is the annual meeting of the St. Patrick’s Society, in aid of its charitable fund: this is our yearly offering to the poor of our own origin—an offering made in the middle of winter, when all the glowing zeal of charity is called for to kindle the hearthstones of those who have, perhaps, at this hour neither food nor fuel, nor any other friends but ourselves. We are here in the best room in the city—brilliant with lights and fair faces and fine dresses; but we are here to remember those who are debarred by bitter poverty from entering these happy walls, from witnessing these pleasant scenes, for whom we have to think and act, and, so far as we can, for whom we have also to make provision suited to this trying season. If it were at all within the possibilities, I could not do otherwise than be here; but I frankly own to you I had some additional reasons in desiring to be present this evening. This society has been always very kind to me, as, indeed, I think I may say every society among us has been in its turn. Now, I, on my part, am ready to do my petit possible for them all; I endeavour not to abuse their confidence, and I ask but one recompense—the privilege of unrestricted freedom of speech, within the bounds of modesty and discretion. There are one or two subjects on which I desire to exercise that privilege, without which my presence here would be worse than

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useless both to you and to me; and the first of them is, to say a few words, which I may have no other opportunity of saying, on behalf of an admirable object, for which a reverend gentleman from Ireland is at present canvassing the city—I allude to the Rev. Mr. Beausang, of the Catholic University of Ireland. Being so long out of old Ireland, fully conscious of the changes that have taken place in myself and in the circle of my own friends during sixteen years, I always speak with great diffidence when I venture to give any public expression to opinions on Irish topics of the day. Moreover, gentlemen, as you may have observed, I do not belong to the Jefferson Brick school of politicians (Jefferson, you may remember, was of opinion that his leading articles in the “Rowdy Journal” made the Czar shake in his shoes at St. Petersburg). I have rather avoided than sought to parade in public the often-abused name of our glorious ” old country.” I have avoided doing so, because I feel no stirrings of national gratification in presenting my native land in the character of an habitual victim, or a perpetual plaintiff; or an unsatisfied petitioner for the cold world’s pity. I dislike as much as Moore did that she should

“Yearly kneel before our masters’ doors!
And hawk her wrongs as beggars do their sores!”

I consider it the part of true patriotism not to jeopardise the position of the Irish in these British Provinces—half a million strong or thereabouts—by idle or irritating retrospective controversies; by fighting over again the battle of the Boyne; or disputing about the merits of the illustrious Prince, who was the victor, and the unfortunate King, who was the vanquished in that eventful contest. The Irish mind has been fed too much on stimulants and too little on solids: and this, among other reasons, is one of my strongest motives for desiring the secure establishment of an University of their own, springing from amongst and congenial to the spirit of the Irish Catholics still in Ireland. On this view, I may say I hope without presumption, that I saw with very great regret, but still greater surprise, Lord

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Palmerston’s refusal to grant a Parliamentary charter to that University. There are at present two Universities recognised by law in Ireland—Trinity College, and what are popularly known as “The Godless Colleges.” I have every disposition and every right to speak with respect of Trinity College, although it is, and always has been, exclusively Anglican in all its statutes, tests, and honours. No Irishman can forget that it was the Alma Mater of almost all our most famous public men, of Anglo-Irish stock, from its first and greatest scholar, James Usher, to its last and not least ornament, Isaac Butt. No Catholic Irishman will consent to part with the reputation of William Conyngham Plunkett, of T.C.D., because he was the son of a dissenting minister, and educated at the cost of the congregation; or with our beloved Goldsmith, because he was the son and brother of a parson, nor with Jonathan Swift, because he was a parson himself. Long—I say in all sincerity—long may old Trinity flourish and be found famous; however tenaciously she may cling to her Elizabethan statutes, tests, and distinctions. None of us, men of the Emancipation era, should ever forget that her present venerable Provost, Dr. Macdonnell (father of the present Lieut.-Governor of Nova Scotia, and uncle of my friend Dr. Macdonnell, of this city), was one of the first signers, in 1828, of the Dublin Protestant petition on behalf of Catholic emancipation ; nor, to descend from bold deeds, as that was in those days, to gentle courtesies, none of us, I trust, have forgotten the marked attentions paid to Cardinal Wiseman by that thorough scholar and thorough Irishman, Dr. Todd, when some years ago the learned Cardinal visited the College. Irish zealots on all sides, there and then, were quietly rebuked, when the scholarship of Trinity rendered its due but dignified recognition to the acquirements and genius of a prince of scholars and a prince of the Roman Church. Put while we can and do respect Old Trinity, with all its dogmas and distinctions, we look—I hope every right-minded Irishman, Protestant or Catholic, looks with distrust amounting to hostility on all godless colleges. Never once for her thirteen hundred years of Christian

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annals have religion and science been considered irreconcileable in Ireland—never have they been other than helpmates to each other—never has the decree of their utter divorce been pronounced until our own days, and never, I trust, either now or hereafter, can that unnatural divorce be carried into effect. Speaking as a layman—as a politician, if you choose—I repeat, with all deference, that it seems to me a most calamitous mistake for the Imperial authorities to make war upon the laudable ambition of the Irish mind, to found for Catholics a Catholic University, and to have its status fixed by legislative enactment. But I will not dwell upon this subject farther than to commend to my countrymen and co-religionists who are here the cause which brings the present delegate of that University, the Rev. Mr. Beausang, among us. There is another subject which more immediately concerns ourselves, in Montreal and in Canada, which has lately occupied a good deal of the attention of the press—I allude to the alleged spread of a seditious Irish society, originating at New York, whose founders have chosen to go behind the long Christian record of their ancestors, to find in days of Pagan darkness and blindness an appropriate name for themselves. A statement having been made the other day in the Toronto Globe, on the authority of its Montreal Correspondent, that there were 1500 of these contemporary pagans in Montreal—a statement made I am sure without intentional malice on the Correspondent’s part—I felt bound, as I suppose you may have seen, to deny absolutely that statement. The denial was not given in my own words, but the alleged fact was denied, and that was the main point. I now, in your presence, repeat that denial on behalf of the Irish Catholics of this city; I say there could not be 15 such scamps associated and meeting together, not to say 1500, without your knowledge and mine; and I repeat absolutely that there is no such body amongst us, and that the contrary statements are deplorably untrue and unjust, and impolitic as well as unjust. I regret that papers of great circulation should lend themselves to the propagation of such statements, which have a direct tendency to foster

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and enhance the very evil they intend to combat. See what the result has been in some parts of Upper Canada. Any two or more nervous or mischievous magistrates—and with 11,000 men in the commission of the peace there must be some of both these sorts—any two or more of these may subject a neighbourhood to all the rigours of martial law. Already indecent and unauthorised searches have been made for concealed arms in Catholic churches; already, as in some of the towns of Bruce, the magistrates are very improperly, in my opinion, arming one class of the people against the other. What consequences of evil may flow from this step, should make any responsible man shudder. And what is it all owing to? Why, to these often invented, and always exaggerated, newspaper reports. Observe the absurd figure Upper Canada is made to cut in all this business—the Protestant million are made to tremble before a fraction of a fraction: for if there are Fenians in that quarter of the world, I venture to say they are as wholly insignificant in numbers as in every other respect. At the risk, however, of sharing the fate of all unasked advisers, I would say to the Catholics of Upper Canada, in each locality, if there is any, the least proof that this foreign disease has seized on any, the least among you, establish at once, for your own sakes—for the country’s sake—a cordon sanitaire around your people; establish a Committee which will purge your ranks of this political leprosy; weed out and cast off those rotten members who, without a single governmental grievance to complain of in Canada, would yet weaken and divide us in these days of danger and anxiety. Instead of sympathy for the punishment they are drawing upon themselves, there ought to be general indignation at the perils such wretches would, if permitted to exist among us, draw upon the whole community, socially, politically, and religiously. How would any Catholic who hears me like to see the parish church a stable, and St. Patrick’s a barrack? How would our working men like to see our docks desolate, our canals closed, our 1100 new buildings arrested, ruin in our streets, and famine shivering among the ruins? And this is what

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these wretched conspirators, if they had the power, would bring to pass as surely as fire produces ashes from wood, or cold produces ice from water. I repeat here, deliberately, that I do not believe in the existence of any such organisation in Lower Canada—certainly not in Montreal; but that there are or have been emissaries from the United States among us, for the purpose of establishing it, has been so often and so confidently stated, that what I have said on the general subject will, I hope, not be considered untimely or uncalled for. By the law of Lower Canada the administration of an oath of membership in any secret, seditious society is a penitentiary offence, punishable by twenty years’ imprisonment; and the taking of such an oath is punishable by seven years’ imprisonment. By the law of the Church, membership in any such society, if persevered in, entails, ipso facto, the penalty of excommunication. I will just refer to an excellent recent work, the Lectures on Modem History, by Professor Robertson, of the Catholic University of Ireland, where the chief decrees on this subject, collated by Professor Murray, of Maynooth College, show that Pope Clement XII., Pope Benedict XIV., Pope Leo XI., Pope Pius VII., and the present Pope Pius IX., have all strongly condemned these societies. (Mr. McGee here cited the titles- of the several decrees by which this description of societies had been condemned.) By all those solemn Acts of ecclesiastical legislation, secret seditious societies are expressly and in the most emphatic terms condemned; and as we, in this Society, are all Catholics, I feel that I am justified in strengthening my own position by a circumstantial reference to those august authorities. Causa finita est!

Mr. President,—I have been led to speak at greater length than is usual with me on these occasions, because I may not again for some months have an opportunity of meeting you all, face to face. We, the Irish inhabitants of Montreal, are doing very well as we are. We are, young and old, some 30,000; our mechanics compare favourably with those of any other origin; our young professional men are putting forth the promise of great talents; our

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civil arid religious rights are respected by all our fellow-citizens, whose equal rights we, in turn, equally respect. I dare assert—and I speak from some degree of knowledge—that there is not, take them for all in all, a more respectable community of Irishmen and their descendants to be found anywhere throughout the New World. I say this with pride—for it is a proud thing to be able to say. When I contemplate this community, rejoicing, as I well may, in their joy, and sharing in their trials,—when I contemplate their peaceful, steady, onward career, exacting respect and confidence on all sides, I cannot but feel keenly that any newspaper, here or elsewhere, should attempt to asperse them as a band of conspirators, or that any one should dare associate them, as a body, with lawless and anti-social designs. Mr. President, any good cause you know, and I trust every one who knows me knows, can at any time command my slender services; but you will continue to grant me, as I am sure our fellow-citizens at large will grant me, the cherished right of unrestricted free speech whenever I am called out to address either a special society or the general body of the citizens of Montreal. I have exercised that right to the full to-night; forgive me if I have gone beyond my limits: it was my zeal for your welfare, believe me, that prompted what I have mentioned to you. But this I think I may say, that wherever the flag above us is at stake—wherever our community is in question—we will be found by word and deed to shed the last of our Irish blood in defence of the inestimable liberties we enjoy, in common with all classes of Her Majesty’s Canadian subjects.

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PART II.

SPEECHES IN CANADIAN PARLIAMENT.

=========

“THE DOUBLE MAJORITY.”*

HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY, TORONTO, APRIL 28TH, 1859.

Mr. McGee said that last year the hon. member for Cornwall moved a resolution almost identical with that now before the House, and that he (Mr. McGee) had felt it his duty to support it. If there had been in this session of Parliament, from the beginning of it till the present time, a valuable moment for those who professed to entertain moderate views, and to be possessed of influence in the country to make those known, and that influence felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, it was, he contended, in the very debate in which they were then engaged. In all probability that was the last debate which would ever take place in a United Legislature sitting in the chief city of Upper Canada. He presumed that the Government intended to go for four years to Quebec, and then to remove to Ottawa, there permanently to reside—which, though situated in Upper Canada, could not be said to be so peculiarly Upper Canadian as the city of Toronto. Therefore it was that he had said that this would be the last important debate in a United Legislature sitting in

* This was a constitutional expedient, by which it was proposed, that as Upper and Lower Canada had an equal number of members, under the Union Act, no legislation “should be forced upon either, without the consent of its own majority.” It subsequently failed in practice.

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Upper Canada. They were first of all to go to Quebec for four years; but where, he would ask, was the guarantee that the Union would last four years in the present condition of the Province? When they heard leading representatives of the people who occupied seats in that House, instituted under and by virtue of the Union, give utterance to disunion sentiments; when they heard such sentiments loudly proclaimed from one side of the House, and echoed tauntingly back from the other, and when they heard gentlemen declare “well, let a severance of the Union come—we are prepared for it,” these, he asserted, were strong symptoms and unmistakeable indications of what the feeling of both sections of the Province was on that point. If the Government believed the Union workable, or that it could be made workable, it was their most solemn duty to have rebuked such sentiments. But their very silence showed that their belief was that the present Union was not workable; that its dissolution was a mere matter of time; that it was on its last legs, and that it was either unworthy of being defended or incapable of any defence at all. Where could it have been with more propriety defended than in the chief city in Upper Canada, and in the course of a debate in which sentiments diametrically opposed to Union had been uttered? He had no doubt in his own mind that they would find the difficulties which had distracted the Legislature during this session, as well as the last, would assume a greater degree of gravity in Quebec. And why? The hon. member for Montmorency had talked eloquently and well upon the necessity of compromise, and no man recognised the importance of that doctrine more than he (Mr. McGee) did, for the spirit of compromise was the spirit of harmony; but where was it desirable that that compromise should be made? He (Mr. McGee) would answer, on that very spot, in the chief city in Upper Canada, and in the presence of the people of Upper Canada. If the hon. gentleman was as bold a statesman as he was an advocate in that House, that was the place to settle the difficulties arising between both sections. Could it be reasonably expected that hon. mem-

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bers from Upper Canada, in the presence of a strange race and away from their own soil, would yield so readily to arguments and proposals of compromise? No. If the present Union was at all defensible—if it could be upheld—this was the time, this was the occasion, to prove it. He (Mr. McGee) had lost no opportunity of making himself acquainted with the feelings of the people throughout the country, and he was convinced that he did not exaggerate when he said that there existed such a spirit of disunion in the upper section of the Province; and he would add, on the authority of members of French origin in Lower Canada too, that if this cry of disunion were raised it would be popular. Had the end of the Union then arrived? If so, let it not be announced by the outcry of the passions of people, nor yet let it be heralded by passionate debates on the part of their representatives. Let those whose duty it is to steer the. ship of State direct it in the proper path, and if the evil must come let them find expedients to break the shock. It was said in common conversation that the Home Government would never permit a dissolution of the Union. They could only reason upon that point from analogy, and nothing, he contended, was more common in their colonial history than such an event. New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were formerly one province, and had been separated by the action of the Imperial Government. Cape Breton had been separated and re-annexed to Nova Scotia, as Labrador had been to Newfoundland. This Upper Province belonged originally to the province of Quebec—was separated from it in 1791, and re-united half a century later. Judging from the colonial policy which the mother country had ever pursued, there is nothing more certain than that, if a dissolution of the Union was strongly pressed for, it would not be refused. He spoke impartially. He had as deeply at heart, he had as great a reverence for, the religious institutions of Lower Canada as any Lower Canadian could have. And he had never sat by and heard them attacked without putting forward his decided protest against such utterances. In that respect he was certain he felt as strongly as anybody could do for the preservation of

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the social and religious institutions of Lower Canada, and if they were attacked—and might that day be far distant—his duty would be to unite himself heartily with those who defended their hearths and their altars. On the other hand, he had a very deep, strong, and sincere feeling of interest in the people of Upper Canada. He belonged to them by birth; he had a great deal in common with them; one-third of them were emigrants like himself, and he could therefore speak impartially on the subject. In that spirit he would say that, badly as they got on under the present system, they would get on much worse if the Union were severed. The radical evil did not lie so much in the system as in that insatiable thirst for office which made every man believe himself a born statesman, and imagine that he should succeed to office after occupying a seat for twelve months in that House. Too many of them desired by illegitimate means to attain to wealth, to have a hand in a job, and surreptitiously to arrive at a position to the attainment of which men in other countries were willing to devote the best and the greater portion of well-spent lives. This spirit he regarded as dangerous—as the rock against which they would split if proper caution was not used. That was the spirit which would prove their ruin, and which would produce a dissolution of the Union. It would be doubly productive of evil in Quebec, as there the French Canadian influence would be stronger, and consequently the suspicions of the people of Upper Canada would be more aroused.

Mr. CAUCHON—That will strike in both ways.

Mr. MCGEE—That is your view of sound policy. The hon. gentleman thinks Lower Canada has now the power and will keep it.

Mr. CAUCHON—I never said so. I hope you don’t want to misrepresent me. What I said was that we ought not to make any concession to Upper Canada without being well aware of what we are doing.

Mr. MCGEE said that such grave issues as those between the two sections of the Province ought not of course to be settled without mature deliberation. The hon. gentleman

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then went on to say that he regarded the taunts the hon. member for Montmorency had uttered that night, and in which he was encouraged by hon. gentlemen opposite, respecting the gentlemen who had been called upon to form the Administration of August last, as most unjust. To suppose it possible that great questions, some of which had been fructifying and fermenting since the Union, could be settled in forty-eight hours, was an absurdity. He would not have alluded to this matter, did it not incidentally show the existence of an unfriendly desire to place public men unfairly before the House and the country—in a position in which their influence must be endangered, instead of taking them as they were, and giving them an opportunity of being useful so long and as far as possible. Instead of being treated in such a spirit, they were attacked with harshness, severity, and unfairness. So long as such a spirit existed, it showed clearly that it was not desired that they should grow into one nation; it showed that the theory—that Canada would be one nation—which existed in the mind of Lord Sydenham and his advisers, had been abandoned on both sides, and that no nearer approach could be made towards its fulfilment. On the contrary, he was one of those who desired that if the present system were displaced, it should be only to make way for a more complete and perfect union. As one who looked forward to the speedy growth of this great Province into an incipient nationality, which, in the fulness of time, and with the consent of the parent State, was to take its place among the nations of the New World; as one who did not believe that prospect to be all a dream; as one who looked forward with confidence to that glorious consummation, he would say that it was now the solemn duty of the gentlemen who occupied the Treasury Benches to speak seriously one last parting word to Upper Canada on a question which most vitally concerned her; and, on the important occasion of bidding her adieu, show some reasonable grounds for adopting or rejecting the resolutions of the hon. member for Cornwall.

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CONSTITUTIONAL DIFFICULTIES BETWEEN UPPER AND LOWER CANADA.

HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY, QUEBEC, MAY 2ND, 1860.

MR. BROWN (Toronto) having moved a series of resolutions affirming the necessity of constitutional changes in the relations of Upper and Lower Canada,

Mr. MCGEE said—I have no intention of detaining the House by speaking at any great length, and still less of following in anything like detail, the observations made last night by the member for North Hastings (Mr. Benjamin). I listened to the hon. gentleman’s speech throughout, with a great deal of attention, but I failed to perceive any conclusive argument in all that he said. The exposition he made to this House reminded me of Falstaff’s “pennyworth of bread to such an unconscionable quantity of sack.” (Laughter.) But, though I do not intend to follow in argument, as I must follow in point of time, the hon. member for North Hastings, if the House will allow me, I shall offer some views which I have formed for myself, from a careful perusal of the political records of this Province, as well as of the sister colonies of British North America, and after giving them all the attention I could, both during the recess and during former sessions, when I had the honour of attending this House, and had the use of its valuable library, the most valuable possession we have, I shall offer to the House with great deference the views which I considered it my duty to form in relation to this question, which differs most materially from any other question that can come before this House. On every other occasion, we are either debating a particular expenditure, or we are for or against a particular law, but in

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this discussion we have raised the long previous question, whether or not we ought to be here—whether it is true that, at this moment, this House and the co-ordinate branches of the Legislature, are governing this country, according to the prevailing theory in Canada of Responsible Government. We are debating the tenure of our own existence, whether we have fulfilled the conditions of that tenure, and whether it is for the advantage of our constituents that that tenure should be prolonged. That is a question of much more serious scope than the propriety of any particular expenditure, which may take place under our form of Government, or any particular Act which we may either pass here or reject. I may observe, Mr. Speaker, before going farther, that this is not the first time, nor the second, nor the third, that the Constitution of Canada has been under discussion in Assemblies similar to our own. Sir Henry Cavendish’s report of “The debates on the Quebec Bill” in the Imperial Parliament, in 1774, are familiar to most members of this House. That discussion occupied the Commons of Great Britain nine days, and engaged the earnest attention of the ablest statesmen of the first half of George the Third’s reign; yet in 1774, there were, according to Sir Guy Carleton, not above 400 British settlers in all Canada, and not more than 90,000 inhabitants altogether, including, I suppose, the Aborigines. The first Constitution continued in force till 1791—seventeen years; it was then abolished; two provinces were created; local legislatures, consisting of an executive head and two chambers each, were granted to Upper and Lower Canada. The discussion on the Canada Act of 1791 occupied the Commons of Great Britain six days, and were sustained by the first statesmen of that generation. That was the discussion which was chiefly dwelt upon, and most largely quoted from by the member for Toronto. It was a discussion very remarkable in every respect, because it coincided in point of time with the great debate on first principles, which at that day occupied the minds of all the statesmen in the civilised world. The great issues raised by the French Revolution were then novel to the minds of men, and even

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the Canada Act of 1791 got entangled in the consideration of the general principles involved in the discussion of the issues raised by the French Revolution, and as the member for Hastings said last night, led to the rupture of a political and personal friendship of twenty-five years’ standing, between two of the most illustrious statesmen of Great Britain, Mr. Burke and Mr. Fox—a rupture, however, which did not grow, as he said, out of the merits of the Canada Bill, but from the introduction of French politics into the debate by Burke, as was charged by his former friend Fox,—unjustly and unnecessarily. The constitution adopted in 1791 differed very materially from that adopted in 1774, and continued for twenty or thirty years, without encountering any formidable criticism or censure. It went into effect in Lower Canada at once, and in Upper Canada in 1796. It was called in those days the “New Constitution,” and had its eulogists and enthusiastic admirers. We have an anecdote in Christie’s “History of Canada” that when Prince Edward, father of her present Majesty, and grandfather of the young Prince, whom we expect soon to see amongst us, visited this colony, he quelled an election riot at Charlesbourg, in this neighbourhood (Quebec), by appealing to the merits of the “New Constitution,” and the advantages Canadians had obtained under it. After a full and fair trial, however, the New Constitution was found not to work well. It was found that the colony had outgrown it. Time and experience, those great instructors of all statesmen, who are not wilfully blind or hopelessly incapable, proved wiser than Lord North in 1774, than Mr. Pitt and his colleagues in 1791, exposed many gaps and vacant spaces in the once lauded constitution, and pointed out many occasions and many reasons for change, improvement, addition, and amendment. Dissatisfaction strongly manifested itself in Lower Canada about the year 1822. The relations of the Executive and Legislature were not defined. The relations of the Judiciary to the Executive and Legislature were not defined. The House of Assembly had spent the greater part of two sessions, 1818 and 1819, in impeaching the Chief Justice and three or four of the

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other Judges. They claimed the power of impeachment, while the Upper Chamber asserted its competency to sit as a court of impeachment. This raised a great constitutional question, which was referred by Lord Dalhousie to the Prince Regent’s Government; but, though it was taken into consideration, no decision on the point has been given by the Home Government from that day to this. (Hear, hear.) In 1822, this section of the Province, then by far the most populous, was before the House of Commons as a petitioner for constitutional changes. It was at that time gradually becoming accustomed to Constitutional Government, which at first, of course, it was not. For it is a curious fact—a fact, perhaps, the dregs of which are not yet entirely worked out of the social state of Lower Canada,—that the majority of Lower Canadians did not themselves in the first place wish for Constitutional Government, having been trained under the military system of Montcalm and his predecessors, to a preference for submission to military power. When the Constitution of 1774 was proposed, the French population of Lower Canada petitioned almost to a man against it, and declared they did not wish to be inflicted with an Assembly. They pointed out how Assemblies in other colonies had led to conflict between the colonists and the Crown, and also to their lavish expenditure of public money. But after a few years were past, when the generation which saw the substitution of the flag of Great Britain for the flag of France had passed away, and when a generation familiarised with constitutional practices grew up, the public men, of the legal profession especially, and some of the medical profession, and some of the seignors of the country, began to warm towards a constitutional system, and the ambition which had formerly been directed to the career of arms, transferred its hopes to the legislature, so that it became a source of triumph and pride to have a seat in either the Upper or Lower branch of the governing body of the country. But, as that constitutional feeling grew strong, so also grew strong the dissatisfaction of the people with the defective system introduced in 1791. Accordingly, in 1822, the Commons

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of Lower Canada appeared as petitioners at the bar of the House of Commons, in England; the same year Mr. Maryatt, M.P., was appointed their agent in the Imperial Parliament; and in 1823 Mr. Speaker Papineau was sent to London to obtain a redress of grievances. In 1828 Mr. Huskisson’s “Canada Committee” sat, and they, in their report, conclude that no changes short of “an impartial, conciliatory, and constitutional system,” will be attended with the desired effect—the pacification of the Province at large. In 1832, Mr. Wm. Lyon Mackenzie carried to London a petition signed by 24,000 inhabitants of Upper Canada, against the scheme of union then in preparation; in 1834, the ninety-two resolutions of Lower Canada, and the report of the “Committee on Grievances” in Upper Canada, sufficiently proved that the system would not work; yet it was not until the unsuccessful insurrection of 1837 and ’88 challenged the attention of Imperial statesmen to the necessity for “Constitutional Remedies,” that they entered in good earnest on their consideration. The measure proposed in 1839 was, however, postponed till the next year, when Canadian affairs occupied the House of Commons six or eight days; the result was, the the present Act of Union, now in its twentieth year, and which we, on this side, propose to subject to the same test of experience—of fitness to our present circumstances—which the statesmen of 1840 employed towards the Constitution of 1791, and the statesmen of 1791 applied to the Constitution of 1774. (Hear, hear.) A century has not passed since the Treaty of Paris handed over this country to Great Britain; yet, in that century, it has existed under five different forms of Government. For fourteen years it was governed by a military executive; for seventeen years it was ruled as a Crown Colony, by a Governor and Council; for forty years and upwards it was ruled as two distinct Provinces, with one chamber filled by election and one by nomination, in each section; and at this moment it is governed by a single Legislature, but with both branches elective since 1854, and the Executive Ministers, in theory at least, responsible for their official

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acts to the people and Parliament of Canada only. The debates of 1774, of 1791, and of 1840, show, Mr. Speaker, how deeply the best minds in the Empire were exercised in planning the fabric, and proportioning the parts of the several systems under which this Province has been governed for the last hundred years. In reading over those debates, we are overawed at the fulness of information, at the generous forecast, the enlightened wisdom of many of the men who have gone before us, in considering the constitution of Canada; but we are no less struck, Mr. Speaker, by the fact, that all their plans have been materially modified and amended by time. Time and experience have proved wiser counsellors than the wisest of men; time and experience have condemned Lord North’s attempt, and every other attempt, to establish the Church of England in any portion of Canada, as the State Church; time and experience have condemned Mr. Pitt’s attempt to make seats in the Legislative Council hereditary; and to these same high authorities—time and experience—we now appeal against the defects, the radical defects in Lord John Russell’s constitution of 1840. What were the circumstances which surrounded the introduction of that constitution into Canada? Both Upper and Lower Canada had been agitated to their depths by the unsuccessful insurrection of 1837 and 1838. The swell and clamour of the storm had not disappeared, when the high commanding voice of Lord Durham was heard above all other voices, propounding remedies—immediate and permanent remedies—for the state of the Province. The report of that noble Lord completes the evidence of the Imperial care of Canada exhibited in the discussions of 1791 and 1774. It is, as I am sure every one in this House will admit, a document above all praise, above all price; it is such a report as Timoleon might have made to the Corinthian Senate, when sent to deliver their descendants, the Syracusans, from the double-headed monster, despotism and anarchy. Lord John Russell was, naturally enough, deeply imbued with the sentiments of Lord Durham; he became Colonial Secretary in the Melbourne ministry of 1839,

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greatly to the satisfaction of his friend, Lord Sydenham, who accepted at the same time the office of Governor-General of the British North American Colonies. It was agreed between the Melbourne ministry and Lord Sydenham—before he could have any other knowledge of the actual state of Upper and Lower Canada, than that gleaned from Lord Durham’s report and Lord Durham’s conversation—that the Legislative Union was to be carried. It was decided upon as a necessary measure, from an Imperial point of view, in order to prevent the recurrence of the events of 1837 and 1838, and in order to strengthen the connection with Great Britain. I do not pretend to say that all considerations local to Canada were underrated or omitted from the deliberations of the Melbourne Administration—I do not even say that the Imperial view they took was not the view which even the most patriotic Canadian—reasoning now long after the fact—might not have taken could he have foreseen its actual consequences; but I do say, that the measure of Union passed in 1840 was conceived in an Imperial spirit, that it was urged on by Imperial, rather than Provincial motives and interests, and that advantage was taken of the temporary agitation and reaction, in this country, to force it, all imperfect as it was, into premature operation. (Hear, hear.) Honourable gentlemen, its defenders and eulogists in this House, may speak fondly of it as “our constitution”—and “our invaluable constitution”—but it cannot be called ours in its conception nor in its execution. Before the Act of 1774 was passed, Canadian witnesses were examined by the Imperial Parliament; Sir Guy Carleton, Chief Justice Hay, Baron Maseres, and M. de Lotbiniere, were examined; before the Act of 1791 was passed, Mr. Lymburner, a very able man, a citizen of Quebec, was examined on behalf of the British inhabitants of Lower Canada, and other colonists had been consulted by correspondence: but in framing the provisions of the Act of 1840 no such preliminary consultation with leading colonists had taken place. It was resolved upon in England before Lord Sydenham left; and that energetic nobleman prided himself especially on the celerity with

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which he carried the foregone conclusion of his colleagues into effect. He gave the Special Council of Lower Canada less than a week’s time to deliberate—he gave the Parliament of Upper Canada a fortnight; after listening to both lie heeded neither; he confesses in his private correspondence that he thought the best thing for Lower Canada “would be ten years more of despotism;” but he could not personally afford to wait ten years; he had arrived in the last week of October, 1839, and he boasted, within two months from that date, before the end of December, he had carried the Union, so far as Canada could assent or make submission. (Hear, hear.) And this is the origin of the measure—the work of two or three men, done in a hurry, in two short months—which is spoken of in the same sense as the British Constitution—the work of many generations of men—the foundations of which, like Cologne Cathedral, were the work of one age, the superstructure of another, the completion of a third, the embellishment of a fourth; winch is compared to the American Constitution, the product of the wisest men, gathered in from the Kennebec to the Altampa, sitting in conclave, under the presidency of a Washington, or engaged in the discussions of the “Federalist” or the Forum for seven whole years together! Mr. Speaker, there is no sanctity of age about this Constitution of ours; we cannot invoke its provisions as “the wisdom of our ancestors!” neither were the means by which it was carried, such as to surround it with any great halo of glory. There was no chivalric gathering, such as met at Eunnymede; no learned assembly, such as sat at Annapolis; the free voices of the people were not heard demanding it; no fair representation of the people existed at the time even in Upper Canada: it was carried by sheer Imperial influence, executive address, and the advance of £1,500,000 sterling for public works.—The Sydenham loan carried the Sydenham Union, and the instrument thus framed deserves for its origin no other reverence than such as may fairly be attached to its authors, Lord Sydenham and Lord John Russell. It is in this sense Lord Grey speaks of Lord Sydenham, as having

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“assumed the government;” and that Lord Metcalfe, in his despatch to Lord Stanley, of the 5th of May, 1843, speaks of Lord Sydenham, as “the fabricator of the form of Government now existing in this Province.”—When lion, gentlemen attribute to “the Act of Union” the advantages which have sometimes flowed from the system of responsible government, they commit, it seems to me, a serious anachronism. Responsible government is nowhere conceded in the Act of Union. (Hear, hear.) Neither Lord Sydenham, nor his second and ablest successor, Lord Metcalfe, recognised “responsible government” in the sense we now use it, as inherent in the Act of Union. As Lord Metcalfe observes of his predecessor, he “scouted the idea” of responsible government in his despatches. After the Union was consummated at Kingston, he practically accepted it, or submitted to circumstances he could not control, by admitting that members of the Executive Council ought not to continue such, when they ceased to command the confidence of a majority of this House. Lord Metcalfe certainly did not recognise that theory; nor did the Colonial Ministers, his immediate superiors; Lord Elgin, so bitterly abused yesterday from the benches opposite, may be called the first Governor-General who acted consistently on the theory—and he did not arrive here till the seventh year after the Union. Let us, therefore, not confound two things—the Act of 1840 and the establishment of responsible government; let us not credit to a false cause whatever good results have sprung from another, and a subsequent advance towards legislative independence. And, after all, in what does this “responsibility” of ministers to this House or the country consist? On the vigilance and patriotism of the majority of the House I admit it ought to depend; but on what does it really depend? I answer—and the records of our recent as well as of our earlier politics under the Union bear me out—it depends as much, if not more, on the personal qualities of the Governor sent us—on his capacity, his firmness, and his superiority to personal influences—as on the will of this House. It does not exist in your Union Act, nor in any

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other fundamental law. It exists mainly in the personal character of the Governor. When you get a Governor who respects public opinion, who has had a constitutional training, who is by temper as well as by information fit to be the head of a great constitutional State—which every public man chosen by favouritism or chance medley is not (hear, hear)—then you have Responsible Government; but not otherwise. (Hear, hear.) For it is a very different thing, Mr. Speaker, moving in a prescribed orbit, as ministers in England, carrying out a constitution which every body around them habitually obeys, from trying to work an ill-defined constitution, in a new state of society, supplementing the defects of that constitution out of the resources of your own wisdom, and justice and foresight. That constitution which depends on the will of any one man, however high he may be, or the will of any number of men, is no constitution, is undeserving the name of a constitution. I know very well that the theory is, that ministers cannot remain in office without being sustained by a majority of this House. But there is another power which may have more to do with keeping them in office, under the present system, than a majority of this House, or their own electors, once they are elected. Give any ministry, however scraped together, a chamber of one hundred and thirty members, not divided by deep and broad party lines—give them, at the same time, a pliable, or partisan, or incapable Governor, who will permit them a profuse use of the public money, under the colour of “Orders in Council”—and such a ministry, however distrusted or detested in the country, may continue to rule this House for four consecutive years, or as long as such a Governor remains. Is it not so? Is not this the plainest lesson which Time, and Experience have taught us from our existing constitution? And where, even with a new Parliament or a new Governor—where is the redress of the people against a bad minister? He may lay down his portfolio, and laugh us all to scorn. He may retire from official station, and you cannot follow him to the back benches or the cross benches. You cannot reach him

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when he is in—you cannot reach him when he is out. Where, then, is your ” Responsible Government? ” Can there be responsibility of ministers without a penalty? It seems to me there cannot. And if not, where is your penalty? Have you not the same radical defect which Mr. Grattan found in the constitution of his country, when he exclaimed, in allusion to the Roman fasces, “Ireland has no axe, and therefore she has no honest minister.” I am well aware that, practically, the power of impeachment has fallen into comparative disuse in England, and has been very rarely resorted to in the United States; but I know that it exists in the constitution of both—that it is not a dead letter—that it has been used with terrible effect in times past, just as the great guns under our windows, though silent now and somewhat rusted, can yet serve every purpose for which they were originally cast from the furnace, and mounted where they stand. But, sir, we are told by the hon. member for North Hastings, that we owe to the Union, unqualifiedly—apart from the system of responsibility—whatever monetary credit the Province has enjoyed the past dozen or twenty years. Sir, I am not a disunionist, and I hold, of course, that some form of union is essential to our common credit, and most beneficial to our common progress. I do not think it possible that Upper and Lower Canada, once separated, could advance, or command one means of progress—money—in anything like the proportion which they can, being united. Dissolution, ” pure and simple”’ as the phrase is, I consider very simple indeed; I consider it altogether retrograde; and I do not believe the youngest man in this House will ever live to see it. (Hear, hear.) But because I am a unionist, must I, therefore, be for this Act of Union and for no other? Or, is it even possible for me, or for any one, to stand by Lord Sydenham’s union at this time of day? Sir, it is not possible; for that union, such as it was, no longer exists; it has been frittered away, year by year, by Imperial legislation and by Provincial legislation, till it now hangs in tatters upon the expanding frame of this colony. Of its sixty-two clauses, no less than thirty have been repealed by

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statute within the last ten years! The 4th clause, in relation to the Legislative Council, has been repealed; the required sanction of the two-thirds vote in Constitutional Changes has gone with that clause; the clauses from 13 to 25, inclusive, relating to elections—to the constitution of this House—have been repealed; the proviso of the 26th clause, and the whole of the 27th clause, relating to the same important subject, have been repealed; clause 41, making the English language the official language of the country, has been repealed; clause 42, reserving all legislation on ecclesiastical matters for the Sovereign’s consent, has been repealed; clause 44, relating to Provincial Courts of Appeal, has been superseded; clauses 50 to 57, inclusive, constituting the Consolidated Revenue Fund, and schedules A and B of the Act referred to in those clauses, have all been repealed. And this is the shattered idol we are called upon to worship, as the image of life, and health, and power! So far as it defined the powers of this Chamber, or the composition of the other, the Act of Union is defunct; so far as it touched the delicate subjects of language and religion it is defunct; so far as it constituted Courts of Appeal, or legislated for the public credit, it is defunct; and in this carcass we are asked to place all our trust and all our dependence for future good government! But, I mistake—it is not altogether dead, though so dreadfully mutilated. There is still a little life left, which the Administration of the day draw hope from with desperate fidelity—the 12th section, decreeing an equality of representation, independent of population, and the 45^th section, vaguely describing the powers of the Governor-General and the all-important “Orders in Council;” the section, also, limiting the duration of Parliament to four years, may be counted among the relics which remain. The equality clause was introduced, avowedly, into the Act, for the purpose of “swamping the French;” but that purpose has been defeated—and I rejoice that it has been defeated. (Hear, hear.) It was a deliberate conspiracy against the rights of one set of people—flagitious in the conception, and wholly indefensible in the enactment;

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why, then, should it be maintained and enforced against another set? (Hear, hear.) Are we, of Lower Canada, to rule our fellow-subjects of Upper Canada, on the Pagan principle of the lex talionis? or, rather, on the Christian principle “of doing unto others as we would be done by?” I do not say that we should place ourselves or our institutions—differing so widely as we do from Upper Canadians—at their mercy; I mean nothing of the kind; I have never entertained any such idea. No! I believe that a remedy can be found by Upper Canada for her wrongs, and by Lower Canada ample safeguards for her rights; and I shall immediately, with permission of the House, though with very great self-distrust, indicate the nature of that remedy, as it suggests itself to my mind. But, before I do so, let me ask every candid man in this Assembly, whether he believes the present state of things in this Province can be much longer maintained? Are the people satisfied with the vague, unlimited power of the Executive over the public expenditure? Are they satisfied with the appointment of strong political partisans—often by their own colleagues—to the judicial bench? Are elections to this House conducted on a system calculated to inspire awe and obedience towards the laws we make? Is the character of this House elevated by the scenes which take place at our elections, by the notorious bribery and corruption which have been practised, by the fact that we met in 1858 with thirty-two seats in this House, out of 130, contested, with every fourth man in the House petitioned against? (Hear, hear.) Is it the fact that the character of this House has been raised of late years under the working of our present system? Is it the fact that a Lower Canadian majority persistently ruling the people of Upper Canada against their well-understood wishes, as expressed through their legitimate organs in this House—is that winning friends for the system in Upper Canada? (Hear, hear.) Is an elective Legislative Council, when it becomes wholly elective—as it soon will—is it, coming fresh from the people, likely to recognise in this Assembly the same monopoly of popular power which the House of Commons holds, in comparison

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with the hereditary House of Lords? If, then, what remains of our constitution does not work satisfactorily—if the Legislature is losing the respect and confidence of the people—if the Judiciary even be sometimes looked upon with doubt, recruited as it is from the thick of the political conflict—if the Executive is not regarded with affection and respect by the country—if the three great divisions of the Government of the country have all sunk in the public estimation, then I put to any honest man the question, How does all this happen? Is it that our present rulers, the Executive, or the administrators of justice, or the representatives of the people in this House, are worse men, are more prone to despotism or corruption than those who have gone before them, or those who may come after them? I do not charge them with any innate depravity of that kind; but I charge the abuses which have crept into the provisions of the Act of Union, or the omissions of the Act of Union—an instrument not strong enough to sustain official weakness against temptations to go beyond the strict line of official duty—an instrument which makes the weak weaker, and tempts and enables the corrupt to become more corrupt. (Hear, hear.) And I say, an instrument like that ought not to be held up to the respect of this House and of this country; and that it would be indeed a poor verdict on the intelligence of the people of Canada, if, after twenty-three years of peace following the last social commotion in this Province, if there are not men to be found in Canada at this day of sufficient wisdom to frame a much better instrument than Lord Sydenham improvised, and Lord John Russell imposed upon Upper and Lower Canada, regardless of the opposition of both. (Cheers.) Before I pass from this subject, there is one other point to which I must refer—the admitted necessity of Departmental Reform, which cannot be had under our present system. The Public Works Department is a fathomless abyss; our Public Domain does not pay the wages of its overseers; our Department of Agriculture and Statistics is without a head; our Emigration Service ds unorganised; the only active agencies of administration

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are to be found in the Taxing Department and the Sueing Department—with the Finance Minister, the Postmaster, and the Attorney-General. Individual vigour, I admit, may do much towards a remedy; but the system ought to be such as to provide against individual weakness, and to render mediocrity comparatively harmless. This, Sir, I fear we never can have, with the present arrangement of nominal heads and irresponsible subordinates. We certainly have not hitherto had a satisfactory departmental system. (Hear, hear.) I have shown, I trust, that Lord Sydenham’s Union did not originate in any view to the interests of Canada, though I do not allege but that the interests of Canada have been served by that instrument, up to a certain point. But I say it was not the act of the people of Canada. It was imposed on the people of Canada by Imperial authority alone. It was urged on to remove an irksome state of things in the Province itself, and to strengthen the connection with the mother country. It was hastened at a time when its chief advocate, the Governor-General of that day, would have needed to have been more than human, to have been above the impressions produced on his mind by all the conflicting stories and views pressed upon him, by men coming heated from the late social contest, many of whom had been actually in the mêlée of civil war. I admit that those who point out the defects of the present Union are bound to make a clear and strong case against it; and I think that clear and strong ease has been made. (Hear, hear.) I speak not now so much of details, as of the broad and general facts. The details have been elaborated with great care in several publications; and, among others, in an excellent political document which the hon. member for North Hastings took as the text for his speech last night—the address of the Reform Convention lately held in Upper Canada. But, I suppose, upon this subject, we are all free companions on this side of the House, and each of us has some peculiar view of his own, which he will express, as I have risen to do, in pronouncing an opinion on the motion of the hon. member for Toronto. I should have preferred, I admit,

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to have voted upon that motion with some modifications; but I am now debarred from doing so by the motion of the previous question moved by the member for Hastings; so that now we shall have to vote for or against it in the form in which it has been proposed. (Hear, hear.) As I am debarred from voting for any modification of that motion, I am prepared fully to concur in the opinion, that the Act of Union has not answered the designs of its projectors—that it has not fulfilled what they claim for it—that it has been already in great part repealed—that it has no longer, so to speak, “a leg to stand upon”—that it is not now in existence in this Province. The question, then, is a question of remedy. The hon. member for Hastings, last night, twitted the hon. member for Toronto that he had no remedy to propose. I have no doubt, when we come to that stage of the matter, remedies will be as thick as blackberries. I have no doubt every one who has ever opened a constitutional book will have his own scheme of the distribution of functions, and of joint authority, of the proportion of power to be exercised by the central authority, and the proportion to be retained by the local governments. There is no subject, perhaps, on which the human mind can exercise itself, so capable of endless combinations, as the question of civil government. Perhaps, even that science, the subtlest of all sciences, Theology, is not more full of acute distinctions than this comparatively modern science, of the formation of constitutions and the distribution of powers. Now my own humble view, which I offer to the House for what it is worth, is, that the remedy which will suit our circumstances, is a bold application of the federal principle. I am prepared to apply that remedy to our position with the sanction of the people of both sections of the Province, and not otherwise. But the best and most desirable thing, to my mind, is the Federal Union of all the North American colonies—and I think it not only a more desirable thing, but a more practical thing. I think every man in this House who has given careful consideration to the subject, must see that dissolution pure and simple is entirely out of the question; that an abso-

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lute dissolution of the Union is an impossibility. We are not our own masters in that respect at all events. We have to get the consent of the Empire, and the consent of the public creditor, and the whole tendency of these modern times is against it. Every invention for diminishing the obstacle of space, for the multiplication of ideas, for the swifter communication of intelligence, is against it—art is against it—science is against it—nature is against it. Dissolution pure and simple, no man on the floor of this House, I believe, ever will live to see, should he live to be as old as the oldest of his ancestors. But, while I believe that to be neither the desirable nor the practical remedy, I say it is easier to obtain, and we have already obtained, the sanction of the Imperial authorities to enter into the consideration of the question of the general federation. Yet to work out this cure even with the sanction of the metropolitan power, much time for deliberation, and many mutual conferences, will be necessary. If the Legislatures of the Lower Colonies, and our own, were prepared for it, the initiative ought to be taken immediately upon the visit of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, for even then, it would probably be 1864 or 1865 before all the obstacles could be removed, and all the arrangements agreed upon. It would, however, be something to hope for, and to work for, and to wait for, in the interim; it would occupy the hearts and minds of all the statesmen of all the colonies, and prepare them by correspondence and intercourse to act understanding together, when they should come together. I rest the advocacy of a Federal Union of all the Provinces mainly on these grounds. First.—That a Unity of all the Provinces is desirable commercially, and would be beneficial to each. Secondly.—That a mere Commercial Union, such as the German Zollverein, without the superintendence of some central political power, would not give sufficient security for the interests of all members of the confederacy. Thirdly.—That such a union is a necessary complement of our present colonial system,—unless we are to look forward to annexation to the United States. Fourthly.—That while the tendencies of our times are all in favour of such Unions,

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the obstacles in our way are not greater than those which have been repeatedly overcome by other disunited States and Provinces. That a Union of the colonies is desirable commercially, was, I think, very clearly shown to this House two sessions since, by the present Finance Minister—though he did not then put his resolution to the vote. Had he done so, I should have felt it my duty to vote with him, as I did subsequently on the subject of an Intercolonial Railway. It is desirable commercially for Canada, that we should have an addition of a million consumers to our domestic market. It is desirable that but one tariff and custom system should prevail throughout all these Provinces. How is it now? With half a dozen different tariffs and different currencies, with New Brunswick and Nova Scotia taxing each other’s industry, and both taxing ours, is it possible we should grow in numbers or in wealth in the ratio of the conterminous New England States? It is not possible, as we find to our cost. While the New England States average thirty inhabitants to the square mile, Canada averages but seven, and New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, taken together, but eleven. The statistics of Intercolonial trade, contrasted with our trade to the United States, shows what “a triangular duel” we are engaged in, at the expense of each other’s safety and property. In 1857 we exported to the United States breadstuff’s to the value of 1,776,250l., or near $9,000,000, while the two adjoining Provinces imported from the United States breadstuffs to the value of 408,000l., or $2,000,000. On the other hand we imported from the United States, West Indies produce to the value of $4,500,000, while our exports to the West Indies were nil. New Brunswick, however, in the same year imported from the West Indies to the value of 40,000l., and Nova Scotia to the amount of 322,000l.-—in all, to the amount of say, $1,800,000—a figure which shows how possible it is to carry on much of our West India trade through the agency of the sister Provinces. I instance only these two articles of commerce—West Indian goods and breadstuffs. But there are

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other mediums of exchange between us. Nova Scotia has coal,—we have none; and fuel, at least in Lower Canada, we are told is becoming every day more scarce and dear: Upper Canada exports flour, and imports West Indian goods—fish and coal; we manufacture many articles which the Lower Provinces want, and they produce or can profitably procure us others which we require. What then is wanting to our mutually benefiting each other? I answer—intercourse—association—union. (Hear, hear.) It is argued that no intercourse exists, and, therefore, that no commerce could exist. Create the intercourse, and you create the commerce. Would the Reciprocity Treaty have been of any practical value to any portion of Canada, if it were not for the canals and railways on our side the line, and the other? There are the broad facts—a million of consumers at our own doors—our own fellow-subjects—with wants which we can supply, and commodities to exchange—yet they profit nothing from our vicinage, nor we by them. At this moment each of these Colonies is much more profitable to the United States than to Canada; we have reciprocity with strangers, but none with our fellow-subjects. When I place the necessity for a general federation on commercial grounds in the first instance, I do not mean to say, Mr. Speaker, that a mere commercial union without a central political power, could accomplish any great things. I know there is the example of the Zollverein, which, since 1838, has extended its circles from the Rhine to the Russian frontier—over 40,000,000 of consumers. Where would the Zollverein be, without the sustaining and directing power of Prussia? Where would any commercial union be without a tariff-making and treaty-making power? The experience of the Hanse towns and the Italian Republics —the experience even of those separated Provinces is full of instruction on this head. The territorial interests of New Brunswick were sacrificed in the Ashburton Territory, the ship-building interests of all our seaports were sacrificed in the Reciprocity Treaty—the American coasting trade has been lost to us, by the indifference of Imperial

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statesmen—the interests of Newfoundland have three times been on the point of being given up to France within six or seven years. Can any one suppose that if we had a central political power—strong enough to protect every member of what Mr. Caming called “the Great British Confederacy” of North America—such things could ever happen again? My third ground is, Sir, that such a Union as I am considering is a necessary complement to our colonial representative system—unless we look forward—which I believe no one in this House does—to annexation to the United States, (Hear, hear.) Sir, we have already advanced too far for dependencies, to halt in our march towards nationality. On what principles that nationality will ultimately repose—whether on British or on American principles—whether we are likely to become part of a Northern Republic, flanked by Southern slavery, or a secundo-geniture in the royal family of England—I do not now mean to discuss. One thing is certain, we have advanced, and must continue to advance. The law of our youth is growth, the law of our growth is progress. Now, if to the next step, we are to take, as well as those we have taken in 1774, 1791, and 1840, the consent of the Empire is essential, can we have that consent for a dissolution of the Canadian Union? I think not. For a Canadian Federation? Possibly. For a general federation, retaining the connection? It has been given over and over again; Lord Grey, Sir Lytton Bulwer, Mr. Labouchere,—almost every Colonial Secretary of late years,—has declared it to be our own affair, with which the metropolitan power has no desire to interfere unfavourably. Nova Scotia is ripe for it; New Brunswick, as I had reason to believe last year, during a visit to that country, is not actively adverse to it; the political interest below Quebec will be in its favour; and the commercial interest in England is well disposed towards it. I hold in my hand petitions presented to the Imperial Parliament during the present year by many of the leading houses of Liverpool and Glasgow; the Cunards, Gilmores, Dunlops, Richardsons,

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Gillespies,—-names powerful alike on ‘Change and in the reception room of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. These petitions not only show that it is commercially, but politically, desirable to draw all these colonies close together. The petitioners pray for an Imperial aid of 60,000l. a year for seven years, to complete the 400 miles of railway which would connect Halifax with Quebec. They point out that the defence of these colonies costs the Imperial Exchequer 420,000l. per annum, which this road would in great part supersede; and every argument for the road tells equally for the federation. Lastly, Mr. Speaker, I have said that the tendencies of our times are all in favour of such a Union as I speak of, while the obstacles in our way are not greater than have been often overcome by other separated States and Provinces. It is true, we are of unequal size, with unequal resources, and different degrees of indebtedness, but the local governments may harmonise all these inequalities. We are of different religions; yet the two great divisions of Christians—Catholics and Protestants—would be, as nearly as possible, balanced, in a union of all the colonies. We are a northern people, and must be a commercial people; the bonds of interest would therefore bind us. We would have in our favour the river system of the North, from the mouth of the Gulf to the head of Lake Superior. We have not a tithe of the difficulties to overcome which the fathers of the Swiss, Dutch, and American Confederacies overcame. Difficulties indeed there are, but none, Sir, in my humble judgment, which could not be got over in an amicable Conference of the Colonies and as I once heard the hon. member from South Ontario (Mr. Mowatt) ask—” What are statesmen fit for, if not to overcome difficulties? ” I cannot believe that any one here has a vested interest in the continuance of our disunion. There may be those who imagine that such a plan as I have sketched would prove fatal to their self-importance; who, as is said—I think unjustly said—of Julius Cæsar, “would rather be first in a village than second in Rome.” We can understand that there might be such persons, even

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in this House, but I believe there are other members of the Canadian Parliament endued with a wider vision and better aspirations—men who do not fear to meet in debate all the talents of all the Provinces; men, who would feel a generous satisfaction in confronting the ablest of their fellow-subjects in amicable controversy. Por such men the prospect of a broader arena, and less manageable majorities, has no terrors; they would welcome with enthusiasm the dawning of the day which was to enlarge our horizon, and open before us new fields of labour and of honour. (Hear, hear.) I conclude, Sir, as I began, by entreating the House to believe that I have spoken without respect of persons, and with a sole single desire for the increase, prosperity, freedom, and honour of this incipient Northern nation. I call it a Northern nation—for such it must become if all of us do but do our duty to the last. Men do not talk on this continent of changes wrought by centuries, but of the events of years. Men do not vegetate in this age as they did formerly, in one spot, occupying one position. Thought outruns the steam car, and hope outflies the telegraph. We live more in ten years in this era than the patriarchs did in a thousand. The patriarch might outlive the palm-tree which was planted to commemorate his birth, and yet not see so many wonders as we have witnessed since the Constitution we are now discussing was formed. What marvels have not been wrought in Europe and America from 1840 to 1860?—and who can say the world—or our own portion of it more particularly— is incapable of maintaining till the end of the century the ratio of the past progress? I, for one, cannot presume to say so. I look to the future of my adopted country with hope, though not without anxiety; I see in the not remote distance, one great nationality bound, like the shield of Achilles, by the blue rim of ocean—I see it quartered into many communities—each disposing of its internal affairs—but all bound together by free institutions, free intercourse, and free commerce; I see within the round of that shield, the peaks of the Western mountains and the

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crests of the Eastern waves—the winding Assinaboine, the five-fold lakes, the St. Lawrence, the Ottawa, the Saguenay, the St. John, and the Basin of Minas—by all these flowing waters, in all the valleys they fertilise, in all the cities they visit in their courses, I see a generation of industrious, contented, moral men, free in name and in fact,—men capable of maintaining, in peace and in war, a Constitution worthy of such a country. (The hon. gentleman resumed his seat amidst loud and general applause.)

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REPRESENTATION BY POPULATION.

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY, QUEBEC, MARCH 28TH, 1861.

Mr. McGee—Suffering from a severe cold, as I am, Mr. Speaker (which rendered it physically impossible for me to be at the division last night), I shall not detain the House long in stating my reasons for the vote I intend to give. I wish distinctly to state, why, if I had been able to have been here last night, I should have voted against the proposition of Representation by Population, as introduced, though agreeing in the justice, and believing in the triumph of the principle as applied to the composition of this House. (Hear, hear.) Since I have had a seat in this House, I have always voted against that proposition, introduced singly and alone, because I believe we ought to have no fundamental change in this House, which was not to be accompanied by some simultaneous check introduced into other parts of the system. (Hear, hear.) Do gentlemen, who advocate this principle for this House, propose to apply it to the other House? I believe not. But what effective corrective will the other chamber, elective as it is, supply against the change to be wrought in this? Are you willing to go back and declare the other House constituted en permanence—for life? Are you willing to restore the nominative power to the Crown, or leave it with the district, for which the member may decease? Are you willing to constitute the other House on the principle of equality, if you have your fair, popular representation in this House, which originates the money bills? These, gentlemen, are considerations which must accompany the practical adoption of Representation by Population, and though I blame nobody for recording his vote for an abstract principle,

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your question will not be a practical one, till you are prepared to consider it with all its pendants, conditions, and surroundings. (Hear, hear.) I hope to see a party—I hope to see a government who will be so prepared to consider it, and to overhaul our whole constitutional system, or rather no system, for at present we have none. At present, the Act of Union hangs in shreds and tatters on the statute book; 27 out of 62 clauses, with schedules A and B, having been superseded or repealed, by Imperial or Provincial legislation. (Hear, hear.) Thirty-five clauses—and these, except the twelfth, of little importance—are all that remain. It is a disgrace to the intelligence of the House, of the country, and of the age we live in, that such a tattered garment should be all we have to clothe the limbs of this young giant nation. (Hear, hear.) This, Mr. Speaker, is not a subject for heat—not a subject on which it is seemly to talk of bloodshed, on one side or the other. The hon. member for Portneuf, and the hon. member for Laprairie, are ready to shed their blood in resisting Representation by Population; while the hon. member for Peel is prepared to shed his blood to obtain it. I ought to congratulate the House on this increase of the martial spirit (laughter), but I prefer to look at the question from a general point of view, as one might look from the summit of the “Two Mountains” upon the Ottawa river, from which you can see both Upper and Lower Canada at once. (Cheers.)

Besides the considerations affecting the other House, involved in any other fundamental alterations in our own organisation, there will be the consideration of the relation which the Judiciary of Canada are to sustain to the other departments of Government in the new system. In England, it was an ancient constitutional usage for the Sovereign, or both Houses, to submit queries on constitutional subjects to the Judges; but the legislative bodies have not hesitated at times to vote the answers of the Judges “insufficient” and to affirm other principles, in resolutions or enactments of their own. In the United States, the Supreme Court has always been an essential department of the Govern-

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ment; if we are to frame constitutional changes with a view to permanency, it will be imperative on us to define the relation of the Judges to the Legislature and the Executive. Lastly, Mr. Speaker, the subject of constitutional changes involves another—our relations to the Imperial Government. While I utterly protest against the Imperial Government imposing a ready-made constitution upon us, I know very well that it is not possible, neither is it desirable, that we should enter on the administration of an improved system until the Imperial Government have sanctioned it. (Hear, hear.) Do I think such a new system as I indicated would weaken or destroy the connection with Great Britain? Everything of course would depend on its executory chief; but as one who believes that where circumstances are not forced, as much legal liberty may be enjoyed with an hereditary as with an elective chief; as one who has no prejudices against a constitutional monarchy, really founded upon, and therefore subject to, the fundamental law; as one holding these general views, I should be prepared to see the connection strengthened at this side by a vice-royalty, which should become a secundo geniture in Her Majesty’s family, and give the possessor rank immediately after the heir-apparent. (Hear, hear.) I throw out this view with great deference, as a long-entertained idea, rather than a complete conviction; but I throw it out for the consideration of those who are groundlessly alarmed, that the very discussion of constitutional changes threatens the connection. On the contrary, it seems to me, in the adoption of a permanent and comprehensive system, the Imperial bond, if so desired on both sides, might be imbedded and preserved for ages. (Hear, hear.) Another guarantee of that description would be a Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament; a reform in the metropolitan constitution, long foreseen and foreshown by many able men, both British and foreign, among whom I may mention the name of Dr. Francis Lieber, in his admirable history of “Civil Liberty and Self-Government.” (Hear.) But whatever may be the precise distribution of powers, I shall always maintain, Mr. Speaker, that such a

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constitution should originate among ourselves (hear, hear); that it should spring from the sensus communis of Canada, and the other Provinces, if they coalesce; that it should be the product of the best heads, both in and out of political life, in these colonies; that it should not be imposed upon us as a mere Imperial edict by the Minister of the day in Downing Street, though I cheerfully admit we must go to Downing Street for its final sanction. (Cheers.) With these guarantees—an equality secured to territory in the Upper House—above all, with the Imperial indorsement on its back, it is necessary to suppose one of two things before we can dream of the violation of such a compact. Either Lower or Upper Canada should conspire in secret and revolt, or the Imperial power should join one or other to oppress one or the other. (Hear, hear.) For your religious guarantee, gentlemen of Lower Canada, insert in such an instrument, so sanctioned, the very words of the capitulation of Quebec, and so long as you are a million strong—100,000 fighting men with the free use of arms—you may laugh to scorn any violence to your institutions, even if any one were mad enough and wicked enough to attempt such violence. (Cheers.) I submit, Mr. Speaker, that I have indicated sufficiently my own objections to any unconsidered and unqualified change, without taking up the whole system and viewing it in all its parts. I am not opposed—I am in favour of the representation of the taxpaying many in this House, which votes and disposes of those taxes; but I am against piecemeal legislation, on the frame of the Government itself. If the old house will not stand, let us take it down and erect a new one, according to our enlarged means and increased family. But the word dissolution—divorce—what the old Jurists called separatismus—ought never to be heard in this House. (Hear, hear.) Another term of almost equally evil import is that too often heard in this debate, “my section of the country” We have nothing to do with sections here; we are the Commons of Canada. Sir, perhaps I am in a too sanguine mood of the triumph of what I believe to be the right principles, but though they are thus wrangling for recog-

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nition, there are three things I do not despair of: I do not despair of the adoption of the principle of numbers as the basis of representation in the popular branch of the future Parliament of Canada; I do not despair of this principle being engrafted in a new Constitutional Act, or Magna Charta, which shall be in great part framed by our leading spirits, which Act shall be entirely assented to by the large majority of the people of Lower Canada; nor do I despair of seeing under this generous, wise, and tolerant constitution, the admission, if not at the outset, then at some future day, of the other British North American Provinces. (Hear, hear.) I shall vote, Sir, for both amendments, though I much prefer that of my hon. friend, the member for Montreal. As, however, the amendment of the hon. member for Cornwall does not pretend to lay down the “Double Majority” as a rule or principle, but simply declares it “highly desirable,” with our present imperfect system, that the actual Government should not be carried on without a majority in both sections, I intend to vote for that also; no doubt it is “highly desirable while the present system continues.” (Cheers.)

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CONSTITUTIONAL DIFFICULTIES BETWEEN UPPER AND LOWER CANADA.

HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY, AT QUEBEC, APRIL 17TH, 1861.

After some introductory remarks, Mr. McGee said:—I proceed now to the general question—Shall we, or shall we not, have such constitutional changes as our present circumstances, our twenty years’ experience of Responsible Government, and a majority of our fellow-subjects, demand at our hands? (Hear, hear.) The arguments addressed to this House in favour of maintaining things as they are, by the three Cabinet Ministers from Lower Canada having seats in this House, and by several members, their partisans, (who may be called the buttresses of the Administration joined to it and supporting it from without,) were mainly three: 1. The example of Great Britain, of whose institutions ours were said to be a transcript: 2. The recent sad experience of the United States—held up to us for our warning: 3. The determination of French Canadians never to entertain at any future time, near or distant, the question of readjusting the popular representation in this House. I think these three heads include all the argument or show of argument that was made on the other side, and when I examine the two former—the American and British precedents—I shall feel free to discuss the consequences of the utterly impracticable policy foreshadowed in the ultimatum of “things as they are” for another ten years. (Hear, hear.) I deny, Sir, at the outset with the member for South Ontario, that our system can be considered a transcript of the British Constitution. Where is the resemblance—not to say identity? England has three “estates”—a Sovereign and two Houses; and we have

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three branches of Legislature, a Governor and two Chambers. But France, and Prussia, and Belgium, and the United States, have also two Chambers and an Executive, or Sovereign. If we look below the surface we will find that in the present distribution of our powers, we depart almost as widely from the British system, in several important particulars, as the United States, or some others of the countries just named. In the Constitutional Act of 1791, and even in the Act of Union, the distribution of powers was essentially different from what it is now. Then, the Governor-General had a judicial function as part of the Court of Appeals—now he has no judicial function; then the Upper House was nominative and might have been hereditary, now it is elective and ephemeral; then there was legal provision made for the maintenance of the Church of England, now you have a Statute, ratified by an Imperial Act, declaring it to be essential to abolish “the very semblance of the connection between Church and State.” Without judicial powers in your Executive, without an ecclesiastical, judicial, or hereditary element in your Upper House, where is the much-talked-of transcript of the British Constitution? In the powers and functions of this House, we might, indeed, find a close resemblance to the composition of the British House of Commons, if it were not for the 12th section of the Act of Union, which is the real basis of this House; the clause decreeing equality of representation to the two former Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada. Is it not this clause, by your own showing, that gives a federative character to this assembly; and where, let me ask, can you show a federative clause in the Reform Bill of 1832, in the Bill of Eights, or the Acts of Union with Ireland or Scotland—or in any other fundamental law of England, defining the character of their House of Commons? No such provision exists, and consequently each of our three branches of the Legislature contains within it principles, or modifications of principles, absolutely unknown to the British system. (Hear, hear.) The British system, Mr. Speaker, as a very cursory acquaintance with its history shows, was originally

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constructed on the principle of a domestic balance of power, and although it has undergone important modifications, it has never wholly lost its original character. In its first stages, the balance was between the Clergy and Nobles—”the spirituality and the temporality” as they were anciently called. A radical innovation was made by the great partisan leader Simon de Montfort, now better known as a soldier than a statesman, when he introduced the representation of borough towns. Before his day the tenants holding in capita, and by knights’ service in the counties, looked with the same indifference on the claims of the mere mechanics of the towns, that the hon. gentleman does on the majority of Upper Canada; but when de Montfort’s reform began to take effect on the system, especially after the Reformation had displaced the clerical equipoise, the balance was formed by the town and country party—and that continued to be the case till the Reform Bill of 1832, and still, in part, continues. In England this offsetting of interests and classes was possible, for the soil of England was held by feudal tenure, and so early as the reign of the first Stuart, 8000 towns could be counted within the kingdom. In England, as Romilly said of India, “distinctions of class are religiously preserved;” in England there are estates of the Crown, of the Peerage, and of the Commons; but in Canada we have nothing of the kind. In Canada we have been obliged to extinguish the only feudal tenure which remained on the Continent, and to substitute for it, the tenure of “free and common soccage”—the universal tenure of the British American Colonies, a tenure fatal to the growth of sustenance of a landed aristocracy. I freely admit, therefore, with all the hon. gentlemen who have made that assertion, that the British system is not now and never was founded on the basis of numbers alone; but at the same time I assert, we never had a close copy of that system, and that every year since the Union we have been departing, under the pressure of circumstances, more and more from the general resemblance which our Constitutional Acts once bore to that original. But, Sir, I might go even farther

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than this—I might assert with truth, that for the last half century and upwards, much of the best intellect of England has been devoted to equalising the representation of the people in the Commons House of Parliament. What was the method pursued by Earl Grey’s administration when they brought in their Reform Bill in 1832? They employed Lieut. Drummond, an expert at calculations, to classify the towns and counties of England into five classes or schedules, in proportion to their population and taxation. Lieut. Drummond’s decimal tables were a main point of attack by the Disraeli of that day—Mr. John Wilson Croker. Every advocate of the bill defended their accuracy; and upon the basis of those calculations the Reform was carried, and the Representation still stands. Why were St. Michael’s, and St. Mawes, Gatton, and Old Sarum disfranchised? Why were Manchester and Leeds enfranchised? Because the former were dispeopled, and the latter were populous towns; and was not that a long stride towards the representation of members? This is a very slight sketch of the history of the latest British reform: before, however, I pass away from it, I beg to observe, in answer to what fell from the Hon. Provincial Secretary and other gentlemen, who referred to the unequal representation of Ireland in the Imperial Parliament, that the Irish liberal or patriotic party have always considered that inequality a flagrant injustice. The Hon. Secretary alluded to Mr. O’Connell on this point, and was glad to find that I considered him a greater authority now than when he was living. Sir, I had the honour to know him slightly in his latter days, and the misfortune to differ from that illustrious man, to whose memory I may be permitted to render the homage of my more mature judgment. It has been my lot, Sir, to have seen many and to have known a few, a very few, historical persons, but I can truly say that, apart from the exaggeration of native patriotism, I never approached a person who seemed more truly deserving the title of “great” than Mr. O’Connell. When I consider his exclusively Gaelic origin, his provincial birth, his proscribed creed, his foreign education; when I con-

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sider that the English tongue, destined to be his sole arsenal, equipment, and resource, was neither the language of his childhood in Kerry, nor of his studies in France; when I consider all the foes he overcame within and without ; when I remember that he entered the Imperial Parliament for the first time at the age of 54; and the position he made and held till the last in that fastidious assembly; I feel that I do not place him too highly, when I claim that he should be ranked among the most original politicians of modern times. (Hear, hear.) Well, Sir, on this very subject before us what was Mr. O’Connell’s standing complaint?—”The county of Cork has 880,000 inhabitants, and (with her boroughs) six members; the principality of Wales has some 900,000 inhabitants, and yet Wales has 29 members! Is this justice to Ireland, is this a union which should be upheld by Irishmen?” Such were the arguments of that great popular leader, and such was the doctrine of all the Irish liberal party—a school to which, in some things, though not in all things, I am as proud to declare my adhesion to-day as I was in the earlier and more enthusiastic years of my life. (Hear, hear.) The recent sad experience of the United States has been frequently held up to us as a warning against extending the power of the people in this House, during this debate. Every one of the gentlemen who so admonished us assumed one and the same case—the excess of the democratic element in that constitution as the origin of its disruption. Mr. Speaker, I sympathise deeply with the proud and sensitive American people, who, for the first time within living memory, are doomed to hear their country spoken of in accents of pity. I sympathise with them, and with human nature deeply concerned in the issue of the American experiment; but I maintain that it is our duty in the presence of such events as are now unfortunately occurring in the United States, not to volunteer our testimony on slight or insufficient grounds against man’s capacity for self-government in the New World (hear, hear), not to attempt to wring a distorted moral, unfavourable to human rights, from a hurried survey of the facts. (Hear, hear.)

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Next to the people of the Free States, we ourselves possess the largest powers of self-government wielded anywhere on this continent, and we ought to be bailsmen with them for our common liberties, derived from a common root, rather than witnesses against them. (Cries of “hear, hear”) But as the instance of the United States has been adduced, let me ask directly, does any one pretend to say that it was, mainly or solely, through default of the House of Representatives, which is based strictly on Representation by Population, that the Union fell? (Hear, hear.) The Senate is constructed on quite another basis,—on the basis of State equality; yet every one knows that in the Senate the discussion mainly raged since the early days of Mr. Calhoun, June, 1820, downwards. It was in the Senate Webster encountered Hayne, and Douglass, Benton; and Seward, Hunter; and it was in the Senate, Sumner was stricken down by brute force for his assaults on Slavery. (Hear, hear.) It was not through the popular branch that the core of the constitution was wounded beyond cure, if it has been wounded. What then becomes of your argument, àpropos of nothing? Oh! it was because the President’s Cabinet did not sit in the House, and were not responsible directly to the Legislature, that the system broke up! Well, suppose we grant this other assumption, who proposes here to lessen the responsibility of our Ministers, or to exclude them from this House? No one proposes anything of the kind; let us not evade the question under consideration, by arguing against a proposition which is not before us. If we are to profit by American experience, it can only be by taking into view all the recent facts of their political history, the numerical increase of the slaves, the territorial increase of the Southern States, the annexation of Texas, the war with Mexico, the conquest of California, that fatal success which has brought the trial of sudden riches, hard to be borne by man or nation, in its train. Then there were other internal reasons besides this sudden overgrowth. There was the States Right doctrine of Mr. Calhoun and his school, which taught the seductive theory to Southern men that the essentials of sovereignty remained with the States,

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and never were ceded to the Union; then there was a political pulpit and an agitating clergy, confounding the Sabbath with the week and theology with politics; then there was a brilliant but reckless press sneering daily at the “Union-savers”—a press before whose arrows of ridicule, barbed by wit but feathered by folly, the ancient sentiment of veneration for the work of Washington and his colleagues fell to the earth. (Hear, hear.) These influences—but most of all the numerical increase of the slaves, the unjustly acquired spoils of the Spanish-Americans—must all be taken into the account when we presume to sit in judgment on the events we have lived to witness at Washington; and we should be most careful not to overstate the case against popular institutions, which our own resemble in structure (though not in administration) quite as nearly as they resemble those of Great Britain. (Hear, hear.) I come now, Sir, after these excursions across the line and across the ocean, to our own constitutional condition, the immediate subject of this debate. I intend to vote against the consideration of this Bill, as I voted against similar Bills and resolutions when introduced by the hon. members for Toronto, Lambton, and Victoria. I never will vote, as I never have voted, for the introduction of such a principle into our system alone, unqualified, unchecked, unbalanced. (Hear, hear.) Hon. gentlemen opposite have again in this debate sneered at their own science, or what ought to be their own science, constitutional checks, balances, and guarantees. Yet I ask them, or any of them, from their confident leader downwards, to point me out a single constitutional statesman or writer, European or American, who has ever been able to discuss this subject, or define this system, without the employment of such terms. (Hear, hear.) I presume no one will deny that Lord Brougham may be considered an authority on the British Constitution, and Mr. Webster on the American. Well, in what terms do these distinguished men speak of their several systems? Mr. Webster, in his celebrated speech in reply to Hayne, delivered in the Senate of the United States, in 1850, says:— “I admit, Sir, that this Government is a Govern-

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ment of checks and balances; that is, the House of Representatives is a check on the Senate, and the Senate is a check on the House, and the President is a check on both.” (Hear, hear.) The 2nd chapter of the second volume of Lord Brougham’s “Political Philosophy” entitled “Of Balances and Checks” is devoted to prove that no constitutional system can exist without these conditions, perfect or imperfect. After referring to the constitutions of Athens and Rome, he goes on to say that “a much more striking exemplification of the doctrine” of checks and balances, “is to be found in the English Constitution.” After giving some particular recent instances of this description, he proceeds to lay down the general rule in words, with which I shall trouble the House:— “In all these instances,” says Lord Brougham, “whether of contending parties or conflicting authorities in the State, the different forces combine to produce the result, the movement of the machine. Its course is in the direction neither of the one force nor of the other, but in a direction between those which either would separately have made it take. As a body on which two forces operate at the same time, in different but not in opposite directions, moves in the diagonal between the two directions, so does the Legislature or the Government of a country take the middle course between the two which the different authorities or influences would make it take if left to itself. It will depend upon the proportion of the forces to each other, whether the direction taken shall incline more to the one than to the other; but this affects not the argument, the course is affected by each, and the influence of each prevails as a check on the other.” I dare to quote Mr. Webster even against so profound a sage as the hon. member for Arthabaska (laughter); I venture to quote Lord Brougham against the Hon. Attorney-General. (Laughter.) And by-and-by, Sir, I may have to quote Archdeacon Paley against the hon. and rev. member for South Lanark (laughter), and Mr. Justice Blackstone against the hon. gentleman who has just sat down. (Laughter.) In one respect it is consistent enough in the hon. gentleman to sneer at “checks” and “balances,” in

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the face of all constitutional authority, because their own policy has never been regulated by any such constitutional rules or forces. They have been instrumental as principals or assistants in sweeping away 28 of the 62 clauses of the Act of Union, and yet they, plead the remaining fragment as an inviolable compact. They have left our present division of powers between the two Houses, and the internal organisation of each House, at the haphazard of a single vote—an absolute majority of one. (Hear, hear.)

Hon. Mr. CAUCHON—No, no!

Mr. MCGEE—If the hon. gentleman consults the Statutes he will find it as I say.—They created an elective Legislative Council, and they have never till this day defined its functions, so that no one either in this House or in the other can describe its proper place in the present contrivance, which serves us instead of a constitution. Have they not argued here last night, and sealed their arguments with their votes, that it is not necessary for an adviser of the Crown to possess the confidence of the people? (Hear, hear.) I can well understand why persons capable of such public conduct should find checks full of painful restraint, balances irksome in operation, and guarantees impossible of observance. When I advocate a more measured distinction of the powers of the Government, I advocate it not for them but for the peace of the country, the unity of all its inhabitants, and for the direction and protection of those who may be the future rulers of the Province. (Hear, hear.) Though I intend, Mr. Speaker, to vote against the introduction of the Bill, I do not intend to meet its many able and respectable advocates on this side of the House and on the other with a flat denial, still less with odious comparisons and irritating taunts. I concede to them frankly that constitutional changes are necessary, and must come sooner or later. But I go further; I believe that such changes should be made with a view to permanence, and should embrace simultaneously the division of powers between this House and the other, the limits of the Executive; the power, and real responsibility of Ministers, and the recognition of some judicial tribunal as

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the final interpreter of our constitutional compact or fundamental law. I will endeavour to exhibit my meaning, as briefly as possible, under the several heads of the Executive, the Upper House, Ministerial Responsibility, the Composition of this House, and the function of Final Interpreter, under such a reformed constitution as I am prepared to discuss and to help forward, in common with all who are convinced of its necessity, whether they come from Upper or Lower Canada. Before I go into this detail, Mr. Speaker, it may not be amiss to say another word or two on the general subject, the division of powers and the system of checks, which Dr. Paley calls “the first maxim of a free State,” and which Blackstone calls “a main preservative of the public liberty.”—The same may be said to be the all but unanimous verdict of all the authors whose works are of authority on the subject of government; in fact, this doctrine of the distribution of powers is as cardinal with constitutional writers as the doctrine of the division of labour is with the economists. (Hear, hear.) To begin at the head. Are the duties and powers of the Executive in any of these North American colonies—or, for our present purposes, speaking only of ourselves—as well settled, as well understood, as indisputable, as the duties of the Sovereign are in England?—Has not every Governor who has been here, since the establishment of Responsible Government, been accused of violating that system? (Hear, hear.) Has not every representative of the Crown, during those twenty years, been accused of transgressing his limits, and been hooted in the streets of the seat of Government? Has not the remedy of electing our own Governors been advocated by many influential persons? Has not a “written constitution” been thought by others the only protection against the abuses alleged against the representatives of the Crown in Canada? (Hear, hear.) Have there not been hints and murmurs about a renewal of the scenes of 1837-38? Whence the reason? Have all our Governors been to blame, or has not the indefinite nature of their powers been a main cause of all this unpopularity? The truth seems to me to be that the

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Governors’ powers were settled by the Act of Union, and unsettled by Mr. Baldwin’s subsequent resolutions laying down the doctrine of the Executive Council’s responsibility to this Chamber. Nothing can show more clearly the responsibility of the Governor as an Imperial office to the Crown, and that of his Provincial advisers to this House, than the two conflicting despatches addressed on those subjects to Lord Sydenham by Lord John Russell, in October, 1839. (Hear.) Both despatches may be considered hostile to the theory of Responsible Government, though in very different degrees, and it is equally certain from Lord Sydenham’s memoirs and letters, that the Act of Union was framed in the same spirit of hostility. Your first innovation that the Act was to make the Governor subject, in the selection of this Council, to the majority of this House,—a salutary innovation, I admit, but still no part of the fundamental law; affirmed only by a resolution of this House, and which a strong man, a vain man, or an irritable man, holding the office, might and could evade by shuffling expedients, such as refusing one party a dissolution and granting it to another, or by sanctioning such an evasion of the independence of Parliament Act as was sanctioned at Toronto, in July, 1858. Another innovation on the Governor’s powers I have already alluded to, when you struck him out of the composition of the Court of Appeals, and left him no remnant of judicial authority, except the pardoning power may be so considered. I do not complain that our chief rulers appear on closer examination, that they have still quite enough for the efficiency of their office; I do not complain that their term of office is not fixed; but I do think it would be equally desirable for the future incumbents of that high office, as well as for their councillors and the people of this country, that these powers of the Executive should be, by common consent, defined and established, so that the riotous discontents of the past might never again disgrace our cities or our records. (Hear, hear.) For it seems to me that if you wish to give the Sovereign’s representative here a chance to be as popular as the Sovereign’s self in England, give his autho-

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rity its full legitimate scope within the constitution; let him know his place; let us know it; let the people know it, and then the experiments of the Metcalfs and the Elgins on Canadian endurance, and the deplorable events they led to, will be impossible of repetition in the future.—(Cries of hear.) I come now, Sir, to the composition of the Upper House, and I repeat my former question; can any one in this chamber or in that, tell me what the powers of our Senate are? Can they vote confidence or want of confidence in the Ministry of the day? Can they alter or originate a money bill? We vote the people’s taxes, because, on the British maxim, we come from the people—because, as the hon. member for Arthabaska said the other night—”the Commons are on the floor of this House.” But do they not also come from the people? Are they, either as persons or as an assembly, a privileged order? The only privileges I know appertaining to them is, that they are not subject to dissolution before their time, as we are. But does this indissolubility alone constitute them an effective check on this House? Does it establish any other function in them, than the faculty of inertia? Is it anything better in itself, than a premium for indifference than a bonus on indolence? Men of active mind going into that Chamber may busy themselves in amateur legislation for a session or two, but when they find they have no real power, either with the Executive or with this House, they will soon grow weary,

——”Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing old in drawing nothing up.”

Sir, I would give the Upper House real importance by giving it active duties; I would have it constituted on a basis as unlike ours as possible; I would have it the representative of age, property, and all our conservative influence; and I would besides make it the Court of Impeachment, before which all high crimes against the Constitution should be tried. (Hear, hear.) And this mention of the word impeachment brings me, Mr. Speaker,

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to another matter—oar present notions of ministerial responsibility to the people. We hear commonly a great deal of ministerial responsibility to the people, that is, to this House; that a majority can always turn them out of office, and so forth.

Attorney-General MACDONALD—Is it not so?

Mr. MCGEE—Practically, where has been the proof of such vaunted responsibility? (Hear, hear.) Give a ministry the power of augmenting the public debt at discretion, and obtaining by the lavish expenditure of the people’s money a corrupt majority in this House, and they may defy, and have defied, public opinion from one general election till another! Give them the power of retaining their seats by a narrow majority, made up wholly of their own votes, and where is the responsibility? We saw an instance of it last night. Convict one or all of them of a corrupt use of their position as advisers of the Crown—they resign, and where is the responsibility? Oh! true, you may cite them before a court of justice; you or I, or any private citizen may. That was the retort to the charges concerning the Sarnia land sale; that was the course taken by Mr. McDonnell, a citizen of Toronto, after the double shuffle. But I maintain that, according to all constitutional precedent, an offence against the State ought to be prosecuted by and in behalf of the State; that the high criminals ought to be tried before one of the bodies of the magistracy, who partake both of legislative, and in that respect, of judicial functions; and I go farther, and assert that there never has been a salutary form of constitution which did not provide for the public punishment, on behalf of the State, of corrupt ministers and other executive officers. In England not only the ordinary advisers of the Crown are subject to such impeachment, but the Lord Chancellor may be impeached for attaching the great seal to an ignominious treaty; an Admiral may be impeached for neglecting the defence of the narrow seas; an Ambassador for having betrayed his trust; a Judge for receiving a bribe, or a Privy Councillor for propounding pernicious advice to his Sovereign. No portion of their history is better known to

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English politicians than their “State Trials” and though the comparative calm of recent times has called for few impeachments, they know well that the block and the headsman’s axe have not been removed from the ramparts of the Constitution. Those who are for ever asserting that our system is a transcript of the British ought to know that, in this important particular, the copy has not been truly made; that this House cannot arraign, nor the other House hear, nor the Judges act as assessors, nor the Governor-General preside at the trial of any .guilty minister or peccant judge in this province; that in office you cannot reach them; that out of office you cannot pursue them; that we stand before the world in the anomalous position of having provided ample penalties for every breach of trust which is a public wrong, except the very highest of all, for which we have no penalty and no tribunal. (Hear, hear.) The thief who puts his hand into his master’s till is rightly punished; but the thief who thrusts his arm to the elbow into the public Treasury “resigns” to re-appear, after a season, on the public stage, or to enjoy unmolested his ease and dignity. (Hear, hear.) Sir—and I must beg the forbearance of the House a little longer, while I discuss the constitution of this House—I have always been of opinion—in Ireland, in the United States, in Canada—that the popular branch of every legislative body should fully represent the numbers of the population. (Hear, hear.) I for one am not frightened at the bugbear of universal suffrage, though I am well content with our present standard, which may be termed universal suffrage for married men. If the population of Upper Canada should be shown by the census to be 250,000 more than that of Lower Canada, and notwithstanding all the arrangements made under various pressures and pretexts at “the Union” these quarter of a million out of two millions and a half one-tenth of our total numbers—demand an increased representation on this floor, in my humble opinion the way to meet such a demand is not by a flat denial, but by an alternative proposition, to which both sections may in the end be reconciled. Can any such proposition be made by

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Lower Canada? (Hear.) That is the great question which the bill before the House calls on us to revolve within ourselves. The Premier says “No,” and menaces us with a war of race. The hon. member for Montmorenci refuses even to debate it—moves “the six months’ hoist.” My hon. friends from Montreal and Iberville, and I hope I may add my hon. friend from St. Hyacinthe, do not despair of a remedy; they are at all events quite willing to hear other opinions and to offer their own when the question comes up in a practical shape. I agree with those who hold that we can find an alternative proposition other than by repealing the Union, which would be a release but no remedy. And I will put a supposititious case to those hon. gentlemen who deny the possibility of establishing any efficient checks against oppression in our circumstances. It is this:—Suppose you had guarantees for the fullest religious and civil freedom in your fundamental law, framed by yourselves, and ratified by Her Majesty for herself and her successors! Suppose you had a guarantee in the composition of the Upper House; suppose you had a power of final interpretation in cases of doubt arising under the constitution, composed of an equal number of the judges of Upper and Lower Canada; would all these guarantees, involving the good faith of the Sovereign and of her representative, the good faith of the Upper House, and the high Judiciary,—would all these content you?

Hon. Mr. CAUCHON—No.

Mr. MCGEE—I believe there is but one voice in this House says “No.” Such guarantees could be had both from England and from Upper Canada; the interests of the Empire, the interests of the public creditor, the interests of Upper Canada herself, would all be favourable to such a settlement, and if Lower Canada is wise in season she will neither despise such terms nor insult those who respectfully submit them for her consideration. To those who threaten a war of race, I say solemnly—Beware! (Hear, hear.) We have pretty well extinguished the war of creeds, and we are not likely to permit ourselves, I hope, to be embattled, like the Knights of Rhodes, by languages and nationalities.

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What must we think of the sanity, not to say the wisdom, of any minister who could utter such a menace against the English-speaking population, two-thirds of the whole people of this dependency of England? That English-speaking population is a slow match, as hard to kindle as to extinguish, and to those who address it in the language of menace, I say again—Beware! (Hear, hear.) Far better and worthier of the hon. gentleman’s position would it be to avail himself of his majority to propose an alternative to the people of Upper Canada than to force them into one united phalanx, as his devoted follower for the last seven years, the member for Durham, told him the other night he would do. “A time of peace is the time for reforms,” says a great political authority, and it will be far easier to adjust our mutual difficulties now, than to let the old constitution run on into downright political bankruptcy. Does the hon. gentleman suppose that, by postponing the day of reckoning, he can diminish the demands on either side, or lessen the pangs of concession on either? Is his best preparative for a friendly settlement to be found in a long cherished previous hostility? Will his own usefulness as a pacificator be improved by his haughty tone in the present debate?—Far from it. (Hear, hear.) He may win the applause of the unthinking; he may strengthen himself by such language with a section or a faction, but he never can become, by indulging in that spirit, a statesman for the whole country. (Cheers.) Another word only I will add—to every man who values our provincial union, peace, and prosperity—and that is, that there is no time like the present in which to enter on the great, good work of constitutional amendment. To those who would attract new strength from abroad; to those who would contrast our stability with America’s agitation; to those who desire the principles of constitutional monarchy to have a fair trial in this new field; to those cooler spirits who look beyond the hour, and know a duty in the distance as well as when they can touch it with their right hands,—to all and every one of these classes I say use your time, and correct by the high light of experience the errors and

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aberrations of your constitution. Let such as have faith in a war of creeds, let such as have faith in a war of races, take their stand—the sooner the better; but let all just men who have seen and felt the derangement of our whole existing system, who have thought and compared thoughts as to the remedies to be applied; let them be but true to themselves and their convictions, and I am persuaded a solution will yet be found satisfactory to all reasonable men both in Upper and Lower Canada. (Loud cheers.)

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CANADIAN DEFENCES.

HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY, QUEBEC, MARCH 27TH, 1862. A DUTIFUL ADDRESS IN REPLY TO THE SPEECH FROM THE THRONE HAVING BEEN MOVED.

Mr. McGee addressed Mr. Speaker as follows:—A speech from the Throne may be open to criticism for what it omits, as well as for what it contains, and I cannot, for my own part, avoid saying that I think the gratifying results of the late decennial Census, and the subject of emigration and the settlement of the country, ought to have been referred to. The Census is an event of rare occurrence; it is an act of the highest importance; its results stated in the Royal Speech would have circulated farther and with higher authenticity than when put forward in any other manner. I think, therefore, it should have been referred to, and that the subject of Emigration was also, just at this period, of such importance as not to have been omitted. The leading English journal lately uttered a sentiment on this head with which I entirely concur, when it said that if our statesmen were worthy of their position, “America’s difficulty might be made Canada’s opportunity.” No other subject has occupied a larger space in the provincial press—the press of all parties—than this of emigration, and the hands of our provincial agents abroad would have been much strengthened by such an authority. We have only to hope that during the session it may command more attention in this House than it has done from the framers of the Speech from the Throne. (Hear, hear.) Of the first sentences, Mr. Speaker—I mean the very proper reference to the late Prince Consort in the Speech—there has not been, and there could not be, any difference of opinion in this House. All parties are

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equally agreed in Canada, that the world has lost a finished man in the Prince Consort—a man whose memory is less to be honoured for his good fortune and alliances than for his provident use of his time, the elevation of his tastes, and the conspicuous example of his private life. To those sentences we all cordially subscribe, and we are all indebted to His Excellency for having given us an opportunity of joining with him in the just and feeling tribute he has paid to the character of the deceased Prince. Immediately following this allusion to Prince Albert there is a paragraph on which I propose, Mr. Speaker, to make some observations to the House, coupling it, however, with the last paragraph specially addressed to this House—I mean that concerning our Colonial defences. The first mentioned paragraph alludes to Her Majesty’s gracious recognition of the attachment exhibited by all classes in this Province, in the late emergency,”* towards the mother country, and I feel that it is no forced march to take up in connection with that passage the relative one of how far this Province ought to look to the metropolitan power for its external defence, or for any species of military protection whatever. (Hear, hear.) I must say, Sir, with all deference, but with all emphasis, that we in Canada cannot but think that the time chosen by the anti-Colonial party in England for the declaration of their principles, exceedingly ill chosen, and the manner of some among them exceedingly injurious to Canadian feeling. If they were really the people of England—if they were likely to direct at any future day the Government of England,—it would be incumbent on us here, without the loss of a single day, to look around us, in search of some new state of political existence. What, Sir! when all ranks and classes with us have been vieing [sic] with each other as to who should do most to give volunteer defenders to the country, was this a time to read us an economical lecture on the burthensome nature of our allegiance to the Empire? Was this a time to have it proclaimed in Washington by the authority of the Imperial

* The affair of the Trent.

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Parliament, that that supreme assembly considered us too dear a bargain at 2,000,000l. a-year. (Hear, hear.) It is undeniable, I suppose, Mr. Speaker, that we are indebted for this rebuff, and the Americans for this gratification, to that school of economists who bring every subject of Government to the infallible test of pounds, shillings, and pence. With that school it is, perhaps, presumptuous to reason, but this I venture to assert, that if their doctrine of putting every Imperial relation in the scales of a cash balance should ever prevail, the British Empire will be near its end, not only in North America, but in the British Islands. (Hear, hear.) These gentlemen of England argue that this country is no commercial benefit to England, because it is of no apparent profit to her. But supposing even this argument to be unanswerably true—though I am far from allowing it to be so—are there no relations any longer profitable or desirable between the mother country and her colonies but commercial relations? Are there no political ties? Are there no military advantages as well as disadvantages attached to colonies? I am not competent to judge whether the military conveniences or inconveniences of holding Canada as a base of North American operations may preponderate in the minds of British military men, but it is clear so far that they have not pronounced against retaining the military power on our soil. It is so far an outcry of civilians and politicians, and it may therefore be answered by other civilians. Now it seems to me, Sir, that both in England and with us much confusion arises from substituting England, or “the mother country,” for the Empire at large, in certain stages of the argument, and dropping that substitution at other stages. Thus we hear people talk of the Empire and the Colonies, as if the Colonies were something apart, exclusive, external to Empire. This is an evident fallacy; we, here in Quebec, are at this moment as strictly an Imperial city as London or Dublin. Her Majesty’s subject in Windsor, Canada West, stands as near to Her Majesty, politically, as Her Majesty’s subject in Windsor, County of Berkshire. (Cheers.) The reciprocal duties of subject and Sovereign are not attenuated

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by distance, but, on the contrary, are oftener enhanced, since they are cherished against the relaxing influence of such distance. Those who talk, therefore, of it being unreasonable to expect the Empire to defend Canada, forget that Canada is itself the Empire in North America. The Empire, commonly called British, is an Asiatic Empire in virtue of India, an Australian Empire in virtue of Australia, an African Empire in virtue of the Cape and other possessions; and it is an American Empire still, in virtue of our sister Provinces and ourselves. Is it the will and wish of the English in England to have no longer fellow-subjects in North America? For it must come to that—whenever the Empire in Canada is not to be defended by all the vigilance and all the resources of the entire Empire, whenever its existence comes to be considered in the metropolis as something separate and apart from their own existence. If that undesirable change should come to pass, future British Ministers at Washington will be much less harassed with work than Lord Lyons, because they will be much less influential; they will have fewer cares, but they will also have a lower sphere of action. Why are Her Majesty’s representatives on the Potomac facile princeps of all the diplomatic body? Why is the British Minister, next to the President, the second power at Washington? Not alone because of England’s greatness proper to herself, but because he alone represents a North American power—if we except the Russian representatives of the Czar’s provinces in the North Pacific, which certainly give a proportionate influence to Russia. If Lord Lyons could review Mr. Seward, with his hand resting on the breach of the Armstrong gun that thrills this whole region from the Citadel, he could not more visibly and personally have Canada and Quebec at his back than he has already in the mind’s eye of the statesman of the Federal Union. (Cheers.) No, Mr. Speaker; directly the commerce of Canada may no longer be an object to the manufacturers, but indirectly, and politically, every English relation with every part of America must already depend materially on the fact, whether or not the Crown of England is still one of the

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largest proprietors on this continent. I object, therefore, not only to the confused way in which the terms Empire and Colony are bandied about, but I also object to the time chosen by the anti-colonial party in England for raising the question of what we are worth to the rest of the Empire. And I hope, Sir, that from every side of this House, from every person of influence within these walls, ministerialist as well as oppositionist, that one unanimous protest will go forth in this discussion against the time chosen by the anti-colonial party in England, for raising such an issue with Canada. (Hear, hear.) With a new state of facts all over North America—with half a million men under arms, in our near neighbourhood; with evidence before us of the employment of secret agents of the United States in Canada—was this a time to cast a damper upon the ardour of Colonial loyalty, and to give a new hope of spoliation to our irritated neighbours? Mr. Speaker, a former residence of some years in the United States has given me, I presume to say, some insight into the American character, and consulting that knowledge I do not hesitate to declare that in my opinion we are not yet finally done with the American difficulty. Formerly you had to do with the example and opinions of their democracy, but let Canadians never forget for one hour, that they have now to do with democracy armed and insolent—with democracy in square and column, with a sword by its side and a bitter humiliation in its heart. (Hear, hear.) It is possible, I wish I could say it is probable, that the evil may cure itself through internal purgation; but Canadian vigilance must sleep no more except upon its arms. We have burst into a new era—the halcyon has fled to other climes and latitudes—the storm and peril are daily visible in our horizon. I have no fears for Canada, in the presence even of such a phenomenon as a victorious democratic army, for I believe, after all, the other and elder members of the Empire will stand cordially by us in our day of danger. But they must be prepared to do so, in some fair proportion to their relative strength and wealth as compared with ours, arid in proportion to the strength and wealth of the enemy opposed

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to us. This is no Cape Colony—this is no Canterbury settlement— and our American neighbours are neither Maoris nor Caffres. It is not against semi-savages, armed only with lances or small arms, that we must keep our frontier, and the frontier of the Empire, but against a people as well armed, as enterprising, and ten times as numerous as ourselves. I admit we must do our share—willingly, cheerfully, and to the utmost extent of our young resources; but I say still, that our share must be proportionate to that of the Empire. (Hear, hear.) To ask us to be the principals in our own defence—in our present stage of development— with our six or seven inhabitants to the square mile—with our three against twenty-five millions—is to ask a downright impossibility. The proportion we should bear to the Empire may, perhaps, be indicated by our mutual symbols of the Lion and the Beaver. There is great disparity between those creatures; the beaver, it is true, can work in land and water, and the beaver has worked wonders in the wilderness. But the lion must bear the lion’s share; if he would continue lord of the forest he must be sometimes felt—at least his formidable points must be visible to the eye of every American emissary. To drop all metaphor, Mr. Speaker, and speaking only for myself, I declare my perfect readiness to entertain any proper project for putting our Canadian Militia on a thoroughly effective footing, as suggested in His Excellency’s speech, but I cannot for a moment entertain—and I do not believe any party in this House or country can entertain—the injurious proposition lately affirmed by the House of Commons, which, as amended by Mr. Baxter, clearly intimates that we are hereafter to rely invariably and mainly on ourselves, and only incidentally on the rest of the Empire for the common defence. (Hear, hear.) On this point I trust the whole House can be unanimous as one man. Not to disturb that unanimity in any quarter I pass over some other topics of the Speech at present. It seems to me we ought to have an early and emphatic expression of opinion on this paramount question of colonial defence, and I would not have troubled the House at all to-day but from a strong sense of

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what is due to my own constituents, and the country at large. (Cheers.) In the course of the debate there are other topics to which I should wish to speak, but just at present they all dwindle into insignificance in comparison with this, on which I have endeavoured to lay my own views respectfully before the House and the country. (Loud cheers.)*

* As the above speech is but one of a series on the subject, the only record of which, during the Session of 1863, is found in the condensed summary of the Quebec Morning Chronicle, it is proper to add the following additional remarks, from another point of view, made in the debate of the 20th August, 1863. “He (Mr. McGee) went on to show, from actual facts, the great danger which might at any moment come upon the country from an aggressive movement on the part of the Northern States. He reminded the House that he, for one, was no enemy of the North; that, on the contrary, he was friendly towards the North in their struggle with the South, inasmuch as he believed the Washington Government to be the legitimate Government of the country; but there was no use in endeavouring to hide from ourselves the fact that there was a strongly hostile feeling in the minds of a portion of the American people towards everything British and everything Canadian. He had no doubt, nay, more, he was certain that those who were at the head of affairs in the United States were desirous of avoiding a war with England, and fully realised the dreadful consequences which such a contest would involve; but it should not be forgotten that political demagogues might, in a moment of political excitement, at a Presidential election for instance, bring about a state of things which would plunge us into an armed contest. It was only necessary, as a proof of this kind of danger, to refer to the case of the Trent, and look at the public ovations which were accorded to Commodore Wilks, who was lionised and fêted, merely because he had fired a shot across the bows of a British vessel: and there was no saying when some other boisterous bluejacket might not, by a similar act, put an end to the peaceful relations at present existing between England and America. Mr. McGee then referred to the extensive armament going on along the American side of our frontier— as for instance the erection of a vast fort and barracks near Rouse’s Point, the strengthening of the works at Niagara, and the fort at Mackinaw; and quoted the speeches and state papers of the late Mr. Webster and other leading American statesmen to show that the invasion of Canada by way of Rouse’s Point was a favourite scheme with many of their leading public men; and that the absorption of the whole continent by the American Republic was the darling object of their ruling public. In conclusion, Mr. McGee dwelt on the willingness which the mother-country had shown, in the hour of danger, to defend her British North American possessions. But while it was well known that England would spend her last man and her last shilling in defence of her Colonies, if the latter showed that they were really desirous of maintaining the connection,—at the same time it was incumbent upon Canadians to provide to the fullest extent of their means for their own protection against insult and aggression.”

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REPRESENTATION BY POPULATION.

HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY, QUEBEC, APRIL 1ST, 1862.

Mr. MCGEE:—Whenever there was a hair to split the hon. member (Mr. Dunkin) never failed to have his razor at hand. (Laughter.) But such was not the spirit in which a grave reality like this ought to be dealt with, and any man who could descend to sophistry in such circumstances, was wholly misplaced in this House. (Hear, hear.) All that he had ever read or heard of state-craft went to show that when a question had taken strong hold on a large population, that when it had become one of the political realities, it was no longer met with a flat negative, but with an alternative proposition. By a reasonable alternative one part of a party, the moderate part, was certain to be satisfied, and so the combination was at an end. (Hear, hear.) Such an alternative would not satisfy extremists, but it would take from them the alliance of those who gave their extreme demands weight. It could not be pretended any longer, with the two votes of this week on record, that the demand for this change came from any one side of the House, or from mere agitators, when they had around them such advocates of it as the member for Welland (Mr. Street), the member for West Brant (Mr. Ryerson), and the able lawyers who had spoken and voted for it (the Messrs. Cameron). (Hear, hear.) As a member for Montreal, a neutral ground, and a cosmopolitan community if there was one in the Province, he (Mr. McGee) appealed to his honourable friend (Mr. Rose), as a joint representative of that city, to be true to the growing public opinion of that great city, which was in favour of an amicable, rational settlement of this question.

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It was not considered an unreasonable principle in Montreal, that numbers should be proportionately represented; and he hoped, now his honourable friend was untrammeled by office, he would be true to his better instincts, and vote for this reasonable amendment. (Hear, hear.) If the 285,000 excess in Upper Canada were grouped in two or three great cities, the size of Montreal or Quebec, but situated on Lake Erie or Lake Huron, could they remain unrepresented in that House? (Hear, hear.) Now the rural population were as valuable to provinces as the urban population—the country made the town—they filled the Treasury, and should be heard where they were taxed. (Hear.) And heard they might be assured they would be, and the longer they resisted the minimum of concession, the higher would rise the maximum of demand. (Cheers.) He much mistook the character of the 90,000 people of Huron and Bruce, for example, if they were content to have but one representative, while eight Lower Canada counties, having in the aggregate only 90,000 inhabitants, had eight members on the floor of that House. (Hear, hear.) Nor was the inequality confined to contrasts between Upper and Lower Canada. The counties of Middlesex, Oxford, and Ontario, with little over 40,000 inhabitants, had two members each, while Huron and Bruce, with twice the number, had but half the representation! It may be asked where will concession stop if we once disturb the existing limitation? To that he would answer that concession could only stop with our growth and development, and that every new community sufficiently numerous should have a representative of its own. The hon. member who had last sat down, spoke of England’s stability. Why, Sir, what folly this is! We are, as to England, in the Heptarchy stage of our existence. (Hear, hear.) We learned no such sentiment about immutability from the honourable gentleman for Montreal East when the knife was drawn through the map of Montreal in order to divide the liberal interest of that city. When in twenty-four hours a petition came down, signed by 3,000 citizens of Montreal, against that measure, there was no such pro-

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test on the ground of stability then. (Hear, hear.) Huron and Bruce would not be put off by the plea of stability. But he might be asked what guarantee will you give to Lower Canada if new eastern counties come to knock at our doors year after year? (Hear, hear.) His answer was, Lower Canada had her Imperial guarantee—she had her guarantee of numbers, her own brave blood, and the freeman’s final guarantee—the right to carry arms. (Hear, hear.) But in addition there was another guarantee he would allude to—he would say to the gentlemen of Lower Canada—settle up your country! If the same pains had been taken the last ten years to settle Lower Canada, that had been taken in Upper Canada, the disparity of representation would be now on the other side. (Hear, hear.) He must speak plainly, but not disrespectfully, when he said that such pains had not been taken. The British and German emigration was allowed to pass through Lower Canada as if there was no habitable land either to their right hand or to their left. Now, they had Sir William Logan’s opinion, and the Hon. Mr. Cauchon’s official report of 1856, that there was more habitable land now unsettled in Lower than in Upper Canada. (Hear, hear.) [Mr. McGee here read a quotation from Hon. Mr. Cauchon’s Report of 1856, showing that there was room enough in the St. Maurice region for eleven millions of people.] Yet nothing had been done to open up that country, and the Three Rivers Inquirer of the 25th instant stated, that it was said to be, because “the Hon. Mr. Turcotte was opposed to the settlement of old country emigrants, or the appointment of an agent at Three Rivers.” (Hear, hear.) But the fact was undoubted—the emigrant was not retained in this section of the country. (Hear, hear.)

Hon. Mr. SICOTTE.—Where will we go to?

Mr. MCGEE.—There is room enough for all. (Cheers.) The population of this country will count by millions before its frontiers give way from repletion. (Cheers.) And what has been the consequence of squandering the Colonisation Fund of Lower Canada on parish improvements? The

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obstacles that kept out the foreigner kept out the native, and sent the surplus Canadians of the old parishes across the line. This was the penalty of obstruction and exclusiveness—what would have served the stranger would have preserved the son of the soil—but both suffered together by this stolid indifference to the settlement of Lower Canada. Were they keeping the St. Lawrence for a preserve for their great-grandchildren in the 20th century? Well, the rest of the Province would not stand still on that account, and if they would not march, they would be left behind-—that was certain. (Cheers.) In no sectional spirit—as a Provincial man—as a Canadian representative—who felt bound to utter the vital truth which he held, he abjured the French Canadian statesman who now wielded the destiny of this land, to surround its admirable institutions with more people, of whatever tongue or origin. (Cheers.) They could bear inspection—they would inspire love and reverence: all that they needed to be honoured and loved, was to be known. Upper and Lower Canada differed in their views of Christian duty, as they did in other views, but on nearer examination they would find much to admire each in the other. Unless lion, gentlemen opposite were in secret desirous of a dissolution of the Union, pure et simple, he begged them to meet the Upper Canadians with an alternative proposition, instead of an arbitrary negative, and not to neglect the last and best of guarantees against western preponderance—to settle up their own section of the country. (Cheers.)

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EMIGRATION AND COLONISATION.

HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY, APRIL 25TH, 1862.

The House resumed the adjourned debate on Mr. McGee’s motion of the 8th instant, “That a Select Committee be appointed to take into consideration the subjects of Immigration and Colonisation, especially with reference to the Spring Immigration of the present year; with power to send for persons and papers, and to report from time to time”

Mr. MCGEE, after a few introductory remarks, said:—In moving for this Committee, Mr. Speaker, I might move on the ground that it is not only called for in itself, but that as the Province expends large sums annually to arrive at a knowledge of its own resources, this Committee is the natural corollary of that expenditure. Turning over the public accounts, yesterday placed on the table, I find the following principal items of expenditure for what we may call, in general terms, exploring or exhibiting the resources of the Province—

Geological Survey (1861)          .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .    $20,315 00

Bureau of Agriculture, salaries, &c.        .           .           .           .           .           .           .       8,091 00

Contingencies   .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .       6,805 00

Roads and Bridges (C.E.)          .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .     57,845 00

Improvement Fund (C.W.)         .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .     17,398 00

Colonisation Roads (C.W.)        .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .     54,000 00

(C.E.)   .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .     52,424 00

Crown Lands Surveys (West)    .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .     75,444 00

(East)   .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .     41,969 00

Colonisation Road Agents (West)          .           .           .           .           .           .           .     11,392 00

(East*) .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .

Inspection of Agencies (West)   .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .       2,976 00

(East)   .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .       3,514 00

—————————

* Included in the item of “Roads and Bridges,” C.E.

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Agricultural Societies (West)     .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .    $53,894 00

(East)   .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .     48,725 00

Emigration service, Inland and Foreign Agencies, &c,

as per page 112, Public Accounts           .           .           .           .           .           .     45,329 00

Emigration Commission .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .        400 00

————

Total    .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .   $501,612 00

Thus, we see, that $500,000 per annum may be said to be the present annual expenditure of the Province on the various branches of administration which fall directly within the scope of this Committee’s inquiry. This sum, $500,000, is about four per cent, on the total revenues of the Province, and whether four per cent, be a sufficient proportion for these branches of the public service I am not now going to discuss; in my own opinion, ten per cent, of the revenue would not be an excessive expenditure on the work of increasing the population and decreasing the wilderness; but I content myself with pointing out that we spend $500,000 a-year on geologists, surveyors, agents (inland and foreign), roads and bridges, agricultural societies, and an agricultural bureau, and that we ought to have something handsome to show at the end of each year for such expenditure. (Hear, hear.) On a point of most immediate importance—the Spring Emigration, and the arrangements made to meet it,—I must entreat the House to extend to me its indulgence, in the next place. I need hardly say, that I did not take up this inquiry in the beginning with any view either to serve or to injure particular individuals, and that I do not intend—so far as I can help it—to let the reform demanded assume any vindictive aspect. (Hear, hear.) But justice must be done fearlessly done, in the Port of Quebec, the coming season, or the loud cry of disappointed hope, going home from this side, will reach us all, from the highest to the humblest person connected with this Government. Having originally recommended the appointment of provincial agents abroad, in my report of 1860, I was of course happy to see that that suggestion had been acted upon, as far as Great Britain and Ireland, Germany, France, and Belgium were concerned. There may be some doubts as to whether the

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persons appointed pro tem. to fill those offices have been always the fittest persons for their work—there may be some doubts whether they have been stationed at the best points for their work, but there can be no doubt that a few able agents on the other side of the Atlantic must be of benefit to this Province. The French agency has been objected to in some quarters as useless and unprofitable, but when we see from the statistics of New York that during the last few years from ten to twelve per cent, of all the arrivals at that port were from Havre—some 8,000 last year out of 68,000—when we see that Havre ranks as a North American port next to Liverpool and Hamburgh in this trade, I cannot concur that the appointment of Mr. Verret was a needless or improper one. If Mr. Verret should not succeed in doing much in France, he may make better progress in Belgium and Switzerland—at least let us hope so, for the sake of the undertaking. (Hear, hear.) Whether Berlin is the proper station for the German, agent, Mr. Wagner, despatched by the Crown Lands Department, I cannot pretend to say, but my impression is, that one of the great northern shipping ports—Bremen or Hamburgh—ought to be his head-quarters. (Hear, hear.) But another appointment equally important, which was suggested in in 1860, has not yet been made,—I mean a Canadian agent at New York. By the New York booking system, we know that, in 1859, 2,000 emigrants were landed at that port whose destination was Canada; that, in 1860, there were 1,880; and in 1861, 1,554 similarly bound for Canada;—or, in three years, 5,434 settlers. Now tins is a contingent well worth looking after. And, supposing such an agent appointed at New York, it might be made part of his business during other seasons of the year to visit those neighbourhoods in which there are native Canadians willing and anxious to return to this country, to report the facts, and to arrange for their return. (Hear, hear.) He would also meet with other British subjects—with some of those hundreds of natives of the British Isles who have besieged the Consulates in the great cities, anxious to be sent back again to their old homes,

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where they will find themselves, on their return, strangers indeed, and from which they may be forced, in all probability, to a second emigration. (Hear, hear.) I am not an advocate for the creation of new offices, Mr. Speaker, unless when they are shown to be really required; but I would not be doing my duty to the Province, if I did not once more point out the importance of a proper agent at New York, as well as at Liverpool, Havre, and Hamburgh. As to the new arrangement of the Inland Agents within this Province, I am not prepared to speak in detail at this moment; besides, so much depends on the personal habits and character of the men, and so much on the head of the department, that I shrink from discussing particular reforms until we have examined them in Committee; and I hope we may have the united sanction of the Committee for recommendations which, as an individual, and a member in opposition, I fear would have little chance of adoption—coming from me. I will not, therefore, dwell on that point; for it must rest, in the end, with the Minister of Agriculture whether any of these offices are to continue sinecures or to be made realities. Mr. Speaker, the mention of New York reminds me of the truly sagacious and politic care which that State and City has of late years exercised over the emigrants arriving in their waters. Formerly it was not so. But for the past ten or twelve years no department of the public service has been more steadily improving than the department committed to the Commissioners of Emigration. I have here their last Annual Report, and it is highly instructive to see how they handled the 68,000 aliens landed in their port during 1861. I have thrown their results into a tabular form of my own, for greater convenience, and I find that—

The arrivals at New York in 1861 were  .           .           .           .           .           .           . 68,311

————

Of these, arrived in steamers      .           .           .           .           .           .           .           . 21,110

In sailing ships  .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           . 37,201

Total number of vessels .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .   453

Average of passengers to ship    .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .   150

————

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Destination of New York arrivals in 1861.

New York City and State           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           . 32,783

Pennsylvania and New Jersey    .           .           .           .           .           .           .           . 7,006

New England States      .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           . 5,779

Western States  .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           . 16,595

Southern States .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           . 3,755

Canada West     .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           . 1,544

Canada East      .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .      8

Balance to California, &c          .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .

————

Aid and Employment Afforded.

Amount received at Castle Garden and its agencies, from friends of emigrants in interior, to assist emigrants on arrival      .           .           .           .           .            .           .           .           .    $17,591 00

Advances made to emigrants on deposits of baggage       .           .           .           .           .       1,299 00

Of which was repaid during the year      .           .           .           .           .           .           .       1,267 00

————

Number who received treatment or relief in Emigrant Refuge and Hospital           .           .             5,079

Number of emigrants sent back to Europe at their own request     .           .           .           .               413

Number provided with temporary lodging in New York, Albany, Buffalo, &c.      .           .             6,177

Temporarily supplied with food in Castle Garden            .           .           .           .           .             1,389

Number of persons of both sexes provided with situations by Commissioners and their agents in New York City and State .           .           .           .           .            .           .           .           .             6,023

————

Emigrant Correspondence.

Letters written at Castle Garden for emigrants     .           .           .           .           .           .             1,682

Letters received for ditto            .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .               641

————

It will be seen by a glance at these figures how thoroughly the Americans have, to use their own expression, “realised the idea” that emigration is a source of national wealth. For some they have nursed and tended; for some they have found prompt employment; for others they have made themselves clerks and correspondents; to others they have advanced cash on deposits of baggage, which they report have always been repaid. (Hear, hear.) We may deprecate as we please some traits of American life; but, in working up the raw material of a new country into populous and prosperous communities, it would be well for us to imitate their sagacity, and their system. (Hear, hear.) I refer to the New York arrangements, to

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point out the absolute necessity of an enclosed landing-place for emigrants arriving in our own port. Is it not a reproach that we here, in Quebec, have less care for our fellow-subjects, present or prospective, than the Americans have at New York (hear, hear);—that the newly-arrived strangers on our docks, male and female, may be exposed and tempted to their ruin, as they have been too often tempted and seduced, both male and female, for want of a properly-provided landing depôt? I do not pretend that we could set up anything on the scale of the New York buildings—there is no need for so costly an establishment; but there is need for a safe and ordinary means of accommodating over night 200 or 300 persons, who are anxious to draw breath before continuing their pilgrimage to the interior. In the name of humanity—in the name of common decency—I appeal to the gentlemen opposite to see that some temporary landing-place and Emigrant Refuge is provided, before the Spring fleet pours its passengers in upon us. It was mainly to effect this one point that I was so anxious to obtain my Committee before the Easter recess;—but it is not yet too late, if the hon. gentlemen opposite will order it to be done. (Loud cries of “Hear.”) The value of every suggestion of this kind must depend, Mr. Speaker, not only on its fitness, but also on the character of the Minister entrusted with its execution if it should be adopted—I allude to the Minister of Agriculture. Now, it seems to me, Sir, and I believe the opinion to be a growing one, that that portfolio ought to be estimated as one of the most important,—requiring as good abilities as any other in the Administration. Every one admits that the legal offices of those who may be called our Ministers of Justice,—that the Finances, the Crown Lands, and the Public Works, require able men to fill them well; but, hitherto, it seems to have been considered that the Ministry of Agriculture—including, as it ought to do, Emigration—might be given to any second or third-rate man. (Hear, hear.) Now, what should be fairly required as a standard of ability in such a department? Should the Minister appointed know as much as

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a clerk under the Civil Service Act? Should he know what the Provincial Examiners insist upon as the standard for every land surveyor? Should he know all parts of his own country well, and something of other countries from which we draw so much of our labour, and to which we export so much of our produce? I will not be guilty of the arrogance of defining the duties of such an office by any description of my own, but I will seek for an example of what such a Minister ought to be; and, happily, I can find an illustrious example in the history of this Province, in the person of one of its old French Governors, whose memory is too little known among us in these days. The Swedish Naturalist, Peter Kalm, a disciple of Linnæus, who visited Canada, and stayed some time in this city in the year 1749, has left us, in his “Travels,” the following account of the Marquis de la Galiissonniere, then Governor-General of this country:—

“He (the Marquis de la Galiissonniere) has a surprising knowledge in all branches of science, and especially in natural history; in which he is so well versed, that when he began to speak with me about it, I imagined I saw our great Linnæus under a new form. When he spoke of the use of natural history, of the method of learning, and employing it to raise the state of a country, I was astonished to see him take his reasons from politics, as well as natural philosophy, mathematics, and other sciences. I own that my conversation with this nobleman was very instructive to me; and I always drew a deal of useful knowledge from it. He told me several ways of employing natural history to the purposes of politics, and to make a country powerful in order to depress its envious neighbours. Never has natural history had a greater promoter in this country; and it is very doubtful whether he will ever have his equal here. As soon as he got the place of Governor-General he began to take those measures for getting information in natural history which I have mentioned before. When he saw people who had been in a settled part of the country, especially in the more remote parts, or had travelled in those parts, he always questioned

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them, about the trees, plants, earths, stones, ores, animals, &c., of the place. He likewise inquired what use the inhabitants made of those things; in what state their husbandry was; what lakes, rivers, and passages there are; and a number of other particulars. Those who seemed to have clearer notions than the rest, were obliged to give him circumstantial descriptions of what they had seen. He himself wrote down all the accounts he received; and by this great application, so uncommon among persons of his rank, he soon acquired a knowledge of the most distant parts of America. The priests, commandants of forts, and of several distant places, are often surprised by his questions, and wonder at his knowledge, when they come to Quebec to pay their visits to him; for he often tells them that near such a mountain, or on such a shore, &c, where they often went a-hunting, there are some particular plants, trees, earth, ores, &c, for he had got a knowledge of those things before. From whence it happened that some of the inhabitants believed that he had a preternatural knowledge of things, as he was able to mention all the curiosities of places, sometimes near two hundred Swedish miles from Quebec, though he never was there himself. Never was there a better statesman than he; and nobody can take better measures, and choose more proper means for improving a country, and increasing its welfare.” (Hear, hear.)

This is the portrait of a Franco-Canadian statesman of the eighteenth century, who considered “natural history,” which then included geology and metallurgy, an essential study for a statesman in a country like Canada. Now I will not, under cloak of the Marquis de la Gallissonniere’s great name, stoop to draw any satirical contrasts between the present holder of the portfolio of Agriculture and the Marquis de la Gallissonniere. But supposing, Mr. Speaker, the organisation of the department to be all that it ought to be, in its head and its members, let us consider the attractions we can offer in Canada to intending settlers.*

* The very rich deposits of gold on the Chaudière and its tributaries, in the Quebec district, had not yet attracted public attention. They have

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It is true that this Province has neither the golden rivers of California nor the luxurious climate of Australia; but it has two things which free-born men value even higher—complete civil and religious liberty, and productive land to be acquired by any man’s industry. Our chief moral attraction must ever lie in our institutions; our chief material attraction must lie in cheap or free land. The institutions of this Province, whatever defects may exist, are, take them all in all, the most desirable in the world; and if we can only succeed in keeping down the wrathful spirit of religious bigotry—bigotry on all sides—that despotic temper which makes a bigot in religion and a despot in politics out of the self-same stuff;—if we only succeed in keeping down that spirit, the institutions of Canada ought naturally to attract valuable accessions to our population from abroad. As to our material advantages, the land resources of this Province are not so well understood, even by Canadians themselves, as they should be. Which of us familiarly thinks of the hundred million acres in Lower, and fifty million acres in Upper Canada, so ably and fully described in that vade mecum of such information, the Crown Land Commissioner’s Report of 1857, for which the hon. gentleman (Mr. Cauchon) and those who assisted him in its preparation deserve the highest credit,—a Report that ought to be familiar to every Member of this House. (Hear, hear.) But confining ourselves to the public lands actually in the market in this Province, we find that we commence the year with over 7,600,000 acres of Crown Lands in the two sections; over 500,000 acres of Clergy Lands,—not to mention the School Lands, the Indian Lands, and the Ordnance Lands, withheld, and I think very properly withheld, for the present. I will trouble the House with a tabular view of these lands, taken from the new emigration pamphlet, giving the acreage in round numbers only:—

since been tested in the most practical way, but only over a limited extent of the auriferous field, and the result so far has been such as to encourage the formation of several mining companies, chiefly by capitalists at Boston and New York.

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CANADA EAST.

Acres.

Counties on the north side of the Ottawa .           .           .           .           .           .           .     1,093,000

Counties on the north side of St. Lawrence         .           .           .           .           .           .     1,378,000

Counties south side of St. Lawrence       .           .           .           .           .           .           .     1,544,000

—————

Total available in Canada East, in 1862  .           .           .           .           .           .     4,015,000

CANADA WEST.

In the Ottawa and Huron country           .           .           .           .           .           .           .       600,000

Continuations of Lennox, Frontenac, Addington, and District of Nipissing           .           .       660,000

Continuations of Hastings, and Peterborough, Victoria, Simcoe, and part of Nipissing      .     1,170,000

District of Algoma        .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .       200,000

Fort William (Lake Superior)     .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .        64,000

—————

Total available in Canada West, in 1862 .           .           .           .           .           .     2,694,000

These are the figures according to the new emigration pamphlet, while according to the Crown Land Commissioner’s Report for the year ending December 31st, 1861, the Crown Lands actually in the market at that date were:—

Acres.

Canada West     .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .   2,021,229½

Canada East      .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .     5,593,833

—————

Total Crown Lands in market     .           .           .           .           .           .           .   7,615,062½

This domain might be diminished at the rate of a million acres a year,—by 10,000 or 20,000 one hundred acre farms, and the decrease would not be felt,—the want would be supplied by the new surveys, on which the Province keeps constantly employed from two to three hundred land surveyors. As the House is aware, Mr. Speaker, a per centage of this immense domain is very liberally given away in “free grants;” to what extent that per centage may be actually in demand I am not now going to discuss, but the average price at which the lands of the Crown, disposed of by sale, are sold, cannot be considered exorbitant. In Upper Canada the average price obtained in the sales of last year was, for the Crown Lands $1.25, the School Lands $1.50, and the Clergy Lands $2.50; in

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Lower Canada the average prices were, for the Crown Lands less than 50 cents, and for the Clergy Lands less than $1 per acre. Considering that on these purchases five years’ time is usually given, and that a first instalment of ten per cent, is all that is usually required, it is evident that the first cost of our public lands cannot be any great obstacle to the more general settlement of our waste territory. Are there, then, defects in the machinery by which the lands are to be settled?—are the formalities expensive?—are the surveys inaccessible?—are there hostile combinations? These are all considerations of the utmost importance for this House, and especially for the Committee which I have proposed. Before passing altogether from this point, I cannot but remark on the existence among us of certain landed monopolies, which, I fear, have given Canada a bad name for a poor man’s country to get. I allude to such corporations as the British American Land Company and the Canada Company; and speaking of these great companies, I was sorry to see, Sir, by the Crown Lands Report for this year, that Mr. Vankoughnet had disposed “of ten townships en bloc” in the Ottawa and Lake Huron tract to another of these companies. I know that the late Commissioner, to whose great administrative abilities I have always cheerfully paid homage, intended and stipulated that settlement duties should be rigorously exacted of this new company. (Hear, hear.) But who is to answer that his successors will be equally resolute? Who is to guarantee the Province that a corporation rich enough to purchase will not be influential enough to hold up these ten townships at an excessive figure, and so keep back the surrounding settlements? What has been our experience of these large landed companies? They all came into existence with the fairest possible professions towards this Province. The Canada Company and the British American Company were created by Royal Charter before the days of Responsible Government, so we are not fairly answerable for them, as we shall be for others, if others are to be created by our own action. The Canada Company’s report for the present year is now in my possession, and shows

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how they have used their chartered privileges to speculate upon Canadian lands during the past few years. The directors congratulate the proprietors on the constant progressive rise of prices in their sales of wild lands. They say:—

“The Directors again draw the attention of the proprietors to the steady annual increase in the market value of the Company’s lands as a most satisfactory and important feature in their affairs; the ultimate success of their operations depending, as it does in some degree, upon the progessive [sic] increase in the price to be obtained from the sale of the remainder of their estate. The subjoined table of land disposed of since the year 1829, arranged in decennial periods, furnishes an interesting illustration on this head:—

1829 to 1840     .           .           .           .           .           .           .      736,608 acres, at 11s. 1d. per acre,

1841 to 1850     .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           989,117  „  15s. 4d.  „

1851 to 1861     .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           493,873  „  32s. 4d.  „

“It will be seen from these figures that, although the quantity of land disposed of during the last ten years has been less by one-half than in the preceding period, it realised more than double the amount.”

No doubt this is a most satisfactory state of things to the Canada Company, to the Directors of the Canada Company, and to the proprietors of the Canada Company, but if the growth of the western section of the Province is in some degree retarded, if its increasing population is obstructed by this, for the American world, exorbitant price of wild land (32s. sterling per acre), it is not quite so satisfactory a state of things for Canada as for the Company. The transactions of the Company during the first two months of the present year, are figured up in the same report, as follows:—

“From the 1st January to the 28th February, 1862:—

424 acres have been sold at 32s. 11d. per acre.

6,221 acres have been leased at 56s. 11d. per acre.

24,522 acres converted to freeholds.”

The collections of money for the same period amount to 36,800l. currency, viz.:—

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“On account of purchase money .           .           .           .           .           .           .           £26,875

„          rent and interest .           .           .           .           .           .           .             9,581

„          sundries            .           .           .           .           .           .           .               314

“The sum of 31,000l. sterling” adds the Report, “has been remitted home by the Commissioners since the 31st December.”

I have no disposition, Mr. Speaker, to exaggerate the evil in our state of society of these great land companies, but I think it my duty to state to this House that both in the Eastern Townships, where the British American Land Company still retains en bloc many thousands of acres, and in those counties in Upper Canada in which the Canada Company retains its vast reserves, that they are generally looked upon as lets rather than as aids to settlement. They allow their lands to lie waste, unless they can get their own exorbitant prices, or if they lease them it is often to take them back again from the disheartened lessees; for, in any event, the value is certain to increase by the mere increase of the neighbouring settlements on the lands of the Crown. The whole surrounding country is tugging to lift that dead weight of corporate lands held en bloc, and if a more liberal policy is not adopted by them—if a policy less hostile to Canadian interests is not adopted—this Province may be compelled, in self-defence, to inquire by what means it may best mitigate this evil, and enfranchise the large scopes of country now held in worse than mortmain clutch.* The Clergy Reserves and the Seignorial Tenure, strong as they were, had to give way to the requirements of a growing society; and those companies, if they are wise for themselves, will not overdo the opportunities which they unfortunately possess, to retard, in many sections, the growth of population. (Cheers.) It might seem to be a sufficient cure for this evil, that the millions of acres of Crown Lands in the market were to be had, in Upper Canada, on an average at $2 per acre, and in Lower Canada, from $1 to 50 cents per acre; but, unfortunately,

* This language should be received with many modifications, as larger experience has instructed us. But the objection as to abase of privileges remains good.

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the great companies have got into the very heart of the land; they have got prime soil centrally situated—which gives them the opportunity they so usuriously employ, to monopolise and overcharge—according to all existing American standards of the value of wild lands. (Hear, hear.) Another topic in connection with our land policy relates to what are called the Colonisation or “Free Grant” roads, east and west. (Hear, hear.) Prom the Crown Land Commissioner’s Report, just laid on the table of the House, we may see at a glance with what unequal strides the work of free colonisation went on, last year, in Upper as compared with Lower Canada. In this section of the Province all the free grants fell a fraction short of 10,000 acres; while in Upper Canada the free grants somewhat exceeded 80,000 acres. Now, as to the quantity of “free grant” land reduced to cultivation during the year, the number of settlers actually established on the colonisation roads, and the reported value of the annual production on those new lines of road, I have taken the Commissioner’s figures, and I find that the result in each section of the Province, for last year, stands thus:—

Total value of

Roads in Upper Canada.     Acres.    Settlers.                                                  Products in 1861.

Addington        .           .           .     726 27                                                          $38,562.20

Bobcaygeon      .           .           .    ——     ——                                                   30,007.10

Hastings           .           .           .     960 88                                                           44,418.15

Muskoka          .           .           .     300 62                                                             4,900.23

Opeougo           .           .           .     416 40                                                            36,716.32

——     ——                                                  —————

Total Upper Canada      .           .    2,402     217                                                   $154,584.00*

——     ——                                                  —————

Value of Products

Roads in Lower Canada.   Arpents.  Settlers.                                                            in 1861.

Elgin road         .           .           .     731 29                                                            $15,000.72

Matane„           .           .           .     705 —                                                               4,443.15

Kempt„            .           .           .     305       14                                                          1,317.70

——            —                                                           —————

1,741      43                                                       $20,762.57

The colonisation road expenditure last year in Lower Canada was over $52,000, and for that very considerable

* This figure must be taken, not for the year 1861 alone, but for all “free grant” reclamations on those roads to that date.

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sum and the donation of 10,000 acres, we have 43 new “free grant” settlers added to the pioneer population. Those 10,000 acres, according to the statutory limitation of 100 acres the grant, ought to give the Province at least 100 such settlers. It may be that on some of these free grants, settlement duties will be commenced the present spring, but it is evident that taking 1861 by itself, the acres granted are not represented by the required number of grantees. (Hear, hear.) In Upper Canada (exclusive of the Bobcaygeon road, not returned), we have only 217, instead of 300 new settlers for 30,000 acres; but this is a nearer approximation to the requirements of the law, than has been made in Lower Canada. It would be instructive to know what proportion of these “free grants,” so freely advertised abroad, were taken up by Emigrants and what portion by native Canadians; but I believe there is, at present, no official information of that kind—unless it may be supplied in the Report of the Minister of Agriculture, not yet in our hands. (Hear, hear.) Another important consideration for us, at this moment, remains to be taken up. We were invited, as you will remember, Mr. Speaker, in His Excellency’s speech, at the opening of the session, to consider the highly important subject of our military defences, and we have assured His Excellency that we will give our best attention to that subject. I have full confidence that this House will keep good faith with His Excellency; but, Mr. Speaker, I deny that we can wisely consider the subject of our defences apart from the subject of our population. (Hear, hear.) Nay, more; we must consider it in connection with the growth of that American population who alone can ever cross our border in anger. Our boundary is theirs; but while on our side there are at present about 2,500,000 inhabitants, in the States that face our frontier there are nearly 20,000,000. Does any one believe that we could hold our own, with the odds against us eight to one? Allow everything you please for a people defending their own soil—allow everything you please for Imperial assistance—the disproportion between the two populations is so enormous as to inspire

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many with the apprehension that it is a mere question of time, when it must come to our turn to be devoured by our gigantic neighbour. I feel, Sir, that these fears are neither weak nor fanciful; but I still hold that if we use our present opportunities as we ought—if we fill in our frontiers with a sturdy yeomanry—if we create and establish a peasant proprietary, trained from youth to the use of arms, that Canada may fairly pretend to an independent existence on this continent. I have no knowledge of military affairs, Mr. Speaker, but I would beg the attention of the House in considering our defences, as well as the present subject, to a glance at the map of the country, both the populated and unsettled parts of it, and to the inquiry which arises from even such a glance, what connection exists between the distribution of our people, and their resources for self-defence? It seems probable that we shall all be obliged to study the map of the country hereafter, more than we ever did before; and it is impossible, it seems to me, to cast even a cursory glance at it without feeling that we occupy one of the most peculiar positions—that our population, so far, is the most peculiarly distributed—of any to be found anywhere else on this side of the world. Our great central valley from Cornwall to the Saguenay is banked on both sides with settlements, facing to the front and not extending, on an average, except up the lateral valley of the Ottawa, and in the direction of the Eastern Townships, 50 miles from the St. Lawrence; we have thus a long narrow riband of population, one-seventh the breadth of its own length, as singularly shaped a country as eye ever beheld. East of the junction of the Saguenay with the St. Lawrence, our population is carried down to the gulf by the south shore alone, while west of Cornwall, it is found only to the north of the Upper St. Lawrence and the great Lakes. The peopled part of the Province thus presents the shape of a long fantastic letter “S”—a waving Lesbian line, which, to my eye, is neither a line of beauty nor of grace, nor of defensive strength. At and above Cornwall, this twist of population is denned by the 45^th parallel of latitude, but there is no necessity for any such

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peculiarity in Lower Canada. From the Ottawa to the St. Maurice, and from the St. Maurice to the Saguenay on the one shore; from the Chateaugay to the Du Loup on the other shore, there is the strongest testimony of the best authorities—surveyors, geologists, lumberers, practical men of all origins—that three, four, seven-fold the present population may find ample space and remuneration for their industry. (Hear, hear.) Fortunately for us who advocate the recruiting of a productive rather than of a destructive army, science with its hammer and its theodolite has been for twenty years at work in these wildernesses. Our living geologists have exploded one fallacy—that he granite country between the Ottawa and Lake Huron could never sustain a numerous population; and this is precisely the same country, geologically, which we find open to settlement in Lower Canada. (Hear, hear.) This is precisely the character of the North Shore counties between Montreal and Quebec, where, if ever Canada stands at bay, in defence of her separate nationality, it must be with her back to that great Laurentian chain of highlands which trends away from the Saguenay to the Ottawa and from the Ottawa to Lake Huron. (Cheers.) I have not a particle of desire, Mr. Speaker, to underrate or overrate the untouched resources either of Upper or Lower Canada; it is as truly gratifying to me to read the testimony of Mr. Symmes, Superintendent of the St. Maurice Works, to the excellent soil in portions of that valley, as it is to read the testimony of Mr. P. L. S. Salter that there is abundant room for “sixty-five townships of thirty-six square miles each,” on the north south of Lake Huron. (Hear, hear.) I rejoice to find the country widening before us, as we advance both east and west; I rejoice to know that we have no limit to our growth, but the line of perpetual frost, beyond the Laurentian mountains. (Cheers.) Another subject not remotely involved in the object of my Committee, is the representation question. We cannot be blind to the fact that at the Union, Lower Canada contained some 225,000 more inhabitants than Upper Canada, and that now she contains 290,000 less. This is an actual

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decrease of above 500,000 in twenty years. Now, does any rational man believe that this disparity can continue, and yet that strict equality of representation can be upheld? If not, what then is the obvious remedy? Have the limits of population in Lower Canada been reached? Are her cultivable lands all taken up? So far from it, that I am well satisfied, Mr. Speaker, from all the evidence taken before the several Committees over which I presided—from all the reports of men of science and men of business, that even below Quebec the soil and the climate will not be found materially different from the soil and climate of the still unsettled parts of Upper Canada, between Lake Huron and the Ottawa. There are with us two regions to the North and South of the St. Lawrence—what are commonly called “the St. Maurice country” and the “Eastern Townships;” we have abundant evidence, obtained at great expense to the Province, of the extent and resources of both these regions. Popularly, the Eastern Townships are tolerably well known; much has been done for them, and much more ought to be done. (Hear, hear.) That instead of a quarter of a million they are capable of sustaining three to four million souls, is generally admitted,—but the St. Maurice is a complete terra incognita. The summer traveller who hears steam blown off at night at Three Rivers, little dreams that he has just passed a great river, which two hundred miles from its outlet is still a great river; which drains a country larger than all Scotland,—and as capable as Scotland of bearing its three millions of inhabitants. (Hear, hear.) Why is this great valley shut up from the native and the immigrant settler alike? Why does the native Canadian turn disheartened away from its pathless woods? Why does the crowded passenger ship and the laden steamer pass by its port, Three Rivers, year by year, and day by day? When last I spoke on this subject in this place, I quoted a statement which had appeared in a local paper that opposition to its settlement came chiefly from an Hon. member of this House (Hon. Mr. Turcotte). The paper referred to has since withdrawn that statement, and I am happy to repeat, unsolicited, the

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correction, for I could not believe that any Canadian statesman would be capable of entering into a conspiracy against any class of Her Majesty’s subjects seeking a home in this country, (Hear, hear.) We are here, Mr. Speaker, within 100 miles direct of the middle waters of that great river on which there are as yet but two or three townships organised—Polette, Turcotte, and Shawinegan. Quebec wants a back country—and 30 or 40 miles of a road, continued from Gosford, would tap the St. Maurice at the Tuque, the centre of its lumber operations, and give Quebec a back country. A lateral road again from the St. Maurice to the waters of the La Lièvre and the Gatineau would not be so heavy an undertaking as the Opeongo Road, in Upper Canada, which, from Renfrew to Lake Huron, is to be 186 miles in length. Such roads might serve to give immediate employment to a number of emigrant labourers, under skilled leaders, to familiarise them to the use of the axe, and to prepare them in one season for dealing with “the bush” in the next. (Hear, hear.) My hon. friend, the member for Napierville (Mr. Bureau), who has given great attention to this subject, has a notice on the paper for an increase of the Colonisation road grant, and, under certain conditions, I think such an increase desirable; but everything depends—everything—on the spirit and system in which the service is hereafter to be administered. If that department was in the hands of a Marquis de la Gallissionniere—if such a man lived in these degenerate days—he would soon, without favoritism or injustice, or conspiracy, redress the balance of population between the east and west—he would give us internal peace on just principles, and external security, on the guarantee of our united numbers. (Cheers.) I cannot but think, Mr. Speaker, that, under a proper administrative system, the county agricultural societies, and the municipalities, might also be made important auxiliaries in the settlement of our waste lands. By the new emigration pamphlet just published, we learn that certain municipalities have informed the Bureau of a demand for upwards of 13,500 farm labourers, servants, and mechanics. It strikes me that

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these little local parliaments might do something more, if they were not afraid of being flooded with a pauper immigration. But that fear, in view of the present social state of Great Britain and Ireland, is quite chimerical. The pauper class is no longer there; they have been cut out of the basis of society; we shall, fortunately, never see again the scenes Canada saw in 1832 and 184 7. The municipalities, then, ought to be enlisted with the government in operations in common, to feel a direct interest in the common object—to make Canada a powerful and populous country. There is yet another impediment in our way to which I must allude before I close. It is, the impression which seems to prevail in some quarters, that there is an inevitable conflict of interests between the lumberer and the actual settler. But this conflict the spread of intelligence will postpone indefinitely. To the experienced eye of the surveyor or the geologist, the character of the timber indicates the character of the soil. Such men need not look below the surface; if they find large hemlocks and basswoods mixed with white pine, maple, beech and birch, they immediately infer a warm productive soil beneath. “Mixed timber generally,” says Mr. Duncan Sinclair (a good authority,—in his reply to my committee in 1860), “indicates good land.” “Oak and black walnut,” he adds,” always bespeak themselves good soil to grow upon.” There is no necessity for the lumberer’s interest and the settler’s coming into collision; but valuable as the timber trade is, agriculture is more valuable still, and those charged with the supervision of the public domain should see that the greater interest is not sacrificed to the less. (Hear, hear.) The woods and forests and the agricultural settlements are necessary and useful to each other, and it ought not to be a matter of difficulty for a firm and intelligent Minister to ensure each its own field, and to guarantee all fair advantages to both. (Hear, hear.) I have thus, Mr. Speaker, endeavoured to sketch hastily and very imperfectly, in consequence of the lateness of the night, the outlines of a reform which I believe to be essential to the best interests, to the largest increase, and fullest security of this Pro-

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vince. The Committee which the House is, I am rejoiced to know, well disposed to grant, will, I trust, be as much more effectual as it will be more numerous, than any of its predecessors. In alluding to the Committees of the last Parliament, I will only say of them, that any one who will take the trouble to consult the journals of this House for 1860 (vol. xviii.) and 1861 (vol. xix.) may see in detail the reforms we formerly projected and advocated. I cannot but again express my gratification that some of those reforms have been adopted—such as the agencies abroad, and districting the inland agencies, to some extent. I confess, Mr. Speaker, I am deeply, nervously anxious about the emigration of the coming spring. If it is botched, we shall be all to blame, and the fair fame of the Province will be deeply compromised; but I trust we will be able to handle this difficult interest firmly and wisely, as well as tenderly. The subject should enlist all our sympathies, for in one sense, and that no secondary one, all men have been emigrants or sons of emigrants since the first sad pair departed out of Eden, when—

“The World was all before them, where to choose
A place of rest, and Providence their guide.”

In these latter days, as well as from the first, we renew the ancestral experience, obeying the Divine ordinance—” go forth and fill the earth and subdue it.” (Cheers.) In the eyes of the frivolous and the vain, such wanderers may be adventurers, and the term adventurer may be made to mean anything that is base and disreputable. But all the civilisation of the world has been the handiwork of just such adventurers. Heroic adventurers gave Greece her civilisation; sainted adventurers gave Rome her Christianity; the glorified adventurers celebrated in history, established in western Europe those laws and liberties which we are all endeavouring to perpetuate in America. (Cheers.) Let us rather, then, as adventurer has lost its true meaning, let us rather look upon the emigrant, wherever born and bred, as a founder, as a greater than kings and nobles, because he is destined to conquer for himself, and not by the hired

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hands of other men, his sovereign dominion over some share of the earth’s surface. (Cheers.) He is the true founder who plants his genealogical tree deep in the soil of the earth, whose escutcheon bears, what Cowley so happily called the best shield of nations— “a plough proper in a field arable.” (Cheers.) Mr. Speaker, in the spirit of a broad, uncircumscribed Canadian patriotism, which knows in this House, in any legislative light, neither race, nor religion, nor language, but only Canada and her advancement, I beg to move for the fourth time for a Committee on Emigration and Settlement. When I see those interests adopted as their own by hon. gentlemen opposite who have the power, if they have the will, to establish a new system, I certainly feel some degree of exultation at the favourable prospects which are before this great project. I can say for myself most truly, though not at all insensible either to the favour of my constituents or my colleagues in this House, that if I were quitting public life or personal life to-morrow, I would feel a far higher satisfaction in remembering that some honest man’s sheltering roof-tree had been raised by my advocacy, than if I bad been Premier or Governor of the Province. (Cheers.) Let it be the mad desire of others in Europe and America to lay waste populous places; let it be our better ambition to populate waste places. In this we shall approach nearest to the Divine original, whose image, however defaced, we bear within us; in this we shall become makers and creators of new communities and a new order of things; it is to further in some degree this good work, during the present session, that I have now the honour to move for a Select Committee to take into consideration the subject of Emigration and the Settlement of the country. [The hon. gentleman sat down amid loud cheers from all parts of the House.]*

* On Monday, April 28, 1862, the following Committee were on motion of Mr. McGee, seconded by Mr. Bell of Lanark, appointed by the House:—Mr. McGee, Honourable Messieurs Alleyn, Robinson, Foley, Loranger, Drummond and Portman, and Messrs. Jackson, McDougall, Robitaille, Joseph Dufresne, De Cazes, Desaulniers, Pope, O’Halloran, Jobin, Bell (Lanark), Dawson, Scott, Abbott, Benjamin, Hooper, Dickson, Haultain and McKellar.

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INTERCOLONIAL RAILWAY DIPLOMACY.

HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY, QUEBEC, OCTOBER 2ND, 1863.

On the resolution to concur in the vote of $20,000 for exploration and survey of the proposed Intercolonial Railway—

Hon. Mr. McGee said that, before concurrence was taken on this resolution, he begged leave to call attention to two additional documents laid on the table, since this subject was last under consideration. Among the papers sent down, there were only two really new, the despatch from His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick, dated 18th September, 1863, and an elaborate answer thereto, contained in a memorandum from the Government of Canada, dated 29th September, 1863. The letter of His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor says:—”I have the honour to transmit to your Excellency (Governor-General of Canada) the accompanying copy of a minute of my Executive Council. I readily assent to the adoption of the course recommended by this minute, and entirely concur in the hope therein expressed, that no further departure from the agreement entered into between the three Provinces will be hereafter proposed by your Excellency’s advisers.” It was quite evident from that short note that His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick did not expect that any other portion of the Intercolonial agreement of September, 1862, would have been abandoned by the Government of Canada, except only in relation to the time of the preliminary survey. If this other memorandum of 29th September, drawn up by the Canadian Government, contained, as it professed to do, their deliberate conviction that the negotiations of 1862

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had come to an end; if that was their deliberate conviction at the recent reconstruction of the Cabinet, an intimation to this effect ought to have been candidly and authoritatively conveyed to the Governments of the Lower Provinces before this, and also to this House and country. (Cheers.) But the first intimation of the abandonment on our part was made in this document of 29th September last. He called this document an uncandid document, and injurious in the highest degree to the character for good faith of this country; and if there was one thing more than another which any Government, either old or new, ought to preserve with jealousy, it was their reputation for good faith. This document went round and round Robin Hood’s barn, and did not state honestly that the members of the present Government, on coming into office, agreed among themselves to regard the negotiations entered into by Messrs. Howland and Sicotte as at an end. It did not pretend to say the Government was reconstructed on that understanding. If the Government had stated that, after a full and careful re-consideration of all the facts, they were resolved to abandon the negotiations; if they had said so plainly and above board, they would have deserved credit for frankness at least. (Hear, hear.) But it was only now they came out with a declaration on this most important subject of policy, with regard to which, months ago, the present Attorney-General East had left the Cabinet; and later, refused to become again a member, on the ground that this Intercolonial Railroad question was not wholly abandoned. It was only now they took definite ground on this matter, which, if they had taken with credit to themselves, should have been taken and held from the beginning. (Cheers.) But there had been a breach of faith on the part of our Government towards both the Colonial and Imperial Governments in regard to these Intercolonial Railroad negotiations. He would adduce evidence to prove this position, and did believe the members of the House would not permit this matter to be disposed of by a stab in the dark four months after. They should, in the previous session, in duty to the Premier himself, to the members

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of the former Government not in this one; in justice to the hon. negociators themselves, and by all the considerations of honour and national good faith, have stated frankly what they stated now. (Hear, hear.) The hon. gentleman now proceeded to read the minute of the Canadian Government to support his views of their conduct in reference to breaking off of the negotiations. The second paragraph read as follows: “The Committee find that, whilst the Executive Council of New Brunswick advise the appointment of a surveyor to act in conjunction with the surveyor appointed by this Province to conduct the proposed survey, they would seem to qualify the recommendation by associating with it a hope that the survey being accomplished, the basis agreed upon by the Convention, held in September, 1862, will be adhered to, if the construction of the railway be hereafter found practicable. The Committee learn with pleasure that, so far as the survey is concerned, their plans are cordially acquiesced in by the Executive of New Brunswick, and they look forward with satisfaction to the consummation of the important undertaking, of which the survey is the preliminary step. In order that there may be no misapprehension, however, between the Governments of the Provinces having a common interest in this matter, the Committee think it right to call to mind the manner in which the negotiations conducted in London terminated, and the general position in which the question of an Intercolonial Railway at present stands in this Province. The Committee would remind your Excellency that the conditions proposed by the Imperial Government, in connection with the assistance to be rendered towards the construction of the railway, differed in some important particulars from the agreement of September, 1862, and from the instructions which the delegates sent on the part of Canada were charged to carry into effect. The Committee may refer to the distinct refusal on the part of the Imperial Government to regard the contribution which Canada might make to the Intercolonial Railway as being to that extent an expenditure for defensive purposes; the proposed sinking fund, and to the condition set forth in

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the 9th of the series of propositions presented by the Imperial Government:—’Government not to be asked for this guarantee until the line and surveys shall have been submitted to and approved by Her Majesty’s Government, and until it shall have been shown to its satisfaction that the line can be constructed without further application for an Imperial guarantee.’ The Imperial Government thus making the proposed assistance, by way of a loan, contingent upon the results of a previous survey establishing the sufficiency of the guarantee for the full purposes for which it was to be granted. The delegates, therefore, were constrained to decline the acceptance of a proposal fettered by conditions so much at variance with their instructions, and their decision received the approval of their colleagues as being in harmony with the spirit of the agreement arrived at by the Quebec Convention, and in entire conformity with the unequivocal tone of public opinion in the Province. The negotiations founded upon the understanding entered into by the Convention of September, 1862, were regarded as terminated with the return of the delegates to this Province.” Now this portion of the despatch was wholly incorrect, the delegates not being either instructed or constrained to decline any propositions made by the Imperial Government, their duty being to transmit such to the other members of the Canadian Government for their consideration. The minute (Canadian Executive Council) went on to say—”It was hoped that the Report of the Council of 25th February last would have sufficed to prevent misconception as to the necessary abandonment of the basis upon which the negotiations up to that time had been founded, and to show. that any further action by the Government of this Province must be the subject of subsequent consideration.” Now, he denied that the Report of February 25, ’63, indicated the necessary abandonment of the basis upon which the negotiations up to that time had been founded. He denied that the modification went further than as regards the necessity of a preliminary survey, which was a totally different thing. If it could be shown that the Order in Council of 25th February, 1862, pronounced

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necessary the abandonment of the basis referred to, then this memorandum of a few days ago was in harmony therewith, and the basis was abandoned by the last Government, and not the present. But no such thing could be shown. The minute of 29th September further stated, “That the carrying out of the agreement of September, 1862, necessarily depended upon the success of the negotiations with the Imperial Government, and the assent of the Legislatures of the three Provinces being obtained. These negotiations having failed, and it being manifest that the construction of the railway could not be attempted without Imperial aid, the Canadian Government did not feel that they were in a position to invite any action on the part of the Canadian Legislature, beyond making a preliminary survey, the results of which may lead to further negotiations, and on a different basis from that agreed to by the Convention.” The hon. gentleman (Mr. McGee) denied emphatically that the negotiations had failed. Such was not the fact. The document continued as follows: “In order to promote the construction of a work which the events of each succeeding year invest with greater importance, the Committee addressed themselves to the task of devising plans whereby the attainment of the object might be secured in a manner consistent with the interests and resources of this Province. They found that the examination of the route, and the satisfactory completion of a survey was also indicated by the Imperial Government, as conditions precedent of any negotiations, and they then informed your Excellency that they had decided, upon recommending an appropriation by the Legislature of Canada, for the purpose of making such a survey as is necessary to the final determination of the several proposals. In conformity with this, they have asked an appropriation of $10,000 during the present session, and they have also appointed an engineer to proceed with the survey so soon as the requisite arrangements can be completed. The action of the Legislature has proceeded so far as that it may be regarded as having rendered the appropriation a certainty, and the immediate commencement of the survey is, therefore, dependent only upon the

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unqualified concurrence of the Provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The necessity of a prompt decision on the part of the Government of New Brunswick, with the view of an early commencement of the survey, is obvious, inasmuch as the season during which this survey may be most advantageously performed is rapidly passing away.” He would beg the House to observe that this was the first time any Canadian document attempted to place the responsibility of the rejection of the proposition for a survey on the Governments of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick—an attempt to make it appear that the terms of the negotiations agreed to by those Provinces, and incorporated in both their Statutes, to which they never objected, had been abandoned by them, instead of by us. (Hear, hear.) It was quite evident they did nothing of the kind. (Cheers.) And, really, to ask them to give their concurrence to the abandonment of the terms was to ask them to abandon the scheme altogether. If this was what the Canadian Government wanted, let them drop out this paltry item of $20,000 for a survey, at once—let them get up and declare they were not in favour of the Intercolonial project itself.

Hon. J. S. MACDONALD—Hear, hear.

Hon. Mr. MCGEE would do the hon. gentleman the justice to say that he believed he was a friend of the scheme, and opposed to its abandonment; but his new colleagues, who were opposed to it, had dragged him with them in this matter. But his Government now asked the Lower Provinces to abandon the conditions accepted by them, and embodied in their Statutes. He (Hon. J. S. Macdonald) had become a party to that proceeding, whether willingly or unwillingly it mattered not, and upon him and his colleagues must fall the responsibility. He (Mr. McGee) could understand the conduct of the Hon. Attorney- General East, who had retired from the Macdonald-Sicotte Cabinet, and had refused to enter it again, out of hostility to the Intercolonial Railway scheme, and because it was not to be abandoned.

Hon. J. S. MACDONALD—No, no.

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Hon. Mr. McGee repeated this was the reason, and it was well known to the House and the country. (Hear, hear.)

Several Opposition Members—Yes, yes.

Hon. Mr. MCGEE would repeat he could understand Mr. Dorion’s position on this question, but he could not understand, and thought this House would not understand, why it was necessary for Government to make this elaborate statement (the minute of 29th September) to throw the onus of the abandonment of the scheme on the Lower Provinces, while in reality all the obstacles to it had arisen, one after another, in the sentiments and conduct of the present Canadian Government itself. (Cheers.) Having raised obstacle after obstacle, which the sister Provinces had generally overcome, our Government at last, having no longer an impediment to raise, had given an interpretation to their own policy on the Intercolonial Railway project, which they had never given before the electors, or the country, or this House, during all the past discussions on this subject; and now, for the first time, four months after their ascent to power, we had an authoritative expression of the new policy in relation to this subject, with an attempt to make it appear of a piece with the old policy. (Hear, hear.) One of the most singular portions of the document which he had read was, that in relation to the necessity of a prompt decision on the part of New Brunswick, in order to the commencement of a survey of the route. This prompt decision was required on the part of New Brunswick—not on our part. (Loud laughter.) This was equivalent to saying again it was only the Lower Provinces that were raising obstacles. It would be remembered that on previous occasions he had endeavoured, but failed, to extract from the Government whether they had ever informed the Governments of the Lower Provinces that they had abandoned the policy of 1863. The Attorney-General East and Finance Minister had failed to answer this question when put to them on three several occasions, during the present session. (Hear, hear.) Now, however, we could get an answer when the members of the Administra-

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tion had at length agreed among themselves upon the policy shadowed forth in this minute in Council of the 29th September; now, when they had been four months in power, during almost the whole of which time they had no formed policy on this subject which they could transmit to the Lower Provinces, at long last our Ministers agree to a policy, and put their opinions on paper. The hon. gentleman proceeded to point out the incorrectness of the statement in the minute, relative to the object of the Imperial Government in asking for a survey and sinking fund, arguing that the demand was only intended as a condition precedent to their going down to the House of Commons to ask for the guarantee. The Canadian Government, therefore, misrepresented the position of the Colonial Office in order to justify its own position and want of faith. (Hear.) Then this document assumed to rely on the document of the 25th February, as having conveyed the information to this House that the original basis of agreement had been abandoned, and also that if some details, if the old negotiation conducted in England by Hon. Messrs. Sicotte and Howland could be adjusted, the enterprise as agreed upon in the Conference of September, 1862, would go on. But the February report pronounced no opinion whatever as to the abandonment of the basis of September, 1862. On the contrary, it assumed throughout it might be induced to reconsider some of its objections and recall some of its propositions, and intimated as delicately as it could that some of the counter propositions of our delegates might be recalled. (Hear, hear.) Nor did it give a single hint that could be interpreted into an abandonment of the basis in question. Moreover, it concluded with the expression of a strong hope that the negotiations might yet be carried to a successful termination. The present Order in Council endeavoured to justify itself by putting the notification of the abandonment of the negotiations in the mouth of the minute of February, 1862; but it did not dare to quote a single sentence in proof. He thought it would be news to some hon. members like himself, who at that day were in the Government, that they had recorded a minute of Council

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communicated to the Lower Provinces, which would justify them in assuming that our Government had abandoned its own act of the previous September.

Hon. Mr. GALT—Was this minute of .February, 1863, communicated to the Governments of the Lower Provinces?

Hon. Mr. MCGEE replied in the affirmative. They distinctly understood that it recognised the old basis, and authorised a survey, everything going to show they understood the very contrary to the scheme being abandoned. He thought it was much to be regretted this minute of September 29th had been adopted, as the character of Her Majesty’s Ministers in Canada must suffer both in the Lower Provinces and in England—much to be regretted for the honour of this country. (Hear, hear.) A more disingenuous piece of special pleading he had never read; and it was because he had a real desire that our countrymen along the Bay of Fundy and the Gulf should not have a low opinion of this country, that our Government should not be considered a pack of tricksters, and that Canada should maintain unsullied her public faith, that he condemned the parties responsible for this document, and desired to see our Cabinet take a more honest and dignified course than in the matter under consideration. If at any time Government should find it necessary to abandon a particular policy, which it had ratified in a manner partaking of the nature of a solemn contract or treaty, it ought to do so frankly and officially, and at the earliest possible moment. He had no objection, if Government was opposed to any measure, to their getting up frankly and saying so, and would not have objected if they had stated they did not consider the former negotiations binding, and that the whole thing was abandoned; but if they felt so, let them not ask $2 0,000 for a survey to enable themselves to gain time, while simultaneously they seek to place the responsibility of rejecting the scheme on the Lower Provinces in an unfair and disingenuous manner.*

* After some further discussion of a conversational kind, the concurrence was taken, without dividing the House.

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STATE OF THE COUNTRY: PUBLIC DEFENCES.

HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY, QUEBEC, OCTOBER 13TH, 1863.

On the last day of the session, the question being on the third reading of the Militia and Volunteer Militia Bills—

Mr. MCGEE said—Before the question is put, Mr. Speaker, I desire to address the House for the last time this session, when it may be proper to do so, on the subject of the state of the defences, provided for, in some sort, in these bills, and the other subject inseparably connected with our defence, the situation in which, when we quit Quebec, we shall leave the Government of the country. (Hear, hear.) I think, Sir, it must be admitted by every one at all attentive to our politics during the present year of grace, that one of our greatest weaknesses is the present Government of the country. (Hear, hear.) No doubt there are other vulnerable points of attack in our position, but so long as we may have a strong Government—a Government acceptable to, and fairly representing all classes and sections of the population—a Government thoroughly masters of the hearty, unbought allegiance of the people they govern, the main basis of all defence may be considered in our possession. Now, have we such a Government, so essential to the effective administration of this new Militia code, so soon as it becomes law? (Hear, hear.) On quitting Quebec, after voting for these measures—after voting the large expenditure necessary to put them in operation—do we feel assured, can we assure our constituents, that we have taken the best possible means for the preservation of Canada’s independence, so long as the

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greatest danger of all remains unremedied—a weak Government, existing by sufferance, at “the mercy, from day to day, of the caprice of two or three individuals? (Hear, hear.) Mr. Speaker, I shall vote for the final passage of both the bills now before you, not that I consider this Militia Bill the best or the fittest measure for Canada—not because I think the Volunteer Bill one which will satisfy, or could be expected to satisfy, the Volunteers of this country—(hear, hear)—but because I regard this Government as merely a Provisional Government. (Cheers and counter cheers.) It can be considered in no other light, with its majorities of one, two, and three. (Cheers.) And because, though it is a great misfortune to a country to have a merely ad interim Government in critical times, yet provision must be made, means and machinery must be provided for some degree of defence, even under the immense disadvantage of placing them in the hands of such a Government. (Cheers.) I do not think in the present hands the country will get value for the money voted.

Mr. SCOBLE—Why do you vote it then?

Hon. Mr. MCGEE—As a temporary provision. (Hear, hear.) But certainly not because I regard these Acts as embodying the best system, nor this Government as possessing the confidence of those who are to be called on to turn out under these Acts. (Cheers.) In vain we vote pay to militiamen, and clothing and arms to volunteers, if we cannot present to the world without, the spectacle of a Government calculated to inspire them with respect, and to our own people at home such a conduct of affairs as will enlist their cheerful and united co-operation in bearing the cost and performing the duties of this or any other system of Militia organisation. (Hear, hear.) It is necessary, most of all now, before we separate for the year, that some one should tell the truth plainly to the Government itself, that however weakly they may exult in the adroit management by which they have barely escaped defeat, day by day, since the first day of the session, at what sacrifices and surrenders of principle and public policy they themselves know, that, however they might raise a cheer when the

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clerk, in calling the division, counted one vote above a tie—that they have far less of the salutary confidence necessary to protect Canadian interests at this moment—at the close of the session—than they had even at the opening of the session. (Cheers, and cries of “No, no,” and “Yes, yes.”) It is necessary, then, to demonstrate this truth a little in detail, from the hour at which we are now arrived—the close of the second month we have spent, I will not say wasted, in Quebec—it is necessary for me to make good the rapid decadence of the political hopes formed of the Macdonald-Dorion combination of May last—hopes are formed alike of “new brooms” and new Governments—(laughter)—and this, Mr. Speaker, I shall endeavour to do in a very summary manner. It will be remembered by the House that the avowed object of the dissolution of May last was to enable the country, by electing a new Parliament, to remedy the inherent weakness which a too close balance of parties was found to have created in the last Parliament. (Hear, hear.) That was the avowed object (hear, hear)—and what was the result? These strong men, strengthened with so many other strong men, making an election with all the advantages of their position, real, imaginary, present, and prospective—these strong men succeeded in splitting the country, east and west, with a diagonal line, throwing two-thirds of the east on one side and two-thirds of the west on the other. (Cheers.) They succeeded in giving us, as I predicted at the hustings of Montreal, “two compact sectional majorities,” and thus has this session staggered on, while Canada, like Issachar, “an ass between two burdens,” groaned under the twofold infliction. (Cheers.) Let us see how this engine has worked for the last two months, and judge if it can continue so to work? (Hear, hear.) It is, perhaps, indelicate to refer to the selection made of a candidate for the speakership at the commencement of the session, but a sense of justice compels me to say a word. I stated in the discussion which preceded that election my objections to the Ministerial proceedings, in presenting their actual Solicitor-General to that chair, and I am more and more confirmed,

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in the opinion that those objections were sound; but the election was not a party test. It was carried by eight votes, three of whom have since acted consistently with the Opposition—(hear, hear)—making a difference of six to be deducted from eight, if it had been a party vote. (Hear, hear.) But the choice was made, and I will take the liberty of adding, after the experience of the past two months, that I believe, Sir, your impartial conduct in the chair has justly entitled you to the respect and confidence of both sides of the House. (Hear, hear.) After the election came His Excellency’s speech, which contained the programme of a full session. (Cries of “Hear, hear.”) The programme of a full session,—though ministers in the very first debate took the extraordinary liberty of putting their own gloss on the speech, by declaring here, in their places, that they did not mean what His Excellency said—that all they wanted was a Militia Bill and Supply Bill. (Hear, hear.) In the Speech from the Throne we were assured that measures ” interrupted by the dissolution” would be submitted to us; but we heard no more of those measures. (Hear, hear.) We were specifically promised in the Speech a Bankruptcy Bill,—but we have heard no more of that. (Hear, hear.) There was the Patent Law, the Civil Service Amendment Act—we heard no more of them. (Hear, hear.) Now it is, in my mind, Mr. Speaker, one among the things most to be avoided in our system—any weakening of the confidence of the country, in the utterances delivered from the Throne—any lessening of the prestige that surrounds the weakest of our “three estates.-” If it was never intended—as it appeared by the announcement of the hon. gentleman at the head of the Government that it never had been intended—to stake their ministerial existence on any one of those measures, so solemnly promised to us, why put their idle and unintentional words in the mouth of His Excellency? (Hear, hear.). For my part, Sir, I rejoice to know that the representative of Her Majesty in this Province, as far as he has been known to the people, is personally and deservedly popular. (Hear, hear.) And it is the interest of every Canadian that the Chief Magistrate

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should stand well with all classes of the people. The Government cannot be safe, the country cannot be safe, if it is otherwise, and therefore it is I lay the utmost strength on this bad example, of making the representative of the Sovereign responsible for official promises, which his advisers, through their want of nerve, or their want of support—it matters nothing which, when the mischief is done—never attempt to fulfil to the people. (Hear, hear.) As to the amendments to the Militia law promised in the Speech, and the hope then expressed that the House would receive those amendments in the proper spirit, I think it will be admitted, Mr. Speaker, that the House has shown the best spirit in the discussions which have taken place on that subject. (Hear, hear.) But, Mr. Speaker, let it be understood that every voice raised in advocacy of an improved and extended system of defence, except the Premier’s, in introducing his amendments, came from the ranks of the Opposition. (Cheers, and cries of “Yes, yes,” and “No, no,” from the Ministerial benches.) Yes! the Premier in these discussions stood alone among his friends. (Cries of “Oh! oh!”)

Hon. Mr. FOLEY—The hon. member for Lincoln assisted him. (Hear, hear.)

Hon. Mr. MCGEE—Yes; I beg his pardon; I should not have forgotten the hon. member for Lincoln (Mr. McGiverin). He certainly gave efficient aid, but all the rest of the Ministerial following voted in dumb show—(hear, hear)—while the hon. members for Kingston, for Montreal Centre, for Laval, and for Lennox and Addington, particularly distinguished themselves in those debates; and all four belonged to the Opposition. (Cheers.) If the Government had depended for party support to carry even the present measures, they know well they would have failed; they know well there are enough of their supporters hostile to all such legislation to leave them in a minority—two votes changed can do it any time—(laughter)—if the Opposition proper and the independent members had chosen to make a united stand against any one provision of these measures. (Opposition

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cheers.) This fact every one knows, but the organs of the Administration will be careful not to mention it. (Laughter.) Now, as to the financial legislation promised us in His Excellency’s speech, what had become of that? We were promised——

The Hon. J. S. MACDONALD here rose to a question of order He wanted to know if the hon. gentleman was speaking to the question?

Mr. SPEAKER would read to the hon. member the rule on the subject, leaving it to himself to make the application.

The rule having been read,

Hon. Mr. MCGEE resumed.—I am much obliged to you, Mr. Speaker, for reminding me of the rule, and I shall endeavour to adhere as rigidly to it as possible. (Hear, hear.) Certainly, it seems to me a most important consideration for the security of Canada, whether we have a strong Government or a weak one, a popular or an unpopular Administration. (Hear, hear.) Notwithstanding these excursions, I hope, before I sit down, to make the matter pertinent enough to the direct question—our public defences. (Hear, hear.) When, then, Sir, as I was about to say, we were instructed in the Speech to give our attention to bringing “the expenditure of the country within its income” —we all, in our simplicity, supposed that the Finance Minister was to bring us here some project of taxation—some skeleton of a tariff—to effect that object. He alone could bring it, but, again, the promise implied in the Speech was violated. (Hear, hear.) Moreover, there was a paragraph in the Speech which even the hon. gentleman (Hon. J. S. Macdonald) can, I suppose, see the relevancy of, in relation to our Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company, and its value as a “military work” to “the British American Provinces” But what cares the hon. gentleman for British America? (Hear, hear.) He would far rather give his leisure to acting as his own whipper-in. (Laughter.) A whipper-in is a necessary Parliamentary agent, an office all very well for a junior member; but a Prime Minister who is his own whipper-in is hardly likely to trouble his head

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much about anything concerning the consolidation of British America. (Cheers.) I now distinctly charge the hon. gentleman and his colleagues with having, from whatever motives, so entangled and embroiled the Intercolonial Railway negotiations with the Lower Provinces, that they have not only sought to get rid of the basis agreed on at Quebec, in September, 1862, but they have got rid of the survey they themselves proposed, and for which, one week ago, we voted the proximate sum of $20,000. (Repeated cries of “Hear, hear.”) That charge I distinctly make, and I intend to move for documents which I believe to be in existence, which will establish that charge; I do not hesitate to say, these proofs which exist, must, when published, do great damage to this country’s credit and character. (Hear, hear.)

An HON. MEMBER—What has that to do with the Militia. (Hear, hear.)

Hon. Mr. MCGEE—Everything. If we are to have a system of defence all the year round, it is most essential to know how we are to get to the sea five months of the year. (Cheers.) If we are to defend ourselves, or be defended from England, we must stand well in England, from which we must derive ” war’s two main hinges—iron and gold.”

An HON. MEMBER—Whose is that? (Laughter.)

Hon. Mr. MCGEE—The phrase is Milton’s, who had it from Machiavelli, who may have had it, as was popularly supposed, from “Old Nick” (Laughter.) One of the two hinges, at least, of all defence, we must derive from England, and that will depend on the exhibit our “sturdy beggar”—the phrase is his own, not mine—I mean the Minister of Finance, may make in England. (Hear, hear.) Now, we will imagine the hon. Minister, safely arrived at London, in search of his four millions loan (including $900,000 for defences), and, though lost in the crowd for a moment, we will imagine him emerging into the very sanctuary of British credit. He will find before him merchants who know how to unite the large knowledge of statesmen with the keenest attention to their, own interests, and men not

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altogether ignorant of what has passed, and is passing, in Canada. Imagine the hon. gentleman indicating to such men the grounds for future loans to Canada by saying, “Our Government went to the country last June, and we estimated our expected majority at 20 or 25, but, unfortunately, we found, when the House met, that we had two ties the first week. However, we did our best to strengthen ourselves by seating in the House a private person (Mr. Rankin) as member for Essex. In this, unfortunately, we failed. A week later we underwent the ordeal of a want of confidence motion, and narrowly escaped by a majority of three in a full House. Immediately, seeing that something should be done, we took the mover of that motion—a distinguished member of the House—and made a Judge of him. (Cheers and laughter.) The ungrateful people of his constituency, however, not seeing their duty in that light, sent us in his stead a determined Oppositionist (Mr. Raymond). So we made nothing by giving the Judgeship; still we think the ingenuity displayed entitles our Government to great consideration in England—pray, lend us four millions!” (Laughter.) Imagine the hon. gentleman further explaining away the conduct of his Government in the Intercolonial negotiations, and being obliged to say, for the truth will be in England before him—it will stand in his path by the Mersey and the Thames—” It is true we proposed a survey to the Lower Provinces and the Colonial Secretary, and that both parties accepted our proposal; it is true, we went through the mockery of voting an item of $20,000 for that survey, and naming a surveyor; but we found so many of our western supporters adverse to it, that we subsequently invented conditions which compelled the Lower Provinces to decline going on, and the Colonial Office to recall their engineer, for which specimen of our good faith we think you ought to put confidence in us—can you lend us four millions? ” (Renewed laughter.) Nor, Mr. Speaker, will the well-known circumstances attendant on the last vote in this House (Mr. Gait’s) fail to be understood in England? It will be seen at once by the observant politicians and capitalists of

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England that this is not really the hon. gentleman’s Government, but the Government of any one or two men who, on any test question, happen to have the toothache or the rheumatism, to stay away, or to put up their price. (Cheers and laughter.) The moral confidence of the country in this Administration is utterly gone, and if there were to be a general election to-morrow, not the city of Montreal alone, but the whole country, would sweep them away like a drift of dry leaves before the October blast. (Cheers.) In six months of administration you have destroyed every hold you ever had on the hearts of the people—those brave hearts, whether French, English, Scotch, or Irish, without whose confidence you will build up paper defences all in vain. (Hear.) This fact, too, will be known right well in England, as the hon. gentleman will find, when he gets there, seeking for his four millions, and pleading that $900,000 of it is for defence. To make the country secure and strong—to inspire with respect our enemies, if we have enemies—we must have a strong Government, and an honest Government. (Hear, hear.) I accept these bills now to be read for the third time, not because they are the best possible Militia legislation, but because they are the best we can get from this Provisional Government. But will you go on ruling the country with a majority of one, two, or three? Will you weaken, and expose, and imperil the country by such a course, at such a time? Or do you expect, by private bartering with individual members, to win over, during the recess, one, or two, or three more? In Lower Canada—who is the Lower Canadian traitor who can face his constituents wearing your livery? (Cheers.) It is, Mr. Speaker, some satisfaction to many members, like myself, who do not desire the restoration to office of the old coalition (hear, hear), and who just as little desire the continuance in office of the hon. gentlemen now in power (hear, hear), that in quitting Quebec we have made some improvements, to say the least, on the existing Militia law; while, at the same time, every member of this House, not in the trammels of the Administration, must know and feel, that the prime want of our

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military as of our civil strength—the cardinal want of a strong Government—must be supplied—or we must continue to see the credit and character of Canada suffer, governed, as she has been governed, by majorities made up of two or three votes, obtained, as they have been obtained, under our own eyes, from the 13th of August last to the present moment. (Loud cheers.)

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INTERCOLONIAL RAILWAY DIPLOMACY.

HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY, QUEBEC, MARCH 10TH, 1864.

Mr. MCGEE, in rising to move the motion, of which he had given notice the first day of the session, for the production of papers in relation to the Intercolonial Railway and Survey negotiations, said: I have already, Mr. Speaker, expressed my conviction—in the debate on the Address—that the recent negotiations as to the Intercolonial Railway and Survey, I had reason to fear were not conducted in a manner creditable to this country, and I have now before me on this desk the most melancholy proofs that that conviction was well founded. (Hear, hear.) As the most frequent and sustained, and by far the ablest and most important correspondence that has ever arisen among these Provinces themselves, the series of papers sent down to us last Session, and those sent to the Nova Scotia and New Brunswick Houses now sitting, deserve the careful review of every member of this House. An article of the organ of the Administration of this day, denouncing the portion of that correspondence sustained by His Excellency Governor Gordon of New Brunswick, as “petulant,” “ignorant,” “foolish,” and “absurdly untrue”—what I cannot but call an audacious article—setting a very bad example in the tone of speaking of persons in His Excellency’s position—a tone I should be very sorry to see adopted towards our own Governor-General—gives a very immediate importance to this correspondence to which I now entreat the attention of the House. (Hear, hear.) It will be remembered that the date of the last paper, in the return sent down to us last October, was September 8th. There was, indeed, another paper, the Canadian Memorandum of Sep-

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tember 29th, read in this House, irregularly, and without due consideration, as I think, by the Hon. Premier the very day of its adoption, but it is not yet formally before this House.

Hon. J. S. MACDONALD—It was sent that day by mail.

Hon. Mr. MCGEE—Sent by mail! (Hear, hear.) That is the way we treat our allies in the other Colonies. (Hear, hear.) The Nova Scotia return includes the paper of September 29th, however, and brings down the series to the Canadian Memorandum of December 20th, while the New Brunswick return, which reached us only yesterday, gives us all the subsequent papers, down to the Order in Council appointing Mr. Sandford Fleming on the 20th February last—the day after the meeting of Parliament, observe—to make the entire survey on Canada’s “own responsibility and at our sole expense”—and the acknowledgment of that step made by New Brunswick, under date February 29th,—only ten days ago. Now, unless our Government has something behind, something which it has not communicated to the other Provinces—and the negotiation being in common, I presume that all the important documents are in possession of all the parties alike,—we have thus, the hon. gentlemen on the Treasury Benches have in their hands the means of refuting, or we of establishing, the most serious charge that can be made against any Government, that is, the violation of its plighted, public faith. (Hear, hear.) I have read, Mr. Speaker, every line of these Intercolonial papers,—I have read some of them for the first time within the last twenty-four hours,—and although it is no pleasure to me to enjoy a personal or party triumph over the hon. gentlemen, I cannot for the sake “of the great public interest at stake, refrain from repeating my full conviction that our part in the recent correspondence is not very creditable to Canada, nor such as to establish the good faith of our Government in the entire transaction. (Hear, hear.) When in the Lower Provinces last vacation, I maintained, publicly and privately, the good faith of the delegation to England, and the Govern

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ment that sent them there; I maintain so still; but it does now seem to me, from a careful review of the whole series of these papers, that the new line adopted by the new Canadian Government,—in which one of those delegates and four of the former Government now hold seats,—was sufficient to throw a retrospective shadow of uncertainty over the entire good faith, even of the delegates themselves. (Hear, hear.) The other Provinces would naturally say, when objections such as the sinking fund, peculiar to Canada, were started to the common project; when a survey to facilitate the project in its latest form was proposed, and when that joint-survey was declined by us unless the project itself was to be considered by all parties as obsolete and at an end;—the other Provinces, seeing these windings and turnings taken within twelve months under the lead of the same Prime Minister, with several of the same colleagues, would naturally say, “What faith can be placed on the stability, what reliance can be placed in the promises, of these Canadians?” I say that was a very natural conclusion for the other Provinces to arrive at; and that it has taken full possession of their minds, I need only refer to the very marked letters of Lieutenant-Governor Gordon to His Excellency Lord Monck, especially the letters of the 7th and 27th October last. These letters, we learn from this New Brunswick return, “received the approval” of the Duke of Newcastle, and whenever they are read, I have no doubt they will be admired for their high-spirited assertion of the obligations resting on all the Provincial Governments as to this negotiation, and the vigorous English in which they are expressed. If I particularise these, and some other papers, it is not, I repeat, from any satisfaction I feel in the discussion; it is not to answer the insolent aspersions of the Mercury of to-day; it is not to fasten conviction on the hon. gentlemen; but it is to turn the light of the past upon the present,—it is with a hope, however extravagant, so to fasten public attention on this Intercolonial diplomacy, that it may not be possible hereafter for any Canadian Administration, if any such could be found, to play the double game at Halifax or Frederickton,

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in the name of Canada, without being called to answer for it to the Parliament of Canada. (Cheers.) I must say a word here on behalf of a gentleman who has shown throughout these negotiations signal temper and ability. I mean my friend, Mr. Tilley, of New Brunswick, on whom the organs of our Administration have endeavoured to throw the entire responsibility of delaying the Survey. (Hear, hear.) Now, the fact is, as these documents show beyond a shadow of doubt, none of the negotiators has been more anxious than Mr. Tilley—as certainly no one of the Provinces is more at stake than New Brunswick—in this undertaking. The accident of politics threw Mr. Howe out of public life for the moment in his own Province, soon after the return of the joint delegation from England, and the Imperial Government—(I am sure every British American will rejoice at it)—having provided an honourable retreat for Mr. Howe, in the Imperial office of Fishery Commissioner, this Nova Scotian revolution—by which, whatever his programme may have been, I cannot but feel that our provincial politics have lost one of their foremost exponents,—this change, I say, naturally forced Mr. Tilley into the foreground in the maintenance of the Quebec compact of September, 1862. Mr. Tilley has performed his part, in my judgment, with great ability, and an extraordinary command of temper; and when the great project has succeeded, as succeed some good day it will, to no man can it be more indebted than to Mr. Tilley, for having nursed it through the most critical period of its existence. (Hear, hear.) Now, Sir, to return to this curious correspondence. The last document brought down to us was, the House remembers, the Memorandum of our Council, read here on the 29th September, the day of its adoption, in vindication of the Premier, by himself, and before it could be communicated to the other parties. That proceeding I then thought, and still think, irregular and disorderly; but let that pass. The document, however, I may observe, en passant, is signed in these papers (N. B. Series, p. 18), “J. S. McD.”—and not, as is our Canadian custom, by the Clerk

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of the Council. What that means, if it means anything, I am unable to say, but I call to it the attention of the other lion, members of the Government now in the House. (Hear, hear.) Now, the first discovery which the Lower Provinces seem to have made of the existence of a double influence in our Council, finds expression in a despatch of Governor Gordon to the Duke of Newcastle, in August last, and is thus enlarged upon in his subsequent despatch of the 28th September:— “The Provincial Secretary of this Province, Hon. S. L. Tilley, together with the Provincial Secretary of Nova Scotia, were at that time on their way to Quebec for the purpose of arranging the details connected with the commencement of the Survey; and I felt that on their learning what was said to have fallen from Mr. Dorion, they might probably be disposed to abandon further negotiation. This, it appeared to me, would be exactly that which would be most desired by the Canadian Government, supposing them to be anxious to escape from their obligations; and I accordingly wrote to Mr. Tilley to the effect that, whilst I thought that, if the Canadian Government as a body repudiated the engagements of September, 1862, or refused to bear five-twelfths of the expenses of the Survey, he would have no alternative but to refuse to take any further step, and should return here immediately ; yet, on the other hand, I saw advantages in pledging the Canadian Cabinet to the practical adoption of the share of expenditure contemplated in the original agreement, and urged that the arrangements should proceed so long as it was possible to assume that the Government of Canada intended, as a Government, to respect the engagements into which it had entered.” (N.B. Series, page 14.)—This despatch, observe, was sent off to Downing Street after Mr. Tilley’s return from Quebec to Frederickton, while we were yet sitting here, and were assured that all His Excellency’s advisers were fully agreed on their Intercolonial policy. (Hear, hear.) Yet what do we find Governor Gordon officially stating to the Duke of Newcastle on Mr. Tilley’s report— that he found some of the Canadian Ministers “absolutely repudiating, and others hesitating, to acknowledge the

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obligations of September, 1862,”—a very dubious position, as the Lower Province statesmen inevitably felt. The Memorandum of the 29th September, read in this House by the Premier, intended to define the exact position, at that time, of the Canadian Cabinet, was communicated to New Brunswick, and drew from Governor Gordon the remarkable letter to Lord Monck, of October 7th, which formally inaugurated “the good faith” controversy—a controversy which seems ended only by Mr. Fleming’s appointment, ten days ago, and the gleam of sunshine which now seems to have fallen upon the path of the project—or, at least, upon the prospect of the project. I shall not go into the particulars of the good faith discussion, in which we find His Excellency compelled by the exigencies of the case to defend his own honour, while endeavouring to justify his advisers; in which we find questions—amounting almost to questions of veracity—raised between these high officers administering these neighbouring Governments; questions which never ought to have been raised, never could have been raised, if a weak spirit, unable to wield, and unable to resign office, had not presided in the Executive Council, and led the deliberations of this House, with a pitiful salvage of one per cent, of its members. (Cheers.) “When our own return places the papers I have quoted from the New Brunswick official return in the hands of all the members of this House (the return for which I am now moving), I shall be prepared, if necessary, to go into every detail of that ingenious series of expedients—the gain-time-at-any-price-policy, pursued by the present Administration towards the sister Provinces. (Hear, hear.) I shall content myself to-day with calling attention to one other fact involved in these Nova Scotia and New Brunswick documents. The House will remember that last year our Government would not go on with the joint Survey, of which we were then to pay five-twelfths only, unless Nova Scotia and New Brunswick expressly renounced the Quebec compact of September, 1862. Well, what are we doing now? We are now going on with it at “our sole expense,” though neither of

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the Lower Provinces have made any act of renunciation. So far from it, that the last document of the Series now before me, the Minute of the New Brunswick Council of the 29th of February, ten days ago, transmitted the same day to our Government, expressly reserves to that Province the right to reject altogether the survey now so unconditionally undertaken by Canada. “The Committee,” says this minute, “wish it to be distinctly understood that the Government of New Brunswick are not to be considered in any way necessarily committed to the conclusions at which Mr. Fleming may arrive. Any survey, to be binding upon them, must be conducted according to the terms of the Act passed at the last session of the Legislature of New Brunswick, authorising the construction of the Intercolonial Railway.” So that we lost a year, and the surveyor lost a season, in seeking for a renunciation which is now abandoned, and in higgling over our proportion of an expenditure of which we have at length undertaken the whole! (Hear, hear.) This is, in short, the sum and substance of the negotiations of the last year and a-half, conducted on our part under the auspices of the present head of the Administration. (Hear, hear.) It is, so far as Canada is concerned, divisible into two parts, that part maintained from September, 1862, to May, 1863, by the Macdonald-Sicotte Ministry, and that party since maintained by the Macdonald-Dorion Ministry. The question of good faith arises only with the latter, for although the delegation to England was our work, I utterly deny that there was any understanding, tacit or explicit, that the basis of the Quebec compact was abandoned during our time. These papers bear me fully out in that denial. It was from an announcement made in his speech on the opening of this House, in August last, by the Hon. Attorney-General East (Mr. Dorion), as is shown by Governor Gordon’s despatch of the 29th of that month to the Duke of Newcastle, that the Lower Provinces took alarm, and that New Brunswick took up the gauntlet for plighted faith and Intercolonial honour. (Hear, hear.) Nova Scotia has not been equally forward, because Nova Scotia has been under an Administration ad interim for

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several months, and her new Cabinet are busied about their new policy. But, so far as she has given it, the testimony of Nova Scotia, as to past transactions, is entirely with New Brunswick, and against us, as having unworthily defeated the project.

Hon. Mr. BROWN.—The best thing they ever did. (Hear, hear.)

Hon. Mr. MCGEE.—The best thing they ever did! I regret to hear the lion, member for South Oxford express so shocking a sentiment—that the best thing a Government ever did was to meet in conference with two other Provinces to sign an agreement, and then violate that agreement without meeting Parliament or putting the question to a test. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Speaker, I fear, I deeply and sincerely fear, that the conduct of our Government has inflicted a blow on the vitals of this project, which even Mr. Fleming and his theodolite cannot cure. I received but yesterday—by the same mail that brought us these papers—a letter from a valued friend, a member of the Nova Scotian Assembly (not a Minister), a letter, in which he says:—”The Intercolonial is as dead as a door-nail—Canada killed it.” I trust my good friend the writer, whom I have no objection to name—Mr. Tobin, member for Halifax—is mistaken, but I fear for the worst. I fear we have not only killed it, but that, by our evil Ministry, we have forced into existence a brood of local projects in both Provinces, which will divide their councils, and devour their substance, for many a day to come. (Hear, hear.) I say here deliberately, and in possession of as full information from below as Ministers themselves have, if this chance of a Canadian outlet to the sea through British territory is for long, or for ever, closed against us, an awful responsibility rests upon His Excellency’s present advisers. (Hear, hear.) Will despatching Mr. Fleming in rude haste to head-waters of the Restigouche, or the valley of the Tobique, restore the project to where it stood, in the list of possibilities, twelve months ago? I say it will not—it cannot. If our Government really means to restore the project to the region of reality, let them legislate. Let

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them introduce a bill authorising either the Quebec terms, or a sum not exceeding a certain amount to be devoted to this enterprise, with a proviso concerning the result of the survey. This would look like business—this would look like good faith—and for this action, and less will not save the project, there is still abundant time left, if our Ministers really desire to do something practical, to reassure and regain the place we have lost in the confidence of the Maritime Provinces and the Home Government. There are, I shall never cease to repeat it, some 800,000 of our fellow-countrymen between us and the Atlantic—there is wanting an iron link of 350 to 400 miles to connect us with our countrymen, the Atlantic, and the rest of the Empire. It is a great project, and never can be carried without courage and firmness on the part of the several Provinces. Canada, the leading Province in every other respect, ought to be the leader in point of enterprise; and it is, therefore, that I urge upon Ministers—promising them my humble support for any such measure—to go a step beyond the mere appointment of a Surveyor, and to give us, and all concerned in the result, a Parliamentary guarantee for our Provincial good faith in this undertaking. If you refuse some such guarantee, after all that has happened, I repeat you will not remove, but confirm suspicion—you will not revive, but you will still more deeply bury your project;—you will remove it from the dead-house, only to lay it finally in its grave. (Hear, hear.) I have spoken of a brood of projects which have sprung up, in the Lower Provinces, on the fall of the Intercolonial:—

“For many have sprung from the one lying low.
Like twigs from the fell’d forest tree”——

but I must except one project, which reflects the greatest credit on all the parties—to which we, in Canada, cannot be indifferent. Laying aside all partisan and personal considerations, the leading spirits of the Lower Provinces, not fearing to venture into broader channels than their own internal politics afford—have simultaneously proposed to reunite Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Island of

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Prince Edward—into one great maritime community—with one tariff, one treasury, and one legislature. (Hear, hear.) It is impossible not to admire the superiority to mere sectionalism exhibited in this proposal, and I, for one, humbly and sincerely pray to God, that for their own sakes, and for our sake, they may succeed, and the sooner the better. (Hear, hear.) I could have wished, as I have always advocated, that steps might, ere this, have been taken for the initiation of the larger union of all the Provinces; but if we are just now barren of the wise and generous spirit of compromise that seeks to restore the ancient Arcadia to its old integrity, we can have at least the modest merit of admiring in others what we may not possess within ourselves. (Cheers.) This will be a union—unlike our existing union—brought about by the internal action of the sections themselves, with the sanction of the Crown; it will be a union unheralded by any great civil commotion—and one, which it is not presumptuous to foretell, that will consecrate the memory of its authors to lasting remembrance. (Cheers.) I could not forbear, Mr. Speaker, since reading the respective speeches of the Governors of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, from expressing my hearty admiration of the wise prevision they exhibit in this recommendation, and in adding my humble hope, as a Canadian representative, that the auspicious union they now have proposed may go on to a most fortunate fruition.

The hon. gentleman concluded by moving for the returns of which he had given notice on the first day of the Session.

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SPEECH ON MOTION FOR AN ADDRESS TO HER MAJESTY IN FAVOUR OF CONFEDERATION.

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9TH, 1865.

The order of the day for resuming the adjourned debate on the proposed Address to Her Majesty, on the subject of the Confederation of the British North American Provinces, having been called—

Mr. MCGEE said:—Mr. Speaker, I rise to endeavour to fulfil the promise made in my name last evening by the Lower Canadian leader of this House. After the four speeches that have already been delivered from this quarter of the House, it may very well be supposed that little of essential importance remains to be said. On Monday the Attorney-General West, in exposing the case for the Government, in moving this Address to Her Majesty, went very fully through all the items of the resolutions agreed upon at the Quebec Conference, and gave us a full analysis of the whole project, with his own constitutional commentaries upon the proceedings of that body. On the next evening, the Attorney-General East gave us his views also, treating chiefly of the difficulties in the way of union in Lower Canada. The same night, my honourable friend, the Minister of Finance, gave us a financial view of the whole subject; and last evening the Hon. President of the Council gave us another extended financial and political address, with some arguments from “the Upper Canadian point of view,” as the phrase is. It may well, therefore, seem that after these speeches little of essential importance remains to be stated. Still this subject is so vast, the project before

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the House is so vast, and comprehends within it so many objects of interest, the atmosphere that surrounds a subject of this importance is so subtle and fluctuating, that there may be, I am fain to believe, a little joiner-work still left to do—there may be a hiatus here and there to fill up; and although, as far as what is called “the preliminary case” is concerned, the question might perhaps very well have rested with the four speeches already delivered, there may be some slight additional contribution made, and, such as it is, in my own humble way, I propose to make it to-night. We all remember that in the nursery legend of the Three Kings of Cologne, Caspar brought myrrh, and Melchior incense, and Baltassar gold, but I am afraid my contribution will be less valuable than any of these, yet such as it is I cheerfully bring it, particularly when there are so many in this and the other provinces who would like to know what my own views are in the present position of the general question.

With your approbation, Sir, and the forbearance of the House, I will endeavour to treat this subject in this way:—First, to give some slight sketch of the history of the question; then to examine the existing motives which ought to prompt us to secure a speedy union of these provinces; then to speak of the difficulties which this question has encountered before reaching its present fortunate stage; then to say something of the mutual advantages, in a social rather than political point of view, which these provinces will have in their union; and, lastly, to add a few words on the Federal principle in general; when I shall have done. In other words, I propose to consider the question of Union mainly from within, and, as far as possible, to avoid going over the ground already so fully and so much better occupied by hon. friends who have already spoken upon the subject.

My hon. friend, the member for Hochelaga, thought he did a very clever thing, the other evening, when he disentombed an old newspaper article of mine, entitled “A New Nationality” and endeavoured to fix on me the paternity of the phrase—destined to become prophetic—which was

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employed by a very distinguished personage, in the Speech from the Throne, at the opening of the Session. I do happen to remember the article alluded to as one of my first essays in political writing in Canada; but I am quite sure that the almost-forgotten publication in which it appeared was never known, even by name, to the illustrious person who delivered the speech on that occasion. But I will own, when I saw my bantling held up to the admiration of the House in the delicate and fostering hands of the hon. member for Hochelaga, I was not ashamed of it; on the contrary, perhaps, there was some tingling of parental pride when I saw what, ten years ago, I pointed out as the true position for these colonies to take, likely to be adopted by all the colonies under such favourable circumstances. I do not think it ought to be made a matter of reproach to me, or a cause for belittleing the importance of the subject, that, ten years ago, I used the identical phrase employed in the Speech from the Throne. The idea itself is a good one, and it may have floated through the minds of many men, and received intellectual hospitality even from the honourable member for Hochelaga himself. One is reminded by this sort of thing of Puff in the Critic. “Two people happened,” Puff says, “to hit upon the same thought, and Shakspeare made use of it first—that ‘s all,” My honourable friend in this respect may be the Shakspeare of the new nationality. If there is anything in the article he has read to the House which is deserving of disapprobation, he is particeps criminis, and equally blameable, if not more blameable, than myself. He is, indeed, the older offender, and I bow to him in that character with all proper humility. Really, Mr. Speaker, the attempt to fix the parentage of this child of many fathers, is altogether absurd and futile. It is almost as ridiculous as the attempt to fix the name of this new Confederation, in advance of the decision of the Gracious Lady to whom the matter is to be referred. I have read in one newspaper, published in a western city, not less than a dozen attempts of this nature. One individual chooses Tuponia, and another Hochelaga, as a suitable name for the new nationality. Now, I would ask any

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honourable member of this House how he would feel if he woke up some fine morning, and found himself, instead of a Canadian, a Tuponian or Hochelagander? (Laughter.) I think we may leave, for the present, the discussion of the name as well as the origin of the new system proposed: when the Confederation has a place among the nations of the world, and opens a new page in history, it will be time enough to look into its antecedents; and when it has reached that stage, there are a few men who, having struggled for it in its earlier difficulties, will then deserve to be honourably mentioned. I shall not be guilty of the bad taste of personally complimenting those with whom I have the honour to be associated; but when we reach the stage of research, which lies far beyond the stage of decision in these affairs, there are some names that ought not to be forgotten.

So far back as the year 1800, the Hon. Mr. Uniacke, a leading politician in Nova Scotia at that date, submitted a scheme of Colonial Union to the Imperial authorities. In 1815, Chief Justice Sewell, whose name will be well remembered as a leading lawyer of this city, and a far-sighted politician, submitted a similar scheme. In 1822, Sir John Beverley Robinson, at the request of the Colonial Office, submitted a project of the same kind; and I need not refer to the report of Lord Durham, on Colonial Union, in 1839. These are all memorable, and some of them are great names. If we have dreamed a dream of Union (as some of you gentlemen say), it is at least worth while remarking that a dream which has been dreamed by such wise and good many may, for aught we know, or you know, have been a sort of vision—a vision foreshadowing forthcoming natural events in a clear intelligence: a vision—I say it without irreverence, for the event concerns the lives of millions living, and yet to come—resembling those seen by the Daniels and Josephs of old, foreshadowing the trials of the future, the fate of tribes and peoples, the rise and fall of dynasties. But the immediate history of the measure is sufficiently wonderful, without dwelling on the remoter predictions of so many wise men. Whoever, in 1862, or

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even in 1863, would have told us that we should see even what we see in these seats by which I stand—such a representation of interests acting together, would be accounted, as our Scotch friends say, “half daft;” and whoever, in the Lower Provinces about the same time, would have ventured to foretell the composition of their delegations which sat with us under this roof last October, would probably have been considered equally demented. (Laughter.) Bat the thing came about; and if those gentlemen who have had no immediate hand in bringing it about, and, therefore, naturally felt less interest in the project than we who had, will only give us the benefit of the doubt—will only assume that we are not all altogether wrongheaded—we hope to show them still farther, though we think we have already shown them satisfactorily, that we are by no means without reason in entering on this enterprise. I submit, however, we may very well dismiss the antecedent history of the question for the present: it grew from an unnoticed feeble plant, to be a stately and flourishing tree; and, for my part, any one that pleases may say he made the tree grow, if I can only have hereafter my fair share of the shelter and the shade. (Cheers.) But in the present stage of the question, the first real stage of its success—the thing that gave importance to theory in men’s minds—was the now celebrated despatch, signed by two members of this Government and an honourable gentleman formerly their colleague (Hon. Mr. Ross), a member of the other House. I refer to the despatch of 1858. The recommendations in that despatch lay dormant until revived by the Constitutional Committee of last Session, which led to the Coalition, which led to the Quebec Conference, which led to the draft of the Constitution now on our table, which will lead, I am fain to believe, to the union of all these provinces. (Hear, hear.) At the same time that we mention the distinguished politicians, I think we ought not to forget those zealous and laborious contributors to the public press, who, although not associated with governments, and not themselves at the time in politics, yet greatly contributed to give life and interest to this question, and, indi-

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rectly, to bring it to the happy position in which it now stands. Of those gentlemen I will mention two. I do not know whether honourable gentlemen of this House have seen some letters on Colonial Union, written in 1855—the last addressed to the late Duke of Newcastle—by Mr. P. S. Hamilton, an able public writer of Nova Scotia, and the present Gold Commissioner of that province; but I take this opportunity of bearing my testimony to his well0balanced judgment, political sagacity, and the skilful handling the subject received from him at a very early period. (Hear, hear.) There is another little book written in English, six or seven years ago, to which I must refer. It is a pamphlet, which met with an extraordinary degree of success, entitled Nova Britannia, by my honourable friend, the member for South Lanark (Mr. Morris); and as he has been one of the principal agents in bringing into existence the present Government, which is now carrying out the idea embodied in his book, I trust he will forgive me if I take the opportunity, although he is present, of reading a single sentence, to show how far he was in advance, and how true he was to the coming event which we are now considering. At page 57 of his pamphlet—which I hope will be reprinted among the political miscellanies of the provinces when we are one country and one people—I find this paragraph:—

“The dealing with the destinies of a future Britannic empire, the shaping its course, the laying its foundations broad and deep, and the erecting thereon a noble and enduring superstructure, are indeed duties that may well evoke the energies of our people, and nerve the arms and give power and enthusiasm to the aspirations of all true patriots. The very magnitude of the interests involved, will, I doubt not, elevate many amongst us above the demands of mere sectionalism, and enable them to evince sufficient comprehensiveness of mind to deal in the spirit of real statesmen with issues so momentous, and to originate and develop a national line of commercial and general policy, such as will prove adapted to the wants and exigencies of our position.” (Hear, hear.)

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There are many other excellent passages in the work, but I will not detain the House with many quotations. The spirit that animates the whole will be seen from the extract I have read.* But whatever the private writer in his closet may have conceived, whatever even the individual statesman may have designed, so long as the public mind was uninterested in the adoption, even in the discussion of a change in our position so momentous as this, the Union of these separated Provinces, the individual laboured in vain—perhaps, Sir, not wholly in vain, for although his work may not have borne fruit then, it was kindling a fire that would ultimately light up the whole political horizon and herald the dawn of a better day for our country and our people. Events stronger than advocacy, events stronger than men, have come in at last like the fire behind the invisible writing to bring out the truth of these writings and to impress them upon the mind of every thoughtful man who has considered the position and probable future of these Provinces. (Cheers.) Before I go farther into the details of my subject, I will take this opportunity of congratulating this House and the public of all the Provinces upon the extraordinary activity of the provincial mind since this subject has become the leading topic of discussion in the Maritime, and what I may call relatively to them, the Inland Provinces. It is astonishing how active intelligence has been in all these communities since the subject has been fairly launched. I have watched with great attention the expression of public opinion in the Lower Provinces as well as in our own; and I am rejoiced to find that even from the smallest of the Provinces I have read writings and speeches which would do no discredit to older and more cultivated communities—articles and speeches worthy of any press and of any audience. The provincial mind, it would seem, under the inspiration of a great question, leaped, at a single bound, out of the slough of mere mercenary struggles for office, and took post on the high and

* Dr. J. C. Taché’s excellent brochure, entitled “Des Provinces d’Amérique du Nord et d’une Union Fédérale,” published at Quebec in 1858, also deserves honourable mention.

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honourable ground from which alone this great subject can be taken in, in all its dimensions—they rose at once to the true dignity of this discussion with an elasticity that does honour to the communities that have exhibited it. (Cheers.) We find in the journals and in the speeches of public men in the Lower Provinces a discussion of the first principles of government, a discussion of the principles of constitutional law, and an intimate knowledge and close application of the leading facts in constitutional history, which gives to me at least the satisfaction and assurance that, if we never went a step farther in this matter, we have put an end for the present, and I hope for long, to bitterer and smaller controversies. We have given the people some sound mental food, and to every man who has a capacity for discussion we have given a topic upon which he can fitly exercise his powers, no longer gnawing at a file and wasting his abilities in the poor effort at advancing the ends of some paltry faction or party. I can congratulate this House and Province and the Provinces below, that such is the case, and I may add also, with satisfaction, that the various orators and writers seem speaking or writing as if in the visible presence of all the colonies. (Hear, hear.) They are no longer hole-and-corner celebrities: they seem to think that their words will be scanned and weighed afar off as well as at home. We have, I believe, several hundred celebrities in Canada—my friend, Mr. Morgan, I believe, has made out a list of them—(laughter)—but they are no longer now local celebrities; if celebrities at all they must be celebrities for British North America; for every one of the speeches made by them on this subject is watched in all the Provinces, and in point of fact by the mere appearance of political union, we have laid the lines of a mental union among the people of all these Provinces; and many men now speak with a comprehensiveness which formerly did not characterise them, when they were watched only by their own narrow and struggling section, and weighed only according to a stunted local standard. (Hear, hear). Federation, I hope, may supply to all our public men just ground for uniting in nobler and more profitable

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contests than those which have signalised the past. (Hear, hear.) We, on this side, Mr. Speaker, propose for that better future our plan of Union; and, if you will allow me, I shall go over what appear to me the principal motives which exist at present for that Union. My hon. friend the Finance Minister mentioned the other evening several strong motives for union—free access to the sea, an extended market, breaking down of hostile tariffs, a more diversified field for labour and capital, our enhanced credit with England, and our greater effectiveness when united, for assistance in time of danger. (Cheers.) The Hon. President of the Council, last night also enumerated several motives for union in relation to the commercial advantages which will flow from it, and other powerful reasons which may be advanced in favour of it. But the motives to such a comprehensive change as we propose, must be mixed motives—partly commercial, partly military, and partly political; and I shall go over a few—nor strained or simulated—motives which must move many people of all these Provinces, and which are rather of a social, or strictly speaking, political, than of a financial kind. In the first place, I echo what was stated in the speech last night of my hon. friend, the President of the Council—that we cannot stand still; we cannot stave off some great change; we cannot stand alone—Province apart from Province—if we would; and that we are in a state of political transition. All, even honourable gentlemen who are opposed to this description of union, admit that we must do something, and that that something must not be a mere temporary expedient. We are compelled, by warning voices from within and without, to make a change and a great change. We all, with one voice who are Unionists, declare our conviction that we cannot go on as we have gone; but you, who are all anti-Unionists, say—”Oh! that is begging the question; you have not yet proved that.” Well, Mr. Speaker, what proofs do the gentlemen want? I presume there are the influences which determine any great change in the course of any individual or State. First—His patron, owner, employer, protector, ally, or friend; or,

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in our politics, “Imperial connection.” Secondly—His partner, comrade, or fellow -labourer, or near neighbour; in our case, the United States. And, thirdly,—The man himself, or the Province itself. Now, all three have concurred to warn and force us into a new course of conduct. What are these warnings? We have had at least three. The first is from England, and is a friendly warning. England has warned us by several matters of fact, according to her custom, rather than verbiage, that the colonies had entered upon a new era of existence, a new phase in their career. She has given us this warning in several different shapes when she gave us “Responsible Government”—when she adopted Free Trade—when she repealed the Navigation Laws—and when, three or four years ago, she commenced that series of official despatches in relation to militia and defence which she has ever since poured in on us, in a steady stream, always bearing the same solemn burthen—”Prepare! prepare! prepare!” These warnings gave us notice that the old order of things between the colonies and the mother country had ceased, and that a new order must take its place. (Hear, hear.) About four years ago, the first despatches began to be addressed to this country, from the Colonial Office, upon the subject. From that day to this there has been a steady stream of despatches in this direction, either upon particular or general points connected with our defence; and I venture to say, that if bound up together, the despatches of the lamented Duke of Newcastle alone would make a respectable volume—all notifying this Government, by the advices they conveyed, that the relations—the military apart from the political and commercial relations—of this Province to the mother country had changed; and we were told in the most explicit language that could be employed, that we were no longer to consider ourselves, in relation to defence, in the same position we formerly occupied towards the mother country. Well, these warnings have been friendly warnings; and if we have failed to do our part in regard to them, we must, at all events, say this, that they were addressed to our Government so continuously and so strenuously that they

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freed the Imperial power of much responsibility for whatever might follow, because they showed to the colonies clearly what, in the event of certain contingencies arising, they had to expect. We may grumble or not at the necessity of preparation England imposes upon us, but, whether we like it or not, we have, at all events, been told that we have entered upon a new era in our military relations to the rest of the Empire. (Hear, hear.) Then, Sir, in the second place, there came what I may call the other warning from without—the American warning. (Hear, hear.) Republican America gave us her notices in times past, through her press, and her demagogues, and her statesmen, but of late days she has given us much more intelligible notices—such as the notice to abrogate the Reciprocity Treaty, and to arm the lakes, contrary to the provisions of the Convention of 1818. She has given us another notice in imposing a vexatious passport system; another in her avowed purpose to construct a ship canal round the falls of Niagara, so as “to pass war vessels from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie;” and yet another, the most striking one of all, has been given to us, if we will only understand it, by the enormous expansion of the American army and navy. I will take leave to read to the House a few figures which show the amazing, the unprecedented growth (which has not, perhaps, a parallel in the annals of the past), of the military power of our neighbours, within the past three or four years. I have the details here by me, but shall only read the results, to show the House the emphatic terms of this most serious warning. In January, 1861, the regular army of the United States, including of course the whole of the States, did not exceed 15,000 men. This number was reduced, from desertion and other causes, by 5,000 men, leaving 10,000 men as the regular army of the United States. In December, 1862, that is, from January, 1861, to January, 1863, this army of 10,000 was increased to 800,000 soldiers actually in the service. (Hear, hear.) No doubt there are exaggerations in some of these figures—the rosters were, doubtless, in some cases filled with fictitious names, in order to procure the bounties that were

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offered; but if we allow two-thirds as correct, we find that a people who had an army of 10,000 men in 1861, had in two years increased it to an army of 600,000 men. As to their munitions and stock of war material at the opening of the war—that is to say, at the date of the attack upon Port Sumter—we find that they had of siege and heavy guns 1,952; of field artillery, 231; of infantry firearms, 473,000; of cavalry firearms, 31,000; and of ball and shell, 363,000. At the end of 1863, the latest period to which I have statistics upon the subject, the 1,052 heavy guns had become 2,116; the 231 field pieces had become 2,965; the 473,000 infantry arms had become 2,423,000; the 31,000 cavalry arms had become 369,000; and the 363,000 ball and shell had become 2,925,000. Now as to the navy of the United States, I wish also to show that this wonderful development of war power in the United States is the second warning we have had, that we cannot go on as we have gone. (Hear, hear.) In January, 1861, the ships of war belonging to the United States were 83; in December, 1864, they numbered 671, of which 54 were monitors and iron-clads, carrying 4,610 guns, with a tonnage of 510,000 tons, and manned by a force of 51,000 men. These are frightful figures; frightful for the capacity of destruction they represent, for the heaps of carnage they represent, for the quantity of human blood spilt they represent, for the lust of conquest they represent, for the evil passions they represent, and for the arrest of the onward progress of civilisation they represent. But it is not the figures which give the worst view of the fact—for England still carries more guns afloat even than our well-armed neighbours. (Cheers.) It is the change which has taken place in the spirit of the people of the Northern States themselves which is the worst view of the fact. How far have they travelled since the humane Channing preached the unlawfulness of war—since the living Sumner delivered his addresses to the Peace Society on the same theme! I remember an accomplished poet, one of the most accomplished the New England States have ever produced, taking very strong grounds against the prosecution of the Mexican war, and published

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the Bigelow Papers, so well known in American literature, to show the ferocity and criminality of war. That poet made Mr. Bird-o’-Freedom Sawin sing:

Ef you take a soaord an droar it,
An go stick a feller thru,
Gruv’meut won’t answer for it,
God’ll send the bill to you!

(Laughter.) This was slightly audacious and irreverent in expression, but it was remarkably popular in New England at that time. The writer is now one of the editors of a popular Boston periodical, and would be one of the last, I have no doubt, to induce a Northern soldier to withdraw his sword from the body of any unhappy Southerner whom he had, contrary to the poet’s former political ethics, ” stuck thru.” (Laughter.) But it is not the revolution wrought in the minds of men of great intelligence that is most to be deplored—for the powerful will of such men may compel their thoughts back again to a philosophy of peace; no, it is the mercenary and military interests created under Mr. Lincoln which are represented, the former by an estimated governmental outlay of above $100,000,000 this year, and the other by the 800,000 men, whose blood is thus to be bought and paid for; by the armies out of uniform who prey upon the army in uniform; by the army of contractors who are to feed and clothe and arm the fighting million; by that other army, the army of tax-collectors, who cover the land, seeing that no industry escapes unburthened, no possession unentered, no affection even, untaxed. Tax! tax! tax! is the cry from the rear! Blood! blood! blood! is the cry from the front! Gold! gold! gold! is the chuckling undertone which comes up from the mushroom millionaires, well named a shoddy aristocracy. Nor do I think the army interest, the contracting interest, and the tax-gathering interest, the worst results that have grown out of this war. There is another and equally serious interest—the revolution in the spirit, mind, and principles of the people, that terrible change which has made war familiar and even attractive to them. When the first battle was fought—when, in the language of the Duke

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of Wellington, the first “butcher’s bill was sent in”—a shudder of horror ran through the length and breadth of the country; but by-and-by, as the carnage increased, no newspaper was considered worth laying on the breakfast table unless it contained the story of the butchery of thousands of men. “Only a thousand killed! Pooh, pooh, that’s nothing!” exclaimed Mr. Shoddy, as he sipped his coffee in his luxurious apartment; and nothing short of the news of ten or fifteen thousand maimed or slain in a day could satisfy the jaded palate of men craving for excitement, and such horrible excitement as attends the wholesale murder of their fellow-creatures. Have these sights and sounds no warning addressed to us? Are we as those who have eyes and see not; ears and hear not; reason, neither do they understand? If we are true to Canada—if we do not desire to become part and parcel of this people—we cannot overlook this, the greatest revolution of our own times. Let us remember this, that when the three cries among our next neighbours are shoddy, taxation, blood, it is time for us to provide for our own security. I said in this House, during the session of the year 1861, that the first gun fired at Fort Sumter had “a message for us;” I was unheeded then; I repeat now that every one of the 2,700 great guns in the field, and every one of the 4,600 guns afloat, whenever it opens its mouth, repeats the solemn warning of England—Prepare! prepare! prepare! (Cheers.) But I may be told by some moralising friend, Oh! but when they get out of this, they will have had enough of it, and they will be very glad to rest on their laurels. They! Who? The Shoddy aristocracy have enough of it? The disbanded army of tax-gatherers have enough of it? The manufacturers of false intelligence have enough of it? Who is it probable will have had enough of it? The fighting men themselves? I dare say they would all like to have a furlough, but all experience teaches us, it is not of war soldiers tire, but of peace; it is not of the sea sailors tire, but of the land. Jack likes to land, and have a frolic and spend his money, so does Jack’s brother the fighting landsman—but the one is soon as much out of his element as the other,

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when parted from his comrades, when denied the gipsy joys of the camp, when he no longer feels his sword, he looks up to it where it hangs, and sighs to take it down and be “at work” again. He will even quit his native country, if she continues perversely peaceful, and go into foreign service, rather than remain what he calls “idle.” (Hear.) This is experience, which I beg respectfully to cite in opposition to the seductive, disarming fallacy of my moralising friend. (Hear, hear.) The Attorney-General East told us in his speech the other night, that one of the articles of the original programme of the American Revolutionists was the acquisition of Canada to the United States. They pretend to underrate the importance of this country, now that they are fully occupied elsewhere; but I remember well that the late Mr. Webster, who was not a demagogue, at the opening of the Worcester and Albany Railway, some years since, expressed the hope that the railways of the New England States would all point towards Canada, because their influence and the demands of commerce would in time bring Canada into the Union, and increase the Northern preponderance in that Union. (Hear, hear.) I think, Sir, I am justified in regarding the American conflict as one of the warnings we have received; and the third warning, that things cannot go on in this country as they are, is a warning voice from within—a warning voice from our own experience in the government of these Provinces. (Hear, hear.) On these internal constitutional difficulties existing among ourselves, which were so fully exposed last evening by my hon. friend the President of the Council, I need say little; they are admitted to have been real, not imaginary, on all hands. An illustration was used in another place in explaining this part of the subject by the venerable and gallant knight, our Premier, than which nothing could be more clear. He observed that when we had had five administrations within four years, it was full time to look out for some permanent remedy for such a state of things. True—most true—Constitutional Government among us had touched its lowest point when it existed only by the successful search of a messenger or a page after a member

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willingly or unwillingly absent from his seat. Any one might in those days have been the saviour of his country. All he had to do was, when one of the five successive governments which arose in four years was in danger, to rise in his place, say “Yea!” and presto the country was saved. (Laughter.) This House was fast losing, under such a state of things, its hold on the country; the administrative departments were becoming disorganised under such frequent changes of chiefs and policies; we were nearly as bad as the army of the Potomac before its “permanent remedy” was found in General Grant. Well, we have had our three warnings; one warning from within and two from without. I daresay, Sir, we all remember the old school-book story of the “Three Warnings;” how Death promised not to come after a certain individual he had unintentionally intruded on on his wedding-day. I say unintentionally, for Death is a gentleman, and seldom walks in unannounced (laughter); but he promised not to call upon this particular person without giving him three distinct warnings. Well, the honourable gentleman in question—I daresay he was honourable, and a member of some house—he, like all the rest of us, expected to outlive everybody. But in process of years he fell lame, then afterwards he became deaf, and at last he grew blind: then Death’s hour had come, and in spite of some admirable pleading on behalf of the defendant in the case, he had his u three warnings ” like a Parisian editor, his case was closed, his form was locked up, and his impression was struck off the face of the earth, and Death claimed and had his own. (Laughter.) Now, Sir, we have had three warnings, and if we do not take heed of them and prepare for the possible future condition into which we may be plunged, wo to us if we are found unprepared when the hour of destiny strikes! (Cheers.) We have submitted a plan preparing us for such a contingency, and the Attorneys- General East and West have analysed its constitutional character, while the Minister of Finance and the President of the Council have treated it in its financial aspects. There are some objections to be taken to the plan, I

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understand, in detail; but I do not believe that any member will get up in this House and declare that he is an anti- unionist, and that he is opposed to union, and that he considers union unnecessary and inexpedient. (Hear, hear.) I do not know that there is one man out of the one hundred and thirty who compose this House, in view of the circumstances in which we are placed, who will declare that he is opposed to every sort of union with the Lower Provinces. One may say that he does not like this or the other clause—that he does not like this or that feature of the proposed scheme; but still all admit that union of some kind would increase our protection and be a source of strength. Some honourable gentlemen, while admitting that we have entered, within the present decade, on a period of political transition, have contended that we might have bridged the abyss with that Prussian pontoon called a Zollverein. But if any one for a moment will remember that the trade of the whole front of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia gravitates at present along-shore to Portland and Boston, while the trade of Upper Canada, west of Kingston, has long gravitated across the lakes to New York, he will see, I think, that a mere Zollverein treaty without a strong political end to serve, and some political power at its back, would be, in our new circumstances, merely waste paper. (Hear, hear.) The charge that we have not gone far enough—that we have not struck out boldly for a consolidated union, instead of a union with reserved local jurisdictions—is another charge which deserves some notice. To this I answer that if we had had, as was proposed, an Intercolonial Railway twenty years ago, we might by this time have been perhaps, and only perhaps, in a condition to unite into one consolidated government; but certain politicians and capitalists having defeated that project twenty years ago, special interests took the place great general interest might by this time have occupied; vested rights and local ambitions arose and were recognised; and all these had to be admitted as existing in a pretty advanced stage of development when the late conferences were called together. (Hear, hear.) The lesson to be learned from this squan-

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dering of quarter centuries by British Americans is this, that if we lose the present propitious opportunity, we may find it as hard a few years hence to get an audience, even for any kind of union (except democratic union), as we should have found it to get a hearing last year for a legislative union, from the long period of estrangement and non-intercourse which had existed between these Provinces, and the special interests which had grown up in the meantime in each of them. (Cheers.) Another motive to union, or rather a phase of the last motive spoken of, is this, that the policy of our neighbours to the south of us has always been aggressive. There has always been a desire amongst them for the acquisition of new territory, and the inexorable law of democratic existence seems to be its absorption. They coveted Florida, and seized it; they coveted Louisiana, and purchased it; they coveted Texas, and stole it; and then they picked a quarrel with Mexico, which ended by their getting California. (Hear, hear.) They sometimes pretend to despise these colonies as prizes beneath their ambition; but had we not had the strong arm of England over us we should not now have had a separate existence. (Cheers.) The acquisition of Canada was the first ambition of the American Confederacy, and never ceased to be so, when her troops were a handful and her navy scarce a squadron. Is it likely to be stopped now, when she counts her guns afloat by thousands and her troops by hundreds of thousands? On this motive a very powerful expression of opinion has lately appeared in a published letter of the Archbishop of Halifax, Dr. Connolly. Who is the Archbishop of Halifax? In either of the coast colonies, where he has laboured in his high vocation for nearly a third of a century, it would be absurd to ask the question; but in Canada he may not be equally well known. Some of my honourable friends in this and the other House, who were his guests last year, must have felt the impress of his character as well as the warmth of his hospitality. (Hear, hear.) Well, he is known as one of the first men in sagacity as he is in position, in any of these colonies; that he was for many years the intimate associate of his late

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distinguished confrère, Archbishop Hughes of New York; that he knows the United States as thoroughly as he does the Provinces, and these are his views on this particular point; the extract is somewhat long, but so excellently put that I am sure the House will be obliged to me for the whole of it:—

“Instead of cursing, like the boy in the upturned boat, and holding on until we are fairly on the brink of the cataract, we must at once begin to pray and strike out for the shore by all means, before we get too far down on the current. We must at this most critical moment invoke the Arbiter of nations for wisdom, and abandoning in time our perilous position, we must strike out boldly, and at some risk, for some rock on the nearest shore—some resting-place of greater security. A cavalry raid or a visit from our Fenian friends on horseback, through the plains of Canada and the fertile valleys of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, may cost more in a single week than Confederation for the next fifty years; and if we are to believe you, where is the security even at the present moment against such a disaster? Without the whole power of the mother country by land and sea, and the concentration in a single hand of all the strength of British America, our condition is seen at a glance. Whenever the present difficulties will terminate—and who can tell the moment?—we will be at the mercy of our neighbours; and victorious or otherwise, they will be eminently a military people, and with all their apparent indifference about annexing this country, and all the friendly feelings that may be talked, they will have the power to strike when they please, and this is precisely the kernel and the only touch-point of the whole question. No nation ever had the power of conquest that did not use it, or abuse it, at the very first favourable opportunity. All that is said of the magnanimity and forbearance of mighty nations can be explained on the principle of sheer inexpediency, as the world knows. The whole face of Europe has been changed, and the dynasties of many hundred years have been swept away within our own time, on the principle of might alone—the

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oldest, the strongest, and as some would have it, the most sacred of all titles. The thirteen original States of America, with all their professions of self-denial, have been all the time, by money, power, and by war, and by negotiation, extending their frontier until they more than quadrupled their territory within sixty years; and believe it who may, are they now of their own accord to come to a full stop? No; as long as they have the power, they must go on onward: for it is the very nature of power to grip whatever is within its reach. It is not their hostile feelings, therefore, but it is their power, and only their power, I dread; and I now state it as my solemn conviction, that it becomes the duty of every British subject in these Provinces to control that power, not by the insane policy of attacking or weakening them, but by strengthening ourselves—rising, with the whole power of Britain at our back, to their level, and so be prepared for any emergency. There is no sensible or unprejudiced man in the community who does not see that vigorous and timely preparation is the only possible means of saving us from the horrors of a war such as the world has never seen. To be fully prepared is the only practical argument that can have weight with a powerful enemy, and make him pause beforehand and count the cost. And as the sort of preparation I speak of is utterly hopeless without the union of the Provinces, so at a moment when public opinion is being formed on this vital point, as one deeply concerned, I feel it a duty to declare myself unequivocally in favour of Confederation as cheaply and as honourably as possible—but Confederation at all hazards and at all reasonable sacrifices.

“After the most mature consideration, and all the arguments I have heard on both sides for the last month, these are my inmost convictions on the necessity and merits of a measure which alone, under Providence, can secure to us social order and peace, and rational liberty, and all the blessings we now enjoy under the mildest Government and the hallowed institutions of the freest and happiest country in the world.” (Cheers.)

These are the words of a statesman—of a mitred states-

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man—one of that order of mighty men, powerful in their generation, whose statesmanly gifts have been cast in the strong mould of theological discipline—such men as were Ximenes and Wolsey, Laud and Knox. No one more deprecates than I do the interference of clergymen in mere party politics, and I think such is the sentiment also of His Grace of Halifax; but when it is an issue of peace or war, of deliverance or conquest, who has a better, who so good a right to speak as the ministers of the Gospel of peace, and justice, and true freedom? Observe once more these two closing sentences, “I feel it a duty,” says the illustrious Archbishop, “to declare myself unequivocally in favour of Confederation as cheaply and as honourably obtained as possible, but Confederation at all hazards and at all reasonable sacrifices. After the most mature consideration, and all the arguments I have heard on both sides for the last month, these are my inmost convictions on the necessity and merits of a measure which alone, under Providence, can secure to us social order and peace, and rational liberty, and all the blessings we now enjoy under the mildest Government and the hallowed institutions of the freest and happiest country in the world.” (Hear, hear.) The next motive for union to which I shall refer is, that it will strengthen rather than weaken the connection with the Empire, so essential to these rising Provinces. Those who may be called, if there are any such, the anti-unionists, allege, that this scheme now submitted will bring separation in its train. How, pray? By making these countries more important, will you make them less desirable as connections to England? By making their trade more valuable, will you make her more anxious to get rid of it? By reducing their Federal tariff, will you lessen their interest for England? By making them stronger for each other’s aid, will you make her less willing to discharge a lighter than a greater responsibility? But if the thing did not answer itself, England has answered that she “cordially approves” of our plan of union,—and she has always been accounted a pretty good judge of her own Imperial interests. (Hear, hear.) She does not con-

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sider our union inimical to those interests. Instead of looking upon it with a dark and discouraging frown, she cheers us on by her most cordial approval and bids us a hearty “God speed” in the new path we have chosen to enter. (Hear, hear.) But I put it on provincial grounds as well. We are not able to go alone, and if we attempted it we would almost certainly go to our own destruction—so that as we cannot go alone, and as we do not desire union with the United States, it is the duty of every man to do all in his power to strengthen the connection with Great Britain? And how shall we do it? Is it by compelling the Imperial Government to negotiate at Charlottetown, for every man and musket required for our defence, to negotiate again at Halifax, and again at Frederickton, and again at St. John’s, and again at Quebec? Is it by having these five separate governments that we are to render the connection desirable? or is it by putting the power of these colonies into the hands of one General Government and making the negotiations between two parties only, thereby simplifying the whole transaction and expediting whatever is to be done between the two countries? (Hear, hear.) I will content myself, Mr. Speaker, with those principal motives to union; first, that we are in the rapids, and must go on; next, that our neighbours will not, on their side, let us rest supinely, even if we could do so from other causes; and thirdly, that by making the united colonies more valuable as an ally to Great Britain, we shall strengthen rather than weaken the Imperial connection. (Cheers.) Let me now, Sir, call your attention to the difficulties, past and present, which this great project had to encounter, before it reached the fortunate stage in which we now rind it; by considering these difficulties we shall be the better enabled to see the folly of throwing the subject back into the cauldron, merely on the ground of detail. When a Union was advocated by individuals, however eminent, of course it had but scanty chance of success. (Hear, hear.) That was the first stage; when, as in 1822 and 1839, it found favour with Downing Street, it excited the suspicions of the

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colonists; when it was identified with the Quebec and Halifax railway project, it shared the same fate,—it was sacrificed to the jealousies and dissensions which destroyed that particular undertaking. When, as in the case of my hon. friend (Mr. Galt’s) motion, and my own motion in 1860, the subject was mooted in this House by a private member, the Ministry of the day could not allow so grave a measure to succeed in other hands than their own; when, as was the case in 1858, the Ministry committed themselves to it, the Opposition complained that Parliament had not been consulted. When Canada proposed to move, in 1859, Newfoundland alone responded; when Nova Scotia moved, in 1860, New Brunswick alone agreed to go with her; at all events, Canada did not then concur. (Hear, hear.) Of late years the language of the Colonial Office, of Mr. Labouchere, of Sir Bulwer Lytton, and of the lamented Duke of Newcastle, was substantially: “Agree among yourselves, gentlemen, and we will not stand in the way.” Ah! there was the rub—”Agree among yourselves!” Easier said than done, with five colonies so long estranged, and whose former negotiations had generally ended in bitter controversies. Up to the last year there was no conjunction of circumstances favourable to bringing about this union, and probably if we suffer this opportunity to be wasted we shall never see again such another conjunction as will enable us to agree, even so far, among ourselves. By a most fortunate concurrence of circumstances—by what I presume to call, speaking of events of this magnitude, a Providential concurrence of circumstances—the Government of Canada was so modified last spring as to enable it to deal fearlessly with this subject, at the very moment when the coast colonies, despairing of a Canadian union, were arranging a conference of their own for a union of their own. Our Government embraced among its members from the western section the leaders of the former Ministry and former Opposition from that section. At the time it was formed it announced to this House that it was its intention as part of its policy to seek a conference with the Lower Colonies, and endeavour to bring about a general

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union. This House formally gave the Government its confidence after the announcement of that policy, and although I have no desire to strain terms, it does appear to me that this House did thereby fully commit itself to the principle of a union of the colonies, if practicable. That is my view, Sir, of the relations of this House to the Government after it gave it expressly its confidence. Other members of the House take another view of that matter, they do not think themselves committed even to the principle, and they certainly are not to the details of the scheme. (Hear.) After the coalition was formed an incident occurred, which, though not of national importance, it would be most ungrateful of me to forget. An Intercolonial Excursion was proposed and was rendered practicable through the public spirit of two gentlemen representing our great railway, of which so many hard things have been said that I feel it my duty to say this good thing—1 refer to the Honourable Mr. Perrier and Mr. Brydges. (Cheers.) Forty members of this House, twenty-five members of the other House, and forty gentlemen of the press and other professions, from Canada, joined in that excursion. So many Canadians had never seen so much of the Lower Provinces before, and the people of the Lower Provinces had never seen so many Canadians. Our reception was beyond all description kind and cordial. The general sentiment of union was everywhere cheered to the echo, though I am sorry to find that some of those who cheered then, when it was but a general sentiment, seem to act very differently now that it has become a ripened project, and I fear that they do not intend to act up to the words they then uttered. They may, perhaps, intend to do so, but they have a very odd way of going about it. (Laughter.) Well, Sir, this was in August; the Charlottetown Conference was called in September, the Quebec Conference in October, and the tour of the maritime delegates through Canada took place in November. Pour months of the eight which have elapsed since we promised this House to deal with it have been almost wholly given up to this great enterprise. Let me bear my

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tribute, Mr. Speaker, now that I refer to the conference, to the gentlemen from the Lower Provinces, who sat so many days in council with us, under this roof. (Cheers.) A very worthy citizen of Montreal, when I went up a day or two in advance of the Montreal banquet, asked me, with a curious sort of emphasis—”What sort of people are they?”—meaning the maritime delegates. I answered him then, as I repeat now, that they were, as a body, as able and accomplished a body, I thought, as any new country could produce,—and that some among them would compare not unfavourably in ability and information with some of the leading commoners of England. As our Government included a representation both of the former Opposition and the former Ministry, so their delegations were composed in about equal parts of the Opposition and Ministerial parties of their several provinces. A more hard-working set of men; men more tenacious of their own rights, yet more considerate for those of others; men of readier resource in debate; men of gentler manners; men more willing to bear and forbear, I hardly can hope to see together at one council table again. (Cheers.) But why need I dwell on this point? They were seen and heard in all our principal cities, and I am sure every Canadian who met them here was proud of them as fellow-subjects, and would be happy to feel that he could soon call them fellow-countrymen in fact as well as in name. (Cheers.) Sir, by this combination of great abilities—by this coalition of leaders who never before acted together—through this extraordinary armistice in party warfare, obtained in every colony at the same moment—after all this labour and all this self-sacrifice—after all former impediments had been most fortunately overcome—the treaty was concluded and signed by us all—and there it lies for your ratification. The propositions contained in it have been objected to, and we were reminded the other evening by the honourable member for Chateauguay, that we are not a treatymaking power. Well, in reference to that objection, I believe the Imperial Government has in certain cases, such as the Reciprocity Treaty, conceded to these Provinces the

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right of coaction; and in tins case there is the Imperial despatch of 1862 to Lord Mulgrave, Governor of Nova Scotia, distinctly authorising the public men of the colonies to confer with each other on the subject of union, and inviting them to submit the result of their conferences to the Imperial Government. (Hear, hear.) We assembled under the authority and acted under the sanction of that despatch. Everything we did was done in form and with propriety, and the result of our proceedings is the document that has been submitted to the Imperial Government as well as to this House, and which we speak of here as a treaty. And that there may be no doubt about our position in regard to that document we say, Question it you may, reject it you may, or accept it you may, but alter it you may not. (Hear, hear.) It is beyond your power, or our power, to alter it. There is not a sentence—not even a word—you can alter without desiring to throw out the document. Alter it, and we know at once what you mean—you thereby declare yourselves against the only possible union. (Hear, hear.) On this point, I repeat after all my hon. friends who have already spoken, for one party to alter a treaty, is, of course, to destroy it. Let us be frank with each other; you do not like our work, nor do you like us who stand by it, clause by clause, line by line, and letter by letter. Oh! but this clause ought to run thus, and this other clause thus. Does any hon. member seriously think that any treaty in the world between five separate provinces ever gave full and entire satisfaction on every point, to every party? Does any hon. member seriously expect to have a constitutional act framed to his order, or my order, or any man’s order? No, Sir, I am sure no legislator, at least since Anacharsis Clootz was Attorney-General of the Human Race, ever expected such ideal perfection. (Laughter.) It may be said by some hon. gentlemen that they admit the principle of this measure to be good, but that it should be dealt with as an ordinary parliamentary subject in the usual parliamentary manner. Mr. Speaker, this is not an ordinary parliamentary measure. We do not legislate upon it, we do not anact it,—that is for a

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higher authority. Suppose the Address adopted by this House to-morrow,—is the act of this House final and conclusive? No. It is for the Imperial Parliament to act upon it. (Hear, hear.) That body that can cause the several propositions to be moulded into a measure which will have the form of law, and these resolutions may probably be the ipsissima verba of the measure they will give us and the other Provinces. But some hon. gentlemen opposite say, that if there be defects in this treaty they ought to be remedied now, and that the Government ought to be glad to have them pointed out. Yes, surely, if this were simply the act of the Parliament of Canada; but it is not to be our act alone. It is an Address to the Throne, in the terms to which four other colonies are parties, and even if we were to make alterations in it, we cannot bind them to accept them. If we were weak and wicked enough to alter a solemn agreement with the other Provinces, the moment their representatives had turned their backs and gone home, what purpose would it serve except that of defeating the whole measure, and throwing it as well as the country back again into chaos? (Hear, hear.) I admit, Sir, as we have been told, that we ought to aim at perfection; but who has ever attained it, except perhaps the hon. member for Broome? (Laughter.) We, however, did strive and aim at the mark, and we think we made a tolerably good shot. The hon. member for Chauteauguay will not be satisfied—insatiate archer!—unless we hit the bull’s eye. (Laughter.) My hon. friend is well read in political literature—will he mention me one authority, from the first to the last, who ever held that human government was or could be anything more than what a modern sage called “an approximation to the right” and an ancient called “the possible best?” Well, we believe we have here given to our countrymen of all the Provinces the possible best—that we have given them an approximation to the right—their representatives and ours have laboured at it, letter and spirit, form and substance, until they found this basis of agreement, which we are all confident will not now, nor for many a day to come, be

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easily swept away. Before I pass to another point, Sir, permit me to pay my tribute of unfeigned respect to one of our Canadian colleagues in this work, who is no longer with us; I mean the present Vice-Chancellor of Upper Canada (Hon. Mr. Mowat), who took a constant and honourable share in the preparation of this project. (Cheers.) Now, Sir, I wish to say a few words in reference to what I call the social relations which I think ought to exist and are likely to spring up between the people of the Lower Provinces and ourselves if there is a closer communication established between us, and also in reference to the social fitness to each of the parties to this proposed union. And first, I will make a remark to some of the French Canadian gentlemen who are said to be opposed to our project, on French Canadian grounds only. I will remind them, I hope not improperly, that every one of the colonies we now propose to re-unite under one rule—in which they shall have a potential voice—were once before united as New France. (Cheers.) Newfoundland, the uttermost, was theirs, and one large section of its coast is still known as “the French shore;” Cape Breton was theirs till the final fall of Louisburgh; Prince Edward Island was their Island of St. Jean; Charlottetown was their Port Joli; and Frederickton, the present capital of New Brunswick, their St. Anne’s; in the heart of Nova Scotia was that fair Arcadian land, where the roll of Longfellow’s noble hexameters may be heard in every wave that breaks upon the base of Cape Blomedon. (Cheers.) In the northern counties of New Brunswick, from the Miramachi to the Matapediac, they had their forts and farms, their churches and their festivals, before the English speech had ever once been heard between those rivers. Nor is that tenacious Norman and Breton race extinct in their old haunts and homes. I have heard one of the members for Cape Breton speak in high terms of that portion of his constituency, and I believe I am correct in saying that Mr. Le Visconte, the late Finance Minister of Nova Scotia, was, in the literal sense of the term, an Arcadian. Mr. Cozzans, of New York, who wrote a very readable little book the other day

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about Nova Scotia, describes the French residents near the basin of Minas, and he says, especially of the women, “they might have stepped out of Normandy a hundred years ago!” In New Brunswick there is more than one county, especially in the North, where business, and law, and politics, require a knowledge of both French and English. A worthy friend of ours, Hon. Mr. Mitchell of Chatham, who was present at the earlier meetings of the Conference, owed his first election for one of these counties, because he was Pierre Michel, and could speak to his French constituents in their own language. I will, with leave of the House, read on this interesting subject a passage from a very capital sketch of the French district of New Brunswick in 1863, by Lieutenant Governor Gordon [it is in Galston’s “Vacation Tourist for 1864” and is exceedingly interesting throughout]; Mr. Gordon says:—

“The French population, which forms so large a proportion among the inhabitants of the counties of Westmoreland, Kent, and Gloucester, appears to me as contented as the habitants of Victoria, but hardly equally as well off. There was an air of comfort and bien-être about the large timber two-storied houses, painted a dark Indian red, standing among the trees, the numerous good horses, the well-tilled fields and sleek cattle, which is wanting on the sea coast. We stopped after a pleasant drive, affording us good views of the beautiful peak of Green River Mountain, at the house of a Monsieur Violet, at the mouth of Grand River, which was to be our starting point. The whole aspect of the farm was that of the métairie in Normandy—the outer doors of the house gaudily painted—the panels of a different colour from the frame—the large, open, uncarpeted room, with its bare shining floor—the lasses at the spinning-wheel—the French costume and appearance of Madame Violet and her sons and daughters, all carried me back to the other side of the Atlantic. After a short conversation with the Violets, we walked down to the bridge, where two log- canoes, manned by Frenchmen—three Cyrs and a Thibaudeau—were waiting for us, and pushed off from the shore.”

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It will be observed Governor Gordon speaks of four counties in the north of New Brunswick which still bear a marked French character. Well, gentlemen of French origin, we propose to restore these long-lost compatriots to your protection: in the Federal Union, which will recognise equally both languages, they will naturally look to you; their petitions will come to you, and their representatives will naturally be found allied with you. Suppose those four New Brunswick counties are influenced by the French vote, and say two in Nova Scotia, you will, should you need them, have them as sure allies to your own compact body, to aid your legitimate influence in the Federal Councils. (Cheers.) I proceed with my analysis of the maritime population, in order to establish the congruity and congeniality of our proposed union. In point of time, the next oldest element in that population is the Irish settlement of Ferryland, in Newfoundland, undertaken by Lord Baltimore and Lord Falkland (Lord Lieutenant of Ireland at the time), immediately after the restoration of King Charles II., soon after 1660. Newfoundland still remains strongly Irish, as is natural, since it is the next parish to Ireland—(laughter)—and I think we saw a very excellent specimen of its Irish natives at our Conference in Ambrose Shea. (Cries of “hear, hear.”) To me, I confess, it is particularly grateful to reflect that the only Irish colony, as it may be called, of our group, is to be included in the new arrangements. (Hear.) Another main element in the Lower Province population is the Highland Scotch. Large tracts of Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton were granted after the Peace of Paris, to officers and men of Frazer’s Highlanders and other Scottish regiments, which had distinguished themselves during the Seven Years’ war. If my hon. friend from Glengarry (Mr. D. A. Macdonald) had been with us last September at Charlottetown, he would have met clansmen, whom he would have been proud to know, and who could have conversed with him in his own cherished Gaelic.

Mr. D.A. MACDONALD.—They are all over the world. (Laughter.)

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Hon. Me. McGee.—So much the better for the world. (Cheers.) And I will tell him what I think is to their honour, that the Highlanders in all the Lower Provinces preserve faithfully the religion, as well as the language and traditions, of their fathers. The Catholic Bishop of Charlottetown is a McIntyre; his Right Rev. brother of Arichat (Cape Breton) is a McKinnon; and in the list of the clergy, I find a constant succession of such names as McDonald, McGillis, McGillvary, McLeod, McKenzie, and Cameron—all “Anglo-Saxons” of course, and mixed up with them Fourniers, Gauvreaus, Paquets, and Martells, whose origin is easy to discover. (Cheers.) Another of the original elements of that population remains to be noticed—the U. E. Loyalists, who founded New Brunswick (as they founded Upper Canada), for whom New Brunswick was made a separate Province in 1784, as Upper Canada was for their relatives in 1791. Their descendants still flourish in the land, holding many positions of honour, and as a representative of the class, I shall only mention Judge Wilmot, who the other day declared in charging one of his grand juries, that if it were necessary to carry Confederation in New Brunswick, so impressed was he with the necessity of the measure to the very existence of British laws and British institutions on this continent, he was prepared to quit the bench and return to politics. (Cheers.) There are other elements also not to be overlooked. The thrifty Germans of Lunenberg, whose homes are the neatest upon the land, as their fleet is the tightest on the sea; and other smaller subdivisions; but I shall not prolong this analysis. I may observe, however, that this population is almost universally a native population of three or four or more generations. In New Brunswick, at the most there is about twelve per cent, of an immigrant people; in Nova Scotia, about eight; in the two Islands, even less. In the eye of the law, we admit no disparity between natives and immigrants in this country; but it is to be considered that where men are born in the presence of the graves of their fathers, for even a few generations, the influence of the fact is great in

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enhancing their attachment to that soil. I admit, for my part, as an immigrant, of no divided allegiance to Canada and her interests; but it would be untrue and paltry to deny a divided affection between the old country and the new. Kept within just bounds, such an affection is reasonable, is right and creditable to those who cherish it. (Hear, hear.) Why I refer to this broad fact which distinguishes the populations of all the four seaward Provinces as much as it does Lower Canada herself, is, to show the fixity and stability of that population; to show that they are by birth British-Americans; that they can nearly all, of every origin, use that proud phrase when they look daily from their doors, “this is my own, my native land.” (Cheers.) Let but that population and ours come together for a generation or two—such are the elements that compose, such the conditions that surround it—and their mutual descendants will hear with wonder, when the history of these present transactions is written, that this plan of union could ever have been seriously opposed by statesmen in Canada or elsewhere. (Cheers.) I am told, however, by one or two members of this House, and by exclusive-minded Canadians out of it, that they cannot get up any patriotic feeling about this union with New Brunswick or Nova Scotia, and that they cannot look with any interest at those colonies, with which we have had hitherto so little association. “What’s Hecuba to me, or I to Hecuba?” Well, I answer to that, know them, and my word for it, you will like them. I have made several journeys there, and I have seen much of the people, and the more I have seen of them, the more I respected and esteemed them. (Hear, hear.) I say, then, to these gentlemen, that if you desire any patriotism on the subject; if you want to stir up a common sentiment of affection between these people and ourselves, bring us all into closer relation together, and having the elements of a vigorous nationality within us, each will find something to like and respect in the other; mutual confidence and respect will follow, and the feeling of being engaged in a common cause for the good of a common nationality will grow up of itself without being forced

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by any man’s advocacy. (Hear, hear.) The thing who shuts up his heart against his kindred, his neighbours, and his fellow-subjects, may be a very pretty fellow at a parish vestry, but do you call such a forked-radish as that, a man? (Laughter.) Don’t so abuse the noblest word in the language. (Hear, hear.) Sir, there is one other argument for this union, or rather an illustration of its mutually advantageous character, which I draw from the physical geography and physical resources of the whole territory which it is proposed to unite; but before I draw the attention of the House to it, I may perhaps refer to a charge that probably will be made against me, that I am making what may appear to be a non-political speech. If it be non-political in the sense of non-partisan, then I plead guilty to the charge; but I think that on some of the points to which I have alluded the country is desirous of being informed, and as many hon. gentlemen have not had time to make a tour of the country to the east of us, those who have had the opportunity of doing so cannot, I think, better subserve the interest of the community than by giving what appears to them a fair, just, and truthful sketch of those Provinces and their people, and thus informing those in Canada who have not had the opportunity of making observations for themselves on the spot. (Hear, hear.) It was remarked by the late Sir John Beverley Robinson, in his letter to Lord John Russell in 1839, that if the British Government had attempted to maintain the ancient boundaries of New France, in the treaty which acknowledged the United States, it would have been an unfortunate attempt, and impossible after all. Those boundaries extended to the Ohio on the south, and included much of what is now called by our neighbours “the North-West.” There is great force, I think, in this observation. But in relation to what I may call the ground-plan on which we propose to erect our constitutional edifice, its natural oneness is admirable to contemplate. There is not one port or harbour of all the Provinces now proposing to confederate, which cannot be reached from any other by all vessels, if not of too great draught, without ever once leaving our

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own waters. Prom the head of Lake Superior the same craft may coast uninterruptedly, always within sight of our own shores, nearly the distance of a voyage to England—to St. John’s, Newfoundland. (Cheers.) We sometimes complain of our inland navigation, that we have it free but half the year round, but what it lacks at one season it amply compensates by its vast capacity. (Cheers.) Last summer, when we visited Halifax in the “Queen Victoria” which the good people of that blockade-running stronghold mistook for a Confederate cruiser, we were the better part of a week steaming away, always in British American waters, within sight of the bold and beautiful coasts which it was our privilege to call our own. (Cheers.) While we were thus following our river system to the open sea, I could not help often recurring to the vast extent of the whole. If any hon. gentleman who has never made, or who cannot find time to make, a journey through his own country, will only go to the library, he will find an excellent substitute for such a voyage in Keith Johnston’s “Physical Atlas,” a book that when one opens its leaves his brain opens with the book. (Laughter.) He will find that our matchless St. Lawrence drains an area of 298,000 square miles, of which only 94,000 are occupied by the five great lakes taken together. Of the commerce already afloat upon those waters, and the commerce of which they are capable of being the vehicle, it is hardly necessary, after what has been already said, for me to speak. I shall not attempt to tread in the path of my two friends who sit next me (Hon. Messrs. Gait and Brown) by exhibiting in any detail the prospects of mutual commercial advantages opened up by this union; but I have prepared a statement of my own on this subject, giving certain general results, which I do not present as complete, but only as proximately correct—and which I now beg to read to the House:—

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* Canada.—The extent in square miles refers to known or surveyed land, as the Northern and Western limit of Canada has never been absolutely laid down,

† All the calculations respecting population made upon the census of 1861.

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But there is, in addition to all that I have quoted, one special source of wealth to be found in the Maritime Provinces, which was not in any detail exhibited by my hon. friends—I allude to the important article of coal. I think there can be no doubt that, in some parts of Canada, we are fast passing out of the era of wood as fuel, and entering on that of coal. In my own city every year, there is great suffering among the poor from the enormous price of fuel, and large sums are paid away by national societies and benevolent individuals, to prevent whole families perishing for want of fuel. I believe we must all concur with Sir William Logan, that we have no coal in Canada, and I may venture to state, on my own authority, another fact, that we have—a five months’ winter, generally very cold. Now, what are the coal resources of our maritime friends, to whose mines Confederation would give us free and untaxed access for ever? I take these data from the authority in my hand—from the highest authority on the subject—Taylor’s “Coal Fields of the New World:”-—

“Dr. A. Gesner, in a communication to the Geological Society of London, 1843, states that the area of the coal fields of New Brunswick has been recently determined to be 7,500 square miles; and 10,000 square miles, including Nova Scotia., but exclusive of Cape Breton. Since his first report he has explored the whole of this vast region, and has found the area covered by that coal formation to be no less than 8,000 square miles in New Brunswick. He says the most productive coal beds prevail in the interior, while those of Nova Scotia occur on the shores of her bays and river, where they offer every advantage for mining operations. The coal fields of the two provinces are united at the boundary line, and belong to the carboniferous period. The developments of almost every season illustrate more clearly- the magnitude of these coal fields, which extend from Newfoundland by Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and across a large portion of New Brunswick into the State of Maine. Mr. Henwood, a geologist of high standing, observes that the beauty and extent of these coal treasures it is impossible to describe. In Nova Scotia,

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Dr. Gesner’s statements exhibit an area of coal formation of 2,500 square miles, while Messrs. Logan, Dawson, and Brown greatly exceed even that. area. Sir W. E. Logan demonstrated by a laborious survey the thickness or depth of the whole group in Northern Nova Scotia to be over 2¾ miles, an amount which far exceeds anything seen in the coal formation in other parts of North America; in this group there are seventy-six coal beds one above the other.”

I must say, Sir, that this is a cheering statement of facts, coming to us on the very highest authority, and I feel warming with the subject, even while making the statement. (Laughter.) These exhaustless coal fields will, under our plan—which is in fact our Reciprocity Treaty with the Lower Provinces—become, hereafter, the great resource of our towns for fuel. I see the cry is raised below by the anti- unionists, that to proceed with Confederation would be to entail the loss of the New England market for their coals. I do not quite see how they make this out, but even an anti-unionist might see that the population of Canada is within a fraction of that of all New England put together, that we consume in this country as much fuel per annum as they do in New England; and, therefore, that we offer them a market under the anion equal to that which these theorizers want to persuade their followers they would lose. (Hear, hear.) Sir, another cry raised by the anti-unionists below is, that they would have to fight for the defence of Canada—a very specious argument. What, Sir, three millions and one million unite, and the one million do the fighting for all! In proportion to their numbers no doubt these valiant gentlemen will have to fight, if fighting is to be done, but not one man or one shilling more than Canada, pro rata, will they have to risk or spend. On the contrary, the greater community, if she should not happen to be first attacked, would be obliged to fight for them, and in doing so, I do not hesitate to say, on far better authority than my own, that the man who fights for the valley and harbour of St. John, or even for Halifax, fights for Canada. I will suppose another not impossible case. I will suppose a hostile American army,

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on a fishery or any other war, finding it easier and cheaper to seize the lower colonies by land than by sea, by a march from a convenient rendezvous on Lake Champlain, through Lower Canada, into the upper part of New Brunswick, and so downward to the sea—a march like Sherman’s march from Knoxville to Savannah. While we obstructed such a march by every means in our power, from the Richelieu to Riviere du Loup, whose battles would we be fighting then? Why, the seaports aimed at, for our common subjugation. (Hear, hear.) But the truth is, all these selfish views and arguments are remarkably short-sighted, unworthy of the subject, and unworthy even of those who use them. In a commercial, in a military, in every point of view, we are all, rightly considered, dependent on each other. Newfoundland dominates the Gulf, and none of us can afford to be separated from her. Lord Chatham said he would as soon abandon Plymouth as Newfoundland to a foreign power, and he is thought to have understood how to govern men. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are Siamese twins, held together by that ligature of land between Baie Yerte and Cumberland Basin, and the fate of the one must follow the fate of the other. (Hear, hear.) Prince Edward is only a little bit, broken off by the Northumberland Strait from those two bigger brethren, and Upper and Lower Canada are essential to each other’s prosperity. Our very physical outline teaches us the lesson of union, and indicates how many mutual advantages we may all derive from the treaty we have made. Mr. Speaker, while we in Canada have no doubt of the ratification of the Intercolonial Treaty, by this House and country, I cannot conceal from myself that our friends in the Lower Provinces are fighting a battle with narrow views and vested interests, which are always most bitter in the smallest communities. There are coasting trade interests and railway interests at work; and there are the strong interests of honest ignorance and dishonest ingenuity.* What can these men mean, who are no fools?

* Events Lave since confirmed this prediction; but I see no reason to despair of all the Maritime Provinces yet coming freely into the proposed confederation, or some similar political union.

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Do they, too, fancy they can get a Government made to their own private order? Do they think they can go on on the old system? Do they mean to give up the country to the Americans? Why not hang up at once the sign, “These Provinces for sale—terms cash!—’greenbacks’ taken at par value!” I rejoice to see the unionists of the Maritime Provinces so resolved, so high-spirited, and so united—and though their victory will not be won without work, yet I feel assured it will be a victory. If the honest and misguided would but reflect for a moment the risks they run by defeating, or even delaying this measure, I am sure they would, even yet, retract. (Hear, hear.) If we reject it now, is there any human probability that we shall ever see again so propitious a set of circumstances to bring about the same results? How they came about we all know. (Hear, hear.) The strange and fortunate events that have occurred in Canada; the extraordinary concessions made by the leaders of the Governments below—Dr. Tupper, the Nova Scotian Premier, for instance, admitting to his confidence, and bringing with him here as his co-representatives, Hon. Messrs. Archibald and McCully, two of his most determined political opponents—can we ever expect, if we reject this scheme, that the same or similar things will occur again to favour it? Can we expect to see the leader of the Upper Canadian conservative party and the leader of the Upper Canadian liberals sitting side by side again, if this project fails to work out, in a spirit of mutual compromise and concession, the problem of our constitutional difficulties? No, Sir, it is too much to expect. Miracles would cease to be miracles if they were events of every-day occurrence; the very nature of wonders requires that they should be rare; and this is a miraculous and wonderful circumstance, that men at the head of the Governments in five separate Provinces, and men at the head of the parties opposing them, all agreed at the same time to sink party differences for the good of all, and did not shrink, at the risk of having their motives misunderstood, from associating together for the purpose of bringing about this result. (Cheers.) I have asked, Sir,

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what risks do we run if we reject this measure? We run the risk of being swallowed up by the spirit of universal democracy that prevails in the United States. Their usual and favourite motto is—

No pent-up Utica contracts our powers,
But the whole boundless continent is ours.

That is the popular paraphrase of the Monroe doctrine. And the popular voice has favoured—aye, and the greatest statesmen among them have looked upon it as inevitable—an extension of the principles of democracy over this continent. Now, I suppose a universal democracy is no more acceptable to us than a universal monarchy in Europe would have been to our ancestors; yet for three centuries—from Charles V. to Napoleon—our fathers combated to the death against the subjugation of all Europe to a single system or a single master, and heaped up a debt which has since burthened the producing classes of the empire with an enormous load of taxation, which, perhaps, none other except the hardy and ever-growing industry of those little islands could have borne up under. (Hear, hear.) The idea of a universal democracy in America is no more welcome to the minds of thoughtful men among us than was that of a universal monarchy to the minds of the thoughtful men who followed the standard of the third William, or who afterwards, under the great Marlborough, opposed the armies of the particular dynasty that sought to place Europe under a single dominion. (Hear, hear.) But if we are to have a universal democracy on this continent, the Lower Provinces—the smaller fragments—will be “gobbled up” first, and we will come in afterwards by way of dessert. (Laughter.) The proposed Confederation will enable us to bear up shoulder to shoulder; to resist the spread of this universal democracy doctrine; it will make it more desirable to maintain on both sides the connection that binds us to the parent State; it will raise us from the position of mere dependent colonies to a new and more important position; it will give us a new lease of existence under other and more favour-

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able conditions; and resistance to this project, which is pregnant with so many advantages to us and to our children, means simply this, ultimate union with the United States. (Cheers.) But these are small matters, wholly unworthy of the attention of the Smiths, and Annands, and Palmers, who have come forward to forbid the banns of British-American Union. Mr. Speaker, before I draw to a close the little remainder of what I have to say—and I am sorry to have detained the House so long—(cries of “No, no”)—I beg to offer a few observations apropos of my own position as an English-speaking member for Lower Canada. I venture, in the first place, to observe that there seems to be a good deal of exaggeration on the subject of race, occasionally introduced, both on the one side and the other, in this section of the country. I congratulate my honourable friend the Attorney-General for this section on his freedom from such prejudices in general, though I still think in matters of patronage and the like he always looks first to his own compatriots—(laughter)—for which neither do I blame him. But this theory of race is sometimes carried to an anti-christian and unphilosophical excess. Whose words are these—” God hath made of one blood all nations that dwell on the face of the earth? ” Is not that the true theory of race? For my part, I am not afraid of the French Canadian majority in the future local Government doing injustice, except accidentally; not because I am of the same religion as themselves; for origin and language are barriers stronger to divide men in this world than is religion to unite them. Neither do I believe that my Protestant compatriots need have any such fear. The French Canadians have never been an intolerant people; it is not in their temper, unless they had been persecuted, perhaps, and then it might have been as it has been with other races of all religions. Perhaps, on this subject, the House will allow me to read a very striking illustration of the tolerance of French Canadian character from a book I hold in my hand, the “Digest of the Synod Minutes of the Presbyterian Church of Canada,” by my worthy friend, the Rev. Mr. Kemp, of the Free Church of

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Montreal. The passage is on page seven of the Introduction:—

“About the year 1790 the Presbyterians of Montreal of all denominations, both British and American, organised themselves into a Church, and in the following year secured the services of the Rev. John Young. At this time they met in the Récollet Roman Catholic Church, but in the year following they erected the edifice which is now known as St. Gabriel Street Church—the oldest Protestant Church in the Province. In their early Minutes we find them, in acknowledgment of the kindness of the Récollet Fathers, presenting them with ‘ One box of candles, 56lbs., at 8d, and one hogshead of Spanish wine at 6l. 5s.'” (Laughter.) I beg my hon. friends, who may have different notions of Christian intercourse at this time of day, just to fancy doings of that sort. (Hear, hear.) Here, on the one hand, are the Récollet Fathers giving up one of their own churches to the disciples of John Knox to enable them to worship God after their own manner, and perhaps to have a gird at Popery in the meantime—(laughter)—and here, on the other hand, are the grateful Presbyterians presenting to these same Seminary priests Presbyterian wine and Presbyterian wax tapers in acknowledgment of the use of their church for Presbyterian service. Certainly a more characteristic instance of tolerance on both sides can hardly be found in the history of any other country. I cite this little incident to draw from it this practical moral—that those who are seeking, and, in some particulars, I believe justly seeking, the settlement of Protestant education in Lower Canada on firmer ground than it now occupies, might well afford to leave the two great Seminaries of Montreal and Quebec at peace. No two institutions in Christendom ever more conscientiously fulfilled the ends of their erection; and whoever does not know all, but even a little, of the good services they have rendered to both the people and the Government of Lower Canada, to the civilisation and settlement of this country, has much yet to learn of the history of Canada. (Hear, hear.) To close this topic, I have no doubt whatever, with a good deal of

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moderation and a proper degree of firmness, all that the Protestant minority in Lower Canada can require, by way of security to their educational system, will be cheerfully granted to them by this House. I, for one, as a Roman Catholic, will cordially second and support any such amendments, properly framed. I will merely add, in relation to an observation of my friend (Hon. Mr. Brown) last night on the subject of the Catholic Separate Schools of Upper Canada, that I accepted for my own part, as a finality, the amended Act of 1863. I said I would do so if it granted what the petitioners asked, when, I thought, they ought to be satisfied. I will be no party to the re-opening of the question; but I say this, that if there are to be any special guarantees or grants extended to the Protestant minority of Lower Canada, I think the Catholic minority in Upper Canada ought to be placed in precisely the same position—neither better nor worse. (Hear, hear.) At present I shall not add another word on this subject, as I am not aware of the particular nature of the amendments asked for at present, either east or west. (Hear, hear.) All who have spoken on this subject have said a good deal, as was natural, of the interests at stake in the success or failure of this plan of Confederation. I trust the House will permit me to add a few words as to the principle of Confederation considered in itself. In the application of this principle to former constitutions, there certainly always was one fatal defect, the weakness of the central authority. Of all the Federal constitutions I have ever heard or read of, this was the fatal malady: they were short-lived, they died of consumption. (Laughter.) But I am not prepared to say that because the Tuscan League elected its chief magistrates but for two months and lasted a century, that therefore the Federal principle failed. On the contrary, there is something in the frequent, fond recurrence of mankind to this principle, among the freest people, in their best times and in their worst dangers, which leads me to believe, that it has a very deep hold in human nature itself—an excellent basis for a government to have. But, indeed, Sir, the main question is the due distribution of powers in

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a Federal Union—a question I dare not touch to-night, but which I may be prepared to say something on before the vote is taken. The principle itself seems to me to be capable of being so adapted as to promote internal peace and external security, and to call into action a genuine, enduring, and heroic patriotism. It is a fruit of this principle that makes the modern Italian look back with sorrow and pride over a dreary waste of seven centuries to the famous field of Legnano; it was this principle kindled the beacons which yet burn on the rocks of Uri; it was this principle that broke the dykes of Holland and overwhelmed the Spanish with the fate of the Egyptian oppressor. It is a principle capable of inspiring a noble ambition and a most salutary emulation. You have sent your young men to guard your frontier. You want a principle to guard your young men, and thus truly defend your frontier. Tor what do good men who make the best soldiers fight? For a line of scripture or chalk line—for a text or for a pretext? What is a better boundary between nations than a parallel of latitude, or even a natural obstacle?—what really keeps nations intact and apart?—a principle. When I can hear our young men say as proudly, “our Federation,” or “our Country,” or “our Kingdom,” as the young men of other countries do, speaking of their own, then I shall have less apprehension for the result of whatever trials the future may have in store for us. (Cheers.) It has been said that the Federal Constitution of the United States has failed. I, Sir, have never said it. The Attorney- General West told you the other night that he did not consider it a failure; and I remember that in 1861, when in this House I remarked the same thing, the only man who then applauded the statement was the Attorney-General West,—so that it is plain he did not simply adopt the argument for use the other night when advocating a Federal Union among ourselves. (Hear, hear.) It may be a failure for us, paradoxical as this may seem, and yet not a failure for them. They have had eighty years’ use of it, and having discovered its defects, may apply a remedy and go on with it eighty years longer. But we also were

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lookers on, who saw its defects as the machine worked, and who have prepared contrivances by which it can be improved and kept in more perfect order when applied to ourselves. And one of the foremost statesmen in England, distinguished alike in politics and literature, has declared, as the President of the Council informed us, that we have combined the best parts of the British and the American systems of government; an opinion deliberately formed at a distance, without prejudice, and expressed without interested motives of any description. (Hear, hear.) We have, in relation to the head of the Government, in relation to the judiciary, in relation to the second chamber of the Legislature, in relation to the financial responsibility of the General Government, and in relation to the public officials whose tenure of office is during good behaviour instead of at the caprice of a party—in all these respects we have adopted the British system; in other respects we have learned something from the American system, and I trust and believe we have made a very tolerable combination of both. (Hear, hear.) The principle of Federation is a generous principle. It is a principle that gives men local duties to discharge, and invests them at the same time with general supervision, that excites a healthy sense of responsibility and comprehension. It is a principle that has produced a wise and true spirit of statesmanship in all countries in which it has ever been applied. It is a principle eminently favourable to liberty, because local affairs are left to be dealt with by local bodies, and cannot be interfered with by those who have no local interest in them, while matters of a general character are left exclusively to a General Government. It is a principle inseparable from every government that ever gave extended and important services to a country, because all governments have been more or less confederations in their character. Spain was a Federation, for although it had a king reigning over the whole country, it had its local governments for the administration of local affairs. The British Isles are a quasi Confederation, and the old French dukedoms were confederated in the States-General. It is a

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principle that runs through all the history of civilisation in one form or another, and exists alike in monarchies and democracies; and having adopted it as the principle of our future government, there were only the details to arrange and agree upon. Those details are before you. It is not in our power to alter any of them even if the House desires it. If the House desires, it can reject the treaty, but we cannot, nor can the other Provinces which took part in its negotiation, consent that it shall be altered in the slightest particular. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Speaker, I am sorry to have detained the House so long, and was not aware till I had been some time on my legs, that my physical strength was so inadequate to the exposition of those few points which, not specially noticed by my predecessors in this debate, I undertook to speak upon. We stand at present in this position: we are bound in honour, we are bound in good faith, to four Provinces occupied by our fellow colonists, to carry out the measure of Union agreed upon here in the last week of October. We are bound to carry it to the foot of the Throne, and ask there from Her Majesty, according to the first resolution of the Address, that She will be graciously pleased to direct legislation to be had on this subject. We go to the Imperial Government, the common arbiter of us all, in our true Federal metropolis—we go there to ask for our fundamental Charter. We hope, by having that Charter, which can only be amended by the authority that made it, that we will lay the basis of permanency for our future government. The two great things that all men aim at in free government, are liberty and permanency. We have had liberty enough—too much, perhaps, in some respects—but, at all events, liberty to our hearts’ content. There is not on the face of the earth a freer people than the inhabitants of these colonies. But it is necessary there should be respect for the law, a high central authority, the virtue of civil obedience, obeying the law for the law’s sake; for even when a man’s private conscience may convince him sufficiently that the law in some cases may be wrong, he is not to set up his individual will against the will of the country expressed through its recog-

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nised constitutional organs. We need in these Provinces, and we can bear, a large infusion of authority. I am not at all afraid this Constitution errs on the side of too great conservatism. If it be found too conservative now, the downward tendency in political ideas which characterises this democratic age, is a sufficient guarantee for amendment. Its conservatism is the principle on which this instrument is strong, and worthy of the support of every colonist, and through which it will secure the warm approbation of the Imperial authorities. We have here no traditions and ancient venerable institutions; here, there are no aristocratic elements hallowed by time or bright deeds; here, every man is the first settler of the land, or removed from the first settler one or two generations at the farthest here, we have no architectural monuments calling up old associations; here, we have none of those old popular legends and stories which in other countries have exercised a powerful share in the government; here, every man is the son of his own works, (Hear, hear.) We have none of those influences about us which, elsewhere, have their effect upon government just as much as the invisible atmosphere itself tends to influence life, and animal and vegetable existence. This is a new land—a land of young pretensions because it is new; because classes and systems have not had that time to grow here naturally. We have no aristocracy but of virtue and talent, which is the best aristocracy, and is the old and true meaning of the term. (Hear, hear,) There is a class of men rising in these colonies, superior in many respects to others with whom they might be compared. What I should like to see, is—that fair representatives of the Canadian and Acadian aristocracy should be sent to the foot of the Throne with that scheme, to obtain for it the royal sanction—a scheme not suggested by others, or imposed upon us, but one the work of ourselves, the creation of our own intellect and of our own free, unbiassed, and untrammelled will. I should like to see our best men go there, and endeavour to have this measure carried through the Imperial Parliament—going into Her Majesty’s presence, and by their manner, if not

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actually by their speech, saying—”During Your Majesty’s reign we have had Responsible Government conceded to us: we have administered it for nearly a quarter of a century, during which we have under it doubled our population, and more than quadrupled our trade. The small colonies which your ancestors could hardly see on the map, have grown into great communities. A great danger has arisen in our near neighbourhood. Over our homes a cloud hangs, dark and heavy. We do not know when it may burst. With our own strength we are not able to combat against the storm; but what we can do, we will do cheerfully and loyally. We want time to grow; we want more people to fill our country, more industrious families of men to develop our resources; we want to increase our prosperity; we want more extended trade and commerce; we want more land tilled—more men established through our wastes and wildernesses. We of the British North-American Provinces want to be joined together, that, if danger comes, we can support each other in the day of trial. We come to Your Majesty, who have given us liberty, to give us unity, that we may preserve and perpetuate our freedom; and whatsoever charter, in the wisdom of Your Majesty and of Your Parliament, you give us, we shall loyally obey and observe as long as it is the pleasure of Your Majesty and Your Successors to maintain the connection between Great Britain and these Colonies.” (Loud cheers.)

THE END.

BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS WHITEFRIARS.