At The Time It Was Formed It
Announced To This House That It Was Its Intention, As Part Of Its
Policy, To Seek A Conference With The Lower Colonies, And Endeavour To
Bring About A General Union.
This House formally gave the Government
its confidence after the announcement of that policy, and although I
have no desire to strain terms, it does appear to me that this House
did thereby fully commit itself to the principle of a union of the
Colonies, if practicable.
Everything we did was done in form and with
propriety, and the result of our proceedings is the document that has
been submitted to the Imperial Government as well as to this House, and
which we speak of here as a treaty. And that there may be no doubt
about our position in regard to that document, we say, Question it you
may, reject it you may, or accept it you may, but alter it you may not.
It is beyond your power, or our power, to alter it. There is not a
sentence - not even a word - you can alter without desiring to throw out
the document. Alter it, and we know at once what you mean - you thereby
declare yourselves against the only possible union. On this point, I
repeat, after all my hon. friends who have already spoken, for one
party to alter a treaty, is, of course, to destroy it. Let us be frank
with each other; you do not like our work, nor do you like us who stand
by it, clause by clause, line by line, and letter by letter. Well, we
believe we have here given to our countrymen of all the Provinces the
possible best - that we have given them an approximation to the right -
their representatives and ours have laboured at it, letter and spirit,
form and substance, until they found this basis of agreement, which we
are all confident will not now, nor for many a day to come, be easily
swept away. And first, I will make a remark to some of the French
Canadian gentlemen who are said to be opposed to our project, on French
Canadian grounds only. I will remind them, I hope not improperly, that
every one of the Colonies we now propose to re-unite under one rule - in
which they shall have a potential voice - were once before united as New
France. Newfoundland, the uttermost, was theirs, and one large section
of its coast is still known as the 'French shore;' Cape Breton was
theirs till the final fall of Louisburgh; Prince Edward Island was
their Island of St. Jean; Charlottetown was their Port Joli; and
Frederickton, the present capital of New Brunswick, their St. Anne's;
in the heart of Nova Scotia was that fair Acadian land, where the roll
of Longfellow's noble hexameters may be heard in every wave that breaks
upon the base of Cape Blomedon. In the northern counties of New
Brunswick, from the Mirimichi to the Metapediac, they had their forts
and farms, their churches and their festivals, before the English
speech had ever once been heard between those rivers. Nor is that
tenacious Norman and Breton race extinct in their old haunts and homes.
I have heard one of the members for Cape Breton speak in high terms of
that portion of his constituency; and I believe I am correct in saying
that Mr. Le Visconte, the late Finance Minister of Nova Scotia, was, in
the literal sense of the term, an Acadian. Mr. Cozzans, of New York,
who wrote a very readable little book the other day about Nova Scotia,
describes the French residents near the basin of Minas, and he says,
especially of the women, 'they might have stepped out of Normandy a
hundred years ago!' In New Brunswick there is more than one county,
especially in the North, where business, and law, and politics, require
a knowledge of both French and English.
"I think it is to their honour, that the Highlanders in all the Lower
Provinces preserve faithfully the religion, as well as the language and
traditions of their fathers. The Catholic Bishop of Charlottetown is a
McIntyre; his Right Rev. Brother of Arichat (Cape Breton) is a
McKinnon; and in the list of the clergy, I find a. constant succession
of such names as McDonald, McGillis, McGillvary, McLeod, McKenzie, and
Cameron - all 'Anglo-Saxons' of course, and mixed up with them
Fourniers, Gauvreaus, Paquets, and Martells, whose origin is easy to
discover. Another of the original elements of that population remains
to be noticed - the U. E. Loyalists, who founded New Brunswick (as they
founded Upper Canada), for whom New Brunswick was made a separate
Province in 1784, as Upper Canada was for their relatives in 1791.
Their descendants still flourish in the land, holding many positions of
honour; and as a representative of the class, I shall only mention
Judge Wilmot, who the other day declared, in charging one of his grand
juries, that if it were necessary to carry Confederation in New
Brunswick, so impressed was he with the necessity of the measure, to
the very existence of British laws and British institutions on this
continent, he was prepared to quit the Bench and return to politics.
There are other elements also not to be overlooked. The thrifty Germans
of Lunenberg, whose homes are the neatest upon the land, as their fleet
is the tightest on the sea; and other small sub-divisions; but I shall
not prolong this analysis. I may observe, however, that this population
is almost universally a native population of three or four or more
generations. In New Brunswick, at the most there is about twelve per
cent. of an immigrant people; in Nova Scotia, about eight; in the two
Islands, even less. In the eye of the law, we admit no disparity
between natives and immigrants in this country; but it is to be
considered that where men are born in the presence of the graves of
their fathers, for even a few generations, the influence of the fact is
great in enhancing their attachment to that soil.
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