Imperial Federation: The Problem of National Unity

by George R. Parkin

Could annexation under any circumstances be effected peacefully and at the ballot-box? I doubt it. If a day should ever come when a bare majority of Canadians voted for annexation, would such a decision be accepted by the minority? To many it would mean Revolution and would be treated as such. It must be remembered that nationality is based on feelings which often lie too deep for mere argument or discussion. In all ages of the world it has been a fighting issue, a question on which minorities yielded only on compulsion. Against mere numbers, moreover, intensity of passion and depth of conviction weigh heavily. I have never heard the question openly discussed, and express an opinion upon it with some diffidence, but to me it seems certain that only coercion would make a very large and influential section of Canadian population submit to the changes which annexation would involve. And I think such a minority would be justified in the eyes of all who place honour and devotion to lofty national tradition before material gain.

Living close to the United States, Canadians can see many practical reasons, outside of sentimental ones, why they should not commit the fortunes of their country to an alliance with those of the great republic. Assuming commercial advantage, the political objections might well seem decisive as a counterbalance. The price which the States have to pay for their wonderful career of prosperity is not yet clear. The amazing flood of immigration with which {135} it has been attended is steadily diluting the Anglo-Saxon element and diminishing the relative influence of the native American. A well-known Mayor of Chicago not long since outlined for me the elements of the population over which his municipal rule extended. The analysis would form a curious study for those who would forecast the American type of the next century: A recent event has revealed the fact that America's population includes a great mass of Italians, little in sympathy with the institutions under which they live, and reinforced by emigrants who crowd every steamer that leaves the Mediterranean to cross the Atlantic.

I lately heard a representative American writer and thinker in England say that in his judgment the Irish question was becoming a more disturbing factor in American politics and a more difficult one to deal with, than it has been for Great Britain. Of the value of this sincerely held opinion an outsider cannot perhaps form a just estimate, but we know that a split in Tammany may practically decide a Presidential election, and a Canadian may fairly think that any problem of race or creed with which he has to deal is not more perplexing.

There still remains the race issue in the South. The war of Secession settled the slavery question: it left the negro question as a dead weight upon the future. Thoughtful Americans themselves are among the first to confess that they have not yet seriously attempted to grapple with it. In the first outburst {136} of generosity, or as a move in the game of party politics, the franchise was given along with liberty, and the result no one as yet foresees. Clearly the country has to face the prospect of a steadily consolidating zone of black population stretching far across the continent. Should the Dominion be annexed to the United States all the voting weight of Canada within the union would for a generation to come scarcely balance this single negro element of America's population, supposing that, in accordance with Canadian ideas of political justice, the negroes should be allowed (as they are not now) to exercise their legal right.

The violence and insecurity of life which have marked the settlement of the West, and still prevail over whole States in the South, are unknown in Canada. People ask why lynch law, as little known in new British countries like Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa, as it is in Britain itself, is still a common phenomenon in the administration of American justice. Canada has managed a large Indian population with little serious difficulty; her neighbours during the same years have been engaged in a series of wars of extermination, apparently the outcome for the most part of maladministration in Indian affairs. The confusion of marriage and divorce laws throughout the various states has become a serious evil, for which no remedy has yet been devised. If Canadians have sometimes to wrestle with political corruption, they at least do so resolutely and {137} effectively, while there is a widespread belief that among their neighbours it is a permanent and accepted factor in party government.

These points are not dwelt upon in a spirit of petty criticism, but it seems fair to mention them as facts which influence powerfully Canadian judgment in forming an opinion on the comparative merits of the political systems which they see working side by side.

One other consideration beyond that of commercial advantage has often been thrust upon Canadians as a reason why they should seek annexation. They are told that so long as they remain politically connected with Britain they will be exposed to the chances of war with the United States, since the Dominion would naturally be made the first point of attack should differences arise between the two countries. It is urged that resistance to such an attack would be useless and absurd, and that Canada's only guarantee of safety from future subjugation and the military occupation of the country is to form as quickly as she can and on the best terms she can, a civil union with the power that thus threatens her.

If the appeal to mere commercial advantage seemed mercenary, this appeal to cowardice seems base. Certainly it is one which has never made any impression on the Canadian mind. Perhaps this is mere recklessness. It might be argued, however, that 4000 miles of frontier are as perplexing for attack as for defence. Canadians remember that in 1812 they successfully faced a corresponding danger when the odds were as {138} much against them, and numbers as disproportionate, as they are today. They remember that to crush the Southern States, fighting without outside help, required the most expensive and destructive war of modern times, prolonged over renewed campaigns. They know at any rate that the task of subduing them is one which would not be lightly undertaken. But picture the worst that such a war could bring: defeat, military occupation, complete subjugation. If war between Britain and the United States be, as is claimed, a possibility of the future, would not each and all of these be for Canadians infinitely preferable to placing themselves in such a position that; having abandoned a country which they loved and joined themselves to a country which they feared, they would by that act be pledged to use their arms, their means, their collective forces as a people, against the land that gave them birth, that had extended over them the strong shield of her protection through a hundred years of struggling infancy, and had freely given them the best she had to give of perfect freedom and noble institutions?

I am satisfied that this argument alone is quite sufficient to make annexation to the United States a moral impossibility for the Canadian people. They may join heartily in every process by which their mother-land and the great republic are drawn more closely together; they may even be in no small degree the link which binds them together in friendly feeling. But to expose themselves to the possibility of hostile {139} conflict with that mother-land for the sake of a temporary commercial advantage or from motives of cowardice would make them incur the contempt of the people they leave and the contempt of the people they join. In the long run it may be taken for granted that the path of commercial and every other prosperity will be found along the path of national honour. That national honour is looked upon as the issue at stake there can be no reasonable doubt.

In considering more closely the question of commercial advantage it may in the outset be remarked that no truly noble individual life, much less any truly noble national life, was ever yet built up on principles and purposes entirely mercenary. The landmarks in history to which the human heart everywhere turns with a thrill of instinctive pride are the periods when nations have forgotten, for a time, self-interest and the love of gain, and in the glow of patriotic enthusiasm have made great sacrifices from motives of principle, affection, honour, and loyalty, British Canada owes its foundation to such an outburst of lofty spirit. The United States themselves were founded, as a nation, upon what seemed at the time an utter defiance of commercial advantage, and the heroic periods of that country, as of every other, the periods which gave birth to all that is noblest and purest in it, were not the times of its wealth and luxury, but the times of its self-denial, suffering, effort, and sacrifice. Prosperity must be an incident of noble national life; not the sole foundation on which it is built.