Document Information

Date: 1865-01 – 1865-04
By: The Edinburgh Review
Citation: “Report of Resolutions adopted at a Conference of Delegates from the Provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, and the Colonies of Newfoundland and Prince Edward’s Island, held in the City of Quebec, on the 10th of October, 1864, as the Basis of a proposed Confederation of those Provinces and Colonies,” The Edinburgh Review, Vol. CXXI (January-April, 1865), 181-199.
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ART. VII.—Report of Resolutions adopted at a Conference of Delegates from the Provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, and the Colonies of Newfoundland and Prince Edward’s Island, held in the City of Quebec on the 10^th of October, 1864, as the Basis of a proposed Confederation of those Provinces and Colonies.

AMALGAMATION is the order of the day, the approved process by which capitalists of all classes are doubling their profits and defying their competitors. From our railway companies and millionaires the co-operative infection has spread to our mechanics and artisans. Men of all sorts and conditions, at home and abroad (theologians excepted), are seeking in union that strength with which it is proverbially identical. A colossal project of this nature has been just presented to our notice in the proposed fusion of the five provinces of British North America, ‘with power to add to their number’ as many of the communities lying within British boundaries between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as may, on terms hereafter to be defined, elect to join this vast copartnership. Even to nations unconnected by political or geographical affinities with the parties more immediately concerned, the success or failure of a scheme embracing in its contingent operations an area exceeding that of Europe is no matter of indifference. To Great Britain it is impossible to over-estimate the importance and extent of the ultimate consequences depending on this crisis in the history of her Transatlantic provinces. For there are problems of colonial policy the solution of which cannot, without peril, be indefinitely delayed, and though Imperial England is doing her best to keep up appearances in the management of her five and forty dependencies, the political links which once bound them to each other and to their common centre are evidently worn out. Misgivings haunt the public mind as to the stability of an edifice which seems to be founded on a reciprocity of deception, and only to be shored up for the time by obsolete and meaningless traditions. Economists fail to comprehend the value of outlying provinces which garrison their frontiers with our troops, while they exclude our manufactures from their markets. Even orthodox politicians, who would shrink from a Colonial Emancipationist as from a pestilent heretic, cannot help asking themselves sometimes whether it is possible or desirable that these little islands of our’s, whose whole area scarcely exceeds 130,000 square miles, should for ever retain, even a nominal dominion, over a fifth of the habitable globe. These hints at a possible disturbance of their existing relations very naturally shock our Colonists, who have no wish to part company with us, and think it very wicked even to talk of dismembering ‘an empire on which the sun never sets.’ It is not unnatural that the desire to maintain a connexion with the power and wealth of the mother-country should be stronger on the side of the Colonies than it is on that of the British public, for they owe almost everything to us, and we receive but little in return from them. Moreover, the existing system of colonial government enables them to combine all the advantages of local independence with the strength and dignity of a great empire. But the Imperial Government, in the meantime, has to decide, not as of old whether Great Britain is to tax the Colonies, but to what extent the Colonies are to be permitted to tax Great Britain—a question which is daily becoming more urgent and less easy of solution. To register the edicts of Provincial Legislatures is now almost the only remaining function of the Colonial Office; and in the absence of any distinct indications of public opinion at home as to the course to be pursued in the administration of our Dependencies, the smallest contributions from Colonial sources which may tend to simplify the task of the authorities in Downing Street will, no doubt, be thankfully received.

The new British American programme has arrived at a seasonable period of indecision, and this circumstance will insure for its promoters, at all events, a favourable hearing. We learn from Mr. Cardwell’s despatch to Lord Monck of the 3rd December that this scheme has already received the deliberate consideration of Her Majesty’s Government; and in the course of the ensuing spring it is expected that a deputation will arrive in this country for the purpose of bringing over the Quebec propositions, which will then be submitted in the form of a Bill to the Imperial Legislature. The time is therefore come when this subject must be fully discussed, and no question of greater interest is likely to come before Parliament in the session of 1865, for it raises numerous points of great novelty and complexity, and it will affect the future condition of a vast extent of territory, of a people verging on independence, and, in a less degree, of England herself.

Of all the provinces added to our empire during the last three centuries, none have on the whole proved less troublesome to the parent State than the long belt which extends from the shores of Lake Superior to the banks of Newfoundland. We have heard, it is true, in times past, of Canadian rebellions, we hear sometimes now of hostile tariffs, and it might puzzle the wisest of our statesmen if he were challenged to put his finger on any single item of material advantage resulting to ourselves from our dominions in British North America, which cost us at this moment about a million sterling a-year. But this is the sort of thing that happens to us everywhere, and we are used to it. Retainers who will neither give nor accept notice to quit our service must, it is assumed, be kept on our establishment. There are nevertheless special and exceptional difficulties which beset us in this portion of our vast field of empire. For though Kaffirs and Maories have proved more dangerous neighbours to our colonists and more costly enemies to ourselves than the Red Indians, whose race the threefold agencies of rifles, whiskey, and small-pox seem almost to have exterminated, the permanent occupation of that frontier of three thousand miles which extends from the Bay of Fundy to the Straits of San Juan presents problems more serious than any we have yet had to solve in New Zealand or at the Cape. Although half these difficulties have no place in the estimate of the sanguine prophets who predict the eternity of the American civil war, or (which is much the same thing) its duration until the utter exhaustion of both parties in the conflict, yet, even assuming for the moment that such calculations afford a safe basis of action, they afford no provision against the contingencies of an anarchy more perilous than filibustering expeditions or organised invasions, and they may fail to protect against the ambition or resentment of a powerful neighbour that vast region which, though claimed for England by our maps and guaranteed to us by our treaties, is during a seven months’ winter inaccessible to our legions, and therefore indefensible by our arms. When therefore we are told that the battalions of Great Britain are the ægis under which these unapproachable provinces propose to shelter themselves against all comers from all quarters of the compass, and that they may possibly call upon us at any moment in mid-winter, as they did three years ago, for ten or a dozen regiments to protect them from the consequences of some quarrel of our own, and when we reflect how utterly inadequate such a garrison would be, unless supported by a far more efficient local militia than is now in existence, to defend those provinces from the only enemy they fear, it is scarcely surprising that any project which may offer a prospect of escape from a political situation so undignified and unsatisfactory should be hailed with a cordial welcome by all parties concerned.

The movement which culminated last October in the Quebec Conference, and in the Resolutions which have since been reported to the Home Government, novel as it may appear to us on this side of the Atlantic, represents no novel idea to our North American colonists. The scheme of a Federal Union between the Canadas and the maritime provinces was indeed ventilated six years ago, in a correspondence between the Duke of Newcastle and the Canadian Government, but the mainspring of the Federative Movement must be sought not in any past or present impulse from Imperial authorities, but in the political circumstances, necessities, and instincts of the provinces in which it has originated. It has, in fact, grown out of the crisis or (as it has been called in Canada) the ‘dead-lock’ by which the advocates of ‘Representation by Population’ have for some years past persistently impeded the practical operations of every successive government which has refused to adopt their policy. When the Canadas, which were divided into two provinces by Pitt in 1791, were reunited in 1840, the terms of union, so far as the electoral laws of the colony were concerned, failed to provide for the contingency which has since arisen of a reversal of the relative proportions of population between the two provinces. West Canada, a large portion of which was then an unreclaimed forest, has now a population of more than a million and a half, exceeding by five or six hundred thousand that of the Eastern Province, to which nevertheless an equal voice in the Canadian parliament is still allotted under the Act of 1840. By the leading men of Upper Canada this state of things has been resented as an anomaly and a grievance, and failing to obtain redress for it, they resorted to a policy of obstruction which has proved fatal to many measures of admitted importance to all parties and districts in the colony. The inconvenience of this position of affairs led, not unnaturally, those who were suffering under it to look out for the basis of a compromise which might, at all events, afford a prospect of the Queen’s Government being successfully carried on. This required basis has been found in the project of a British American Federation in which ‘Representation by Population’ should be accepted as a cardinal principle of union.

It was, therefore, no crude or capricious fancy which brought together the delegates from Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, who assembled last September in Prince Edward’s Island. The preliminary gathering at Charlotte Town had for its object to establish the basis of those negotiations which, after a further exchange of compliments between the representatives of the contracting Powers at Halifax and at St. John’s, took the more definite and detailed form in which they are now presented to our notice, in the Resolutions passed six weeks afterwards at the Conference of Quebec. In this last-named conclave, composed of accredited representatives of all political parties in the five provinces of British North America, the various topics arising out of the project they had taken upon themselves to discuss appear to have been handled, if we may judge from the results before us, with earnestness, vigour, and moderation. The hearty and almost unanimous approval with which the Quebec programme has been greeted, both in the colonies and in this country, disinclines us, especially pending those discussions in the Imperial Parliament, which it must of course necessitate, to dwell critically on its details. There are, nevertheless, points directly involving Imperial interests on which, before the Executive Government is empowered by Parliament to take action in the matter, it seems expedient that some expression of public opinion should be invited.

It will shorten and simplify our criticisms if we assume at the outset that these international negotiations have been undertaken with the deliberate and honest purpose of carrying them out to their fullest consequences. Let it be taken for granted that our North American fellow-subjects are as hearty as ourselves in their devotion to our Sovereign and her empire, and that no evidence is needed to prove the preamble of their project. Dismissing, therefore, from our contemplation all the broderies of colonial orations, banquets, balls, déjeûners, and receptions, which have been festooned round the council-chamber of the North American plenipotentiaries, let us examine for a few minutes their scheme as a dry matter of business.

Their first edition only is before us. How far it may have since been amended or revised, we do not profess to know. Any alterations it may have experienced have been probably rather in the details than in the general outlines of the plan. As to its primary objects, let the delegates speak for themselves in their six opening Resolutions, which run as follows:—

‘That the best interests and present and future prosperity of British North America will be promoted by a Federal Union under the Crown of Great Britain, provided such Union can be effected on principles just to the several provinces.

‘That in the Federation of the British North American Provinces the system of Government best adapted under existing circumstances to protect the diversified interests of the several provinces and secure efficiency, harmony, and permanency in the working of the Union would be a general Government charged with matters of common interest to the whole country, and local Governments for each of the Canadas and for the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward’s Island, charged with the control of local matters in their respective sections,—provision being made for the admission into the Union, on equitable terms, of Newfoundland, the North-West Territory, British Columbia, and Vancouver.

‘That in framing a constitution for the general Government, the Conference, with a view to the perpetuation of our connexion with the mother-country, and to the promotion of the best interests of the people of these provinces, desire to follow the model of the British Constitution so far as our circumstances will permit.

‘That the executive authority or government shall be vested in the Sovereign of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and be administered according to the well-understood principles of the British Constitution by the Sovereign personally or by representative duly authorised.

‘That the Sovereign or representative of the Sovereign shall be Commander-in -Chief of the land and naval militia forces.

‘That there shall be a General Legislature for the Federated Provinces, composed of a Legislative Council and House of Commons.’

The qualifications, powers, and number of members who are to form the two Houses of the proposed Federal Parliament are then defined. The Legislative Council is to consist of seventy-six members, to be appointed by the Crown for life, in the following proportions for each province, viz.:—Twenty-four for Upper Canada, twenty-four for Lower Canada, ten for Nova Scotia, ten for New Brunswick, four for Newfoundland, and four for Prince Edward’s Island. All the members of the Legislative Council to be British subjects by birth or naturalisation, of the full age of thirty years, and possessing a property qualification of four thousand dollars.

The ‘House of Commons’ is to consist of 194 members, to be elected for five years, under the laws now in force in the several provinces respectively; the proportion of members to be returned by each province depending on the population as shown by each decennial census. At the first election each province is to be entitled to return members in the following proportions, namely:—Upper Canada, eighty-two; Lower Canada, sixty-five; Nova Scotia, nineteen; New Brunswick, fifteen; Newfoundland, eight; and Prince Edward’s Island, five. It is further provided that in all re-adjustments rendered necessary by increase of population in any province, the proportion of members to electors now fixed shall be retained.

The Legislative powers proposed to be committed to the Federal Parliament are thus set forth:—

‘The Federal Government shall have power to make laws for the peace, welfare, and good government of the Federated Provinces (saving the sovereignty of England), and especially laws respecting the following subjects:—

1. The public debt and property.
2. The regulation of trade. and commerce.
3. The imposition or regulation of duties of Customs on imports and exports, except on exports of timber, logs, masts, spars, deals, and sawn lumber, and of coal and other minerals.
4. The imposition or regulation of Excise duties.
5. The raising of money by all or any other modes or systems of taxation.
6. The borrowing of money on the public credit.
7. Postal service.
8. Lines of steam or other ships, railways, canals, and other works, connecting any two or more of the provinces together or extending beyond the limits of any province.
9. Lines of steamships between the Federated Provinces and other countries.
10. Telegraphic communication and the incorporation of telegraph companies.
11. All such works as shall, although lying wholly within any province, be specially declared by the Acts authorising them to be for the general advantage.
12. The Census.
13. Militia, military and naval service, and defence.
14. Beacons, buoys, and lighthouses.
15. Navigation and shipping.
16. Quarantine.
17. Sea fisheries.
18. Ferries between any province and a foreign country, or between any two provinces.
19. Currency and coinage.
20. Banking and the issue of paper money.
21. Savings-banks.
22. Weights and measures.
23. Bills of exchange and promissory notes.
24. Interest.
25. Legal tender.
26. Bankruptcy and insolvency.
27. Patents of invention and discovery.
28. Copyrights.
29. Indians and lands reserved for the Indians.
30. Naturalisation and aliens.
31. Marriage and divorce.
32. The criminal law (except the constitution of courts of criminal jurisdiction), but including the procedure on criminal matters.
33. For rendering uniform all or any of the laws relative to property and civil rights in Upper Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward’s Island, and Newfoundland, and for rendering uniform the procedure of all or any of the courts in these provinces; but any statute for this purpose shall have no force or authority in any province until sanctioned by the Legislature thereof.
34. The establishment of a general Court of Appeal for the Federated Provinces.
35. Immigration.
36. Agriculture.
37. And generally respecting all matters of a general character not specially and exclusively reserved for the local Governments and Legislatures.[1]

The appointment of lieutenant-governors is vested in the Federal Government, together with the control over all courts of justice and the judicial patronage of the superior courts in each province, the judges of which are to hold their offices during good behaviour, and to be removable only on the Address of both Houses of the Federal Parliament.

After providing that the local Legislature of each province shall be constituted in such manner as the existing Legislature of such province shall provide in the Act consenting to the Union, it is further resolved that the local Legislatures shall have power to make laws on the following subjects:—

‘Direct taxation and the imposition of duties on the export of timber, logs, masts, spars, deals, and sawn lumber, and of coals, and other minerals.

‘Borrowing money on the credit of the province.

‘The establishment and tenure of local offices, and the appointment and payment of local officers.

‘Education; saving the rights and privileges which the Protestant or Catholic minority in both Canadas may possess as to their denominational schools at the time when the Union goes into operation.

‘The sale and management of public lands, excepting lands belonging to the General Government.

‘Sea coast and inland fisheries.

‘The establishment, maintenance, and management of penitentiaries, and of public and reformatory prisons.

‘The establishment, maintenance, and management of hospitals, asylums, charities, and eleemosynary institutions.

‘Municipal institutions.

‘Shop, saloon, tavern, auctioneer, and other licenses.

‘Local works.

‘The incorporation of private or local companies, except such as relate to matters assigned to the Federal Legislature.

‘Property and civil rights, excepting those portions thereof assigned to the General Legislature.

‘Inflicting punishment by fine, penalties, imprisonment, or otherwise for the breach of laws passed in relation to any subject within their jurisdiction.

‘The administration of justice, including the constitution, maintenance, and organisation of the courts, both of civil and criminal jurisdiction, and including also the procedure in civil matters.

‘And generally all matters of a private or local nature.’

For the presumed purpose of obviating conflicts of authority between the Federal and local Legislatures it is further provided—

‘That in regard to all subjects over which jurisdiction belongs to both the General and Local Governments, the laws of the Federal Parliament shall control and supersede those made by the local Legislature, and the latter shall be void so far as they are repugnant to or inconsistent with the former.’

All powers of taxation are reserved to the representative branches of the Federal and local Legislatures, such imposts to be in all cases first recommended by message from the Governor-General or Lieutenant-Governor as the case may be. Any Bill of the General Legislature may be reserved for the Royal Assent, and may be disallowed by her Majesty (in accordance with the present practice) within two years. All monies and securities for money belonging to each province at the time of the Union, together with all the public works, the property of such province, shall be vested in the Confederation, which shall assume all the debts and liabilities of such province, such debts not to exceed at the time of Union certain amounts fixed by the Resolutions.

After various stipulations as to the details of Intercolonial finance, the document concludes with the following provisions:—

‘All engagements that may be entered into with the Imperial Government for the defence of the country shall be assumed by the Confederation.

‘That the Federal Government will secure without delay the completion of the Intercolonial Railway from Rivière-du -Loup through New Brunswick to Truro, in Nova Scotia.

‘The communications with the North-Western Territory, and the improvements required for the development of the trade of the great west with the seaboard, are regarded by this Conference as subjects of the highest importance to the Confederation, and should be prosecuted at the earliest possible period when the state of the Federal finances will permit the Legislature to do so.

‘The sanction of the Imperial and local Parliaments shall be sought for the union of the provinces on the principles adopted by the Conference.

‘The proceedings of the Conference, when finally revised, shall be signed by the delegates, and submitted by each deputation to its own Government, and the chairman is authorised to submit a copy to the Governor-General for transmission to the Secretary of State for the Colonies.’[2]

Such are the leading features of this important State Paper, which will receive, no doubt, at the hands of the Imperial Government and Parliament, the careful consideration which, without prejudging the merits of the case, it may be said unquestionably to deserve. ‘Will it work?’ is probably the first question which the statesman will ask himself as he contemplates the various cog-wheels and contrivances of this somewhat intricate political machinery. Assuming that the inventors are not mere theorists, but practical men who have an eye to their own best interests and the social and material progress of British North America, have they presented to us a scheme which will attain the objects they have in view, and which has in it the elements of permanent success? It is said, and perhaps truly, that in adopting the image and superscription of her Majesty as the frontispiece of their first edition, the authors of this Constitution prove themselves to be wise in their generation; and whatever may be the ultimate tendencies of their project, the problems which surround it are quite sufficiently numerous and perplexing, without adding to them at starting the quadrennial election of a chief magistrate, after the fashion of their Republican neighbours. It is, moreover, an evidence alike of their foresight and their tenacity of time-honoured traditions that they should have set before themselves as their model the framework of the British Constitution. Nor is it unworthy of remark, that in a project which may be said to have grown out of what we in England have regarded as a democratic movement, namely, the claim of representation by population, nearly all the changes suggested are of a distinctly ‘Conservative’ character. The property qualification of Legislative Councillors, which is now only temporary, is to be made continuous. Instead of being elected they are to be nominated for life.[3] Though the programme contains no specific proposition respecting the franchise, it is understood that the tendency of opinion in Canada is rather towards raising than lowering the qualification of electors. We do not hear a whisper of vote by ballot, nor is it proposed to shorten the duration of the Federal Parliaments. In order to centralise authority, and to reduce as far as may be to a municipal level the local Legislatures, all matters of a general ‘character’ are, in addition to those enumerated in the Resolutions, placed under the control of the Federal Government; and though the distinction attempted to be drawn between general and local matters is in some respects scarcely traceable in the draught minutes of the Conference, the object they had in view is sufficiently clear and intelligible. The selection of Ottawa as a metropolis has been dictated probably by the prudent principle which is said sometimes to guide republics in their choice of presidents, and prime ministers in their choice of bishops, namely, that of neutralising formidable rivalries by doing honour to insignificance. The financial arrangements as between Canada and the maritime provinces appear to have been based on the adoption by the Federal Government of the debts and liabilities of all, and the relinquishment on the part of the local Legislatures of all their revenues, except those arising from the sale of lands, and from certain export duties, the control over which each local Government respectively retains.

The concluding Resolutions, which have reference to the completion of the Intercolonial Railway and the opening of the North-West territory, are not so much items of bargain between the delegates as a recital of their common aims and interests in the prosecution to a successful issue of these important undertakings. The former has, it is well known, been the frequent subject of negotiations between the Imperial and Colonial Governments since the days of Lord Durham, and by correspondence recently laid before Parliament its accomplishment appears to depend on the result of pending applications from the North American provinces for an Imperial guarantee, to which, however, no reference is made in the document before us. This and all the undertakings contemplated for the development of the industrial resources of British America must be regulated (as the language of the Quebec Resolutions informs us) by the state of the Federal finances.

The result of these proposals, if carried into effect, would be the creation of a new State in North America, still retaining the name of a British dependency, comprising an area about equal to that of Europe, a population of about four millions, with an aggregate revenue in sterling of about two millions and a half, a debt of about sixteen millions, and carrying on a trade (including exports, imports, and intercolonial commerce) of about twenty-eight millions sterling per annum. If we consider the relative positions of Canada and the maritime provinces—the former possessing a vast and fertile back country, but no good harbours; the latter possessing good harbours but no back country—the former an unlimited supply of cereals but few minerals; the latter an unlimited supply of iron and coal but little agricultural produce—the commercial advantages of union between states so circumstanced are too obvious to need comment. The completion of the Intercolonial Railway, and the probable annexation of the fertile portions of the great North-Western territory to the new confederation, form a portion only of the probable consequences of its formation, the benefits of which will not be limited to the colonies alone, but in which Europe and the world at large will eventually participate. When the Valley of the Saskatchewan shall have been colonised, the communications between the Red River settlement and Lake Superior completed, and the harbour of Halifax united by one continuous line of railway with the shores of Lake Huron, the three missing links between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans will have been supplied; and a political project tending however remotely to such a consummation may well challenge the all but unanimous approval it has received from the commercial community in British North America. Politically speaking, it is equally manifest that a Confederation with an aggregate population of four millions could more cheaply and effectually provide for its civil government and for its defence, if necessary, against foreign attack or internal disturbance than the five isolated communities which it is now sought to combine. There are indeed those who, anticipating the inherent difficulties of federation, desire that more complete fusion of interests which a legislative union would effect, but (with the exception, perhaps, of Mr. Dorion, and those whose opinions he represents) the objectors to the scheme belong to a class who would go beyond the plan propounded rather than thwart it or stop short of it.

The real difficulties of the proposal consist in the due adjustment of the threefold relations between the Imperial, Federal, and Local Governments which the creation of this vast confederation will involve. The colonial combinations of which we have had experience in other parts, and at other periods of our empire, furnish few analogies for our guidance under the present peculiar conditions of the North American Colonies. The consolidation of the Windward and Leeward Islands under the Governments of Barbadoes and Antigua, which took place about thirty years ago, was an arrangement devised simply with a view to official convenience, and left untouched the constitutions of the several islands so combined. In the case of New Zealand, representative institutions were given to its six provinces, which were at the same time welded into a Federal Legislature, the Local and Federal Governments having been created simultaneously by an Act of the Imperial Parliament in 1852. The present proposals of the Quebec Conference differ, however, in some important particulars from the course actually adopted by Parliament in the case of New Zealand. The Provincial Councils of that colony, though inhibited by a restrictive clause from legislating on some twelve or thirteen interdicted topics, were in all other respects left free (subject to the royal veto) to manage their own affairs. By the British American programme, on the other hand, all matters of a general character not specifically enumerated as of local or concurrent jurisdiction, are intended to be placed under the authority of the Federal Government, and thereby the risks of conflict or attempts at ‘nullification’ on the part of the subordinate legislatures proportionally diminished. But the chief novelty, and, we may add, difficulty, presented by the Quebec scheme is in the circumstance that now for the first time in our colonial history five provinces, in all of which ‘responsible government’ is an established rule of administration, propose to superadd to their existing parliaments a superior and central machinery, in which the same system of government by party is to prevail under the nominal rule of the Queen’s representative. It will probably be admitted by all who have watched whether with favour or disapproval the working of ‘responsible government’ in the Colonies since its first introduction in Canada five and twenty years ago, that it is, to say the least of it, a system tending to reduce to the minimum the prerogatives of the Crown. Such a result will probably be its chief praise and justification in the estimate of those who regard the political maturity and eventual independence of our colonies as the great aim and object of Imperial policy. The practical difficulties, however, which beset the working of this critically-devised machinery were foreseen by its reputed inventor in 1839, and have since been sufficiently illustrated. Neither by Lord Sydenham, nor by his three successors, was it put in action; and it was not until Lord Elgin became Governor-General in 1847, that he commenced the process of ‘giving his confidence’ to each Executive Council in turn, retaining at the same time, through all changes of his policy, the confidence of his sovereign.

In the Australian Colonies and New Zealand, and wherever this system has been introduced, the Imperial Government has compounded for the advantages supposed to be inherent in it by a surrender of power, and by submitting to the inconveniences of a constant change in the Governor’s advisers. Whether on these terms ‘responsible government’ is a good or bad bargain, it is too late to inquire. It rests upon the doctrine by which Adam Smith justified government by party nearly a century ago. ‘Men desire,’ he says, ‘to have some share in the management of public affairs chiefly on account of the importance which it gives them. It is upon the power which the greater part of the leading men of every country have of preserving or defending their respective importance that the stability and duration of every system of free government depends.’ Whether this doctrine was rightly or wrongly applied to Canada a quarter of a century ago, we do not pretend to decide. The practical question we have now to ask is, looking at the hitches and dead-locks to which this system seems to be liable, when applied to one colony alone, how will it work when half a dozen ‘responsible governments’ are called upon to combine in the same confederation? Assuming even that all goes smoothly, the superaddition of a Federal Parliament to the existing institutions must, of course, increase the ordinary difficulties of constitutional government in all new countries where the supply of men uniting the qualifications of leisure, capacity, and inclination for the task of legislation is unequal to the demand. The legislative crew of the ‘British North America’ will not be less (including the local councils and assemblies) than between six and seven hundred hands, all told. Allowing for the frequent change of officers of all ranks, the question of keeping up the complement with so slender a political reserve to fall back upon, may be serious. This, however, is the affair of the colonists themselves. What we have to fear, and, if possible, to guard against, is the constant peril of a threefold conflict of authority implied in the very existence of a federation of dependencies retaining, as now proposed, any considerable share of intercolonial independence.

In order to illustrate our argument, let us suppose the Federation to be established, and a dispute respecting some project of law to arise between the Parliament of Newfoundland and the officer administering the government of that island. The dispute (as is the tendency of colonial quarrels) grows in the constitutional struggle, and ends in a ministerial crisis. The Lieutenant-Governor, on appealing from his intractable senate at St. John’s to the Central Executive at Ottawa, is supported in the first instance by the Governor-General in Council, but the Newfoundland members of the Federal House of Commons, finding perhaps that the question at issue is one in which the maritime provinces generally are interested, succeed in combining their representatives with those of the Opposition for the time being in Canada, and the result is a vote of censure on the Federal Executive, and a refusal to vote the salary of the Lieutenant-Governor on the annual estimates. Under these circumstances the Governor-General has the option of moving with the obedience and rapidity of a marionette, in accordance with the fluctuating will of the colonial managers who pull the wires, or he may adopt the more dignified course of submitting the whole case to the Imperial Government, thus involving it in an arbitration between two subordinate Legislatures, which (however it may be conducted) must end in the disappointment of one, and may imperil the loyalty of both.

The fact is, we may schedule as we please ‘local‘ and ‘general’ topics of legislation; we may define with the utmost possible distinctness the limits of each, or the concurrent authority of both Governments; we may equitably adjust financial liabilities, and allot to the central and provincial authorities their respective spheres of power over future redistributions and rearrangements; but it is on the accuracy and sharpness with which the prerogatives of the Federal Executive are defined that the success and permanence of a constitution, necessarily clogged with checks and counterpoises, must eventually depend. It is hardly to be expected that the local parliaments, with their responsible ‘ministers,’ will consent at once to be reduced to the rank of a parochial vestry, but it is by this process alone, and by their voluntary surrender of a very large share of the powers now left in their hands, that we can hope for a real consolidation of the provinces of British North America. If, as has been alleged, a Legislative Union is unattainable, because inconsistent with due securities for the rights guaranteed to the French Canadians by Treaty or by the Quebec Act, and Federation is therefore the only alternative, the vital question for the framers of this Constitution is how the inherent weakness of all Federations can in this instance be cured, and the Central Government armed with a Sovereignty which may be worthy of the name. It is the essence of all good Governments to have somewhere a true Sovereign power. A Sovereignty which ever eludes your grasp, which has no local habitation, Provincial or Imperial, is, in fact, no Government at all. Sooner or later, the shadow of authority which is reflected from an unsubstantial political idea must cease to have power among men.

It has been assumed by those who take a sanguine view of this political experiment that its authors have steered clear of the rock on which the Washington Confederacy has split. But if the weakness of the central government is the rock alluded to, we fear that unless in clear water and smooth seas the pilot who is to steer this new craft will need a more perfect chart than the Resolutions of the Quebec Conference afford, to secure him against the risks of navigation. It is true that instead of a president elected every four years you have a governor-general appointed by the Queen every six. It is true also that the area of his nominal dominion presents now no topic more formidable than the expiring jealousies of race between our French and English colonists, to imperil the harmony of the British Federation. It is true that we have also now genuine aspirations of personal devotion to the sovereign, which were wanting to those who first organised the constitutions which resulted in the declaration of independence in 1776. But it is in the rapid ratio of progress at which our colonists have advanced since that period, and in their increasing sense of capacity for self-government, that we shall find our main difficulty in stranding together the thin threads of authority, which their spontaneous loyalty compels, as it were, the sovereign of Great Britain to retain. And it is evident that if this authority or its semblance is to be continued to any purpose of advantage either to the mother-country or to the provinces themselves, it can only be by gradually municipalising the local government and concentrating authority in the newly-created Federal Parliament. In the progress through its various stages of a project to which the annals of our empire present no parallel, it is more than probable that obstacles to its success now unforeseen may here and there arise, and that the present apparent unanimity may be occasionally disturbed by sectional jealousies and controversies on points now left purposely vague and undefined. On the whole, however, contemplating the future of this vast experiment, our hopes predominate over our fears. But while in the best interests of our colonists we are inclined to augur well of this enterprise, it must be remembered that the five provinces who were represented at Quebec will not be the only parties who will be called upon to sign, seal, and deliver this international indenture. By the fourth resolution of the Conference it is provided that the Executive Authority or Government ‘shall be vested in the sovereign of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and be administered according to the well -understood principles of the British Constitution, by the sovereign personally or by representative duly authorised.’ In other words, the Queen is invited to retain a nominal sovereignty, entailing considerable liabilities and perils, and to accept in addition the invidious functions of an arbitrator, in the event of disputes between the associated states and the Federal authorities. Imperial England is not unaccustomed to one-sided bargains with her dependencies. The sound maxim that ‘whoever pays the piper should order the tune,’ has been generally invested in the conduct of our Colonial wars. For the most part Great Britain has taken on herself the burdens, leaving to her dependencies the privileges of freedom, and the present proposal assumes accordingly that the honour and glory of empire are a full equivalent for all its accompanying embarrassments. If the Quebec project were to be regarded as in any sense a final arrangement, and the equivalent in honour or power to be derived by the Crown from the acceptance of so perilous an authority were to be weighed in the balance with. the commensurate risks, the safety and dignity of the proffered position might be very questionable; but it is impossible to regard this proposed federation in any other light than that of a transition stage to eventual independence; and in this view the precise form which Imperial sovereignty may for the time being assume becomes a matter of comparatively secondary importance. There are those perhaps, who, if the choice were offered to them, might prefer an hereditary vice-royalty, or an independent constitutional monarchy inaugurated under a prince of the blood-royal of England, to the republic to which they believe themselves to be drifting, and which the experience of the Federal States, already burdened by a public debt not far short of that which has been accumulated by Great Britain in two centuries, proves to be rather an expensive luxury. But even if the pageantry of a court and the dignity of a peerage could be transplanted at once to an unprepared and uncongenial soil, the success of such an experiment must depend entirely on the spontaneous unanimity with which it was demanded by the colonists themselves. And whether such a course were adopted, or the present rule through the Queen’s representative. continued, the subsisting relations between Great Britain and her Transatlantic provinces would remain unchanged, and the responsibilities of the former practically undiminished. For with a long land frontier line swarming with marauders—with points of possible dispute bristling on all sides—with the risk of a fleet of armed American schooners covering the Canadian lakes, when the six months’ notice already given of determining our treaty engagements in this behalf shall have expired—with the San Juan question still in abeyance—with the north-west boundaries of Canada still undefined—with the vast region which lies between the Red River and the Rocky Mountains left without any government at all, unless that of the irresponsible agents of the Hudson’s Bay Company, at Fort Garry, be deserving of the name—with all these elements of political difficulty hanging over our Transatlantic dependencies, this is not precisely the moment when, whatever form of government they may choose, our implied engagements for some share at least of their military defence can be abruptly terminated.

The policy of retaliation, by which it was once supposed that, in the event of an invasion of Canada, we had only to bombard an American sea-port, for every inland town in our colonies that might be sacked, is, on the report of our own military engineers, now happily impracticable. At this very time it would cost, we are informed, half a million sterling to put the citadel and works of Quebec in a complete state of defence, and recent reports ordered by the Government on the North American frontier forts prove that a much larger expenditure may be necessary. In addition to these charges an armament may be required on the Lakes. It is time, therefore, to inquire by whom these expenses are to be borne? If further fortifications are deemed requisite for the protection of our North American colonists from attacks which they, it seems, do not apprehend, they may perhaps be manned, in case of necessity, by their own militia and volunteers; but whatever progress they may make in self-defence, it can scarcely be expected that, in a country so thinly peopled, and hitherto so thriftily disposed in military matters, a sudden jump from one-seventh of the total cost of their defence, which is all they now defray, to an assumption of the whole, is very likely to take place. Nor is it probable that if any prince of the blood-royal became to-morrow the adopted sovereign of British North America, any material reduction in the Imperial garrisons in those colonies would be immediately effected. But it is not in the spirit of the economist who desires to get rid, on the best possible terms, of a profitless estate, that the Government and Parliament of England will approach this important question. They have accepted, at the instance of enlightened colonial reformers at home, a fair responsibility for the defence of their dependencies abroad from perils arising from the consequences of Imperial policy. Of that responsibility they are prepared honourably to acquit themselves, until the time shall arrive when all perils traceable to that policy shall cease to threaten the distant provinces of the British Empire.

But while voluntarily accepting the burdens inseparable from their costly and now profitless inheritance, the statesmen of England, aiming no longer, as of old, to retain in helpless minority those communities of her empire which combine the powers and qualifications of free states, hail with no feelings of apprehension or regret each symptom of nascent independence as it may disclose itself. By our past colonial policy, we have surrendered the prerogatives not less absolutely than the emoluments of empire, and their relinquishment has been based on a deliberate consideration of the best interests, both of the mother-country and her provinces. The people of England have no desire to snap asunder abruptly the slender links which still unite them with their Transatlantic fellow- subjects, or to shorten by a single hour the duration of their common citizenship. On the contrary, by strengthening the ties which still remain, they would convert into a dignified alliance an undignified, because unreal, subserviency. History has warned them that it is not by futile attempts to retain in an inglorious subjection its scattered satrapies, that the real greatness of a nation can be advanced, but rather by an attitude of watchfulness for the dawning of that inevitable day, when ‘years of their apprenticeship shall have been passed, and nature shall have pronounced them free.’ By all the tokens of rapidly increasing material prosperity, by the still more important evidences of intellectual and political development, as manifested in the records of the recent Conference at Quebec, we are led irresistibly to the inference that this stage has been well-nigh reached in the history of our Transatlantic provinces. Hence it comes to pass that we accept, not with fear and trembling, but with unmixed joy and satisfaction, a voluntary proclamation, which, though couched in the accents of loyalty, and proffering an enduring allegiance to our Queen, falls yet more welcome on our ears as the harbinger of the future and complete independence of British North America.

[1] This last clause is obviously very loosely expressed, for what are ‘matters of a general character,’ and who is to decide whether a matter which may be in dispute between the Confederation and one of its members is of a general character or not? Mr. Cardwell has wisely pointed out, in his despatch of the 3rd of December, that the success of the scheme depends on giving a preponderating authority to the Federal power: and we should prefer to the foregoing enumeration of the powers of the Federal Parliament, a simple declaration that all powers are given to it except those expressly reserved to the several members of the Confederation. In the constitution of the United States the contrary principle was adopted. All powers were reserved to the several States which were not expressly made over to the Union. We think that experience has shown this to have been one of the fatal vices of the American Constitution: and if British North America is to become a great State, we hope its citizens will profit by the mistakes of their neighbours.

[2] A very important question on which these papers afford no information, is that relating to the future condition of those territories and dependencies of the Crown in North America which are not included within the present boundaries of the Five Provinces. We allude more particularly to the territories now held by the Hudson’s Bay Company under the Crown by charter or lease. The Crown is doubtless bound to take care that the interests of its grantees are not prejudiced by these changes; but, on the other hand, an English trading company is ill qualified to carry on the government, and provide for the defence, of a vast and inaccessible expanse of continental territory. Probably the best and most equitable solution would be the cession of the whole region to the Northern Federation for a fair indemnity; and this would lead to the execution of the great Northern Pacific Railway, under the auspices of the Federal Power.

[3] This, however, is one of the two points to which Mr. Cardwell objects on the part of the Government, because it affords no remedy for a dead-lock between the two Houses.