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Date: 1865-03-11
By: The Montreal Herald
Citation: “The Opinion of the People”, The Montreal Herald (11 March, 1865)
Other formats: TBA

THE OPINION OF THE PEOPLE.

—We believe that there is not a statesman in England who would not resist any endeavour to legislate for this country in a sense opposed to the wishes of the people of it. What is to be apprehended is not that England will do intentional wrong; but that she will be deluded on the subject of confederation, as she has often been deluded before by official representations, which are unfortunately the only ones to which British statesmen and the British public have access. One day the party in power in Canada is denouncing say Mr. Hincks, Mr. Macdougal, Mr. Galt, or Mr. Brown as a traitor or a demagogue—as some one looking to Washington for inspirations hostile to his own country. The members of the Ministry on whose behalf these denunciations are made go to England at the public expense; they come into contact with imperial officials; they yield a little and flatter a little, and their views, being the only ones presented, are the ones naturally accepted. From the West End they go to the city. There they transact a little business, very agreeable and profitable for those who do it, first of all perhaps in debentures, then in railway stock; and finally, passing from Lombard into Fenchurch street, they come across the representatives of the Hudson Bay Company, and threaten all sorts of truculent proceedings, till the great paltry merchants begin to think, like the nigger on the sinking boat, when he called for the Lord’s prayer, that “suthin must be done, and that bery quick,” to conciliate these terrible patriots. By this time they have as many introductions to the leading members of the press as they require, and they thus insinuate their views into the public opinion of the country. If there is anything on hand with money in it their effigies are very likely to appear in one or two of the illustrated newspapers with short biographies, illustrative of their virtues, together with the virtues of their scheme. In the meantime, the so-called traitors and demagogues, having no one to pay for their pleasant travelling, and nothing to do with the initiation of despatches, get neither their likenesses nor their objections placed before the British public, until suddenly, perhaps, one of them arrives at the conclusion that he has been too long in the cold shades of opposition; jumps Jim Crow; gets on the Ministerial benches; goes off by the next steamer; and finds himself among the heaven-born Canadian statesmen of Downing street, Lombard street, Fenchurch street, and Printing House Square. In the meantime, all the men who continue to think as he professed to think a few weeks before, remain still demagogues and so forth, until they in their turn take the same steps to acquire distinction. Those who recollect the current English representations about Messrs. Hincks and Lafontaine during the Governorship of Lord Metcalfe; then, upon the accession of these gentlemen to power, how the Conservative opposition were denounced in the Times as “the rule or ruin party”; afterwards Mr. Hincks’ great railway coup; Mr. Galt’s subsequent vast financial successes; the visit of Mr. Cartier to Windsor, his abortive attempt at open rebellion only about twelve years old; and the more recent emergence of Mr. Brown above the British horizon, as the grand supporter of Confederation and the Intercolonial Railway, and as the conciliator of the absolute right of Canada to the North-West territory, with the claims of the Hudson Bay Company, under Sir Edmund Head and Mr. Watkin, to be paid for every inch of the soil of that country,—those we say who remember this procession of men and events, will fully understand our statement respecting the way of making public opinion in England with respect to opinion in Canada. We dare say we shall live to see in the Illustrated News an accurate representation of our friend Mr. McGee, in his present distinguished character as prime supporter of the British Crown, Aristocracy flag, and principles, against Fenians, Yankees, and all republicanism, accompanied by elevations and ground plans of the castle and palace whence his remote ancestors, as we read in that invaluable work, “The Biographies of Celebrated Canadians,” successfully conducted the hereditary government of the island which bears the family name. The expression of our desire to enjoy this latter gratification has, however, diverted us for a moment from the thread of our discourse, which referred to the manner in which the Government and people of England obtain and act upon their views of public opinion here. Knowing that they will do nothing hostile to that opinion, the partizans of Confederation will, of course, do everything in their power to make it appear that opinion here is favourable to their scheme, and it must be granted that they will not do this without some ostensible appearance of truth. So far as opinions have been expressed since the project has been set on its legs by the new undertakers, they have, undoubtedly, largely preponderated for its adoption. But we presume that the British people, and especially the British Government and Legislators, who will have to deal with the question, will want not merely careless or hypocritical utterances, but an intelligent popular judgement, formed after due deliberation, not contradicting other judgments coming from the same sources, and likely, because based on facts and reason, to be realized in the future happiness and prosperity of the country. If they should see that the present expression of sentiment is that of one or more bodies of men in Parliament and the Press banded together under one or more leaders, and ready, at the behest of those leaders, to say to-day exactly the reverse of that which they said yesterday, they will come to the conclusion that this opinion is either factious or venal, and cannot be taken, with any probability, to be the opinion of a whole people. Now let us apply this test for a moment. Strong and general as the expressions of Upper Canadians now are in favour of Confederation, we are not without equally cogent reasoning on the other side, put forward at a moment when some persons believed that the Macdonald-Sicotte Government leaned to a similar proposal.

“Upper Canada has not, it appears, suffered enough, in the estimation of the Upper Canadian members of the Cabinet, from being tied to one poor eastern province; it must have three more added to its already heavy burdens. One legislature is not a sufficiently cumbrous, unwieldy and expensive body, but we must add to it the representatives of three other communities, each section with varying local interests, and all pulling at the same purse. And to show what we may look for in the future, we are to pay five twelfths of the cost of a railway to unite us to these new allies, and to keep the road running besides. Truly a charming scheme to be proposed by a retrenchment government, whose sole aim was to be the reduction of expenditure and the correction of abuses in administration! New burdens to an enormous amount are to be imposed upon the people of Upper Canada, a railway job to be undertaken, likely to be as disastrous and disgraceful as the Grand Trunk, ‘an already unwieldy political system to be encumbered threefold;’ all, that Messrs. Sicotte and Sandfield Macdonald may get rid of the difficulties with which their government is surrounded.”

“The most extraordinary part of the affair is that the men who talk of the expense of establishing an Upper Canada county in Red River, are clamoring to pay from one to two hundred thousand pounds a year for a railroad which will never afford a penny of return, and who also desire to form a Legislative or Federative union with the Lower Provinces which would impose upon Upper Canada the task of assisting three weak sisters instead of one, as at present, without receiving any recompense. If we were called upon to assist the nascent settlements of the West, we would at all events, feel that we were fostering communities which would repay us by buying our goods, as well as by the more direct return which we should derive from the sale of their lands. In a union with the Lower Provinces we would have no such consolation. It would be all pay and no profit.”

“The Ministry have belonged to a race of idiots when they expected us to swallow so absurd a scheme.”

“It will not be wise for the opponents of the measure to rely upon present appearances. The ministerial project must be resisted at every stage in the press and in Parliament.”

“With fair professions of retrenchment and economy on their lips, Ministers took office; but three short months afterwards we find them launching a new railroad scheme on the market, admittedly more onerous at the moment of initiation than was the Grand Trunk at the same stage.”

It may be difficult to escape from pledges given to the representatives of the Lower Provinces, but the members of the Cabinet may rely upon it, that they will have their reward for the abandonment or postponement of the measure in the approbation of their constituents, and of the Province at large.”

“There is a refreshing coolness in the demand that Canada shall pay for the construction of a road which is professedly designed to draw away trade from its great estuary. We have been building up the navigation of the St. Lawrence at immense expense, and have had very hard work to compete with the Hudson and Erie Canal. [According?] to the views of the late Mr. Merritt, [steamship?] lines were alone needed to secure the object we desire. The Ministry propose, however, to withdraw the steamships from the St. Lawrence, and transfer them to Halifax! If this could be done, it would be an act of suicide for Canada to take part in the scheme. As it cannot be done, it is simply an absurdity.”

“The road is to run mainly through a country which not only does not belong to Canada, but which cannot, under any possible circumstances bring it any profit or return, directly or indirectly.”

Can our readers imagine what they have been perusing? No less than extracts from Mr. Brown’s newspaper, the Globe, published about three years ago! Now, there is not a man in Canada who can doubt that, if Mr. Brown still took that side of the argument which he espoused at the time these extracts were written, the Globe would have continued as much opposed to the scheme as it then was; nor will there be any more doubt that Mr. McKellar, Mr. McKenzie, and all the rest of the Upper Canadian patriots in Parliament would have echoed Mr. Brown’s no, just as they will now echo Mr. Brown’s yes. Is the expression of this journal then and these members of Parliament to be considered as the expression of the sound, deliberate opinion of a population of free men—is this sand ever shifting at the will of one individual—a foundation on which wise builders will erect that great structure, which we are told this British North American Confederacy is to be?