The Fathers of Confederation: A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion

by A. H. U. Colquhoun

CHAPTER XI

THE FRAMING OF THE BILL

When the British American delegates met in London to frame the bill they found themselves in an atmosphere tending to chill their enthusiasm. Lord Palmerston had died the year before, and with him had disappeared an adventurous foreign policy and the militant view of empire. The strictly utilitarian school of thought was dominant. Canada was unpleasantly associated in the minds of British statesmen with the hostile attitude of the United States which seemed to threaten a most unwelcome war. John Bright approved of ceding Canada to the Republic as the price of peace. Gladstone also wrote to Goldwin Smith suggesting this course. The delegates were confronted by the same ideas which had distressed George Brown two years earlier. The colonies were not to be forcibly cast off, but even in official circles the opinion prevailed that ultimate separation was the inevitable end. The reply of Sir Edward Thornton, the British minister at Washington, to a proposal that Canada should be ceded to the United States was merely that Great Britain could not thus dispose of a colony 'against the wishes of the inhabitants.' These lukewarm views made no appeal to the delegates and the young communities they represented. It was their aim to propound a method of continuing the connection. Theirs was not the vision of a military sway intended to overawe other nations and to revive in the modern world the empires of history. To them Imperialism meant to extend and preserve the principles of justice, liberty, and peace, which they believed were inherent in British institutions and more nearly attainable under monarchical than under republican forms.

Minds influential in the Colonial Office and elsewhere saw in this only a flamboyant patriotism. The Duke of Newcastle, when colonial secretary, had not shared the desire for separation, and he found it hard to believe that any one charged with colonial administration wished it. He had written to Palmerston in 1861:

You speak of some supposed theoretical gentlemen in the colonial office who wish to get rid of all colonies as soon as possible. I can only say that if there are such they have never ventured to open their opinion to me. If they did so on grounds of peaceful separation, I should differ from them so long as colonies can be retained by bonds of mutual sympathy and mutual obligation; but I would meet their views with indignation if they could suggest disruption by the act of any other, and that a hostile, Power.

The duke was not intimate with his official subordinates, or he would have known that Palmerston's description exactly fitted the permanent under-secretary at the Colonial Office. Sir Frederic Rogers (who later became Lord Blachford) filled that post from 1860 to 1871. He was therefore in office during the Confederation period. He left on record his ideas of the future of the Empire:

I had always believed—and the belief has so confirmed and consolidated itself that I can hardly realize the possibility of any one seriously thinking the contrary—that the destiny of our colonies is independence; and that in this view, the function of the Colonial Office is to secure that our connexion, while it lasts, shall be as profitable to both parties, and our separation, when it comes, as amicable as possible. This opinion is founded first on the general principle that a spirited nation (and a colony becomes a nation) will not submit to be governed in its internal affairs by a distant government, and that nations geographically remote have no such common interests as will bind them permanently together in foreign policy with all its details and mutations.

In other words, Sir Frederic was a painstaking honourable official without a shred of imagination. He typifies the sort of influence which the delegates had to encounter.

The conference consisted of sixteen members, six from Canada and ten from the Maritime Provinces. The Canadians were Macdonald, Cartier, Galt, McDougall, Howland, and Langevin. From Nova Scotia came Tupper, Henry, Ritchie, McCully, and Archibald; while New Brunswick was represented by Tilley, Johnston, Mitchell, Fisher, and Wilmot. They selected John A. Macdonald as chairman. The resignation of Brown had left Macdonald the leader of the movement, and the nominal Canadian prime minister, Sir Narcisse Belleau, was not even a delegate. The impression Macdonald made in London is thus recorded by Sir Frederic Rogers in language which gives us an insight into the working of the conference:

They held many meetings, at which I was always present. Lord Carnarvon [the colonial secretary] was in the chair, and I was rather disappointed in his power of presidency. Macdonald was the ruling genius and spokesman, and I was very greatly struck by his power of management and adroitness. The French delegates were keenly on the watch for anything which weakened their securities; on the contrary, the Nova Scotia and New Brunswick delegates were very jealous of concessions to the arriérée province; while one main stipulation in favour of the French was open to constitutional objections on the part of the Home Government. Macdonald had to argue the question with the Home Government on a point on which the slightest divergence from the narrow line already agreed upon in Canada was watched for—here by the French and there by the English—as eager dogs watch a rat hole; a snap on one side might have provoked a snap on the other and put an end to the concord. He stated and argued the case with cool ready fluency, while at the same time you saw that every word was measured, and that while he was making for a point ahead, he was never for a moment unconscious of any of the rocks among which he had to steer.