Document Information

Date: 1866-11-16
By: Montreal Herald
Citation: “What Confederation Means” Montreal Herald (16 November 1866).
Other formats: Click here to view the original document (PDF).

WHAT CONFEDERATION MEANS.—For those who believe that Confederation means a drawing closer of the bonds between Canada and the mother country, the following antithesis, forming the last words of an article in the Times on the subject of the Quebec fire, will perhaps be instructive. To the writer of that article Confederation evidently means the independence of the Colonies, or, as others put it, the disembarrassment of the Mother Country from the complications on this Continent: “In a few months the province to which Quebec belongs will probably be a member of a great Confederation, and we trust that in course of time this Confederation will take its place among the independent nations of the earth. In these altered political circumstances acts of mutual kindness will be remembered, and constitute a bond of union between those who have lived in harmony and parted in peace.” We have “lived in harmony.” We are about in a few months to “part in peace,” by the process of Confederation—that is the judgment of the London Times on a movement which is here represented as the necessary, because the only mode of retaining the connection between Great Britain and the Colonies.