The Charge That
We Have Not Gone Far Enough - That We Have Not Struck Out Boldly For A
Consolidated Union, Instead Of A Union With Reserved Local
Jurisdictions - Is Another Charge Which Deserves Some Notice.
To this I
answer that if we had had, as was proposed, an Intercolonial Railway
twenty years ago, we
Might by this time have been perhaps, and only
perhaps, in a condition to unite into one consolidated government; but
certain politicians and capitalists having defeated that project twenty
years ago, special interests took the place great general interest
might by this time have occupied; vested rights and local ambitions
arose and were recognized; and all these had to be admitted as existing
in a pretty advanced stage of development when the late conferences
were called together. The lesson to be learned from this squandering of
quarter centuries by British Americans is this, that if we lose the
present propitious opportunity, we may find it as hard a few years
hence to get an audience, even for any kind of union (except democratic
union), as we should have found it to get a hearing last year for a
legislative union, from the long period of estrangement and non-
intercourse which had existed between these Provinces, and the special
interests which had grown up in the meantime in each of them. Another
motive to union, or rather a phase of the last motive spoken of, is
this, that the policy of our neighbours to the south of us has always
been aggressive. There has always been a desire amongst them for the
acquisition of new territory, and the inexorable law of democratic
existence seems to be its absorption. They coveted Florida, and seized
it; they coveted Louisiana, and purchased it; they coveted Texas, and
stole it; and then they picked a quarrel with Mexico, which ended by
their getting California. They sometimes pretend to despise these our
colonies as prizes beneath their ambition; but had we not had the
strong arm of England over us we should not now have had a separate
existence. The acquisition of Canada was the first ambition of the
American Confederacy, and never ceased to be so, when her troops were a
handful and her navy scarce a squadron. Is it likely to be stopped now,
when she counts her guns afloat by thousands and her troops by hundreds
of thousands? On this motive a very powerful expression of opinion has
lately appeared in a published letter of the Archbishop of Halifax, Dr.
Connolly. Who is the Archbishop of Halifax? In either of the coast
colonies, where he has laboured in his high vocation for nearly a third
of a century, it would be absurd to ask the question; but in Canada he
may not be equally well known. Some of my honorable friends in this and
the other House, who were his guests last year, must have felt the
impress of his character as well as the warmth of his hospitality.
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