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Фредерик Марриет
Diary in America, Series Two

“It is, indeed, a lamentable fact which must not be concealed, that there does not exist in the minds of the people of this Province the slightest confidence in the administration of criminal justice; nor were the complaints, or the apparent grounds for them, confined to one party.

“The trial by jury is, therefore, at the present moment, not only productive in Lower Canada of no confidence in the honest administration of the laws, but also provides impunity for every political offence.”

I have made these long quotations from Lord Durham’s Report as his lordship’s authority, he having been sent out as Lord High Commissioner to the Province, to make the necessary inquiries, must carry more weight with the public than any observations of mine. All I can do is to assert that his lordship is very accurate; and, having made this assertion, I ask, what chance, therefore, is there of good government, if the power, or any portion of the power, be left in the hands of those who have in every way proved themselves so adverse to good government, and who have wound up such conduct by open rebellion.

The position of the Executive in Canada has, for a long while, been just what our position in this country would be if the House of Commons were composed of Chartist leaders. Every act brought forward by them would tend to revolution, and be an infringement of the Constitution, and all that the House of Lords would have to do, would be firmly to reject every bill carried to the Upper House. If our House of Commons were filled with rebels and traitors, the Government must stand still, and such has been for these ten years the situation of the Canadian government; and, fortunate it is, that the outbreak has now put us in a position that will enable us to retrieve our error, and re-model the constitution of these Provinces. The questions which must therefore be settled previous to any fresh attempts at legislation for these Canadians, are,—are, or are not, the French population to have any share in it? Can they be trusted? Are they in any way deserving of it? In few words, are the Canadas to be hereafter considered as a French or an English colony?

When we legislate, unless we intend to change, we must look to futurity. The question, then, is not, who are the majority of to-day, but who will hereafter be the majority in the Canadian Provinces; for all agree upon one point, which is, that we must legislate for the majority. At present, the population is nearly equal, but every year increases the preponderance of the English; and it is to be trusted that, by good management, and the encouragement of emigration, in half a century the French population will be so swallowed up by the English, as to be remembered but on record. If, again, we put the claims of British loyalty against the treason of the French—the English energy, activity, and capital, in opposition to the supineness, ignorance, and incapacity of the French population,—it is evident, that not only in justice and gratitude, but with a due regard to our own interests, the French Canadians must now be wholly deprived of any share of that power which they have abused, and that confidence of which they have proved themselves so unworthy. I am much pleased to find that Lord Durham has expressed the same opinion, in the following remarks; and I trust their importance will excuse to the reader the length of the quotation.

“The English have already in their hands the majority of the larger masses of property in the country; they have the decided superiority of intelligence on their side; they have the certainty that colonisation must swell their numbers to a majority; and they belong to the race which wields the Imperial Government, and predominates on the American continent. If we now leave them in a minority, they will never abandon the assurance of being a majority hereafter, and never cease to continue the present contest with all the fierceness with which it now rages. In such a contest, they will rely on the sympathy of their countrymen at home; and if that is denied them, they feel very confident of being able to awaken the sympathy of their neighbours of kindred origin. They feel that if the British Government intends to maintain its hold of the Canadas, it can rely on the English population alone; that if it abandons its colonial possessions, they must become a portion of that great Union which will speedily send forth its swarms of settlers, and, by force of numbers and activity, quickly master every other race. The French Canadians, on the other hand, are but the remains of an ancient colonisation, and are and ever must be isolated in the midst of an Anglo-Saxon world. Whatever may happen, whatever government shall be established over them, British or American, they can see no hope for their nationality. They can only sever themselves from the British empire by waiting till some general cause of dissatisfaction alienates them, together with the surrounding colonies, and leaves them part of an English confederacy; or, if they are able, by effecting a separation singly, and so either merging in the American Union, or keeping up for a few years a wretched semblance of feeble independence, which would expose them more than ever to the intrusion of the surrounding population. I am far from wishing to encourage, indiscriminately, these pretensions to superiority on the part of any particular race; but while the greater part of every portion of the American continent is still uncleared and unoccupied, and while the English exhibit such constant and marked activity in colonisation, so long will it be idle to imagine that there is any portion of that continent into which that race will not penetrate, or in which, when it has penetrated, it will not predominate. It is but a question of time and mode; it is but to determine whether the small number of French who now inhabit Lower Canada shall be made English, under a government which can protect them, or whether the process shall be delayed until a much larger number shall have to undergo, at the rude hands of its uncontrolled rivals, the extinction of a nationality strengthened and embittered by continuance.

“And is this French Canadian nationality one which, for the good merely of that people, we ought to strive to perpetuate, even if it were possible? I know of no national distinctions marking and continuing a more hopeless inferiority. The language, the laws, the character of the North American Continent are English; and every race but the English (I apply this to all who speak the English language) appears there in a condition of inferiority. It is to elevate them from that inferiority that I desire to give to the Canadians our English character. I desire it for the sake of the educated classes, whom the distinction of language and manners keeps apart from the great empire to which they belong. At the best, the fate of the educated and aspiring colonist is, at present, one of little hope, and little activity; but the French Canadian is cast still further into the shade, by a language and habits foreign to those of the Imperial Government. A spirit of exclusion has closed the higher professions on the educated classes of the French Canadians, more, perhaps, than was absolutely necessary; but it is impossible for the utmost liberality on the part of the British Government to give an equal position in the general competition of its vast population to those who speak a foreign language. I desire the amalgamation still more for the sake of the humbler classes. Their present state of rude and equal plenty is fast deteriorating under the pressure of population in the narrow limits to which they are confined. If they attempt to better their condition, by extending themselves over the neighbouring country, they will necessarily get more and more mingled with an English population; if they prefer remaining stationary, the greater part of them must be labourers in the employ of English capitalists. In either case it would appear, that the great mass of the French Canadians are doomed, in some measure, to occupy an inferior position, and to be dependent on the English for employment. The evils of poverty and dependence would merely be aggravated in a ten-fold degree, by a spirit of jealous and resentful nationality, which should separate the working class of the community from the possessors of wealth and employers of labour.

“I will not here enter into the question of the effect of the mode of life and division of property among the French Canadians, on the happiness of the people. I will admit, for the moment, that it is as productive of well-being as its admirers assert. But, be it good or bad, the period in which it is practicable, is past; for there is not enough unoccupied land left in that portion of the country in which English are not already settled, to admit of the present French population possessing farms sufficient to supply them with their present means of comfort, under their present system of husbandry. No population has increased by mere births so rapidly as that of the French Canadians has since the conquest. At that period their number was estimated at 60,000: it is now supposed to amount to more than seven times as many. There has been no proportional increase of cultivation, or of produce from the land already under cultivation; and the increased population has been in a great measure provided for by mere continued subdivision of estates. In a Report from a Committee of the Assembly in 1826, of which Mr Andrew Steuart was chairman, it is stated, that since 1784 the population of the seignories had quadrupled, while the number of cattle had only doubled, and the quantity of land in cultivation had only increased one-third. Complaints of distress are constant, and the deterioration of the condition of a great part of the population admitted on all hands. A people so circumstanced must alter their mode of life. If they wish to maintain the same kind of rude, but well-provided agricultural existence, it must be by removing into those parts of the country in which the English are settled; or if they cling to their present residence, they can only obtain a livelihood by deserting their present employment, and working for wages on farms, or on commercial occupations under English capitalists. But their present proprietary and inactive condition is one which no political arrangements can perpetuate. Were the French Canadians to be guarded from the influx of any other population, their condition in a few years would be similar to that of the poorest of the Irish peasantry.

“There can hardly be conceived a nationality more destitute of all that can invigorate and elevate a people, than that which is exhibited by the descendants of the French in Lower Canada, owing to their retaining their peculiar language and manners. They are a people with no history, and no literature. The literature of England is written in a language which is not theirs; and the only literature which their language renders familiar to them, is that of a nation from which they have been separated by eighty years of a foreign rule, and still more by those changes which the Revolution and its consequences have wrought in the whole political, moral, and social state of France. Yet it is on a people whom recent history, manners, and modes of thought, so entirely separate from them, that the French Canadians are wholly dependent for almost all the instruction and amusement derived from books: it is on this essentially foreign literature, which is conversant about events, opinions and habits of life, perfectly strange and unintelligible to them, that they are compelled to be dependent. Their newspapers are mostly written by natives of France, who have either come to try their fortunes in the province, or been brought into it by the party leaders, in order to supply the dearth of literary talent available for the political press. In the same way their nationality operates to deprive them of the enjoyments and civilising influence of the arts. Though descended from the people in the world that most generally love, and have most successfully cultivated the drama—though living on a continent, in which almost every town, great or small, has an English theatre, the French population of Lower Canada, cut off from every people that speak its own language, can support no national stage.

“In these circumstances, I should be indeed surprised if the more reflecting part of the French Canadians entertained at present any hope of continuing to preserve their nationality. Much as they struggle against it, it is obvious that the process of assimilation to English habits is already commencing. The English language is gaining ground, as the language of the rich and of the employers of labour naturally will. It appeared by some of the few returns, which had been received by the Commissioner of Inquiry into the state of education, that there are about ten times the number of French children in Quebec learning English, as compared with the English children who learn French. A considerable time must, of course, elapse before the change of a language can spread over a whole people; and justice and policy alike require, that while the people continue to use the French language, their government should take no such means to force the English language upon them as would, in fact, deprive the great mass of the community of the protection of the laws. But, I repeat, that the alteration of the character of the province ought to be immediately entered on, and firmly, though cautiously, followed up; that in any plan, which may be adopted for the future management of Lower Canada, the first object ought to be that of making it an English province; and that, with this end in view, the ascendancy should never again be placed in any hands but those of an English population. Indeed, at the present moment, this is obviously necessary: in the state of mind in which I have described the French Canadian population, as not only now being, but as likely for a long while to remain, the trusting them with an entire control over this province would be, in fact, only facilitating a rebellion. Lower Canada must be governed now, as it must be hereafter, by an English population; and thus the policy, which the necessities of the moment force on us, is in accordance with that suggested by a comprehensive view of the future and permanent improvement of the province.”

Volume Three—Chapter Six

The Canadas, continued

I have quoted largely from Lord Durham’s Report, as in most points relative to Lower Canada, especially as to the causes which produced the rebellion, the unwarrantable conduct of the Legislative Assembly, and his opinions as to the character of the French Canadians, I consider that the remarks are correct: they are corroborated by my own opinions and observations: but I think that the information he has received relative to Upper Canada is not only very imperfect, but certainly derived from parties who were not to be trusted: take one simple instance. His lordship says in his Report, that the petitioners in favour of Mathews and Lount, who were executed, amounted to 30,000, whereas it is established, that the whole number of six natures only amounted to 4,574. Those who deceive his lordship in one point would deceive him in another; indeed his lordship had a task of peculiar difficulty, going out as he did, vested with such powers, and the intents of his mission being so well known. It is not those who are in high office that are likely to ascertain the truth, which is much more likely to be communicated to a humble individual like myself, who travels through a country and hears what is said on both sides. The causes stated by his lordship for discontent in Upper Canada are not correct. I have before said, and I repeat it, that they may almost be reduced to the following: the check put upon their enterprise and industry by the acts of the Lower Canadian Assembly; and the favour shewn to the French by the Colonial Office, aided by the machinations of the American party, who fomented any appearance of discontent.

There is in his lordship’s Report, an apparent leaning towards the United States, and its institutions, at which I confess that I am surprised. Why his lordship, after shewing that the representative government did all they possibly could to overthrow the constitution, should propose an increase of power to that representative government, unless, indeed, he would establish a democracy in the provinces, I am at a loss to imagine.

That a representative body similar to that which attempted to overturn the constitution in Lower Canada can work well, and even usefully reform when in the hands of loyal English subjects, is acknowledged by his lordship, who says, “the course of the Parliamentary contest in Upper Canada has not been marked by that singular neglect of the great duties of a legislative body, which I have remarked in the proceedings of the Parliament of Lower Canada. The statute book of the Upper Province abounds with useful and well-constructed measures of reform, and presents an honourable contrast to that of the Lower Province.”

Indeed, unless I have misunderstood his lordship he appears to be inconsistent, for in one portion he claims the extension of the power of the representative, and in another he complains of the want of vigorous administration of the royal prerogative, for he says:—

“The defective system of administration in Lower Canada, commences at the very source of power; and the efficiency of the public service is impaired throughout by the entire want in the colony of any vigorous administration of the prerogative of the crown.”

To increase the power of the representative is to increase the power of the people, in fact to make them the source of power; and yet his lordship in this sentence acknowledges that the crown is the source of power, and that a more vigorous administration of its prerogative is required.

There are other points commented upon in his lordship’s Report, which claim earnest consideration: one is, that of the propriety of municipal institutions. Local improvements, when left in the hands of representative assemblies, are seldom judicious or impartial, and should therefore be made over either to the inhabitants or executive. The system of townships has certainly been one great cause of the prosperity of the United States, each township taxing itself for its own improvement. Although the great roads extending through the whole of the Union are in the hands of the Federal Government, and the States Government take up the improvement on an extensive scale in the States themselves, the townships, knowing exactly what they require, tax themselves for their minor advantages. The system in England is much the same, although perhaps not so well regulated as in America. Are not, however, municipal institutions valuable in another point of view? Do they not prepare the people for legislating? are they not the rudiments of legislation by which a free people learn to tax themselves? And indeed, it may also be asked, would not the petty influence and authority confided to those who are ambitious by their townsmen satisfy their ambition, and prevent them from becoming demagogues and disturbing the country?

Whatever may be the future arrangements for ruling these provinces, it appears to me that there are two great evils in the present system; one is, that the governors of the provinces have not sufficient discretionary power, and the other, that they are so often removed. The evils arising from the first cause have been pointed out in Lord Durham’s Report:—

“The complete and unavoidable ignorance in which the British public, and even the great body of its legislators, are with respect to the real interests of distant communities, so entirely different from their own, produces a general indifference, which nothing but so me great colonial crisis ever dispels; and responsibility to Parliament, or to the public opinion of Great Britain, would, except on these great and rare occasions, be positively mischievous, if it were not impossible. The repeated changes caused by political events at home having no connexion with colonial affairs, have left, to most of the various representatives of the Colonial Department in Parliament, too little time to acquire even an elementary knowledge of the condition of those numerous and heterogeneous communities for which they have had both to administer and legislate. The persons with whom the real management of these affairs has or ought to have rested, have been the permanent but utterly irresponsible members of the office. Thus the real government of the colony has been entirely dissevered from the slight nominal responsibility which exists. Apart even from this great and primary evil of the system, the presence of multifarious business thus thrown on the Colonial Office, and the repeated changes of its ostensible directors, have produced disorders in the management of public business which have occasioned serious mischief, and very great irritation. This is not my own opinion merely; for I do but repeat that of a select committee of the House of Assembly in Upper Canada, who, in a Report dated February 8, 1838, say, ‘It appears to your committee, that one of the chief causes of dissatisfaction with the administration of colonial affairs arises from the frequent changes in the office of secretary of state, to whom the Colonial department is intrusted. Since the time the late Lord Bathurst retired from that charge, in 1827, your committee believe there has not been less than eight colonial ministers, and that the policy of each successive statesman has been more or less marked by a difference from that of his predecessor. This frequency of change in itself almost necessarily entails two evils; first, an imperfect knowledge of the affairs of the colonies on the part of the chief secretary, and the consequent necessity of submitting important details to the subordinate officers of the department; and, second, the want of stability and firmness in the general policy of the Government, and which, of course, creates much uneasiness on the part of the Governors, and other officers of the colonies, as to what measures may be approved.

“‘But undoubtedly (continues the Report) by far the greatest objection to the system is the impossibility it occasions of any colonial minister, unaided by persons possessing local knowledge, becoming acquainted with the wants, wishes, feelings, and prejudices of the inhabitants of the colonies, during his temporary continuance in office, and of deciding satisfactorily upon the conflicting statements and claims that are brought before him. A firm, unflinching resolution to adhere to the principles of the constitution, and to maintain the just and necessary powers of the crown, would do much towards supplying the want of local information. But it would be performing more than can be reasonably expected from human sagacity, if any man, or set of men, should always decide in an unexceptionable manner on subjects that have their origin thousands of miles from the seat of the Imperial Government, where they reside, and of which they have no personal knowledge whatever; and therefore wrong may be often done to individuals, or a false view taken of some important political question, that in the end may throw a whole community into difficulty and dissension, not from the absence of the most anxious desire to do right, but from an imperfect knowledge of facts upon which to form an opinion.’”

This is all very true. There is nothing so difficult as to legislate for a colony from home. The very best theory is useless; it requires that you should be on the spot, and adapt your measures to the circumstances and the growing wants of the country. I may add that it is wrong for the Home Government to consider the government given to the colony as permanent. All that the mother-country can do is to give it one which, in theory, appears best adapted to secure the true freedom and happiness of the people; but leaving that form of government to be occasionally modified, so as to meet the changes which the colony may require, and to conform with its wants and its rising interests: all of which being unforeseen could not be provided for by the prescience of man. The governor, therefore, of a colony should be invested with more discretionary power.

The constant removal of the governor from the colony is also much to be deprecated. On his first arrival, he can only have formed theoretical views, which, in all probability, he will have to discard in a few months. He finds himself surrounded by people in office, interested in their own peculiar policy, and viewing things through their own medium. In all colonies you will usually find an oligarchy, cemented by mutual interest and family connection, and so bound up together as to become formidable if opposed to the Government. Into the hands of these people a governor must, to a certain degree, fall; and must remain in them until he has had time to see clearly and to judge for himself. But by the time that he has just disenthralled himself, he is removed, and another appointed in his place, and the work has to commence de novo.

Lord Durham has proposed that the Canadas should be united, and there certainly are some benefits which would arise could their union take place. He asserts most positively that the French party must be annihilated. He says:– “It must henceforth be the first and steady purpose of the British Government to establish an English population, with English laws and language in this province, and to trust its government to none but a decidedly English legislature.” This is plain and clear; but how is it to be effected? The land of Lower Canada is still in the hands of the French, and nearly five hundred thousand out of six hundred thousand of the population are French.

How, then, are we to make the Lower Canadas English? We may buy up the seigneuries; we may insist upon the English language being used in the Assembly and courts of law, in public documents, etcetera; we may alter the laws to correspond with those of the mother-country; but will that make the province English? We may even insist that none but English-born subjects, or Canadian-born English, shall be elected to the House of Assembly, or hold any public office; but will that make the province English? Certainly not. There is no want of English-born demagogues, as well as French, in the province. The elections of the Lower province are decided by the Canadian French, who are in the majority, and they would find no difficulty in obtaining representatives who would continue the former system of controlling the executive and advocating rebellion. Is it, then, by altogether taking away from the Canadian French the elective franchise and giving it entirely into the hands of the English, that the province is to be made English? If so, although I admit the French have proved themselves undeserving, and have by their rebellion forfeited their birth-right, you then place them in the situation of an injured, oppressed, and sacrificed people; reducing them to a state of slavery which, notwithstanding their offences, would still be odious to the present age. By what means, therefore, does his lordship intend that the province shall become English—by immigration? That requires time; and before the immigration necessary can take place the Canadas may be again thrown into a rebellion by the French machinations. In our future legislation for the Canadas, we must always bear in mind that the French population will be opposed to the Government and to the mother-country; and that there is no chance of a better state of feeling in the Lower province until they shall become amalgamated and swallowed up by British immigration. Until that takes place, the union of the Canadas will only create a conflict between the two races, as opposed to each other as fire and water, and nearly equal in numbers. It will be an immense cauldron, bubbling, steaming, and boiling over—an incessant scene of strife and irritation—a source of anxiety and expense to the mother-country, and, so far from going a-head, I should not be surprised if, in twenty years hence, the English population should be found to be smaller than it now is. Political dissensions would paralyse enterprise, frighten away capital, and, in all probability, involve us in a conflict with the United States. Until, therefore, I understand how the Lower Province is to become British, I cannot think a union between the Canadas advisable.

Whether his lordship is aware of it or not, I cannot say; but there appears to me to be a strong inclination to democracy in all his proposed plans, and an evident leaning towards the institutions of the United States. He wishes to make the Executive Government responsible to the people; he would make one Federal Union of all our provinces, and institute the Supreme Court of Appeal which they have in the United States. In short, change but the word governor for president, and we should have the American constitution, and a “free and enlightened people;”—that is to say, the French Canadians, who can neither read nor write, governing themselves.

So far from a Federal union between all our transatlantic possessions being advisable, I should think, from their contiguity with the Americans, that it would be advisable to keep them separate. I am of the same opinion respecting the Canadas. I consider that, even as two provinces, they are too vast in territory already. Whether it be a woman looking after her servants and household affairs, or a captain commanding a ship, or a governor ruling over a province, large or small as may be the scale of operation, one of the most important points in good legislation, is the eye. A governor of a vast province cannot possibly be aware of the wants of the various portions of the province. He is obliged to take the reports of others, and consequently very often legislates unadvisedly.