PART II

CANADA

CHAPTER I

PERIOD 1763 TO 1840 OF CANADIAN HISTORY

WHEN the British Government acknowledged the independence of the United States at the Treaty of Versailles in 1783, the Colonial Empire, as distinguished from the East India possessions, or at least all of it which seemed valuable and glorious, was no more. Australia and New Zealand had not yet been born, those small fragments of South Africa to which Europeans had penetrated belonged to Holland and Portugal. Jamaica and other West Indian islands, the unhealthy slave-trading settlements on the west coast of Africa, and the barren wastes of Canada with a French population of about a hundred thousand at one end of it, were but small consolation for the loss of thirteen Colonies with three millions of people. "The separation," said Flood, the Irish orator, "had swept away most of our glory and our territory, forty thousand lives, and a hundred millions of treasure." The English people fell into a kind of disgust with colonial matters. They were attentive to the development and administration of the Indian Empire, but for the next half-century no colonial affairs, except in connection with the slave question, attracted much attention.

The line of history which connects the colonial affairs of the eighteenth century with the modern Empire is the history of Canada. In Canada two great solutions were slowly worked out: (1) how self-government, so far as relates to internal affairs, as full and free as that existing in Great Britain, could be granted to colonies without severance of the bond uniting them to the Empire; (2) how populations too much divided by race or extent of territory to manage all their affairs in a single legislative assembly could be combined in a federal bond for certain common purposes, while leaving sufficient autonomy to the several provinces.

To show this, it is necessary to give a summary account of the constitutional history of Canada since the annexation. It is not so well known as it should be to most Englishmen.

By the Treaty of Paris, 1763, France ceded to England-already mistress of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia the provinces of Canada, Cape Breton, St. John's Island, and other islands along the coast line. The French Canadians, then numbering about 65,000 persons, were by the Treaty secured in the possession of their property and the free exercise of their religion. It was, however, at first the intention of the English Government to anglicise Canada as much as possible, and, for one thing, to introduce the whole English law. This design was abandoned when American discontent came to a head, because it was thought still more desirable to secure the loyalty of French Canadians. By an Act passed in the critical year, 1774, the French law was restored in all matters relating to property, criminal law remaining English. The same Act instituted an Administrative Council for the province of Quebec.

Its fiscal power was limited to raising

funds for local or municipal purposes, the British Parliament expressly reserving all rights of levying export and import duties. The Act also recognised the Roman Catholic religion in the province-much to the disgust of the Puritan New Englanders-and provided that the Catholic clergy should continue to receive tithes and other dues.

At the close of the American War of Independence many of the loyalists who had during it taken part against their fellow-Colonists, were anxious to leave the States, where they were very badly treated, though not to leave America. A public grant of £4,000,000 was therefore voted for their assistance, and land provided for them in the country between the Ottawa River, the St. Lawrence, and the Lakes. It was estimated that 20,000 loyalists went to Nova Scotia, and 10,000 to this Western Canada or Ontario.

The British Government at this time desired to keep the French and English parts of Canada as distinct as possible, so as to obviate the possibility of any combination against the Crown, like to that which had ended in the independence of the southern colonies.1

In accordance with this policy Parliament passed, in the year 1791, the first of the three great Constitutional Acts relating to Canada. At this date the population of the whole country, then so called, amounted to 150,000 persons, of whom about 130,000 belonged to Lower Canada, or Quebec. The Act provided that each of the two provinces should have a Governor of its own, and a Parliament consisting of two houses, viz., an Assembly elected by the people, and a Legislative Council to consist of members nominated by the

1 Mr. Pitt, in a debate in the House of Commons, distinctly declared this to be the object of the Government.

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Governor on behalf of the Crown, and holding their seats for life. Power was also given to the Crown to confer hereditary titles with seats in the Legislative Council. In fact, these second Chambers were intended to resemble the British House of Lords as nearly as circumstances would permit. In Lower Canada the House of Assembly was to have fifty members, and the Legislative Council fifteen; in Upper Canada the Assembly was to have sixteen members, the Council seven.1

The Act of 1791 also provided for the support of a "Protestant clergy" in Upper and Lower Canada by the setting apart of a large extent of wild land called the "Clergy Reserves."

This Act of 1791 is important for one reason, because for the first time a real colonial Constitution was made to rest not upon royal charter or grant made by the owner of a concession, but upon an Act of Parliament. Such an Act can be amended or repealed by the Legislature which made it. Thus recognition was given to the principle of the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament for which England had contended during the American troubles. It could not have been argued with regard to the Canadian Legislatures as Franklin had argued with regard to the American Assemblies, that they were, in and by their origin, entirely independent of the British Parliament.

Between the passing of this Act of 1791 and that of the second great Constitutional Act in 1840, by which the two provinces were united in a legislative union, lies a distinct period of Canadian history. Its political interest is chiefly in the Lower or French province.

The statesmen who passed the Act of 1791 did

1 Burke thought this constitution too democratic; Fox thought it too aristocratic; and their famous final breach took place in this debate,