Upper Canada, from....... ..20 to 30...128.740 Lower Canada, from....... Nova Scotia, from.... Newfoundland from.. 30 to 40... 84 178 40 to 50... 59.660 Notwithstanding the disadvantages incident to divided counsels and section 50 to 60... 36,377-308,955 al legislation, the provinces have advanced 20 to 30... 93,302 Prince Edward Island, from...20 to 45... 11.144 45 to 60... 3,675 14,819 693,918 popu very rapidly in material wealth. Small markets have stunted their manufactures, but their great staples have enabled them to grasp and retain a fast hold on international trade. Their exports and imports already exceed those of the United States in 1821. The returns of 1863 are presented in one view in the following table: Canada.. $45 964.493....$41.831 532....$87.796 025 New Brunswick. 7.764.824.. 8.964.784.... 16.72),608 Nova Scotia.... 10,201,391... Island 1.428.028 ... Newfoundland... 5,242,720.... The ebb and flow of the tide of population in a new country such as America presents curious results. While the lation is being augmented from without, Prince Edward localities and sections of country suffer from the constant drain made upon them by the attractions of older or more inviting parts of the continent. The young Canadian or Nova Scotian, seduced by the prospect of an enlarged scope for ambition or the hope of acquiring a fortune more rapidly than he could do at home, deserts his native land to push his way in the adjoining States or the extreme west of the continent. Even the French Canadians, noted for their attachment to their native soil, become restive, and are found bold enough to seek new homes among a people whom they have been taught to regard as hostile to all that they hold sacred. The number of British colonists now residing in the United States is very great. It is said that there are 20,000 Canadians alone in the Federal army. What has contributed to this self-expatriation has undoubtedly been the want of intercourse between colonies which offer every inducement to industry. Instead of an interchange of floating population, the current has gone in a foreign direction, and thousands of young men have not only been lost to the colonies, but have gone to the buildup of their rivals. As districts now scarcely rescued from native wildness become more closely settled, and intervening tracts that serve as so many barriers to communication are pierced by advancing civilization, communities now almost strangers to each other will feel the uniting influences of trade, and present to the colonial youth a greater diversity of pursuits than the limited means and distracted energies of each province have been able to open up. 1.627 540.... 3,055,563 6,002.312.... 11,245,032 $70,601,456 $66,847,136 $137,448,592 While this trade in the aggregate is large, cause an increase in their trade with each other. A large proportion of the goods which the maritime provinces now buy in the States could be supplied by Canada, and competition would not be with the productions of Great Britain, but * Senator Sumner-Speech on the Reciprocity Treaty in Congress, Jan. 11, 1865. came to the conclusion that the free interchange of goods and uniformity of tariff were indispensable consequences of the construction of the intercolonial railway, and that the diminution of the revenues of the respective provinces, from various causes, did not warrant the adoption of measures to carry the principle into effect. with those of the States. The imports of all kinds of agricultural produce in New Brunswick amounted in one year to 2,060,702 dollars, of which Canada supplied only 177,328. Most of the flour is of Canada growth and manufacture, and instead of its being procured from Portland in the United States, it could be laid down at the head of the St. John River in New Brunswick as cheaply as it is The necessity for a line of railway becarried to Portland. The New Bruns- tween Canada and the Lower Provinces wick Comptroller of Customs, in his re- has been apparent for years past, and the port for 1863, says "If New Brunswick project has occupied the attention of the were connected with Montreal and Que- imperial as well as the colonial authoribec by direct railway communication ties. The trade of Canada is dependent, through British territory, our imports in a great degree, upon the temper and from the States would decrease immedi- feelings of the United States. For five ately, as much of our flour and other sup- months in the year exit by the St. Lawplies could come direct from Canada." rence is completely cut off, and during The same might be said of the other provinces. The subject of intercolonial reciprocity has been considered by the colonists, and various schemes have been suggested to change a state of things which all looked upon as anomolous, but which, being beset with difficulties, offered little prospect of a satisfactory or immediate improvement. In 1862 the Legislature of Nova Scotia passed resolutions empowering the Government to negotiate with the neighboring provinces for an interchange of articles duty free. The Finance Minister of Canada gave his attention to the proposition, and reported to his colleagues the result of his examination. He said: "If a complete customs union could be formed between the provinces under which they could interchange, without restriction, all goods, the produce and manufacture of whatever country, it would have a beneficial effect. But as, to carry such a union conven. iently into effect, greater uniformity in the tariffs of the colonies must be secured, which would be almost impracticable under their present condition, the undersigned contents himself with recommending that, in answer to the despatch of the Nova Scotia Government, a proposal be made for the reciprocal free admission of all articles, the growth, produce, and manufacture of Nova Scotia and any other province becoming a party to the agreement that may be founded on this propo sal." The delegates from the provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, who met to consider the subject, Report of Canadian Finance Minister on Intercolonial Reciprocity, 1862. this period Portland is the Canadian seaport. Should the Portland section of the Grand Trunk Railway be closed at any time, all communication with Europe must be carried on by the overland route to Halifax, and Canada would be forced to resort to the old system of importation by way of the St. Lawrence during the season of open navigation. The repeal of the Reciprocity Treaty and the abolition of the bonding system will compel Canada to find other outlets than those now available, and will force her to seek relief from a virtual blockade by connecting herself with the other colonies. For defensive purposes the road may also be of advantage, in enabling masses of troops to pass rapidly from province to province. However, as matters now stand, it is the only possible way of fore-stalling the consequences of complete isolation. The importance of the undertaking has never been questioned. In Lord Durham, in the report to which we have already referred, said "The completion of any satisfactory communication between Halifax and Quebec would in fact produce relations between these provinces that would render a general union absolutely necessary." 1843 the Imperial Government caused a survey to be made with reference to a miliary road, and in 1848 Major Robinson and Captain Henderson reported as to the fitness for railway purposes of the proposed route. In a correspondence between Lord Elgin and Earl Grey in 1848, the former insisted strongly on the advantages likely to accrue from the construction of the line; among others, that it would "tend to unite the provinces to one another and to the mother country, and to inspire them with that consciousness of their own strength and of the value of the connection with Great Britain, which is their best security against aggression." The Legislatures of Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, passed acts for the promotion of the undertaking. In 1851, Lord Derby, in the House of Lords, expressed himself in favor of the construction of the line; and in 1852 Sir John Pakington, in a despatch to Lord Elgin, gave expression to the views of the Imperial Government, declaring their intention to fulfil the just expectations held out by their predecessors. In a despatch from the Duke of Newcastle, dated April 12, 1862, a proposal was made, couched in the following terms: "Anxious, however, to promote as far as they can the important object of completing the great line of railway communication on British ground between the Atlantic and the westernmost parts of Canada, and to assist the provinces in a scheme which would so materially promote their interests, her Majesty's Government are willing to offer to the Provincial Governments an Imperial guarantee of interest towards enabling them to raise by public loan, if they should desire it, at a moderate rate, the requisite funds for constructing the railway. The nature and extent of such guarantee must be determined by the particulars of any scheme which the Provincial Governments may be disposed to found on the present proposal, and on the kind of security they would offer." In September, 1862, delegates duly appointed by the provinces met at Quebec to consider the proposal, and a memorandum of agreement was drawn up. Owing to a subsequent dissatisfaction with some of the conditions precedent proposed by the Imperial Government, the effort proved abortive. The objections to the construction of the line have been the probable immediate loss connected with it as a commercial speculation, owing to the insufficiency of paying freights, the difficulty of keeping it in running order in winter, and its uselessness for military purposes, owing to its proximity to the frontier. In its favor the arguments rest on a national, military, and commercial basis; that it fur about a confederation, that it will enable troops to be moved rapidly across British territory, and facilitate the concentration of masses of men, and that it will counterbalance to a certain extent the pressure of the United States on Canada by affording another method by which the foreign mails can be carried, and access to the seaboard obtained for Canadian products and manufactures; besides effecting a saving of time in the transmission of European and American correspondence. The length of railway to be built is estimated at 350 miles; * this, however, may be under the mark. When this line is constructed there will be a complete railway connection from Halifax on the Atlantic to the shores of Lake Huron. Thus far the energies of the different provinces have been directed to schemes of internal improvement, promoting facility of internal communication, and every effort has been put forth to secure the vast trade of the West, whose natural channel is the St. Lawrence. Costly though the struggle has proved, yet it is not fruitless. Every mile of railway has paid for itself tenfold in opening up the country and increasing the value of property, and the magnificent canal system has overcome the natural obstacles commerce forced into other and foreign by which navigation was impeded and channels. The benefits conferred will not be confined to one province, but must be shared with all to a greater or less extent, from their very nature. sustain and extend the public works already in existence, and to call others into being that will act as feeders to them, can only be done efficiently, where the aim is a common prosperity, by unity of action and a clubbing of resources. It will be found that the Canadian Confederacy will set out with a respectable income. Its financial standing may be judged of from the following statement of liabilities, revenues, and expenditure: Το $79,223 668 $17,140,357 479,420 171 718 $17.517,207 nishes the surest means of bringing *Despatch of Duke of Newcastle, April 12, 1862. We are thus enabled to see at a glance the magnitude of the interests to be dealt with by the delegates appointed to the Quebec conference, and we can imagine the difficulties that presented themselves at every step in their negotiations, while striving to reconcile the prejudices of localities hitherto having complete control over their own affairs. The necessity for securing different races against mutual aggression, and protecting religious views from an intolerance already busy in sowing seeds of discord, involved problems not easy of solution. Had there been any inclination to trifle with the main object of their meeting, or a disposition to throw obstacles in the way of its attainment, the result of the convention would have extinguished all hope of a British American confederation for years to come, as well as suggested grave doubts as to the future peace and welfare of colonies so situated as the British North American colonies are. But great responsibilities outweighed narrow-minded views, and mutual concession enabled the delegates to lay down a substantial basis for a consolidated government. The scheme is outlined with prudent forethought, and in detail evinces the care of practical statesmanship. As a whole it is acceptable, taking it for granted that it is the best that could be arrived at. Its authors tell us that they were anxious to follow, as far as circumstances would permit, the model of the British Constitution. How far circumstances controlled their desires, an examination of the prominent features of the resolutions embodying their conclusions will show. The principle of federation, which forms the basis of the whole scheme, presents the widest departure from the model they were professedly anxious to follow. This Confederacy is not, at first at least, to assume the character of an independent government. The executive authority, the shape and title of which are left undefined, is to be vested in the Queen. We are thus to have a confederation of colonies, with the Queen at their head. Whether its chief executive officer is to be known as Governor-General, or is to have the title and rank of Viceroy, are points apparently reserved for the determination of Parliament. All that the representatives of the several provinces undertook to determine was that the chief executive officer should be nominated by the Crown. It is of the very highest importance to the provinces that this office should be made one worthy the ambition of a statesman. The governors of Canada have necessarily, for the most part, been men of little or no mark at home. It would be very difficult to induce a rising statesman to abandon the prospects which a successful career in the House of Commons opens to him for any attractions that the Governor-Generalship of Canada, as heretofore constituted, has had to offer. At the time of the union of the two Canadas, Lord Sydenham debated in his own mind whether he should make the salary of the governor six or eight thousand pounds sterling, but the former sum was determined upon. In the near neighborhood of the American Republic, where the chief executive officer is confined to a salary of 25,000 dollars per annum, it may easily be conceived that many of the colonists regarded the salary of their Governor-General as very extravagant; and even as late as 1849, the Legislative Assembly of Canada, in a spasmodic fit of economy, expressed the opinion that a saving in this item ought then to have been effected. As a natural consequence of this rate of remuneration, excessive as it may have seemed to a portion of the colonists, Canada has found it necessary to be content with, on the whole, an inferior order of men for governors. The two most striking exceptions have been those of Lord Sydenham and Lord Elgin. Nor is this the worst. It has happened more than once that the poverty rather than the will of the person selected for this post has induced him to accept the appointment; and the necessity for nursing the dilapidated fortunes of these functionaries has sometimes gone far to bring the representative of the Crown into discredit with the people. It is apparently to be left to our Parlia necessary to look carefully to his position on the American continent. The overshadowing predominance of a single state is the question which that war appears to him to be about to decide; for if the North can succeed in binding once more the broken fragments of the old Union, he fears an attempt to apply to the whole of Northern America the modern and exaggerated reading of the Monroe doctrine. For British America there is, therefore, no absolute independence. She must lean somewhere for support, and her inclinations, if not her interests, lead her to prefer a species of dependence upon the mother country, which shall be something more, though perhaps not much more, than a national alliance. ment to fix the salary of the executive a stepping-stone to this final end. It is head of the confederation, and it is es- not that four millions of people might sential that, without being extravagant, not desire independence, if circumstances it should be such as will attract men assured them of being able to maintain with some pretension to statesmanship. it. But the thoughtful colonist, aroused The complexity inherent in all federa- by the gigantic war which is going on tions will be increased by the fact of in the neighboring republic, finds it this federation being one of colonies. Above their government, and vested with supreme sovereignty, is the authority of Parliament and Queen; below will be that of the lieutenant-governors of the provinces, deriving their appointment and receiving their pay from the federal executive. Under this tertiary authority, in Canada at least, there prevails an elaborate and an expensive, because extravagant, gradation of municipalities, beginning with the village and ending with the aggregation of townships which forms the county municipality. A system of government so intricate, combining the imperial, the federative, the local, and the municipal element, will, from its very nature, be exceedingly complex, and must be something like proportionately expensive. But there is no choice in the matter. Federation forms the only possible principle upon which British America can now be united. Lower Canada-of which a large majority of the population is of French extraction-being sensitively tenacious of its national distinctions, with the peculiar customs and rights growing out of them, could not, from its dread of absorption, be induced to assent to any closer form of union. Whether some of the other provinces might not have refused to surrender the privileges of local legislation may also be a question; for even now objections are made by the opponents of federation that this scheme exacts too great a surrender of local rights. The relations between the Government and the chief executive officer of the confederacy will apparently differ in no respect from those which are at present subsisting between the Colonial Office and the government of any colony having representative institutions. The colonists advance with excessive timidity to whatever has the appearance of ultimate independence, and they seem to be wholly unconscious that they are framing a confederation which is to form An ardent partisan of the perfect federative principle might find in the proposed constitution reason to object that it is not being dealt fairly by; that under the guise of federation there lurks a manifest desire and persistent determination. to establish a form of government that will in effect partake of nearly all the characteristics of a legislative union. The theory of the United States' constitution is, that the general government can exercise such powers only as are specially delegated to it by the separate States. The Quebec convention has attempted to reverse this principle by investing the confederate legislature with powers over "all matters of general character not specially and exclusively reserved for the local governments and legislatures." Thus the residuum of unappropriated powers, whatever it may be, goes to strengthen the influence of the central government. Of the same character is the right of the federal government to appoint the local governors during pleasure. Nor will the circumstances of these functionaries being irremovable for five years, except for cause, be much, if any, check upon the centralizing tendency; for it is not to be supposed that the federal government would want the inge |