Document Information

Date: 1865-08-23
By: Montreal Witness, Alexander Galt
Citation: “The Protestant Minority of Lower Canada in a Bad, but not Hopeless Condition,” Montreal Witness (23 August 1865).
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THE PROTESTANT MINORITY OF LOWER CANADA IN A BAD, BUT NOT HOPELESS, CONDITION

The Legislature has been in session but a few days, and already the position of the Protestant members of Lower Canada who have joined the coalition is no longer the same,–it is very essentially altered; it has become a false one, and untenable for men of power and principle. When the scheme of Confederation was first proposed to them, they felt, and the Protestant community felt with them, that it would be suicidal for the Lower Canada minority to support a scheme that placed them at the mercy of a Roman Catholic and French majority. Yet the votes of these members were indispensable to carry the scheme, since nearly the half of the French members had refused to join the coalition. In this emergency the support of seven Protestant members from Lower Canada was secured by a secret written pledge, given to them in behalf of the Ministry by Mr. Galt. By a very timely indiscretion, this written pledge has been placed in the hands of Mr. Dorion, and by him publicly exposed.

The secret agreement refers to four guarantees tendered to the Protestant minority of Canada, and which are summed up as follows:–

“1^st. No change in the constituencies of English-speaking members unless on a vote of two-thirds of the latter.—

2. The limits of several municipalities within said counties will be changed by executive interference, but only according to law.—

3^rd. These municipalities will be permitted to acquire the crown lands within their limits at a nominal price, provided they resell them without distinction to every purchaser.—

4^th. The school system of Lower Canada will be remodelled, so as to give Protestants the control of their own schools, and system of education. The government does not pledge themselves, however, to any particular means of reaching this end, which may be by a change in the council for public instruction, by the appointment of a Protestant Superintendent, or otherwise. The dissentients of different municipalities will be allowed to united their taxes for the support of their schools. Isolated dissentients, however, will not be allowed to send their taxes to support a school far removed from them.”

We take the above statement from the organ of Mr. Dorion, Le Pays, because an incorrect version has been published in the English papers, omitting some of the checks with which the guarantees were provided, thus giving too much scope to the latter. For instance, it will be seen that a Protestant Superintendent of education was not positively promised, but only mentioned as possible, and that the right of the townships to monopolize public lands, for the benefit of a certain class, was not only not granted, but expressly excepted.

It was on the strength of these secret pledges of this written guarantee, under the signature of Mr. Galt, that seven Protestant members from Lower Canada agreed to support the Ministry and their Confederation scheme. By exacting such pledges, these gentlemen fully acknowledged that without them the Confederation scheme was not acceptable to the Protestant minority; that it was not a safe constitution for them to accept; and that their interest and duty would be to oppose it. This is the very ground which the Protestant independent press of Lower Canada has taken from the beginning; and it is very refreshing to find that there were Protestant members from Lower Canada who secretly thought precisely the same, although openly giving their support to the government, and to their pet scheme. But they had guarantees of which their constituents knew nothing, and that made their conscience easy. Their apparently inconsistent excuse was afterwards to be explained at the polls, when they could triumphantly point to the success of their secret negotiations.

But now all this subtle arrangement is destroyed. The secret letter has been made public, and its effect has been a crushing reaction against the rights and the claims of the Protestant minority. The French Canadians of all parties are unanimous in protesting against these guarantees, and pledging themselves not to observe a single one of them. Mr. Cauchon has indignantly committed himself to vote against every one of these concessions. Le Canadien looks at them as only a successful trick played on some Protestants members in order to secure their co-operation, and without which, the scheme, not commanding a majority from Lower Canada, would have fallen through. The Courrier and other French papers protest more vigorously still. The Minerve alone keeps silent, because that organ of Mr. Cartier regrets to see the trick prematurely exploded, and deems it imprudent to awake the Protestant spirit of Lower Canada by saying that none of the secret guarantees will ever be allowed to pass in the constitution. As to the French opposition press, they are more violent still in denouncing every one of these concessions to Protestants. They do not see in it only a trick of the Ministry, but a treason. They clamor that their nationality and their religion are ruined if any of these pledges are granted, and they agree to vote down every one of them. Even the provision of Mr. Galt that the lands would be sold indiscriminately to all comers fails to satisfy the Pays, because if the settlers are a Protestant corporation they can adhere to the letter of the law, but evade the spirit by telling all sorts of lies to turn off Catholic applicants for a lot of land.

The net result of this secret diplomacy becomes very apparent, and it is that the Protestants of Lower Canada are placed now, through the indiscreet action of their ministerial representatives, in a far more precarious position than at any previous time. If the Confederation scheme carry, they will be sacrificed and put in a much tighter place then if no attempt had been made to secure their rights privately and by double dealing. The abortive attempt leaves behind two most unfortunate results; viz., the mistrust of the Catholic majority, which will suspect everything in connection with Lower Canada Protestants, and the determined hostility caused by irritation, which will prevent all generous dealing with the minority, and lead to cutting down their just demands.

But what will the members who have lost their pledges do? Can they possibly be infatuated with the notion that there is still some virtue lingering in the written guarantees of Mr. Galt? The Catholics of Lower Canada are a unit in protesting that they will not allow one of them to pass into the local constitution. The Protestant members find themselves where they were before the pledge was given, or rather still farther off from the security they deemed indispensable to their constituents. Under these circumstances, only one honorable course is open to them,–either to exact from the coalition a new pledge, not secret, but public, written and well-defined; or else to withdraw altogether from the coalition. The fate of the Confederation scheme rests now entirely with the Protestant members from Lower Canada, for the Catholics of that section are almost equally divided. They command the situation; there is yet time for them to break down the obnoxious scheme, and substitute for it that of Representation by Population, which alone offers to their constituents a sufficient guarantee. Whatever course they adopt, a heavy responsibility rests upon them; may they prove themselves equal to it.