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Date: 1865-03-13
By: The Montreal Herald
Citation: “Questions of Urgency”, The Montreal Herald (13 March, 1865)
Other formats: TBA
QUESTIONS OF URGENCY.
—We have to-day news, though in rather an incomplete shape, from the Island of Newfoundland, where the Confederation scheme has met with very much the same kind of reception as it has met with in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, and as, we dare to say, it would have met with in Canada, but for the opportune conversion of Mr. Brown, which operated a salvation as comprehensive as that worked by the antique conversions of the German and Frankish Kings to the Christian faith. Your Clothaires and Athelstans were pagans one day and sound Churchmen the next, and all their subjects, by a remarkable coincidence, were as obstinate as themselves up to the last moment, and became convinced simultaneously with their chief. It is to a similar phsycological phenomenon, we repeat, that we owe it that Canada is the only one of the B. N. A. Provinces in which Confederation meets with any success. We pointed out the other day that, while our Parliamentary leaders have informed the House that the Quebec convention was a treaty, not a word or letter of which must be altered, and the passage of which did not admit an instant of delay, the ministers of the other Provinces, not only informed their Parliaments that they were consulted in the ordinary sense of the term, viz, for the purpose of learning their opinions, but that the measure would not be hurried on at all. The news from Newfoundland is that the Attorney-General there, finding the opinions of the people strongly against the measure, had announced his intention not to test the question—not to dissolve the House upon it—but to let it stand over until a new election should have taken place in due course, sometime within the next twelvemonths. This leads us to speculate with some curiosity on the elements which constitute the urgency of a question in the Canadian Parliament, and on the extraordinarily evanescent characteristics of those elements which permit questions of life and death importance to-day to disappear, be replaced by others—also of the last importance—and then reappear, without any settlement, and, as Mr. Lincoln said after Sumter—so far as we know—with nobody hurt. We all recollect when Rep by Pop, as the Palladium of the country was irreverently nick-named by the profane, was the one thing needful. If there were another subject on which the eyes of the Upper Canadian patriot were turned with an equal intensity of interest, it was the claim of the Province to the whole of the North-West territory vice the Hudson Bay Company to be dispossessed. Mr. MacDougall, it will be remembered, developed this thesis in a powerful and beautiful oration during the eventful session of the Parliament whose vote on the Militia bill led to the formation of the McDonald-Sicotte Government. He even, as our readers will remember, took the extreme step of looking to Washington “as the alternative of getting it adopted.” We may add that there was another theory of urgency on the other side of the House, which was that the thing needed of all others was to put 50,000 armed men on foot at the expense of the Province, with another 30,000 in reserve; but as the Sicotte-McDonald Ministry arose out of the opposition to that warlike measure, it not unnaturally declined to take that view on their accession. Singular to relate, however, the urgency of Representation by Population disappeared at the same moment, and Mr. MacDougall felt it to be as much an affront to suppose that his head was ever towards the Yankee Capital, as it would be to imagine of a Mussulman that he had prayed in any other position than facing the city of Mecca. Mr. Brown even concurred in the opinion that temporarily, at any rate, the country might be saved without his pet remedy. But then we must have equilibrium restored between the revenue and the expenditure. That was the measure which, if carried, would justify us in crying Eureka, and to carry this Mr. Macdougall was ready to vote Rep. by Pop. a humbug. After a time the Macdonald-Sicotte Ministry and the Macdonald-Dorion Ministry were beaten one after another, the equilibrium still, we fear, unrestored, though in rapid progress in that direction. Then came the Tache-Macdonald Government, and strange to say, the 50,000 troops on foot and 30,000 of reserve the voting of which, within a week, had been two years before essential to the quiet sleeping of old women in their beds, had ceased to have any urgency whatever; and we need not say that this Ministry had no opinion whatever of the equilibrium. It is true that Sir E. Tache did inform the Council in his first speech after taking office, that he conceived the whole militia of the country should be ready to rush to the frontier at the call of the bugle; but he took no steps to realize that project. In due course the Tache – Macdonald Government was beaten. Then came the Tache-Macdonald-Brown arrangement, which has the merit of combining the height of corruption with the most spotless purity in the same Cabinet. Not a word about the equilibrium, although Mr. Macdougall again makes one of the Ministry; not a word about the army or the bugle. This Government was, it is true, obliged to postpone any active measures; but they gave us the benefit of their programme, and according to this, the thing of most pressing importance was to heal the dissensions of the country. This was to be done by a plan which would be rep. by pop.: if you looked at it from any where West of Kingston, and equal representation if you regarded it from the Eastern side of that parallel of longitude. It was, however, of first-rate necessity, and was to be called “Federation of Canada,” with leave to the Sister Provinces,—greatly envying our happiness, as is set forth in the declarations in libel suits—to come in and enjoy a share of our Paradise. We were to be federated at any rate—we were to have this subtle and pleasing contrivance of Rep. by Pop—which would look like something else—at all events, and that with a few months; and then outsiders might ask admittance at their leisure. Federation of Canada was the urgency of the hour. In two or three weeks, however, the public learned that this most weighty business was to be abandoned for another. Confederation instead of federation became rhe order of the day, and we know how absolutely necessary it has been to carry that, whether any one would confederate with us or not. At last, however, it has become clear that others will not confederate; and now we have a new question of urgency, which is that of the fortifications. The previous question had to be carried to shut off all proposals of amendment to the confederation scheme, not because it is of any use saying we will unite with people who choose to be separate; but because Mr. Jno. A. Macdonald and Mr. Brown, and perhaps some more gentlemen, find it absolutely necessary to go to London and see about the fortifications. What a nurse of statesmen is this Canada! What a shame that those she breeds should not have a wider career!