As lumbermen and settlers gathered in the border area, the risk of conflict became acute, culminating in the Aroostook War in 1838-39, when the Legislatures of Maine and New Brunswick backed their rival lumberjacks with reckless jingoism. Diplomacy failed repeatedly to obtain a compromise line. Arbitration was tried with little better success, as the United States refused to accept the award of the King of the Netherlands in 1831. The diplomats tried once more, and in 1842 Daniel Webster, the United States Secretary of State, and Lord Ashburton, the British Commissioner, made a compromise by which some five thousand miles of the area in dispute were a.s.signed to Great Britain and seven thousand to the United States. The award was not popular on either side, and the public seized eagerly on stories of concealed "Red Line" maps, stories of Yankee smartness or of British trickery. Webster, to win the a.s.sent of Maine, had exhibited in the Senate a map found in the French Archives and very damaging to the American claim. Later it appeared that the British Government also had found a map equally damaging to its own claims. The nice question of ethics involved, whether a nation should bring forward evidence that would tell against itself, ceased to have more than an abstract interest when it was demonstrated that neither map could be considered as one which the original negotiators had used or marked.*
The boundary from the St. Lawrence westward through the Great Lakes and thence to the Lake of the Woods had been laid down in the Treaty of 1783 in the usual vague terms, but it was determined in a series of negotiations from 1794 to 1842 with less friction and heat than the eastern line had caused. From the Lake of the Woods to the Rockies a new line, the forty-ninth parallel, was agreed upon in 1818. Then, as the Pacific Ocean was neared, the difficulties once more increased. There were no treaties between the two countries to limit claims beyond the Rockies. Discovery and settlement, and the rights inherited from or admitted by the Spaniards to the south and by the Russians to the north, were the grounds put forward. British and Canadian fur traders had been the pioneers in overland discovery, but early in the forties thousands of American settlers poured into the Columbia Valley and strengthened the practical case for their country. "Fifty-four forty or fight"-in other words, the calm proposal to claim the whole coast between Mexico and Alaska-became the popular cry in the United States; but in face of the firm att.i.tude of Great Britain and impending hostilities with Mexico, more moderate counsels ruled. Great Britain held out for the Columbia River as the dividing line, and the United States for the forty-ninth parallel throughout. Finally, in 1846, the latter contention was accepted, with a modification to leave Vancouver Island wholly British territory. A postscript to this settlement was added in 1872, when the German Emperor as arbitrator approved the American claim to the island of San Juan in the channel between Vancouver Island and the mainland.*
With the most troublesome boundary questions out of the way, it became possible to discuss calmly closer trade relations between the Provinces and the United States. The movement for reciprocal lowering of the tariffs which hampered trade made rapid headway in the Provinces in the late forties and early fifties. British North America was pa.s.sing out of the pioneer, self-sufficient stage, and now had a surplus to export as well as townbred needs to be supplied by imports. The spread of settlement and the building of ca.n.a.ls and railways brought closer contact with the people to the south. The loss of special privileges in the English market made the United States market more desired. In official circles reciprocity was sought as a homeopathic cure for the desire for annexation. William Hamilton Merritt, a Niagara border business man and the most persistent advocate of closer trade relations, met little difficulty in securing almost unanimous backing in Canada, while the Maritime Provinces lent their support.
It was more difficult to win over the United States. There the people showed the usual indifference of a big and prosperous country to the needs or opportunities of a small and backward neighbor. The division of power between President and Congress made it difficult to carry any negotiation through to success. Yet these obstacles were overcome. The depletion of the fisheries along the Atlantic coast of the United States made it worth while, as I.D. Andrews, a United States consul in New Brunswick, urged persistently, to gain access to the richer grounds to the north and, if necessary, to offer trade concessions in exchange. At Washington, the South was in the saddle. Its sympathies were strongly for freer trade, but this alone would not have counted had not the advocates of reciprocity convinced the Democratic leaders of the bearing of their policy on the then absorbing issue of slavery. If reciprocity were not arranged, the argument ran, annexation would be sure to come and that would mean the addition to the Union of a group of freesoil States which would definitely tilt the balance against slavery for all time. With the ground thus prepared, Lord Elgin succeeded by adroit and capable diplomacy in winning over the leaders of Congress as well as the Executive to his proposals. The Reciprocity Treaty was pa.s.sed by the Senate in August, 1854, and by the Legislatures of the United Kingdom, Canada, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia in the next few months, and of Newfoundland in 1855. This treaty provided for free admission into each country of practically all the products of the farm, forest, mine, and fishery, threw open the Atlantic fisheries, and gave American vessels the use of the St. Lawrence and Canadian vessels the use of Lake Michigan. The agreement was to last for ten years and indefinitely thereafter, subject to termination on one year"s notice by either party.
To both countries reciprocity brought undoubted good. Trade doubled and trebled. Each country gained by free access to the nearest sources of supply. The same goods figured largely in the traffic in both directions, the United States importing grain and flour from Canada and exporting it to the Maritime Provinces. In short the benefits which had come to the United States from free and unfettered trade throughout half a continent were now extended to practically a whole continent.
Yet criticism of the new economic regime was not lacking. The growth of protectionist feeling in both countries after 1857 brought about incidents and created an atmosphere which were dangerous to the continuance of close trade relations. In 1858 and 1859 the Canadian Government raised substantially the duties on manufactured goods in order to meet the bills for its lavish railway policy. This increase hit American manufacturers and led to loud complaints that the spirit of the Reciprocity Treaty had been violated. Alexander T. Galt, Canadian Minister of Finance, had no difficulty in showing that the tariff increases were the only feasible sources of revenue, that the agreement with the United States did not cover manufactures, and that the United States itself, faced by war demands and no longer controlled by free trade Southerners, had raised duties still higher. The exports of the United States to the Provinces in the reciprocity period were greater, contrary to the later traditions, than the imports. On economic grounds the case for the continuance of the reciprocity agreement was strong, and probably the treaty would have remained in force indefinitely had not the political pa.s.sions roused by the Civil War made sanity and neighborliness in trade difficult to maintain.
When the Civil War broke out, the sympathies of Canadians were overwhelmingly on the side of the North. The railway and freer trade had been bringing the two peoples closer together, and time was healing old sores. Slavery was held to be the real issue, and on that issue there were scarcely two opinions in the British Provinces.
Yet in a few months sympathy had given way to angry and suspicious bickering, and the possibility of invasion of Canada by the Northern forces was vigorously debated. This sudden shift of opinion and the danger in which it involved the provinces were both incidents in the quarrel which sprang up between the United States and Great Britain. In Britain as in Canada, opinion, so far as it found open expression, was at first not unfriendly to the North. Then came the anger of the North at Great Britain"s legitimate and necessary, though perhaps precipitate, action in acknowledging the South as a belligerent. This action ran counter to the official Northern theory that the revolt of the Southern States was a local riot, of merely domestic concern, and was held to foreshadow a recognition of the independence of the Confederacy. The angry taunts were soon returned. The ruling cla.s.ses in Great Britain made the discovery that the war was a struggle between chivalrous gentlemen and mercenary counterhoppers and cherished the hope that the failure of the North would discredit, the world over, the democracy which was making uncomfortable claims in England itself. The English trading cla.s.ses resented the shortage of cotton and the high duties which the protectionist North was imposing. With the defeat of the Union forces at Bull Run the prudent hesitancy of aristocrat and merchant in expressing their views disappeared. The responsible statesmen of both countries, especially Lincoln and Lord John Russell, refused to be stampeded, but unfortunately the leading newspapers served them ill. The "Times", with its constant sneers and its still more irritating patronizing advice, and the New York "Herald", bragging and bl.u.s.tering in the frank hope of forcing a war with Britain and France which would reunite South and North and subordinate the slavery issue, did more than any other factors to bring the two countries to the verge of war.
In Canada the tendency in some quarters to reflect English opinion, the disappointment in others that the abolition of slavery was not explicitly pledged by the North, and above all resentment against the threats of the "Herald" and its followers, soon cooled the early friendliness. The leading Canadian newspaper, for many years a vigorous opponent of slavery, thus summed up the situation in August, 1861:
"The insolent bravado of the Northern press towards Great Britain and the insulting tone a.s.sumed toward these Provinces have unquestionably produced a marked change in the feelings of our people. When the war commenced, there was only one feeling, of hearty sympathy with the North, but now it is very different. People have lost sight of the character of the struggle in the exasperation excited by the injustice and abuse showered upon us by the party with which we sympathized."*
The Trent affair brought matters to a sobering climax.* When it was settled, resentment lingered, but the tension was never again so acute. Both Great Britain and in Canada the normal sympathy with the cause of the Union revived as the war went on. In England the cla.s.ses continued to be pro-Southern in sympathy, but the ma.s.ses, in spite of cotton famines, held resolutely to their faith in the cause of freedom. After Lincoln"s emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves, the view of the English middle cla.s.ses more and more became the view of the nation. In Canada, pro-Southern sentiment was strong in the same cla.s.ses and particularly in Montreal and Toronto, where there were to be found many Southern refugees, some of whom made a poor return for hospitality by endeavoring to use Canada as a base for border raids. Yet in the smaller towns and in the country sympathy was decidedly on the other side, particularly after the "Herald" had ceased its campaign of bl.u.s.ter and after Lincoln"s proclamation had brought the moral issue again to the fore. The fact that a large number of Canadians, popularly set at forty thousand, enlisted in the Northern armies, is to be explained in part by the call of adventure and the lure of high bounties, but it must also be taken to reflect the sympathy of the ma.s.s of the people.
In the United States resentment was slower in pa.s.sing. While the war was on, prudence forbade any overt act. When it was over, the bill for the Alabama raids and the taunts of the "Times" came in. Great Britain paid in the settlement of the Alabama claims.* Canada suffered by the abrogation of the Reciprocity Treaty at the first possible date, and by the connivance of the American authorities in the Fenian raids of 1866 and 1870. Yet for Canada the outcome was by no means ill. If the Civil War did not bring forth a new nation in the South, it helped to make one in the far North. A common danger drew the scattered British Provinces together and made ready the way for the coming Dominion of Canada.
It was not from the United States alone that an impetus came for the closer union of the British Provinces. The same period and the same events ripened opinion in the United Kingdom in favor of some practical means of altering a colonial relationship which had ceased to bring profit but which had not ceased to be a burden of responsibility and risk.
The British Empire had its beginning in the initiative of private business men, not in any conscious policy of state. Yet as the Empire grew the teaching of doctrinaires and the example of other colonial powers had developed a definite policy whereby the plantations overseas were to be made to serve the needs of the nation at home. The end of empire was commercial profit; the means, the political subordination of the colonies; the debit entry, the cost of the military and naval and diplomatic services borne by the mother country. But the course of events had now broken down this theory. Britain, for her own good, had abandoned protection, and with it fell the system of preference and monopoly in colonial markets. Not only preference had gone but even equality. The colonies, notably Canada, which was most influenced by the United States, were perversely using their new found freedom to protect their own manufacturers against all outsiders, Britain included. When Sheffield cutlers, hard hit by Canada"s tariff, protested to the Colonial Secretary and he echoed their remonstrance, the Canadian Minister of Finance, A. T. Galt, stoutly refused to heed. "Self-government would be utterly annihilated," Galt replied in 1860, "if the views of the Imperial Government were to be preferred to those of the people of Canada. It is therefore the duty of the present government distinctly to affirm the right of the Canadian legislature to adjust the taxation of the people in the way they deem best-even if it should unfortunately happen to meet the disapproval of the Imperial Ministry." Clearly, if trade advantage were the chief purpose of empire, the Empire had lost its reason for being.
With the credit entry fading, the debit entry loomed up bigger. Hardly had the Corn Laws been abolished when Radical critics called on the British Government to withdraw the redcoat garrisons from the colonies: no profit, no defense. Slowly but steadily this reduction was effected. To fill the gaps, the colonies began to strengthen their militia forces. In Canada only a beginning had been made in the way of defense when the Trent episode brought matters to a crisis. If war broke out between the United States and Great Britain, Canada would be the battlefield. Every Canadian knew it; nothing could be clearer. When the danger of immediate war had pa.s.sed, the Parliament of Canada turned to the provision of more adequate defense. A bill providing for a compulsory levy was defeated in 1862, more on personal and party grounds than on its own merits, and the Ministry next in office took the other course of increasing the volunteer force and of providing for officers" training. Compared with any earlier arrangements for defense, the new plans marked a great advance; but when judged in the light of the possible necessity of repelling American invasion, they were plainly inadequate. A burst of criticism followed from England; press and politicians joined in denouncing the blind and supine colonials. Did they not know that invasion by the United States was inevitable? "If the people of the North fail," declared a n.o.ble lord, "they will attack Canada as a compensation for their losses; if they succeed, they will attack Canada in the drunkenness of victory." If such an invasion came, Britain had neither the power nor the will, the "Times" declared, to protect Canada without any aid on her part; not the power, for "our empire is too vast, our population too small, our antagonist too powerful"; not the will, for "we no longer monopolize the trade of the colonies; we no longer job their patronage." To these amazing attacks Canadians replied that they knew the United States better than Englishmen did. They were prepared to take their share in defense, but they could not forget that if war came it would not be by any act of Canada. It was soon noted that those who most loudly denounced Canada for not arming to the teeth were the Southern sympathizers. "The "Times" has done more than its share in creating bad feeling between England and the United States," declared a Toronto newspaper, "and would have liked to see the Canadians take up the quarrel which it has raised.... We have no idea of Canada being made a victim of the Jefferson Bricks on either side of the Atlantic."
The question of defense fell into the background when the war ended and the armies of the Union went back to their farms and shops. But the discussion left in the minds of most Englishmen the belief that the possession of such colonies was a doubtful blessing. Manchester men like Bright, Liberals like Gladstone and Cornewall Lewis, Conservatives like Lowe and Disraeli, all came to believe that separation was only a question of time. Yet honor made them hesitate to set the defenseless colonies adrift to be seized by the first hungry neighbor.
At this juncture the plans for uniting all the colonies in one great federation seemed to open a way out; united, the colonies could stand alone. Thus Confederation found support in Britain as well as a stimulus from the United States. This, however, was not enough. Confederation would not have come when it did-and that might have meant it would never have come at all-had not party and sectional deadlock forced Canadian politicians to seek a remedy in a wider union.
At first all had gone well with the Union of 1841. It did not take the politicians long to learn how to use the power that responsible government put into their hands. After Elgin"s day the Governor General fell back into the role of const.i.tutional monarch which cabinet control made easy for him. In the forties, men had spoken of Sydenham and Bagot, Metcalfe and Elgin; in the fifties, they spoke of Baldwin and La Fontaine, Hincks and Macdonald and Cartier and Brown, and less and less of the Governors in whose name these men ruled. Politics then attracted more of the country"s ablest men than it does now, and the party leaders included many who would have made their mark in any parliament in the world. Baldwin and La Fontaine, united to the end, resigned office in 1851, believing that they had played their part in establishing responsible government and feeling out of touch with the radical elements of their following who were demanding further change. Their place was taken in Canada West by Hincks, an adroit tactician and a skilled financier, intent on railway building and trade development; and in Canada East by Morin, a somewhat colorless lieutenant of La Fontaine.
But these leaders in turn soon gave way to new men; and the political parties gradually fell into a state of flux. In Canada West there were still a few Tories, survivors of the Family Compact and last-ditch defenders of privilege in Church and State, a growing number of moderate Conservatives, a larger group of moderate Liberals, and a small but aggressive extreme left wing of "Clear Grits," mainly Scotch Presbyterians, foes of any claim to undue power on the part of cla.s.s or clergy. In Canada East the English members from the Townships, under A. T. Galt, were ceasing to vote as a unit, and the main body of French-Canadian members were breaking up into a moderate Liberal party, and a smaller group of Rouges, fiery young men under the leadership of Papineau, now returned from exile, were crusading against clerical pretensions and all the established order.
The situation was one made to the hand of a master tactician. The time brought forth the man. John A. Macdonald, a young Kingston lawyer of Tory upbringing, or "John A.", as generation after generation affectionately called him, was to prove the greatest leader of men in Canada"s annals. Shrewd, tactful, and genial, never forgetting a face or a favor, as popular for his human frailties as for his strength, Macdonald saw that the old party lines drawn in the days of the struggle for responsible government were breaking down and that the future lay with a union of the moderate elements in both parties and both sections. He succeeded in 1854 in bringing together in Canada West a strong Liberal-Conservative group and in effecting a permanent alliance with the main body of French-Canadian Liberals, now under the leadership of Cartier, a vigorous fighter and an easy-going opportunist. With the addition of Galt as the financial expert, these allies held power throughout the greater part of the next dozen years. Their position was not unchallenged. The Clear Grits had found a leader after their own heart in George Brown, a Scotchman of great ability, a hard hitter and a good hater-especially of slavery, the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and "John A." Through his newspaper, the Toronto "Globe", he wielded a power unique in Canadian journalism. The Rouges, now led by A. A. Dorion, a man of stainless honor and essentially moderate temper, withdrew from. their extreme anticlerical position but could not live down their youth or make head against the forces of conservatism in their province. They did not command many votes in the House, but every man of them was an orator, and they remained through all vicissitudes a power to reckon with.
Step by step, under Liberal and under Liberal Conservative Governments, the programme of Canadian Liberalism was carried into effect. Self-government, at least in domestic affairs, had been attained. An effective system of munic.i.p.al government and a good beginning in popular education followed. The last link between Church and State was severed in 1854 when the Clergy Reserves were turned over to the munic.i.p.alities for secular purposes, with life annuities for clergymen who had been receiving stipends from the Reserves. In Lower Canada the remnants of the old feudal system, the rights of the seigneurs, were abolished in the same year with full compensation from the state. An elective upper Chamber took the place of the appointed Legislative Council a year later. The Reformers, as the Clear Grits preferred to call themselves officially, should perhaps have been content with so much progress. They insisted, however, that a new and more intolerable privilege had arisen-the privilege which Canada East held of equal representation in the Legislative a.s.sembly long after its population had fallen behind that of Canada West.
The political union of the two Canadas in fact had never been complete. Throughout the Union period there were two leaders in each Cabinet, two Attorney Generals, and two distinct judicial systems. Every session laws were pa.s.sed applying to one section alone. This continued separation had its beginning in a clause of the Union Act itself, which provided that each section should have equal representation in the a.s.sembly, even though Lower Canada then had a much larger population than Upper Canada. When the tide of overseas immigration put Canada West well in the lead, it in its turn was denied the full representation its greater population warranted. First the Conservatives, and later the Clear Grits, took up the cry of "Representation by Population." It was not difficult to convince the average Canada West elector that it was an outrage that three French-Canadian voters should count as much as four English-speaking voters. Macdonald, relying for power on his alliance with Cartier, could not accept the demand, and saw seat after seat in Canada West fall to Brown and his "Rep. by Pop." crusaders. Brown"s success only solidified Canada East against him, until, in the early sixties, party lines coincided almost with sectional lines. Parties were so closely matched that the life of a Ministry was short. In the three years ending in 1864 there were two general elections and four Ministries. Political controversy became bitterly personal, and corruption was spreading fast.
Constant efforts were made to avert the threatened deadlock. Macdonald, who always trusted more to personal management than to const.i.tutional expedients, won over one after another of the opponents who troubled him, and thus postponed the day of reckoning. Rival plans of const.i.tutional reform were brought forward. The simplest remedy was the repeal of the union, leaving each province to go its own way. But this solution was felt to be a backward step and one which would create more problems than it would solve. More support was given the double majority principle, a provision that no measure affecting one section should be pa.s.sed unless a majority from that section favored it, but this method broke down when put to a practical test. The Rouges, and later Brown, put forward a plan for the abolition of legislative union in favor of a federal union of the two Canadas. This lacked the wide vision of the fourth suggestion, which was destined to be adopted as the solution, namely, the federation of all British North America.
Federal union, it was urged, would solve party and sectional deadlock by removing to local legislatures the questions which created the greatest divergence of opinion. The federal union of the Canadas alone or the federal union of all British North America would either achieve this end. But there were other ends in view which only the wider plan could serve. The needs of defense demanded a single control for all the colonies. The probable loss of the open market of the United States made it imperative to unite all the provinces in a single free trade area. The first faint stirrings of national ambition, prompting the younger men to throw off the leading strings of colonial dependence, were stimulated by the vision of a country which would stretch from sea to sea. The westward growth of the United States and the reports of travelers were opening men"s eyes to the possibilities of the vast lands under the control of the Hudson"s Bay Company and the need of a.s.serting authority over these northern regions if they were to be held for the Crown. Eastward, also, men were awaking to their isolation. There was not, in the Maritime Provinces, any popular desire for union with the Canadas or any political crisis compelling drastic remedy, but the need of union for defense was felt in some quarters, and ambitious politicians who had mastered their local fields were beginning to sigh for larger worlds to conquer.
It took the patient and courageous striving of many men to make this vision of a united country a reality. The roll of the Fathers of Confederation is a long and honored one. Yet on that roll there are some outstanding names, the names of men whose services were not merely devoted but indispensable. The first to bring the question within the field of practical politics was A. T. Galt, but when attempt after attempt in 1864 to organize a Ministry with a safe working majority had failed, it was George Brown who proposed that the party leaders should join hands in devising some form of federation. Macdonald had hitherto been a stout opponent of all change but, once converted, he threw himself into the struggle, with energy. He never appeared to better advantage than in the negotiations of the next few years, steering the ship of Confederation through the perilous shoals of personal and sectional jealousies. Few had a harder or a more important task than Cartier"s-reconciling Canada East to a project under which it would be swamped, in the proposed federal House, by the representatives of four or five English-speaking provinces. McDougall, a Canada West Reformer, shared with Brown the credit for awakening Canadians to the value of the Far West and to the need of including it in their plans of expansion. D"Arcy McGee, more than any other, fired the imagination of the people with glowing pictures of the greatness and the limitless possibilities of the new nation. Charles Tupper, the head of a Nova Scotia Conservative Ministry which had overthrown the old tribune, Joseph Howe, had the hardest and seemingly most hopeless task of all; for his province appeared to be content with its separate existence and was inflamed against union by Howe"s eloquent opposition; but to Tupper a hard fight was as the breath of his nostrils. In New Brunswick, Leonard Tilley, a man of less vigor but equal determination, led the struggle until Confederation was achieved.
It was in June, 1864, that the leaders of the Parliament of Canada became convinced that federation was the only way out. A coalition Cabinet was formed, with Sir Etienne Tache as nominal Premier, and with Macdonald, Brown, Cartier, and Galt all included. An opening for discussing the wider federation was offered by a meeting which was to be held in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, of delegates from the three Maritime Provinces to consider the formation of a local union. There, in September, 1864, went eight of the Canadian Ministers. Their proposals met with favor. A series of banquets brought the plans before the public, seemingly with good results. The conference was resumed a month later at Quebec. Here, in sixteen working days, delegates from Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and also from Newfoundland, thirty-three in all, after frank and full deliberation behind closed doors, agreed upon the terms of union. Macdonald"s insistence upon a legislative union, wiping out all provincial boundaries, was overridden; but the lesson of the conflict between the federal and state jurisdiction in the United States was seen in provisions to strengthen the central authority. The general government was empowered to appoint the lieutenant governors of the various provinces and to veto any provincial law; to it were a.s.signed all legislative powers not specifically granted to the provinces; and a subsidy granted by the general government in lieu of the customs revenues resigned by the provinces still further increased their dependence upon the central authority.
It had taken less than three weeks to draw up the plan of union. It took nearly three years to secure its adoption. So far as Canada was concerned, little trouble was encountered. British traditions of parliamentary supremacy prevented any direct submission of the question to the people; but their support was clearly manifested in the press and on the platform, and the legislature ratified the project with emphatic majorities from both sections of the province. Though it did not pa.s.s without opposition, particularly from the Rouges under Dorion and from steadfast supporters of old ways like Christopher Dunkin and Sandfield Macdonald, the fight was only halfhearted. Not so, however, in the provinces by the sea. The delegates who returned from the Quebec Conference were astounded to meet a storm of criticism. Local pride and local prejudice were aroused. The thrifty maritime population feared Canadian extravagance and Canadian high tariffs. They were content to remain as they were and fearful of the unknown. Here and there advocates of annexation to the United States swelled the chorus. Merchants in Halifax and St. John feared that trade would be drawn away to Montreal. Above all, Howe, whether because of personal pique or of intense local patriotism, had put himself at the head of the agitation against union, and his eloquence could still play upon the prejudices of the people. The Tilley Government in New Brunswick was swept out of power early in 1865. Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland both drew back, the one for eight years, the other to remain outside the fold to the present day. In Nova Scotia a similar fate was averted only by Tupper"s Fabian tactics. Then the tide turned. In New Brunswick the Fenian Raids, pressure from the Colonial Office, and the blunders of the anti-Confederate Government brought Tilley back to power on a Confederation platform a year later. Tupper seized the occasion and carried his motion through the Nova Scotia House. Without seeking further warrant the delegates from Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick met in London late in 1866, and there in consultation with the Colonial Office drew up the final resolutions. They were embodied in the British North America Act which went through the Imperial Parliament not only without raising questions but even without exciting interest. On July 1, 1867, the Dominion of Canada, as the new federation was to be known, came into being. It is a curious coincidence that the same date witnessed the establishment of the North German Bund, which in less than three years was to expand into the German Empire.
CHAPTER IV. THE DAYS OF TRIAL
The federation of the four provinces was an excellent achievement, but it was only a beginning on the long, hard road to nationhood. The Fathers of Confederation had set their goal and had proclaimed their faith. It remained for the next generation to seek to make their vision a reality. It was still necessary to make the Dominion actual by bringing in all the lands from sea to sea. And when, on paper, Canada covered half a continent, union had yet to be given body and substance by railway building and continuous settlement. The task of welding two races and many scattered provinces into a single people would call for all the statesmanship and prudence the country had to give. To chart the relations between the federal and the provincial authorities, which had so nearly brought to shipwreck the federal experiment of Canada"s great neighbor, was like navigating an unknown sea. And what was to be the att.i.tude of the new Dominion, half nation, half colony, to the mother country and to the republic to the south, no one could yet foretell.
The first problem which faced the Dominion was the organization of the new machinery of government. It was necessary to choose a federal Administration to guide the Parliament which was soon to meet at Ottawa, the capital of the old Canada since 1858 and now accepted as the capital of the larger Canada. It was necessary also to establish provincial Governments in Canada West, henceforth known as Ontario and in Canada East, or Quebec. The provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were to retain their existing provincial Governments.
There was no doubt as to whom the Governor General, Lord Monck, should call to form the first federal Administration. Macdonald had proved himself easily the greatest leader of men the four provinces had produced. The entrance of two new provinces into the union, with all the possibilities of new party groupings and new personal alliances it involved, created a situation in which he had no rival. His great antagonist, Brown, pa.s.sed off the parliamentary stage. When he proposed a coalition to carry through federation, Brown had recognized that he was sacrificing his chief political a.s.set, the discontent of Canada West. But he was too true a patriot to hesitate a moment on that score, and in any case he was sufficiently confident of his own abilities to believe that he could hold his own in a fresh field. In this expectation he was deceived. No man among his contemporaries surpa.s.sed him in sheer ability, in fearless honesty, in vigor of debate, but he lacked Macdonald"s genial and supple art of managing men. And with broad questions of state policy for the moment out of the way, it was capacity in managing men that was to count in determining success. Never afterward did Brown take an active part in parliamentary life, though still a power in the land through his newspaper, the Toronto "Globe", which was regarded as the Scotch Presbyterian"s second Bible. Of the other leaders of old Canada, Cartier with failing health was losing his vigor and losing also the prestige with his party which his solid Canada East majority had given him; Galt soon retired to private business, with occasional incursions into diplomacy; and McGee fell a victim in 1868 to a Fenian a.s.sa.s.sin. From the Maritime Provinces the ablest recruit was Tupper, the most dogged fighter in Canadian parliamentary annals and a lifelong sworn ally of Macdonald.
It was at first uncertain what the grouping of parties would be. Macdonald naturally wished to retain the coalition which a.s.sured him unquestioned mastery, and the popular desire to give Confederation a good start also favored such a course. In his first Cabinet, formed with infinite difficulty, with provinces, parties, religions, races, all to consider in filling a limited number of posts, Macdonald included six Liberal ministers out of thirteen, three from Ontario, and three from the Maritime Provinces. Yet if an Opposition had not existed, it would have been necessary to create one in order to work the parliamentary machine. The attempt to keep the coalition together did not long succeed. On the eve of the first federal election the Ontario Reformers in convention decided to oppose the Government, even though it contained three of their former leaders. In the contest, held in August and September, 1867, Macdonald triumphed in every province except Nova Scotia but faced a growing Opposition party. Under the virtual leadership of Alexander Mackenzie, fragments of parties from the four provinces were united into a single Liberal group. In a few years the majority of the Liberal rank and file were back in the fold, and the Liberal members in the Cabinet had become frankly Conservative. Coalition had faded away.
Within six years after Confederation the whole northern half of the continent had been absorbed by Canada. The four original provinces comprised only one-tenth of the area of the present Dominion, some 377,000 square miles as against 3,730,000 today. The most easterly of the provinces, little Prince Edward Island, had drawn back in 1865, content in isolation. Eight years later this province entered the fold. Hard times and a glimpse of the financial strength of the new federation had wrought a change of heart. The solution of the century-old problem of the island, absentee landlordism, threatened to strain the finances of the province; and men began to look to Ottawa for relief. A railway crisis turned their thoughts in the same direction. The provincial authorities had recently arranged for the building of a narrow-gauge road from one end of the island to the other. It was agreed that the contractors should be paid 5000 pounds a mile in provincial debentures, but without any stipulation as to the total length, so that the builders caused the railway to meander and zigzag freely in search of lower grades or long paying stretches. In 1873, which was everywhere a year of black depression, it was found that these debentures, which were pledged by the contractors to a local bank for advances, could not be sold except at a heavy loss. The directors of the bank were influential in the Government of the province. It was not surprising, therefore, that the government soon opened negotiations with Ottawa. The Dominion authorities offered generous terms, financing the land purchase scheme, and taking over the railway. Some of the islanders made bitter charges, but the Legislature confirmed the agreement, and on July 1, 1873, Prince Edward Island entered Confederation.
While Prince Edward Island was deciding to come in, Nova Scotia was straining every nerve to get out. There was no question that Nova Scotia had been brought into the union against its will. The provincial Legislature in 1866, it is true, backed Tupper. But the people backed Howe, who thereupon went to London to protest against the inclusion of Nova Scotia without consulting the electors, but he was not heeded. The pa.s.sing of the Act only redoubled the agitation. In the provincial election of 1867, the anti-Confederates carried thirty-six out of thirty-eight seats. In the federal election Tupper was the only union candidate returned in nineteen seats contested. A second delegation was sent to London to demand repeal. Tupper crossed the ocean to counter this effort and was successful. Then he sought out Howe, urged that further agitation was useless and could only bring anarchy or, what both counted worse, a movement for annexation to the United States, and pressed him to use his influence to allay the storm. Howe gave way; unfortunately for his own fame, he went further and accepted a seat in the federal Cabinet. Many of his old followers kept up the fight, but others decided to make a bargain with necessity. Macdonald agreed to give the province "better terms," and the Dominion a.s.sumed a larger part of its debt. The bitterness aroused by Tupper"s high-handed procedure lingered for many a day; but before the first Parliament was over, repeal had ceased to be a practical issue.
Union could never be real so long as leagues of barren, unbroken wilderness separated the maritime from the central provinces. Free intercourse, ties of trade, knowledge which would sweep away prejudice, could not come until a railway had spanned this wilderness. In the fifties plans had been made for a main trunk line to run from Halifax to the Detroit River. This ambitious scheme proved too great for the resources of the separate provinces, but sections of the road were built in each province. As a condition of Confederation, the Dominion Government undertook to fill in the long gaps. Surveys were begun immediately; and by 1876, under the direction of Sandford Fleming, an engineer of eminence, the Intercolonial Railway was completed. It never succeeded in making ends meet financially, but it did make ends meet politically. In great measure it achieved the purpose of national solidification for which it was mainly designed.
Meanwhile the bounds of the Dominion were being pushed westward to the Pacific. The old province of Canada, as the heir of New France, had vague claims to the western plains, but the Hudson"s Bay Company was in possession. The Dominion decided to buy out its rights and agreed, in 1869, to pay the Company 300,000 pounds for the transfer of its lands and exclusive privileges, the Company to retain its trading posts and two sections in every township. So far all went well. But the Canadian Government, new to the tasks of empire and not as efficient in administration as it should have been, overlooked the necessity of consulting the wishes and the prejudices of the men on the spot. It was not merely land and buffalo herds which were being transferred but also sovereignty over a people.
In the valley of the Red River there were some twelve thousand metis, or half-breeds, descendants of Indian mothers and French or Scottish fathers. The Dominion authorities intended to give them a large share in their own government but neglected to arrange for a formal conference. The metis were left to gather their impression of the character and intentions of the new rulers from indiscreet and sometimes overbearing surveyors and land seekers. In 1869, under the leadership of Louis Riel, the one man of education in the settlement, able but vain and unbalanced, and with the Hudson"s Bay officials looking on unconcerned, the metis decided to oppose being made "the colony of a colony." The Governor sent out from Ottawa was refused entrance, and a provisional Government under Riel a.s.sumed control. The Ottawa authorities first tried persuasion and sent a commission of three, Donald A. Smith (afterwards Lord Strathcona), Colonel de Salaberry, and Vicar General Thibault. Smith was gradually restoring unity and order, when the act of Riel in shooting Thomas Scott, an Ontario settler and a member of the powerful Orange order, set pa.s.sions flaring. Mgr. Tache, the Catholic bishop of the diocese, on his return aided in quieting the metis. Delegates were sent by the Provisional Government to Ottawa, and, though not officially recognized, they influenced the terms of settlement. An expedition under Colonel Wolseley marched through the wilderness north of Lake Superior only to find that Riel and his lieutenants had fled. By the Manitoba Act the Red River country was admitted to Confederation as a self-governing province, under the name of Manitoba, while the country west to the Rockies was given territorial status. The Indian tribes were handled with tact and justice, but though for the time the danger of armed resistance had pa.s.sed, the embers of discontent were not wholly quenched.
The extension of Canadian sovereignty beyond the Rockies came about in quieter fashion. After Mackenzie had shown the way, Simon Fraser and David Thompson and other agents of the NorthWest Company took up the work of exploration and fur trading. With the union of the two rival companies in 1821, the Hudson"s Bay Company became the sole authority on the Pacific coast. Settlers straggled in slowly until, in the late fifties, the discovery of rich placer gold on the Fraser and later in the Cariboo brought tens of thousands of miners from Australia and California, only to drift away again almost as quickly when the sands began to fail.
Local governments had been established both in Vancouver Island and on the mainland. They were joined in a single province in 1866. One of the first acts of the new Legislature was to seek consolidation with the Dominion. Inspired by an enthusiastic Englishman, Alfred Waddington, who had dreamed for years of a transcontinental railway, the province stipulated that within ten years Canada should complete a road from the Pacific to a junction with the railways of the East. These terms were considered presumptuous on the part of a little settlement of ten or fifteen thousand whites; but Macdonald had faith in the resources of Canada and in what the morrow would bring forth. The bargain was made; and British Columbia entered the Confederation on July 1, 1871.
East and West were now staked out. Only the Far North remained outside the bounds of the Dominion and this was soon acquired. In 1879 the British Government transferred to Canada all its rights and claims over the islands in the Arctic Archipelago and all other British territory in North America save Newfoundland and its strip of Labrador. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the forty-ninth parallel to the North Pole, now all was Canadian soil.
Confederation brought new powers and new responsibilities and thrust Canada into the field of foreign affairs. It was with slow and groping steps that the Dominion advanced along this new path. Then-as now-for Canada foreign relations meant first and foremost relations with her great neighbor to the south. The likelihood of war had pa.s.sed. The need for closer trade relations remained. When the Reciprocity Treaty was brought to an end, on March 17, 1866, Canada at first refrained from raising her tariff walls. "The provinces," as George Brown declared in 1874, "a.s.sumed that there were matters existing in 1865-66 to trouble the spirit of American statesmen for the moment, and they waited patiently for the sober second thought which was very long in coming, but in the meantime Canada played a good neighbor"s part, and incidentally served her own ends, by continuing to grant the United States most of the privileges which had been given under the treaty free navigation and free goods, and, subject to a license fee, access to the fisheries."
It was over these fisheries that friction first developed.* Canadian statesmen were determined to prevent poaching on the insh.o.r.e fisheries, both because poaching was poaching and because they considered the fishery privileges the best makeweight in trade negotiations with the United States. At first American vessels were admitted on payment of a license fee; but when, on the increase of the fee, many vessels tried to fish insh.o.r.e without permission, the license system was abolished, and in 1870 a fleet of revenue cruisers began to police the coast waters. American fishermen chafed at exclusion from waters they had come to consider almost their own, and there were many cases of seizure and of angry charge and countercharge. President Grant, in his message to Congress in 1870, denounced the policy of the Canadian authorities as arbitrary and provocative. Other issues between the two countries were outstanding as well. Canada had a claim against the United States for not preventing the Fenian Raids of 1866; and the United States had a much bigger bill against Great Britain for neglect in permitting the escape of the Alabama. Some settlement of these disputed matters was necessary; and it was largely through the activities of a Canadian banker and politician, Sir John Rose, that an agreement was reached to submit all the issues to a joint commission.
Macdonald was offered and accepted with misgivings a post as one of the five British Commissioners. He pressed the traditional Canadian policy of offering fishery for trade privileges but found no backing in this or other matters from his British colleagues, and he met only unyielding opposition from the American Commissioners. He fell back, under protest, on a settlement of narrower scope, which permitted reciprocity in navigation and bonding privileges, free admission of Canadian and Newfoundland fish to United States markets and of American fishermen to Canadian and Newfoundland waters, and which provided for a subsidiary commission to fix the amount to be paid by the United States for the surplus advantage thus received. The Fenian Raids claims were not even considered, and Macdonald was angered by this indifference on the part of his British colleagues. "They seem to have only one thing in their minds," he reported privately to Ottawa, "that is, to go home to England with a treaty in their pocket, settling everything, no matter at what cost to Canada." Yet when the time came for the Canadian Parliament to decide whether to ratify the fishery clauses of the Treaty of Washington in which the conclusions of the commission were embodied, Macdonald, in spite of the unpopularity of the bargain in Canada, "urged Parliament to accept the treaty, accept it with all its imperfections, to accept it for the sake of peace and for the sake of the great Empire of which we form a part." The treaty was ratified in 1871 by all the powers concerned; and the stimulus to the peaceful settlement of international disputes given by the Geneva Tribunal which followed* justified the subordination of Canada"s specific interests.
A change in party now followed in Canada, but the new Government under Alexander Mackenzie was as fully committed as the Government of Sir John Macdonald to the policy of bartering fishery for trade advantage. Canada therefore proposed that instead of carrying out the provisions for a money settlement, the whole question should be reopened. The Administration at Washington was sympathetic. George Brown was appointed along with the British Amba.s.sador, Sir Edward Thornton, to open negotiations. Under Brown"s energetic leadership a settlement of all outstanding issues was drafted in 1874, which permitted freedom of trade in natural and in most manufactured products for twenty-one years, and settled fishery, coasting trade, navigation, and minor boundary issues. But diplomats proposed, and the United States Senate disposed. Protectionist feeling was strong at Washington, and the currency problem absorbing, and hence this broad and statesmanlike essay in neighborliness could not secure an hour"s attention. This plan having failed, the Canadian Government fell back on the letter of the treaty. A Commission which consisted of the Honorable E. H. Kellogg representing the United States, Sir Alexander T. Galt representing Canada, and the Belgian Minister to Washington, M. Delfosse, as chairman, awarded Canada and Newfoundland $5,500,000 as the excess value of the fisheries for the ten years the arrangement was to run. The award was denounced in the United States as absurdly excessive; but a sense of honor and the knowledge that millions of dollars from the Alabama award were still in the Treasury moved the Senate finally to acquiesce, though only for the ten-year term fixed by treaty. In Canada the award was received with delight as a signal proof that when left to themselves Canadians could hold their own. The prevailing view was well summed up in a letter from Mackenzie to the Canadian representative on the Halifax commission, written shortly before the decision: "I am glad you still have hopes of a fair verdict. I am doubly anxious to have it, first, because we are ent.i.tled to it and need the dollars, and, second, because it will be the first Canadian diplomatic triumph, and will justify me in insisting that we know our neighbors and our own business better than any Englishmen."
Mackenzie"s insistence that Canada must take a larger share in the control of her foreign affairs was too advanced a stand for many of his more conservative countrymen. For others, he did not go far enough. The early seventies saw the rise of a short-lived movement in favor of Canadian independence. To many independence from England seemed the logical sequel to Confederation; and the rapid expansion of Canadian territory over half a continent stimulated national pride and national self-consciousness Opinion in England regarding Canadian independence was still more outspoken. There imperialism was at its lowest ebb. With scarcely an exception, English politicians, from Bright to Disraeli, were hostile or indifferent to connection with the colonies, which had now ceased to be a trade a.s.set and had clearly become a military liability.
But no concrete problem arose to make the matter a political issue. In England a growing uneasiness over the protectionist policies and the colonial ambitions of her European rivals were soon to revive imperial sentiment. In Canada the ties of affection for the old land, as well as the inertia fostered by long years of colonial dependence, kept the independence movement from spreading far. For the time the rising national spirit found expression in economic rather than political channels. The protectionist movement which a few years later swept all Canada before it owed much of its strength to its claim to be the national policy.
But it was not imperial or foreign relations that dominated public interest in the seventies. Domestic politics were intensely absorbing and bitterly contested. Within five years there came about two sudden and sweeping reversals of power. Parties and Cabinets which had seemed firmly entrenched were dramatically overthrown by sudden changes in the personal factors and in the issues of the day. In the summer of 1872 the second general election for the Dominion was held. The Opposition had now gained in strength. The Government had ceased to be in any real sense a coalition, and most of the old Liberal rank and file were back in the party camp. They had found a vigorous leader in Alexander Mackenzie.
Mackenzie had come to Canada from Scotland in 1842 as a lad of twenty. He worked at his trade as a stonemason, educated himself by wide reading and constant debating, became a successful contractor and, after Confederation, had proved himself one of the most aggressive and uncompromising champions of Upper Canada Liberalism. In the first Dominion Parliament he tacitly came to be regarded as the leader of all the groups opposed to the Macdonald Administration. He was at the same time active in the Ontario Legislature since, for the first five years of Confederation, no law forbade membership in both federal and provincial Parliaments, and the short sessions of that blessed time made such double service feasible. Here he was aided by two other men of outstanding ability, Edward Blake and Oliver Mowat. Blake, the son of a well-to-do Irishman who had been active in the fight for responsible government, became Premier of Ontario in 1871 but retired in 1872 when a law abolishing dual representation made it necessary for him to choose between Toronto and Ottawa. His place was taken by Mowat, who for a quarter of a century gave the province thrifty, honest, and conservatively progressive government.