Document Information

Date: 1866-01-05
By: True Witness
Citation: “The New Year”, True Witness (5 January, 1866)
Other formats: TBA

THE NEW YEAR

[…]

Passing from the consideration of these merely personal matters to those of public importance, we may observe that the past year has been one of deep significance to Canada. The ever to be deplored—deplored at least by all who would fain maintain Canadian independence, and Canadian connection with Great Britain—issue of the gigantic struggle which the Southern States for four long years heroically carried on for their independence, has left the Northern States at liberty to direct their arms against this happy and free Province, against the last asylum for liberty on the North American Continent. That they have not as yet done so is owing partly to the fact that the South though conquered and trampled upon by the iron hoofs of the Northerners is not, in so far as the noble spirit of its men and women are concerned, by any means subjugated. They are not, never will be reconciled to the Northern yoke; and though for the moment they may, by the mishaps of the late war, be compelled to bear it, it galls them, and they are prepared no doubt to avail themselves of the first favorable opportunity, when their conquerors shall be engaged in war with some European power, to cast it off, and again assert their inalienable, their natural, and constitutional right to national independence. What Poland is to Russia, what British misrule has unfortunately made Ireland towards England—that are the Southern as towards the Northern States: and to make use of a [backnied?] proverb, “the difficulty of the latter will be the opportunity of the other”—an opportunity which they will not be slack to seize, and, God grant it, to improve.

In the meantime their own domestic affairs—their financial difficulties of which the only probable solution is “repudiation,” and their unsatisfactory relations with the conquered Southern States—prevent or delay the long meditated hostile action of the Northern States against Canada; and give us a breathing time, and time for making preparations for the impending storm. God grant that our rulers may make the most of it, and that the customary party squabbles for place and pelt may not, when the supreme moment shall have arrived, leave us unprepared to meet it. We have so much to love and cherish in that we are British subjects: we have so much to lose, by any conceivable change in our political relations, that our people must be infatuated indeed, if they be not ready to make any and every sacrifice to preserve to themselves and to their children the blessings which they actually enjoy, but of which their apathy under actual circumstances would show them to be all unworthy. Though our soil may be inferior to that of our Southern neighbors, though our climate may be more rigorous, yet in its moral aspect and in comparison with the rest of this Continent, Canada is a very land of Goshen; a land in which the torch of rational freedom, of civil and religious freedom burns still with undimmed lustre; though all around us is thick darkness, the darkness of military despotism “even darkness which may be felt.”

Canada is in a transition state, and some changes in our political status are, unfortunately, inevitable; but it should be our care that these changes be as slight as possible, and tend not in the direction of democracy and centralisation, from whence in the nineteenth century, and not from monarchy, not from aristocracy or from the debris of European feudalism, proceed the dangers with which liberty is menaced. The problem which our statesmen are called upon to solve is this: How to combine all the strength of British North America for purposes of defence if our liberties and national independence be menaced: whilst leaving at the same time to each section or Province thereof, its full and perfect autonomy in all that concerns its internal or domestic affairs: how to secure in short unity of commercial and military action, together with a minimum of centralisation. The projected Confederation scheme so long before the country does not appear to the people of the Lower Provinces to combine these two qualities, and it has therefore up to this time been coldly looked upon by them. What may be its ultimate fate it is impossible at present to foresee. Its opponents and its advocates are alike confident of victory; but perhaps the most probable hypothesis is this: that the Lower Provinces will ultimately assent to a Union—but to a Union which shall by greatly limiting the functions of the proposed central government, and by giving to their local legislatures far greater control over their internal affairs, than that allotted to them by the delegates at the Quebec Conference of 1864, give greater prominence to the principle of “State Rights.”

God has been pleased to bless the country, with an excellent harvest; this, and the great demand for grain and cattle from the United States, have caused money to flow freely into the Province, and have given a great impetus to all commercial business. But, as the proverb says, “What is one man’s meat is another man’s poison;” the high prices, source of prosperity to some, have been to others, the poor especially, a fearful calamity, and the cause of much and bitter suffering. What is sport to the boys who throw the stones, is cruel death to the frogs at whom the stones are thrown; and now in this severe season, when so many thousands are thrown out of employment—when, through no fault of theirs, they are without food, without fuel, and unable, from the high prices ruling, to give to their little ones that daily bread for which in vain they cry, it behoves the rich man, if he would not provoke the wrath of Him Who is the Father of the fatherless, if he would not have his blessings changed into a curse, and see his overcherished gold converted into dross, to open his ears to the cry of God’s poor, and to make his less fortunate brethren participants with him of heaven’s bounty.