"All who have spoken on this subject have said a good deal, as was natural, of the interests at stake in the success or failure of this plan of Confederation. I trust the House will permit me to add a few words as to the principle of Confederation considered in itself. In the application of this principle to former constitutions there certainly always was one fatal defect, the weakness of the central authority. Of all the Federal constitutions I have ever heard or read of, this was the fatal malady: they were short-lived, they died of consumption. But I am not prepared to say that because the Tuscan League elected its chief magistrates but for two months and lasted a century, that therefore the Federal principle failed. On the contrary, there is something in the frequent, fond recurrence of mankind to this principle, among the freest people, in their best times and in their worst dangers, which leads me to believe, that it has a very deep hold in human nature itself—an excellent basis for a government to have. But, indeed, Sir, the main question is the due distribution of powers in a Federal Union—a question I dare not touch to-night, but which I may be prepared to say something on before the vote is taken. The principle itself seems to me to be capable of being so adapted as to promote internal peace and external security, and to call into action a genuine, enduring, and heroic patriotism. It is a fruit of this principle that makes the modern Italian look back with sorrow and pride over a dreary waste of seven centuries to the famous field of Legnano; it was this principle kindled the beacons which yet burn on the rocks of Uri; it was this principle that broke the dykes of Holland and overwhelmed the Spanish with the fate of the Egyptian oppressor. It is a principle capable of inspiring a noble ambition and a most salutary emulation. You have sent your young men to guard your frontier. You want a principle to guard your young men, and thus truly defend your frontier. For what do good men who make the best soldiers fight? For a line of scripture or chalk line—for a text or for a pretext? What is a better boundary between nations than a parallel of latitude, or even a natural obstacle?—what really keeps nations intact and apart?—a principle. When I can hear our young men say as proudly, 'our Federation,' or 'our Country,' or 'our Kingdom,' as the young men of other countries do, speaking of their own, then I shall have less apprehension for the result of whatever trials the future may have in store for us. It has been said that the Federal Constitution of the United States has failed. I, Sir, have never said it. The Attorney- General West told you the other night that he did not consider it a failure; and I remember that in 1861, when in this House I remarked the same thing, the only man who then applauded the statement was the Attorney-General West,—so that it is plain he did not simply adopt the argument for use the other night when advocating a Federal Union among ourselves. It may be a failure for us, paradoxical as this may seem, and yet not a failure for them. They have had eighty years' use of it, and having discovered its defects, may apply a remedy and go on with it eighty years longer. But we also were lookers on, who saw its defects as the machine worked, and who have prepared contrivances by which it can be improved and kept in more perfect order when applied to ourselves. And one of the foremost statesmen in England, distinguished alike in politics and literature, has declared, as the President of the Council informed us, that we have combined the best parts of the British and the American systems of government; an opinion deliberately formed at a distance, without prejudice, and expressed without interested motives of any description. We have, in relation to the head of the Government, in relation to the judiciary, in relation to the second chamber of the Legislature, in relation to the financial responsibility of the General Government, and in relation to the public officials whose tenure of office is during good behaviour instead of at the caprice of a party—in all these respects we have adopted the British system; in other respects we have learned something from the American system, and I trust and believe we have made a very tolerable combination of both.
"The principle of Federation is a generous principle. It is a principle that gives men local duties to discharge, and invests them at the same time with general supervision, and excites a healthy sense of responsibility and comprehension. It is a principle that has produced a wise and true spirit of statesmanship in all countries in which it has ever been applied. It is a principle eminently favourable to liberty, because local affairs are left to be dealt with by local bodies, and cannot be interfered with by those who have no local interest in them, while matters of a general character are left exclusively to a General Government. It is a principle inseparable from every government that ever gave extended and important services to a country, because all governments have been more or less confederations in their character. Spain was a Federation, for although it had a king reigning over the whole country, it had its local governments for the administration of local affairs. The British Isles are a quasi-Confederation, and the old French dukedoms were confederated in the States-General. It is a principle that runs through all the history of civilization in one form or another, and exists alike in monarchies and democracies; and having adopted it as the principle of our future government, there were only the details to arrange and agree upon. Those details are before you. It is not in our power to alter any of them even if the House desires it. If the House desires, it can reject the treaty, but we cannot, nor can the other Provinces, which took part in its negociation, consent that it shall be altered in the slightest particular.
"Mr. Speaker, I am sorry to have detained the House so long, and was not aware till I had been some time on my legs, that my physical strength was so inadequate to the exposition of those few points which, not specially noticed by my predecessors in this debate, I undertook to speak upon. We stand at present in this position: we are bound in honour, we are bound in good faith, to four Provinces occupied by our fellow colonists, to carry out the measure of Union agreed upon here in the last week of October. We are bound to carry it to the foot of the Throne, and ask there from Her Majesty, according to the first resolution of the Address, that she will be graciously pleased to direct legislation to be had on this subject. We go to the Imperial Government, the common arbiter of us all, in our true Federal metropolis—we go there to ask for our fundamental Charter. We hope, by having that Charter, which can only be amended by the authority that made it, that we will lay the basis of permanency for our future government. The two great things that all men aim at in free government, are liberty and permanency. We have had liberty enough—too much, perhaps, in some respects—but, at all events, liberty to our hearts' content. There is not on the face of the earth a freer people than the inhabitants of these Colonies. But it is necessary there should be respect for the law, a high central authority, the virtue of civil obedience, obeying the law for the law's sake; for even when a man's private conscience may convince him sufficiently that the law in some cases may be wrong, he is not to set up his individual will against the will of the country, expressed through its recognized constitutional organs. We need in these Provinces, and we can bear, a large infusion of authority. I am not at all afraid this Constitution errs on the side of too great conservatism. If it be found too conservative now, the downward tendency in political ideas which characterises this democratic age is a sufficient guarantee for amendment. Its conservatism is the principle on which this instrument is strong, and worthy of the support of every colonist, and through which it will secure the warm approbation of the Imperial authorities. We have here no traditions and ancient venerable institutions; here, there are no aristocratic elements hallowed by time or bright deeds; here, every man is the first settler of the land, or removed from the first settler one or two generations at the farthest; here, we have no architectural monuments calling up old associations; here, we have none of those old popular legends and stories which in other countries have exercised a powerful share in the government; here, every man is the son of his own works. We have none of those influences about us which, elsewhere, have their effect upon government just as much as the invisible atmosphere itself tends to influence life, and animal and vegetable existence. This is a new land—a land of young pretensions because it is new; because classes and systems have not had that time to grow here naturally. We have no aristocracy but of virtue and talent, which is the best aristocracy, and is the old and true meaning of the term. There is a class of men rising in these Colonies, superior in many respects to others with whom they might be compared. What I should like to see, is—that fair representatives of the Canadian and Acadian aristocracy should be sent to the foot of the Throne with that scheme, to obtain for it the royal sanction—a scheme not suggested by others, or imposed upon us, but one the work of ourselves, the creation of our own intellect and of our own free, unbiassed, and untrammelled will. I should like to see our best men go there, and endeavour to have this measure carried through the Imperial Parliament—going into Her Majesty's presence, and by their manner, if not actually by their speech, saying—'During Your Majesty's reign we have had responsible Government conceded to us: we have administered it for nearly a quarter of a century, during which we have under it doubled our population, and more than quadrupled our trade. The small Colonies which your ancestors could hardly see on the map, have grown into great communities. A great danger has arisen in our near neighbourhood. Over our homes a cloud hangs, dark and heavy. We do not know when it may burst. With our own strength we are not able to combat against the storm; but what we can do, we will do cheerfully and loyally. We want time to grow; we want more people to fill our country, more industrious families of men to develop our resources; we want to increase our prosperity; we want more extended trade and commerce; we want more land tilled—more men established through our wastes and wildernesses. We of the British North-American Provinces want to be joined together, that, if danger comes, we can support each other in the day of trial. We come to Your Majesty, who have given us liberty, to give us unity, that we may preserve and perpetuate our freedom; and whatsoever charter, in the wisdom of Your Majesty and of Your Parliament, you give us, we shall loyally obey and observe as long as it is the pleasure of Your Majesty and Your Successors to maintain the connection between Great Britain and these Colonies.'"
CHAPTER XVII.
1851.—First Visit to America: a Reason for it.
My first visit to America was mainly induced by a misfortune which happened to me in the spring of 1846. The year 1845 had been one of excitement, and my hands had been very full at that time. I was to a great extent a water drinker. I had the habit of sticking to my work, various and complicated as much of it was, day by day, until that day's work was done. It often happened that I forgot to eat the modest lunch carefully put in my pocket by my wife on my leaving home, in early morning. And often and often I did not get home till nine o'clock at night, so tired that occasionally I fell asleep over my dinner; and my wife, seeing my condition of fatigue, got into the habit of carving our frugal joints, a habit which has become permanent. Thus, when I say, as a bit of pleasantry, that where the lady carves, you learn who is the master of the house, Lady Watkin will retort by mentioning this old story of past and anxious times.
Well, the Trent Valley Railway, of which I was Secretary and Manager, was sold, at a large profit—I think 438,000_l._—to the London and Birmingham and Grand Junction Companies, then about to amalgamate under the name of the "London and North Western." In the spring of 1846 it became necessary to close our accounts, and balance our books, with a view to give each shareholder his share of principal and profit. It was arranged that the shareholders should call at the office in Norfolk Street, in Manchester, for their cheques on and after a day in April, 1846. Two days before this date, my Scotch book-keeper came to me to report that in balancing the books he was out the small sum of 1_s_. 10_d_. (I think it was), and he proposed to carry that to profit and loss ("Profeet and Loasse," he said). To which I, of course, replied, "My good friend, a failure to balance of even a penny may conceal errors on the two sides of the account by the hundred. Set all hands to work to call over every item." We set to work, and I was up the best part of one, and the whole of another, night. I was so anxious that I did not feel to want food; and drink I was unused to. A beefsteak and a pint of stout would have saved me from ten years, more or less, of suffering, weakness, and all kinds of misery. In the early morning of the day on which we were to begin paying off our shareholders, the books balanced. We had discovered errors, both to debit and credit, probably a hundred at least in number.
It was a clear, cold morning. I went out to a little barber's shop and got shaved. I did not feel in want of food—and took none. At ten o'clock shareholders began to arrive: got their cheques, and went away satisfied. One of them, who would gain about 30,000_l._, actually gave me a 5_l._ note for the clerks, which was the only expression of gratitude of a practical character, so far as I remember, now. About noon Mr. Henry Houldsworth, the father of the present member for Manchester, called for his cheque; and, chatting with him at the time, as I was making the upstroke of the letter H in "Houldsworth," I felt as if my whole body was forced up into my head, and that was ready to burst. I raised my head, and this strange feeling went away. I thought, how strange! I tried again, the same feeling came again and again, till, with a face white as paper, that alarmed those about me, I fell forward on the desk. Water was given me; but I could not swallow it. I never lost entire consciousness; but I thought I was going to die. I never can forget all that in those moments passed through my brain. They put me into a carriage, and took me to the consulting room, in Mosley Street, of my old friend William Smith, the celebrated Manchester surgeon, nephew of the great Mr. Turner, the surgeon. He placed me on a sofa, and asked me what it was,—feeling, or trying to find, my pulse the while. I whispered, "Up all night—over-anxious—no food." He gave me brandy and soda water, and a biscuit, and told me to lie still. I had never tasted this popular drink before. In about a quarter of an hour I felt better, got up, and said, "Oh! I am all right now." But Mr. Smith, nevertheless, ordered me to go home at once, go to bed, take a pill—I assume, a narcotic—which he gave me, and not to get up till he had seen me in the morning. I insisted on calling at the office. I felt able to go on with my work. But at the office, something in my looks induced them to send a faithful clerk with me in the cab to our house, Woodland Cottage, Higher Broughton. So he and I went away. I found afterwards, that some of the clerks said, "We shall never see him again." But they did—shaky and seedy, as he was, for many a long day.
Well, just as our cab mounted the small hill on which our house stood, the faithful clerk, with more zeal than discretion, said, "You look awful ill, sir; why your face is as white as my shirt." I looked at his shirt, seemingly guiltless, for days past, of the washerwoman.
But I was within three minutes of home: and I was distressed at the thought of alarming my wife, who was not in a condition to be alarmed. So, with what little strength I had left, I rubbed my forehead, face, nose, lips, chin, with my clenched fist, to restore some slight colour. Entering our door, I said, "I am rather worn out, and will go to bed. Up all night. Work done. Now, please, I will go to bed."