The course of prosperous years soothed the bitterness of party hatred, and the Canadian Legislature applied itself to measures of internal amelioration and development. Thus far the inestimable advantage of municipal institutions had not been enjoyed in Canada. The Legislature regulated all local concerns;—took upon itself the charge of roads, bridges, and schools; of the poor; of such sanitary arrangements as existed; and the people contracted the enfeebling habit of leaving their local affairs to be administered by the Government. 1849 A.D. This grave evil was now corrected; the Legislature was relieved of unnecessary burdens; and the people learned to exercise an intelligent interest in the conduct of their own local business.
Canada had now to accept the perfect freedom of trade which the mother country had at length adopted for herself. 1846-50 A.D. All restraints were now withdrawn; all duties which bestowed upon the colonist advantages over his foreign rival ceased. The Canadians might now buy and sell where they chose. Foreign ships were now free to sail the long-forbidden waters of the St. Lawrence. The change was not, in the outset, a welcome one. The Canadians were not fully prepared for an open competition with their neighbours of the United States. For a time trade languished, and there was a loud and bitter cry that the mother country disregarded the interests of her dependency. But the wholesome discipline of necessity taught the Canadians self-reliance. The adoption of a policy of unaided and unrestricted commerce inaugurated for the Canadians a period of enterprise and development such as they had not previously known.
After some years of steadily growing commerce, the Canadians bethought them of the mutual benefits which would result from freedom of trade between themselves and their neighbours of the United States. 1854 A.D. Lord Elgin, who was then Governor-General, was able to arrange a treaty by which this end was gained. The products of each country were admitted, without duty, to the other. The Americans gained free access to the great fisheries of Canada, to the rivers St. Lawrence and St. John, and all the canals by which navigation was facilitated. For eleven years this treaty remained in force, to the advantage of both the contracting powers. But the idea of protection had gained during those years increased hold upon the minds of the American people. 1866 A.D. The American Government now resolved to terminate the treaty. Grave inconveniences resulted to many classes of Americans. The New England States missed the supplies of cheap food which their manufacturing population received from Canada. The brewers of New York and Philadelphia had to find elsewhere, and at higher prices, the barley which Canada was accustomed to send. Woollen manufacturers could not obtain the serviceable varieties of raw material which the flocks of their northern neighbours supplied. Railway companies experienced the sudden loss of a large and lucrative traffic. Canada did not suffer materially by the termination of the Reciprocity Treaty. She found new outlets for her products, and the growth of her commerce was not appreciably interrupted.
The progress of education had in the Upper Province kept pace with the increase of population. But the common school was yet very insufficiently established in Lower Canada. The polite, genial, industrious French habitant was almost wholly uninstructed, and suffered his children to grow up in the blind ignorance of which he himself had not even discovered the evils. 1850 A.D. There was now set up an educational system adapted to his special requirements, but of which he was not swift to avail himself.
The question of the Clergy Reserves had been for generations a perennial source of vexation. The Episcopalians persisted in asserting themselves as the only Protestant Church; the Presbyterians and Methodists rejected with indignation and scorn the audacious pretension. In all countries where religious divisions prevail, the exaltation of any one sect above the others is obviously unjust, and must in its results disturb the harmony of the nation. Especially is this true of a colony where the notion of equality is indigenous, and men do not so easily, as in an old country, reconcile themselves to the assumption of superiority by a favoured class. The existence of a State Church became intolerable to the Canadian people. 1854 A.D. An Act was passed which severed the connection of Church and State. All life-interests—Episcopalian and Presbyterian—having been provided for, the lands and funds which remained were divided among the several municipalities on the basis of the population which they possessed. No important question of an ecclesiastical nature has since that time disturbed the tranquillity of the colony, if we except the demand of the Roman Catholics for a system of education apart from that of the common school.
The feudal tenure of lands still prevailed among the Frenchmen of the Lower Province. The seigneurs to whose ancestors Louis XIV. had granted large tracts of land, in the hope of building up a Canadian aristocracy, still levied their dues; still enforced their right to grind, at oppressive rates of charge, all the corn grown upon their land; still imposed upon the Canadians those cruel exactions which Frenchmen of seventy years ago had been unable to endure. The system was long complained against as a grievance which held the French population in a position of inferiority to the British. 1859 A.D. The rights of the seigneurs were now purchased by the province for a payment of one million dollars, and this antiquated and barbarous method of holding ceased to press upon the interests of the colony.
For some years after the union of the provinces there had been a sudden influx of settlers attracted from the old country by the improving prospects of the colony. In the quarter century which followed the battle of Waterloo, half a million of emigrants left Britain for Canada. But in the two years of 1846-47, the number was a quarter of a million, and the average for ten years had been nearly sixty thousand. Means were now used to stimulate these enriching currents. Hitherto the emigrant had been unregarded. He was suffered to take his passage in ships which were not seaworthy, and which were fatally overcrowded. When he arrived, often poor and ignorant, sometimes plague-stricken, he was uncared for. Now he was welcomed as a stranger who came to contribute to the wealth and greatness of the Dominion. Officers were appointed to protect him from the plunderers who lay in wait for him. His urgent wants were supplied; information was given him by which his future course might safely be guided.
The passion for constructing railways, which raged in England in the year 1845, sent its influences into Canada. The colonists began to discuss arrangements for connecting the great cities of their extended Dominion. But the need in Canada was less urgent than elsewhere, and the difficulties were greater. The inhabited region lay for the most part on the shores of the Great Lakes, or of the St. Lawrence and its tributaries, where easy communication by steam-boat was enjoyed. On the other hand, distances were great, population was scanty; capital for the construction of railways and traffic for their support were alike awanting. For years Canada was unable to pass beyond the initial stage of surveys and reports and meetings to discuss, and vain attempts to obtain help from the imperial exchequer. 1852 A.D. After seven years thus passed, a railway mania burst out in Canada. In one session of Parliament fifteen railway Bills were passed, and the number rose to twenty-eight in the following session. The most notable of the projects thus authorized was the Grand Trunk Railway—a gigantic enterprise, which proposed to connect Montreal with Toronto, and Quebec with Rivière du Loup. So urgent was now the desire for railways, that the Legislature incurred liabilities on account of this undertaking to the enormous amount of nearly five million sterling; to which extent the colonial exchequer is and will probably always remain a loser.
The financial position of Canada had been hitherto satisfactory. Her entire debt was four million and a half; an expenditure of £600,000 met all her requirements, and her revenue largely exceeded this sum; her securities bore a premium on the Stock Exchanges of England. 1852 A.D. But now Canada, in her eagerness for more rapid development, began with liberal hand to offer aid to industrial undertakings. She contributed freely to the making of railways. She encouraged the municipalities to borrow upon her security for the construction of roads and bridges, and for other necessary public works. The municipalities, with responsive alacrity, borrowed and expended; a genial activity pervaded all industries; and the development of Canada advanced with more rapid step than at any previous period. But the country was providing for wants which had not yet arisen, and the premature expenditure brought upon her unwelcome and oppressive burdens of debt and of taxation.[19]