The Crown and the Confederation

I THE CROWN AND THE CONFEDERATION. I . --... +-+-+~.. - T EE LETTE S TO THE HON. JOHN .ALEXANDER McDONALD, BY A BAOKWOODSMAN. Finis Coronat? ~tonfrtttI : JOHN LOVELL, PRINTER, ST. NICHOLAS STREET. 1864. ... The first and second of the followin g Letters are reprinted with a few verbal alterations from the Montreul Gaeette , the th ird nppears III print, for the first time, in th ese pages, .- THE CR,OvVNAND THE CON~1EDERATION. LETTER I. The fVriler introduces h.imself-State of opinion among his neighbors at JJiapleton- Conjusion of ideas as to the term Confederation-Monarchical Confederacies, ancient and modern-Lord Bacon's opinion that Monarchy is founded in the Natural Law - Monarchical elements in British Jimerican population-.J1nalysis thereof: The French Canadian. element " Old Country" element-the descendants of U. E. L oya.lists-The Con- federacv ought to embrace "the three estates." MAPLETON, C. E., Sept. sui, 1864. RESPECTED SIR,-In the ministerial explanations which you gave last June, in your place in Parliament, as to the occasion of that crisis, you were reported to have said that a settlement was to be sought for our constitutional perplexities, " in the well understood principles of Confederation." You will, I am assured from all that is reported of your character, excuse a plain man, wholly out of politics himself (except in so far as every subject of the Queen and spectator of events Inay be said to be interested), for addressing you a few words of commentary on your own text. In justice to what may seem crude or impractical in my style or opinions, I may be permitted to introduce myself as one who has formerly had a good deal of commerce with the world; which lay, howeve~, more with the past generation than the present; whose notions may therefore be open to the imputation of old-fash- 6 ioned, but who has not, if he knows his own heart , lost anything of his early hatred of all oppression, or his early enthusiasm for the happiness and good government of all mankind. You and your colleagues propose to lead us politically " to other scenes and pastures new," but, not, of course, without our own assent. That assent must, to serve your purpose, be the free' act of a large majority of the inhabitants of Canada; and it is of the grounds on which such necessary assent can be honestly obtained, that I respectfully present to you the humble views of one man. When I say of one man, I should add, however, that I have canvassed these views with many of my worthy neighbors, in not the least important county in the P rovince, and have found them very generally approved of in this quarter. By "the well understood principles of Confedera tion," my neighbors and I are agreed that you must have meant a divi sion of power between several local or minor governments, and one grand or supreme government. So far , the platform is broad enough to bear us all. The immense extent of British America as naturally calls for local superintendence in matt ers of detail, as its political circumstances call for one strong power in general, to oversee and harmonize all. No arm would, perhaps, be executively long enough to reach from the capes of Newfoundland to the plains of Rupert's Land, not to speak of stretching its operations farther west ward . Moreover, all the provinces now invited to unite have been for two or thre e generations accustomed to their own local governments. This universal custom has grown easy and natur al to them; it has begotten interests of locality, of offi ce, and of class; its modification to fit it into your newly projected Union need not be a work of intrigue or violence, as other unions have too often been ; while its abolition would be, perhaps, impossible, even if it were at all desirable. 7 This we can all see-and already the goocl will of the Pro vinces 'generally appears to' attend your design, seeing it by this conciliatory-and accommodating light. But that, Sir, which most occupies the thoughts of our fireside statesmen here in.Mapleton is, whether your confede ration. is. to be.framed OR democratical or monarchical prin ciples. The very words confederacy, confederation, federa- .tion, and: federal. union, have acquired so exclusively an American meaning in our part of the country, that some excellent people will reason, as though they could not possibly have a British meaning; wholly distinct from the American. As to this confusion of ideas, I may congratulate myself in having wholly escaped it. By the aid of a few good books, and the recollection of 111any, I endeavor to show; those who converse with me on the subject, that there 11lay be again (as there often has beep) a confederation on monarchical as well as on republican principles; and in. this. argulTIBnt I quote the most conspicuous instances, ancient and modern. Not to venture into Egyptian antiquity; the next oldest governments of which,we have clear record, were the Asiatic mcnarchics.s-call of them confederated rather than consoli dated. The title of the Imperial ruler was usually " the great king" or "the king of kings," because, says the learned Abbe Rollin, "they had several kings their vassals, either in their court, or dependent on them." "Monarchi calor regal governn1ent, as we call it," observes the same wise and well read author, "is of all others the most ancient, the most universal, the best adapted to keep the people in peace and union, the least exposed to th.e revolutions and vicissitudes incident to States." "For these reasons," he adds, "the wisest writers among the ancients, as Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, and especially Herodotus, have thought fit to prefer this form of government to all others." Of the three hundred constitutions which Aristotle con- 8 sulted, before he wrote his Politics, by far the greater part included the kingly element, under one form or other; and the conclusion to which he came, after all his studies, is very well known. The Roman government comrnmenced with a confederated and ended in a consolidated monarchy. When the rage of centralizing everything in one city, seized on the Romans, "the allied kings" ceased to experience the former consi deration and fairness which had so att ached them to the metropolis; hence provincial insurrections, such as Dion, Cresar, and Sallnst have described. As to the confederated empires of modern times, I need but mention that of Charlemagne, or the West, which survived a thousand years, in the modern empire of Germany. So strong a hold upon that thoughtful and freedom-loving people had this confederate monarchy, that after resisting to the death the arbitrary recasting of their institutions by the modern Charlemagne, they forgot not to restore again, though in a modern fashion, the federal system, which their ances tors for so many ages had found to be not at all incompatible with a high degree of local independence. Besides these examples of famous and long-lived monar chical confederacies, I confess, at the risk of being thought a pedant, that I am old-fashioned enough also, to quote from some of the great masters of the English system who lived formerly, such as Lord Bacon, Lord Somers, and Mr. Burke, Of the sentiments of the two last-uttered, by one in corn batting an infidel and levelling revolution, and by the other in guiding and controlling a lawful revolution-I need not speak to one so conversant with English constitutional read ing, as the Attorney General West. But the weighty opin ions of Lord Chancellor Bacon are not, perhaps, equally familiar to all who may do me the honor, on account of your name at its head, to read this letter. They will be found 9 scattered throughout his State writings, but nowhere, per haps, more concisely put, than in the early part of his famous argument made while Solicitor General, "before all the Judges of England," in the case of the "Post-Nati of Scot land." In my edition," the passage referred to begins on page 322 of the fourth volume. The celebrated jurist and philosopher there argues, and to my mind conclusively, that the original of monarchy exists in the natural law, while the original of senates and commonwealths is found only in con • ventional laws or compacts. He finds three chief types of "the monarchical state: I. That of the father, or chief of a family. 11. That of a shepherd and his flock, "which Xeno phon saith, Cyrus had ever in his mouth." Ill." The government of God himself over the world, whereof lawful monarchies are a shadow." This last sacred original can never be challenged, he says, by "the Senate of Venice or a Canton of Swisses." And on this head his Lordship thus concludes: "So, we see, there be precedents or platforms of monarchies both in nature and above nature; even from the monarch of heaven and earth, to the king, if you will, of an hive of bees. And, therefore, other states are the creatures of law; and this state only subsisteth. by nature." Having overwhelmed my less bookish neighbors with my instances, I usually conclude by this question-· because the Americams have used a good word badly, is that any reason why we should not use it properly, and to our own advantage? Now, though I do not pretend that we, in this country, are in circumstances nearly analogous to those of our insular fathers, who laid the foundations of kingly government within the circumvallation of popular representation a thousand years ago, yet I do venture to affirm this-· that what has been true of a whole people for above thirty generations, cannot be said without extreme presumption to have lost all applicability to .

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