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Date: 1865-01-20
By: True Witness
Citation: “No title”, True Witness (20 January, 1865)
Other formats: TBA

The Minerve will we trust allow us to make a few comments upon a passage which appeared in its columns, the other day, and in which our contemporary spoke of us as opposed to Confederation. This is not strictly true. We are not opposed to Confederation, although we do not approve of the details of the plan of the Union of the B. N. A. Colonies, adopted by the Quebec delegates. If indeed we approved of the programme by them drawn up, we might well be said “to be opposed to Confederation,—because in that programme from first to last, the idea, or fundamental principle of Confederation is ignored and set at naught. Our objection to it is this:—not that it contains a plan of Confederation, but in that it does not contain it, in that instead of a Confederation it proposes to us a system of Union the very opposite, or contradictory of Confederation. The very essence, the condition sine qua non of any conceivable Confederation is this:—That the States parties thereunto, are Sovereign and independent; and that the Central Government is their creature or agent exercising certain well defined powers by them especially delegated to it. Whether such a system of government is good or evil? is a question which we care not at present to discuss. This much may be said in its favor: that its adoption by the thirteen Colonies of North America enabled them to live together in peace and harmony for many years, and postponed the inevitable civil war now raging, for three quarters of a century: and that had they adopted a more highly centralised form of Union such as that which it is proposed to confer on the B. N. American Provinces, they would have been cutting one another’s throats before the close of the first half century of their national existence. The longevity of the American Union was due entirely to its non-centralising or Federal character.

The Minerve seems also to mistake the extent as well as the object of our opposition to the Quebec scheme of Union. We see with sorrow the difficulty of our position. We recognise that during 1864 Lower Canada has lost ground fearfully, and that Mr. George Brown and his Clear Grit friends have got altogether the whip-hand of us. We are not where, or what we were, a year ago. The enemy is in possession of all the outworks, and threatens speedily to establish himself in the citadel itself. We have been worsted,—and Mr. George Brown is so far triumphant and our master, that prudence dictates to us the expediency of entering into negotiations with the enemy—and since we must capitulate, of endeavoring to obtain the best terms possible for ourselves and our institutions. We do not think that such “best” terms have been obtained. Low as we have fallen, disastrous as the last year’s campaign has been to us, we still think that by a united and a vigorous effort, less ruinous conditions of capitulation might be obtained; and that though we must march out of the place, we should at least contend for the ordinary honors of war. This is the scope, or the extent of our opposition, for we scarce believe it possible for Lower Canada ever again to occupy the old vantage-ground which she last year abandoned. It is no use, as the proverb says, crying over spilt milk, and we must just try and make the best of a bad, of a very bad bargain. Owing to our own accursed internal divisions, to that greed of office which obtains amongst us, and to our lamentable deficiency in honest principle and negation of self, we have allowed the common enemy to effect an entrance within our defences: we cannot now, it is to be feared, cast him out or exorcise him: and we must therefore speak the foul fiend fair—and must endeavor by gentle means, and by such concessions as he may please to accept, to persuade him to take his departure before he has ruined us utterly, soul and body.

The plain statement or explanation of the case is this. Lower Canada could never have held her own so long as she has, against Mr. G. Brown and the Clear-Grits, but for the co-operation of the British Conservative party; and so long as these remained true to us, our position was impregnable. For some time past our British Allies have manifested much uneasiness, and have displayed a design to join with our enemies; and it is to this desertion, or threatened desertion of our quondam allies that must be attributed our late reverses, and the consequent necessity imposed on us of capitulating, or coming to terms. Several years ago, and during the discussions on the Clergy Reserves Bill, the TRUE WITNESS clearly foresaw, and repeatedly foretold what would be the inevitable result of the impolitic, and anti-Catholic course pursued on the secularisation question by soi-disant Lower Canadian Conservatives. We told them that by supporting secularisation, they were alienating their best friends, the British Conservative party, without whom they could not expect long to uphold the autonomy of Lower Canada. At the same time, Mr. George Brown in the Globe used to congratulate his friends on the certainty that secularisation would soon be followed by the “cordial hearty and complete junction” of all the Protestants of Canada against Catholic Lower Canada. And yet, in spite of these warnings, and remonstrances, our precious Catholic legislators, as deficient in prudence, as in religious principle, for the sake of a temporary party advantage, consented to give deep and unpardonable offence to their best, to their only faithful allies, the British Conservative party; and to place on our Canadian Statute Book, to their own indelible disgrace, the damnable proposition now formally condemned by the Sovereign Pontiff in his late Encyclical, that “It is desirable to remove all semblance of connection between Church and State.”—18th Vict. C. II.

If we contrast the above enunciation of principle by our so-called Catholic and Conservative legislators, with the proposition 55, just formally condemned by the Pope—to wit,—

“The Church ought to be separate from the State, and the State from the Church;”

we shall see no reason for wondering at the difficulties of our present position. We are superstitious enough to believe that national crimes merit, and often bring down on the guilty nation, national punishments. We are sufficiently ultramontane to believe on the word of the Successor of St. Peter, that in formally consenting to the principle that “it is desirable to remove all semblance of connection between Church and State,” our Catholic legislators were deliberately guilty of a great national sin and of quasi national apostacy: and in the political embarrassments which have since overtaken us, in the desertion of our former British Conservative allies, and in the consequent necessity of submitting ourselves to the rule of Mr. George Brown, we distinguish its just, inevitable and most appropriate punishment—of which the end however has not yet arrived.