Document Information

Date: 1864-10-14
By: True Witness
Citation: “No title”, True Witness (14 October, 1864)
Other formats: TBA

It is easy, by leaving out, or suppressing a single word of an opponent’s argument to make him appear in a ludicrous light. Thus has the Courier du Canada dealt with us, by omitting the single word “Colonial.” We had argued with him that, whilst we intended to express no opinion hostile to “Confederation,” we objected to the scheme of union proposed for the B. N. A. Colonies, seeing that Colonial Confederation, in the proper sense of the term Confederation, was impossible.

We cited, first the definition of Confederation given by the Canadien of Quebec; and then the terms upon which alone, according to that journal not unfavorable to the Ministerial policy, a Confederation is possible:—

“In order that there be a Confederation, there must be a certain number of sovereign independent States delegating to a central government a definite portion of their rights and their powers.”—Canadien, August 26.

To this definition of, and to the conditions assigned by the Canadien as indispensably necessary to any real Confederation, we supposed that the Courrier du Canada would not object, and we therefore gave it as the major premiss of our syllogism.

Our minor was:—

“But Colonies are not sovereign independent States.”

And therefore our conclusion was against, not “Confederation” as the Courrier du Canada in its issue of the 28th ult. incorrectly asserts—but against “Colonial” Federation.” Here are our words:—

“Therefore is it that we oppose the proposed plan of Colonial Federation, since no matter in what terms it may be conceived, it proposes to saddle us with a sovereign central government which in our actual position must derive its authority, not from within, or from the States over which it bears rule: but ab extra, and from an Imperial Government with which our connection must cease ere many years be past, and to which, and to the plenitude of whose authority, the said central government would then inevitably succeed. Our position would then be that of a subject Province, not that of a State or independent member of a Confederation.”—TRUE WITNESS, 23rd ultimo.

Our argument is of course a legitimate subject of criticism, and as such the Courrier du Canada had the right to deal with it; but we contend that it had not the right to misrepresent it, either by the suggestio falsi, or by the suppressio veri—by adding of its own thereunto, or by suppressing the word “Colonial,” upon which our argument entirely depended, and which we had therefore because of its significance expressly marked in Italics. It is, we will not say dishonest, but scarcely within the limits of honorable discussion, thus first to distort an opponent’s meaning, and then to hold him up to ridicule as inconsistent and self-contradictory. We certainly expected better things from the Courrier du Canada.

Once again therefore—and we have the right to ask the Courrier du Canada to set us right with his readers to whom he has grossly misrepresented us—we will define our position.

Without committing ourselves on the question of “Confederation” which has not yet come up for discussion, because there can only be Confederation (as the Canadien says), between “Sovereign Independent States,” and the British North American Colonies are not “Sovereign Independent States“—we declare ourselves decidedly opposed to that proposed mongrel union of the said Colonies to which the ludicrous misnomer of Confederation is applied by certain of our Ministerial contemporaries.—It is “Colonial Federation,” not Federation that we oppose; and we oppose the former because “Colonial.”

Colonial Confederation is impossible; and the term is employed only to deceive the less educated classes of the people, and thus to induce them to swallow the nasty dose of representation by population, and to submit to the unjust and insolent pretensions of Protestant U. Canada. When the question of a real, not a bogus, Confederation shall come up—a Confederation in which the essential principle is clearly laid down, “that the Federal Government holds from the States, and not the States from the Federal Government,” then will it be time enough to discuss the merits or demerits of a Federal form of Government. At the present it is enough for us to expose a gross imposture, and a dangerous snare.

And if after all that we have said the Courrier du Canada still cannot or will not understand us, we will indicate a method by following which our meaning will become clear to him.—Let him take a sheet of paper, and write out thereon a clear and exhaustive definition of the words Federation and Confederation, distinguishing sharply wherein a Federal Union differs essentially, or formally, from a Legislative Union.—When he shall have done this, we do not fear that we shall be any longer unintelligible to him.

And if he should still ask what is the object of the TRUE WITNESS in opposing the “constitutional changes” proposed to us by the Ministry as “Colonial Confederation,” we tell him again that our object is to assure to Lower Canada the chance of taking part in a real Confederation when the time for such a measure has arrived. The day must come when what are now British Colonies shall become independent States. It is our desire, it should be the object of every patriotic Canadian, that when that day arrives, the position of the several Provinces or Colonies towards one another shall be as was the position towards one another of the Thirteen Colonies which in the last century wrested their independence from Great Britain, when that independence was acknowledged by the Government of George III. We would, that when our connection with the Imperial Government of Great Britain shall have been dissolved, Lower and Upper Canada should then occupy as towards one another the positions respectively occupied towards one another by Massachusetts and Virginia at the close of the war of American Independence. Then indeed, and in such circumstance, but in such circumstances only, would Upper and Lower Canada be able to contract a real and mutually profitable Federal Union.—