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Date: 1864-08-10
By: The Globe
Citation: “The Future of Canada”, The Globe [Toronto] (10 August 1864).
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THE FUTURE OF CANADA

We can see no good that is to be attained by entering into a controversy about the establishment at some future period of an Independent Republic in British North America, and must therefore decline publishing a letter on this subject which we have received from Mr. T. Phillips Thompson, of St. Catharines. In a recent article we made reference to a pamphlet got out by Mr. Thompson, advocating this project, but we did so, not with any view of seriously discussing the matter with him, but merely for the purpose of protesting against the unfair use which had been made by some of the Lower Canada newspapers of Mr. Thompson’s strong anti-French utterances, as an argument against the scheme of federating the British North American Provinces. We showed that Mr. Thompson, so far from advocating, distinctly opposed the idea of federation, just because of the protection it would afford to the French language, laws, and institutions, in Lower Canada, which he would like to see swept out of existence; and that it was exceedingly unfair to make the scheme of federation responsible for sentiments to, which in the view of the author of the pamphlet himself, it stood in direct antagonism. Having pointed this out, we have nothing more to say about Mr. Thompson or his pamphlet.

The question as to the British North American Provinces growing at some time in the future into a great independent nation, extending from the Atlantic to the far Pacific, and the further question as to whether its forms of government shall then be republican or monarchical, may be safely left, we think, for discussion by our posterity. We have a vastly more practical question in hand at this moment—how we are to get rid of existing constitutional difficulties, and whether we cannot with most satisfaction to all parties concerned, accomplish this by exchanging for the present legislative union of Upper and Lower Canada—which experience has shown to be productive of endless dissensions, heart-burnings and strifes—a federative union of the Canadas, with provision for the admission hereafter of the North-west and the Maritime Provinces, a mode of union under which the evils we now suffer could not have place. In making this change, the subject of our connection with the mother country is not at all in question. Indeed, as we have already pointed out, the establishment of the federative system would afford some additional guarantees for the perpetuation of our connection with the British empire; and, believing this to be the case, we have no time to spare for a discussion of fanciful theories as to possible forms of government, under an entirely different state of circumstances which may perhaps arise in the remote future of these Provinces.