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Date: 1867-02-14
By: The Montreal Herald
Citation: “Mr. McGee’s Speech at Halifax”, The Montreal Herald (14 February, 1867)
Other formats: TBA

MR. MCGEE’S SPEECH AT HALIFAX.

—The speech of the Hon. member for Montreal to his friends at Halifax, appears to us to make manifest one of the great evils of the scheme which it was intended to applaud. Mr. McGee stated, no doubt with a full conviction that he carried his audience with him, that he would himself greatly prefer a Legislative union to the plan, which though so utterly opposed to the form of a really united Government, distinguished as a Legislative Union, he nevertheless esteems as excellent. But that was not all. If he had contented himself with the profession of his preference for one mode of government, but his willingness to take the next best and be contented with it, his remarks would have been from one point of view statesmanlike enough. We have in our every day life constantly to take the course of choosing between two evils, or between two goods; but choosing frankly and definitively, with the determination to carry out without subsequent hesitations the choice which we have made. Not such was the prospect held out by Mr. McGee to his friends at Halifax. He spoke of accepting Confederation only because without taking that first step it would be impossible to take the second, and he plainly intimated his opinion that the first step was to be legitimately followed up and succeeded by another. The era of revolution, therefore, as the French say, is not to be closed. So soon as we have attained this blessed measure of pacification and prosperity we are to have demonstrations of its blunders, inconveniences and shortcomings, and consequent agitation for another movement, or step the second. That is the only meaning that can be attached to Mr. McGee’s speech. We shall not here discuss the difference between a Legislative Union and Confederation. Both have certain advantages, if the leading idea which respectively underlies each of them be honestly and thoroughly carried out. The hotch potch between the two, compounded in our Quebec constitution, on the contrary has no consistency in itself and sets up an expensive machinery of local governments which will have no real utility if the Central Government shall exercise the control which the constitution gives it, and will create conflicts between bodies who suppose themselves to be possessed of authority, and that other body by which they find themselves checkmated. And this brings us to the point suggested by the remarks of Mr. McGee. It is the utterly deceptive and sandy foundation upon which this whole house of confederation is built. It is warranted to have qualities directly opposite to each other—functions and tendencies which can never be reconciled. Mr. McGee’s was a very popular speech in Halifax, and so it would have been before any English speaking audience in Lower Canada, who could shut their eyes to facts while their ears were tickled with words. But Mr. Cartier with all his boasted courage would never have ventured to deliver it before an audience of his own supporters in this part of the World, nor we believe would Mr. McGee before a company composed largely of French Canadians. The reason is perfectly obvious. The great objection to a Legislative union notoriously, and we may add naturally, even if mistakenly, comes from the French Canadian population. We are not sure indeed that such a union would be popular even in Upper Canada, where the people are taught to consider that they will hereafter have uncontrolled management of their own affairs. At any rate the majority in this part of Canada are utterly opposed to it, and are certainly under the impression that whatever other effect Confederation may have, it will make French Canadians masters in Lower Canada. They fear—we admit, naturally—fear, to be swamped by political relations with an overwhelming majority of another race, and they would not accept any extension of these relations unless they had guarantees in a system which Mr. McGee, speaking to persons of another race, declares to be the mere stepping stone to the very danger against which they suppose themselves effectually secured. Here is revealed, to our minds, the weakness and the evil of the entire scheme. Concocted by persons whose interests and opinions have always been utterly adverse, it is put forward by each party as having a tendency the direct opposite of that which is claimed for it by the other. Mr. Brown, who has for years professed to struggle against Lower Canadian domination, tells his readers in the Globe that he has at last triumphed over Mr. Cartier, and obtained the constitutional reform for which he has contended. Mr. Cartier will certainly not admit that Mr. Brown has been the victor, or that the influence of his countrymen has been diminished in his hands. A reform carried in this way is none: it is a mere provision of materials for further conflict to be begun when one or the other of the two parties which both think themselves successful shall find itself disappointed. It is as if the Imperial Ministry should attempt a juggle with the popular feeling about a reform bill, and should profess in meetings of workingmen to give the workingmen an increase of influence in the representation of the country, and at the same time should assure their hearers in meetings of another class that the influence of the present body of electors would not be diminished. There can be no real comprehensible improvement when all parties adhere to their old views, and each one believes that the change will promote interests and tendencies the opposite of those which the other party seeks to strengthen.