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Date: 1865-04-21
By: True Witness
Citation: “What will our Ministerial Delegates do in England?”, True Witness (21 April, 1865)
Other formats: TBA

What will our Ministerial Delegates do in England?

what is the object of their voyage or mission? Not, assuredly, to induce the Imperial Government to coerce the Lower Provinces into an acceptation of the Quebec scheme of Union; for already has Mr. Cardwell given us plainly to understand that, though the Imperial authorities approve of that scheme, they propose to leave the Colonies free to accept, or to reject it.—Besides, if the people of the Lower Provinces—as the result of the late elections in New Brunswick assures us is the case—are averse to the proposed scheme of Union, any action on the part of the British Government, to coerce them into accepting it, would but have the effect of coercing them into the arms of the United States; with whom their political and social affinities are as great as, and their material affinities are much greater than, are their affinities political, social or material with Upper Canada. Any attempt to coerce the Lower Provinces would simply result in the loss of those Provinces to Great Britain; and we may therefore be confident that the Ministerial delegation to England has not coercion for its object.

Besides, Mr. George Brown, speaking through the Globe, and detaching himself from his Ministerial colleagues whom he evidently looks upon as his servitors, has told us that the Quebec scheme is dead, and that we must fall back upon some other plan for settling the sectional difficulties betwixt the two Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada. In this matter we believe, though of course we are not behind the scenes, that the French Canadian section of our Ministry are not disposed to yield to the dictation of Mr. George Brown. Our Provincial Legislature has, whether for good or evil, accepted the Quebec scheme; adopted an Address to the Imperial Government praying the latter to legislate for the British North American Provinces, in accordance therewith; and therefore our Legislature could not, without stultifying itself, without eating its own words, condescend to listen to any other project than that which it has already formally sanctioned, and to which it has committed itself. The actual order of relations betwixt the two Canadas must therefore be maintained, until it be exchanged for, or superseded by, that embodied in the scheme of Union adopted by the Provincial Legislature in its last session.

If this be the policy of the Ministry it is one which so far should be supported, even by those who, like ourselves, strongly object to the details of their plan of Union; because, so long as that plan is not voluntarily adopted by the Lower Provinces, the actual order would thereby be maintained, and the extreme democratic and anti-French Canadian party of which Mr. Geo. Brown is the leader, would be incapacitated from bringing forward any other, and perhaps still more objectionable scheme for settling the “constitutional difficulties” of the day, by the simple process of “swamping the French” as the Montreal Herald of the 10th ult., so tersely expresses it. We must wait now, until in process of time the Lower Provinces see fit to accept that, which for the present at least, they have rejected; and thus the very adoption of the Quebec scheme by our Legislature may be made the means of indefinitely prolonging the existing order, which all French Canadians will admit is, if it could but be maintained, more favorable to the preservation of Lower Canadian autonomy than would be that other Union which the delegates to the Quebec Conference proposed as its substitute.

Had “State Rights” been better protected by that proposed scheme of Union; had it been less centralising in its details, and more truly Federal in its scope, we believe that the people of the Lower Provinces, who are naturally and laudably jealous of their autonomy, would have have been less averse to it. We believe that the only means by which it can ever be rendered acceptable to the people of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, will consist in a considerable modification of some of its details, so as to impart to it less of the character of a legislative or incorporating Union, and more of the character of a real Federal Union; and which modifications will at the same time give greater prominence to the monarchical element in the Constitution. No one pretends that the details of the measure laid before our Legislature are perfect, or not susceptible of any improvement; or that the hastily adopted, and in many instances crude ideas of the Quebec delegates can not be altered or modified for the better. If then the Union scheme in its actual form is distasteful to the Lower Provinces, it would certainly be better for us of Lower Canada to call upon their people to indicate what changes of detail would make that measure acceptable to them, and then to wait patiently for an answer, than to abandon it entirely, and thereby give Mr. George Brown and his Clear-Grit friends an opportunity to introduce, and insist upon the adoption of, another and perhaps, in so far as the autonomy of Lower Canada is concerned, a still more dangerous measure.

As an instance of what we may term the “crudity” of the ideas of the gentlemen who met at Quebec to make, God help the mark! a spick and span new Constitution for half a Continent, inhabited by races alien to one another in blood, language, and religion, we may cite, (though it may seem at first but a slight matter,) the name which they propose to give to the more popular or directly elected Chamber of the Central Legislature—to wit, “HOUSE OF COMMONS.” What more absurd than such a name! as if there could be in such a state of society as that which obtains in North America, anything but a “House of Commons;” as if, with the occasional exception of Her Majesty’s Representative who may be a Noble, all the rest of the Queen’s subjects in North America were not equally “Commoners!” To call one Chamber of a Legislature a House of Commons, par excellence, implies, of course, that the other Chamber is not a House of Commons; and implies therefore a social distinction which has, which can have, no footing amongst a people of whom all are Commoners alike, and none Nobles. We do not suspect the Quebec delegates of any occult design of forming in British North America a bogus patrician order, or of founding a pork and potash aristocracy; but we cannot but recognise in the absurd system of nomenclature which they adopted for their Federal Legislature, traces of haste and crudity, and a profound ignorance of the reasons why, in England, one branch of the Legislature is styled most appropriately a “House of Commons.”

There is therefore no reason to believe that the work of the Quebec delegates is in any other respect more free from imperfections and crudities, than it is in this of nomenclature: and though we do not pretend to insist now upon any modifications, though it is now too late for us of Lower Canada to commence any such agitation—yet if the people of the Lower Provinces themselves were to adopt that mode of action; were they to express their readiness to accept a less centralised form of Union than that which has been proposed to them, we do not see why we of this Province should regret what has occurred, or refuse to listen to terms. In the meantime, we must make the best of a bad bargain, and avail ourselves of the Resolutions adopted at the last session of our Legislature as a barrier against the mediated aggressions of Mr. George Brown and his friends. Those Resolutions unrescinded, the latter cannot bring forward their pet measure of “Rep by Pop,” or suggest, even, any other “Constitutional Changes;” and if the Ministry propose to make this use of the Resolutions, to shelter themselves behind them, should Mr. George Brown attempt some fresh attack upon our existing institutions, and to insist upon adhering to the terms agreed upon by the Quebec delegates, so far from opposing them, we should support them in this their intent, and seek to strengthen their bands against Mr. George Brown, and his party.