Imperial Federation: The Problem of National Unity

by George R. Parkin

CHAPTER VI.

FRENCH CANADA.

CANADA has had a two-fold history: French and English. The two elements of the population have not amalgamated to any appreciable extent, the hindrance arising from religion rather than race. We have then today a French-speaking Canada and an English-speaking Canada. It is important to keep in the mind a clear idea of the proportion of the one to the other. The tendency of the French population to remain concentrated in a single province or its immediate neighbourhood, (I do not forget the Acadian French, but they cannot seriously affect the position), makes it easy to indicate this proportion, and its fluctuation. In 1759 Quebec was Canada—a Canada entirely French and Roman Catholic. In 1791 Ontario was set off as a separate province, and within fifty years was of itself equal to the French province in population and superior in wealth. Today Quebec is the only French-speaking province among the seven which make up the Confederation. An overflow into a few of the border counties of Ontario, a limited and {154} scattered migration to the north-west, mark the only further expansion of the French population over new areas in Canada. A considerable migration to New England, where the Quebec peasant becomes a factory operative, is interesting, because it shows that he resists amalgamation in the United States as steadily as in Canada. Quebec then, still represents French Canada. It has a population of 1,500,000, of whom 1,200,000 are French. It should be added that the wealth and influence of the great and growing city of Montreal are in the hands of the English minority, as were the wealth and influence of the city of Quebec in its days of greatest prosperity. A certain unprogressive spirit hampers the Frenchman, and gives a striking commercial and industrial advantage to the English population. Perhaps this contrast may in part be explained by the fact that the conquest of 1759 was followed by the return to France of a small, but intellectually and commercially important element of French Canadian society, while the English population was reinforced a few years later by an influx of loyalist energy and ability.

Roughly speaking, therefore, the French of Canada stand to the whole people as, at the most, a million and a half to five millions. The many provinces which are still to be carved out of the north-west will be English speaking. It is true that the French habitans have large families, and the natural increase of the race is somewhat greater than that of British colonists, but on the other hand the whole inflow of immigration increases {155} the weight of the English-speaking provinces; the outflow to New England lessens that of Quebec. The relative influence and numbers of the French element in Canada will never be greater than they are at present, but rather less, partly owing, as I have said, to the formation of new provinces, but even more to the hesitation of French Canadians to follow the advice of their wiser leaders like Mr. Laurier, and throw themselves more entirely than they have hitherto done into the tide of Anglo-Saxon movement on the continent. More than one historian has pointed out that the efforts of French kings and ministers to make Quebec a preserve for a single set of ideas paralyzed the energies of the colonists in early days. There seems to me to be a like danger now, arising from similar causes, that it may become the less energetic community of a strenuously progressive continent. But it can never dominate Canadian development, or permanently block the general movement of the Dominion in any given direction.

From another point of view French Canada today represents one of the most interesting triumphs of British constitutional government. When the Province of Quebec came under British dominion in 1763, it had never known what free government by the people meant. Governors and Intendants, with almost despotic power, or taking their orders even in minute detail from a French king or minister in Paris, left no room for popular control. Striking indeed was the contrast which the province presented to the {156} English colonies further south, which from their very foundation began to organize a system of local self-government. In Quebec the beginnings of self-government had still to be made after 1763, or, rather, after 1774, the date of the Quebec Act. Yet the remark of Montalembert, that the Frenchman in Canada under British institutions has attained a liberty which the Frenchman of France never knew, is in strict accord with fact. France, which seems to have wasted few regrets on a colony which had always been poor and a drain upon her resources, plunged into all the horrors of the Revolution to win a liberty which after all for more than a century has wavered between name and reality. The people of her surrendered colony, carrying on, along with the British provinces, the agitation for responsible government by methods entirely constitutional, save for the slight outbreak of 1837, have gained and continue in the secure enjoyment of a popular freedom as complete as that of any country in the world; a recognition for their religion such as that religion cannot command in France. Between the European Frenchman, moreover, and the French Canadian is the barrier raised by the Revolution. Modern France does not send emigrants to Quebec, where, indeed, they would scarcely be welcome. The typical French republican, with his atheism, his free life, and his contempt for religious forms, would be curiously out of place in the average French Canadian community, devout, moral, and conservative. He would, indeed, run no slight risk of {157} being boycotted by clerical orders. The sentimental tie with France or race and language remains, and to the honour of French Canadians be it said, is fondly cherished, though it is not sustained by that constant intercourse and hearty literary sympathy which so bind the English world together. The reasoned political allegiance of the people goes out to the British connection, which gives steadiness to their public and security to their religious life.

Once more, French Canadians have profound objections to annexation to the United States. They go in numbers to work in the mills and factories of New England, or in the forests of Michigan or Maine for a few months or a few years, forming a large proportion of the so-called exodus, but those who become naturalized American citizens have hitherto been an unimportant fraction of the whole. Many return, the movement to and fro being continuous. Those who stay form more or less distinct communities of their own, to which cohesion is given by the curé, who follows to supply the ministrations of their religion. The simple loyalty of the habitant to his Canadian home and to his religion is no slight offset to his narrowness of political outlook and his somewhat unprogressive habit of mind. It made him fight against American aggression in 1774; it added a bright page to Canadian history by the heroic part taken in the war of 1812, when 400 French Canadians under de Salaberry defeated at Chateauguay an army {158} of 3000 Americans. Happily we need not now think of like aggression, but should danger ever again threaten Canada, there are the strongest reasons to believe that the Frenchman even of the United States would soon find his place beside his compatriot in the old home, fighting for the land he loves with a passionate affection.

It is only natural that, with race, language, and religion on the one side, and on the other a heritage of free political institutions giving security to all of these, we should find fluctuations of expression among an excitable people in regard to national attachment. On the whole, however, the steadiness of French Canadian loyalty to British institutions is remarkable. Cardinal Manning told me in 1886 that French Canadian bishops and clergy had over and over again assured him that their people were practically a unit in preferring British to French, or any other connection, and since that time the pastoral addresses of the highest ecclesiastics have more than once confirmed this statement in explicit terms.

Sir George Cartier described himself as an Englishman speaking French, and he no doubt meant it as a sincere indication of the drift of French Canadian thought. When a conspicuous French politician—not a Conservative—told me in Ottawa three years since that he would not be afraid to stand on any platform in Quebec and affirm that, in the event of war between France and England, other things being equal, four French Canadians out of every five would not only {159} sympathize with, but prefer to fight for England, the energy of the statement was a surprise to me; but I have no reason to doubt the speaker's sincerity. The absolute truth of the statement cannot be questioned, if the supposed contest involved the substitution in Quebec of anti-religious French Republicanism, which the French Canadian hates, for the tolerant system of Britain. Looking back upon all that has happened in France since 1789, looking even at the condition of the Republic today and its attitude towards religion, the French Canadian may, and, it may be added, often does, sincerely echo the thought of the brilliant historian of the French occupation of America when he says that 'a happier calamity never befell a people than the conquest of Canada by the British arms.'

In criticism of what has so far been said of French Canada it will no doubt be replied that Mr. Mercier, the late leader of the French Nationalist party in Quebec, has taken occasion to denounce the proposal to work out some scheme of British unity, and has pointed to independence as, in his opinion, the ideal future for Canada. No doubt Mr. Mercier was for a time able to introduce new features into the political life of Quebec, but there is no reason to suppose that he broke down even for a moment the traditional policy of his people, who have long looked upon their British connection as the chief safeguard for the rights which they most value. The exposure of Mr. Mercier's political methods and the collapse of his system make {160} it perhaps unnecessary to discuss his views on national affairs.

Mr. Laurier, the exceedingly able and fair minded leader of the opposition in the Canadian Parliament, is described in 'The Problems of Greater Britain,' as 'more or less in favour of' Imperial Federation. He has lately, probably under the pressure of political events in the Dominion, expressed the opinion that independence, rather than Federation with the Empire, was the more desirable end of Canadian development, basing his argument chiefly upon the idea that Canada would, in a federated empire, be drawn into European wars. I have dealt with this objection in another place. Mr. Laurier is devoted to the honour and the interest of Canada, and it may be taken for granted that if these can be proved to coincide with the honour and interest of the Empire, any difficulty which he sees in British unity would disappear.