Why, The Seaports Aimed At, For Our Common Subjugation.
But The Truth Is, All These Selfish Views And Arguments Are Remarkably
Short-Sighted, Unworthy Of The Subject, And Unworthy Even Of Those Who
Use Them.
In a commercial, in a military, in every point of view, we
are all, rightly considered, dependent on each other.
Newfoundland
dominates the Gulf, and none of us can afford to be separated from her.
Lord Chatham said he would as soon abandon Plymouth as Newfoundland to
a foreign power, and he is thought to have understood how to govern
men. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are Siamese twins, held together by
that ligature of land between Baie Verte and Cumberland Basin, and the
fate of the one must follow the fate of the other. Prince Edward Island
is only a little bit broken off by the Northumberland Strait from those
two bigger brethren, and Upper and Lower Canada are essential to each
other's prosperity.
"If the honest and misguided would but reflect for a moment the risks
they run by defeating, or even delaying this measure, I am sure they
would, even yet, retract. If we reject it now, is there any human
probability that we shall ever see again so propitious a set of
circumstances to bring about the same results? How they came about we
all know. The strange and fortunate events that have occurred in
Canada; the extraordinary concessions made by the leaders of the
Governments below - Dr. Tupper, the Nova Scotian Premier, for instance,
admitting to his confidence, and bringing with him here as his co-
representatives, the Hon. Messrs. Archibald and McCully, two of his
most determined political opponent - can we ever expect, if we reject
this scheme, that the same or similar things will occur again to favour
it? Can we expect to see the leader of the Upper Canadian Conservative
party and the leader of the Upper Canadian Liberals sitting side by
side again, if this project fails to work out, in a spirit of mutual
compromise and concession, the problem of our constitutional
difficulties? No, Sir, it is too much to expect. Miracles would cease
to be miracles if they were events of every-day occurrence; the very
nature of wonders requires that they should be rare; and this is a
miraculous and wonderful circumstance, that men at the head of the
Governments in five separate Provinces, and men at the head of the
parties opposing them, all agreed at the same time to sink party
differences for the good of all, and did not shrink, at the risk of
having their motives misunderstood, from associating together for the
purpose of bringing about this result. I have asked, Sir, what risks do
we run if we reject this measure? We run the risk of being swallowed up
by the spirit of universal democracy that prevails in the United
States. Their usual and favourite motto is -
"'No pent-up Utica contracts our powers,
But the whole boundless continent is ours.
That is the popular paraphrase of the Monroe doctrine. And the popular
voice has favoured - aye, and the greatest statesmen among them have
looked upon it as inevitable - an extension of the principles of
democracy over this continent. Now, I suppose a universal democracy is
no more acceptable to us than a universal monarchy in Europe would have
been to our ancestors; yet for three centuries - from Charles V. to
Napoleon - our fathers combated to the death against the subjugation of
all Europe to a single system or a single master, and heaped up a debt
which has since burdened the producing classes of the Empire with an
enormous load of taxation, which, perhaps, none other except the hardy
and ever-growing industry of those little islands could have borne up
under. The idea of a universal democracy in America is no more welcome
to the minds of thoughtful men among us than was that of a universal
monarchy to the minds of the thoughtful men who followed the standard
of the third William, or who afterwards, under the great Marlborough,
opposed the armies of the particular dynasty that sought to place
Europe under a single dominion.
"But if we are to have a universal democracy on this continent, the
Lower Provinces - the smaller fragments - will be 'gobbled up' first, and
we will come in afterwards by way of dessert. The proposed
Confederation will enable us to bear up shoulder to shoulder; to resist
the spread of this universal democracy doctrine; it will make it more
desirable to maintain on both sides the connection that binds us to the
parent State; it will raise us from the position of mere dependent
colonies to a new and more important position; it will give us a new
lease of existence under other and more favourable conditions; and
resistance to this project, which is pregnant with so many advantages
to us and to our children, means simply this, ultimate union with the
United States. But these are small matters, wholly unworthy of the
attention of the Smiths, and Annands, and Palmers, who have come
forward to forbid the banns of British-American Union. Mr. Speaker,
before I draw to a close the little remainder of what I have to say -
and I am sorry to have detained the House so long -
I beg to offer a few observations apropos of my own position as
an English-speaking member for Lower Canada. I venture, in the first
place, to observe that there seems to be a good deal of exaggeration on
the subject of race, occasionally introduced, both on the one side and
the other, in this section of the country. I congratulate my honorable
friend, the Attorney-General for this section, on his freedom from such
prejudices in general, though I still think in matters of patronage and
the like he always looks first to his own compatriots for which neither
do I blame him. But this theory of race is sometimes carried to an
anti-christian and unphilosophical excess.
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