Messrs. Archibald And McCully, Two Of His Most Determined Political Opponent - Can We Ever Expect, If We Reject This Scheme, That The Same Or Similar Things Will Occur Again To Favour It?

Can we expect to see the leader of the Upper Canadian Conservative party and the leader of the Upper Canadian Liberals sitting side by side again, if this project fails to work out, in a spirit of mutual compromise and concession, the problem of our constitutional difficulties?

No, Sir, it is too much to expect. Miracles would cease to be miracles if they were events of every-day occurrence; the very nature of wonders requires that they should be rare; and this is a miraculous and wonderful circumstance, that men at the head of the Governments in five separate Provinces, and men at the head of the parties opposing them, all agreed at the same time to sink party differences for the good of all, and did not shrink, at the risk of having their motives misunderstood, from associating together for the purpose of bringing about this result. I have asked, Sir, what risks do we run if we reject this measure? We run the risk of being swallowed up by the spirit of universal democracy that prevails in the United States. Their usual and favourite motto is -

"'No pent-up Utica contracts our powers, But the whole boundless continent is ours.

That is the popular paraphrase of the Monroe doctrine. And the popular voice has favoured - aye, and the greatest statesmen among them have looked upon it as inevitable - an extension of the principles of democracy over this continent. Now, I suppose a universal democracy is no more acceptable to us than a universal monarchy in Europe would have been to our ancestors; yet for three centuries - from Charles V. to Napoleon - our fathers combated to the death against the subjugation of all Europe to a single system or a single master, and heaped up a debt which has since burdened the producing classes of the Empire with an enormous load of taxation, which, perhaps, none other except the hardy and ever-growing industry of those little islands could have borne up under. The idea of a universal democracy in America is no more welcome to the minds of thoughtful men among us than was that of a universal monarchy to the minds of the thoughtful men who followed the standard of the third William, or who afterwards, under the great Marlborough, opposed the armies of the particular dynasty that sought to place Europe under a single dominion.

"But if we are to have a universal democracy on this continent, the Lower Provinces - the smaller fragments - will be 'gobbled up' first, and we will come in afterwards by way of dessert. The proposed Confederation will enable us to bear up shoulder to shoulder; to resist the spread of this universal democracy doctrine; it will make it more desirable to maintain on both sides the connection that binds us to the parent State; it will raise us from the position of mere dependent colonies to a new and more important position; it will give us a new lease of existence under other and more favourable conditions; and resistance to this project, which is pregnant with so many advantages to us and to our children, means simply this, ultimate union with the United States.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 152 of 259
Words from 79753 to 80317 of 136421