Canada, Sir John George Bourinot [best time to read books .TXT] 📗
- Author: Sir John George Bourinot
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the leader of the "Grits," or extreme wing of the Reformers or Liberals. In opposition to him were allied Mr. George Etienne Cartier, once a follower of Papineau, but now a loyal leader of his race, and Mr. John Alexander Macdonald, who had occupied a prominent position for years as a Conservative leader.
The time had come for the accomplishment of a great change foreshadowed by Lord Durham, Chief-Justice Sewell, Mr. Howe, Sir Alexander Gait, and other public men of Canada: the union of the provinces of British North America. The leaders of the different governments in Canada, and the maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island combined with the leaders of the opposition with the object of carrying out this great measure. A convention of thirty-three representative men[1] was held in the autumn of 1864 in {373} the historic city of Quebec, and after a deliberation of several weeks the result was the unanimous adoption of a set of seventy-two resolutions embodying the terms and conditions on which the provinces through their delegates agreed to a federal union. These resolutions had to be laid before the various legislatures and adopted in the shape of addresses to the Queen, whose sanction was necessary to embody the wishes of the provinces in an imperial statute.
The consent of the legislature was considered sufficient by the governments of all the provinces except one, though the question had never been discussed at the polls. In New Brunswick alone was the legislature dissolved on the issue, and it was only after a second general election that the {374} legislature agreed to the union. In Nova Scotia, after much discussion and feeling, the legislature passed a resolution in favour of the measure, though a popular sentiment continued to exist against the union for several years. In the December of 1866 a second conference of delegates from the governments of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, was held at the Westminster Palace Hotel in London, and some modifications were made in the Quebec resolutions, chiefly with a view of meeting objections from the maritime provinces. In the early part of 1867 the imperial parliament, without a division, passed the statute known as the "British North America Act, 1867," which united in the first instance the province of Canada, now divided into Ontario and Quebec, with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and made provisions for the coming in of the other provinces of Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, British Columbia, and the admission of Rupert's Land and the great Northwest.
From 1840 to 1867 the relations of Canada and the United States became much closer, and more than once assumed a dangerous phase. In 1840 the authorities of New York arrested one Macleod on the charge of having murdered a man employed in the _Caroline_, when she was seized by the loyalists during the outbreak of 1837. The matter gave rise to much correspondence between the governments of Great Britain and the United States, and to a great deal of irritation in Canada, but happily for the peace of the two countries the courts acquitted Macleod, as the evidence was clear he had {375} nothing to do with the seizure of the vessel. In 1842 the question of the boundary between Maine and New Brunswick was settled by what is generally known in Canada as "the Ashburton Capitulation." As a result of the settlement made by Mr. Daniel Webster on the part of the United States, and of Mr. Alexander Baring, afterwards Lord Ashburton, on behalf of Great Britain, the State of Maine now presses like a huge wedge into the provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec, and a Canadian railway is obliged to pass over American territory, which many Canadians still believe ought to be a part of the Canadian Dominion. In 1846 Great Britain yielded to the persistency of American statesmen, and agreed to accept the line 49 degrees to the Pacific coast, and the whole of Vancouver Island, which, for a while, seemed on the point of following the fate of Oregon, and becoming exclusively American territory. But the question of boundary was not even then settled, as the Island of San Juan, which lies in the channel between Vancouver and the mainland, and is mainly valuable as a base of offensive and defensive operations in times of war, was, in later years, handed over to the Republic as a result of its successful diplomacy.
During this period the fishery question again assumed considerable importance. American vessels were shut out from the waters of certain colonial bays, in accordance with the convention of 1818, and a number of them captured from time to time for the infringement of the law. The United States Government attempted to raise issues which would {376} limit Canadian rights, but all these questions were placed in abeyance for twelve years by the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, which opened up the provincial fisheries to the people of the United States, on condition of free trade between the provinces and that country in certain natural products of the mines, fisheries, and farms of the two peoples. This measure was in itself an acknowledgment of the growing importance of the provinces, and of the larger measure of self-government now accorded them. The treaty only became law with the consent of the provincial legislatures; and, although the Canadian governments were not directly represented by any of their members, the governor-general, Lord Elgin, who personally conducted the negotiations on the part of England at Washington, in this, as in all other matters touching colonial interests, was assisted by the advice of his responsible ministers. The treaty lasted until 1866, when it was repealed by the action of the United States in accordance with the provision bringing it to a conclusion after one year's notice from one of the parties interested.
The commercial classes in the Eastern and Western States were, on the whole, favourable to an enlargement of the treaty, so as to bring in British Columbia and Vancouver Island, now colonies of the Crown, and to include certain other articles the produce of both countries, but the real cause of its repeal was the prejudice in the North against the provinces for their supposed sympathy for the Confederate States during the War of the Rebellion. A {377} large body of men in the North had brought themselves foolishly to believe that the repeal of the treaty would, sooner or later, force the provinces into annexation. A raid made by a few rash Confederates who had found refuge in Canada, on the St. Albans Bank, in the State of Vermont, deeply incensed the people of the North, though at no time could it be proved that the Canadian authorities had the least suspicion of the proposed expedition. On the contrary, they brought the culprits to trial, placed companies of volunteers along the frontier, and even paid a large sum of money in acknowledgment of an alleged responsibility when some of the stolen money was returned to the robbers on their release by a Montreal magistrate. When we review the history of those times and consider the difficult position in which Canada was necessarily placed, it is remarkable how honourably her government discharged its duties of a neutral between the belligerents.
No doubt the position of Canada was made more difficult at that critical time by the fact that she was a colony of Great Britain, against whom both North and South entertained bitter feelings by the close of the war; the former mainly on account of the escape of Confederate cruisers from English ports, and the latter because she did not receive active support from England. The North had also been much excited by the promptness with which Lord Palmerston had sent troops to Canada when Mason and Slidell were seized on an English packet on the high seas, and the bold tone held by some Canadian {378} papers when it was doubtful if the prisoners would be released.
Contemporaneously with the repeal of the Reciprocity Treaty came the raids of the Fenians--bands of men who did dishonour to the cause of Ireland, under the pretence of striking a blow at England through Canada, where their countrymen have always found happy homes, free government, and honourable positions. For months before the invasion American newspapers were full of accounts of the assembling and arming of these bands on the frontiers of Canada. They invaded the Dominion in 1866, property was destroyed, and a number of Canadian youth lost their lives near Ridgeway, in the Niagara district, but one O'Neil and his collection of disbanded soldiers and fugitives from justice were forced back by the Canadian forces to the country whose neutrality they had outraged. The United States authorities had calmly looked on while all the preparations for these raids were in progress. Proclamations were at last issued by the government when the damage had been done, and a few raiders were arrested; but the House of Representatives immediately sent a resolution to the President, requesting him "to cause the prosecutions, instituted in the United States courts against the Fenians, to be discontinued if compatible with the public interest"--a request which was complied with. In 1870 another raid[2] was attempted on the {379} Lower Canadian frontier, but it was easily repulsed, and the authorities of the United States did their duty with promptitude. For all the losses, however, that Canada sustained through these invasions of her territory, she has never received any compensation whatever.
Out of the very circumstances which were apparently calculated to do much injury to Canada, her people learned lessons of wisdom and self-reliance, and were stimulated to go vigorously to work to carry out that scheme of national development which had its commencement in the Quebec conference of 1864, and was constitutionally inaugurated in 1867 when the provinces entered on the new era of federal union.
[1] The delegates to the Quebec conference, held the following positions in their respective provinces:
_Canada_: Hon. Sir Etienne P. Tache, M.L.C., premier; Hon. John A. Macdonald, M.P.P., attorney-general of Upper Canada; Hon. George Etienne Cartier, M.P.P., attorney-general of Lower Canada; Hon. George Brown, M.P.P., president of the executive council; Hon. Alexander T. Galt, M.P.P., finance minister; Hon. Alexander Campbell, M.L.C., commissioner of crown lands; Hon. Jean C. Chapais, M.L.C., commissioner of public works; Hon. Thomas D'Arcy McGee, M.P.P., minister of agriculture; Hon. Hector L. Langevin, M.P.P., solicitor-general for Lower Canada; Hon. William McDougall, M.P.P., provincial secretary; Hon. James Cockburn, M.P.P., solicitor-general for Upper Canada; Hon. Oliver Mowat, M.P.P., postmaster-general.
_Nova Scotia_: Hon. Charles Tupper, M.P.P., provincial secretary and premier; Hon. William A. Henry, M.P.P., attorney-general; Hon. Robert B. Dickey, M.L.C.; Hon. Adams G. Archibald, M.P.P.; Hon. Jonathan McCully, M.L.C.
_New Brunswick_: Hon. Samuel L. Tilley, M.P.P., provincial secretary and premier; Hon. Peter Mitchell, M.L.C.; Hon. Charles Fisher, M.P.P.; Hon. William H. Steeves, M.L.C.; Hon. John Hamilton Gray, M.P.P.; Hon. Edward B. Chandler, M.L.C.; Hon. John M. Johnson, M.P.P., attorney-general.
_Prince Edward Island_: Hon. John Hamilton Gray, M.P.P., premier; Hon. George Coles, M.P.P.; Hon. Thomas Heath Haviland, M.P.P.; Hon. Edward Palmer, M.P.P., attorney-general; Hon. Andrew Archibald Macdonald, M.L.C.; Hon. Edward Whelan, M.L.C.; Hon. William H. Pope, M.P.P., provincial secretary.
_Newfoundland_: Hon. Frederick B. T. Carter, M.P.P., speaker of the House of Assembly; Hon. Ambrose Shea, M.P.P.
[2] In the autumn of 1871, a body of Fenians were prevented from raiding the new province of Manitoba by the prompt action of the troops of the United States stationed on the frontier.
XXVI.
END OF THE RULE OF FUR-TRADERS--ACQUISITION OF THE NORTHWEST--FORMATION OF MANITOBA--RIEL'S REBELLIONS--THE INDIANS.
(1670-1885.)
The time had come for the accomplishment of a great change foreshadowed by Lord Durham, Chief-Justice Sewell, Mr. Howe, Sir Alexander Gait, and other public men of Canada: the union of the provinces of British North America. The leaders of the different governments in Canada, and the maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island combined with the leaders of the opposition with the object of carrying out this great measure. A convention of thirty-three representative men[1] was held in the autumn of 1864 in {373} the historic city of Quebec, and after a deliberation of several weeks the result was the unanimous adoption of a set of seventy-two resolutions embodying the terms and conditions on which the provinces through their delegates agreed to a federal union. These resolutions had to be laid before the various legislatures and adopted in the shape of addresses to the Queen, whose sanction was necessary to embody the wishes of the provinces in an imperial statute.
The consent of the legislature was considered sufficient by the governments of all the provinces except one, though the question had never been discussed at the polls. In New Brunswick alone was the legislature dissolved on the issue, and it was only after a second general election that the {374} legislature agreed to the union. In Nova Scotia, after much discussion and feeling, the legislature passed a resolution in favour of the measure, though a popular sentiment continued to exist against the union for several years. In the December of 1866 a second conference of delegates from the governments of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, was held at the Westminster Palace Hotel in London, and some modifications were made in the Quebec resolutions, chiefly with a view of meeting objections from the maritime provinces. In the early part of 1867 the imperial parliament, without a division, passed the statute known as the "British North America Act, 1867," which united in the first instance the province of Canada, now divided into Ontario and Quebec, with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and made provisions for the coming in of the other provinces of Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, British Columbia, and the admission of Rupert's Land and the great Northwest.
From 1840 to 1867 the relations of Canada and the United States became much closer, and more than once assumed a dangerous phase. In 1840 the authorities of New York arrested one Macleod on the charge of having murdered a man employed in the _Caroline_, when she was seized by the loyalists during the outbreak of 1837. The matter gave rise to much correspondence between the governments of Great Britain and the United States, and to a great deal of irritation in Canada, but happily for the peace of the two countries the courts acquitted Macleod, as the evidence was clear he had {375} nothing to do with the seizure of the vessel. In 1842 the question of the boundary between Maine and New Brunswick was settled by what is generally known in Canada as "the Ashburton Capitulation." As a result of the settlement made by Mr. Daniel Webster on the part of the United States, and of Mr. Alexander Baring, afterwards Lord Ashburton, on behalf of Great Britain, the State of Maine now presses like a huge wedge into the provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec, and a Canadian railway is obliged to pass over American territory, which many Canadians still believe ought to be a part of the Canadian Dominion. In 1846 Great Britain yielded to the persistency of American statesmen, and agreed to accept the line 49 degrees to the Pacific coast, and the whole of Vancouver Island, which, for a while, seemed on the point of following the fate of Oregon, and becoming exclusively American territory. But the question of boundary was not even then settled, as the Island of San Juan, which lies in the channel between Vancouver and the mainland, and is mainly valuable as a base of offensive and defensive operations in times of war, was, in later years, handed over to the Republic as a result of its successful diplomacy.
During this period the fishery question again assumed considerable importance. American vessels were shut out from the waters of certain colonial bays, in accordance with the convention of 1818, and a number of them captured from time to time for the infringement of the law. The United States Government attempted to raise issues which would {376} limit Canadian rights, but all these questions were placed in abeyance for twelve years by the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, which opened up the provincial fisheries to the people of the United States, on condition of free trade between the provinces and that country in certain natural products of the mines, fisheries, and farms of the two peoples. This measure was in itself an acknowledgment of the growing importance of the provinces, and of the larger measure of self-government now accorded them. The treaty only became law with the consent of the provincial legislatures; and, although the Canadian governments were not directly represented by any of their members, the governor-general, Lord Elgin, who personally conducted the negotiations on the part of England at Washington, in this, as in all other matters touching colonial interests, was assisted by the advice of his responsible ministers. The treaty lasted until 1866, when it was repealed by the action of the United States in accordance with the provision bringing it to a conclusion after one year's notice from one of the parties interested.
The commercial classes in the Eastern and Western States were, on the whole, favourable to an enlargement of the treaty, so as to bring in British Columbia and Vancouver Island, now colonies of the Crown, and to include certain other articles the produce of both countries, but the real cause of its repeal was the prejudice in the North against the provinces for their supposed sympathy for the Confederate States during the War of the Rebellion. A {377} large body of men in the North had brought themselves foolishly to believe that the repeal of the treaty would, sooner or later, force the provinces into annexation. A raid made by a few rash Confederates who had found refuge in Canada, on the St. Albans Bank, in the State of Vermont, deeply incensed the people of the North, though at no time could it be proved that the Canadian authorities had the least suspicion of the proposed expedition. On the contrary, they brought the culprits to trial, placed companies of volunteers along the frontier, and even paid a large sum of money in acknowledgment of an alleged responsibility when some of the stolen money was returned to the robbers on their release by a Montreal magistrate. When we review the history of those times and consider the difficult position in which Canada was necessarily placed, it is remarkable how honourably her government discharged its duties of a neutral between the belligerents.
No doubt the position of Canada was made more difficult at that critical time by the fact that she was a colony of Great Britain, against whom both North and South entertained bitter feelings by the close of the war; the former mainly on account of the escape of Confederate cruisers from English ports, and the latter because she did not receive active support from England. The North had also been much excited by the promptness with which Lord Palmerston had sent troops to Canada when Mason and Slidell were seized on an English packet on the high seas, and the bold tone held by some Canadian {378} papers when it was doubtful if the prisoners would be released.
Contemporaneously with the repeal of the Reciprocity Treaty came the raids of the Fenians--bands of men who did dishonour to the cause of Ireland, under the pretence of striking a blow at England through Canada, where their countrymen have always found happy homes, free government, and honourable positions. For months before the invasion American newspapers were full of accounts of the assembling and arming of these bands on the frontiers of Canada. They invaded the Dominion in 1866, property was destroyed, and a number of Canadian youth lost their lives near Ridgeway, in the Niagara district, but one O'Neil and his collection of disbanded soldiers and fugitives from justice were forced back by the Canadian forces to the country whose neutrality they had outraged. The United States authorities had calmly looked on while all the preparations for these raids were in progress. Proclamations were at last issued by the government when the damage had been done, and a few raiders were arrested; but the House of Representatives immediately sent a resolution to the President, requesting him "to cause the prosecutions, instituted in the United States courts against the Fenians, to be discontinued if compatible with the public interest"--a request which was complied with. In 1870 another raid[2] was attempted on the {379} Lower Canadian frontier, but it was easily repulsed, and the authorities of the United States did their duty with promptitude. For all the losses, however, that Canada sustained through these invasions of her territory, she has never received any compensation whatever.
Out of the very circumstances which were apparently calculated to do much injury to Canada, her people learned lessons of wisdom and self-reliance, and were stimulated to go vigorously to work to carry out that scheme of national development which had its commencement in the Quebec conference of 1864, and was constitutionally inaugurated in 1867 when the provinces entered on the new era of federal union.
[1] The delegates to the Quebec conference, held the following positions in their respective provinces:
_Canada_: Hon. Sir Etienne P. Tache, M.L.C., premier; Hon. John A. Macdonald, M.P.P., attorney-general of Upper Canada; Hon. George Etienne Cartier, M.P.P., attorney-general of Lower Canada; Hon. George Brown, M.P.P., president of the executive council; Hon. Alexander T. Galt, M.P.P., finance minister; Hon. Alexander Campbell, M.L.C., commissioner of crown lands; Hon. Jean C. Chapais, M.L.C., commissioner of public works; Hon. Thomas D'Arcy McGee, M.P.P., minister of agriculture; Hon. Hector L. Langevin, M.P.P., solicitor-general for Lower Canada; Hon. William McDougall, M.P.P., provincial secretary; Hon. James Cockburn, M.P.P., solicitor-general for Upper Canada; Hon. Oliver Mowat, M.P.P., postmaster-general.
_Nova Scotia_: Hon. Charles Tupper, M.P.P., provincial secretary and premier; Hon. William A. Henry, M.P.P., attorney-general; Hon. Robert B. Dickey, M.L.C.; Hon. Adams G. Archibald, M.P.P.; Hon. Jonathan McCully, M.L.C.
_New Brunswick_: Hon. Samuel L. Tilley, M.P.P., provincial secretary and premier; Hon. Peter Mitchell, M.L.C.; Hon. Charles Fisher, M.P.P.; Hon. William H. Steeves, M.L.C.; Hon. John Hamilton Gray, M.P.P.; Hon. Edward B. Chandler, M.L.C.; Hon. John M. Johnson, M.P.P., attorney-general.
_Prince Edward Island_: Hon. John Hamilton Gray, M.P.P., premier; Hon. George Coles, M.P.P.; Hon. Thomas Heath Haviland, M.P.P.; Hon. Edward Palmer, M.P.P., attorney-general; Hon. Andrew Archibald Macdonald, M.L.C.; Hon. Edward Whelan, M.L.C.; Hon. William H. Pope, M.P.P., provincial secretary.
_Newfoundland_: Hon. Frederick B. T. Carter, M.P.P., speaker of the House of Assembly; Hon. Ambrose Shea, M.P.P.
[2] In the autumn of 1871, a body of Fenians were prevented from raiding the new province of Manitoba by the prompt action of the troops of the United States stationed on the frontier.
XXVI.
END OF THE RULE OF FUR-TRADERS--ACQUISITION OF THE NORTHWEST--FORMATION OF MANITOBA--RIEL'S REBELLIONS--THE INDIANS.
(1670-1885.)
In 1867 the Dominion
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