Canada: the Empire of the North Part 32

And still worse fared the fortunes of war with the patriots north of Montreal. Their defense and defeat were almost pitiable in childish ignorance of what war might mean. Boys' marbles had been gathered together for bullets. Scythes were carried as swords, and old flintlocks that had not seen service for twenty years were taken down from the chimney places. With their bonnets blue hanging down their backs, rusty firearms over their shoulders, and the village fiddler leading the march, one thousand "Sons of Liberty" had paraded the streets of St. Eustache, singing, rollicking, speechifying, unconscious as {431} children playing war that they were dancing to ruin above a volcano. Chenier, the beloved country doctor, is their leader. Girod, the Swiss, has come up to show them how to drill. They take possession of a newly built convent. Then on Sunday, the 3d of December, comes word of the defeat down on the Richelieu. The moderate men plead with Chenier to stop now before it is too late; but Chenier will not listen.

He knows the cause is right, and with the credulity or faith of a simple child hopes some mad miracle will win the day. Still he is much moved; tears stream down his face. Then on December 14 the church bells ring a crazy alarm. The troops are coming, two thousand of them from Montreal under Sir John Colborne, the governor. The insurgent army melts like frost before the sun. Less than one hundred men stand by poor Chenier. At eleven-thirty the troops sweep in at both ends of the village at once, Girod, the Swiss commander, suicides in panic flight. Cooped up in the church steeple with the flames mounting closer round them and the troopers whooping jubilantly outside, Chenier and his eighty followers call out: "We are done! We are sold! Let us jump!" Chenier jumps from the steeple, is. .h.i.t by the flying bullets, and perishes as he falls. His men cower back in the flaming steeple till it falls with a crash into the burning ruins. Amid the ash heap are afterwards found the corpses of seventy-two patriots. The troopers take one hundred prisoners in the region, then set fire to all houses where loyalist flags are not waved from the windows.

Matters have now come to such an outrageous pa.s.s that the British government can no longer ignore the fact that the colony has been goaded to desperation by the misgovernment of the ruling clique. Lord Durham is appointed special commissioner with extraordinary powers to proceed to Canada and investigate the whole subject of colonial government. One may guess that the ruling clique were prepared to take possession of the new commissioner and prime him with facts favorable to their side; but Durham was not a man to be monopolized by any faction. {432} When he arrived, in May of 1838, he quickly gave proof that he would follow his own counsels and choose his own councilors.

His first official declaration was practically an act of amnesty to the rebels, eight only of the leading prisoners, among them Dr. Nelson, being punished by banishment to Bermuda, the rest being simply expelled from Canada.

This act was tantamount to a declaration that the rebels possessed some rights and had suffered real grievances, and the governing rings in both Toronto and Quebec took furious offense. Complaints against Durham poured into the English colonial office,--complaints, oddly enough, that he had violated the spirit of the English Const.i.tution by sentencing subjects of the Crown without trial. Though every one knew that in Canada's turbulent condition trial by jury was impossible, Durham's political foes in England took up the cry. In addition to political complaints were grudges against Durham for personal slight; and it must be confessed the haughty earl had ridden roughshod over all the petty prejudices and little dignities of the colonial magnates.

The upshot was, Durham resigned in high dudgeon and sailed for England in November of 1838.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LORD DURHAM, SPECIAL COMMISSIONER TO CANADA, 1838]

On his way home he dictated to his secretary, Charles Buller, the famous report which is to Canada what the Magna Charta is to England or the Declaration of Independence to the United States. Without going into detail, it may be said that it {433} recommended complete self-government for the colonies. As disorders had again broken out in Canada, the English government hastened to embody the main recommendations of Durham's report in the Union Act of 1840, which came into force a year later. By it Upper and Lower Canada were united on a basis of equal representation each, though Quebec's population was six hundred thousand to Ontario's five hundred thousand. The colonies were to have the entire management of their revenues and civil lists. The government was to consist of an Upper Chamber appointed by the Crown for life, a representative a.s.sembly, and the governor with a cabinet of advisers responsible to the a.s.sembly.

In all, more than seven hundred arrests had been made in Quebec Province. Of these all were released but some one hundred and thirty, and the state trials resulted in sentence of banishment against fifty, death to twelve. In modern days it is almost impossible to realize the degree of fanatical hatred generated by this half century of misgovernment. Declared one of the governing clique's official newspapers in Montreal: "Peace must be maintained, even if we make the country a solitude. French Canadians must be swept from the face of the earth. . . . The empire must be respected, even at the cost of the entire French Canadian people." With such sentiments openly uttered, one may surely say that the Const.i.tutional Act of 1791 turned back the pendulum of Canada's progress fifty years, and it certainly took fifty more years to eradicate the bitterness generated by the era of misgovernment.

With the Upper and Lower Canadas united in a federation of two provinces, it was a foregone conclusion that all parts of British North America must sooner or later come into the fold. It would be hard to say from whom the idea of confederation of all the provinces first sprang. Purely as a theory the idea may be traced back as early as 1791. The truth is, Destiny, Providence, or whatever we like to call that great stream of concurrent events which carries men and nations out to the ocean {434} highway of a larger life, forced British North America into the Confederation of 1867.

In the first place, while the Union worked well in theory, it was exceedingly difficult in practice. Ontario and Quebec had equal representation. One was Protestant, the other Catholic; one French, the other English. Deadlocks, or, to use the slang of the street, even tugs of war, were inevitable and continual. All Ontario had to do to thwart Quebec, or Quebec had to do to thwart Ontario, was to stand together and keep the votes solid. Coalition ministries proved a failure.

In the second place, Ontario was practically dependent on the customs duties collected at Quebec ports of entry for a provincial revenue.

The goods might be billed for Ontario; Quebec collected the tax.

Ontario was also dependent on Quebec for access to the sea. Which province was to pay for the system of ca.n.a.ls being developed, and the deepening of the St. Lawrence?

Then the Oregon Treaty of 1846 had actually brought a cloud of war on the horizon. In case of war, there was the question of defense.

Then railways had become a very live question. Quebec wanted connection with New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. How was the cost of a railroad to be apportioned? Red River was agitating for freedom from fur-trade monopoly. How were railways to be built to Red River?

Ontario's population in twenty years jumped past the million mark. Was it fair that her million people should have only the same number of representatives as Quebec with her half million? Reformers of Ontario, voiced by George Brown of _The Globe_, called for "Rep. by Pop.,"--representation by population.

Civil war was raging in the United States, threatening to tear the Union to tatters. Why? Because the balance of power had been left with the states governments, and not enough authority centralized in the federal government. The lesson was not lost on struggling Canada.

{435} England's declaration of free trade brought the colonies face to face with the need of some united action to raise revenue by tariff.

Then the Hudson's Bay Company's license of monopoly over the fur trade of the west was nearing expiration. Should the license be renewed for another twenty years, or should Canada take over Red River as a new province, which was the wish of the people both east and west? And if Canada did buy out the Hudson's Bay Company's vested rights, who was to pay down the cost?

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN A. MACDONALD]

Lastly, was John A. Macdonald, the young lawyer who had pleaded the defense of the patriot trials at Kingston in 1838, now a leading politician of the United Canadas, weary of the hopeless deadlocks between Ontario and Quebec. With almost a sixth sense of divination in reading the signs of the times in the trend of events, John A.

Macdonald saw that Canada's one hope of becoming a national power lay in union,--confederation. The same thing was seen by other leaders of the day, by all that grand old guard known as the Fathers of Confederation, sent from the different provinces to the conference at Quebec in October of 1864. There the outline of what is known as the British North America Act was drafted,--in the main but an amplification of Durham's scheme, made broad enough to receive all {436} the provinces whenever they might decide to come into Confederation. The delegates then go back to be indorsed by their provinces. By some provinces the scheme is rejected. Newfoundland is not yet part of Canada, but by 1867 Confederation is an accomplished fact. By 1871 the new Dominion has bought out the rights of the Hudson's Bay Company in the West and Manitoba joins the Eastern Provinces. By 1885 a railway links British Columbia with Nova Scotia.

By 1905 the great hunting field of the Saskatchewan prairies has been divided into two new provinces, Saskatchewan and Alberta, each larger than France.

Such is barest outline of Canada's past. What of the future for this Empire of the North? That future is now in the making. It lies in the hands of the men and women who are living to-day. In the past Canada's makers dreamed greatly, and they dared greatly, and they took no heed of impossibles, and they spent without stint of blood and happiness for high aim. When Canada lost ground in the progress of the nations, as in the corrupt days of Bigot's rule during the French regime, or the equally corrupt days of _the family compact_ after the Conquest, it was because the altar fires of her ideals were allowed to burn low.

It has been said that the past is but a rear light marking the back trail of the s.h.i.+p's pa.s.sage. Say rather it is the search light on the s.h.i.+p's prow, pointing the way over the waters.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FATHERS OF CONFEDERATION, 1867. (From the painting by Robert Hariss)]

To-day Canada is in the very vanguard of the nations. Her wheat fields fill the granaries of the world; and to her ample borders come the peoples of earth's ends, bringing tribute not of incense and frankincense as of old, but of manhood and strength, of push and lift, of fire and hope and enthusiasm and the daring that conquers all the difficulties of life; bringing too, all the outworn vices of an Old World, all the vicious instincts of the powers that prey in the Under World. Canada's prosperity is literally overflowing from a cornucopia of super-abundant plenty. Will her const.i.tution, wrested from political and civil strife; will her moral stamina, bred from the heroism of an heroic past, stand the strain, the tremendous strain of the {437} new conditions? Will she a.s.similate the strange new peoples--strange in thought and life and morals--coming to her borders?

Will she eradicate their vices like the strong body of a healthy const.i.tution throwing off disease; or will she be poisoned by the toxins of vicious traits inherited from centuries of vicious living?

Will she remake the men, regenerate the aliens, coming to her hearth fire; or will they drag her down to their degeneracy? Above all, will she stand the strain, the tremendous strain, of prosperity, and the corruption that is attendant on prosperity? _Quien sabe_? Let him answer who can; and the question is best answered by watching the criminal calendar. (Is the percentage of convictions as certain and relentless as under the old regime? What manner of crimes is growing up in the land?) And the question may be answered, too, by watching whether the press and platform and pulpit stand as everlastingly and relentlessly for sharp demarkation between right and wrong, for the sharp demarkation between truth, plain truth, and intentional mendacity, as under the regime of the old hard days. When political life grows corrupt, is it now cleansed, or condoned? Let each Canadian answer for himself. If the altar fires of Canada's ideals again burn low, again she will lag in the progress of the world's great builders.