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Date: 1866-06-22
By: Viscount Monck
Citation: Letter from Viscount Monck to John A. Macdonald (22 June 1866), MG26-A, Vol. 51, 20230-20233].
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Confidential.

June 22, 1866.

My dear Macdonald

There is only one point in your note, just received, on which I desire to set myself right.

I never meant to imply I certainly did not express that I entertained any doubt of your sincerity or that of your colleagues with regard to the question of Union.

What I did wish to convey to you, and what I still feel, and what I think I expressed, is that the delay in bringing forward the subject of Union is a great mistake in the management of the question, and may lead to disastrous consequences by wasting time now and leaving you at the mercy of accident hereafter.

No one is more favourable than I am to the financial proposals which Galt means to

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make, but I anticipate I hope I may be mistaken considerable opposition to them, and I do not like to see the Union horse weighted with the burden of what may be unpalatable in the new financial project.

Besides, it appears to me that this mode of dealing with both subjects is in reality a postponement of the Union question to that of finance, which, considering the mode in which, and the purpose for which, the present Administration was formed, I think scarcely justifiable.

I most fully admit your right as leader of the Government to take your own line in a matter of party or Parliamentary management, but I felt and still feel that you would have good right to complain if I had permitted you, without remonstrance, to pursue a course of conduct which

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I consider injudicious, and then had made the results of your course of action the ground for strong measures on my part.

I need scarcely say that any step of mine which would tend to dissociate me from the completion of the great work of Union would be personally most disagreeable to me, and could be induced only by a sense of duty.

I have received in the past, and am likely to receive in the future, much more credit for the business than I say it most unaffectedly I feel I have any right to claim.

To you and to your colleagues is ^[really] due the honour of having founded a “new nationality” and one of the incidents of this policy of delay which gives me most uneasiness

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is that it makes you, who have hitherto led the way, appear to hang back now when all other parties to the matter are prepared to move on. ” However, liberavi animam meam. I have put you in full possession of my opinions, and I feel that now no one can complain of my adopting any line of conduct which may appear best to me.

Believe me to be

Yours most truly,

Monck

The Hon.

J.A. Macdonald