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Date: 1866-12-07
By: Montreal Herald
Citation: “The Value of the Canadian Authorities by whom Confederation is recommended in England” Montreal Herald (7 December 1866).
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THE VALUE OF THE CANADIAN AUTHORITIES BY WHOM CONFEDERATION IS RECOMMENDED IN ENGLAND.—We have delayed but not forgotten to fulfil the pledge which we gave sometime ago, to show that several of our Canadian authorities, self styled statesmen, have heretofore been precisely of the same opinion as the writer in the London Daily News, who lately discussed the above cognate subjects. It will be remembered that the London writer devoted two articles to reply to the present representations of our Toronto contemporary, and that in the first of these he spoke thus of the Intercolonial Railway:—
“If the money were about to be laid out for the good of the people of the Province ; if the railroad to he constructed were tolerably sure to pay, or even to serve such a public purpose as to make its construction desirable in the eyes of the Colonial public, if in short it were such an undertaking as the Colonists themselves would assume and execute, provided they had the requisite command of money, the propriety of giving an Imperial guarantee might still be debateable ; but it would stand on a footing very different from that which it occupies at present. This Intercolonial Railway is a hermaphrodite scheme belonging neither to remunerative commercial enterprise nor to State policy, but having to do with both. When you ask for public reasons for its construction, you are reminded of the wants of commerce ; when you inquire if it can possibly have a paying traffic, you are bid to think of it as a political line. * * *
When the line, has been opened a year or two and for want of traffic becomes burdensome to the Provinces, the transactions which it is now proposed to enter into will be scrutinized in Canada and the Lower Provinces, as it seems to be worth nobody’s while to examine them now. A bad harvest, a season of commercial depression, or a budget with a deficit opens the eyes of taxpayers and makes them wonderfully acute.
“At such times people decline to have their enquiries stopped by the mention of legal obligations; they insist on knowing the ground and reason of things. Let this railway be constructed and prove a burden to the Colonial revenues, and we shall have the Colonists asking in whose interest the bargain has been made. Why did successive governments take so much interest in it? Why did Colonial Secretary after Colonial Secretary urge its construction? * * The Canadians will say boldly that the line was made much more for our purposes than theirs. * * * Then will follow a claim upon the Imperial Government.
In a second article, the Daily News, after asserting: “ We fail to discover a single point on which the Provinces would he rendered stronger for military defence by Confederation,” adds :—
Canadian politicians are becoming unsavoury in this country owing to their perpetual association with pecuniary jobs. The Toronto Globe, whose vigorous and long sustained assaults on the “Corruptionists,” now in power, are fresh in memory, will understand us. * * In Canada there is a capitalist in every scheme. The administration of large sums of money, not raised by taxation on the colony, has completely debauched public life there, and those Englishmen who know the Provinces and care for the success of free government, tremble as often as they hear that its public men are on their way to England—knowing that they never come without some financial project.
Now we propose taking these words for texts and showing the entire accordance with the views herein set forth with those of the organ of Mr. G. Brown before Mr. J. A. MacDonald, or as he now says, the hackneyed corruptionist, caught him in the snare. But before we do so we may as well dispose of another part oi our subject,— by exhibiting the former opinions of some members of the present Ministry on the value of the Intercolonial Railroad for commercial purposes, and the fidelity of the representation made hy the Daily News of their views that it must be regarded solely as an Imperial and not Colonial project. The Ministers of whom we speak are Messrs. Howland and McDougall; now in England, and Mr. McGee, all of them colleagues, in Mr. John S. MacDonald’s first Ministry. In a memorandum signed by these gentlemen, and by three others who are now supposed to represent Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in England, approved by the Governor General in Council, on the 15th Sept.,1862, we find an agreement to build this railroad in such a manner that five twelfths of the expense should be borne by Canada, and here is the motive alleged:
“That in arriving at this conclusion the undersigned have been greatly influenced by the conviction that the construction of the road between Halifax and Quebec must supply an essential link in the chain of an unbroken highway extending through British territory from the Atlantic to the Pacific, in the completion of which every Imperial interest in North America is most deeply involved.”
Not a word it will be seen about any Provincial interest being involved in the construction of the read between Halifax and Quebec ; not a word here about its commercial advantages, an omission which is made emphatic by the antithesis which follow when the writers speak of the road through the Hudson Bay territory as follows :
“And the undersigned are agreed that to present properly this part of the subject to the Imperial authorities, the three Provinces will unite at an early day in a joint representation on the immense political and commercial importance of the Western extension of the projected work.”
The road between Halifax and Quebec involved Imperial interests only. That across the Hudson Bay territory had immense commercial as well as political importance. This was signed by Messrs. Howland, MacDougall and McGee, and if there be any ambiguity about its meaning the doubt is cleared up by the report of a Committee of the Executive Council approved by the Governor General October, 1862, and intended as an instruction for Messrs. Sicotte and Howland who were then in England.
“They recommend that the said delegates be charged to represent to the Imperial Government that the Government of Canada in coming to the conclusion expressed in the said (above) memorandum were, influenced in a high degree by their understanding of the value which in the judgment of the Imperial Government attaches to the Railway as a means of strengthening the defensive power of the Province as an integral part of the British Empire. They recommend that in their intercourse with the Imperial Government the delegates be instructed to urge that the contribution which Canada may make to the Intercolonial Railway shall be regarded as to that extent, an expenditure for defensive purposes, and that it shall be so considered in any intercourse or agreement which may hereafter he had concerning the relative expenditure by the Province and the Imperial Government growing out of the necessary defence of Canada in seasons of danger or war.”
It is worthy of remark that the signers of this memorandum by no means render themselves responsible even for the opinion that the road would be a valuable aid in defending the country. They only comply in this respect with the views well or ill-founded which they understand to be entertained by the Imperial Government.
Now it having been the opinion of these gentlemen that the Intercolonial Railroad could be of no Provincial value, but was solely to be regarded as a military work made by us to facilitate the defence of the Province by the Mother country, the Daily News cannot be considered as wandering very fac from probabilities in supposing that the same opinion may continue to prevail, especially after the projected work shall come to be felt as a burden. So much at any rate for these authorities. Now let us see what the Globe said at that time on the same subject. We place a few lines in Italics to mark their exact correspondence with these Italicized from the Daily News. The article from which we extract hears date Sept. 23, 1866:—
The scheme of the Government the construction of the Intercolonial Railway opens an account which never will be closed. Every storm of snow in the inhospitable regions below River du Loup will lay a new burden on the people of Upper Canada. The tax-payers will watch the passenger traffic with the liveliest interest, as indicating the extent of the demand upon them for the year. It was had enough when they consented that Canada should pay five-twelfths of the expenditure on the road, when in fact it will not receive one-twentieth of the benefit ; but it was infinitely worse to involve the country in a scheme for running the railway. ** * * * Who can fail to see the hand of the Grand Trunk in this? * * * They are putting forward the construction of this railroad as a measure of defence, which it cannot possibly be considered. * * * It is a dream of many persons in Nova Scotia that the Halifax and Quebec railway will draw to that harbour the trade of the West; but it is a dream, and nothing more. No passenger, no shipper of freight will ever think of going or sending to Halifax when he can find shipping at Quebec or Portland. He will not add the cost of 700 miles of railway travel to the expenses of transit to benefit the people of Halifax. It is said that the shortening of the sea voyage is a great object with travellers ; but any one who has travelled 700 miles by railway will, saying nothing of the expense, prefer to it the prolongation of a voyage for a day. As to freight, the thing is not to he spoken of. * * * 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 the trade from its great estuary. 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.
We might multiply quotations to the same effect from the same source; but nothing can be stronger or more comprehensive than the above. It will he seen that while the then Ministry, which comprised three of the present Ministry, without vouching f. r the justice of the opinion that the road would facilitate the Imperial Government in discharging its duty of defending the Province were willing to comply with that notion, and build the road as ft part of our contribution to military purposes, even this was too much for the organ of Mr. Brown. It declares that the railroad cannot possibly he considered as a measure of defence! any more than it can be looked upon as valuable for commercial purposes ; and it is especially severe upon the agreement that Canada should pay five twelfths of the cost. By what arguments does it now refute those which we have quoted, and show the justice of our paying not five twelfth but five sixths of the cost? We boldly say that we have seen none. Yet it has frequently of late written as if great commercial and military advantages were to flow from the construction of the road. In any case, however, it asserts that the road is an essential incident of political union with the other Provinces, and that this union is so good a thing that it is willing to take the road for its sake, even if that work might not by itself be worthy of favourable consideration. But unhappily for that argument the Globe has pronounced, if possible, more vehement censures upon the Union of the Provinces than upon the Intercolonial Railroad. It, and its editor Mr. Brown, say now that this union is to settle all the constitutional difficulties as they call them, and especially to withdraw Upper Canadians from beneath that French domination under which they allege that they groan. Let us see what these authorities once thought on these points and especially on the last of them :
“Moreover, the result of a union with the Maritime Provinces would be, that instead of one sucker fastened on the rich udder of Upper Canada, there would he three, or perhaps four I A compact for the less advanced sections of the country for the expenditure of public money on local objects, not’ at all useful to the West, would soon be struck up and carried into operation; and the French Canadians standing in the centre, in a compact body, will rule more firmly than ever.
The Daily News asked what it was to think of Confederation and its concomitants, when it saw the Globe writing in its favour and lire Herald against it. Perhaps it may find this confusion worse confounded, when, it has to judge between the Globe writing for and against the same thing, and Ministers of the Crown asserting that commercial advantages are to be derived from a railroad, whose construction they have themselves solemnly refused even to consider, except in the light of a contribution to the military defence of the Empire. We suppose, however, that our English contemporary may attach some little superiority of value to an opinion consistently held for years, over one assumed in contradiction to repeated declarations, in the course of half an hour, with place and pay hanging before the eyes of the gentlemen who were about to turn their backs upon themselves. There is one other delegate now in England, in ability far above his colleagues in the Ministry, whose opinions have undergone a change as sudden as the rest. We mean Mr. Jno. A. MacDonald. At the epoch when Mr. Brown was complaining so bitterly of the railway arrangements of the MacDonald-Sicotte Government in the words we have quoted, Mr. Jno. A. MacDonald made a speech in the Western part of the Province, and though we cannot put our hands upon it, we believe that we are not wrong in saying that he declared in substance that though he and Mr. Brown differed on almost all points, he was happy to say that he was sure of Mr. Brown’s assistance in defeating this mischievous scheme. The acceptance of that scheme and that of Confederation a few months after the speech, is the only thing on which these two now agree ; and as to Confederation, Mr. Brown has recently quoted the Attorney General’s votes on a Committee of the House of Assembly, to show that he was bitterly opposed to the plan,—opposed even to considering it—down to a few days before it became manifest that his acceptance of it was the surest method to retain his hold on office.