CHAPTER IV

Reactions on Canadian Nationalism

HE Constitution of the Dominion of Canada and

Tthe owe

the present national spirit of the people owe their character in part to the experience of the United States and to the propinquity of a powerful and often aggressive neighbour. Almost from the beginning the New England colonists looked upon the French in Canada as their natural enemies, and they lost no. opportunity of seeking to check-mate them. The game was played by foes in deadly earnest. When therefore in 1774 the Quebec Act was passed by the British Government, virtually establishing the Roman Catholic Church, the French Civil Law and the French language upon the continent, it became a grievous irritant to the American colonies then in the incipient stage of revolt, and the aggravation was heightened by the extension of the boundaries of the province to the far West, made with the definite purpose of encircling the thirteen colonies by French settlements. As we have seen, the Americans found themselves hemmed in on the North and on the West by traditionary foes and by a civilization with which they could not come to terms. Of course Carleton realised that they would be quick to detect

and resent this policy, but none the less did he carry it out, and that of set purpose to counteract if possible the republican tendencies from the colonies which he knew well to his cost were spreading.

These ordinances (he wrote) have been framed upon the principle of securing the dependence of this province (Quebec) upon Great Britain, of suppressing that spirit of licentiousness and independence that has pervaded all the British colonies upon this continent, and was making, through the endeavours of a turbulent faction here, a most amazing progress in this country1.

He hoped, therefore, by restoring as far as possible the status of affairs that existed under the old regime to gather the noblesse, the seigneurs and the clergy around him, and to cement them by loyalty into a bulwark against the attacks which he feared would soon be made upon them from the South. And in this hope he was not disappointed, though he incensed the British traders and merchants of Quebec, and laid the train for future trouble even among the loyalists who shortly afterwards took refuge in Canada.

It must be kept in mind that these loyalists had been Americans and had gone through a long period of training in constitutional problems. They brought with them ideas which they had learned in their old home, they were anything but docile people, and

I

P. 73.

Quoted by W. P. M. Kennedy, Constitution of Canada,

among them were all shades of opinion. Before and during the War many of them had protested against the actions of Parliament, of British officials and of army officers, and they differed from their fellow Americans chiefly in the strength of their sympathies, and in the distance which they would be willing to go in maintaining what they regarded as their constitutional rights. Undoubtedly the mercantile theory of Empire had caused estrangement, and socially the peoples of Britain and America had drifted apart, but the rock on which the unity of the Empire at that time was wrecked was the constitutional issue1. Taxation as such did not oppress them any more than it did John Hampden. It was what taxation involved that aroused their opposition. There had really emerged for the first time the problem of the Constitution of the British Empire, the kernel of which was the right of the Parliament of Great Britain to govern these colonies. The most advanced leaders openly challenged its prerogatives, holding that the colonies had been founded by royal charter and that they owed allegiance only to the King. The Commonwealth, they held, was one, in the sense that everywhere Englishmen had the same rights as to the British Constitution and that this itself was based upon the natural rights of man. In support of their view they

On this whole matter see C. H. McIlwain, The American Revolution.

cited the instances of the freedom of the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and Ireland. In other words, they refused to accept Parliament as an Imperial Parliament. We have heard much like this of late and had thought that these were ideas of the twentieth century, but they abound in the political writings of Americans of the eighteenth century.

Chatham and Burke did not agree with the Americans in theory: they held that Parliament had a legal and constitutional right to impose its will upon the colonies, but that it would be politically criminal were it to do so. From their point of view the controversy resolved itself into a matter of practical statesmanship; had their advice been accepted and tact prevailed in England, a compromise might have resulted and the radical American thinkers would not have been able to go to the extreme. Had Americans been allowed to regulate their own affairs and to impose internal taxation they would probably have been content, at least temporarily, to let Britain regulate trade and defence, for they admitted that these were external to themselves and concerned the Empire as a whole.

When rebellion broke out the loyalists, as has been said, did not go so far as the radical Americans. Revolt against Britain they would not, but many of them held the general view, so much under discussion, that they should exercise all the rights of

Englishmen and especially have control of their own local affairs. And in the second Quebec Act of 1791 definite assertion is made that in view of what had happened in the United States the British Parliament would not impose any internal tax or duty for internal revenue, which matter would be dealt with by provincial Assemblies. It would, however, still regulate navigation and commerce for the benefit of the Empire. But this Act laid down definitely the principle of the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, which the American colonists had challenged. Among English-speaking people of Canada this Act was regarded as not having gone far enough, even strong loyalists desiring a fuller control than it gave them of their own affairs. However, the second great event in the history of the Canadian people intervened before the constitutional discussion became acute.

By all those Americans, and they were not a few, who were of Jefferson's opinion that, as he expressed it in 1808, it was one of the objects of the Government "to exclude all European influence from this hemisphere," the existence of the British colonies was resented as a challenge to this supremacy. For behind them stood Great Britain with her remarkable recuperative power. Canada has often felt the repercussion of American dislike for Britain, but in the War of 1812-4 a deadly blow was aimed at