Document Information
Date: 1865-03-31
By: True Witness
Citation: “The question of Confederation or Annexation?”, True Witness (31 March, 1865)
Other formats: TBA
The question of “Confederation or Annexation?”
is the subject of lively discussion amongst our contemporaries of the press, more especially amongst the members of that section which is published in the French language. According to the arguments of one side, Canada has no alternative betwixt “Confederation and Annexation.” According to those of the other side, the first offers no guarantee against the second; neither the acceptance nor the rejection of the Ministerial scheme will hasten or delay an event which, to do both parties justice, we will hope is not looked upon with favor by either.
To make a frank confession of faith, we will not hesitate to declare that, if we could see in the Brown-Cartier scheme of Union for the British North American Provinces, any the slightest chance of evading entirely, or even of staving off for any length of time, the other alternative, i.e. Annexation, we would not hesitate to give to the first named our support, in spite of our strong objections to many of its details, and its centralising tendencies. Of all the evils, political, moral, and religious, which could befall Lower Canada, as a Catholic country, we look upon “Annexation” as beyond all comparison the greatest. To escape such an evil, such a humiliation, no material sacrifice would be too great. Only, and this is with us the difficulty, we see not, and nobody has as yet attempted to show, how “Confederation” will act as preventive of “Annexation.”
We believe that the argument that it will do so is, in the mouths of some, a snare, a delusion, a dishonest argument; in the mouths of others, sincere perhaps, but founded upon a total mis-conception of our actual circumstances, and of the state of public opinion in England; but in both cases it is a weak and vicious argument.
“Union is Strength,” we are told, usque ad nauseam; and therefore the British North American Provinces united, will be stronger against the aggressions of the people of the neighboring Republic, than they would be if disunited.
Perfectly true no doubt; but this argument is based on the false assumption that the British North American Provinces are not for all military purposes of offence and defence, united already, and as closely united as, considering their peculiar geographical conditions, they could possibly be under the Brown-Cartier scheme of Union.—The people of all the British North American Provinces are, as it is, the citizens of one Empire, subjects of one sovereign, and war with any one of them means necessarily war with all the others, and with the whole force of the British Empire. Were their relative political conditions as those of France and Spain, of Belgium and Holland, we could understand the meaning of the argument “Union is Strength;” but we do not, we confess it, we do not see how the substitution of one kind of political union, for another already existing political union, can in aught augment the military strength of these Provinces, or their capacity to offer resistance to an invader.
We believe that our only chance of safety, that our only guarantee against Annexation, consists, not in any change of the nature of the existing political relations betwixt ourselves, but in the maintenance of the Union which binds us to Great Britain, and which therefore at the same time binds together in a real Federal bond all the Provinces of the British Empire without distinction. Things that are united to the same, are united to one another; and so long as we remain united to the British Empire, forming together with New Zealand and New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Van Dieman’s Land integral portions of that Empire, we see not what other form of Union is needed, or can be beneficial to us, from a military point of view.
On the other hand, we believe that any political change which shall have the tendency to sever or to weaken the tie which connects us with that Empire, will have the tendency to throw us into the arms of the neighboring Republic. “La domination Britannique,” says the Canadien of the 22nd inst., “est notre planche de salut;” an opinion in which we need scarcely add we entirely concur. Now we fear that the political changes propounded by the Quebec Delegates will have the effect of depriving us of this “plank of salvation,” by withdrawing us from “British domination.”—Hence our opposition to those changes.
Nor are we singular in this opinion. It has been entertained and publicly expressed by some of the leading publicists of the British Empire, in the Legislature, and in the press. Perhaps on this point we may be permitted to cite the opinion of the Edinburgh Review, no mean authority:—
“It is impossible to regard this proposed federation in any other light than that of a transition stage to eventual independence.”—Edinburgh Review, Jan. ’65, p. 101.
“Hence it comes to pass that we accept, not with fear and trembling, but with unmixed joy and satisfaction, a voluntary proclamation, which, though couched in the language of loyalty, and proffering an enduring allegiance to our Queen, falls yet more welcome on our ears as the harbinger of the future and complete independence of British North America.”—Ib., p. 102.
At all events, and in this all will agree with us, the maintenance of British connection is essential to our successful defence against the aggressive tendencies of the neighboring Republic.
In this also many, if not all, will agree with us: That the scheme agreed to by the Quebec Delegates, and laid before our Provincial Parliament, would, if carried into execution, have the effect of weakening, and ultimately destroying the tie which binds us to Great Britain, whose protection to us as against the Northern States is our plank of salvation.
Now it is never good policy to renounce the certain for the uncertain. It is certain that British connection is our best defence against Annexation; but it is by no means certain that the scheme of the Quebec Delegates would afford us any additional means of defence at all: whilst in the opinion of many it would deprive us of the aid which, as a British Province, we have the right to expect, and would receive from our Imperial head. What follows from these premises? This—That it would be foolish on our part to risk the loss of the certain benefit of British connection, for the uncertain benefits of Confederation, which would probably deprive us of that connection.
We should bear in mind too that the great supporter of the Ministerial scheme of Union is Mr. George Brown; and remembering this man’s antecedents, his notorious Yankee proclivities, his democratic tendencies, his undisguised attachment to the principles of the Revolution in Europe, which are identical with the principles of the Federals or Yankees, we cannot bring ourselves to believe that he sees in the scheme which he advocates any guarantee against Annexation; any screen betwixt us and Washington towards which his loving, anxious glances are ever cast; any security for the independence or the autonomy of Lower Canada, with her Catholic, and therefore anti-revolutionary principles, or any pledge for the preservation of the monarchical and anti-democratic elements in our political and social life. On the contrary, it is, we believe, because of the absence of any of these things; because it interposes no obstacle to, but rather invites, Annexation; because it is a measure essentially democratic, anti-monarchical, and revolutionary, that he Mr. George Brown, the democrat, and the No-Popery revolutionist of the reddest hue, gives to it his support; and propounds it to the Clear-Grits of Upper Canada as the remedy for the evils which French Canadian and priestly influence in the Legislature imposes on them. We might just as reasonably expect to find Cobden or Bright assuming in the House of Commons the attitude of defenders of an hereditary landed aristocracy, and of the laws of primogeniture, as to find Mr. George Brown aiding and abetting in a measure designed to affirm monarchical principles and British connection in Canada, and calculated to avert “Annexation” to the neighboring democratic republic.
But though we have, can have, no faith in Mr. George Brown’s professions of loyalty, we can willingly believe that of our French Canadian friends who advocate his Union scheme, as a means of averting the disgrace and calamity of Annexation, the majority are sincere in their views; though upon a matter of fact—the tendencies of that scheme—we unhappily differ from them. We congratulate ourselves that from the French press, from the Courrier du Canada as from the Canadien, arises one harmonious voice expressive of loyalty to the Queen, and attachment to British connection, even whilst we see, or believe that we see, with regret that they have allowed themselves to be deceived by the insidious argument of a man from whom in our opinion no good thing can ever proceed, and who has procured their support to his democratic policy by false pretences. We believe, or at all events we hope, that, greatly as in appearance we may differ from them, we are, au fond, but one, and that but one sentiment animates us:—That of warding off the danger of Annexation, and of maintaining the autonomy of Lower Canada. As betwixt our French Canadian contemporaries, and those who see matters in the light that the TRUE WITNESS sees them, the argument “Union is Strength” has its meaning; and would to God that, casting aside all bickerings, and discarding all party trammels, we could all unite and come to an amicable understanding upon the line of policy to be pursued in our actual circumstances. Such a line it might be difficult to draw; this we seek not to disguise from ourselves. But of this we may be certain, and it may be laid down as an infallible axiom, that when there is question of upholding monarchical and anti-Yankee principles in Canada, the French Canadian or Catholic who follows Mr. George Brown, or keeps company with him, must be on the wrong road, and on the high way to political, national, and social perdition, which is Annexation.