Document Information

Date: 1865-01-22
By: The Montreal Herald
Citation: “The Speech from the Throne”, The Montreal Herald (22 January, 1865)
Other formats: TBA

THE SPEECH FROM THE THRONE.

—If one were disposed to read this document very critically, one or two phrases might be found in it, which would excite remark, and perhaps something like resistance to the ideas they convey. It has hitherto been the boast of Colonists that they continue to be Britons—all the more firmly so, perhaps, on account of the distance from the seat of Empire, which obliges them to supplement by strength of will, other and more material ties. We are now told by Her Majesty’s representative, speaking officially for his Ministers as well as himself, that we are to become members of a “new nationality.” What new nationality? That is still undeveloped among the inchoate schemes of a set of people for whom perhaps the first Napoleon would have had more rather than less of the contempt which he always expressed for the “ideologues.” “Ideologues” are persons who embody some kind of human conceptions in plausible words. But those we speak of are of the sort which another great master called your “empty word catchers who live on syllables”—fellows who found themselves turned into green pastures, by the very first proposition for a union of the Provinces, and vexed the compositors of an entire Province for weeks with uncouth names, from which we were offered an evil choice as the future designation of the land which we inhabit. We now learn from His Excellency’s announcement—if indeed that is to be taken without the grain of salt which we shall presently apply—that the choice of horrors must be made. We may make ourselves living monuments of biographical information and become Cabotians. We may indicate our extreme proximity to that pleasant boundary of our extended reign, the North Pole, and call ourselves Hyperboreans; or for brilliancy, Aurora Borealisians; or we may commemorate past historical struggles and the present state of peace, at the same time that we indicate one of our future leading pursuits by accepting in some form, more or less simple, the celebrated title which Mr. Cartier struck out in a moment of inspiration. We may be cod-fishes, or as classical learning abounds, may have this lengthened by a syllable or two, or entirely remodelled into a Greek or Latin shape, as the warranted high-lows of an eminent London boot-maker became Antigropelos. We must at any rate make some kind of a choice, for a great people such as we mean to be, cannot go on enacting the romance of “no name,” and according to the speech from the throne we are by the legislation of the present session to endow ourselves with a new nationality, and of course cast off like the slough of a former state of being, that of which we have hitherto considered ourselves as forming a not altogether unhonoured part. That being so it seems perhaps naturally to follow that we are to assume “Imperial responsibilities,” for a nation new or old, if it be really one, will willingly admit of no superior authority to its own. Imperialism implies provincialism—nationality, independence of external authority. As the Cæsars extended their Empire, nationalities vanished; and new nations grew again, just as Imperial authority faded from the circumference of the territory it had previously ruled. It is plain that truly Imperial functions are inconsistent with the state of Provincialism, or else words lose all meaning, though we may assume duties not necessarily of an Imperial kind, which the Imperial Government has hitherto performed for us. In our present position there is no clashing between our internal independence and the external supremacy of the mother country. The different lines of action of the two powers are each exercised in an appropriate and independent sphere; but from the moment when the Province assumes to exercise concurrent jurisdiction with the Metropolitan State, from that moment divided action tends to, or at least does not exclude, opposing action. The new nation, exercising the same class of functions as the old nation, of which it once made a part, may exercise them with a view to common interests and sentiments; but the whirigig of time brings round strange reverses, and who shall answer for such community of feeling in new relations, when we see the utter carelessness of Imperial interests which have been shown in the past by the hostile tariffs of this and other Colonies? In approaching the possibly grave questions of the future, it becomes us not to deceive ourselves. Want of logical coherence, whether it be expressed architecturally by insufficient strength of materials, or legislatively by antagonism of principles, may be present without any one detecting the consequential weakness, until the time comes for the strain to be put upon the faulty spot. The edifice or the constitution may have a fair and, perhaps, majestic outside, with all sorts of plausibilities to allure the eye of the on looker, but unless the parts are fitly framed, each in its right place, to support the whole, the fabric will one day fall to ruin. The double majority, which once had its fashion, was not a more lunatic idea than two Imperial authorities co-existing in the same Empire. While we, however, point out these verbal eccentricities of the speech with which his Excellency opened Parliament on Thursday, we may add our advice that no one should take seriously to heart the dangers which a strict construction of it would seem to menace us with. Of all documents, perhaps, these kind of ceremonial programmes have the least possible significance or influence as to the course of future events. We do not suppose that His Excellency really meant to ask us to put off our old title of Britons; nor do we imagine that he would like us to determine in peace to make foreign alliances independent of Great Britain; nor, in case of war, to frustrate the plans of campaigns by sending to the field independent armies with independent Generals, instead of contingents to the army of the Empire, under one leader of Imperial appointment. At present all this is but words, and we hope that the day will never come when either of these measures will be seriously propounded to us as the practical business of our Legislature.