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Date: 1867-01-19
By: The Montreal Herald
Citation: “The Confederation Pamphlet”, The Montreal Herald (19 January, 1867)
Other formats: TBA

THAT CONFEDERATION PAMPHLET.

Yet another pamphlet on Confederation for the entertainment and edification of the people of England! It is entitled: “The Proposed British North American Confederation: Why it should not be imposed upon the Colonies by Imperial Legislation. By Edward Goff Penny, editor of the Montreal Herald.” Mr. Penny has certainly undertaken a very modest task,—a fact to which he seems to be himself alive; for he states in his introduction that he “proposes to show reasons” why the Imperial Government and Parliament should rather listen to him, than the unanimous resolutions of the Conference of Quebec, an overwhelming vote of the Canadian Parliament, an overwhelming vote in New Brunswick, and the same in Nova Scotia. It is only fair that the people of England should know something of the antecedents and position of this remarkable person, who thus asks their Government, to accept his “reasons” in preference to those solemnly recorded ones of the Government and Parliaments of the three principal British Colonies in North America, in order to enable them to make up their minds. Mr. Penny gives it to be understood that he is not to be daunted by formidable difficulties. Men of genius seldom are. Napoleon Bonaparte for instance, always declared that “impossible” was not French. The first fact that the people of England ought to know with regard to Mr. Penny is: that he was the paid Secretary of the annexation association of Montreal some years ago. To this he will turn round and say that he only joined in that movement in common with many others—Mr. Rose and Mr. Galt for example—who are now among the foremost advocates of Confederation. But there is this difference: Mr. Penny has never made any recantation of error for having joined in that ill-starred movement, which the loyal sense of the people of this country so speedily frowned down. He has, on the contrary, all the time since sailed as close to the wind in the advocacy of his old love, as he has found prudent. And he is understood here to be a short of shadow or man Friday of Mr. L. H. Holton, a politician known for oracular utterances, looking wise and doing nothing, holding extreme radical views, believing in the “manifest destiny” of the ultimate absorption of these British Provinces in the U. S. Republic, and trimming his sails accordingly. Mr. Penny is a man who must have credit given to him for having laboured very hard in his vocation as the organist of the little party called Rouges, of which Mr. Holton is the real head, and which, all told, after an election, of its own seeking, and conducted under its own “auspices,” taking the test of the recent “Remonstrance,” numbers only twenty members. It is very small! the proportion being a little less than one seventh (exactly one sixth and a half) of the whole House. It is further desirable the people of England should learn for the purpose of enabling them better to understand the value of the utterances of Mr. Penny (who this time has dropt the role of anonymous journalist, and, over his own name, asks to have discredited, the solemnly recorded acts of the Parliaments of these colonies) that his duties as the organist of the select party to which we have referred have not been to establish any principles of politics, but to vilify and destroy the reputation of the ins in the interest of the outs. Nothing could exceed the violence and unscrupulousness of the attempts. In fact the public mind was in danger of being debauched by villification and slander being made party cries. Certainly the tone of Canadian politics has been degraded by this means. The whole ground work of the pamphlet of Mr. Penny is a rechauffee of these old, stale cries, which may be explained in a sense quite different, from his jaundiced version. And this is the kind of stuff which he has served up, in order to induce the Imperial Parliament, to reject the requests of the Legislatures of these Colonies! He could not have fished up any rubbish more really worthless for any useful purpose whatever. Do our readers want a sample? We take from the very beginning of the introduction the following passage in which Mr. Penny fouls the calling to which he himself belongs:—”In Canada, with which the writer of these pages is chiefly acquainted, the whole Government patronage has been thrown into the scale to induce adhesion to the plan. This is a very powerful element of strength, and that it has been used without hesitation may be learned from the fact that a Minister of the Crown, in his place in Parliament, was forced to read a circular which he had addressed to every newspaper in Upper Canada, offering Government business to all who would lend their support to the Ministerial policy.” Here is a direct insinuation that a large portion of the press of Upper Canada was corrupted by Government patronage to favour Confederation. If true it would be in the last degree disgraceful. But unfortunately for the cause of truth it is like too many of the slanders that come from the same dirty source. The fact is that it has been the custom of all Governments in Canada since the Union to give departmental advertisements to the newspapers of their party. The whole amount involved is very trifling—in some years it is perfectly insignificant. It we take the authority of the Montreal Herald, which on this point is unexceptionable from its experience, the whole amount in one year was not worth a single quack advertisement. But such as it was, and whatever might be its corrupting influence, it was equally exercised on Mr. Penny’s own paper in 1862, as by the Coalition in 1864, for the advertisements which were previously inserted in the Montreal Gazette, were, by order of the Ministry, transferred to the Montreal Herald. (Let us, however, be just. and say we are sure that paper was not by that means corrupted) In Upper Canada the same kind of process happened by the circular to which Mr. Penny has alluded; but there was this difference–the Government was a Coalition, and as a simple transfer on the ordinary principles could not be made, a test of adhesion to the Government had to be found, and that was the ground on which the Coalition was based–Confederation. No more villainous slander could be penned than to say the press of Upper Canada which supported Confederation almost unanimously, was moved by this petty bribe. A dirty bird that thus fouls his own nest, to point a lying tale away from home, can only earn the contempt of his fellows; while his advocacy of any cause would be disgrace,—his opposition, praise. Did space permit, or if it were worth while, we could expose almost every statement in the book in the same way as this opening one about the Upper Canada press. —Gazette.