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Date: 1867-02-25
By: The Montreal Herald
Citation: “The New Confederation Scheme”, The Montreal Herald (25 February, 1867)
Other formats: TBA

THE NEW CONFEDERATION SCHEME.

—We copy from the Globe, the entire article from that paper, setting forth the information it possesses upon the changes which have been made in London in the Confederate constitution, which it seems we are constructively held to have asked for, although no one in Canada has ever seen them. The Globe pronounces some of the changes to be monstrously unjust, and it is manifest that the influence of Upper Canada in the Legislative Council is rateably to be considerably lessened, by handing over the members who were to sit in that body for Newfoundland and Prince Edward’s, to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Canada is of course to pay more money than was at first stipulated, and apparently to keep on paying it. The new calves which Mr. Brown once asserted that these Lower Provinces would be found to be, are hard at work already tugging at the udders, not of Upper Canada only, as Mr. Brown put it, but at those of Lower Canada also. In short his prophecies about the effect of Confederation, made while he was opposed to it, are clearly getting themselves fulfilled, while there is not one glimmering of the advantages which he has promised since his Balaks, in the shape of Messrs. John A. Macdonald and Cartier, offered to charter his vaticinations, and met with a response much more compliant than that of Balaam. On the School question the information is, as we said on Saturday, almost naught. Standing as it is put in the Globe, it would appear to mean nothing, but a derision of the Protestant portion of Lower Canada, of whose protection we have hitherto heard so much. The minority in Lower Canada is to have all the privileges in School matters, which may be granted to the minority in Upper Canada. Now inasmuch as our Common School System is much more obnoxious to the minority than that of Upper Canada, that minority has obtained already exceptional concessions, which are looked upon by many—whether they are so in fact or not—as larger than those which have been secured by the Upper Canadian minority, although the Protestants in Lower Canada would be only too glad to be placed in this matter, on exactly the same footing as the Upper Canadian Catholics. Protestants here, therefore, have nothing to get in the way of separate school facilities, to bring them up to the present level of the Upper Canadian minority ; and as it is not probable that the local legislature in Upper Canada will make any advance in that direction, it follows that there will be no additional concessions for our part of the country. We suppose this part of the account of the changes which have been made is incomplete—so incomplete, indeed, as to be unintelligible for any practical purpose. But the appeal of the minorities to the Federal Government, which the Globe at first found so evil that he talked of getting up a monster petition against it, we see is now spoken of as a very trumpery affair indeed, and we are inclined to be of that opinion—at least so far as concerns the minority in Canada East. Notwithstanding all the injustice, however, of the measure, Mr. Brown and the Globe are perfectly prepared to swallow it, as we fully expected they would be, no matter what it contained. But really its contents appear to us to be the point of least significance in the whole matter, though the Globe treats them as if they were the only things worthy of notice. What we conceive to be the most important point is that for this country, supposed to be under the regime of that system of responsible government, of which Mr. Brown was formerly so powerful a supporter, legislation, which he declares to be monstrously unjust, is taking place three thousand miles off, substantially by a committee of officials—because Parliament only professes to homologate the decision of the Colonial delegates—and that Mr. Brown has not one word to say against the wrong! We have this much made plain to us at all events—that the pretence of this being done at the request of the Colonies is utterly unfounded; but we can even yet hardly credit the statement that British statesmen, who do not profess formally to take away our right of self-government, should yet act in a manner so contrary to all constitutional principles and theories, as to legislate away the money of the Provinces without any previous or subsequent consent of the local Legislatures, and this for all future time. Yet that is what will be done if the Globe be correctly informed as to the alterations made in England to the money part of the Quebec scheme.