Part 8

I had reason to believe that I was armed with all the power which I thought requisite.... I also trusted that I should enjoy, throughout the course of my administration, all the strength which the cordial and steadfast support of the authorities at home can alone give to their distant officers; and that even party feeling would refrain from molesting me whilst occupied in maintaining the integrity of the British Empire.

In these just expectations I have been painfully disappointed. From the very commencement of my task, the minutest details of my administration have been exposed to incessant criticism, in a spirit which has evinced an entire ignorance of the state of this country, and of the only mode in which the supremacy of the British Crown can here be upheld and exercised. Those who have in the British Legislature systematically depreciated my powers, and the ministers of the Crown by their tacit acquiescence therein, have produced the effect of making it too clear that my authority is inadequate for the emergency which called it into existence. At length an act of my Government, the first and most important which was brought under the notice of the authorities at home, has been annulled; and the entire policy, of which that act was a small though essential part, has thus been defeated....

In these conflicting and painful circumstances, it is far better that I should at once and distinctly announce my intention of desisting from the vain attempt to carry my policy and system of administration into effect with such inadequate and restricted means....

You will easily believe that, after all the exertions which I have made, it is with feelings of deep disappointment that I find myself thus suddenly deprived of the power of conferring great benefit on that province to which I have referred; of reforming the administrative system there, and eradicating the manifold abuses which had been engendered by the negligence and corruption of former times, and so lamentably fostered by civil dissensions. I cannot but regret being obliged to renounce the still more glorious hope of employing unusual legislative powers in the endowment of that province with those free municipal institutions, which are the only sure basis of local improvement and representative liberty, of establishing a system of general education, of revising the defective laws which regulate real property and commerce, and of introducing a pure and competent administration of justice. Above all, I grieve to be thus forced to abandon the realisation of such large and solid schemes of colonisation and internal improvement, as would connect the distant portions of these extensive colonies, and lay open the unwrought treasures of the wilderness to the wants of British industry and the energy of British enterprise.

... Our exertions, however, will not, cannot be thrown away. The information which we have acquired, although not as yet fit for the purposes of immediate legislation, will contribute to the creation of juster views as to the resources, the wants and the interests of these colonies, than ever yet prevailed in the mother country.

37. THE EVILS OF THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM (1839).[4]

=Source.=--The open letters of Joseph Howe of Nova Scotia to the Colonial Secretary, Lord John Russell, 1839, printed in Howe's _Speeches and Public Letters_, Vol. II. Boston, 1858.

The city of Liverpool shall again serve us for the purposes of illustration. Turn back to the passages where I have described a Mayor, ignorant of everything, surrounded by irresponsible but cunning advisers; who, for their own advantage, embroil him with a majority of the citizens, while his countenance, and the patronage created by the taxes levied upon the city, are monopolised by a miserable minority of the whole; and insulted and injured thousands, swelling with indignation, surround him on every side. After your Lordship has dwelt upon this scene of heartburning and discontent--of general dissatisfaction among the citizens--of miserable intrigue and chuckling triumph, indulged by the few who squander the resources and decide on the interests of the many, but laugh at their murmurs and never acknowledge their authority--let me beg of you to reflect whether matters would be made better or worse, if the Mayor of Liverpool was bound, in every important act of his administration, to ask the direction of, and throw the responsibility on, another individual, who never saw the city, who knows less about it than even himself, and who resides, not in London, at the distance of a day's coaching from him, but across the Atlantic, in Halifax, Quebec or Toronto, and with whom it is impossible to communicate about anything within a less period than a couple of months. Suppose that this gentleman in the distance possesses a veto upon every important ordinance by which the city is to be watched, lighted and improved--by which docks are to be formed, trade regulated, and one-third of the city revenues (drawn from sources beyond the control of the popular branch) dispensed. And suppose that nearly all whose talents or ambition lead them to aspire to the higher offices of the place, are compelled to take, once or twice in their lives, a voyage across the Atlantic, to pay their court to him--to solicit his patronage, and intrigue for the preferment, which, under a better system, would naturally result from manly competition and eminent services within the city itself. Your Lordship is too keen sighted, and I trust too frank, not to acknowledge that no form of government could well be devised more ridiculous than this; that under such no British city could be expected to prosper; and that with it no body of her Majesty's subjects, within the British islands themselves, would ever be content. Yet this, my Lord, is an illustration of your own theory; this is the system propounded by Lord Normanby,[5] as the best the present cabinet can devise. And may I not respectfully demand, why British subjects in Nova Scotia any more than their brethren in Liverpool, should be expected to prosper or be contented under it; when experience has convinced them that it is miserably insufficient and deceptive, repugnant to the principles of the Constitution they revere, and but a poor return for the steady loyalty which their forefathers and themselves have maintained on all occasions?

One of the greatest evils of the Colonial Constitution, as interpreted by Your Lordship, is, that it removes from a Province every description of responsibility, and leaves all the higher functionaries at liberty to lay every kind of blame at the door of the Secretary of State. The Governor, if the Colonists complain, shrugs his shoulders, and replies that he will explain the difficulty in his next despatch, but in the meantime his orders must be obeyed.

38. THE BENEFITS OF RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT (1839).

=Source.=--Howe's _Letters_, as in 37.

You ask me for the remedy. Lord Durham has stated it distinctly: the Colonial Governors must be commanded to govern by the aid of those who possess the confidence of the people, and are supported by a majority of the representative branch. Where is the danger? Of what consequence is it to the people of England, whether half a dozen persons, in whom that majority have confidence, but of whom they know nothing and care less, manage our local affairs; or the same number, selected from the minority, and whose policy the bulk of the population distrust?... Would England be weaker, less prosperous or less respected, because the people of Nova Scotia were satisfied and happy?

But, it is said, a Colony, being part of a great Empire, must be governed by different principles from the Metropolitan State. That, unless it be handed over to the minority, it cannot be governed at all. That the majority, when they have things their own way, will be discontented and disloyal.... Let us fancy that this reasoning were applied to Glasgow or Aberdeen or to any other town in Britain which you allow to govern itself. And what else is a Province like Nova Scotia than a small community, too feeble to interfere with the general commercial and military arrangements of the government; but deeply interested in a number of minor matters, which only the people to be affected by them can wisely manage; which the ministry can never find leisure to attend to, and involve in inextricable confusion when they meddle with them. You allow a million of people to govern themselves in the very capital of the kingdom; and yet her Majesty lives in the midst of them without any apprehension of danger, and feels the more secure, the more satisfaction and tranquillity they exhibit. Of course, if the Lord Mayor were to declare war upon France, or the Board of Aldermen were to resolve that the duties upon brandy should no longer be collected by the general revenue officers of the kingdom, everybody would laugh, but no one would apprehend any great danger. Should we, if Lord Durham's principles be adopted, do anything equally _outré_, check us, for you have the power; but until we do, for your own sakes--for you are as much interested as we are,--for the honour of the British name, too often tarnished by these squabbles, let us manage our own affairs, pay our own officers, and distribute a patronage, altogether beneath your notice, among those who command our esteem.

39. THE UNION ACT (1840).

=Source.=--_Documents Illustrative of the Canadian Constitution_, edited by William Houston. Toronto, 1891.

Whereas it is necessary that provision be made for the good government of the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, in such manner as may secure the rights and liberties and promote the interests of all classes of her Majesty's subjects within the same: And whereas to this end it is expedient that the said provinces be reunited to form one province for the purposes of executive government and legislation....

III. ... from and after the reunion of the said two provinces there shall be within the Province of Canada one Legislative Council and one Assembly....

IV. ... for the purpose of composing the Legislative Council ... it shall be lawful for her Majesty ... to authorise the Governor in her Majesty's name, by an instrument under the Great Seal of the said Province, to summon to the said Legislative Council ... such persons, being not fewer than twenty, as her Majesty shall think fit....

V. ... every member of the Legislative Council ... shall hold his seat therein for the term of his life....

XII. ... in the Legislative Assembly ... the parts of the said Province which now constitute the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada respectively, shall ... be represented by an equal number of representatives to be elected for the places and in the manner hereinafter mentioned....

XXXI. ... there shall be a session of the Legislative Council and Assembly ... once at least in every year ... every Legislative Assembly ... shall continue for four years from the day of the return of the writs for choosing the same, and no longer, subject nevertheless to be sooner prorogued or dissolved by the Governor of the said Province.

(_Compare with IV. the Amendment Act of 1854._)

It shall be lawful for the Legislature of Canada ... to alter the manner of composing the Legislative Council ... and to make it consist of such number of members appointed or to be appointed or elected by such persons and in such manner as to the said Legislature may seem fit....

(In accordance with this enabling Act of Parliament, a Canadian Act for making the Council elective was passed in 1856.)

40. EDMONTON IN 1841.

=Source.=--_Narrative of a Journey round the World_, by Sir George Simpson, Governor-in-Chief of the Hudson Bay Company's Territories in North America. London, 1847.

Next morning, being the 22nd of July, we had a sharp frost before sunrise, and afterwards a heavy dew. The whole country was so parched up, that no water could be found for breakfast till eleven o'clock; and again in the afternoon we passed over a perfectly arid plain of about twenty-five miles in length, encamping for the night at the commencement of the Chaine des Lacs, a succession of small lakes stretching over a distance of twenty or thirty miles. During the afternoon we saw our first raspberries; they proved to be of large size and fine flavour. Two days previously we had feasted on the service-berry ... a sort of cross between the cranberry and the black currant; and, before leaving Red River, we had found wild strawberries ripe....

Next afternoon we passed over a space of about four miles in length, where the grass was thoroughly beaten down, apparently the work of hail. Such storms, which are almost always partial in their operation, are often remarkably furious in this country. While travelling from Red River to Canada in the fall of 1837, I was overtaken near Lac la Pluie by a violent tempest of the kind, which, if we had not gained the fort in time, might have proved fatal. As the angular masses of ice rattled on the roof, we entertained fears for the safety of the building; and, in point of fact, the lodges of the Indians were thrown down and their canoes shattered; while their luckless dogs, tumbling about like drunken men, scrambled away howling in quest of shelter. Some of the pieces ... we found to be fully five inches and a half in circumference.

Throughout this country everything is in extremes--unparalleled cold and excessive heat; long droughts, balanced by drenching rain and destructive hail. But it is not in climate only that these contrarieties prevail; at some seasons both whites and natives are living, in wasteful abundance, on venison, buffalo, fish, and game of all kinds; while at other times they are reduced to the last degree of hunger, often passing several days without food.

In the year 1820, when wintering at Athabasca Lake, our provisions fell short at the establishment, and on two or three occasions I went for three whole days and nights without having a single morsel to swallow; but then again I was one of a party of eleven men and one woman, which discussed three ducks and twenty-two geese at a sitting....

The nights were getting chilly; and, whenever the sky was clear, a heavy dew fell from sunset to sunrise on particular spots, so as to look, when morning dawned, like large lakes in the distance. As the power of the sun increased, these mists gradually resolved themselves into streaks of various shapes and sizes, which, rising from the ground in the form of clouds, finally disappeared....

The whole plain was covered with a luxuriant crop of the vetch or wild pea, almost as nutritious a food for cattle and horses as oats. As we drew near to the Saskatchewan, we had to cross as many as five creeks with steep and lofty banks, the last in particular being a stream scarcely twenty feet in span between rugged declivities about two hundred feet in height....

On arriving in front of Edmonton, which was on the opposite bank of the Saskatchewan, we notified our approach by a volley of musketry, which was returned by the cannon of the fort....

Edmonton is a well-built place, something of a hexagon in form. It is surrounded by high pickets and bastions, which, with the battlemented gateways, the flagstaffs, etc., give it a good deal of a martial appearance; and it occupies a commanding situation, crowning an almost perpendicular part of the bank, about two hundred feet in height. The river is nearly as wide as at Carlton, while the immediate banks are well wooded, and the country behind consists of rolling prairies.

This fort, both inside and outside, is decorated with paintings and devices to suit the tastes of the savages that frequent it. Over the gateways are a most fanciful variety of vanes; but the hall, of which both the ceiling and the walls present the gaudiest colours and the most fantastic sculptures, absolutely rivets the astonished natives to the spot with wonder and admiration. The buildings are smeared with a red earth found in the neighbourhood, which, when mixed with oil, produces a durable brown.

The vicinity is rich in mineral productions. A seam of coal, about ten feet in depth, can be traced for a very considerable distance along both sides of the river....

41. THE MOHAWK INDIANS IN ONTARIO (1842).

=Source.=--_Letters from America_, by John Robert Godley. London, 1844.

Within two miles of Brantford (which is called after Brandt the Indian chief) is a village which may be termed the headquarters of the Mohawk tribe of Indians. They lost their possessions in the States by adhering to Great Britain in the revolutionary war, and received in compensation a settlement here of 160,000 acres: since that time they have decreased considerably, and now consist of not more than 2200 souls. I went over to the Indian village on Sunday morning, and attended Divine service in their church; it was performed according to the forms of the English Church, but in the Mohawk language, with the exception of the sermon, which the clergyman delivered in English, and which was translated with wonderful fluency, sentence after sentence, by an Indian interpreter who stood beside him. It was good, practical, and well adapted to the audience, who listened with the most unfailing attention, though the plan of proceeding made it necessarily very long: the Indian language, too, is far more prolix than ours, at least the sentences as translated were at least three times as long as in the original delivery; the singing was particularly good in point of time and harmony, but the airs were somewhat monotonous. Two children were baptised during the service, one of them ensconced in a bark cradle, which fitted it accurately, and was attached in a curious manner to a board so as to be carried easily upon the mother's back. There were about 120 Indians present; the men, with one or two exceptions, dressed like Europeans, but the women wearing their native costume, which is rather becoming: it consists of a calico or linen tunic reaching to the knee, below which appears a petticoat of blue cloth, generally embroidered with red and white bead-work, the legs are covered with a kind of buskin of blue cloth, and the feet with mocassins; over all is a large robe or mantle, of blue cloth also, thrown loosely round the shoulders; completing a dress which, at this time of year, must be dreadfully hot and heavy: the head is without any other covering except very thick black shining hair. Those of the men who have not adopted the European costume wear instead of trousers a tunic and leggings which reach half-way up the thigh.

I had some conversation with the clergyman after service: he is employed by the "New England Society," has been for a long time among the Indians, and knows them well: he has a better opinion of them and of their capacity for acquiring domestic and industrious habits, than most white men to whom I have spoken upon the subject have expressed. The society support a school in the village, where about forty children are boarded, educated, and instructed in trades; and they learn, Mr. N. says, as fast as Europeans: as yet, however, they are not fit to be trusted in making bargains with the whites, nor can they at all compete in matters of business with them: much of their original grant has been trafficked away to settlers, at prices wholly inadequate; and, though such transactions are altogether illegal, they have been overlooked so long that it is now impossible to annul them. A superintendent lives close to the village, who is paid by Government for the express purpose of protecting the Indian interests and managing their affairs; yet encroachments upon their rights are still perpetually made, which, however advantageous they may appear to a political economist, are neither reconcilable with equity nor with the real wishes and intentions of Government. Mr. N. is by no means without hopes that in a generation or two these Indians may become quite civilised: they are giving up their wandering habits, and settling rapidly upon farms throughout their territory; and, in consequence, probably, of this change in their mode of life, the decrease in their numbers, which threatened a complete extinction of the tribe, has ceased of late years: if it turn out as he expects, this will form the sole exception to the general law which affects their people. They are very much attached (as well they may be) to the British Government; and in 1837 turned out under their chiefs to the number of 500, and offered their services to it: they wished to attack Navy Island in their canoes, but those who were in command thought the enterprise too hazardous. The chiefs (whose office is, as among the ancient Gothic nations, partly hereditary and partly elective, _i.e._ ordinarily transmitted from father to son, but liable to be transferred in cases of incapacity) have still a good deal of authority among them, but, as it is of course not recognised by law, they are gradually losing it; in fact, the race is assimilating itself here far more than anywhere else to the habits and manners of the surrounding Europeans, while at the same time there is perhaps hardly any settlement where the red blood is preserved with less mixture.

42. THE POSITION OF THE GOVERNOR (1854).

=Source.=--Lord Elgin to the Colonial Secretary, Sir George Grey, 18th December, 1854: Elgin's _Letters and Journals_. London, 1872.

As the Imperial Government and Parliament gradually withdraw from legislative interference, and from the exercise of patronage in Colonial affairs, the office of Governor tends to become, in the most emphatic sense of the term, the link which connects the Mother-country and the Colony, and his influence the means by which harmony of action between the local and imperial authorities is to be preserved. It is not, however, in my humble judgment, by evincing an anxious desire to stretch to the utmost constitutional principles in his favour, but, on the contrary, by the frank acceptance of the conditions of the Parliamentary system, that this influence can be most surely extended and confirmed. Placed by his position above the strife of parties--holding office by a tenure less precarious than the ministers who surround him--having no political interests to serve but that of the community whose affairs he is appointed to administer--his opinion cannot fail, when all cause for suspicion and jealousy is removed, to have great weight in the Colonial Councils, while he is set at liberty to constitute himself in an especial manner the patron of those larger and higher interests--such interests, for example, as those of education, and of moral and material progress in all its branches--which, unlike the contests of party, unite instead of dividing the members of the body politic.

43. THE CONFEDERATION DEBATES (1865).

(1) _For Confederation_: (a) _J. A. Macdonald_.

=Source.=--_Debates in the Parliament of Canada on the Confederation of British North America, 1865._