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Date: 1864-09-14
By: The Montreal Herald
Citation: “The Charlottetown Conference”, The Montreal Herald (14 September, 1864)
Other formats: TBA

THE CHARLOTTETOWN CONFERENCE.

—In a day or two the members of our Government who have been to Charlottetown to take part in, or rather, perhaps, to witness the proceedings of, the conference of the Maritime Provinces, will return to Canada, and then the public of this part of her Majesty’s dominions may probably be informed, wholly or partially, of the result of the deliberations which have been carried on in Prince Edward Island. There will naturally be much curiosity to ascertain what are the details, which have seemed to the members of the Conference from Canada to make a suitable filling up for the frame which they sketched out at the end of last session. Undoubtedly there will be many difficulties to meet and surmount, and perhaps it may be held to require a somewhat sanguine temperament on the part of those who hope, in the face of all these obstacles, to bring the inchoate plan to a consistent and satisfactory completion. We suppose that there is no scheme which any individual could devise of which it could be hoped that it would be calculated to meet all views. The truth is, that unlike some other works of men’s hands, the perfect is not what is aimed at in political constructions; but rather so near an approach to the perfect as is consistent with the possibility of success. If we proceed on a false theory we shall, of course, in practice produce a faulty work. Sound doctrine is the beginning of sound measures, and every effort should be made in order to secure that each step determined upon should tend in a right direction.—But, after all is done, human interests will play very much the part in social and political movements that friction plays in the movements of inanimate machinery. It will clog the philosopher, and force him to accept results far less brilliant than those to which, but for this obstruction, he sees a very clear route. This being so, we are disposed beforehand to bespeak very considerable allowance for the scheme which may be proposed as that of the Ministry. Believing, as we do, that things could not long have gone on as they were going, under a method of government which involved great injustice to a most important and constantly increasing part of our population, we hold that a trial of something better was imperatively forced upon us, and whether that trial shall or shall not be made in the direction to which our individual opinions incline us, we shall think it a duty, at least, to endeavour to accept it, unless it involve some germ of palpable evil. Of course the old controversy between the Democrats and the Federals, fought out between Jefferson and Hamilton, must come up in some shape when we attempt to go over the same ground which the people of the United States have traversed before us. The Federals, with Washington and Hamilton at their head, were accused of a desire to place a monarch at the head of the old colonies after they had secured their independence, and though it is hardly probable that these able men did not see the want of material for a monarchy, and, perhaps, still more for an aristocracy, which seems to be an essential of monarchy, if it is not to degenerate into despotic Cæsarism, like that of the Napoleons, it is likely that they had no very strong theoretic objection to Kingship. The wide theories of rights on which Jefferson based his political ideas did not greatly influence his countrymen who were rather governed by historical traditions of British liberty. Doubtless, each of the two sets of opinions interpenetrated the other; but their respective starting points differed as widely as that of the French revolutionists of a quarter of a century later differed from that of the British Whigs who threw out the Stuarts a century before the declaration of independence. The one stood on first principles which ought to secure human rights—the other on acknowledgments and conventions, which were held really to have secured them, and which it was considered necessary and possible to maintain in their integrity. An eclectic will find that each method of reasoning produced some peculiar results which he will approve, and we think that among those which would wisely be selected from the Federalist scheme is that one which recognizes the idea of a supreme authority in the State. Whether the promoters of that set of political doctrines did or did not wish to erect an American monarchy to replace that of George III., they unquestionably did favour the creation, for the whole country, of one supreme arbiter, consisting of a government copied, as far as circumstances would permit, after the British model of King, Lords and Commons, represented in their project by the President, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. That they had as much logic on their side as Jefferson, who, building up his scheme of government from the unit of the free man, combining with others to form the free State, which should afterwards join with equally free States in a league, conceived that such league could only have the limited powers which an instrument may receive from the original and native source of power, may, perhaps, admit of argument. But that they did not exaggerate the danger of a divided or doubtful allegiance, hesitating between the State and the Nation, has been fully established by the event. On this head we trust that there will be with us no attempt to shift the real difficulty, but that it will be met manfully. To suppose that there can, in practice, be two supremacies in the same State is a delusion, and any attempt to satisfy both of the two completely opposite tendencies will only be covering up a pitfall into which the country will fall to ruin the moment it has to traverse the treacherous surface. We are as much as any one can be aware of the necessity of maintaining, by all legal means, the independence of local legislatures. In a great Confederacy, it is only in and by them that diversities of opinion can have room to grow, and that appropriate ground can be found for the exercise of independent public service, when the views of the individual, not being in accordance with those of the majority, he has to seek shelter in some particular locality where he may meet with appreciation and support. Wise men have held that the great blunder of the French revolution was the complete abolition of the ancient local jurisdictions; the concentrating of all authority in Paris, and the crushing of all opinion and action into the same mould which followed from this course. But while a wise nation will maintain openings for varieties of opinion and action, it will not do so by giving the part a right to resist the whole. It will do so as a part of its own policy; not as an admitted deduction from its own power—just as it will maintain from age to age the habeas corpus act, the freedom of religious worship, and other great leading principles of social well being, without for a moment giving any one authority to say that it has lost the right of modifying or repealing them. It is, doubtless, this question, in some shape or other, upon which one of the chief difficulties of arranging a federal or confederal constitution will turn; but we hope our legislators will be enlightened enough and firm enough to avoid the dangers on which our neighbours have fallen.