Document Information

Date: 1864-11-11
By: True Witness
Citation: “Sectional Delicacy and Sectional Morality”, True Witness (11 November, 1864)
Other formats: TBA

SECTIONAL DELICACY AND SECTIONAL MORALITY.

—Much disappointment was felt and expressed in Lower Canada and by the Lower Canadian press, in that at the Montreal Banquet no declaration was made as to the results arrived at by the Conference lately held at Quebec to determine the conditions of a Union of the British North American Provinces. This declaration we were assured by the Lower Canadian Ministry and their friends could not be made, because delicacy required that the proceedings of the delegates should be laid before the Imperial Government, before they were given to the Canadian public; and because every member was in honor bound not to divulge what had taken place in the secret sittings of the Conference, and of which secrets he had cognisance only through his official position. This explanation of the reticence of the French Canadian Ministers present at the Montreal Banquet, was accepted; their decision to keep the results of their deliberations secret was acquiesced in; and their motives were no doubt duly appreciated.

Other laws of delicacy, quite another code of morality, however obtain as we go West; and the reasons assigned above for keeping the decisions of the Conference a secret at Montreal, and from the people of Lower Canada, are without weight in Toronto and in the case of Upper Canadians. No feelings of delicacy, or sentiment of honor such as closed the lips of M. Cartier in Montreal, deterred the President of the Council from speaking out in the capital of the West, and from divulging all the secrets of the Council chamber of the Quebec Conference to the expectant ears of an Upper Canadian audience. The depths of this mystery the Minerve of Saturday last vainly attempts to fathom. If—thus does the Minerve state the case—if M. Cartier was bound in duty and in honor not to divulge the secrets of the Conference to a Montreal audience on the 29th of October, how is it that neither duty nor honor operated to prevent Mr. George Brown from divulging the same secrets to a Toronto audience, on the 3rd of November?

The explanation of the mystery is we think to be found in the fact that the divulging of the secret in Montreal implied the confession of a humiliating and crushing defeat to Lower Canada; whilst its divulgence in Toronto implied the proclamation of a full and glorious triumph to Upper Canada. Now no man likes to be the herald of his own discomfiture, and every soldier is well pleased to be the bearer of dispatches announcing a splendid victory. The results of the Conference are no doubt humiliating, most disastrous to Lower Canada; but for the same reason most satisfactory to the other section of the Province, whose political ascendency over her hated Romish rival thereby seems to be effectually secured. We can therefore easily understand why M. Cartier, himself a French Canadian, and a leader amongst French Canadians, should have shrunk from declaring the results arrived at by the Quebec Conference to a Lower Canadian assemblage; and we find it equally easy to understand why Mr. George Brown, an Upper Canadian, and the chief of the Clear Grits should gladly avail himself of the first opportunity that presented itself for proclaiming the triumph of Clear-Grit principles, and the defeat of Conservatism to an Upper Canadian audience. As Samuel Weller would say “’tis human natur.”

The Minerve may deal with our explanation of the mystery as it pleases, but we think that it will be unable to suggest one more plausible, or which more naturally suggests itself to the looker on at the great game of politics now playing. There is also another little suggestion that we would take the liberty of offering to our contemporary. The Minerve, referring to the Toronto Banquet, and Mr. George Brown’s discourse, naïvely asks:—

“If Mr Brown has taken it upon him to divulge the secrets of the Conference, whilst M. Cartier deemed it his duty to abstain from so doing in Montreal, it must be admitted that Mr Brown is a terrible man, and that he was quite capable of violating the discretion solemnly promised by the members of the Conference at the beginning of their labors.

“But if Mr. Brown was authorised to act as he has done, we should like to know why the tongue of M. Cartier was not in like manner untied at Montreal.”—Minerve, Saturday, 5th inst.

A very pretty dilemma indeed: or it might be thus stated:—

If the reasons assigned by M. Cartier for not divulging the plan of Union agreed to by the Conference at the Montreal Banquet on Saturday the 29th ult., were valid, then Mr. George Brown has been guilty of conduct unbecoming a statesman and a gentleman in that he divulged that same plan in Toronto on the 3rd of November; and he is therefore one whom no true statesman or gentleman would associate with, or accept as his colleague in office.

But:—

If Mr. Brown was justified in divulging the plans of the Conference to a Toronto audience on the 3rd instant—then the reasons assigned by M. Cartier for not divulging that same plan to a Montreal audience on the 29th ult. were not valid; then M. Cartier was humbugging—to use a cant phrase—the people of Lower Canada, concealing from them a matter in which they were deeply interested, and on which they had the right to demand full information; and therefore M. Cartier who without valid reason kept that information from them, and assigned false reasons for his silence is not * *

We leave the Minerve to fill up the hiatus as the wisdom and long experience of our contemporary shall dictate.