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Chronicles of Canada Volume 28 - The Fathers of Confederation: A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion

<h3> CHAPTER II </h3> <h4> OBSTACLES TO UNION </h4> The prospect was indeed one to dismay the most ardent patriot. After the passage of the Constitutional Act of 1791 the trend of events had set steadily in the direction of separation. Nature had placed physical obstacles in the road to union, and man did his best to render the task of overcoming them as hopeless as possible. The land communication between the Maritime Provinces and Canada, such as it was, precluded effective intercourse. In winter there could be no access by the St Lawrence, so that Canada's winter port was in the United States. As late as 1850 it took ten days, often longer, for a letter to go from Halifax to Toronto. Previous to 1867 there were but two telegraph lines connecting Halifax with Canada. Messages by wire were a luxury, the rate between Quebec and Toronto being seventy-five cents for ten words and eight cents for each additional word. Neither commerce nor friendship could {12} be much developed by telegraph in those days, and, as the rates were based on the distance, a telegram sent from Upper Canada to Nova Scotia was a costly affair. To reach the Red River Settlement, the nucleus of Manitoba, the Canadian travelled through the United States. With the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia the East had practically no dealings. Down to 1863, as Sir Richard Cartwright once said,[1] there existed for the average Canadian no North-West. A great lone land there was, and a few men in parliament looked forward to its ultimate acquisition, but popular opinion regarded it vaguely as something dim and distant. In course of time railways came, but they were not interprovincial and they did nothing to bind the East to the West. The railway service of early days is not to be confounded with the rapid trains of to-day, when a traveller leaves Montreal after ten in the morning and finds himself in Toronto before six o'clock in the afternoon. Said Cartwright, in the address already cited: Even in our own territory, and it was a matter not to be disregarded, the state {13} of communication was exceedingly slow and imperfect. Practically the city of Quebec was almost as far from Toronto in those days, during a great part of the year, as Ottawa is from Vancouver to-day. I can remember, myself, on one occasion being on a train which took four days to make its way from Prescott to Ottawa. Each province had its own constitution, its tariff, postage laws, and currency. It promoted its own interests, regardless of the existence of its British neighbours. Differences arose, says one writer, between their codes of law, their public institutions, and their commercial regulations.[2] Provincial misunderstandings, that should have been avoided, seriously retarded the building of the Inter-colonial Railway. 'The very currencies differ,' said Lord Carnarvon in the House of Lords. 'In Canada the pound or the dollar are legal tender. In Nova Scotia, the Peruvian, Mexican, Columbian dollars are all legal; in New Brunswick, British and American coins are recognized by law, though I believe that the shilling is taken at twenty-four cents, which is less than its value; in Newfoundland, {14} Peruvian, Mexican, Columbian, old Spanish dollars, are all equally legal; whilst in Prince Edward's Island the complexity of currencies and of their relative value is even greater.' When the Reciprocity Treaty was negotiated at Washington in 1854, Nova Scotia felt, with some reason, that she had not been adequately consulted in the granting to foreign fishermen of her inshore fisheries. In a word, the chief political forces were centrifugal, not centripetal. All the jealousy, the factious spirit, and the prejudice, which petty local sovereignties are bound to engender, flourished apace; and the general effect was to develop what European statesmen of a certain period termed Particularism. The marvel is not that federation lagged, but that men with vision and courage, forced to view these depressing conditions at close range, were able to keep the idea alive. There was some advance in public opinion between 1850 and 1860, but, on the whole, adverse influences prevailed and little was achieved. The effects of separate political development and of divided interest were deeply rooted. Leaders of opinion in the various provinces, and even men of the same province, refused to join hands for any great national purpose. Party conflict absorbed {15} their best energies. To this period, however, belongs the spadework which laid the foundations of the future structure. The British American League held its various meetings and adopted its resolutions. But the League was mainly a party counterblast to the Annexation Manifesto of 1849 and soon disappeared. To this period, too, belong the writings of able advocates of union like P. S. Hamilton of Halifax and J. C. Taché of Quebec, whose treatises possess even to-day more than historical value. Another notable contribution to the subject was the lecture by Alexander Morris entitled Nova Britannia, first delivered at Montreal in 1858 and afterwards published. Yet such propaganda aroused no perceptible enthusiasm. In Great Britain the whole question of colonial relations was in process of evolution, while her statesmen were doubtful, as ours were, of what the ultimate end would be. That a full conception of colonial self-government had not yet dawned is shown by these words, written in 1852 by Earl Grey to Lord John Russell: 'It is obvious that if the colonies are not to become independent states, some kind of authority must be exercised by the Government at home.' This decade, however, witnessed some {16} definite political action. In 1854 Johnston, the Conservative Opposition leader in the Nova Scotia legislature, presented a motion in these terms: 'Resolved, That the union or confederation of the British Provinces on just principles, while calculated to perpetuate their connection with the parent state, will promote their advancement, increase their strength and influence, and elevate their position.' This resolution, academic in form, but supported in a well-balanced and powerful speech by the mover, drew from Joseph Howe, then leader of the government, his preference for representation in the British House of Commons. The attitude of Howe, then and afterwards, should be examined with impartiality, because he and other British Americans, as well as some English statesmen, were the victims of the honest doubts which command respect but block the way to action. Johnston, as prime minister in 1857, pressed his policy upon the Imperial government, but met with no response. When Howe returned to power, he carried a motion which declared for a conference to promote either the union of the Maritime Provinces or a general federation, but expressing no preference for either. Howe never was pledged to federation as his fixed {17} policy, as so many persons have asserted. He made various declarations which betokened uncertainty. So little had the efforts put forth down to 1861 impressed the official mind that Lord Mulgrave, the governor of Nova Scotia, in forwarding Howe's motion to the Colonial Office, wrote: 'As an abstract question the union of the North American colonies has long received the support of many persons of weight and ability, but so far as I am aware, no political mode of carrying out this union has ever been proposed.' <center> <ANTIMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-016.jpg" ALT="Sir Alexander T. Galt. From a photograph by Topley." BORDER="2" WIDTH="372" HEIGHT="517"> <H4 CLASS="h4center" STYLE="width: 372px"> Sir Alexander T. Galt. From a photograph by Topley. </h4> </center> The most encouraging step taken at this time, and the most far-reaching in its consequences, was the action of Alexander Galt in Canada. Galt possessed a strong and independent mind. The youngest son of John Galt, the Scottish novelist, he had come across the ocean in the service of the British American Land Company, and had settled at Sherbrooke in the Eastern Townships of Lower Canada. Though personally influential and respected, he wielded no general political authority, for he lacked the aptitude for compromise demanded in the game of party. He was the outspoken champion of Protestant interests in the Catholic part of Canada, and had boldly declared for the annexation of Canada to the {18} United States in the agitation of 1849. His views on clericalism he never greatly modified, but annexation to the United States he abandoned, with characteristic candour, for federation. In 1858 he advocated a federal union of all the provinces in a telling speech in parliament, which revealed a thorough knowledge of the material resources of the country, afterwards issued in book form in his Canada: 1849 to 1859. During the ministerial crisis of August 1858 Sir Edmund Head asked Galt to form a government. He declined, and indicated George Cartier as a fit and proper person to do so. The former Conservative Cabinet, with some changes, then resumed office, and Galt himself, exacting a pledge that Confederation should form part of the government's policy, assumed the portfolio of Finance. The pledge was kept in the speech of the governor-general closing the session, and in October of that year Cartier, with two of his colleagues, Galt and Ross, visited London to secure approval for a meeting of provincial delegates on union. Galt's course had forced the question out of the sphere of speculation. A careful student of the period[3] argues with point {19} that to Galt we owe the introduction of the policy into practical politics. In the light of after events this view cannot be lightly set aside. But the effort bore no fruit for the moment. The colonial secretary, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, declined to authorize the conference without first consulting the other provinces, and the government did not feel itself bound because of this to resign or consult the constituencies. In other words, the question did not involve the fate of the Cabinet. But Galt had gained a great advantage. He had enlisted the support of Cartier, whose influence in Lower Canada was henceforth exerted with fidelity to win over the French to a policy which they had long resisted. The cause attained additional strength in 1860 by the action of two other statesmen, George Brown and John A. Macdonald, who between them commanded the confidence of Upper Canada, the one as Liberal, the other as Conservative leader. Brown brought before parliament resolutions embodying the decisions of the Reform Convention of 1859 in favour of a federation confined to the Canadas, and Macdonald declared unequivocally for federative union as a principle, arguing that a strong central government should be the chief aim. {20} Brown's resolutions were rejected, and the movement so auspiciously begun once more exhibited an ominous tendency to subside. The varying fortunes which attended the cause during these years resembled its previous vicissitudes. It appeared as if all were for a party and none were for the state. If those who witnessed the events of 1860 had been asked for their opinion, they would probably have declared that the problem was as far from solution as ever. Yet they would have been mistaken, as the near future was to show. A great war was close at hand, and, as war so often does, it stimulated movements and policies which otherwise might have lain dormant. The situation which arose out of the Civil War in the United States neither created nor carried Confederation, but it resulted, through a sense of common danger, in bringing the British provinces together and in giving full play to all the forces that were making for their union. [1] Address to Canadian Club, Ottawa, 1906. [2] Union of the Colonies, by P. S. Hamilton, Halifax, 1864. [3] See the chapter, 'Parties and Politics, 1840-1867,' by J. L. Morison, in Canada and its Provinces, vol. v. {21} <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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