Document Information

Date: 1864-09-09
By: True Witness
Citation: “No title”, True Witness (9 September, 1864)
Other formats: TBA

Our respected contemporary the Courrier du Canada will, we trust, take it in good part if we point out to him an error in respect to the TRUE WITNESS whereinto, in his issue of the 29th ult., he falls; our contemporary says:—

“The True Witness has almost always declared itself against the project of a Confederation.”

This is not strictly correct, because, on the contrary, we have always abstained, and explicitly declared our intention to abstain, from all consideration of the abstract question of Confederation—for the excellent reason that no such question is as yet, or for many long years can possibly be, before the country. If the Courrier du Canada will honor us with a perusal, he will find us carefully guarding, or at all events endeavoring to guard, ourselves against the suspicion even of pronouncing any opinion upon the merits of Federation or Confederation, by the employment of the following terms:—

“For the present carefully abstaining from hazarding any opinion on the merits or demerits of Federation.”—True Witness.

Our contemporary has therefore misapprehended, and consequently has unintentionally misrepresented us. He will surely not take it amiss that we point out to him his error—of which ambiguity of language on our part may have been the cause; and that we endeavor to explain to him once for all our actual position.

“Federation” is a league or compact betwixt two or more sovereign and independent States—(sovereign and independent at least as towards one another)—in virtue of which the said sovereign States expressly delegate a clearly defined portion of their several functions to their creature the “Federal” or central government. A Federation in short is simply a political league or partnership for a particular object—that object being mutual protection against foreign aggression; but in which the autonomy or distinctive political existence of each particular State composing it, is carefully preserved. A Legislative Union on the contrary, may exist as in the case of Upper and Lower Canada, without any mutual consent, league, or compact; Legislative Union also implies the fusion or merging of the several nationalities—parties to the Union—into one; and therefore, we hesitate not to avow with M. Rameau, that of the two, we prefer a Federative to a Legislative Union—and if by means of a real Federal Union we could get rid of the incubus of a Legislative Union that now presses on us, we would accept the former gladly.

But we have said that such a Federation is impossible, indeed inconceivable, under our actual circumstances; for the simple reason that there can be no league or fœdus betwixt Upper and Lower Canada, as two sovereign and independent States, until such time as they do stand towards one another in the relative positions of two sovereign and independent States; or in other words, until the existing iniquitous Legislative Union be repealed, and their several Legislatures be restored to Upper and Lower Canada respectively.

In the second place we have argued that a Federation, so long as Canada remains a British Province, would be at the best useless, expensive, and cumbersome ; would in all probability be injurious to the autonomy of Lower Canada ; and would certainly operate to her disadvantage when the Imperial connection should have ceased, since she would then find herself bound to Upper Canada by ties which would impede her freedom of action, and prevent her from asserting her State Rights; in the bold and constant assertion of which Rights alone, under a Federal form of Government, can freedom be preserved. The proofs of our propositions are very simple; we have already exposed them to the public, and they are unanswerable.

All the necessary functions of government, local and general, are in the case of every British Colony, performed by two bodies; one the Imperial, the other the Provincial, Government. Now a Federal Government, implies a third government interpolated betwixt these two ; and as every government must have some functions, it follows — unless we create new functions for our new government, as well a new government to exercise these new functions—that the latter must encroach upon the functions of, either the Imperial, or of the Provincial Government. We have a moral certainty that the former, or Imperial Government will not give up any of its functions, or suffer them to be encroached upon ; and with the same certitude we may therefore predicate that the functions of this new hybrid government, interpolated betwixt the Imperial and the Provincial Governments, will encroach upon the legitimate functions of the latter, or Provincial Government.

In short the Imperial Government actually discharges for us all the legitimate functions of a Federal Government. It manages our Foreign Affairs ; provides the military and naval armaments requisite for our protection, and the defence of our trade on the high seas ; it regulates our intercourse with foreign nations, and by it, our attitude towards all other Powers is determined ; it declares war for us, and it makes peace ; it concludes Treaties, and in short discharges every conceivable function that, with due regard to its autonomy, or “State-Rights” any member of a Federation would concede to its central or Federal Government.* All British Colonies are already Federated under one head, or central Government, resident at Westminster, even as the head of the late American Federation was resident at Washington ; and whilst we remain British Colonies or Provinces, we need no other Federal or Central Government than that which we already possess, and which abundantly discharges for us all the legitimate functions of a Federal Government—to wit, these of an agent entrusted with the management of our common Foreign Affairs.

But this state of things cannot last for ever. The day will come when we shall cease to be British Provinces, and when we shall have to set up in business for ourselves ; and for that day we should prepare ourselves, as for an inevitable evil, even as the Clear-Grits and Liberals look forward to it, and seek to precipitate its advent. Now we put it to the Courrier du Canada, whether it would not be better for Lower Canada, when that day arrives, to find herself in the attitude of a sovereign and independent State as towards Upper Canada, and therefore free to make her own terms with her neigbor as to the Federation which might then perhaps be advisable—than to find herself already hampered by the terms and conditions of a mongrel Union, miscalled “Federation,” and in virtue of which many of those functions which a truly sovereign and independent State would reserve to itself, would already have been made over, irrevocably, to a central government in which her enemies, the enemies of her laws, her language and her religion, would be in an overwhelming majority ? Yes, we say ; if we look forward to a favorable and real “Federation” to-morrow, and when our connection with our present Federal or Imperial Head shall have ceased, and rendered another Federation possible and desirable, we must naturally be opposed to that mongrel kind of Federation which it is proposed to impose upon us to day. The pear is not yet ripe.

Instead therefore of representing the TRUE WITNESS as opposed to Confederation, the Courrier du Canada would deal more justly with us were it to say, that the TRUE WITNESS looks upon the Federation of Upper and Lower Canada at the present moment, and under our actual circumstances—i.e., whilst a British Province, and whilst bound together in Legislative Union as one Province—as undesirable, and indeed as morally impossible.

That which the TRUE WITNESS opposes, is the scheme of reform, or “constitutional change,” announced by the President of the Council through the columns of the Globe, as the scheme to which, under the pseudonyme of Federation, the Ministry have given their assent. To this scheme we have offered, and shall ever offer, our opposition; because it is insulting to Lower Canada, and dangerous to the, material, interests at least of the Church. In this we trust that our friend—if he will permit us to call him so—the Courrier du Canada will see nothing factious, no spirit of party, no ill will towards the persons—many of them no doubt most estimable men—of whom the Ministry is composed; and even this opposition to their scheme we will withdraw whenever our contemporary shall have shown us, that there can be a real Federation—i.e., league betwixt two independent States—betwixt Upper and Lower Canada so long as Upper and Lower Canada are not two independent States, and form but a political unit; and that the interests of Lower Canada will be well and safely provided for under that form of Government, or “Federation!” which the President of the Council tells us, without contradiction from his colleagues, the Ministry have agreed to impose on us—and under which, according to M. Rameau, our second condition would be worse than our first. Of course the Courrier du Canada will understand that we hazard no opinion as to the truth or falsity of Mr. George Brown’s assertions as to the assent of the French Canadian-section of the Ministry to the scheme announced in the Globe as the Ministerial plan of Federation; whilst, however, those assertions shall have been formally uncontradicted, we must deal with them as if their truth were admitted.

* With the one exception, that our present Federal Government can impose no taxes on us even for Federal purposes.