PAR

CHAPTER XXVII.

GOVERNMENT OF LORD MONCK,—continued.

1865.

ARLIAMENT met at Quebec on the 19th of January. The Governor-General's speech congratulated the chambers on the "general contentment and prosperity of the people of the province, and the continuance of the inestimable blessings of peace." He alluded also to the outrages on the American frontier, the perpetrators of which had sought refuge in Canada, rendering a detective police system necessary; to the calling out a portion of the volunteer force and its prompt response; and asked for larger powers to deal with persons who violated the right of asylum in this country. The progress of confederation was briefly yet pointedly limned out, and the Legislature informed that her Majesty's Secretary of State was prepared to introduce a measure into the Imperial Parliament, to give effect to the Acts of Union which might be passed by the different local legislatures. It remained with the public men of British North America to say, whether the vast tract of country which they inhabited should be consolidated into a state, combining within its area all the elements of national greatness, providing for the security of its component parts, and contributing to the strength and stability of the empire; or whether the several provinces of which it was constituted, should remain in their present fragmentary and isolated condition, comparatively powerless for mutual aid, and incapable of undertaking their proper share of imperial responsibility. His Excellency closed his speech by fervently praying, that in the discussion of an issue of such moment, their minds might be guided to such conclusions as would redound to the honour of their Sovereign, the welfare of her subjects, and their own reputation as patriots and statesmen.

On the 23d, the Assembly proceeded to take into consideration the address in reply, when two Lower Canadians, Dorion, of Hochelaga, and Laframboise, moved in amendment thereto, that

the House did not desire to disturb existing political relations, nor to create a new nationality. Only four Upper Canadians supported this amendment, and the number in favour of which was twenty-five in all, while sixty-four voted against it. On the 12th paragraph of the address, asserting the feasibility and desirability of union, being put to vote, there were seventy yeas and only seventeen nays, not one member of British origin being among the latter. Another division followed with like result; and the same day the address was fully concurred in. What a profound relief was this from the wearisome partisan debates, which had of late years characterised the moving of addresses! So far as Canada was concerned, confederation was now an accomplished fact; and the subsequent long debates on this question, which distinguished this session, were mere matters of form, and designed to give members an opportunity of expressing their individual opinions relative thereto, to be recorded in a "blue book" of one thousand and thirty-two octavo pages, of little value to the historian, and no small expense to the country. The question was finally disposed of by a motion asking an imperial measure of confederation, and which the House endorsed by a vote of ninety-one to thirty-three. On the 18th of March, the necessary business having all been completed, Parliament was prorogued, and ministers hastened to put themselves into communication with the Home Government, by a deputation, on the matter of confederation. While a revolution, rendered necessary by the course of events and national progress, was thus being peacefully accomplished in Canada, in accordance with the expansive character of the unwritten British constitution, the dark drama of blood destined to reconstruct the written constitution of the United States, with slavery for ever blotted out from their escutcheon, was rapidly drawing to a close. Before Petersburg the silent and inflexible Grant still patiently marshalled his legions waiting for the long-looked-for opportunity to crush the gallant army of Lee, and whose distant rear was already threatened by the victorious forces of Sherman, sweeping down in a desolating current, forty miles in width, through the very heart of the South. In the last days of March, the western army of invasion was not two hundred miles from Richmond, and the dark shadow of final defeat was already settling down on the slave empire of the Confederate States. The sunshine of spring had no ray of hope for the Southern oligarchs, and the people of Canada watched with the most intense interest for the final catastrophe. The city of Washington now no longer feared invasion, and while the South grew weaker and weaker in the final struggle, and the perspiration of blood coursed down her

limbs, as she saw the sword suspended above her head about to descend, a brilliant audience assembled in the capital, on the 14th of April, at Ford's theatre, to witness a comedy, as if in very mockery of her woe. Flags gaily decorated the President's box, brilliant gasaliers flashed their lights on the beauty of the licentious metropolis, and a sea of delighted upturned faces in the pit met the eye from the glittering dress circle above. The curtain rises for the third act, the play pauses for a moment, there is a pistol shot, the assassin Booth leaps upon the stage with a long dagger in his hand, and shouting Sic semper tyrannis,the motto of the state of Virginia, disappeared at the back of the stage. A woman's wailing cry now fell painfully on the ears of the vast audience, and it was speedily ascertained that her husband, the honest and genial Abraham Lincoln, had been foully murdered, and that the second term of his presidency had already terminated. A profound thrill of horror coursed through the veins of the Canadian people, as the telegraph flashed the news of the dark deed throughout the length and breadth of the land. And public meetings were held in every direction, at which motions were passed deprecating the assassination, and expressing the most profound sympathy for the people of the Northern States. Lincoln dead; Lee defeated, crushed; Johnston surrendered; the empire of the South lay in broken fragments in the dust. Cotton was no longer king, and the fetters had fallen from the slave. What a commentary on human hopes and expectations! History had again repeated itself, and in our own times demonstrated, that national sins beget national punishments, a lesson it had already so frequently taught. The Upas tree of slavery, planted by British cupidity in the early days of the old thirteen colonies, and so lovingly watered at a later period by the United States themselves, had blossomed and grown, until its prodigious size extended over millions of human chattels, and involved commercial and political interests of the most gigantic proportions. Its branches spread over the South in all directions, while its odour permeated every corner of the North, floated heavily through the warehouses and along the massive quays of Liverpool, and tainted the atmosphere of the cotton mills of Manchester. No wonder, then, that the slave nobles fancied that cotton was indeed king, and that their cause was invincible. Spurning the numerical supremacy of the North, which had at last dared to assert itself politically, in the election of the obscure Illinois lawyer, Lincoln, to the presidential chair, they rushed into war in 1861 to found a slave empire, and thus presented, of themselves, the solution of that question of perpetual involuntary servitude, which men had so long regarded as utterly

hopeless. And thus did the Wise Disposer of human events "make even the wrath of man to praise Him." The national sin had indeed brought down the national punishment. It has hopelessly ruined the South, it has placed a huge burden of national debt on a hitherto almost untaxed people, and Liverpool and Manchester, the great marts of its products, partook of its bitter tribulation. Nor has the fierce struggle it produced been wholly terminated as we write. It has been transferred from the battle-field to the forum-from the sword to the pen, and intensely bitter are the passions and the animosities it still evokes. The South is conquered, but not pacified. From the imposing historical events transpiring in a neighbouring country, we now turn to contemplate the comparatively quiet current of Canadian affairs. Midsummer brought with it sad misfortune for the ancient city of Quebec. Its narrow streets and frequently recurring wooden buildings, had repeatedly made it the scene of terrible fires, and on the 23d of June a new conflagration rendered three thousand people homeless, and destroyed property to the extent of $1,000,000. For the last time the Legislature of United Canada assembled there, on the 8th of August, to hear the report of the deputation to England relative to confederation, and to complete the important business left unfinished at its last session. The Premier, Sir E. P. Tache, had died a few days before, and Sir Narcissus Belleau, a member of the Upper House, became his successor; so the public business moved tranquilly forward. The session was an unusually short one, the large majority now wielded by ministers enabling them to push their measures through the House very quickly. Beyond the act imposing a stamp-duty on notes and bills, it developed no very novel feature in legislation, and was chiefly distinguished for the large number of private measures which were enacted. The despatches and papers laid before the Chamber stated the willingness of the Home Government to aid in forwarding confederation, and that it had already instructed the British Minister at Washington, Sir Frederick Bruce, to give all practicable assistance to the Canadian Cabinet to procure the renewal of the Reciprocity Treaty, and which must expire in the ensuing month of March. The death of the Imperial Premier, Lord Palmerston, in October, produced no alteration as regarded Canadian affairs, and the policy of his Cabinet touching them was fully adopted by its successor. Towards the latter part of the year, the removal at length of the seat of government to Ottawa, and the rumours of a Fenian invasion from the United States, were the only events of note.

In the beginning of January, Mr Brown resigned his seat in the Cabinet, in consequence of a disagreement between his 1866. colleagues and himself, on the mode of procuring a continuance of the Reciprocity Treaty. In order to secure that certainly most desirable result, the whole of the Cabinet, with one exception, were in favour of making a good many concessions to the United States, and of accepting legislative, if treaty reciprocity could not be procured. Mr Brown, on the other hand, would not agree to accept legislative reciprocity, which might be terminated at any moment by a vote of Congress; and was opposed to the making, in the premises, what he deemed to be unnecessary concessions. Finding himself thus at issue with all his colleagues, he accordingly resigned; and Ferguson Blair, a Reform member of the Upper House, for the Brock Division, became his successor. But, as it soon became perfectly plain, that neither the American Government nor Congress would agree to a renewal of the treaty in any shape in which it could at all be accepted by Canada, many persons, among whom were the great majority of his own political friends, doubted the wisdom of Mr Brown's resignation, and considered that he should have remained in the Cabinet until confederation, the purpose for which he had entered it, had been fully accomplished.

As the period drew near for the termination of the Reciprocity Treaty, Canada presented a most unusual spectacle. American dealers in farm stock and produce spread themselves in every direction over the country, already largely denuded of saleable articles, and purchased everything buyable. The various international ferries were choked up continually with vast droves of cattle, sheep, and horses, as though a hostile army had harried all Canada; while the conveying capacity of the railways, in every direction, was taxed to its utmost limits to meet the needs of produce buyers at this juncture. Under the provisions of the Reciprocity Treaty, the international commerce between the United States and this country had swelled to the enormous sum of $70,000,000 per annum. Its termination produced a great disturbance of trade, and the New England States, now so accustomed to the cheap markets of Canada, lying almost at their doors, were largely the sufferers, and had to look elsewhere for supplies for their manufacturing population. The brewers of New York and Pennsylvania experienced the greatest inconvenience in having their supplies of Canadian barley cut off, while woollen and worsted manufacturers found it utterly impossible to replace the long staple they had hitherto drawn so abundantly from this country; and railway companies and produce merchants