What is the future reserved to French Canada, and indeed to the whole Dominion?
There are only two political parties, Liberals and Conservatives, but I find the population divided into four camps: Those in favor of Canada, an independent nation; those in favor of the political union of Canada and the United States; those in favor of Canada going into Imperial Federation, and those in favor of Canada remaining an English colony, or in other words, in favor of the actual state of things.
Of course the French Canadians are dead against going into Imperial Federation, which would simply crush them, and Canadian “society” is in favor of remaining English. The other Canadians seem pretty equally divided.
It must be said that the annexation idea has been making rapid progress of late years, among prominent men as well as among the people. The Americans will never fire one shot to have the idea realized. If ever the union becomes an accomplished fact, it will become so with the assent of all parties. The task will be made easy through Canada and the United States having the same legislature. The local and provincial governments are the same in the Canadian towns and provinces as they are in the American towns and States—a House of Representatives, a Senate, and a Governor, with this difference, this great difference, to the present advantage of Canada: whereas every four years the Americans elect a new master, who appoints a ministry responsible to himself alone, the Canadians have a ministry responsible to their parliament, that is, to themselves. The representation of the American people at Washington is democratic, but the government is autocratic. In Canada, both legislature and executive are democratic, as in England, that greatest and truest of all democracies.
The change in Canada would have to be made on the American plan.
With the exception of Quebec and parts of Montreal, Canada is built like America; the country has the same aspect, the currency is the same. Suppress the Governor-General in Ottawa, who is there to remind Canada that she is a dependency of the English Crown, strew the country with more cuspidores, and you have part of Jonathan’s big farm.
